M1NER’s QTH – Whittlesey, UK

Welcome to the webpage of M1NER, an amateur radio station located in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, UK, operated by Andy Taylor. The Maidenhead locator is IO92wn. Formerly, I operated under the callsigns 2E0GPU (Intermediate) and M3YEK (Foundation).

I am a committee member of the Peterborough & District ARC

Recent Projects

Recent projects included resurrecting my LoRa based APRS iGate at home – which is now back online as interest in the project has picked up again! I have also been experimenting with Meshtastic.

New Radios

In June 2024, I sold the Yaesu FT-991A and replaced it with the new all singing, all dancing Kenwood TH-D75.

In August 2024, I purchased a Beofeng DM-1701 to replace my old TYT MD-380. The DM-1701 is running the OpenGD77 firmware.

The IC-705 is now my main and only HF capable transceiver. 10w is plenty for me. I am considering purchasing a HF amplifier at some point in the future. A 2m amplifier has been purchased from a SK sale.

The Straw Bear

If you’ve received a QSL card from me when I used the 2E0GPU callsign, you might had been curious about the silver statue depicted on it. It represents a straw bear.

In Whittlesea, from when no one quite knows, it was the custom on the Tuesday following Plough Monday (the 1st Monday after Twelfth Night) to dress one of the confraternity of the plough in straw and call him a ‘Straw Bear’. A newspaper of 1882 reports that “… he was then taken around the town to entertain by his frantic and clumsy gestures the good folk who had on the previous day subscribed to the rustics, a spread of beer, tobacco and beef”.

For more information about the straw bear, visit The Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival

Whittlesey is a town in the north-west of the Isle, 6½ miles east of Peterborough and 11 miles west of March. Its ‘island’ rises to 26ft above sea level, and is about 3 miles long and ½ mile broad.

The town is situated at the intersection of the road from Peterborough to March with that from Ramsey to Thorney and Crowland. The latter (B1040) is planted with trees on the Thorney side of the town, a pleasant but unusual feature in this part of the country; from it fine views of Peterborough Cathedral may be obtained.

Whittlesey is situated just off the limestone belt of England, and has an extensive display of good domestic architecture. The most important buildings are the manor house and the Butter Cross.

The right to hold a market and three annual fairs was granted in 1715 to George Downes, steward to Richard Price and Nathaniel Webb, the lessees of the manors. The market had been discontinued for about twenty years in 1808, but the June fair, limited to one day only, was still kept up. Horses were the chief item of trade at this fair. Shortly before 1851 the market was revived ‘and bids fair to become an excellent corn market’, but in 1868 it was said that only ‘the tradition of a market lingers about the place on Friday afternoons’. Friday is still market day in Whittlesey, but the town is too close to Peterborough for the market to be of much importance.