John McCormick from Leonardo Airborne & Space Systems gave a talk about the Compact Antenna Test Range (CATR) at Crewe Toll, Edinburgh, at the meeting on 14th March. 

CATR is a dual-reflector test facility enclosed in a 24m x 14m x 8m anechoic chamber. It is designed to make measurements of antenna performance from 500MHz to 40GHz. 

In prep - psp. 

Allister Watson GM7RYR, who is beacon-keeper for GB7EE, talked about Digital Voice Modes on 28th Feb 2018. There was a good turnout of 11 in spite of the blizzard blowing outside - "The Beast from the East"!

This talk looked at the different digital modes used on the VHF / UHF bands: D-Star, Fusion (C4FM) and DMR, the developments of the Local, National and International Networks and compared this with the state of the networks at the last talk given to the Lothians RS in February 2016. (Click)

Our good friend Stan Frey GM8ZQY from Glenrothes gave a comprehensive talk on "Battery Types and Behaviours" at the meeting on 14th February - a review of the currently available battery types with an emphasis on lithium-ion rechargeables. And he was thinking about the behaviours of the users as well as the batteries themselves! 

In prep - psp

At the meeting on 24th January 2018, Neil Gillies, ex-GM6BZF, talked about and demonstrated 3D Printing, the state-of-the-art way of producing plastic parts using a computer. Neil gave an in-depth talk to a very full room at the Braid Hills Hotel on how to get started - types of machine available, the software required for various parts of the process, materials, what can and can’t be done with 3D printing. He provided several useful links that will be e-mailed soon and given on this site. 

Peter Dick GM4DTH, who is the current President of the Edinburgh Cine & Video Society, presented the annual LRS Video Evening on Wednesday 10th January 2018 at the ECVS screening room in Fettes Row. The theme was "The Role of Radio in Aviation". Here are some stills from this very interesting evening which covered not only radio communication but also Direction-Finding and RADAR in aviation. 

Loan DVD copies of the complete program are available from Peter. 

Eric Worley W0RLY, Alan Masson GM3PSP & Pete Bates GM4BYF

This year's LRS Christmas Curry at the Himalaya Tandoori Restaurant at Bruntsfield was most enjoyable, with 14 diners present including a surprise guest, Eric Worley W0RLY, a pilot with United Airlines from near Denver CO, who joined us for his one night in Edinburgh between flights. This was Eric's introduction to Christmas crackers and paper hats!

 

James Gentles GM4WZP, who has spoken at the LRS twice before on aerial photography, and now a club member himself, gave a very interesting and entertaining presentation on the history of the pirate radio stations on ships and estuary forts from 1964 to 1974. The talk was nicely illustrated with a number of videos and sound recordings which unfortunately cannot be reproduced here for technical reasons (but the slides are very good)! 

                 Many thanks to James for a great talk and for allowing his slides to be reproduced here.

 

LRS member Brian Howie GM4DIJ gave an introduction to antenna modelling at the LRS meeting on 11 March 2015. This time he talked more specifically about "Optimization of Antenna Height Over Real Terrain in the Low VHF Bands" at the meeting on 22nd November 2017.

Brian writes: "It is common intuition that the higher an antenna is above the ground, the better it performs. Whilst this is true in most cases, the performance of an antenna a few wavelengths above ground is a complex interaction of the beam patterns and the local topography. It can be shown that in some cases a lower antenna can outperform one much higher. I've been looking in particular at the local terrain at our contest site at Gatehouse of Fleet using an ARRL- supplied program HFTA, designed primarily for the HF Bands, to explore terrain effects on antenna performance at low VHF". 

In addition to the following Powerpoint slides, Brian gave live demonstrations of the use of the HFTA software with the data from Gatehouse and other locations.