wythall radio club

 SOMETIMES IT TAKES  AN AGM TO REMIND MEMBERS OF THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE PREVIOUS YEAR ,

AND SO IT CAME TO PASS THAT CLUB CHAIRMAN, CHRIS G3YHF REMINDED US.

The chairman in his natural habitat: out doors and portable!

An abbreviated version of his report follows

NOVEMBER  ‘How  low can you go?’ asked CW/QRP obsessive 2E0XET and a week was spent on low power , highlighting the ever popular FT817/8 and the Wonder Whip.. Kev on the South Coast reporting his results on the reflector.

        Lee addressing the RSGB Convention.

 Later in the month Lee G0MTN gave a presentation to the RSGB Convention on HF antennas and repeated this for the benefit of Club members at one of our regular Tuesday night meetings.

DECEMBER:  Lee G0MTN hosted several members at his well-equipped contest station to use the special call G5AT in the 10m SSB/CW Contest. (G5AT celebrating the first European amateur contact with the USA in 1922.)

MARCH: The Club hosted a lively and fun evening for the local Beaver colony: Roger M0WGM ran a phonetics session using licence-free handhelds, John 2E0XET and Chris  G3YHF inducted the eager Beavers into the mysteries of Morse Code and Les 2E0LRV stole the show setting up a digital voice link enabling the Beavers to talk to amateurs in Seattle.

Les and the eager Beavers at the March Event- with Seattle at the other end of the line.  

APRIL: We put GX4WAC on the air on a Tuesday night to celebrate World Amateur Radio Day.

JUNE:  GB0BUS was a special event station at the Transport Museum Wythall to celebrate International Museums’ Weekend. A team of 9 members erected 2 wire aerials for HF with Dave G3YXM again impressing with his catapulting skills. The team had QSO’s with stations in 20 countries with the best DX being Texas. Ian M0LQY’s FT8 operation attracted a steady stream of visitors and the weather stayed kind.

AUGUST:  Chris G0EYO took on the challenge of coordinating the many responses to the OFCOM consultation regarding amateur radio regulations. Thanks also to Chris for the tremendous amount of work updating and spring cleaning the Club’s website: an onerous task and long overdue.

      Neil and some fascinated onlookers

SEPTEMBER: Our Plug and Play in the Park involved 12 members setting up portable stations : Phil 2E0WTH and Peter M5DUO disappeared into the shade of the trees in what turned out to be improbably the hottest day of the year. Neil G1TZC QO100 portable satellite station impressed the many visitors and included a contact with the St Helena’s island in the South Atlantic Ocean. A few days prior to the Plug and Play Ian M0LQY and Clive 2E0IKN hosted a ‘come and meet us’ evening with aim of attracting several potential new members.

OCTOBER: Clive 2E0IKN and Chris G3YHF  gave a talk on SOTA, POTA and WWFF schemes highlighting the attraction of the great outdoors and amateur radio.

OTHER EVENTS IN THE YEAR

Meanwhile   Lee’s G0MTN ever popular DXCC Challenge has continued with some great DX worked particularly the stand out performance of  M0IFT (216 countries); as we approach the peak of this sunspot cycle expect scores to rocket!   

The ever competitive Christmas and Easter Contests have continued ,, expertly run by Lee G0MTN. The Easter All band winner was Chris G0EYO and,  appropriately the 2 metre/70cm section was won by Jim 2E0BLP.

Don G0NES receiving the Christmas Trophy (All bands/all modes) from Club President Mike G4VPD

In the Christmas Contest Ian M0IDR won the 2m/70cm Trophy and Don G0NES won the all modes Trophy.

An effort has been made by John 2E0XET to regularly update the Club’s website and Radcom has been provided with a steady stream of Wythall Radio Club reports and photos.

Other achievements during the year include Neil G1TZC’s great success with with his QO100 satellite operation and  his bronze award for working 50 DXCC . G0MTN was just pipped into  place second place in the QRP unassisted portable section of National Field day  but at the time of writing in the CQ WW RTTY contest the raw scores suggest he may be the leading European operator in the single operator, all band , low power category: some achievement.

Clive (ex M7OCB) is now 2E0IKN and studying hard for his full licence. Chris G0EYO has dusted off his CW skills through regular schedules with John M6KET and thriving with both  straight key and paddle.

Sadly the Club lost two of its much loved and longstanding members with the passing of Vic M0AEJ and Jim 2E0BLP. Vic joined the Club in the 1990’s and was always very supportive of the rallies and field days; he was always there as a volunteer and highly dependable: a wonderful member of the Club Jim, the Voice of the Midlands, was a big presence in the Club a mainstay of the Easter and Christmas Contests and a regular at our Plug and Play events; he was also a regular on the club frequency 144.225 , often chatting to Peter M5DUO whilst mobile on the way to work: both will be very much missed.

and so what of the next year?

