Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society
G0MWT, GX0MWT, GB5HF, GB100MWT & GB100MZX

CARS Meetings: Jan - March 2026


January Meeting
6-Jan-2026, 7.30-9pm
Danbury Village Hall		 "Practical Skills Evening"
By CARS Members

The January meeting was a practical skills evening, which was quite well attended despite the weather. There was a good variety on offer to those present as well the opportunity to socialise or get practical with a soldering iron.

For example Danbury currently has a dual band VHF/UHF Antenna that can help on-air demos (whilst we plan to have a newer HF antenna setup in due course)

Quiz - This had an enjoyable set of teasers to entertain and educate. John M0JOC had created the questions, and on the night Murray G6JYB presented the quiz and Andy G0IBN ran the raffle draw.

Sales - Murray also brought one of the last lots from the G0TRM SK sale. Members are welcome to bring Surplus/SK items along for meetings.

For future meetings (such as the March-2026 skills event) feel free to bring and show your own handiwork. Also, please do indicate if other skills such as coax connector assembly or other topics are of interest.

February Meeting
Tue 3-Feb-2026, 7.30-9:30pm
Danbury Village Hall		 "QRP"
By Keith G3WGE

For February, Keith G3WGE gave us a great talk about his journey and experiences with QRP, nicely illustrated by both slides and some real hardware. The evening saw a great turn out for this

Once upon a time, Keith passed his City & Guilds in December 1966 and self-taught himself CW to become G3WGE in March 1967. Some homebrew and Heathkit hardware followed until in 2012 he started operating semi-portable from a caravan. In more recent times he renewed his interest in CW via EssexCW and FOC.

QRP operating at ~5-10W is quite a different thing to 100W+ rigs, but it is only ~2 S-points down. Being far more portable and on batteries lets you operate from the top of hills to get great take off and benefit from the much lower rural noise floor for receiving weak signals.

QRP in the UK goes back years and puts the emphasis on skill and efficiency. The GQRP Club was founded by Rev George Dobbs in 1974, has a popular magazine called 'Sprat' and is at www.gqrp.com

Whilst there have been commercial rigs such as the FT817, recent times has seen the emergence of some great compact offerings (sometimes in kit form) from folk such as QRP-Labs as well as recently from china.

After seeing an earlier QMX model, he decided to acquire a pre-built QMX+ all-band multimode transceiver, as well as a compact lightweight ATU. Keith also covered qrp operating frequencies, RBN and other aids

Afterwards folk could see the hardware and the raffle was drawn. A great talk - thank you Keith

March Meeting
3-Mar-2026, 7.30-9:30pm
Danbury Village Hall		 "Skills and Science Evening"
by CARS Members

In association with the RSGB, we were pleased to host a very special Skills Night on March 3rd as we were selected to take part in British Science Week (BSW), a ten day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths. We were provided with five Morse Code Tutor kits by the RSGB, supplied by Kanga Products specifically for our Skills Night.

The kits were a 'one-off special edition' version of the Kanga Morse Code Tutor, which for BSW is supplied with a red circuit board complete with the RSGB logo.

Towards the end of the evening we had our popular raffle and another enjoyable set of teasers to entertain and educate in the Quiz. More about BSW at RSGB Science Week pages

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