Worked All Britain and Mills on the Air Plus Thirty Years of Listening to SSB on 80m (Part 2) Designing Antennas for Small Gardens Member Profile – Pete 2E0FVL Shoreham Lighthouse GB8SL G1EXG’s Short Circuit No. 3
July - August
Worthing & District Amateur Radio Club Established 1948 Website: www.wadarc.org.uk
E-mail: info@wadarc.org.uk President: John Slater G8FMJ
Life Vice President: Peter Robinson G8MSQ
WADARC meets every Wednesday at 8pm in the Lancing Parish Hall, South Street, Lancing BN15 8AJ. All who have an interest in radio communications and associate subjects, whether a licensed amateur or not, are invited. WADARC can also arrange training for the radio amateur Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced licences. The WADARC Committee 2013 - 2014 Phil Andy Dawn John Jonathan Peter Norman Andrew Andrew Peter
G4UDU M6RFE 2E0ESK G8FMJ G1EXG G4LKW 2E0RKO G1VUP 2E0TCB 2E0FVL
Chairman Secretary Treasurer President Ordinary Member Ordinary Member Ordinary Member Ordinary Member Ordinary Member Ordinary Member
WADARC Ex Officio 2013 - 2014 Publicity Membership Manager Contest Manager Ragchew Editor Website Training Officer
John Peter Graham Roger Andrew Andrew
G8FMJ 2E0FV G4FNL G4TNT G1VUP G1VUP
WADARC Club Nets (all times are local) 07.30
Sunday
3.725MHz ± QRM SSB
19.30
Monday
145.425MHz (V34/S17)
11.00
Thursday 7.106MHz ± QRM SSB
CONTENTS From the Editor’s Keyboard ...................................... 4 Presidential Ponderings ........................................... 5 Chairman’s Chatter .................................................. 6 Thirty Years of Listening to SSB on 80m .................. 7 Member Profile – Pete Penycate 2E0FVL ................. 14 Designing Antennas for Small Gardens .................... 17 Shoreham Lighthouse GB8SL ................................... 18 G1EXG’s Short Circuits ............................................. 20 Mills on the Air .......................................................... 22 WAB Weekend.......................................................... 24 Band Reports ............................................................ 27 Club Diary ................................................................. 28 Rallies in July & August ............................................ 29 3
FROM THE EDITOR’S KEYBOARD
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belated welcome to the July & August edition of Ragchew. I was hoping to publish this issue on July 1st to match the date on the cover but a couple of things stopped that happening. The first was that I went away on holiday at around the time I should have been preparing articles and the second was that I didn’t have articles to prepare. All I had were the ones carried over from the last issue – enough to fill about a third of the magazine. Luckily, my appeals for help when I came back resulted in an abundance of material coming in so you should find plenty to read this time. We start with the concluding part of Jonathan Hare G1EXG’s fascinating article on Thirty Years of Listening to SSB on 80m. Jonathan’s enthusiasm is so infectious that even I have been tempted to try listening to the 80m band. Then we have the second in our occasional series where we take a look at the life and times of a club member. This time it’s Pete Penycate 2E0FVL, who describes himself as a complete amateur. Phil Godbold G4UDU supplied a clipping and a web link that will be of interest to anyone who wants to design an antenna for use in a small garden. Pete Head G4LKW sent in a brief history of Shoreham Lighthouse station GB8SL. He also reminds members that this year’s lighthouse event will take place on August16/17th and setting up will be on the Friday 15th if you’re interested in taking part or just want to go along to see what’s happening. Jonathan G1EXG’s Short Circuit this month is a battery that uses an ice cube tray, 12 carbon rods, 12 zinc-plated screws and seawater! Pete 2E0FVL sent in a Mills on the Air event report and Phil G4UDU describes his attempt at working all Britain on 2m during the WAB Weekend. Both Ted G3EUE and Graham G4FNL sent in band reports so that others can see how conditions have been recently and we round off this issue with our list of forthcoming events in the Club Diary and Rallies pages. If you would like to contribute something to Ragchew, my e-mail address is roger@radiouser.co.uk and if you’re reading this on your computer, you should be able to click on this address to open your e-mail program. I’d like to close by briefly mentioning the sad loss of Chris G3NDJ. Others who knew him better than I did have spoken at the club and written about him on the reflector far more eloquently than I ever could so all I will say is that the Chris I knew was a nice man and I know he will be missed. 73, Roger G4TNT
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PRESIDENTIAL PONDERINGS
