Archived News Script
IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday 11th March 2012
CQIR Contest
The CQIR contest takes place next weekend – from mid-day on Saturday 17th March to mid-day the following day. This contest is the international showpiece event for the Society’s 80th celebrations and while we know most of our serious contesters will be making a big effort on the bands we would ask all stations to join in the festivities over the St. Patrick’s weekend. The multipliers are the 32 EI and GI counties, so those in the "rarer" counties will be very much in demand!
Paul EI5DI advises that his contest logger SD is free and unrestricted for the CQIR contest. SD may be downloaded from ei5di.com, and users should experiment with test logs before the contest.
Entrants should be aware that the Russian DX contest overlaps with CQIR, and Russian stations will send a 2-character district code instead of a serial. Full rules for the contest are available on the IRTS website.
Galway Radio Experimenters Club
Galway Radio Experimenters Club will be hosting two very interesting presentations at their next club meeting on Monday 12th March at 8.00 p.m. in The Anno Santo Hotel, Threadneedle Road, Galway. Larry EI9CN will talk about Software Defined Radio, demonstrating the Flex 5000 and linking it with third-party software such as CW Skimmer and Logger32, while Tom EI3ER will talk about the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster and the radio communications techniques used at that time.
Any amateurs, SWLs or other interested people are invited to come along on the night. This would be particularly interesting for any amateur thinking of going down the Software Defined Radio route.
South Dublin Radio Club
The Annual General Meeting of the club will take place Tuesday 13th March. All members are requested to attend.
Shannon Basin Radio Club
The Shannon Basin Radio Club is holding a meeting on Wed 28th March at 20:30 in Hannons Hotel, Roscommon.
It is planned to give practical demonstrations on computerised logging, dx cluster and Logbook of the World.
All members are requested to attend and visitors are welcome. For more info see www.shannonbasinradioclub.com
North Cork Radio Group
The North Cork Radio Group will be activating Mizen Head Visitors Centre again this year for Marconi weekend. The callsign, EI0IMD, will be on the air from 20th April - 22nd April inclusive. As you may know, Marconi Day is on 21st April this year and we will be operating over the full 24 hour period on this day in order that collectors of the Marconi Award will have the opportunity to add us to their list. Mizen Head is a beautiful location and well worth a visit.
EI8GQB activity : March 18th-26th
Oliver/ON4EI will again be QRV from Ireland near Fethard (IO62EL) on top of Benneshill (170m ASL) with his Irish callsign EI8GQB. He will enter the CQ WPX SSB CONTEST on March 24th/25th.
During the week before the contest Oliver will set up 5 antennas to support SO2R operation. Reference frequency is 7.100 MHz +/- QRM.
Olivier will hold a daily blog on www.qrz.com/db/EI8GQB and post regularly video on YouTube ON4EI's channel www.youtube.com/user/ON4EI
If you want to visit him during the week, please send a mail to ON4EI/at/VANDENBALCK/dot/EU
IRTS 80th Anniversary AGM & Rally
The event this year is hosted by Dundalk Amateur Radio Society. The annual dinner takes place on Saturday April 21st, with the Rally and AGM on the following day. Dinner tickets are just €32, a reduction on previous years and represents great value for this very special dinner. B&B is €55 for single and a double is €65. As dinner tickets and rooms are distributed on a first come first served basis, you are encouraged and advised to act now to avoid disappointment. The annual rally, on Sunday April 22nd, will also have its favourites and many new and novel exhibitors.
This is a must attend event in the 80th Anniversary year of your national society. Full details of this event are on the IRTS web site www.irts.ie
Dinner tickets can be bought now by contacting Thos EI2JD on 087-2953256 or email thoscaffrey /at/ hotmail.com or by contacting any IRTS committee member. The Fairways Hotel can be contacted on 042 9321500 or www.fairways.ie
VHF / UHF Squares Table
VHF Manager, Trevor EI2GLB is aiming to get the 2011 Squares Table up to date, and he is asking all EIs that have been active on the VHF and higher bands in 2011 to submit their totals to him.
Contacts can be on any band 6m and higher, any mode excluding repeaters. Please send your totals to Trevor, EI2GLB at hotmail.com
He just needs to know the number of squares per band. If your electronic log won’t output that data he can take a log extract and work it out for you.
DXCC Entities
We have lost one DXCC entity! Malyj Vysotskij Island - often known as "MV Island" (prefix R1M) which is part of Russia, was leased to Finland from the 1960s until very recently and, under the DXCC rules, was considered a separate DXCC entity. Since February this year, the island is no longer leased to Finland and is therefore a "Deleted Entity" in the DXCC programme. This reduces the number of current DXCC entities to 340.
See www.irts.ie/dxcc for an updated list of EI call signs in the DXCC listings. Congratulations to two new entrants to the EI DXCC list - Seamus EI9CF and Claus EI7JZ. Claus is no stranger to the DXCC programme, as he is on the Honor Roll under his Austrian call sign OE6CLD.
DX News
Barney ZS6TQ will be working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 14 March – 8 April. He will operate as 9Q6/ZS4U outside working hours. He will be located in Grid Square KI16 and his QSL Manager is K3IRV.
Retu OH4MDY will be back in Vietnam from 17 March – 16 April. As before he will sign XV2RZ. QSLs go via his home call.
The island of Svalbard will be activated by LA2XNA and LA8HGA. They will use the calls JW2XNA and JW8HGA respectively from 16-20 March.
For the island chasers a brand new one in the form of AT2DW will be on the bands from 16 – 23 March. This expedition station will be active from the Indian island of Bet Shankhodar. The IOTA reference number is AS-175.
Items for inclusion in next week’s Radio News can be submitted via e-mail to “newsteam /at/ irts / dot / ie” for automatic forwarding to both the radio and printed news services. Urgent news items for the radio news maybe telephoned to the radio news editor, Aidan, EI7JC on 085 7100511.
Please note that items for the radio news should reach the editor no later than midday on Thursday in order to be guaranteed inclusion in the following Sunday’s bulletin.
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