It looks as though the weather was against us last evening; only nine members turned out for the contest. Although there was some snow and hail earlier in the day, the main roads remained clear and some were dry. Perhaps the forecast of snow later in the evening put members off, but the snow held off till around 21:30 by which time the contest had finished.

There were a total of three entries for the entire contest! Paul, G8IUG entered an Electro Luminescent Receiver that contained a double superhet with full digital readout. It also had tunable filters and a phase locked VFO. The PCBs were bought in. Although the project didn’t look like the usual Major Construction Project, Paul assured us that it could tune amateur bands and resolve double sideband on HF, although this was not demonstrated as there was no HF antenna connected.

There were no entries for the ‘Kit’ and the ‘Novice’ class.

There were two entries in the Weekend Project and both were antennas. The winning entry was submitted by Paul, G1GSN showing two elements of a six element 70Mhz antenna designed by DK7ZB and finished to a high standard. The other antenna was a 2M tape measure DF antenna submitted by Alan, G4PSO.

Both Paul, G8IUG and Paul, G1GSN are now scheduled to explain and demonstrate their winning entries on the 12^th of Feb. So, come along, this will be worth seeing!

Bryan, M0BIK and Terry, G4OXD used an impressive line up of professional test equipment to check members VHF and HF transceivers. Tested were the transmit frequency, modulation, power out, receive frequency and minimum signal sensitivity. Other tests were performed if requested.

Don, G4LOO showed two videos, the first was about the Woofferton transmitting station, the last remaining UK shortwave broadcasting site, located at Woofferton, south of Ludlow, in Shropshire. The station was originally built by the BBC during World War II to house additional HF broadcasting transmitters. It had six 50 kW RCA transmitters. The site has been modernised many times over the years and during the Cold War, the station was equipped with six Marconi BD272 250 kW shortwave transmitters.

Woofferton Transmitting Station currently has ten HF transmitters. There are 3 x Riz 250 kW (installed 2007-2008), 1 x Riz 500 kW (installed 2006), 4 x 300 kW Marconi B6124’s (installed 1980) and 2 x 250 kW Marconi BD272’s (installed 1963).

The second film was a digital conversion of  8mm movies shot at field days during the 1960s.

Members were welcomed back from Christmas and New Year breaks.  Discussions followed about various topics.