The CUWS Team achieved first place for England (and the UK) in the multi-op single transmitter category. Normal antennas at the shack were supplemented with a 40m 4-square, 80m vertical, and 15m monobander on a SCAM 12 tower (Tnx M0LCM).
ZC4UW Cyprus Sovereign Base Area Operation
Six members of the Society and one guest were active from the western Sovereign Base Area on Cyprus from 2-8 January 2020. A record (for CUWS) 26,000 QSOs were made from 160-15 metres (including a handful on 12/10/6). Modes used were CW, SSB, and RTTY. The team used 4 Elecraft K3/KPA500 stations and one KX3/Juma combination. The antennas were: 160m inverted L, 80m quarter wave, 40m quarter wave, 30m ground plane, 20m ground plane, 17m vertical dipole, 15m vertical dipole. For 60m either the 160 or 80 metre antenna was used. The QTH was a beach cafe that had closed for the winter. The team picture is below. Ops from left to right were: Michael G7VJR, Rob M0VFC, Simon G7SOZ, Martin G3ZAY, Stavros 5B4AFM / M0BBB, Dan M0WUT and Dom M0BLF.
December 1st & 6th – Youngsters on the Air Activation
CUWS hosted two 8 hour slots in the December activation of GB19YOTA for Youngsters on the Air. 1000 QSOs were made, mainly on 40 and 20 metres CW and SSB.
Dan M0WUT kicked things off on 20m CW:
He was joined shortly afterwards by Charlie M0ZCJ on 40 SSB:
Next up was Nikolas M0IPY on 20m SSB:
And William M0WJE on 40m SSB (20m CW later):
William introduced Jared KC1LZJ to the sound of the bands from this side of the pond:
And Aly M0WSE finished off on 20m SSB:
28 Nov 1900: Eloy de Lera Acedo: “Unveiling the Early Cosmos”
Cambridge University Engineering Dept, LR6, 1900 on 28/11/19
Dr Eloy de Lera Acedo, of the Cavendish Laboratory, will address the Society on his research.

Image credit SKA Organisation/Swinburne Astronomy Productions
One of the missing pieces in the puzzle of the history of the Universe is the transition from the Dark Ages after the Big Bang, when the Universe was an empty vast volume, to the complex realm of galaxies, starts, etc. that we can observe from Earth today. In this lecture, Dr de Lera Acedo will give an overview of the current efforts (some of them led from Cambridge) to observe and study the very early lights of our cosmos. Low-frequency radio telescopes, aiming at observing the signature signal from Hydrogen in the early Universe, are widely considered the prime tool to unveil the remaining mysteries around the formation and early evolution of the first luminous objects in the sky. Dr de Lera Acedo will talk about the science case named 21-cm radio cosmology and the different current (eg. REACH, HERA) and future (eg. SKA) experiments and observatories dedicated to this mission.
CQWW SSB Contest 2019
CUWS entered the major CQWW SSB contest last weekend (26/27 October) in the Multi-operator, Single Transmitter, category. In practice this means two transmitting positions – but one is designated as only being able to contact countries or “zones” that have not yet been contacted on a particular band. The usual 3 element SteppIR Yagi was supplemented with a 5 element 15m Yagi on a 12m SCAM mast, a 4-square phased array for 40m, and a single quarter wave vertical for 80m. The last two antenna systems will be in place for members to use until the end of March (if the vertical parts survive the winter gales).
Conditions were as poor as one would expect at the bottom of the sunspot cycle but we managed 2802 contacts over the 48 hours and are hoping for 1st place in our category again.
Operators included a number of students and recent alumni.
G6UW Member on Gough Island in 1955
In 1955, Martin Holdgate (now Sir Martin) then a recent Cambridge graduate organised a scientific expedition to Gough Island in the middle of the South Atlantic. He asked CUWS if a member would be interested in joining as the radio operator and electronics technician. Philip Mullock, G3HPM, stepped up and by late that year was active as ZD9AD from Gough Island. Thanks to Paul Johnson, ZS1S, one of Philip’s QSL cards has been scanned and sent to us as a memento of the expedition. Holdgate’s book “Mountains of the Sea” has more detail about the trip and includes a recollection that Philip kept a regular radio sked trying to contact an old school friend in the UK – entirely without success throughout the expedition.
Holdgate also commented on the nature of the typical amateur radio contacts as per the book image below:
QSL card sent to ZS1AB in Cape Town:
Philip retired to the Cambridge area and visited the current G6UW shack about 7 years ago (pictured) but sadly passed away recently.
22 Oct 1900: Jossy Sayir: “Information Storage on DNA”
22 October 1900, LR5, Cambridge University Engineering Dept.
Dr Jossy Sayir, a lecturer and researcher at Robinson College, Cambridge, will address the society on his research. It promises to be a most entertaining and engaging lecture.
There is a lot of digital information in the world — about three zettabytes’ worth (that’s 3000 billion billion bytes) — and the constant influx of new digital content poses a real challenge for archivists. Hard disks are expensive and require a constant supply of electricity, while even the best ‘no-power’ archiving materials such as magnetic tape degrade within a decade. One solution is to use DNA: a compact, robust molecule, as a storage medium. We call this DNA storage. The talk will introduce the technology for writing and reading DNA, cover data preparation and retrieval. It will also include an activity where participants will get to encode and decode their own messages into DNA in the form of coloured Lego pieces.
