Welcome to the Lothians Radio Society

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The LRS Spring Surplus Equipment Sale was held on Wednesday 5th April at St Fillan's Church, Buckstone Drive. There was a good turn-out including members of other clubs from as far away as Glasgow. 

The sale included a large number of small items from GM0FAL-SK which were sold by Andre GM3VLB and XYL Veronica. Many thanks to them both for all the preparation work they had done over many months.

Click for Full Report.

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Many thanks to former LRS member Mike Senior GM3PAK, who lives with his XYL Marion GM1DCB on the isle of Islay, for this nice photo of the Aurora on 21 March 2017. Did anyone work anything via AU?  

Another aurora is forecast for the following evening but it will probably not be visual in Edinburgh due to forecast cloud and rain.  

Forecast Auroral oval: Wed 22 March 2017.

(Courtesy spaceweather.com)

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(Photo courtesy AMSAT-UK)

Following John Cooke's talk on amateur radio applications for the Raspberry Pi microcomputer at the March 8th meeting (see report below), John now reports that he has successfully received the FUNcube-1 satellite using a Raspberry Pi 3. He writes: 'Just managed the next stage of my satellite project successfully. It uses the DVB-T dongle I showed at the talk, and the Raspberry Pi 3 (at present). I'm really impressed that the satellite is so easy to receive with the dongle- I'm using a turnstile antenna for 145.9MHz outdoors'.

Click for Full Report.

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At the meeting of the LRS on 8th March 2017, John Cooke GM8OTI talked about the Raspberry Pi computer's history and variants, and gave a couple of simple examples with demonstrations of its use in radio applications. Full report.

 

After his talk, John was presented with Raspberry ... ...tarts by LRS Prez. Andy Sinclair

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At the meeting on 22nd February 2017 John Macdonald GM4XZN described his career - "1948-1968, 20 Years with the Post Office Engineering Dept in the Highlands" - with many photographs and amusing anecdotes.

Click for Full Report with many photos. 

 

This talk was an update on the one that John gave on 10th November 2010 (click to link).

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Bob McFarlane, one of the last surviving members of the S.O.E. - Special Operations Executive - in WWII, died at home in Kelso on 30th January 2017 aged 93. Bob had given two talks in recent years about his experiences - to the LRS on 24 February 2014 and at the MoC on 24 September 2014. (Click for reports).

Bob's good friend, André Saunders GM3VLB writes:

'As many MoC members know, Bob was never a ham himself, but as a radio operator behind enemy lines with Churchill’s Special Operations Executive in WWII, he got to know the famous B2 ‘spy set’ intimately, using relatively high-speed, coded CW, beginning as a 19-year old when he parachuted, at night, into the then Yugoslavia where he remained, with the partisans, till the end of the war in Europe. Following further jungle training in what was then Ceylon, he then had to dodge the Japanese in the Malayan jungle, before being sent to Hiroshima, just after the A-bomb. Those who attended his joint LRS/MoC talk in Sept 2014, will remember him as a modest, still military-like gentleman and indeed gentle man'.
 
Bob's funeral at Melrose Crematorium on 14th February was attended by several LRS members.
 
Click for Full SK.  Click for Scotsman VIP Obit.
 

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At the meeting of the LRS on 8th February  2017 our good friend Prof. Tom Stevenson of the Museum of Communication in Burntisland presented a biography of James Clerk Maxwell and described some of his contributions to science which have had a huge impact on our modern way of life. Maxwell [1831 – 1879] was a member of the Clerk family of Penicuik. He was one of our greatest scientists, ranked alongside Newton and Einstein, yet he is not well-known even in the land of his birth. 

The lecture was interspersed with music.  Maxwell was fond of the poetry of Burns and he wrote his own poems, some amusing, some thought provoking.

Click for Full Report.

 

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A 2017 replica edition of the VHF/UHF DX Book is now available free online. (Info from GM4BYF).

Click for DETAILS.

'The VHF/UHF DX Book' was written in the early to mid-1990s by a team of experienced VHF/UHF DXers and equipment developers, in an effort to pass on our knowledge and stimulate further developments. But eventually the book went out of print, and information of lasting value became trapped on the printed pages.
To keep that information alive for future generations of VHF/UHF DXers, a digital replica of the Second Printing (1995) has now been released as a free download, by kind permission of the copyright owner TRPublishing and its proprietor Trevor Preece.

  1. 25 Jan 2017 - The Williamson Amplifier - Prof Joe McGeough
  2. 8 Jan 2017 - Silent Key - Vic Imamura JA5VQ / MM0JVQ
  3. 11 Jan 2017 - Video Evening at ECVS - 'The Dish'
  4. 14 Dec 2016 - Christmas Curry at the Himalaya Tandoori