As you are aware I attended the Ripon rally for the first time this year, and there were bacon sandwiches on offer too, can't say no to that and a cup of tea, and I did not return home empty handed.
I purchased a second air-spaced variable capacitor, as I hope to get my magloop project off the ground in the next few months between now and the National Hamfest, this one is much larger than my previous one and has the capacitance and voltage ratings on the chassis, it even came with a knob fitted, great but I would prefer to remove the knob and fit a stepper motor and gearbox to do the tuning remotely (my hand would probably introduce stray capacitance), I also picked up a Pixie QRP kit that came with an enclosure for me to put together and play with, though I didn't get a Morse key.
As this rally is a small rally I spent only 2 hours there, I did see a bargain price on a Yaesu FT-817 but it needed a new battery so not quite the bargain I'd have liked so I passed it by, it was less than £300 and if the battery was in good order I'd have snapped it up straight away, plenty of Baofengs being sold as usual and an Anytone DMR radio, though at present DMR isn't a big interest to me.
I also put a £1 donation towards GB3HG as the keeper was present with the York Radio Club, as it is well deserved and will help keep HG running for I hope many years, though I completely forgot to speak to Arthur G8IMZ about when they expect System Fusion to come into service after they received the unit from Lamco in December, though obviously a repeater swap isn't straight forward.
I am now going back over the research for magnetic loops and hope to have a working one in a few weeks once I can get some copper pipe, and the seller of the capacitor did tell me one very useful piece of advice, don't use compression fittings.
73 de 2E0EIJ
