The Shack
The “Shack” is located in the AB block on level 5 by the lift. This room contains the club equipment and library. We have facilities for Electronic construction and testing, plus radio equipment for the HF bands, 50 MHz, 144 MHz, 432 MHz and 1296 MHz. The club also has facilities for packet radio with a Tiny 2 TNC. There is a PC running Debian GNU/Linux which has wireless Internet access and some packet radio software.
The IARU locator is IO91QF, WAB SU95 in the Borough of Guildford. According to GPS we are at 51:14:38N 0:35:16W. The shack is 67m (220ft) asl and the antennas start at 30m agl, 85m asl.
In October ‘05, the shack had a flood - see The Great Flood.
Antennas
The club antennas are mounted on top of the AA/AB lift shaft at approximately 80M ASL, 20M AGL. The stack includes a dipole for the low bands, a 3 element tri-band beam for 14 MHz, 21MHz and 28 MHz. A 5 element beam for 50 MHz, a 14 element beam for 144 MHz, an 88 element multibeam for 432 MHz, a beam for 23cm and a 2m/70cm co-linear. All of the beams are mounted on a rotator.
There is also a quarter wave antenna for 4m waiting to be fitted and a very long-term project for an EME array.
Radios
Currently, the radio setup consists of:
- Icom IC-751E - primary HF
- Alinco DX-70H - 6m and HF
- Kenwood TR-751 - 2m SSB and FM
- Icom IC-451E - 70cm SSB and FM
- Kenwood TS-700G - modded for 23cm
Amateur Radio Licences
The club station operates under two licences - G3IGQ and G8AHK. Both of these may also be heard with the ‘GX’ prefix, however GX8AHK is a bit of a mouthful! Previously, these were class A and class B respectively, however under the new licensing system, there is no such distinction - though they are still used on their traditional bands despite this change.
Electronics
The shack has two workbench areas with test equipment such as an oscilloscope, multimeter, power supplies and a spectrum analyser (on loan from Nick, 2E1LOK) as well as various tools and components. We are working on replenishing the component store this year. Anybody is free to use these facilities to work on projects or similar.
