Bills Posts

Horndean & District Amateur Radio Club – my club. When the Covid-19 lockdown started, our twice monthly meetings stopped, that was March. August sees the meetings starting again, This being September I have resisted attending, until tonight. I must admit I felt uncomfortable. Everybody wore masks, nobody was obviously ill, I made a point of trying to stay away from people but I still felt very uncomfortable. I’m on the committee, so I have responsibilities to the club – how can I reconcile my responsibilities with my concerns?

It’s two weeks until the next meeting. But also, as we move towards the October that means an AGM, which means even more people. Which means increased nervousness on my part.

I hadn’t realised that although I had written an article yesterday it had remained as draft, and hadn’t been published. I have published it now. So, technically, I did do a submission yesterday.

The picture is nothing to do with the title. The radio appears to be broken, the aerial appears to be OK. I know this because I swapped radios. The other, a Leixen VV898 works fine. However, last night I mentioned an organisation RAYNET, tonight here’s a potted history;

During the 1950’s control of the activities of radio amateurs was much more rigidly applied than is the case today.

Anyhow, on the night of 31 January, 1953 the North Sea experienced an unprecedented swell, causing major floods in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. There were more than 230 deaths. On the night, and in the immediate aftermath, radio amateurs got together and assisted the emergency services. As a reward some of the restrictions were relaxed, and the Radio Amateurs Emergency Network, which later became RAYNET.

Today, RAYNET continues as a charity. Most counties has at least one group (I’m not aware of any that have none). Some, like Hampshire has four. We become involved in activities with the public for example next week I shall be on a point for the Clarendon walk, and the week after the New Forest Marathon. It’s an opportunity for us to use our radios helping the public, and I get to go to places that I normally wouldn’t such as the depths of the new forest, or the top of Butser Hill – absolutely lovely.

Walking to the waterfront I can see the sky above the dawning sun, this morning it was a very striking pink. I knew that it would be gone by the time I arrived at the halfway point, the Gosport promenade, and indeed it had. Although it had been replaced by some incredible, gentle shades, hence the pastels. It was a lovely view.

The problem? For those that don’t know, I’m a licensed radio ham. On a Wednesday night I take part in a “Net” where a group of amateurs have a chat over the radio. Tonight, I was supposed to chair the South East Hampshire RAYNET Wednesday Night Net (I’ll explain what RAYNET is later). Anyhow, I turned my radio on, and after a few seconds, it jumped from the programmed channel on to 144.000mhz. It didn’t matter how often I put it back on the RAYNET channel, after a few seconds it jumped away again, and I can’t stop it from happening. I’ll leave it tonight, and investigate a bit more tomorrow. Concerning, as I’m supposed to run the Isle of Wight Radio Society Thursday Night Net tomorrow.

I’ll have to see what happens.

Even if I say so myself, a very nice sky this morning. An artistic picture (a bit presumptuous of me, I know) allows me to talk about one of the books I’m about to start reading. Actually, it’s more about why I am reading it.

The Story of Art by E H Gombrich, published by Pahidon, purchased around 1995, never read, until this week. Let us go back to 1994, I was just getting to a point where accessing the internet became possible. Probably around 1994 I joined Demon, but before then I was with Compuserve. Do any of you remember it? It was clunky, and you had to use their software, but it did work. The structure was based on forums or groups.

Somehow, I found myself in the Fine Arts group, and become involved in talking about works of art. There were a number of key players in the discussions, a chap who called him Sungod, and was very strident about his art, Abigail, whom I believe is quite well known in the art world now and a few others. We had a few, sometimes quite angry arguments. It was quite entertaining. As you can probably imagine, I must have been (and was) infuriating to the likes of Sungod, and goodness knows what Abigail must of thought of me. Anyhow, it soon became very apparent that I had no knowledge on the topic at all, and was arguing on how I felt, rather than what I (didn’t) know. With that, Abigail recommended that I buy the story of art. I did so, but have never managed to read it. That’s going to change.

Slowly, but surely, the closed, highly managed community that was Compuserve faded away, it could not survive the vibrancy, activity, and sheer anarchy that was the internet. I did try several years ago to see if Compuserve was still about. It seems to be, but is it the same one? Clearly not. Sometimes, I hanker back to those days. I’d love to know who Sungod was (is).

We’ve got a reasonable selection of books. I’ve not read most of them. I thought I would take the opportunity to read some of them. Thing is, I think I’ve got the bug. So now, I have a dilemma.

I am currently reading the Photographers eye, As you might expect it’s making me think about photography. I’m about thirty pages from the end of the book, and have been thinking about what to read next.

A couple of weeks ago I decided I was to read Hubble Vision, and i am going to – but at breakfast, that’s a few pages a day, so it always takes a while. But, the photography book made me think about art, and the The Story of Art. I bought that book around 1995. I don’t think I’ve ever really looked at it. I’ll talk about that a bit more tomorrow.

I can’t remember where I heard about Britain’s Pilgrim Places – it sounded an interesting book because it involved walks (obviously). I think that will be my bed time reading.

So, it looks like I will have three books on the go.

They say you should never publish any of your bad work. Is this a bad picture?

We have two trees at the bottom of our garden. In the space between them there are a bunch of five or six hover flies that gather. They are quite mesmerising to watch, and I would love to get a decent picture of them. But, the chances of doing that with a phone are slim, so I felt quite pleased with my first effort, which really was a grab shot, This kind of highlights my dilemma, I am increasingly thinking that I am going to have to get my DSLR out, and use that more than I am my phone camera.

At the moment, I am posting almost random shots. This really should be an exercise in improving my photography. How do I do that? Technically, I think I have a reasonable understanding, not perfect of course, and my DSLR isn’t really an extension of me, because I haven’t been using it much. I need to think about this.

OK, admittedly a slightly unusual photograph, but it is one taken today. So I am maintaining the intention of taking a picture everyday. We were having problems with a new light fitting, the bulbs wouldn’t fit. An electrician had tried, we definitely had the correct bulbs (G9), they just would not fit in the holder. We couldn’t work out why, so I took a picture where we could see the internal fitting to try and work out what was going on. The clips in the middle were too tight, and would not allow a lamp to be inserted. I was lucky to be able to get one lamp in, of four. I was worried as I pressing so hard, that the bulb would shatter and I would cut my self, or get glass in my eye. I didn’t. A friend botched it, but shaving part of the mount of each bulb – surely that can’t be right? But it was the only way of doing it.

Not only did i nearly not go for a walk this morning, I almost forgot to do my daily blog. I have every intention of writing something everyday, even if I have nothing to write about. During the week I do my facebook entry, but this is a follow up, which I very much want to do even set weekends.

I almost stayed in bed this morning, I woke up slightly later than I normally do, and almost couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed. But I did, and as usual I’m glad I did. Not that anything particularly exciting happened on the walk, nor was there a nice dramatic sky, I did though get this shot, which as soon as I saw it on my screen, I liked. So tonight, I thought I would share it with you.

The boat in question is the £5.5m racing yacht. I got to the waterfront, as the project managers, and technical experts were considering the move. I wanted to watch the move, but they were obviously taking their time. As usual, I walked away, only to look back a few minutes later, to see the boat in the air.

When I started writing this, I had to google Hugo Boss, I had no idea who he was. I didn’t know that he was a real person. He was the founder of Hugo Boss, the fashion company.

A little bit of excitement on one of my walks.