Saturday 24 October 2015

DV and Scouting Ramblings

It's been a busy couple of weeks radio wise lately. Last week we at SKARS visited the 1st Barrowby Scouts to enable the Cubs to gain their communications badges. After a short talk about radio we set about getting them to pass greetings messages. We couldn't raise anybody on 2m so I went into the car park and carried out QSO's from my car. A great time was had by all and, more importantly, a good rapport was established with the Group.

Last weekend saw SKARS again involved with the Scouts, this time it was with the 1st Foston Scouts for Jamboree on the Air. Saturday and Sunday were occupied with the event and Andrew, Stewart and myself ran both HF and VHF stations from the Scout Hut. This is my favourite of all the events we cover - the enthusiasm and willingness to participate from all of the kids is infectious and goes to prove that radio really does affect us all.

My DV4 MINI dongle arrived last week and it is now running on a Raspberry Pi in the shack. It's a little disappointing as the performance on DMR is poor when compared to Dstar and Fusion. Drop outs and missing syncs are the major issues - perhaps a software update might improve things but we will have to wait and see.

Last Wednesday I gave a talk and demonstration on DMR to the Club and guests. It all went surprisingly well and as a result we gained four new members. I have ordered another DMR handheld (bringing the total to three) and the next major radio purchase will be a DMR mobile set to put in the shack. I can access the GB7RR DMR repeater so I will reinstate my X50 collinear on a 6 metre pole in the garden to be dedicated to this task.

As Christmas looms ahead we at the Club have decided not to have a Christmas Bash as such, we will be having fish and chips and fizzy pop at our December meeting instead. I'm very much looking forward to that, there's a particularly good Chippy close to the Church Hall and it will be good to get everyone together for a fish supper.

73 for now de 2E0ENN

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