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t is not often that I am lost for words but the recent loss of both Vicky and now Chris has overshadowed other club events and rightly so. Most of you will already have seen the personal tributes to them both on the club’s e-mail reflector and it is wonderful to know the level of respect with which they were both held by our members. May they now be together again as they were for so many happy years and I would like to thank them both for all the memories they have left us with. RIP. The club itself is still moving forward. Andrew and the training team are still doing a superb job of getting members through exams to gain a licence or upgrade an existing licence and hopefully they will gain more knowledge and experience on the way – well done all of you. I have tried to keep the club programme as varied as possible and we have had, and are due to have, some excellent talks along with our ever-popular discussion evenings. With regard to the club programme of events, I have been doing this job now for some years and would really like to take a break so we will be looking for a willing volunteer to take this on at the AGM. Please give it some thought between now and then. I am sure we must have someone who is up to it. We also have a number of special event stations in the diary, all of which help to promote the club and its activities. Along with the various special event stations we have planned, we are also well on our way with preparations for this year’s SSB Field Day contest in September. Under Grahams professional leadership we won this event last year, for the first time I believe, so we have a lot to live up to this year – let’s give it our all once again. Finishing, as I started, with the loss of Chris and Vicky, this means that we are now without someone to sort out the club’s annual awards and certificates and to run the Christmas party raffle. They did such a good job each year that we tended to take them for granted, until now. We now need volunteers for these jobs, please think about it. Thanks all for making this probably the best club in the south and one that we can all be proud to be members of. See you all soon and 73, John G8FMJ
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CHAIRMAN’S CHATTER t’s summer and here at WADARC we’re entering our busy outside event operating season. We have already taken part in Mills on the Air in Worthing and the PW 2m QRP Field Day and over the next two months we will have the open day at Worthing fire station followed by the Selsey lifeboat day. Shortly after that comes the lighthouses weekend at Shoreham followed by a short break of a couple of weeks and then there’s SSB Field Day on the first full weekend in September. Finally, there’s the Shoreham Coast Watch special event station. For all of these events the club makes a great effort to put on efficient operating stations and I would like to thank all the members who regularly contribute a lot of time and effort to make them work. Those older club members and any new ones who have yet to experience one of these events, please do come along and see how they work. You will have the chance to operate with a really good setup and if your antennas at home are constrained by the size of your garden, you will see just how different operating can be when you’re using bigger, more efficient antennas. On August 20th, we are going to have a wonderful summer barbecue with Derrick G4XKF and his wife Margaret. We’ll be sitting on the patio beside the pool in his immaculately maintained garden – this is always a very pleasant evening so do come along. All the food is provided by the club so just bring anything you want to drink. The club training program continues and I know it has been difficult integrating it with club meetings but we are limited by the constraints of the space we have at Lancing Parish Hall so please do bear with us. Finally, I have to report two pieces of very sad news. First, at the end of April Chris G3NDJ's wife Vicki was taken ill very suddenly and had to go into hospital, where she died the following day. This was sad news for all of us and devastating news for Chris as they had been together for over 60 years. Second, Chris had also been unwell for several months but he always tried to get down to the club whenever he could. However, his health deteriorated and now two months later, after he went into hospital early in June, I have to report that last Friday 11th July, Chris's long and painful struggle with illness ended. We have lost two very much loved members of the club and they will be remembered by everyone.
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73, Phil G4UDU
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LISTENING Thirty Years of Listening to SSB on 80m Jonathan Hare G1EXG (Part 2)
In the concluding part of his look back at 30 years of listening on the 80m band, Jonathan Hare G1EXG discusses amongst other things noise levels, antennas, some key stations, some future projects and 80m today.
