Alan Wyatt I just want to say..

Candlelit vigil for moth

13 June, 2010

a dead moth
The moth died tragically shortly after England’s 1-1 draw with USA in the World Cup 2010 Group C match, when it flew in under a pan which was sitting atop a lit gas ring. Ironically, the moth bounced twice before the disastrous incident, in a strange coincidence relating to the USA shot which bounced twice before England’s own disaster.

A 1 second silence will be held before the next World Cup match in honour of the moth.

A cremation will take place during preparation of Sunday breakfast, which will feature a traditional fry-up. A wake will follow with food and beverages.

A poorly planned tribute, a candlelit vigil, which will take place Sunday evening for moths to pay their respects, is not expected to draw many moths due to the risks involved, though it is believed they will change their minds once the flame is lit.

Policies not Personalities

6 April, 2010

I took this online survey which lets you select from a choice of party policies in various areas, such as Crime, Environment and Education, etc. The policies are displayed without the name of the party which is proposing them. I was surprised by the results, but don’t think it will change the way I intend to vote. I’ll probably try it again and see if it makes a difference.

It’s a handy tool for the upcoming UK General Election on 6th May 2010.

So which party’s policies do your ideas most closely match? Conservative? Labour? Liberal Democrats? Green? Other? Find out by taking the survey by following the link below..

VoteForPolicies.org.uk

CQ CQ DE M6DXU

11 March, 2010

I registered my amateur radio Foundation licence callsign today: M6DXU.

The Foundation licence callsign is denoted by the ‘M6′, and the 3 letters are a personal choice. DXU is in honour of a relation, Robert Lever, who is now a ‘silent key’. Bob, as he was known, was a radio amateur from pre-1950 and had served in the RAF during WW2. Bob’s callsign was G2DXU. G is the old callsign pre-fix for Great Britain. Sadly those have all been used now and new licences mainly begin with M.

At the moment I only have a Kenwood TH-F7E dual band handheld radio for VHF/UHF but I’m looking forward to getting on HF and making some international contacts. This could become a rather expensive hobby.

For those not familiar with ham radio lingo, here is an explanation of the above title: CQ (seek-you) is a calling code, DE is French for ‘from’, and M6DXU is the station calling.

As in ‘text talk’, words can be shortened (and the kids of today think they thought of it all first!) and there are abbreviations and acronyms. DX means long distance, and U can be a shorter version of ‘you’. So the DXU in the callsign has a meaning of ‘DX’ ‘U’, or ‘long-distance call’ ‘you’. Quite appropriate for a method of communication that pre-dates the Web, email, mobile phones and cheap international telephone calls.

73 (Best wishes)
M6DXU