Last evening, as a last minute substitution, we saw the video ‘Valveman’ which told the story of Gerald Wells and how he came to be the curator of the The British Vintage Wireless and Television Museum. This was in place of the planned visit out that had to be postponed due to a change in our host’s work schedule.  

This museum at West Dulwich, London displays one of the world’s largest collections of valves, vintage radios and other early apparatus from the pioneering days of wireless communication. These are all kept in his house in London.  

More details of the museum can be found at  http://www.bvwtm.org.uk  including a virtual tour and much more.

A good turn out heard Alan, G4PSO describe the little computer originally aimed at youngsters to help them become more aware of what lay behind the computers and game consoles they are so familiar with. The computer described is the product of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a charity founded in 2009 to promote basic computer science in schools. They developed a single board computer about the size of a credit card which they named the Raspberry Pi.  Developed along with the hardware is a coding system based on building blocks called ‘Scratch’ which makes very basic programmes easy enough for youngsters to use.

 The usefulness of this hardware was not lost on more experienced experimenters. Alan showed how the unit could handle and display still photos and videos as well as  HD video on a Television. The uses to which this unit can be used is almost endless and was shown in the dozens of books and magazines Alan had on display. 

For the first meeting of the New Year, we had an informal chat. Many topics were covered and one was the state of the club’s web site. 

 Members must have noticed that, among other things, the calendar hasn’t been updated in a good while.  This is not due to lack of interest or failure on the webmasters part, but a change of software has left the site un-responsive.  For some time now the software used to build the site has been unsupported by our host. We had been given a ‘workaround’ but lately that has stopped working with the result that the webmaster has been unable to access most parts of the site.  This Blog still works because it is done with different software.  Our webmaster and committee are very aware of the potential problems associated with a dead site and please be assured that the situation will be amended as soon as possible.  In the meantime, the programme and updates will be posted here:  http://calendar.g3fje.org.uk

 Discussions also followed about the future use of our club callsign G3B.  We are aware that in order to renew it in three years we will have to use it in more contests.This discussion needs to be taken up by the entire membership and that should be the subject of an evenings meeting.