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he noise level on 80m has increased over the last 30 years. Even in the 1980s I remember people wondering why I bothered with 80m, saying it was too noisy for them. Back then, most people didn't have PCs, broadband equipment or plasma TVs. The main source of interference I experienced from the houses around me was from central heating systems going on and off (and worse still, not quite going on but arcing). This would start between 0600 and 0700, just when the dawn DX was coming through! I would get a regular strong 'brrrrrr buuzzzzz' for 10 seconds of so, just enough to miss a DX callsign. On my MK I receiver, strong signal breakthrough from broadcast stations was sometimes a problem. Also in the 1980s there was an unusually strong recorded service broadcast near 80m that seemed to consist of a German woman endlessly counting out numbers in a loop. Correct setting of the balanced diode mixer could dramatically improve breakthrough problems (it took me years to discover this!). A decent home-made preselector and an ATU can provide a lot of front end performance improvement for a simple DC receiver. Nowadays there is a lot of
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extra noise from plasma TV and switch mode power supplies, so for serious 80m listening a loop antenna is a must. Antennas Back in the 1980s I used a balanced ATU and a full-sized inverted V antenna (basically a dipole) for 80m at my parent’s home in Sea Lane, Goring. The apex was up at about 35ft while the ends went down to insulators at about 10ft above ground. This was a good antenna. After leaving home, I only listened on 80m when I was back there for Christmas or other holidays. I once tied a 1/4 and a 1/2 wavelength length of wire to a large helium balloon and used it to make an end fed vertical (with an ATU and a good earth). It worked but the noise was awful! When I finally got a house in Brighton in the early 2000s, I started listening again properly on 80m. I then built the MK II DC receiver and because I had no space for a full sized dipole, I also started to experiment with loop antennas. The small, roughly 50cm diameter, 7-turn loop shown in the photograph is tuned using a 300pf variable capacitor and a small single turn coil (just seen on the inner right of the loop) is used to provide a 50ℌ coupling. It works really well as a portable receive antenna4. There is a nice null broadside to the plane of the loop and you can twist and turn the loop to reduce local interference. Sometimes you not only need to rotate the loop but also to slope it at an angle it to get the best signal to noise.
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One night in December 2006 I used this to listen to EA9IE on the top end of 80m. He was working a lot of Northern America and I could hear everything he could! I have also developed a larger four or five turn 1m diameter loop based on a ‘flat dweller’s antenna’ design by Harry Lythall SM0VPO. This is a really great listening antenna4. The signal pick-up on a loop is somewhat less than on a full sized dipole but the noise level is often much reduced so the signal to noise ratio is usually much better.
The development of a 1m diameter four or five turn loop for 80m: left) normal hook-up wire, centre) 12 SWG solid copper wire and right) 8mm copper tube. The box contains the tuning capacitor, while the circular coil is a Faraday coupling coil to match to 50Ω coax.
Over the last five years or so I have modified this loop in a number of ways. The original SM0VPO antenna (left-hand photo) used standard multi-wire cable, which worked well on receive. Later, I swapped this for 12 SWG copper wire (middle photo) to see if it would improve the response. My latest version is made from a single piece of 8mm copper tube (right-hand photo). I have tried Jackson variable caps and vacuum caps but now I use a homemade wide-spaced (8mm spacing between vanes) capacitor. If you are using a double-ganged capacitor (sharing the same shaft), you can connect the two ends of the loop to the fixed part of the two capacitors and only move the common tuning part. That way you don’t need any sliding contacts that might introduce noise and resistance losses. The capacitor is fitted with a geared motor drive inside a waterproof box that’s fixed near to the base of the loop. The circular coil above it is a Faraday
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coupling coil to match into 50Ω coax cable. A low VSWR (better than 1.2:1) is possible using this technique. At first, I was a bit worried that the coil and capacitor might just be acting as a remote ATU to match the outer of the coax as a sort of ‘long wire’ antenna! However, once a good match is obtained, it does not seem to be affected by adding a random length of coax to the line so I am pretty sure the loop is really acting as the antenna! (The low noise and null is another clue it’s working okay, of course.) You can see in the middle photo that I used a small waterproof box for the wiring of the Faraday loop. Water always seems to get in though and I find it better to use heat shrink and tape directly on to the coax. For the capacitor and motor drive, you have no other option. With the four-turn 8mm copper tube loop I hope to be able to use a few watts for low power SSB and PSK31 experiments (yes, after all these years I will actually transmit on 80m!). Because the inductance is high, I can easily make the small capacitor needed for resonance. A low value capacitor can be made very wide spaced to take high voltages. According to the antenna pioneer John Kraus, the radiation resistance of a small n turn loop (small compared to the wavelength) increases as n2 while the DC resistance (considering the skin effect) will increase as n. So there may be an advantage of a four turn loop over a single turn loop (I’ll let you know … it’s a work in progress). Some Key Stations, Moments and Observations over the Years One morning in January 1987, I heard K1JJ (RS 56). He was using an 11-element Yagi beam, 20m asl with a 300' boom on 80m! Presumably it was a wire beam! In 2007 I heard Gustaff DJ9TK calling in his very characteristic way. I realised that I had been listening to him for over 25 years on the 80m band! LX1UN’s station: 1,000W, 30m vertical, 150 radials, FT1000D. In November 2007, local stations were all very weak but the DX was good. G3UCK (who is usually very strong) was the same strength as AA4MM. There was lots of fog over the UK at that time and I wonder if it was absorbing the ground wave. 18th February 2008, AA4MM is still very strong, even in broad daylight. 28th September 2009, 7J4AAL (RS 56): using a 5-element Yagi, 50m asl (!). Best signal from Japan.
