On Saturday 16th September 2023 we ran a special event station GB2CC from Corfe Castle as part of the National Trust’s Festival of Cultural Heritage 2023 which featured many local groups demonstrating a variety of crafts and skills including wood turning and stone masonry. In common with many of the other stalls, we made a big thing of having a go at sending and receiving messages in Morse Code. People of all ages from young children upwards had a go, and received a certificate on successfully completing the exchange of messages. In addition we operated SSB, CW and FT8, making a total of 91 contacts on a variety of bands, including 40m, 30m, 20m, and 17m.
We had a stand at the Yeovil QRP Convention, held on Saturday 15th April 2023 in Sherborne.
Over 3 days in September 2022 we ran an exhibition station at Kingston Lacey to mark the covid-delayed 40-year anniversary of the hand-over of the estate to the National Trust. We obtained a special event call-sign GB5BN from Ofcom for the weekend. The previous owner of Kingston Lacey House was an amateur, holding the callsign G5BN. We operated stations on the VHF and HF bands using FM, SSB, CW and FT8.
We had a stand at the Hamworthy Park Fete on Saturday 2nd July 2022. We showed several aspects of the hobby.
We are pleased to report that Will, one of our Intermediate candidates, has passed his Intermediate Exam in Spring 2020. Having started the course in our usual classroom environment, he completed the remaining modules of the course using our on-line tuition on Skype, and then took the exam online using the RSGB remote invigilation facilities. We are happy to re-run the sessions that others have missed. Note that you can now sit the exams online without doing the practical elements.
On Monday 16th March 2020 the officers of the Society decided to suspend our weekly meetings until such time as official advice changes and/or we feel safe to resume. In the meantime, an additional net will operate on Thursday evenings on 145.475 MHz FM starting at 20:00 local clock time. We intend to complete the delivery of the Intermediate Course using Skype etc.
We are pleased to announce that the Intermediate Course is continuing using Skype. Transmitters were covered on Thursday 19th March 2020. If you missed the session, please contact us and we will arrange a further session. Receivers are currently scheduled for Thursday 26th March at 19:30. Please try to connect from 19:00 if you’ve not connected before.
We started our first Intermediate Course to prepare for the new 2019 exam syllabus on Thursday 9th January 2020 with 7 candidates enrolled.