mas Night out on Satur-day 3rd December this year, I have already put out an email to the distri-bution list that I have and the amount of re-sponses are absolutely negligible. There isn’t the decency as requested to respond with either a YES or a NO, to be hon-est the apathy shown is really, really getting me down to the extent I am wondering why I should bother. Try organising something yourself, which requires people to respond and you get no answers how would you feel? “Cheesed off" I suspect to say the least!!!!! Have a little courtesy to anyone or-ganising an event and if they ask for a response then give them one, it is only good manners. Enough of that, a copy of what I am willing to organise is in the news-letter and from the re-plies so far a meal is top of the list. Can I have your answers by the 30th September please? I am also starting to think about next year’s

(Continued on page 2)

equipment that is re-quired to teach the Foun-dation and Intermediate Licences, which believe it or not comes to nearly £5000. It is surprising how a pound here and a pound there all eventu-ally total’s up. To whether we are success-ful or not it remains to be seen. Lastly I must thank everyone who put forward suggestions, some were taken on board and others sadly weren’t, not that they were bad suggestions but they fell outside the re-mit of training. No mat-ter what, you all played your part in producing the eventual application, so many thanks and let us keep our fingers crossed. This month the planned activities are another DF Hunt night at the end of the month, 30th Septem-ber. Now this one is a real challenge as it is done in the dark, this really tests your skills. The “fox” has certainly been getting devious on the last few outings so why not come and try and catch him…. To the future, the Christ-

Well folks here we go again with another month’s editorial, which has certainly been a busy month for myself with regard to the radio club activi-ties. From the club point of view we have once again had another successful Junk Night and I must thank everyone who helped donated refresh-ments and any raffle prizes. A fuller report can be found later in the newsletter. Lighthouse Weekend has just passed and another great suc-cessful one it was. The weather was very kind to us with no rain on both events, which is an abso-lute miracle. Like Junk Night a fuller report can be found further in the newsletter. I have at long last man-aged to submit our appli-cation to the Lottery (Awards for Scotland) for a possible grant. I didn’t realise how much work was involved in actually producing a case and what was fully required. I have submit-ted a request that would cover us for all the

Editorial

Inside this issue:

Lighthouses Weekend 2

Junk night 3

IOTA 2005 log 4

Contest Calendar 5

RSGB 50MHz Trophy 6

CW Crossword 8

Club Accounts 9

DF Hunt Rules 10

Test Your Knowledge 11

Christmas Night Out 12

Events Column 13

Special points of interest:

• Photos and report from Lighthouses Weekend

• Club Accounts

• Christmas Night Out

September 2005

Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club

Volume 13, Issue 9

Club Newsletter

Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

activities, any ideas. Does anyone want to take a pro-ject onboard and get something going? Don’t all rush! Serious I feel I need help here and I would like someone to take it on and run with it fully. Who ever does it will find it is hard work to sustain a level of interest and drive it forward. No I am not being negative but realistic. So a volunteer then! Something I have noticed whilst we take part in Spe-cial Events, Demonstra-tion Station’s, etc is that

we get lots of visitors who are all licensed but are unwilling to have a go on the radio. At the end of the day we are all licensed amateurs. I wonder why that is the case? Is it shy-ness? Because we use computer logging at these events are you afraid of that? (Computer logging is easy; honestly plus from my perspective after the event it makes the paper-work 1000 times easier). Is it the thought of running a Pile-Up, yes it can be daunting but remember you will be controlling it? Are you not interested at all? So what is your rea-

son it would be great to know? For those of us who do operate we have all been there and have worked at it plus we do enjoy the buzz as well. There is no doubt it does enhance your operating skills. Why not just give it a try you may just like it. A night could be set-up to practice logging but the question is would you be interested in attending? That is it then enjoy this month’s newsletter. Bob GM4UYZ

(Continued from page 1)

