Hope you had a great McMichael Rally! A huge thankyou to the McMichael Rally committee from RADARC for making it all happen. And of course to everyone who attended making for such a wonderful day, if a little on the warm side.
Next up….Chippenham next weekend then Flight Refuelling, Wimborne, Dorset
73
John
G4RDC
Folks,
“Our”rally is coming up soon. We need all the help we can get with prep on the Saturday and running the show on the day.
It is a significant South of England rally thus important to the amateur community as a whole. Newbury, Luton, Wildhern et al. put on a great show this year – let’s do the same for our guests!
The McMichael Rally Committee have put in a lot of hard work in getting to this point. They deserve our support now.
Please contact Denis G4KWT if you are able to help. As he says,
“*** YOUR RALLY NEEDS YOU ***”
Thankyou,
John
G4RDC
Thankyou NADARS for all the hard work you’ve put into making this year’s Newbury rally a most enjoyable day especially in the challenging heat. Lots of folk from RADARC enjoyed it including me. Really great to see everyone and the impressive field of stuff, as ever!
73
John
G4RDC
Folks,
Next meeting Thursday 28th June, RRFC.
Venue: Reading Rugby Football Club, Holme Park/Sonning La, Sonning, Reading RG4 6ST 8pm til late. (get there earlier if you wish – the bar will be open)
If you have anything to work satellites we’ll try that this time so
bring along your VHF/UHF gear and prediction gizmos.
Also last time I didn’t get round to evaluating the site RF wise so if
anyone has a wideband SDR, would be interesting to see how RF
noisy/quiet RRFC is.
As ever at this time of year, 21/28/50/70MHz – or even 144MHz Sporadic ‘E’ is likely to be happening so if you have any portable gear covering those bands I’m sure others would be interested. Also it might be a good evening for NLC or “Noctilucent cloud” spotting which I think is a similar phenomenon.
We do have the room upstairs if we want it, but Wx this time looks good so enjoy the sunshine and a beer!
73
John
G4RDC
After some hard work from Michael M0MPM, Tom M0LTE and our web team, we are happy to announce that there is a live QSL card viewing system for RADARC (M0AAA,MX0AAA,G3ULT, G3AKF, M4T,M0EEE).
There is a vast amount of cards to see and one can search, browse or just sit back and watch as a slide show.
Click below
Thanks again to all involved.
73
Simon M0ZSU, RADARC
Folks,
We meet again this Thursday 14th June.
Venue: Reading Rugby Football Club, Holme Park/Sonning La, Sonning, Reading RG4 6ST 7pm til late.
This time we’ll have a go at the 50 MHz UK Activity contest. Aim will be to introduce people to contesting. It runs from 8pm to 10:30pm BST. There’s also a 50 MHz FM contest from 7pm to 8pm before that for the really keen. I for one would be at least interested in giving some points away in that.
We will also try and do a bit of an RF site survey at RRFC just to get
an idea of how noisy/quiet it is. So I’ll bring up some SDR kit
(software defined radio) of some sort – probably an airspy and SDR
Sharp.
We will have some sort of HF station also. I think Wally wants to
experiment with a 20m/40m cross dipole. Not sure what he did to upset it.
I’ve not run this by the committee yet but we might have a look into why the cheapie icom club rig we have is deaf as we established last time. It’s not much use as a rig at the moment so we might as well learn something from it. I’m thinking for those who wonder “what’s in the box” it might prove of passing interest.
As ever feel free to bring along anything you feel may be of interest.
Looking forward to seeing you there.
We will adapt activities (QSY the bar most likely) if the weather is not clement.
Refreshments provided by the bar!
73
John
G4RDC
Thought the following Podcast might be interesting to members:
https://www.hamradioworkbench.com/podcast/understanding-hf-receiver-specifications
Eric Swartz WA6HHQ, co-founder of Elecraft, joins us to guide our understanding of RF receiver performance specifications. Eric introduces us to common receiver specs such as Sensitivity, Noise Floor, Dynamic Range, Intermod Dynamic Range, Phase Noise, and RMDR. He tells us what they mean in real-world receiver performance terms, how they are tested, and whether it’s better to have a higher or lower number in each one. It’s also the final episode before the 2018 Hamvention and George and Jeremy share our plans for our Booth, special offers, and exclusives for show listeners who stop by booth 3104 in Xenia.
David M0DHO
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.
Really quick post to put up a link to G7IZU’s real-time European Sporadic E map. Great for those 6m openings!
6m was open to Scandinavia last night and a good opening to Spain this afternoon. Keep your eyes peeled.
Also check out PSK Reporter.
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.
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