wythall radio club

Neil, G1TZC, a Wythall Radio Club member, writes about his experience with a little Vector Network Analyser….

My local club runs monthly activities and this month there are activities on 80m to 30m and 20m to 10m.

As good as the 1/2 sized G5RV is it just doesn’t cover enough bands for this.

Recently I purchased a four inch screen version of the NanoVNA. I decided to pay a little more for a premium version.

I hadn’t realised when I made the purchase that part of the extra money went on the fact it has a much better antenna connector – the N type connector – mounted to the metal case.

My main advice is read the menu flow chart and take the time to download the online manual. The windows software is the right side of basic.

This has given a great chance to make a couple of antennas for the 12m and 30m. Using the analyser makes the whole process so easy.  You can see some of the screen shots below.

I shall be purchasing some more pvc covered wire to add extra bands. I think this will become my portable “go to” antenna for holiday operating.

It has also allowed me to check my 3 element 2/70 beam and the two colinears. I’ve even found that one of the 2/70 colinears works ok on 23cm.

If you have a little bit of spare cash and you want a handy test tool this is great. It allows you to check that antenna from the end of the coax.

Check out Neil’s qrz.com (G1TZC) page for more of his blogs.

Cayman, Puerto Rico, Madeira, Cyprus, and Malta were among the many islands contacted by Wythall Radio Club members in our November DX Challenge.

KP2M in the US Virgin Islands was a big signal into Wythall on 40 meters.  This station is the home of the Radio Reef DXers group. 

We also contacted several stations on the Aland Islands located between Sweden and Norway including OHoR and OHoZ.

And back in the Caribbean, contact was made with radio amateur Daniel, ZF2MJ, on Cayman Island.

Congratulations to Chris G0EYO and Neil G1TZC for topping the total DXCC and unique DXCC tables. Neil also just pipped Chris in the 40 meter tables.

On 80 and 160 meters, there was a close contest between the Chris’s G0EYO and G3YHF, with each taking honours on one band.

You can find a list of countries contacted here

We are continuing the 160 meter tables through December, January and February to see what DX members can work during the 4 winter months. 

For December and January, there will be two tables – one for the low bands (80,40 and 30 meters) and one for the high bands (20, 17, 15, 12 and 10 meters).  Each country will count once in each table regardless of the band or mode used.

Afghanistan (T6AA – see right), Madagascar (5R8AL ) and Trinidad were amongst the countries contacted by Wythall Radio Club members in their October DX Challenge.

The aim was to have two-way contacts with other radio amateurs in as many different countries as possible on the 20 and 40 meter short wave bands.

With 85 countries worked on 20 meters and 76 on 40 meters, Club members had lots of fun talking to people in other parts of the world.  They used digital, voice and Morse Code transmisions at all times of the day and night.

Here’s a list of countries we contacted.

And below you can see the way the contacts built up…  John 2E0XET (photo left) contacted the most countries, although he was using low power (50 watts or less from his KX3 and small power amplifier) to a simple wire antenna (a doublet) and Morse Code only.  Nice one, John!

Finally, the overall result….

November’s Challenge is on 160, 80 and 40 meters.

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……

There are lots of counties to work on 30, 17 and 12 meters – as the results of the August DX Challenge at Wythall Radio Club show.

Mali (TZ4AM – QSL card left), the Falkland Islands and Trinidad and Tobago were amongst the more exotic countries reached by Club members.  For a full list, click here.

Tim M6OTN contacted 95 unique counties (each country counting only once across the three bands) and 152 countries overall (the total of the countries worked on each of the bands).   Chris G0EYO had 71 uniques and Neil M0LUH was close behind at 66. 

These three station were all using FT8, a digital mode of communication, and modest power with simple wire antennas.

This graphic shows how Club members’ unique countries increased over the month… 

FT8 is well suited to poor propogation conditions – which may be why the CW-only stations of Chris G3YHF and John 2E0XET were not as successful. 

However it is rumoured that some FT8 ops monitored the bands while they were doing other things – which is harder for CW ops to do!

The September DX Challenge is a FT8/FT4-only event on 40, 20 and 10 meters.  

Good luck and we hope for some excellent DX results!

STOP PRESS – THE INTERMEDIATE COURSE IS NOW FULL.  FOUNDATION COURSE STILL AVAILABLE.

Wythall Radio Club will be running ONE online courses in September.

The 8 week Foundation course starts on the 13^th September .

The examinations for both these courses will be done under the RSGB’s new remotely invigilated on-line examination scheme in the candidate’s own home.

Practical Assessments for the Foundation course have been suspended until such time as the COVID lockdown makes it safe for them to be re-introduced and the Practical Assessments for the Intermediate have been taken out of the syllabus altogether.

There is no charge for doing these courses and we do provide individual tuition via quizzes etc.  Please note that there are specific IT requirements which have to be met for the online examinations.

If anyone is interested in doing these courses with us please contact Chris G0EYO g0eyo@blueyonder.co.uk  ASAP.

The fine weather has encouraged Wythall Radio Club members to operate portable.

Kev G4XLO, based in Torquay, has been out on Dartmoor:

“For the last 2 weeks I’ve been on leave from work, not had too much time for the radio apart from an hour in the evening for HF and also re-erected the wire that the seagulls keep attacking (the bloke in the house behind me is convinced it’s a seagull trip wire – I’ll let him continue with that theory!).

The trip gave me an idea for next year though, as I spotted some places for a portable HF antenna, so I’m thinking about QRP portable for next year.  All I need is an FT817 and I’ll be away!”

The antenna has a TX gain of 46.2db so quite some eirp and is fed via 2 x TWTA at 750W linearised amplifiers.  But sadly the TX is 13750 to 14500 GHZ, so no chance for Moonbounce qsos!