wythall radio club

Next weekend, 6th and 7th July, sees one of the Radio Society of Great Britain’s premier contest events, VHF National Field Day and members of Wythall Radio Club are gearing up to take part and have yet more fun with RF!

The general idea is that stations take to the great outdoors and set up stations literally “in the field” and then try to make as many contacts as possible for 24 hours. Five VHF Amateur bands are used, 50Mhz, 70 MHz, 144 MHz, 432 MHz and 1296 MHz.

Wythall Radio Club’s idea of a good VHF Field Day however, is to have as many members as possible on Wythall Park playing a mix of radio, both VHF and HF, heavy duty contesting and combining that with eating food, drinking beer and telling tall stories well into the night. (Occasionally even radio comes second to beer!)

All this takes a modicum of planning though and this Tuesday evening we will putting the finishing touches to our Field Day plans and making sure all is ready for the following weekend.

Feel free to come along and see what the fuss is about. 2030 in the Club shack at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall. B47 6LZ.

Fox-hunting with hounds may be illegal in the UK but for members of Wythall Radio Club, fox-hunting means something altogether different!

Phil 2E0WTH tries to get a bearing on the “fox”!

The radio form of fox-hunting involves someone hiding somewhere in the countryside and transmitting regular bursts of signal. The rest of us are out and about in the same general area of countryside trying to get bearings on where the “fox” is transmitting from. Before too long (hopefully!) the “fox” is found and the finders become the new prey.

Admittedly it may look like grown-ups playing hide-and-seek with radio, but whatever, it is a lot of fun! Wythall Radio Club puts on a fox-hunt over the Christmas period but this year the enthusiasm is back to get out in the late summer evening light that we have at the moment.

Chris G0EYO is a leading light in the Wythall Fox-hunt department and will be giving a short presentation this coming Tuesday in advance of our actual fox hunt this coming Friday evening. He will be covering how the event works, some basic principles of hunting, using a compass, taking a bearing, and other useful information.

Why not come along and see what the fun is all about? Tuesday 25th June at 2030 in the club shack at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall. B47 6LZ

One of Wythall Radio Club’s most active “homebrewers” is busy again! Barry M0DGQ reports that construction has started on an ambitious new all band, all mode HF transceiver.

Using a Direct Digital Synthesiser (DDS) for the VFO, the controller is a two-PIC circuit, which can be found here. It has all the bells and whistles of an upmarket commercial transceiver with such niceties as dual VFO’s, memories & splits.

Ingeniously, Barry has used bits and pieces from redundant equipment – for example, he has salvaged the keypad from an old telephone unit and the blue switch array from a discarded fax machine. This is doubly advantageous as the buttons are both easy to use and see for us amateurs of advancing years! :-)

As Barry himself admits, “…by today’s demanding standards, this would not be suitable for a contest grade receiver due to the low level spurious outputs on the higher frequencies as these can mix with very strong out of band signals, however with good front end band pass filtering, this radio should be fine for most uses.”

We look forward to progress reports and to seeing the finished article!

Wythall Radio Club put on a superb Special Event Radio Station on Saturday 11th May 2013 for Mills on the Air, activating Danzey Green Windmill, hence the call GB1DGW.

A full report will follow. For the time being, this is the beginning of the photographs.

This weekend sees the UK radio event known as “Mills on the Air” and Wythall Radio Club members will be out in force at one of our local mills with a special event station.

The 2012 station we set up at Avoncroft

We will be setting up the temporary shack near the mill at the Avoncroft Museum of Buildings in Bromsgrove. This is a fantastic museum which is home to over 27 different structures which have been rescued and re-built in rural Worcestershire. The Museum is spread over 19 acres and includes a wildflower meadow, period gardens, a traditional cider and perry orchard (yum!) as well as the fantastic collection of buildings.

Wythall Radio Club will be setting up our radio station underneath one of the barns near to the mill (see photo). Why not come down and not only have a great day out, but say hello to some of the hardy souls who will be erecting antennas and setting up this computerised hi-tech station? We will be there on Saturday from 0900 till about 1630. Ask for Callum – anyone there will know who you mean!

