Category Archives: General

I am planning on being at the HFC (High Frequency Convention) at Gatwick again this year. Need to double check with my Grandparents about staying the weekend, but I am 90% sure I have mentioned. If not I should be talking to them on Monday via VOIP as they are staying with relative who has broadband.

Some of the lectures I would like to see include:- “International DXpeditioning & Contesting talks” & “Special feature on the Antarctica 2006 Peter 1 Island 3Y0X Dxpedition”. Also we can’t forget the RSGB beer if on offer again, which while not great, is cheap.

On Friday posted my Cheque off to RSGB for my Advanced Exam (again). Hopefully this year will pass as have been studying hard and also setup with Pete (M3PHP) Hamtests.co.uk.

When I went to Whitton Radio Club on Friday we had a talk from Jeffery Pawlin, WA6KBL about WinRAD which site says the following about “Winrad is a software program designed to implement a so-called Software Defined Radio (SDR), meant to run under Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows 98SE. In a nutshell, it accepts a chunk of up to 96 kHz coming from a complex mixer in form of two signals, I and Q, fed to the PC sound card. It does a fine tuning inside that segment with a point-and-click technique, demodulates (LSB/USB/CW) what has been tuned and optionally applies a series of filters to the results of the demodulation.”

Anyway, back to the point. After the talk I spoke at length to one club member about some equations I had difficulty grasping. Well I am definitely better prepared now than this time last year. Really last year, I just glanced at the book. Still have some more mock papers to go through and hopefully give me a better understanding for the exam.

A Jelly Baby walks into a bar and starts talking to a Smartie. After a few beers the Smartie says, “Ere, a bunch of us are heading to that new club, fancy tagging along?”

The Jelly Baby says, “No mate, I’m a soft centre, I always end up getting my head kicked in.”

So Smartie says, “Don’t worry about it, I’m a bit of a hard case, I’ll look after you.”

Jelly Baby thinks about it for a minute and says, “Fair enough, as long as you’ll look after me”, and off they go.

After a few more beers in the club, three Lockets walk in. As soon as he sees them, Smartie hides under the table.

The Lockets take one look at Jelly Baby and start kicking him, breaking cola bottles over his little jelly head, lamping him with little sugary chairs, and generally having a laugh. After a while they get bored and walk out.

Jelly Baby pulls his battered Jelly Baby body over to the table and wipes up his Jelly Baby blood and turns to Smartie and says, “I thought you were going to look after me.”

I was!” says Smartie, “But those Lockets are f***ing menthol”.

Yesterday collected the Battery from the sorting office. Had to pay some customs, but I have saved loads. I can see the only reason for ordering some radio products in this country is if you need urgently. Otherwise savings can be made if you know where to look.

Now what to spend saved money on? Beer?

The Good:- My Battery has finally arrived.

The Bad:- Is stuck at Sorting Office as have to pay custom fees. Went today but was closed as the adjoining Post Office couldn’t find, so have to go tomorrow. Also lost the card they posted with details of fee, and opening times.

And the Ugly:- The delivery card was with my Passport. Luckily is out of date, but will still contact Passport agency to let them know.

Didn’t notice, but a few days ago my No Smoking Counter (Thanks to JW for writing the PHP) passed the 2 YEARS mark.

OK, I guess this is the time to confess to having about 10 cigars at Birthday parties, New Year and Christmas celebrations, but 10 Cigars compared to 6200+ cigarettes can’t be as bad.

There have been times I have wanted a cigarette and the urge to have once is still there, it more than likely always will be. Hopefully (except for occasional cigars) I won’t go back to smoking.

My tips for giving up:-

• YOU must be ready to give up! You will know when!
• Give up Cold Turkey (No Patches, or Cigarette replacements)
• Keep Busy (early on when I wanted a Cigarette, I made a coffee)
• Try not to convert others to Non-Smoking (I still try without thinking – Am I Bad)
• Don’t Change your habits (If you for example go to pubs when smoking, don’t give that up. If you have to stop going places are you ready???)