wythall radio club

This weekend sees the UK radio event known as “Mills on the Air” and Wythall Radio Club members will be out in force at one of our local mills with a special event station.

The 2012 station we set up at Avoncroft

We will be setting up the temporary shack near the mill at the Avoncroft Museum of Buildings in Bromsgrove. This is a fantastic museum which is home to over 27 different structures which have been rescued and re-built in rural Worcestershire. The Museum is spread over 19 acres and includes a wildflower meadow, period gardens, a traditional cider and perry orchard (yum!) as well as the fantastic collection of buildings.

Wythall Radio Club will be setting up our radio station underneath one of the barns near to the mill (see photo). Why not come down and not only have a great day out, but say hello to some of the hardy souls who will be erecting antennas and setting up this computerised hi-tech station? We will be there on Saturday from 0900 till about 1630. Ask for Callum – anyone there will know who you mean!

As May approaches, the thoughts of Wythall Radio Club members turn to a special event in honour of our past President.

Lew Williams was a grand man who taught many of the senior members of our club the joys of Morse Code (CW). When Lew passed away, it was thought appropriate to honour his memory in a suitable manner and so the “Lew Williams Shield” was born.

In order to win this trophy, Wythall Radio Club members are asked to view the 31 days of May as a “Morse Code Activity Month”. The trophy is awarded to the club member who has shown some kind of commendable contribution to the event. It will probably involve some evidence of improvement, however small, in some aspect of his/her Morse Code skills.

In order to explain a little more about how we can take part, even if we might not know much about the Code, Lee G0MTN will be giving a short talk this Tuesday evening. He will take us through what the Lew Williams Shield is about and how ANY member can submit a valid entry to try to win it.

Perhaps we will see you there? Visitors very welcome – this Tuesday, 30th April, at 2045 at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall. B47 6LZ

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!

As regular readers of our website will know, Tuesday evening is the main meeting night at Wythall Radio Club and this Tuesday’s meeting is one that quite a many members will have been looking forward to.

That’s because it is time for the results of our “in-house” Easter Contest.

Just as at Christmas, we hold an event to get as many members on air and working each other as possible. 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 makes life simple, a fact to which lead adjudicator Lee G0MTN will testify!

Tomorrow night is Easter Egg Prize night and, while we cannot yet publish any information about winners and runners-up, suffice it to say that there are going to be quite a few surprises in store! 2030 at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall, B47 6LZ. Visitors are, of course, most welcome!

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!

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!

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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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! :-)