wythall radio club

Bletchley Park – a place of pilgrimage for Radio enthusiasts?

You could be forgiven for thinking you are reading a different website, but you’re still tuned to Wythall Radio Club! “The Bletchley Park Story” is actually the title of our presentation this week!

On Tuesday (23rd September) we are looking forward to welcoming a very special guest, Ray Goff G4FON. Ray is known to many radio amateurs as the writer & programmer of the G4FON Morse Tutor software for Windows. However many folk are not aware that Ray has an “alter ego”, in that he is a Bletchley Park Volunteer Tour Guide! This makes him the ideal person to visit us to talk about Bletchley Park and its place in radio history.

Ray G4FON

Ray particularly expressed an interest in talking about this part of his radio life when the invitation to him was first mooted. Since many members of Wythall Radio Club have visited Bletchley Park, we know that his talk will be very popular! As a result, we are expecting a large turnout for this evening, so early arrival is highly advised.

The talk takes place in the Darts Room at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall B47 6LZ and starts at 20:30. Visitors are always welcome but be advised that we do have a whip round of 50p each to help pay for the room hire, so make sure you have a few pennies left after you’ve bought your pint from the Wythall House bar!

See you there!

The UK has been enjoying an Indian Summer over the last couple of weeks. And that has meant more news on the antenna front at Wythall Radio Club!

23cms, 70cms, 2m and a dual 4m/6m set of beams sit atop the Wythall Radio Club mast!

Members have been been busy preparing our tower, replacing luffing cables and starting to construct our new antenna arrays. Thanks to our friends at Innovantennas and Martin Lynch & Sons, we have been able to put together a great set of aerials to cover all bands from 20m to 23cms.

Putting them together and getting them up in the air has been no mean task but we are almost there! The VHF and UHF arrays now proudly sit atop the mast and the last antenna to go on, the 5 band HF beam, is currently being constructed. We now just await one more kind weather day so we can finish the job.

Enjoy a look at some of the recent developments – we will let you know when it is finished!

Further to the previous post, Wythall Radio Club members have been busy again on the antenna front!

The club antenna project continues apace – this week it’s been Chairman Mike G4VPD, Stu M0NYP, Rob 2E0MEX and Kevin 2E0NCO getting their hands dirty! 

The fab four managed to get onto the roof at Wythall House and build the first of our replacement antennas.  The VHF and above stack was tackled as a priority. Click on the photos for a better view!

So now we have beams ready to put up for 23cms, 70cms, 2m, and 4m/6m. The 5 band HF yagi is to follow.

We are sure our friends at Innovantennas will be watching this carefully – we don’t want to be having to order replacement parts before we even get the metal in the sky!

More developments on this project soon – there is a Bank Holiday weekend coming up here in the UK, so if the weather is kind, there may be more news and photos for you next week!

Wythall Radio Club’s main antennas are down! Not because of adverse weather conditions or such like – this was actually planned!

Recently we have purchased a whole new raft of antennas for our club mast, thanks to our friends at Innovantennas and Martin Lynch & Sons. But before anything can go up, the old has to come down!

So it was, that a few days ago, a working party, which consisted of Chairman Mike G4VPD, Dave G3YXM, Pete M5DUO, and John M1JSS, went up to our clubhouse to make a start on the big job.

We are pleased to report that all went very well and subject to some maintenance, it shouldn’t be too long before the new antennas are seen above the Wythall skyline. Of course, you will hear about it first here on www.wythallradioclub.co.uk.

Proof of the hard work of the guys involved can be seen below!

Wythall Radio Club is today saying a very big thank you to our friends at Kenwood (UK).

That’s because they have helped us out with our future training courses thanks to a generous donation of some USB sticks – and they are not just any USB sticks, they are in the design of a Kenwood Handheld Transceiver!

Chris G0EYO, our Training Co-ordinator, is moving away from using CDs for his course material, preferring to use USB sticks instead. And when David Wilkins G5HY at Kenwood UK heard about our need for 10 of the devices, he was more than pleased to help us out.

In future then, all our trainees will be the proud owners of these rare Kenwood USB sticks, while they are on our courses at least! They will have to hand them back once they have “graduated” – they aren’t keeping them forever!

Every August, the villagers of Wythall come together to celebrate with a summer carnival and this year, Wythall Radio Club members are heavily involved again.

