Digital Radio supporting the Trans Adriatic Pipeline and the antics of the 1970’s Anti-Repeater Group.

Our guest speaker for our April monthly meeting was Ian Hill G8MWK who offered us two presentations in one evening.

We started with our usual roundup of upcoming club activities, including POTA Activations, Special Event Stations, Construction Club projects, Brickworks awards and on-air activites. It was also good to welcome some remote members, new members and potential new members visiting us for the first time.

Ed G8GSY was the first to be awarded a Gold Brickworks Award from the Club Brickworks Champion Daniel G4DGC.

The first of our presentations from Ian was about the history of the use of early VHF Repeaters in west the London area. Ian’s presentation style and humour was something our members quickly connected with. Some fun slides and hilarious recollections of the antics of the Anti-Repeater Group (ARG) back in the 1970’s made for a fun interactive presentation with a first for Bracknell ARC Members, singing along to some of the ARG songs of their exploits. Although I am sure the ARG activity is not something we would appreciate in modern times, it was great fun listening to some of the stories of their activities.

Without a break, Ian then explained with some great detail, the design, installation and operation of DMR/Tetra Radio links across the length of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline from Turkey to Italy. An amazingly complex and sophisticated set-up with built in spare capacity and capability helping ensure future-proofing.

We were so interested in Ian’s presentation, with following questions that we had one of our latest meeting finishes for a long time.

A huge thank you to Ian G8MWK for entertaining us and Brett M9XBB for helping with the info/slides.