Paper CQ-QSO or not? (Was To UBA or not to UBA)

After my email and blogpost about the UBA and it’s paper magazine I received a reply from Rik ON7YD who said the board members of UBA are really aware of this problem and they are looking for a solution.

Because some people misuse all information about the UBA I will not get into the details of this in public.

As soon as the different possibilities have been studied the UBA will of course publish how it will react to this problem.

The least I can say is that I am happy with the emails I received from the UBA and that this matter is under study.

To UBA or not to UBA (2)

Today I received a very constructive reply from ON7YD ant ON7TK to my email concerning mainly the paper magazine of the uba.

Unfortunately some people seem to use my ‘open’ letter to stir up the war between the different radioamateur associations in Belgium.

For those who don’t agree with the things I write, you can always reply to me directly or on the blog. No need to only send emails to your friends about it.

And let me state this again: IF ALL THE ENERGY YOU GUYS HAVE PUT IN THE WAR BETWEEN THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS IN BELGIUM DURING THE LAST TEN OR FIFTEEN YEARS HAD BEEN USED FOR PROMOTING AND PROTECTING HAM RADIO IN BELGIUM, TODAY IT WOULD BE A LOT EASIER FOR ALL OF US TO PUT UP TOWERS AND ANTENNAS WITHOUT ALL THE ADMINISTRATIVE HASSLE WE GET NOW.

I’ll probably comment on the reply from ON7YD and ON7TK in a few days, I will have to think about every word I write… “Everything you say will be misquoted and used against you”

To UBA or not to UBA?

A few days ago I received an e-mail from Rik ON7YD to ask me to pay the yearly membership fee for the UBA. Since a few years they send out these e-mails a few weeks before they send out letters to all members. For those who pay before the letters are sent out they can spare some postage.

After receiving this e-mail I sent this reply to Rik ON7YD (the dutch speaking vice-president of the uba) and to Claude ON7TK (the president of the uba):

(I sent the reply in dutch but translated it here for you, in italic you find some extra explanations to help you understand)

Dear Rik,

with all due respect to those putting a lot of work in it but I think CQ-QSO (the bi-monthly printed magazine of the uba) is a huge waste of money. Continue reading To UBA or not to UBA?

Yes contesting sucks…

but I still have a lot of fun doing it!

Franki ON5ZO recently wrote a blog ‘Why contesting sucks’. And I can’t deny I sometimes have the same feelings during or after the contests.

http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Grumpy

For example, the reason why our clubstation lost one of the last fielddays probably was because our biggest competitor probably used his home station with huge beam antennas via remote control. Okay, it’s only a suspicion and we can’t prove it but… At least since this year the rules for our national fieldday have changed and now all internet and dx-cluster use is forbidden.

And no, I probably can’t win any big contest from my average station (when speaking about contest stations).

But hey you’ll ask, why do you keep doing it? Continue reading Yes contesting sucks…

To make backups or not to make backups? #update

Through my provider I received some more info about the problems on on5mf.be. After some research the conclusion was that the control panel for ALL of the websites I manage had been hacked. Someone could log in at a level even higher than mine and change settings without even getting those in the log.

But, thanks to the help of my provider, all problems have been solved and the security has been tightened.

I am now a member of ARRL

At the recent Hamradio at Friedrichshafen I decided to become a member of ARRL. This is why:

  • It’s cheaper than UBA at least if you don’t need the printed QST (this doesn’t mean I will cancel my UBA membership yet)
  • QST is way better than CQ-QSO
  • My favorite contest is the ARRL RTTY Roundup and now at least I can see my Log Checking Report (more on that in a later post)
  • At Friedrichshafen I pretty much had the same feeling when approaching the UBA booth as in previous years (see my post from 2007), still no hugs and kisses 🙂

Message for the UBA: please get rid of the paper CQ-QSO, it is a HUGE waste of valuable money. All of your members have an internet connection so PDF is ok! With the money gained you could lower the membership fees and invest some more in promoting and defending HAM radio in Belgium!

To make backups or not to make backups?

A few days ago I received the dreaded email from Google with the title: “Malware notification regarding on5mf.be”.

I won’t write all the not so nice words that I wanted to shout at that moment 🙂

But pretty recently (only 3 weeks ago) I had started making backups of my websites (this site but also my company websites www.geldhofhout.be and www.wisatrans.be) and see, this now pays off!

OK, I agree, it didn’t work at first but after the third try I could reinstall the last backup of the site and it was back up and running!

A look at www.stopbadware.org gave me some hints to tighten the security of the site a little further so hopefully we’re up and running again for a long time.