This local rally is being held on Sunday 29th July 2018 at Kington Langley Village Hall & Fields, Church Road, Kington Langley, Chippenham, SN15 5NJ.
Andrzej, M1SKI is currently in Poland and has set up skeds on 3.707MHz at 0800BST and 7.096MHz at 2100BST.
He welcomes calls from club members and we think he is operating as SP/M1SKI.
Please let us know if you manage to work him.
Throughout August we will be meeting out and about. We are meeting in the car park at Barbury Castle. If you don’t know where it is and you have a GPS… 51.483822, -1.777436
Barbury Castle is an Iron Age hill fort situated in Wiltshire, England. It is one of several such forts found along the ancient Ridgeway route. The site, which lies within the Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, has been managed as a country park by Swindon Borough Council since 1971. It is situated on Barbury Hill, a local vantage point, which, under ideal weather conditions, commands a view across to the Cotswolds and the River Severn. It has two deep defensive ditches and ramparts. The Old Ridgeway runs close by and the modern Ridgeway crosses through the castle. In the surrounding area are to be found round barrows, Celtic field systems and 18th-19th Century flint workings.
See you there.
This weekend we will be operating as G8SRC/P from Barbury Castle. We will be operating 50/70/144/433 over the weekend. If you’re free to help, please let us know.
Rules: https://www.rsgbcc.org/vhf/rules/18rules/VHFNFD.shtml
This weekend we will be participating in the RSGB May 144MHz Contest. We will be entering the club in the 6-hour contest as M4W from IO91CL. If you are at a loose end, pop up to Barbury Castle and say hello.
We will be on site around 9am.
Due to the recent success of the testing evening, we have decided to run another on the 24th May. If you have anything you want testing on the night, please let us know ASAP so we can ensure we are prepared.
We activated GB1WW in May over the weekend of 12th – 13th for Mills on the Air.
This is Wilton Windmill with the Supermoon behind it from 2018 with our special event callsign added to be used as a QSL card.
The day started rather early on Saturday morning with the usual group volunteers putting up masts for the antenna, event shelter, and gazebo to house operating equipment and operators. The gazebo was used as a mess tent and second operating shelter. We started radio operations around 09:15 – 09:30 and continued all day, with our main operator taking breaks at various intervals. The stations heard and contacted were from Europe mainly to begin with, and working inter UK was changeable with Scotland, Northern Ireland being amongst our easier contacts.
We had a fair amount of visitors from several of the amateur radio clubs from around the area. Some even got into the spirit and operated for a while, for which I give them a big thank you and will list them at the end of this article. Around lunch time we had our flyover by the Yak-52 which is an ex-Russian trainer aeroplane and is owned by Dom 2E0WHQ. He said that he wanted to fly over the mill on his flight from Popham to Wales where he was taking the aircraft, to have its yearly airworthiness certificate inspection. One of our SDARC club members (Jonathan M0ZGB) took a wonderful closeup shot of this aircraft as he circled around and gave us a wing wave before continuing his journey.
The first day of the event was very successful in proving all our hard work building and testing the antenna setup prior to using on the day was correct as it performed extremely well. We had a visit from Ian G0GRI from the Trowbridge amateur radio club with his portable 2Mtr setup which proved a useful addition to our overall tally of stations contacted. We had Phil M0PBZ from SDARC setup an 80Mtr station and he made contacts on CW & SSB using a couple of different antennas built by himself that worked very well. We had M1CJE bring along his portable data station and was successful in achieving a fair few contacts on FT8 but got a lot of reports that he could be heard over a good part of the globe. The first day’s operating ended around 17:30 as we had to pack equipment back into our vehicle’s as it wasn’t safe to leave them overnight.
The Sunday started a little early but not as early as the previous day, and the first thing to get up and running was, of course, the kettle and a cup of tea. We had our share of visitors during the day and we had another visit from a Newbury club member Norman M0JEC with the intention of videoing the mill. We operated for most of the day and our tally of contacts for the weekend was 225 so well done everybody who was involved with this special event station. We’ve received 44 eQSL cards from our contacts at the time of this article going to press.
We’ve contacted enough UK MOTA stations to apply for the certificate from Denby Dale club to confirm that we have activated the station.
Let me say a big thanks to all the helpers involved with putting things up and operating plus all the other bits and pieces: – John G1OQV, Neil M6CUE, Bill M0TDW, Phil M0PBZ, Russell M0RFI, Mike M5CBS, Andrew M1CJE, Dom 2E0WHQ & of course his flyover.
Thanks to the visitors Roy G0VFS, Ian G0GRI who operated on 2Mtrs, Phill G6EES who operated for a while, Roy G4VWG, Jonathan M0ZGB, Matt 2E0WLF for his excellent drone footage of the event, and several others who visited.
On Thursday, 3rd May, at Pine Trees, we ran a testing evening for projects built by our members. You may recall Phil, M0PBZ, suggesting this at the recent Construction Contest as a way of trying out some of the excellent projects built by our members for the contest.
Suitable test equipment was be provided for use, such as a Signal Generator, Frequency Counter, VNA, Multimeter, Dummy load etc. which allowed members to check and test their projects.
We tested antennas, a couple of preamps and we also tested the clubs TS2000 radios against spec with a radio test set.
Here are a few photos of the evening.
With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the European Union’s new privacy law, coming into effect on May 25th, 2018, we wanted to be clear about the data we collect, how we use it and your rights to control that information, which is why we’ve made some updates to our Privacy Policy.
We made these updates to reflect the high standards established by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a set of laws passed in the European Union.
We respect your personal data. We have never and will never sell it to third parties.
We need YOU to act to help us stay compliant with the GDPR. Please can you email [email protected] providing consent for SDARC to email you else you will no longer receive email from us after May 25th 2018.
You can read the full policy at https://sdarc-net.stacktemp.com/privacy/. If you have specific questions or concerns about the use of your data, please contact [email protected].
This week at Pine Trees, we welcome Colin North, G4GBP, who will be delivering a presentation on Special Event Stations.
Most Radio Amateurs at some point or another will have likely worked one or more of the many Special Event Stations (SESs) that are frequently found on the air and which are activated from sites all around the world.
Up to date lists of those stations operating or planning to operate can be found online or in RadCom.
One such event taking place this weekend from 0000 UTC to 2359 UTC Saturday 21st April is International Marconi Day (IMD) where numerous stations will be on air from sites which are associated with Gugliemo Marconi.
Usually, special QSL cards and/or certificates are produced for such stations which are coveted by those who work them and huge pile ups can occur when the stations are operating.
There are a number of rules governing what constitutes a Special Event Station and how it is operated, such as licencing conditions, public access to the event and its significance to a person, event or place – but how do you go about participating or setting one up??
Colin G4GBP, an ex-Merchant Navy R/O, has a wealth of experience of operating such stations for events such as ROTA (Railways on the Air), MOTA (Mills on the Air) and IOTA (Islands on the Air).
Colin’s presentation to SDARC will be the perfect way to find out more about these stations and how to get further involved in their setting up and operation.
He is also our local (Wiltshire) RSGB Deputy Regional Manager and is hoping to spend a few minutes at the start of his presentation telling us about his role within the RSGB.
This is sure to be a fascinating presentation, so please join us from 7pm on Thursday 19th April at Pine Trees to meet Colin and find out more about Special Event Stations.