OPEN UNIVERSITY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB
NEWS LETTER no:20
G0OUR Affiliated to the OU Club and the Radio Society of Great Britain
Seasons greetings. This is just a brief update, and to inform you of our forthcoming AGM, which will be held on Thursday 28 January ’99. As usual we will meet in the Green Room above the old Lecture Theatre at 12.30pm. Please make a note in your diaries. Local members will be reminded nearer the time.
Since the last newsletter we have purchased a Diamond V2000 triband vertical for 6m, 2m and 70cm, which was paid for by our OU Club grant. This has been fitted to the tower, replacing the damaged 2m/70cm colinear. At the same time the broken open wire feeder for the topband dipole was replaced with 450W ladder line, and a new 7MHz vertically polarised loop was strung from the tower. Finally the old 80/40m dipole was trimmed down to a 30m half wave. Most of this work was done by Adrian, to who we are very grateful. Quite how he managed to attach the V2000 to it’s crossbeam with one hand, while supporting the aerial with the same hand I don’t know! All this at at arms length on top of a 25 foot ladder. Needless to say he was wearing a safety harness but even so it feels pretty hairy up there. For the first time we now have dedicated aerials for all bands from 160m to 70cm except for 17 and 12m. We will put something up for those bands sometime in the New Year.
The optional filters have been fitted to the IC756 and it’s working very well. Also the PC in the shack has been upgraded to a Cyrix 486DX which has given a big improvement in performance.
The last lunchtime video was "DX-Pedition Fastnet". This gave an interesting account of the 1991 expedition to Fastnet Rock Lighthouse. The next video is "Skywatching" and will be shown on Tuesday 12th January at 12.30pm in N2028 Venables Building. This 40 minute video from the USA is a guide to the daytime sky; explaining sun, clouds, wind, precipitation, weather hazards etc.
At the RSGB convention we were presented with the Ariel Trophy for winning last years club calls contest. This resulted in some good publicity for the club in the OU’s staff newspaper ‘Open House’. See over for a copy of the article. This year Paul G0WAT planned to operate for us in the Club Calls contest, and Adrian M0ANS also hoped to come along. In the event neither could make it due to work commitments and Fraser G4BJM operated the station. The final tally was 131 QSO’s and a claimed score of 1608 points. This is a little down on last years 138/1754 claim, but still a respectable score.
We are almost out of QSL cards, nearly 3000 having been sent out since the club was started in 1990. Chris G7BBD has been helping with the artwork for the new card, which now features the OU Club logo on the front (since they are paying for the cards this time) plus a few other small changes. Hopefully the new cards will be printed in the next few weeks and we can clear our backlog.
Right, that’s about all there is to report this time. Below is the article which appeared in December Open House. In the photo, from left to right are: Tom Mitchell, Robert Seaton, Bill Mawson, Ian Cameron, Fraser Robertson, and Tom Smith. Have a good Christmas and all the best for 1999.
73 for now…
Contact: Adrian Rawlings adrianrawlings@googlemail.com