www.cpsarc.com

The newsletter of Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club

www.cpsarc.com

Well folks another year has nearly gone, oh where do they vanish too? From a personal viewpoint it has been another busy year on both the club and personal front to the extent I have not played as much radio as I would have liked to, plus I still have lots of outstanding things I should have done so maybe next year I will end up with a nice clean sheet, some hope knowing my luck��. Normally in the December edi-torial I do a recap of what has happened over the last year but I have decided to hold it back until January so that it really does line up with being a full year. I will start with the unfortunate sad news where Jim GM7LUN sadly lost his father a week or two back and as always our thoughts will go out to Jim and his family on their sad loss. There is never a good time but I often feel as it nears Christmas it makes it harder, again Jim our deepest sympathies. So what has happened since our last club night? On club night we had our official presen-tation to the British Heart Foun-dation and sadly again the pa-pers never turned up as prom-ised . This now twice they have done this although a day previ-

ous they assured Heather of the BHF they would be there. I gave a talk on “Routers in a Network” which sadly was not really well supported. Regard training I am well into the Advanced Course where I know all the students are finding it quite hard but I am sure they will all pass with flying colours when they sit their exam on Monday 8

th December. I am

sure you will go along with me and wish them all the luck. To the future: as mentioned in last months newsletter the club will celebrate its’ Silver Anniver-sary (25 years) and I would like us to do something special but so far I have had only a couple of replies to my request so what do you want to do? Tomorrow a few of us are going out for our Christmas Meal which I am really looking for-ward too, it is an occasion where we get a chance to go out along with our partners and have a meal and a good laugh. My wish for 2009 is that some of the “old faces” will return to the club and that “apathy” and lack of attendance to ALL club events will be a thing of the past. LET US ALL SUPPORT THE CLUB because if you don’t it will just wither and die and that is something I would hate to see

happen. Right, that is about it again for another year so all that is left to say to you all is to WISH YOU ALL AND YOUR FAMILIES A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY, HEALTHY AND PROSPOROUS NEW YEAR. I should add I hope you get what you want as well from Santa, assuming you posted your let-ter! Bob GM4UYZ

EDITORIAL

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

December 2008

Vol 16 Issue 12

www.cpsarc.com 2

Club Premises update

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

see if they could offer anything else. The bottom line is that we are still looking. The following is my opinion and may not be shared with others with regard to the search.

• The possibility of finding anything is looking like it is a non-starter.

• I feel the momentum has dried up amongst others as well in the hunt for prem-ises.

• If we do find something then I have massive concerns for the following reasons.

• We are struggling and I mean struggling to get peo-ple through the door for our normal club night or even organised events in the Community Centre.

The impression that it gives me that in reality, no one is inter-ested in the club. If we cannot get people in now then what chance will we have with our own premises and the running costs?

Own premises means commit-ment financially� I see Rates, Electric bills, heating, up keep, rental, etc. How are we going to pay for all this? From what I see is it would fall to the same few people that are prepared to put their hand in their pocket for the benefit of the club. Personally I do not think it is fair, do you? By the way I am not being negative even though it may read that way as ideally I would love a place of our own but I am just looking at the bigger pic-tures with all the information that I have at hand and that does not read anything promis-ing. Any one else want to offer an opinion on where we go from here�� Bob GM4UYZ

As you are all aware we set about trying to obtain our own club premises back in January. Sad to say our success rate is absolutely zero. I can assure everyone it is not for the sake of trying. We have written way to at least two or three people and to this date there has been no response from any one of them. To be honest I feel it is quite sad plus bad manners on their behalf for not replying. At the beginning of November I thought about the old St Jo-seph’s School which lies be-tween Port Seton and Tranent so I did a bit of recognisance where in my eyes it looked quite favourable as a location. I sub-sequently wrote to East Lothian Council but as it turns out they only lease the property and un-der the terms of their lease they could not permit the use for our purpose. The response from East Lothian was also positive in that they tried to look to see if anything was available that fits our needs but sadly not. Ok it was still a negative but at least they had the decency not only to respond but also look to

