A good turnout again for our fortnightly chat and CW practice. There were two tables for the CW practice. Richard, G3NII sent for the improvers group and G4YRF sent CW for the others while the rest of the group had a good chat.

Graham, G4JBD began by explaining his Major Project winner. As his HF rig wasn’t the easiest for scanning quickly between different frequencies, modes, bandwidths and power settings he designed the project to do just that. His unit is based on the Arduino interfaced through the CIV port on the rear of the HF rig. In all there are one hundred different frequencies with the necessary parameters stored in the memory. All the  design, building and coding were done by Graham. He did admit it took longer to debug than to build!

Since Victor, G3JNB was still a bit ‘under the weather’ Graham took on the task of explaining his Kit Project, the Rooster 2W 40M CW transceiver, supplied by Kanga Projects. The rig is direct conversion with crystal filters. RIT is provided to shift the crystal frequency a short way off the calling frequency, if required.. Upon finishing the project, Victor decided to check it out by using the Reverse Beacon Network and was pleased to see he had been received in over fifty different station from North and Sough America as well as Europe and the middle East!  Very impressive for a kit just slightly larger than a playing card.

Speaking as the winner of the Weekend project, Paul, G8IUG produced a range of projects built in the past. His winning project this year was an RF Linear Amplifier build from a kit.

There was a good turn out last evening for a chat or CW practice. I’m glad to say that most members chose the CW practice!  There were two tables for the CW, one at each end of the hall. The table nearest the entrance and hosted by Richard, G3NII was used by those learning the code and wanting some practice at their speed. While the other table, hosted by Ken, G4YRF was for slightly faster CW. For once, those practicing the code outnumbered those who wanted to chat. Good fun!

A good turnout attended the annual contest. In total there were eight entries but there can be only three winners. This year the kit category was won by Victor, G3JNB with his “Rooster”, a very small 40m CW transceiver providing two watts out with break in CW action.

This year’s Weekend project winner was Paul, G8IUG who built  a Linear Amplifier Kit.

The Major Project was easily won by Graham, G4JBD with a “User friendly Scanning Controller for the IC7300”. The unit was designed, coded and built by Graham and it was shown working very well.

Cups and plaques for the winners will be presented at this year’s AGM.