The Dragon Amateur Radio Club vice chairman David Morgan GW6MLI also happens to be the North Gwynedd and Anglesey Raynet co-ordinator and Raynet Director. The Raynet organisation was formed in 1953 following the East Coast floods, when radio amateurs provided emergency communications. Today they can provide a flexible communications service for major civil emergencies or related exercises and local community events such as the Dougie Mac’s bike ride event.

Dougie Mac’s annual bike ride is an event for cyclists of all ages and abilities with participants having the opportunity to choose between two beautiful routes.

The shorter, 49 mile route will see participants ride out of the city through Whitmore and Loggerheads towards the Shropshire town of Market Drayton before heading northward through the beautiful Shropshire and Cheshire countryside to Nantwich. They’ll then return to Stoke through Keele.

For more experienced cyclists, Dougie Mac’s longer 108 mile route heads out of Stoke-on-Trent through Baldwins Gate and Woore to Whitchurch. Continuing west via Ellesmere, cyclists will cross the border into Wales and head on to Llangollen, before returning to The Potteries through Nantwich. Along the route, cyclists will take in the beautiful countryside of Staffordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire.

David GW6MLI working under the Raynet banner attended the Dougie Mac’s bike ride to help provide communications between stages of the ride.

For more information on Dougie Mac or Raynet please click the relevant logo below.

On Thursday 4^th September, members of Dragon ARC paid a visit to Rhyl & District Amateur Radio Club at their potential new home of Rhyl Yacht Club. Simon MW0NWM, a member of Dragon ARC attended in his role of Regional Representative for the Radio Society of Great Britain in North Wales, wishing Rhyl & District the best of luck in their potential new venue.

18 people attended this pleasant social evening where copious amounts of tea, coffee and biscuits were consumed.

Rhyl club member Alan GW4HDR set up a vertical aerial and checked for HF noise levels at the Yacht Club using his Icom IC705 and compared them on a fellow club member’s, Xiegu G90. They found that there were high noise levels on 80 metres, but other HF bands were usable. This could prove to be useful if they plan to operate from the site in future.

The following amateur attended the event: Sylvia SWL, 2W1LJC, 2W0JEB, GW4CQZ, GW4HDR, GW4RWR, GW6MLI, GW7AMS, GW7BZR, GW8NZN, MW0GBR, MW0IDX, MW0NDE, MW0NWM, MW1DSB, MW7FXH and Alan GW4HDR.

Alan thanked Tony GW7AMS and the Yacht Club for allowing them to use their lovely premises and hope that Rhyl & District ARC will be able to use the building on a monthly basis. In conclusion it was a very enjoyable evening!

Article by Simon MW0NWM

GB2TD – Trwyn Du

On the third weekend of August every year, Dragon ARC take place in one of the largest international operating events, and 2024 was no exception. Once again, we gathered at the Penmon Coastguard station, overlooking Trwyn Du (Black Point) Lighthouse to operate the special event callsign GB2TD as part of the International Lighthouses and Lightships (ILLW) weekend. This is a very popular event with 400 lighthouses and lightships being activated by amateurs around the world and thousands of other amateurs hoping to contact the special stations from their own homes!

Early evening on Friday 16^th August a small gang of members gathered at the coastguard station to set up a simple wire antenna and HF transceiver in readiness for the weekend. This was a straightforward procedure, with the only sense of jeopardy was when Simon MW0NWM climbed onto the roof of the coastguard station to tie off one end of the wire aerial!

The first contact of the weekend was made at 06:45 on Saturday morning and members were kept busy throughout the day contacting amateurs across the UK, Europe and into north America, unfortunately the Australians eluded us! We did however speak to several other lighthouse stations and had many enjoyable contacts with interesting people. 

We were visited by friend of Dragon ARC, David Victor Mills who brought along a trio of impressive valves to show us, one of which was an absolute beast, measuring around 18 inches and used to ply its trade in the transmitter at Anglesey Radio.

Stewart GW0ETF joined us later in the afternoon and set up a second aerial and transceiver so he could make contacts using Morse Code. As most of us headed home for the evening, we left Stewart hard at work attempting to make contacts with his morse key. This was more challenging than it would have been earlier in the day as there had been an amber alert for a possible aurora, which are well known to negatively impact HF propagation conditions.

Sunday was a frustrating day as contacts were harder to come by compared to Saturday morning, due to the continued issues caused by the aurora, however our members continued to valiantly work against the odds and make as many contacts as possible! We finished making voice contacts around 15:00 and packed up, leaving Stewart to continue making morse code contacts until late evening.

So how did we get on?
We made 291 voice contacts and 286 morse code (CW) contacts, making a grand total of 577!

None of this could have happened without the hard work, humour and enthusiasm of the small team of members who took part, including Danny GW7BZR, Simon MW0NWM, Stewart GW0ETF, Ian GW0KRL, Martin 2W0NKS, Tony GW4WZS ?, Liz GW0ETU and Sylvia. Special thanks to John GW3GUX for arranging our accommodation at the coastguard station and particular thanks are owed to Emlyn and everyone at Penmon Coastguard for allowing us to use their fabulous premises.

