July 2009

Editor: Malcolm Andrew G8NRP

COMMENT

We hope to start running courses for the RAE exams in the autumn.  There are a few formalities that have to be completed but once these have been sorted we will be up and running.  In the meantime if you know of anyone who might be interested in taking any of the exams, Foundation, Intermediate or Advanced please let Mike, G8CUL know.

I was saddened to read last week that CompuServe had in fact been closed down.  I remember my first email account and Internet experience was with this company.  These were the days when the BBC charged you to use their service and the dial-up connection was so slow that it was sometimes difficult to tell if you were still connected.  How times have changed!  How did we manage before Google and Wikipedia where anyone can find out about anything in a fraction of a second?  (I wonder how many of you know that Beijing is only a little nearer the equator than Madrid?!)

Don’t forget the Perseids meteor shower on my birthday, (12 August).  Unfortunately I will be on holiday in southwest France but I hope to get a good view if there is no cloud cover.  Just go and lie down in your garden and look up at the sky as near midnight as possible.  You are sure to see intense streaks of light across the night sky caused by small bits of interplanetary rock and debris called meteoroids crashing and burning high in Earth's upper atmosphere. 

And finally, if you are lucky enough to be going away on holiday take your transceiver and some sort of antenna and try and do a bit of radio.  And most important of all take some notes and write a short article for QAV so that we can all share your experience.

Malcolm, G8NRP

JUNE MEETING

The June meeting was an excellent talk by Tim, G4VXE on Mapping and Amateur Radio.  It was unfortunate that the Internet connection let us down (this has now been fixed) but the slides used in Tim’s talk can be viewed or downloaded from:
http://g4vxe.blogspot.com/2009/06/mapping-and-amateur-radio-talk-at.html. 

Most of us have now moved into the twenty-first centuary and there are some fascinating and valuable aids to amateur radio available via the Internet.

ANOTHER OVER FROM THE CHAIRMAN

A couple of weeks ago we saw both Bob, G0ADH and Pat and I am pleased to report that Bob in particular seemed very well.  In fact, he had a cool lager while with us, reporting that is was the first one for some time.  He certainly seemed to savour it.  After the worries during the previous weeks, especially for Pat, it was good to see Bob so cheerful.  I believe that he is due for more surgery soon, so we wish him a speedy recovery from that.

We were pleased to welcome Tim, G4VXE to our monthly meeting in June where he gave an interesting talk about computing and radio.  He had hoped to demonstrate some interesting web sites, but the new ‘dongle’ we had bought to allow this didn’t work well enough to allow this to happen (it since has been changed to a different provider and all is now working well).  However, Tim managed to whet our appetites even with just a static showing of some of the sites.  For me, the most interesting one is the real-time QSO mapping for bands from 28 MHz to 432 MHz.  It certainly shows what other people are achieving!  See -
http://www.vhfdx.net/spots/map.php?Lan=E&Frec=70&Map=EU&mycall=&myloc=&freq=&prop=

I hope you all found the RAL Social Club suitable for our meetings.  We intend to integrate our radio microphone system with their PA system so that should help in the future.  I am also pleased to announce that 5 of us have very recently had ‘Bar training’ so now we can draw the bar keys from the security chaps and open up for our events up there whenever we wish!
Apart from the DF hunt on 14 July, our next event will be the BBQ at the Social club on the 15 August where John, G6LNU will be officiating with the cooking and of course we will have the bar open, although operating the till could easily be the challenge of the evening!

On October 17-18 we are planning to host some local Scout and Guide groups at the RAL clubroom for the JOTA weekend.  We have contacted some of the groups around Didcot and Wantage and in general the interest from them has been high.  We will need many helpers for that weekend, so please put it in your diaries and come to give a hand.  It has been a long time since I have helped with a JOTA weekend, and I’m sure things have changed somewhat since then.

The monthly club championship contests on 2m, 23cm, 6m and 4m continue and we have a core of members who come on for some or all of those events.  However, the more we have who come on and enter, the better the club will do.  Looking at the club scores this year, the leading stations are not doing well because they have some big individual scores, but because a lot of their members come on and work 10 or 20 other stations and enter their scores.

The ‘CUL household is off for the annual trip to France on Saturday 18 July, returning 1 August.  Again this year, we will be operating on 80m with a new (and hopefully improved) antenna system, but also on 2m during the backpackers contests on Sunday 19 July and hopefully on 6m during the Club Championship contests on the evening of Tuesday 28 July.  The latter band is going to be a real challenge.  As yet I’ve not finished building the beam, the regulations in France only allow 5W ERP and operation has to be above 50.2 MHz!  Still, I like a challenge!  For more details, please see the information elsewhere in QAV.!

Mike, G8CUL

CONTEST NEWS

The 80m Club Championship ends at the end of July, but is replaced by something new known as RSGB 80m Sprint Contests.

They are series of short sprint contests to complement the 80m Club Championship events earlier in the year.  These events will introduce different contesting skills through the ‘sprint’ format.  This requires stations to QSY often, and not maintain a ‘run' frequency.  The general HF contest rules apply to this contest:
Mode: CW & SSB. 
Exchange:   Your callsign + Other station’s callsign + serial number + name.  Each station may use only one name during each Sprint event.  Please note that both stations must repeat both callsigns during their exchanges. 

