Cretan Blog-February 2015

Greetings again. It was really good to catch up with some of you last month at the Lunch and Club Meeting. The person most pleased to see me was, of course, John, ‘DJI, as he deftly removed money from my wallet.

Avast mistake
As one gets older, what seem like simple things to the younger generation, turn out to be huge problems for all of us older than 25. To my mind, the biggest of all these problems is anything to do with computer software. As you know, computers and I have this ‘Hate – Hate’ relationship.

I hate them and they hate me right back. I think it is to do with the instructions, or, basically, the total lack of them.

Why is it assumed that any user of a computer (and here I include eyepads, idiotphones and weather stations – see below) have a built-in ability to know what to do without being told, have an understanding of the specific beast to a PhD level, have a permanent internet connection at some phenomenal speed and do not need help in any way in understanding software for the said item?

These comments are prompted by my recent experience with Avast, the anti-virus mob. I have used the free Avast thing for a number of years and have found it to be fine. However, for the past few months it has been advising me that my laptop has this and that on it and so I decided to upgrade and clean all the junk off. I could also do this to the XYL’s machine for the same cost.

I decide to upgrade. What a mistake! I click the button to upgrade. I part with money. I receive various emails and after a while I am upgraded. So far so good.
But where is the second part of the upgrade that will remove the crap from my machine? I know not. The so-called ‘instructions’ for this so-called crap removal, which looks like half a sheet of A4, show a screen shot that is nothing like anything I have and when I click on anything to try and find said icon, I am told that I am not registered with Avast – but they have just taken my money!

I try and find out where I can get help and am advised to join some forum or go on something called facebook. At seeing this, I lose it. I eventually find a ‘contact us’ button and let fly. I receive an automated reply a few hours later that says I should look at a video on something called a portal. Eh? A what? So much for them reading my letter where I state that I have limited access to the internet so cannot sit and watch bloody videos all day!

Hours became days, and days became weeks and I heard nothing from them as obviously ‘customer support’ is a totally strange concept for them. So I gave up. I found their ‘contact us’ button again and demanded my money back. I will stick to the free version in future, it is simpler. So, if you are thinking about upgrading your Avast from the free version, my advice is DON’T. It is not worth the time, money or the bloody hassle . . . It is far easier to go out and buy something from PC World!

RadCom January 2015
While in the UK I picked up my copy of January RadComic. Another ‘Curate’s Egg’ edition with it being ‘good in parts’.

As predicted the start of charging for the use of the QSL Buro has begun. OK, it is only for the heavy user at the moment but this is the thin end of the wedge and within a couple of years, the weight limits will be reduced and the charges raised. Just remember that you heard it here first. As I have said before, the chap who runs the Buro seems to be overwhelmed by the job and even enlists the help of his local Club in the sorting of cards [Dec RadComic – page 6 – Ed].

We are told that we must supply the RadComic label when sending cards but what if we want to send two or three batches of cards per month? And why, if when in the UK, I work a pile of Russians, for example, should I send my cards direct to Moscow when it is obviously cheaper to send them to Halifax? Anyway, on the positive side, it is good to see the Editor Lady keeping the income up for members of her extended family even though the ‘Getting Started in SDR’ article was (a) totally incomprehensible, and (b) totally incomprehensible.

PW
I have now subscribed to Practical Wireless and I found a copy of the January edition in a shop down in Sussex. As you know, PW is different from RadComic. It is not aloof and does not seem to talk down to you as RadComic does. Yes, some of the articles are aimed at the newer Amateur but overall there seems to be a simpler ‘feel’ to the magazine.

As you know, I do not like any of this ‘electronic QSL’ rubbish and in January PW there was a piece about Club Log. I read the article but felt that it glossed over quite a bit of stuff that you really need to know if you are thinking of using the system. Because of this I looked at the Club Log web page and found that, despite all the hype, not that many people use it. (Which is probably why in the HF column in Feb RadComic, there is a plea for RadComic readers to join and register with Club Log) Worldwide there are about 29,000 users and that if you want to use the OQRS facility i.e. you request a QSL on-line from a station that you have worked, you have to have an account on something called Pay Pal and it will cost you 2 quid a time as well as have an account with Club Log.

When I looked at the Club Log search thing – you type in what you want to find and hit the little magnifying glass – if I typed in “Paying for OQRS” the search engine thing threw up articles about different prefixes used over the past few years by various countries and not the information I actually wanted. This always instils confidence in that they know what they are doing – NOT.

Meanwhile, February PW arrived and covered eQSL and QRZ.Com. Here I learnt that QRZ has a logbook built in – I did not know that – but in order to use it, and eQSL, your logging programme really needs to throw out an ADIF file. Mine used to but seems to have stopped so even if I wanted to use the QRZ log facility, I couldn’t.

