Archived News Script
IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday April 1st 2001
IRTS AGM Postponed
Following the latest developments with the foot and mouth situation, the IRTS Annual General Meeting, Dinner Dance and the Limerick Radio Club Rally due to be held over next weekend, April the 7th and 8th at the Limerick Inn in Limerick have been postponed.
Both the Society and Limerick Radio Club regret any inconvenience caused and any monies collected for tickets will of course be refunded.
Members will be advised of the new arrangements in due course.
Spring Counties Contest
The Spring 2 Metres Counties Contest will be held as usual on Easter Monday, April 16th. However, due to the Foot and Mouth situation, the portable sections are
cancelled.
That means that there will only be three sections, high power fixed, low power fixed and the FM section.
Please be aware of the new rules - you may only make a maximum of 2 consecutive QSOs on a frequency - you can answer a CQ call, then you call CQ, have a QSO and then QSY.
This should allow much greater use of the scarce FM channels and should result in more QSOs and more counties being worked.
Please don’t criticise the new rules until they have been tried!
The time is 1400 local to 1600 local.
2000 IOTA Contest Results
The Islands On The Air Contests results for last July were published recently and showed no changes from the claimed scores published earlier.
Congratulations to the Dalkey Island Group EI1DD who set a new EI record in the multi operator section in finishing 11th overall in the world.
Four other new EI records were set in this contest, EI7GL in the single operator 24 hour SSB section, EI4DW in the 12 hour mixed, EI8GP in the 12 hour CW and EI4CF in the 12 hour SSB section.
Three EJ island DXpedition stations participated: EJ4GK from the Aran Islands, EJ5J from Clare Island and EJ7M from Bere Island.
The Society has two trophies associated with this contest. The IRTS DX trophy is awarded to the leading EI single operator entry and this year that is John EI7GL.
The Hal Hodgens Key is awarded to the leading EI operator in the 12 hour CW section and this year that is Martin EI8GP.
Congratulations to both of them.
A full listing of all the EI/EJ records and all the scores since the IOTA contest started is published in the current Newsletter.
This year’s event will be held over the weekend of July 28th and 29th.
See EI5DI’s Web Site for the full results.
Slievenamon Shield
The Tipperary Radio Group recently presented the Slievenamon Shield to the IRTS in an effort to promote activity on the 70cm band.
The Shield will be competed for over the Sundays in July and activity will be confined to simplex QSOs on FM only between 433.400 and 434.400 MHz.
Score one point for each QSO and the multiplier will be the number of counties worked.
Upcoming Contests
The main contest season has just passed and the CQ WW WPX CW Contest is the only major 24 hour event to come. This will be on the last weekend in May, the weekend before the CW Field Day.
Next weekend we have three 24 hour contests.
The SP DX contest runs from 1500utc on Saturday and the King of Spain contest starts at 1800 on Saturday. Both of these are CW and SSB events.
The EA RTTY Contest is also a 24 hour event and begins at 160utc on Saturday.
To keep you busy over the Easter weekend we have the Japan International DX CW Contest over 48 hours, starting at 2300 on Friday and the Holyland Contest, both CW and SSB, is a 24 hour event starting at 1800 on Saturday.
Marconi Day
Some confusion has arisen as to the date of this year’s International Marconi Day due to wrong information being published in some of the magazines.
The date is April 21st, this being the Saturday nearest Marconi’s birthday on April 25th.
As usual a large number of stations connected with various Marconi related sites worldwide have indicated their intention of participating. To date, only two Echo India Stations are listed as having confirmed their participation, one in Dun Laoghaire and one in Galway.
The event runs for the 24 hours and various awards are achievable for working the special Marconi stations.
There are seven different awards, the main one being for working 15 Marconi stations from a fixed station.
Other categories are working 12 stations while mobile, 15 stations on CW, 15 stations on digital modes, 20 stations as a multi-operator effort and there are two classes for Shortwave Listeners, one mixed mode and one CW only.
Each award costs 4 pounds sterling or 12 IRC’s.
Claims should be sent to Sue Thomas G0PGX, Awards manager, P.O. Box 100, Truro, Cornwall, TR1 1RX, England.
Items for inclusion in next weeks Radio News and the next issue of Echo Ireland should be forwarded to Dave EI4BZ at 021-883555 in the evenings or by e-mail at ei4bz@eircom.net Dave is also available during office hours at 021-4353853 and you can fax him at 021-4354113
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