Red Rose Rally 2012

Hello Folks,

I thought I would just put a file together on the Red Rose Rally that took place a few weeks ago.

I attended with Damien G0LLG, Hughie G4UME and Mark M0DGK. The Rally was not expensive to get into with a £3 entry fee. and while we were waiting for it to open it was nice to be able to get a hot drink along with Bacon or Sausage bun's from the sports center cafe.  Both early morning food and lunchtime food were very reasonably priced and of excellent quality.

 The rally consisted of two large halls.... The entrance Hall had the RSGB Stand, Bring and Buy, LAM Communications who were the only mainstream amateur shop in attendance TRETRA & DSTAR

This was Hall 2 which had most of the things I was interested in.

It was good to see G0VAP in attendance Ian manages to cover most of the rally's in the northwest and Wales selling high quality components.

Ian is well known in my local area for the quality of construction so whoever ends up buying the K2 and ATU will be sure of a first class build .

For the last 7 years Sands Contest Group have had the pleasure of using the K2 and K3 Transceiver to good effect in the contests thanks to the generosity of our Ian G0VGS.  If you would like to learn more about them go to the Elecraft Website where you can find details of all the equipment made by Elecraft range including the new KX3

 

The KX3 picture was taken from the Elecraft website

http://www.elecraft.com

This series of pictures shows a special morse Telegraph Key made by Hy-mound complete with a nice dust cover

Model HK-802 "Swedish" Presentation Key

I think this is the correct model which came with a unique serial number

The only way of getting one of these keys now is on the secondhand market

For those of you who are interested in radio restoration Francis was in attendance with a selection of WWII Radio's and Amateur related items

The set above is not military, its the Drake MN4 Matching Network. It was also nice to see a couple of rollacoasters  one of them of I last saw used with the TenTec Omni series a steal at £30

 If you would like to learn more about this receiver the link below has plenty of photographs and information 

http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/military_receiver_tcstcs.html

This receiver dates back to 1943

I must commend Paul Bosh for putting information out not only covering model/type of receiver but also an index of who they were made by. Please click on this link for more information.

Continuing with the naval theme here's an Eddystone EA-12

You will know from previous blogs that our DX-Peditions have taken the form of working the Scottish Isle's.... At last years rally we met up with Eileen from BYLARA whilst having lunch and we learned about lighthouses they had worked which was food for thought for some form of future activity  by the group.  We met up with the group again this year to hear about their latest adventures.

Eileen in the left of the photograph with Damien on the right

Hall 1

I have always thought of Tetra as a secure communications link between the police and emergency service radio's however in this case they are Tait and Philips 25w PMR sets available for 4m 70cm and 2m offering an a reasonably priced alternative to the mainstream sets costing a lot more. The sets were also advertised as being ideal set for M3/M6 licensee's with 5w being minimum power output.

For those wanting to get into DSTAR the next stand offered a demonstrations of DSTAR Equipment

A Military Man Pack for sale at the Bring and Buy

 

An R1155 in need of restoration

The Sky Champion by Halicrafters inc. was said to be in working order and offered at a very cheap price.  It had a few scratches to the paint work but there are not many of them around this particular model only had a short production run of around a year before the Sky Champion S was released.  The only other Sky Champion I have seen can be found in the original Station X tower at Bletchley Park

To my knowledge the only change was to replace the alloy dial on the left with a back lit Bakelite dial similar in size to the one in the centre of the radio above.

Well that it from me for this review