Amateur Radio |
Computers |
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In addition, I like listening to a wide range of music including classical and jazz, in fact almost anything that's 'musical'. I also like watching motor sport, good drama and documentaries on TV, travelling when I can afford it, and misbehaving with the opposite sex. However, I haven't necessarily listed my favourite activities in order of preference!
I've been interested in 'wireless', thanks to my Dad, since I was about 7 years old. Remember Dan Dare and the Ovaltineys on Radio Luxembourg? If you do, you're probably older than you'd care to admit! At first I played with safe stuff like crystal sets, and then progressed to single valve receivers complete with HT and LT batteries. By the time I was about 11, transistors were beginning to appear on the surplus market and I started experimenting with them. Since then I've spent countless hours tinkering with projects from publications like Wireless World, Practical Wireless, and 'Twenty Circuits using Microalloy Transistors' written by a certain Clive Sinclair. Yes, that one. I wish I still had some of the old radios I pulled to bits as a youngster 'cos they'd be worth a bit now!
I started to listen to short wave broadcasting and eventually stumbled across strange-sounding signals that I couldn't understand. They sounded like speech but were unrecognisable. I discovered that they were single sideband transmissions and, having obtained a receiver that could resolve SSB, I started to listen-in. I'd discovered Amateur Radio and I could hear people chatting to each other from all over the world. I found it so interesting that I resolved to become an Amateur myself one day. Girlfriends and things got in the way for a number of years so it wasn't until 1973 that I got my class 'B' Amateur licence, followed a couple of years later by a class 'A' licence with my current call sign G4FIK. It horrifies me to think that I've been licensed for over 30 years - how Tempus fugit!
Nowadays I mostly use my radio to keep in touch with local friends (within about 50 miles) on the 70 cms and 23 cms bands. I have equipment that's capable of world-wide communications, but I prefer the good quality and quiet background obtainable on UHF/FM. I also prefer talking to people who share my interests. I operate from my car on 70 cms, and I often carry a small hand-held transceiver when I'm away from home.
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My Standard C710 'Handie'
This is an amazing little radio that transmits on the 144MHz, 432MHz and 1296MHZ bands, and has extended receiver coverage (with a few gaps) between 100MHZ and 1320MHz. The power source is 3 AA batteries. |
The word 'radio' in 'Amateur Radio' is a bit misleading nowadays because the hobby covers such a wide range of activities, including television, computer networking via radio, satellite communications and much more. There are far too many aspects to the hobby to list here, and I see no point in duplicating information that's already available elsewhere. There are links to much more info under 'Amateur Radio' on my links page.
I'm often asked by people who aren't interested in computers, "What do you actually do with it"? I usually point out that I communicate with friends world-wide on the Internet, and that I can do all my normal correspondence on it etc., but I suppose the main reason I play with these wretched devices is that I actually enjoy it. After all, that's basically what a hobby is - a way of passing time pleasantly. If it's productive or profitable as well, then fine, but enjoyment is the main reason anyone takes up a hobby. However, with the inherent problems associated with Mr. Gates' operating systems I suppose 'masochism' might be a better way of describing the pleasure I get from computing, but I like a challenge!
I just upgraded my system (again) to a 2800 MHz CPU, 512 Mb RAM, MX4 video adapter, 360 gigabytes on three hard drives, DVD Rewriter, CD Rewriter and a floppy drive. All this is assembled in a midi tower case and connected to a 17 inch TFT monitor, a scanner, inkjet and laser printers. It's not the latest and up-to-datest kit, but it does everything I want, and it should keep me happy for a while.
I have several other machines that I've built from the bits left over after repeated upgrades in the past. If the old machines were worth anything I'd probably sell some of them, but second-hand computers are as near worthless as makes no difference, and I can't bear to throw anything away! I have a small home network, more for experimenting than out of any need, but it has been instructive to set it up and I can play computers anywhere in the house now.
I'm not a game player, apart from the basic Windows card games and the like, but I do enjoy Flight Simulators. I also get a lot of entertainment from experimenting with sound and graphics. I've amazed a few of my relatives with what can be done to old, faded photographs with a scanner, some photo editing software and a colour ink jet printer. One valuable lesson I've learned from this is that scanner and printer 'specmanship' can be a waste of money for the average user. It's all very well saying that your scanner can do 9600 by 9600 pixels, but have you seen the size of an image file at that sort of resolution scanned from a small photo? Also, you're just wasting resources if your picture wants to print at a finer resolution than your printer can manage. Finally, unless you use highly expensive super quality paper, ink spread (bleed?) in the paper surface is the main limiting factor to print resolution.
Whilst on the subject of printers I'd like to record my disgust at the price of printer ink. I have an Epson printer and if I buy ink at the maker's prices it costs between 10p and 20p per black-and-white print! In fact it's less than �10 more to buy a new printer than it is to replace the ink cartridges - a ridiculous situation. Fortunately there are many suppliers of 'clone' cartridges at a fraction of Epson's price so it isn't too bad and I like to be able to print in colour sometimes. The laser printer is much cheaper to run at �39 or less for a toner cartridge with a capacity of about 2500 pages of text. I haven't tried refilling a toner cartridge yet but that should only cost about �15, and there are 'clone' cartridges available at about the same price.
Nowadays a good digital camera is within reach of just about anyone although still more costly than a film camera for equivalent features. I am sure that digital photography is never going to replace traditional silver-based film for the finest quality, but unless you want to do huge enlargements a digital camera costing a lot less than �200 will provide you with more-than-adequate results. I have a Fuji with a 2 Megapixel CCD sensor that gives a maximum resolution of 1600 by 1200 pixels. That's about 50% bigger than my screen resolution of 1024x768 so you can imagine the quality is adequate for prints of up to A4 size. The convenience of instant results and the ability to preview pictures and delete unwanted ones before downloading them to a PC, justify the initial cost - to me anyway - and I no longer use silver based film.
I'm no musician but I enjoy listening to music and experimenting with MIDI files. The results obtainable from a cheap wave table sound card are truly amazing when the MIDI file is well written. I've downloaded some really good stuff from the newsgroup alt.binaries.sounds.midi and even the not-so-well sequenced files can provide interesting practice, rearranging things to sound more natural and realistic. There are some amazing midi sequencing software packages available and I only wish I could play a keyboard so that I could make my own arrangements. There just aren't enough spare hours in the day!
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