THE EVENT!
(All photos thanks to Ian)
8AM - On Your Marks.........
Well, I was the first to arrive - I got to the room at about 8:15am, so put all my stuff down, and called Ian "I'm sitting in the car park" - Seeing as I had the trolley - I made my way down the stairs to help Ian with his kit. As he'd brought most of it the previous day - there was only a few boxes - we decided to lug them up the stairs by hand - I think this bought us a few more minutes.
John (RBM) Had also turned up at this point, but had disappeared upstairs -
Thing is, John used to teach at NEWI - He was a Workshop & Lab Technician and the room we would be occupying,
was the old electronics room, which John oversaw - He was somewhat dismayed to discover that the door to his
old office had been blocked up !
Slowly, the rest of the team arrived, Malcolm, Steve (STE, along with nephew Simon) and Steve (ZMD) and Gordon, who although helping out with St Johns Ambulance, still stopped by to help us out before the day started....We commandeered some tables and started laying the room out - We were sharing the room with the local Photographic Society - which was supposed to be a static display by all intentions....
MDH & WZZ Setup!
Steve and Malcolm disappeared off to sort out the aerials - Ian's 80/40 trap dipole which had proved successful during JOTA, An Airband Antenna for Geoff (GW6SBD) and White-Stick antennas for both myself and Malcolm - Malcolm was to run a DX Cluster alongside my 2M Station - oddly enough, this didn't really bother my TX, nor did it worry his.
He'd also brought along PC's Morse Tutor's Keys more PCs a laptop and an LCD
Projector, which would run a slideshow that Malcolm had put together throughout
the day - We started getting set up.
Around me, stations were being put together, coax came through windows, Ian got the ATV demo set up. I gave people posters etc that had been generously donated by both Icom and Kenwood, and a lump of blu-tack and started helping to get these posters and maps on the wall.
Gordon Sets Up the PWs!
9AM - Webcam Hassle
When I got home on the Friday, we'd left the webcam PC running - unfortunately - we'd forgot about the power saving settings and the PC had gone into power saving mode not long after we'd left the room - D'Oh! - However, that was to prove the least of our worries...
I'd set up the page using FrontPage, which had cunningly removed our JavaScript re-loader, However, when all that was on the screen is a static image - we wouldn't know! - I honestly thought it was OK. I had packed for eventual web-related emergencies, I had loaded a Zip disk with my FTP Client, all the settings and a backup of the WSF site - In case of the very worst happening.....
Not to worry I thought, just pop the Zip Disk in, load the FTP client and we're off - I had an old copy of the page that I knew worked on the site - All I had to do was go in and rename the files. It was easy.......No it wasn't. The Zip drive in our PC refused to read my Zip disks, it thought that they were blank. I had to download an FTP client, and fast - luckily I did, but remembering the password was the more painful experience - its all cryptic!
Long Story Short - I got the password, and re-copied the page back over, it was 9:30 by now so we hadn't lost a lot of time - but panic had set in already - Looking back, it wasn't a major hassle - the page did work, except manual refresh would have been needed to reload the latest image. I figured that the Zip Drive was faulty and didn't chance my Zip disks in it (which do work BTW) - which meant the archiving would be out - until nearer the end.
That done, I checked my Station over - all was running well.....
At 9:40, Ian suggested a clear-up, which we did, which took a few minutes, at which point we had a few final words (Including me showing off our Kenwood promo) and the raffle was discussed and finalised - We were ready for the off, Fastlog running on the 2M station, HF running on 40M, the PW table was almost bending under the weight of the literature on it! (Thanks again Rob) - The kits table was looking good, as was the 'older radios' stand. Admittedly the only ones I could identify with were the HRO (who doesn't know what they look like !!) and my Codar CR-70, The others on display were a 19 set and a 38 set, both believed to be of Czech origin.
Posters and maps, and datacards were up - Literature and pens were strategically located. The cam was running and the page was updating - we loaded DXMon onto the PC - this would prove useful in many ways ! The clock ticked down.........
10AM - GO!
This was it - all this planning, had culminated in this - we were on our own, it was all down to the public, would they flock in in droves, or could we all afford to take an hour for lunch (There was at least 10 of us!)
Within minutes we had our answer - we had a steady stream of people in the room - HF was off and running, Only problem was 2M, although both my Yaesu and Malcolms ADI seemed to be coping with being so close to each other, but there was an issue with it - there was something up with the antennas the signal for the Cluster wasn't exactly useable by the Baycom modem. Malcolm Ian and Steve (ZMD) puzzled over the settings - in the meantime Steve (STE) had brought his MFJ analyser along, guess what???? For some reason the antenna was now resonant around 156MHz - Everybody trekked onto the roof to see what the problem was. It was later discovered that a small piece of coax used as a patch lead on one of the 2M antennas, happened to be faulty - we removed this, and suddenly everything was OK.
It was nearly 11AM when the 2M Station brought in its first contact- Something which was starting to panic me, would I actually get any contacts? UI-View was so hit and miss, I gave up, and went to Voice. First contact through was M0ABS - this proved I was up and running.
In the HF Corner ! - Glyn MW0BNB (L) and On 2M - Mark MW1MDH/MW3MDH
Geoff GW0EMB (R)
A Little More Detail.......
I think at this point I can breathe - you see, HF was doing quite well, John, Geoff and Ian were milling around and talking to people. And all we could hear was the bee-bee beep of my ERA Microreader, I leant it to Malcolm for his display - and left it on Receive Practice mode.
We'd put posters pretty much anywhere there was wall to stick them to...Although we had stickers from Icom, I was worried about these taking the paint off the walls and so blu-tacked them to the walls. On entering our 'room' you were greeted by Johns display of older equipment - to your left was the PW table, which Gordon had spent time setting up, with me on the 2M Station - Malcolm's display of Data Modes and Morse just near the window, and Glyn (MW0BNB) and Geoff (GW0EMB) running the HF Station between them.
To one side was an Oscilloscope which people could either talk into, or at the flick of a switch showed the voice pattern of the RF going out the back of Glyn's 726.
Between me and Malcolm, was a Camera which formed part of our ATV demo - Admittedly it wasn't as full a demonstration as we'd hoped - there had been some concerns expressed about the frequencies we would be using interfering with the microwave links for the college network - On our trip to PW, I had briefly raised this point with Tex, who pointed out that the allocations for these sorts of applications are far different to those for amateur use.
This actually proved to be of little use when we went back to Wrexham - We decided to play it safe, and link the ATV across the room. This proved a pretty good move, as all day we had people standing in front of the camera, and pulling faces and watching them on the TV!
And, in the middle of the room, was Geoff (SBD) - Talking to the masses, demonstrating Morse, and pretty much doing his own thing by all accounts.
When there was no-one to talk to on the air, all we had to do is stand up - Someone would want to talk to us...
Our 'Old Kit' Display