MSARS
Mid Sussex Amateur Radio Society
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...and now, for something completely different...
The eagle-eyed amongst you may have spotted a couple of new logos in the footer of the website.
Welcome to the new MSARS Twitter feed and Youtube channel!
Yeah, OK - try and contain your excitement. It's really just to provide 'backlinks' to the website to help improve its visibility, but should any of you come over a bit tweety or uncover any videos that we could post (that aren't already on the website) then please let me know.
Also, great to see Thomas M7BQI on Zoom this evening, and congratulations on your loft-mounted homebrew J-pole. It's working a treat. If you get a moment, send me a picture and a description. It's just the sort of thing that other new amateurs would be interested in seeing.
Berni M0XYF -
Create your own MSARS website content!
Hi folks.
I hinted at this a couple of weeks ago, but have only just got around to finishing the mini-tutorial. Apologies for that.
Both the website and the tutorial are now ready to receive your attention, so please have a look if this is something that interests you.
You can read the tutorial here: https://msars.org.uk/index/32-joomla/61-create-your-own-msars-content
There is loads of content I would like to get up on the website - including things that several members have already offered up as potential articles. If you don't want to post them yourself, then please email them to me and I'll load them up for you.
On a different note, I was rummaging around on t'Internet the other day, and I happened across a local company called RF Solutions. Now, please forgive me if you all know about this place, but it was news to me so I thought I'd mention it. It's based in Burgess Hill, located just opposite T L Carr near the Premier Inn, and they have loads of reasonably priced radio gear, including LORA modules, WiFi components, a GPS receiver module for £2.50, and loads of 433MHz hardware like an AM transmitter module for £2.43 and several superhet receiver modules for around a fiver. You can collect too, free of charge. Like I said, you probably already know, or your mum works there or something...
https://www.rfsolutions.co.uk
I have no connection or affiliation with this company. Just thought it might be of interest.
Berni M0XYF -
Re: QRZ updates
Yes. I believe that mail for organisations is placed on the shelf just inside the main door.
/\/\ike
The Homestead
Burgess Hill
RH15 0RQ -
QRZ updates & club official mailing address
OK, Stella has asked if we can set the QRZ pages' postal addresses to her address, as she is the QSL manager (I did not know that, sorry! I have updated our website to reflect that fact) and can someone who knows what's going on with a general mailing address for the club please let me know what address to put on our own website, or I'll just have to leave it as is with no address at all.
Thanks!
Berni -
Re: QRZ updates
Hi Mike.
Does that mean we can use the Cyprus Hall address as the official mailing address for the club? If so, I will update our main website which at the moment just says "Please Do Not use this address for mail" WRT Cyprus hall address... -
Re: QRZ updates
Hi Chris, Yes, a letter box has been installed by the front door.
/\/\ike
The Homestead
Burgess Hill
RH15 0RQ -
Re: QRZ updates
I imagine that's true Chris, so for cards & mail, it's not ideal - but I guess nobody is using any of our callsigns at the moment? The postal address was Sue's but of course that's now no longer applicable. If the committee want to come up with a temporary c/o address, then we could use that, or just wait until the AGM when the backlog of housekeeping can be addressed? I haven't heard anything, but I guess an AGM or an EGM will be fairly high on the priority list once it can be facilitated.
Failing that, I could pop down to Cyprus Hall with a circular saw!
Berni M0XYF -
Re: QRZ updates
Hi Bernie
Some time back we had a problem with incoming post.
It appeared that Cyprus Hall doesn’t have a letter box!
Worth checking to see if there is one now?
Cheers
Chris -
Re: QRZ updates
Bernie, Thanks for all your doing to bring the Website up to date. There is one error however which requires changing in that the MSARS lunchtime net is shown as being on 14.330 and not where it really is on 14.345. The shift in frequency took place a month or so back due to QRM on 14.330. I've left a message on Adrian M0TCD's phone and asked him to effect the change but if this is wrong please attend to it as soon as you can. Tks agn, es 73's Ken -
QRZ updates
Thanks to Adrian (I believe) for performing all those QRZ updates. Quite a few changes required there, but everything now looks great. I guess the physical mailing address for the club will be resolved once we finally have our AGM and the committee is elected, but the hall address is the only real option until that happens.
Apologies for the lack of Zoom meetings last week, I just had a lot of mundane stuff to catch up with. Normal service will be resumed this week. Hope you're all having a good Easter holiday!
Berni M0XYF -
Lost Walkie talkie
My niece has lost her ‘walkie-talkie’ in one of our woods.
Is there any device/way of sending a signal that one could pick up if standing reasonably close.
I am thinking that if one telephoned a lost mobile, the number would ring out and, if standing close by, one might ‘echo locate’ it?
Your thoughts, please?
Would anyone in the Club have an idea?
Regards,
William
From: Antonia Boulsien [mailto:antoniamg@...]
Sent: 03 April 2021 17:28
To: UNCLE William <wg@...>
Subject: Re: Lost Walkie talkiePhoto attached
On 3 Apr 2021, at 17:27, Antonia Boulsien <antoniamg@...> wrote:
Hi,
If by some miracle you or your friends come across a walkie-talkie lying around somewhere in Buckbridge Wood, then it’s ours! See attached a photo for reference. I suspect it is lost forever, but you never know...
Love Monie x -
Re: Car Radio
Brilliant Mike
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Car Radio
HISTORY OF
THE CAR RADIO
Seems as if cars have always had radios,
but they didn't.
Here's the story:
One evening, in 1929,
two young men named
William Lear and Elmer Wavering
drove their girlfriends to a lookout point high above the
Mississippi River town of Quincy, Illinois, to watch the sunset.