Well for starters..

TUESDAY  7TH NOVEMBER.. THE VENUE : THE DARTS ROOM AT WYTHALL HOUSE. THE TIME 8.00 P.M..

AN ACTIVITY EVENING FEATURING THE CLUB EQUIPMENT (AND OTHER ) WORKING DIGI MODE , HF, CW AND  SSB.

NEW MEMBERS AND INTERESTED PARTIES VERY WELCOME TO ATTEND

COME ALONG AND MEET OUR EVER OBLIGING CLUB MEMBERS!!

Our previous two reports described our  visitors’ interest shown in Neil’s and Ian’s  satellite and digital operations respectively.

Our final reports reflect the successes of  Lee ( GoMTN ), Chris (G3YHF ) and John (M6KET) on the HF bands using SSB and CW.

Chris working Canada on 20m SSB

The Lab 599 TX500 lightweight all band all mode transceiver+LIFEPo battery

Chris (pictured right) brought along his rig-in-a-rucksack ( previously spotted on the summit of Bredon Hill)…The Lab 599 TX500 lightweight all mode transceiver and a LiFEpo battery along with a homebrew 20m delta loop on a 7m telescopic pole.

Chris reports:  “tuning on 20m SSB the Worked All Europe Contest produced some strong signals and I worked VE3AJ in Canada first call-not bad for 10 watts!!” Lee G0MTN also worked Canada on the same rig whilst John M6KET borrowed Phil’s operating table and Portable  HF dipole and worked a number of Spanish stations on 20m  with 5 watts CW and his KX3.

By 2.30 many were beginning to wilt in the heat and it was time to pack up, lower the gazebos  and return  the equipment  to our nearby store. Chris writes: “Like all Plug and Plays I found the social side as much fun as seeing other Club members’ gear. and operating portable is always enjoyable.”

This was a great opportunity to showcase the Club and the diversity of Amateur radio; I think our visitors were genuinely interested in our operations and I include some of  visitor Martin’s comments below 

“A shared passion that unites the member… the welcoming nature of those present….the enthusiasm and thrill of connecting with fellow operators across continents….a celebration of a shared love for amateur radio… warm hospitality.”

A big thank you to Club member Martin G8VXX for providing the generator; this entailed a one hour round trip to deliver and collect and a big thank you to Phil 2E0WTH and Peter M5DUO for helping the day run so smoothly. Phil and Peter’s experiences in field operations continue to be invaluable to the club.

Phil, 2E0WTH dispenses some wisdom to an attentive chairman before providing this scribe with an outstanding sausage sandwich. Thank you Phil !!  

Among the visitors, members and operators recorded were: Chris G3YHF, Phil 2E0WTH, Peter M5DUO, Lee G0MTN, John M6KET, Ian M0LQY, Don G0NES, Winston 2E0EGP, Martin G8VXX, Neil G1TZC, Debra SWL, Mike G4VPD and Chris G7DDN.  (Apologies if I missed anyone.)

COMING SOON!!

WYTHALL RADIO CLUB AGM

TUESDAY 24TH OCTOBER

WYTHALL HOUSE 8.00 P.M.

Neil contemplates the radio world through the medium of Satellite QO-100

The next episode features Neil G1TZC who attended his first Wythall Radio Club ‘Plug and Play’ last Saturday and despite the very hot conditions calmly erected  the gazebo, installed the satellite dish and wasted no time in attracting a captive audience as he introduced them to QO -100 communicating with amateur radio stations through the use of satellite. His report on the day follows:

“For my part the Plug and Play event was important on so many levels. Apart from visiting the new members night on the previous Tuesdays, all of my interaction with members had been over the air or via the internet group, so it was great to meet people in the arena of an organised event. It was also a chance to test the portable satellite setup in the real world with various changes and repairs that had been made. Once everyone had arrived and things started to get going, something struck me straight away. Debra and I were made to feel like we had always been members of the club.

It was great to see everyone help everyone else, something that can often be missing from clubs. Often people turn up with the expectation that it will just appear, but not at the Wythall club. People pitched in and helped each other. Four people do a gazebo and erect a mast. People going back and forth between stations to help where needed.

