I am happy to report that SSB Field Day went according to plan. We entered the unrestricted section although with only a fan-dipole for 80, 40 and 20m at 45 feet. We did run an amplifier though. 811 contacts made with many more dupes than I can remember. Lots of fun, laughs and we even slept the night. The days of 24×7 operating finally over for the old duffers?
Pictures score more points than words. Check these out.
144 MHz or 2 metres is probably the most popular amateur band for local or semi-local contacts.
However, tomorrow it will be full of low power or QRP stations trying to make contacts far and wide in the annual Practical Wireless 2m QRP contest.
All modes from FM to SSB and CW are allowed and it’s a great opportunity to snag some new squares or work some hilltoppers. All you have to remember is that no more than 3w is allowed as your output power.
This is a great chance to get out onto some high spots for an hour or so too and see how many stations can be worked.
So if you are at a loose end tomorrow, why not take part? Even a small antenna such as a tiny yagi or halo for horizontal polarisation will work. The usual antenna types for vertical polarisation will also give good results.
See http://www.pwcontest.org.uk/144MHzrules.html for more details and remember, have fun with RF!
No-one can surely have failed to notice that the UK is celebrating something special this weekend (and we don’t mean 2 extra days public holiday!)
“Her Maj” is rightly the centre of attention this coming weekend and we at Wythall Radio Club are also taking part in her celebrations.
We will be joining in with the village activities this Sunday and Monday with a Special Event Station to mark the Jubilee. Listen out for the callsign GQ4WAC and feel free to contact us (most likely on the 80 metre, 40 metre, 20 metre, and 2 metre bands).
Catch you on the air!
What a fascinating evening last night! Thanks to Steve G3ZVW, we experienced an amazing hour of “whole-brain learning”!
Three “volunteers” (if you can call Steven 2E0SDD, Stacey M6STJ and Howard M6AUL that) managed to learn the vast majority of all 26 letters of the alphabet in around 60 minutes. That is thanks to the method known as Instant Morse. Using a mix of storytelling, picture imagination and letter shapes, Steve took us through the letters of the alphabet while helping us with the CW equivalents.
It will be a long time, for instance, before we forget Mel M0MAJ’s cocktail glasses and fancy bow-tie or, come to think of it, Chris G0EYO’s mouth with the tomato in it! (You just had to be there!!!)
Callum M0MCX obviously didn’t forget anything however – at the end of the evening he could remember all 26 characters in code! (I didn’t write that! Callum.)
An amazing day out, thanks to all stations who worked us. QSL cards will be posted to all 200 contacts. Chris (G0EYO) said, “I counted 18, G0EYO, M0MCX, M3PMP, Syd (G4?) M6AUL, 2E0WTH, M0NYP, M0JMM, 2E0BLP, M1JSS, M0IDR &XYL, G7DDN, G7IBO, M3RSC, M0YOM, G0MTN, and M0COK. Who have I missed out”? Speak up if your callsign isn’t listed. What a great day team!
Photos courtesy of James Thresher, M0YOM
Elsewhere on this website, you can read a tribute to Lew Williams, former President of Wythall Radio Club and our original CW tutor. Many current members took their first steps in Morse Code with Lew.
Some time ago, after Lew sadly passed away, it was thought appropriate to honour his memory in a suitable manner and so the Lew Williams Sheild was born!
In order to win this trophy, Wythall Club members are being asked to view the 31 days of the month of May as a “Morse Code Activity Month”. The shield will be awarded to the club member who has shown the biggest contribution to the event, and/or shown the greatest improvement in Morse Code skills. Certificates may be also awarded for various levels of achievement.
Morse Code Activity Month
The quantity of contacts will not be the most important factor. Log submissions and personal statements will be equally important in the judging process. The sort of things the judges will look for include… “First live CW QSOs on HF”, or “First CW QSOs not using an automatic reader”, “First ever CW QSOs, but did use receive assistance”, ”Log shows 20 Wythall club members contacted using CW”, “Log shows 30 countries worked during the month.”
