I'm sure most Radio Amateurs have had, at sometime in their radio lives, periods of, shall we say, inactivity. I mentioned it recently, back in July. What July has in common with October for me is contests; the IARU in July and the CQWW SSB in October.
This is October, and the CQWW (SSB goes without saying, as I barely touch the key) has been taking place over this weekend. My last foray into that contest appears to have been in 2007, and my best DX was Senegal. This year, with all the QRM you get when conditions are good, it's a miracle I got farther than Shettleston. I heard China on 10m, Qatar on a couple of bands, Cape Verde on 20m, a number of weak Japanese stations on 10 and 15 and a couple of stations in the Caribbean. Did I work any of them? No.
I ran the IC-707 on 20 and 40m (where I only worked 2 GMs, 2 Gs and a GW) with 30W, and the TS-590S on 15m, mostly with 30W, and 50W on Saturday morning. I started off with the FT-817 on 10m, but 5W wasn't enough to get through to anyone, it seemed, so I hooked the aerial up to the FT-857D and turned it up to a whopping 25W. What did that lot get me?
I started at 05:45GMT on Saturday morning, but didn't work anything for nearly half an hour. An hour later, and I'd barely got into double figures. It was a struggle throughout the entire weekend to make oneself heard by any station above the splatter, and there was plenty of QSB to deal with, too. Just under 4 hours later, I made a contact outside of Europe for the first time, and it turned out to be UP2L in Kazakhstan on 10m. I followed this by IG9Y, which is the Pelagic Islands, apprently (Lambedusa, etc). I only made another three contacts in the next hour, before I exchanged reports with TF3CW. It's been a long time since I've worked Iceland, so this was my favourite contact from Saturday. After this, it was Europe, North Africa and North America all the way.
Sunday wasn't much different, except that the bands appeared to be a bit more unstable than the day before. It took me most of the day to work not much more than 30 stations. The best was VY2TT on Prince Edward Island. I couldn't struggle on anymore, as most stations I tried to work started off around 59 but faded to almost unreadable. I doubt I was making an impression on their S-meters.
Anyway, I finished with 107 contacts and 39 DXCC Entities (countries). This is the most contacts I have made during a contest for around 25 years, but it doesn't beat that record of 139 QSOs. I didn't actually enter the contest. I'd be too embarrassed.
No, I haven't forgotten about Part 2 of the RSGB Convention blog. I promise I'll do it later in the week (and correct the mistakes in Part 1).
Sunday 27 October 2013
Sunday 20 October 2013
100 Not Out
I had not attended an 'RSGB Convention' for over twenty years. Around the late 80s/early 90s, the Society held its annual Convention at the NEC in Birmingham, but eventually they stopped; partly for financial reasons, partly for reasons unknown. The RSGB is often portrayed as a London- or South East of England-centric body, so dispensing with its annual bash was looked upon by some (in the provinces) as further evidence of this. It didn't matter to me, as I had, at varying times, no transport, no time, no money or a combination of two or more of those things. My last long-distance trip was when I went to Leicester (Donnington, actually) in 2003, and that event is also no longer on the calendar. By the look of it, the National Hamfest, which takes place in Newark, is the biggest Rally in the UK, and one of the few left.
I have been a member of the RSGB for twenty-eight years, joining after the Scottish Convention in Dundee in September of 1985. I attended the Society's 75th Anniversary Convention at the NEC in 1988, so it was only fitting that I put in an appearance for the Centenary, especially considering that the Convention proper, with lectures, had been reinstated some years ago. This followed the amalgamation of various other events, such as the HF Convention, which I had attended in 1986, the VHF Convention, and so on. I think that's correct.
The Convention has been held for the last few years in a hotel situated eleven miles from Milton Keynes. I presume this is designed to keep everyone a safe distance from the riff-raff. In that respect, it appears to succeed, but it's a challenge for those not travelling by car, wherever they are based. I went from Glasgow to London by train, then took another train to Milton Keynes, from where I took a taxi to the hotel at a cost of around £20, and did the same in reverse to go home. Being me, I couldn't resist turning it into a trip to London, so the whole weekend cost me a pretty penny. I would prefer to travel by car, in future, as the flexibility afforded by not having to adhere to someone else's timetable and route means that I will be able to visit not only the village of Little Horwood, which is not really adjacent to the hotel, and, of course, Bletchley Park.
