Radio clubs - past and present - in the Edinburgh area. 

 

PIONEER RADIO CLUB - GM4AVH (~1972 -1978)

This club met at a church hall in Gilmerton on the south side of Edinburgh on Tuesdays in the 1970s.

The secretary was Rab Henderson GM4DTJ. They operated on 2m AM with a Pye  transceiver.

 

 

There was an active Radio Club at Stewart's during the 1960s run by former pupil Jim 'Nick' Nicholson GM3FJP / VU2JP after he returned to Edinburgh from many years in India. There was some overlap of membership with the Signals Section of the Stewart's Combined Cadet Force CCF). Not listed from 1974, presumably after Nick became a Silent Key (actual date not known).

 

A second callsign, GM8EWQ is listed in the 1970s, possibly obtained by club members after Nick's SK prevented further use of GM3OLQ. The following note was published in the Short Wave Magazine in August 1971:

"News from GM: The VHF "get-together," held this year in Cupar, Fife, seems to have been a great success. Some 30 souls attended, including a few HF men who had come along to see what it was all about, and whom we are assured by GM8BZX, went away suitably impressed. Raffle tickets for the prizes were drawn by GM6RI and GM8EWQ, as holders of the oldest and the newest licence among those present"

 

The Watson's Radio Club ran very successfully from the late 1940s to about 1980 thanks to the efforts of two teachers - Tom Simpson GM3BCD who constructed a world-class HF station and John Hughes GM3LCP who taught Radio Amateurs Exam and the Morse test. Your scribe was a member of the club from 1959 to 1962, secretary in 1961-62 and obtained his GM3PSP licence there in 1962.