If you have recently visited the Radio Society of Great Britain’s National Radio Centre (NRC) at Bletchley Park you will have noticed two new radio additions. Icom has provided the IC-7300 and IC-9700 SDR transceivers to the Centre to allow it to promote amateur radio with the latest cutting edge Icom radio technology.

The NRC, which opened in 2012, has a primary goal to promote amateur radio as an integrated technical hobby and encourage people to become radio amateurs. Its other remit is to help increase awareness of the hobby so that (for example) neighbours might be more informed when a planning application or EMC issue arises. On a broader level, the Centre plans to demonstrate that amateur radio can be part of a wider STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) application and that a career in engineering (particularly radio communication engineering) is very worthwhile.

The NRC has been immensely successful. In 2017 it welcomed 23,000 visitors and this increased in 2018 to more than 55,000 visitors. By September of 2019, the Centre had given just over 80,000 visitors the opportunity to see amateur radio in action.

Icom UK has supplied two of its latest SDR radios to the Centre in addition to the GB7BP D-STAR repeater that is situated on site. The IC-7300 is being used (with transmit disabled) for visitors to tune around the amateur bands, giving practical hands-on experience of using a high-grade modern SDR transceiver. The IC-9700 is the NRC’s flagship VHF/UHF transceiver for 2m/70cm operation, running CW/SSB/FM simplex and D-STAR digital amateur radio.

Martyn Baker G0GMB, RSGB National Radio Centre Coordinator, said, “Both the RSGB, and in particular the NRC, are most appreciative of both the IC-7300 and IC-9700, as, without them, it would be much harder to inspire visitors and potentially recruit new interest in amateur radio”.

To find out more about the NRC visit the website below. If you are a member of the RSGB, don’t forget you can get free entry to Bletchley Park and the NRC by downloading a voucher from the RSGB website. To find out more about these SDR radios, visit the Amateur Radio Base Station section of the Icom website.

www.rsgb.org/nrc
https://icomuk.co.uk

This review was featured in the February 2020 issue of Practical Wireless