wythall radio club

G0MTN presents the G7OJO Trophy to Stu M0NYP, overall winner of last year’s event

It is that special time of year again, when the airwaves around Wythall (and a bit further afield too!) will be full of stations exchanging numbers. No, it’s not a spy extravaganza, it’s just the Wythall Radio Club Christmas Contest again!

Lee G0MTN congratulates Jim 2E0BLP, last year’s winner of the 2m Trophy

Members are encouraged to work each other as often as possible between Christmas Eve at 20:00 and New Year’s Day at 20:00.

The rules are a little difficult to explain here but suffice it to say that at the end of the event, we take our best 5 days scores and submit them to the adjudicators. They then come up with the results, which are celebrated with a presentation evening in January.

It is all about “having fun with RF” as our club motto states, and it invariably lives up to its name.

So if you hear strange goings-on on the airwaves (especially on 145.225 MHz FM or perhaps even on our new repeater GB3WL) over the Christmas holidays, don’t be alarmed – in fact, please join in and say “hello”.

Once again, Wythall Radio Club has done brilliantly in the annual 1.8MHz RSGB Club Calls Contest.

Mark M0RKX operates G0WRC out portable in this year’s Club Calls Contest

This year’s contest took place last month and the results have just appeared on the RSGB Contest website.

Congratulations to our Club Station GX4WAC which finished 3rd in the individual places out of the 99 stations taking part. The team, comprising Lee G0MTN, Stan G4JGV and Anita 2E0DUO, scooped 5171 points just 453 points off the top spot.

In the club rankings, Wythall again finished in 3rd place (out of 49 Clubs) with our team of GX4WAC, G3YXM, G0WRC who were out portable and G7DDN. With the top two spots in the contest taken by “serious” Contest Groups, that makes Wythall Radio Club the top “ordinary” club in the listings.

Even better arguably, our ‘B’ team, comprising Simon G4TVR, Chris G0EYO, Rob 2E0MEX and David G0ICJ finished in an incredible 8th place, beating many club’s A teams!

Well done to everyone who took part. Perhaps next year we might even catch those Contest Groups up!

Is this an effective HF antenna? ;-)

Antennas are the lifeblood of the active Radio enthusiast. At Wythall Radio Club, we are only too well aware of that, having replaced our main tower antennas earlier this year!

So when a visiting speaker with expert knowledge comes to do a presentation on the subject, you can guarantee there will be a full house!

This Tuesday, friend of the club Mark G4FPH, a broadcast professional, will be presenting “Effective HF Antennas”.

Mark is well known to us at Wythall for previous talks and for getting his hands dirty with us at some of our special events. He is a very welcome visitor!

We know from previous evenings with Mark that we will be in for a very informative and challenging evening. As Wythall members are known for taking new ideas on board, we fully expect to hear about members trying out some of Mark’s ideas in 2015!

Why not join us for the evening? The talk starts tomorrow night (16th December) at 20:30 in the Darts Room at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall B47 6LZ. Visitors are most welcome.

Last night, the members of Wythall Radio Club were having great fun at the annual Christmas shindig at Wythall House.

On the basis that a picture tells a thousand words, enjoy this montage, courtesy of “official” photographer, Stu M0NYP

We’ve been waiting for the best part of 2014 but it has finally happened. GB3WL, the Wythall UHF Repeater is now on the air!

The Notice of Variation to keeper Dave G3YXM’s licence came through this Monday lunchtime and a short while later, the switch was thrown and GB3WL came to life!

Fortunately, the RSGB General Manager, Graham Coomber G0NBI, happened to be passing by recently and was press-ganged into doing an ad-hoc “official” switch on!

RSGB General Manager, Graham G0NBI performs the un-“official” switch-on of GB3WL

We hope that this new 432MHz box will be well used, not only by members of Wythall Radio Club but by all amateurs across the wider Midlands.  It provides better coverage of the M42 and M40 motorways on UHF than has been possible previously and even covers a large slice of Redditch.

It has been a long journey to get GB3WL on the air and we offer it to the Midlands community as a resource and another way to keep the 70cms airwaves humming.

More information on GB3WL can be found here.

With the festive season almost upon us, it’s time for Wythall Radio Club members to get into the party spirit – yes it’s the annual Christmas party once again!

Members bring copious amounts of food and we share a communal dinner together. Live entertainment and fun games will be going on too and with a fully licensed bar, there is no end to the fun we have!