We are looking forward to doing it all again in 2025!

Article by Simon Taylor MW0NWM

Club members setup and enjoyed a special event Station on Bangor Pier on the 20th July 2024.

Built in the late 19th century during the Victorian era, Bangor Pier exudes a charming and nostalgic atmosphere. Its architectural style and design reflect the elegance and craftsmanship of that era, making it a captivating sight for history enthusiasts. At intervals along the length of the pier deck, you will see pretty little Victorian kiosks, it was in two of these kiosks that we setup and ran the SES in.

We were greeted by sunshine upon arriving on the pier at 8:30am, however by 10am the weather had changed bringing in rain for most of the remainder of the day. This did not however dampen the spirit of the members that attended and didn’t stop members of the public visiting the pier and indeed visiting our kiosks.

The aim of the special event station (SES), and indeed all SES’s is to make  to make contacts locally and/or around the world to promote, celebrate, or commemorate an event, or venue which in this case was Garth pier in Bangor North Wales. Another important aim of a SES is to allow members of the public to see amateur radio in operation and indeed have a go themselves and despite of the poor weather a few members of the public visited, took a turn on the microphone and tried their hand at morse code, Who knows one of our visitors may be a licensed amateur in the future!

During the day club members worked over 100 stations on HF 40m and 20m, CW, VHF 2m FM. We made 40m SSB contacts around the UK, Finland, Austria, Belgium, France, Netherlands, 20m SSB around Europe and 18m the Azores. CW worked some in a Russian contest at the start, and later in the YOTA contest – the youngest ‘Youth’ worked was a 9 year old Romanian.

Dragon Amateur Radio Club would like to thank the Friends of Bangor Garth Pier and Bangor city council who kindly allowed the Dragon Amateur Radio Club the use of two kiosks on the pier to run the club Special Event Station. Without their kind support this event would not have been possible.

Watch a video about GB0BGP, click HERE

To find out more about what events and meetings the Dragon Amateur Radio Club have planned, please visit our google calendar page by clicking HERE.

The Dragon Amateur Radio Club website has been under development for a few weeks now. Martin Moyse 2W0NKS gave members a presentation explaining how the website had developed since his last talk. Martin explained that we now have two domain names. www.dragonamateurradioclub.co.uk and www.darc.wales, the latter being a forwarding domain. Our club website now has some exciting features such as random headers featuring scenes from Anglesey and north Wales. Another great feature is the ability to read the website in a wide range of languages.
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation and all that it involves was explained.

Club secretary Simon MW0NWM discussed the upcoming special event station GB0BGP being held on Bangor Garth Pier on the 20th of July 2024. We will have the use of two kiosks on the pier where we can setup VHF, UHF, HF radios and a CW display.
The primary objective of a special event station is to make local and worldwide contacts to promote Bangor Garth Pier.
However, some visitors to the special event station maybe amateur radio operators of the future so it is important that we enage them.

Dragon Amateur Radio Club offer a variety of activities on club nights for our members. On the 1st of July 2024 we held an evening where members brought in a variety of antenna analysers to test and compare.

Antenna analysers measure and analyse the performance of antennas. They work by transmitting a signal through the antenna and measuring impedance, standing wave ratio (SWR), return loss, and resonant frequency. These measurements help optimise the performance of antennas, ensuring efficient transmission and reception of RF signals.

Most of the antennae tested using the analysers were VHF/UHF but the principal of use is the same for HF antennae.
We found that some of the antennae tested proved to be beyond the range of some of the analysers thus providing a valuable lesson in their use.

A very enjoyable evening!! Thankfully nobody tried to tune in the Jaffa cakes!!

As radio amateurs we thrive on communications. Of course this means spreading the word about our club and hobby to anybody that will listen! In this modern day and age it is important that any club has a highly visible internet presence. This is achieved using media such as YouTube, Facebook and of course a good website.

On the 17th of June 2024 Martin Moyse (2W0NKS) visited our club to discuss building a new website for us. Which is indeed what you are looking at right now!

During the course of the evening Martin gave a multimedia presentation on his website proposals.
His talk included the benefits and pitfalls of owning a website and covered topics such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Martin will be visiting the club again on the 15th of July to update the club on the progress of the website build.

Parys Mountain, originaly known as Trysclwyn, changed its name when it was gifted to Robert Parys, Chamberlain of North Wales by King Henry IV.
The mountain is truly one of Anglesey’s must-visit locations, offering a network of scenic walks around the rocky moon surface like landscape of an ancient copper mine.

For Amateur radio operators Parys Mountain is a superb mobile radio station site with its elevation of 147m above sea level.

Dragon Amateur Radio Club we are lucky to have permission to use the small carpark on the site for club VHF/UHF days. On this sunny but rather chilly day in particular we made plenty of good contacts on 2m and 70cm including local contacts. We also made contacts from as far afield as Glasgow, Co Wicklow in Ireland, as well as making SOTA contacts from Bala and Aberporth in Ceredigion.

Thanks to all of our members who came along.