4th Wednesdays of the month
Formal Nights for talks, demonstrations, lively discussions and activities: 7:30pm: Heeley Green Community Centre, 344 Gleadless Rd, Heeley, Sheffield S2 3AJ.
Other Wednesdays in a month
Check out our events and Member's Hub on Facebook, as we either go out for meals and socials, contesting evenings, or we do portable evenings.
Welcome to the website of the Sheffield & District Wireless Society. We have members from all walks, of life, bringing with them a very long wealth of history and knowledge with a common ground to agreed a very relaxed, different and refreshing set of membership aims and objectives. Do come and join us in our Facebook Member’s Hub where most of our daily activity takes place. Just bring yourselves along, your ideas and together we can enjoy what is a fantastic life long hobby to pursue!
Since 2013, we have always offered FREE membership and no subscriptions chipping in with funding via junk sales and donations when we need to. We welcome new members who are interested in getting involved in amateur radio, who want to take up training for Foundation, Intermediate and Full License, enjoy our lectures and social nights, or typically, become a part of our strong and vibrant contesting team where we do have a strong recent history of being at the top of the league tables.
Feel free to visit our website and Facebook promotional page, or better still, come along to one of our Society meetings, talks or events where a very warm welcome awaits.
First thanks to all those that participated in our meetings in 2025 including our successful Christmas Dinner.
Our next meeting is on January 28 2026.
Neil Smith, G4DBN will give a talk on Communications, Machining and Historic military use of Telephony and Microwaves. Neil can be seen on BBC Together with Prof Hannah Fry, demonstrating experiments on “The Secret Genius of Modern Life” Programme :
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001f1tg/episodes/guide and www.g4dbn.uk
G4DBN: Machining and Ham Radio Experimentation from VLF to SHF.
Neil is a member of the Goole radio club, as is our Treasurer John G4LKD.
Our thanks to John for getting Neil to come over from E.Yorkshire to present his talk to us. So please let us have a good attendance.
Note: February meeting: Wednesday 25 February 7.30pm
UKAC call up…. a small group of us including myself G5YL, John 2E0RVX and Iftikhar M5IA are getting together to put in some contacts in the UKAC contests under SDWS, mainly for fun in the evenings.
I personally struggle to do the contests at weekends and so this suits me well on Tuesday and Thursday evenings where I will be doing 2m, 70cm, 4m and 6m over a two week period, and then two weeks off. There’s also 23cm and SHF.
We might get a chance to do well in the scores although the UKAC’s are NOT in the official contest calendar for the society. It was decided it can be onerous over the year.
Our main goals are to have some fun, hone our contest skills, improve our gear, and keep SDWS in the club charts. Some of us are choosing to work from home, although for the more adventurous, going portable high up will certainly yield you some far better results…. Please feel welcome to join in
More info at the link here to the RSGB’s VHF pages… You can certainly start by downloading MINOS from here for your logging Hope to hear you on one evening Next week sees the 70cm on Tues 13th and 4m on Thurs 15th.
The banner image containing the frequencies for the GB7SR DMR Repeater has been corrected and updated for the GB7SR Facebook Group. Our apologies for any confusion caused.
The Society is doing very well indeed in spite of the recent restrictions due to the Covid pandemic. Face to face meetings are once again taking place at the Rutland Hotel on the first Wednesday of each month and a full programme of talks and other events is now planned up to the end of the year. These can be accessed via both the public and members only SDWS Facebook pages.
The AGM resulted in a several committee changes. The General Secretary, Peter G3PHO, decided to step down after some 60 years (!) or so of being on various radio club committees. David M0GDX kindly volunteered to take on the Programme Secretary’s job. Likewise, Graham G3YJR handed his Treasurer’s job over to a younger person. We also have a new Chair man in the shape of Andy M0GAV. All these and more can be read in the Minutes PDF file.
The highlight of the Awards Presentations were the October 2021 Construction Competition awards. These are shown below in the photos…
The Award for Progress in Amateur Radio was, this year, given to Pat Davies, M7PAT, the partner of Dave Shaw, M5DWI. Pat is a relatively new licencee and, since getting her callsign, has made significant progress in contesting and is now coming well up the league charts in both HF and VHF contests. She has won a number of RSGB Contest certificates for being the highest place Foundation Licence holder. Well done Pat!
Bring along your surplus radio junk and help the club through a 10% levy for club funds.
The sale will run as an auction like you see on Bargain Hunt!
Anti Covid precautions apply…. Masks to be work in public areas of the hotel such as the reception area and corridors, members attending to have had two anti covid vaccinations, do not attend if you have any covid symptoms such as persistent cough, a temperature, etc.
