Club Diary

• Tuesday 20 June Summer Foxhunt
• Tuesday 4 July Committee Meeting
  
• Friday 21 July Summer Quiz Night
• Tuesday 1 August Committee Meeting
• Tuesday 5 Sep Committee Meeting

Events Diary

• 10 Sept Telford Rally
• 22 / 23 Sept Leicester Show

Contest Diary

• 1 / 2 July VHF National Field Day
• 2 July 3rd 144 MHz Backpackers
• 2 July Low Power HF Field Day
• 9 July 2nd 50 MHz Backpackers
• 15 July 144 MHz Low Power
• 16 July 432 MHz Low Power
• 30 July 4th 144 MHz Backpackers
• 6 August RoPoCo2
• 13 August 70 MHz Trophy
• 14/29 Aug 144 MHz UK Cumulatives
• 13/28 Sep 144 MHz UK Cumulatives
• 20 August 432 MHz
• 2 / 3 Sept 144 MHz Trophy
• 2 / 3 Sept SSB Field Day
• 3 Sept 5th 144 MHz Backpackers

As you'll have hopefully noticed this newsletter is a lot different visually for the first time in about 5 years. I've finally taken the plunge and have started using MS Word instead of Lotus Ami-Pro and Lotus WordPro ("about time too" I hear you shout.)

Despite the new look, there shouldn't be too many surprises for regular readers. Inside this issue are the plans for VHF National Field Day - the club's busiest outdoor event of the calendar - I hope we can again count on your support.

The club morse class continues to progress. Les and Pete have taken their class through the whole alphabet now, and are tentatively looking towards the Telford Rally at the end of the summer as a good time for taking the 5 wpm test.

In recent weeks we've had the Drayton Manor Radio Rally where once again we helped out on the Bring and Buy, and also have taken part in a weekend long special event station at the Blackwell Court Scout Camp, where we ran two stations on 2m and HF. This was an arduous but worthwhile weekend for those who attended, and we were even able to use the mobile tower for the first time in 10 months, thanks to Vaughan.

As usual, the reason for this newsletter is to serve as a reminder for VHF National Field Day, held every year in the first weekend in July. All the plans and details we have so far are inside.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone that has contributed to this edition. It does make my job much easier, and also in my opinion makes the newsletter more interesting to read !

The big contest over the spring was the CQ WPX SSB contest, where were using the M5W short contest callsign once again.

As a further step forward we entered the Multi-Operator Multi-Transmitter cateogry this year. It had been mentioned that in previous years at busy times in the day there were too many operators hanging around with nothing to do. Also, when we (eventually) found ourselves running quite well it was rather overwhelming for the newer HF operators.

The solution was to go multi-multi - which allows for separate simultaneous transmissions on different bands. I was going to bring along my own TS850 for the weekend but the timely loan of an Icom HF radio from Ray G0XAT meant that this wasn't required.

The Icom was connected to the long wire antenna, and the club TS850 to the HF yagi. For this contest, a prefix counts as a multiplier - but it counts only once so we needed to connect the logging PCs together so that the multipliers could be tracked.

The club 486 PC was connected to my laptop using the serial ports, and the software used was TR.

An interesting feature of the software is that the different PCs can send talk messages to one another - so whilst both operators were calling CQ and working people, they could still share a joke over the keyboard.

We operated for most of Saturday daytime, shutting down in the evening to attend Tracey and Jennifer's birthday party, and then most of Sunday.

The long wire was surprisingly good on 10m - we were working USA and Japanese stations on it - but this is more likely to be a factor of the excellent sunspot conditions.

Most (if not all) of the Multi-Multi stations taking part were likely to have more stations active than ours, and also operating for more of the 48 hour contest period. I think it is safe to say we will be in world last place - but it was still an interesting experience and we were the only English multi-multi which must count for something !

CQ WPX SSB - M5W - G0MTN, M0COK, M0COP, G0EYO, G6KMQ ops

Backpackers Contest Season 2000 - by Les M0COK

"CQ CQ!...." The contest season is upon us once again. We have secured permission from Birmingham Council to once again use the site at Monument Lane car park on the Lickey Hills for the series of 2m and 6m backpackers contests. This site is accessible to anyone able to get to the top of the hill - either on foot or wheels - and anyone is welcome to come along and see us in action.

This also allows for the `social` side of Wythall Radio Club alongside the contesting profile we have promoted further over the last few years. Last year saw us do well from the site, in one instance we would have won the 6m section if we hadn't operated in two different power sections!, though we did get a 1st and a 2nd respectively.

We will be operating G1WAC/P when we are QRV up there, and if you can't make it up to see us then a call to us from club members will give us morale boosting if not contest winning points, so listen round those dials for us hi !

