wythall radio club

A 3 week programme covering:

• How to get going with your Raspberry Pi
• Connecting to your network and other computers
• Compiling ham radio programmes from source code

Tuesday, March 10^th, 17^th, 24^th 8 – 9.30pm,

Darts Room, Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall B47 6LZ

with Ian Gilmore M0LQY

Free course, but please make a small donation towards room hire.

To reserve a place, e-mail us at: wythallradio@gmail.com

Most hams will have noticed that world of amateur radio is undergoing a transformation.  The analogue nature of radio design is rapidly being swept aside and replaced by digital designs.

Recent models by radio manufacturers are all based upon Software Defined Radio Technology (SDR) Better sensitivity, selectivity and filtering can be provided by software than would have been previously possible.  Even familiar meters displaying, power SWR, ALC etc. are created in software using TFT screens instead of older analogue meters.  

Additional information once fixed is now configurable according to operator preference. Electronics under software control is the new standard and there can be no going back.

A common trait amongst HAM’s is the desire to experiment finding new ways to improve the performance of our radios and whether this means designing and building circuits, constructing new antennas or finding innovative ways of controlling our radios is now possible using software. We routinely attach our radios to computers either to control, display information or to operate one of the many digital modes available to us.

Although many of us routinely connect our radios to a PC or laptop running Microsoft Windows this is not the only option. The Raspberry Pi is a real alternative. This is a true mini-computer that has become a favourite amongst licence HAM’s.

This remarkable device now on its fifth generation has become a truly powerful computer and unlike the closed nature of expensive Microsoft products it utilises software freely available to all and actively encourages users to experiment.

Taking full advantage of opensource software, you can learn to program and develop controls to support your own projects. Many of you may already have discovered this marvel and want to extract maximum value from it.  Alternatively, you maybe are thinking of giving it a try or just want to know more. Well, we can help!

For those with an interest in learning how to get going with a Pi then this is your chance.

Wythall Radio Club is hosting a series of workshops beginning in March which will guide and advise members on buying, powering and connecting peripherals.

The workshops will guide you through the process of setting up a new installation and installing key Ham Radio programs. Hopefully, we will dispel many of the myths about complexity, the command windows or other unfounded rumours which are often heard.

Later sessions will progress into networking and connecting to other computers running windows or other Unix based systems such as Apple Mackintosh.  Another issue we will cover is Unix permissions which often confuses new users.

We will look into compiling programs from source code which is something that is a very useful skill since some applications are only distributed as source code. Some of you may want to go on to write your own programs or just want to improve your skills or understanding.

The Raspberry Pi is an ideal platform for Radio Hams to develop skills to further your knowledge of software-controlled electronics. Additionally, the Pi is excellent at performing more traditional computer tasks.

A Ham wanting a small computer for field days, running a local hotspot or controlling your radio then the Raspberry Pi is for you. The Pi is a real computer that can be used for all of the traditional tasks expected of a PC whether it is email, writing documents or keeping a  spreadsheet.

Come and join us in March and begin your Raspberry Pi Journey. Who knows where it will lead you to. 

It’s always fun to receive a recording of one’s signals. 

Even better is to receive a video!

So I was delighted to have an e-mail from Dimitris (aka Jim) SV8ANW with a video of our recent 10 minute CW QSO on 30m.

Click here to see the video of our QSO

I could tell that Jim was using a bug key as they have a distinctive sound. 

Having owned a Vibroplex in the past, I was intrigued to see him clip a clothes peg on to the vibrating ‘dots’ arm during our qso. 

He tells me that this increases the weight on the arm, so slowing the oscillations that produce the dots.

You can hear that the timing of the dots relative to the dashes is better once the clothes peg is used.

That’s high tech CW!

I wish I’d known of this trick when I had my Vibroplex bug, as I always found my dots being produced faster than they should have been – despite following lots of advice on how to set up the key.

RadCom ‘Club News’ for April reported on Wythall Radio Club.

Here’s an edited version…..

It’s been a busy Spring at Wythall Radio Club.