(OPEN TO MEMBERS AND NON-MEMBERS) ** SUBJECT TO COVID RESTRICTIONS AND WEATHER CONDITIONS**
Location: Individual locations to be chosen by the participants Operators: Single Operator only (couples may enter a log each by sharing the time allowed) Equipment: HF and/or VHF mobile or portable transceiver and matching antennas Categories: (1) HF 100W maximum. (2) HF 10W Maximum (3) VHF 100W maximum (4) VHF10W Maximum HF is defined as 1.8 to 30MHz. VHF is 50MHz and up Antennas: Any portable or mobile type. Modes: Any mode allowed, including digital (FT8, PSK, etc) Logs submission: Any format (paper, electronic, etc) provided the following information is recorded: DATE TIME GMT FREQUENCY or BAND CALLSIGN WORKED REPORT RS(T) SENT REPORT (RS(T) RECEIVED) LOCATION OF STATION WORKED (Town, city or QRA LOCator).
FT8 reports may be in WSJT format rather than RST The log should also state the entrants location(s) either by QRA Locator or Six digit National Grid reference
Send your logs to: sdws(at)g3pho(dot)org(dot)uk OR post to Peter Day G3PHO’s address as shown on QRZ.com Deadline for log submission: Midnight Wednesday 11th August.
Awards: Achievement certificates in PDF format for the best DX on each band shown in the total entries. The definition of HF DX is based on the country’s rarity value rather than distance. On VHF DX is determined by the distance worked. The judge’s decision is final!
At the time of writing this post (mid March 2021) we are yet to decide on a firm date for when we can resume our “in the flesh” meetings in Sheffield. It is now one year since we met at the Rutland Hotel in Broomhill, Sheffield, and most of our local members have not seen each other since! Instead, we have been having video conference meetings in the form of a Sunday morning chat at 11am, using the entirely free Jitsi video conference software, which works like Zoom and Webex but does not require passwords. There are no time limits and apparently a very generous allowance re numbers of participants. The Jitsi meeting is only available to bonafide Society members so if you wish to take part you will need to either look for the weekly reminder on the members Facebook page or email the club secretary for the link.
We also run a weekly 2m FM net on 145.475MHz. You do not need to be a club member to join in so if you are interested in SDWS why not call into the net at 8pm each Wednesdsay evening? Due to the hilly nature of Sheffield not all members can hear each other so be prepared to have a little difficulty hearing some of the net members. If you hear callsigns such as M0RPK, G8BMI, 2E0YTV, 2E1WCB, G5TO you will have found us!
At the moment the greatest proportion of club activity takes place on our members Facebook page. This is really a very active Social Media outlet for SDWS and is well worth joining Facebook if for nothing else. Here you can make new friends as a member, get the answers to radio problems, especially when they concern antennas and software.
We are also very active in the contest field … especially the RSGB weekly 80m Club Contests, the weekend VHF/UHF RSGB Contests in the VHF Championships and the AFS Superleague and the Autumn Series of RSGB 80m Contests.
If the Covid regulations allow it we hope to put on a VHF Field Day station at our contest portable location at Wharncliffe (IO93FL) on the 3rd/4th July and the RSGB SSB Field Day in early September, from the same location. We are most grateful to the Wharncliffe Estate for giving use permission to use their Wharncliffe Chase site for all our portable contesting. No other clubs or individuals from other clubs are allowed this privilege
SO WHAT OF MEETINGS AFTER THE COVID RESTRICTIONS ARE FINALLY RELAXED FOR GOOD?
The committee have had preliminary chat about this and at present we have no firm decisions to take. We have a number of scenarios that we could undertake..
1. Revert back to preCovid meetings… ie a formal meeting for talks at the Rutland Hotel on the first Wednesday of each month, plus social meetings in the Rutland Bar on all other Wednesday evenings.
2. For the coming year have club talks online only using video conferencing. The RSGB are presently using this system very successfully. We will need someone in the club to organise and co-ordinate the video meetings. PLEASE OFFER YOUR SERVICES! In addition we would meeting in a centrally based pub for social evenings and/or meals.
3. Look for a cheaper meeting room than the £50 a night room we rented at the Rutland. If anyone knows of such a room (free if possible!) which we would need for 7.30 to 10pm one night a week please email the club secretary Peter, G3PHO (email address can be found on his QRZ.com page).
WATCH THIS SPACE FOR FURTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS AS WE APPROACH THE LIFTING OF COVID RESTRICTIONS.
SDWS |are proud to announce the appointment by RSGB of our former Chairperson, Krystyna Haywood, G5YL to the office of Region 4 District representative
Sheffield and District Wireless Society is delighted and proud to announce that founder member and former Chairperson, Krystyna Haywood, who recently qualified for her Full Licence as G5YL, has been chosen to represent RSGB Region 4 as its District Representative for the Sheffield and South Yorkshire area. This means she will be working with the Region 4 Regional Rep and will be available to visit affiliated clubs and societies and well as helping individual RSGB members.
This is an important job and SDWS have every confidence that Krystyna will carry out her RSGB duties to the full and in her usually very thorough way.