We expect to be contesting on the following dates: 21st May / 4th June / 18th June / 9th July / 16th July / 30th July / 3rd September. QRZ contest.......! de Les COK

The rules for VHF National Field Day 2000 have undergone quite a dramatic change this year. This year's dates are the 1st and 2nd of July, and the location as usual in the far field at Wythall Park

In summary the changes are:

• Addition of 6m - pick 4 bands out of 5 in the entry
• Restricted Section power level now 100w
• 4m is now a single mixed mode 8 hour section
• Low Power sections operate for 16 hours

Chris G0EYO has been working hard on a way to use the versatower to accommodate multiple bands using clamped horizontal boom on which to mount two rotators.

There has been quite a lot of interest show on the Internet from several UK Contest Groups. Europe has been using 6m during VHF NFD for many years - so there is scope to make a lot of QSOs.

With our site, choice of equipment and level of commitment I think it is unlikely that we will be able to radically improve our placing, so Chris and I would like to propose that whilst we try our best, our emphasis should be on maximising our scores whilst enjoying ourselves.

The plan is to operate all 5 bands if possible and send in two entries:

Team A:

• G1WAC/P 2m Low Power
• IC275, 17 ele on a Sectioned Mast
• G7WAC/P 432 MHz Open
• IC475, 21 ele on Versatower
• G4WAC/P 4m Low Power
• G0EYO Transverter, 7 ele on a Sectioned Mast
• G0WRC/P 6m Restricted
• IC706, new 6m yagi on a Sectioned Mast

Team B:

• G0EYO/P 1296 MHz Open
• G0EYO Transverter, 55 ele on Versatower

Also we hope to run the HF Trap Dipole from the Versatower and the TS850 so we can use HF. There is also the RSGB Low Power CW Field Day on 40m and 80m on Sunday morning, so there is a possibility for an entry there too.

Low Power stations need only operate for 16 hours of the 24, so effectively we can shut down overnight and carry on with the socialising / sleeping.

Morse Class

The CW class run by myself and Pete COP has gone well and continues each Tuesday evening from 7.30pm at the club prior to the regular evening activities. However the original attendance has unfortunately dropped due to unforeseen events for those concerned, causing them to miss sessions as we have progressed. We hope we haven't frightened them away and those who have been affected will come back for more when they can!

Praise has to be given to the efforts of Peter DUO and Alban UGC who have been able to maintain the work through the early stages and could be ready to take their 5 wpm tests at Telford Rally (I'm sure you'll thank me for that lads - no pressure you understand!) Also taking part have been Vaughn EOQ, Ken DJG and Reg OJO, we'll be continuing for you if you want us to folks. dah-dit-dit dit Les COK

If you ever need to know a ham's address anywhere in the world then log on to QRZ.COM. Not only can you get the address, but you can also put biographical information and pics of your own ham station on there. There are also other very useful links to ham related data. My all-time best ham link this year. (Thanks Chris G0EYO)

Although the club has had this for a year or so, I only recently had occasion to need use of it.

For HF I use a Cushcraft vertical bought at the Telford Bring and Buy a couple of years ago. I have found this excellent for 40m to 10m. (I use a dipole for 80m). After re-locating it in the garden I decided to check the VSWR when I realised that the automatic ATU was not capable of matching it on 40m. Using the Antenna Analyser for a vertical could not be simpler. I simply connected the feeder to the vertical to the Analyser and measured the VSWR and impedance at the band edges and band centres. I got a reasonable match, certainly one that was capable of being "tuned in" by the ATU on all bands except 40m. On that band the resonant frequency (ie lowest VSWR) was 6.890MHz. For 40m I need to be able to match between 7.050 and 7.090MHz. So to tune the antenna higher I had to reduce the length (If I had had to tune lower then I have to increase the length). This length was easy to calculate.

6890 kHz = 0.974
7075 kHz

Assuming the current length is 20ft 6inches. I would need to reduce it to 19ft 11inches for it to resonate on 7075kHz. Easy isn't it. In actual fact by relocating it I had accidentally increased the length of the 40m section by about 6 inches. Problem solved.

Reading an article in April's QST, about the organisation of the Dayton Ohio Hamvention, supposedly the world's biggest amateur radio rally, it was inevitable that I would make comparisons with our own rather modest rally. Here are some statistics for you.

Chris G0EYO

Tracey Champion is compiling an asset register to track what equipment the club owns, or is in possession of, where this equipment is (!), and it's value. Hence Tracey asks that if anyone has loaned the club any equipment, can they let her know what it is and what is it's approximate value.

