The next VARC meeting will be at The Boot on Monday 17th of April. We welcome members and not members. You are cordially invited to join us for at The Boot on Monday 17th of April 2023. This is an excellent opportunity to connect with fellow club members, share your knowledge and your projects, and … Read more
My antenna is a 2m folded dipole designed by Dave Kimber, G8HQP. I followed his instructions like this: 2m Folded Dipole – a loft-mounted vertical folded dipole for the 144 – 146MHz band. Theory: A vertical antenna most appropriate for 2m. A fat dipole (therefore wideband) will have a lower feed impedance at resonance than a thin dipole … Read more
The annual VARC Antenna Shootout starts today and runs until the end of June. The theme for this year is ‘2-metre activity’ meaning that it can be any mode, any polarisation, and any power (within applicable licence restrictions of course). You can operate from any location but must use your own callsign and not the … Read more
Verulam Amateur Radio Club now has it’s remote station running from it’s site near Dunstable. This is running most HF bands and proving to be very successful. It is operating using the RemoteHams software, which is a free download from the Remote Hams website. Once downloaded you can search for VARC and access the radio. … Read more
Europe and the Falklands are seemingly the main activity on the 4 metres (70 MHz) band. America and Japan don’t have it so most big ham radio company manufacturers avoid it for the most part. (The Icom IC-7300 is the exception but only the European model.) VARC member Bob Houlston (GVPVB) sent an e-mail to Elecraft … Read more
SWLs may have a lot of fun monitoring the new FM voice repeater on the International Space Station. ‘I heard it on 21st May 2021 at 20:05 UTC for an 11-minute pass’, says VARC member Bob Houlston (G4PVB). ‘The Doppler effect is quite noticeable, so I tuned my receiver high to 437.810 MHz and gradually … Read more
In January, Ron White G6LTT, the club’s district representative spoke at the club’s virtual meeting. He was joined by Terry Baldwin G4UEM, also a representative. Ron described the changes now taking place, particularly with training and examinations which have moved online, including invigilation of exams, all of which can be booked and paid in the … Read more
VARC member Tim Price (G4YBU) took part in a radio interview on BBC Radio Surrey this morning discussing Summits on the Air (SOTA). Tim is one of the event organisers for SOTA. He was joined by RSGB Board Director Stewart Bryant (G3YSX).
Rhombic for 6m One thing I have fancied playing with for a long time is the Rhombic antenna. It has a very good directional gain and in principal is easy to construct. The problem is that on HF a Rhombic is extremely large. Even on 6m the antenna is pretty big! My idea for the … Read more
