Who are Wrexham Amateur Radio Society ?
Wrexham Amateur Radio Society, are based in Wrexham (funny, that!) and have been around for about 70 years, they have been based in many places around Wrexham but crurrently reside at Maesgwyn Community Centre, Lilac Way Wrexham.
They meet every first and third Tuesday, meetings start at 8pm, and cover a number of areas of radio. They have run a number of Special Event Stations, JOTA, TDOTA, and appeared at Wrexham Science Festival for 4 years running. Depsite their size, they are a very active club, and the memberships knowledge covers a number of areas of the hobby.
The Club President is John Roberts (GW3RBM), Chairman is Graham Lloyd (2W1PGL)
Wrexham ARS' website is located at: http://www.qsl.net/wars
Who is Scarlett Point Amateur Radio Society ?
Scarlett Point Amateur Radio Society, was formed as soon as Scarlett Point Tower was finished, whilst it only has a handful of members, they run from the tower, and are responsible for its upkeep. They generously allowed Wrexham ARS to operate from there in 2004 and 2005 - if you look on their website, located at: www.scarlettpoint.com and take a look in the photos section, theres a lot of photos there of our visit, plus theres some on the Wrexham ARS site (Look in Special Event Stations -> GB4IOM) - the whole thing attracted attention from the local press (although they never showed) - but we were visited by the Mayoress and Town Clerk of Castletown.
Haven't they done this before ?
Not quite - A team from Wrexham ARS worked from Scarlett Point Tower in 2004, running the callsigns GB4IOM and GB4SPT - The VHF operation was run from Scarlett Point Tower, where the HF Station, as well as the operation centre was run from a field next to Scarlett Point Visitor Centre, this was mainly for practical reasons, we couldn't get the antennas onto the farmers land, plus the noise from 2 HF stations would have made VHF operating a problem (not to mention the lack of space!) Whilst there the team amassed around 3500 QSOs, which considering they weren't running as a contest station wasn't bad (VHF made around 100) - they also ran in SSB Field Day as GD4WXM , but also ran as GT4WXM/P from time to time - running entirely at the teams discretion (i.e. when they felt like it)
This amassed 140 contacts in two hours alone, 80 of them were in the first hour (40M) 2M lit up like HF, and 80M was alive well into the night running this callsign.
Another team went over in 2005 for a couple of days, whilst not on the same scale as the 2004 DXpedition, a number of contacts were made, and this was Colin's first taste of not just the IOM, but DXpeditioning.
In May 2006, a team from Wrexham ARS went over, not to operate but to fit a crank up mast to the tower, in-between horrendous rain and winds they managed to get the mast up, but it was a close call!
Whats the plan ?
GB100TT will run from 25th May to 6th June - However...they'll pack up on 6th, so last operating day will be 5th!
GB100TT will operate for about 8 hours a day (More if the operators can last) on HF - 80M upwards, and 6 and 2. Although no official word has been given regarding data, look out for them if they pop up on PSK, RTTY or SSTV. Power is 100W on all bands. They will run with various aerials.
Please spot them if you hear them on, especially if they're on data!
They will operate from within Scarlett Point Tower itself.