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G0EVY’s station: a full-size 80m beam on a 150' tower consisting of a 95' boom (7" diameter) with 126' long elements (4.5" tube diameter). The antenna weighs 1456lb and has 1000' of feed line! 15th December 2011, VY2ZM using a 6-element array and was still RS 58 at 8:30am. October 2013, ZL1BMW – a really great signal from New Zealand An 80m Band Clock Getting up early to listen on 80m can be disturbing for our partners. If I set my alarm clock for 0600, it will obviously wake both of us and I won’t be in Sarah’s ‘good books’! Additionally, there are times when I might set the alarm clock and then in the morning just not feel like getting up early. That’s why I devised a PIC 80m Band Clock.
Instead of setting off an alarm, it simply lights an LED between 0600 and 0800. I am quite a light sleeper so if I naturally wake in the night, I can tell if it’s time to get up (to listen to the DX!) as the LED will be ON after 0600. The LED gives enough light to read the LCD time and I get the 80m message to inspire me! My thinking is that if I don’t wake up at all, then I probably need the sleep but if I do see the LED light, then I can decide if I want to get up or not! Future Projects I am in the process of building a Cascode pre-selector to replace the simple single FET circuit I am currently using. This should provide more gain (around 20dB). Simply adding more gain to the input of a radio is not usually the best way of improving performance but on a DC receiver, where the main gain is in the audio stage, it can help the signal to noise rather than just raising the noise level of the whole setup.
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I am also working on an AGC circuit using an LM13700 trans-conductance amplifier. This will also mean that I will be able to experiment with a simple audio S-meter. I’m hoping that it will provide some large signal protection and audio levelling. Operating Style The big guys at the top end of 80m all have one thing in common – an impeccable operating style. It’s just a delight to listen to the skill, humour and politeness of these operators. On the whole, I find that people are still very obliging, patient and skilled on 80m. You sometimes get the odd ‘big station’ who does not say their callsign very often or the callsign of the DX station they are talking to, which is very frustrating for a short wave listener. At one time I wrote to a few of the DX guys and on the following mornings they made an effort to say, “Hello to any short wave listeners who might be listening”. That was a nice touch. A Community on 80m Back in the 1980s, the top end of 80m was held by giants such as GU3KFT, G3FPQ, EI8H, DJ9TK and M1XZ (San Marino). These stations often used delta loops or large vertical antennas so that you could hear them extremely strongly as well as the DX they were working. By the 2000s, it was LX1UN, PA1K and ON1JW who were the big guys in Europe. There was a lovely sense of community because you could hear everything – both the local and distant stations – you could hear the world! While most people were moaning about the end of summer, I was looking forward to DX on 80m – it really made my winter months and kept me sane at school. 80m Today The new net holders are people such G3UCK, EI6S (George, who is fondly known to the rest of the world as 'the European beacon'), DF2BO and PA0GMW. Many of these are using four square antennas (an array of four or more 1/4λ verticals phased in such a way that they can direct their transmission and reception), beaming their signals out. Because of the local noise level in Brighton, I sometimes have problems even hearing these 'locals' when they use some beam headings and depending on band conditions and so on. Consequently, some days there is not the
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feeling of community I used to get when everyone was audible but those days are in the minority and I still generally look forward to my time listening on the top of 80m with all home-made gear. In October 2013 I turned on to the top end of 80m at about 0600 to hear an amazingly strong New Zealand station ZL1BMW working a lot of UK stations on SSB, including Jerry G0BRP from the WADARC, who gave each other 59 both ways!
