wythall radio club

If you are tune around the 2 metre band in the West Midlands area between Maundy Thursday morning & Easter Monday night and hear some stations exchanging numbers, you might just have stumbled upon the 2014 Wythall Radio Club Easter Contest!

Just as at Christmas, we hold an event to get our members on air and working each other. Points are given for each member contacted – 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 keeps score for us!

Just to ease the complication, tomorrow (Tuesday 14th April) we will have an evening where we can explain the idiosyncrasies of this annual event. Chris G7DDN will attempt to simplify the rules and the logging so that everyone can feel comfortable in taking part. 2030 in the Club Shack at Wythall House, Silver Street. B47 6LZ.

Incidentally, the prizes for the contest are Easter Eggs – is it no wonder so many Wythall RC members are getting ever larger?

New RSGB Regional Manager, Martyn G3UKV

The Radio Society of Great Britain announced today that they have appointed a new Regional Manager for Wythall Radio Club’s region.

Following a ballot of members across the area, Martyn Vincent G3UKV was duly elected to serve the Society. The members of Wythall Radio Club would like to congratulate Martyn on his appointment.

WRC Chairman Mike G4VPD said, “Wythall Radio Club looks forward to working with Martyn in promoting Amateur Radio in the Midlands. We look forward to him visiting Wythall at his earliest opportunity.”

Club President Chris G0EYO commented, “I don’t know Martyn personally but his reputation as a trainer and a committed club man goes before him. I am sure he will make an excellent representative for the region in RSGB matters. We greatly look forward to introducing him to the what we think is the best radio club in his region.”

Further to our post earlier this week advertising the Intermediate Course starting next month, Wythall Radio Club is at the same time pleased and saddened to let you know that it is now full!

We can only accommodate 7 students on a course like this due to space required for practical work and we have had 7 students sign up very quickly.

If you are looking for more information about our Intermediate Courses, contact Wythall Radio Club’s Training Co-ordinator, Chris G0EYO at g0eyo@blueyonder.co.uk

Perhaps you can persuade him to run another course later this year!

Some exciting news from the Wythall Radio Club Training Department today! We will be running a 9 week course for the Intermediate Licence starting next month.

The course will begin on Monday 12th May and continue most Mondays until the start of July. As usual, we will hold the training at our Club headquarters at Wythall House on Silver St, postcode B47 6LZ . All sessions are from 20:00 and last for 2 hours.

There is also an additional Saturday session on 14th June. This is for the practical assessments, which are compulsory, so you should ensure you can make that morning. The cost for this this course is £50 all in (no hidden extras!).

If you are a Foundation License holder and would be interested in finding out more, click here for more information or email the Wythall Radio Club Training Co-ordinator Chris G0EYO. He is available (24/7 so it sometimes appears!) at g0eyo@blueyonder.co.uk.

Good luck with your studies!

We are very fortunate that,very near to Wythall Radio Club, lies possibly one of the best Indian restaurants in the area! The Monsoon is very popular with families all around South Birmingham and people travel for miles to visit it for a meal out.

Since Monsoon is just a short walk from the club HQ, it is no surprise that the members of Wythall Radio Club use it for a regular social evening! 

For those who don’t know, the social side of being in an Amateur Radio “family” like this is really important. For example, every Friday several of us meet for nibbles and drinks in the club shack; our Field Days and Training days are also excuses for more food and drink; and then every last Monday of the month, as this evening (pictured!), we descend on the Monsoon in force and present the staff with the difficulties of catering for 15 or so hungry radio hams! It all helps the bonding between members.

Just another part of life at Wythall Radio Club – albeit one that has too many of us going on diets so we don’t end up more “shack-bound”!

Wythall Radio Club’s Contest training day yesterday proved to be a real success!

We achieved our goal of providing an opportunity for club members relatively inexperienced in HF contesting to have a no-pressure guided play on-air. It was particularly encouraging that so many of our Foundation Licence holders and newer club members got their first taste of the huge event that is the CQ World Prefix Contest.

Getting on for 20 members worked many countries including Australia, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Ceuta and Mililla, China, the Netherlands Antilles, Palau, Puerto Rico, Sardinia, the United States, Venezuela, and West Malaysia.

Special mentions go to Dawn M6UDY, John M1JSS, Kevin M6NCO, and Terry G7NWA who all really got stuck in in a serious way! Dawn M6UDY worked Australia with 100w to our club doublet, and Terry G7NWA, who has recently returned to the hobby, was running a pileup of USA stations on 15m just before we pulled the big switch late into the evening.