20 & 21st AUGUST 2005 Another great weekend at this event with even the gods shin-ing down on us, the fact that that no rain fell, it must have been a miracle. The weather was an absolute scorcher. This year we headed for Barns Ness on the Saturday morning, leaving about 08:00 and set up most of the station. This year we had the following set-up: Station 1 – FT1000MP & AL-PHA Linear fed into a 20M Monoband Yagi at about 60 feet on a tower. Station 2 – FT1000MP & AL-PHA Linear fed into a 40M Monoband Yagi at about 60 feet on a tower. There was also an 80M dipole strung between the two towers which were switchable between the sta-tions. We operated from the club caravan, with the power being provided this year from the actual lighthouse workshops,

this was such a bonus as we didn’t have a noisy generator to contend with. The use of the lighthouse workshops was due to the kindness of Lafarge who now own the property. On arrival the shack was set-up and at the same time the aerials were erected. We de-cided on using the Monoband aerials this year to give them a “run” before CQWW at the end of October and again, which really is now by default, that all QSO’s would be com-puter logged, this from my point of view being the QSL Manager certainly helps me tremendously. Getting up and running proved to be relatively easy but for some odd reason for the first hour or two we were having RF type problems with the computer system. The moving of the actual com-puters and cables seemed to cure it. No matter how much filtering is added to the leads the old “RF” still seems to get

in. Although it was 11:49 BST when we eventually got up and fully running the stations were kept very busy indeed and many pile-ups were worked, phew! Apart from the RF problems mentioned earlier there were no other problems to contend with. Plenty of social breaks were taken as well as this is what the event was all about. Satur-day night saw the normal bar-beque plus the opportunity to have a couple of beers, well enjoyed before we all departed to bed about 02:00 on the Sun-day morning. The Sunday morning, thanks to Innes GM4VJV who turned up after his nightshift at La-farge, we were on the air for 07:09, for the rest of us it was the struggle to get up, maybe the few beers we had the night before were the cause of that! For the rest of Sunday the stations once again kept very

Lighthouses Weekend

Editorial cont...

Club Newsletter Page 2

busy before we pulled the plug at 15:00. Everything was dis-mantled and we left the site about 16:00. It was once again a great social event, certainly enjoyed by everyone who attended. 1061 QSO’s were made with the breakdown as follows: Note: the count doesn’t show any Dupe’s that were made. Hope-fully for next months newslet-

ter I will try and get a break-down on what countries and lighthouses that we worked Many thanks to everyone who came and took part and con-tributed without this the event could never take place. Bob GM4UYZ

Band CW SSB PSK31

80 0 60 0

40 0 261 0

20 0 726 0

17 0 0 0

15 0 0 0

10 0 0 0

ALL 0 1047 0

This year once again the weather for our Junk Night couldn’t have been any better; someone up there must like us…… The worry before this sort of event is will people turn up; glad to say I wasn’t disappointed. The numbers that came via the door this year were down on the 2004 numbers from 165 to 137. For those of you interested in statistics then numbers that have come through the door on each junk night are printed in the sidebar. For a Friday night event we certainly cannot complain, so long may it continue. Looking around the hall this year, the number of people there looked very constant until about 20:00 when it does seem to thin out and those left eagerly await the raffle being drawn, any way tremendous to see everyone. This year again I received a few compliments about our Junk Night and a sample are “Tremendous Friendly At-mosphere”, and “Well run night congratulations to you all, keep it up”. Personally on hearing these it makes all the hard work really worthwhile. Once again Bill & Betty of Jaycee and Rose & Norrie of Tennamast continued to give us their support on the eve-

ning. Peter GM1RCP and his new Business “Wireless Em-porium” also joined in this year offering his support. The Thorntree Inn also kindly donated a raffle prize for the support that we give them over the year, so thanks to them and to every one else for their donations to our Raffle. Before the raffle was drawn Heather Gregory of the Brit-ish Heart Foundation then spoke a few words explaining what the British Heart Foun-dation is all about plus thank-ing us for our continuing sup-port for them. One thing I forgot to do this year is the “draw for the Lucky Door Ticket” and all I can do is say that I genuinely hadn’t no-ticed it on the tickets and I never prepared any prize for it so it was never drawn. Again all I can do is put my hands up and apologise sin-cerely. The raffle then took place, drawn by Heather. The actual figure that we raised on the night was £536.77. This added to what we had raised before Junk Night gives us a grand total of £845, which has now been donated to the British Heart Foundation. Thanks goes to everyone for all the effort put in to raise the money as it really is going to a tremendous cause. For your information since we started we have now raised a

