The groups AGM took place on Sunday 6th November. There was a good turnout of members and the committee were re-elected en-bloc.

Items discussed included purchasing a trailer for transport of equipment, use of CTCSS tones, digital modes, mapping software and the unification of Raynet.

Thank you to all members that turned out to assist at this event.  We had a very large number of entries with over 200 riders taking part.

We ran a shortened mast with a 2m Slim Jim used to provide the coverage. This was fed from the trusted Kenwood 732 in dualband talk-through mode with 5W on both bands.

Unfortunately the weather got somewhat rainy a couple of times and I know several of the team got more than a little wet!

Thankfully no safety issues of note other than a missing rucksack and a bike that developed a puncture!

Thanks to all the team that made the long journey to the other side of Dereham for this event.  It was outside our normal operational area but supporting one of our West Norfolk ride organisers.

We had just 130 riders take part over two routes including some jumps.  One incident required St John Ambulance to attend.

Fortunately the area was easily cover on 5W 2m as the control location was nicely in the centre of the ride.

Thank you to all the members that came out to assist on this one. After a break of a couple of years it all became very familiar again. Good RF coverage from  a high spot in the middle of course meant for a smooth 2m net. Very few issues on the course for St John Ambulance as well which is always welcome.

Thanks to members that assisted on this one.  In the end just under 50 riders took part over some parts of West Norfolk that we have never operated in.

Horse boxes…horses…and Norfolk country side somewhere….

Homebrew 2m slim jim on a tripod… it works on 70cm as well!

We ran a slightly modified base arrangement into a shorter tripod mounted aerial.  This proved a wise move as the control location was predominately hard ground and concrete! 2m net of 10w proved more than adequate apart from one location.  However a change of location rectified that (we think shielding effect from damp trees).

Thank you to the members that were able to assist at this small horse ride. In the end 52 horses took part over the two main routes. Although some took shortcuts/wrong routes so several tracks were covered outside of the plan!

Because of the control location we were able to cover this well on a 5w 2m net.

The Raynet locations were both on rather fast roads and also one had an unfortunate number of flies present! Just some of the challenges faced.

Thank you to all who were able to assist at this event. We managed to set up a good 2m net on 144.650Mhz running 10W that covered all the required check points this year.  On Sunday morning we were also picking up another group covering a cycle ride so we had to adjust squelch accordingly to eliminate most of their traffic.

Weather was wet and cool on Saturday but dry and sunny on Sunday which gave anice balance to proceedings.

We also tried some HF tests between a couple of the points using vertical SSB . Results below:

Thank you to the members that assisted at this annual event. As usual this presented good RF coverage challenges. We also used the Hunstanton control room club call of M0HCR/P for a change which confused everybody!!  In the end we managed to work all but one location directly from control with the Fring location being relayed from Sedgeford. We also used GB3KY for the Park Farm location.

The main issue at the control was S3/4 noise across the 2m band.  At first this was though to be very localised ie from nearby vehicles. But upon further investigation likely to be a mix from the nearby radio tower that is very close by.

Checkpoint R2

We saw over two hundred horses on the day

The control area including the donated Lynx bus

The control… 70cm link to talkthrough unit, HF and PMR.

Thank you to the members that were able to attend this event. We provided a good safety net for 220 horse riders on the hottest day of the year so far (just under 30C).  RF wise 144.650MHz was used into a low power cross-band 2 – 70 talk-through unit with no issues encountered. We also had a brief 80m test with excellent ground wave QRP signals between two stations.