The 2013 G1EXG station - the MK II DC receiver is to the left and the small Archos MP3 recorder is shown resting on the logbook.
References and Notes 1 For my loop experiments please see my website at: http://www.creative-science.org.uk/minihfloop.html http://www.creative-science.org.uk/smallhfloop.html 5 Also see my radio page at: http://www.creative-science.org.uk/g1exg.html 6 A latest updated version of this article can be found at: http://www.creative-science.org.uk/80mDCRX.html
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MEMBER PROFILE In the second of an occasional series profiling club members, we learn about the life and interests of Pete Penycate 2E0FVL.
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can’t remember the exact date but sometime in the late 1950s, I remember waking up to the sound of the BBC Home Service (Radio 4 to the young) that Dad used to listen to in the morning before going to work. It was the shipping forecast (I’m not sure if it was before or after the news) but that’s the bit that did it for me, finding out where those places were (internet, what’s that?). Then, on a Sunday, there was Forces Favourites and mention of more far flung places. In those days there were names of places on the dial of a domestic radio and a knob that you could turn to match the tuning to the names. You could have hours of fun tuning around to see what was there. FM Then came the 1960s and we got an FM radio. I soon found that when I tuned to the top end of the dial I could hear some funny lingo followed by a load of pips then some more funny lingo. That turned out to be Surrey police and it was a bit annoying only hearing one side of the conversation. Then the fire service appeared there too. The trouble was that there were no scanners then so I had to choose which one I was going to listen to. Later, I bought various airband and public service band receivers and then, after years of messing about with various radios, in the mid-1970s I brought a proper receiver, a new Yaesu FRG-7. Now I was getting serious and I even joined a radio club (G3IHH) and the RSGB (BRS 87468).
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CB Then, towards the end of the 1970s, came the Good Buddy days of CB radio when AM and SSB were in use – my handle back then was Pony Express. In 1981, 27/81 CB became legal in this country and three days after it arrived, I had a visit while I was at work. Luckily, they just left a letter telling me to give up using AM/SSB so I went out and bought a new 27/81 rig on HP from a high street store. I had many good years use from it as I was driving lorries for a living and it was before the days of mobile phones and satellite navigation – it was a tool of the trade in those days. I was still running an SWL station and spending hours in the shack and I’d started reading how to become a radio amateur. This was followed by classes for the RAE but I only took the first part of the exam as the second part was not until two weeks later and by that time I had started night work. This increased my weekly income by 25% and with a young baby and a move to a new house, I decided that maybe giving up radio was the best option as I would never have been able to buy any radio equipment as well as furniture! Scanners A bit later on, after selling some of my old CB radio equipment, I brought my first scanner. It was a Realistic PRO-38 with 10 channels! Gradually, more and more scanners came on the market and as the FRG-7 was getting less use, I traded it in for a 200 channel all bells and whistles scanner that I used to take almost everywhere with me. In the 1990s, I started to get
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involved with the Safety & Medical radio side of motorsport. Back then, we were using 86MHz AM and trusty Pye equipment that cost £15 to £20 per unit. That changed completely when we went to 81MHz FM with ID TX, auto cut off and so on. The radios then started costing about £200 each – ouch! So radio and motorsport have both been in my life for quite a few years, both for work and as a hobby. Retirement In later years, just as retirement was looming, I filled in a survey from a pub carvery chain. It was offering the chance to win one of the £1,000 prizes that they were giving away each month and yes, I did win! In the meantime, between entering and being told I had won, I was at an event where there was a special event station in operation. I got talking to some of the people there and that started me thinking about getting back into radio. Anyway, I did nothing about it until one day I received a phone call to say that I was a grand richer. Thinking easy come, easy go, I started looking around for radio clubs and training and in February 2010, I joined WADARC. I then took the foundation exam at the end of March and passed with 100%. I became M6PAP, which are wife’s initials because I couldn’t get my own. In September 2013, I passed the intermediate exam and chose the callsign 2E0FVL (Fine Vintage Layabout), which seemed appropriate because Chris G3NDJ often referred to retired people as professional layabouts. That’s it now, I’m not going to take it any further because I don’t have the slightest interest in technical stuff and I don’t need to operate abroad so I’m happy with what I’ve got. I would like to thank the WADARC Training Team past and present for making the ham world a better place with me in it! 73, Pete 2E0FVL
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ANTENNAS Designing Antennas for Small Gardens I recently came across this webpage: http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~jwp/radio/software/loading.html The information in it comes from an article that originally appeared in QST September 1974 with updates by NC4P. For those of you who are trying to get an antenna to operate on 80m without the space for a full dipole, this lets you to calculate a loading coil for any antenna length (it’s a USA program so everything is in feet & inches).
