www.cpsarc.com

The newsletter of Cockenzie & Port Seton Amateur Radio Club

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 hopes knowing my luck……. Congratulations to Robin MM0VTV who successfully passed his driving test on the 12/11/2010 at his first attempt. Well done Robin...... So what else has happened since our last club night? There was a talk on “Software Defined Radio” by Björn Franke DL1DBS / MM0GFS which as I write this is about to happen but

I am sure it will have been a tremendous talk. On the teaching front three pu-pils in the Intermediate class will have sat and, hopefully, have passed their exam... and I am sure you will go along with me and wish them all luck. I will be starting a Foundation Course on the 11

th December.

To the future: Next Saturday a few of us are going out for our Christmas Meal which I am real-ly looking forward 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. For me, I am taking a sabbatical for the rest of De-cember and January to try and recharge the batteries ready for the “February Off” on the club events calendar. Thanks to some background work by Brian M0RNR we are now up and running with the new Club Tables which are be-ing run under ClubLog a web based site written by another amateur (Michael Wells G7VJR). This is a far more pow-erful tool than our old spread-sheet system. Pop onto the site via the club‟s web page and see for yourself. Thanks Brian for pointing us in this direction.... Although we have moved to this Bob GM4IKT is still interested in

all the good DX you have worked so he can do his club tables write up. My wish for 2011 is that some of the “old faces” will return to the club and that everyone will support ALL our club events. LET US ALL SUPPORT THE CLUB because if you don‟t it will just 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 letter! Bob GM4UYZ PS: Remember next club night is the 14

th January.

EDITORIAL

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

December 2010 Vol 18 Issue 12

www.cpsarc.com

2

2010 CQWW SSB Contest

30-31st OCTOBER Below shows how we ended after the contest and what was eventually submitted. There will always be differences as the log is checked for typo‟s and any errors. Sometimes it works in our favour and other times it does not.... How we ended with QSO‟s Logged: 4139 Contest : CQ World Wide DX Contest Callsign : GM2T Mode : PHONE Category : Multi Operator - Two Transmitter (M2) Overlay : --- Band(s) : All bands (AB) Class : High Power (HP) Zone/State/... : 14 Locator : IO85SX Operating time : 47h57

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

YEAR SECT CALLSIGN LOCATION ENTRANTS POSITION FINAL

SCORE QSO's ZONES COUNTRIES

1997 M2 GM0NTL/P No results Available

1998 M2 MM0MMV/P Longniddry No results Available

1999 M2 MM0CPS/P Barns Ness Log but no Entry??

2000 MM GM2T Barns Ness 2 2 1400091 2158 87 312

2001 MM GM2T Barns Ness 1 2 4216844 4523 114 434

2002 M2 GM2T Barns Ness 1 1 948918 1366 87 331

2003 MM GM2T Barns Ness 2 2 1009821 1641 91 318

2004 M2 GM2T Barns Ness 1 1 1809750 2565 102 373

2005 M2 GM2T Barns Ness 1 1 2528326 3454 95 359

2006 MM GM2T Barns Ness 2 3 4443504 5606 114 510

2007 MM GM2T Barns Ness 2 1 4416448 5527 109 495

2008 MM GM2T Barns Ness 3 2 2183742 2832 116 422

2009 MM GM2T Barns Ness 2 2 2442830 3306 109 450

2010 M2 GM2T Barns Ness 4358450 4086 135 475

BAND QSO CQ DXC DUP POINTS AVG

--------------------------------------

160 435 10 52 5 464 1.07

80 726 18 75 4 974 1.34

40 572 25 87 9 868 1.52

20 1280 35 106 22 2708 2.12

15 921 32 107 11 1909 2.07

10 154 15 51 0 228 1.48

--------------------------------------

TOTAL 4088 135 478 51 7151 1.75

======================================

TOTAL SCORE : 4 383 563

3

Contents 2 CQWW SSB Contest

4 New Club Tables

6 CQWW tale

8 Talk: Software Defined Radio

9 What‟s wrong with the sun?

10 Hull Man Convicted of radio offences

11 Intermediate Course

12 Test Your Knowledge

13 Event Calendar

14 Club Attire Test Your Knowledge answers Contacts

3

Contributions to the newslet-ter are most welcome. Please don‟t send these items to GM4UYZ, he‟s busy enough doing the many other things he does for the club. Send any items you‟d like included to newsletter@cpsarc.com or submit items for the web site direct to www.cpsarc.com

What we submitted...