It was a romantic night to be sure,
but one of the women observed that
it would be even nicer if they could listen to music in the car.
Lear and Wavering liked the idea. Both men had tinkered with radios (Lear served as a radio operator in
the US. Navy during World War I)
and it wasn't long before they were
taking apart a home radio and
trying to get it to work in a car.
But it wasn't easy: automobiles have ignition switches, generators, spark plugs, and other electrical
equipment that generate noisy static interference, making it nearly impossible to listen to the radio when the engine was running.
One by one, Lear and Wavering identified and eliminated each source of electrical interference. When they finally got their radio to work, they took it to a radio convention
in Chicago.
There they met Paul Galvin , owner of
Galvin Manufacturing Corporation.
He made a product called a
"battery eliminator", a device that allowed battery-powered radios to
run on household AC current.
But as more homes were wired for electricity, more radio manufacturers made AC-powered radios.
Galvin needed a new product to manufacture. When he met Lear and Wavering at the radio convention,
he found it. He believed that
mass-produced, affordable car
radios had the potential to become
a huge business.
Lear and Wavering set up shop inGalvin's factory, and when they perfected their first radio, they installed it in his Studebaker.
Then Galvin went to a local banker
to apply for a loan. Thinking it
might sweeten the deal,
he had his men install a radio in
the banker's Packard.
Good idea, but it didn't work –
Half an hour after the installation,
the banker's Packard caught on fire. (They didn't get the loan.)
Galvin didn't give up.
He drove his Studebaker nearly
800 miles to Atlantic City to show
off the radio at the
1930 Radio Manufacturers
Association convention.
Too broke to afford a booth, he parked the car outside the convention hall and cranked up the radio so that
passing conventioneers could hear it.
That idea worked -- He got enough orders to put the radio into production.
WHAT'S IN A NAME
That first production model was
called the 5T71.
Galvin decided he needed to come up with something a little catchier.
In those days many companies in the phonograph and radio businesses used the suffix "ola" for their names -
Radiola, Columbiola, and Victrola
were three of the biggest.
Galvin decided to do the same thing, and since his radio was intended for use in a motor vehicle, he decided to call it theMotorola.
But even with the name change,
the radio still had problems:
When Motorola went on sale in 1930, it cost about $110 uninstalled, at a time when you could buy a brand-new car for $650, and the country was sliding into the Great Depression.
(By that measure, a radio for a new car would cost about $3,000 today.)
In 1930, it took two men several days
to put in a car radio --
The dashboard had to be taken
apart so that the receiver and a
single speaker could be installed,
and the ceiling had to be cut open
to install the antenna.
These early radios ran on their own batteries, not on the car battery,
so holes had to be cut into the floorboard to accommodate them.
The installation manual had eight complete diagrams and 28 pages of instructions Selling complicated car
radios that cost 20 percent of the
price of a brand-new car wouldn't
have been easy in the best of
times, let alone during the Great Depression –
Galvin lost money in 1930 and struggled for a couple of years after that. But things picked up in 1933 when Ford began offering Motorola's pre-installed at the factory.
In 1934 they got another boost when
Galvin struck a deal with
B.F. Goodrich tire company
to sell and install them in its chain
of tire stores.
By then the price of the radio, with installation included, had dropped to $55. The Motorola car radio was off and running
(The name of the company would be officially changed from
Galvin Manufacturing to
"Motorola" in 1947.)
In the meantime, Galvin continued to develop new uses for car radios
In 1936, the same year that it introduced push-button tuning,
it also introduced the Motorola Police Cruiser, a standard car radio that was factory preset to a single frequency to pick up police broadcasts.
In 1940 he developed the first
handheld two-way radio
-- The Handy-Talkie –
for the U. S. Army.
A lot of the communications
technologies that we take for granted today were born in Motorola labs in the years that followed World War II.
In 1947 they came out with the first television for under $200.
In 1956 the company introduced the world's first pager; in 1969 came the radio and television equipment that was used to televise Neil Armstrong's first steps on the Moon.
In 1973 it invented the world's first handheld cellular phone.
Today Motorola is one of the largest cell phone manufacturers in the world.
And it all started with the car radio.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO
the two men who installed the first radio in Paul Galvin's car?
Elmer Wavering and William Lear, ended up taking very different
paths in life
Wavering stayed with Motorola.
In the 1950's he helped change the automobile experience again when
he developed the first automotive
alternator, replacing inefficient and unreliable generators. The invention lead to such luxuries as power windows, power seats, and, eventually,
air-conditioning.
Lear also continued inventing.
He holds more than 150 patents. Remember eight-track tape players? Lear invented that.
But what he's really famous for are
his contributions to the field of aviation. He invented radio direction finders for planes, aided in the invention of the autopilot,
designed the first fully automatic
aircraft landing system,
and in 1963 introduced his
most famous invention of all,
the Lear Jet,
the world's first mass-produced, affordable business jet.
(Not bad for a guy who dropped out of school after the eighth grade.)
Sometimes it is fun to find out how some of the
many things that we take for granted actually
came into being!
AND It all started
with a woman's suggestion!
/\/\ike G1tdl
//ike
The Homestead
Burgess Hill
RH15 0RQ -
Re: QRZ updates
Hi all,
The GB0HHT was for Haywards Heath Twinning,which we used about 4-5 years ago in Haywards Heath Victoria park.
Noit sure who got the call sign.
Mike G8KMP -
Re: QRZ updates
Hi Berni
I have GB50BR, this was not a club station, but one of G6DGK's
I also have GB0HHT but I have no recollection of that.
Note that G3 & G1ZMS have Sue's postal address, so will need updating.
Cheers & thanks for sorting this out
Chris
G4ZCS
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