wythall radio club

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!

Following Chris’ (G0EYO) previous article on Training  for the Amateur radio Licence, Martin M7XFD describes his journey to the Foundation Licence (and beyond)

WHAT NO CW!! OR HOW I FOUND THE FOUNDATION LICENCE ..OR THE FOUNDATION LICENCE FOUND ME

Martin (left) receiving award certificate from Lee G0MTN

Always at the back of my mind has been the idea of getting licensed as a Radio Amateur.

As a young person I was a Short Wave Listener. My father had been involved in Radar during World War II and at a very young age I discovered a crystal set in his box of ‘bits and pieces’.

We used the metal frame of my bed for the earth, strung a long wire down the garden and with a pair of ex-army headphones rotated the stiff aluminium thing with corroded vanes to pick up the BBC Light Service on the medium wave. Hearing speech and music, with no batteries or electric power involved, was sheer magic to young boy!

Following on from that we had a valve radio that had shortwave that I was able to use and added a long wire antenna. I finally bought an ex-army radio, the size and shape of the top half of a large fridge. A battleship grey Marconi 52 I think. It weighed 50lbs, had glowing valves and UV sensitive dials that also could glow in the dark. I listened to Hams around the world and I wrote to them for QSL cards to confirm I had picked up and heard their signal.

The mighty battleship grey Marconi 52

It was the CW (Morse requirements) that put me off getting my licence (sorry editor)-  [Ed.unforgiveable!!]

Years flew by……….

With a career in electronics which led to computers, I retained my interest in radio and bought an airband radio that had three crystals allocated to Birmingham Airport’s Control tower, approaches and one other: (perhaps I only used two slots as the crystals were expensive.)

Living close to an airport I have updated my scanner and noticed technology changing with the advance of digital radio.

A few years ago I noticed that Wythall Radio Club ran training courses for the Amateur radio Licences and I toyed with the idea of finally becoming licensed.

Time passed. I gained another handheld receiver.

Some of my post-retirement hobbies changed, freeing up time, and in the summer of last year I emailed the club to inquire if I could get involved. As a result Chris G3YHF invited me to a talk at Wythall House in September and a few weeks after that to a ‘Plug and Play’ Open day in the fields at Wythall Community Centre.

G3YHF’s neat portable CW Plug and Play table

I was not the only prospective new member so the talk was on Amateur Radio in the modern world of today. What struck me was that despite the  decline in  numbers of active Hams , the focus has shifted to pursuing  different  ways of doing things in this digital age and the technical challenges within the hobby. I could see this as a way of finding out what would interest me most.

I took my wife to the open day so she could understand better what I was thinking about getting into. She had a good time and could see the range of interests and the camaraderie involved. The fact that every rig and antenna set-up was portable was good for me to see as my main interest is in handheld and portable systems. ‘How much is it going to cost?’, she said. ‘Oh not much’, I replied. ‘There are very cheap handheld radios from China’.

 Neil,G1TZC , taking time out from his satellite dish, reassured me that Morse code was not mandatory and showed me a copy of the Foundation licence manual, explaining me that studying and taking the exam was straightforward especially given my background in electronics. Other Club members encouraged me to have a go and again I checked : definitely no  CW requirement!! 

I sent for the manual from the RSGB the next day.

Wythall Radio Club do not run their own courses anymore as most of the courses have gone on-line, so in September and October  I took the Essex Ham course and passed my Foundation Licence in November last year.

Neil’s Pop- up shack with captive audience . (Martin in there somewhere?)

From contacting a Wythall Radio Club to being licensed took less than three months.

To reassure those that might be thinking of getting into the hobby, even taking the exam itself was a pleasant experience as there is a pre-exam chat with a person who is also a keen radio amateur and the same person is on hand to facilitate the online exam session.

Martin’s current rig

I traded my scanners in for a very good Handheld radio transceiver (right). Even though I could get something much cheaper this was going to be my sole equipment for a while. As you will recall I said I wanted portability rather than a fixed set-up at home

However to get more coverage, with advice from Ian M0LQY, I have subsequently put together a hotspot. With the handheld radio I have three options. I can make contacts directly locally and on the move, via near and sometimes far repeaters, or through the hotspot over the internet. With the latter I can make contacts all over the world, but I have enjoyed most being able to contact  club members directly and via the Wythall repeater. I am also getting to know other Radio Amateurs locally and further afield – sometimes as I pass by on my travels

        MMDVM Pi-Star Rig

It was seeing a YouTube video on a ham using a Handheld radio and a hotspot in his house, contacting the World that was one of the triggers to contact WRC which led on to the Foundation Licence.

To continue to extend my knowledge I am now studying for the Intermediate Exam which is taking longer, but  equally enjoyable.

   For me Amateur Radio has so much a lot to offer.

I am enjoying VHF/UHF and surprising world wide contacts when I want. With the summer coming then HF with a portable set up may be something to try.

Shall I learn morse code? … I am not rushing!! (you never know Ed. !!)