This was written at various times over the weekend I was at Friedrichshafen on my Nokia N95 8Gb phone. I was going to edit, but thought would be better to just post as is from the notepad on my phone. Only editing was making this into 1 post instead of three. Enjoy.
Photos are on my Flickr.com page http://tinyurl.com/FN2009
Day 1 – It’s 11pm here in Friedrichshafen and I have spent the evening being the guest of the Slovenians. I have even put my tent up in their camp area.
I’ve had a few beers and now just drinking a cup of tea. The East camp area has a feeling of community even though it’s a large amount of camper vans & tents that will be good in a few days.
The airport is quiet and even at this time of night I can see a Zepplin airship moored in the distance.
Tip of the day:- Get extra bag at airport they supply for liquids & use to store your normal currency when you need to use different currency whilst you’re away.
Day 2 – What a start to the day. Not long after I emerged from my small tent (got some comments about how it looks) I noticed the Zepplin was about to depart. I started the video recording on my phone and got a nice piece of it taking off & the moving into the distance.
After a cup of coffee was time to hit the show.
Wow. It’s big.
Compared to biggest Ham event i’ve been to in UK just the flea markets alone are 4x bigger. Then is another bit for vendors.
A few hours were spent trawling the flea markets, not that I could buy much as not really any space in my bag. Well I brought 2 Friedrichshafen 2x T-shirts with callsign on. Oh & ARRL membership.
At 2pm we went for beers. Was quite a few on our table drinking including 3 Germans, 3 Slovenians, and me. I also enjoyed a Wurst (German) sausage. 2 hours later I had to return to get the T-shirts.
Some of our group the tried the pile-up contest. I didn’t attempt to save me from showing myself up.
We them headed back to Slovenian camp but I was slightly delayed as found out where US exams where happening following morning.
Once back at camp no sooner were beers opened the skies opened and drenched the camp.
We were under am awning but a few leaks had to be quickly sorted. Also one of the beers was almost frozen. Then had a glass of wine made in 1984 when Slovenia played England at football, but I am sure he said England lost. Oh well.
For dinner was a nice pasta dish kindly provided by my hosts again.
After a few more drinks there was a group forming near one of the vans. Upon going round the other side there was some French Amateurs sending what looked like an SSTV image, but showed instantly on the screen when signal was lost and re-established.
A short time later I went to bed.
Day 3 – Started  Saturday early. I was dressed, tent & sleeping bag was packed by 8:30am.
There was a short queue for the “Ham Tram” free taxis to the main event.
Once at there I headed for the admin building to take my US General exam. There were about 12 people taking the exams at the 3 levels. Room was split with almost half taking Technician exam, and most others the Amateur Extra. Only 2 including me were taking General.
I spent some time in recent weeks studying for the exam, either at Hamtests.net or just reading the questions on my Sony Reader.
Well, it helped as I passed.
WØTZO/AG
Now just writing this while deciding what to do. The rain is coming down hard now & I have no more space for purchases.
I took part in the 2009 IARU HF World Championship Contest for few hours on Saturday Night a few on Sunday Morning.