www.cpsarc.com

The newsletter of Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club

I am writing this editorial with still a couple of weeks away from the deadline, to be honest I am trying to get on top of all my outstanding issues before the Tiree trip which by the time you read this, will be well and truly over and a part of history. I am also praying that the weather will have been kind to us as well on the trip same as it was for VHF Field Day this year. Ok then what have we been doing this month? We had our normal club night although it was a week earlier than normal due to the VHF Field Day event, but regard numbers attending it was about the same as we have had all year. It is nice to see a consistency of numbers plus still pulling in some new faces as well. The dream is that eve-ryone will turn up one club night, now that would be some-thing$ Right we have taken part in the RSGB VHF Field Day from the same site we have used for the last four years down near Castle Douglas, Dumfries & Galloway. As we have found, it is a fantastic site and worth the travel. Lastly this month is the IOTA contest from TIREE but by the time the newsletter is read it will once again be history. No doubt there will be many tales to tell.

To the future, well the major event is our Junk Night on the 14

th August. I am again looking

for raffle and food donations so if you can help I really would appreciate it. Let’s hope is once again a resounding success as it has been in previous years. Also we have Lighthouses Weekend on the 15

th & 16

th Au-

gust once again down at Barns Ness so I hope you will all come along and take part and have what is a real fun weekend. Overall the whole weekend is going to be really busy with both events one after the other. I am starting my winter training ses-sions of Foundation, Intermedi-ate and the Advanced Training by kicking of on the 12

th Sep-

tember with a Foundation Course. If you know of anyone interested in any of these courses can you now start to get back in touch with me so I can get the Community Centre bookings confirmed? The Club June 20M activity night was the best we have had with regard to numbers so many thanks for all those who took part. Yes the night was a bit of a struggle with regard conditions but it was good fun never the less. The Club 25 year challenge apart from one or two people

entries appear to very lacking indeed Come on Folks get operating and get those entries in, IT IS OUR 25

TH ANNIVER-

SARY AFTER ALL. Remember there are prizes for the overall winner, the leading Foundation Entry, the leading Intermediate Entry and the lead-ing Advanced Entry so there is an incentive as well. Enjoy club night, and come along to Junk Night and Light-houses Weekend. See you all then. Bob GM4UYZ

EDITORIAL

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

August 2009 Vol 17 Issue 8

www.cpsarc.com

2

Museum of Flight Weekend

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

2E0ZIG at 15:29 BST (14:29 UTC), Conditions were certainly as good as on the Saturday with 513 QSO’s made. Overall 1203 QSO’s were in the log so not a bad weekend’s work and the best we have ever done, so well done everyone. The highlight for me personally was watching the “new opera-tors” getting behind the micro-phone and working the pile-ups that we had created. Everyone handled it extremely well. Regarding the public we cer-tainly had a small amount of interest over the weekend com-pared with what we have had other years. This is certainly a great opportunity to sell and demonstrate to the general pub-lic what Amateur Radio is all about, who knows we may have given someone the “bug”. I have emailed the Museum of Flight giving them a summary of what we achieved over the weekend plus thanking them for allowing us to use their facilities. All being well we will be back their next year$. I am in the process of compiling a spreadsheet of what we have achieved over the years at the Museum so will send it to John MM0JXI when it is completed for popping up on the website. Lastly, many thanks for all those

who came along and helped out at the event without you it cannot happen. I do hope you all en-joyed yourself I know I certainly did. For those who didn’t attend well you missed a great opportu-nity to play radio from an impres-sive station. Till next year then unless we are asked to come back ear-lier$$$ Below is a report that I sent to the Museum after the weekend QSL CARD’s Attached are the two QSL cards that we have sent out over the years to all the contacts that we have made with the Spitfire ver-sion from 2001 until 2005 and the Concorde version from 2006. Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ Sec: Cockenzie & Port Seton

