A little about me, Part 3

So, what's all this got to do with M0UAW and why is an M0 'newly licensed?

We're getting there, I promise...

I'd been mulling the idea of becoming a licensed amateur for years, ever since the (pre legalisation) heyday of CB, a few of my friends were/are G7s and I could whistle a pitch perfect 1750Hz, into the legal days then on and off for the next three decades.

Finally, in 2016, I visited the Telford rally (did I mention I liked and had been attending rallies for years?) at Ingenuity and got chatting to the young bloke on the RSGB stand (I was already a GQRP member) who kindly sold me a copy of the Foundation Now book.


The book, well I read it, then put it away, almost convinced I was missing something, it was too easy!

A few months passed by and then I found the book again, read it and decided, no, it really wasn't more complex than that so I started to try and find a club who would allow me to take the exam.

Herein we discover one of the reasons why Amateur radio is not attracting new people, the clubs, it's a pain in the arse to find one who even responds to emails, voicemail or text messages.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to get in touch with the two clubs closest to me, two years later and I'm still waiting for a response from one, the other, well rude doesn't describe them adequately, I've since heard from other people who have tried to get their licence via that club, my experience was entirely typical.

I gave up, had a whinge on a couple of forums, the GQRP mailing list and just put it on the back burner again for a while, reading replies and filing the information away while considering just dropping the idea entirely.

But, I don't like being told I can't do things, so, I didn't entirely give up, I wanted that licence,  eventually, emails started flying and the RSGB suggested I contact North Cheshire Radio Club
where I got a prompt response from Jill, the club secretary who suggested I contact David, the club instructor.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Free GPS and a Merry Christmas

Image
 Season's greetings to one and all. I've been fascinated with GPS and GNSS in general for quite some time now, it feels rather miraculous that, for only a few pounds, I can buy a module not much larger than my thumb that will reliably provide my position anywhere on the planet to within a few metres by receiving signals from flying atomic clocks several thousand miles above my head. I've probably got far too many GPS receivers but recently someone posted an offer of free for the cost of postage receiver modules to the GQRP mailing list and it was too good an offer to turn down.  A few days later some nice little Leadtek modules arrived, complete with coax pigtails. As well as the modules, there was a zip file with pinout for the 1mm (?) pitch connector on the underside and a datasheet for the module itself. While they're quite old, they have a SiRFStar chipset which is a decent performer and I've always found them to be reliably fast to get and hold a fix.  Unfortun
Read more

MiniPA 70 build, almost there.

Image
A quick update, I needed a heatsink so I found one from an old PC which is more than adequate, weighing in at almost 650 grammes I reckon it should be able to handle the heat. Problem though, it's not flat. Which makes it kind of difficult to mount the board. Now, I could use some standoffs, PCB pillars cut to length but I'm a little light on machine tools to make an accurate job of it and it'd annoy me that it was 'wobbly'. As it happens, I recently bought myself a new toy. A Flashforge 3D printer so this seemed an ideal opportunity to learn to use a CAD program and find out how dimensionally accurate the printer is. It turns out, it's pretty good. And the PLA takes a thread really nicely. So, my Mini PA board now has mounts, I just need to drill and tap some holes in the heatsink.
Read more

Replacing the Teensy 3.2 with 4.0 in the GQRP SCD Sudden Digital VFO

Image
 Place holder for GQRP SCD Digital VFO Post   The chip shortage has struck down the Teensy 3.2 which was used in the GQRP Digital VFO here: https://www.gqrp.com/suddenvfo.htm   Obviously that's a problem.  However, there is light at the end of the tunnel, the Teensy 4.0 is pin compatible so could be a drop in replacement.   I downloaded the 'sketch' and tried to compile it, which failed with what looked like potentially simple to resolve errors and a *lot* of warnings about unused and uninitialised variables. The information below shows the changes I made to the V0_13 sketch and get a successful compile.   Compiled for Teensy 4 using Arduino IDE: Version: 2.1.0 Date: 2023-04-19T15:31:10.185Z CLI Version: 0.32.2 Errors with unmodified sketch when compiled for Teensy 4  "Sorry, i2c_t3 only works on Teensy LC and 3.x.  Use Wire for Teensy 4.0, 4.1, MicroMod." To fix: Change every instance of i2c_t3.h to wires.h In:  SCD_2021_V0__13.ino Si5351.h Si5351.cpp To mop up s
Read more