Once we found them and unpacking suits and other bits, we headed back to the main meeting areas for a look around, coffee, tea & hot chocolate the time soon passed and it was soon time for the Friday buffet on a whole the dinner was fantastic although service was rather slow this was due to people taking too long to get there food from the serving area and the fact there was only one serving area, after the dinner we moved to the bar area to carry on chatting and a few drinks.

Saturday

Surprisingly the Jimmy’s (youngsters) were pretty knackered by midnight and went back to our rooms to get some much needed sleep before breakfast, which we all turned up for without hang overs rather impressive for us! might even be a first the day kicked off at 9:30 with the first lectures, In the morning I attended

• IOTA Update by Roger Balister, G3KMA followed by Kaglin Island, Alaska by Mike Crownover, AD5A.
• Line Islands (T32) by Derek Cox, G3KHZ.

Then decided to take some time out to rest due to health so a few of the Jimmys retreated to the Games Room which we had decided would be our base during the day before getting some lunch with Dad. Afternoon lectures soon started though with

• World Radiosport Team Championship by Dave Lawley G4BUO: Which was very interesting to learn about the station and the experiences Dave had while in Russia.
• Chesterfield Islands 2009 (TX3A)  by Tomi Pekarik, HA7RY & Chris Hildebrand, HA5X/M0XXA.
• Blowing away the smoke and mirrors of antenna operation by Roy Lewallen, W7EL.

Then it was time to have some more social time, before getting ready for the DX Dinner on Saturday night which was excellent both food and company and as it was table service it was a lot quicker too. Then it was back to the bar for a few more drinks with the Jimmy’s which proved to be rather entertaining when Glyn (Santa) GW0ANA turned up to share his years of knowledge although at times we had no idea what he was on about!

We continued in-till the early hours of Sunday morning before I left some of the Jimmys and headed to bed to get some much needed rest before yet entertaining day!

Sunday

Before I knew it, it was the last day of the conference lectures started at 9am which I personally thought was a bit early by the time we had gotten up and had breakfast and needed to pack our bits up ready to be checked out of the rooms by 11am, so Dad and & Myself missed the first lecture of the day to get sorted out!

Once I did get ready for lectures I attended

• Clublog by Michael Wells, G7VJR & Alan Jubb, 5B4AHJ.
• HF Contest Awards by RSGB Contests Committee.
• Digital/D-Star by Darren, G7LWT and Gavin, M1BXF: Well you have to support a fellow Jimmy! even if it is just to haggle and wind things up
• Skimmer and RBN – more fun or the end of amateur radio? By Olof Lundberg, G0CKV.

At this point it was time for the Raffle, we had all complained when we bought the raffle tickets we never won anything, this weekend proved different though with Paul (M0TZO) and myself won a prize each and we got a suitable cheer from the Jimmys! Sadly non of us won the grand price of the IC7000 or the FT450 maybe next year? then suddenly the conference over we all said our good byes and returned home.

Notes

• You can find all my other photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/m3php/sets/72157625135428692/with/5069272906/
• We tweeted throughout the weekend using the hashtag #RSGBC http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23rsgbc might be worth a read

Thoughts?

• Good
  • Confusing everyone else calling each other Jimmy
  • Great weekend meeting the Jimmy’s & everyone else!
  • Nice choice of lectures
  • Good food at both the dinners & lunch you could easily have put some weight on!
  • Being entertained by Santa.. (Actually maybe not “Good” but amusing!)
• Bad
  • Chairs for the lectures were uncomfortable (Maybe I’m being picky)
  • Bar wasn’t big enough and not enough seating!
  • Bar was expensive unless you bought the RSGB £1 beer.
  • Wifi was poor
  • Everyone seemed to struggle to get mobile signal (Orange worked fine though!)
  • 9am lectures on a Sunday..

