The Journal of Horsham Amateur Radio Club January 2019
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Club Call G4HRS Est. 1938 The Journal of Horsham Amateur Radio Club January 2019 Affiliated to: Sponsored by: 1 Contents In this issue 3. Notes from the Editor A new year 4. AGM Report and congratulations 5. Puzzled The answers! 6. Hot night Invitation to Southwater 7. Quiz event Crawley Horsham club results 10. Mystery location DF Hunt revealed 13. Seasonal evening Review of Xmas party 16. Tuning in Latest broadcast news 19. Diary of events Full listings for the month Cover photo: Merry Christmas from The Owl Published by Horsham Amateur Radio Club HARCNEWS is produced at home by G4JHI 2 Editorial Welcome to 2019 and I have been informed by some friends that a visa may be required to go abroad later this year! How exciting or perhaps not but in the true spirit of amateur radio we’re not going to discuss politics! Let’s hope the outcome is good for us all…. As in previous years the committee has been busy preparing a great diary of events which will include guest speakers, outings and holidays, pub visits and contests and the HARC / CARC Challenge. This magazine will continue in the same format since the last facelift (although small changes might take place) and include the same columns with Broadcast Listener and TV Addict appearing in alternate editions. Perhaps a reader out there would like to create a new column? It could be perhaps one that only appears from time to time. Maybe a DX report for DX on the HF / VHF amateur radio bands or something like that? We wait to hear from you! I will wish all readers a prosperous new year. David G4JHI Copy deadline for emailed items for February edition 20th January - For written items the deadline is 12th January. For items sent by email please send to this address: [email protected] Amendment Pete G3LET advises of an error on page 5, line 2 of HARCNEWS December 2018. ‘This was not a single but a multi-op entry, with Alister G3ZBU making a valuable contribution to our winning score’. 3 December Meeting AGM The Chairman Adrian G4LRP hands over the Webb Cup Trophy to David 2E0NKC The 2018 AGM started with apologies for absence and the 2017 minutes were read out and accepted. In matters arising a question was asked as to whether moving to a bank account with interest had been looked into. This was not thought to be cost effective with the work involved to sort out. The Chairman’s report was read and accepted. In the absence of the Treasurer the Chairman ran through the financial report. The club funds were looking good for the year but subs may need to be reviewed in a years’ time. It was mentioned that the club’s equipment was under used but there was no need to sell as the club has sufficient funds. Two questions arose; the petty cash amount is high – this was due to the junk sale, there hadn’t been any raffles at junks sales during the year – it had been decided not to have any due to the low attendances at junk sales. The accounts were then accepted. The elections of officers for 2019 were proposed the same as the previous year for Chairman G4LRP, Honorary Secretary G3ZBU, Treasurer G4TMC, Newsletter Editor G4JHI and Web Master M0TWM and were duly elected. The ordinary Committee members would remain the same number at three. Any other business brought some comments from the floor; Could the website be looked at with a view to put a full list of club achievements and GDPR compliance up on a prominent spot. These issues would be looked at by the Committee. Members were encouraged to come onto the 2 metre club net and 80 metre Billingshurst and district net. It had been noticed by members that the club events hadn’t been listed in RadCom recently – this was due to difficulties with some of the club diary events changing. Keith G4JDM the South East Kent RSGB Regional Representative was in attendance who suggested advertising the club events in the magazine anyway. Following the end of the AGM business the Webb Cup was presented to David 2E0NKC for his excellent and well written column in HARCNEWS ‘Broadcast Listener’. 