Our annual Christmas Contest attracted keen competition between members.  Lee G0MTN, our contest supremo, announced the results to an expectant meeting in mid-January, with the top scorers only separated by a few points. 

David G7IBO won the 2/70cm FM section, and Mike G4VPD found a couple of extra multipliers to gain first place in the all-bands/all-modes section. 

The 6-day competition involves Club members contacting eachother on various bands and modes, with bonus points and multipliers leading to keen competition – although there is always time to chat!  We are delighted to report increased activity from members compared with previous years.

Lee GoMTN made remote QSOs from Poland, Munich, and the centre of Birmingham, using his mobile phone to access his home rig.  There was much greater use of CW, with 5 members active most days. 

Some QSOs were on 12 meters, where ground wave propagation enabled contact between members 10-15 miles apart.  Good use was made of the Club 145.225MHz frequency and GB3WL repeater.

Our new members are making a very positive impact in the Club.  Martin, who joined the Club in 2023 as an SWL, has made rapid progress through the exams with the help of tutoring by our training coordinator Chris G0EYO and the Bath scheme, and now has his full licence – M0XFI. 

Like several other members, he participated in the Club’s ‘How low can you go?’ QRP month in January. 

Impressive results were achieved using a maximum of 5 watts on CW and 10 watts on SSB/digital, including working north and south America and Asia.

In our ‘miles per watt’ challenge, the top scorers were John 2E0XET with a stupendous 3543 miles/watt for his 1-watt CW qso with Virginia USA and Lee G0MTN’s 713 miles/watt from his 10-watt digital contact with Argentina.

The Club has a growing group of CW operators, many of whom used this mode to work other members during the Christmas Contest.  Clive M0KNP, having recently achieved his full licence, is  participating in the CWOps training programme (and just completed the first module – well done, Clive!) and made his first QSOs on the key, as has Neil G1TZC. 

And not just CW operating!  Chris G0EYO has continued the restoration of his historic Morse code key collection…. as you can read here.

In February, a large gathering of members welcomed Jamie M0SDV, to talk about the 8R7X dxpedition to Guyana that he co-led in 2024. 

Jamie obtained his Foundation licence through our training scheme and is now a highly experienced contest and dxpedition operator and leading advocate for younger amateurs.  His talk provided an amusing and insightful look at this very successful operation.

Our re-established Friday-in-the-Shack, held monthly, has a good attendance.  The focus is ‘bring and show’ hands-on activity and technical discussion. 

Recent sessions have covered John G3VRF’s modular QC100 rig and Phil 2E0WTH’s mag loop.

Amateur television is an interest of Derek G1INC and Neil G1TZC’s – both also new members – including home-brewing gear.  Thanks to their work, the Club has applied to host a SSTV repeater using the existing collinear on the chimney and spare 2-meter FM rig (this is now active, details here).

Club meets every Tuesday evening and visitors are always welcome here and at our special events, the programme for which is here and on our web site.

Wythall Radio Club is pleased to announce its new SSTV repeater is now live on-air.

Operating on 144.500MHz FM, this ‘store and forward’ repeater will give good coverage around the south Birmingham/north Worcestershire area.

Neil G1TZC and Derek G1INC have been working hard in the Club’s shack to get the repeater on air. 

It uses a 2 FM meter mobile rig (kindly donated by John G3OIC) running 5 watts to the Club’s collinear mounted above the GB3WL 70cms repeater array on Wythall House chimney. 

The system is controlled by a computer in the shack with remote management by repeater keeper Neil G1TZC.

A 1750 hz tone of 1 second is needed to open the repeater.  It will respond with a fast morse ident.

Then you have 5 seconds to start uploading your frame.

After the frame is received, the repeater will re-transmit it on the same frequency.

You can find Neil’s presentation about how to use the repeater here…..

Here are some images from the first days of the repeater’s operation…..

No, it wasn’t the Flowerpot Men wot done it!

But my Flowerpot antenna – a ‘single’ band vertical dipole for 12 meters.  Those ‘inverted commas’ are significant – read on!

