wythall radio club

Many Wythall Radio Club members enjoy the radio sport of contesting. It is fun, after all, to test your station and your operating skills against other radio enthusiasts, whether locally, in the UK or worldwide. Yet taking part in a contest can seem pretty daunting for newcomers to the hobby, even downright frightening for many more experienced ones too!

Club husband & wife team, Dawn M6UDY & John M1JSS operating the Elecraft K3 in a recent pile-up

With one of the largest world contests taking place this weekend on most of the shortwave bands, it seems like a good time to help folk improve their Radiosport operating skills and give members a taste of the excitement that is radio contesting.

CQ WPX (World Prefix) is the training ground and the Wythall Club shack and equipment are the weapons of choice. This is not a “serious” entry, just a great opportunity for members to be helped in how contests work, learn how to operate logging software and try to to improve one’s technique so as to get maximum enjoyment (and maybe points too!) from the activity.

Starting at 1300 tomorrow, Saturday 29th March, come and join top UK contester Lee G0MTN and a few other club contesting maestros for some hands-on fun! Mistakes are very welcome as that is one of the ways to learn, so don’t be shy.

We will be on the air until at least 1800 when we intend to finish the day with a mass takeaway of all world cuisines to match the world-wide contacts we will have made! With all the fun going on and it being a 48 hour contest, I wonder what time we might finish though?

25 years ago, the permanent antennas, rotator and coax runs at Wythall Radio Club HQ in Silver Street, Wythall, were installed on a retractable 40 foot tall Versatower in the backyard of Wythall House.

Since then, other buildings have sprung up around the House and Park where we meet – all this means that tilting our tower over for maintenance purposes can be a little more difficult than in the past – but not impossible, as you can see in the pictures!

On tower duties today, Mike G4VPD, Dave G3YXM, Jon M1JSS, Stuart M0NYP and Andy M6CYY with Rob 2E0MEX acting as official photographer! It looked like a cold day!

This week, the members of Wythall Radio Club are looking forward to reaching new summits in the pursuit of our Amateur Radio hobby! That’s because our visiting guest speaker this week is representing the “Summits on the Air” programme.

Radio + stunning view = happiness, SOTA-style!

“Summits on the Air” is an Amateur Radio award scheme that promotes getting outside onto high spots around the country (and indeed the whole world!) and making contacts. There is a lot to “SOTA” as it is known and this Tuesday, Wythall Radio Club welcomes Brian G8ADD to tell us a whole lot more about it.

With (hopefully!) warmer weather coming this summer, some of us will be persuaded to give getting involved in SOTA a shot. In any case, it will be fascinating to learn first hand just how the scheme works. For those of us less active, there are still ways we can take part in SOTA and enjoy the activations of hills that others make.

Our guest, Brian G8ADD says,”Worldwide, SOTA currently has nearly 100 Associations in around 50 countries, with almost 3,500 activators and about the same number of chasers. Close on 20,000 summits have been activated so far totalling well over 2 million contacts!”

It should be a really fascinating evening, so why not pop along to the Darts Room at Wythall House this Tuesday? The talk starts at 2030 and you can find Wythall House on Silver Street, B47 6LZ. Can’t wait!

There is a very popular section of the Amateur Radio hobby known as “Radio Sport” or “Contesting”. The idea is to make as many (accurate!) contacts as possible within a specified time period. It is something which appeals to many Wythall Radio Club members!

Some stations will be using antenna arrays like this one at OH8X! Phew!

To get us in the mood to have a go at a big contest, our “top gun” Radio Sportsman, Lee G0MTN, is putting together one of his famous presentations to enthuse us to all to take a shot at entering the next large-scale event –  the CQ Magazine World Prefix Contest (known as CQ WPX). It takes place on the last weekend of this month.

This year we thought we would have a go at something a little different – Lee is going to use the Saturday of the contest as a kind of “Beginner’s Guide to Contesting” workshop using the WPX event as a practical training ground. We will be training all afternoon and hope to finish the day off with a traditional British curry! This will be a fantastic way of learning the “how to’s” from some of the club’s top guns!

Fantastic weather has helped to make this year’s Wythall Radio Rally an unqualified success!

Traders began arriving in glorious sunshine from 0700 this morning and, helped by the enthusiastic members of Wythall Radio Club, it wasn’t too long before all the stalls were ready. Bacon Rolls from our caterers helped the morning go quickly and before long it was 10.00 and opening time!

Traders were seen making brisk deals, visitors were caught between the many offerings on display and wanting to stop to catch up and chat with old friends – and despite our inability to use the school playing fields for our car park, the vast majority of visitors were very understanding and helped make today’s event the undoubted success that it was.

Thank you one and all, traders, visitors & hard working Wythall Radio Club members – we cannot do it without you!

