This time last week I was at in the bar at the Wyboston Lakes Centre, Bedfordshire along with Iain (M0PCB) enjoying a beer or two before calling it a night and getting some sleep before the lecture streams for the HFC07 began.
Travelling to the HFC this year was easy had to change in London to St Neots (the closest train station) then a short taxi ride to the Centre. Time wise it took about 2 hours actual travel time and about an hour waiting for connections in London.
Saturday arrived and it was time to find the lectures which interested us the most these being
- HF Contest Forum
- Online IOTA System
- Woleai Atoll
- Software Defined Radio
- Antennas for Contesting
- Micro-DXpeditioning
The HF contest forum provided an update about what’s happening in the contest scene in the UK regarding the RSGB contests, WRTC in Russia and also the contest page in the Society magazine. We then went to Dom’s talk about the new IOTA system which provided a nice introduction on how to use the system to claim scores. It was nice to see that you can now upload logs from the IOTA contests to get credits!
In the afternoon Iain and I attended the talk about software defined radios which provided some technical background to how they actually work and some of it even made sense after doing audio modules at University! We then took a short break to drink some beer and do some networking with others attending the event.
To end the day we attended the Micro-DXpeditioning talk by G3SXW which both Iain and myself found a bit more interesting as we’re both not in the position to spend thousands of pounds on DX holidays to sit in the sun for 4 weeks although we’d both like to be able to.
The Gala Dinner was most enjoyable great food and good company on the Cambridge Wireless Society/WWYC table, we did well in the first round of the dinner quiz on map pictures but in the final round we failed due to a stupid question on CQ zones but we wont talk about that to Dom (M0BLF).
We then carried on into the evening drinking some more beer; we did have one annoyance with the new venue that the bar closed at 00:00 which affected the amount of beer we consumed why cant it stay open longer? At around 1:30am we all headed off to are rooms.
Sunday morning arrived far too soon Iain and myself really didn’t want to get up, we didn’t manage it in the end and at 8:45am we where eating a full English breakfast! Before heading for Sundays lectures
- IOTA DXpeditions
- 3B7C Video
- ZL8R Raoul Island DXpedition
- Countering Deliberate QRM
- VU7RG Lakshadweep
Weekend Recap
Looking back at the weekend I’ve got to say I had a brilliant time and it provided an opportunity to meet up with friends and make some new ones at the same time. The lecture streams were excellent although I hope next year they book some of the bigger rooms as some talks had standing room only.
As for next year I can’t wait although I’m not sure what my circumstances will be, as I’ll have finished work and hopefully be in fulltime employment.
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