JUNE 2008

Editor: Malcolm Andrew G8NRP

COMMENT

You will read elsewhere in QAV that we plan to hold an open day event on 16 August in order to publicise our hobby. I recently looked through the RSGB Yearbook 2008 and have discovered that there are at least 200 licenced Radio Amateurs in the OX10, 11, 12 , 13 and 14 post code areas. This does not include the Faringdon and West Oxfordshire areas. I suspect we all know of at least one very close to our own QTH. I wonder why they choose not to belong to HARS or any other club? I know that historically we were seen as a ‘VHF and above only’ club. In fact it was slightly worse than this as there were only two acceptable transmission modes - SSB and CW. Recent events will confirm that this is no longer the case.

So why do we not attract more members? We are no longer tied to the rules of a parent organization to enforce additional membership costs. Perhaps we should all try and bring along someone who lives close to our own QTH who is not a club member to a HARS meeting. They might actually enjoy it!

Malcolm, G8NRP

MAY MEETING

In May, Ray, G3LQC gave us an interesting talk about data modes and in particular the way Packet Radio has changed over the years. With the use of a mobile phone connection, he demonstrated a connection into his system at home using (I think) an RF link on the way.

ANOTHER OVER FROM THE CHAIRMAN

It’s another hot weekend and we’ve had a busy day at ‘CUL towers today operating on 2m for the PW QRP contest. We were not entering into the contest, but were ‘just giving points away’. Some very big scores were heard and we worked a number of continental stations who were doing their own thing with their Field Day. We didn’t hear any club members on though.

This month we have a talk by Mike Palmer, M1EHW of Sophos.

The 2m Club Championship contest (first Tuesday of each month) was again well supported by HARS members in May 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 again, so with two successive months with ‘the top spot’, we have now moved up to 2nd place. In theory, we could make first place, but that would require this high level of activity by us all for the rest of the year. We are now half way through the 2m CC contests for 2008 so in order to get above the current first place club, we have to make up the difference in only half the year. However, anything is (just about) possible.

Don’t forget the 80m Club Championship Contests. This month we had the Data evening on 2 June, with CW on 11 June and SSB on 19 June. Please come on if you can and help support Bob.

The committee have arranged a summer event on the 16 August at Court Hill, just South of Wantage on the Hungerford road. This event is effectively in 2 parts with the afternoon dedicated to a demonstration exercise to try to encourage more locals into the hobby. We plan to operate mainly on HF with, we hope, SSB, CW, RTTY and SSTV. We may also put up a VHF or UHF vertical to listen to the local repeaters. In the evening, we are having one of John, G6LNU’s BBQs, still at Court Hill. Please put the date in your diaries. We will need as much help as we can get, not only with the setting up of the station, (and taking down!), but also during the afternoon with the public. We can’t expect the operators to explain and operate at the same time, so the non-operators there will need to mill about in the background, explaining things to the public.

We are planning to heavily advertise this event in the local area and if we can get a few new members, (licensed or not), we will have done a good job.

G8NVI, G6LNU, Marian and G8CUL will be operating as F/M0CUL/P again this summer between 19 July and 1 August. This year we are going to stay at a different place (still in Normandie), but we have already checked with the owners and they are happy for us to erect some aerials - as long as we don’t make any holes in their lawn! So listen out between these dates and we wil again be awarding “Le Tatty Piece de Papier” award. More details next month and on the club reflector closer to the time.

The new SoftRock DDS VFO has now been built and run up. I am at the early stages of the internal firmware development, but it is at present responding to band, step and tuning controls with output to a display. The next stage is to write the code that actually talks to the DDS chip itself. I think this may be the ‘interesting’ bit! At the last committee meeting I volunteered to give a club talk on it all sometime in the autumn. I’d better get on with it then!

Now the weather has warmed up a bit, there seem to have been some openings on (at least) 6m and 10m, the latter band I’ve never operated on before. At present, operation is with a tuned long wire, but when I EVENTUALLY get the new tower up, I’m hoping for better results with a tri-band beam.

Mike, G8CUL

CONTEST NEWS

We did it again in May and won the 1000pts for the 2m Club Championship.
Many thanks to all those who took part which, for us, was a record-breaking entry of 12 logs. May also saw a return to form for Cray Valley so we were only able to take 104pts out of their lead. The really important bit is that we are now 2nd and less than 1000pts behind the leader. If we can continue with this level of activity for the rest of the year we are in with a good chance to win. The other thing is that if there are a large number of logs and they are sent to me in time I can do some error checking and hopefully stop points being deducted. Remember there is only a 10-day
window to get the entry in.

The 80m Club championship continues with varying levels of support for the various events. Thanks to John G3VPW we had an entry in the CW event as Bob G0ADH had been dragged off to some parish well away from Wallingford and told to not event think about it! Unlike the 2m CC we are unlikely to win the 80m CC but we are comfortably in the top half. It would be good to get into the top 20.

If you have read the reflector recently you would have seen that there has been an announcement about proposed changes to the 80m CC rules. The changes announced regarding the data event are interesting as there will be two contests in one. While only a single log is submitted per station the scoring will be separate for RTTY and PSK each normalised to 1000 and then added together and normalised again to 1000. Sounds complicated but it will mean that to win you will have to work both modes. I wonder if use of PSK63 will increase as the increased bandwidth means quicker QSOs.

Angus, G0UGO
Contest Co-ordinator

JULY MEETING

There will be no meeting at the Harwell British Legion on Tuesday 8 July.

Instead we will be holding our Annual Summer DF Hunt organized by Ron, G0BNC. Envelopes are now available from him giving transmission times and, sealed within the envelope, his location and the venue where we will all meet up afterwards. All you need is a 2m receiver, some sort of very directional antenna and a lot of something that Bob, G0ADH describes as skill but most other know it is just luck. You do not have to take part in the DF Hunt to come and enjoy some ‘nosh and natter’ - bring the whole family and see some sights in West Oxfordshire - just ask Ron for an envelope and open it just before you leave home - but don’t tell anyone the location.

AUGUST MEETING

There will be no formal meeting on Tuesday 12 August this year.

GOOD BEDTIME READING

As you will all know some of the Amateur Bands are shared with the MoD and we are allowed to use them on a secondary basis. Earlier this year, following a public consultation, Ofcom announced plans that would allow Government departments, their executive agencies and certain other public
bodies to trade radio spectrum. The MoD have now published a consultation
on reforming how it will manage its spectrum use more effectively and its plans to release and share spectrum. The consultation can be found on the MoD website. Go to www.mod.uk and search for Spectrum Management.

NEW HARS EMAIL ADDRESSES

We have recently introduced new email addresses for the Officers in HARS.
Please use them rather than the personal addresses. They are as follows:

In addition, if any member would like a new email address, (anything-decent@g3pia.org.uk) with excellent automatic spam rejection, please send your request to editor@g3pia.org.uk. There is no charge for this service, all you need is an Internet connection.

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.

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