Activities in 1988 1987 1989
On this page you will find illustrated reports of some of our activities during 1988. These are mainly in addition to our main meetings and shack nights. The most recent activities are at the top of the page.
Oner
For the last main meeting of the year on 16th December we usually try to plan something a little different. This year we set up a small production line producing ‘Oner’ low power QRP transmitters. The design came from the G-QRP club. The name ‘Oner’ is very apt, as the printed circuit board is just 1-inch square. By the end of the evening we had already made the first QSOs using a couple of the transmitters we had built that evening (albeit with a commercial receiver). Great fun - and at a cost of less than 0.5% of the then current top of the range transceiver from Kenwood!
College Exhibitions
During the year
we ran successful exhibitions at both the Lansdowne and Poole North Road
College sites.
We had a few EMC problems at the Lansdowne site, which we quickly resolved by switching to a loop antenna on the hf bands. The Lansdowne site was also excellent for accessing the Bournemouth 2m and 70cm repeaters using low power.
At the Poole College site we took over a large part of the reception area. Displays of many aspects of our hobby were seen including some amateur television.
The picture on the left shows Dave Mason G3ZPR in the white shirt telling a large group of students on the Poole College site about amateur radio. The display boards had examples of QSL cards on them and pictures of our activities.
HF SSB Contest
Earlier in the
year over the weekend of 26th & 27th March, we
participated in the HF SSB Worldwide Prefix Contest, running a station for a
full 48 hours.
Operation was mainly on 80m, 40m and 20m, although some contacts were also made on 15m and 10m. After removing a large number of duplicates from the logs, we ended up with 410 contacts, representing 221 prefixes. Logging was done using a computer with a floppy disc drive.
Phil G4XYX is seen operating, with a check logger sat to his left.
Commander’s House
During 1988 we were meeting at Commander’s House, part of the College premises. It has since been demolished and the land re-used for the housing in Jelicoe Close (the entrance to the shack).