On the 21st of April it was the 2024 NARSA rally.

This was the second year of the new approach to the rally with the focus more on clubs and how they have been doing, and how they are furthering the hobby.

At WARC we once again set up our satellite station for QO100, however this year we decided to combine what we did the last couple of years with both TX and RX for narrow band and also video RX. In addition to the satellite station we also put up a live TinyGS node as well as one inside for people to look at a long with some information about TinyGS, Meshtastic and MeshCom.

It was interesting to note that we were not the only club actively working with TinyGS and the mesh systems, and one display had a 3D printer printing out cases for the LoRA modules. It was encouraging this year to see a little more of what other clubs were doing and the synergies between similar projects, I really hope to see more in future NARSA events.

In the past couple of years we’ve been in a room off the main corridor, but this year it was being used for an event so we were in a different room off the main hall, it was smaller but seemed to work well for us in terms of getting a few more visitors who missed us the last couple of years.

It’s always great meeting other amateurs with both similar and different interests and seeing how we can grow and further the hobby.

It’s April and that means that it will shortly be the NARSA day rally. Last year the organisers took a slightly different approach to focus more on clubs and what clubs are doing. As a club we had a narrow band QO100 station on both transmit and receive and a 5GHz TV demonstration, and this year to expand on that we are planning on both the QO100 narrow band transmit and receive as well as QO100 TV receive.

Alongside the QO100 station we are also demonstrating some club projects based on LoRa modules, (MeshCom, Meshtastic and TinyGS). We’ve decided to focus on TinyGS as with the telemetry received and decided that has the most interesting display for the rally.

It’ll be interesting to see what other clubs are up to and hopefully give us some inspiration for future projects and talks.

On the 23rd of April it was the 2023 NARSA rally.

This year marked a change in how the rally was being approached. Increasingly and particularly thanks to Covid (or at least so I understand) the larger traders have been staying away from rallies, not seeing it worth their while, so NARSA decided to focus less on big traders and more on clubs and what clubs have been doing.

As a club we decided to try to build on what we’d exhibited last year. In 2022 alongside the usual selection of club projects on display we had a satellite ground station receiving video from QO-100. This year rather than just receiving we decided to put on a fully operating narrow band ground station which we operated throughout the day, in addition we had a camera on the station, the video from which we transmitted across the room via a 5GHz link and then streamed to the BATC streamer via a Portsdown device. Putting all this together was a big job, and I learned a lot through assisting.

It was a very enjoyable day and I thought the mix of club stands and smaller traders was great, in particular there was a fantastic selection of components, I’ll definitely put some more thought into what I need for the shack before I go next time.

Hopefully the club focused aspect will continue to grow and it’ll continue to stand as a real radio amateurs rally furthering the hobby!