The Arrival of the Transistor in Amateur Radio with Duncan James M0OTG

Following on from his November 2021 RADCOM article “Amateur radio and the arrival of the transistor” we recently welcomed Duncan James, M0OTG as our guest presenter.

Duncan gave an excellent talk showing the historical development of the transistor through the ages from primitive laboratory pieces through to today’s hyper-miniaturised devices.

You can watch Duncan’s talk again right here:

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CQ World-Wide WPX SSB contest this weekend

Thought I’d put up a note that ALL this weekend is the CQ World-Wide WPX SSB contest. This is one of the very busiest weekends on HF for the entire year, and is a great opportunity to get some contacts on HF, even if you’re not a contester. Large contest stations with very capable receive antennas, which would not normally be on the air, will be operating worldwide – so you will be heard by more stations and further away than normal. People will want to work you.

Don’t be daunted by the fact it’s a contest – there’s no requirement to enter formally (though it’s encouraged) and all you have to do to complete a contact in this contest is give the report (always 5/9) and a number which you increment by 1 each time. For example, “you are 5/9 001”, “you are 5/9 002” etc. If you did want to enter, a contest logger is recommended (I like N1MM+) but not required – look on cqwpx.com for setup instructions for N1MM+.

Many large stations will be sitting there calling CQ continuously on one frequency for literally hours at a time. There will be busy times with huge pile-ups and quieter times where you’ll easily make the QSO. Rich pickings to be had for these on Sunday afternoon – work your way up a whole band and make easy QSO after QSO.

The permitted bands are: 160m, 80m, 40m, 20m, 15m and 10m.
Times are 0000 UTC tonight to 2359 UTC Sunday, i.e. 48 hours.
The full set of rules is here: https://www.cqwpx.com/rules.htm

Good luck, have fun!

HF + No PTT by Dave Porter G4OYX

Recently RADARC welcomed Dave Porter, G4OYX, as our guest presenter for an evening talk.

Dave is a well known author from, among others, VMARS’ magazine Signal, and joins us for a talk entitled “HF + No PTT”. I wonder what that could be about? Here’s a clue: the transmit powers involved are somewhat higher than most of us are accustomed to.

Join Dave G4OYX as he loses 249,750 Watts, goes “professional in Europe with home-brew”, but is on the air without a PTT!

Don’t forget to check out the club Events page for upcoming talks, also announced on the RADARC mailing list as well as our Discord discussion server – click the links to join either.