Bills Posts

If you are a licensed amateur radio operator, I hope this evenings post will be of interest. If you aren’t and persist in reading, then I am sorry for the jargon – perhaps you might become interested in joining the community of hams?

Fairly regularly, I run the Isle Of Wight Radio Society’s (IoWRS) Thursday Night Net (TNN). It happens 2000-2100 local time most Thursday evenings. Everything is routed via the net controller who manages the net – this week it was me.

There are different ways of running a net, and different outcomes – no two thursxday evenings are the same. An abiding fear is that I put a call out and nobody comes to the party. Or possibly only one or two other people join in. That’s how tonights net started. What do you do? Let it run it’s course, or say “let’s not bother tonight” . That latter very rarely happens, I usually try to run it.

What helps is having a topic – that gets people talking, and often draws in more operators who wish to contribute. I should say, you absolutely do not have to be a member of the IoWRS to take part in the net, any licensed operator is more than welcomed to be involved.

Tonights topic was “what questions do you have about HF (High Frequency)?” Well, it was posed like that. What it turned into was as discussion about high noise levels on HF radios and what can be done about it.

A fair bit was discussed about what causes the noise (LED lamps, smart TV’s, broadband boxes were all cited as sources) . What to do about it was also discussed; Go mobile, add line filters, try different antennas, change the position of existing antennas that kind of thing. It was for me (an inexperienced HF operator) an invaluable, and interesting hour. If you are on facebook, look for the GB3IW page – there’s a live video recording there.

Here are some random, unrelated pictures;

• 

• 

• 

• 

Over the last couple of years through going to weight watchers and becoming a bit more active I have shed around 65lbs. I’ve become a bit stuck these last couple of weeks and this last monday, I stayed for the chat. It’s no longer Weight Watchers, it’s WW, they’ve become a whole body thing, which I get and don’t have a problem with.

Where I do have a problem is controlling my eating, and I am now becoming a bit worried that I am gaining weight again. I do not want to go back to what I was. So I have to do two things, the main one is bring my eating back under control, and do something about my fitness. Stupidly, at WW on Monday, I said that I was going to be honest with tracking my food this week. The trouble is that I am being honest, and it is almost like it has become a bit of a contest to see just how bad I can make it. This has to stop, I am better than this, and I can make it.

About this time last year, I started running. I did the Couch to 5k thing. The app worked incredibly well for me. I have never actually reached the goal of running 5km in 30 minutes, the best I have achieved is 4.3km. But, I’m not worried about that. I have though stopped running at the moment. The excuse I am using is that I had a twinge in my knee. How much am I using that as an excuse now? Probably a lot. Although, I don’t have a problem with walking.

I’m not sure yet what I am going to do about the phys side of things, but I am going to bring my food intake back under control. Here are some random pictures for you.

• 

• 

• 

• 

I think I’ve only put the date in the title, because it is a special day. The story of Guy Fawkes is well known, and I enjoy a firework display as much as anybody. But being a person who is owned by cats, tonight always causes me some distress. If only we could talk to them, and tell them that they are safe here, so we do the best we can to protect them. I can open the cat flap now, as it has quietened down. They’ll be relieved!

When I looked out the back door to assess the weather, I could see that the sky was heavily clouded, with a layer of smaller clouds underneath scudding along at a fair old rate. It was a bit blustery at ground level. It was a very enjoyable walk, with an excellent #Breakfastclub. We don’t always talk about radio related topics, but it featured quite a bit this morning.

I’ve started reading a bit about blogs, the first lesson I get is publish and be damned. Oh well. Not a brilliant post, but I’m persisting. What I would really like is to not be doing this last thing. I’d like to link it to my Facebook posts, developing threads which make it easy to write the post, rather than struggling to think of a topic. I’m not quite there yet. I have a locality project planned for the weekend. Let’s see how it goes.

In the meantime, here are some partially random pictures for you.

