A good club turnout came to hear Richard tell about the UK’s Heritage Railways.
Richard is very knowledgeable of the subject as well as being enthusiastic. His slide presentation detailed the results of various rebuilding projects from narrow gauge to full size engines. All done by volunteers who not only rebuild but help finance the projects through fund raising. To make matters more difficult, almost all of the restoration is done in the open air! Restorations need to be covered during bad weather and heavy lifting equipment has to be hired in when things need moving.
The engines which have been bought from scrap yards where they have been rusting for the last twenty five years are now looking like new and running on their own rails. A feat that many thought could not be accomplished by volunteers.

As the winner of both the Weekend Special and the Major Project sections of the contest, Don, G4LOO spoke about his projects.

The Weekend Special was a self imposed challenge to build a high Amperage power supply for under £50. Don provided a cost breakdown which included numerous items purchased on the internet. The main power was supplied by the Dell Poweredge,
Server supplies. While many are listed on the popular auction site, the cost of shipping can be a deal breaker! Two were found that met the criteria and were incorporated into the twin 12v, 2x 47A supply. Don explained how a voltage nearer to 13.8v was obtained and
how over voltage and power was controlled and monitored.

The idea for the Major Project came during Don’s visit to Friedrichshafen where he saw a PCB for build a switching control for six antenna inputs to two rigs. Don build this unit but then decided he would like ten inputs to two rigs and set about designing one. After producing his own PCB, Don used 36 relays to control the ten inputs and also the inputs from his Four Square antenna. Measurements show the connection isolation to be equal to or better then commercially manufactured units.

Victor, who won the Kit Competition, was unable to attend on the evening and will present his story of building  the ‘PIXI’ at a later date.

Don’s first talk about Utility Listening was back in 1990 when he described the Hoka Code 3 Data Mode Decoder. At that time there were many different modes which are, for the most part, no longer used.
Since that time, many of those who made the transmissions have changed to satellite communications. However, now it is realized that satellites can be vulnerable as well as costly. Some Civil Authorities and the Military have  been migrating back to HF communications. The use of complicated software negates some of the shortcomings of HF drop-outs and the overall result is still reliable and much cheaper. While still using satellites, the HF communications provide an effective back up.
Don demonstrated the latest decoding software and played several recordings of transmissions using modern modes of modulation. Although much is known about the parameters of the transmissions, most of the results are encrypted. There are, however,
some transmissions which are not. They are mostly weather related and some news services.

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!

There was an exceptional turn out for the last meeting of the year, the Mince Pie Evening.

Have a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Meetings will re-start on the 7th of January 2016 with a ‘Welcome Back!’

Don, G4LOO began with a Thank you to all members who helped with the setting up, operations and packing up afterwards. He showed some photos of the antennas and operations area. That was followed by a brief rundown of ‘what went wrong’, then a look at our final score. The un-adjudicated score looked pretty good, but it will be the final tally that really counts.

Ken, G4YRF followed by outlining ‘Software I have used’. This was a look at the software and websites used to find the ‘up and coming’ DXpeditions, then propagation programmes to find the best times for contacts, followed by the logging software which kept the best records of worked, QSLd and wanted DXCC prefixes. Described was the use of OQRS for collecting cards, if wanted.  A list of all the software and sites was supplied to members who wanted to investigate the methods for themselves.

A good turn out was divided into five teams of four members each. The first round was recordings of music or voice passages for teams to identify locations, counties, or persons.
Round two was all about Desert Island Disks, started by identifying the theme music, followed by nine well known persons who have appeared on the programme. A short voice clip of each was played for teams to identify.
Round three was about the 1960s with questions and audio clips from film, music and politics.
Round four was the last and the most difficult. Brian played three sound clips and teams were challenged to find the link between them and then name what would be the next item in the sequence.
While the rounds were being played, teams were also challenged to name the country of each of a number of QSL cards from the archive. The country’s name had been blocked out on the photocopies supplied.
The quiz was won by Team One, ‘The Dodgy DXers’ made up of               Victor Brand, Owen Williams, Peter Webb and John Airey who each were awarded a bottle of wine!
The lowest scored team won a traditional wooden spoon for each member, and they will remain anonymous.