grand total of £11237, not bad for a “wee” radio club. FOR THE DIARY: The offi-cial presentation of the cheque will take place at 20:00 on Friday 7th October (Club Night) in the Thorntree Inn (Lounge Bar). Please come along and give this your support. Lastly I would like to say a personal thanks to everyone who helped put the Junk Night together. To Colin 2M0AYZ for helping me with the door and raffle tickets, Ron GM4IKU for printing the door tickets and posters, Colin GM0CLN for the Gen-eral Club Posters, Tom GM4LRU for running the Talk-In station and if I have missed any one then thanks to you. To Yvonne and Liz who worked hard behind the re-freshments counter and lastly to everyone who handed Food or raffle prizes in. Without this sort of help this type of event would never happen. So again thanks. WELL DONE EVERYONE FOR A VERY SUCCESS-FUL JUNK NIGHT AND FUND RAISING YEAR. Bob GM4UYZ

Junk Night

1994 150

1995 154

1996 162

1997 133

1998 151

1999 154

2000 157

2001 168

2002 152

2003 176

2004 165

2005 138

Average No. 155

Make some space in that junk box!

Volume 13, Issue 9 Page 3

The final log has now been submitted for our entry into this year RSGB IOTA Contest which took part over the last weekend in July (30 & 31st). As normal we took part in the contest from the Island of Tiree IOTA EU008 and this year we were blessed with fantastic weather, no major mishaps and the bands being open. I will leave the full report of our trip to John MM0JXI. [coming next month—no space in September! - Ed] The logging software we used this year again was NA although I am hopefully going to look at the logging software N1MM as it deals with serial numbers correctly over the network when more than 1 PC is used. The difference is N1MM is a Windows based software whereas NA is still DOS based. I diverge as they say…… Below is the final screen from NA for this year’s entry showing the num-ber of CW and SSB along with the respective multipliers for each band and lastly the final score as submitted by us. This score once it goes into the checking system will no doubt change.

2005 Entry

2004 Entry (Official Score in the results was 3,491,889) I have just added this so those interested can make a comparison between the 2004 and 2005 scores.

Bob GM4UYZ

IOTA 2005 submitted log

How good is your Amateur Radio

Knowledge?

Club Newsletter Page 4

Date Start

(UTC) Dur

Hours Contest Notes & Info

03-Sep-05 14:00 24 144MHz Trophy Contest

04-Sep-05 11:00 4 144MHz Backpackers Contest

01 Oct 05 07:00 12 RSGB 21/28 Mhz Contest SSB

16-Oct-05 07:00 12 RSGB 21 / 28MHz Contest CW

29 Oct 05 00:00 48 CQWW DX SSB Contest

12-Nov-05 20:00 3 RSGB Club Calls Contest

19-Nov-05 21:00 4 RSGB 2nd 1.8MHz Contest

26-Nov-05 00:00 48 CQWW DX CW Contest

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.contesting.co.uk/hfcc/calendar.shtml RSGB VHF : http://www.blacksheep.org/vhfcc/index.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 Start at http://www.sk3bg.se/contest/ and use the appropriate links to find the info you require.

Contest Calendar

Volume 13, Issue 9 Page 5

also results in a very low noise array, which is ideal for QSO’s we were hoping to make both via ground-wave, and tropo. After plac-ing an additional pole on the top of the tower, we were able to mount both antennas at a stacking distance of 10’. A simple power divider was made from two runs of RG11X (75ohm) (0.75 & 1.75 wavelength) via a T-connector. From this, we were able to take a single run of LDF4-50 right down the mast and into the caravan, which would hopefully make a difference to our receive performance. This appeared to be the case as despite run-ning full legal limit, we only struggled on receive with a few QSO’s into G & GM, and several of these were way down into England with stations running verticals. Indeed for one QSO that we made with Nigel G3TXF on CW, we received an Email from him first thing on Sun-day saying …..

