wythall radio club

Life so often seems to get in the way of the best laid plans, does it not?

While all the members of Wythall Radio Club have been looking forward to the results of our Christmas Contest, sadly our adjudicator, Lee G0MTN, has gone down with one of the many Winter sickness viruses that routinely does the rounds. The results presentation scheduled for this week has therefore had to be postponed, but the good news is only till next Tuesday!

Instead, this Tuesday, Chris G7DDN will lead an interactive discussion on the new Club Activity Ladder and related software.This is a new event in the club, which, depending on the uptake and demand, may end up being an all year round activity for club members. The support for the concept was overwhelming at the last full club meeting, so here’s a chance to see in more detail just what the fuss is all about!

Tuesday 22nd January at 2030 at Wythall House, Silver Street, B47 6LZ. Visitors, as always, are very welcome!

The members of Wythall Radio Club would like to wish all readers of and visitors to our website the best season’s greetings!

We wish all radio enthusiasts a fantastic Christmas holiday and our wishes that “Santa” has bought you all the radio equipment you could possibly want! :-)

It’s been a great year at Wythall RC and we look forward to building on our successes in the future. Remember to check our Events page regularly – why not make it a New Year’s Resolution to come along to one of our Club events and say hello sometime?

73 es 88 de Wythall Radio Club

Not long to go now before one of the events of the year in the Wythall Radio Club Christmas Calendar. Our in-house Christmas Contest started from small beginnings and is now a major part of the club’s calendar. Some amateurs have been known to join our club just to take part!

The G7OJO Trophy
& its little brother!

The idea is to work as many members as possible each day from 2000 on Christmas Eve till 2000 on New Year’s Day. You are allowed to work stations each day for points but each station worked also counts as a “multiplier” to your total score. So to win, you need to work as many members as you can across the 9 days but also try to make lots of contacts with those members every day too! As if Christmas wasn’t busy enough as it is! Your best 5 days totals are sent in and the adjudication team sorts the wheat from the chaff and declares the winners at a presentation evening in January. They are presented with the G7OJO Trophy and another as yet unnamed trophy (for members using 144 MHz only.)

So why are we telling you this now? Well this Tuesday 18th December, there is a presentation by Contest Supremo Lee G0MTN on the history and development of the Contest and on the innovations introduced in recent years, which include more points for using more bands and modes and a fantastic logging spreadsheet which scores you automatically!

It will be a fascinating evening for sure. So be there at 2030 this Tuesday 18th December in the Club Shack. It will be full so arrive early!

Sometimes club life is just plain fun! Last night Wythall Radio Club held its annual Christmas Party. Over 60 members, family and friends all came together for a fun-filled evening at Wythall House.

This Saturday, 8th December, is a very special date in Wythall Radio Club’s Calendar. It is the date for our annual Christmas Party! Members come along and bring friends & family and we basically just have a lot of fun together!

We hire one of the larger rooms (with bar of course!) at Wythall House and have a mixture of excellent food and drink (in the “American Supper” style), live entertainment, games, raffles, and even a skittle alley!

Great chat, a relaxed friendly atmosphere and a “no pressure” environment, it’s the perfect way to start the festive season off with friends. This Saturday in the Britannia Room at Wythall House, Sliver Street, Wythall from 19:00.

What a fun day! Our first club visit to Martin Lynch’s shop in Chertsey, Surrey.

Six of us made the trip down a frosty, foggy M40 early this morning to enjoy the ML&S open day & hog roast and we were not disappointed! We arrived around 8.30am to find a Car Park space reserved for our Chairman Mike G4VPD. He won’t live that down in a hurry!

We then spent a happy few hours browsing the shop, enjoying a breakfast of unlimited free bacon sandwiches, free drinks and very friendly chat with the ML&S staff.

G5HY from Kenwood(UK) presents Mike G4VPD with our £600 voucher

This was also the day when we were presented with our £600 voucher, won in the ML&S raffle at the National Hamfest in September, to spend in store. Kenwood’s David Wilkins G5HY was on hand to present the voucher, which was very promptly exchanged in part payment for a Kenwood TS-590S!

Needless to say, there were a few other pre-Christmas deals done and Santa obviously came VERY early for all the members who travelled down!

A hot pork lunch and more drinks and soon it was time to leave, but not before we felt we had made a few new friends in the South-East.

Many thanks to Martin, Richard and all the staff and Martin’s family at ML&S. We look forward to seeing you again in the New Year.

We operated as G7WAC from 1,000 feet in the Cotswolds at about 2.5c. It was very cold but very amusing and great fun. A picture tells a thousand words so perhaps you might skip to the sequence below.

125 QSOs, FT1000MP, Full size inverted V 160m Dipole at 65 feet AGL. Dipole legs were cut at 37 metres each leg giving us a tune-up at 1.850. Ideally, the maths told me to cut another metre off, but we ran out of time to become operational just 6 minutes before the off at 19:54.

Operators, Stu M0NYP, Jon, M0JMM and myself Callum, M0MCX. Thanks for working us.

One of the perennial favourite contests in the RSGB Contest Calendar is fast approaching.

The “Club Calls” Contest, originated by the Verulam Radio Club, has always been a fun relaxed event on 160m. Wythall Radio Club started taking part in this contest a little more seriously over the last two years.  In 2011, our club station actually managed to finish in 3rd place and won a certificate!

This year the event is on the evening of Saturday November 10th (2000-2300) and we are hoping to try to get as high as possible in the results table, but it has to be said, we do treat the event as a fun event first!

Dave G3YXM (of “Olympics” fame – see the previous post) is our lead member when it come to this event and has been entering it in one guise or another for many years. This Tuesday at our regular club meeting he is going to tell us a bit more about the history of the contest, how easy it is to enter it and what we can do to improve our standings in the results table!

As always, it will be a fun event. 2030 in the Club Shack this Tuesday 23rd October, at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall B47 6LZ. See you there?

Thanks to stalwart members, Darren and Carol (a.k.a. the Welsh Contingent!), and aided & abetted by several other Wythall Radio Club members, the weekend’s Special Event Station at the Stoke Prior Steam Fair was a great success!

While the beer tent and entertainment was doubtless a great draw,(!) on the radio front a lot of fun was had, with quite a few pile-ups over the weekend. There was not too much in the way of long distance working to be had, but one highlight was working another Special Event station also operating from a steam fair! Now that IS spooky!

Click the photos below to get some idea of the fun that was had. And why not take a peek at http://photobucket.com/stokeprior for more?

This weekend you will find Wythall Radio Club members out literally “in the field!”

Image © R G Newman 2012

Down at Stoke Prior, a village not too far from Wythall, the annual Autumn Steam Rally is taking place across the weekend and Wythall Radio Club puts on an Amateur Special Event Station in the rally field to coincide with it. We operate on 40m, 2m and sometimes other bands too and our aim is always to have fun!

Watch out for Darren GW7HOC & family as well as Les M0COK and others manning the station on the field this weekend.

For more information about this popular event, or to plan a visit, you can click the link below to the rally website – it gives you all the information you need to know!  http://www.shakespearesrally.com/Stoke_Prior.htm