CUWS Talk – Feb 14th 1900 – GNU Radio: A toolkit for the Wireless World
The talk will be from 1900 in the Bateman Auditorium at Caius College on Thursday Feb 14th. All are welcome.
Speaker:
Derek Kozel is an officer in the GNU Radio project, president of the Cardiff University Amateur Radio society, and a PhD researcher at the Centre for High Frequency Engineering. He operates as MW0LNA primarily on the microwave bands and has a strong interest in Free and Open Source Software and enabling the use and understanding of wireless digital communications by students and in Amateur Radio.
2018 VP2MUW Montserrat DXpedition
Three CUWS alumni M0VFC M0BLF and M0WUT visited Montserrat at the end of 2018. Read about their activity at https://vp2muw.com/
CQWW CW 2018 (M0WJE)
This year, the weekend of 24/5 November saw the CQWW CW contest. Although CUWS normally enters the SSB version only, my Morse has been progressing steadily and I felt finally ready for a contest…what better opportunity? Since the VP2MUW team of experienced CW ops was returning hours before the contest began, and since in any case I thought building a team to disappoint with my beginner’s operating was a bad idea, I entered the single-operator category from Woop Woop 3. As a relatively recent licensee, receiving my M0 call in early 2017, I was also eligible for the ‘Rookie’ overlay category. Having set up WinTest for the contest in advance and checking I knew at least vaguely how to drive the shack’s Winkeyer, I left things until Friday; unfortunately, I still had rather a lot of work to do over the weekend, so clearly could not go in for a serious 30+hour stint. I elected to aim for about 10-12 hours operating over the weekend, and chose to enter the 20m QRO class.
I arrived at the shack (later than I would have liked) at around 0845 on Saturday, and began by working the numerous multipliers in Asia before propagation in that direction died; after a couple of hours including my first attempt at running in a contest (at 26wpm or so, extremely leisurely by contrast to some ops—TI7W, for example was running at 43wpm), I decided to go and buy myself a sandwich lunch while waiting for the US path to open properly. On my return, I had a cup of tea and got back to work, soon managing a reasonable run of US stations interrupted only occasionally by frequency-snatchers, only some of whom were warned off with an insistent “QRL QRL”!
I returned at greyline time on Sunday morning to work a few more mults/JAs; in the former I was largely unsuccessful, finding no new zones but a few new countries, but I managed to run through around 50 stations, comprised of many Russian/eastern European stations and a few calls from further afield, including JA.
What I did
- About 9.5hrs operating over two days
- 20m high power
- Logging to Wintest
- Morse via Wintest macros, sent through Winkeyer
- Hand keying for some partials and abbreviated CQs etc (which I never got round to programming in) via a Bencher paddle connected to the Winkeyer.
- FT1000MP with 250Hz filters. DSP minimally used.
What was good
- Logging was largely successful, though I made a few keyboard errors.
- Sending exchanges, most callsigns and some partials via Winkeyer.
- Some partials etc by hand.
- Running in a contest…it’s stressful but not as bad as I’d feared.
What was bad
- Copy accuracy: I was able to copy about every other callsign on the first attempt, even at only 27wpm or so. Most callers were considerate enough to slow down to this speed, though a few attempted to work me at >>35wpm (I feel I can estimate this fairly well since I will happily call people QRQ if they are running fast, especially given the predictable exchange in CQWW DX). One or two succeeded. I found myself sending lots of partials. Predictable given my inexperience and rather as I’d expected—sorry to those whose rates suffered from my ineptitude!
- Hand sending: it’s improving, but I am still prone to make errors when sending by hand at 28wpm (I think I’m slightly better, at least with some messages, at higher speed). On several occasions I released the key too early when sending a short CQ, thus sending “M0W” (three men went to…), so had to correct myself. I also seem to struggle unnecessarily with the humble question mark: never have I sent so many ..–. . or similar!
- Run technique to some extent: this was mostly due to the copying issue. Lack of experience once again largely to blame. I was very confused until after the contest by people whose callsign I had thought I’d copied correctly sending some unexpected characters before the exchange; now I realise this was probably “UR”. I was also not always able to establish when I had copied callsigns correctly; credit due to those who patiently sent “N N” when I had it wrong, and “R R” when I had finally cracked it, but less to those who gave their exchanges even though I had not sent their full callsign and then disappeared!
- Winkeyer occasionally: for some reason, every so often, the keyer speed appeared to jump quite dramatically. I suspect this may be due to the interesting idea of speeding up to send “5NN” as quickly as possible, and somehow periodically failing to slow down again… problem easily solved by wobbling the potentiometer on the front though.
Raw score was 139,050, though I am sure the error rate will be startlingly high (for reasons outlined above). Hopefully I should at least finish with a positive score! Raw score places me 78/145 worldwide, 59/88 in EU and 6/6 in G.
Update: Final score after moderation was 118,104. 5.4% error rate compared to the average of 2.8%; not brilliant, but not as bad as I’d expected! 1st of 3 in G “Rookie QRO 20m single op”—perhaps unsurprisingly—and 11 of 71 in worldwide Rookie QRO (all sub categories). Not as bad as feared!

M0WJE CQWW certificate