Bills Posts

Thursdays is Isle Of Wight Radio Society Thursday Night Net Night.

On a Thursday, I like to run the net starting at 2000 and running through to 2100. Some nights there is a topic other nights are “Natter Nights” . Even though, with a topic, callers on the net can raise any issue they wish, having a topic merely provides a focus, if people can’t think of any other issue to raise. Usually, when a TNN is run with a topic it is not only entertaining, but it is educational as well. It’s rare that I don’t learn something.

Tonights topic was wireless scanners. There are two ways of conducting scanning; frequency and channel. Depending upon the capability of the scanner channel scanning is best, these are known set frequencies, that may be allocated a name or a number, for example, Southampton Vessel Traffic Services, commonly Southampton VTS manages ship movements into and out of Southampton and through the Solent, it operates on Marine Channel 12, or 156.600 MHz, scanners can be programmed so that you now the name of the primary channel user, they will then cycle through all the channels, stopping whenever a signal is detected. Scanners have a serious purpose, but they are also fun.

What I found out tonight was that my Uniden scanner only really deals with higher frequencies, there are frequencies used by ships and aircraft, if satellite isn’t available. I’d never even thought about HF. Once again, a very pleasant hour passed.

Here are some random pictures;

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Are you a starter or a finisher? I tend to think of myself as a starter, but I’m not really sure. My problem is I like to be involved. To give you an example; After becoming licensed as a Radio Ham, I was very keen to become a member of RAYNET. I’ve been a member for three years now. During my first year, in my journal (not a diary because I only wrote when I felt like it) just after I joined RAYNET, I wrote in large red letters, underscored with a border around it DO NOT JOIN THE COMMITTEE. By the end of the year I was secretary of our group. I do this with everything. I have a project that I’ve started, already I’m not sure if it is a good idea, but it is growing legs, and I have half a dozen people involved. it involves a number of articles for the journal for our radio club (i’m on the committee for that as well), I’m also a Neighbourhood Watch coordinator, and am the Gosport NHW Twitter account holder.

Every so often something gets too much for me and I have to get rid of it. I know that what I am doing at the moment is manageable, so that isn’t a danger. But I did join an organisation as I wanted to volunteer in the local community. I knew fairly quickly that I had made a mistake, and that the role involved too much (in my view) responsibility – for me at least. So I had to let the chairman and the organisation down. I was becoming stressed over it, and that was as a volunteer – not a good position to be in.

This mornings walk was the first one in four days. I don’t normally go out early at the weekends, and I had a work commitment on Monday, and overslept on Tuesday. It wasn’t as cold as it was yesterday morning, but it was blustery, so I really appreciated my hat, coat and gloves. The frustrating thing is that with dawn now receding from my reach, I can still see the beginnings of the morning sky, and this one looked as though it would be quite spectacular. And I had to walk away! Oh well. There’ll be another one.

Here are some random pictures for you.

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After a long day at work involving an early rising, I managed to oversleep this morning. I’m sure I’ve said previously that if I am no able to get out of the house before 0610, the walk isn’t worth doing as it is such a rush, that it becomes not so enjoyable. Anyhow, I woke up at about 0600, I knew that even if I got a move on, I wouldn’t get out of the house before o615, so I enjoyed a bit of extra time under the duvet.

The trouble is when that happens I miss something. One thing I missed was an interesting #Breakfastclub, the trouble here is that they are invariably good, so I am guaranteed to miss a good chat. Another thing I miss is some photos of the harbour, you never know what the sky is going to be like. This mornings little gem though, was the first proper frost of the season. I know there will be others, but this was the first proper frost in Gosport. I’ve added a couple of rather pathetic pictures. I promise . I will try sand do better tomorrow.

On the first and third fridays of the month, my Amateur Radio Club – Horndean & District meet. This evening I sat a table with few of the other members, and what a really good evening it was. Some very interesting and entertainin g talk.

I new of course that both the #Breakfastclub, and the Thursday Night Net were listened to, but I don’t normally get to meet the listeners – well, I did tonight. To the extent that we might have a couple join us next week – we may have to wait and see.

I said in my facebook post that I hadn’t really wanted to get up this morning, but that I was glad that I did. It was both a pleasant walk, even if slightly cold, and a very good #Breakfastclub.

Looking forward now to a nice day tomorrow, and then the Nevada Open Day – which should be very nice.

I’ve been listening to Sohpies World – the book about philosophy. It’s very interesting. We’ve just has Socrates & Plato, and are now on to Aristotle. It is being read very well. I will try and think of something to write about it.

Here are some random pictures.

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On a Thursday Evening, I act as network controller for the Isle Of Wight Radio Society Thursday Night Net. One aspect of the net, is a live feed via facebook. If you are interested, look for the GB3IW page on FB, and you will see broadcasts going back over time.