As it turns out not many mistakes or I will rephrase it I didn‟t find many so the logging by everyone was excellent. I have been keeping records, surprise, surprise on what we have done since we started doing the CQWW Contest. The Final Score, QSO‟s, Zones and Countries are what the final adjudicated results were except for this year (2010) where it is showing our submitted score. From the table you can see how well we have achieved this year so everyone needs to be congratulated for all the effort that they put in. Well done to everyone who took part it is a fantastic score.... and I think Multi-2 is here to stay. Bob GM4UYZ

BAND QSO CQ DXC DUP POINTS AVG

--------------------------------------

160 434 10 52 6 463 1.07

80 726 18 75 4 974 1.34

40 571 25 87 10 867 1.52

20 1280 35 105 22 2710 2.12

15 921 32 105 11 1903 2.07

10 154 15 51 0 228 1.48

--------------------------------------

TOTAL 4086 135 475 53 7145 1.75

======================================

TOTAL SCORE : 4 358 450

Dupes are not included in QSO counts neither

avg calculations

www.cpsarc.com

4

New Club Tables

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

Further to Bob GM4IKT‟s posts on the Club‟s Website about dwin-dling club table returns and feed-back from some who say the ta-bles are too complicated to com-plete. Brian M0RNR has been quietly working in the background with Michael G7VJR about getting CPSARC added to Club Log. This is now up and running and replac-es the existing Club Tables spreadsheet. Sad in away to see it go but Club Log is superior in many respects and input from individuals is easier to do by just uploading your recent QSOs as an ADIF file from you logging pro-gram. Club Log then does the rest. Club Log is a web-based applica-tion that analyses log files from radio amateurs all over the world. Using the logs, Club Log offers you a wide range of reports for your own benefit, and identifies large scale trends from the sum of all activity in the database. If you participate in Club Log by uploading your log you will re-ceive:

Personal DXCC reports and league tables.

Detailed analysis of your log, using researched DXCC in-formation.

Zone charts for your log, again based on detailed re-search.

A personal timeline of your activity (DXCCs per year, band and mode info).

Your own log search tool, e.g. to link from your web page or QRZ profile.

A filtered DX Cluster which only tells you about DX you still 'need'.

A say in the Club Log most wanted report: your log is part of the trend data.

Access to propagation and activity predictions, using everyone's logs.

QSL suggestions to help you

send out just the cards you need.

Satisfaction from taking part in and improving a free DXing resource.

On top of the usual features you are also able to add CPSARC as a club and view club member‟s activity in a league table and drill down into stats etc as above. Michael has kindly provided this service free of charge for us but we need 10 members to upload their logs in order to activate the feature. (This has been achieved) The beauty about all of this is that you can upload your log to club log by doing an ADIF log export from almost any logging software, I use Winlog32 and Brian M0RNR uses HRD, as examples, You can upload at any frequency you like. You don't have to worry about dupes etc as the log deals with them. There is a hints and tips page on the webpage that pretty much covers all of the stuff you need to know (or give me or Brian M0RNR a shout and we will talk you through it) in addition the fa-cility is free, although there is a facility to donate should you wish to, and would encourage you to do so to keep the facility ad and charge free. It‟s dead easy to get going all you need to do is go to http://www.clublog.org/loginform.php and sign up. Remember we need as many of your logs as possible. John MM0JXI has created a link for the club tables directly from the club log site. Please, please upload your log, it has taken a bit of negotiation to get us onto the site and there are some prestigious clubs there al-ready so let us show everyone what we can do. Once you have registered on the site and have become or are al-