Enjoy our pictures of the day below – maybe you can spot yourself in one of them? Also our latest club newsletter with longer stories is now available here!

With one of the wettest Winters on record behind us (fingers crossed!), members of Wythall Radio Club have been heartened by the change in the weather forecast for the annual Wythall Radio Rally this Sunday.

It seems it is going to be a really sunny, even warm(!) day for our big event, which takes place at Woodrush School in Shawhurst Lane, Wythall B47 5JW.

This year, the Radio Gods are blessing us with weather like this!

Sadly the better weather isn’t coming in time to allow us the luxury of parking on the school playing fields. They are still saturated from the drenching we suffered this past few months!

Street parking is the order of the day then, so have a look at our local area on Google Maps and follow the instructions on the day from our team of intrepid car parkers.

We will have refreshments available so that you can get a warming breakfast before the doors open at 10am.

Members are very excited about the rally this year and we will be pulling out all the stops so that our many traders and visitors have a memorable day out.

We hope to see YOU there!

Some very exciting news! Wythall Radio Club are sponsoring a new UHF repeater for our local area.

GB3WL, if approved by the authorities, will serve Wythall and the surrounding areas as well as large parts of South Birmingham, Redditch & Solihull.  Other local areas out towards Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick, including parts of the M42 motorway currently not well served by other repeaters, will also get coverage. 

The repeater workings are all but complete and will be on show at the Wythall Radio Rally on Sunday 9th March, just 10 days or so away.

A team of members has been working hard behind the scenes on this project and we are very excited about the prospects for this unmanned relay station in providing communications across the area for all local Radio Amateurs, members and non-members alike.

Why not come along to the Wythall Rally and see it “in the flesh”? You can read more about it here.

One of the lesser talked about aspects of the great hobby that is Amateur Radio is that of Satellites. For many years, Amateur only satellites have travelled around the earth providing world-wide contacts for those of us more earth-bound.

And this Tuesday, the members of Wythall Radio Club are to get genned up on the very latest information – that’s because AMSAT-UK member Dave G4DPZ is visiting us to talk about the FUNcube project.

Putting the finishing touches to a CUBESat

This is one of the most innovative projects in recent years.  Launched by AMSAT-UK, the project has created educational “CubeSats”, just 10cm in size, which are intended to enthuse, excite and educate young people about radio, space, physics and electronics. The primary mission is to provide downlink telemetry that can be easily received by schools and colleges for educational outreach purposes.

The project includes the development of a simple and cheap ground station – the ubiquitous FUNcube Dongle, a USB dongle which will receive signals direct from the satellite and transfer the data to specially developed graphical software running on any Windows PC.

Wythall Club members have been buzzing about this visit for some time and we are expecting a large turnout this Tuesday. Visitors are as always very welcome but turn up early to get a seat! 2030 in the Darts Room at Wythall House, Silver Street B47 6LZ. We look forward to seeing you there.

We are very lucky in Wythall Radio Club, in that we have several members who seem to be well known in the amateur radio world in the UK. One of those is Dave G3YXM, who writes the regular LF column for the Radio Society of Great Britain’s monthly journal RadCom. 

However for the March edition, Dave has written a very informative article for the “Getting Started” series on how to get on the air on the LF bands. These bands are often used by experimenters in the hobby as there is precious little commercial equipment or antennas available. With 472kHz having been made available as a new band to UK hams only recently, there has been an upsurge of interest in LF operation, something in which Wythall member Dave is one of the UK’s experts.

All the members of Wythall Radio Club congratulate Dave on an excellent read – of course, we were lucky enough to have the talk in person that preceded the article, so to some degree, we’ve heard it all before!

Traders, get your bookings in quickly – there is not much room left at Wythall Radio Rally for 2014!

Radioworld, probably the busiest stall at Wythall 2013!

That is the message from Wythall Radio Club’s organising team.

Club President & Rally Organiser, Chris Pettitt G0EYO spoke at our latest planning meeting, telling members that there were only a few tables left for hire and that traders will now have to be very quick to get one of the few remaining places.

The lads from Sandpiper Aerials enjoyed 2013’s rally!

Club members are now enthusiastically preparing to receive our regular welcome visitors & friends, such as Dave Hayward and his family from Radioworld, the boys from Sandpiper Aerials, and W H (Henry) Westlake, to name just a few!

Wythall Radio Club’s annual Radio and Computer Rally takes place on Sunday March 9th at Woodrush School, Shawhurst Lane, Wythall. B47 5JW. Now close to its 30th year of existence, it is fast becoming one of the longest remaining events of its kind in the Midlands or indeed the country!

Click on the photos to see larger versions and put the date in your diary – it is going to be a year to remember!