Up bright and early and at the Oxford railway station for the 07:01 fast service to London Paddington changing for the underground to make the quick crossing to Kings Cross where we met Paul (M0TZO) for the final leg of the journey to Newark the time on the train soon passed by Twittering, chatting and playing with Pauls iPad.

After 3 hours 30mins, 3 trains and a short taxi ride we made it! the weather was dry and we made are way round all the stalls seeing what goodies were on offer, long the way stopping to chat to friends as we passed. I didn’t really go with any intentions of buying anything but by the time we’d left I had picked up an MP1 Chapstick portable vertical and a new callsign badge, sadly non of us won anything on the raffle!

The venue was nice plenty of room to move around between traders and better catering then last year, Its nice to see much more ham radio related things being sold and less computer bits (Maybe due to computer fairs) and less junk than some of the other rallies we’ve been to in 2010.

Soon after 3pm we left back for Newark north gate, this is where the trip would take a dip for the worse travelling back to Oxford was a very uncomfortable experience, as I noticed a lump behind my right ear had grown during the day from a small lump to something the size of a golf ball and was growing by the hour, the pain was like my head was being bashed with a baseball bat.. and I’ve got to admit I’ve never been bashed with one!

On arrival back in Oxford I decided it would probably be wise a get some medical attention, so decided to give NHS Direct a call and with a call back later I was in A&E having a cannula fitted and being told I was going to have to stay in, as I had an infection in the bone behind the ear (Mastoiditis) by this point it was around 4am Sunday morning and Mum left me when they transferred me to a ward for a night.  Doped up on pain killers I got some sleep although they seemed to wake me up very time I got into a deep sleep for checks and more medication.

I have to admit I was treated very nicely by the hospital staff, both medical and general staff making sure I had a comfortable as expected stay, I even had my own private room for the whole stay! Monday arrived and they gave me the indication that they might discharge me (heck I even tweeted the news) this didn’t pan out though and I had to stay till Tuesday to make sure the antibiotics where actually hearing up the infection. but the following day I was out and rather pleased although I’m now at home and now slightly deaf in the right ear.. they do hope this will return to normal but it could take months.

Lets just hope the next radio event I attend isn’t so eventful! oh and I’ve still yet to take the MP1 out of its box

ICOM IC9100 on Display

There was a good selection of stalls too at from clubs, to large manufactures showing off there latest and greatest radios like ICOMs IC9100 and Kenwoods new HF radio which hasn’t even got a model number yet! one impressive item on show was the Luso tower which could be purchased for a small £25,000 not sure any council would give planning for it though!

The impressive Luso Tower

You can see more photos on Paul (MoTZO)’s Flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/gadget17/sets/72157622377568237/

]]> http://www.m3php.com/2009/national-hamfest/feed/ 2 http://www.m3php.com/2009/international-marconi-day-in-review/ http://www.m3php.com/2009/international-marconi-day-in-review/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:11:24 +0000 Peter http://m3php.com/?p=301 The weekend has passed and I’m pleased to report it was really enjoyable, I made my way down to the G6PZ contest station Friday afternoon, getting to the station is super easy and I was in luck with the trains which seemed to be running like clock work! and arrived early so used the time to take some shots of the beach at Weston-super-mare.

MW0CRI operating RTTY

On arrival at the station we started setting up the three operating positions, this year we were going to operate some RTTY too so we setup Win-Test with MMTTY, this was the first time I’d used the MMTTY engine so it was a little bit hit and miss setting up but there seemed to be no issues.

Marconi Day lasted for the whole 24hrs of the 25th of April, and we run it contest style allowing us to work as many as possible and in theory helping those wanting to work as many stations as possible for the awards. Conditions early Saturday morning seemed very poor  but at day break 40m soon picked up, and we started to work into Europe at times the pile up never seemed to end either people really wanted to work the station or spotted the pile up and had to get it in the logbook!

Simon (M0CLW)

We also got some reasonably decent runs on 20m Saturday afternoon into North America to my surprise K2DBK took a short recording of me operating you can listen by going to http://k2dbk.com/gb6md.mp3 conditions did seem to go very poor again around 4pm.