As for the satellite station it was nice to have such an interest from the visitors to the site

Neil’s commentary and operations soon attracted an  audience,  including our very own 2E0EGP

Equipment did struggle with the heat but we made a few contacts, but that actually ended up being somewhat secondary. I felt I spent more time talking and explaining how QO-100 differed from other amateur satellites. There was a keen interest in the fact that geostationary operation still kept roots in traditional forms of communication, such as CW and SSB as well as embracing a whole range of digital modes. Also pointing people in the direction of internet resources via the printed sheets in the satellite tent. Several people were pleased that the QR codes were on the bottom of some resources for them to take the pages with them for later reading.

The fact that the system also has an emergency frequency that covers half the planet was explained with the practical example of the earthquakes in Turkey and how the amateurs were able to pass information from the disaster areas to major cities via the satellite without having to worry about any propagation issue. As far as contacts, we had contacts with Finland, India and St Helena Island.

All in all a very positive even and I would be delighted to participate again at any further events.”

    Peter M5DUO and Phil 2E0WTH in                         assembly mode

Coming  next  and soon

In the final report on the ‘Plug and Play’ Event …

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF HF CW AND SSB and….

One of these two pictured left makes a fine cup of tea

 and the other a wicked sausage sandwich..all will be revealed in

                                                                                            Fun in The Sun in the Park  Part 3

Dressed for the occasion and the sweltering heat  the hardy members of Wythall Radio Club took to the great outdoors at Wythall Park on Saturday and operated G4WAC/P in all its various  modes: Digimode, Satellite, CW, SSB and VHF.

                            The operating site in Wythall Park on a sunny Saturday

In this first instalment Ian M0LQY, operating digimode takes us through his thoughts on the experience.

“What a glorious day was had by all at our field day with the weather being perfect and lots of people dropping in to see a real range of radios and operating methods great stuff. For me I wanted to try out a few things a new antenna which I purchased last year and was waiting for the right opportunity and in particular a project I had been working on for a while to use a specially built operating system for my raspberry pi. The experience of using it in the field for my favourite digital modes was informative and a real lesson in what I got right and more importantly what was not.”

                 Ian cheerfully going about setting up on Saturday

“My aim was to have a working setup that I could use portably contained within a single carrying case. Back at the shack I set about building both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of the raspberry pi operating systems from source rather than using prebuilt binaries. Having had a number of Raspberry Pi’s I find that building the software from source produces better performance and stability. Therefore, I decided to do everything that way to produce a bespoke purpose-built Pi that suited me and my exact requirements.”

“So how did it go? Like all things it was a mixed bag with the main aims achieved but unexpected niggles and self-inflicted incompetence’s  all conspiring to make the day interesting. My requirements for the Pi were as follows:

Only have the software loaded that I would actually use. Mostly, digital mode applications. Logbook and other useful Amateur Radio programs.

1. Be able to operate without a monitor (Headless).
2. Remote operation from another computer, tablet or even a mobile phone.
3. Have automatic availability of my home NAS shares with read and write capability in both directions. Any Connection must be able to pass username and password , so no guest access.
4. Ability to use the programs installed with two Radios (Yaesu FT991A and Xiegu X6100) both of which have USB CAT control and built in sound cards”

“Having spent time building the operating systems at home and getting the radios to talk to the pi with audio, CAT control it was all working well. So the field day was the ideal chance to test out the antenna a 80-10 40 metre EFLW from UKAntennas which was supposedly to work on all of the bands and did not require an ATU. Also, I could test the pi setup with the bare minimum before choosing a suitable carrying case with foam inserts.”

 Ian goes on to detail some of the problems on the day: the voltage  and an issue synchronising the clock to the NTP server  (no internet connection in the field) and a full account of the challenges and solutions  can be read on Saturday’s posting on the Repeater

“As for the antenna, well it works and does indeed allow operation on all of the advertised bands without an ATU. My issue is that I like to operate with low SWR and at 40M it was showing 1:1 as I went to higher bands the SWR crept up and on 17M reached 2:2 although that was with 50 watts at 20 watts my normal operating power this became 1:9. So yes it works and was surprisingly quiet although the location must have helped.”

IN THE NEXT EPISODE :WHY ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE GATHERED ROUND A GAZEBO IN THE MIDDLE OF WYTHALL PARK?? (AND IS THAT REALLY WINSTON?)

Visitors welcome at Wythall Radio Club’s free demo of short-wave and VHF radio communication, on Saturday 9th Sept. between 10 and 3.

We’ll once again be operating various radios from Wythall Park, using a variety of antennas – and hopefully we’ll have some contacts via a satellite!

You can find us on the far side of Wythall Park, furthest from the car park. 

Follow the tarmac footpath on the right hand side of the small playground, and keep going bearing right at any junction!

You’ll see vehicles, antenna masts and flags – that’s where we are. 

