About Wythall Radio Club

The 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, 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 and Holland.

The club's mission statement is to have FUN in everything it does. We do all the things you would expect any other club to do but we do it differently. Our VHF NFD is not only another chance to come half way down the league tables yet again but an opportunity to play around with strange designs of 80m loop antennas, or have an FT817 contest to see who can work the farthest on a miracle whip. We also do special events such as Steam Fairs, Mills on Air, JOTA and other local events.

We are strong on social events. We have an annual Xmas Socials were we either have a quiz or skittles and an annual clay pigeon shooting contest when we compete for the Lord Pettitt Shooting Trophy. We have a Xmas and Summer Fox Hunt which usually ends up in a pub meals somewhere. The fact that the Community Association we meet in every Tuesday has a club with a well stocked bar also adds to the social ambience. Of course we have been known to play radio using our a very well equipped radio shack covering 160m to 23cm which is in the basement of the community centre and has its own water pump in case it floods, an event which seems to happen every 5 years or so.

The club also organises the Annual Wythall Radio Rally every March and whilst this is more hard work than fun, it does provide the club with its major source of funds and can be guaranteed to get most club members out working together to make it a great success. More infromation on the Rally please visit the Rally website www.wrcrally.co.uk

Some Tuesdays are taken over with a talk by a member or outside speaker on some topic of interest to members. We have had talks on SSTV, various Dxpeditions, and DXing. We were also lucky to have visits out to local broadcast transmitting stations.

We have an active Contest Group within the club and participate in many of the RSGB club contests, field days and other international contests. The club and contest group hold four callsigns between them G1WAC, G4WAC, G7WAC and G0WRC.

Throughout its 27+ year history, getting people into the hobby has been an important objective of the club, and over the years we have run regular RAE ,foundation classes. In 2008, thanks to a Lottery Awards for All grant, we started running the full set of training courses for Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced licenses.

Over the Xmas holiday the club runs the Christmas contest for members who will try and work each other every day from Xmas eve until the New Year and each member worked being a multiplier for the number of members worked over the best five days. The winner is presented with the "G7OJO Reg Brown Cup". This is another way of bringing club members together.

Read the Clubs History here