Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club (20th Anniversary Year—Established 1984)

JANUARY 2004 VOLUME 12, ISSUE 1

Club Newsletter

are a happy club, yes I know there has been the “odd” disagreement and it is fair to say that I would have been surprised if there hadn’t been considering the time that we have been running. Like life it is hard to please everyone and I have tried in all of my decisions to achieve this but having said that I am sure that I haven’t pleased every-one all of the time. I will say that any decision made was always regarding in what I see is the best for the club, even though personally it may not have been what I want to do . The club is also well recog-nised within the UK for what we have done on the contest-ing front but probably more so for what we have done for charity. We have certainly been a great example to show what can be achieved to help others through our hobby

(Continued on page 2)

First of all I would like to wish you and all your family A VERY HAPPY, HEALTHY AND PRO-SPOROUS NEW YEAR it really is hard to believe that we are now into another year. I also hope that Santa Claus was good to you all and you got all that new sparkling radio kit that you put in your letter to Santa, I’m sure you did.

Another year starts, regarding the Newsletter, so I wonder what new ideas John MM0JXI has in store for this year. I am sure he will have put a lot of thought into the matter and a new look will be given. I do hope you will all support John by providing lots of newsletter input, re-member it is your newsletter so no input means no news-letter. Don’t just leave it up to the normal contributors, it

is difficult enough for them to continually produce items month in and month out, so try and give them a break and put something in no matter how large or small it is.

It is also another major mile-stone in the Club’s History in that the club is 20 years old this year. Little did I believe how an idea would grow into what we have today, certainly over the 20 years we have done many things some we have kept from year to year and others we have dropped but basically we really are a very active club. Regarding the club’s structure, just keeping it plain and simple has certainly helped put us where we are today and I will always fight to keep it that way, honestly— it really has been our success. Regarding harmony within the club I genuinely still believe that we

Editorial

Congratulations

I would like to through the newsletter wish Lisa and John MM0JXI on behalf of us all at the Club all the best for their future happiness together. Lisa and John an-nounced their engagement, which took place on the 14th December 2003; the big day I believe is going to be Satur-day 11th September 2004. Congratulations once again

to you both.

That will now make two club weddings this year as also Sarah and Brian M0RNR are also getting married, their date I believe is in October 2004 (hopefully I have got the date right as I am doing it from memory).

Bob GM4UYZ

Special points of interest:

• CPSARC 20th Anniversary , Club started in 1984.

• Two weddings for Club Mem-bers in 2004

• Christmas Raf-fle results

Inside this issue:

Construction Project

2

Contest Calendar 3

Events Column 4

Radio Test Night 5

Club Attendance 6

Xmas Raffle Results 7

Xmas Meal photos 7

PAGE 2 CLUB NEWSLETTER

considering many see the hobby as a “loners” one. In summary then; let’s look forward to the future and con-tinue to keep the club flourishing, keep it a happy and welcoming one and lets use it to enjoy what is a fan-tastic hobby.

This editorial I do not have much to report as I have been giving myself a well-earned break from all matters radio, not 100% I must add, as I was still doing some bits and pieces. On the club front 99% of the club’s main events for 2004 have been confirmed up so please read Ron’s Events Col-umn to see what is going on or visit the club’s WEB page, as John will be adding a copy there. On the out and about front we will be putting on demonstration stations in June at the Museum of Flight and Lighthouses in August. Hopefully the events that I have put together will offer some-thing for everyone. I am always look-ing for any ideas so if you come up with anything well just let me know

(Continued from page 1) and it will be added to the ‘TO-DO’ list.

