Meeting Thursday 24th May Reading Rugby Football Club – informal evening

Next meeting is 24th May at Reading Rugby Football Club, Sonning Lane, RG4 6ST. Plan is to enjoy a beer/beverage, some sunshine, a bit of radio and have a natter. Hopefully the weather will be kind, Though the forecast could be better…

We’ll try to put on a simple HF station and maybe some 6m/4m/2m VHF. Should be a good opportunity newcomers to experience setting up a station.

Would be interesting if we can start to judge what the site is like RF
wise. At VHF it should be quite good as it’s not too far from where the old BK repeater used to be at Shepherd’s Hill.

By all means bring along any kit you’d like to play with. Just remember to keep an eye on it as it is a public space, try not to irradiate passers by etc.

Also be aware of high field strengths near antennas damaging kit – very unlikely anything would get damaged but something to keep in mind.

Check out FT8 on 6 metres for Es activity

I’m seeing tons of Sporadic ‘E’ activity (Es) on FT8 digi mode on 6. Running wsjtx. 50.313MHz.

Would be interested if anyone sees a double-hop – or further – as per Chris Deacon’s talk. Paths open to Finland this morning so maybe the JA path will open up.

Also how it compares to 10m, 4m, 2m. Haven’t seen any FT8 on 4m.

https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx.html

What’s interesting is WSPR seems dead on 6 but FT8 is hopping.

Ant is slim jim strung from a tree; motorola mc micro + 21.4MHz IF  tap into a funcube dongle. wsjtx-1.9.0-rc3 on Ubuntu Linux 17.4 on Dell M4400 2.8MHz Core2 laptop. Rx only. For now…

Very strong signals so Ian NXJ won’t be getting much sleep in the shack. With those sort of signal strengths, FM 51.51MHz calling will open up.

10th May meeting – what would you like to hear about/do?

Our speaker is being called away for a meeting with “UK Space Agency” on Thursday and sounds extremely busy.

This presents us with an opportunity.

So.

We will still meet at Woodford Park, Woodley, 8pm, 10th May as usual.

If you have a burning desire to talk about/share something, please let
me know! It doesn’t have to be a full on polished presentation. If fact
I’d prefer exactly the opposite this time round.

Baldrick has a few cunning plans. However, yours are most likely better.

So here’s my turnip:

* (All) brief discussion about the future of the club – get
feedback/ideas from you. eg. Maybe dial back talks a bit and dial up
more practical stuff? 10-15 minutes tops. Springboard for discussions
over a pint at the rugby club, perhaps.

Then break up, have tea etc and as parallel activities:

* short FT8 digimode demo
I realise computers and radio may not be everyone’s cup of tea but
having got FT8 going in Rx mode on 50 MHz I can see it’s huge potential.

* program up the club DMR handheld

* learn to use the Marconi 2955 test set we acquired from G8ZWN

* Zello https://zello.com/ demo – PTT on mobile telephones thingy;
network radios

* “gardener’s question time” type q&a for 5 minutes?

* ???? let me know!

This is literally just off the top of my head.

I will keep the website up to date as the evening shapes up.

73

John
G4RDC