Yes, you may have become so embroiled with the drama at the forecourts or the pandemic that you failed to notice that Christmas is just around the corner!!!!

Following successful visits to the Harvester in Blunsdon in recent years, we are again booked in there for our Christmas Dinner and Awards evening.

This year’s date for your diary is Thursday 9th December. We are nominally booked for 19.30 for 19.45.

You have a choice of a 2 course menu for £15.99 or a 3 course one for £18.99.

Files

Please see the above file for menu choices which you will need to decide on at booking.

Minimum deposit of £5 on initial booking or you can choose the pay the full amount.

Limited places! FIRST COME FIRST SERVED!

From time to time people contact the committee asking for help or with something to give away/sell or just say hello. We decided it would be good if members could join a mailing list and send messages to each other. Whilst I have used the term “member”, this is not just for members. Anyone with an interest can subscribe. There is no obligation to sign up and we will not sign you up automatically.

We have chosen to use the very popular Groups.io platform to run the service. An archive of all emails sent are available at https://groups.io/g/sdarc/topics

Your first message may be moderated and therefore might take some time to arrive.

We may alter the rules from time to time.

Please use clean language and keep it related to the club or amateur radio in general.

Let’s make this a friendly and active community.

With the fast-approaching prospect of being able to return to real face-to-face meetings in the autumn (more info when we know more), we need to get our house in order post-Covid lockdowns and restrictions.

To that end, we need to set up an AGM.    Actually, we need to set up TWO!

This is a formal notice of the AGM to be held as a Zoom session on TUESDAY 24TH AUGUST at 1930 BST

Why TWO AGMs, you may ask? 

Covid lockdowns and disruptions to normal thinking put the tin hat on the 2019-20 one and now we are several months late on the May 2020-21 AGM, so we plan to run the two together in one ONLINE (Zoom) session.

So much water has flown under the bridge that we will really only address an Activity Report for 2019-20 and agree on the audited accounts from that year.

The 2020-21 AGM will be the more substantive part and will include elections to the committee as you will see from the Agenda below.

Agenda

• Welcome
• Review of 2019-2020 and 2020-2021
• Finance: Presentation of Accounts for 2019-2020 and  2020-2021
• Elections to Committee for 2021-22
• AOB ( if submitted prior to AGM)

We will provide further details of how to join the Zoom session in due course.

Please put the date in your diary and please join us so we can get the SDARC show back on the road – we need a goodly number of attendees to make the AGM a formally acceptable activity.

Also… if any Member, new or long-standing would like to join the committee, please email me. We should have a committee of at least 10 of our now 60-something members. NOW seems a really good time for new ideas from new people, so please think about joining the committee.

We have got into the habit of Zoom committee meetings from the comfort of our own homes but we also like sampling biscuits and cake at REAL meetings, so we have a choice. We have even met at local hostels serving cold fizzy drinks in times past !!

• Only CURRENT members can take part in the AGM
• Subs are now as overdue as the AGM, so if YOU haven’t paid your subs, please do so as soon as possible. See website for BACS etc details.

Any items you wish discussed in the AGM MUST be sent to me BEFORE the date of the AGM.

73 all

Den M0ACM (Club Secretary)

Throughout August (starting  29th July) we will be meeting out and about (where safe to do so). We are meeting in the car park at Barbury Castle. If you don’t know where it is and you have a GPS… 51.483822, -1.777436

Barbury Castle is an Iron Age hill fort situated in Wiltshire, England. It is one of several such forts found along the ancient Ridgeway route. The site, which lies within the Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, has been managed as a country park by Swindon Borough Council since 1971. It is situated on Barbury Hill, a local vantage point, which, under ideal weather conditions, commands a view across to the Cotswolds and the River Severn. It has two deep defensive ditches and ramparts. The Old Ridgeway runs close by and the modern Ridgeway crosses through the castle. In the surrounding area are to be found round barrows, Celtic field systems and 18th-19th Century flint workings.

If you prefer not to meet in person, the net will still be in operation.

There have currently worked 66 unique entities across the competition so far. There are 19 players and 2 clubs currently submitting scores. Spain is currently the most popular prefix. As expected, MGM is the most popular category. The leaderboard not only shows who has scored what, but now highlights the club winner and overall winner for each category.

Good luck everyone!

There have currently worked 63 unique entities across the competition so far. There are 18 players and 2 clubs currently submitting scores. Italy is currently the most popular prefix. As expected, MGM is the most popular category. M1CJE is leading that category with 59 entities.

We would like to draw your attention to a contest calendar provided by WA7BNM which can be found at https://www.contestcalendar.com/weeklycont.php

This is a very comprehensive calendar of HF contests which gives you an overview of the rules. The link is also available in the “useful links” section of this site should you want to get to it quickly.

This is a year-long dual award scheme open to SDARC (and invited clubs) Members only. It aims to encourage on-air operating, to have some competitive fun playing radio, to raise the profile of SDARC on the air and to reward members making consistent use of their radio gear. Go on, THIS year, why don’t YOU have a go!!

