MAY 2008

Editor: Malcolm Andrew G8NRP

COMMENT

The last month has been quite busy for me traveling up to Scotland to the Isle of Bute to see my grandchildren for a few days and then to the RSGB AGM in Bristol.  This was attended by about seventy- five members.  It was good to chat with some who I have never met before including Ian, G0DMU who wrote an article for RadCom last September about Jodrell Bank and EME.  We were also told about the new venture at Bletchley Park where the RSGB shack and museum will be located.  Entrance to these facilities will be free to RSGB members.

I was taken by surprise at the announcement of a new TV satellite service that began last week called Freesat - not to be confused with Freesat from Sky.  Freesat will give you most of the Freeview setup including a number of high definition television channels.  You will need a dish and a set-top box and we can only wait and see what problems this causes those using the amateur bands.  Some of us already suffer from poor screening on large flat screen TVs being susceptible to interference from 80m transmissions.  Best of all, as Bob, G0ADH would say, it is completely free once you have bought the necessary equipment.  I’m not sure you should rush out to buy this equipment - it seems to be only available from one well known high street chain at the moment and as far as I can tell prices are from £49 upwards plus £80 for an installed satellite dish if you don’t already have one.

For those who have trouble sleeping, try this for some bedtime reading: ‘High Definition Image Formats for Television Production’ at:
www.ebu.ch/CMSimages/en/tec_doc_t3299_tcm6-23327.pdf

The RSGB have now moved to their new offices in Bedford.  Their address is 3 Abbey Court, Fraser Road, Priory Business Park, Bedford MK44 3WH.  Phone numbers remain unchanged as Phone: 0870 904 7373 and Fax: 0870 904 7374.  The RSGB have also announced new contact details for the RSGB QSL Bureau.  With immediate effect QSL cards should be sent to the QSL Bureau at the following address: RSGB QSL Bueau, P.O. Box 5, Halifax, HX1 9JR.

Malcolm, G8NRP

APRIL MEETING

Colin, G3NNG presented his long awaited and fascinating talk ’50 years of HARS’.  He had managed to save some documents that went right back to the first tentative advert that was placed in the weekly AERE News inviting anyone interested in Amateur Radio to a meeting.  However, time ran out and we had only moved forward to 1961 so we can look forward to at least one more episode!

ANOTHER OVER FROM THE CHAIRMAN

I note that I started last month’s chairman’s ramblings with a mention of the snow we had.  Well, this month I am writing this in much higher temperatures (22ºC in the shack) and we’re planning the first BBQ of the season.  What a change in just a month.  Even so, little has been achieved on the planned aerial changes at ’CUL towers!

The 2m Club Championship contest (first Tuesday of each month) was well supported by HARS members in April and I’m pleased to say (and Bob was THRILLED to say!) that the combined efforts of all of you meant that we got the ‘1000’ points for that month and are now a mere 112 points away from 2nd place.  In April we ‘only’ had 8 entries from HARS, but in May we had about 12 or 13 so we might again do well enough to push us up the scoreboard a bit more.  I know that Bob will be pleased as he puts a lot of effort into the Club contests, not just on 2m but on 80m as well, so this increase in entrants from the club will be a good return for all his efforts.

One of our newer members, Dave M0NUT, joined in the May 2m CC and together with Mike, G0MJW and ourselves at ‘CUL towers, we put up quite a bit of activity from the Didcot area.  The local QRM was something else of course!  I was pleased to hear Ray, G3LQC, active from the WARS site and even with a simple omni-directional aerial he was a BIG signal working a good number of contacts.

Not only did we take part in the 80m CC the day before the 2m CC, but a number of club members also aired 70cms again from the RAL clubroom on the Saturday before that.  The Mayday bank holiday weekend seemed to be non-stop contests!  After we did so well in the 2m and 70cm contest in March, some changes were made to the system to improve matters.  The main change was the addition of a mast-head preamp, but unfortunately, it lasted just about 1 QSO.  We think the RX to TX sequencing was not good enough and the poor front-end FET didn’t think much of the excess RF.  Since then it has been dismantled and ably repaired my Mike, G0MJW, who now has declared it fit for its next outing.  We still need to sort out the sequencing though.

