Members of the Society gathered to judge the entries in this year’s Construction Contest. The main three categories were well supported and this year’s winner in the Major Project section was Don, G4LOO with his 70 MHz 300w solid state Linear.

The Week-end Project Class was well supported and again the winner was Don, G4LOO who exhibited his RTL dongle HF converter

Last,  but not least is the Kit Class and the project chosen as best was Don’s Iceni 28/432 MHz Transverter and power amplifier

Winners’ plaques and cups will be presented at the Annual Meeting on 23rd  of March.

Other entries were:

The Diplomatic Wireless Service  evolved from its WW2 origins which was set up at Hanslope Park as a semi-autonomous part of the Foreign Office. It was quite distinct from GCHQ and MI6. Led by Richard Gambier-Parry the staff consisted of wireless operators (CW) and a number of Philco staff.

During WW2 the MI6 radio network included a receiving station at Whaddon Hall, and a transmitting site to its south. As well as several other sites.

Richard Gambier-Parry who was a sales manager at Philco in the 1930s (and also a radio amateur) worked for MI6 during WW2 at Whaddon Hall. He became the first director of Communications at DWS until 1955. At DWS he was joined by another Philco man, Harold Robin, who was Chief Engineer until 1971.

Eventually satellite communications and other technical changes came along as did the end of the Cold War in Europe. Consequently HF usage and much of the foreign broadcasting declined. The last HF communication was on 4th July 1993 to the Tehran embassy.

Another little known story was of William Marshall, a 24 year old DWS radio operator at the British Embassy in Moscow. He was passing info to the KGB until spotted by MI5 and incarcerated

Peter described the high power  Broadcast section of DWS based at Crowborough, East Sussex. They operated MW and SW transmitters in the UK and overseas in liaison with the BBC World Service. The Crowborough Tx was replaced in 1982 by one at the Orford Ness site. The latter ran BBC-World Service on 648 kHz until 27-Mar-2011. Other sites included Cyprus (MW+SW), Francistown in Africa and Masirah in Oman. The remaining sites were taken over by BBC Engineering in 1986, and subsequently privatised and became Babcock in 1997.

Although it was very cold (-5c) and icy, members turned up for the Mince Pie night signalling the last meeting of the year.  Have a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Meetings will re-start on 5th of January 2023 when we will have the usual Welcome Back and also a practical demonstration of RTTY to get members up to speed for the RTTY contest on the 7th Jan.

Our talk this evening was provided by the PYE trust members Roger and Mike who took us through the years from 1896 when Mr. W.G. PYE started a business making scientific instruments in his garden shed which grew through the years to be one of Cambridge’s largest private sector employer.  At it’s peak in 1966 the company consisted of more than sixty UK companies with more than 20 companies overseas, it had over 30,000 employees worldwide and the headquarters always remained in Cambridge.

Although mostly known for their radios, PYE also made components, valves, early mobile phones, televisions, portable communications units for the military during WW2 and later even outside broadcast equipment for the BBC and ITV.

However, in 1966 the PYE ’empire’ began to have business problems which led to a takeover by Philips who later found there was too much duplicationin the arraignment and gradually various PYE divisions were closed. Over the next thirty years, PYE slowly disappeared from the market.

A small group of ex-PYE employees wanted to keep the name and ethos alive by forming the PYE History Project to create a charitable trust to secure artefacts, documents, and photos for the future and create a permanent exhibition to commemorate Pye’s history and keep the memories of former employees.

You can view the entire story at:  www.pye-story.org                                or  www.pyemuseum.org

The Imperial wireless chain was conceived as an effort to maintain contact with the British Empire which in 1906 included eighteen countries plus lesser known territories, islands and outposts. Between them, they extended to every continent: Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, Middle East, North and South America, An area that contained more than a quarter of the world’s population.

Marconi, who had the plan to setup, maintain and manage the network, won the contract in 1913 but found the government wanted it for ‘Government use’ only and it would be under the Post office control. WW1 intervened and the project was put on hold. After the war the government agreed £170,000 to implement the first two stations, Leafield, Oxfordshire and Cairo, Egypt which were completed in 1920 and activated on 24 April 1922. These stations were to transmit on Long Wave using Spark transmissions.  However, a later government committee stipulated that transmitter range should be 2000 miles and should connect Canada, Australia, South and East Africa, Egypt, India, Singapore and Hong Kong. By this date, Marconi wanted to use Short Wave transmissions but the Norman committee insisted on Long Wave, but later agreed to Short Wave as well.

