by Steve Farthing (with apologies to the late great William McGonagall)

It was on the eleventh of July two thousand and eight,
In the G0XAR shack a well remembered date,
When G0UPL and YL came to stay
from London which is far away.

The XAR shack was a terrible mess
But construction had started on a beacon for QRSS
There were capacitors, resistors and transistors three
Soldered to a strip of PCB
Plus a crystal for the the thirty meter band
All badly soldered by G0XAR's hand

Also, in the course of construction
Because of a power supply disruption
the output transistor, my last BC107
let out its smoke and went to heaven
"No worries" said G0UPL "What you should do"
"Is use a 2n2222!"

We soldered in the shiny new part,
The power supply we then did start
No output current did we see
On the meter, which frustrated me
G0UPL then said "Upon inspection,
I see you have reversed the base and collector connections,
that will have let out the smoke"
I did not see the funny side of the joke,
but another 2n2222 was fitted,
and this time power was emitted!

The output signal sounded very rough
And finding the problem was exceedingly tough
The G0XAR Oscilloscope
had lost its trigger, so there was no hope
As there was no signal to be seen
on its lovely fluorescent green screen.

However G0UPL's massive brain
put us on the right track again
as we reduced the output power
by turning the potentiometer
the roughness it did go away
Oh happy, happy, happy day.

We connected the beacon to the doublet
via an ATU to match the beacon with it
we had to guess at the various settings
but managed to avoid any more smoke outletting
Then we mailed our fellow QRSS knights
that the beacon would be on that night
and using Argo it might be in sight.

The output power was measured at 10 milliwatts
which most people think is not a lot.
But was sufficient to be received by G6AVK
in Essex which must be 80 miles away.
Then a grabber screen we did see
from I2NTD
In Bergamo, which is in the beautiful country of Italy,
clearly showing the G0XAR beacon for all to see!.

From Norwich to Bergamo is over nine hundred miles,
For our signals to get there gave 'XAR and 'UPL many smiles
Next i will use the Si570
connected to my computer using USB
to give me a better choice of frequencies.
How far will my qrss signals get? Well we shall see!