ready a club log member then on your settings page and click on the text "to join clubs and contest leagues, click here". This takes you to the Club Membership page. On the “Add more Clubs” select Cockenzie & Port Seton ARC and then Click on “Join Club”. Job done and your infor-mation will appear on the Cocken-zie & Port Seton ARC page. INFORMATION: If things do not appear instantaneous then leave for a couple of hours until the pro-gram sorts everything out. Thanks for your support guys - Michael was very supportive and I'd like to repay that good will by getting as many logs onto the sys-tem for CPSARC as possible. Even if you have a few QSO's in your log it is still worth uploading it, it can run the entire time you've held your licence if you have it electronically but the data gener-ated is really interesting. If you haven't yet ventured into electronic logging then I'd recom-mend Ham Radio Deluxe which is free to down load and does rig support and control as well as logging award tracking etc plus has an ADIF export function to allow you to use Club Log. Once a month Bob GM4IKT will publish the table in the club mag-azine so if you have any rare or interesting QSO's or snippets to send him then please continue to do so it is always good to hear what everyone has been up to. Thanks to Brian M0RNR for all the background work, it is really appreciated. Enjoy Club Log.... it is fascinating what it produces. Bob GM4UYZ

5

For this inaugural ClubLog table I‟ve filtered the entries by this year (2010) and sorted them by total number of DXCC entities worked.

To avoid the personal callsigns getting swamped by the contest and special event calls, I‟ve listed them separately.

So congratulations to Duncan MM0GZZ who tops the table for December 2010. The final totals for the year will be published in the January newsletter.

Those callsigns with a +2 beside them indicate logs with merged callsigns (Martyn MM0XXW has included MM1X and MM3XXW, Brian M0RNR has included M1BTP and M5BAP)..

Club members with contest calls should separate them out on the ClubLog site to allow them to be

listed alongside other contest / special event calls.

All club members are encour-aged to make use of this service, as Bob says in his article the system is easy to use, sign up and just upload your log to the system. You don‟t need to worry about filtering out a new year, the system will ignore duplicate entries so you can either send it your whole log, or just the new stuff you‟ve worked.

The more members we get using the system, the better the table will be.

From time to time we‟ll print the all-time tables to show who‟s doing the best across their whole time in Amateur Radio.

John MM0JXI

Rank Callsign 160 80 60 40 30 20 17 15 12 10 6 4 2 70 Total Slots

1 MM0GZZ 1 12 0 46 13 95 0 11 0 13 0 1 4 0 109 196

2 MM0XXW+2 1 11 0 33 0 81 18 35 12 14 0 0 0 0 94 205

3 M0RNR+2 0 21 0 26 0 22 0 19 0 0 0 0 0 0 57 88

4 MM0YMG 0 11 0 19 0 25 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 34 56

5 MM5AHO 0 19 1 11 15 0 1 0 0 0 8 0 0 0 34 55

6 GM0NTL 0 1 0 0 7 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 15

7 MM0FZV 0 1 0 1 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 6

8 GM4UYZ 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 5

Rank Callsign 160 80 60 40 30 20 17 15 12 10 6 4 2 70 Total Slots

1 GM2T 50 72 0 86 0 102 0 105 0 49 40 0 6 0 143 510

2 GM4W 21 40 0 55 0 78 0 53 0 11 0 0 0 0 93 258

3 GB2MOF 0 0 0 15 0 50 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 52 70

4 GB2LBN 0 0 0 22 0 36 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 40 58

5 MM0CPS 0 0 0 6 0 4 0 4 0 0 23 0 10 6 26 53

www.cpsarc.com

6

This year CQWW (Clearly Ques-tionable Wibbly Wobblers) at Barns Ness was wonderful. It is always wonderful but this year excelled. To fully understand you really have to participate to the full – starting Friday at 0700h in Tranent, through the full build, through the 48 hours of operating, through the station dismantling and ending about Monday at 1400h in Tranent. Only then will you truly appreciate the full gran-deur (and stupidity) of the event.

It is great that people come along to play a few hours radio over the weekend, or simply come along for the craik. It is a huge asset the club puts on for the members, but I recommend heartily that next year they partake of the event fully. I presume visiting the station is a bit like visiting a fancy bordel-lo and only peering through the window, but, having never visited a bordello, I am sure others can confirm this is the case.