As a fun, friendly event, it is hoped that members will recognize improvement in their fellow club members and submit feedback and nominations for them. Like the Oscars, the Lew Williams Shield can be largely decided by your peers!
So it may be time to dust off that key and finally see what you can do with the code!
A few years ago, I decided it was time I had a go at a Morse Code (CW) contest. Having picked a short evening event in the UK, I was surprised (perhaps I shouldn’t have been!) at how simple and formulaic the exchanges were. Plucking up some courage and dusting off the straight key, I managed to complete my first faltering contacts using little more than my callsign and a few numbers!
With Wythall Radio Club’s “Morse Month” coming up this May, it seemed a good time for Lee G0MTN, one of our resident CW experts, to pop along and give us a short presentation, about how feasible it really is to make some excellent contacts on CW without actually knowing much more than how to read a callsign and send a few numbers!
There can of course, be much more to it that this, but nonetheless, it makes a jolly intriguing title for a talk, so why not pop along next Tuesday 17th April and hear for yourself how easy it can be to make contacts with just an initial limited knowledge of the code?
Who knows? You might even be tempted to take it further!
This time next week, Easter will be almost upon us, and while the young-at-heart among us will doubtless be tucking into our chocolate eggs, members of Wythall Radio Club will also be busy on the airwaves.
Thursday sees the start of our Easter Contest, a shorter version of our Christmas Contest. While members will be busy from 1000 local time trying to work each other across the holiday period, everyone is welcome to call in and say hello. The contest ends on Easter Monday at 2200 and members will be submitting their best 3 days to see if they can win an extra Easter Egg or two!
But there’s more! The club is also putting on a Special Event Station this weekend at the Hanbury Vintage Steam Fair. Look out for the club station on the field on both Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday with keen members making contacts on both VHF and HF. The fact there is a good flow of real ale on site plays only a little part in our interest! ;-)
Wythall Radio Club wishes you and your families a very happy Easter Holiday.
I happened to be talking to Chris, G3VNA on the internet in the MyDel Yahoo Group Reflector. Chris has recently bought an SG3000, Auto Antena Tuner. We were discussing the technique of joining antenna wire together and I recalled a long debate years ago on eHam. The general conclusion was that you can join antenna wire but try not to use solder. Apparently the solder breaks down over time and you can end up with a worse problem due to the solder joint starting to behave as a component.
Over the last couple of years, I have experimented with jointing aerial wire and have had great succes with what they call the AT&T Wireman’s Joint (or similar). Somewhere on the internet is a PDF document showing this join which happens to be about the most natural join you can make with wire anyway. As it happens, that’s the same join as I have been making since I can remember. Indeed, it seems as strong as the wire itself.
The photograph shown here is of enamelled hard drawn wire. For the benefit of the photo, I have not scraped the varnish off the copper. This would certainly NOT work as a join if you left the varnish all shiny like this, you’d have to get your pen-knife out and scrape it all off. But the then the photo would be ruined :)
If you are using stranded wire, you can still use a similar join but I would recommend taping up the joint so that it didn’t unravel over time.
Have fun with rf!
Callum.
I’m very pleased to report that I have just completed my first QSO on the HF bands using JT65-HF, a mode that was designed for very weak signal EME work but is now in use across the HF bands. If you have an RF isolated sound card you can be in business inside 10 minutes. You don’t even need a COM port for PTT, it will work with VOX. I downloaded my version here here but I believe there are other decoders out there.
In a nutshell, this is the most quirky and strange mode I have ever used but certainly fun. Calling CQ and answering CQ can only happen at the top of the minute. Each “over” takes 48 seconds and therefore you have 12 seconds to make up your mind what to do about the next over. On top of that, the protocol only allows for an exchange of 13 characters. However, it is highly tolerant of interference, fading and other nasties – ideal for EME as it seems (and also for bands that are apparently “closed”). There’s a fabulous paper written here which I recommend to all readers. Of interest, the character strings that are transmitted are not sent one at a time, like CW but as a scrunched up packet. Decoding these messages are a mathematician’s dream!
Click the thumbnail for a full-sized screenshot of my first QSO – and let me know if you have a go.
