I’m sat slowly recovering from drinking far to much beer last night I thought I’d look back at 2008 which has been a rather unusual year. The shack changed somewhat with the new addition of the Yaesu FT-950 which has proven to work brilliantly and Dad (M3JFM) & myself have been making the most of all of its features.

Radio activity wise was slightly down this year, I did manage to take part in a few contests from home but fair less then I’d expected looking at the log and I can’t see this improving much in the coming months. I did manage to operate a number of stations though which included G6PZ for Marconi Day operating as GB6MD, which is a fantastic station and hope to return their for other contests in the future and I managed to help the ODARS during SSB field day as G8PX/P.

Apart from operating I was jointly awarded the Kenwood Trophy by the RSGB broad along with Paul (M0TZO) for our significant contribution to training in providing the HamTests UK website which offers mock questions for all levels of licences. HamTests has grown in activity too over the last year with 3095 who have hopefully all been able to use the site to gain their amateur radio exams, hopefully it will continue to flourish into 2009.

I also managed to wrap up my degree before the summer finishing up with a Bachelor of Science in Multimedia Technology (Web Design) gaining a first-class honours, this was an excellent achievement! Now after months of applying for jobs around the south-east of England it looks like I’m due to start full-time employment every soon.

So what does 2009 bring? who knows I’m sure it will be packed with new and interesting experiences I hope somehow I can improve my contest activity whether this is at home or contest stations.