About AARC

Addiscombe Amateur Radio Club is primarily a VHF / HF contest group. We participate in most RSGB club VHF events and some regular RSGB HF contests, as well as:

  • HF field day – from Dave G7RAU’s QTH on Lizard
  • IOTA from the Isle of Wight
  • VHF field day with the NE Surrey Contest Group

Recent club contests include the 6m Trophy, VHF field day, 6 and 4m club contests, and in 2020 we won the RSGB Super AFS League with club entries in all the AFS contests from 80/40 m to 432MHz, all modes.

AARC is an affiliated club of the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB).

The club callsign is G4ALE – representing Addiscombe, London, England.

Brief History (by Mike G3VYI)

The Addiscombe Amateur Radio Club was formed around 1968 by a group of radio enthusiasts in south London.

Tony G3VLJ and Mike G3VYI started with 19 sets in the garage, and were joined  by locals such as  Steve G3UFY, Peter G3SJX and Quin G3WRR, Peter G3RQZ, Alans G8GOJ, G3XJO and Francis G3VKI, John G4CZB , Alan G4GLN, etc. The first meetings were held at the TOC H in Addiscombe (Croydon) and were attended by up to 30  people with talk-in on 160m AM. We entered RSGB and Short Wave Magazine contests, and ran 160m DF hunts with a whip on a Morris 1000 convertible.

The group gradually grew in technical ability and started to form a weekend contest expertise. Many expeditions were undertaken under the new club call G4ALE, both VHF and HF. 

VHF DXpeditions were often in long weekends in Tony G3VLJ’s Bedford Dormobile, or Mike VYI’s father’s Austin Westminster and Peter G3SJX’s Ford Anglia Estate. Destinations included Scotland, GreenLaw, the Mull of Kintyre, Wales , to the top of the Cader Berwyns, France, at the Calais cliffs and Hay Bluff in Wales. Mountains in Wales were scaled with AM rigs in suitcases powered by moped engines/dynamos, and antennas dragged behind scrambler motorbikes made from modified 100cc mopeds.

We have records for all  contests from 1971 to 1986, written by Alan G8GOJ.

We won the 70MHz contest in June from the Berwyn summit after 2 days setup from the base.

VHF Field day was entered from various sites including in 1980 / 81 / 82 / 83 ( winners) / 84 /85 ( winners) from the top of Hameldown in Devon, with the HADRABS group, 

HF expeditions included LowPower field day to Rutland, and HF field  days to sites near Croydon. The first HF field day in London was  at the scout HQ ,The Fort, Dulwich, with a quad antenna made from wooden scout poles and homebrew TT11  PA Tx, AR88D RX. 

In  the winter we used G3SJX’s QTH to enter CQWW, ARRL phone  and CW 48 hrs events with some success, all paper logs with 2000+ contacts! We used Quad antennas for 40-10m, some of which  ended up next door in high winds! Ralph, now K9ZO, joined us for  some of these in 1969 before returning to the USA. He keeps in touch and works us regularly in contests.