Due to personal circumstances, the date for Callum M0MCX’s talk on Garden Antennas has had to be changed.
Instead of taking place this coming Tuesday 28th February, it will now take place on Tuesday March 20th at 2030. Venue within Wythall House to be confirmed.
Our apologies for this late change to the programme. This Tuesday will be a social evening at the club – a chance to chat RF and put the Amateur Radio world to rights! :-)
Time to get ready for your new Wythall Radio Club polo shirts, t-shirts and fleece jackets! The “club tailor”(!) Peter Hall will be visiting us this coming Tuesday evening.
Many regular folks will have noticed the recent proliferation of club branded wear. Peter will be doing a demonstration of how the logos are created and how his bespoke computerised machinery makes the garments. He will also make a few shirts on the night for any last minute orderers, and bringing some pre-ordered garments with him too.
His first visit in November was excellent but this time, we will be meeting in the Darts Room, which will allow us to see more “up close” just exactly what goes on!
We are looking forward to welcoming him again, this time with his wife, Carol.
Don’t forget to bring your wallets, folks!
Wythall Radio Club’s calendar is now correct up to the end of 2012.
As new talks or events are arranged, details will be posted and the calendar updated. Talks are firmly in the diary up to June of this year and the Autumn talks programme is currently being planned. Watch this space!
The next event which may be of interest to non-members is on Tuesday February 28th when Callum M0MCX will be giving a talk and presentation on HF Antennas for your Garden. Visitors are welcome – just make yourselves known and say hello! :-)
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.
Wythall Radio Club’s latest Foundation Course begins this evening. With a full complement of students, we are hoping for yet more successes at Foundation level.
All at Wythall Radio Club send their best wishes to our new students for a successful course and we hope to hear new callsigns on the air come March.
Remember if you are interested in becoming a Radio Amateur or just have any queries with regards to what the Foundation Course is all about, just drop a line to Chris G0EYO at g0eyo@blueyonder.co.uk anytime. He will be more than pleased to give you any advice.
The Radio Society of Great Britain and Ofcom have reached agreement on the optional use of special callsigns for two significant events during 2012.
For the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, all UK amateur stations will have the option of applying for a variation to their licence if they wish, to use a special prefix for a five week period. This will add or substitute the letter “Q” in the place of the Regional identifier in the callsign. For the period of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, a similar facility will exist for a seven week period, using the letter “O”. Both the above facilities will also be available to Amateur Club licences, so expect to hear GQ4WAC and GO4WAC during this year!
More info at http://www.rsgb.org/news/articlelinks.php?id=0263
The Club’s programme of events on this website has been further updated and is now accurate to the end of September 2012.
October – December 2012 will be added shortly.
The latest issue of the Wythall Radio Club newsletter is now on-line and available.
Amateur Radio operators around the Midlands might wonder what’s going on down at 145.225 FM most hours of the day and night. It’s the Wythall Christmas Contest. The rules are biased to encourage club members to work each other, every day over the Christmas break between Christmas Eve and New Year’s day.
There are two sections; the “restricted” section, which is 2m only and then the “open” section where bonuses are achieved for modes and band slots. Full rules here: https://www.wythallradioclub.co.uk/contest/xmas-contest-rules/
At the time of writing, late on Boxing day, over 50% of club members have been active and exchanged serial numbers with other club members. Serial numbers as high as 50 have been reported already.
A tremendous success!
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.