CQWW is a long haul. It is a mar-athon against the IOTA 10k run. We put on as big a station as on Tiree but instead of having a 15 man team and all the hours of daylight that summer gives we only had about 7 of us to build the station and anything that was not done by about 1830h had to be finished under torchlight.

On top of that the contest starts at 0100h on the Saturday so there is no chance to finish things off fresh in the morning. To make matters even worse the cook is not half as capable or good looking as Elaine!!

We, that is pretty much the usual crew – Twig, Grampa, Handie-Man, Vindaloo, Slim (aspirational!) and Duck (think “duck or grouse”) - arrived in good order at about 0800h and immediately set to with the team splitting into small groups to get the 10m, 20m and 40m beams onto their respective towers. Methane joined shortly after and took on the 15m beam which was mounted on a tall rota-tor mounted scaffolding pole. It is encouraging how we all manage to quietly plug away and get these monsters built quite swiftly and without any fuss. Before long it was time for Vindaloo to slope off to get soup heated and the first of many plates of sandwiches made to keep bodies fed and morale, unlike SWR, high.

Afternoon saw the main beams all finished, the 80m vertical built and the top band inverted L set up, by which time everybody was just about dropping. It is critical here not to forget that the twig jockey‟s job is all to naught without the val-iant and heroic efforts of the shack pansy. Grampa was by himself and soldiered on astonish-ingly, not only building the radios, accompanying band decoders, filters etc etc and PC network, but also physically manufacturing the furniture!

It was tough being such a small team for such a Herculean task

but at least the weather was fair and there was hardly a breath of wind which helped enormously. I confess the decision to have take-away pizzas was a blessing and when the evening contingent – The Prof, NightShift and Logger - arrived they were dispatched to Dunbar with lots of filthy lucre to buy the entire stock of the pizza takeaway. On their return beers were cracked and silence de-scended – well munching, farting and burping in reality but poetic silence gives a much better im-pression!

With the rota all set up for kick off at 0100h quite a few headed off for an early night, either to take the 0400h shift or else to try and get a full night‟s sleep – some hope for those in tents since the wind came out of nowhere early evening and tried very hard to blow us all out. Sleep defying tent flapping seems to be an integral component of contesting unfortu-nately.

The contest started well with some very good runs being built. This year we were operating as a multi-two station so although we had four radios all set up (20m, 40m, 80m/15m and 160m/10m) only two were ever running at one time. This had a critical impact on us since the pressure to keep four radios going for 48 hours with very few people was eased. Now we had to keep two radios going continuously for the 48 hours and we succeeded – most of the time both radios were running, alt-hough sometimes stern words from The Prof and a bullwhip were

(Continued on page 7)

CQWW

By Malcolm Gibson MM0YMG

7

needed to keep recalcitrant radio operators running (self included!). It meant that we were all generally working on a 3 hours on then 6 hours off rota which gave every-one a chance for a half decent sleep at fairly regular intervals.

I was one of the lucky ones and got a few hours of sleep before getting the Mess kicked into action for a breakfast to keep everyone going. I cannot recall the details (I reckon over 80 plates of food were prepared – and eaten – over the weekend). All I do know is that it probably was not the healthiest of meals but I heard no complaints, except perhaps that was there not more bacon.

Peendon turned up Saturday lunchtime (I think) but unfortunate-ly had to make an unexpectedly early return at the crack of Sunday dawn to Peendonland due to sick-ness hitting at home. Fortunately he managed to pile his usual mas-sive tally to the QSO count when he did get to a radio!

Saturday evening saw a wonderful curry brought in by NightShift who graciously allowed that his wife had prepared it rather than he, so it was quite safe (and delicious) to eat. Of course, having eaten curry it was all the more essential that

vast quantities of beer were drunk in order to dilute the effects of the chillies!

Gradually a steady pattern emerged which involved operat-ing, sitting and chatting/drinking tea (beer after sundown), eating, and sleeping. We had no disasters like beams blowing down, or dodgy SWR developing.