Conversely, if anyone has any of the club's equipment in their house, car, shack, on the Bring and Buy, or as security on their holiday home please let Les M0COK or Tracey know.

We will be holding a 'radio amnesty' night soon where equipment can be handed back with no-questions-asked !

No, it's not a personal ad for me, but another request from Tracey. She asks…

"Do any of the wives / girlfriends / partners of Wythall Radio Club Members read the newsletter? If so, would the girls like to get together sometime?"

Please let Tracey know either via phone 0121 243 3805 or email leschampion@lineone.net or tracey.champion@bmwgroup.com

No men please, not unless you are going to shave your legs and put on a skirt. 73s and all the other numbers Tracey."

I hope that everyone with Internet access has had a chance to look at the new Club Website that has been designed and hosted care of Martin's company Legend JSM (plug plug)

The URL is: http://www.wythallradioclub.co.uk and the new email address is g1wac@wythallradioclub.co.uk

Martin is looking for material to put on the website.

The newsletter and all of the articles will be transferred to the website after publication.

Contacts

Les Champion has a new mobile number. This is: 07974 320348

Chris Meadows has a new mobile number too: 07967 213416

This year's rally was the smoothest running in living memory, no doubt due to lots of preparatory work by Chris G0EYO, a lot of help on the big weekend itself, and some good fortune in the form of nice sunny weather for a change. This was in stark contrast to the snow from the previous summer if you remember!

The format was very similar to previous years, with the use of the Brittania Room, Park Hall, the Scout Hut and the hired marquee. We had a smaller than usual marquee this year as we didn't have such a good response from traders this year.

We were set up on Saturday in good time, a good number of helpers ready to unload tables as they were delivered. Some of the rally direction signs were also put out.

On the Saturday evening our social had moved location to the darts room in Wythall House. We had our best turnout ever for this, and I think the added warmth compared with the chilly scout hut also went down well. We were also able to set up the Britannia room at this time as it had not been hired out which saved us more time in the morning.

A quick trip to the shack to fetch a receiver gave us our background music for the evening, and Leigh (once G7IUB when he actually went on the radio) went on-line surfing the Internet with his laptop and GSM modem card which was interesting. Ben seemed to enjoy it anyway.

Then it was off to bed, as the 7am on site start is always a bit of a struggle. The rally itself is always a bit of a blur, but this year seemed to go really quickly. The first job of the day was to assist the traders as ever were unloading their wares. Then as opening time approached the car park team were dispatched.

Our major problem of the day was car parking on site. Co-incidentally there were several football matches, an archery competition, and a tennis competition trying to park on site as well as the social club regulars. This meant that the on site car parks became full and the shuttle bus had trouble getting to it's bus stop by the marquee.

This problem was rectified by the car park marshalls on the front gate who's diplomat skills were tested to the limit. Some of the tennis players even used the shuttle bus to the car park at the Brittanic site.

This year Rally HQ went up market - Vaughan brought the club caravan to site using his Landrover - Chris enjoyed the shelter - although this year there wasn't any rain !

Raynet once again provided talk in for us, although they reported fewer calls than ever - presumably by now most people knew the way here was the thought.

The catering team once again excelled themselves, the nice weather also assisting, and all of the cold drinks. I must have been unwell as I only managed 3 hot pork rolls this year. During the busy lunch hour rush a catering emergency was announced and we had to send a runner to the shops to buy some more sage and onion stuffing.

It was during this part of the afternoon some interesting 'greetings messages' were relayed on 2m concerning food and beverages orders for the Car Park and Bring and Buy teams. I can't quite remember what the order was from Carol in the counting house but I know I was too embarrassed to say it myself over the air.

The Bring and Buy team found that there were not as many items being presented for sale this year, probably as a result of not being able to park on site. However, we made up for in quality what we lost in quantity. A number of quite expensive items were sold which boosted our commission total to above what we would normally expect to make.

As the rally drew to a close, the remaining signs were picked up from around the parish, and also a lot of the additional signs claiming to be from Raycom (we thought a defunct Amateur Radio dealership) that someone else had put up. We never did find out the source of these !

Overall it was another successful rally - the club lives on for another year - and the rally itself went off more or less smoothly without fraying the nerves of too many club members.

Don't forget that next year's rally is only about 9 months away !

Summer Club Quiz

We are having another inter-club event on Friday July 21st, 7.30 - 11.00pm in the Britannia Room. This will follow the successful format we used for the club Christmas party with a quiz, hosted by myself and Darren HOC with trusty markers Tracey and Carol.