On the teaching front, I know I have been asked about running am Inter-mediate Course and yes I will once I have completed building up the course. I am using PowerPoint as the course presentation format but as yet I have only managed to produce about half the course, this has been due to quite a heavy work and home workload. Once I have it complete I will be in touch with those who have shown interest and I will get dates organised. What I will say is that I will stop doing all training after April but will start up again in August. I would love to do it all the year round but it takes up a huge amount of my personal time and I do need a break so I can spend time with my family plus carry out other Radio Club ac-tivities that I want to get involved in. Therefore I hope you will all under-stand my position. If you do know of any one who is interested in any of the training, Foundation or Interme-diate, then please still get in contact

with me as this enables me to plan in advance what training to deliver and when. Thanks in advance for this.

To the future we are now into an-other years club events so please as a reminder read Ron’s Events column for all the details. Nothing is planned for January but we kick off in earnest that we will be having another Radio Check Night in February courtesy of John MM0JXI so I hope you will all bring your radios along and put them through their annual MOT. That’s it then, enjoy the newsletter and I will see you all at all our events!

Bob GM4UYZ

Editorial continued

• First Night -- Meet and decide what project would be the best and work out what components, etc are required. Talk about the process of etching and how it is done ( Ron GM4IKU—I know you have done this could you de-liver a short talk on the subject?)

• Second Night -- Design the PCB ready for etching.

• Third Night -- Etch the PCB

• Fourth Night -- Clean the PCB and Drill Component holes and maybe make a start on adding the components.

• Fifth Night -- Add the compo-nents and after completion - test

• Sixth Night -- Same as the Fifth Night.

I have been pondering over the idea of a set of construction evenings (which would be held in the Commu-nity Centre) on different Friday Nights. What I’d like to do was build a project from start to finish and it should be something that everyone could use about the shack. I for one have never constructed my own pcb by using the etching process so I would like to include that as part of the project, how long it takes I don't know so it may have to be done by each individual away from the con-struction night.

My rough plan is as follows and is obviously open to variation.

• Ideas for what can be built as the project ---- Ideas to be with me by the 16th January

Ok these are my thoughts so if you are interested then please get back to me with your idea of what could be built as a project by the 16th January and also if you are interested in tak-ing part. If I receive no responses then I will take it as you are not inter-ested and the usual apathy domi-nates.

Hear from you all soon then.

Bob GM4UYZ

Construction Project

General Notes :

The club or its members plan/hope to be active in those events shown as bold above.

Full Event Rules Are Available On The Internet As Follows :

RSGB HF : http://www.blacksheep.org/hfcc/Rules-2003/index.html

RSGB VHF : http://www.blacksheep.org/vhfcc/rules/03rules/frameindex.html

ARRL : http://www.arrl.org/contests/

CQ WPX : http://home.woh.rr.com/wpx/

CQWW : http://www.cq-amateur-radio.com/cqwwhome.html

Links to most of the other events, or their rules, can be found on the SM3CER Contest Web Page under Calendar 2003. Start at http://www.sk3bg.se/contest/ and use the appropriate links to find the info you require.

Ron GM4IKU

DATE

START

(UTC)

DURATION

(HRS)

CONTEST

NOTES & INFO

05Jan 04 20:00 1:30 80 m Club Championship CW 11 Jan 04 10:00 2 70 Mhz Cumulatives RSGB 11 Jan 04 14:00 4 Affiliated Societies Team Contest CW 14 Jan-04 20:00 1:30 80 m Club Championship SSB 17 Jan-04 14:00 4 Affiliated Societies Team Contest SSB 17 Jan 04 12:00 12 Hungarian DX Contest CW / SSB 22 Jan 04 20:00 1:30 80 m Club Championship DATA 25 Jan 04 10:00 2 70Mhz Cumulatives RSGB 02 Feb 04 20:00 1:30 80m Club Championship SSB 08 Feb 04 10:00 2 70 Mhz Cumulatives RSGB 11 Feb 04 20:00 1:30 80 m Club Championship DATA 14 Feb 04 12:00 24 PACC Contest 14 Feb 04 21:00 3 1st 1.8 Mhz RSGB Contest 13 Mar 04 10:00 24 RSGB Commonwealth Contest CW 27 Mar 04 00:00 48 CQWW WPX Contest 17 Apr 04 00:00 24 Holyland Contest 05 Jun 04 15:00 24 RSGB National Field Day 1.8 – 28 MHz 13 Jun 04 TBA TBA Practical Wireless 144Mhz QRP Contest 144 Mhz Note the new date 03 Jul 04 14:00 24 RSGB VHF Field Day 24 Jul 04 12:00 24 RSGB IOTA Contest CW / SSB 04 Sep 04 13:00 24 RSGB SSB Field Day 3.5 – 28MHz 03 Oct 04 07:00 12 21 / 28 MHz Contest SSB 17 Oct 04 07:00 12 21 / 28 MHz Contest CW 13 Nov 04 20:00 3 Club Calls Contest

