Community Support Officer Katherine M3HPY with James 2E1GUA, Mark M0IEO, Laura M3LIQ, Clive G1EUC and Richard M3YLB

Amateur Radio demonstration in Chelmsford town centre

As part of their ongoing programme to raise the public awareness of Amateur Radio, the Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society (CARS) set up a demonstration station just outside Starbucks coffee shop in the High Street over the weekend of August 15-16

Mark M0IEO has provided this description of the successful weekend.

We arrived on Saturday to find that we were on a shared pitch with the Army Recruitment team and also charity collectors from the Motor Neurone Disease and a recruitment drive by the AA. My daughter Laura (M3LIQ) and I arrived at 07:00 and with the help of a member of the public, set up the gazebo and signage for the day's event, this took about an hour and by 08:00 we were up and running.

We were operating on 2m only as the town centre is not conducive to operating HF although we did have an HF rig set up for demonstration using a Buddy-Pole antenna.

Contacts were hard fought on 2m but with the aid of the Danbury repeater we were able to operate with a good degree of success. Richard (M3YLB), Chris (M3YLN), Clive (G1EUC) Jim (2E1GUA) and Peter (G1FOA) joined Laura and I later in the morning.

Amongst the stations contacted during the morning, using the club GX0MWT, call were Harry (G5HF) and Zipy (G4ZPE) who were both visitors to the station later in the day.

Although we were fighting for contacts, the main aim of the weekend was to meet members of the public and raise their awareness of amateur radio and to that end we were very successful. There were a good number of people who stopped and spoke to the team and took literature with them for the next foundation course. Other visitors to the station on Saturday were Chris (G0IPU), John (G8DET), John (2E0NNQ), Clive (M0GHH) and Katherine (M3HPY) from the local constabulary.

Sunday was just as successful as the Saturday had been; I met Richard (M3YLB) and Chris (M3YLN) at 08:00 hrs at our allotted site and we were set up and running by 09:00 hrs. We used the same set-up as the Saturday but this time Richard had borrowed a generator which was almost silent, this was a better bet then the Saturday as we were running both rigs on my car battery for convenience.

We had to change call sign for the Sunday to M0IEO/P because the CARS HF team were running at Sandford Mill in the afternoon, using the GX0MWT call. All the team who attended on the Saturday also attended on the Sunday and we were joined by Martin (G1EFL) for the day, although hotter then Saturday, all seemed to cope well with the heat.

Again the High Street was busy with shoppers and there was a good amount of interest shown in the station. In all I would estimate that we gave out in excess of 40 leaflets for the foundation course in September and again raised the profile of both our club and amateur radio in general.

Once again my thanks go to the team, Richard, Chris, Clive, Martin, Jim and Peter, without whose help these displays would be almost impossible. Hope to see you at Sandford Mill this Sunday, as we will be working VHF for the afternoon, if you can't make it in person then please call in on 2m, as we would love to hear from you.

73 de Mark M0IEO

CARS run Amateur Radio training courses on Thursday evenings. To find out more about these courses speak to Clive G1EUC on
Tel: 01245-224577
Mob: 07860-418835
E-mail: ARtraining at g0mwt.org.uk
Web: http://www.g0mwt.org.uk/training/

Sandford Mill Radio Museum on-the-air in August
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/august2009/
sandford_mill_radio_museum.htm