Swindon & District Amateur Radio Club

SWINDON'S FANTASTIC AMATEUR RADIO COMMUNITY

Well another absolutely amazing evening at the Swindon & District Amateur Radio Club this evening. Not only did we have another incredible turnout for this evenings presentation, but we had some outstanding displays of generosity.

During the week Mike, M5CBS had kindly agreed to donate his Kenwood TS-450S to our young operator, Enzo, M7VZO, so that he could get on HF. Mike said that he didn't use this particular radio anymore, so he may as well pass it on to Enzo.

This in itself was an incredibly kind offer. However, the story doesn't end there. One of our other club members Tony, G4LDL turn up at the club saying that Ian, G5WQ (who he didn't know) turned up on his doorstep, before he left to come up the club and presented him with a bag FULL of equipment, including an ICOM IC-718, Quansheng UV-5K, 20A adjustable PSU, Manual ATU, 2 x VHF/UHF SWR meters, RigExper digital modem, wire antenna, various patch leads and balun torroids, stating that this was all for Enzo! Furthermore, one of our other members Marc, M0KYB had made Enzo a EFHW antenna with a 49:1 balun.

So, we now had a bit of a dilemma as Enzo had now been gifted a couple of HF radios. I had a quick word with Mike, M5CBS and asked if he would be happy if we donated his Kenwood to Michael, M7OUF, who passed his Foundation last week and doesn't have a HF radio. He agreed that would be absolutely fine. During our 'parish notices', I presented Enzo and Michael with their donated equipment. Obviously, they were over the moon.

At the end of the evening, it was great to see Enzo going through is bag of goodies and sharing out some of the kit he had duplicates of with Michael and our two newest members went away fully kitted out to start their journey on HF, which we, as a club will support them on.

Over the last couple weeks, we have seen some incredible generosity from our members, past members, non-members who have shown the true spirit of Amateur Radio and donated various equipment and ancillaries to the club, so that we can pass it on to members.

This has included:
Ian, G5WQ
Mike, M5CBS
Simon, G4WQG
Darren, G1ERM
James, M1DST
Mike, G4GER
Marc, M0KYB
Chris, G4AJA

Apologies if I've missed anyone off, but the generosity has been overwhelming.

These people are true ambassadors of Amateur Radio and we are privileged to have them as members and friends of the Swindon & District Amateur Radio Club.

Thank you.

73
Dom, M9WHQ
Chairman SDARC

What a week at the Swindon & District Amateur Radio Club!

Thursday club night was an incredibly busy evening, with loads of activity going on.

Firstly, we had a new member Michael come along and visit the club for the first time. He sat in whilst I did some knowledge transfer with Enzo, M7VZO. I was teaching him how to use his new Yaesu FT-65E handheld and discussing contesting, in preparation for the 144MHz VHF Championship over the weekend, where the club would be putting on a small station to allow some of our newer club members to have a go at contesting.

Michael has his Foundation Exam booked for next Friday, so we are all wishing him the best of luck with that.

While this was going on, Philip, M0PZB and Rob, G4ZAM had setup a HF Station with the club's ICOM IC-7300 to allow any club members to jump on and have a go on SSB, CW or FT8.

Additionally Pete, G4OIQ was being assisted by Viv, M0IEP and Paul, M7JPJ to tune a 2m Moxon with a VNA analyser.

Towards the end of the evening, Enzo, M7VZO jumped on to the radio to practice his CW under the guidance of Philip, M0PZB and I, Dom, M9WHQ even jumped on to have a very quick dabble. 😊

On Friday, we received the great news that Paul, M7JPJ had successfully passed his Intermediate Exam.

On Saturday, the club setup a fairly small station, compared to our usual 2 tower station, to take part in the RSGB 144MHz VHF Championship Contest, up at Barbury Castle, just outside Swindon.
The station was setup by James, M1DST, Marc, M0KYB, Andy, G0UWS, Enzo, M7VZO, Paul, M7JPJ.

The aim of the station was to give some of the newer members the opportunity to experience and have a go at Contesting. Despite the relatively small station, the event was extremely successful and thoroughly enjoyed by all those who took part.

The club continues to go from strength to strength. If you are interested in finding out more, then please get in touch or visit our website for more information.

https://sdarc.net

73,

Dom, M9WHQ
Chairman Swindon & District Amateur Radio Club

Time for celebration!

Yesterday evening, our latest club member, 11 year old, Enzo, who has only been at the club for 3 weeks, successfully passed his Foundation Licence Exam, with an incredible score of 99%.

Well done Enzo, you should be proud of yourself with such a fantastic achievement.

We'll see you at the club this evening for a little celebration.

Congratulations from all of the club members.

73

Dom, M9WHQ
Chairman SDARC

The Swindon & District Amateur Radio Club is proud to announce that it is now a RSGB Brickworks Accredited Club.

The Brickworks scheme is an exciting and fun way to build on what you have learned on your Foundation Course. It enables you to learn more about your new hobby, build your confidence, gain a greater understanding of how to get the best out of your equipment and enjoy new experiences, but it does not need to be limited to Foundation Licence holders. The tasks can be enjoyed by all members of the club, no matter what licence level, as it encourages mentoring and training all, in the many different aspects of the hobby. Most of all, it encourages activities and getting on the air.

