Update from the Dover Construction Club

News from the construction club

Ian continues with his love of military equipment repair. He has been
working on the B2 spy set. He had it working at Rishworth earlier in
the year but it had a replica TX he had scratch built. Now he has an
original TX section. He has also been using a 123 set and installed a
neat mod for netting. I will try and send you some photos in the next
few days.

Ian and I moderate the B2SPY set yahoogroup. Perhaps you can give
this a mention. A search for B2SPY will lead listeners to our group.

Over christamas I completed my MKARS80 RXTX what a fantastic bit of
kit for £50. The audio is FB, covers the whole 80m band and easy to
build. My friend Norman has not had time to finish his so I have as
of yesterday I now have his aligned on the band and the tx working. I
still have with the help of Ian to set up the drive and mixer
correctly. We have as you know all the kit at the club. I had
Colette aged 7 help with the winding of the final toroid of both
Normans and my kits, this is good and the QRP gods will look down
favourably, no transistors gave up any smoke as a result.

Last night (Thursday) it was one of the few occasions when we were
unable to meet. The threat of more snow coupled with our local
authorities inability to clear our roads means we had to all work at
our home benches and chat over 2m.

Perhaps Bill we can have some photos of the operating position in the country.

My next project will be the cw add on for the MKARS80. Ian tells me
off because I have too many projects on the go. I still have a DDS
sitting waiting to be grated with an icom if and af boards.

Most recent purchase was a froggy 7 for £30. Have installed a slowmo
drive which improved the tuning no end.

I have moved my shack to the conservatory, my loft space shack was
just too cold for comfort. I had a broken antenna switch in the junk
box, the switch had failed, Ian gave me a relay from his massive stock
of spares and now when I power up the downstairs sheck HF is
automatically switched to there, when powered down the feed switches
to the froggy 7 in the bedroom for headphone monitoring whilst Michele
watches Eastenders or some other such TV mush.

Michele has given me a iphone for Christmas. I rarely have to open up
my laptop and can catch up on emails and the like in down time waiting
for Eurotunnel to deal with the snow on the line ha ha. What a
fantastic bit of kit for a ham. It has some cw practice apps. There
is an app which allows a paddle to be used to type in text for text
messaging the problem is it requires the phone to be hacked which
would void the warrantee. A bit risky with a phone that costs about
£400.

I have spend some three years now working in France, and have made
good friends with the Dunkerque radio club as you know. Perhaps this
year it is time to consider new horizons, jobs are hard to find in the
Uk right now but watch this space.

Can I finally ask you to mention the Dover Radio Club Rally on 17th January 2010
information from www.darc.org.uk. The club used to hold an annual
rally and we are planning to start these again. We have almost every
table booked and will be drawing in hams from all over the SE of
England.

What a pity you left London, you could have come down and met the
construction club had you still been in London. I am sure will will
meet up at some time. I am considring the purchase of a motorhome to
replace the one we sold a couple of years ago. I have a trip to Rome
already mentally planned, and Michele as you know is radio friendly.

Bill keep up the good work with soldersmoke.

Because of the snow I am working Uk side today I guess I should get
back to some work again.

73 from Nigel, White Cliffs of Dover England