The SoftRock DDS VFO that I designed some months ago has now gone off for PCB manufacture and is due back in a week or so.  Once that is built-up and some embedded software written to drive it, it should create complete coverage for 80m and well as 160m, 40m and 30m.  I suspect some additional band-pass filtering will be needed though.

73 and good DX to you all.  Let’s hope for some decent openings now that the weather has (finally) warmed up!

Mike, G8CUL

CONTEST NEWS

We did it again and won!  We took the 1000pts in April’s 2m Club Championship event which while still leaving us in 3rd place we have reduced the gap between us and      de Montford to 112pts for 2nd place and less than 1000pts from Cray Valley for 1st.  Bracknell came 2nd in the event and remain 4th 326pts behind us.  Many thanks to all those who entered a log.  Cray Valley are doing well because they have 3-4 high scorers but crucially 9-10 low scorers, some as low as 3pts, which in the end adds up to a win.  This month we managed an excellent entry of 11 logs and have a very good chance of winning.  Hopefully we will now move up to 2nd place.  Even if you can only manage half a dozen QSOs please send me your log.  We CAN do this!

Once again we have entered logs in the 80m Club Championship and after the adjudication of the CW and SSB events we have moved up to 21st place and comfortably in the top half of the table.  We have managed to put in good entries although some of us with less than ideal set ups are starting to suffer from QRM.  While 5-6 logs are entered for the CW and SSB events it is still only Bob G0ADH and myself who are entering the Data events.  Please give this event a go especially as there is now a logging program available (free) to do data modes contests.  See below.

On Saturday 3rd May the Appleton and Harwell Contest Group reconvened at RAL for the RSGB 432MHz Trophy.  9 club members came up to offer varying degrees of assistance, eat chocolate biscuits or just to see the facilities.  After this and the previously successful event, Ann, G8NVI is keen to do a HF event.  The site currently has a 3 ele yagi for 20/15/10m but nothing for 160/80/40m.  Mike G0MJW thinks there will be a lot of noise on those bands due to the nature of some of the work that goes on on the site but there is a plan to string up a very long wire.

So with Bob G0ADH’s help you have mastered the black art that is logging with SD and SDV you may want to have a look at a more sophisticated bit of logging software, N1MM.  Following requests for UK contesters, the authors have now written code to directly support all of the RSGB HF contests including the 80m Club Championship.  “But SD does the job!” I hear you say.  Yes, but not Data.  N1MM has a MMVari digital interface which makes it ideal for the data element of the 80m CC.  Macros can be easily created or I can give you a copy of mine to get you going.  Assuming QRM is not too bad a QSO is no more than a press of 2-3 F keys, a couple of mouse clicks and hit Return.  If you do download it, download the manual in pdf format as well but don’t print it; it’s 400 pages!  Please get in touch if you need some help.

Angus, G0UGO Contest Co-ordinator

AUGUST MEETING

We have traditionally not met formally in August but this year we have decided to do something slightly different.  On Saturday 16 August we propose to hold an open afternoon where members of the public will be invited to visit a demonstration station and this will be followed in the evening by our Annual Barbecue.  More detail very soon but please make a note of the date in your diary.

CLUB BADGES

Some years ago it was decided that all club members would be given a red badge with their name, callsign and Harwell Amateur Radio Society engraved on them.  However, one or two members seem to have lost theirs and we also have some new members.  If you are a new member or have lost yours please give the following details to Malcolm, G8NRP: your name (as you would like to be known) and your callsign and we will do the rest.

HARFORD NET

Did you know there is a regular net on 2m?  It is called Harford as it is used by both HARS and Oxford members.  Please come and join in.  145.325MHz FM every Sunday and Wednesday 20.00 - 21.00hrs.

CLASSIFIED ADS

YOUR AD - can appear here - free of charge - contact the Editor - ads@g8nrp.net.