The QSO tally kept mounting steadily, just as the stocks of beer fell, equally steadily. Plates of food were prepared and were hastily emptied. At several points people were sitting outside on the grass in the sun which is almost unheard of.

Sunday evening was enjoyable. We had a massive BBQ with loads of food. Including salads and veg-etables (shock horror) as well as plenty of beer – there were only two sessions left to the end of the contest and those signed up were going great guns. Fortunately no-body smoked else there might have been a stupendous explo-sion at Barns Ness, what with all the food and the beer. Gradually the witching hour of midnight ar-rived and the score was a very respectable 4000+ QSOs. Another quiet beer then everyone stag-gered off to try and grab some sleep.

Getting up on Monday was hard. We were all tired and we all knew what lay ahead. Fortunately taking a station down is less demanding than putting it up so tired muscles and men fell into the tasks in front of them and dismantled masses of metal, coiled kilometres of cables, and wound down the towers.

The task was eased mid-morning when the heavenly smell of bacon filled the air. Geoff had set up the final sacrificial offering of pig. We sat in the sunshine and ate our way through masses of bacon, sausages, eggs, black pudding, and heaven knows what else in true Stone Age Man fashion, all

washed down with flagons of hot tea – we had to drive later. The world was beginning to make sense again! Soon enough it was back to work and eventually every-thing was put into its box and kept (reasonably) ship shape then stowed in the vans.

After a final check that we had left nothing but footprints we set off in convoy back for Tranent. A happy crew, and a successful crew, but all ready for a bath and a good night‟s sleep.

So what would make next year‟s

better? More people certainly; two

other good suggestions I heard

were an old but working fridge (the

threat of Delhi Belly is always a

worry, although to be fair the end

of October is rarely a heat wave,

which is perhaps just as well!) and

also a hot water boiler to give con-

stant supply would both make the

catering, and general troop wel-

fare, somewhat easier.

(Continued from page 6)

www.cpsarc.com

8

Talk: Software Defined Radio

The latest in our series of talks to the radio club took place on Fri-day 19

th November 2010 at the

Port Seton Community Centre on the subject of Software Defined Radio by Dr. Björn Franke DL1DBS / MM0GFS.

Björn is a lecturer at the School of Informatics at Edinburgh Universi-ty, his current project is to develop a series of highly specialised CPUs for use in signal processing and DSP applications. His team has developed the concept of customising a processor with ded-icated extensions to perform spe-cific tasks. Their remit is to keep power consumption to a minimum while producing excellent perfor-mance.

Part of the project is to develop tools which automate much of the process, allowing developers to choose which custom extensions are included on the chip when the processor is sent to manufacture. His team then developed methods of optimising the power consump-tion and performance using pow-erful emulators and statistical tools to predict performance with-out having to exhaustively model every variation and then to verify

that the processor will perform the assigned task without errors.

The chips which the team had produced were only 1mm square but packed a lot of performance into such a small area, the fin-ished chip with all the external connections was still only 7mm square, ideal for applications like mobile phones etc.

By dedicating custom arithmetic logic units to some of the com-plex maths required to imple-ment functions like digital filters, then much of the load is re-moved from the main processor which can then achieve much higher throughput at lower power consumption.

Because processors have be-come very complex, the task of manually optimising them for per-formance or power consumption is very slow and costly, Björn‟s team are developing tools to auto-mate the process.

As the processor is now a flexible entity, without a predefined in-struction set, a new complier is needed to take advantage of the enhanced features and new tools are needed which can make auto-mated decisions about the many trade-off‟s that exist between speed, energy and die size.

Björn delivered a very interesting presentation on his very complex project and did a good job of pitching the technical content at a level the club members could ap-preciate. There were glimpses of complex equations and very high level maths in the presentation but we were mercifully spared most of those!

So thanks to Björn for delivering

an interesting talk on an exciting development in the world of signal processing which may help to make the radios of the future even more powerful, energy efficient and flexible.

