[Corkradioclub] CRC Club Meeting Tuesday November 19th - here's what you missed!

[Cormac Gebruers]

Everyone,

Thanks to all those who were able to make it along to our November meeting
held last evening in Carrigtowhill. Despite a bitter wind and low
temperatures, a healthy crowd braved the elements. For those who couldn't
make it, here's a summary of what we got up to:

It was great to see Jim EI3DP the incoming 4 QSLs manager along, he kicked
off the evening playing Santa Claus by delivering healthy piles of QSL
cards to Dave EI4BZ & Cormac EI4HQ.

The main event of the evening was *Don EI8DJ* who gave us a very
interesting talk about the BITX QRP homebrew rig platform. This platform
was developed by an Indian ham VU2ESE to provide hams in the developing
World with affordable radio equipment with reasonable performance. A number
of kit makers e.g. Hendrix  & ameteurradiokits.in do commercial versions of
the BITX designs. PA1ED has a dead bug style build that is particularly
interesting. Andy Hunter G6LBQ does a multiband BITX version available from
DXKITS.COM. Our thanks to Don for a well thought through and delivered
talk. Don has since posted a follow up email to the reflector with lots of
useful links.

Jim EI8GS kindly offered to request a talk for our next meeting on digital
TV by none other than the subject matter expert John Hearn (TBC).

There followed a lengthy and lively discussion about the club's activity
calendar for the next 12 months. The most important announcement is *our
Christmas Social Gathering taking place on Friday November 29th, Midelton
Park Hotel at 8pm. Any member planning on attending should confirm with
Dave EI4BZ as soon as possible please.*

Two fantastic additional suggestions were made to the events already
listed:

   - A challenge for the Club to activate in parallel all the 19 coastal
   lighthouses in County Cork in a single weekend next Summer (see
   http://www.commissionersofirishlights.com/cil/aids-to-navigation/lighthouses.aspx
for
   a list of lighthouses). Investigations are underway into the logistics of
   organising this event and more information will be provided at the *next
   meeting (Tuesday 17th December, 8pm Carrigatowhill Community Centre)*.

   - There is a competition to achieve the highest QSO count and points
   score in a single contiguous 24 hour period during 2013 using the special
   "The Gathering" EI13CLAN callsign (see
   http://www.irts.ie/cgi/gathering.cgi for details). An SSB QSO nets you 1
   point, CW 2 and RTTY 3 points. It was suggested the Club should have a go
   and the suggestion was met with widespread support. EI4BZ is checking
   callsign availability for the weekend of December 7th and 8th. If that or
   another weekend can be found where the callsign is available for use, a
   special meeting will be arranged to organise and coordinate operating
   schedules for the Club to have a go.

You can download the latest version of the Club events calendar from
http://86.43.106.118/ei4hq/calendar.xlsx

Following this discussion it was decided tea was in order (thanks to Dave
EI4BZ and Dave EI9FBB for operating the tea trolly) and all present enjoyed
a fine ould chat about all kinds of everything radio. The meeting
eventually broke up in disarray when the tea ran out...

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY:
CHRISTMAS GATHERING: Friday November 29th, Midelton Park Hotel at 8pm. Any
member planning on attending should confirm with Dave EI4BZ as soon as
possible please.
NEXT MEETING: Tuesday December 17th, 8pm Carrigtowhill Community Centre

FINAL OVER: a member has recently had to change his logging software. After
some time spent trying various options he settled for Log4OM, an excellent
solution provided by Daniele IW3HMH. Available from
http://www.pisto.it/wordpress/ it's a fully featured logging platform,
clean, fast, richly featured and very intuitive to use.

As the Club's complaints department is permanently closed, please direct
your ire or any corrections/clarifications or addtions re the above to
ei4hq.mail at gmail.com.

-- 
Regards
Cormac, EI4HQ
[Cobh / UTC] NNNN++++
ei4hq.cloudaccess.net
www.corkharbourweather.ie