wythall radio club

Sometimes club life is just plain fun! Last night Wythall Radio Club held its annual Christmas Party. Over 60 members, family and friends all came together for a fun-filled evening at Wythall House.

Tonight is the night that our four Advanced Course students (plus an outside candidate) take their examination at Wythall House. We wish club members Chris 2E0ETH and Jim 2E0BLP plus non-members Tony 2E0TKS and Carl 2E0CWC together with external candidate Shaun 2E1BWN the very best. We hope to hear their new M0 callsigns on the air as soon as they get them.

The Advanced Course covers a large number of technical topics in some depth and passing the exam is a real achievement, equivalent to an NVQ qualification.  It is also the longest course the club runs with 15 two hourly sessions on Monday evenings and a couple of Saturday mornings.

Chris 2E0ETH, Jim 2E0BLP & Tony 2E0TKS ready to roll

As Lead Instructor & Training Coordinator, Chris G0EYO has attended every session.

Nonetheless Chris paid tribute to his assistants. “Running this course would not be possible without the help and expertise of my fellow tutors, Peter G4LWF, Barry M0DGQ and Dave G3YXM together with invigilators David G0ICJ and Mike G4VPD. It surely is a team effort and I am sure all our candidates appreciate their efforts. As a club, we are lucky to have the facilities of a classroom with multimedia technology at our disposal.”

While we await tonight’s results, you might be interested to know that Wythall Radio Club will be starting an Intermediate course in January, so watch this space for more news!

This Saturday, 8th December, is a very special date in Wythall Radio Club’s Calendar. It is the date for our annual Christmas Party! Members come along and bring friends & family and we basically just have a lot of fun together!

We hire one of the larger rooms (with bar of course!) at Wythall House and have a mixture of excellent food and drink (in the “American Supper” style), live entertainment, games, raffles, and even a skittle alley!

Great chat, a relaxed friendly atmosphere and a “no pressure” environment, it’s the perfect way to start the festive season off with friends. This Saturday in the Britannia Room at Wythall House, Sliver Street, Wythall from 19:00.

What a fun day! Our first club visit to Martin Lynch’s shop in Chertsey, Surrey.

Six of us made the trip down a frosty, foggy M40 early this morning to enjoy the ML&S open day & hog roast and we were not disappointed! We arrived around 8.30am to find a Car Park space reserved for our Chairman Mike G4VPD. He won’t live that down in a hurry!

We then spent a happy few hours browsing the shop, enjoying a breakfast of unlimited free bacon sandwiches, free drinks and very friendly chat with the ML&S staff.

G5HY from Kenwood(UK) presents Mike G4VPD with our £600 voucher

This was also the day when we were presented with our £600 voucher, won in the ML&S raffle at the National Hamfest in September, to spend in store. Kenwood’s David Wilkins G5HY was on hand to present the voucher, which was very promptly exchanged in part payment for a Kenwood TS-590S!

Needless to say, there were a few other pre-Christmas deals done and Santa obviously came VERY early for all the members who travelled down!

A hot pork lunch and more drinks and soon it was time to leave, but not before we felt we had made a few new friends in the South-East.

Many thanks to Martin, Richard and all the staff and Martin’s family at ML&S. We look forward to seeing you again in the New Year.

There’s an exciting day in Wythall Radio Club’s calendar coming up this Saturday.

A group of members is travelling down to the Radio store of our friends Martin Lynch and Sons. Wythall Radio Club won the ML&S raffle which ran for the duration of the National Hamfest in September.  We are very much looking forward to receiving our prize, a £600 gift voucher to be spent on goodies in the shop!

Martin personally gave us an unbeatable deal on our new club radio, the Kenwood TS590S, and we look forward to meeting him again, together with David Wilkins G5HY from Kenwood UK who will be presenting our members with their goodies.  Needless to say we will be partaking in the famous ML&S Hog Roast as well as purchasing more radio bits for ourselves and for the club.  In the words of Wallace and Gromit, it should be “a grand day out!”

A late change to our club programme this week; James M0YOM is sadly tied up abroad on work and his talk on “Filtering in the Shack” has therefore been postponed till next year. Instead, Chris G7DDN will host another of our popular “Internet Nights”.

This takes the form of a “round table” – we visit a selection of ham radio websites of which members may not yet be fully aware.   It is easy in our modern connected world to think everyone already knows about the many resources available at the click of a mouse or press of a button, but this is not always the case. You are also encouraged to contribute by bringing along useful links to sites that you may have discovered which might enhance the hobby for us all.

Last time out, a can of worms was uncovered! Several members discovered the delights of webSDRs which has enhanced the hobby for many of us. What will Tuesday night bring this time around? 2030 in the Club Shack.

Imagine your correspondent’s surprise when he received a large A4 size letter postmarked from the USA recently!

Not expecting anything from “across the pond”, it was opened with a mixture of anticipation and wonderment.  It turned out to be a certificate for a placing in the 2011 CQ Worldwide Contest for CW.

Now this was a surprise! I had forgotten entering this event, probably as I only operated for a short time and made just 19 contacts on just one band, 80 metres.  It turned out that I had won 1st place in England in the Low Power section for a Single Operator on 80 metres. OK, so I was about 4th from the bottom in the world, but as no-one else from England had bothered to enter that section, I won it! Rather a nice piece of wallpaper for the radio room, methinks!

See, it’s always worth submitting an entry to a contest. You never know what can happen!

We operated as G7WAC from 1,000 feet in the Cotswolds at about 2.5c. It was very cold but very amusing and great fun. A picture tells a thousand words so perhaps you might skip to the sequence below.

125 QSOs, FT1000MP, Full size inverted V 160m Dipole at 65 feet AGL. Dipole legs were cut at 37 metres each leg giving us a tune-up at 1.850. Ideally, the maths told me to cut another metre off, but we ran out of time to become operational just 6 minutes before the off at 19:54.

Operators, Stu M0NYP, Jon, M0JMM and myself Callum, M0MCX. Thanks for working us.

A strange title admittedly, but then not every radio ham is adept or as knowledgeable as they might be about antennas. That’s why, this coming Tuesday 6th November, Callum M0MCX will be telling us more about the basics of wire antennas for shortwave.

On another tack, this week’s offering is a good example of how being in a club like Wythall Radio Club can work for you. Someone posted on our internal email reflector that they needed help with an antenna and apart from getting that help, it prompted Committee Member Callum to offer one of his famous “short talks” so we could all benefit.

Most members know what we mean when we say Callum’s approach to presentations is… well… “unique”. Hence this week’s talk title, “Wire Antennas for Dummies”!

So why not come along to the Club Shack this Tuesday at 2030 to Wythall House on Silver Street and find out more? You will be made most welcome!

One of the perennial favourite contests in the RSGB Contest Calendar is fast approaching.

The “Club Calls” Contest, originated by the Verulam Radio Club, has always been a fun relaxed event on 160m. Wythall Radio Club started taking part in this contest a little more seriously over the last two years.  In 2011, our club station actually managed to finish in 3rd place and won a certificate!

This year the event is on the evening of Saturday November 10th (2000-2300) and we are hoping to try to get as high as possible in the results table, but it has to be said, we do treat the event as a fun event first!

Dave G3YXM (of “Olympics” fame – see the previous post) is our lead member when it come to this event and has been entering it in one guise or another for many years. This Tuesday at our regular club meeting he is going to tell us a bit more about the history of the contest, how easy it is to enter it and what we can do to improve our standings in the results table!

As always, it will be a fun event. 2030 in the Club Shack this Tuesday 23rd October, at Wythall House, Silver Street, Wythall B47 6LZ. See you there?