The eQSL registration page now looks very complicated whereas a few years ago you only had a couple of lines to fill in . . . Not for me . . .

LHW T3
On this last trip, I used the new Terminal 2 at Thiefrow. Not very impressed I’m afraid. Apart from the inept machines that try to check your passport on the way in, to the incomprehensible self-service check-in machines on your way out, the whole place seems designed to make you feel inferior and some form of second class citizen.

Just to add to your enjoyment, the roof leaks in several places so it is always best to carry an umbrella with you. Then there are these damned eyepad things dotted about. These are built on small stands so that people can have 20 free minutes to check their email etc. (You get an hour free at Athens and can use your own eyepad thing or your own laptop)

Once again, there are no instructions on what to do with the things. I stood and looked at one – the words on it were extremely small. But I managed to see the word ‘email’ and so with trepidation tried to hit the screen at that point.

No luck. The area you have to hit is so small that anyone over the age of 3 has too larger fingers. I got a display that made no sense at all and so I hit the screen again and somehow managed to get back to the start screen where I tried again. No luck once more and so I walked away.

However, about an hour latter while wandering about, I came across another bunch of these stupid things and being a glutton for punishment, I tried again.
By using my little finger and only barely touching the screen, I jumped to the Yahoo mail sign-in page. I was impressed! Pity then that there was no keyboard to type in your name and password so you could not go any further! What a waste of bloody time!

W&S Wx station
While in the UK I picked up a small WX station from W&S, model W-8683. No rain gauge, no wind recorder or direction thing, but just the basic WX station. This is confusing the hell out of me as even after two days it tells me that the pressure is something like 9874 (it has stayed at this figure for over 48 hours) which is a lot higher than I would expect, unless I was on Venus or somewhere like it. Despite what it says on the box, I cannot get it to receive the standard time signals and the instructions are not very clear on how to set the time yourself. However, more by luck than judgement I eventually managed to change the time but the day of the week and month are still wrong, as is the year.

There are bands of black moving across the bottom of the screen under the heading ‘Pressure History’ and it has been doing this for two days now. There is nothing about this in the instructions and according to the piece of paper that came with the device, pressure is measured in 0hPa or 2hPa or 4hPa or even 5hPa. What are these? I always thought that pressure was measured in Milibars . . .

Oh, and the weather ‘forecasting’ bit shows that this evening at 10.00pm, it will be sunny.

Looks like another piece of junk from Watson then . . .

QRO
The good news this month is that the linear is repaired and back in the shack so I am now causing decent QRM again. Actually I am back to having at least one ‘normal’ CW QSO a day. None of your ‘599 PSE QSL’ type QSOs but proper, normal chats . . .  Good stuff.

Greek Election
You may have heard that we had an election out here the other week. Good thing about it was that here you vote on a Sunday so there is no need to close schools down for the day. I do not do politics but, as with all counties, the opposition can say what they like until they get into power and then they find out that they can’t always fulfil the promises they made ‘on the stump’.

Thought the BBC coverage both on BBC World (always crap) and t’internet was biased towards Syriza and did not give a balanced view. If you clicked on the “Who’s who” link on their news page, you only got four people and not the nine that were up for the job.

But the first thing that will ‘hit the fan’ over here will be from the Greek Tie Manufacturers. You may have noticed that our new Prime Minister never wears a tie and this past few days have seen 90% of his male cabinet colleagues threw their ties away so that they can also ‘look like one of the workers’.

Can’t see that happening in the UK prior to your election in the next couple of months. . .

RadCom February 2015
Feb RadComic arrived the day this was being sent to Deez and a quick look revealed the usual mixture. Skelton’s 10m rig looks to be very interesting but that was about the highlight of the magazine. The Editor Lady keeps up the family income again with two articles by G4WNC, one of which is just basically a lift from Practical Wireless a couple of months ago.

The ‘Getting Started in Contesting’ piece was aimed far too high to the first-time contester. I mean, why start by mentioning that ‘..if you have a SteppIR or something similar..’? Some of the information given was ok but, as I said earlier, it was not aimed at the chap who wants to find out about contesting. It is also stated that SD is freeware. It is for RSGB contests but if you want to use it in, say, the Russian DX, you have to pay twenty five quid. It also failed to mention that WinTest, when registered at 50 Euro, only works for one call but with N1MM (free) you can use as many as you want.

Dodd’s antenna piece was just another re-run article (When is this guy going to be put out to grass?) from 40 years ago and who in their right mind would wander up some snow covered hill to work four people on 2m FM? Mountain Goat? Mountain idiot more like.

Time for a cold one.

Yammas!

Dick. SV0XBN.