Category Archives: General

HF Convention (HFC), Gatwick

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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

Ultimate Top 10 Sci-fi Aliens

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The “Ultimate Top 10 Sci-fi Aliens” program was on Friday night in UK on SkyOne. What do you think of the list??? any missing???

Click Continue to find Number 1, but before you do can you guess what the Number 1 might be?

Continue reading Ultimate Top 10 Sci-fi Aliens→

My 6600

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The first week or so with my new 6600 has certainly been an eye-opener compared against my old 7650. While I still like some part of the 7650 the extra memory and brighter screen are major bonuses of the 6600.

One downside I have noticed is that I am charging the 6600 more regularly possibly due to smaller battery. This could also be due to the fact I am playing more games, and sending lots of texts (get 500 free a month).

I also paid a visit to J2K Symbian Themes website and downloaded lots of themes. A few days later I deleted all but Blue Final PRO by AEFox and changed wallpaper to a photo of my Nephew who is at time of writing 13 days old (Ahhh!).

I am also taken more photos than ever (mostly ones that later I bin) thanks to the 32Mb memory card which compared to the 7650 is vastly bigger although I may in near future purchase a much bigger card.

The easiest task by far though was copying my phone numbers I had on 7650 to the 6600. This was made so simple with iSync on my Mac. I set up the 6600 as the main phone and then just a click later had all phone numbers and their thumbnails restored.

Well it’s back to playing with the phone……………….

Upgrading to a 6600

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Well, it was time for a upgrade and last week O2 phoned me about getting a tariff with them (I am currently with Vodafone on PAYG).

So when she first phoned, I asked what “Symbian” phones she had on offer. Well, in the nicest way she said she had no idea what that was, but if I looked on the O2 web site I could see what I wanted. At the time I was a bit dubious (and still will be until phone arrives), but asked her to phone back later in week so I could have a proper look.

Out of the phones on offer, the best upgrade for free was the Nokia 6600. But I will be keeping my Nokia 7650 for know.