To take part, please visit the official page which contains the button to log a QSO and also the real-time scores. Worked All Europe (2021) This page is also available from the main menu “Worked All…”

Rules

Aim

To work as many EUROPEAN COUNTRIES as you can during the Award period, to encourage some competitive fun playing radio, to raise the on-air profile of SDARC & to reward members making use of their radio gear.

You will need to log and submit the full call worked but only the country counts. There are 70 countries to collect.

Dates

QSOs may be made at any time from 1st APRIL to 30^th NOVEMBER 2021.

Callsign

Log ALL QSOs under your own Full Call Sign. QSOs made using your SCC (Short Contest Call) are OK.

Bands

ANY allocated UK Amateur Band from DC to Light.

QSOs

Contacts made where YOU used an RF signal on an Amateur band at your end. The propagation of your signal to the other end of the QSO could be a direct RF link (eg 20m or 6M)
or could be RF through a repeater (including a Satellite)
or even could be a mode that uses an Internet segment (eg DMR or Echolink).
The ONLY other Limitation: No remote, automatic or unattended operation.

Site

You may operate from home or /M, /P or /A anywhere within a 25 mile radius of your QTHR.

Modes

There are THREE Awards for 2021 according to how you operate:

Award 1: CW or Phone QSOs made using RF propagation alone.
Some Members may operate CW using a computer. This does NOT make those QSOs MGM.

Award 2: MGM (Machine Generated Modes) QSOs – (eg RTTY, PSKnn, JTnn, FTn … )

Award 3: QSOs using RF at YOUR end but with which an Internet segment ‘assists’ – (eg Echolink / DMR )

Power

Your Maximum TX Power is determined by your licence.

Award 1: CW/Phone:  You may choose a lower power category should you wish (10/50/100/400W)
… e.g. An M1 or G4 may tactically choose 10,  50,  100 or 400W  in the CW/Phone Award.

BUT… Choose carefully as  *** you must stick to your chosen power category all year. ***

So, if you choose 10w in April, you can’t change to 100w halfway through May!

Award 2:  MGM:  You can use any power and mode allowed by your licence and can change these at any time!

Award 3: “Assisted”: Power unlikely to be a factor, so any conventional power within your licence terms is OK.

Scoring

Each Country worked counts as ONE point. Enter details using the appropriate online form at SDARC.net Just copy the details from your shack log.

Awards

There will be SIX Winners’ Certificates overall :
One for MGM, one for “Assisted” and 4 more for CW/Phone (10W, 50W, 100W, 400W).
ONE member could win MGM, “Assisted” and one of the CW/Phone Awards.   YOU can prevent that‼

Judging

QSOs will not normally need validating but Judges reserve the right to request confirmation. The Judges’ decision in all matters is final. By entering, you agree that results & photos may be sent to Radcom & the SDARC website.

Several 4m FM-only radios have been donated to the club by Paul G6UAJ. These have been tested and are ready to
go. The intention is to offer them on long-term loan to club members to increase activity on the band. If you are
interested in borrowing one, please contact Paul G6UAJ ([email protected]).

There’s no time limit on the loan, but the radios remain the property of SDARC. The only conditions for borrowing
are: the radio must be regularly used; not sold or loaned to anyone else; and please ask G6UAJ before making any
hardware modifications.

The radios

They are Philips PRM8010, SEO version (12.5kHz, 68-88MHz). They have 9 channels, TX power is 25Watts. They are
programmed with scanning of all the channels, and there is a scan add/delete button for removing nuisance
channels from a scan. They have fully variable squelch. RX is quite sensitive, about 0.2uV.

They run from 12 volts, cable supplied. Mic is supplied. There’s no internal speaker but the radio has a 3.5mm socket
fitted, you will need to supply a speaker.

The rear chassis has a space that will take a 15-way d-socket. There’s a nearby socket inside that has PTT, Volts, TX
and RX audio etc.

The mic socket is a standard RJ-45.

• The rotary volume control is also push (for power on/off), and pull & rotate, for squelch threshold adjust.
• Button 1 (’SEND’) button has no function programmed at present.
• Button 2 (‘AUX’) is Scan Add/Delete.
• Button 3 (‘SCAN’) is Scan.
• The channels and button functions are programmed with a PC. This programming is done using an RS232 to 5 volt TTL level shifter, PC software and a slow old PC to run it on. To find out more about setting this up for yourself, contact Darren G1ERM. If you just want the programming changed, that can be arranged, please ask G1ERM (usually monitoring 145.5, 433.5, 70.45, 51.51, 29.6 MHz).
• The radio hardware supports these other features that can be PC-programmed if required:
• Selective calling (sequential tones, typically five); CTCSS and reverse Tone Burst; TX time limiter; Priority channel; External alert

Congratulations to all the members of the Swindon & District Amateur Radio Club who took part in the RSGB 144Mhz FMAC Contest.

The results have just been released and we’ve managed to achieve 2nd place for the first contest of this year, which is a fantastic result given that we are all limited to operating from home and cannot go out portable due to the current pandemic situation.

Thanks to all the members who took part, entered logs, or just came on the air to give us points. It’s very much appreciated and just goes to show you what you can do if you just have enough members joining in.

Well done everyone!