OBSERVATIONS FROM SCOTLAND                           09_September 2009                               GM1SXX

The 'bear' is on the air!

'All the nines' brought some more excitement. One of our club members passed her foundation license, at the age of seven, catapulting her into the record books as Scotland's youngest licensed radio amateur.  She's Stephanie, nickname 'bear' and now holds the foundation call MM6BER.   I had, along with other club members, the privilege of talking to her on the air on 9/9/09 while she was out with her family on the Gleniffer braes having a barbeque.  Eddie 2M0EDY,  Dennis MM0DNX and myself talked with her on  two metres, later moving to 20M where she sounded rather like 'Minnie Mouse' because of the combination of her high-pitched voice and the limitations of the SSB bandwidth :-)  Initially a little bit 'mic shy' she was soon rambling on about her experiences at school and how much fun she was having.  I remember asking her a week or two ago what callsign she'd like and suggesting MM6STF but she was insistent that she wanted MM6BER!  Now we know why.   On 20M the conditions were very variable with the propagation coming in 'waves'. We copied a CT1 station in Porto, Northern Portugal but unfortunately, he couldn't hear us. It would have been good for Steph to have had an international contact but the band conditions were terrible. Still.... there will be another day.  We have a club station and she can now operate from there under her own callsign.

73 Al.

GM1SXX