Category: Meetings

Again, not a lot happening but let’s see how it goes.

A good representation from people named David, people from the Antipodes, people who need marine radio and people who have marine radio licences. Lots of chat about how to operate on holiday and a discussion of marine radio licences, which one is needed and how to get one.

The venue was unanimously approved by those in attendance as much nicer (and cheaper, and better food) than The Pear Tree, but it is a bit harder to get to for some so we’re open to input from those who for any reason didn’t attend.

Next meeting is Friday 9th September online and as it’s not far off and there’s a bank holiday in the way we won’t try to squeeze in an extra meeting this month.

NOTE NEW VENUE!

Godfrey and I have had a few ‘management’ meetings (or at least that’s what he tells his wife) at The Curtains Up and agree that it’s a much nicer pub than the Pear Tree.

https://www.thecurtainsup.co.uk/

It’s open plan inside so you shouldn’t have much trouble finding us.

If there’s general agreement that it’s a better venue then we’ll make it permanent, or at least until further notice.

John K dropped in at the start live from Bisley to show us a most excellent sunset across the ranges, and after that we talked about various things although data modes and propagation featured heavily.

Usual plan but nothing in particular planned as it’s the middle of the holiday season.

Sorry for the short notice but I wasn’t sure if I’d be available to organise. I’ll open a meeting and we’ll see if anyone appears.

The main event (unscripted as usual) was David M’s single board computers, competitors to the ESP32 range in a similar format but with different (ARM?) processors that if David drops me a line I’ll edit into this post.

This Wednesday is the monthly pub meet by which time the weather should be a little cooler.

Also for your diary:

This week from Wednesday to Friday the renovated 1960s BBC outside broadcast truck MCR21 will be on show at the Broadcasting House piazza. https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/research/mcr21/ I’m planning to go on Wednesday before the HARS meeting.

On Sunday 24th July (subject to confirmation) West London Hackspace (not London Hackspace) has a talk on monitoring river water quality by a member who’s been developing a solution for distributed monitoring of water quality in a nearby river, a project in which the problem of actually measuring the water quality turned out to be the simple part, dwarfed by the issues of communications, power management and security. It’s a short informal talk with plenty of time for Q+A, discussion and, of course, beer. At The Forester pub, Northfields/West Ealing, from 6pm.

On Saturday 6th August from 14:00-16:00 the London Hackspace Radio Club holds it’s monthly meeting in the shack, mainly with the intention of showing off the shack and fielding questions about amateur radio. The shack has an FT-450D for HF and an FT-857D for 2/70 with an H422 vee and V2000 aerials on the roof of the five-storey building high up in Wembley in the shadow of the arches. Members have 24×7 access to use the shack which runs digital modes when not otherwise in use. Opportunities to visit are rapidly diminishing as the lease comes to and end in December and as present a new home has yet to be found so the last meeting will be the first Saturday of November and at that point we’ll be focussed on stripping out and most likely putting the equipment into storage.

We didn’t cover as much admin as we’d wanted but we’re going to include another online meeting each month, so watch the events page.

If someone could take on the role of soliciting and coordinating low key talks, please contact me. Perhaps we should think of them as discussion topics, because as soon as we mention talks we get suggestions of inviting other clubs and streaming, which misses the point that we need meeting material that any member can prepare in half an hour on a subject close to their heart.

Cristian has been playing with the morse training equipment that was donated and posted some pictures on the Discord server. If you haven’t joined Discord then send me a private message and I’ll send you an invitation.

Usual plan – we’ll send a Teams invite on the day.

Members may remember Nigel Royan, 2E0CLX who came to meetings during our first two years.  He appeared much younger than he was as I was surprised to learn in conversation that we’d both worked at Thames TV at the same time, but he was already quite senior while I was a junior R+D engineer.  For a month or so his emails have been bouncing and sadly this week I spotted his name in the SK section of RadCom magazine.  Our condolences to his family and friends.