No meeting was held due to maintenance work being carried out on the floor.    Our programme will continue next week as listed.

Geoff told of how he was working for BAe in the UK when the Shah of Iran left and Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. BAe had about a hundred employees with families living there. Geoff had made a QSO with an employee working for BAe in Tehran, and the company wanted him to keep in contact so as to get news in and out. Eventually, telephones and telex lines were down and it appeared Geoff was the company’s only contact. They even bought him a better aerial!  He was paid to stay at home and do daily contacts to arrange evacuations.

The evening’s narrative then went over to Vic Ludlow, G3JLZ who had travelled to the meeting to give his side of events from the Tehran perspective.  The TV news they had seen in Tehran hadn’t given a hint as to what was actually going on in the country, but Geoff  was able to let Vic know what was being reported on television in the UK . At one point  the employees were rounded up and taken under armed guard for interrogation. Vic said he just played the simpleton, which he said was easy for him. Eventually, they were all bussed to an embassy building in the north, then finally arrangments were made for a VC10 to pick them up and they were on their way home. To Vic’s surprise, he was paid ‘Danger’ money which his wife insisted he use to buy a new transceiver!

Of the fifteen or so rigs on display, Larry, G4OXY explained that only two were purchased as new. The rest were acquired as not working or being sold very cheaply due to faults.  His interest was in finding a ‘brick’ and bringing it back to life. Most of his radios are from the 1980s, but his earliest is from 1978.  Some radios were rare and considered expensive at the time.

Larry detailed the specifications and faults found in each radio and how he went about fixing them

He explained he didn’t set out to collect vintage radios, he just liked to get them working again. Once working they were set aside to make room for the next repair project. Through the years, Larry has enjoyed the use of his repaired radios on the air.

It was with great sadness that we heard of the death of one of our members. Gary Luhman, G0ETA died of a heart attack on the 2nd of January, 2017. He was only 56.

This evening was our first meeting after the holidays and the turn out was pretty good, considering the frosty weather. The meeting was a ‘Welcome Back’ and general chit chat.

We discussed the pending Hall floor refurbishment and how that conflicted with the date of the Annual Construction Contest. The new date for the Construction Contest is the 9th of Feb. So far, the date for the winners’ talks has not been set.

This evening signals the last meeting of the year. There was a good turn out and members brought mince pies and other delights.

Announcements for the evening included the news that our NOV for G3B had been approved and Martin, M6SCI  has progressed to the next level in his license studies. He now holds the call 2E0HIQ.

Regular weekly meetings will commence on 5 January 2017.

Why go to Chatham Island for a DXpedition?  Don said the group known as ‘The 6 Gs’, that’s G3SVL, G4TSH, G3TXF, G3WPH, G3XTT, G3BJ plus G4JKS had a look at Club Log to see what DXCC Pacific location might fit the bill as ‘wanted in Western Europe’ as well as relatively easy to get to and provide a nice holiday location. The trip was entirely self funded and relied on light weight radios and elevated ground planes, all of which could be carried on board an aircraft.

Chatham Island is a dependent of New Zealand and is about 800 kilometres east of the South Island with a population of 600. On the island there are, in addition to the harbour, two shops, a hotel, cafe, police station, courthouse, weather station, a petrol station and a meeting hall. Fortunately, the group knew that the local power supply would be reliable.

Long before the trip, extensive modelling of antennas was undertaken by G3WGN and G3WPH.  A complicated station diagram of all the equipment and interconnections was made and the best time to go was selected, which was around the equinox. Since the focus would be on the lower bands, the grey line propagation would be favourable, which proved to be the case.

Each member of the group made their own way to Auckland where they met up for the once a week flight to Chatham Island.

ZL7G over the period 27 October – 8 November 2016 made a total of 42,723 QSOs, of which 13924 were unique.  CW was the most effective mode, especially at this point in the low Sun Spot cycle.

This year, David, G8UOD provided one of his excellent quizzes. There were four teams of four members each. Topics as diverse as ‘Movies’ and DX were on offer.  The team named KODA (Ken, Owen, Derek and Alan) was the winner.  A good bit of discussion about the questions and answers followed during tea and biscuits.

A good turnout of 31 including contingents from The Stevenage and Cambridge clubs attended the Autumn Junk Sale.

It was agreed that the amount and quality of junk has gone down in the last few years, perhaps due to fewer companies getting rid of out dated equipment. We might have to re-think our outlook on two Junk Sales a year even though the lower takings were worth the effort.

Jeff is the Technical Director of the East Anglia Astrophysical Research Organization formerly knows as East Anglia Amateur Radio Observatory. The name was changed to better covey the nature of their work.

EAARO is an educational and scientific charitable company and the organisation is building a radio astronomy observatory and satellite ground station near Cambridge. Their main objective is to encourage and inspire young people to pursue science, technology and mathematics interests.  They also want to develop basic radio astronomy for the wider community.

Jeff explained the nature of meteors and how they could be detected using the reflected signals from a powerful VHF transmitter located in southern France. He explained that from the signals detected, the meteor velocity and directions can be calculated. The information thus obtained can be used to back up present theories.

The organisation is also outfitting another remote station on the Orkney Islands with the hope that a transmitting license can be obtained for radar studies at that location.

For anyone interested in meteor detection and radio astronomy, there is a website at: http://www.meteorscan.com/meteor-live.html  showing live detections!

Appointed in early 2016, Steve Thomas, M1ACB took on the position of General Manager of the RSGB.  He explained he was first licensed in 1999 and volunteered for the post of Deputy Regional Manager for Suffolk in 2008.  In 2009 he became the Regional Manager for East & East Anglia. He stressed he believes in radio clubs and societies and seeks to support them.

Steve went on to explain the many duties of the RSGB, not all of which readily spring to mind.  He also pointed out that there were only 15 paid workers at the HQ but the society relies on a further 1000 volunteers to get things done. The statistics for Foundation, Intermediate and Advance licenses were discussed and it was encouraging to see that almost half of those holding Foundation licenses advance to Intermediate. The trend from Intermediate to Advanced is also up. A total of 2861 exams were taken in 2015 with a high pass rate.

Also showing improvement is the number of visitors to the RSGB website, the number of visits this month being 31,300.

After a short Q&A, Steve went on to tell of the success of the schools’ programme to make contact with the International Space Station. Ten schools took part and numerous students began by earning their Foundation License.  There was extensive coverage by the BBC, Sky and other news agencies which resulted in the Sandringham School having a total of 16 million TV viewers during their QSO with Tim Peake on the ISS.