“Hullo John, Thanks for my FIRST EVER QSO (GM2T) with GM on 6m yesterday evening. I'll be QSLing for sure! 73 - Nigel G3TXF

PS : I was using my HF Beam - probably not the best thing for 50MHz.” ——

You may well recognise Nigel’s callsign as he is a well known HF DXPedi-tioner’, but I certainly had never heard him on 6m be-fore. Suffice to say we were as delighted as Nigel was, as the QSO was over 500Km in relatively flat conditions. Despite there being very little Sporadic-E propagation at the start of the contest, we

(Continued on page 7)

The 50MHz Trophy Contest has always been a favourite of mine, however, in recent years, along with others, I’ve given up my weekend pass for it, usually to build up “brownie points” for HF Field Day (CW). To make a reasonable num-ber of contacts in this con-test, just like all the other VHF/UHF bands from GM, you really need to go port-able and arguably the need for a good hilltop site is even more crucial than on the higher VHF bands, where a good sea path, many would say, is of more importance. All previous club entries for the 50MHz Trophy have been made from the usual site at Mainslaughter Law IO85RU and the team (myself and Colin GM0RLZ) decision was that this would be as good a site as we could get from GM without an AATV to take us up the Cheviots or one of the high peaks around Green Lowther. Every entry we had made prior to this one had been with our trusty 6ele home-brewed NBS design yagi. Although this has been a great workhorse over the years, in terms of forward gain and lobe patterns it does not compare with the many new computer optimised designs that we see nowa-days. After a fair bit of de-bate we decided to upgrade to a stack of 2 x 5ele DK7ZB (#) design yagis. Colin GM0RLZ had already homebrewed one of these yagis last year, and soon had all the required parts to add a second one to the collection. Whilst these yagis were some 2 metres shorter than our 6ele NBS yagi, careful optimisation of the design brings their forward gain to within about 1dB of the NBS. Although we were

happy with the new choice of antennas we were some-what wary of how they would perform in Sporadic-E type propagation, as the ef-fect of the stacking might well keep our signal too close to the horizon. Whilst this would be great for Tropo DX, it may well compromise signals via Sporadic-E, where the signals arrive at a higher angle. More on this later. For a change, we also had the luxury of full legal limit on the band as we had an Acom 1000 on loan, thanks to Rob GM3YTS. In all previous years, we had at best, an IC746 or IC706 running barefoot at 100 watts and had only ever made more than 200 QSO’s once, in 2000. Colin GM0RLZ and son Christopher MM3GVE turned up at my QTH on the Saturday morning at 9am, and after collecting the club caravan and Cambell MM0DXC’s tower, we headed up to Mainslaughter Law at 10am, arriving there some 45 minutes later. The weather was nice and bright upon arrival, though it was also fairly windy as well. With only one band to set up, we took our time with the assembly process, and even had time to stop for food and water breaks. The only thing new to us on setting up was having to place two phased antennas on the mast, rather than a single yagi. Using yagis with a relatively short boom length, we were able to use a stacking distance in the re-gion of 0.6 wavelength, rather than the more normal 1.2 wavelength for larger yagis. Whilst this will give a slight reduction in the gain achieved as a result of the stacking, on the plus side it

RSGB 50MHz Trophy 2005—GM2T

Read about how MM0CCC got on from

Mainslaughter Law

Club Newsletter Page 6

For the first time ever, we deviated from the usual VHF contest loggers (G0GJV & SDV) and instead used Win-Test (#) by Olivier F5MZN. Once we were used to the keystroke procedure (use the space bar, rather than tab) we were very impressed with the software. It was nice to see a real-time map which shaded each new locator square worked and also to have the cluster on-screen at the same time. 70MHz support has not been fully implemented yet, ruling this logger out for VHF NFD, but Olivier has began writing modules for many RSGB HF contests so watch this space. This is a real breath of fresh air from the other loggers which seem to focus entirely on USA and some of the bigger Euro-pean contests. In the photograph you will see a map of Europe which shows a spread of our QSO’s over the weekend. Thanks to Matt M0MAT of the Bristol Contest Group G(W)6YB/P who has created a program which will plot VHF QSO’s taken from the log, onto a resizeable map. On sending me the file containing the map, Matt commented to me that we had a much broader spread of DX QSO’s than they managed at GW6YB/P. Although our QSO total is way down on Matt’s group, our raw (claimed) score prior to multipliers surprisingly exceeds theirs. This is likely due to a greater number of our QSO’s being via Spo-radic-E since our average points per QSO is 955 (Km), compared to their 608(Km). It therefore looks like that despite our northerly loca-tion, which we often com-plain of as being a disadvan-tage on VHF, we were in a more favourable location for

