Wythall Radio Club is one of the most active clubs in the Midlands. Meeting every Tuesday evening from 8pm onwards at the Wythall Community Association, Wythall Park, Silver Street, Random Club Photo Wythall where it has been able to build a permanent shack and an HF to UHF antenna system mounted on a 60ft Versatower. It has some 55 paid up members with a few overseas members in Italy, USA, Holland and Ireland.
The club takes part in special events such as Steam Fairs, Mills on Air, JOTA and other local events. We have Christmas parties and the club Christmas Contest which really gets many members in touch with each other.

Wythall Contest Group is part of Wythall Radio club, formed several years ago when contests began to be entered in earnest by several club members.
Membership is automatically granted to all members of Wythall Radio Club club itself, although only a die-hard group of individuals turn out to enter the contests!

The aims of Wythall Contest Group are:

To encourage amateur radio contesting amongst members the club.
To improve operating proficiency.
To have fun and finally : To do better than last year !
The contest group enters over 40 contests per year using all contest bands from 1.8 MHz to 1296 MHz, including SSB, CW, and RTTY. On HF, RSGB, CQ, BARTG, IARU and ARRL contests have been entered amongst others. Keep an ear out for our club call signs G1WAC G4WAC G7WAC G0WRC and M5W.

The club's mission statement is to have FUN in everything it does. To read more click here.

If you would like to visit us you would be made most welcome. To contact the club please click here.

Training

Wythall Radio Club, with the help of a grant from the National Lottery Awards for All programme, is able to offer training courses for those members of the local and wider community who wish to gain an amateur radio transmitting license. The Club run courses at Foundation level, Intermediate and Advanced for those wishing to gain their Full Amateur Radio Licence.
If you would like to know more about our training programme click here

100% pass rate continues in April.

The five students who went through our 3 week Foundation Class all passed their examinations with flying colours. So well done Matt, Mark, Jon, John and John. [more]

Nick passes his Foundation Certificate aged 10.

Well done to Nick M6NJR, son of club members Vaughan M0VRR and Sherryn M3SVR. Nick took his Foundation exam recently at Wythall House and passed with flying colours. [more]

Wythall Radio Rally Great Success

Over 500 visitors paid to attend the 24th Annual Radio Rally on Sunday 8th March last. This is 20% up on the previous year and by all accounts visitors and traders were very happy with the experience. Some 28 club members turned out to assist on the two days and we are very grateful for their help. Also assisting were the 1st Tidbury Green Explorer Scouts who did the car park marshalling for us and we shall be making a donation to their funds in recognition of their efforts. Next year will be the club’s 25th Rally and it promises to be a smasher!

New Foundation Course starting 18th April

The Wythall Radio Club will be starting a new Foundation course on 18th April for any short wave listeners, CBers or amateur family members who may be interested in getting into the exciting world of amateur radio. The course will be split over two Saturday mornings and two Tuesdays and the exam will be held on the morning of Saturday 2nd May. The cost will be £40 to cover the cost of exam fee, course material and tuition book and this also includes membership of Wythall Radio Club for 12 months. For further information, please contact Chris G0EYO on 07710 412 819 or by Email.

All 4 pass their Intermediate Examination

Congratulations to Alan M3SXB, Walter M6WJC, Stuart M6STU and Steven M6STE on passing their Intermediate Examination on 24th February following a 5 week course at Wythall Radio Club. Alan at 87 is the oldest candidate to have taken a course and examination at Wythall Radio Club.... [more]

The next course at Wythall will be a Foundation one which is planned to run from Saturday April 18th to Saturday 2nd May as a mixture of Saturday mornings and Tuesday evenings. If you are interested in this course or know of someone who may be, then contact Chris G0EYO by Email.

New Intermediate Course Starts on January 27th

Wythall Radio Club will be running a 5 week Intermediate Licence course commencing Tuesday 27th January. The course will comprise two Saturday mornings and four evening sessions plus the examination which is scheduled for Tuesday 24th February. We aim to do the practical work on the Saturdays and the theoretical stuff on the evenings.

A calendar for this Intermediate course can be downloaded from here

Cost of the course will be £50 to club members or £65 to non-members and this includes the examination fee, course book, course material and the practical work and the project kit. Fees will be payable on the first session.

