[SOC] Monthly Stats for List: SOC

[Paul Bartlett]

Bah Humbug!
>
> Looking at the stats below it tells me a conservative beat a liberal [once
> again]. But only very narrowly.
>
> Claude are you sure these statistics aren't skewed in favour of the
> monopolistic, capitalist, war mongering classes who wish to oppress us
peace
> loving socialist left who simply want to get on with life.
>
> One could mention these people recently acquiring call signs. Comrades
Unite!
>
> It's a capitalist plot. Today M3CRQ, tomorrow the world. It's a plot for
world
> domination.
>
Anyhow, if I hadn't stoked up a bit of controversy and thus was forced to
defend
myself (cunning ploy...) I'd have come in at number 4. Tops.

Anyway, on to more important and weighty matters. I've been a bit quiet the
last
24 hours or so because I've done the 250 mile round trip drive to my mate
(also Paul)
in deepest West Wales.

As I may have mentioned to one or two of you, he is a purveyor of the very
best
second hand ex-military kit. (Ok, he's 'clag' merchant.) On hearing of my
predicament
of not having a tuning knob to twiddle on my HF RX, he immediately offered
to
replace it with one equipped with such a device. Very generous since he
supplied
the original ;-)

I'm now the proud keeper (and maybe even owner) of a receiver similar to my
previous
one but with a large, black and heavy twiddler in the middle of the front
panel. It's
also got nice big red numbers that change when you turn the black thing.

We fired it up last night and this morning and explored various bands using
Digipan
for PSK31. Last night we copied clear QSO's on 80m from Italy, Spain,
Portugal,
Argentina and Germany. This morning on 15m was Russia, Italy (again -
twice), Bellorus
and a few more that I missed. Great fun! Loads of PSK31 activity on 15m this
mroning.

If anybody's interested, I'll send a picky of the RX which describes itself
(on the front
panel) as a 'Vigilant SR532' . Has to be direct though 'cos SOC strips
attachments - which I discovered to my chagrin when the punchline of a joke
got
deleted.If anybody's heard of it please let me know. I have no documentation
and
google's completely deaf on the mattter. I'm told it's a pretty rare beast.

I also returned with an ex-mil kevlar strengthened long-wire (conveniently
marked
for various bands), a handful of very nice gold-plated BNC-SNB bulkhead
connectors (for the spec-an project outlined in Ian's pages) and an old RF
board from some piece of clag containing no less than 5 SBL-1s, three
PSC2-1's
(which I have yet to identify), misc toroids and half a dozen SNB PCB
mounting
sockets. And a pocketful of porcelain eggs. We also had a very nice curry
and
some Arran single malt.

Altogether a most satisfactory 24 hours.

Paul M3CRQ SOC#529 :*)