The latest Wythall Radio Club Newsletter is out now!
Find your copy by clicking here or on the newsletter graphic to the left of this post.
Articles this edition include… Six Decades of Morse Keys, an update on Club Contests, some news about our 3-15 evenings and a report of John M6KET’s adventures at the Essex CW club event.
As always, there’s loads more besides too, so just click here and enjoy!
Further to the post about Mark M0LXQ below, it’s now the turn of another Wythall Radio Club member John M6KET, to be a winner! 
Retired teacher John told us, “…just returned from a CW (Morse Code) Boot Camp run by the excellent Essex CW Club with some 30 delegates put through their paces by hardened professionals (well, keen amateurs!)”
“Honest feedback received on both my sending and receiving was handed out, as well as lectures on all things CW from keys to building your own speed monitor.”
“As I was the delegate who had travelled the furthest, I won a CG Antenna PK-4 CW Pocket Keyer (sponsored by our friends from ML&S)”
John runs our well-known Morse Training Classes on Tuesday evenings here at Wythall and we congratulate him on a great day out and a new piece of kit for the shack!
Well done John!
A member of Wythall Radio Club has won top prize at a prestigious UK Radio event.
Mark M0LXQ looked as nonplussed as this when he won the raffle!
Mark M0LXQ was one of 12 members enjoying the Radio Society of Great Britain’s Premier UK event this weekend – the three-day Convention held at Milton Keynes.
Mark arrived on the Sunday to join those of us in residence for the whole weekend, ostensibly to sit his USA Licence exam (Mark’s wife is an American citizen, so it makes sense for Mark to have a US license in case he and his wife decide to reside in the USA in the future).
He passed his Extra Class (Advanced) licence with a staggering 94% mark but was left further gobsmacked at the end of the day, when it was revealed that he had won the top raffle prize, a brand spanking new Icom IC-7300 Software Defined Radio worth £1200 – not bad for a fiver’s worth of tickets!
Mark, who is a fully qualified paramedic, said later that his first thoughts “I’m going to have to convince my wife that I haven’t actually spent money on buying this!”
Don’t worry Mark – the next RSGB Radcom magazine will have the photographic proof!
News of some developments on the repeater front at Wythall Radio Club.
The antenna stack at GB3EH
Firstly, GB3WL will hopefully be undergoing some upgrades later this year. Part of the recent money donated to the club from the Wythall Fun Run is being ploughed back into GB3WL in the form of an upgrade, initially to a dual-mode Analogue/System Fusion Digital box.
This will of course be subject to clearance from Ofcom.
Later we intend to look at upgrading it still further to a D-STAR and DMR unit too, so that it can be used in 4 modes in total. Watch this space!
And our friendly companion repeater GB3EH near Banbury, with which some of our club members are very closely involved, is having a frequency change soon.
It is moving from a 1.6MHz split to a 7.6 MHz split and coincidentally it is going to be right next door in frequency to GB3WL on channel RU77 – GB3WL is on RU76.
That should make it very easy to change frequency while driving up and down the M40!
Chair Anita 2E0DUO receives the cheque from the Fun-Run Committee
Wythall Radio Club are celebrating today. That’s because we are a little better off than we were a few days ago!
On Tuesday at the Club, we were presented with a rather fulsome cheque – this was in recognition of our assistance at the recent Wythall Fun Run.
Several local charities also benefitted and the Fun Run Committee allocate money according to the help given to the community and the number of volunteers who help them out.
On that front, WRC managed well over 20 folk helping with marshalling and radio communications around the 10km course and it seems the Fun Run folk are very grateful for our help, though it has to be said we enjoy doing it too!
Thank you to all members who helped out in any way and thanks too to the Fun Run organisers for putting on what is a great local event.
We are ready looking forward to next year’s!
The 2016 Radio Club Stall – click for a close-up
It’s that time of year in Wythall – Carnival Time! And Wythall Radio Club will be out in force on display this Sunday.
Wythall Carnival is a fantastic celebration of our village – most local organisations have a stall. And there’s classic cars, children’s entertainments, arts and crafts and a cornucopia of stalls selling all kinds of wares. There’s plenty of food too of course…
Like other societies, Wythall Radio Club will have a stall where you can come along and see what we do, chat with enthusiastic members and maybe see and listen in to some contacts being made live on the air!
It’s a great opportunity to say hello or take your first tentative steps in finding out what the hobby is about in a non-threatening environment, so please come and say hello and ask difficult questions!
Please support Wythall Carnival by coming along and we hope to see you on Sunday at Wythall Park from 1pm.
Wythall Radio Club member Jamie M0SDV is celebrating today. 
He has been crowned the winner of this year’s Lew Williams Shield award.
Each May, we designate the month as our Morse Activity month and members are invited to show evidence of progress in learning and/or using the Code in the Radio hobby.
This year Jamie, (who is still only 16, even though he is tall!) was nominated the winner by the judging panel. This comes hot on the heels of him recently gaining his Full licence callsign a few months ago.
It’s been an exciting few weeks for the young man, who is pictured here at last weekend’s Field Day and BBQ, receiving his awards from judge Lee G0MTN.
Well done Jamie, from everyone at WRC!
An LF Receive Loop at G3YXM
It’s all happening at Wythall Radio Club this coming Tuesday!
Loop antennas are something of a mystery to many of us but they are gaining in popularity.
This is partly down to the modern twin scourge for radio hobbyists of both local noise and small gardens!
While small antennas are always a compromise, magnetic loop antennas are particularly popular due to their quiet receive and quite effective transmit capabilities.
In addition, they can be used close to the ground so they are even useful outdoors too.
So this week, on Tuesday 30th May, Club Member and antenna guru, Dave G3YXM, is giving a talk on Practical Loop Antennas.
Dave is a veteran of many a loop, so to speak, and this, our final presentation before the summer activity season starts, is bound to be a very popular one.
Get your seat early then – the talk is at 20:30 in the club shack at Wythall House, Silver Street. B47 6LZ.
We can’t wait!
Back in January, Bob G3PJT gave Wythall Radio Club a demonstration on remote operating of his radio station over the internet.
This would cost most of us far too much £££, but…
The purpose of his talk was to demonstrate remote operations mainly to young people with the aim of encouraging younger people into the hobby with technology that they understand.
This was quite an expensive setup though and, being radio amateurs, we would always like to do it less expensively!
So tonight Club Member Lee G0MTN, is giving us a demonstration on a much cheaper set-up that will achieve a very similar end. Lee has trialled his remote station operation from Poland back to Wythall, so we know it works!
Come along tonight and find out more.
It kicks off at 2030 in the Club Shack at Wythall House, Silver Street, B47 6LZ.
See you there!
People join clubs for various reasons, but high among the reasons people join Wythall Radio Club is the opportunity afforded them to “play radio” with a group of like-minded colleagues.
So it was yesterday, when the weather in Wythall turned decidedly warm – for once, we were quick off the mark too, to arrange one of our “Plug and Play Days”.
Several members managed to get out on the fields behind Wythall Park for some back-to-basics radio, with a generator providing power and members bringing all kinds of strange antennas and radios to do some RF experimentation.
A great time was had by all, and the sun was caught by a few! Just as well there was an ice-cream van and a refreshing cooling bar nearby!
Perhaps we should change the name of such events to “Plug, Play & Pint Days”…
