MKARS News

Foundation Exam Successes

Over the last couple of months we have run a Foundation evening class and two weekend events (mainly for the Air Cadets) with a 100% pass rate.  We wish everyone great succes as they start their a

mateur radio journey and hope that they get as much out of the hobby as we do.

Andrew G8GNI & Frank M0JSZ

Click images to enlarge

Southgate Amateur Radio News

By popular request we have now added the Southgate Amateur Radio News feed to our website.

MKARS would like to thank the Southgate Amateur Radio Club for providing such an excellent source of up to the minute information.

MKARS Diary now available as a feed (Updated)

For those of you who organise your life using the calendaring functionality on your phone and/or computer like I do, you will be pleased to know that the MKARS Diary is now available as an iCalendar feed to allow you to view it on your Android and iPhones as well as Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Apples iCal and most good calendaring applications.

The feed is available with a number of different options which will alow you to recieve only the information is important to you. To find out more visit our new feeds information page.

Its finally here, the new MKARS website!

As you can see not only do we have a design refresh which will hopefully make the new site quicker and clearer to use but we've also incorporated a login system which will give assigned/authorised members the ability to update diary entries and create news articles as well as maintain their own sections on the site. Hopefully this will lead to us having much more rapid updates and in depth information!

Its still not 100% finished but we believed that it was more important at this time to get something up and running with the diary and news information than to hold off any longer whilst some of the less critical features were finished. Some of the things we hope to add very shortly are an iCAL feed for diary entries so people can import them realtime into their calendering programs on their computers and phones, and also an RSS news feed so people can read our news on their software package/device of choice. ...watch this space!

As you can imagine its been quite a job to get all this online in such a short space of time, so if anyone notices any typo's, grammatical errors, etc please let us know on webmaster@mkars.org.uk and we will do our best to correct them as soon as possible. Additionally if anyone would like to contribute articles or other radio related content please also let us know as we are always very grateful for anything that furthers the amateur radio hobby!

Enjoy!

Milton Keynes Museum Radio Event

Last weekend, 26th-27th November, several MKARS members set up a special event station at the Milton Keynes Museum.

Apart from our normal G5RV, Pete G0TLE came along with a 17M Moxon (see picture).  When erected at 29' it worked very well and enabled us to have good QSOs with countries as far away as Nigeria and New Zealand. 

The Nigerian contact was with club member Roger, 5N4LRJ.  There was much radio talk and members brought equipment along including commercial and several homebrew SDR radios.  We hope to hold a similar event sometime early next year.

Silent Key: Fred Frisby (G3ZNY)

There were at least 200 people packed into the New Oak Chapel at Crownhill for the Funeral of Fred G3ZNY, it was standing room only for most of the mourners.

It was a simple service as well as hymns there was also some of Freds favourite music being played finishing with the song 'I'll see you in my dreams'.

There were eight current club members present along with at least the same number of past members.

The following tribute was read by the priest to the congregation:

Fred Frisby was a stalwart in the history of the Milton Keynes Amateur Radio Society. It was his decisions and actions at a time when the club was in the doldrums ensured it's survival and laid the foundations of what it has become today.
Fred was a respected and well liked member of MKARS and will ever be so.

Fred joined MKARS in the late 1960's and in 1969 sat the Radio Amateurs Examination after studying at Wolverton College.
Fred was successful and received his callsign G3ZNY.

In 1977 when a committee could not be formed Fred personally took over the accounts and the documents of the moribund club and set about trying to regenerate the interest in the radio club.
He arranged for informal meetings to be held, often at the stony stratford bowls club or the Globe Inn at Hanslope and at least once in The Galleon on the Old Wolverton Road.
This went on for some months until he managed to reform the club.
Fred was elected chairman of the reformed club and from that time it has gone from strength to strength.

Fred will be remembered with respect and affection by the membership of the Milton Keynes Amateur Radio Club of which he was proud to be a member.

Membership and Forum Access

The committee has decided that as has always been the case, membership subscriptions are due at the AGM.

Now clearly, it is not always possible to pay at the AGM, so we are setting an amnesty date of Monday 19th December this year. From this date on, all access to the members part of the forum will be limited to paid-up folk.

If anyone didn't receive a new card last year (or are new this year), please let me know at membership@mkars.org.uk but please note there are a number still in the club shack, uncollected.

For those of you who live a long distance away who have paid your dues, please let me know and I'll send you a sticker to attach to your current card (if you want one) for 2012 (it's not very hi-tech, but it saves the club some considerable costs for printing new membership cards every year).