Community Open Day & Operating GX4BRA

What a great event today at the Priestwood Community Centre, our now established location for Club Monthly Meetings and Construction Club. Since moving to the new venue we have increased in size, gradually expanding into the space offered by the large hall and into the outdoor patio area where we have even able to operate via the QO-100 Satellite.

We were kindly invited to the Community Centre Open Day this year and grabbed the opportunity to support the centre and meet more of our local community and their families.

We were based in the marque at the rear of the hall, ideal for Paul G4HLF and the team to setup Paul’s trusty 88ft Doublet and our ICOM IC-7300. Within minutes of setting up we were making contacts using the club callsign G4BRA but with the ‘X’ prefix for the very first time, making our callsign GX4BRA.

The Open Day presented an ideal platform to demonstrate Amateur Radio the range of activities and events the hobby includes. It was especially fun to meet local families and get them trying Morse Code for the first time using our Straight and Dual Paddle Keys. It is always amazing to see how quickly the younger members of the family adapt to the keys and are able to key their names so smoothly.

Together with the other groups that use the community centre, from Kick Boxing to Dancing and Coffee Meet-up Groups, we had a lot of visitors and interest shown in our hobby

While most of us chatted with visitors to our stand, our team of operators received excellent signal reports from everyone we spoke to, who could generally hear us better than we could hear them. We also got numerous good audio reports, so it seems our ICOM audio settings are doing a great job! Even despite the wet weather later in the afternoon we managed to work a total of 105 stations on 40m using GX4BRA.

A fun occasion for us all.