Obituary by Bob Treacher, M0MCV

I was shocked when I heard Owen had passed away from a heart attack during the early hours of 29 November. He had been suffering from breathing problems for a while, and had been admitted to hospital a few days earlier. He rang me from his hospital bed. As he had missed a couple of meetings, he asked for an update on the meetings and the training course. He was due to have more tests and chest x-rays the next day. I never heard from him again.

I had known Owen since our SWL days in the 1970’s. He was a very good SWL (BRS33364) and used to contribute to my ‘SWL News’ column in Radcom. He joined the Society in 1971 and was elected to the committee in 1973/74. In 1974 he passed the RAE and was licensed as G8HYH. Soon after, he passed his Morse test and became G4DFI. Owen took on the Treasurer’s role in 1974/75, and in 1976 became Membership Secretary due to membership numbers approaching the 140 mark. Owen made it his job to welcome new members to the Society, something he was still doing 40 years later.

Owen was Chairman in 1981/82 and for a short time in 1986 when pressure of work and domestic reasons led to the Chairman at the time standing down, before being elected as Vice Chairman for 1986/87. During the early years of his membership he was an ever-present at the special event stations organised at the Danson Show, the Bexley Show and the Plumstead Make Merry in the 80’s. He had also operated at most of the special event stations organised by the Society over many years. He was ‘the fox’ at several DF Hunts in the ‘90s and ’00s. In 1995, when the Society was going through a rocky patch, he joined a sub-committee to look in depth at the status and future of the Society. Owen’s enduring work on behalf of the Society was recognised in 1988 when he was elected as a Vice-President and in 1990 when he received ‘The Founder’s Cup’. Even in recent years when his health was deteriorating, he was an ever present at meetings and fully supportive of the Society and its activities.

Owen also enjoyed contesting, taking part in the major HF SSB contests (CQWW, CQWPX, ARRL DX) and some of the smaller ones (Helvetia, UBA, PACC, etc). He was proud to have received many first place certificates. He also supported Society contest activities, submitting logs for the 2m UKACs, 2m AFS, 80m AFS, etc. He worked 225 DXCC entities but never applied for DXCC. However, Owen was seriously into VHF DXing in the 70s and ‘80s and often reminded me of the DX he had worked in 2m tropo and Sporadic-E openings. Owen was one of only a handful of members who qualified for the Gold Award for working 100 Cray Valley members.

But perhaps Owen’s main claim to fame was as our QSL Manager. I’m not sure how long he had done the job. Records show he was QSL Manager for M2000A in 2000, but he had acted as QSL Manager for our special event stations well before then. He responded to thousands of QSL requests; the boxes of QSL cards in his garage are proof of his dedication to grow the name of Cray Valley Radio Society around the world. As a result his callsign is synonymous with the great QSL Managers around the world. Since 2000, Owen had acted as QSL Manager for 29 special event stations organised by the Society, as well as a number of Nobby G0VJG’s DXpeditions.

Owen was truly a stalwart of Society activities from the day he joined right up to his untimely passing. On behalf of the Society, thank you for everything you did for us. You will be sorely missed.

Rest in Peace, dear friend.

 

 

Welcome to the web site of the Cray Valley Radio Society. We are situated on the SE London/NW Kent border. We hope that this site will be able to provide all the information you require about the Society and its events throughout the year!

 

If you're a new visitor to this site and you want to know more about Amateur Radio, please scroll down to the next section of this page.

 

Starting with M2000A to mark the Millennium, Cray Valley has mounted a number of high-profile special event stations culminating in 2012L for the London Olympics. Since then we have re-focused on smaller events such as GB6MW for National Mills on the Air weekend, and GB2CM at Crossness Pumping Station. The Society runs licence training courses each year, with an annual Foundation course and alternating Intermediate and Full courses. We also co-ordinate training dates with other active clubs in Kent and south-east London.

 

 

 

 

Please look at the Contact Form page to contact our Secretary, and you can follow us on Twitter @G3RCV

We run an award programme for contacting members of our club, click this linke for information on the Cray Valley Award and how to claim it.

 

---

 

GDPR Announcement

Members will all have received an email relating to the General Data Protection Regulations which come into force on 25th May 2018. The Society's data policy can be viewed here  http://www.cvrs.org/CVRS_data_policy.pdf 

 

Amateur radio is one of the world's most popular hobbies with more than 50,000 active hams in Britain alone. For more info about amateur radio, visit the Radio Society of Great Britain's website - RSGB

 

We had great success with our recent Foundation course with ten candidates passing. Our next Foundation course will take place in February 2020 and registration will open in mid-2019. Candidates wanting to get licensed before then should look on the Training page where full details are given of courses in south-east London and west Kent.