This week at Pine Trees, we welcomed Dr. Stuart Eves who is the Lead Mission Concepts Engineer at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited.

After working with the Ministry of Defence for 16 years, Stuart joined SSTL in 2004. He has experience in communications and surveillance satellites and initiated the ‘TopSat’ satellite programme, the engineering model of which was displayed at the Science Museum in London until recently.

Stuart is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and has an MSc in Astrophysics and a PhD in Constellation Design.

In his presentation entitled ‘The Future Is Out Of This world’, Stuart will give us his slant on how he sees satellite technology progressing over the next 20+ years.

With Satellite technology being of interest to many Radio Amateurs, this will give us a fascinating insight into an (out of this) world of technology that many do not fully understand and these days, take for granted.

Mills on the Air will be held between 13th and 14th May 2017 and we will be activating Wilton Windmill. We are looking for support for various activities to help run this event. Any help is appreciated, especially for, erecting masts and antennas but most of all we need operators. The location is Wilton Windmill, Wilton Hill, Near Marlborough, Wiltshire, SN8 3SW

We’ll be reminding you about it on Thursday nights but you can talk to Ken if you want to know more.

More information about the MOTA programme can be found at http://www.mills-on-the-air.net/

UPDATE: We are holding the Construction Competition this week!

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 and entry form beforehand so you can bring it on the night. You can download the entry form here.

On Thursday, March 2nd we welcomed Dr. Adrian Bowyer, the founder of RepRap Ltd (3D Printers), to our club.

RepRap, the REPlicating RAPid Prototyper was the invention of Adrian whilst he was a senior academic in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Bath University. His invention was the birth of low-cost 3D printers, started the open-source 3D printing revolution and the RepRap has been described as the invention which will start a second industrial revolution.

Adrian started the company in 2009 and finally retired from academic life in 2012. During his time at Bath, he invented (at the same time as David Watson), the Algorithm for the computation of Voronoi diagrams – this became known as the Bowyer-Watson Algorithm.

Adrian brought along one of his 3D Printers to demo spoke of some of his experiments on 3D printing Printed Circuit Boards.

Home construction has always been close to the heart of amateur radio and with many radio hams still enjoying this aspect of the hobby, 3D printers will doubtless feature more and more within the home constructors workshops. The possibilities are endless – from making small project boxes, knobs, bespoke parts etc. to replicating those hard to find parts for the restoration of older equipment.

Ken, Andy and James helped some Brownies and Guides with Thinking Day on the Air by running various radio related activities and a special event station where the girls could pass messages. We didn’t find any other Guiding group on the air but a number of amateurs were happy to accept their messages.

The girls were especially interested in CW which shows that the aging mode does still have appeal to future generations.

We closed the day by receiving a satellite pass of AO-85 which the girls also found fascinating as they heard stations from the UK, Italy and Belguim using just a handheld radio.

Thanks to all involved in making it possible including the hams who responded to calls from our special event station.

Tony will talk on the basic requirements for a repeater and lead on to the history of repeaters and repeater groups in Swindon area. A second talk on the more technical aspects is programmed for May 18th.

Last week it was announced that two very popular books that had gone out of print have been made available electronically for free. This is great news!

NOSintro – TCP/IP over Packet Radio
An Introduction to the KA9Q Network Operating System
by Ian Wade, G3NRW
http://g3nrw.net/NOSintro/NOSintro.pdf

In NOSintro you’ll find a wealth of practical information, hints and tips for setting up and maintaining the KA9Q Network Operating System (NOS).

The book concentrates on KA9Q in a packet radio environment, but most of the coverage is applicable to dial-up use via a modem as well.

The emphasis is on hands-on practicalities. You’ll see exactly:

• how to install KA9Q on a PC
• how to set up the control files
• how to check out basic operations before going live
• how to use KA9Q commands for transferring files, logging in to remote systems, sending mail and so on.

Theoretical coverage is kept to a minimum – just enough to provide a framework for the hands-on sessions, so you get a good understanding of what’s happening without being submerged in a morass of superfluous detail.

The VHF/UHF DX Book, 2017 Replica Edition

‘The VHF/UHF DX Book’ was written in the early to mid-1990s by a team of experienced VHF/UHF DXers and equipment developers, in an effort to pass on our knowledge and stimulate further developments. But eventually the book went out of print, and information of lasting value became trapped on the printed pages.

To keep that information alive for future generations of VHF/UHF DXers, a digital replica of the Second Printing (1995) has now been released as a free download, by kind permission of the copyright owner TRPublishing and its proprietor Trevor Preece.

As with all older books, the challenge for the reader is to separate the parts that are of lasting value from other parts that have become dated. But we make no apology for that; even the outdated parts remain an accurate snapshot of VHF/UHF DXing in its heyday.

This Thursday evening at Pine Trees we welcome David Dale along to speak about the history and development of the transistor. David, you will remember, is the chap who very kindly donated all those components and books to the club a few months ago.

David spent a number of years working for GEC semiconductors, leaving in 1998. Before retirement, he was on the Swindon committee of the IET (Institute of Engineering and Technology – previously IEE) and gave this presentation to the IET in 2012.

The development of the transistor is a fascinating one and the component has revolutionised electronic design over the last 60 years or so, allowing smaller and cheaper designs to be produced.

David Dale has a wealth of experience in this field, so please join us from 7pm on Thursday the 9th February at Pine Trees to see his presentation.

This week at Pine Trees, Peter Martin 2E0CYS, will be coming along to give us another of his entertaining presentations of his time with the RAF.

Peter will need no introduction to most of course, being one of the regular attendees at our club nights.

Over the last couple of years, Peter has delivered several talks to SDARC, entertaining us with his stories of RAF life and speaking of the many aircraft he has had the privilege of flying in during his career.

On Thursday, he will deliver his final (surely not Peter!) installment entitled ‘Sort it out Chief!’, which will undoubtedly be as enjoyable as his other talks and one not to be missed.

Please join us from 7pm on Thursday 26th January at Pine Trees to see Peter’s presentation.

This Thursday, 19th January, we will be holding a ‘Show & Tell Evening’ at Pine Trees.

The evening gives members the opportunity to bring along a piece of equipment, review an item or a piece of software or perhaps speak about their favourite aspect of the world of radio.
We have three speakers on the 12th, which are Jonathan – M0ZGB; Geoff – G3TPQ and Den – M0ACM.

Jonathan, M0ZGB
Jonathan is giving us a short presentation on his 1950s Ex RNLI lifeboat receiver, during which he will tell us about the original concept of the Type 97 radio set as well as his attempt to discover which lifeboat the receiver originally came from. He will also take us back to a time when tea & fried sausages were deemed more interesting than new-fangled radio sets!

Geoff, G3TPQ
Geoff will be speaking to us on the subject of British & German wartime civilian receivers and will be bringing along an example of each. We are doubtless all aware of the depth of Geoff’s knowledge on these subjects and he has also offered to end his talk with a short musical quiz!

Den, M0ACM
If you are still a breathing, well-read amateur, you WILL have heard of SDR transceivers… The new-ish fangled boxes with a computer attached to process the signals. Tonight, we will have a look at a new implementation of that concept – The ICOM 7300…

As there are three speakers on Thursday, we would ideally like to start the talks at 7.45pm rather than the usual 8pm, so that we have some time for questions and swap over.

Thursday night will be a good mix of the old and the new with regard to radio technology, so please join us from 7pm at Pine Trees to see our speakers deliver their presentations.