I don’t think that we should be unduly discouraged by our pre-sent lack of success in finding a suitable location for our club premises, it was never going to be a vision that was realised in a short period of time. Members of the club are still keeping an eye out for suitable sites, the offer from Liz and Ricky based around their inter-est in a plot of land (even though it may not be viable due to access difficulties) shows that opportunities do present them-selves from time to time. Bob’s point about the reduction in active members and their collective ability to fund such a venture is valid, with only a small membership base (the

number of active members is small, but not zero!) we would have to examine the potential running costs of any premises (balanced against the savings we could make in storage fees and room rentals) but almost certainly it would trigger the need to move to a formal mem-bership fee, this proposal re-ceived broad support from those present at the Club Re-view earlier in the year. Also our fund raising efforts would have to more focussed on our inter-nal projects. Club members have shown that they are willing to support pro-jects that require considerable sums of money (the success of the appeal to raise funds for our

second Alpha amplifier and the ongoing support of the Tiree expedition are two which spring to mind) I’m certainly willing to put my hand in my pocket in order to gain such valuable asset, and I’m sure others are equally will-ing. Of course no-one is able to do this all on their own, it needs real, positive support from eve-ryone who is proud to call them-selves a member of CPSARC. John MM0JXI

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Contents 2 Club Premises update

3 BHF Presentation

4 Talk—Routers in a Net-work

5 Has the Magic of Radio Gone Away?

6 Next Foundation Course

7 Presentation to BHF

8 Dunestar 600 6 Band Filter

10 Test Your Knowledge

11 Event Calendar

12 Snippets

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Presentation to BHF

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

Our annual official presentation of the money raised this year by the Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club was done on Friday evening the 7th No-vember during the club’s normal monthly club night. Heather Gregory, Regional Organiser for the BHF accepted the cheque for £915 from the club’s chair-man Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ. The club has over the past fif-teen years now raised the sum of £14368 for the charity. It is great to see from a tremendous hobby that something good can be put back into the community. The hobby takes many knocks, much from people who do or are not prepared to do any thing for it. So to all amateurs don’t knock the hobby, think positive and drive this hobby forward in a positive light. The following is an extract from Heather Gregory our local fund-raising manager and although she mentions Scotland it also applies to everyone within the UK.

“It is with the support of people like Bob and his members and the family and friends who sup-port the Junk Night and the Brit-ish Heart Foundation which continues to help improve the lives of patients living with heart disease. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank everyone concerned in raising the brilliant total of £915. The charity is keen to recruit volunteers to support its work in the East Lothian area and hopes other groups will follow the example of Bob and his members in organising fund-raisers. Volunteering can be a really rewarding experience. You get a great sense of achievement from volunteering with the nation’s heart charity, where your contribution will make a difference and be truly appreciated. Together we can beat heart disease” Bob GM4UYZ

Presentation of cheque for £913 to British Heart Foundation

Bjorn DL1DBS, Cambell MM0DXC, Heather Gregory BHF, Duncan MM0GZZ, Bob GM4UYZ, John MM0JXI

www.cpsarc.com 4

The talk took place in our nor-mal location of the Port Seton Community Centre on Friday 14

th November between 19:30

and 21:30. I would like to thank those who did turn and support the event plus also thanks to those who did offer their apolo-gies for not being able to come along. The question is, "where were the rest of you?” To be honest it was a very disappoint-ing turnout�maybe it was the speaker who turned you all away��. What worries me is if we had had a guest speaker what would they have thought espe-cially if they had put a power of work in to produce the talk. This talk produced by me took well over 5 hours to put together so maybe you will realise what I mean�just think about it. Ok moan now over�. To the talk�. The questions asked were� Do you have a PC and Broadband? Do you have email? Do you access the Internet? Then the answer is that you will use routers. A description using a diagram was used to illustrate the home user connecting to an ISP and then onto the Internet. Explaining that within the ISP’s network there will be routers which will connect you to your mail server and also out to the internet. The internet is all con-nected together via thousands of routers allowing connection to all sorts of information. What is a router then? Well it is a device that operates primarily at Layer 3 within the ISO 7 Layer model. It can have more than one type of physical con-nection i.e. Ethernet, ADSL, ISDN, Wireless. Etc. It can use at the same time different routed protocols like IP, IPX, etc and in a network the routers are all configured to use a routing protocol like RIP, OSPF, etc to create a dynamic routing table.

