Category Archives: General

I am using this post as a test for the WordPress Twitter posting tool, but also a few updates on some other stuff.

Normally I ignore Gimmick Special offers, but this one sounded too good to pass. Superdrug in various areas on Fri/Sat 17/18 Aug were offering what they called a Razor Amnesty. Basically you took your old razor (couldn’t be a disposable) to Superdrug and they would give you a new Gillette Fusion Stealth razor.

Luckily my mum was going to nearest town offering this Amnesty, so she took my razor. And was not a joke nor was there anything else to pay. And yes it works perfectly. The Fusion Stealth model is a battery powered model and this certainly helps the shave.

Also the new phone is coming along well. Although I sometimes miss my old Nokia 6600. Maybe one day will get the N95 or better. The O2 XDA Orbit is now running Windows Mobile 6 (WM6) offical O2 update, and I am finding much better. Also added some themes. Running a nice black theme at the model called “XDA Live”.

At some point I will update site to contain some links and info regarding O2 XDA Orbit.

Twitter Tool stopped a K2 Theme function, so disabled for now!

On Saturday 4th August 07 James MØBOV and myself went out to operate for few hours of portable/mobile operation.

We headed up to East Clandon near Guildford.

I setup on a picnic table and put up my SotaBeam on my 9m pole for 2m operation. James operated from his car after setting up his 5m pole with a di-pole on HF.

The external battery pack even with a full charge over last few days it was losing power fast. The internal FT-897 power pack had only 30mins of what should have been 4 hour charge as forgot to charge during week. Still was enough to give me a short contact with Wimbledon and District Amateur Radio Society (GX3WIM) Annual Club Camp. Locator was IO91SF.

As bands were poor (and my batteries were flattening fast) we decided to move on. Headed over to National Trust’s Newlands Corner (IO91RF) and Ranmore Common (IO91TF). Newlands Corner looks good. As well as a free car park, also has shop and amenities, and loads of space to operate.

Lessons Learned

• Make Sure ALL Batteries are Charged
• Try to pick a day when others are not likely to be out as well
  • Contacts may have been increased if we hadn’t picked the sunniest day for a long while
• Make a list of possible contests. If we had known, there was actually one starting later that day
• Take Handheld Radios
  • Forgot last time and this time (although not really needed this time, could have been useful)

Some Photos of the Day

So I have had my O2 XDA Orbit for a few days now. It has many features, and a few Minor annoyances which I have listed below. Also today I have ordered using a shop on eBay 2 metal cases (1 silver, 1 black as couldn’t decide colour) and a screen protector.

Features:-

• Height / width / depth
  • 108 x 58 x 16.8mm
• Weight
  • 129grams
• Windows Mobile 5
• GPS
• 2 Megapixel camera
• Video
• FM radio (with RDS)
• MS Office (Word, Excel & PowerPoint)
• MP3 player
• Speaker phone
• Polyphonic ringtones
• MP3 & Polyphonic ringtones
• Email client
• 65k Screen colours
• Picture messaging
• Photo phonebook
• Java games
• GPRS
• WAP
• Wi-Fi
• Instant Messaging
• Bluetooth
• PC sync
• Quadband
• Expandable memory
• Up to 190 hrs Standby time
• Up to 5 hrs Talk time

Annoyances:-

• MicroSD Slot under Sim & Battery so Can’t Hotswap
• Max MicroSD size can use is 2Gb
• Radio needs earphones even if using speaker as lead acts as Antenna

Couldn’t afford the Nokia N95 as budget from a bonus was £100 less tax so ended up with about £65(ish) to spend on a new phone. Within next year should be back with a Symbian Phone.

It’s been a busy week (for me anyway).

For a while I had the notion in my head “to try to make one contact at least every day”. So since Sunday I have tried.

During most evenings I will have the radio on the 2m calling channel, but do little else in the way of making contacts.

So back to this week. Since Sunday I have made a contact every day, and where possible on HF. This does not include regular local nets.

• GB2TOL – Sunday was a Special Event station. Was on 2m at the Tower of London.
• OM7CW – Monday 20m SSB to Slovak Republic
• HB0/PA0ABM & HB0/N6OX Tuesday 2x 40m SSB to Liechtenstein
• SZ2TSL – Wednesday 20m SSB to Greece
• TA3D – Thursday 20m SSB to Turkey
• LA1VNA – Friday 20SSB to Norway
• M3WOJ – Saturday’s new contact was slightly different. Was 2m FM, but was first time I had spoken to a Scout I had helped train at local club and was proud to add him to log.

What will the next 7 days bring??? Only the DX gods know the answer to this.

Since getting back from the Isle of Wight the site I run with Pete (M3PHP) called PrettyGoodProjects has been moving lots of it’s projects forward.

Recently we have posted some updates on the site about DXAnywhere and a new simple What’s my IP service.

Also our (current) main site Hamtests.co.uk is doing very well. As I write this we have 899 members and are making money with Google Adsense at the last count about $112.98 (USD) (£57.30 (GBP)). Hamtests.co.uk is not there to make money, but we will use anything we earn to pay for server costs.