Ever played “Stand-up Bingo”?  Or maybe even rolling pound coins down the bowling alley to see if you can win a bottle of Scotch Whisky? There is a club raffle too and there may be some desirable radio-related goodies among the prizes this year so we hear!

You don’t have to pay to come either! Our equivalent of an admission fee is that you simply bring some food that we all might want to eat! There may be no RF at this event, but it proves that Wythall members do at least have some fun without RF sometimes…

It’s happening this Saturday 13th December anytime from 1900 in the Britannia Room at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall B47 6LZ. Be prepared to have a little Christmas fun!

Some good news on the D-STAR front. Wythall Radio Club member John M1JSS has been successful with an application for a public simplex gateway near his home in Bromsgrove. 

Called MB6IDG and operating on a frequency of 431.125 MHz, it will be based just outside the town centre near the village of Dodford.

Once it is up and running, it will be connected to the Worcestershire DCS Reflector 005H joining the Wythall Gateway MB6IWL and the increasing number of Dongle users around the area. It will also fill in D-STAR coverage for mobiles between Wythall and the Bewdley repeater.

There are also further tentative ideas for Wythall Radio Club to support an increase in D-STAR coverage towards Redditch and Evesham as well, but more about that when we have some firmer plans.

Meantime, keep your eyes on the ukrepeater site (or even MB6IDG’s page on this site) for news of the progress of the Bromsgrove Gateway.

Now December is almost upon us, the thoughts of many a Wythall Club member start to turn to the annual “in-house” Christmas Contest.

This event, probably the most popular in the Wythall Radio Club Calendar, started from small beginnings and has now become a major feature of members’ Christmas Celebrations. Some amateurs have been known to join our club just to take part in it!

The idea is to work as many members as possible every day from 2000 on Christmas Eve till 2000 on New Year’s Day.  It is not quite as straightforward as it seems though and there are bonuses to be gained for using different bands and modes as well as going portable, mobile and operating from each other’s houses! Phew!

The G7OJO Trophy & the 2m Trophy

The eventual winners are presented with the G7OJO Trophy (for all bands) and the 2 Meter Trophy (for members using 144 MHz only.)

This Tuesday 2nd December, there is a presentation by Contest Supremo Lee G0MTN about the history and development of the Contest and on the innovations introduced in recent years, which will include more on the latest updates to our fantastic logging spreadsheet and some online goodies to increase the fun level during the holiday season.

It will be a fascinating evening for sure. So be there at 2030 this Tuesday 2nd December in the Club Shack. It will be full, so arrive early!

Some of the motley crew of Wythallians from 2013’s Hog Roast!

You could be forgiven for thinking that the members of Wythall Radio Club are only interested in food, what with curry nights, barbecues and “nibbles” nights as regular features in the club diary… (actually a few of us like a drink or two too…)

However, this Saturday 29th November, it is not our turn to be the host but to be the visitors. That’s because it is time for our annual trip to Chertsey to visit our friendly Ham Radio dealer Martin Lynch and his family and staff.

Every year Martin puts on a bacon sandwich breakfast and a “Hog Roast” lunch for any radio enthusiasts who wish to visit his shop in Surrey. Last year we had a fantastic time, enjoying the company of friends old and new, as well as inadvertently purchasing too much radio equipment! And this Saturday will actually see the last of these events – well, only at the current premises – MLS is moving across the Thames, so we hear!

So expect to see up to a dozen or so Wythallians winging their way down the M40 once again this Saturday morning.  We are already looking forward to seeing many old friends – and the local bookmakers are taking no further bets on Wythall members returning with something substantial in their car boots! That, for once, really is a dead cert!

You could be forgiven for thinking that the members of Wythall Radio Club are going Digital-mad! Hard on the heels of our recent successful D-STAR events, we now are turning to HF and “digimodes”.

What’s more, with our infamous internal Christmas Contest getting ever closer, there will be bonus points for using HF Digital modes. So it is just as well that our resident Digimodes Guru, Callum M0MCX, will be helping us out a little this week.

“PSK31 and Beyond” is the title of Cal’s presentation this coming Tuesday in the Club Shack. He will take us through a plethora of easily usable HF Digital modes and give us a beginners’ guide as to how to get on the air, simply, inexpensively and with no fuss – and it will done in his own inimitable, fun and entertaining style!

Make a date for Tuesday 25th November at 20:30 at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall B47 6LZ and let’s get digital!