• 

• 

• 

Everybody hates Mondays – don’t they?  Well I’m not sure that I do. It’s pretty much like any other day really, except you can bring back memories of the weekend.  I’m hoping for you, they are good memories.  Somebody said to me on Saturday “isn’t the weather dreadful”? To which I replied “well…as long as I’m kitted out right, I quite enjoy weather like this”. I heard that the Needles (a formation of rocks on the western edge of the Isle of Wight) lighthouse had recorded a wind speed of 100mph – I haven’t confirmed that, but it seems likely. A fair bit of rain fell as well. And although my trainers got wet, I did enjoy being out.  You’ll have seen the pictures from yesterday’s blog I hope.  It was a lovely day.  It was frustrating at work.  I like to go for a walk at lunchtime.  Not today, it was very showery, and they were quite heavy, and of course one started just as I was due to go out, so I didn’t.  Just a normal autumn day.  

After yesterday’s wind and rain, todays blue skies have been a delightful change. I had to get out for a walk. Here’s most of my route today;

It was lovely. We have quite a few blue plaques around the town. There’s one that I had seen not long after moving here, but it had disappeared, and then today I just happened to look and there it was. It celebrates Henry Cort who developed a new process “Puddling” for managing wrought iron. I must do something here with other plaques

I walked down to the end of the Haslar Marina Pier wall, from where I did a brief Facebook Live. I walked round to the small lake by the Gosport Ramparts, I stopped on the way to have a chat with one of the towns street cleaners. I see him quite often. It’s nice to be able to say to them “thank you for looking after the town”. I saw this Cormorant sunning themselves at the side of the small lake. I must admit I did get a little too close to them, and they scooted off across the lake. I’d loved to have taken a picture of it, but was too slow. I was sorry I had frightened and disturbed them. They didn’t seem too disturbed though. By the time I’d walked to the other side of the of the lake the bird was back in the same spot, wings raised, gently wafting backwards and forwards.

I walked on round to the Cockle ponds, where I met a local Facebook Friend and we had a brief chat. The cockle ponds are a delightful little area. This group of Canada Geese were making good use of it, have a very placid float;

Today, they would be sharing the lake with members of the Gosport Model sailing club. I pretty much ended the walk near Walpole Park, where this sight met me;

Really frustrating. Do you get this where you are?

If you read my facebook post you may see some of the pictures used here again. Apologies for the duplication.

I’d written a piece about the weather today, or rather my experiences out and about in it – mainly revolving around how good is my wet weather jacket, and how very comfortable the new HoodyFleece, purchased by the Station Manager has been.

Then at the end, I wanted to upload a two versions of the same photo. Of course the pictures in question don’t appear in the image galley, and so I was looking to see ho I can force the gallery to bring in new photos.

In doing so, I lost the text of my post, but… Ah, now you see; I didn’t have a particularly good sleep period for a variety of reasons, have now come over all tired and forgot what I was going to say.

Anyhow, another attempt at pasting a gallery. If this doesn’t work, I shall just leave here.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I like walking. Not too far mind you. For example, I wouldn’t go on a 30 mile hike. But, I would consider a 5 or 6 mile walk quite happily, I probably push it to 10 miles with the right shoes.

Mon – Fri, I get up at 0540 and go for a walk, about 2 miles, and then at lunchtime, I will go for a 2 – 3 mile walk. Coupled with my 2 – 4 mile commute (2 miles there, 4 miles back if I go the long way, which I usually do gives me a bit of exercise most weekdays. I try and do a walk on the weekends, even if it is only to walk in to town, let’s say about a mile each way. The only thing that is really likely to interrupt this routine is rain – I always cycle to work, regardless, but I may not go for a walk if it’s chucking it down. If there are droplets in the air, I am more likely to walk than not, so there are tolerances in my regime.

Last year in October, I started recording my walks as I read about Walk1000, this is a campaign to encourage people to walk 1,000 miles in a year. In order to do that, you need to walk 2.79 miles per day, every day. Of course if you walk more than 2.79 miles in any one day, that reduces the amount you have to walk on other days. As it happens, I averaged more than that each day, and there were some days where I didn’t walk at all, typically a Sunday, or if it was wet all day. The beginning of last week saw the year come to an end, and my final figure was about 1,340 miles. Which I have to admit surprised me. I didn’t expect to be able to do it.

Because I like doing it, I’m going to continue to record my mileage until the end of the year. But I am also going to formally register for next years walk 1000.

As usual, here are some random pictures, mostly taken on my walks.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Inspiring tonight’s post was tonight’s trip out to the Clanfield observatory. Organised by my amateur radio club. Clanfield is an amateur facility with some amazing resources, doing serious and useful research.

