England 2001
Operating as M/4S7AB from Cambridge University G6UW, England
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Article Summary
The visit to UK was planned as a summer trip. Major motivation was the invitation by my university batchmates who are PhD students in the Cambridge university. They wanted me to come there and spend few days with them.
I was living in Stockholm,Sweden at that time
Article Highlights
- Meeting G3ZAY Martin
- Visiting G6UW Cambridge Uni
Kamal Edirisinghe
4S7AB / KA5MAL
Oct 2001
Having More than 35 years of experience in the Field of Amateur Radio, I have published many articles in prestigious international publications like, QST, CQ-DL, NCJ, Six-News etc.. Here in this web site, these write-ups are intended to give you knowledge about my designs and projects related to the hobby. The articles about foreign HAM activities are intended to share my experience.
- Full Solar Powered Radio Station
- SO2R and Multi-Multi Compatible
- Operate on All Bands/Modes/SATS
- DXCC #61,271
- IOTA AS-003, CQ-22, ITU-41
But as usual, I wanted to operate ham radio from England with my own callsign. I was able to prepare the groundwork in obtaining the callsign M/4S7AB within few days with the help of the Licensing Authority of UK. They are really helpful and efficient. In the meantime, I was able to get hold of the Cambridge University club station G6UW members. Martin Atherton G3ZAY who is a senior member and a ex-student of the university came up with a good plan for me to operate on the 8th Saturday evening from G6UW.
As planned, I was able to visit G6UW with Martin and operated a good pile up on 15m towards USA with my brand new callsign M/4S7AB. Among the Q’s were some whom I have wkd before from 4S7. It was fun. After spending about 1 1/2 hours in the club stn, we were travelling around the suburbs of Cambridge and visited some places with technological importance. That evening ended with a traditional Dinner at a famous restaurent used only by the students and staff of the Cambridge University called the University Centre.
On Sunday the 9th, my friends have organized a trip to the famous Warwick castle which is about 70 km west of cambridge. This is a very interesting place to see which gives a good picture of the days of ‘Robin Hood’. Also it includes a museum which illustrates the culture of those days. Then we went to the birth place of Shakespere which was on our way back to Cambridge. In fact we lost our way 2 times even though we had very good road maps. There were plenty of road signs but at timesthey were too much so that you can be easily mislead.
Few more days were spent on visiting London (only the tourist attractions), shopping and bicycling around Cambridge. This was my first visit to UK and I had a very good impression on many things. There were so many similarities between the architecture of house building between Sri lanka and England so that I felt like riding the bicycle in a Colombo suburb at times. Vehicles are driven from the left side unlike in Sweden where I came from. Most of all, everything makes sense when the people speak English, I mean very good English and they are very friendly and knows how to smile.
I really enjoyed my short 5 day visit to UK and surely this is not going to be the last one.