There’s also a link at the bottom of the page that details the number of turns required to build the coil to the required inductance. Remember to calculate at the bottom of the frequency range you need to cover because it’s easy to trim the dipole but adding extra wire when you have utilised every bit of space you have will be difficult!
Phil G4UDU
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SHOREHAM LIGHTHOUSE
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n 1999, Stan Williams G3LQI (later EI5IY) chose as the callsign GB8SL for Shoreham Lighthouse for what was then a new event to activate lighthouses worldwide. The 8 in the callsign was because other lighthouses had already taken 2, 4 and 6SL. Also in that year, Stan put in place a one-man operation but, sadly, we do not have a log of this. In 2000, we operated on just the Sunday and logged six lighthouses in four countries amongst a log of 131 contacts. In 2001, we progressed to operating on both days and we were rewarded with 29 lighthouses in 15 countries in a log of 388 contacts. In the following years, we have also had considerable success, as the table shows. Year 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Lighthouse Stations 46 40 45 46 42 29 34 36 45 44 41 36
Countries 13 16 20 20 14 14 16 11 15 12 08 09
The total Countries in which we have worked at least one Lighthouse currently stands at 36. They are Austria, Azores, Belgium, Canada, Canary Is, Croatia, Denmark, Eire, England, Finland, France, Germany, Isle of Man, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, N. Ireland, Namibia, Netherlands, Norway, Panama,
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Poland, Portugal, Russia, S. Africa, Scotland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, USA and Wales. We have used various antennas over the years, including a W3DZZ trapped dipole, a doublet, a double extended Zepp and a couple of beams. Over the years, the accommodation has varied. Last year we used the club’s white gala tent with a frame tent pitched inside because the displays on some radios can be a bit difficult to see in bright conditions. For those of you who are interested in the list of lighthouses worked, this can be found on the WADARC website. This event always takes place on the third weekend in August, which this year is the16/17th so we will be setting up on the Friday 15th in the late afternoon. Any help you can give will be gratefully received, as would any attendance over the weekend, whether it’s to help operate or just to visit to provide morale support. 73, Pete Head G4LKW
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G1EXG’S SHORT CIRCUITS
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onathan Hare G1EXG continues his series of short circuits with a brief explanation of how electrical cells work and then shows how we can use seawater to produce electricity.
Short Circuit No. 3: A Simple Seawater Battery
A battery is a group of connected individual electrochemical cells. The simplest electrical cell is made by putting two different metal electrodes into a liquid called an electrolyte (for example, acid or even salt water). A simple battery can be made by pushing a zinc-coated screw and a carbon rod (or piece of copper) into a lemon or a potato. Due to the ion chemistry taking place, each electrode receives an electrical charge. The most reactive metal (zinc) becomes more negative than the less reactive electrode (carbon or copper). Three potatoes cells can be wired in series to power an LED.
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PAGE 2 Shown here is a 12-cell seawater power plant (!) made from an ice cube tray, 12 carbon rods and 12 zinc-plated screws. The metal electrodes are attached to the wood and wired up as in the circuit and then these are lowered into the ice cube trays, which have been partly filled with seawater. It produces about 6V at 5 to 10mA, which is enough to drive an LED flasher or even a simple radio.