As May approaches, the thoughts of Wythall Radio Club members turn to a special event in honour of our past President.

Lew Williams was a grand man who taught many of the senior members of our club the joys of Morse Code (CW). When Lew passed away, it was thought appropriate to honour his memory in a suitable manner and so the “Lew Williams Shield” was born.

In order to win this trophy, Wythall Radio Club members are asked to view the 31 days of May as a “Morse Code Activity Month”. The trophy is awarded to the club member who has shown some kind of commendable contribution to the event. It will probably involve some evidence of improvement, however small, in some aspect of his/her Morse Code skills.

In order to explain a little more about how we can take part, even if we might not know much about the Code, Lee G0MTN will be giving a short talk this Tuesday evening. He will take us through what the Lew Williams Shield is about and how ANY member can submit a valid entry to try to win it.

Perhaps we will see you there? Visitors very welcome – this Tuesday, 30th April, at 2045 at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall. B47 6LZ

Jim 2E0BLP receives his prize from Chairman Mike G4VPD

Last night saw the results and presentation evening for the annual Wythall Radio Club Easter Contest. You can read more about how the event works here.

6 lucky winners were revealed and Mike G4VPD, Club Chairman, took great delight in presenting both certificates and Easter Eggs to the first, second and third placed entrants in each of the two sections, 2 Meters FM and Open. Bizarrely, Mike came second in the Open section so had the strange task of congratulating himself!

Jim 2E0BLP won the 2m FM section and is pictured above right – just click on the pictures below to see a few of the other happy winners!

As regular readers of our website will know, Tuesday evening is the main meeting night at Wythall Radio Club and this Tuesday’s meeting is one that quite a many members will have been looking forward to.

That’s because it is time for the results of our “in-house” Easter Contest.

Just as at Christmas, we hold an event to get as many members on air and working each other as possible. Points are given for each member worked and each discrete member worked across the period also counts as a multiplying factor (or multiplier) to attain a final score. It sounds complicated but we have a clever Excel spreadsheet which makes life simple, a fact to which lead adjudicator Lee G0MTN will testify!

Tomorrow night is Easter Egg Prize night and, while we cannot yet publish any information about winners and runners-up, suffice it to say that there are going to be quite a few surprises in store! 2030 at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall, B47 6LZ. Visitors are, of course, most welcome!

Knots, eh?

Probably the last time you had any tuition in those, you were in the boy scouts! As a Radio Amateur though, a working knowledge of a few knots is very useful when it comes to putting antennas up, whether it be temporary or a little more permanent.

This Tuesday at Wythall Radio Club, member Callum M0MCX will be giving us a hands-on demonstration of useful knots we must all learn in readiness for our summertime outdoor hamming activities.

This should be a lot of fun… Callum’s style is not what you might call “traditional” and of one thing we can be sure, audience participation will not just be encouraged but absolutely mandatory!

The fun and laughter begins at 2030 in the Club Shack at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall B47 6LZ. Why don’t you come along and join us?

Enthused by Wythall Radio Cub’s recent club project here, member Colin M0GJM decided to go hunting for a circuit for a valve based TRF receiver to cover the medium wave band. Having found one and played with it for a while, Colin shared his discoveries with another member, Ian M0IDR, who was equally fired by the thought of building something with a thermionic device.

Ian has now gone on to make his own version of the receiver, making changes to the circuit “on the hoof”. The finished product (pictured) uses a 12BH7A double triode valve from a defunct American TV and a rather nice tuning capacitor which was rescued from an old Decca transistor radio that someone had relegated to the compost heap! Apparently it did need a little cleaning up…

What a fantastic example of life in a busy Amateur Radio Club! Enthused by a club project from one member, others go searching for more circuits and end up bringing into life the little beauty pictured here.

Watch out for our next Club Newsletter where an article with fuller description and more photos will be published and its brother from the workbench of Colin M0GJM will be published too.

Home construction lives on at Wythall Radio Club!