July 2002 Edition

Contents

Welcome to the July edition of BeechLog.

First may I apologise for the late appearance of this issue. As I warned you in the last issue, I have been away on holiday during May/June, and so have not been able to find the time to write all the content! Like many other recent issues, this one has a large non-radio content, which just reflects some of the things which interest me at the time of writing! This could all be remedied if only some of you could put together something I could publish!

I had hoped to show some pictures of the GB50 event at Windsor Castle, or even have an article about how it all went. I was abroad during this so I could not do it myself. But no-one has sent me anything, and so from that I have no idea of how things went. It's not too late - there will be room in the next issue, so please take a little while to write down your experiences, and send me a picture or two (I am sure that someone took some).

Judging by the talk at club meetings, I know many of you have bought new gear, tried new techniques, or been somewhere new. So please send me something.

This month is also a busy one for me. My 10 year-old son son is almost finished at his current school, and will be off to a new one in September. There are numerous meetings to get through, all arranged to inconvenience our family! And also we are having all our outside doors and windows replaced. This latter business means clearing a space for the installers, quite difficult in our household. Last weekend was spent sawing a bed in two(!), and rerouting all the various cables that pass through our window frames. To this day, I can't quite figure out how the telephones were wired up, even though I did some of it myself. And there's TV feeder all over the place, going in and out of various rooms. There was some ethernet cable too, but not any more.

It was easy to replace the telephones with a DECT system. These operate at 1.9GHz with a maximum power of 250mW. The actual RF power of the handsets must be very much lower than this, so as to get a good battery life. They have the advantage that you can't eavesdrop by picking up a handset, and also picking one up doesn't cut off an internet connection.

Sorting the TV means drilling holes through the brickwork so I can get an RF feed upstairs, not so good.

The ethernet can be replaced by using 802.11b cards, although it seems that getting this working is not as easy as it should be. But that's another story.

Roger GØHZK, Editor