The Swindon & District Amateur Radio Club will be incorporating the various activities in to its usual busy schedule throughout 2026. If you want to find out more or get involved, then please do come along and join us at the club.

Please visit links below for more information about Brickworks and the club.

https://rsgb.org/main/beyond-exams-building-experience/brickworks/

https://sdarc.net

Following the talk "Micro-Controllers & Micro-Computers – 3 Quick 10 Minute Projects" by Dom, M9WHQ. The Swindon & District Amateur Radio Club has now received 9 x Heltec ESP32, V3 433Mhz LoRa boards for several members to build their own TinyGS Satellite Receiving Ground Station. It has also received 12 x Heltec ESP32, V3 863Mhz LoRa boards for members to experiment with LoRa Mesh technology, primarily focussing on Meshtastic and MeshCore projects.

The slide-deck from the presentation can be downloaded from https://sdarc.net

If you are interested, in radio and technology, then why not come along to the club and find out more.

Over this weekend (5/6th July '25) the club is taking part in the RSGB VHF National Field Day (NFD). Despite some bad weather with lots of wind and rain, the club was setup to operate on multiple bands from Barbury Castle.

Here are some pictures of our impressive setup.

It's been a busy week for the Swindon & District Amateur Radio Club. On Thursday we were up at Barbury Castle for the first of our Summer club meetings up there.

There was an excellent turnout and lots of activity. The kite antenna was back out again and proving to be as excellent as usual, giving us QSOs in to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Japan, Canada, USA Ukraine, Corsica and all around Europe.

As well as the kite antenna, we had Hustler mobile antennas, Vertical End-Fed Half-Wave and antennas and club members testing out new equipment, including a brand new Xiegu G90. Other radios on the air were an ICOM IC-7300, ICOM IC-7000 and Yaesu FT-991A.

The kite antenna was finally reeled in just past 22:00.

Over the weekend, we are taking part in the RSGB VHF NATIONAL FIELD DAY. (See separate post with photos).

If anyone would like to join us at Barbury Castle on a Thursday, then please feel free to come along and you'll be made more than welcome.

https://sdarc.net

The kits for the Swindon & District Amateur Radio Club, Construction Challenge 2025 have arrived.

Following the success of the Construction Challenge last year, where 18 club members built Pixie, 40M, QRP, CW Transceivers, this year, the members decided that they wanted to continue to enhance the kit they built last year.

So, for this year's Construction Challenge, 17 members have elected to build a QRP Antenna Tuning Unit and Headphone Amplifier kit to compliment their Pixie Transceiver. One member, who missed out on building the Pixie last year has opted to build all 3 kits.

This is a great opportunity for club members to get their soldering irons out, at least once a year, practice their building skills and have a bit of fun along the way. It's always good to see so many members get involved and keeping the club active.
73,
Dom, 2E0WHQ
Chairman SDARC

A few weeks ago the Swindon & District Amateur Radio Club was forced to move location for its weekly meetings. It's only 800m across the road, but we've spent the last two weeks settling in to our new club QTH.

We've already hosted one presentation of the history of SSB and this week we setup our club station for the first time. To start with, Rob, G4ZAM provided us with his vertical 1/2 wave for 15m, which is a simple EFHW vertical wire loosely wound around a 12m Spiderpole. The 15m band seemed pretty quiet, so we decided to change to 20m. Rob quickly swapped over the vertical to 20m. again, a 1/2 wave vertical, EFHW.

This time the band seemed a little more active and we could here JE8AGX coming in, peaking 5/9 from Japan. I (Dom, 2E0WHQ) tried calling him several times, but there was a lot of QRM and bad operating from other stations, so I eventually gave up.

Whilst I was busy listening on the club ICOM IC-7300, one of our new club members, Steve, had brought in his Yaesu FTDX3000 transceiver for testing and Marc, M0KYB was busy helping him test it on a dummy load. Having tested it, he asked if he could put it on the antenna to test the receiver; So we swapped the radios over. On the FTDX3000 we could hear JE8AGX fine and after playing with some of the filters, he was coming in as strong as he was on the IC-7300. Again, there was too much QRM to work him, so I continued to tune around of the band.

Finally I heard Rob, VK3EY in North Melbourne, Australia calling CQ and decide to try and give him a call. Two calls in and he came back to me, giving me a 5/7 signal report. I reciprocated with a similar 5/7 signal report. We had a quick QSO. It was absolutely fantastic to have VK3 as our VERY FIRST QSO at our new club QTH and great to do it on one of our new club member's equipment. What a great way to prove that his radio works!

The QSO was made on 80W from the FTDX3000 in to the simple 1/2 wave EFHW vertical wire antenna. It just goes to show that you don't need complex or expensive setups to make decent QSOs.

Really happy to have made a great first QSO for the club. After that, we swapped back to the ICOM IC-7300 and Phil, M0PBZ jumped on the key and attempted to work another VK station, but there was heavy QSB and didn't quite make it, but made do with a Greek station on CW.

All-in-all another great night at the club. Lots of discussion around putting up permanent antennas at the site, as well as lots of other club discussion around our Christmas programme and plans for the New Year.

If you'd like to join us, then please come along one Thursday. More details on our website:

https://sdarc.net

Thanks to Phil, M0PBZ for the photos of me working VK3EY.

73
Dom, 2E0WHQ
Chairman SDARC