Activities in 1976 1978
On this page you will find reports of some of our activities during 1976.
Marconi 75th Anniversary
The Wessex Amateur Radio Group (which became the Bournemouth Radio Society which closed on 31st October 2015) and the recently formed Poole Radio Amateur Society organised a well-supported exhibition at the Haven Hotel, Sandbanks between the 10th and 12th December 1976. The event marked the 75th Anniversary of the first transatlantic radio signals.
The opening by the Mayor of Poole, Councillor Rhoda Hewitt, received excellent coverage from BBC TV, Southern Television, BBC Radio for BBC Radio Solent, BFBS and World News. The event also appeared on TV in some parts of the U.S.A. and Canada. It was also reported by the Bournemouth Evening Echo on Saturday 11th December 1976.
82-year old Ken Alford, G2DX who worked with Marconi attended the exhibition, travelling from Shaftesbury. Ken’s licence dated back to 1912.
Some of Marconi’s original equipment was on show at the three-day exhibition station. Included was a spark-gap, a tuning coil and a carborundum receiver. A 1910 Morse tape inker was also on display together with a still decipherable message on the original tape.
250 contacts were made on the hf hands and about 300 on 2m. Good contacts were made with Newfoundland, Canada, across the States to California and to the West Indies. An attempt to work the special station II4FGM at the Villa Grifone which was Marconi’s family home in Italy was unfortunately not successful.
The Wessex
Amateur Radio Group had staged a previous exhibition at the Haven Hotel to
mark the 70th Anniversary of the first transatlantic radio signals,
5 years previously, in December 1971, using the special event callsign
GB3PMA. The QSL card from the 1971 event can be seen here.