For more information see: http://www.creative-science.org.uk/sea1.html
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MILLS ON THE AIR
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good number of members helped with the event this year at High Salvington Mill GB0HSM. The setting up crew consisted of Pete 2E0FVL, Pete G4LKW, Peter G8MSQ, Andrew G1VUP and Norman 2E0RKO. This year we used Norman’s pneumatic mast and the Club’s new Windom antenna. They take up far less space than the larger mast and the antenna we used to use in the past and this helped us to set up a lot more quickly than before. This meant the station was on the air by 0930, which was earlier than normal. We found that the smaller setup worked just as well on HF as the larger antenna that we have used in the past.
Also in use for the first time was a computer logging system, which worked very well.
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During the day, new member and licence holder Markus M6EEA turned up and did a very good job operating with some guidance from Andrew. Then Edmund M0MNG came along to wake up the VHF world.
By the end of the event, we’d worked 31 mills with of a total of 150 contacts on HF and 20 on VHF (some mills were worked on both HF and VHF). 73, Pete 2E0FVL
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WAB Worked All Britain Weekend July 12/13th
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was chatting to Andrew G1VUP on a Friday evening about the Worked all Britain 2m activity contest that was on that weekend. As the weather seemed reasonable and we had easy access to a high point where we might be able to make it work, we decided to have a go on the Sunday. Most of my activity on WAB has always been using 40m so I had no idea of the number of stations that were likely to be on during this 2m event. Devil’s Dyke On Sunday July 13th, the contest was scheduled for four hours from 1100 to 1500 local time. We both arrived at our chosen site, Devil’s Dyke (reference TQ21), at around 0900. We would have arrived earlier but there was a slight
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problem with a road closure due to a cycling event. The road should have been reopened at 0600 but they didn’t get round to removing the cones until just after 0900. The station was all set up in a matter of about half an hour. We were using a Kenwood TR751 multimode and a 13-element Tonna antenna on my small pole mast. A quick check around the 2m beacons showed that everything was working as it should. The beacon in Scotland, GB3ANG, was a steady S1 to S2 signal and the other beacons in Holland and France were also clearly audible so the antenna and radio were both working well. Slow Start When the contest started at 1100, it was very obvious that this was going to be a slow one as the level of activity was very low indeed! However, we managed to work stations easily around the south of England. To the north, the furthest contacts we made were up into Merseyside and the Manchester area, which was not too bad for the 10W allowed in this contest. The slow progress continued for the next two hours but when we worked the special WAB radio station and found out we were ahead of them, that gave us some encouragement. By 1400 we had made a total of 20 contacts, which was very slow and as nothing more was forthcoming, we decided to call it a day.
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Just then, Graham G4FNL arrived with his camera in hand so at least we now have some nice pictures. Conclusion It may not have been a particularly successful contest but we had a very nice day out up on top of the hill with a lovely view to the north to look out over and the bonus was we enjoyed a pleasant day on the radio as well.
Thank you Andrew for joining me for this event, it was an interesting exercise. Phil G4UDU
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BAND REPORTS
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wo members have submitted band reports for this issue. The first is Ted G3EUE. He sent in – “Band report since Sunday: 28MHz - 10.30 SP3JFK worked on CW. 24MHz - Several European stations worked am/pm CW, 1350 9J2BO (Zambia) heard working JA CW (Japan not heard), 1630 6V7i (Senegal) worked CW. Nothing heard on SSB on these bands.” Graham G4FNL sent in his log extracts for April to June 2014 80M 80M 40M 20M 20M 20M 20M 20M 20M 20M 20M 20M 20M 20M 20M