As a guide to the size of these Long Wave aerials, the masts, usually five, were 285 ft high, the length of the array was approximately half mile each side, the distance between masts was 650 ft. and the cross arms were 90 ft. each.  There were four UK based receiver sites and Five UK based Transmitter sites each transmitting 25 KW using telegraphy at 200 words per minute.

The Dorchester station closed in 1978 and Bodmin station transmitting to Canada and South America closed in 2002. By this time they had been using Short Wave transmissions, shortly to be overtaken by satellite and under sea cable networks.

David, G8UOD was the quizmaster and four teams, two of three members and two of two members took part in the quiz. Questions about early wireless and general topics followed.

The winning team consisting of Richard, G3NII, Don, G4LOO and Brian, G8GHR were the winners by two points.  Attendance was down a bit compared to other years, but we had just as much fun.

Our autumn surplus equipment sale was a success!  Numerous members found just the items they were looking for and many left with boxes full of useful bits and pieces. Keep a lookout for the date of the next sale sometime in late spring. It will be announced in our club’s programme

Nick Cooke’s presentation, lasting fifty minutes, gave an overview of the history of Bletchley Park before the codebreakers arrived two weeks before the start of WWII. The Leon family lived in the mansion, prior to the codebreakers. Sir Herbert Samuel Leon was a wealthy financier, Bletchley Park being one of four properties that he owned. On his death in 1926, his second wife, Fanny Leon, continued running the estate and after her death in 1937, the property was left to the children from the two marriages. They were not interested in keeping the estate, so an auction was organised. In the auction, the reserve price of £7,500 for the mansion and nearly 50 acres of land surrounding the mansion was not met. A local builder, Mr. Hubert Faulkner, offered £6,000 and this was accepted. His intention was to demolish the mansion and build houses in the grounds. The sale was brought to the attention of the Secret Intelligence Service, the predecessor to MI6 and after an ‘arrangement’ with the builder, the site was purchased for the Government Code and Cypher School. This was Spring 1938, approximately a year and a half from the start of WWII.

Interviews began to take place, recruiting staff for this Intelligence Factory, with a new group of personnel being interviewed, called mathematicians. Eventually, nearly 9,000 people worked at Bletchley Park, 80% of these were women. The advantages of the site were explained (close to the main railway line, out of London etc.) and then the working of the German cipher machine, Enigma, was discussed. Various techniques were used to decipher the German enciphered communications produced by Enigma; the end result was to find the daily settings that each network used. The number of ways that a three rotor Enigma could be set up at midnight (the choice of rotors, the position of these in the machine, the 10 plug leads on the plug-board and the rotor output ring settings) is an amazing  159, 000,000,000,000,000,000! To break the ciphered messages, cribbing techniques became the norm, along with the development of machines such as the Bombe, which was primarily the result of the brilliance of Alan Turing. Two hundred and eleven Bombes were built during the War at the British Tabulating Machine Company in Letchworth; each Bombe was valued at a third the cost of a Lancaster bomber. The Bombe is not a computer, but an electro-mechanical ‘circuit tester’. There is no doubt that this machine speeded up the whole process of finding the daily ‘key’ or settings and thus breaking Enigma ciphered messages. A typical time to break each message was around 2.5 hours!

Finally, an explanation of the Wireless Intercept stations {Y stations} was presented, this being very relevant to the interests of the Shefford & District Amateur Radio Society.

Text by Nick Cooke

Don, G4LOO began with statistics covering our overall success during the CQWW SSB contest. Points earned this year (uncorrected) were over twice achieved last year and much more than 2020 and 2019. This success can be put down to improved propagation conditions and our use of more advanced equipment.

The video shown was one from last year’s RSGB@8 program titled ‘Getting started on QO-100 by Dom Smith, M0BLF’  Dom explained his equipment set up and showed his small dish antenna. He demonstrated a contact through the satellite before the wind and the rain got the better of his location. However, he did demonstrate the stable contact through the satellite due to it’s geo-stable position.

If you missed the showing, you can find it here, (with good audio):

First shown on RSGB Tonight @8, Peter started out with a brief rundown of the dipole antenna. After that the subject turn deeper into wave theory and radio waves travelling in a vacuum. Some interesting aspects were described. However, the subject is too long to detail here. If interested have a look at; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS2DVuYDo2A     for the entire story.

Near the end of the video there is an interesting Q&A from those who were watching the live presentation.