4 HARC Christmas Crossword Answers by Mike, G8CKT Solution 1 T R 2 B I A S N 3 S K 4 5 K I R E S E 6 C R Y S T A L 7 Q O A R R L 8 S D R Y 9 10 A L C T 11 12 N A G C O 13 14 F E T N A D A P T E R E B B 15 16 17 N I A R U A T U N F I N N 18 19 S M A L O A D U 20 R O S L N 21 22 23 B B O F C O M A H 24 25 L S B O U C K 26 N O I S E 5 HARC Winter Curry Night It’s back once again the regular HARC Winter Curry Night! As in previous years the Curry night will be at the: Haldi restaurant in Southwater at 8pm on Thursday 24th January. http://www.haldirestaurant.co.uk Meet in the Lintot from 7:30pm. https://whatpub.com/pubs/NSX/178/lintot-southwater ( Group may be upstairs! ) If you would like to come along and join in, please let me know no later than Friday 18th January. g4lrp<at>btinternet.com 6 CARC-HARC Challenge This time we were hosted at Crawley’s HQ. HARC had two teams of 4. Off the top of my head we had G3ZBU, M0TWM, G70DN, G4LRP, G3OGP, G4TMC, G4EFO and G4ANN (apologies for errors and omissions!). A chap called Ted had organised 12 puzzles, alas we only had to deal with 11 because puzzle 8 was left back at his home… The puzzles: 1. Estimate the frequency of a signal 2. Build a leak detector 3. Estimate the resistance of two mystery resistors 4. Demonstrate standing wave on radio feeder 5. Flags and call-signs quiz 6. Listen to audio tape and decode mystery word 7. Q code quiz 8. Guess the town 9. Decode the pictures 10. SWR quiz 11. Which Club? 12. What’s faulty? Various items, that may or may not prove useful, were placed on a desk, such as straight lengths of model railway track, LEDs, transistors, wire, a box of resistors, chock-blocks, a tool-box without screwdrivers, wall-wart power supplies and a PP3 battery. There was also a covered signal generator on the desk that would output the mystery frequency. The cover was so one could not read the display of frequency or the fact that its output was disabled… We built a Wheatstone Bridge to try to find the value of the mystery resistors with a pair of LEDs connected together and used the box of resistors to find which values caused each LED to turn on. Both resistors were about 1.65k we thought. In fact the actual ones were 1.47k and 1.20k, so we were near but ‘nil points’. The track seemed to be ideal to look for standing waves by sliding an LED along, but the disabled signal generator did not have enough power to light up the LED… The Flags and Countries quiz was quite easy because a list of 15 countries and 18 call-signs were offered for 10 flags. The audio tape was of Morse Code, so we all thought. No-one decoded the answer, because it was a ‘Numbers Stations’ type of code in which the total number of dots and dashes led to one page and word, respectively, of a book. Needless to say, the Q-code quiz was not too bad with only a few unusual ones such as QRH, QTC and QTR. The full listing on the HARC website would have helped out: does my frequency vary, how many telegrams have you to send and what is the correct time? Decode the Pictures was good fun. A list of answers to pictures 2 to 11 had to be filled in. There were unnumbered pictures of radio kit where the first letter of the manufacturer made an anagram, so it didn’t matter that the pictures were not numbered. One of the pictures was missing though… 7 The SWR quiz was to calculate the VSWR if the voltage reflected is 50%. Everyone seemed happy with that. Then there was a list of 7 club call-signs such as G4FUR and G2LW. We had to write down the club. Again, not too bad and we got 4 correct. Coulsdon and Crystal Palace if you would like to know. Finally What’s Faulty, a page from a technical training book with a circuit of a mains power supply with Zener diode regulation. A table of voltage readings at various points on the circuit for 6 different fault conditions was given. By looking at these voltages it was possible to find the faulty component responsible for each fault. Some faults could be caused by more than one culprit but we only had to suggest one. We got all 6. The evening ended when we had exhausted ourselves; after scoring CARC won. Fortunately there was a crate of beer on offer to HARC so we didn’t return empty handed. Our thanks go to CARC for an enjoyable evening. 8 G3ZBU 9 December HARC Fox Hunt Results Nine teams took part in the November HARC Fox Hunt with 2E0XRT (aided by G8CKT) as the Fox who was concealed in the National Trust car park on Lavington Common.