1A0KM JT5DX VO1AX JA1AJK PY1PM V650XG VP8LP W1AW/0 W1AW/0 W1AW/7 W9RGB ZF35LC ZL4IR FK8CE FK8DD
CW CW CW CW CW CW SSB CW CW CW CW CW SSB CW CW
21:18Z 22:04Z 20:54Z 21:35Z 21:32Z 19:57Z 19:45Z 21:21Z 21:21Z 22:11Z 18:59Z 22:13Z 21:28Z 06:38Z 06:36Z
20M 20M 20M 20M 20M 17M 17M 15M 15M 15M 15M 15M 15M 10M 10M
ZD7VC A61Q JH6RON LU4FD VK2BJ J28NC W1AW/7 JH1HDD NX4N/M PP2PS W1AW/0 ZL2IFB ZD7FT W1AW/0 KP2/K3TEJ
SSB 21:10Z CW 21:29Z CW 21:36Z CW 21:40Z CW 21:50Z CW 19:49Z CW 19:56Z CW 21:28Z CW 20:52Z CW 20:15Z SSB 22:01Z SSB 20:04Z CW 21:18Z CW 21:58Z CW 20:06Z
He went on to say, “So far this year, I have had 2,596 QSOs but, admittedly, most of these are very brief contest exchanges! “Also, I notice that I have not had many decent DX QSOs on the WARC bands, which is disappointing – I must try harder...” Thanks My thanks go to both Ted and Graham for taking the trouble to write in. If you would like to contribute extracts from your log so that other members can see how the bands have been, please contact me at roger@radiouser.co.uk
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CLUB DIARY JULY 6th .......................... Monthly breakfast meeting at the Rainbow Café 9th .......................... Talk by Paul G3SXE 16th ........................ 80m CC SSB Contest 16th ........................ Discussion Evening 23rd ..............................Talk by Phil G4UDU on his walk down the Grand Canyon 24th ........................ 80m CC Data Contest 26th ........................ Fire Station Open Day at Worthing 30th ........................ GX3WOR On-The-Air evening 1 .............................
AUGUST ................ 1st ......................... Selsey Lifeboats 2nd ......................... Selsey Lifeboats 3rd .......................... Selsey Lifeboats 3rd .......................... Monthly breakfast meeting at the Rainbow Café 6th .......................... Talk by Gerry M0WGB “Heterodyning with the brain, a journey into sound" 13th ........................ 80m CC Sprint Contest 15th ........................ Lighthouse & Lightship Weekend - Shoreham 16th ........................ Lighthouse & Lightship Weekend - Shoreham 17th ........................ Lighthouse & Lightship Weekend - Shoreham 20th ........................ Club BBQ 28th ........................ 80m CC Sprint Contest
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RALLIES JULY 12th July – Stockport Rally Walthew House, 112 Shaw Heath, Stockport SK2 6QS 13th July – McMichael Radio Rally & Car Boot Sale Reading Rugby Football Club, Holme Park Farm Lane, Sonning Lane (B4446), Sonning on Thames, Reading RG4 6ST 20 July – Finningley ARS Summer Rally The Hurst Radio Communications Centre, Belton Road, Sand toft, Doncaster DN8 5SX 25 July – SSC/AMSAT-UK Cubesat Workshop Surrey Space Centre, University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 7XH July 25th/27th – The AMSAT-UK Colloquium 2014 The Holiday Inn, Egerton Road, Guildford GU2 7XZ July 27th – The Horncastle Summer Rally The Horncastle Youth Centre, Horncastle, Lincolnshire LN9 6DZ
AUGUST August 3rd – The Great Eastern Radio Rally The Gaywood Community Centre, off Gayton Road, King’s Lynn PE30 4DZ August 3rd – The Lorn Rally The Crianlarich Village Hall, Main Street, Crianlarich, near Oban, Perthshire FK20 8QN August 10th – The Flight Refuelling Hamfest The Cobham Sports and Social Club Ground, Merley, Nr. Wimborne, Dorset BH21 3DA August 17th – The Rugby Rally The Rugby Amateur Transmitting Society Annual Radio Rally will be held at Princethorpe College, Princethorpe, Rugby CV23 9PX August 17th – The SMRCC Car Boot Sale The Trafford MV (Metrovicks) Rugby Football and Cricket Club, MacPherson Park, Finney Bank Road, Ashton on Mersey, Sale, Cheshire M33 6LR August 24th – The Milton Keynes Rally Longueville Hall, Hammond Park, Whaddon Road, Milton Keynes MK17 0AT August 25th – The Huntingdonshire Rally The St Neots Community College, Barford Road, Eynesbury, St Neots PE19 2SH August 31st – The Telford Hamfest The Enginuity Technology Centre, Coalbrookdale, Telford TF8 7DU
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ITEMS FOR SALE If you have any equipment you would like listed here, please send me the details via e-mail (roger@radiouser.co.uk).
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