Published: Thursday, 14th May, 2009 6:55am

Club in first-ever amateur broadcast from Parliament

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MEMBERS of Cockenzie and Port Seton Amateur Radio Club (CPSARC) are this weekend taking part in an historic event marking the tenth anniversary of the Scottish Parliament.

The club will broadcast from Holyrood on Saturday and Sunday from 9am-5pm each day.

Bob Glasgow, 57, club president and founding member, said: 'It will be a unique experience and I feel quite honoured that we have been asked to do this event, as the first ever amateur broadcast from the Scottish Parliament.

'We started the club in 1984 with about seven members and now we have about 23, and we celebrate our 25th anniversary this year. This is a real privilege for us and we really hope lots of people will be able to tune in.'

Lib Dem MSP Jim Hume – a CPSARC member – arranged the broadcast.

'I met Jim many years ago when he was training for an amateur radio licence and he does still come along to some meetings, so he asked us if we would take part and of course, we said yes,' Bob added.

Amateur radio clubs use various types of radio equipment to communicate with other radio amateurs all over the world.

CPSARC will set up two radio stations within committee room five of the parliament – one station will be on a frequency designed to channel the UK, and the other will focus on the rest of the world, as far as Australia and New Zealand.

There will be about 10 members of the club present during the two days and their "call sign" will be GB10SP which can be picked up by other amateur radio station users.

Bob, of Castle Terrace, Port Seton, said: 'We"ve been doing this a long time and we have always had a lot of contacts when we have done events like this before – we have had between 500 and 1,000 people on previous occasions.

'We want to give people the unique opportunity to speak to us when we will situated in the Parliament – there"s no chance we will run out of things to say!'

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