On Saturday 17th September 2022, the Paisley Amateur Radio Club operated a Special Event Station as part of Renfrewshire’s historic buildings Doors Open Day. The club is located in one of the county’s significant number of impressive buildings, right in the centre of historic old Paisley town.
During the event, club members operated several station setups using the special callsign - Golf Bravo Zero Delta Oscar Delta. The radio operators were active on the 40, 20, 17 & 15m HF bands in both voice and data and the 2m VHF band in voice. A WISPr data station operating with only 200mW made many contacts across Central Europe, north across Scandinavia and even to the south as far as an island off the west coast of North Africa, a distance in excess of 3,000 miles. The radio equipment was also used to send messages by Winlink Global Radio Email and we successfully transmitted our special event station logo using slow scan television Voice contact was made on the 20m band with the United Nations Amateur Radio Contest DX Club in Vienna, Austria. Contacts were also made with many other stations including a radio club in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
A display of fully operational amateur radio equipment, military radio transceivers and old domestic receivers were available for the visitors to see. The working conditions on the day were far from ideal due to our location right in the heart of a busy town centre, but with clever selection and positioning of the numerous antennas, the event was deemed to be a success in both contacts made and the numbers of visitors attending.
Our friendly club operates a popular VHF net on 144.550 MHz on Monday evenings and meets each Thursday.
