The RSGB 2016 Convention will be held at the Kents Hill Conference centre in Milton Keynes again this year on the 8th and 9th October. It is a weekend of lectures spanning many topics of interest to all radio amateurs. The RSGB have now released a draft programme for Saturday and Sunday which I have included here.
If you are under 21yrs you get free entry too. 🙂
Peter, 2E0UAR and I, G0RVM are going. Are you?
A short SDR video from a Friedrichshafen 2016 lecture. In the video Phil Harman, VK6PH outlines different SDR architectures their associated benefits/dis-benefits and has a look at future use of CUDA instead of FPGAs.
The Severn bridge was 50 years old this month. To commemorate its birthday the Thornbury and South Gloucestershire Amateur Radio Club (TSGARC) ran a special event station with the callsign GB4SBB throughout Thursday 8th September.
The morning arrived, the weather gods smiled upon us, a very nice morning, a little too much wind perhaps. The first arrivals were on site and unloading by 09:00hrs, put up the tents and started to erect three HF antennas, this took time, a lot of time during which Mike Davis G0JMD arrived popped up his posh toilet tent, a pole complete with a white stick and was operating on air within fifteen minutes. ( Lesson. Keep it simple, practice erecting poles and antennas and to have a plan and to stick to it ). It became clear that a Special Event Station is not the place for experimenting…..
The day, however, turned out to be a success with 50+ contacts were made and we had visits from passing amateurs, also a member from the Chepstow ARC drove across the Bridge specially.
It was great to see so many of our club members, some stayed a hour or so, the rest were there for the all important break down.
Special thanks must go to Ron M6EAT for supplying the Generator, Stan G0RYM for the big dome tent, we would have made more use of it had it rained. And to all the Club members who made it a day to remember.
Click on the images for a larger version 🙂
Richard 2E0RES, Rex G4RAE.
Today the TSGARC is running a special event station to celebrate 50 years of the Severn Bridge. The event is being held at Aust Services next to the bridge. The club will be using the callsign GB4SBB, if you hear the call give us a shout.
Just to test your knowledge about the bridge here is a link to a quiz: BBC 7 Bridge Quiz.
Strange hot weather but good conditions on 2m 🙂
Monday 5th and Tuesday 6th September very busy on 2m. At times tonight every 10kHz step and often 5kHz step was busy. Great to see/hear. Worked F8IQS in Caen on CW. His signal was easily 599!
Even bumped into another club member, Steve, M6JJV working contest from Berkeley 🙂
Andrew
G0RVM
TSGARC members will be setting up a special event station on the east side of the bridge at the Brightside observation point on Thursday 8th September 2016 at 9.30am transmitting until 5.30pm. We have set up a page on Qrz.com for information. Rob and Sue will be handling our qsl cards and John m0hfh will be looking after the qrz log and page. We will be pleased to see members or non members interested in this event at the observation point on Thursday.
The institute of civil engineers is also celebrating this event on the west side of the bridge.
Members may be interested to read or download digitised back numbers of Wireless World and Practical Wireless. Some articles remain useful even now after 30, or more years. See the Wireless World selection here:
http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Wireless_World_Magazine.htm.
Here is an extract from an index of interesting-looking items from Wireless World that I’m drawing up. If folks want to see more, just ask:
Year-Month and page number:
1986-08 page 43: A design for a pulse generator instrument
1986-06 page 39: A VHF pre-amp design
1986-04 page 21: An analogue Hilbert transform circuit for SSB
1986-03 page 22: Transistor based full wave detector circuit
1985-12 page 23: An article on digital filter theory
1985-10 page 27: How to make a logarithmic amplifier
1985-04 page 38: A loop antenna for HF
1985-02 page 51: Index to issues from Jan-Dec 1983.
1985-02 page 55: A UHF osc and mixer for a spectrum analyser
1984-01 page 57: HF signal generator
1983-08 page 58: Spectrum Analyser pt1
1982-10 page 59: Audio to LF signal generator
1982-10 page 67: Designing parabolic antennas
1982-09 page 32: Digital VFO stabilization technique
1982-06 page 43: Digital filter design tutorial
1982-06 page 62: Freq synthesiser design tutorial
1982-05 page 51: Wide band FM demodulator or freq meter
1982-05 page 52: Digital filter design tutorial
1982-02 page 38: RC sinusoidal oscillator design tutorial
The same site also offers digitised back issues of Practical Wireless. Again, these look like a mine of information:
http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Practical_Wireless_Magazine.htm
Best regards,
Steven.
de M0SVR
Ever heard of Hackaday.com? Nope I hadn’t either so last night was ‘special’ 😉
Paul, M0ZMB, showed some decidedly old video’s from the website. The first couple were about Philips A63-11X cathode ray tube manufacture. These were followed by a short video about Bone records and then a fascinating video entitled ‘The craft of the Cooper’. Although very, very grainy it was delightful to see real craftsmen at work. The final four videos where about the making of porcelain insulators, electric 100w/120v light bulbs, the joining of cable using lead wiping and transitioning telephone exchanges. For the enjoyment of members who couldn’t attend or who just have the urge to watch again I’ve placed some of them below.
Others can be found at Hackaday. Search for ‘retrotectacular’
I have cancelled our room booking at the Chantry for the following dates:
Perhaps members would like to have a Christmas meal again this year as we did at the local carvery last year? If so, can people leave a reply to this post suggesting a venue and possible dates.
Stan
A problem we have experienced on several field days is that transmitted RF from a transmitter overpowers a nearby receiver despite it being on a different HF band or even on a more distant part of the spectrum.
Band pass filters are the usual approach to solving such an issue. However, another approach is to place a wide notch filter over the entire interfering transmission. This is the approach described by John Crowder, G0GDU in this article passed to me by Rex G4RAE last Wednesday.
Andrew
G0RVM