What with a fantastic takeaway meal as well, all eating around one of the large club tables, a great time was had by all, participants and spectators alike! The question we are being asked now is, “When’s the next one?”

Many Wythall Radio Club members enjoy the radio sport of contesting. It is fun, after all, to test your station and your operating skills against other radio enthusiasts, whether locally, in the UK or worldwide. Yet taking part in a contest can seem pretty daunting for newcomers to the hobby, even downright frightening for many more experienced ones too!

Club husband & wife team, Dawn M6UDY & John M1JSS operating the Elecraft K3 in a recent pile-up

With one of the largest world contests taking place this weekend on most of the shortwave bands, it seems like a good time to help folk improve their Radiosport operating skills and give members a taste of the excitement that is radio contesting.

CQ WPX (World Prefix) is the training ground and the Wythall Club shack and equipment are the weapons of choice. This is not a “serious” entry, just a great opportunity for members to be helped in how contests work, learn how to operate logging software and try to to improve one’s technique so as to get maximum enjoyment (and maybe points too!) from the activity.

Starting at 1300 tomorrow, Saturday 29th March, come and join top UK contester Lee G0MTN and a few other club contesting maestros for some hands-on fun! Mistakes are very welcome as that is one of the ways to learn, so don’t be shy.

We will be on the air until at least 1800 when we intend to finish the day with a mass takeaway of all world cuisines to match the world-wide contacts we will have made! With all the fun going on and it being a 48 hour contest, I wonder what time we might finish though?

25 years ago, the permanent antennas, rotator and coax runs at Wythall Radio Club HQ in Silver Street, Wythall, were installed on a retractable 40 foot tall Versatower in the backyard of Wythall House.

Since then, other buildings have sprung up around the House and Park where we meet – all this means that tilting our tower over for maintenance purposes can be a little more difficult than in the past – but not impossible, as you can see in the pictures!

On tower duties today, Mike G4VPD, Dave G3YXM, Jon M1JSS, Stuart M0NYP and Andy M6CYY with Rob 2E0MEX acting as official photographer! It looked like a cold day!

This week, the members of Wythall Radio Club are looking forward to reaching new summits in the pursuit of our Amateur Radio hobby! That’s because our visiting guest speaker this week is representing the “Summits on the Air” programme.

Radio + stunning view = happiness, SOTA-style!

“Summits on the Air” is an Amateur Radio award scheme that promotes getting outside onto high spots around the country (and indeed the whole world!) and making contacts. There is a lot to “SOTA” as it is known and this Tuesday, Wythall Radio Club welcomes Brian G8ADD to tell us a whole lot more about it.

With (hopefully!) warmer weather coming this summer, some of us will be persuaded to give getting involved in SOTA a shot. In any case, it will be fascinating to learn first hand just how the scheme works. For those of us less active, there are still ways we can take part in SOTA and enjoy the activations of hills that others make.

Our guest, Brian G8ADD says,”Worldwide, SOTA currently has nearly 100 Associations in around 50 countries, with almost 3,500 activators and about the same number of chasers. Close on 20,000 summits have been activated so far totalling well over 2 million contacts!”

It should be a really fascinating evening, so why not pop along to the Darts Room at Wythall House this Tuesday? The talk starts at 2030 and you can find Wythall House on Silver Street, B47 6LZ. Can’t wait!

It is with great pride that we can now reveal how Wythall Radio Club’s recent exam successes have translated into new Amateur Radio callsigns.

Jamie, Gavin, Kevin, Darren & Craig all now have their M6 callsigns and are getting on air!

From our Foundation batch of students, 14-year-old Jamie Williams  is now M6GDI, Gavin Weston is M6GWG, Kevin O’Reilly is M6KOR, Darren Meehan is M6UDM, and Craig Wright has his call too!

Is he “KID”ding us about his callsign? :-)

Our self-studying Intermediate, George Ifrim is now the proud owner of 2E0KID and is sure to be instantly recognisable on the air with a callsign like that!

All the members of Wythall Radio Club congratulate our latest batch of students on their successes.  That won’t be the end of it though – there is another batch of Foundation students who have been doing their studies online and they are gearing up to take their exam on Saturday 29th March – we hope for yet more successes to report on soon!