One of the things I like to do when the net is finished, is to write a few notes about the evenings session and list all the participants – even if they just call in to say they are only going to listen. Them taking the trouble to do that is really appreciated. Anyhow, it’s this writing lark that I want to talk about, it’s like I’m a one-shot wonder boy. I write something, and that then drains me so I can’t write anything else.

For some reason this evening is an exception because not only doing my morning facebook post, I’ve done this evenings GB3IW TNN post, and now I’m doing this. I really didn’t know I had it in me.

Several times when I’ve been writing my blog post on the iPad, I have managed to erase what I’ve written before posting it. I find that I just can’t be bothered to go back and have another go so end up not posting anything on that particular evening.

So, there is this evening’s post. Here are some random pictures from this morning’s walk. They tend to be a bit samey this time of year.

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I joined the Gosport Society towards the begining of this year, after looking at the list of talks they had planned all of which (Even the Pubs Of Gosport) sounded very interesting.

And, My Golly, this evening was no disappointment . One was the meeting itself, which has inspired me to see if I can go to their Christmas Lunch, the second was the talk. This evening it was “Embarking the D-Day Armada” by Stephen Fisher. Stephen is a military archaeologist, who has an interest in concrete. Doesn’t sound very exciting does it? His talk takes you through the lengths the allies went through yto ensure that when D-Day came, they would be able to embark the soldiers and equipment needed for the invasion, get them off the other side of the channel and even through the countryside over bridges destroyed by the German army.

It includes the “Hards” the concrete ramps that enabled the landing crafrt to be loaded, the supporting roads that would be needed to get the men & materials to the Hards, the repair facilities needed for battle damaged landing craft and the Mulberry Harbours, in particular there is a museum in Welcheren in the Netherlands that comprises 3 intact mulberry caisons, you enter through one, the centre is a museum of Mulberry, and is partially buried – in this context, they were used to bolster the dykes that were damaged during the 1953 storms & Floods (this saw the beginnings of RAYNET in the UK) . There remains a lot of evidence of the infrastructure that was put in place, especially here in Gosport. Southwick Park, and the Map Room for the D-Day landings is there, I’ve had the honour of going to see that.

At the start of the evening, the Chair did his introductions, and talked about, amongst other things, the Gosport Railway Society, which I had no idea existed. It looks like they do an interesting range of talks as well.

What a fascinating evening. Just goes to reinforce just stuffed with history is Gosport.

Here are some totally random pictures for you. Of of interest is the picture of the grey night sky, with the streak of light in it. I don’t understand it, it can’t be the moon, it’s the wrong colour, but the source was static, and it was behind the clouds. Unusual.

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Once again, I find myself at the end of the day, sat at my machine, having done everything else and now wanting to write a post and not having a subject prepared. It’s frustrating. I’d like to have a week of posts ready but that means running ahead of myself – perhaps tomorrow, I might start doing that.

I would like to understand why I have such a problem with food. Once again, I ate too much at tea.. Not helped by eating a doughnut that someone had bought. What I should have done is put it in the bin. I will try and do this next time. I also had too much bread with tea. Whereas I should just have had my portion and accepted it.

Frustratingly, there was a thing at work that prevented me from going for my lunchtime walk. So, I am down on my steps and distances today. Under normal circumstances I can get 20,000+ steps and 17-18KM walked or cycled per day. Todays step tally is around the 16,000 mark. Oh well.

The moon is full at the moment, and is up early in the evening. The way I come home takes me past a couple of bodies of water, I’m in a position to exploit the light producing some pictures that I like. According to the forecast, I should be able to go for my walk in the morning – that’s good. There are some pictures from my morning walk also.

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After a fine breakfast in the Buttery, Elayne went off and did her Christmas shopping with her sisters. Bill here, took the cowards way out by going and looking for historic and interesting Chichester. He found a bit of each.

Knowing that there was a high certainty that it would start raining around midday, I decided I would do any outdoor activities first. Starting with the Canal. I’m not sure what you would call it – The Basin? a rectangle of water at the head of Chichester Canal. At the moment, it looks like Father Christmas and his troupe of Reindeer are relaxing and building up their energy before the Christmas rush.

I strolled probably for a bout 10 minutes down the stretch of the canal. It really was most relaxing and very scenic. There were some interesting houses on South Bank Street (or perhaps just South Bank?) From there, I walked back up South Street to the Cathedral. I had the opportunity of a guided tour which I declined saying I didn’t have enough time . So the vicar gave me a leaflet containing a guided route. One thing I didn’t know was that the ashes of the Composer,Gustav Holzt (The Planets) were interred there. Not the largest cathedral in the world, but intriguing none the less.

Fro m the Cathedral, I walked not much more than four minutes to the Novium, a smallish museum, covering an part of a Roman Bathhouse. Coming out of the Novium in to the forecast rainstorm. From there, after checking I decided to come home on the train. It had been a very pleasant and enjoyable day.

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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;

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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.

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