Terry Baldwin's Blog

Picture No 12

Today’s picture reminds me that Christmas is a distant memory. Only Gaynor’s homemade Christmas wreath decaying in the garden serves me as a reminder of Christmas.

Two images today.

Picture No 11

This evening I was sorting out the many pictures that I have saved on my hard disk. I found this image of a rainbow and it immediately reminded me of summer.

Picture No 10

The weather has been terrible for the last couple of days, so I haven’t had much of a chance to get out with the camera. I managed to take a photo of another bird on our bird feeders.

Picture No 9

I popped home at little bit early from work and notice there was a very small Robin feeding from all the sunflower hearts that had fallen down from the feeders that we put out for the other birds.

Picture No 8

I’ve had to cheat for todays picture, I used my iPhone to take a picture of the camera that I’m using to take the picture for the Blog.

The camera that I’m currently using to take the pictures for my Blog is an Olympus OM-D E-M1 a Micro Four Thirds Digital camera, the lens is a 12-40mm f 1:2.8 PRO lens.

https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympus-om-d-e-m1

Picture No 7

My parents have always had dogs, but we have always had cats, more recently one breed in particular.

Meet Matilda or shortened to Tilly our pedigree Bengal female cat.

Picture No 6

Today’s picture is a change of subject.

Another interest I have is motorbikes, both old and new.

Picture No 5

In picture No 3 and 4 we discussed the four traditional different modes of communication. Below is a picture of a mode switch on a transceiver. Transceiver is term used for a radio that can transmit and receive as opposed the radio your radio that you listen to Radio 4, which is purely a receiver.

1980’s 2M all mode Transceiver showing the Mode switch with LSB, USB, CW, AM and FM positions. To the left of the Mode switch is the microphone socket.

This Blog is also supposed to encourage me to take better pictures with a digital camera, instead of relying on my iPhone. What I have noticed is that before I took the picture I should have cleaned the subject matter !.

It’s only day five, hopefully my Blogging and picture taking will improve, well that’s the hope.

Picture No 4

Yesterday we spoke about Morse code. Morse code is one of the ways that radio amateurs communicate with each other. Morse code is often referred to as CW or Continuous wave. Another method that amateurs communicate with each other is using a microphone. There are three methods of communicating using a microphone and they are;

Single Side Band (SSB) split into either Upper Side Band (USB) or Lower Side Band (LSB)

Frequency Modulation (FM)

Amplitude Modulation (AM)

I’ll describe CW, SSB, FM and AM in more detail in future Blogs.

Icom hand microphone

Picture No 3

Some of you may or may not know that I have held a full UK Amateur Radio licence for over 40 years. I’m going gradually to talk about the hobby in my Blog and start to create a webpage about my interest in Amateur Radio.

Today I’m going to briefly cover Morse Code.

Morse Code what is it ?. Morse code was invented during the 1830’s by Samuel F.B. Morse. Morse Code uses an arrangement of dots, dashes and spaces to represent letters of the alphabet, numbers and punctuation marks. Below are two examples of Morse keys. The key on the right is a straight key, you press the black knob up and down to send the dots and dashes (or dits and dahs). The key on the left is a paddle key, you press the left red paddle to get a dit and the right red paddle to get a dah.

Two Begali Morse keys. On the left is a Begali Simplex paddle key and on the right is a Begali Blade straight key.