Archived News Script
IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday October 3rd 2021
Limerick Clare Amateur Radio Club Rally
Simon, Ei7ALB, tells us that plans are well advanced to hold a Rally on the 7th of November 2021 in the Radisson Hotel & Spa, Ennis Road, Limerick. V94 YA2R The venue can be contacted via email via info.limerick /at/ radissonblu.com and their telphone number is 061 456200. Further details will follow as we go through October.
Child Protection Policy
The IRTS have recently instated a Child Protection Policy. This policy reflects the values the IRTS holds in making this hobby a safe and enjoyable hobby for all ages, furthermore it underscores the IRTS' continued drive to involve the youth in Amateur Radio. The policy can be viewed on the downloads section of the IRTS webpage at www.irts.ie
It is suggested that all members familiarise themselves with the new Child Protection Policy.
Congratulations
The IRTS would like to congratulate Megan - EI5LA on the successful completion of her licence examination, Megan is only 14 years old and we wish her the best success on the bands. Megan joins a growing number of Young Ops in EI and with the quality training from the National Shortwave Listeners Club along with support from the IRTS, we expect to see this number to grow.
JOTI & JOTA
JOTA-JOTI takes place from the 15th to the 17th of October, hundreds of Scout stations are taking part including many Irish Scout Troops. Currently registered from EI are the 14th Galway Scout Group, the 17th Longwood Meath, the 1st Meath Navan Scouts, the 2nd Laois Rathdowney and the 5th Mayo Copper Coast Scout Group. More information, including a full list of participating stations can be found at www.jotajoti.info
South Eastern Amateur Radio Group
EI2WRC will be active with the Copper Coast Scout Group on Saturday the 16th October for the JotaJoti 2021 event. The club hope to have a few HF stations on air along with other club members explaining other aspects of the hobby with workshops where the scouts can take part in. The group will also be active on the Southern Ireland Repeater Network and all nodes connected to it. Special thanks to the SIRN group for allowing us to use the repeater network for this special event. If you hear the station on air please take a few minutes to say hello to the scouts. Thank you! Please note due to restrictions this event will not be open to the public.
For anyone that wishes to find out more about the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group and their activities you can drop them an email to southeasternarg /at/ gmail.com or please feel free to go along to any of their meetings. You can check their website www.searg.ie and you can also join them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.
Repeater Interferences
Kells Radio Club are trying to source interference to the 2 Metre repeater EI2LLX on 145.7875 MHz in Cavan and to Dublin repeater EI2KTR on 145.7625 MHz. The interference is intermittent and is opening both repeaters. Anyone with information or ideas to cure the problem should contact the IRTS technical panel via the email address irtstech /at/ irts.ie.
DX News
The Budapest Radioamateur Society BRASZ marks the World of Hunting and Nature Exhibition in Budapest for the next three weeks, HG5NATURE will be active on all hf bands, all modes.
Until the end of November, Emilio, HP2NG, and others are on air as 3E200P from Colon, Panama, marking the nation's 200th anniversary of independence from Spain. The station will be on the air until the 30th of November on all bands, all modes. They have a special QSL card for contacts with them on various hf bands. QSL is recommended via ClubLog's OQRS, but also eQSL and LoTW.
And until early December the Japanese special event station 8J250IWA is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Japanese city of Iwakura. Given the length of their operation it may be a good opportunity to get a first contact with Japan and also receive a proper QSL card via the bureau.
For the next fortnight, the S9OK DXpedition by Czech hams is active from Sao Tome, IOTA AF-023 on CW, SSB a DIGI on all bands from 160m to 6m. IT takes a while to complete the station due to limited ferry capacity, so for the next few days they have a limited antenna selection for their eight operators. They plan to use the Live Stream ClubLog for QSL.
