meeting 10th Jan – Equipment + Alignment evening, Spectrum analyser Intro

Folks,

Happy RADARC New Year to you!

Next meeting is Thursday 10th January, Woodford Park, Woodley.

Eyes down 8pm.

This time it’s the club equipment that’s the star of the show with the new Rigol spectrum analyser and the Icom IC7300 transceiver “Top of the Bill”. However Ray G3SCZ will also give a short introduction to the spectrum analyser and what it’s capable of. Many thanks to Ray for that.

It will be less formal than ‘normal’ talk evenings. This is more a chance for you to play with stuff – and have a natter, of course.

Also note the “humble support acts” are very capable (antenna analysers etc.). If you haven’t used one and you enjoy messing with antennas do come along.

This is a great opportunity to see how test equipment can make your life much easier and what radio equipment we have that’s ready to use.

Bring along any filters you may need aligned, also attenuators and dummy loads to find out what they’re really doing, and antennas within reason. Alignment evenings reborn!

On show will be:

• Icom IC7300 transceiver
• Rigol Spectrum Analyser + tracking generator + VSWR attachment
• MFJ259 + MFJ269 Antenna Analysers
• FT100D HF Rig
• Marconi radio test set (combination of sig gen + spec analyser iirc
  donated by Mick G8ZWN. Need to get to know this better.)
• FL2100Z linear – even if we just admire the glassware on it. Needs bringing up on a variac.
• FT757GT transceiver
• Advantest 1GHz spectrum analyser

+more, will keep you updated.

This will also be a good opportunity to discuss what our next equipment purchase should be. One obvious thing I’d say is missing is a decent, modern (i.e. small, light, capable) RF signal generator. Others:

• 10MHz GPS locked frequency source
• Decent Frequency counter i.e. accurate and wide range.

Would be good to chat about what makes sense to purchase as a club and what not.

Tea, coffee, biscuits will be in plentiful supply – perhaps a bit
earlier than usual. But only for humans/our membership. A valve linear at full throttle drinking a cup of tea doesn’t bear thinking about! As ever, keep your meetings ideas coming. If you mentioned something to me before and I’ve not done anything about it, please nag me.

Season’s greetings all,

73

John
G4RDC

(Hopefully you can read this. I’m battling the new ‘wordpress’ interface as you may be able to tell.)