Week Nine In Which It’s Nearly EXPO Time!

Well done to the obviously well-informed and quite as daftly passionate davidcox1983 who in fact identified even more companies at the home HiFi show that have been involved in car audio than I did unbder last week’s column! He gets one of the JBL sponsored 4GB USB sticks so kindly swagged for the UK Bass King contest last year. We had some over (Oh and Baz W, yours for that Kenwood ‘tattoo’ will be finally posted out todaymurrr!)
The Saturday at the fishing show left me wiped out.. I’m all recovered now, though and keen to play some more. I have a Clarion bass box and another amplifier and all sorts more here to play with, so will be getting at the review thing.
Now, regular readers may know that I had a phase, way back, when I was thirteen, and got into CB because my mum brought some CB walkie talkies home from a USA trip. Bless her, she had no idea that the 27MHz waveband in AM was utterly illegal for anyone but the licensed to get upon in Blighty. She would have pooh-poohed it anyway. ‘Just be careful, love&;’ Trouble was, while in the USA, you went on Channel 19 to say hello, or ‘get a copy’, in the UK it was sodding channel 14 and my walkie talkie was on, yes, channel 14. So, I would say hello and always end up getting badly bollocked for hogging the breaking channel and treated with snarling derision when I revealed I was on a 4 Watt walkie talkie with ONE channel.
I later saved up and after being first denied (for sounding too posh) I was sold a real ‘rig’ at a shop in Edgware when I went back with my mate Bob, who knew them. It was the single most exciting piece of electronics I have ever owned! I even adored how it smelled when warm. The trouble I got into with my mouthy ways was hysterically funny. ‘Did you call StuntGirl a slag?’ ‘Nah mate&;’ ‘yes you did&;’ POW! Trouble is, it didn’t hurt and as I’d negotiated to be be ‘permitted to finish my burger before I left just before he thumped me, I sort of pretended a bit and then when I’d finished, he left, not me. I think he could tell the worm was gradually turning I’m bloody hard to kidnap, too&;
And I still have this fascination with random communication and now the net makes our citizen’s band the Broadband type and it’s world wide.
Trouble is, you have to learn Morse Code to be a real licensed amateur radio owner and I know it is dah dah dah da dit ditting HARD. But I do live so high up a hill that a European grade antenna tower called Euromast lives on the other side of my hilltop! Anyway, just so you know just exactly how damned badass Kenwood Electronics are, I show you in my column today, a radio transmitter/receiver (they call them transceivers) that can have FOUR different transmission aerials up its 200w arse as well as a fifth, just made super sensitive for listening. So you could have a big assed omni to cough across the whole of Europe, a beam pointing at the Scilly Isles and a bloody great strung up mega twig all down my ridiculously long and unkempt garden, all at once. This device would look so bloody cool in my desk rig here. Check this mighty thing out, all seven grand of ‘Hello GUAM,  THIS IS FATMAN62, SEEK YOU, CQ, CQ DX&;..!’ Oh fapping HELL I want one of these and lessons&;
Must get on&;.
Adam Rayner On Line Editor