One thing to remember about a router is basically it is a device that holds a table known as the Routing Table to allow the router to make decisions on what to do with any data that arrives at it. Basically some data arrives to go some where, the data is passed up to layer 3 i.e. where the routing table lives. The router looks at the information provided and com-pares it with what is in the rout-ing table. If it finds an entry in that table for this data it then forwards or routes that data onto the next location using the information from the table. If it doesn’t find any entry the data will be discarded unless a De-fault Route has been config-ured. Routers physically come in many sizes from a small home router to a very large commer-cial router. Which one you use depends on the requirements needed... An explanation then was deliv-ered on the ISO 7 Layer model concentrating on the bottom 3 layers i.e. Physical, Data Link and the Network Layer explain-ing how a router uses these layers. Following this an expla-nation of TCP/IP was given con-centrating on IP addressing. For a fuller description on this see my article in a previous edition of our newsletter. This was followed by two slides one showing how data from a PC gets across the network using the ISO 7 Layer model crossing a few routers before arriving at it is destination. The second slide was showing what in a way what makes a router powerful in the sense it can send data from one media type to another i.e. from say an Ethernet network to a Token Ring network. This is achieved by the router as it can remove the Data Link information from

the Ethernet sourced packet and replace it with Data Link Information required for the To-ken Ring destination. In es-sence the router removes the layer 2 information from the in-coming data and replaces it with the destinations layer 2 informa-tion. An explanation was then given on the three types of routes that can be configured in a Router which are Static Routes, Dy-namic Routes and Default Routes. Static Routes are routes which are added to a router by an “administrator”. The administrator then has the task of always keeping these up to date, a tiresome task if there was ever one especially in a large network. Static Routes though are extensively used when a router is “out on a limb” from the major network as in this case this router only sends data to the major network so that is all that needs to be con-figured. Dynamic Routes are created by routing protocols for example RIP, OSPF, BGP, etc. When a network is being de-signed then the Designer will decide on what routing protocol they will use (there are a num-ber of them and they all have their advantages and disadvan-tages). On deciding what Rout-ing Protocol that will be used, then each router in that network will be configured to run with this protocol. Part of the config-uring of this protocol is that all the networks which are at-tached physically to the individ-ual router are assigned to the protocol. What happens then is that these networks are adver-tised or passed to each router that has been configured with the routing protocol. Eventually every router learns about all the networks that have been config-ured. This is Dynamic Routing. If there are any changes i.e. networks added or removed

(Continued on page 5)

Talk– Routers in a network

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

5

then the Routing Protocol ad-vertises these changes to all the routers and the routing table will be amended accordingly. Lastly Default Routing is an entry added so that if a request to go to a network arrives and there is no entry in the routing table to route this data the data will not be discarded. What the default route does is sends it to another router to deal with. The term often used for this is “last man frees all”. An example of a rout-

(Continued from page 4) ing table was then shown to illustrate Dynamic Routing. The last part of the talk was a demonstration which had been created on a Network Simula-tion Program showing initially that data being sent from a PC could not get across the net-work. What needed to be done to make it work was some final configuration of a router within the network. This was configur-ing the router to be part of the network with regard to a routing protocol.

On completing this, a full routing table was then established in this router which allowed data to flow across the whole network. The talk was aimed to try and give a small understanding of some of the basics on how the routers work and pass data so hopefully I did achieve that. Bob GM4UYZ

I remember as a kid listening in on the short wave radio that wondrous feeling I got of the magic of radio. I wondered how this was possi-ble that a voice can be transmit-ted over vast distances and re-ceived... Radio was truly a magical device. Today, we have such wonderful communication devices and digital toys I often wonder what the children think of these items and if they can truly appreciate how they came to be? Today, most people of young take everything for granted. I find very few if any younger kids wondering how it works, why it works and where it came from. Basically all they are just appli-ance operators with no regard of the work and effort it took to get that device in their hands. As a young boy and even an old man today, I would be inter-ested in finding out how it worked, how to fix it and why it either worked or how it broke. Before I throw anything out I would try to fix it and see what went wrong. Not because I am cheap and don't want to spend the money on a new device BUT for the satisfaction that I did indeed fix it!

