I have now started my second course (Intermediate Licence) and will take about 6 weeks at the Whitton (WARG) club. I may also keep my M3 call from next 11 months and not upgrade to Intermediate and do my Advance exam. Will mean I forego the added priviledges of the Intermediate licence, but if I don’t have them I won’t miss them. In 11 months if I haven’t got the Advanced, but passed the Intermediate, I will let the M3 laspe and get a 2E call.

Last month I went to the SRCC’s Junk Sale. I sold some items and made about £35 and then brought a 2M Trio for £5 and a couple of weeks later I got the VFO unit for it for £6. Not bad I think to get a working 2M rig for £11.

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I even managed using my outside antenna connected to my Handheld Radio (Icom IC-E90) to have a direct chat from Sutton to someone is Chesham (don’t ask exactly where it is), and my radio running 5 watts of power made it 47 miles (77km).

Also before getting up out of bed to go to work, I had a chat with another station through the Repeater I had used over the weekend.

So anyway back to the chat now…

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I have been a licensed for less than a year and this was the first major event I have attended. But within moments of walking though the doors and paying my entrance fee, I saw people I knew. These included members from SCRS and the Whitton Amateur Radio Group (WARG).

I was originally going to do my Intermediate and Advance courses, but as it got closer to event I still hadn’t done any soldering so will be doing the Exams at a later stage. This left me able to go to some of the lectures and other attractions on offer instead.

The lectures I attended were the 3B9C Rodrigues Island Expedition, Development and design philosophy of the Yaesu FT DX 9000 Elite-Class HF/50 MHz Transceiver, Wire Antennas, Basic QSOs in Foreign Languages, World Wide Young Contesters (WWYC), StarSoftware and the 3B9C DXpedition and the Raffle Draw & Farewell from RSGB President.

I also took the opportunity over the weekend to visit the stalls from the RSGB and ML&S.

The HFC over the weekend had a station available for visitors to operate with the call MB2HFC. There were 2 radios available for use. I was in awe at how fast the Morse operators were logging whilst CW was being used.

I was going to leave early on the Sunday but decided to stay until after the Raffle. There were 2 big prizes supplied by Yaesu and ML&S as well as various other smaller prizes. But alas was not my day to win, maybe next year.

Photos from event in ScrapBook

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The Intermediate Radio Licence course won’t be stating until October, but I wanted to get ahead of the game. In preparation, I have purchased a Multi-meter and Soldering Iron. I will if all goes to plan be taking the course at Bromley DARS than for my Foundation Licence at Whitton ARG ARG. Only one bus from centre of town to Bromley instead of one bus and two trains Whitton. Talking of which, I went to the Whitton club for 1st time last friday since I got my Foundation Licence and had a great evening.

I contacted the author of the Intermediate Licence book and was sent some Mock Exams which I am working though the questions so I understand what the questions are asking. For part of it you can choose to build a simple electrical project and I have a feeling I want to try a Morse Oscillator so I can try to learn Morse Code. Well it’s back to the Studying…..

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It was also my Mum’s birthday, but I have a slight cash-flow problem. Luckily at end of month is PayDay and my sister also has to get her something, so we will mostly likely combine our money.

With regard to my Radio, I made my first HF radio contact on my Kenwood TS50 radio. Was with a guy in Epsom just down the road from my location but further than I have made with my Handheld.

I have also set up my 2m SlimJim antenna, so that is usable, but need to purchase more Co-ax so I can put up outside.

My uncle on Friday has sent me a Computer-Radio (Kenwood TS50) interface and 80m traps for my G5RV jnr. I made an elementry mistake when I installed the interface though. I used the basic settings with checking they were right, and for most of weekend I had 1 digit wrong and wasn’t working properly. Thankfully it is now!

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When I sent off my Paperwork for my Foundation Amateur Radio License, it asked which Call-Sign you wanted. After a phone call my first choice had gone, but the second I put on the application was (and still is) available.

And the one I requested is M3TZO or Mike, Three, Tango, Zulu, Oscar.

The ones that used letters from my nickname had gone, but after trying to think of words that had 5 letters starting with ME, I then decided on 3 letters that didn’t have acronyms with it.

Hopefully I will get it!

On another Radio point, I have on Friday installed my 52ft (2x26ft) G5RV antenna in my loft. Took an hour or 2 of crawling around but is up an running. All I need now is my grounding wire.

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I used an old Black and White map of Sutton in the 1800′s and Photoshoped it to add the Colour and a Texture to give an old feel. At the moment I cannot add my Call-Sign as I still don’t have one, but hopefully soon.

If you are wondering, my house is where the fields are in top right corner.

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I Passed

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Info for this Connector was obtained from ICOM CI-V Hardware Page

Here are some images of the OPC478 connector someone is making for me.

Icom OPC-478 Interface.

The ICOM design for the OPC-478 interface is a simple transistor circuit used for cloning. The version by Chris VK3JEG http://uk.geocities.com/blakkekatte/hardware/opc-aus.jpg gives equivalents for the transistor and diode parts. That version is the one commonly found on the internet. However the one from ICOM Japan’s site http://uk.geocities.com/blakkekatte/hardware/opc478-japan.jpg has a few modifications. I have added the transistor and diode equivalences from VK3JEG’s copy of the earlier version of the interface. WA0SXV http://www.wa0sxv.us/ci-v.html has some reservations that this design might not properly implement the RS-232 protocol.

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