At the last club night, John M6GSW kindly gave a presentation on the Marine VHF bands and how they relate to the work of the Maritime & Coastguard Agency. He also explained how they dovetail with other emergency services such as Search & Rescue and the RNLI.
Thanks John for a totally innovative talk. We hope later in the year to expand on this by asking Ian to talk about the way that the Devon & Cornwall 4×4 Rescue Group work and how they mesh with the Dartmoor Rescue Group and the other blue-light services..
AOTA 2014
2014′s AotA in April this year brought some interesting challenges. Fog, cold, wind and a pervasive soaking wet mist heralded the start of the day and no one was sure the event would even happen. However, RARCers are made of stronger stuff and John M6GSW, Lobster M6HFD and Steph G4XKH were determined to make the best of it.
Lobster and John battled the elements to get an Off-Centre fed dipole aka the Carolina Windom up at about 35 feet.
Once the antenna was suitable guyed and restrained we set up shop on 40 metres and dove straight into to hunting down some other AotA stations and worked GB4STB (Raf Stanbridge) and sent a number of greetings message to a collection of air cadets at Stanbridge.
Our two Foundation candidates Ian and Ann turned up to show moral support and Ian passed some greetings messages to other stations.
All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable day despite the weather. QSL’s were dispatched to the bureau and we hope to receive some in return. Well done RARCers !
RARC has a new home
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Riviera ARC now have a new venue at the Acorn Youth & Community Centre in Barton, Torquay.
We meet from 1930-21:30 on the first and third Thursdays of each month. The centre has kindly agreed to allow us to put up permanent antennas which should allow us to run HF & VHF on club nights.
The Acorn centre has a kitchen area for hot drinks, vending machines and free access to their wifi.
Hopefully as the year progresses we will be able to host talks on radio related matters and demonstrations of some of the newer data transmission modes.
Last year’s demo’s included how the AIS traffic system allows us to plot and follow airplanes in Real Time moving around Europe. A similar system works for sea going traffic.
We also had a video on how the German “Knickerbein” or “Crooked Leg” system allowed german bombers to approach their targets in total darkness.
We hope this year to host videos on the German Enigma system and demos on the JT-65 low power data mode and the new digital Slow Scan TV system known as EasyPal as well as many of the other obscure data modes too.
An intro to the Automatic Position Reporting System known as APRS and how hasm can use this in both ham operations and its potential for disaster relief operations.
Foundation training starts in earnest in February and hopefully we will be adding some new friends to the club. G4XKH has offered to run practice sessions in slow Morse Code for those old or new who might be interested
All in all, I foresee that 2014 could turn out to be a very bright and interesting year for the club.
SOS Radio Week 2014
RARC will be running the SOS 2014 Radio Week in aid of the
RNLI on Saturday 1st Feb.
We aim to be operational on the HF bands and 2metres from 11:00 am. Both Short Wave listeners & licenced hams are welcome to attend.
The club callsign MX0RIV will be in use.
Operating hours are down to weather conditions and manning.
Further exam success
Congratulations to club member Bob on passing the Foundation exam recently and obtaining his new callsign M6DFY. Welcome to the hobby, Bobby!