Meeting:2016/06/09

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Meeting (to be) held from 18:00-20:00 on 2016/06/09 in Zepler CLS Lecture Room

 

Amateur Radio

Year Book Submission

Southampton University Wireless Society (G3KMI) has become a thriving student-led amateur radio club with membership having increased year-on-year since our revival in 2011, after roughly a decade of dormancy. The society runs a busy exam centre, this year having has X people passing amateur radio exams, at a pass rate of 95%. On the 7th December 2015, we held our biggest ever single exam session with Y candidates.

The society regularly runs workshop evenings to give members the opportunity to work on their own projects whilst gaining advice from others. Over the last few years we have developed a set of straightforward project ideas for our new members' practical exam work. This has included VFO kits, 2m Slim Jims, 10m antennas and most recently Morse sounders.

We have had many successful society outings and operating sessions this past year. One of the highlights has been tracking the VHF signal from the International Space Station (ISS), in particular during an Amateur Radio on the ISS (ARISS) session where we picked up Tim Peake talking to students at a UK school. We also ran an operating station at the University's open days back in September 2015 as well as its public-engagement Science and Engineering day on the 12th March 2016. This July will be our fourth consecutive year entering a team for the RSGB VHF Field Day.

The society has had an ongoing project to install a rotating antenna array to our Students' Union building to replace the mast we historically had erected on campus. This includes a system of transceivers and control equipment which is planned for installation within a room in the Students' Union to provide a permanent shack for more regular operating sessions. Unfortunately, this project has suffered a number of recent setbacks but we hope to get this back on track over the coming year.

The society, in collaboration with external radio amateurs, has supported the continued development and maintenance the Farnham WebSDR. This antenna array is mounted to an previous MoD communications mast located north of Farnham in Surrey (IO91OF). It can be accessed by anyone with a web browser and covers multiple VHF and UHF amateur radio bands. In particular it is useful for tracking high-altitude balloons as well ISS and satellite passes.

Amateur Radio

Licence exams

  • All practical work should have been completed at last weeks revision session or due to be signed off.
    • Soldering Coaxial Connections
  • Next exams: Fri 6th May
    • Applicants: ADVANCED: Arihant Kuba, Frederick Nash, Laurie Kirkcaldy, Josh Curry, Mark Bumstead. INTERMEDIATE: Thomas Kelly, David Young, Cori Haws. FOUNDATION: Mohit Gupta.
    • People should be doing practice papers that can be found linked to on the exam syllabus pages on the wiki.
    • Any questions for Henry?
  • Building 54 10th floor, classroom 10B. Due to start at 19:00 BUT turn up at 18:30. Advanced must start at 19:00. Can turn up as early as 18:00.

SUSU fundings

  • Antenna Bags
    • Purchased and money claimed
  • End fed zep (250 W)
    • purchased
    • Thanks to Gwhip for the discount
  • Tripod mast
    • Arrived 28/04/16. First used at outing.
  • HF Beam Balun
    • Purchased
  • QSL Cards (deferred)
    • Unknown

Future Planning

Power pole distribution kits

    • First of the kits completed
  • Rest of the parts arrived
  • Need to laser cut cases

Stock of people who need to pay for club kit used

  • Should be a book with the money tin to see what is outstanding
  • Stock items with purchaser unknown (according to last meeting minutes):
    • 1.6ish m of ladder line (pay Tyler)
    • 1 BNC connector (pay Tyler)
    • 1 BNC connector (pay Club)
    • 3m ish of RG58 (pay Tyler)
  • Remove section after exams, but some people have not turned up for a while.

Mast

  • Workshop progress
  • Update from SUSU / Estates and Facilities
    • Large setback, E&F have suddenly said no.
    • Tyler is talking to Kerry.
      • No response so far

Basingstoke ARC Activities

  • Phil has received an email from Mark 2E0ECN, their chairman, asking if we're interested in the following:
    • 14 May - Radio Fun Day at 2015 VHF NFD Site
      • Chance to play with whatever, away from RF noise, other hams will be onsite.
    • 1 - 3 July - VHF Field Day, after the end of term.
      • 24h Contest on several bands - great fun! Can do joint entry as before if we commit early.
    • 13 August - Radio Fun Day
      • Chance to play with whatever, away from RF noise, other hams will be onsite.
    • 2 - 4 Sept - HF Field Day
      • Similar to VHF NFD, but on HF. Not one that the Uni club has entered before.
  • Move to the next meeting.
  • Phil has forwarded the email to the committee.

SUWS WordPress site

  • Can people upload any club photos taken within the past two years to the WordPress site
  • Can we make another blog post? One post per-term idea?
    • Murray will start writing

Callsign list update

  • Anyone not added new callsign after December exams?

Comments on 28/04/16 outing

  • Didn't happen on common. Happened on the SUSU grass.
  • Didn't get two way contact.
    • However did receive some very "interesting" SSTV.
  • Tested new kit
    • New end-fed zepp. Could do with some tuning as SWR was high. Works well.
    • New tripod mast using two support ropes connected as we did not have a mallet.
    • Used tape to connect end-fed zepp to mast. This worked well. Could do with clamp to connect rope to.
  • Used IC7000 rig. Manual in outing box, will not fit in radio case.
    • Outing box contains everything (other than large items) needed for an outing.
  • Tree climbing experience.

Amateur Radio AOB

  • IC7000, two PL259 RF connectors on back. Modify the VHF connector to an N-type connection.
    • Attempted to print out labels but they fall off. Performance upgrade benefit, and will tell difference between VHF and HF connection. Take a club vote. Is it worth the risk?

Joint Agenda

Next month's events

VHF field day

This month's events

  • Projects evening on the 12th for power pole distribution box.
    • Other club projects and web-master handover.
  • Think about doing on the 19th.
  • 26th meeting for those doing exams
  • Beer festival 2nd June. Traditional social for society. No meeting this week.

Storage shenanigans

  • Correct locations of kit on wiki.
  • Discuss storage location of new items.
    • End-fed Zepp in cupboard
    • Tripod mast in cage
    • Lock for the cage (split up to £17 three ways)
  • Still no padlock on cage with key.

Anyone need to be added to the mailing list?

Updating Email Aliases

  • committee (at) sown.org.uk, should be updated.
  • webmaster (at) suws.org.uk and (at) sown.org.uk, just David and Cori
  • exams (at) suws.org.uk, just Phil.
  • contact (at) suws.org.uk
    • Can we get people's email addresses who are on the committee.
  • Exam secretary and a few others to be added to the exams address, which is an account but will be turned into an alias.
  • Murray, Russell, Colin to be removed from the committee
  • People who need to be added: Cori, Tom, Freddie.


Joint Agenda

  • AOB
  • Any talks for after exams?
    • Will there be enough people here for this to be worth while?

SOWN

See SOWN Agenda