As a follow up, participants in our time and aerial limited IARU contest entry were Owen, G0PHY; Gareth, M5KVK; Ian, G3ORG; Martin, M0XMP; Andy, G4DAQ and Geoff, G4CEP.

As a result of not being able to field full club participation in the IARU contest, Paul, G1GSN suggested a ‘mini’ IARU set up for those members who wanted to experience contesting operations.   A suitable field was source from a friend and details of the proposed dipoles were explained.  It was hoped to enter in the low power section for multi operators,  single transmitter. Fortunately, the weather is forecast as fine for the weekend.

This is the last club meeting for the summer. Meetings resume on    the 13th of   September  2018.

From his deep knowledge of the subject, Steve, a retired Senior Systems Engineer for the Metropolitan Police Service gave a history of calls for help from the earliest times, before electricity, up to the very latest innovations in digital communications.

It was strange to hear the early police didn’t really want communications with the public other than face to face meetings. The onset of communications by electronic means brought improvements in general communications which the police could no longer ignore.

After the end of the second world war, mobile radio began to play an important part, When the mobile phones arrived 1986, it was apparent that an overall control of communications was required which lead to the development of Terrestrial Trunked Radio known as TETRA.

Modern emergencies such as terrorist activities, large rallies and events like the Kings Cross fire begin to show shortcomings and engineers are now looking to the most modern
of digital techniques such as MCPTT over 4G, (Mission-critical push to talk over the 4G phone network to include high availability and reliability, low latency with support for group calls and
one to one calls with caller ID, including device to device direct comms for emergency calling.)