PAGE 3 VOLUME 12, ISSUE 1

Contest Calendar

DATE TIME EVENT CONTACT TEL./E-MAIL

09 Jan 04 7pm till late CPSARC Club Night in the Thorntree Inn, Port Seton

NOTE THIS IS THE 2ND FRIDAY IN JANUARY

Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723

06 Feb 04 7pm till late Normal Club Night in the Thorntree Inn Port Seton Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723

20 Feb 04 19:30 to 21:30 Radio Check Night by John MM0JXI

Port Seton Community Centre Resources Room 2

Bring along your rig for checking

Entrance £1

John MM0JXI 0131 665 9125

05-Mar-04 7pm till late CPSARC Club Night in the Thorntree Inn, Port Seton Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723

19-Mar-04 19:30 to 21:30 Talk by Alan Thomson BGS Edinburgh

“Space Weather and How It Affects Radio”

Port Seton Community Centre Resources Room 2

Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723

02-Apr-04 7pm till late CPSARC Club Night in the Thorntree Inn, Port Seton Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723

17 Apr-04 7pm 10 Pin Bowling night Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723

May TBA Special Event Museum of Flight East Fortune

(To Be Confirmed)

Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723

07 May 04 7pm till late CPSARC Club Night in the Thorntree Inn, Port Seton Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723

14 May 04 18:30 First 2m DF Hunt

Meet in the OLD SHIP INN Car Park

Ron GM4IKU 01875 811000

26 Jan 04 Lothians Radio Society Talk

Amateur Radio Observation Service (Barry Scarrisbrick G4ACK)

Peter Dick GM4DTH

0131446 0155

23 Feb 04 Lothians Radio Society Talk

The History of the Museum of Communication (Tom Stevenson)

Peter Dick GM4DTH

0131446 0155

PAGE 4 CLUB NEWSLETTER

Forthcoming events from January until April are shown below. Please make an effort to attend as many as you can especially John’s Radio check night and the talk by Alan Thomson. These events are provided for your enjoyment and do take a lot of organizing on your behalf. It’s a great shame that more callsigns are not in evidence on these nights

which are ideal for learning more about our hobby.

As usual any further events for inclu-sion in this page can be forwarded to me at GM4IKU@TISCALI.CO.UK

Ron GM4IKU

Events Column

PAGE 5 VOLUME 12, ISSUE 1

I would personally like to thank Alf for his assistance over the last couple of years in maintaining cluster links in and out of GM land.

All is not lost though as we hope to relocate the cluster equipment into this area and change the call to GB7BDX.

Cheers

Jim

From: Jim [mailto:yahoomail@gm7lun.co.uk]

Sent: 13 December 2003 00:57

To: cpsarc_dxcluster@yahoogroups.com

Subject: [cpsarc_dxcluster] GB7TDX closure

Due to personal circumstances GB7TDX will be closing on Mon 15th Dec.

GB7TDX Closing Down

I am running one of my a radio test nights on 20 February at 7.30pm in the Port Seton Community Centre to give club members access to profes-sional test gear to check out their equipment.