Our 100% success rate continues…

We are pleased to announce that our three Foundation students, Steve, Stuart and Walter passed their Foundation examination on Tuesday 18th November and have applied for their new callsigns. Congratulations to the all and lets see you on the air soon with those M6 calls. At the same time club member, Roger M3RXV took his Intermediate examination and passed with only one question wrong. Tricky one too, what does 2 gold bands on a resistor mean (Answer tolerance and divider – used for high tolerance very low resistance resistors). Roger intends to go straight on and take the Advanced examination in December at Wythall and get his M0 full ticket. Good luck to him.

Xmas came early to Wythall Radio Club

Some 18 club members and their families enjoyed a relaxing Xmas social at Wythall House on Friday 21st November. This years’ event was designed to be less organised than in previous years with plenty of time for eating and playing pool, darts or skittles or just chatting amongst ourselves. As in previous years food was provided under the lines of an American Supper and was both plentiful and enjoyable. Visitors were generous with their raffle prizes and even more generous with the cash we collected for the sale of raffle tickets, stand up bingo and conventional bingo. In the event, three people shared the stand up bingo prize money and Chris G8KMQ won the full house and Wendy, G0EYO’s xyl won the line prize money on the bingo. We also ran a quiz consisting of two general knowledge papers, (supposedly easy, but actually quite hard) a Connections sheet and a radio quiz. It is embarrassing to have to report that no team got 100% on the radio quiz which was taken from a Foundation exam paper and one team only got 5 out of 10 right on it. Anyway the Strictly John Sergeant team, comprising Peter G4LWF, David GW0RQO and family and friends, won the quiz prize with 28 points out of 40. Well done them and well done everyone who came along. We all had a great time and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Thanks to our chairman Martin for providing the PA system which was essential for the bingo calling to overcome a spot of local QRM!.

100% Success Rate

Advanced and Foundation Passes

It is with great pleasure and some pride that we saw the three club members who undertook the club’s first 14 week Advanced course recently pass their examinations to become full licence holders. Well done Colin (now M0GJM), Mel (now M0MAJ) and James (now M0GJQ). Tim 2E0SDE who was not able to do the course with us and took the exam at another venue also passed and is now M0URX. Congratulations to all four of you.

Not only can we report on the 100% success rate for our members in the Advanced Exam but our recently concluded Foundation Class also scored a 100% pass rate with new M6 licences on their way for Lynne (now M6FAB), Jan (now M3YXM) and Rob (now M6MRX). Well done you three, are you planning on signing up for the Intermediate Class starting on September 16th

These results now show us that the Wythall approach to tuition for the Foundation. Intermediate and Advanced classes works. By using a team approach we can bring fresh minds to the challenge of imparting what can be quite difficult concepts to understand. We now have a large team of club members (8 in all) who can be drawn upon to tutor and demonstrate the requirements of the various syllabus’s for the licence courses.

So, all you M3’s out there, why not have a go at the Intermediate Licence and the same applies to you 2E0’s, why not go for the Advanced one. The tutors at Wythall will get you through it.

2008 VHF National Field Day (VHF NFD.)

Update by Lee G0MTN

As I sit inside, watching the trees blow around in the rain, I was strangely reminded about VHF National Field Day (VHF NFD.)

An important part of doing well in the contest is making sure we are on the air as much of the time as possible. In previous years I've wandered around on club nights with a paper rota. This year I thought I would publish the list on the Internet so it's always visible. You can see this year's rota here.

Please email / call / SMS me with your preferences for filling slots, and I will update the table. Pick as many as you'd like! I've put two slots for each hour, for a main operator, and also for an assistant. If you are new to VHF NFD, keen to help but a little cautious at the moment, offer to be "Operator2" which can be listening, logging if required, and filling in for a few moments when Operator1 has a cup of tea or a hot dog etc. It's not very demanding really - it is meant to be fun after all !
Lee G0MTN

2008 VHF National Field Day (VHF NFD.)

Photos now online

On site preparations for field day started Friday 4th July at around 5pm. Saturday morning after setting up various antennas and stations, our Field Day effort was underway. Take a look at some of our pictures here to see what a great (wet) weekend we all had.