💾 Archived View for sdf.org › stug › phlog › 2021 › 20210905.txt captured on 2022-07-16 at 18:54:58.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
05 September 2021 This weekend has been spent staring at Zoom. Normally this would suck but this weekend happens to be the GQRP convention weekend. If you are interested in building radio bits then you really should join the GQRP. It is the best value society I have joined. The UK membership price is just �6 a year and you get 4 copies of the society magazine delivered to your address. It is a welcoming organisation with plenty of patient members to help any newcomers to the hobby pick up the construction bug. I have been helping in the background resolve Zoom issues and hosted one of the many talks. The subjects have varied from the introduction level through to detailed technical updates. We have 750 attendees from 36 different countries attending the convention. I have found myself looking to do some antenna building again. Some of my barriers of reluctance to build a SSB transceiver have been knocked down through the brilliant examples of not worrying over PCBs etc. Get some ugly builds done and forget the perfect bits! The talks covered: construction techniques, RF test equipment (both use and making your own), designing rigs through measurement, antenna construction, valve construction, EMF exposure assessments, using surface mount components, operating on mountain tops, antenna modelling, techniques for operating QRP Not bad for an event which is free to members! People who signed up as members for the event got 6 months of membership for free too. Note, my arms still ache from climbing! The back and legs are not aching though.