The main test gear will be my Mar-coni 2955 radio test set. This marvel-ous piece of gear combines the func-tions of several previously discrete testers. It will measure output power (up to 30W), transmit frequency (1Hz-1GHz) deviation (FM & AM), receive sensitivity and distortion. It will also give a reading of the SINAD measurements so beloved by manu-facturers as an indication of the qual-ity of a receiver. The 2955 will also send and receive CTCSS tones.

I intend to bring along a spectrum analyzer (courtesy of BT’s radio sup-port group) and a Bird Thruline power meter which can handle just about anything you care to throw at it.

What you need to bring is your radio, any power leads, a microphone (or data leads) and any output adaptors if you have unusual connectors (eg SMA)

I will have a 23A 12V power supply with me which should be enough for most radios.

If there is time I can do some adjust-ments (assuming you know how to adjust the rig or bring details with you).

The evening has proved to be very popular in the past and I’m grateful to other club members who have either brought their own test gear along or have operated some of mine to reduce the waiting times. If we have the resources we will set up more test stations.

Due to the fact that some members bring several rigs to be checked we will test one rig at a time, the owner then goes to the back of the queue to allow other members to have their

rigs checked without excessive wait-ing times..

This test night fulfills your license requirement to have your radios checked regularly and you should record this in your logbook .

We have in the past found radios which fail one or more of the tests we can do, on at least one occasion the radio was returned to the manu-facturer and they claimed they could not find anything wrong but the ra-dio now tests correctly. These tests can only be regarded as a comparison with other radios, we perform the same tests on all radios and record the results.

We also run an informal competition during the evening looking for the most sensitive radio—so is yours the best at winkling signal out of the noise?

John Innes MM0JXI

Radio Test Night

PAGE 6 CLUB NEWSLETTER

I have been playing about with good old Excel Spreadsheets and I thought I would use some of the information that I have gained since I started making a note of who attends our “Official” Club Nights, from away back starting in the November of 1992. Yes it is hard to believe that I have been doing this amount of re-cording for 11 years. For those of you who have not been around the club that long the reason I do this is that I keep a total history on all our club activities, which are submitted into the Local History Section of our Local Library. This will allow in years to come people in Port Seton the access on what an Amateur Radio Club has done, basically OUR RA-DIO CLUB’s HISTORY.

As you will notice there has been a “tail” off in attendees since our 1997 peak. Thankfully I can more or less answer where those regular people have disappeared too. Much of this drop is due to the change in individ-ual’s personal circumstances mostly funnily enough due to changes in work patterns. It is quite nice though to see last year, 2003 an upward turn in those who came through the door and hopefully it will continue with that trend. How we achieve this is a question many, many clubs are ask-ing them selves. The way forward has to be via the changes in Licensing Conditions, whether we as individu-als agree or disagree with them. Hopefully new blood will come out of this and from that they will come

to the club. To be honest the in-crease is certainly down to the new structure but we must still encourage this to continue. Hopefully they will give us a “look” of which I would hope they will like, and it will encour-age them to come back again. We need to be full of new ideas, try new things, see what happens and take it all from there. Yes I am very much aware that the same old things can turn people away but it is a continual struggle from one year to the next to try and generate a very active pro-gram what will please everyone. It will never happen 100% but the aim is to try and achieve that goal. Don’t knock the doers who go out their way to make things happen, it may not be perfect and it can even upset

at times what they do or how they react. If that is the case TALK to the person and explain why you are not happy, it does work you know, be constructive and not destructive. If you do take things on remember that there as many “lows” as there is “highs” so you must be prepared to take the rough with the smooth, don’t just give up at the first hurdle it achieves nothing. I certainly have over the years had many “lows” and thought about throwing in the towel and if I had done that there would be no radio club today, glad to say that there has been more “highs” than the “lows” so long may that situation last. The aim has always been to cre-ate a very active and happy Radio Club hopefully covering everything that as individuals we would like to see done, I think on a whole we achieve the majority of that but we cannot be complacent.