The SSB part of Scandinavian Activity Contest will start next Saturday at 1200 UTC, and runs for 24 hours. Each part of this “Polar Battle” gathers over 1000 contesters from all around the world. SAC offers non-Scandinavians a unique opportunity to work the propagationally challenged Arctic nations and practice your skills. From the CW part in September this year they received almost 1400 logs and out of the received logs they report that as in 2020, more than 1500 stations have participated. The rules for entering this contest can be read on sactest.net
Ham Radio in Laos
Simon, XW0LP, also known as G6JFY, HS0ZIB and XZ2A, is probably the only active ham in Laos. He reports about his troubles renewing his license, after a run-in with the local military. According to Simon, the situation was resolved with the good assistance of the Lao radio licencing department, who explained to the police and military that he was legally allowed to operate his ham equipment. The XW0LP licence now only permits 160, 40, 20, 17, 15, 12 and 10 metre bands, 80m and 30m are only on a secondary basis in Region 3, and those bands were not included in his new license any longer. XW0LP is on air with basic equipment and homebrew antennas, his qrz.com page is certainly recommended reading.
IARU Bandplan Overhaul
One hot topic at the next five days long IARU Region 1 General Conference Workshop taking place in Novi Sad, Serbia in a fortnight's time will be a proposal for an IARU HF Digital Mode reorganization.
IARU author Tom, DJ5Fl, reports that over the past 18 month a proposal has been undertaken by representatives of all three IARU Regions. The objectives were to review the data modes usage of the Amateur Radio HF spectrum and propose changes that reduce inter-mode conflict between dissimilar operating modes and facilitate the expansion of new technologies.
In conducting the review it was realized that it was necessary to update the manner in which the IARU creates its band plans. Accordingly, the IARU’s band planning definition toolkit were redefined, and additional data mode definition characteristics has been added to help separate activities that are fundamentally incompatible within the data mode family.
With the band planning process updated, the proposal then revised the band plans of all three IARU Regions, focusing on the data sub-bands and taking into consideration popularity and capacity requirements, and existing band users and inter-mode compatibility assessments.
The team also took the opportunity to harmonize the band plans of all three IARU Regions to the greatest extent possible of course. The proposal is now being discussed in the relevant committees.
Oscar7 Distance Record
A distance of 7247.8 km was bridged between Bernd, DL6IAN, and Joseph, KE9AJ, via the aging Oscar7 satellite. They set this new record using CW via mode A at 1744 utc, 17th of September. Oscar7 was launched in 1974 into a circum-polar orbit at an altitude of around 1450 km. Unlike previous satellites, Oscar7 was launched with an active battery regulator, which eventually saved the oldest amateur satellite in active service. In 1981 the power supply failed due to a dead short in one of the batteries, taking the transponder off-line. During the summer of 2006 the short circuit cleared itself, and mode A and mode B have become available again, but only during periods of full illumination of the solar panels.
No News from Mars
Martian spacecraft will get a temporary break from their normal work schedules when the space agencies pause sending any commands from their mission controls during the upcoming Mars solar conjunction. Every two years, Mars and Earth find themselves on opposite sides of the Sun, completely invisible to each other because a large orb spewing plumes of hot, ionized gas happens to be in the way. Therefore it is impossible to upload new commands to the Martian rovers, landers, or orbiters until the 16th of October.
NASA operators parked the Ingenuity drone 175 metres away from Perseverance, and the rovers themselves are instructed to gather audio recordings and observe dust devils, and just store their observation data. As soon as Earth gets a better line-of-sight to Mars as the conjunction passes, all that data will be beamed to the Deep Space Network. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory staff will spend a week downloading and sifting through the information before regular spacecraft operations can resume.
The Propagation Horoscope
The Stereo A solar observatory is orbiting the Sun just inside one astronomical unit, preceeding Earth as it orbits about the Sun. This currently gives us a view of what is about to appear on the eastern limb of the solar disc. So we know that a new active region is about to appear, and it will hopefully be as productive as last week's region 2871, now weakening after multiple C, a few M1 flares, and a single M2 flare. That leaves us with a steady increase of the solar wind with around 10 particles per cubic centimeters hitting us at a speed around 600km per second. KP is at two and expected to increase to 4, and SFI is also expected to increase from currently mid 70's to near 90 towards next weekend. Conditions on the low bands are already good, apart from fair to good regular propagation on 40 to 20m, there will be some short hops late evenings on 17 and 15m via sporadic E, but the sun is still too quiet for 10m miracles.
That is the news for this week. Items for inclusion in next week’s radio news can be submitted by email to newsteam /at/ irts.ie for automatic forwarding to both the radio and printed news services. The deadline is midnight on Friday.
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