Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society G0MWT, GX0MWT, GB5HF, GB5SM, GB100MWT & M2T CARS Skills - October-2015

Skills Night, hosted by the CARS Training Team, on Monday the 19th of October, was another popular event with over 60 people attending, several from afar.

The latter included the Cambridge area, but especially notable was Colin Redwood G6MXL from the Poole Radio Society in Dorset.

As the picture hints at, Skills is both a social occasion as well as an evening with a variety of demos and hands-on opportunities. The Danbury Village Hall venue also has a nice kitchen facility to help the evening along with tea/coffee!

 

This month, the evenings activities included:-

• Construction – Peter M0PSD and Steve G4GHO were offering 2m and 70cm Slim Jim antenna and 2 metre dipole construction and adjustment. The rear Hawkins room was busy with practical stuff! - inc patch lead construction, tools and soldering.
• CARS – The CARS table had club information on display with new Membership Secretary Chris 2E0CUU handling subs/renewals. New this month was a timed challenge for how fast to tune a VHF dipole (based on the Foundation course practical and a MFJ analyser)
  
  Chris 20CUU with the VHF Dipole Challenge

• Essex CW Club – As ever, helping to promote and encourage the Morse mode had a collection of keys on display
• Portable – '/P the G0DZB Way' – saw Peter Onion giving tips on portable working (as he is an expert with an Elecraft KX3 amongst other things). Peter's sense of humour was also on display....
  
  Peter G0DZB - the man with the beard....

• Radio Programming - Charlie M0PZT proved to be a popular draw as a wide variety of radios sought his programming skills
• D-Star & Satellites – Steve M0SHQ brought along his satellite kit. Timely, as the new AMSAT-NA FOX-1A had just been lauched (and has just got the latest Oscar number - AO-85). Steve also had his D-Star Digital Voice hotspot with him
  
  Steves Antenna and DV demo

• Antenna Design – Andy Chapman G7TKK (brother of Chris G0IPU) returned with his novel antennas based on slinkies. Andy has also become a dab hand at 4NEC2-based antenna modelling. One of his deployable 'umbrella' antennas was on display along with an animated 3D model of its geometry and radiation pattern (play the video)

• Callsign Badges – Jim 2E0JTW and Glynis 2E0CUQ had a busy time with their callsign badge engraver fulfilling demand from the new batch of M6s
• Quiz – Courtesy of some 'interesting' questions from Murray G6JYB amongst others, Chris G0IPU challenged the audience with some topical questions, and then finished on another anagram from Pete M0PSX.
  
  Sarah M6PSK with this months anagram question

• Essex Ham – This month the Essex Ham table had a playback of the new RSGB Youth video (running on a RasPi from the ERG AGM Raffle) and a nice demo of PSK31

  Les Radley G4JDS looking at the Essex Ham demos

  Close-up of the PSK31 demo

Local club representatives included CARS, Essex RAYNET, Essex Repeater Group, Essex CW Club and Essex Ham, so if you ever go along there is often someone on hand to help with questions.

Thanks as ever to David G3SVI and Myra M0MYR for their work in the kitchen, producing copious amounts of tea/coffee.

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Skills Night takes place at the Danbury Village Hall – Entrance is free, and the event is open to all – no need to be a member of CARS.

Want to be notified of future events?
- subscribe to the free CARS Skills mailing list

Next Event: Monday Nov-16

Venue: Danbury Village Hall, CM3 4NQ

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See Also:-

Skills Night Main Page

Training Main Page

CARS Home Page

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