The Heritage School Electronics & Radio Club, G7HSC, run by Jon Bonsor-Matthews, M0NOJ, and supported by Colin Tuckley, G8TMV, has gone from strength to strength over the autumn term.
The club is hugely grateful to the RCF who awarded a very generous grant enabling us to purchase a Xiegu G90 & XPA-125B based HF setup and an Anytone AT-777UV rig for local contacts. In addition, we are hoping to install antennas on the school, so that we can transmit inside too. We would also like to thank M0VCO Antennas, Sotabeams and Moonraker for their support to make our grant spread that little bit further.
During the autumn term the Cambridge Repeater Group kindly lent us their van, Flossie, which we took on an overnight school camp enabling 18 students to make their first QSO. We’ve been transmitting from a nearby field whilst the light allowed and, more recently, we worked inside with a 2m Slim Jim hung from an upstairs window and connected remotely to a Flex radio, in part to operate as GB25YOTA.
We’ve been building a simple six transistor MW receiver – which picks up Radio 5 Live very nicely, but alas nothing else. The students have enjoyed practising their Morse and, following the latest craze, sending quite a lot of -…. –… around the classroom! We managed a DMR contact with Chris, MM0WIC, the RSGB Youth Chair and are hoping to extend this to a lunchtime connection between schools next term.
