WHAT DO WE DO?

In addition to holding club nights, which can be members giving presentations, outside speakers or build nights (where members assist each other in building electronic items), the club takes part in many field events as can be seen here.  Members participate in SOTA and POTA as well as other award based schemes.  We have two weekly 'Nets' using the clubs own Repeater and a YSF Reflector (GB DundeeARC #60253) where members meet on air to catch up and discuss radio matters.  There are literally hundreds of competitions to take part in, locally, nationally and worldwide.  Club members interests involve VHF & UHF local communications, digital voice radio, HF radio (worldwide), digital radio modes such as FT8, Slow Scan TV, satellite communications and much more.  Did you know that the International Space Station is fitted with Amateur Radios and the astronauts are licensed amateur radio operators who you can talk to when they have time!

it isn't all sitting behind a radio on a desk though

History of Dundee ARC

The club was founded as the Kingsway Technical College Amateur Radio Club in 1970 by Derek Coupar (GM3YVX) and Findlay Baxter (GM3VEY), who started running classes for the Radio Amateur Examination at the college in October 1969. The club's callsign GM4AAF was first on the air in 1971.

Kingsway Technical College became Dundee College in 1985 then Dundee and Angus College in 2013.  The clubs meets at the college on the Kingsway Campus during term times.  Further details can be found here.

When the college is closed during the summer our meetings move to Monikie in the Scouts and Guides Hall.  We regularly assist the Scouts and Guides in obtaining their communications badge and Jamboree on the Air (JOTA). We also use the hall for taking part in contests and special event stations.

James Bowman Lindsay

The club's emblem; a bronze hand grasping a thunderbolt, is based upon the monument to James Bowman Lindsay in Dundee's Western Cemetery.

Born in 1799 near Arbroath, Lindsay was a pioneer in the field of electrical engineering and in 1835 he demonstrated an early electrical lighting system in Dundee.  In 1845 he later turned his attention to telegraphy, proposing a scheme for constructing and protecting transatlantic telegraph cables.  In 1854 he was awarded a patent for a method of wireless communication across bodies of water, which he demonstrated across the Earl Grey Docks in Dundee and later across the Tay from Dundee to Woodhaven.  Members of the club have attempted to replicate Lindsay's experiments on several occasions with varying degrees of success!

In addition to electricity, Lindsay's research interests included philology, astronomy, philosophy and history; he spent much of his life working on a dictionary in fifty languages and was granted a pension of £100 per year by Queen Victoria in 1858 in recognition of his great learning and extraordinary attainments.

For more about the life of James Bowman Lindsay, see A History of Wireless Telegraphy by J. J. Fahie.