Back in the day, film and developing cost money, so a lot of thought went into the subject, composition and amount of photographs one would take. This means that there are no photos from RSGB Conventions past. With the advent of digital cameras, the sky's the limit, so here's a quick run-though of a very enjoyable weekend.
Before I went to Buckinghamshire, I popped into the Science Museum.
They have a Yaesu FT-101ZD, a valve transceiver from around 1980. The Greenock and District Amateur Radio Club had one of these, and I got to use it a couple of times.
Finally, the President of the RSGB at the time this T & R Bulletin was published was Gerald Marcuse, G2NM, and the Science Museum has this famous photograph on display.
Enough of that, let's get to the Convention.
I arrived at the hotel around 4:30 on the Friday. The sponsors, Martin Lynch and Sons, provided a buffet to welcome delegates who were staying on the Friday night. I had some soup and a couple of rolls then went back to my room to watch the England v Poland game on the ancient CRT telly, which lacked BBC4. This was the only real complaint I had about the hotel itself. Well, that and the inability to find my way round.
It's 9am on Saturday. Some people are still having their breakfast, and some people are still arriving on site as Bob Whelan, G3PJT, welcomes a bleary-eyed bunch to the Centenary Convention.
The keynote speaker was, as the slide shows, Joe Taylor, K1JT, the creator of a number of digital modes such as WSPR, WSJT and so on (no, I have no idea), who gave a very interesting and highly technical talk on many of these modes. He's also a former winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics!
Next up for me, a potentially depressing talk about Solar Cycle 24 and predictions for 25. However, it was all very light hearted, not least because no one has a clue.
First up, though, Carl gave a display of QSL cards from deleted or rare DXCC entities...
... then it was back to the bad news, or was it? Some data suggests that Cycle 24 could be headed for a second peak. Some data also suggests that sunspots will vanish. Oh NO!!!!!!
The rain stopped long enough around lunchtime for a quick photo of the outside of the hotel.
Just time for one more talk before lunch, and this was one of the most interesting topics of the weekend, presented by Liz Bruton of the University of Leeds.
I had originally been down for the Gala Dinner, and was on the laminated seating plan, but I managed to duck out and get the last ticket for the Technical Dinner. More later.
I got distracted by a documentary about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on the telly, then I got lost in the rabbit warren of a hotel, so I arrived late for the first talk after lunch. Elaine Richards, G4LFM, gave one of the most amusing presentations of the weekend. Many of the pictures used during this talk illustrated not only the vastness of some Amateurs' gardens at this time and also the total disregard for Health and Safety! The story of Bill Corsham, 2UV, drew chuckles from the audience when it was revealed that one singer who had gone to his house to be broadcast (its seems anything was allowed) had been dressed in a rather substantial outfit, unaware of the dimensions of an Amateur's shack. She had to remove some of her clothing to fit into the room, and Bill was worried that his mother would find the young lady in a state of undress and come to the wrong conclusion! Apart from this, Bill Corsham was the first known UK Amateur to use a QSL card.
One of the most, if not THE most popular presentations of the weekend was 'Another slice of Pi' by Peter Goodhall, 2E0SQL. This was a follow-up to last year's introduction to the Raspberry Pi computer.
The timings were a bit askew, and there was a particular talk I wanted to see at the end of the Saturday session, so I took a wander round the Exhibition.
I think this is a representative of a company building something to sell.
I didn't ask, so I don't know what was going on.
Not surprisingly, I was too scared to have a go. I wasn't so timid in 1988. Shameful.
The ubiquitous RSGB bookstall. Yes, I did buy some books.
I didn't eat a sweetie, though.
Contrary to appearances, this isn't a member of the Martin Lynch and Sons team begging someone to buy something from their stand.
To kill some time, I went to a talk by Mike Gloisten, GM0HCQ, which was imaginatively entitled 'From Morse Code to the World Wide Web'. You'd never know it was about the changes in communications equipment on the British Antarctic Survey ships and on the onshore bases!
Last lecture of the day, and a very interesting presentation on Voluntary Intercepters, and how a great many of them were Radio Amateurs. Needless to say, I can't talk about it.
What happened next? Tune in for the next exciting episode of the RSGB Centenary Convention.
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