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Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Alpha Charlie (Air Cadets)

In between busy familie chores I found some time to be in front of the radio and work some of the air cadets in their blue ham radio excersise. I think many stations did not know what it was all about as the air cadet stations don't use the radioamateurs language and codes. They call CQ with "Alpha Charley". Unfortunately I was not able to get that on video but will try to do that next weekend. I made a video from my contact with MRE31S but unfortenately the audio doesn't sound very clear.
Most of the activity was outside the frequencies allocated for most countries as the region-1 60m allocation. We dutch radioamateurs are still lucky to be allowed outside these frequencies and so it was possible to work these militairy style stations again.

I found a interesting report from a participating air cadet station of last year, nice read:

http://www.centraleast-atc.org.uk/archives/3715

Another interesting page is the wiki page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Air_Force_Air_Cadets

There are also dutch air cadets, but will they ever organise a radio excersise?

http://www.nlac.nl/air-cadets.html


7 comments:

  1. PhotonTuesday, March 21, 2017 at 1:40:00 PM GMT+1

    There seemed to be even fewer stations in 2017 than the handful that appeared briefly in 2016. Of the four regularly active stations, two were usually operated by ham-licensed adults, not young cadets.

    Pretty disappointing, all told.

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    1. PE4BAS, BasWednesday, March 22, 2017 at 11:14:00 AM GMT+1

      Well, a handfull is 5? or 10? I observed that MRE12,21, 31,40,42,65 and 71 appeared on the band. 7 stations is not that much. If you worked them all and next weekend again you still don't have the 25 contacts needed for the certificate. I think they should send a certificate for 10 stations worked and even that will be difficult. MRE21 was operated by a cadet, I noticed. He (or she) logged me wrong as PE3BAS. I guess that is lack of experience.

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  2. MØYKS SimonWednesday, March 22, 2017 at 10:01:00 AM GMT+1

    Sounds interesting I will have to try listening out for them. I first descovered ham radio when I was an air cadet (Air Training Corps) back in 1980. We had a terrible wire antenna about 15 feet high which never seemed to work on a very old valve YAESU. The ATC squadron 2458 are still going and have a new building in the same place less than 1k away from my QTH but I still don't see any decent antenna 38 years later h.i best 73 Simon M0YKS

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    1. PE4BAS, BasWednesday, March 22, 2017 at 11:19:00 AM GMT+1

      Nice memories Simon. It would be nice if you work some of them next weekend. And now from the radio amateur side. It would be a nice story on your blog. If not too busy with the CQ WW contest I'll try again and shoot some video if possible...

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  3. HansWednesday, March 22, 2017 at 12:10:00 PM GMT+1

    Hoi Bas, toch leuk dat je wat verbindingen heb kunnen maken met de Air Cadet stations. Helaas voor mij afgelopen weekend en aankomend weekend familieverplichtingen. Maar ik wens jou veel succes komend weekend. We zullen het lezen. 73 Hans, PE1BVQ.

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  4. HansWednesday, March 22, 2017 at 5:46:00 PM GMT+1

    N.B.: Inderdaad klink de audio niet mooi, vrij smalbandig. Telefoongeluid. Mogelijk dat ze daar met keelmicrofoons werken. Maar het gaat om de verstaanbaarheid en dat is gelukt. 73 Hans

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    1. PE4BAS, BasThursday, March 23, 2017 at 7:54:00 AM GMT+1

      Hallo Hans, het is mijn eigen schuld. Ik nam op met de telefoon en dat is niet ideaal. Daarbij had ik ook nog een narrow filter aan staan. Ik had het idee dat de verstaanbaarheid dan beter werd maar op video komt dat er niet goed uit. Ik probeer het dit weekend nog eens met de camera. 73, Bas

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Thanks for your comment. Bedankt voor je reactie. 73, Bas