Next meeting is on Thursday 14th September entitled “The events leading up to and including the Battle of Britain by Chris Wren MBE”.

Venue: Woodford Park, Woodley, 8pm.
Refreshments to be served as usual.

Chris is the curator of the WW2 underground bunker and museum at RAF Uxbridge built in 1939 some 60 feet below ground. He will introduce personalities of the time including Douglas Bader who had a flying accident not far from the our very own Woodford Park on the Woodley airfield and the most successful fighter squadron at the time.

Churchill visited the bunker during one confrontation and enquired what reserves we had – the answer was “none”.

I look forward to seeing you there to look back on those perilous times and be inspired by those incredibly brave men and women to who we owe so much.

Next RADARC meeting is at Reading Rugby Football Club, Holme Park, Sonning Lane, RG4 6ST, Thursday 24th August, 7pm.

Given folk seemed to enjoy last meeting “Night on the Air”, we’ll do the same again. The reason it’s billed as “Drinks” is so we all get a chance to relax a bit but with a nod to health and safety, I think we can combine the two.

Feel free to bring along any portable gear to play/experiment with.  There was loads of stuff last time. Just be aware there may be 100W of RF kicking about on HF which delicate equipment may not appreciate if connected to any nearby antenna.

For fun, if you have any vintage/veteran gear you might want to
demonstrate to people (not necessarily radio) feel free to bring it.
Simon ZSU and I like Tilley lamps (i.e. paraffin storm lamps) and one
came out to play last time.

In fact – bring what you like. Even if you think it maybe of no interest
to others. You may be surprised.

Start 7pm but feel free to arrive earlier to help with setup or just
enjoy the evening. NOTE I’m going to start an hour earlier than the usual 8pm as it’s getting dark earlier. Don’t feel you have to be there for that time.

If you are new to the hobby this is a great opportunity to see amateur
radio in action and have a go at operating yourself.

We may also have Woodley air cadets joining us.

Should weather preclude outdoor operations we will meet anyway as the bar will be open.

A huge thankyou to people who brought stuff last time.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

73

John
G4RDC

Next meeting is at Reading Rugby Football Club, Holme Park, Sonning Lane, RG4 6ST, Thursday 10th August.

It’s “Night on the Air” so we will have a few stations set up – probably a couple of HF stations. Feel free to bring along any portable gear to
play/experiment with. Just be aware there may be 100W of RF kicking
about on HF which delicate equipment may not appreciate if connected to any nearby antenna.

Start 8pm but feel free to arrive earlier to help with setup or just enjoy the evening.

If you are new to the hobby this is a great opportunity to see amateur
radio in action and have a go at operating yourself.

With luck, we will also have a demo of an “Antenna test range”.

On the military kit side, with luck, we will also have a “Clansman”
dipole and 30-70MHz vertical antenna/dummy load atop. I suspect there will be some other “green” radios on parade.

Should weather preclude outdoor operations we will meet anyway as
the bar will be open.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

73

John
G4RDC

Next meeting is Thursday, 27th July, 8pm Woodford Park.

It’s a ‘Fix it’ evening (Alignment evening in old money) so bring along those radio/electronics items needing attention. Even if we can’t fix items on the evening we may be able to work out a plan for them.

I’ll try and make sure we have some test gear available (scope, maybe spectrum analyser, meter etc.)

Computers also welcome – I’ll bring a VGA/HDMI monitor.

As per last meeting, would be great if you can let me know what you’re bringing first but no problem if not.

Even if I have to use many kettles, we’ll do coffee, tea and biscuits. The urn was indisposed last time.

Folks,

Peter Butcher is with us on Thursday 11th May for the next club meeting.
Venue: Woodford Park, Woodley as usual.

In his own words:

“Communications between the Emergency Services, Police, Fire and
Ambulance have always been a problem. Complete inter-operability has been an elusive goal since the 1960s, so what has changed?
Three disasters; The East Coast Floods, the Isle of Wight Air Crash and Lockerbie prompted the Home office to take action and a set of
frequencies was allocated for the Emergency Services to allow
inter-operable communications. Planning rules were established and the question arose as to how many radio sites would be needed for a network to cover England and Wales.

A contract was awarded to Racal Radio in 1993 to calculate that number and I worked on that report as a Consultant, having recently retired from the Racal Radio Group.

The paper describes that work in detail, showing how time consuming and difficult propagation predictions were in those days and how two
different methods; manual calculation and early computer-aided
prediction gave sensibly the same results.
How that information was used and where we are now gives an interesting insight to government. After some long winded correspondence, the Home Office gave me permission to re-publish my historic report and added their version of today’s position.
Basically this paper is an historic archive of how things were and how
much, or little, things have changed!
Peter Butcher.
April 2017”

A big thankyou to George M0GXB for helping organise this one.

Refreshments to be served – or perhaps more accurately to be made
available. Audience participation may be required to make them happen.
There will be many, many biscuits. Some of them in date.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

73

John
G4RDC