You can find more information about Björn and his research pro-jects at http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/bfranke/Welcome.html

9

This article is extracted from an item which appeared in newscientist.com

SUNSPOTS come and go, but re-cently they have mostly gone. For centuries, astronomers have record-ed when these dark blemishes on the solar surface emerge, only for them to fade away again after a few days, weeks or months. Thanks to their efforts, we know that sunspot numbers ebb and flow in cycles last-ing about 11 years.

But for the past two years, the sun-spots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged for nearly a hundred years, has tak-en even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. "This is solar behaviour we haven't seen in living memory," says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Cen-ter in Huntsville, Alabama.

Sunspots are windows into the sun's magnetic soul. They form where gi-ant loops of magnetism, generated deep inside the sun, well up and burst through the surface, leading to a localised drop in temperature which we see as a dark patch. Any changes in sunspot numbers reflect changes inside the sun. .

When sunspot numbers drop at the end of each 11-year cycle, solar storms die down and all becomes much calmer. This "solar minimum" doesn't last long. Within a year, the spots and storms begin to build to-wards a new crescendo, the next solar maximum.

What's special about this latest dip is that the sun is having trouble starting the next solar cycle. The sun began to calm down in late 2007, so no one

expected many sunspots in 2008. But computer models predicted that when the spots did return, they would do so in force. .

The first sign that the prediction was wrong came when 2008 turned out to be even calmer than expected. That year, the sun was spot-free 73 per cent of the time (266 days without sunspots) , an extreme dip even for a solar minimum. Only the minimum of 1913 was more pronounced, with 85 per cent of that year clear.

As 2009 arrived, solar physicists looked for some action. They didn't get it. The sun continued to languish until mid-December, when the larg-est group of sunspots to emerge for several years appeared. Finally, a return to normal? Not really.

Even with the solar cycle finally un-der way again, the number of sun-spots has so far been well below expectations. Something appears to have changed inside the sun, some-thing the models did not predict. But what?

The flood of observations from space and ground-based telescopes sug-gests that the answer lies in the be-haviour of two vast conveyor belts of gas that endlessly cycle material and magnetism through the sun's interior and out across the surface. On aver-age it takes 40 years for the convey-or belts to complete a circuit

When teams looked over the obser-vations to find out where their mod-els had gone wrong, they noticed that the conveyor-belt flows of gas across the sun's surface have been speeding up since 2004.

The circulation deep within the sun tells a different story. Analysing data from 2009, they found that while the surface flows had sped up, the inter-nal ones had slowed to a crawl.

These findings have thrown our best computer models of the sun into dis-array. It is not just our understanding of the sun that stands to benefit from this work. The extent to which chang-es in the sun's activity can affect our climate is of paramount concern. It is also highly controversial.

The extended collapse in solar activi-ty these past two years may be pre-cisely the right sort of test, in that it has significantly changed the amount of solar radiation bombarding our planet.

Another example is the Maunder minimum, the period from 1645 to 1715 during which sunspots virtually disappeared and solar activity plum-meted. If a similar spell of solar inac-tivity were to begin now and continue until 2100, it would mitigate any tem-perature rise through global warming by 0.3 °C on average, However, something amplified the impact of the Maunder minimum on northern Europe, ushering in a period known as the Little Ice Age, when colder than average winters became more prevalent and the average tempera-ture in Europe appeared to drop by between 1 and 2 °C.

What the sun will do next is beyond our ability to predict. Most astrono-mers think that the solar cycle will proceed, but at significantly de-pressed levels of activity similar to those last seen in the 19th century. However, there is also evidence that the sun is inexorably losing its ability to produce sunspots By 2015, they could be gone altogether, plunging us into a new Maunder minimum - and perhaps a new Little Ice Age.

What’s wrong with the sun?

www.cpsarc.com

10

Hull Man Convicted of Radio Offences

A Hull resident was sentenced at Hull Crown Court on 22 Novem-ber for causing deliberate interfer-ence to amateur radio users in the Hull region of Humberside between June and November 2009. The defendant was also convicted of unlawfully using ra-dio equipment without a licence from Ofcom, which was installed in his van and driven around the region to interfere with legitimate users of the local amateur fre-quencies. He was sentenced to four months imprisonment sus-pended for 18 months, a curfew between 7pm and 7am for 3 months via a means of electronic tagging and forfeiture of his van and radio transmitters to Ofcom.

