What’s Been Happening

It’s been over a year since first being licenced as a Amateur Radio operator. I have had quite a good year with it including making new friends at clubs and on the air, attending radio events like Kempton Park Radio Fair.

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.

Lots of Chat

The weekend just gone, I have spent a while on the Local Repeater (GB3HZ) talking to other Amateur Radio operators from London and Surrounding areas. This repeater is one of the best I can hear and chat through. It’s in Amersham, which from Sutton is 45 miles (73 km) and I run 0.5 watts from my handheld.

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…

HF Convention (HFC), Gatwick

Having spent the last 2 days here at the HFC, I thought I would write a report from my “newbie” perspective.

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

Intermediate Licence Practise

Well firstly apologise for not posting for a while, but I have been busy practising for my Amateur Radio Intermediate Licence, as well as deleting and re-categorising some posts here.

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…..

Busy Weekend for Me

What a weekend I have just had, and feel I need to go to work to relax from it. Spent most of Saturday mowing the Front & Back lawns. It took quite a while as was more like a Jungle than a lawn. I believe I found some new species of Flora and Forna. Unfortunately the Back lawn was so bad that I have to finish next weekend but over half is done.

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!