1. Sections: (a) 100W maximum output power; (b) 10W maximum output power. 
Stations may be single or multi-operator. 

2. Frequencies: CW 3.520-3.570 (QRS Corral around 3.560); SSB 3.600-3.650 & 3.700-3.775

3. Special QSY Rule: if any station initiates a call (by sending CQ, QRZ?, etc.), they are permitted to work ONLY one station on the same frequency.  They must thereafter move AT LEAST 2 (two) kHz before they may call another station or solicit (CQ, QRZ?, etc.) other contacts.

4. Scoring: One point per. contact.
The next planned club event will be the 144MHz trophy contest to be held over the weekend of 5-6 September.  As usual the plan will be to enter the 6-hour Open section operating from 1500 to 2200 with a 1 hour break.  Please let me know if you are interested in taking part.  Evening cuisine will be decided nearer the time but let me say the Indian was very good.

In October it is intended that we will enter the CQ WW DX SSB contest after our successful venture into the CQ WPX SSB contest.  We will probably, as last time, operate 12 hours on the Saturday (nominally 1000-2200).  More details in the next edition of QAV.

Angus, G0UGO

LE TATTY PIECE DE PAPIER AWARD 2009

For the last 2 weeks in July, Mike, G8CUL; Ann, G8NVI; John, G6LNU and Marian will once again be hosting ‘Le Tatty Piece de Papier Award’ from their holiday location in Normandy in Northern France and all members of the club, as well as friends and other hangers-on, are invited to take part.

To make things SLIGHTLY more interesting there will be the opportunity to collect points toward this year’s award on no less than 3 bands!

There will be the usual skeds by F/M0CUL/P on 80m (3.700-3.710MHz) at 2100 (British Summer Time) from SUNDAY 19 July until FRIDAY 31 July (excluding TUESDAY 28 July - see below).  Each contact will be worth ONE POINT towards the final award.

On SUNDAY 19 July, F/G8CUL/P will be operating from IN98 square during the 144MHz Backpackers Contest (1200-1600 BRITISH SUMMER TIME).  Beam a little west of south and see if you can work us.  TWO POINTS per QSO towards the final award will be on offer.  Please give some points to others who are entering the contest.

On TUESDAY 28 July, F/G8CUL/P will be operating from IN98 square during the 50MHz CC Contest (2000-2230 BRITISH SUMMER TIME).  To make things difficult for us, in France we are only permitted to operate ABOVE 50.200MHz and in THIS part of France are only allowed 5W ERP!   FOUR POINTS will be on offer for anyone who can work us during this contest!
As usual, there will be certificates and a small French delicacy for all entrants.  There will also be ‘valuable prizes’ for those securing the highest number of points overall!
Please join in - it is just a bit of fun but has proved very popular over the last few years.

Bonne Chances!

Angus, G0UGO

AUGUST MEETING

There will be no formal meeting on Tuesday 11 August but please try and come along to our annual Summer Barbecue on Saturday 15 August at the RAL RecSoc Social Club.  More details next month.

ANNUAL SUMMER BARBECUE

Our Annual Summer Barbecue will be held on Saturday 15 August at the RAL RecSoc Social Club starting at 1930 (entrance near the satellite dish).  Our resident Chef has just purchased a gas barbecue and so there will be no delays this year!  We will have the full use of the Social Club instead of the tent we hired last year.  There will also be a licensed bar.  Tickets are ‘eat as much as you like’ - £5 for adults and £3 for children.  Please send your monies to: The Treasurer, HARS, 62 Westfield Way, Wantage, OX12 7EP.  Tickets must be ordered in advance.

ADVANCE NOTICE

NATIONAL HAMFEST 2009
Brought to you by the RSGB in association with Lincoln Short Wave Club

Friday 2 and Saturday 3 October 2009 George Stephenson Pavilion, Newark & Nottingham Showground, Lincoln Road, Winthorpe, Newark NG24 
For the latest details on the National Hamfest and ticket sales, check out the website:
www.nationalhamfest.org.uk

SOME HELPFUL TIPS ON USING THE HARS REFLECTOR

Do you subscribe to the HARS reflector?  If not why not join and get all the latest club news, views and gossip when it happens.  Simply visit www.g3pia.org.uk and select ‘email list’ from the main menu and complete the simple form.

The HARS reflector is available to anyone who wishes to subscribe to it.  In fact about half of the subscribers are not members of the club.  The HARS committee reserves the right to remove the subscription of anyone who abuses the reflector.  The reflector is moderated by a member of the club and by default the size of any posting including attachments such as photos is restricted.  It also has a very efficient spam filter and to date no spam has been sent via the reflector to subscribers.

Please remember when replying to a message sent by the reflector that you should only use the ‘reply’ function on your email system if it is important that all subscribers see your reply.  If you just wish to ‘send’ your reply to the author or a limited number of subscribers then just use the ‘forward’ function on your email system and enter individual email addresses.

Please remember that there are two types of subscription to the reflector.  You can either receive each message as they are sent or your can receive a daily digest that contains all messages sent.  You should bear in mind that not everyone will see your message or comments straight away.
Don’t use the ‘reply’ function to send a message that is a change of subject from the original message - send a new message.
If there is anything you need help with or clarification, please contact me direct at:
secretary@g3pia.org.uk.

REVISED CONSTITUTION

The HARS revised constitution is now available at www.g3pia.org.uk or request a copy from the Secretary.

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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