Eighteen members were present at this year’s judging of the 2016 Construction Contest.
Submitted this year were 10 projects built at home during the past year or so. The only class with no entries was the Novice Class which is limited to members who have never entered a project in previous years. All members present on the evening serve as judges and all use the supplied score sheet detailing the judging criteria.

The Kit section was won this year by Victor, G3JNB who submitted the Pixie, a very small 40M 500 mW transceiver bought from China for £2.85 including P&P!

The Weekend Special section was won by Don, G4LOO who showed his dual 12V 47A power supply built for less than £50. A list of costs was supplied.

The Major Project was also won by Don, who this year submitted a 10 to 2 Antenna Switch of his own design.

The winners are being asked to give a short presentation about their projects on the eleventh of February.

Our Video evening was hosted by Don, G4LOO and Bryan, M0BIK. Members were offered a choice of about 8 videos from which to choose.
The session started with an account of the BBC’s method for getting signals to Fair Isle and nearby islands.
The second video showed an amateur radio group’s week end operations at Flat Holm Island using a special event callsign. Then two more videos about Amateur Radio, one about the 2012 DXpedition to Pitcairn Island and the other extolling the virtues of vertical aerials.
There followed a film from 1959 detailing the building of the Severn Railway Tunnel which was started in 1873, but most of the story was how they struggled to stop the works flooding from a nearby fresh water spring gushing fourteen million gallons of water a day! The finished result is one of the longest under water railway tunnels.

Bryan and Terry supplied advanced diagnostic equipment to test member’s rigs. The K2 shown in the photo, built by Gareth, M5KVK, was tested for stability, power output at various levels, and sensitivity etc. It came up to specifications, as expected. Several hand helds were also checked.

There was a good turn out for the New Year club re-start. Members had lots of topics to talk about and that continued till the hall became too cool. Although the present system of heating does work, it is quite noisy when the fans are blowing, requiring that the fans be run before the meeting starts and then turned off during discussions!