This is just a reminder that this Thursday at Pine Trees is the last club meeting of the year, after which there will be a 2 week break until the first meeting of 2016 on Thursday 7th January.
This weeks meeting is of course the annual club quiz which this year will be will be starting slightly earlier than normal at 7:45pm. It’s always an entertaining evening so please come along if you can, and don’t forget that as well as the usual refreshments there will be mince pies!
At the club Christmas dinner last night the results for the Worked All Counties competition were announced.
Thanks to everyone who entered, to Den for organising, to Tony for being an Adjudicator and to James for creating the on-line results table.
The aim was to encourage on-air activity and the Awards strategy was no-one wins >1 award.
10w – Period 1 (James, M1DST)
10w – Period 2 (Martin, G0DHL) – “you have to be in it to win it!” – He won P2 with just 1 QSO !
10w – Overall (Chris, G4AJA)
50w (Jonathan, M0ZGB) – NO other entries except Jonathan !
100w was most competitive section. Here we allocated Awards based on winner’s highest score. It resulted in Awards in all sections.
100w – Period 1 (Paul, M0PMV)
100w – Period 2 (Tony, G4LDL)
100w – Period 3 (Andy, G0UWS)
100w – Overall (Phil, M0PBZ)
Unfortunately, James’ 37 – a potential winning score had to be ignored as he had entered in 10W previously. “Your first Progress Form determines your chosen Power category for all periods”
400w – Overall (Steve, M0SPN)
Paul’s score (26 from P2) had to be ignored as he had entered in 100W previously. “Your first Progress Form determines your chosen Power category for all periods”
Many thanks to everyone who entered. Hopefully these results will encourage those who thought themselves uncompetitive to enter next year.
Key advice – as shown is 1) to enter! and 2) to choose your category carefully !
So, folks…. What would you like next year ?
…Italian Provinces, UK Postcodes, US States, Maidenhead Squares, Irish districts, Scottish Pubs …?)
Still use Power categories? OR …should we have Mode categories instead? (SSB, CW, PSK, RTTY,SSTV…)
This is just to confirm (or to advise you if you didn’t know) that there will not be a club meeting at Pinetrees this Thursday 10th December due to the Members Christmas meal.
There will be a meeting as normal on the 17th which is the Christmas Quiz Night, complete with Mince Pies.
GB1WWM is being activated for the second time this year at the request of the Wilton Windmill Trust.
This special event station will running over the bank holiday weekend of August 29th, 30th & 31st 2015.
All are welcome to come and visit, if you just want to see how a special event is run (chaos come to mind). Or you would like to be involved just try to support us please.
The station has been organised by Colin G4GBP and assisted by John G1OQV and myself Ken G1NCG.
If you are listening on the air for the callsign this the call you will hear “Golf Bravo One Whisky Whisky Mike” Wilton windmill.
We will be on 40m and 2m.
This is the address of Wilton Windmill :-
Wilton Windmill
Wilton
Near Marlborough
Wiltshire
SN8 3SW
Check their website for directions. http://www.wiltonwindmill.co.uk/
A number of us attended the SDARC Summer BBQ at Coate Water. Paul, G0EPC took some photos of the event.
The Club is holding a BBQ at the Coate Water Country Park on Thursday 20th August from 7.00 – 9.30 pm.
As this is a club event we will not be opening up the club room.
We will be providing the fire, you need to bring your burgers, sausages and ketchup…. don’t forget the rolls. We plan to setup some radios too.
Hope to see you there!
During the month of August we will not be meeting at Pine Trees. We shall be meeting at Barbury Castle to play radio. On the 20th August we are having a club BBQ. We will be providing the fire, you just need to bring the food you would like to eat.
We will be returning to Pine Trees from September.
This year James, M1DST entered the VHF NFD on the 50MHz band representing the club.
Please take this as advance notice…
The Club is holding a BBQ at the Coate Water Country Park on Thursday 20th August from 7.00 – 9.30 pm.