Commenting on the sentence, Paul Mercer, Head of enforce-ment at Ofcom, said: “There are around 900 amateur radio users in and around the Hull area, who have been deliberately disrupted for more than four years. Ofcom is very pleased with this result, which will hopefully give these users some welcome relief, as well as sending a very strong sig-nal to those that abuse the air-waves. This followed a dedicated investigation by Ofcom involving six enforcement officers working day and night to bring the culprit to court.” Mr Sheldon, the Court Recorder commended Ofcom for the quality

of the evidence that had been collated and the quality of file pre-sented in court. RSGB General Manager Peter Kirby, G0TWW, said "RSGB volunteers co-operated closely with Ofcom in gathering evidence for this case. This conviction shows that delib-erate interference will not be toler-ated and can have serious conse-quences for the perpetrator." Ray Evans GMØCDV Deputy Regional Manager District 16

Ray Evans GMØCDV

11

Just a reminder about the club‟s training program and the next INTERMEDIATE COURSE. As it starts just after the New Year then it would help me enormously if I have all the registration details if you want to do the course or someone that you know who wants to do it. With this course I have a fair amount of back-ground work that needs done and with the Christ-mas period just about on us it means my own time is limited to do this work. Details of the Course: VENUE Course 2: Port Seton Resource Centre (Resources Room 2), South Seton Park, Port Seton, Preston-pans, East Lothian EH32 0BQ

Saturday 5th February Exam at 12:00 Closing Date for Course Fees (£65): 11th Decem-ber 2010 (AT THE EXTREME LATEST) For those sitting the December Foundation Course I appreciate that you will not know if you can do the course as you need to obtain a Pass and your ex-am is on the 18th December. On the assumption that you pass the Foundation, I am sure you will, will you be interested in doing this course? If it is Yes it helps me...thanks FEES Course Fees (£65) Make cheques payable to: ROBERT GLASGOW Send to Address: 7 CASTLE TERRACE, PORT SETON, PRESTON-PANS, EAST LOTHIAN EH32 0EE

REGISTRATION DETAILS For all courses the following information is manda-tory and must be provided by the candidate. 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 applicable

DATE OF BIRTH

RSGB MEMBERSHIP – Member or Non-Member

The Intermediate Course requires the follow-ing extra information

MM3 CALLSIGN – If one obtained

DATE OF PASSING FOUNDATION LICENCE EXAMINATION

Saturday 8th January 2011 09:00 – 16:00 Resource Room 2

Saturday 15th January 2011 09:00 – 16:00 Resource Room 2

Saturday 22nd January 2011 09:00 – 16:00 Resource Room 2

Saturday 29th January 2011 09:00 – 16:00 Resource Room 2

Saturday 5th February 2011 09:00 – 16:00 Resource Room 2

Intermediate License Course

www.cpsarc.com

12

Test Your Knowledge

By Bob Glasgow GM4UYZ

1. The DC. input power to a PA. stage is calculated by measuring the collector current Ic to the p.a transistor and the collector voltage Vc. Which one of the following formulae is then applied to the calculation

a. Power =Vc x Ic b. Power = Vc² x Ic² c. Power = Vc – Ic d. Power = Vc/Ic 2. In the circuit shown what will be the

reading on the meter? a. 1A b. 2A c. 6A d. 12A 3. An inductor can a. hold an electric charge on two parallel

plates b. store energy between two parallel plates c. hold a charge in a coil of wire d. store energy in a magnetic field. 4. Which one of the following shows a vari-

able frequency parallel tuned circuit? A B C D 5. The purpose of the iron core in a trans-

former is to a. concentrate the magnetic field b. concentrate the electric field c. insulate the two windings d. provide an earthed cover for safety.