Has the Magic of Radio Gone Away?

By Lou Giovannetti KB2DHG

If you are reading this you probably are a tinkerer and can relate to my feelings here. Ama-teur Radio was always a hobby of tinkerers, experimenters and general interesting people that had an interest in electronics and advancement of the radio art. I remember years ago hear-ing more Hams describing their rigs as HOME BREW... today the rigs are manufactured. To me there was nothing more exciting than that first contact I made with a transmitter I built from scrap parts of an old TV! Even the old EICO 723 kit I built which I still have today and use. I miss those days where we were amazed at the wonders of the new devices and what they did. I recently purchased my daughter a new cell phone that can do everything but walk the dog. An amazing little device that can communicate all over the world, send movies, pic-tures, play games and music and so much more that I don't even know myself? She just took it and that was it! Man, I remember when I got my first short wave receiver; I was glued to that thing like a magnet to steel! AMAZED at how this box was receiving signals all over the world and then when I became a ham transmitting my

own signal and being heard in another location! WOW MAGIC! Well my friends, maybe I am simple minded but even today I am still getting a charge when I am sitting at my Amateur Radio station and communicating to the world via wireless. When I get comments from non-Hams that say their cell phone or com-puter can do the same thing I simply say yes but I get a cer-tain satisfaction of knowing that I made the signal myself! Yes, RADIO is magic and I am very proud to be a part of this hobby. I have and always will have an appreciation for inven-tion and electronic devices. A person who wonders about things in today's world is basi-cally a person that never lost that child within. I guess that is what keeps us young at heart. I hope Amateur Radio never dies... It would be sad to have silence on the bands... We were the ones who gave mankind the communicating devices we have today... BRAVO my fellow HAMS!

www.cpsarc.com 6

My next Foundation Course starts on Saturday 17th Janu-ary at 09:30. It runs over two weeks (i.e. two Saturdays) and you will sit the exam on the 24th January at 15:00. See below FOR ALL DETAILS, COSTS and REGISTRATION information. If you are inter-ested then send me the money ASAP and then you will be on the course. Hope to hear from you soon on your decision FOUNDATION COURSES 2009 Course 2: Resources Room 2 Saturday 17th January 2009 Saturday 24th January 2009 (Exam at 15:00) Closing Date for Course Fees: 20th December 2008

Any one wishing to attend any of the training courses needs to contact: Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ 7 Castle Terrace, Port Seton, Prestonpans, East Lothian EH32 0EE Tel: 01875 811723 or 07867 836488 Email: bob.gm4uyz@talktalk.net For all courses the following information is mandatory and must be provided by the candi-date. It is required by the RSGB for examination booking and administration. * FULL NAME * FULL ADDRESS * POST CODE * CONTACT TELEPHONE NUMBER (Assuming not ex-directory) * EMAIL ADDRESS – If appli-cable * DATE OF BIRTH * RSGB MEMBERSHIP – Member or Non-Member Note: For candidates under the age of 16 they must have their application endorsed by a par-ent or guardian

Training Course Fees: Please note that all fees must be paid in advance for the re-spective course—see the panel on the opposite page for de-tails. Make cheques made payable to Bob Glasgow. And send them to his address above.

Next Foundation Course

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

Foundation Licence RSGB & NON-RSGB Member RSGB Exam Fees £20.00 “Foundation Licence Now” manual £5.00 Hire of Community Centre Room for course and examination £5.00 Training Course Fees TOTAL COST OF COURSE): £30.00 Training Venue: The club delivers all the training and exams at its RSGB registered “Satellite Examination Centre” which is as follows: RSGB Registered Identification No: LT82 Cockenzie & Port Seton Community Centre, South Seton Park, Port Seton, Prestonpans, East Lothian EH32 0BQ Tel: 01875 815815

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(25 Years) in 2009� It is hard to believe that in 2009 the club will be 25 years old. It doesn’t seem 5 minutes since I started in away back in 1984. What we started out doing by just meeting in the Thorntree to what we are involved in now is a massive step forward. I would love to think the club will still be around in another 25 years but that is another ques-tion all together. Remember it is YOUR CLUB so to keep it going it requires ALL YOUR SUPPORT and not left to the normal one or two. Anyway the question is as it is a special year how can we cele-brate it, do you have any ideas? Do we�.