Amateur Radio Club

20 & 21st June 2009

Again we had the privilege of being able to work from a fan-tastic site during the Interna-tional Museum’s weekend. As in the last few years we set-up our equipment inside the Military Hanger (H1) and this year our two stations ran on both 40M.and 20M. Each station comprised of a FT1000MP and an Alpha Linear, logging com-puters networked together and running Win-Test logging soft-ware. Each computer was linked to the radio plus a Band Decoder Box which controlled the Voice Keyer and respective Dunestar Filters. The antennas consisted of a 4 Element Mono-band for 20M installed 60 feet up on a tower and a 40M dipole hung between the tower and a 40 foot pole. All this equipment was set-up of the Friday after-noon in preparation for the Sat-urday and Sunday Event. On the Saturday we arrived bright and early and our first contact took place at 08:20 BST (07:20 UTC) with M3UEP on 40M and our last for the day on Saturday at 16:51 BST (15:51 UTC) with DC2PH on 20M. For the day we managed a total of 663 QSO’s which was not too bad considering that conditions were not expected to be at their best. The best DX of the day was with WC6DX (USA – Cali-fornia) made by Bob GM4IKT. On the Sunday again another bright and early start with the first QSO in the log 08:28 BST (07:28 UTC) with EA1DST on 20M and our last for the day and the event being with

GB2MOF

Date Time Callsign Band Rprt

Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club

www.cpsarc.co

East Fortune Museum of Flight

East Fortune Airfield

East Lothian

Scotland

www.nms.ac.uk/flight

WAB #T57

GB2MOF

GB2MOF MUSEUM of FLIGHT East Fortune Airfield

East Lothian

Scotland www.nms.ac.uk/flight

WAB: NT57

Locator: IO85PX IOTA: EU005

Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club

ww.cpsarc.com

Date Time Callsign Frequency MHz

1.8, 3.5, 7, 14,

17, 21, 24, 28,

Mode

CW

SSB

Rpt

59

599

G-BOAA now at museum

3

Contents 2 Museum of Flight

Weekend

3 Lighthouse Weekend Junk Night Reminder

4 VHF Field Day—A Newbie’s View

6 VHF Field Day Worked Squares

7 Club Activity Night

8 Club Attire

9 GB2MOF Report

10 Test Your Knowledge

11 Event Calendar

12 Perseids Meteor Shower

3

This is just a reminder that once again we will be taking part in Lighthouses Weekend on Satur-day and Sunday the 15

th & 16

th

August. I am hoping once again that we will be able to use the “out buildings” at the Light-house. Thanks to Lafarge we have been able to do so for the event plus CQWW over the last few last years but failing that we will be setting up back under canvas with the tents. Whatever happens we will be running two stations, one on 20M and the other on 40M. This event is a real social event where yes we will do our fair stint of operating over the two days but it also gives us an op-portunity to get the barbeque out and do a bit of socialising as well.

From the operating side it gives everyone a chance to “play” with a couple of big stations and plus gain more experience on being on the side of “being a wanted station”. I can assure you it is a fantastic experience. When operating you control how quickly or slow it takes place by either working it like a contest “pile-up” or simply just having a “rag-chew”. Hope you will come along to this event and play a bit of radio and have some fun as well. Bob GM4UYZ

Contributions to the newslet-ter and web site are most welcome. Please don’t send these items to GM4UYZ, he’s busy enough doing all the other things he does for the club. Send any items you’d like included to mm0jxi@cpsarc.com or submit them direct to the web site.

Lighthouse Weekend

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

Junk night Reminder

JUNK NIGHT FRIDAY 14th AUGUST 2009

Bring along your own “junk” and sell it your-

self. Tables on a First Come, First Served

Basis

Time: 1830 till 2200

Location: Cockenzie & Port Seton Community

Centre (Main Hall) Disabled access available

Entry: £2 ALL PERSONS Raffle @ 21:00, Food & Drink Available

If any one would like to donate any prizes for the

raffle or food towards the catering it will be very

much appreciated.

www.cpsarc.com

4

On the face of it I thought things would be very similar to other outings with the club, and in some ways they were. There was the usual friendly crowd, welcoming to all new-comers and comfortable enough with each other for more than a few good rib-bings to run without the risk of offence being taken, but there were also subtle technical differences. The weather was generally kind to us. The drive to the Dumfries coast was fairly hor-rendous as we crossed the high col by The Devil’s Beef Tub and Moffat looked like it was about to be submerged when we got there, but by the time we eventually got to the location it was clear. We man-aged to get all the antennas up in clear weather, and again at the end, go them all down in the sunshine. The paltry rain we got was almost irrele-vant since we were either in the shack (MM0CCC’s Luton) or else in a tent.