6. A transmitter's r.f. output power is al-ways

a. less than the d.c. input power b. almost equal to the d.c. input power c. more than the d.c. input power d. half the d.c. input power 7. Which would be the most suitable range

of a multimeter to check the continuity of a coil of wire for an antenna 40 metres long?

a. 0-100 mA b. 0-l0V c. 0-100V d. 0-10Ώ 8. When a frequency of l 0MHz is mixed

with a frequency of 30 MHz, two new fre-quencies are produced. These are

a. l0kHz and 30kHz b. 20kHz and 40kHz c. 20MHz and 40MHz d. 40MHz and 80MHz. 9. When a radio frequency carrier is modu-

lated by audio frequencies the additional frequencies which appear above and be-low the carrier frequency are

a. the result of deviation of the carrier b. sidebands c. harmonics d. parasitic oscillations. 10. An r.f. power amplifier is producing a 5th

harmonic as well as the wanted signal of 14.2MHz. The harmonic will have a fre-quency of

a. 7.1 MHz b. 28.4MHz c. 70MHz d. 71MHz

13

Event Calendar

By John Innes MM0JXI

3 December 2010 Club Night

11 December 2010

Club Christmas Night Out Chinese Meal in the Dragon Way, Prestonpans. Please come and join those who are already going and have a good fun night, it only costs £25 a head (your own drinks are not included)

8 January 2011 Newsletter Deadline

14 January 2011 Club Night (2nd Friday in January)

29 January 2011 UBA DX Contest

29 January 2011 Newsletter Deadline

4 February 2011 Club Night

18 February 2011 Radio Test Night (Provisional Date)

26 February 2011 REF Contest

26 February 2011 Newsletter Deadline

4 March 2011 Club Night

26 March 2011 Newsletter Deadline

1 April 2011 Club Night

2 April 2011 SP DX Contest

16 April 2011 Holyland DX contest

16 April 2011 10 Pin Bowling

30 April 2011 Newsletter Deadline

6 May 2011 Club Night

13 May 2011 1st 144MHz DF Hunt (Provisional Date)

28 May 2011 Newsletter Deadline

3 June 2011 Club Night

18 June 2011 Newsletter Deadline

24 June 2011 Club Night (Early to avoid clashing with VHF Field Day)

2 July 2011 VHF Field Day

30 July 2011 RSGB IOTA Contest

30 July 2011 Newsletter Deadline

5 August 2011 Club Night

www.cpsarc.com

14

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 website www.cpsarc.com where you will find our popular web site which features lively discussion forums and photo galleries.

You can also download an electronic copy of this newsletter and the complete archive of copies from the past.

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

Far from being just a local club we have members regularly attending 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, 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 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.

General correspondence, training and contest entries Bob Glasgow 7 Castle Terrace Port Seton East Lothian EH32 0EE Phone: 01875 811723 E-mail: gm4uyz@cpsarc.com HF Contests Cambell Stevenson mm0dxc@aol.com VHF Contests John MacLean mm0ccc@cpsarc.com Club Tables Bob Purves gm4ikt@cpsarc.com Contest Reports Robin Farrer mm0vtv@cpsarc.com Newsletter, website, event calendar John Innes newsletter@cpsarc.com

The club has a design for Club Tee-shirts, Polo-shirts, Sweat-Shirts, Fleeces and Jackets and all of these can be obtained from the address below. When making an order please:

Quote Cockenzie & Port

Seton Amateur Radio Club as this will ensure that the Club Logo will be placed on the re-quired ordered garments.

If you wish to add your call-

sign to the logo then please ask at the time of the order. Cost will depend on garment and should cover the garment and logo, call-sign addition will be extra. Order from: PATRICIA BEWSEY DESIGNS, UNIT 11, FENTON BARNS RETAIL VILLAGE, FENTON BARNS, NORTH BERWICK, EAST LOTHIAN EH39 5BW Tel/Fax: 01620 850788 Mobile: 07970 920431

Club Attire Information

Contacts

Supported by BT Community Champions Answers from December

2010 newsletter “Test Your Knowledge”. 1A, 2B, 3D, 4D, 5A, 6A, 7D, 8C, 9B, 10D