All posts in Uncategorized

Good afternoon Members,

We, your committee, are sorry but in keeping with best practice advice in the circumstances of the Covid-19 outbreak, the Parish Councillors have decided to *CLOSE Pinetrees Centre as of today* and until further notice.

This means that from today, SDARC will have no physical meeting place for the foreseeable future.

On the bright side, one of the key advantages of the hobby we share is that we have our radios. To try to ‘fill the gap’ while we have no meeting place, the committee has suggested we operate radio nets and maybe other means of ‘getting together’ remotely.

As a start, we are proposing to run a net using GB3WH tomorrow (Thursday) in place of our regular physical meeting. The plan is that the net will run from around 1930 and be an open forum to discuss ways that we might wish to ‘stay together’ as a Club and help each other through the current issues. The Repeater Keeper for WH is on-board with this plan. Thanks.

It is appreciated that some Members might live in locations where access to WH is either limited or impossible and to that end James has created a “doodle” poll so we can gauge which bands might be best to use for such nets. If you would like to add in your preferences to this poll, please follow the link below.

We hope that this health issue will be over in the not too distant future and that we will be able to get back to normality and back to Pinetrees, but in the meantime, please make use of your radio(s), call in on the net(s), keep in touch with each other and enable Members to support each other through the weeks ahead.

This is the first time since WWII that the Club has been forcibly closed and we hope it will be the last time and for a very short period!

73 all, keep well, keep safe and keep busy!

Den  (for the SDARC Committee)

To voice your preferences about future nets, please follow this link :  https://doodle.com/poll/rg78bwk6pp42u5is

Work in progress so keep up the good work everyone!

We are holding the Construction Competition on March 26th!

The aim of this annual Spring contest is to encourage members to build either radio equipment or ancillary items which enhance their radio operations and to exhibit these to encourage others to follow their example.

Entries can include any radio-related equipment or software, for example, Morse oscillator, test unit, QRP rig, computer/radio interface, PSU, Tx/Rx, linear, antenna, ATU…..

Entries can have been built at any time, but to be accepted as an entry, they must not have been entered in any previous SDARC construction contest.

If YOU have built something that helps you operate, why not enter it?  Remember it is not necessarily the most complex equipment that wins!

Provide sufficient details with your entry to help judges understand the purpose and operation of the entry….”Sell” the concept and its usefulness through your description, diagrams, circuits etc!

The contest will have five principal Product categories:-

Homebrew – This will be for equipment built completely by the club member. (If the equipment is a magazine project with a PCB available, then, the PCB may be used.)

Kit – This will be for equipment built from a kit. The kit should require some soldering to component level.

Hybrid – This will be for homebrew equipment which also contains one or more kits.

Antenna – This will be for special homebrew antenna systems. For this type of contest entry, the member will just need to provide photographs of the antenna together with a specification, a drawing and details of the construction. A list of countries worked with the antenna should also be provided.

Software – This category will be for radio-related software. This can be either, a new piece of “stand-alone” software, or a piece written to add extra features to some existing software.

In addition, three Constructor categories may be brought to bear:-

Novice – This will be for those members who have not previously built or exhibited any equipment.

General – This will be for those members who have built and entered previously.

Professional – This may be awarded to experienced constructors whose work is of an exceptional standard.

The number of Awards will reflect the scope of entries and may include awards made to deal with tie-break situations.

The judges’ decisions on all the awards are final.

Please complete an entry form beforehand so you can bring it on the night. You can download the entry form here.

On April 2nd we will be holding a Members’ Equipment Sale.

Bargains are to be had, as sellers tend to keep their prices to a sensible level and there is always the option to haggle a bit!

You may wish to bring along items to sell or just browse the tables as a buyer – all are welcome to attend.

Fees are as follows:

• SDARC Member Seller’s Table – Free
• Non Member Seller’s Table – £3
• SDARC Member Entrance – Free
• Non Member Entrance – £1
• Refreshments – £1.50 (all)

There was a request made for the slides used in our recent talk on Arduino. They are now available to download from here.

Congratulations to club member Andrew Eastland, M1CJE, who has achieved the accolade of SOTA Mountain Goat.  This is the principal award in the Summits on the Air scheme and marks passing through 1,000 activator points.

Andrew reached his Mountain Goat status with an activation of Black Mountain GW/SW-041 in January 2020.

He started his SOTA journey on Pen y Fan GW/SW-001 in September 2017, and so has reached Mountain Goat status in less than two-and-a-half years, which is relatively quick!

Well done Andrew!

During Dom’s talk on programming radios with CHIRP, he promised to make the slides available. They are available to download below.

Congratulations to new club member John C. who passed his Foundation Exam on Tuesday.

John aced the exam with a score of 100%. If you hear him on the air I am sure he would appreciate a call.

Andrew – M1CJE

Once again, the RSGB VHF Contest Committee would appreciate your views on a number of topics to help us set the contest rules for 2020. The survey is quite short because we are not considering major alterations to the rules for next year, but all your views are read and appreciated.

The survey will close at midnight on Sunday 10th November and is available at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/VHFCC2019

Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey.

73,
Andy, G4PIQ ([email protected])

It is with regret that the GB3TD repeater will be returned to its original frequency configuration 433.075/434.675MHz during the afternoon of Wednesday 30th Oct.

The RRG apologise to those that have already reprogrammed their radios however this regression is required to overcome some issues that have been experienced over the previous week.

This will be a short term fix whilst we discuss options with the Repeater Management Committee.