Mike G4KFK – Wins ‘Best Newcomer’ Award in the RaDARC Construction Competition 2023

Thursday 9th November was the date of the Reading and District Amateur Radio Club’s Construction Contest. With eight entries there were some well designed and incredibly useful projects on show. The level of sophistication of the electronics, build and embedded coding was outstanding.

RaDARC and BARC Member, Mike Gathergood G4KFK entered the contest for the first time, demonstrating the modifications and upgrades to his 4m FM Pye MX293 following failure of the radio’s original rotary encoder. Mike utilised a Arduino, writing code to replace the original rotary encoded with binary encoder logic to switch the channels and added a display with channel and frequency details.

Being his first entry to the contest, Mike was entered into the Newcomer section and being this year’s only newcomer automatically won the award. Although Mike may have been the only entrant, his project demonstrated the level of inovation and build quality we have come to expect from him.

Congratulation on your award Mike and congratulations to all the entrants for being part of such a high standard contest.