Over the weekend of the 2nd/3rd August members of the Quantum Technology Club headed up to the Lake District to run the annual GB9WHP special event amateur radio station.
GB9WHP special event station
Operating GB9WHP from the Ruskin Museum, in Coniston, to celebrate the wireless communications experiments performed by William Henry Preece in the 1890s, the team ran a digital amateur radio station and demonstrated some of the technical projects they had undertaken recently.
The annual event has now become a members weekend away that we all look forward to, and eight made the trip north.
Raspberry Pi 5’s first outing at GB9WHP
This year we broke with tradition and operated the radio station using a Raspberry Pi 5, rather than our more usual Windows-based laptop. The mini single-board computer has evolved over the years and is now quite a powerful device. Ours, supplied to us free of charge by the Raspberry Pi Foundation (with grateful thanks), is an 8GB model – so it fairly purrs along. It was more than up to the task of running WSJT-X to enable us to make contacts around the world using the FT8 digital data mode.
New Icom IC-7100 transceiver
The transceiver used, an Icom IC-7100, was recently acquired from the estate of one of our founding members. It performed really well, transmitting at 35w throughout the day. It being one of the earlier transceivers to have a sound card and CAT interface built-in, it does use a mini-USB connection which is no longer widely used these day. However, the interfacing of the transceiver to the Raspberry Pi went flawlessly. This is really appreciated when Linux is not your operating system of choice.
A great weekend socially
Several members set up camp, literally, at the Sports Ground on the edge of Conistion on the Friday evening, with the rest arriving on Saturday morning. A meal at the Yewdale Inn set the tone for the weekend.
The weather behaved itself throughout the event on Saturday and we were bathed us in bright sunshine almost all day. The views around us were stunning too.
Having had a successful day and being all packed up, it was over to the Black Bull Inn for a very tasty Cumbrian dinner and pint of the local brew from the Coniston Brewery, of the celebrated Bluebird Bitter fame. This is why we really come up to Coniston every year.
The following day turned out to be a little less desirable, weather-wise, but several members stayed and took a trip aboard the Coniston Launch. The Lake District countryside, however, is spectacular no matter what the weather so we were still treated to a very pleasant day.
Where to next?
Members will be off down south, this time, in September. On the 14/15th we will be ‘camping’ out near Milton Keynes and paying visits to Bletchley Park and the National Computer Museum.
We look forward to seeing you there.