(Continued on page 8)

started at great pace as there was a continual pile-up of UK stations trying to work us. Some club members were also down at the Mu-seum of Flight for the GB2MOF special event and thanks are due to everyone who picked up the mic from there and worked us, waiting in turn amongst the other UK stations who we were working at the time. According to the online tropo forecast (#), there were above average (though not great) conditions over the North Sea for the weekend, particularly towards ON/PA/DL. As the day progressed, we managed a few QSO’s with these countries on tropo, which in previous years would have been a rare luxury. Late on Saturday night, whilst monitoring the ON4KST VHF/UHF (#) chat pages, DL3YEE asked us if we’d like to try a CW sked. Although this was in excess of 800Km, we agreed to give it a go and duly completed with him in about 5 minutes. This was our best tropo QSO of the weekend and certainly brought a smile to our faces. Our best Sporadic-E QSO was early on Sunday with UT1IC/P in KN96AX at

(Continued from page 6) 2933Km. There were some rumours going about just after the contest that stations who managed to contact UT1IC/P would not get the points they claimed for the QSO as the locator given out was in the Black Sea how-ever, it has since been estab-lished that this station was located on an oil rig and our best DX will therefore stand. Phew!! Although we were a bit con-cerned that the new antenna array might compromise our Sporadic-E performance, our fears were not justified as we enjoyed several good open-ings in the 24 hours we oper-ated. In particular was a great run on Saturday after-noon/evening into YU/LZ/YO/9A, and a similar open-ing in terms of numbers and duration on Sunday morning into SP. Most of the Spo-radic-E signals were very strong so we would have no hesitation using the stacked yagis again. By closedown on Sunday at 3pm local, we had 385 QSO’s, 130 locator squares, 27 countries (G, GM, GW, GI, GD, EI, CT, EA, F, ON, PA, DL, HB9, I, 9H, LZ, YO, YU, T9, S5, 9A, SP, OE, OK, OH, UR, LY), and a total claimed score of 57,696,872.

RSGB 50MHz Trophy report

50MHz Trophy cont...

Volume 13, Issue 9 Page 7

Across

1. Taker of the CW exam 6. Generate code 10. Weak (CW abbr.) 11. First CW mode 13. Something that makes you say 39 Down 15. To save time, CW ops do this to letters 17. I am listening here (Q-signal) 18. And (CW abbr.) 19. Listening to CW has this quality 20. Rapid sequence of QSOs 22. Biggest ham event, but not a contest (abbr.) 23. Simplest code making device 24. Too much code will turn your arm to this 27. Organized on-the-air meeting 29. Load (abbr.) 30. Look for 32. Semi-automatic code generator 33. CW was the first of this type of mode 36. Radio signals (abbr.) 37. I am closing the station (CW abbr.) 38. Eight dots signify this 41. Equalize (abbr.) 44. Thermometer metal (chemical symbol) 45. Unit of frequency (abbr.) 46. Sorry (CW abbr.) 48. CW signal report 50. Speed up (Q-signal) 52. Every state is this direction from KL7 53. Fast and accurate 56. End of message (CW abbr.) 57. A CW signal is on .. off 59. The longer code element 61. The magic word (CW abbr.) 64. A call sign is your radio .. (abbr.) 66. Nagging desire to send code 67. The shorter code element 68. CW "Speed King" 70. With 70 Down two precious metals (chemical symbol) 71. Inventor of Morse

Down

1. The exam can be one of these in your side 2. Syncopated code rhythm 3. License (CW abbr.) 4. Equivalent of OM 5. Buddy 6. Prearranged contact 7. Original home state of RCA Labs 8. At 5 wpm, each word takes this many seconds 9. Number of call districts in the US 12. CW abbrevia-tions used for traffic control 14. Device that generates code electronically 16. Vacuum tube gain 21. User interface for 14 Down 22. CW Club 25. Telephone (CW abbr.) 26. First medium to use the code 28. Highest frequency that works 31. Add an 'r' to get the thing you use to re-ceive a code transmission 32. This is what code users pound 34. Interference (Q-signal) 35. Who is calling me? (Q-signal) 39. Home state to the biggest US hamfest 40. The telegrapher's laugh 42. I have nothing for you (Q-signal) 43. Saint or suite (abbr.) 44. The ARRL's is in Newington, CT 47. This color means overload!