The VHF antennas were smaller but much more inter-esting than the HF yagis. What they lacked in scale

they more than made up for in complexity. Setting them up was fun, especially when you actually got to work with the phasing leads for the big 2m array – that was when the dry

theory of the licensing class-room suddenly sprung into real life and made sense. Also put-ting the tower together for, I think, the third time made me feel quite at home. Mind you they even let GM4UYZ onto one antenna so it must be easier that I thought. As the 2m array was being taken up I confess it really did look splendid in the dying sun-shine, and it made me very pleased to have been part of the team that put it together so effortlessly. Perhaps next year we might consider a 16 yagi array, since this would be even more impressive! One major difference from HF outings was that each station was different. With the HF out-

VHF Field Day—A Newbie’s View

By Malcolm MM0YMG Photos by Geoff MM5AHO

ings all the radios are Yaesu FT1000MPs and the amps are Alphas so once you know the rig and its controls you can move from station to station with relative impunity. For the VHF outing we had a whole variety of radios according to the band being used. As some-one with still relatively narrow experience of radios this was a challenge. Alter the RF gain on an FT1000MP or FT-2000 and I am fine but with a Kenwood, or a big Icom then I struggled and so ended up largely accepting the settings from whoever went before me. I suspect this did not help me.

At one ghastly point I thought I had blown the mike on my headset since it inadvertently got plugged into the speaker socket. I am fairly sure that would not have happened with the FT1000MP. The bands were all quite differ-ent. 6m felt fairly familiar and

5

2m was also comfortable. I found dealing with the 70cms and 4m bands quite hard by comparison – the combination of noise and faint signals chal-lenged my hearing more than it liked, so I was not too success-ful on those bands. The operating technique was similar to HF but a major differ-ence was that we were not gen-erating as overwhelming a sig-nal on VHF as we tend to with the HF outings so in some ways breaking into a pile up was rather more like working from home – you try, and try and then try again, but often as not end up moving on without get-ting the contact.

I did find that the operating pro-cedures I have been learning with RAYNET were a big help since they had brought me fairly naturally to being as concise on the air as possible. I even re-membered to use “SAY AGAIN” instead of “REPEAT” which was gratifying and effective – like-wise I noticed the use of RAYNET pro-words and opera-tional tendencies with some of the other operators on the air.

I confess there is not much dif-ference between the graveyard shift (0300h to 0600h) on HF or VHF, except that perhaps VHF was even quieter, and I was very pleased when that shift ended. The social aspect was exceed-ingly civilised. I have been camping all my life so tents held no great fear or excitement for me. I was a tad surprised to find myself dubbed the camping expert for the simple reason that I understood how to get a big tent up – despite having never before been in a tent that you didn’t enter on your hands and knees! However I would not knock the big tents for this sort of function. The mess tent made cooking and food preparation much eas-ier, especially in the rain. The humongous group tent was

most welcome when the rain was tipping down and everyone was chilling with a beer. First I have to declare the picture above gives a false impression. It was MM5AHO who did almost all the cooking, but since he was the only one with a camera we never got a picture of him strutting his stuff in a way that would put The Ritz to shame. The catering arrangements were well oiled and the stan-dard of food was pretty much five star throughout the event – home-made bread would have been nice but I guess beggars cannot be choosers!