Having fun with RF at the 2013 Carnival!

Some of our hardy souls will be helping out with car parking and marshalling at the event, which takes place on Sunday 10th August at 1400, while another group of members is putting on a stall to advertise the club and its activities.

You can read more about the carnival and what is on offer here. Expect the usual Classic Car exhibition, Dog Show & lots of stalls, together with a Birds of Prey display and some dogs playing “Flyball”! Sounds like great fun!

The members of Wythall Radio Club will be setting up a demonstration radio station and a “hands-on” activity stall, showing all that is good about Amateur Radio and Wythall Radio Club in particular. This Tuesday evening (5th August) we will making our final preparations for the event so it is important that you turn up if you fancy being involved!

So come and join us at 2030 in the Club shack at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall B47 6LZ.

Wythall Radio Club is pleased to announce that we are putting up some brand new antennas to replace the old ones on the club mast.

We can’t wait to try this monster out!

The antennas at Wythall House have been showing their age a little in recent times – they have served us well for about 25 years though!

A decision was taken earlier this year by the committee to completely strip the mast down and rebuild it with new antenna and cabling.

With the help of our friend Justin at Innovantennas, we are now the proud owners of a new 9 element HF array, a 6m/4m Dual Band Yagi, a 13 element 2m beam and a 19 element 70cms beam.

Martin at Martin Lynch & Sons has helped us out with a discount on our new Heavy Duty Rotator and Westflex cable runs, so we are good to go.

Now for the fun part – finding the volunteers to spend a weekend stripping down, cleaning up the mast and rebuilding the antenna tree!

Watch this space!

This year’s Wythall Fun Run took place yesterday (Sunday morning) around the village. Despite the name, it’s a pretty serious event with 1.5 km, 5 km and 10 km courses attracting some even more serious entrants!

Checkpoint Anita M6DUO! She tells us she enjoyed watching fit young men running past her… Well!

For the members of Wythall Radio Club though, it was an opportunity for fun of a different kind!

This year we were asked by the organisers to help provide communications for the event. So some of us took a break from our Field Day event to go and help make sure the Fun Run went without a hitch, which it did!

Wythall Club Member John M1JSS rallied the troops into action – all those some folks along the route with handie-talkie radios or perhaps sitting in their cars handling communications traffic for the event were all Club members, having fun with RF in yet another guise!

And it’s really quite satisfying to use our love of radio communications to put something back into the community!

A lonely M0MCX operates on 144MHz while everyone else barbecues! Don’t worry, he eats well!

VHF Field Day is one of the highlights in the Wythall Radio Club calendar. Not just for the fun and camaraderie we have around taking part in the biggest VHF outdoors contest, but also because of the fun we have socially.

Last year’s event was one of the best (if not the very best) Field Days in the memory of most people in the club, from founder members to new recruits. It will be difficult to better but we are keeping our fingers crossed for good weather, which always helps!

This Tuesday sees a very important evening at the club, as it is traditionally the evening where we “dot the i’s” and “cross the t’s” in terms of getting our final preparation right for the big day.

It’s a good evening to come to especially if you harbour any plans about turning up on the actual day!

2030 in the Club Shack in the cellar at Wythall House, Silver Street, B47 6LZ.

Is this the ultimate 80m antenna?

Please don’t think that the members of Wythall Radio Club are about to burst into a Mary Poppins song – really, that is something no-one would want to hear!

When Radio Amateurs talk kites, we are usually thinking about getting a wire antenna strung into the air!

Roger Stafford G4ROJ is perhaps the best known amateur in the UK when it comes to using kites to string up antennas. He is an expert, not just on the antenna side of things, but also in his knowledge of kites themselves. His work has recently been featured on the Amateur TV Channel the TXFactor.

Fortunately for us, Roger is this Tuesday’s visitor to Wythall. He is planning to give us a talk and possibly even (weather permitting) a demonstration of using a kite to hoist up an antenna safely.

We welcome visitors to come along and see just how much fun one can have with RF in the great outdoors. The talk will start at 2030 in the Darts Room at Wythall House, B47 6LZ but may (or may not) be outdoors too (and may therefore be earlier around 1800! – email ian.radioworkshop@hotmail.co.uk for final details!)

Perhaps you might “breeze” in for a visit?