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This week we welcome John B Winterburn to our club night, who will be speaking to us about the search for Lawrence of Arabia’s Desert Camp.

John is an archaeologist, researcher and lecturer and has recently been heavily involved in the search for the desert camp of Lawrence of Arabia. He is interested in all periods of archaeology and in particular Modern Conflict Archaeology, the Neolithic and Roman periods as well as the archaeology of the 20th and 21st centuries.

John is also a Chartered Engineer and has a passion for the links between present technology and past industrial archaeology. He is also a licenced Radio Amateur and holds the call G4NSB.

Thomas Edward Lawrence or Lawrence of Arabia as he is better known, is perhaps one of the most fascinating characters from the WW1 era.

Born in 1888 and tragically killed in a motorcycle accident in Dorset in 1935, he was an Archaeologist and an Officer in the British Army. His exploits during this period were famously portrayed in the 1962 film staring Peter O’Toole in the lead role.

With John’s expertise in this subject matter, this is sure to be a fascinating presentation and one not to be missed. So please join us on Thursday 19th February from 7pm at Pine Trees to meet John and see his presentation.

We now have people entering QSOs for the Worked All Counties club competition which is brilliant. Keep making contacts!

I was asked if it was possible to see what counties have been worked. To keep everything transparent and introduce chatter, entries now appear in a table underneath the leaderboard. You will see each county worked and by who. If a 1 appears then it means the county has been worked at least once. If it is blank then the county has yet to be worked.

Only counties which have been worked at least once by someone will appear in the table.

Have fun!

It has only been a few days since the competition was announced and as it starts on the 1st (Sunday) I felt it was important to get this out quickly. We have a dedicated page for the competition now and at the bottom of the page you will find a league table. You will be able to see who has entered, what category they are in and how many counties they have worked during each of the three periods.

To make this possible I have created a form for you to populate with each QSO you make. It asks you the same questions as you would fill in to the paper version. We would appreciate if you could use the form to submit your scores as it will make adjudicating it much easier and give everyone else a realtime view as to the state of the contest.

You can find the form by visiting https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10iBsgOPOSFaMxtjV4VrX9jZkZalENMqwf3YfvszuGyg/viewform

You will need to submit an entry for each QSO you wish to be considered. If you are reading this then you already have everything you require to make a submission. You can still log on paper if you wish but our preference is electronic for obvious reasons.

If you have any feedback please pass it to the committee.

Good luck

Just to remind you that this year’s Construction Contest will take place on Thursday 5th March at Pine Trees from 7pm. There is still plenty of time to construct an entry if you haven’t done so already.

Never built anything before? Then now is the time to have a go! There is a category for ‘1st timers’ who are new to construction.

Construction Contest 2015 – Rules

The contest will have six general categories:-

Homebrew – This will be for equipment built completely by the club member. (If the equipment is a magazine project with a PCB available, then, the PCB may be used.)

Antenna Installations – This will be for special homebrew antenna systems. For this type of contest entry, the member will just need to provide photographs of the antenna together with a specification, a drawing and details of the construction. A list of countries worked with the antenna should also be provided.

Kit – This will be for equipment built from a kit.

Hybrid – This will be for homebrew equipment, which contains one or more kits.

“First Timers” – This will be for club members who have not previously built any equipment.

“IT” – This category will be for radio-related software. This can be either be, a piece of “stand-alone” new software, or a piece written to add extra features to some existing software.

There will be a total of eight awards allocated to the six categories; the number of awards per category will be up to the judges to decide.

In addition there will be a special award:- “Professional” – This prize may be awarded to experienced constructors whose work is of an exceptional standard.

The judges’ decisions on all the awards are final.
Items can have been built at any time, but to be accepted as an entry, they must not have been entered in any previous SDARC construction contest.

The entries can be any radio-related equipment or software, for example, morse oscillator, test unit, QRP rig, computer/radio interface, PSU, Tx/Rx, linear, antenna.

