I have just spent two most stimulating days at the RSGB HF
Convention. Since I was attending both as a professional for RSGB
and an amateur as G3XDV, I worked hard, but also played hard too.
Congratulations to all concerned, especially to John, G3WKL,
David, G0MRF and Graham, G3XTZ, for all of their hard work and to
Dave, G3YXM and Andre, N4ICK, for their interesting lectures.
The company was very good, I spent a lot of time with N4ICK and
DK8KW, as well as the Gs. It was also great to see lowfers from
Holland and Portugal, too.
Geri (pronounced with a hard G like "good"), DK8KW, was sporting
a tee-shirt with a Spectrogram of his callsign and the slogan
"Longwave enthusiasts do it extremely slow". We talked until about
11 Saturday night, then he flew back to DL at 7am Sunday, getting
on the air for a sked with GB4RS at midday.
The work that went on behind the scenes to get the two 73kHz
contacts was amazing. The FETs on G0MRF's transmitter died after
a few minutes of operating - one by one. By the time we went into
dinner on Saturday evening, the Tx was useless and we did not
know why it kept blowing FETs. During the meal, David went quiet
for a few minutes, then waved a piece of paper, saying "I have
redesigned my PA for Class D". He left the convention very late in
the evening, went home, rebuilt the transmitter and returned at 0630
local to put it on the air, this time successfully! This was just one
example of the huge amounts of ingenuity used to keep things
working.
I am convinced that we will have intrigued several HFers enough for
them to venture onto 136kHz. And we certainly gave a boost to
future activity from Portugal.
Lastly, the memory of Peter Bobek was very much kept alive in
various conversations and in something more formal to be
announced soon.
I will post some pics on my web site later this week.
See you next year.
Mike, G3XDV (IO91VT)
http://www.dennison.demon.co.uk/activity.htm
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