Est. 1938 G4HRS H A R C N E W S The Journal of Horsham Amateur Radio Club October 2015 Sponsored by: 1 Contents In this issue 3. Carry a bag! Junk Sale info, radiation and the reusable bag scheme 4. No good A run down of failed ideas 17. Charlie Whisky Peter reviews National Field Day 21. The Crowborough experience All about Aspidistra 24. New OS What to know about Microsoft’s new Windows 27. West Country David’s DX-pedition 28. Square eyes Up to the middle of England and across to the east! 29. Diary of events Full listings for the month Cover picture: Moller ‘Skycar’ Published by Horsham Amateur Radio Club HARCNEWS is produced at home by G4JHI 2 Editorial This month see’s the autumn junk sale and for those who may not be familiar here is a basic summary. At 7.30pm the doors will open and during the 30 minute set up one can view the items coming up for auction. At the door David G4FQR and myself will hand out numbered tickets. If you are selling items please note that the club junk should go to the right hand end of the tables and everything else will go along in the order in which it arrives towards the left. When you buy something the finance department will need to know your ticket number and also when your items for sale come up. Light refreshments will be available during the peak time of the auction. Any items that are not sold should be taken away by whoever brought them. If possible it would be helpful if you are able to settle your account at the end of the evening. Following reports of interference across Band II 88 – 108MHz I have made some progress on this. The QRN can in fact be heard on my hand held from 29MHz to 200MHz! Over a period I have changed some of my home computer network for reliability from WiFi to Ethernet. Basically speaking the increased use of cables rather than WiFi is the cause! The router sends out some noise although does reduce a bit if the cables are disconnected. A few months ago I bought a 4 way network switch and this radiates somewhat and especially when the cable to a mini HiFi system is connected! The increase in QRN is quite dramatic! Fortunately it doesn’t affect the HF bands which are of most interest but I have noticed some similar noise across 2 metres. However it’s not too much of an issue since all of my aerials / antennas are outside away from most of the interference zone. So if you’re getting something similar this could be a starting point. On October 5th new rules by the government will come into effect and large retailers in England will start charging customers 5p a bag. This practice is already in operation in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I actually got caught out on this several years on one of my trips to Denmark which introduced this practice in 2003! So for all those local radio amateurs that I meet in Sainsburys I can inform you that from that date those throw away bags will disappear they informed me. At the time of writing they were selling the reusable bags for 10p but these will reduce to 5p when this all comes into effect. So I guess all the other retailers will be similar although we know that the minimum charge is 5p. However it should be pointed out that there are some exemptions just to confuse everything! If you do some Googling you’ll be able to get all the information you need. As time goes on could smaller retailers start the same thing? What would happen at the rallies?............ David G4JHI Copy deadline for November edition 20th October For items sent by email please send to this address: [email protected] 3 September HARC Meeting It didn’t work! by Mike Tooley, G8CKT/F8VON Our speaker, Mike Tooley, presented ten engineering designs that went badly wrong. In one way or another, they could all be considered spectacular failures! Here is the story of just three of the ten projects that Mike described: Domes and the Dymaxion Born in 1895 and hailed as one of the greatest minds of the 20th Century, Richard Buckminster Fuller was a distinguished American philosopher, systems theorist, architect, and inventor. He coined the terms “Spaceship Earth” and “synergetics”, and he developed numerous inventions, the most famous of which was the geodesic dome. At Harvard, Fuller had been a nonconforming student – holding the dubious honour of being kicked out not once but twice for bad behaviour. Later he suffered from depression. His early business failed and then took up heavy drinking, even contemplating suicide so that his family could claim the insurance money. After something of a mid-life epiphany he completely transformed his life, dedicating it to solving problems that confront humanity – notably transport and housing. ‘Bucky’ – as he liked to be called - is widely known for a large number of thought provoking quotations, including: 4 • To ask a politician to lead us is to ask the tail of a dog to lead the dog. • The opposite of nature is impossible. • A problem adequately stated is a problem solved theoretically and immediately, and therefore subsequently can be solved realistically. • Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment. Fuller went on to develop many ideas, designs and inventions. His geodesic dome proved to be a highly efficient structure and he proposed that it should be used on a massive to enclose the entire Manhattan district of New York. So, what could possibly have gone wrong with Bucky’s monster dome? Snow isn’t all that heavy but a cubic metre of it weighs about a tenth of a tonne. A hemispheric dome covering the entire Manhattan district of New York would have an area of approximately 57 square kilometres. A foot of snow – about 30cm - over the entire surface area would produce a load of around 1.8 million metric tonnes - that’s roughly equivalent to a dozen large cruise ships or 4000 fully loaded jumbo jets. Now 12 cruise ships stacked on top of the dome might sound a little drastic but, in fact, the load is mostly a uniformly distributed - a UDL - and so not quite as bad as it might at first seem. However, there’s another potentially more serious problem - would you want to be anywhere near the circumference of the dome when all that snow melts? 5 This would be a much more serious problem even if you could get the geodesic structure to support the load. In order to avoid flooding the rest of New York, massive underground drainage would be required. It seems that our technology guru didn’t even think about this! Now for another of Buckminster Fuller’s projects that was fatally flawed; enter the Dymaxion. Fuller described the Dymaxion as “ ... a vehicle that could hop off the road at will, fly about, then, as deftly as a bird, settle back into a place in the traffic”. The Dymaxion’s aerodynamic bodywork was designed for speed and fuel efficiency. It featured a lightweight hinged chassis, a rear mounted V8 engine and front wheel drive. With steering by the third, rear wheel, the Dymaxion could achieve a 90 degree steering lock and it could, as a result, turn in an exceptionally tight circuit circle, causing something of a sensation amongst crowds of onlookers. 6 Unfortunately the Dymaxion proved to be almost impossible to handle. Potential drivers had to be given specialist training and ‘Bucky’ himself noted severe limitations at high speed and in high wind. He declared openly that the Dymaxion would need considerable improvement before it could be made available to the general public. In 1933, shortly after its public launch, Prototype One crashed somewhat ignominiously outside the public entrance to the Chicago World Fair. In fairness, the accident was not actually caused by the Dymaxion but by a car driven by the Chicago South Park Commissioner who, it seems, wanted to take a close look at Fuller’s prototype vehicle. Unfortunately, he came too close and the driver of the Dymaxion, travelling at 70 miles per hour, swerved to avoid the impact and, in so doing, he rolled the prototype at high speed. Sadly the Dymaxion’s driver was killed and the two distinguished passengers - one an aviation pioneer and noted spy (if that’s not a contradiction in terms), the other no less than the French Air Minister - were both very seriously injured. Headlines in Chicago and New York read “Freak car rolls over – killing famous driver and injuring international passengers”. This was a huge blow for Fuller but he remained undaunted by the unfortunate event, repaired Prototype One and went on to develop Prototype Two. Unfortunately this was also a disaster with ‘Bucky’ himself at the wheel crashing the vehicle with his only daughter, Allegra, a passenger. Because of its chequered history and its appalling handling, and despite some initial interest from Walter Chrysler, the Dymaxion never went into production but perhaps this might have been a fortunate outcome and might have saved more than a few lives. 7 But, what of ‘Bucky’s’ vision of a car that could fly? There are plenty of reasons why we won’t see flying cars any time soon. With mass production the purchase price is likely to be well in excess of a quarter of a million pounds.