As this is a club event we will not be opening up the club room.
We will be providing the fire, you need to bring your burgers, sausages and ketchup…. don’t forget the rolls. We plan to setup some radios too.
Please add the event to your calendar as it is taking place during our month of outdoor activities. Please see the programme for details of the other events.
Hope to see you there!
Those members who have been involved in or have watched the progress of SDARC contest entries over the past 2 or 3 years will have come to recognise certain recurring themes by which to identify our activities.
…….and many more that retain that ‘unfortunate’ theme!
Well, on the 6 metre contest last weekend (20/21 June) there was clearly a group of organised stand-ins masquerading as the SDARC team!
It was a productive and enjoyable session.
The Details
We planned to work from Barbury, using the Raynet Gazebo (it needed an airing!) with one of the Club’s TS2000s barefoot 100 watts into one of two 5 ele yagis loaned by Den & Andy. One yagi was to rotate from a club rotator on Tony’s pump up tower and the other was to go fixed on a 20 foot pole pointing at the highest activity. Power was a leisure battery with James’ genny as backup.
Limitations
Personal commitments elsewhere that weekend resulted in a small team: Andy, James, Den & Mike.
Newbury Rally on Sunday meant Den and Mike available only Saturday and since it was Dad’s day on Sunday, it was bye-bye James and Andy!
During the week, we followed growing doom & gloom in the wx forecasts for Saturday (heavy persistent rain with thunder & lightning). Lovely! …Just what you want when /p on a hill under canvas with lots of aluminium in the air and us folk underneath it !!!
Based on all this, we decided to enter the “6-hour” section on Saturday beginning 3pm BST – the beginning of the contest and finishing at 9pm.
The Way It Was
In the event, the Gods smiled on us big time ! The weather was superb. NO rain (or lightning!) at any time during the day. And everything went together like clockwork.
Mike brought lunch at lunchtime. We stopped, ate, chatted and got back to work! We completed tests and were ready to go just before 2pm (the contest didn’t start till 3pm !!!!)
On Air
The early afternoon was typical…. For the first hour, Den worked lots of mainly UK stations – not surprising as this was the beginning of the contest.
Den handed over and it then became much slower with most stations heard already worked and less response to our CQ calls. Late afternoon, Mike suffered just under an hour with nothing new in the log!
He handed over to Den at 7.00 BST and suddenly the Sporadic Es kicked in and QSO distances which earlier were peaking at 200km (more typically 70 – 90 km) suddenly became 1600km-1800km with one big hop to UH1HY in Ukraine at 2400km !! Wow !!!! THAT is why Six is called “The Magic Band” !!!
After half an hour of this Den, gave way to Andy who continued the theme working 1400km, 1600km and 1800km Es stations for the rest of his session.
James took over and among continuing Es working, logged YR8Y in Romania at 2190km before our session time ran out. A link to the map showing our results (thanks Andy) is below. You will need to zoom out several times once it opens to see our big hops!
http://www.rsgbcc.org/cgi-bin/vhfresults.pl?kml=/2015/Rru9ATySWIeG4fKEjxsxroEIB8AuBHc
Elated, we stripped down the station, packed away and went home after a very productive and exciting session. We did well and were enthused to do more.
On Sunday Andy sent us claimed scores submitted by all stations in the 6 hour multi op section.
The Result
We were good … but there were better…. Our total claimed score was 75 QSOs, 42 multipliers (QRA squares and Countries) 756 points per QSO, 2,381,358 points with our UH1HY at 2433km the best DX.
FOUR stations beat our scores however….one of them was running 400 watts and claimed a 6699km hop to work NP4A and claimed total of 12,387,060 points.
However, the top score of 16,983,180 points was claimed by a station running just 25 watts from IO94 !! He didn’t work as far as we did but he worked over twice the number of QSOs and over twice as many mults as us! It’s the QSOs and mults that boost the scores of course… lesson learned ! G4G…you wait till next time !!
Den M0ACM