A short history of C.A.R.S

 

 

The site at which Christchurch Amateur Radio Society is based has a long association with radio communications. From 1938 to 1980 the site was home to the various forerunners of the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment who eventually moved to Malvern.

For details see http://www.users.freenetname.co.uk/~bgwells/BAEXCHSite/xchsite.htm .

In 1980 the site was taken over by Plessey http://members.lycos.co.uk/diy/plessey/plesseyhistory.htm who needed to expand from their Poole site to develope the Ptarmigan http://www.army.mod.uk/royalsignals/equipment/digital.html military communications system. Interestingly this sytem (with many upgrades) is still in service today, and its replacement a VOIP based system called Falcon http://www.baesystems.com/BAEProd/groups/public/documents/bae_publication/bae_insyte_data_falcon.pdf  is being currently being designed at Christchurch.

With a large number of electronics and communications engineers based on the site it was not surprising that there were quite a few Radio Amateurs in the Staff. One of them Clive Compton was also one of the directors so he gave his support to the formation of a Radio Electronics and Computing Club. To give the club somewhere to meet a builders hut was purchased and placed next to the Sports and Social club which until the 1987 storm was based in a Nissen Hut where the current Club building is.

Since I only joined the company in 1989 I'm not sure what the club did in its early days. However, from the clubs records I could see that an early project was to use Plessey's purchasing power to buy Floppy drives for members BBC computers at the bargain price of £130 each (compared with a retail price of £200).

The club has always had a strong association with Raynet with many club members also being members of that organisation.

Other activities the club has done since I joined include Homebrew competition (not for the alcoholic type but home constructed equipment)

Direction finding contest.

Attending the Pelhams and Hamfest Radio Rallies. I don't think we have missed one of these since I joined.

How else would we get rid of the things we bought at the last one ?

Training for would be Radio Amateurs. Since around 1993 the club has provided training for Amateur Radio licences.

More recently it has become an exam centre, so you can take the licences there as well. 

 

History written by Duncan Layne (G0AHK)