The Clarendon Way walk raises money for Naomi House Hospice.  It’s a fun event to help organise and RAYNET provides the safety comms every year.

100′ Versatower on a trailer, shown fully upright and guyed here with the Disco to scale.   Three hours later it’s flat on the trailer and ready to take “home”.

The two contenders – that several people seem to debate, are the Cobb barbecue and the Cadac grill. They are different animals – and ultimately I want both for different reasons.

The Cadac is a gas bbq, with space, from the reviews, to cook burgers and sausages for eight people. You can stick a pan on it, and it comes with flat (bacon and egg) and ribbed (steaks) cooking surfaces. It’s a portable gas barbie, basically.

The Cobb is a portable oven. Charcoal fired, and popularised by the “Hairy Bikers”, it’s a good way of cooking a proper roast or similar out in the field. But it’s not something that can be used for quick grilling of steak, or really for a quick breakfast. If you want to do a roast in the field, it’s the equipment of choice.

So which did I go for?

Ultimately, the Cadac.

It’s a bit cheaper, but the selling point is that it’s really for quick cooking. Grilling a steak, cooking breakfasts, perhaps roasting some veggies. It’s the weapon of choice for the next two events.

I’d like to add a Cobb as well, but funds aren’t unlimited. So I’ll stick with the extra grill space for now.

RAYNET assist in Lake District marathon

As part of the theme, Bletchley provided an Enigma machine as well as a number of other variations, some of where were in use as late as the 1970s.

The collision, of course, is that the Enigma messages were sent via morse code.  Thinking about being able to send and received encrypted messages – just random strings of letters – and the whole process of using the machine to code and decode them, gives a whole new level of respect for the difficulties in communication just 60 years ago.

So what have I done in the last 7 weeks?

• Thames Valley 4×4 Club at Avon Dasset
• A weekend in York
• A summer party out on the Solent
• 10 days in Slovenia on holiday
• The Marvellous 2008 Music festival at Wellington Country Park
• Passed my intermediate radio licence exam and got a new callsign – 2E0XAC

Oh, and working as well.  No wonder I don’t have time to blog.

Saturday was spent on the final part of the course for my Intermediate Radio Licence – exam on Wednesday!  That was a fairly demanding day talking a lot about the internals of radio transmitters and receivers, then I got home and loaded up the Dakar.

Almost unheard of for me, I left at about 7:45 am on Sunday morning to make the trip up to Avon Dassett, just outside Banbury, to join the Thames Valley 4×4 Club for the day.  I wanted to get there early, since I had an evening appointment and needed to be back in time.

And Sunday evening was spent in Woking watching Pam Ann – wonderfully funny, and thoroughly crude!

This was the operating base of KM1CC, one of a number of global stations set up in celebration of International Marconi Day. The Coast Guard no longer use the building and it’s now maintained by the National Parks Service, but it made an excellent operating spot despite poor DX conditions. We clocked up over 350 contacts during the day, of which I contributed 10 despite poor band conditions and much of 20 metres being swamped by the Florida QSO party.

I learned a lot, and I’d like to thank Barbara KB1GSO and everyone from the Marconi Radio Club for their kind hospitality and the privilege of operating their special event station – in this day and age it’s a rare treat to walk into a room full of strangers and be treated like an old friend. Contacts I made were with WB4RRD, WA4KCN, KG4TPZ, W9EHU, WA9WNE, KF4OQB, KU4MT, KE4BZJ, K9DLC, WX4DON, and K8EMF. Thank you all for responding to my calls.