• Do nothing?

• Do we put on a special day

in the Community Centre with speakers, refresh-ments, etc?

• Do we sponsor a special

award for a contest or other Amateur Radio activity?

Do you have any suggestions? Depending on the input and what could be selected maybe a small team of volunteers could “drive” the idea forward. That is more for the future rather than the present. I look forward to your re-sponses. Bob GM4UYZ gm4uyz@cpsarc.com

Bob tells me that he hasn’t had much response so far to this appeal for a suitable project or event to mark this historic land-mark. This is our opportunity to raise the profile of the club and maybe do something really ex-citing. Doing nothing isn’t an option so get your thinking caps on, all suggestions (and offers of help) are welcome! John MM0JXI

Club’s Silver Anniversary

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

Web Site update

By John Innes MM0JXI

The present version of the web site was installed in December 2006 and released for general use in the February of 2007, since then it has seen phe-nomenal growth, expanding from 800 unique visits in the first month to the present 3500 unique and we peaked at 5438 last June. The forum is very well sup-ported, and the chatbox has added a new real time dimen-sion and is being used during the Club Sked and at other times for general chat (which is exactly what it’s for) This real time usage is resulting in total hit counts of 13,000+ a month which is far in excess of any-thing we achieved with the pre-vious version of the site. All this activity doesn’t come without its problems and we’ve seen a worrying increase in

spam on the guestbook and other areas of the site which have resulting in us having to lock it down a bit tighter and take rapid action to delete the rubbish (every day), thanks must go to Cambell MM0DXC who’s very vigilant in deleting offending posts. The whole point of this version of the site is interactivity and I’d encourage as many people as possible to have a go as posting stuff in the forums, submitting pictures or news. Everyone can do it and I’m sure you’d get a buzz out of seeing your content featured on the site. The next innovation was to re-ceive generous sponsorship from Malcolm 2M0BNY who’s company has funded the web hosting for two years. As a result of this the site was moved to a commercial host

and hopefully there has been a noticeable improvement in reli-ability and speed. Over the last couple of months I’ve been developing methods of raising a little money from the site—enough to cover the ongo-ing hosting and domain costs, and to that end you’ll see the Amazon shop and some ban-ners on the site, purchases made from Amazon via these links earn us a referral fee and the results so far are very en-couraging. So I’d encourage you all to consider using these links to make your Amazon pur-chases, the prices are the same but we benefit every time. John MM0JXI webmaster

www.cpsarc.com 8

The club uses these filters as part of our HF set-up and they are designed to cover the HF Bands 160M, 80M, 40M, 20M, 15M and 10M. The filters are contained in one unit with the required band selection being made via a 9 Pin “D” Type, ba-sically we change band on the radio the Logging program then changes band then the band change is fed out to the filter and the correct band is then selected.

This type of arrangement is re-quired when the station is going to feed different antennas at different times. What I mean is that say through the night we use 80M and through the day we use 10M so at night we would select the 80M band on the radio which will eventually select the 80M filter, through the 1=day we select 10M on the radio which will eventually se-lect the 10M filter. Although we have primarily moved away from the Multiple aerial to single Monoband station set-up where we now use single band Dunestar Filters instead of the 6 Band Dunestar Filter they are still needed on radios that are sharing bands i.e. 15M/80M or 10M/160M.

The filters I must admit are fan-tastic and allow more than one radio to be operating at the same time without any interfer-ence to each other. An example of this set-up is when we were doing CQWW SSB running 4

Dunestar 600 6 Band Filter

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

radio stations at the exactly the same time. With the filters in then this would certainly not be possible. The following diagrams and information showing how the filters are behaving on each of the bands was produced by Bernard Naylor G3SHF from the Stockport Radio Club near Man-chester. Personally I have made a few friends at the Stockport club and when ever I am in the area I try my best to attend their club nights plus I am often in email conversation with them. Ironically Jim Barlow G3VOU joined us from the Stockport club during our IOTA Dx-pedition to Tiree this year ce-menting an even closer relation-ship between the two clubs. Anyway, back to the filters, Ber-nard was aware that we use these filters and asked if he could borrow one to do some tests plus evaluate its perform-ance so to that end I have posted one down to Bernard. The evaluation that he will be doing will take place during this years CQWW CW contest. Measurements were taken us-ing the following procedure:

• I used my FT1000 as an RF

source padded down to 10 watts. I then used my homebrew power meter terminated by a dummy load. The power meter is a design by N2PK with a 90 dB range. See URL http://n2pk.com/RLPmtr/RLPv1c.pdf For information from Bernard: The meter is not a kit and all the information needed in the .PDF file, see the above URL (the file is also available from www.cpsarc.com). The Chips are the only issue, from Analogue Devices. Go on their website and they are free, 2 only, for 'experimental' pur-

poses. You have to fill in an interesting questionnaire though. Alternatively they were about £17 each.....!! Meter scales were homebrew using a little program called 'meter', available from http://www.tonnesoftware.com/meter.html Yes an interesting peace of kit. It is so sensitive that you can tune an ATU while in SSB mode with the microphone gain at zero. The suppressed carrier is sufficient to drive the return loss meter - true silent tuning. My thanks to Bernard for the information he compiled and put together so please enjoy study-ing the output�. Bob GM4UYZ

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1. Additional protection from strong HF transmis-sions affecting television reception can be achieved by fitting a

a. low pass filter in the TV aerial lead b. high pass filter in the TV aerial lead c. low pass filter in the transmitter feeder d. high pass filter in the transmitter feeder. 2. The chance of causing interference to nearby

radio and electronic equipment can be re-duced by

a. keeping all antennas below the line of the sur-rounding roofs

b. using minimum transmit power for the contact c. using vertical polarisation wherever possible d. using SSB in preference to FM. 3. Running a transmitter in a motor vehicle could a. increase the risk of interference to other stations b. cause a malfunction of the engine management

system c. increase the rate of corrosion of the vehicle body-

work d. adversely affect radar operated speed cameras. 4. A neighbour advises that his new digital televi-

sion is suffering interference. You should a. advise that amateur transmissions can affect ana-

logue equipment but not digital and he should contact the supplier

b. give the neighbour a copy of the TV interference leaflet from the RSGB EMC committee web site

c. suggest he contacts Ofcom to get his installation arrangements properly checked

d. ask if you can try out some test transmissions to see if it is likely to be your equipment.

5. The main difference between a packet mailbox

and a digipeater used to pass a message to a more distant station is that

a. a mailbox will check each packet of the message and store it until complete whereas a digipeater forwards each packet immediately and unchecked

b. a mailbox will check each packet of the message and store it until complete whereas a digipeater checks only the whole message

c. it is necessary to specify the end to end route of a message sent to a mailbox but a digipeater is able to route messages automatically

d. digipeaters need to be separately licensed but any amateur can set up a mailbox as part of his or her own station.

6. You are on 433.100MHz, in contact with a mobile amateur who asks if you can hear him directly. To check that you should listen on

a. 431.500MHz b. 432.500MHz c. 433.700MHz d. 434.700MHz 7. A special event station can be recognised by its

callsign, which will be of the form (note `a' de-notes. any number and `x' any letter)

a. MaSxx b. MBaxxx c. SPaxxx d. 2Saxxx 8. Provided you are using the correct mode, it is

considered amateur etiquette to transmit on 20m from

a. 14.000 to 14.350MHz b. 14.000 to 14.089 and 14.112 to 14.350MHz c. 14.000 to 14.099 and 14.101 to 14.350MHz d. 14.000 to 14.112 and 14.125 to 14.350MHz 9. An amateur shack should have a a. notice saying `no entry to unauthorised persons' b. general coverage receiver for all amateur bands c. residual current circuit breaker on each item of

mains powered equipment d. single master `off switch’ for the entire installation

except a ceiling mounted light. 10. The HPA provides recommendations on a. the safe levels of RF exposure b. immunity to RF interference c. lightning protection of antenna d. amateur operating procedures.

