Don, G4LOO presented members with a long list of videos first presented at the RSGB Convention last year and asked members to choose one.  The result was a bit of a surprise as they chose Radio astronomy. Mapping the Milky Way’s arms and demonstrating Dark Matter from your garden by Dr Andrew Thornett, M6THO

Dr Thornett began by describing how to make a Corner aerial from chicken wire!  It is on a metal pipe frame just over six feet high and about eight feet wide.  He then went on to describe his giant parabolic antenna made from an upturned garden parasol with a light metal screen lining. He also described his Parmigan Triffid Military Phased Array given by a friend and mounted on a wooden mount. Under the mount was a box containing a mini PC, SDR & Sawbird H1 LNA. For 21cm the aerial was an Alex Pettit Patch Yagi antenna, Small, light and home-made which worked brilliantly.  His most recent acquisition was a 150cm solar cooker dish!  (small dish antennas)

There followed lots of beam widths for various aerials. He explained that his set up was sufficient to show the various arms of the Milky Way etc. which displayed as depths of red and white traces on various charts.

The second video chosen was ‘QRP: fun or folly?’ By Dr. Bruce Macaulay, G4ABX who began by saying his grandparents gave him a wonderful AR88 receiver for his seventh birthday, they then bought him a Philips Electronics Engineer kit for his eighth birthday and within a week he had constructed every project in the kit.   He said by then he was hooked!

His first QRP rig was a Heathkit Twoer, super regen RX wide as a barn door, AM TX/RX with a few watts and crystal controlled TX. He had built it from a kit which began his love affair with Heathkit.  Later his first HF QRP rig was the Heathkit HW8. That was a wonderful introduction to HF QRP. It ran 2 to 3 Watts and was CW only on 80, 40, 20 and 15m. He built it from a kit and still has it today

He pointed out that when going to HF there were a few things he wanted and one was small size and weight. That led to a very small rig known as the Mountain Topper. a Tiny credit card size  3 band CW transceiver, VFO controlled, 2-3 Watts with Crystal ladder filter and built in keyer all running from a 9v PP3 battery. Through time the rigs got smaller but not more powerful. These small rigs are useful with a small aerial for use in Parks on the Air, or even up peaks.

Numerous other QRP rigs were described, such as the K2
and others from Elecraft.  Used with an end fed half wave antenna Dr Macaulay worked many very distant stations around the world.