wythall radio club

Members of Wythall Radio Club had a fabulous time at SSB Field Day 2013 as G4WAC/P.  A photo gallery upload appears below but a full write up will appear in our next Club Newsletter.

Chairman Mike G4VPD at the controls during SSB FD 2012

You could be excused for thinking that Wythall Radio Club members are gluttons for punishment! Once again a group of hardy members is taking to the field on Wythall Park this coming weekend, 7th-8th September. This time it is to take part in the Radio Society of Great Britain’s SSB Field Day Radio Contest.

The idea is to work as many worldwide stations as possible using Single Side-Band (SSB- an efficient Voice Mode used by Radio Amateurs). Several members will be shouting away for 24 hours in the middle of a field – they will of course be also hoping the rain stays away!

Planning such an event is not completely straightforward though, so this Tuesday at Wythall House, our regular weekly meeting will be taken up with sorting out the finer details for the weekend’s event.

Visitors, as always, are very welcome. This Tuesday, 3rd September 2013 at 20:30 in the Club Shack, Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall B47 6LZ

Thanks to everyone who turned up to put a great show on for Wythall Radio Club’s IOTA entry. We made nearly 600 contacts all over the world and generally had a good time.

Operators included James M0YOM, Lee G0MTN, Stan G4JGV, Dave G3YXM, Mark M0MSE, Rob 2E0MEX and myself, Callum M0MCX. I may have missed someone, please let me know.

I’ll do a write up for the next Wythall Radio Club newsletter. In the meantime, a picture tells a better story anyway!

Members of Wythall Radio Club have been living up to our club motto and having lots of fun with RF this weekend with our “Islands On The Air” station, M5W.

Stan G4JGV on the “Graveyard” shift!

Masterminded by Callum M0MCX, a hardy group of members has been up on Wythall Park all weekend, braving the rain to try to make as many contacts as they can, while remaining as dry as possible!

Stan G4JGV was reportedly on air all night on SSB and CW, whilst Rob 2E0MEX, Mark M0MSE, Dave G3YXM and of course, Callum M0MCX and others took turns on the microphone. James M0YOM and Lee G0MTN also helped out and gave some of the overnighters a little rest! Other members lending support included Colin M0GJM, Mike G4VPD and John G4OJL.

Needless to say, the intrepid team have been somewhat damp(!) but are now drying out after a busy weekend. It doesn’t help when the coaxial cable needs changing in the middle of a downpour!

Doubtless there will be more up-to-date news to report from M5W very soon…

This coming weekend, 27th and 28th July, sees Wythall Radio Club members taking part in one of the premier international contests of the year.

“Islands on the Air” is the Radio Society of Great Britain’s international contest event. It involves working as many islands as possible during the weekend and is hugely popular all over the world.

Wythall Radio Club member and top UK Contester, Lee G0MTN, is planning to enthuse us all to have a go in this year’s event with a talk this Tuesday evening. Entitled “IOTA Contest Tales from Four Countries” , Lee will be taking a retrospective glance at the contest and some of his own personal activities in it over the last 15 years!

It will be a very relaxed evening with lots of photos and tales of putting together both large and small stations in different part of the world. Just what we need to get us into the IOTA mood!

2030 this Tuesday in the shack at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall B47 6LZ. If you are reading this and have been contemplating popping along, this would be a great evening to be a first-time visitor!

There is a rumour going around that there could be a bigger entry from the club than expected this year too – more news soon… :-)

Members of Wythall Radio Club have been having lots of fun this weekend! Making the most of the fantastic weather on offer in the UK at the moment, our members took to a field in Wythall Park to have a weekend of “playing radio”.

Two radio stations were built to take part in the UK’s National VHF contest with masts loaded with various antennas for several bands. Members also bought along their own personal masts and portable stations to make a number of short-wave stations.

Much fun was had at the Saturday Night Barbecue with around 64 folk attending, making this year’s Field Day one of the best in living memory, according to some of the longest standing members. The fun we had and the people whose company we enjoyed will live long in the memory.

Another highlight this year was a prize raffle for club funds with prizes donated to the club from Kenwood (UK). It has to be said that the Kenwood items were the most coveted in the raffle and were the first to be gone!

The biggest question now is, can we please have the same weather next year? :-)

Meantime, here’s a selection of photos to give a flavour of a little of our weekend…

Next weekend, 6th and 7th July, sees one of the Radio Society of Great Britain’s premier contest events, VHF National Field Day and members of Wythall Radio Club are gearing up to take part and have yet more fun with RF!

The general idea is that stations take to the great outdoors and set up stations literally “in the field” and then try to make as many contacts as possible for 24 hours. Five VHF Amateur bands are used, 50Mhz, 70 MHz, 144 MHz, 432 MHz and 1296 MHz.

Wythall Radio Club’s idea of a good VHF Field Day however, is to have as many members as possible on Wythall Park playing a mix of radio, both VHF and HF, heavy duty contesting and combining that with eating food, drinking beer and telling tall stories well into the night. (Occasionally even radio comes second to beer!)

All this takes a modicum of planning though and this Tuesday evening we will putting the finishing touches to our Field Day plans and making sure all is ready for the following weekend.

Feel free to come along and see what the fuss is about. 2030 in the Club shack at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall. B47 6LZ.

Looking back through recent posts, you will see that a number of Wythall Radio Club members are appearing individually in the hobby press or seem to be getting very well known for their Radio Activities.

Today it is the turn of Lee G0MTN. Lee is one the UK’s best known and respected Amateur Radio contesters. In the current (May 2013) issue of CQ Magazine (a US publication but read worldwide) a photograph of a slightly younger(!) Lee appears in the article entitled “The VooDoo Contest Group in Africa – The End of an Era”” written by another “famous” radio ham, Roger Western G3SXW.

The photo, reproduced above exactly as it appears in CQ Magazine, was taken in 2001/2002 when Lee was involved in the VooDoo Contest Group taking part in one of their CQ Worldwide contest activations – this time in Burkina Faso as XT2DX

It is really good to see another Wythall Radio Club member making waves in the world of Ham Radio! And why not take a look at CQ? It’s a darned good read!

Jim 2E0BLP receives his prize from Chairman Mike G4VPD

Last night saw the results and presentation evening for the annual Wythall Radio Club Easter Contest. You can read more about how the event works here.

6 lucky winners were revealed and Mike G4VPD, Club Chairman, took great delight in presenting both certificates and Easter Eggs to the first, second and third placed entrants in each of the two sections, 2 Meters FM and Open. Bizarrely, Mike came second in the Open section so had the strange task of congratulating himself!

Jim 2E0BLP won the 2m FM section and is pictured above right – just click on the pictures below to see a few of the other happy winners!

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!