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The LIDS CW annual summer break-a-thon is coming to an end. Its marked by a reddening of the skin and a knotted hanky on the head is ceremonially removed and placed in the cupboard until next year.

So what?

As far as Lids members are concerned this means the drawing closer of ‘strictly come dancing’ on Auntie and a cue every self respecting member to head to the shack are start sending a strange combination of di’s and dah’s that on occasion resemble actual words, phrases and numbers.

Don’t spill the beans but lurking round 40m on abou 7.032Mhz might net you the QSO of your dreams. Looking forward to working you. Don’t forget that you can arrange skeds via Twitter, just Tweet Freq & time to @lids_cw and arrange to your hearts content.

Saturday 16th April saw the long-awaited inaugural LIDS CW Boot Camp.  Ten LIDS members from as far afield as Kent gathered in Bristol for a day of CW practice, learning, discussion and fellowship.

Many practice QSOs were made across the room, some using sidetone oscillators but also radio-to-radio QSOs by connecting dummy loads to the antenna sockets.  Pick a band, any band…

We had a 30m station set up for ‘live’ CW contacts and, although the antenna was a simple dipole folded around the ceiling, it tuned up and had got some RBN spots in Spain and Germany the day before.  Unfortunately the band conditions were awful during the morning and we were also suffering from S6-7 of noise so it wasn’t until later in the afternoon that G0POT ‘broke the duck’ with a QRS contact with EA7JUK.  Of course, everyone else in the room was working to copy both sides of the QSO.

Attendees were (in LIDS# order): David G7AGI (#003), Michael G0POT (#027), Matt M0CUV (#040), Paul G0WAT (#051), Steve M0SPN (#059), Simon M3HXE (#069), Paul M0PNA (#114), Matt 2E0LJZ (#116), John M0HFH (#128), and Mike G8HKS (#139).

Thank you and well done to all the LIDS who attended.  We would love to be able to do another boot camp and hopefully in a different location so that they can be accessible to those for whom Bristol was a little too far to travel.

In response to demand from our members, and now that we have passed the threshold of members required, we are delighted to announce that LIDS is now listed as a club on ClubLog. Go to your Settings page in ClubLog, click on the Clubs button and in the list of clubs underneath ‘Join more clubs’ you will find us listed as “LIDS CW & Data Club”. Let’s start getting those logs uploaded!

And so, only a few days after it’s creation, it is my pleasure to announce the first LID-t0-LID QSO, between Ian MW0IAN #002 and Jaan SM0OEK #009.

Initial reports say it was a nice, QRM-free 40m contact between LIDS members. May there be many more!