So how did we do? Well the

squares worked (see article by

GM4UYZ) show a pretty im-

pressive diversity and hopefully

our score will reflect the effort

and enthusiasm that everyone

put into the event.

www.cpsarc.com

6

MM0CPS/P from IO84BT Well that is another VHF Field Day over and I must admit it for me comes in as one of the best that I have been involved in. I have been doing them since 1993 which I cannot believe is 16 years ago, oh how time flies. The company was fantastic with great team work and lots of fun and laughs to go along with it. For the first time ever we never had any technical hitches at all which is absolutely amazing. It certainly helps leaving home on the Friday dinnertime to arrive onsite around about 16:00 and starting the building of the site. This year the concentration was on getting all the antennas built for all the bands on the Friday evening which we achieved be-fore we settled down to having a “beer or two”. The Saturday morning the concentration was now getting the shack up an operational again it came to-gether with ease. On the Sun-day we had to drop the 6M tower and install the 4M beam then in the shack remove the 6M station and build the 4M station and again no problems. About our actual trip I know Malcolm MM0YMG is writing a story about that so I will not du-plicate. For the technical minded this is what we put on each station: 6M: Transmitter IC756 Pro III + Acom1000 Linear Power 400W Receiver IC756 Pro III Antennas 2 x 5 Element DK7ZB Yagi's 4M: Transmitter FT1000MP+Mutek TVF57A Transverter+4M MM Amp+ LinearAmp 4M Amplifier Power 300W Receiver FT1000MP +Mutek

TVF57A Transverter Antenna 7 Element DK7ZB 2M: Transmitter Yaesu FT847+ Linear Amp 2M Amplifier Power 400W Receiver Yaesu FT847 + Land-weher Gasfet Preamplifier Antennas 8 x 7 Element DK7ZB Yagi's

70cms: Transmitter Kenwood TS2000 Power 50W Receiver Kenwood TS2000 + Landweher Gasfet Preampli-fier Antenna 2 x 23 Element DK7ZB Yagi's So how did we do? Well the following are the square maps worked for each of the bands and finally what score was sub-mitted for the contest. I must admit it looks really impressive this year. Well done everyone involved. 6M Squares Worked

4M Squares Worked

2M Squares Worked

70cms Squares Worked

Score submitted$

Bob GM4UYZ

VHF Field Day Worked Squares 2009

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

BAND QSO DUP LOC POINTS AVG PTS AVG DIS

--------------------------------------------

50 218 3 82 190166 872.3 882.4

70 75 1 22 22027 293.7 294.8

144 400 6 52 164165 410.4 415.3

432 67 1 22 17745 264.9 268.6

--------------------------------------------

TOTAL 760 11 178 394103 518.6 524.4

============================================

TOTAL SCORE : 394 103

Dupes are not included in QSO counts neither

average calculations

7

done the Tiree trip for a number of years does that not rings bells, Ron getting his days wrong. No further com-ments$$ John MM0JXI: His comments Sadly I couldn't get on the air last night as I was busy printing the club newsletter and fixing the church sound system. Gary MM0FZV: His report Managed just 11 QSO's but better than nothing and under very difficult conditions. Got a text from Cambell to say that Robin was a stronger signal than me and I was toiling to get a station in the Ukraine (he gave me 5+2!). Then I get a station in Morocco 5+9!! Strange hobby! Countries: Scotland, Bulgaria, Morocco, Italy, Slovenia, Po-land, Eastern Russia, Lithuania Wallace MM0AMV: His report Well that was fun until 21:30, when my Aldi power pack dropped below 12 volts and it was time to go home. Quite sur-prised it lasted so long. Running 50 watts tonight and quite a high duty cycle and I reckon if I turned the wick down to about 30 watts or drew breath in be-tween calling CQ, I could possi-bly get over 3 hours out of it. Its a 17 Ah job with extra sockets for accessories etc. Ok, the log is attached for your edification and delight. Techie bits.... Yaesu FT-897D running 50 watts. LDG Z-11 Pro Auto Tuner. Pro -am whip for 20 me-tres mounted on a Moonraker mag-mount. Power by Aldi Logging by pencil :-) Countries: Belgium, Ukraine, Scotland, Italy, European Rus-sia, Slovenia, Bob GM4IKT: His report It was good to hear so many members on 20 metres, I even

