Ham Radio Operator - M0YKS

Last night I was very happy to make my first QSO with Ham Radio blogger and fellow DXer Nash JN4VWH. We have been in contact via the Internet for quite some time, so as you can imagine it was very exciting and pleasurable to finally make QSO using our radio equipment. We have both tryed listening out for each other on HF for quite a while, but the bands have not yet been open when we have both found a mutual time that is convenient for us both to play radio. With propagation not quite reliable enough to work JN4VWH the plan had to change, so we decided to use more Technology that is available to give us a helping hand. Using the Gb3YR repeater I was able to hear Nash JN4VWH coming through loud and clear via echolink through his local IRLP echolink link JE4YIZ-L. It was a real pleasure to finaly be able to speak with Nash on his new Icom 7000 using my Yaesu Ft-847 and an echolink enabled repeater and Link in England and Japan. Truly great Ham radio Technology. We had some interesting ov

SkillWeld 2008 is part of the World Skills Olympics and fortunately for myself I get the fantastic job of helping to arrange the regional final to be held at the College where I work. Thanks to a great team and the fact that we have just recently merged with Park Lane College Leeds, Park Lane College Keighley(PLCK) held a very competitive event 'SkillWeld 2008' at the fantastic state of the art Fabrication and Welding workshop based at Keighley. The various welded joints were marked and examined by the judges to extremely high standards and there was quality competition from another college taking part at Keighley. But we still managed to deliver the goods with a victorious 1st, 2cnd and 3rd place finish. Well done P.L.C.K Lads!!! The event involves using Metal Inert Gas(MIG),Manual Metal Arc(MMA) and Tungsten Inert Gas(TIG) welding processes on Mild Steel, Stainless Steel, Aluminium plate and pipe of various thicknesses. These skills also come in handy for constructing radio m