Peter (G4MJS)

Saturday evening seemed good we were able to work into JA on 40m CW without too much problem, but 80m SSB was hard work with poor conditions it seemed and lots of noise. Later on though during the last hour 11-midnight was able to get a really good run on 40m into the US and parts of SA, the run just kept going and gave me a serious adrenaline rush and stations were giving 59+ reports.

At the end of the day we made over 3000 QSOs,  there was always lots of banter going on in the background and plenty of beer lets hope next year is just as good.

I then took an hour out and had an interesting chat with Eric K3NA (more on that soon maybe), and finalised my short talk about DXAnywere for the Ham 2.0 session. it also allowed me to stock up on mugs of hot chocolate!

The next set of lectures was a double stream by Dom (M0BLF) on Ham 2.0 – sharing amateur radio information across the Internet. which gave an in sight to Web 2.0 and what it can offer amateur radio he also put in a couple of short presentations by Michael G7VJR on Club Log which is a tool for producing DXCC league tables, log search services and most-wanted lists for ham radio clubs and societies.

I then followed up with a short presentation about DXAnywhere which is a Social Media engine to provide features which include cluster notification, social networking and mini applications.

After this we returned to the bar for a short period to grab some lunch and a drink before getting ready for the afternoon lecture by John Gould G3WKL on Update on Countering Deliberate QRM, to finish up the weekend there was the final farewell from the RSGB President and the Raffle Draw. It was good to see it wasn’t fixed when Janet (2E0LLM) got called out (Well done Janet!!).

Which finally concluded a fantastic weekend yet again and very much looking forward to next year, was also nice to see a slightly larger turn out of young people!

First up was Lee (G0MTN) who started with the Joys of Contesting, covering why people contest and the types of contests which you can actually take part in, which we all know can vary by large amounts, for beginners it gave a good insight to what they might like to try first while they get interested.

Next up after a coffee break which at this venue was free and you could have as much tea, coffee, hot chocolate (my preference) as you like! so you could be nicely topped up throughout the day, was contest operating procedures by Roger (G3SWX) covering what to expect when operating and how to actually handle yourself on the air like not giving your callsign 10 times, he also covered operating as SO2R and that if you lose your run frequency because you QSY’d to the other radio you can’t expect to have it back.

At the end of this session I decided to take some time out, and prop up the bar for a while and socialise you could also check your email, twitter etc as there was free wifi covering the whole venue! after some lunch I returned back to the lectures Propagation by Steve G0KYA was insightful even though I’ve been licensed since 2002 I’m no expert at this subject he covered the basics of solar physics, explaining things like A and K indexes explaining that the geomagentic field A index is an average over 24 hours were as the K index shows a three hourly effect.

Steve then went on to explain what needs to be considered

• Solar Flux
• Geomagentic Disturbances
• Direction signals travel
• Time of day and year
• East west/North south polar
• Bands
• Path (long, short, hops)
• Working mults (important in some contests)

He also covered some of propagation prediction programs like W6EL Prop, VOA Cap and ACE HF explaining they use different algorithms and will normally display different results! but do offer a good guide on what to expect and can help plan what bands your going to use during the contest and when you should expect to work JA, USA etc.

Next session was on Antennas for contesting by Steve G3UFY, who covered antennas which UK gardens can cope like verticals and dipoles explaining what you should expect out of them. He also covered some of the larger antennas which most people dream of like large quads and beams! After this followed a 30minute break before going back to Contest Strategy by Dave (G4BUO).

Who covered what you should do before contest like sorting antennas and sleeping arrangements and food so you have a clear idea of what your going to be doing, he also covered during the contest giving tips like don’t check email, surf the web or even watch the telly! as this means your not 100% focused at the task at hand. Dave also covered post-contest like remembering to send your logs and make sure you correct your log so that its error free! He also said that’s it worth noting down some notes about the contest to help with next years (I do this with my blog!)

