wythall radio club

Wythall Radio Club members have been active contacting Scout groups around the world during JOTA/JOTI (Jamboree on the Air/Internet) 2020.

Les 2E0LRV spoke to Scouts from 2 JOTA stations last week end. 

“On Saturday I spoke to several groups of Scouts in Lillehammer, Norway. Their call was LA2L and was being run by Anders Forgen LA6UIA.

On Sunday I spoke to the Scouts from Crystal Lake Illinois, USA, who were using the call K9AT belonging to David J Holmgren, who sent this link about the event. 

Both Anders and David have passed on thanks from the Scouts.”

Les made both contacts through Hub Net using a Yeasu FT 8800 feeding a small colinear and back in to an All Star node connected to the wonderweb.

Both scout groups were trying various modes to make contacts and the feedback was that the contacts made using Allstar/Hubnet were by far the most popular and rewarding for the Scouts.

Meantime Tim M6OTN worked EA2KV in Spain on 40meters, leaving another happy group of Scouts!

This continues Wythall Radio Club’s support for Brownies, Beavers, Guides and Scouts – see our earlier posts, for example here.

Shields have now been awarded to Wythall Radio Club members for their achievements in the Easter Contest and Morse May, delayed due to the pandemic.

Over 40 members participated in the Club’s annual Easter Contest, and highpoints were QSOs with some of our more distant members in Scotland, Torquay and Derby. 

In the 2m/70cm FM section, the winner was Kev 2E0NCO (photo left), who was awarded the Colin Baker G6ZDQ Easter Contest VHF/UHF Shield, in memory of our former Club member.  Over the 5 days of the contest he achieved 124 QSOs with 37 different Club members  giving a total score of 3071 points!

There was very close competition for the top places in the all bands/all modes section.  David G7IBO came first (photo right) with 124 QSOs with 43 Club members over the five days, and a total score of 3655 points. 

He was awarded the David Dawkes G0ICJ Easter Contest all bands/all modes Shield, in memory of our former Club member.

Stuart M0SRZ (photo left) is the 2020 recipient of the Lew Williams Shield.  This annual award recognises a member’s progress with CW (Morse Code), and is in memory of Wythall Radio Club’s former CW tutor and President. 

The shields are shown in the order given above.

The RSGB has just launched today a series of videos to help the thousands of people who have taken their Foundation exam via remote invigilation whilst the Covid restrictions have prevented the practical assessments taking place.

The full 30-minute video highlights six practical tasks and each segment stands alone rather than being part of a single ‘story’ through the video. As well as this whole video we have published the different segments as separate short videos to make it easier to go back to just one or two parts again.

As the National Society, RSGB “wanted to create a video resource that people could use and return to whenever they needed some support.

We know that many clubs and individual radio amateurs have created online training courses and have been helping new licensees with these skills too and we’re really grateful for all the support being given by the amateur radio community.

With the launch of these videos we now want to add to the resources that new licensees have available to them.”

If you want to find the page quickly or share a link, this short url will be the easiest way: www.rsgb.org/foundation-practicals

Find out more about Wythall Club’s training courses on the ‘Training’ tab on our web site and for latest info click here

Yes, Wythall Radio Club members contacted exactly 100 different countries in their September DX Challenge!

Highlights included contacts with Western Sahara, the Falkland Islands and tiny Sant Marten island in the Caribbean.

The ‘ton up’ was reached using digital mode FT8 on the 40, 20 and 10 meter bands.  Not bad for this stage in the sunspot cycle and in late summer.

Lee G0MTN contacted 76 unique counties (each country counting only once across the three bands) while Ian M0LQY contacted 136 overall (the total of countries worked on each of the three bands).   

Lee and Ian shared the top 3 spots with Chris G0EYO.

As expected most contacts were on 40 and 20, although several countries were reached on 10 meters.

For a full list of countries worked, click here.

There was quite a race to the finish……