This is an antenna that’s cheap and easy to build (you just need to be able to strip some coax and solder on a PL259 or similar), and it’s hardly noticeable.  It can be hung from a pole, tree, window, etc.  It doesn’t have radials or a counterpoise.

I like experimenting with homemade antennas, and I wanted to take advantage of this sunspot maximum to work as much DX as possible on 24MHz.  My doublet works quite well, but perhaps a vertical would help by giving me greater low angle radiation?

The Flowerpot antenna is a centre fed vertical half-wave dipole made from coax. 

It comprises a quarterwave radiator made from the centre of a length of coax, below which is a quarterwave of complete coax that is then wound into an rf choke.  The tail of the coax beyond the choke forms the feeder.

The antenna radiates from the top quarterwave section of coax core, and from the outer braid of the bottom quarterwave section.  The choke prevents the outer braid from radiating further along the feeder.

There’s lots of material on-line about how to make one.  

It didn’t take long to measure up some RG58 and expose the inner core at one end.  I then marked a further quarterwave for the position of the choke, which I wound around some 40mm plastic pipe.

I used a dipole length calculator for my measurements.  As I usually do with my antennas, I cut it a bit longer than the calculated figure so I had room for adjustment.

I tied the top to my 8 meter Sotabeams telescopic mast, and pushed the mast up between the branches at the bottom of my garden.  The radiating section cleared the fence on one side and the shed on the other.

The antenna analyser showed there was a dip at about 24.9MHz and an swr of 1.7:1, easily resolved by my rig’s ATU.  To my suprise, there was a bigger dip on 28.5MHz and an swr of 1.1:1 that covered the CW and SSB sections of that band.

So it looked like the antenna wasn’t too long, but too short!  Perhaps this was caused by the close proximity of tree branches?

Two bands for the price of one!

My K3 has dual antenna sockets, so switching between the Flowerpot and doublet on receive, I immediately noticed signals were affected by up to +/- 2-3 s-points on both bands.  Presumably signals ariving by different paths.  There was not much difference in the noise floor.

Now I can alternate between antennas when I put out a CQ call, and also choose the antenna with the strongest receive signal when I call someone.

Each January it’s Wythall Radio Club’s ‘How low can you go?’ month devoted to QRP operating.

And what great results!  41 countries worked on CW and 66 on digital modes.  Several also on SSB.

Power was restricted to 5 watts CW and 10 watts SSB and digital – although several members thought this was too generous and used even less power!

Wire antennas were used – no beams to boost the dbs!

Kev G4XLO – our own DX member down there in Devon – worked 55 unique DXCC entities using digital modes, closely followed by Martin 2E0XFI (now M0XFI) with 48.  Lee G0MTN worked 59 countries using multiple modes. 

John M6KET topped the CW table with 38 countries.  Meanwhile Neil worked 10 countries using SSB with a mix of HF and satellite.

To add some fun, we ran a ‘miles per watt’ challenge. 

The top scorers were John 2E0XET with a stupendous 3543 miles/watt for his 1-watt CW QSO with Virginia USA and Lee G0MTN’s 713 miles/watt from his 10-watt digital contact with Argentina.

John used his trusty K2 (or was it his KX3?) and dog-leg doublet antenna. Great result!

Down in devon, Kev started off using 10 watts of FT8 but then dropped down to 5 watts for the last 2 weeks to see what could be achieved. 

Here’s his report….. 

“January was a really interesting month for me on the QRP challenge.  I was on 10 watts digital the first couple of weeks and my main bands were 30m and 40m. 

These gave me the normal European regulars as well as the USA one morning. 

The fourth week it all came alive.  I swapped between 5 watts and 10 watts maximum. 

Tuesday, I had a totally awesome day, working China, Japan, Brazil as well as Puerto Rico and Ceuta & Melilla in one day, and yesterday bagged Turkey as well.

Was good to work Belize yesterday – that was my best DX for the week at over 5000 miles away – ones that got away included Venezuela, Indonesia and Brazil although they were quite audible for me in the shack.

It’s been encouraging too to see other members efforts thru the month.”

As well as everyones’ great QSOs, our QRP signals have also been spotted in a variety of locations, including Australia and New Zealand.

