Biography

Welcome to our page. MX0SSW is the callsign of the Silcoates School Amateur Radio Club, in the city of Wakefield, West Yorkshire, in the North of England.

The club was formed in 2005, and we have grown to having more than 30 licenced pupils at Silcoates, as well as many more members not yet licenced, between the ages of 11 and 18 - mainly in the Senior School and Sixth Form (Secondary School).

Our interests are wide and varied. We can often be heard in the daytime on HF between 6 and 40 metres. We can also be heard locally on VHF 2 metres, as well as RTTY and BPSK31. We also participate in regular contests mainly out of term times, and have numerous awards - including the Multioperator SSB multi operator multi band champions of the King of Spain contest 2006, and the Rookie high power all band award for England in the 2006 WPX contest.

In September 2014, we will be featured on the TX Factor online Amateur Radio television show. Thanks to Nick Bennett for taking the time to come and see us for this! http://www.txfilms.co.uk/txfactor/txf005.shtml

You will find us active on HF most often. Our breaktimes (10:25-10:45UTC) offer the perfect time for us to respond to CQ calls, and operate a few callsigns we see on DXSummit. However, we are most active at the School Lunchtime (12:45-13:50UTC) Monday to Friday. Our 6-Band Hexbeam means that even our M6 licencees (10W) are able to talk outside the European continent; although our members are varied in licence class, including M3, M6, 2E0, and M0 members - qualified to use 10, 50, and 400 Watts respectively. Listen out for us on SSB phone, and data during our lunchtimes! Here is the installation of the Hexbeam by our generous installers Charles M0OXO, and Malcolm M0BZH.

The teacher responsible for the Radio Club is Nigel Wears M0NJW. Nigel was responsible for founding the club in 2005, and it has gone from strength to strength since. In 2006 we were lucky enough to be one of the first in the UK to collect Yaesu's new FT-2000 Transceiver. Here are the club members collecting the rig from Martin Lynch and Sons, Surrey.

We also operate from the extensive School sporting fields as a portable station. For this we have dipole's for 40 and 20 metres, and a Yagi for 2 metres VHF. When we operate portable we often use a Yaesu FT-857 transceiver with a portable MFJ tuner, and a Honda petrol generator. We also do this when we are rehearsing for a disaster scenario when our radio licence becomes assistant to the public.

We are very pleased with our well equipped Radio Shack. Although being another 'Shack in the attic' it offers plenty of seating for members and observers, as well as space to have our equipment well spread out and accessible. The shack is also Air-conditioned and central heated (not at the same time!)

We hold annual licensing courses to start our youngest members (mainly Year 7 and 8) on with their Radio career. This course is called the Foundation (M3/M6 Prefix) which allows the young participants to operate HF and VHF using a 10W limit. The test includes practical assesments including CW, an SSB QSO, and has some technical elements. There is also a multiple choice assesment which tests the candidates knowledge of Amateur Radio.

We send out QSL cards via the Bureau, and eQSL to all our QSOs unless specified not to. These usually go out monthly by eQSL, but the Bureau is sent on a bi-annual basis.

Please send us an email with any comments about the Club, our operating, and your thoughts on our new page at radioclub@silcoates.org.uk. We always respond to mail; and it is greatly appreciated to hear from fellow Hams from around the World.

Thank you for reading our Biography!

73s de MX0SSW

Silcoates School Wakefield

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

Antenna: 6-Band Hexbeam by Ant MW0JZE - Yaesu G-1000DXC Rotator, Trapped Dipole for 80/40 Metres, Colinears for VHF and APRS (All 60 feet above ground on School roof)

Transceiver: Yaesu FT-2000 Transceiver for HF with Data management unit 2000, Yaesu FT-2800 for 2 Metres.

Sound: Yaesu SP-6 External Speaker, Yaesu MD-200A8X Dynamic Microphone

Amplifier: ACOM 1000 Linear Amplifier

I.T.: Three custom Intel PCs running Windows XP, Logger 32, MixW 3.1.1 with Tigertronics Signalink USB interface for Data. PCs display the club log, Google Earth, DXSummit, and QRZ.com lookups.

APRS: We are also equipped with a APRS transmitter, a Navico AMR-1000, using a PacComm Tiny 2 Mk2 Packet card. The APRS is located in the School Shack, and is active when we are on air.