Here’s a report on a recent radio field-day in Wythall park.

Neil operating in IARU HF World Championship weekend 11/7/20

Our resident satellite member, Neil G1TZC, amused us all recently with a tale from his past on the club’s group.io forum with a tale about a visit to Canada. We thought this would make good first addition to our Articles’ section in the Library folder on the club’s website.  READ IT HERE 

Enjoy!

Thanks to the internet, it’s possible to listen on amateur radio frequencies without a special short wave receiver.

There are many WebSDR (Software-Defined Radio) receivers connected to the internet, allowing multiple users to listen simultaneously.  

A list of WebSDR receivers and links to them is at  http://www.websdr.org/   

To use WebSDR…

1. Navigate to a receiver like Hack Green, Cheshire (one of the closest WebSDRs to Birmingham) or KFS WebSDR in California (where you can listen in to the US amateurs).
2. Once on a WebSDR site, enable ‘allow keyboard’, which permits you to tune the receiver using mouse wheel or keyboard arrows.
3. You may have to enable audio settings on your browser – see the advice on each webSDR site; eg for listening to Hack Green using Chrome: Click the Lock in the address bar of your Chrome browser. Click Site Settings. Under Sound, select Allow.
4. Select the band you want to listen on – you will find most stations on 80, 40 and 20 meters, in the frequency ranges in the table below.
5. When listening on 80 and 40 meters, select LSB (lower side band); when listening on 20 meters, select USB (upper side band).
6. Once you hear a station, it may sound like ‘Donald Duck’ – tune slowly and the voices will become clear
7. Once you become proficient at tuning in stations, try some of the other receiver functions – e.g. narrow IF bandwidth and IF passband can be used to reduce interference.

Over the next few months, you can expect the following radio conditions:

CALL SIGNS

You can identify the countries from which stations are operating by comparing their call sign prefix (the first one or two letters/numbers) with those on the list of international call sign prefixes e.g. the Wythall Radio Club call sign is G4WAC – G means the station is in England. 

Q CODES AND OTHER SHORTHAND YOU MAY HEAR

You may hear the following…

CQ, CQ – I am calling for a contact; please reply to me

DX – long distance (normally, outside the operator’s continent)

QRZ? – is anyone there?

QTH – location of the station

QRM – interference on the signal

QSB – fading on the signal

QSL – confirmation of the contact or information passed

73s – best wishes and goodbye

GAINING AN AMATEUR RADIO LICENCE

The ‘Foundation licence’ is not difficult to obtain.  There is some simple electronics and radio operating to study.  You can find details of the licence levels and courses on the Wythall Radio Club web site and there is more information at the RSGB.

Visitors welcome at Wythall Radio Club’s famous ‘Plug and Play’ event on Saturday 9th Sept. between 10 and 3.

We’ll once again be operating various radios from Wythall Park, using a variety of antennas – and hopefully we’ll have some contacts via a satellite!

You can find us on the far side of Wythall Park, furthest from the car park.  Follow the tarmac footpath on the right hand side of the small playground, and keep going bearing right at any junction!

You’ll see vehicles, antenna masts and flags – that’s where we are. 

Here’s a report on a recent ‘Plug and Play’.

We are also holding an open evening for anyone interested in becoming a member of our Club, or in obtaining an amateur radio licence so you can transmit and make new friends locally and around the world.

The open evening is on Tuesday 5th Sept. from 8-9pm in the Darts Room, on the ground floor of Wythall House.  Follow the signs.

We’ll have some radios operating making contacts outside the UK, as well as members who can chat with you.

If you can’t make these dates, there are members at the Club most Tuesday evenings – email us to fix a date to visit at:  wythallradio@gmail.com

Was the break for sustenance (a sausage roll?) the crucial lost few minutes  the moment that Lee (G0MTN) just lost out to M0RYB/P  (Loxlot Club) in the QRP Unassisted Portable Station Section in the recent National Field Day Contest??

Lee endured extremes of heat and cold in his one man 24 hour operation

Lee writes:

“NFD results are out and  G4WAC/P *almost* won the QRP shield… I came second. I had more QSOs than the second placed entrant (and previous winner) but couldn’t find / work enough multipliers.  All the Russians that called are worth zero points too currently. Have a look at the attached chart to show how close the race was. It does show there’s no time for sleeping!  

I submitted the log to the German DARC society for their (and the IARU) Field Day – let’s see if it’s the same result there.

https://www.rsgbcc.org/cgi-bin/hfresults.pl?Contest=NFD&year=2023

A magnificent performance  and please see the previous report on Lee’s extraordinary marathon