Several members have 10 watt maximum rigs, but others have decided to turn down the wick to see what they can work with QRP during the rest of the year.

Just for comparison, here’s our report from last year’s QRP challenge!!

What’s happening at the low frequency end of the amateur spectrum?

Dave Pick, G3YXM, RadCom’s LF correspondent, will be revealing all on 5th November at 8.30pm, Darts Room, Wythall House.

All welcome. 

Have some refreshment at Wythall House bar before and after the event.

This is just one of the features in Wythall Radio Club’s new 12 month programme now available here – and on right hand side of our home page.

We’ll post updates as events are added and finalised.  

Photo of Droitwich aerial system courtesy of an anonymous rigger in late 1960s – source and more info here

Is 10 open today?

That’s the question many of us are asking as we wait for the summer doldrums to disappear and sunspot maximum conditions to reappear.

One way is to put out a call and see if anyone answers. 

When I first got my licence I was told it’s always worth calling on a band that seems dead – it may just be that everyone assumes the lack of activity means it’s dead, when in fact it’s open!

Another way for voice mode and CW operators is to see if they can hear any FT8 burbling on 28.074USB.  If there is, decoding signals may indicate what paths are open.

Then there is the VERY extensive beacon network.  There are beacons on all amateur bands, but 10 meters is very well served.  

Most 10 meter beacons are found between 28.200 and 28.300, with some below and above these frequencies.

Beacons transmit their callsigns in Morse code, and may also give their locator square, power and antenna details.  Listening to them can be good practice for copying Morse code!

There is a recently updated list of beacons here.

Remember to enable CW on your receiver to get the correct frequency!

Early this morning I could only hear the German beacon DL0IGI, transmitting on 28.205. 

At lunchtime, I couldn’t receive this beacon – but instead the Faroe Islands beacon OY6BEC was very strong on 28.235. 

This is part of a comprehensive set of beacons in a radome to protect from the weather – shwon in photo left!

There is a special worldwide set of 18 beacons on 28.200 – the International Beacon Project. 

Each beacon transmits for 12 seconds once every 3 minutes at 100 watts.  There are then 4 x 1 second dashes sent at 100, 10, 1 and 0.1 watts. 

This lunchtime I could only hear 4X6TU in Israel, and I copied the 100 and 10 watt dashes, I could just hear the 1 watt dash, but not the 0.1 watt dash. 

Beacons may transmit a continuous tone between sending the callsign – so if you hear a tone, listen for a bit and see if a callsign appears.

At least it’s something to do if the band doesn’t have any QSOs on it!

Do want to know how to use cheap drone transmitter/receivers to get on 5.7GHz? – the photo shows one in operation at Broadway Tower.

Or build a J-pole antenna for bicycle mobile operation? 

Or with more activity on the HF bands as we approach the solar cycle peak, perhaps you’d like to build a small profile ‘C’-beam for 20m using easily available plastic conduit?

It’s shown in the photo left.

It’s all there – and more – in the Wythall Radio Club newsletter archive!  Click here to find the index to articles.

Or brouse the issues by clicking here.

You’ll find lots of invaluable advice, projects and ideas.

We don’t publish a newsletter these days, but try to keep the world informed on this web site.

Or come along to the Club any Tuesday evening or to one of the special events. 

Our location and contact details are on this web site.

COMING SOON .. A REPORT ON OUR RECENT EVENING SPENT ON THE LAWN OF WYTHALL HOUSE WITH OUR VERTICALS AND THE VECTOR NETWORK ANALYSER (VNA)

Tiny VNAs can now be bought cheaply.

Here’s one Lee G0MTN used to test his rebuilt band-pass filters.

But how can we use them to analyse our antenna systems and improve their performance?

Wythall Radio Club members will be gathering next Tuesday 23rd. July for a practical workshop. 

We’ll be using a VNA to analyse some portable antennas.

We will plot SWR over a given frequency range and display this as a line graph.  And see what else the VNA will tell us!

As usual, 8pm at Wythall House (in the garden if the weather is ok).

Visitors always welcome – bring an antenna!