Imperial College Amateur Radio Society
The Imperial College Amateur Radio Society (HAMSOC) folded in 2001, leaving it's callsign, G5YC, without a home. Being rather nostalgic, I decided to become custodian of the call should HAMSOC ever reform. As I am paying for the call every year, I decided to use it as my HF call from 2006 onwards as it it so much shorter than M0BPQ in cw contests.
Hamsoc History
I was only a member of the society for two years before it folded, so I know little of the it's history. There was an RSGB certificate on the wall of the shack in the Beit Quad dated 1924, so clearly the club had some heritage. There was also an impressive antenna stack on the Electrical Engineering building which was never in use whilst I was a member. I am trying to get a meeting with the college archivist to see if information and logs are available, and if I do I will post the information on this website. If you have any information of the amateur radio society from your time at Imperial College, please contact me as it will be gratefully received.
Correspondance (reproduced with permission):
Chris Byard wrote to me on 08/07/2006 with the following info
"Hello Steve I've been wondering why all mention of amateur radio had disappeared from ic.ac.uk- my guess that it had folded was unfortunately correct. I can't tell you much about anything recent (ie since 1974 when I graduated) but I can offer a little information about the 1971 - 1974 period. Things were quite active then- in summer 1972 we went on a return visit to Andorra as C31FK (C31DZ was a year or so before)- the trip being notable for a tremendous thunderstorm at pic de la rabassa (I think) the last night we were there. Luckily it was after we had dropped the masts but we still spent most of the night huddled in the Land Rover- no-one fancied their chances in a tent! In 1972, the new (24ft x 12ft timber building) shack was being commissioned on the roof of the Elec Eng block, replacing a smaller (about 12 by 8) one between the lift motor house and the boiler chimney which was almost uninhabitable if the wind was in the wrong direction. The same fumes had had dire effects on the chassis of the KW2000 HF rig over the years. Luckily the Swan 2000 linear was newer and less decayed. Aerials then were a 3-element monoband yagi for 20m plus a 3-element trapped yagi for 15m and 10m above mounted on about 20ft versatower. A separate scaffold pole (ISTR) carried a 14 element parabeam for 2m. Other HF bands made do with long wires of one sort or another. The KW was replaced by a Drake TR4 in 1973 ish and 2m was taken care of by an Emsac TX2 (about 10W series gate modulated AM with about 5 spot frequencies multiplied up from 8 meg crystals) plus a Microwave Modules converter into an AR88 on 4-6 megs. Life was enlivened by such exploits as hanging a 6ft fluorescent tube under the boom of the 2m beam to provide interesting flashing lights in the sky and pointing the big HF array at Linstead at about 7dBL plus antenna gain to see how long it took someone to moan about RFI. Mostly though we behaved ourselves (as students do ;-) . I ended up as chairman for 1973-74 if for no better reason than it guaranteed me a tankard (RCC24) in the union bar unless some scumbag previous chairman turned up and claimed precedence! I think the tankard was lost sometime in the 80's - at least the one with my name on it was :-( . Some things you might know- was the VHF callsign G8EYC carried on by anyone? Any idea when (why?) the shack moved to Beit? It used to be quite impressive claiming a 14 ele beam at 200 ft AGL in central London. 73's Chris Byard (ex G8GVO)"
As did Matt Pickles:
"Hi Steve,
I saw your website and mention of the G5YC callsign (later GX5YC). I was treasurer and then chairman of "HamSoc" back in the early-mid 90's. I was also responsible for putting the antennas on top of the Elec Eng building, which were used regularly at the time. What happened to the club? And how did you come to be the owner of G5YC? I'd be interested to hear.
Cheers,
Matt"
and subsequently
"Hi Steve,
Thanks for the reply and sorry for not getting back to you sooner. It's a shame to hear that HamSoc has finished and it sounds unlikely that it will re-start from what you said. The club had probably been in decline for about 10 years, so it isn't a big surprise. They actually had most of the gear stolen in the late 80's, but we managed to gradually build up a decent amount of equipment again. By the time I left, we had the cable to Elec Eng running, a nice beam on top and a decent rig/amp set up which worked really well. Do you get much interest when you use G5YC? I always found that people were interested and wanted to know why we had such an unusual call sign. We often had a bit of competition with the science museum (GB2SM) next door, but the extra height on the antennas meant we could usually put out a better signal than them! I have lots of good memories of my time with hamsoc, and remember many hours on the roof of elec eng fixing something or other (usually re-attaching part of an antenna that was blown off in the wind). We also had a trip with the estates manager to inspect the entire length of the heliax cable at one point, which was fun. I'm not active in radio these days. Getting a decent amount of kit an somewhere to mount an antenna put me off, and email is still easier than SSB! All the best, Matt"
I also found some QSL cards:
The first is reproduced with the permission of Andy Cowley who has an old QSL website
Cards from G3TXF
And two more recent ones supplied by G3TXF
My G5YC card
This one was produced in the Ukraine...