heard Gaz now that is DX! I re-con I had about 16 QSOs. I found out late on that my log-ging programme had taken the hump and it gave all the QSOs last night the same time so my log will not make a lot of sense. Countries: Lebanon, Scotland, Ukraine, US Virgin Islands, Bul-garia, Brazil, Morocco, USA, Slovenia, Poland, Lithuania Martyn MM3XXW: His report Band conditions were not great but enjoyed it none the less, couldn't get a clear frequency for CPSARC members though!!!! Countries: European Russia, Italy, Slovenia, Canada, Scot-land, Bosnia Herzegovina Robin MM3SRF: His report Yep a good day out, only made 7 QSO’s and that was with 3 outside Scotland. The biggest highlight for me was working IW2CLM on 5 watts, after the QSO he soon worked a VE sta-tion who told him the Scottish station was 57 with him, not bad for QRP but pity I never had a chance to speak to him. Also we had a quick chat with Wallace MM0AMV who came down to say hello. Good to put a face to the voice. The only thing that I had a prob-lem with is I kept bumping into to everyone! ;-) Countries: Scotland, Italy, Euro-pean Russia, Bosnia Herzego-vina Alex GM4TAL: His report That’s as much as I could man-age Bob, and that was a sweat. There was a numpty following me with a big carrier. I think he nobbled you too. Countries: Bulgaria, Scotland, Serbia, Poland, Ukraine Malcolm MM0YMG: His report Just back from a very sunny Gairloch trip. I tried really hard

(Continued on page 8)

Club Activity Night

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

24th June 2009

The club’s activity night took place on the Wednesday eve-ning between 19:00 and 22:00 BST on 20M with the aim for club members to get on the air and operate and have a bit of fun, we are radio amateurs you know!!!! There was certainly one or two on which was fantas-tic to see although the band conditions were very poor in-deed. Nice to see some Foun-dation Licence holders taking part. Well done on your efforts as it was certainly harder for you. Bob GM4UYZ: My report Managed only 11 QSO’s with 10 on SSB and 1 on CW. Even calling CQ on CW only gener-ated the single QSO. Heard a good few stations with a few in South America but just could not get them with the 100 watts. Even those close at hand in Europe did not seem to re-spond. Best QSO was a 20 min-ute chat with LA5ZO in Norway who turns out he is doing a sail-ing holiday to Scotland. After telling me his route I persuaded him to go to Tiree instead of Coll plus told him about Elaine at Elephants End and that he must visit her. So looks like I did it as he said he would go. Countries: Scotland, Italy, Bul-garia, Ukraine, Slovenia, Nor-way, Lithuania Ron GM0NTL: Sent the follow-ing the day after$. Last night at 19:00 I wandered out to the shack and made sure everything was working, had a listen on 20m and commented to myself about the lack of activ-ity. Then I switched it all off and went back into the house. OOPS, I had got it into my head that it was TONIGHT :-) At least the thought was there. Now for those of us who have

www.cpsarc.com

8

for the activity night but only managed one QSO with a Polish special event station. Conditions were really difficult and I was swamped by massive European stations on about 1.5kW grab-bing every pile up I could find. Also tried CW on five or six fre-quencies but very disappointing. Countries: Poland The results are as follows:

(Continued from page 7) That’s it then for another year maybe more will take part next year. Bob GM4UYZ

Club Attire

The club has Club Tee-shirts, Polo-shirts, Sweat-Shirts, Fleeces and Jackets and all of these can be ob-tained from the address below. When making an order please:

• Quote Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club as this will ensure that the Club Logo will be

placed on the required ordered garments.

• If you wish to add your call-sign to the logo then please ask at the time of the order.

