more Hamfest camping preparations

In the last week I have replaced the ink in my printer meaning I have been able to print off the form for the National Hamfest camping booking, it is part filled in though I should be able to fill it out fully today, however in light of this I am looking into buying what I need for the 2-night camping.

So first and foremost I will need a tent, that is a work in progress though I have found an ideal one from Go Outdoors for just shy of £100 that has exactly what I need, a rearmost sleeping area with a canopy area at the front where a small table or two can be placed, next are cooking facilities, perhaps it is possible to get these items from B&M for as cheap as possible, the stove, the pots and pans, a kettle (I am not going without tea), gas, utensils and a camping table, I have my mini fridge to store milk and other things that need refrigeration over the course of the 2 days.

A generator is required for electricity during the day (my mini fridge should run off the jump starter at night (though when I measured it's DC current draw this may be for only a few hours) and run off the generator by day, which will also charge the jump starter), the selected generator has an output of 2.2kW which is more than enough to run my radio power supplies and the fuel tank is rated at 15 litres capacity with an 8 hour run time, as I am aware of a petrol station near the showground I will fill fuel cans near the site rather than drive the whole way with filled petrol cans in the boot of the car, the generator may have fuel in it from initial testing as I plan to do that on or soon after delivery of this unit, and because it uses the blue CEE socket rather than a traditional mains socket then a flylead is required, Go Outdoors sell a long lead fitted with the same type of MCB as a house breaker box, a mains conditioner is also required as generators aren't always a clean and stable output.

And in the last 24 hours my Intermediate licence came through so I can now up my power to 50 watts on most bands and have access to bands I didn't have access to before, and I've pretty much configured everything including the FTM-400XDE in the car, all that involved was writing a pre-prepared file to an SD card (after updating the callsign in the file) and doing a restore.


73 de 2E0EIJ