One sunny Summer Sunday in Sonning
Members Meetup at McMichael Rally
Worked All OARC 2024 - Net #003
TL;DR
A bunch of OARC folk meet up in Reading, enjoy a chat and a radio rally.
The idea for an OARC meetup in the South East started as a new thread to the #community-connect forum back in Sept 2023, originally focused on members in IO91. What followed was a surprisingly long gestation period.
After a couple of initial expressions of interest, the thread fell silent. A refresher post in November was followed in December by the McMichael Rally being mooted (a really good location based on the clustering of OARC folk on the members map). Then in February 2024, Nathan 2M0OCC broadened the forum title to South East England Meet ups, and a few more piped up. Nothing more in March, so in April, I posted again, outlining a specific plan, as WAOARC 2024 was hoving into view. A good bit of discussion in May and we had clear idea, so the plan went to the OARC wiki - https://wiki.oarc.uk/mcmichael_meetup_2024
From here, things seemed to happen pretty rapidly. I got Vic EI5IYB to post an Event on Discord, and 12 people flagged their interest. Days before the event, I checked the weather forecast for the weekend and posted gleefully to the forum how nice it was looking; I was immediately admonished for jinxing it - with good reason: hours later, the McMichael Rally team announced that the ground in the rally site field had taken so much water in recent rains that it may have to be postponed.
With 12 OARC members having expressed interest in the meetup, and after waiting months for the date to come around, this was not the best news, and the Rally organisers would only give a go/no-go after they had reassessed the ground conditions on Friday, 2 days before the rally.
I briefly toyed with a Not-A-Rally Plan B as a contingency, but happily the organisers came back with a green light on Thursday. A flurry of update posts from various people on the forum and dawn broke on the morning of the rally - a warm and pleasant Sunday. I headed there from Basingstoke, a 40 minute drive away, others came from further afield (one of which had awoken around 0400 hrs to arrive early doors).
I arrived around 0910 and driving in, I spotted was Tom M0LTE, marshalling cars in customary Hi-Viz vest. After a brief stop to say hi, I continued on to park up and headed into the rally.
Making a call into the talk-in frequency to check in with the rally station and giving a general shout out for OARC, and then revealed that this was my first radio rally, to which I was cordially warned to expect 'a load of old toot' - which proved to be largely accurate, with some notable exceptions.
After signing with the talk-in station, I QSYd to 433.425 MHz, previously designated as the OARC backchannel. This worked really well. On the first call, Steve M1SDH responded, on his way into the car park. He arrived in the field soon after, and gets the Instant Recognition Award for his checked short sleeved shirt, jeans and HT, distinguishing him from 3% of other rally attendees.
We made it to the end of the first row of stalls, then decided to nip in to the clubhouse to see the stall selling Key radios, before heading back out to rendezvous with Dayle M0OUE, who Steve had heard on the 70cm channel. Dayle, who was rocking some very weather-appropriate shades, and gets the DX Award, having driven down from St. Helens, starting in the small hours of the morning, arriving early, and bagging a camera for £10 which he checked on ebay goes for about £50, so this would cover his fuel for the trip.
As we continued chatting, I spotted Tom, accompanied by someone in a red vest sporting a bandana, and wielding a freshly-purchased telescoping antenna for 4m, which looked like it would double as a Police baton. This transpired to be Szymon M0GZP.
Jonathan G4KLX sensibly wore a Tank Museum hat, but was most recognisable at 50m by the fact that he was talking into his radio when I was looking around the stalls to see if I could clock him responding to a CQ OARC call on 433.425.
Jason G7RUX was initially the guy in the purple polo shirt at the entrance to the clubhouse adjusting his earphones (although we didn't know it was him at that point). It was only some minutes later after the OARC group made an ill-fated queue for the coffee machine, some resorting to the bar for cold drinks, and sitting down around a table, that Jason rocked up and introduced himself. He had a couple of short whips protruding from his backpack and a 70cm HB9CV strapped on the back. He mentioned that he'd tried responding on 433.425 MHz, but due to his radio's bluetooth mic conflicting with his wire headphones, his outgoing transmissions weren't passing any voice.
Above, left to right: Simon, Jason, Steve, Rich & Dayle
The group spent a good 3/4 hour chatting, before heading back out to the rally, or some off home.
Steve, Dayle and I continued browsing the rows of goods on offer. My haul for the day amounted to a pack of heatshrink (unusually restrained in the face of competitively-priced radio stuff).
Continuing up the penultimate row of stalls, I spotted MastCar cunningly concealed to the side of the main stalls area. Wandering over, I saw it had some For Sale signs in the windows.
Matthew 2E0SIP is just visible in the above photo standing behind a friend waving an inflatable antenna (fully-deployed), testing it by monitoring the talk-in frequency. It seemed to be working well, but he was having some issues with the deflation process. Matthew was in animated conversation with his friends and MastCar associates.
We said hi, and Dayle came over, and intros made, we chatted about MastCar, looking at the kit inside, hearing the vehicle's history, and lamenting our limited driveway space, but for which the vehicle would surely have been snapped up.
After leaving Simon to finish browsing the stalls, we heard an announcement of free stuff on the RADARC table, so I suggested to Steve and Dayle that we head over to have a look.
The menacing sound of a tank engine foretold the appearance of a Sturmtiger, about knee-height and remote controlled, ambling it's way to join a collection of other scale RC tracked vehicles near the steward's tent.
This was all the distraction needed to divert me into buying some raffle tickets.
We then visited the free stuff table, came away empty-handed, and headed to the barbecue where we secured burgers and sat chatting, bumped into Ace G0ACE and then at 1300, the raffle was drawn, at which point we each headed off home.
This was a great opportunity: we had luck with the weather, the rally was a decent venue with decent selection, and a good number of OARC members turned up - many thanks to them for making the meetup a success. Looking forward to future get-togethers when the chance presents itself. Discussions are already afoot.
OARC members at the rally: Rich M7GET, Tom M0LTE, Steve M1SDH, Dayle M0OUE, Szymon M0GZP, Jonathan G4KLX, Jason G7RUX, Matthew 2E0SIP, Ace G0ACE; it transpires that Simon M0PDF had also been at the rally, but had left not long after 1000 hrs.
73 de Rich M7GET