Cost will depend on garment and should cover the garment and logo, call-sign addition will be extra. Order from: PATRICIA BEWSEY DESIGNS, UNIT 11, FENTON BARNS RETAIL VILLAGE, FENTON BARNS, NORTH BERWICK, EAST LOTHIAN EH39 5BW Tel/Fax: 01620 850788

Pos Callsign QSO’s DX QSO’s

1 GM4IKT 16 11

2 MM0AMV/M 13 6

3 MM0FZV 11 8

4 GM4UYZ 11 7

5 MM3XXW 6 6

6 GM4TAL 6 5

7 MM3SRF/P 6 4

8 MM0YMG 1 1

9

On the 20 and 21 June, the club operated at their usual haunt under the call sign of GB2MOF for the annual weekend of mu-seums on the air. In the company of Stevie MM3YPN, who kindly gave me a lift to the East Fortune Air-base, the current site of the Na-tional Museum of Flight. We were greeted by the mag-nificent sight of a Cushcraft A3S sitting proudly on the mast and a very discreet W3DZZ wire antenna hoisted into the air next to it. Hanger 1 was our location for the whole weekend, which is host to several types of military aircraft. From the engine re-mains of Rudolf Hess's crashed Messerschmitt to a massive American naval jet but the big-gest spectacle of all was not the planes, oh no! But the set-up of two FT-1000 MP's, two match-ing pairs of Alpha amplifiers running 400w and fantastic log-ging software called wintest is certainly the radio amateur's dream. Both stations were soon up and running with Gary MM0FZV as the 40M maestro and Bob GM4IKT at the reigns of the 20m band. Propagation seemed to be on our side which quickly prompted a fierce pile up on

GB2MOF REport

By Robin MM3SRF

both stations. Only being a foundation licence holder I have never experienced the thrill of being on the other end of the pile up so I put on the dreaded “hairy mic”(don't be put of by it, it's not that bad!) and listened to Bob IKT bring in the contacts. It was a gabble of call signs, words and static. Sure enough to make the beginner fright-ened, however after quick tun-ing of the ears and realising that you only picked up the loudest signal it became simple, well maybe after the whole week-end! For the whole day on Saturday the station made around a re-spectable 600 qso's including contacts into Europe and Can-ada. The with a high target set we were hoping to beat it on the Sunday and with a climatic sprint finish in the last final mo-ments of the stations shutting down time, the total amount of contacts was brought up to 1200. So not bad for a week-end's work! Few people also came up to ask questions which also shows that our work pays off to make the public aware of our wonderful hobby.

Thanks go to Bob GM4UYZ, Campbell MM0DXC, Gary MM0FZV, Bob GM4IKT, Dun-can MM0GZZ, Steve MM3YPN and his son Gregory (who seems like a suitable foundation candidate), Gareth M3INO and visitors for making the whole weekend a success So raise a pint to next year! Robin MM3SRF

www.cpsarc.com

10

1. The unit of inductance is the

a. farad

b. ohm

c. Henry

d. hertz.

2. In which of the circuits are the resistors in parallel?

a. A

b. B

c. C

d. D

3. A capacitor cann be used to

a. store RF energy

b. store electrical energy

c. provide inductance

d. rectify alternating current.

4. The energy stored in a capacitor and inductor can be

transferred from one to the other in a tuned circuit at a rate known as the

a. optimum frequency

b. critical frequency

c. intermediate frequency

d. resonant frequency.

5. A transformer has 1000 turns on the primary and 50

turns on the secondary. The primary is connected to an a.c. supply. The potential difference across the secondary will be

a. zero

b. lower than the primary

c. the same as the primary

d. greater than the primary.

6. Which one of the following represents a rectified a.c. waveform?

a. A

b. B

c. C

d. D

7. The basis of amplification in a n-p-n transistor is nor-

mally that a

a. small base current will control a larger collector current

b. small emitter current will control a larger collector current

c. changing emitter voltage will cause a larger change in the

base voltage

d. changing collector voltage will cause a larger change in the

emitter voltage.

8. Which meter shows the power supply voltage

a. Meter 1.

b. Meter 2.

c. Meter 3.

d. Meter 4.

