For some weeks now the Reading & District Amateur radio Club has been running the Advanced Amateur radio licence course on Monday evening’s mostly in Tilehurst with the odd evening taking place in Reading. On Saturday I was delighted to be able to attended the Saturday workshop Peter and I took the 9am train to reading we had time to call into Costa coffee for me and hot chocolate Peter’s favourite beverage sat we sat on the station concourse this is a delight in the summer but bitter cold this time of year but our hot drinks were excellent.

Their seemed to be no shortage of black cabs for hire at the train station and we took one to Caversham Park Village Association Hall we had a great time with Dr Allison Johnson G8ROG and David Rumens G4BOO we learnt about the VSWR meter and they work, how to make a 2m antenna without a tape measure using just using the maths and an MFJ- 269Pro analyser then connect it up to a 2m rig Avair AV-20 VSWR power meter 1.8-200MHz to see if you got it right

we also learnt how to find harmonics using a Radio Communication service monitor and with a 100 Mhz Digital Storage oscilloscope we learnt how to set our modulation correctly so as not to be over driving the transceiver. After lunch we learnt how to set up safely the Yaesu YA-30 antenna andto make a few contacts on HF with it. Over all I rate this as an excellent day’s training in a friendly and stress free environment and I did not feel uncomfortable asking questions.