The most complex equipment may not necessarily win!

Entry forms will be available on the night, but if you wish to complete one beforehand, please download the entry form.

Mike will be speaking to us about the use of radio in aircraft navigation – a subject he is well versed in.
Mike has been a radio enthusiast since the age of 9, building his first crystal set at the age of 12 and passing the Radio Amateur exam at the age of 15. He has designed and built a number of popular Transceivers including several ‘Top Band’ rigs during his 50+ years involvement with Amateur Radio.

Mike has also been involved in aviation for 47 years, flying on Hercules, V Bombers and VC10s. He is also a flying instructor and examiner and spent 12 years with the CAA, partially as their Chief Radio Examiner. He was also the chief avionics instructor with RACAL Avionics.

With his vast experience in the subject, this will be very informative presentation on the subject of Radio Navigation. So if you would like to learn about VOR, NDBs, DME and a whole lot more, please join us on Thursday, 22nd January from 7pm at Pine Trees Community Centre.

HARWELL AMATEUR RADIO SOCIETY are holding a Radio and Electronics Rally at Didcot Leisure Centre, Mereland Road, Didcot, OX11 8AY from 10.00am-3.00pm on Sunday 8th February 2015.

There will be radio and electronics trade stalls, a Radio Society of Great Britain bookstall, information on local courses for those who would like to become a Radio Amateur and an Amateur Radio Demonstration Station. Refreshments will be available all day. Entry £3.00 (children under 12 free).

Details from Ann on 01235 816379 or from www.g3pia.org.uk

The Annual Christmas Quiz will be held at the SDARC Clubroom at the Pinetrees Community Centre, The Circle, Pinehurst, Swindon.

In addition to the usual tea and coffee, there will be free mince pies.

In this Quiz, members form small teams to enter the quiz and give a team answers to the questions.

So, even if you do not know the answer to a question, hopefully someone else in your team will know the answer.

There will be rounds of both amateur radio and general knowledge questions.

No access to the internet will be allowed and the question master’s decision on each answer will be final!

A short fly around one of the towers and the site we used during IOTA 2014 amateur radio contest.

Have you ever perhaps wondered how a particular street in Swindon got it’s name or what a particular building was used for years ago – before its current use? Well, join us at Pine Trees Community Centre on Thursday 20th November from 7pm and hopefully you will get your answer!

Robert ‘Bob’ Townsend is a born and bred Swindonian and served his apprenticeship at Swindon Railway Works. After leaving the Railway, he worked for the Royal Navy on Wroughton Airfield, servicing helicopters and working on ground equipment in the workshops. Before retirement, he spent a number of years as a trained Conservator for the Science Museum’s outstation site on Wroughton Airfield, working on such objects as the prototype Austin 7 car and travelling to Japan with a Science Museum touring exhibition.

Bob has a keen interest in local, athletics and cycling history and has been heavily involved in the digitisation of the Swindon Society’s large collection of photographic slides.

This will be an excellent talk to attend for anyone who has an interest in Swindon’s history, so hope to see you there!

This Thursday, 6th November, we welcome Tim Walford, G3PCJ to our club.

Tim will be familiar to many as the proprietor of ‘Walford Electronics’ based in Somerset and the designer of many popular kits which are available to the Amateur Radio world.

Tim concentrates on the circuitry of the design with the aim of maximising performance whilst keep the cost of the kit to a sensible level. The kits are provided with excellent instructions which allow the kits to be built and tested in stages, avoiding the ‘build it in one go and hope for the best’ approach.

Tim also publishes the quarterly magazine ‘Hot Iron’ for members of his construction club and runs the annual ‘QRP in the country’ event from his farm in Somerset.

On Thursday, Tim will be speaking to us about his latest Somerset Range of kits and will have some on display with perhaps an experiment thrown in too!

So please join us at Pine Trees Community Centre from 7pm on Thursday 6th of November to see what is sure to be an informative presentation.

You can visit Tim’s website at www.walfords.net