Thursday, 22nd June, 2023

I’m trying not to be too impatient with the licencing issuing body here in the UK for my full licence. It doesn’t really matter, but I just want to start using it and configuring everything (for the final time) to use that callsign.

I had a nice email exchange with GM5AUG yesterday, after reading his website.

A little ham radio matrix chat group I’m in, did it’s first net (local chat) on the geostationary satellite QO-100. I listened in on the webSDR, whilst chatting in the channel. Reminded me that I wanted to build a station for it. So much so that I ordered a random part for it from Germany last night. Now I just need to order the rest and then put it all together. I think it’ll be quite the project… I think a 80cm dish will be fine but everyone keeps saying I should get a 1.1m dish..

I worry I’m biting off more than I can chew, or have time to chew. I was thinking of writing down all the radio related things I want to do, then figuring out where to start. There’s no rush for me to do anything, and I don’t want to overwhelm myself and then hate it because of it.

My wife has said I need to get out of the kitchen by the end of the summer, so that’s probably quite high on the list.

My new licence came through at 5pm today! I am now GM5ALX.

To celebrate I went to the local amateur radio club tonight. Not been in 6-8 weeks. They also lost my application form, so I took a new one. It was member talks tonight. One guy, who is a retired electrical engineering professor, always gives good talks, and was sharing his experience in refurbing old 70s rigs. That was interesting…I made a new of a few models for one day down the line as another project!

The other guy’s talk was “my favourite power supply”. His talk was interesting, but if you’re imaginging a ~70 year old guy, with high waisted trousers,