The final lecture I attended was Station Equipment & Layout by Paul (G6PZ) who has his on super station, Paul covered how you should layout your shack so that’s its ergonomically correct and comfortable like placing the monitor at eye height and the keyboard and mouse in front of it so you don’t have to stretch around to find them. He also went on to talking about what equipment you need for SO1R, SO2R and M/* style contest efforts and things you should make sure you have more so in a M/* style event so you don’t suffer from any problems.

At the end of the Contest Uni stream if you had attended more than 4 lectures you got issued a certificate to prove the fact which was a nice touch and gave you something to put on the shack wall.

The evening was taken up with socialising and the dinner, afterwards us youngsters hanged out in the bar drinking beer in till the small hours.

I can’t wait and I’ll try my best to do some blogging during the weekend about some of the lectures and other events going on.

In the mean time you can checkout last years post

SSB Field day

For the first time in a couple of years I took part in SSB Field day with the Oxford and District Amateur Radio Society, conditions were poor although we did make around 941 QSOs in the 24 hour period and didn’t have any major problems apart from static rain.

Checkout the main post here

GB2CCC

Every year we take part in the special event station, at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford which is for the Oxfordshire Historic Churches Trust, Ride and Stride.  The amateur radio station counts as a point to anyone who visits and is organised by Harry G3NGX.

G3NGX and G0GWK

Sadly I didn’t get to the station in till just after lunch time (it was graduation the day before!) so everything was already setup using a Kenwood TS570 and a G5RV for HF and a mobile FT-100 and whip to get access to the local repeaters and work the odd station simplex.

Like usual conditions were pretty grim and we kept to 80m for the main bulk of qsos, but we had plenty of interest from the public walking past. Not sure how many qsos were put into the logbook but I’m guessing around 150.

Kempton Radio Rally

Kempton Radio Rally was slightly earlier this time but nonetheless Barry (G4AZN), Terry (G0LUQ), Dad (M3JFM) and I went along to see if there were any bargains to be had. First call was ML&S to pick up a new VHF/UHF radio, in the form of a Yaesu FT-7800 plus we also got the extension kit free with it!

We then proceeded to have a look around, unlike previous years the number of trades and visitors were down, whether this was due to it conflicting with another event or if it was just a show of things to come in the future with everyone watching the amount of money they spend.

Lunchtime came and we was joined by Paul (M0TZO) who I run HamTests with, so some friendly banter was exchanged before having a final look around the rally where Dad picked up a weather station from ML&S just before we exited the building.

Thankfully we were lucky to have good weather sunny and warm if you had the sun in your face, on arrival we went along to the Oxford and DARS pitch to see what they were flogging and have a chat.

By 9am the boot sale was getting busy and there was lots of things on sale some bargains some junk (Hey you get that anywhere!) although I didn’t pick up anything Dad found a few things which he was after and also picked up a Softrock SDR receiver for 40/80 as I couldn’t get mine to work!

Over all was a great day out, was nice to meet up with friends and catch up with the news, we left around 1:30pm and arrived back into Oxford in good time.

A couple of weeks ago Simon M0CLW asked if I wanted to go to Paul’s to operate the special event station, of course I jumped at the chance and on Friday I got the coach to Luton Airport to meet Simon (M0CLW) to head down to the station.

On arrival Paul’s antenna system was amazing with 4/4 SteppIR stack and a 4el MonstIR, inside was just as good with ICOM IC-7800 plus a Ten-Tec Orion and two ACOM 2000s. The operation was midnight to midnight and we hoped to work 4000 QSOs thankfully we did make this with 4036 including the odd dupe QSO.

Highlights of the weekend was having ZL’s call me on 40m and getting a couple of decent runs on 20m SSB during Saturday sure was nice feeling loud on the bands. If you weren’t operating you always had the dogs to keep you busy.

Also checkout the post on G6PZ.com, and more photos on Flickr