Teams of `up to` 6 people please, let us know your intentions of attending or not as soon as possible so we know how we are off for room. We will trim the evening to two sessions of four rounds with an interval round, we may hold a raffle for a local charity to be agreed upon. The usual clubs have been invited and we might also expect an attendance from members of South Derbyshire club with whom we had a club night qso last month - our bar facility is proving quite an attraction to other radio clubs and societies!!

With regard to food on the night we can go for a local `outlet` to provide based on menus being available on the evening with orders being paid for on the night. Suggestions for who we might use please to either myself, Darren HOC or Chris KMQ. de Les COK

Scout Camp Blackwell Court - May 20 / 21 2000

There had been a little bit of trepidation when I returned from my holidays and found that there was not an awful lot of club support for this project to host a weekend long special event station off site at Blackwell Court for a Scout district camp. As is it turned out the weekend was very successful.

On the Friday afternoon, a group of keen Wythall men transported the mobile versatower to Blackwell, which is located between Bromsgrove and Alvechurch. Actually it's in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by similar looking fields, confusing roadsigns, as I found out when I got lost when trying to find the site later in the evening. On the top of the tower we mounted Chris G6KMQ's 2m colinear, and one end of the HF trap dipole. It took over an hour to get the dipole aloft, as there were lots of inconveniently placed telephone and electricity wires. The other end of the dipole was put in a tree. The tower itself was not wound up - the standard height was ample and we didn't want to have to put out any guys. In the end the installation looked very neat and tidy. After we had set up we joined other helpers and scout leaders for a social evening and a buffet.

The weekend itself was broken up into 45 minute slots when beavers, cubs and scouts would come in groups of about 15 for a demonstration. We divided ourselves up into three groups, the VHF station on 2m, the HF station, and the CW 'station.' On 2m we were very grateful to club members who were able to be on air to accept greetings messages, especially Alban G7UGC. HF ran especially well on 40m, rather than 80m which seemed to be devoid of life. On the busy HF bands it was important to try to get good QSOs with strong signal levels so that the SSB could be understood by the cubs and scouts.

Some memorable contacts included an Australian amateur on holiday in Essex (we still counted it as a VK QSO) and a chap running 2w from a Mizuho 40m handheld. Lots of greetings messages were passed. A 'crib sheet' saying "My name is xxx, I am xx years old" etc. proved very useful to combat shyness or not knowing what to say, although it did prevent any classic greetings messages from occuring. There was nothing to rival Darren's all time best "Hello, I am seven and I have a family of five" unfortunately !

The most bizarre occurrence over the weekend was that Chris G6KMQ, who is not known for his love of morse code, was helping to demonstrate morse to the scouts. We had a key and a sounder and because of the noise we noticed that a lot of the cubs and scouts gravitated straight to Chris rather than the radios when they piled through the door of our makeshift shack, which was the roof space of a converted stable block.

We were very well looked after with several meals, and we were very glad of a few rest sessions during the day. Sometimes we didn't get any break at all between sessions - the next batch of eager visitors were with us before the old ones had departed !

Another problem was trying to find QSOs on the radio, be able to pass enough greetings messages, and explain what was going on in the 45 minute slot. At least at JOTA it's a bit more leisurely. We contacted another scout group on a camp, and we learnt that a lot of Scout stations were being activated the following week at other camps - we were a week early !

After lunchtime on the Sunday we packed away, quite weary, but some of us went to Vaughan and Sherryn's for a post event social to relax. We even went on the club net - there were 8 of us on the net and we only used 3 radios - but that is another story.
Finally, I'd like to thank everyone that helped over the weekend to make it a success.

The new tidy shack layout at G0EYO.

Please send in pictures of your shack (big / small / clean / untidy) and I'll put it in the next issue.

Come gather round people wherever you roam
And I'll tell you a story of how my problems have grown
And accept that I'll soon be stranded at home.
'Cos my life is certainly changin'.
I Had better start sleepin' 'cos soon I'll get none.
For there's nappies soon to be changin'

Come writers and lovers, oh please tell me when
And tell me that life will be normal again.
But I try to stay calm but I'm still in a spin
And there's still the question of namin'
And I'm not at all scared to ask for a hand
For there's nappies soon to be changin'

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don't criticise me when things don't go as planned
A son or a daughter it's beyond my command
And I feel that I'm rapidly agein'
Please help me work out what I don't understand.
For there's nappies soon to be changin'

Come midwives and nurses please heed the call
Don't wait in the doorway, don't stand in the hall
For when my wife needs you she'll need one and all
And if the doctors not there he'll need pagin'
And when I'm a father I'll feel ten foot tall
For there's nappies soon to be changin'

Our weekend home - the stable block. We used the versatower, a colinear for 2m, and the LF dipole