The interest in Astronomy has always stayed with me. Their are few things more beautiful than the night sky and even a simple pair of 10×50 binoculars expands the universe another step.

I can remember when I was quite young, let’s say between 5 and 10, on one cloudless night we had just come back to their home from a trip out, my brother-in-law was trying to show me the Plough, Ursa Major. Of course, I couldn’t grasp it. Now, it is one of the first constellations I look for, and how easy it is to use it as a pointer for the pole star.

I knew of the topic of spectroscopy, but have never really given it much thought. Tonight, I had one of those “Oh!” moments. The amateur astronomer who was doing the presentation specialised in the subject. He showed us in a simplified way how he extracts the spectroscope of an object, such as the Crab Nebula, and how he derived the component parts, surprisingly to me one of the main elements is oxygen, beaten only by hydrogen. Also, because each of those elements had a double peak representing the leading and trailing edges of the nebula, it was possible to work out the rate of expansion. Even after the nova which was the source of the nebula was first observed a thousand years ago, he was able to work out that the nebula is expanding at 1400 miles per second or 3.2 million miles per hour.

Amazing stuff, and a really fascinating evening. The frustration? It was cloudy so we couldn’t use the equipment. But it was good to see.

Some random pictures for you;

The mornings are getting increasingly darker. That is a truism even though the clocks went back a couple of nights back. It’s really nice to have Dawn’s light with me when I go morning walks, even though this is only temporary. I estimate that within 10-15 days, I will be chasing the Dawn again, and I will have to look for subjects that improve my night photography to prevent them from becoming boring. This is based upon the length of the day light hours decreasing by just under four minutes per day at this time of year, in the northern hemisphere of course.

Why talk about this now? It became a topic of discussion on the #Breakfastclub this morning, specifically, there was a period of time, some years ago; 1968-1971 when the change to British Summer Time was abandoned. It was introduced in 1916, apparently intended to make best use of daylight, and to reduce fuel requirements for working.

For me, the clocks changed two days ago, and I have already adjusted to it. Our cats always have a slightly more difficult time with it, because they get fed an hour later (to which they do object) or earlier (to which they don’t object), but within a very number of days, they are back in the normal routine. They have though been known to get fed by one member of the family at 0600, then fed again by another family member at 0700. They have never been known to complain when this happens.

I was at school between 1968-1971, and have absolutely no recollection of the experiment to do away with BSGT. Why would I be expected to? Like many things, it didn’t register – about the only thing I was interested in outside school were the Apollo missions, which I followed avidly.

You will see my ineptitude in nighttime photography over the next few months. This is something I should pay some attention to. In the meantime, here are some more random pictures.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I want to continue the item about books briefly. This time, focussing on non-fiction. The quantity of books that you own is a subjective number – do you own a lot of books? Relative to any library, no I don’t. But we do have a number. Enough to fill several 9- shelved bookcases.

Why do we have all these books, clearly we don ‘t a hope of reading them all, and more importantly, why in the age of the internet do we even need them? Clearly, we don’t need them. But I love being able to pick up a book and have a browse, and usually you learn something when you do. Everyone laughed at Rumsfeld, but he was correct. You don’t know what you don’t know, until you know it. Books help you with the unanswered, and unknown questions. I should add that although we have a fair number of fiction, most of the books are non-fiction, and they cover a reasonable range of topics.

One thing I did notice yesterday though, was that we only had one book that specifically covered philosophy – Sophies Choice, which I read several years ago, and when I finish my current reading (David Suchet’s biography, Through the Lens) will read again. Of course, I have in a minor way fixed that omission, after a visit to The Works, and a fortuitous gift. The works is a retail store, it sells art and craft materials, toys and books – very cheap books. I acquired two books from there for £3 each; the little book of philosophy and think like a philosopher. OK, I know these are not the works of Descarte or Kant, but I don’t know that much about the subject, and view these as something of an intro. The fortuitous gift? Today, My Father-in-Law gave me a copy of Frederica Sgarbi PhD (in philosophy)’s book; The Philosophy of Cats. I’ve already started reading it. But, I really must continue with David Suchet.

Here are some random pictures.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•