An AI summary of tonight’s net, plus the following image:
This week’s Essex Ham Monday Night Net on GB3DA was hosted by Dorothy, M0LMR, with a warm, chatty evening that wandered happily between Christmas prep, radio shacks, military vehicles, gas leaks, pets and a bit of AI wizardry for good measure.
Dorothy and Rob, M7HBZ, opened with talk of Christmas presents and hampers. Dorothy’s been assembling Christmas hampers for family, adding fun little bits like Christmassy glasses and candles and getting most of the shopping done before the December rush. Both agreed that buying for children is easy – toys, trucks and trinkets – but adults are much harder, as most of us just buy what we need during the year. Rob’s made it simple for his family: beer and chocolate liqueurs keep him happy, especially as his birthday falls on Christmas Eve. Dorothy is equally straightforward: she’s delighted with Dove or Nivea “smellies”, while Richard favours novelty T-shirts with ham-radio and humorous slogans.
The conversation moved on to Christmas dinner and home life. Dorothy counts herself lucky: Richard always cooks Christmas dinner, a tradition that started after a disastrous family meal in his younger days. Rob also insists on cooking the festive meal at his QTH, declaring he’s the best cook in the house. That led neatly into a discussion about shacks and staying warm. Rob operates from a corner of his insulated but cluttered garage, surrounded by tools, a motorbike, a model aeroplane, a lathe, Clansman military radios and a handy stock of beer. Dorothy and Richard’s station is in the corner of their living room on a purpose-built desk, home to an impressive collection including an IC-9100, FT-857, TS-2000, IC-7100, Flex 3000, and an FT-817 in the summerhouse for ISS work, plus various handhelds. HF at home is tricky due to noise on their half-size G5RV, so they mostly use FT8 from home and head up to “the hill” with an IC-7100, drive-on plate and a folding cobweb antenna for voice work.
Rob described his fascination with Clansman ex-military gear: a hefty 320 manpack and a 353 vehicle set, relics of the late-Cold-War era. They’re heavy, limited and hardly practical by modern standards, but he enjoys the history and occasional dedicated Clansman nets. Rory, M0NFJ, joined from Epping with a simpler living-room setup: a Yaesu FT-450D for HF, a rock-solid CRT 2m/70cm set from a French manufacturer, and an inverted-L / long-wire arrangement matched across the bands. He admitted he hasn’t done much HF recently and is also pondering a future Land Rover purchase, asking for tips on which modern models and engines to avoid.
Steve, M7XSR, checked in from a very cold shack at the bottom of his garden, relying on a hat and an IC-980-style radio small enough to hide under his monitor, plus a couple of QYT mobiles and an X50. He’s gathering bits for HF, including something like a DX Commander on a drive-on base. Steve shared stories of his ex-army Land Rover days, towing caravans for people and buying from military disposal yards, and later mentioned a brief kitchen drama when frozen onions hit hot oil and produced an impressive flare-up.
Gas leaks became an unexpected theme. Mick, M7TRU, arrived late after gas engineers had been hunting for a reported leak near his bungalow. That prompted Dorothy to recall a serious leak years ago at her own house, where gas had been seeping in via an unsealed duct; a visiting engineer discovered dangerously high levels that could have caused an explosion if a light had been switched on. Rory added the tale of a neighbour whose hob gas ignited and blew the roof tiles off at 5.30am, amazingly leaving her unhurt. Rob recounted snagging a yellow gas pipe with a digger while replacing a driveway – which triggered a full-scale response with probes, cordons and the fire brigade, followed by an £800 bill despite no fracture. Mick also mentioned a BT manhole quietly filling with gas over time. Richard chipped in with his long-running saga of being chased for gas bills in a house with no meter, even to the point of police attendance and a court case he eventually won.
Later in the evening, Neil, M0NMT, reported on gas main replacement at his home and then gave a touching update on his elderly mum’s new miniature Schnauzer, who is slowly settling in after the loss of her previous dog. That led naturally into wider pet chat: Rob spoke about bringing back ten cats and a dog from Dubai and the destruction wrought by the cats, while Dorothy talked about her dog Xena and her son’s pebble-eating dog, plus local tales of dogs swallowing stones or getting wedged between gate bars and needing fire brigade rescue.
Audio tricks and AI rounded things off. Mick shared a simple tip of using cardboard to “horn-load” top speakers to improve weak signals, while Rob uses a short length of 40mm PVC pipe over his radio speaker to focus the sound towards him. There was a brief debate about headphones: some prefer them, especially late at night, while Dorothy feels they look uninviting at public events. Neil asked how the AI net reports are produced; Pete, M0PSX, joined near the end to explain that he records the entire net, feeds the MP3 into one tool for transcription and another for the written and graphical summary, with minimal editing, as an experiment in what AI can do. He also mentioned that the Essex Ham forum has been revamped into a more traditional “old-school” style.
Dorothy closed by thanking everyone who joined in, including short-wave listeners, and expressing the group’s appreciation to the Essex Repeater Group for the use of GB3DA. The net wrapped up with warm 73s all round and the promise of another sociable Monday evening next week.