Test Your Knowledge

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

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Event Calendar

By John Innes MM0JXI

5th December Club Night

6th December Club Christmas Night Out Dragon Way Restaurant , Port Seton

9th January 2009 Club Night

24 January 2009 SOS Radio Week (a week of Amateur Radio based events in support of the RNLI)

31 January 2009 Newsletter Deadline

6th February 2009 Club Night

20th February 2009 Radio Test Night by John MM0JXI Port Seton Community Centre, Resources Room 2 19:30 to 21:30

28 February 2009 Newsletter Deadline

6th March 2009 Club Night

20 March 2009 Talk by Malcolm Gibson 2M0BNY —Databases and their uses

28 March 2009 Newsletter Deadline

3rd April 2009 Club Night

18 April 2009 10 Pin Bowling Night (TBC)

25 April 2009 Newsletter Deadline

1st May 2009 Club Night

15 May 2009 1st 144MHz DF Hunt (TBC)

23 May 2009 Newsletter Deadline (this is early due to holidays)

5th June 2009 Club Night

6 June 2009 Port Seton Gala Day

14 June 2009 PW QRP Contest

20 June 2009 Newsletter Deadline

20 June 2009 Museums on the Air Weekend GB2MOF From the Museum of Flight—East Fortune

24 June 2009 CPSARC 20m Activity Night

26 June 2009 Club Night (note the change of date to accommodate VHF Field Day

4 July 2009 VHF Field Day

25 July 2009 Newsletter Deadline

25/26 July 2009 RSGB IOTA Contest

7 August 2009 Club Night

14 August 2009 Junk Night

15 August 2009 Lighthouses Weekend—GB2LBN From Barns Ness Lighthouse

22 August 2009 Newsletter Deadline (early due to holidays)

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The Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club is affiliated to the Radio Society of Great Britain and holds the call signs MM0CPS and GM2T which are used for our special event and contest entries.

We have our own internet domain www.cpsarc.com where you will find our popular web site which features lively discussion forums and photo galleries with a slide show. You can also download an elec-tronic copy of this newsletter.

The Club was formed by Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ in 1984, to help the local amateurs get to know each other.

Numbers increased steadily over many years but now average about 20. Far from being just a local club we have members regularly at-tending from the Borders, Dumfries, Strathclyde, Fife and Newcastle.

The Club meets on the first Friday of every month (Second Friday of January) in the lounge of the Thorntree Inn on the old Cockenzie High Street from 7pm till late.

The Club is run in a very informal way, there are no regular fees, no formal committee structure, just a group of like minded people doing something they enjoy!

This does not mean that we don’t do anything, we enter (and win!) contests, train newcomers, hold talks, DH Hunts and video nights and run a popular annual Junk Sale. Our newsletter has won the Practical Wireless ‘Spotlight’ competition on several occasions.

The Club supports the British Heart Foundation in memory of a member who died from heart disease by donating the profits from some of the events we hold, we have raised over £14,368 since 1994.

Bob Glasgow 7 Castle Terrace Port Seton East Lothian EH32 0EE Phone: 01875 811723 E-mail: gm4uyz@cpsarc.com General correspondence, training and Contest entries Bob Glasgow gm4uyz@cpsarc.com HF Contests Cambell Stevenson mm0dxc@cpsarc.com VHF Contests John MacLean mm0ccc@cpsarc.com Newsletter, website, event calendar John Innes mm0jxi@cpsarc.com

Club Sked The Club Sked has been run-ning for a couple of months now and is proving very popular, it’s driving several people to put up aerials and others to try a bit of operating, all very encouraging. 80m is proving to be quite diffi-cult at times but the wide geo-graphic spread of members means we are a bit limited in choice of bands. If you’d like to join in, keep an eye on the website chat box for the sked frequency. Thanks are due to Cambell MM0DXC for acting as sked controller and doing so much to encourage others to get on the air cpsarc.com email addresses If any club member wants an email address in the form call-sign@cpsarc.com please let mm0jxi@cpsarc.com know and I’ll set it up. Those who had these email addresses previously will also have to request them again as the old system isn’t connected to the new one. CPSARC Amazon shop If you’re doing your Christmas shopping, consider using the Amazon shop at www.cpsarc.com, you get the same great prices and service from Amazon and the club earns a referral fee for every direct purchase (not from resel-lers)

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Answers from December 2008 “Test Your Knowledge”. 1B, 2B, 3B, 4D, 5A, 6D, 7B, 8C, 9D, 10A

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