The Spring 2015 Surplus Equipment Sale was held on 8th April at St Fillan's Church.

 

The sale items included this HF loop

antenna brought by Ian GM3VEI, Dunbar. 

Photo report.

Photos by Brian GM4DIJ of the near-total solar eclipse.

 

See also: RSGB Eclipse Experiment yields data. 

Brian Howie GM4DIJ talked about and demonstrated Antenna Modelling Software at the LRS meeting on 11th March 2015.

Brian writes: "The design and building of antennas at one time required vast testing ranges with expensive equipment. Analysing  and optimising antennas once took many hours of  painstaking measurements, hand calculation (if you understood the maths)  and modifications with no real guarantee of success.

Modern software now allows you to  determine the pattern, feed point impedance and even the SWR of your antenna system before  committing to cutting metal or hoisting wires thus avoiding expensive or time consuming mistakes".  Full report.

LRS member Brian Flynn GM8BJF talked about The Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) at the meeting of the LRS on Wed 25th March 2015. 

The club is now the proud owner of a 6GHz HP-8753C VNA thanks to the generosity of Norrie GM1CNH. Brian GM8BJF is the custodian and "minder" of the instrument. His talk covered the operation of the VNA along with some background on transmission line measurements and a demonstration of it in use. Several members  brought along items to be measured.  

Full report.

The subject of the LRS meeting on 25th February was that mysterious place where we are told we shall be archiving all our digital "stuff" in the future. LRS President Andy Sinclair MM0FMF talked about The Cloud, what it is, why it's used and whether it will rain all over your data. Not a simple subject! 

Full Report