9. The tuned circuit in an oscillator

a. removes unwanted frequencies

b. sets the frequency of the output

c. limits the signal strength to a safe level

d. modulates the r.f. carrier.

10. A received signal consists of two alternating audio tones. A suitable demodulator would be

a. a frequency discriminator for FM

b. a data demodulator

c. an amplitude demodulator

d. an SSB product detector.

Test Your Knowledge

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

11

Event Calendar

By John Innes MM0JXI

7 August 2009 Club Night

14 August 2009 Junk Night

15 August 2009 Lighthouses Weekend from Barns Ness GB2LBN

22 August 2009 Newsletter Deadline (early due to holidays)

4/5 September 2009 Leicester Amateur Radio Show

4 September 2009 Club Night

25 September 2009 2nd 144MHz DF Hunt

26 September 2009 Newsletter Deadline

02 October 2009 Club Night

04 October 2009 RSGB 21/28MHz Contest

9 October 2009 Construction night

16 October 2009 Video Night

18 October 2009 Galashiels Rally

24 October 2009 CQWW SSB Contest GM2T

31 October 2009 Newsletter Deadline

6 November 2009 Club Night

13 November 2009 Construction Night

20 November 2009 Talk: Borders Search & Rescue Unit

28 November 2009 Newsletter Deadline

04 December 2009 Club Night

12 August 2009 Perseids Meteor Shower peak (23 July—22 August)

21 October 2009 Orionids Meteor Shower peak (15—29 October)

17 November 2009 Leonids Meteor Shower peak (13—20 November)

www.cpsarc.com

12

The Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club is affiliated to the Radio Society of Great Britain and holds the call signs MM0CPS and GM2T which are used for our special event and

contest entries.

We have our own internet domain www.cpsarc.com where you will find our popular web site which features lively discussion forums and photo galleries.

You can also download an electronic copy of this newsletter.

The Club was formed by Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ in 1984, to help the local amateurs get to know each other.

Far from being just a local club we have members regularly attending from the Borders, Dumfries, Strathclyde, Fife and Newcastle.

The Club meets on the first Friday of every month (Second Friday of January) in the lounge of the Thorntree Inn on the old Cockenzie High Street from 7pm till late.

The Club is run in a very informal way, just a group of like minded people doing something they enjoy!

This does not mean that we don’t do anything, we enter (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 some of the events we hold, we have raised over £14,368 since 1994.

Bob Glasgow 7 Castle Terrace Port Seton East Lothian EH32 0EE Phone: 01875 811723 E-mail: gm4uyz@cpsarc.com General correspondence, training and contest entries Bob Glasgow gm4uyz@cpsarc.com HF Contests Cambell Stevenson mm0dxc@aol.com VHF Contests John MacLean mm0ccc@cpsarc.com Newsletter, website, event calendar John Innes mm0jxi@cpsarc.com Club Tables Bob Purves gm4ikt@cpsarc.com

You’ll notice from the event calen-dar this month that I’ve added the dates of some of the major meteor showers visible from the Northern Hemisphere. These showers are of interest both visually and from a radio perspec-tive, they can produce a wonderful display of shooting stars—if the night is clear and you can get away from the pollution of street lights and headlamps. From a radio perspective, the me-teor showers provide the opportu-nity to work over much larger dis-tances on VHF and UHF by reflect-ing signals off the trail of ionised gas produced when the particles pass through the atmosphere. This is a huge challenge and the reflections are pretty random and very short lived. High speed Morse and tape recorders are needed. The Perseids occur this month (peak on 12 August) so this is the ideal time to wrap up warm and head for an isolated spot and spend a couple of hours spotting shooting stars, great fun for all the family.

John MM0JXI webmaster.

Perseids Meteor Shower

Information

Contacts

Supported by BT Community Champions Answers from August 2009

newsletter “Test Your Knowledge”. 1C, 2C, 3B, 4D, 5B, 6B, 7A, 8C, 9B, 10B