49. Suface-mount (abbr.) 51. Slow down (Q-signal) 53. Stand by (CW abbr.) 54. CW signal that changes frequency during each character 55. CW signals and musical ..... sound alike 58. Number of characters per unit of time 60. The pinnacle or peak of achievement 62. Rising and falling, they determine band-width of code signals 63. A very weak signal mode that uses CW to bounce signals back to earth (abbr.) 65. Just .. it 69. Women that have their own radio league (abbr.) 70. With 70 Across two precious metals (chemical symbol)

Sporadic-E conditions over the weekend. The contest results are due out shortly. Currently, our claimed score of 57,696,872 pts is sitting at 3rd in the Open Section, behind MD6V 94,047,696 pts, and GW6YB/P 64,601,328 pts. If we maintain the 3rd place after adjudication we will be more than delighted with the result. We had been hoping to finish somewhere around 7th place as there were also several other well known “big guns” who were also QRV, and were giving out higher serial

numbers than us when we worked them. We are now mulling over what improvements we can make for next year. This will focus mainly on the antenna system. Do we make two more 5ele yagis and put them in a box formation (extra gain, but H-Frame required and a narrower beam pattern) or do we build longer boo length yagi’s (extra gain but more mechanically challeng-ing and a narrower beam pat-tern)? What do you think? Maybe, just maybe, we might get more folks along next

year. 73 de John MM0CCC. # DK7ZB Yagi Designs : http://www.qsl.net/dk7zb/start1.htm # Online tropo DX forecast : http://home.cogeco.ca/~dxinfo/tropo_nwe.html # ON4KST Chat Pages : http://www.on4kst.info/chat/login.php # Win-Test Logger : http://www.win-test.com/

(Continued from page 7)

VHF National Field Day 2005

Club Newsletter Page 8

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Volume 13, Issue 9 Page 9

Date FRIDAY 30th SEPTEMBER Time MEET AT 6:30PM FOR A BRIEFING PRIOR TO A 7:00PM

START Place The "OLD SHIP INN" CAR PARK (Bar Entrance Side), PORT SETON Grid Ref. NT408 759 ORDNANCE SURVEY LANDRANGER MAP No.66 Entry Fee £1:00 PER PERSON, TO BE DONATED TO THE BRITISH HEART

FOUNDATION Frequency 145.275MHz, FM, VERTICAL POLARISATION Callsign GM4IKU/M Hunt Area THE FOX WILL BE LOCATED WITHIN THE AREA ON ORD-

NANCE SURVEY LANDRANGER MAP No.66 BOUNDED BY THE FIRTH OF FORTH TO THE NORTH, THE EDGE OF OS LANDRANGER MAP No.66 TO THE EAST, THE LINE JOINING GRID REF. NT400700 and NT400 760 TO THE WEST. A SMALL MAP SHOWING THIS AREA WILL BE ISSUED TO ALL COM-PETITORS AT THE START.

TX Times TRANSMISSIONS BY THE FOX WILL BE 30 SECONDS EVERY 5 MINUTES. THE FIRST TRANSMISSION BEGINNING AT 7:00PM, FOLLOWING TRANSMISSION TIMES WILL BE 7:05PM, 7:10PM.etc. THE FINAL TRANSMISSION WILL BE AT 8:45PM AND WILL REVEAL THE LOCATION OF THE FOX AND THAT OF THE POST HUNT MEETING.

Access THE FOX WILL BE IN A POSITION WHICH IS ACCESSIBLE BY CAR (4WD NOT NECESSARY!)