Sorry about the slight divergence from the original topic but in a way I think it is important to say. So I leave it up to you all to look upon the sta-tistics provided and draw your own conclusions.

Bob GM4UYZ

Club Attendance Since 1992

Attendees

020406080

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000

2002

Year

Atte

ndee

s

Attendees

Club Attendance 1992-2003

0

10

20

30

40

50

Jan(1992)

Jan(1993)

Jan(1994)

Jan(1995)

Jan(1996)

Jan(1997)

Jan(1998)

Jan(1999)

Jan(2000)

Jan(2001)

Jan(2002)

Jan(2003)

Jan(2004)

Years Since Statistics Taken

Atte

ndee

s

PAGE 7 VOLUME 12, ISSUE 1

The raffle raised a Grand Total of £75 towards our Annual Donation to the British Heart Foundation. Once again thanks for dipping into your pocket and putting a little bit more towards our adopted charity.

I would like to thank all those who donated something towards the raffle without your donation there wouldn't have been a one.

To Kenny GM0WHM thanks for putting your “Black Isle Beer” which you won and coming up with the idea to auction it once again to help raise some money.

The results then...

Christmas Raffle Results (1) Peter MM3FBC Bottle of Wine

(2) Paul 2M1IBE Bottle of Wine

(3) Tom GM0PPE 2004 Diary

(4) Bob GM4UYZ Bottle of Wine

(5) Ron GM4IKU Bottle of Whisky

(6) Bob MM3EYN Bottle of Wine

(7) Bill MM0BXK Surprise Win???

(8) Dudley GM8PAH 2004 Diary

(9) Fiona In Lounge Bar Surprise Win??

(10) Melanie GM4UYZ’s Daughter Post-it Holder

(11) Dave In Lounge Bar Glasses

(12) Colin MM3ENM Christmas Cards

(13) Jim MM3EWI “Smellie Stuff”

(14) Paul 2M1IBE Bottle of Vodka

(15) Peter GM1RCP Security Hammer

(16) John Macrae SWL Mug

(17) Tom GM4LRU Chocolates

(18) Kenny GM0WHM Black Isle Beer

(Prize auctioned and won by Gavin GM4GVJ)

Thanks again...........

Bob GM4UYZ

Christmas Meal Photos (taken by Ricky MM3RIK)

Club Secretary Bob Glasgow 7 Castle Terrace Port Seton

Email: gm4uyz@cpsarc.com

Information

The Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club was formed by Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ in 1984, to help the local amateurs get to know each other.

Numbers have increased steadily over the years and now average about 20.

Far from being just a local club we have members coming from the Borders, Dumfries, Strathclyde and Fife.

The Club meets on the first Friday of every month (Second Friday of January) in the lounge of the Thorntree Inn on the old Cockenzie High Street from 7pm till late.

The Club is run in a very informal way, there are no fees, no real committee structure, just a group of like minded people doing something they en-joy!

This does not mean that we don’t do anything, we enter (and win!) contests, train newcomers, hold talks and video nights and hold a popular annual Junk Sale.

The Club supports the British Heart Foundation in memory of a member who died from heart dis-ease by donating the profits from events we hold, we have raised over £9,436 since 1994.

The Club is affiliated to the Radio Society of Great Britain and holds the callsigns MM0CPS and GM2T which are used for our contest and special event entries.

We also have our own internet domain name www.cpsarc.com and club members can get their own ‘callsign@cpsarc.com’ email addresses.

Contacts

General Correspondence, Novice Training, Contest entries

Bob Glasgow gm4uyz@cpsarc.com

HF Contests, 5wpm Morse Class

Cambell Stevenson mm0dxc@cpsarc.com

VHF Contests

Colin Smith gm0cln@cpsarc.com

Newsletter, Web Site, email admin

John Innes mm0jxi@cpsarc.com

Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club (20th Anniversary Year—Established 1984)

W E’R E ON THE WEB! WW W. CPSARC.COM