Month: November 2025

This Friday’s meeting will start with the AGM which shouldn’t take long as there aren’t any major issues to discuss, but if you want to stand for a committee position or have anything to raise under Any Other Business please let Godfrey know by Thursday latest.  Friends are welcome for this part but cannot vote on any motions.

After the formal part we’ll have a general discussion about meeting days and formats for next year so please have a think about what you’d like next year. This is important as it’s your club!

Link to be sent on the day as usual.

The next real meeting will be on Wednesday 26th November at the school and in December we’ll do as we usually do and have an online meeting but no physical meeting as there’ll be too much else going on in that week before Christmas. And also, as previous years, we’ll organise a very informal get-together between Christmas and the New Year, usually something like a pub dinner but we’re open to suggestions for that.

Keep an eye on the Events calendar as the school is currently unable to confirm meeting dates more than a few weeks in advance so we may have to change some dates as we move to holding two meetings a month at the school during the summer months.

Incidentally, the Events calendar on our website https://www.m0xhs.uk/events/ has some links at the bottom that allow you to synchronise it with Outlook or Google or iCalendar so meetings will automatically appear in your normal calendar.  The online meeting is easy to do manually but the meeting at the school is harder as it’s the second Wednesday (12 days) after the online meeting.  Setting up synchronisation will make it much easier.

It was a very low turnout, with several members sending apologies due to illnesses and weather (and in fairness, those of us there got utterly drenched leaving the pub). Mindful of club funds we moved the meeting to a nearby pub that we’ve used a few times before and fortunately the school allowed us to cancel at no charge.  And Godfrey made a sensible decision not to come as it was indeed dry when he’d have been coming but the rain was horizontal as we were leaving.

But for those of us that made it, there was a lot going on:

I brought my £6 repeater that links two Baofengs or other radios with ‘K’ (Kenwood) connectors, although being in a public place and raining heavily outside we couldn’t really play with it.  But it will have uses, we just haven’t thought of them yet.  Also I flashed my two Meshtastic devices to MeshCore which Marrold tells me is what all the cool kidz use now.  We deed to find somewhere high up to leave a repeater.

Alistair brought a DigiPi hotspot he’d recently put together, which is a compact, all-in-one digital station for amateur radio. To use his words, it’s built around a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W running a lightweight Linux image, and connects to a transceiver via a USB soundcard and serial interface (he’s using a Digirig with his Lab599 TX-500 or connecting directly to his Icom IC-705). With a portable power source and connected to a phone or small tablet, it becomes a completely self-contained setup for digital modes. It runs popular software like WSJT-X, JS8Call, FLDigi, and APRS, allowing FT8, PSK, WSPR, and more without needing a laptop. Just power it up, plug it into the radio, and it’s ready to go. The whole point of the build is to make digital operation simple and portable, perfect for using on his boat, or a POTA/SOTA activation, or just running quietly in the shack. It’s small and surprisingly capable for such a tiny setup. The Pi Zero 2W and screen came to around £25 and more information about the Digipi can be found at https://www.digipi.org/

Greg brought some LoRa in an ultimately successful attempt to run AX.25 over LoRa @ 70cm, using the E22 400T30D Module made by EBYTE (max 1W). So far he’s have tested PacketRadio using LinPac software on Linux and IP over AX.25 communication (Ping and SSH). Using a minimum available power of 21 dBm it worked nicely between the ground and 8th floor of his flats (further tests to be made). The setup consists of USB-C to Serial TTL adapter, LoRa module and a few wires and elements on the universal board. Additionally after spending some time with Alastair, we made a connection using the modules at the pub (between his Linux laptop and Raspberry Pi)

We discussed putting together an order for some PCBs and parts to build LoRa “Hydra” module for Meshtastic (30dBm, 868 MHz LoRa modules made by EBYTE) but more on that soon.