David Hughes M3LFC

Young Radio Amateur raises money for the RNLI

10 year-old David Hughes, M3LFC, is currently part-way through a three month fund raising marathon to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

David, a member of the Southport and District Amateur Radio Club (SADARC), started the marathon at the end of January.

During the period David hopes to collect 100 QSL cards for contacts made and raise as much money as possible for his favourite charity, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). To-date, just short of £100 has been pledged, over seventy five contacts made and thirty five QSL cards received.

David is a keen member of the RNLI's junior branch, Storm Force, and has been a licensed Radio Amateur since July 2005; having passed the Foundation course a month earlier aged nine.

The idea for the marathon came from the Radio Society of Great Britain's (RSGB's) Foundation Award. The award is only available to Amateur Radio Foundation Licence holders during their first twelve months of being licensed and requires the operator to obtain 100 points - each unique contact on the 50MHz and 144MHz bands earning 1 point, whilst unique contacts on the 70MHz and 433MHz bands earn two points. To keep things simple for the sponsorship, it was decided that David would just work towards 100 QSL cards.

10 year-old David Hughes, M3LFC, at the microphone to help the RNLI

The Northern Area Fundraising Manager of the RNLI, Lisa Cooke, has been informed of David's activities and has wished him well on behalf of the volunteer crews, hoping that he succeeds in his target. Each year it costs over £1,000 to keep a crew member trained and ready for action. It has, therefore, now been decided that the money David raises will be allocated to the RNLI's Crew Training Campaign that was launched last year and has a target of £10m over the next five years.

If you hear David on the air, please do reply to him and send him your QSL card either via the bureau, or direct to David's dad, G7LFC, whose details are in the call-book.

For those of you that would like to sponsor David, there are two ways this can be done. Firstly, you can fill in an on-line sponsorship form and then we will e-mail you when the event is over with details of where you can send your cheque, or postal order. Secondly, you can make an on-line donation using a credit, or debit card. Further details of sponsorship/donations can be found on the club web-site at http://www.sadarc.org.uk/m3lfc.

Further information can be obtained by e-mailing the club's Special Event Manager, Derek Hughes (G7LFC) – g7lfc@<no spam>sadarc.org.uk.

David and I would like to thank all those who have worked David so far and we lok forward to working more of you as we travel around the country over the coming weeks.

Regards
Derek

Derek Hughes (G7LFC)
Special Events Manager
Southport & District Amateur Radio Club
http://www.sadarc.org.uk/
g7lfc@<no spam>sadarc.org.uk

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