Update

Last Friday I did my first presentation ever. The UBA club of Diest invited me over to talk about N1MMLogger, the world’s greatest (and free!) contest software. I seem to be considered as an ‘N1MM evangelist’ in Belgium, in analogy to the software company’s evangelists. The evening went well and I had good fun. I prepared a presentation but did not rehearse or plan my talking. I didn’t want to beat it to death. I wanted to come across spontaneously and I think I did. I evaluated myself and I’m ready to give it another go. So Belgian clubs: give me a shout!
There was a friendly and enthusiastic local crowd but I expected some friends from nearby clubs to come over like they told me a while ago. I said it before and I’ll say it again: there is a lot of immobility among Belgian hams. Especially to cross club borders. I also would have liked a few more more died-in-the-wool contest operators for some interaction with the audience. The picture shows the club’s president ON7UZ and me.

The FH-bus counter jumped up two numbers this week and dropped down two notches a few days later because the OM had to cancel his plans. Net count back to zero. There was another person interested but he prefers to stay overnight. Sorry chaps, I’m NOT going through the hassle of booking hotel rooms. I think it’s already way too late for that. Every room will already be booked. Remember that there is a massive crowd landing in Friedrichshafen each year for the annual ham fair!
I finally managed to get my plan published on the UBA site. It seems my regular contact / publisher had to forward it higher up the UBA ladder. Yesterday someone informed me that it had been there for a short while but the actual info linking back to me then disappeared. He coined the term ‘sabotage’ but I wouldn’t go as far as to accuse someone higher up the UBA ladder of sabotage.