| Those radio licensing people at OFCOM are really nice. |
| Monday, 18 June 2007 00:00 |
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Those radio licensing people at OFCOM are really nice. Years ago when I was a lad, the Internet didn’t exist, and we lived in a world of analogue signals, none of this digital crap that I’m currently surrounded with. In those days signals were more than just a one or a zero and had the potential to be an infinite number of values anywhere in between. I like to think of those days as times when you could understand what was going on with something, be it a car or an amateur radio station. I mean, have you ever tried to do anything under the bonnet with a modern car? It’s all so disposable, sealed in, proprietary and definitely not repairable. I’m so sad I can remember setting the points gap on my car, or the dwell angle? Anybody remember what the dwell angle was? But back to the point… In those days when a spade was a spade (my early teenage years and before), I used to be a radio amateur. I’d have a nice Yaesu 100 watt rig on HF (that’s shortwave to you) and a couple of transverters on 70cm and 2m (that’s a box that takes the IF output from the HF rig and ‘transverts’ it onto 144Mhz or 433Mhz for local VHF or UHF access. … oh how this is so easy to digress. Anyhow, after getting married and having kids (and moving to Cyprus) I let my amateur license lapse, and that was the end of that (or so I thought). So I bought this Picolario device for my model plane last week. It’s a device that transmits real time telemetry from the model aircraft on UHF to a receiver so that I can tell what the model is doing. Being inquisitive by nature I realised that the glider was transmitting on an amateur band using a very low power (10mw) transmitter.  …and that got me thinking. So I called up OFCOM the radio licensing authority here in the UK and asked them about my old amateur license. Not only did I get it back with my original call sign, but for a further 20 quid I get to keep it for life and no longer have to renew it annually.Now how cool is that? So I’ve been scanning eBay for bargains, and pretty soon there’ll be a couple of odd looking aerials going up on the house, then I’ll be back. So watch out for Golf Four Mike India Hotel (G4MIH) around the Cheshire area. Tutt, tutt. And you thought I was sad before this? Now you know! Dave Eff G4MIH (dah dah dit, dit dit dit dit daah, dah dah, dit dit, dit dit dit dit) |
Answer; Yes. Drop me an email (use the contact me link).