TX Ban NO TRANSMISSIONS, OTHER THAN THOSE OF THE FOX, SHOULD BE MADE ON THE HUNT FREQUENCY AT ANY TIME DURING THE EVENT

Vacate ONCE A TEAM HAS FOUND THE FOX THEY SHOULD LEAVE THE IMMEDIATE AREA AND SHOULD NOT TRANSMIT ON ANY FREQUENCY WHILE IN THE VICINITY OF THE FOX

Equipment ONLY ONE SET OF DF EQUIPMENT IS TO BE USED PER TEAM AT ANY ONE TIME.

Hunting DURING THE HUNT PLEASE TRY TO BE CONSIDERATE TO OTHER ROAD USERS WHEN CHOOSING YOUR STOPPING POINTS ANY TEAMS FOUND TO BE BREAKING THE ROAD SPEED LIMITS IN ANY AREA WILL BE DISQUALIFIED IMME-DIATELY SIMILARLY, ANY TEAMS FOUND TO BE BREAK-ING ANY OF THE ABOVE RULES WILL BE DISQUALIFIED

144MHz Fox Hunt Rules

Go racing about East Lothian with an aerial hanging out your car!

Club Newsletter Page 10

Answers from August 2005 newsletter “Test Your Knowledge”. 1c, 2d, 3b, 4a, 5d, 6a, 7c, 8a, 9b, 10c 1. Operating a transmitter without an an-

tenna is undesirable because a. The transmitter could be damaged. b. The SWR on the feeder will be low. c. The carrier will not be modulated. d. Excessive power will be lost in the

feeder.

2. Which combination of transmitter power and antenna gain will give an e.r.p. of 50W? a. 10W transmitter, antenna gain of 2. b. 25W transmitter, antenna gain of 2. c. 50W transmitter, antenna gain of 2. d. 100W transmitter, antenna gain of 2.

3. A balun is

a. Used instead of a dummy load. b. Used to connect a dipole to a coaxial

cable. c. A particular type of antenna. d. A type of feeder.

4. The correct cable to use between the microphone and the transmitter would be a. Twisted twin flex b. 50R coaxial cable c. Screened cable d. 3-core twin and earth cable

5. Interference on a TV screen takes the form of two bands of spots lasting about 5 seconds repeating approximately every 10 minutes. What is the most likely cause? a. An electric motor in a washing ma-

chine b. A wind screen wiper motor on a car c. A heating element in an electric kettle d. A faulty thermostat in a fish tank

6. Interference conducted out of a transmit-ter along its power supply leads can be detected by a. Replacing the transmitter antenna

with a dummy load b. A sensitive receiver tuned to multi-

ples of the transmitter frequency c. A de-sensitised receiver tuned to

either side of the transmitter fre-quency

d. Disconnecting the power supply unit

7. A high voltage power supply for a valve transmitter produces about 1500V. The smoothing capacitor is 100µF and the bleeder resistor is 600KR. After 1 minute the P.D. across the capacitor will be ap-proximately a. 50V b. 500V c. 1000V d. 1500V

8. Three inductors, each having an induc-

tance of 6mH, are connected in series, with no mutual coupling. The combined value of inductance is a. 2mH b. 6mH c. 12mH d. 18mH

9. An HF receiver to receive 2MHz has an IF of 465KHz.How many choices of local oscillator frequencies are there? a. 1 b. 2 c. 3 d. 4

10. A crystal is used inside a temperature controlled oven. The purpose of the oven is to a. Cause the crystal to operate on a har-

monic frequency. b. Reduce the reverse bias current c. Stabilise the turn-on voltage d. Maintain the frequency stability

Just how good is your Amateur Radio

knowledge?

Test Your Knowledge

Volume 13, Issue 9 Page 11

Yes folks believe it or not it is time to turn my attention to organising the Christmas Night out. The planned night is Saturday 3rd December and what we do, now comes up to what you would like. The choices are as below with the eventual choice being that which gives the majority of responses. ARE YOU INTERESTED IN A CHRISTMAS NIGHT OUT Yes/No Choices A Meal Yes/No

ο If “Yes” what are your preferred choices (State 1st, 2nd, etc)?

