OPEN UNIVERSITY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB
NEWS LETTER no:47
G0OUR Affiliated to the OU Club and the Radio Society of Great Britain
Please make a note of our forthcoming 2020 AGM which is on Thursday 23rd of January at 12.30pm . We’ll be in Central Meeting Room 03, on the ground floor (not CMR06 as per recent years). This is accessed from outside via the Central Meeting Rooms entrance, near the shop. An email reminder will be sent nearer the time, and local members are urged to attend if they can. Subscriptions are due in January and remain at £5. Please send to the OUARC Treasurer, Paul Maher, Berrill Ground L0 South, Open University, Walton Hall, MK7 6AA. Email: paul.maher@open.ac.uk.
Firstly, congratulations to our Open University, which celebrated its 50 th anniversary in April 2019. I’m reminded of the special event station GB25OU that we put on, and I guess that really does feel like 25 years ago, an awful lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then.
We have some exciting news! We’ve just been issued with a new club callsign, G3OU, which we look forward to putting on the air. This follows a heads up from the RSGB HFCC, which pointed out that clubs (but not individuals) can apply for the two letter calls that are now bizarrely available to new licensees. After a bit of kerfuffle, our Secretary Adrian was successful in securing the new callsign for us. We still retain G0OUR, but G3OU is a much snappier call (especially on CW, goodbye to all those dashes).
Earlier this year Adrian M0ANS was informed that the video he was featured in at the club shack had been completed. This is being used in Block 3 of the module T312, Electronics: signal processing, control and communications. Adrian demonstrated and explained the action of our HF antennas, as well as discussing propagation and demonstrated the club station in use.
As proposed at the AGM, we got together back in April at the shack, and had a good clear out of the adjacent storage shed. Mostly this was stuff that remained unsold after numerous boot sales. It was later collected by OU porters for WEEE recycling. The shed is now far tidier and uncluttered.
Soon after that, Tom G0PSU had a clear out and donated some high quality and valuable ‘junk’ to the club. This included his trusty FT401 transceiver with FV401 external VFO, along with mostly documented vintage/valve equipment. So it didn’t take long for the shed to start filling up again. Ever since the club started, Tom has made generous donations to the club, and given much of his time and effort too. I’m very pleased to say that the committee has decided to make Tom a life member.
Many thanks go to Adrian M0ANS for running our stall at the DDRC boot sale in May. Adrian had a successful morning there, selling most of our significant ‘junk’ in the first two hours. Despite the forecast, the weather was kind too. We have since used some of the funds to add a laser cutter to our range of club tools. We are also considering buying one of the small VNAs (Vector Network Analysers) that are now available at low cost. These give a greater frequency range, plus more detail and accuracy than our old MFJ259 analyser.
In May we had a ‘gardening’ session, clearing the vegetation/growth around the M100 mast, and the OU gardeners finished off the job the following day, leaving it all very neat and tidy, and much more accessible. It was fortunate that we got there first to make sure the cables didn’t get damaged. However, we have since been told not to do gardening anymore due to Health & Safety concerns, so in future we have to make a request to the OU gardeners to keep things tidy.
Soon after that we heard that Estates have had the M100 mast inspected and have told us that we can no longer use it. It’s very odd since the company inspecting the masts had previously suggested taking this mast off its trailer and using it to replace the old P60. With hindsight we should have agreed to that, but it would have been less useful in that position, so we opted to refurbish the P60 instead. Most of the M100 issues raised relate to the roadworthiness of the trailer, since it hasn’t been moved for many years. That doesn’t impact though on its use as a mast in it’s current location. The guys and wire ropes are in good condition but could be replaced if deemed necessary. Likewise the winches and pulleys. Having said that we have more limited manpower available currently within the club, and Estates seem less and less keen on us doing anything physical at all. Our aluminium ladder tower has been removed by Estates with no notice or consultation given to us. We have also been told not to use ladders, solvents, paints, or even a soldering iron. We will discuss the best way forward at the forthcoming AGM with regard to the M100. We no longer have a topband antenna, and the current 80m and 40m antennas, a mediocre inverted L with two elevated radials, and a dipole, aren’t in the same league as those we had on the big mast.
Adrian brought to our attention this free online pdf of the RCA Radio Antenna Engineering book, 1952. Fascinating stuff and some awe inspiring photos and designs for large vertical antennas and radial fields:
Perhaps we should consider some form of vertical antenna with a radial field for topband? A lightweight push mast, e.g. from Spiderbeam might be acceptable from a Health & Safety point of view.
Again we urge members to make use of the G0OUR / G3OU club station, and in particular to put in an appearance at club meetings in the shack on Thursday lunchtimes, from 12.30ish. New active club members would also be very welcome. Members can also activate the club callsigns from at home or elsewhere, (it’s no longer a licence requirement to add /A when operating from an alternative address). If so please email a copy of the log for club records.
That’s about it for now; hope to see some of you at the AGM on Thursday 23 rd January. Meanwhile have a great Christmas and New Year.