The web form is now working again after failing silently for an unknown period (could have been days/weeks/months!). I am guessing the hosting provider made a change (possibly when forced to PHP 8.x) that stopped the mailer working using the php mail() function.
Apologies to those who have tried to contact me – I wasn’t ignoring you!
I only became aware of this today when someone mentioned via social network while letting me know my weather station was having issues.
For those eagle-eyed users, you will notice that you are now visiting www.vk7ben.au and not vk7ben.id.au. This is the story about why.
In 2007, I acquired my advanced license and callsign VK7BEN. At this time I was quite big on websites and domains and having my own identity online. However it was not possible to own a .com.au/net.au/org.au domain if you were not a registered business or organisation. However you could register for an id.au domain if the domain name contained your your name or nickname. Beauty – VK7BEN could indeed be considered a nickname. I applied for the domain with this information, application was approved, happy days.
Earlier this year however the happiness came to an abrupt halt with an email from my domain registrar shortly after renewing my domain.
Continue readingRealistically, I haven’t been on air much in the last 7 years. Other interests and real life have seen tinkering with amateur radio come a distance last to everything else.
Occasionally I would have a listen around the band, make a half-hearted CQ DX call, or try to contact that station in amongst the pileup, usually turning off the rig some 30 minutes later.
However, thanks to a renewed interest by some of the people who helped me get into the hobby, and with some of my newer friends taking the opportunity to get licensed themselves, I find myself growing in enthusiasm to get back on air.
As part of this, I felt I would also bring back my website. Sadly much of the information from the original 2008 website has been lost, but some still remains and will make it up here eventually.
Thanks for joining on this new adventure!
