Vancouver day 1 and day 2 so far!

We have reached Vancouver after an overnight near Heathrow.
The Air Canada flight was on time and lasted just 9 hours. We left Heathrow at 11:30am and arrived here at 12:30pm. I have uprated my appraisement of Air Canada to a 6 out of 10! The food was quite edible and service acceptable. I am still of the opinion that there are far too many announcements on their flights. I think this is aggravated by everything being in English and then French. I really got fed up with the number of times the movies were interrupted. Please note, Air Canada, if anyone from the airline ever reads this.

It was raining when we arrived at Vancouver. Fortunately the rain from earlier in the day had cleared and all that was left was light showers that cleared later in the evening.

We both thought that Vancouver airport was excellent. The Rockies theme works really well. The inevitable immigration queues were exacerbated by far too few staff on duty. All those booths that were unoccupied, but probably installed for the Winter Olympics. What happened to all the staff that were on duty over winter 2009/2010?

We got a Hyundai rental car and drove into Vancouver. Fortunately the USA and Canada Tom Tom maps I had bought three years ago were still accurate and we got to the hotel without any problems.

The hotel is OK, but the room is far too small for an executive room and although there is Internet access, there is no WiFi. That really screws many of those, like me, who want to use the LAN but don't have an Ethernet port on their PC or iPAD! I'm typing this off-line in the hope that I will find WiFi access later today. Since you are reading it, obviously I did!

So, what about Vancouver?

We are in Central Vancouver, in a hotel off Howe Street. Yesterday evening we walked along Granville Street down to the Harbor Centre and up the Lookout tower. At 518 feet it is not the tallest tower we've been up, but the few is spectacular From the Burrard Inlet round through the city and False Creek, the city lights were quite stunning. Unfortunately, the top of Grouse Mountain was shrouded in low cloud, so we didn't get to see the view up there from the Lookout.

This morning has dawned wet. According to the local weather forecast on TV heavy rain is forecast for today with up to 8 inches of rain in places! Such is often the case on the pacific coast at this time of year. I suspect we will have to change our plans for today. Right now we are getting ready to go and get breakfast, whilst the rain beats on the hotel window......







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Location:Vancouver

That thin slot

I had a question about that strange piece of wave-guide in the previous post.
I am told by the owner that the item is the original 13cm parametric amplifier used for the first amateur radio EME contact. The pump oscillator is not shown.
The reason for the very narrow slit is that it provides the required low impedance match to the parametric mixer diode in the waveguide.
73 de Sam

Second test with photo, I hope

Test 2


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Location:Back Ln,,United Kingdom

Test of iPad blog

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Location:Home

Final blog of the 2010 Conference visit

Back home!
I arrived back home on Tuesday after an overnight flight from Toronto on Air Canada. Overall I give Air Canada 5 out of 10 for the experience. Not the best, but certainly not the worst airline.
They really need to pay more attention to the little things that matter to passengers. It really is not acceptable to have non-working entertainment systems on transAtlantic flights, non-reset air progress maps on two flights and constantly interupting messages on top of movies, especially in two languages! It makes it a lot worse, guys.......
When I pay top rates for flights I expect at least a meal on the 2.5 hour Jazz flight between Toronto and Dallas. OK. Moan over. On the positive side the seats were comfortable and I'll probably travel AC again later this year. Ohh, and Toronto Pearson airport is very impressive!

So, to the conference.
A great success and all-thanks to the organisers for organising a wonderful event. I learnt a lot from the many experts that were around and the time spent with SM5SBZ was really useful.

I'm pleased to say that my pre-amps acquited themselves very well in the noise figure measurements. Although the numbers didn't always agree with my own measurements or with measurements made elsewhere in Europe, they were within the expected range.

The Proceedings for the Conference are a weighty tome. They are probably the biggest set produced for any EME conference to date! There is a CD available and that is probably the best bet for anyone wishing to obtain a set of material. The organising group for the Conference (NTMS) have said they will be posting all the slide presentations on their web page. This is a great idea and valuable for a subject like EME where the results of development may mean that results submitted to be published in the proceedings are already out of date by the time of the Conference.

Oh, I did buy the Flex1500. I'm looking forward to using it and to having a 10MHz locked SDR at last. I am now planning a frequency locked 2m transverter (and maybe other bands, in due course) to use with the Flex1500. I didn't buy very much else except another 23cm -20dB Narda coupler. My free door prize was a set of ATC 0.1 to 2pF chip capacitors and a few Minicircuit level 23 mixers. Maybe for that transverter? I also brought back some replacement PCBs for my 8970A noise figure meter. Hopefully, that will solve the problem. Fingers crossed!

With the Conference now over it is time to look forward to the next one. The 2010 Conference delegates voted for it to be in Cambridge, England, in 2012. The UKuG will set up a web page to keep everyone posted on progress and let you know when you can register for what we hope will be the best EME Conference ever. Dallas , Florence, Wurzburg etc will take some beating, however..........

Thanks to everyone who has been following the blog. I hope that you enjoy the next one as well.

73 de Sam

last evening in Dallas

The Conference is over and most of the delegates are now on their way home or may already be there! I fly out tomorrow morning via Toronto.

Left with a full day to fill and with the temperatures still over 100F we decided it wasn't the weather to do much. Since Leif Ashbrink, SM5SBZ, wasn't due to fly out until late afternoon, he joined Kent, WA5VJB; Doug Quagliana, KA2UPW and I for lunch at a Chapps restaurant near the Dallas Cowboys new stadium in Arlington. There was a lot of earnest discussion about 10GHz EME signals and how best to process the dispersed audio returns.

After the meal we went for a quick look at the new stadium before returning Leif to DFW for his flight home.



I'll try to blog from one or more of the airports on my way home tomorrow.

Sam

Last day of Conference

Yesterday was just too hectic to find time to blog from the hotel. I had my talk to do, deliver a batch of preamps for measurement and talks to attend (of course).
Dave, G4HUP, and I presented the UK bid for the 2012 International EME Conference. We had a last minute competitor in the form of Japan, so the Conference went to a vote at the evening banquet.
I am extremely pleased to announce the the 2012 EME Conference will be coming to the UK. The venue will be Cambridge. 'Wireless in the DNA' and 'Walking in the footsteps of giants' were the themes of the presentation.
Dave and I would like to thank the UK uG for their support in the bid and to thank Peter Blair, G3LTF, for his encouragement in going for the Conference bid.
We have a lot of work to do before 2012. More details of the Conference will be made available soon.
One of yesterday's major events, for us, was the presentation of the Fraser Sheperd award to Joe Taylor, K1JT. The presentation was made by Dave, G4HUP, on behalf of the RSGB. The UKuG decide who the award is presented to each year.
Our hearty congratulations to Joe on winning the award in 2010. A very worthy recipient.

This is the last day of the 2010 Conference and Kent and I will be heading out to the Westin very shortly.

I will plan to blog again later today, all being well.

Sam