July Meeting – Construction Club, Signal Strengths, IC-720 Diag and Q&A

Our July meeting was our second visit to The Brownlow Hall where it was good to see so many new members attending. The evening just happened to clash a certain Euro Semi-Final, members being kept up to date with the score based on the level of cheering from the Pub Garden opposite.

Following a rather lengthy update on the current activities and plans from the Club Committee, covering subjects from our meeting location to our new Tuesday DMR Net, it was time to hand over to Roy M0WTP.

Construction Club – Roy M0WTP

Roy has been doing a lot of preparation and planning over recent months to form a new BARC Construction Club. The Club will run evening and possibly weekend sessions during which small individual electronics projects can be assembled and tested with help and advice on hand from more experienced members.

Roy had pre-assembled a number if suggested projects to get us started, these included the following:

• FM Broadcast Receiver with Digital Display
• CW Morse Trainer
• Pixie CW 40m Transceiver

All three items were purchased in kit form and could easily be assembled and tested during and evening meeting. Members new to electronic construction would be able to develop their component identification and soldering skills while experienced members would be on hand to help out if needed.

Demonstrating the assembled kits Roy showed how well they all worked, even sending and receiving CW from the little Pixie transceiver. A list of members interested in joining a construction evening and their kit preferences was taken and will be contacted with available dates.

IC-720 Fault Diagnosis – Mike G4KFK

The Club had been contacted by a non-member that had recently be gifted a very nice ICOM IC-720 that had no power supply and was in an unknown operating condition. Mike G4KFK brought along some useful test equipment and had constructed a Power Lead with an ICOM Connector to test the Radio.

The ICOM powered up and after some tuning and slowly increasing the poser output it was determined that the radio was stuck around the 20Mhz frequency and the band could not be changed. Although the radio received successfully, the power output was only just measurable. Mike suspected that the key panel board behind the facia may be at fault. The owner, Sergei will disassemble the radio and make some investigations. Thanks also to Sergei for the lovely Pastries that he brought in for our members.

Signal Strengths and Wide Band Antenna – Les G8AMK

After a short break and another cup of Coffee all round, Les G8AMK distributed a detailed chart of Theoretical S-Meter Readings, displaying the S Scale and associated equivalent in uV, dB, dBmw and other measurements. Les also discussed a recent wide band antenna that he had modeled and constructed that is performing well with a relatively consistent SWR across the bands, from Top Band to 2m!

Thank you to Roy M0WTP, Mike G4KFK and Les G8AMK for making this an interesting and entertaining evening of Amateur Radio, it is very much appreciated.

With so may subjects to present there was little time for a Q&A, with most of the discussion covering CW Paddles and the use of the Iambic Modes.

This was our last meeting at The Brownlow Hall, our new meeting location will announced shortly.