On the way from Tampa to Little Cayman, I managed to drop by London for the annual FOC meeting ("Lord's", so-called because the Saturday banquet is held at Lord's cricket grounds in London).  This trip was courtesy of some of Wesley's frequent flyer mileage accumulation.  What an experience!  This was my first opportunity to meet in person some fellows I had come to know only over the air, but for years.  Those of us coming from overseas were treated like visiting royalty, and it was 3 extremely memorable days of good conversation, great food, and an always open bar.  Here are some shots from the weekend...

Know any of these guys?  If you're a ham, I'm certain you know about all of them--though you may never have seen their faces before.   This picture is of a bunch of the overseas visitors during the Friday afternoon party at the home of G3MXJ.

This is how we spent most of the weekend...simply schmoozing.  Again, this is from G3MXJ's back yard in East Sussex.   The first picture above was posed; this one obviously was not.

Here are EI5CP, G3MXJ, and 5B4AGC...

Before the banquet Saturday night, I finally had a chance to meet Fraser, G4BJM.  Standing next to Fraser is probably about as close as I'll ever get to a Marathon win!

However, I did get my own trophy at the banquet.  This is the Senior Rose Bowl, for winning the annual Commonwealth Contest.  It's engraved as the "BERU Challenge Trophy"--"BERU" stands for "British Empire Radio Union".  This rotating trophy has the names of the winners engraved on it for every year since the beginning--1934.   Treasure that the trophy is, the RSGB guys wouldn't let me take it out of the UK, so I had to leave it behind for next year's winner.  George, 5B4AGC, says that's going to be him.  Of course, he said that last year too!

Speaking of George, here's the old man himself.  Next to him is my very gracious QSL manager Phil, G3SWH.

Here is a bunch of "The Gang" gathered together at Wychwood on Sunday afternoon.  Wychwood was the home of Al Slater, G3FXB, and the station has been kept alive by his lovely wife Maud ever since.  Maud put on a wonderful party for us Sunday afternoon--one of the real highlights of the weekend.