G0MWT, GX0MWT, GB5HF, GB5SM, GB100MWT & M2T
CARS Skills - May-2015 |
A mild sunny evening on Monday May 18th heralded another good attendance for a highly varied CARS Skills Night at Danbury Village Hall. Topics and demos included lots of antenna construction, Echolink, CW-Skimmer and the quiz spot. - made all the merrier by ample supplies of tea, coffee and cake!
CARS Skills lead, Peter M0PSX is in the left of the photo opening proceedings with the list of activities, with Chairman Chris G0IPU right.
- Construction – In the 'Hawkins Room' Peter M0PSD and David M0HBV had a busy construction session offering 2m and 70cm Slim Jim antenna construction . A full set of tools enabled some real hands-on activity. Meanwhile Peter G1FOA brought a dual bander he had made earlier to try.
- Portable Kit - Charlie M0PZT's followed up on his talk for CARS earlier in May with more examples of his portable kit as well as some popular low cost SDR dongles. The table shows the /P gear laid out, whilst the second photo shows how the frame looks in action
Charlie's display of portable items - and what the fully assembled FT-857 carry frame looks like
- Training Topics – Fresh from his recent Train the Trainers course, Peter Onion G0DZB was helping Dorothy 2E0NCE with the intricacies of Decibels.
- Digital Badges – Nick M0NIB who is a bit of a dab hand at IT matters, returned with his popular scrolling LED callsign badges. These are fully programmable and were soon snapped up. A short video clip shows one in action.
- And Even More! The variety of helpers/demos included Essex CW Club (Rob M0KCP et al), Steve M0SHQ on satellites, Jim Salmon 2E0RMI with an EchoLink demo, as well as SDRs/Digimodes running on the Essex Ham table
A low cost RTL-SDR dongle running SDR# on the Essex Ham table
along with guides for SSTV, PSK31 and other Datamodes
- The Skills Quiz: The latest question set was composed by Carl G3PEM. Clive G1EUC presented the quiz and tried to tease out the guesses/answers. The mix included questions on band plans, fuse colours and call sign prefixes. If you have new sets of quiz questions, please let Clive know.
And Finally: Peter rounded the evening off with a list of forthcoming events which included the CARS June talk on Microwaves by John Worsnop G4BAO and the GB1JSS June Summer Solstice special event being coordinated by Charlie M0PZT
All in all another very enjoyable evening courtesy of all concerned and the excellent tea/biccie service led by David and Myra.
The next Skills event will be on Monday June-15, but if you want to socialise beforehand, W&S Open Day is on Sun May-24
See Also:-Skills Night Main Page
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