wythall radio club

Knots, eh?

Probably the last time you had any tuition in those, you were in the boy scouts! As a Radio Amateur though, a working knowledge of a few knots is very useful when it comes to putting antennas up, whether it be temporary or a little more permanent.

This Tuesday at Wythall Radio Club, member Callum M0MCX will be giving us a hands-on demonstration of useful knots we must all learn in readiness for our summertime outdoor hamming activities.

This should be a lot of fun… Callum’s style is not what you might call “traditional” and of one thing we can be sure, audience participation will not just be encouraged but absolutely mandatory!

The fun and laughter begins at 2030 in the Club Shack at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall B47 6LZ. Why don’t you come along and join us?

Enthused by Wythall Radio Cub’s recent club project here, member Colin M0GJM decided to go hunting for a circuit for a valve based TRF receiver to cover the medium wave band. Having found one and played with it for a while, Colin shared his discoveries with another member, Ian M0IDR, who was equally fired by the thought of building something with a thermionic device.

Ian has now gone on to make his own version of the receiver, making changes to the circuit “on the hoof”. The finished product (pictured) uses a 12BH7A double triode valve from a defunct American TV and a rather nice tuning capacitor which was rescued from an old Decca transistor radio that someone had relegated to the compost heap! Apparently it did need a little cleaning up…

What a fantastic example of life in a busy Amateur Radio Club! Enthused by a club project from one member, others go searching for more circuits and end up bringing into life the little beauty pictured here.

Watch out for our next Club Newsletter where an article with fuller description and more photos will be published and its brother from the workbench of Colin M0GJM will be published too.

Home construction lives on at Wythall Radio Club!

Another Wythall Radio Club member has been making waves in the world of this great hobby. This time it is the turn of James M0YOM.

James is a professional computer genius but in his “down time” has been developing a neat remote control program for the ACOM 2000 RF Linear Amplifier. This has been gaining several notable users as time goes by.

The latest news is that Mike W0YR has contacted James from the USA to thank him for his contribution to his Amateur Contest Super-Station, K4VV. Nice to see James’ software in use in such a fantastic setup!

Take a look at the station tour video here where Acom Director can be seen. Also there is a video of it in use during the 2013 ARRL DX SSB Contest – check out the window in the centre of the screen!

For more information on Acom Director, visit James’ website. Meantime, congratulations to James from all of us here at Wythall Radio Club. 

This is becoming a little bit of a habit!  Further to other posts on this website (here and here), we are pleased once again to congratulate Barry M0DGQ on the publication of yet another article in renowned Ham Radio magazine SPRAT.

SPRAT (Small Powered Radio Amateur Transmitters) is the quarterly journal of the G-QRP Club. It is known world-wide for its technical innovation and integrity.

The Spring edition is just now landing on the doormats of its members and therein, on page 14, is an article by our very own Wythall Whizz-kid(!) for a Temperature Controller device for a cheap Chinese soldering iron purchased from a well-known auction site! Complete with circuit diagram, Barry designed and then built this just using components from his “Man Drawer”. Has he just invented the cheapest Weller clone in the world, we wonder? :-)

Once again, congratulations to Barry from all at Wythall Radio Club on another brilliant and innovative article. Whatever will he be constructing next?

If you are tuning around on the 2 metre band in the Birmingham area or further afield and hear some stations exchanging numbers, you just might have stumbled upon the 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 worked and 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!

The best 3 days of the 5 days of Easter are adjudicated and the top 3 winners in each category get Easter Eggs as prizes. No wonder so many Wythall RC members are getting larger!

Being involved with radio in any way inevitably means that at some point, one has to face up to the technical side of the hobby. However, it would be true to say that this aspect of the hobby does not always come easily to all of us. Circuit diagrams, for example, are not always easy to read – trying to see exactly understand how a circuit works can be quite daunting for many of us.

These days computer software is a big help in helping our understanding of circuitry and this Tuesday, Wythall Radio Club is proud to be presenting a talk on one particular type of software which can assist us in this.

Chris G0EYO is doing a presentation for us on the “Circuit Wizard” range of software. Chris uses this in his training sessions for our students and is just the man to explain how it works and how we as radio enthusiasts can use it to help us in our hobby.

Interested? Then come along this Tuesday at 2030 to Wythall House, Silver Street Wythall B47 6LZ. You will be very welcome!

Exam time again at Wythall Radio Club and tonight it was the turn of the Intermediate Licence students. And our largest ever single class of Foundation licence holders are now all celebrating Intermediate success!

Paul, Howard, Howard, Andy, Tom, Darren and Rob show off their pass certificates

Seven students (pictured) successfully passed their exam with flying colours this evening and now lead instructor Chris G0EYO is looking to headhunt them to step up and have a go at the Advanced course which starts at Wythall in September.

Meantime the members of Wythall Radio Club send their congratulations to Paul, Andy, Tom, Darren, Rob and the 2 Howards.

UPDATE! We hear that Rob is now 2E0MEX, Darren 2E0LPD, Howard H 2E0TBR, Howard K 2E0KWH, Tom 2E0GSW, Andy 2E0VAZ and Paul 2E0ULC – Congratulations on the new callsigns, lads!

There is a section of the Ham Radio hobby, the fastest growing we are led to believe, which is known as “Radio Sport” or “Contesting”. The idea is to make as many contacts (exchanging the correct information of course!) within a specified time period. It is a very big part of the hobby of many a Radio Amateur!

To get Wythall Radio Club members in the mood to have a go at a big contest, our “top gun” Radio Sportsman, Lee G0MTN, is putting together one of his famous presentations to enthuse us to all to have a go at the next worldwide event, the CQ Magazine World Prefix Contest (known as CQ WPX) on the last weekend of this month.

There will be plenty of big gun stations like OH8X on the air!

You could try it out from home or even from our well-equipped club shack.  It is not too difficult to achieve a DXCC award (100 countries contacted) in one weekend during this contest!

So if you have little or no idea what the “contesting” bug is like, why not come and catch it at Wythall House, Silver Street, B47 6LZ this Tuesday at 2030?  Lee will be giving an introduction to all-band HF contests in general as well as this contest in particular.

There is even a rumour, that to encourage participation within the club, there may even be a “contest-within-a-contest” that we’ll run, just for fun, to encourage members’ activity in the WPX contest.

I wonder if there will be a prize in the form of a liquid refreshment for the winner? :-)

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Give it a go and hit Like now :)

73, Callum.

Nice to see the national journal of the Radio Society of Great Britain is catching up with us here at Wythall Radio Club! :-)

“RadCom” is published monthly and Wythall RC member Dave G3YXM is one of their regular columnists, writing the LF (Low Frequencies) column.

In his column for April, which has just been published (page 48), is a mention (and photo) of an item that appeared on our website here just over a month ago. Click here to see it!

Amusing that, at least this time, Wythall RC’s website is setting the trend! :-)