Chinese _______

Indian _______

English _______

Other: (Please State) ______________ _______

Recommend a good restaurant

Restaurant _________________________________

• A Dinner/Dance Yes/No

ο Where do you recommend?

Location __________________________________

• Saturday Night Away Yes/No

Example: A Saturday Night in Newcastle. Everyone makes their own way down can even do their Christmas Shopping at the Metro Centre. We book in say at a Travel Inn for the overnight stay. Meet up at a pre-arranged time then go for a meal then go out, maybe Brian M0RNR could help out with this one.

• Turkey & Tinsel Bus Tour Yes/No

Some of the Bus Tours have organised weekends somewhere. The trip will be the tour, accom-modation and meals, etc. Nobody needs to worry about driving and we would all be together. Note: a date for this may not be the above weekend, again this about trying to get feedback.

Any other Suggestions:

Suggestion _______________________________________

Can I have your responses by the 5th September please so a final decision can be made on what we are going to proceed with?

I WOULD REALLY APPRECIATE ALL YOUR RESPONSES EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT INTERESTED AS IT ALLOWS ME TO KNOW THAT YOU HAVE MADE YOUR

MIND UP AND STOPS ME CONTINUALLY CHASING YOU, THANKS Many thanks in advance.

Christmas Night Out

Time to decide what you want to do at Christmas!

Club Newsletter Page 12

Date Time Event Contact Tel./E-Mail

02 Sep 05 19:00 Club Night in the Thorntree Inn Port Seton Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723

03-Sep-05 15:00—15:45 Foundation License Exam

30 Sep 05 18:30 2nd 144 MHz DF Hunt Meet in Old Ship Inn Car Park (East) Ron GM4IKU 01875 811000

07 Oct 05 19:00 Club Night in the Thorntree Inn Port Seton Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723

21 Oct 05 19:30 VIDEO NIGHT Port Seton Community Centre Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723

23-Oct-05 10:30 Galasheils Rally, Volunteer Hall, Galasheils Jim GM7LUN

04-Nov-05 19:00 Club Night in the Thorntree Inn Port Seton Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723

02-Dec-05 19:00 Club Night in the Thorntree Inn, Port Seton Bob GM4UYZ 01875 811723

03-Dec-05 CPSARC Christmas Night Out

Forthcoming events are shown below. Please enter in your diary for 2005 and make an effort to attend as many as you can. These events are organized on your behalf do take a lot of organizing. It’s a great shame that more members are not in atten-dance on these nights which are ideal for learning more about our hobby as well as enjoying the company of like minded friends. As usual any further events for inclusion in this page can be forwarded to me at gm4iku@cpsarc.com

Events Column

Volume 13, Issue 9 Page 13

I enclose a few photos and a cartoon for the newsletter from my trip to Crianlarich at the weekend.

A disappointing day in terms of business, I sold very little, but a wonderful day in terms of a great drive there and back, the weather was great. Cheers, Peter @ The Wireless Emporium, Edinburgh.

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 Thorn-tree 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 enjoy! This does not mean that we don’t do anything, we en-ter (and win!) contests, train newcomers, hold talks and video nights and run a popular annual Junk Sale. Our newsletter has won the Practical Wireless ‘Spotlight’ competition on several occasions. The Club supports the British Heart Foundation in memory of a member who died from heart disease by donating the profits from events we hold, we have raised over £11,237 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 special event and contest en-tries. We have our own internet domain www.cpsarc.com and club members can get their own ‘callsign@cpsarc.com’ email addresses. The club also has a Yahoo! Group which is used to manage a mailing list. (see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cpsarc) Contacts General Correspondence, Amateur Licence Training (Foundation & Intermediate at present) and Contest entries Bob Glasgow gm4uyz@cpsarc.com HF Contests, Cambell Stevenson mm0dxc@cpsarc.com Newsletter, Web Site, Email Admin John Innes mm0jxi@cpsarc.com Events Column Ron Brown gm4iku@cpsarc.com

We’re on the web! www.cpsarc.com

7 Castle Terrace Port Seton

East Lothian EH32 0EE

Phone: 01875 811723 E-mail: gm4uyz@cpsarc.com

Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club