Archived News Script
IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday 29 May 2022
EI90IRTS
The Irish Radio Transmitters Society was founded in 1932 and this year the society celebrates its 90th birthday. To mark the occasion the society has secured the special call-sign EI90IRTS. Since its initial use the call-sign has attracted multiple pile-ups on all bands and modes it has been used on. This call is available to activate for any EI IRTS licensed member that’s interested in activating it. The special call can be activated on all bands and modes and the duration of any activation is entirely up to the operator. It can be for an hour or even a day! All logs must be submitted electronically in ADIF format. To make sure that the call-sign is not used on the same bands or modes at the same time, the use of the call-sign is being coordinated by Declan, EI9FVB. A special WhatsApp group is in use to help with the coordination. If any fully licensed EI IRTS member would like to activate the EI90IRTS call-sign you are please asked to get in touch with Declan EI9FVB by email to horandx /at/ gmail.com . A special QSL card will be made available, once printed. Direct QSLs can be sent to Dave, EI6AL. For more information including QSL details please see www.qrz.com/db/EI90IRTS
Club News
The Shannon Basin Radio Club will be taking part in the CW Field Day contest next weekend on Saturday, the 4th of June from a location opposite the Racecourse in Roscommon Town. Anyone with an interest in radio or field-day operations would be more than welcome to drop by. More details can be found on our website www.sbrc.ie and our facebook page.
The May meeting of the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group EI2WRC will take place tomorrow night, Monday the 30th of May 2022 at 8.00 p.m. sharp at The Sweep Bar, Adamstown, Kilmeaden, Co. Waterford, Eircode X91 H588. New members or anyone interested in learning more about amateur radio or the group are as always very welcome to attend. The South Eastern Amateur Radio Group EI2WRC will be QRV as EI2WRC/P from the Old Copper Mine, Tankardstown, Bunmahon, Co. Waterford over the weekend of the 4th and 5th of June 2022. Although there is no official European Geopark Activation taking place this year the club are pleased to announce that the location can be activated in the following categories: Echo India Flora and Fauna as EIFF-0263, at the Mid Waterford Coast SPA. It also has a 2 for 1 on POTA which are EI-0162, also at the Mid Waterford Coast SPA, and EI-0163, at the Tankardstown Copper Mine. The old copper mine building comes in as part of the COTA-EI and we are currently waiting on a COTA designator for this. EI2WRC would like to thank Jer Aspell of the EIFF group for all his hard work in providing all the designators for this location. 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.
National SWL Club
The National Short Wave Listeners Club had 87 members as of 24 May 2022. Our biggest undertaking at the moment, the re-write and the modernisation of the IRTS HAREC Study Guide to match the new Irish HAREC exam structure is going well. Nine club members, including six tutors, have been actively writing, drawing, or amending the guide almost every day since the early April. Thirty active class Echo attendees have been re-reviewing the chapters as they have been produced and corrected. However, due to the sheer size of the job and the need to carefully include new topics, such as SDR, the process has taken longer than expected. The guide is about 70% complete but we are about one month behind our original schedule. The guide has 150 pages and 47000 words across 30 chapters at present. Eight chapters still need to be re-written, and one more needs to be written from scratch. We are hoping to get assistance from the other IRTS Clubs and the wider membership in reviewing and proof-reading the new guide, so that it is ready for everyone in June. Once we have published it, we will welcome feedback and edits from the amateur radio community worldwide. We continue to meet weekly every Sunday, on Zoom, in addition to running the HAREC classes every Thursday evening. Sunday attendance has averaged 27 members every week. We have covered subjects relevant to both those recently licensed, and those still studying, including live demos of successful propagation using CW from Ireland to Australia using only 5 W, and to New Zealand using more power than that, on 40 and 20 m. We also did an extensive live demo of multiple operating modes, including all voice modes as well as modern and older digital modes. The last meeting covered the structure of on-air calls as prescribed by the IARU and ITU guidelines. The attendance of Thursday Class Echo sessions has seen a little drop off and runs 30-32 attendees. We hope that the remaining students will still take the exam in July.
Publications Library Update
The IRTS Publications Library contains newsletters and other IRTS publications from 1948 to the year 2000. The library now holds more than 270 publications which have been scanned and converted to PDF for easy viewing and downloading. Optical character recognition has been used during scanning, to facilitate screen readers and text searching.
The most recent additions to the library are a number of issues of the society’s monthly newsletter from 1975, from the collection of the late Rod Mooney EI2P. The 1975 newsletters record plenty of on-air and construction activity, as well as presentations about the various amateur radio experiments being undertaken by members. Although solar cycle 20 was heading towards its minimum at the time, it is clear that some impressive DX was being worked by EI stations, often using low power.
The IRTS Publications library is at www.irts.ie/library and is well worth a visit. We continue to ask members to help to fill in the gaps by lending newsletters or other IRTS publications not currently in the library so that they can be scanned and added to the library.
Golden Globe Race
Pat Lawless from Limerick, now living in Ballyferriter, Co Kerry, is endeavoring to solo circumnavigate the globe as an entrant in the Golden Globe Race 2022. He is the only Irish entrant. The race starts from Les Sables-d’Olonne in France on Sunday, the 4th of September 2022. All entrants must navigate using only old technology, no GPS or computer laptop allowed, with only a Sextant in hand and the stars to navigate the way around the globe. Participants will be allowed to use Radio Directional Finding, RDF navigation. Pat has an IC-M710 SSB marine transceiver onboard. He is putting out a call to the amateur radio community in Ireland who may have a good surplus SSB receiver for loan or purchase. That will allow him to help his navigation using RDF. Sailing alone for 9 months or more, he would also like the company of, and listen to amateur radio operators from around the world as he circumnavigates the globe. If you feel you can help Pat with a general purpose SSB receiver, please contact Pat Lawless on 087 742 6360, or email him at lawlessfuniture /at/ hotmail.com More info about the race can be found at www.goldengloberace.com/ggr-2022
Contests
Several international contests are taking place next weekend.
Pride Radio Group is proud to announce CQ Pride, a radio contest intended to celebrate pride month, support inclusion in amateur radio, and to have a fun time. CQ Pride runs for 24 hours next Sunday, full info on www.prideradio.group
The Dutch CW Field-day will be held starting next Saturday at 15:00 UTC, ending at 14:59 UTC next Sunday. The rules for this all-band contest can be found on www.veron.nl
The ARRL International Digital Contest runs from 18:00 UTC next Saturday to 23:59 UTC on Sunday. Using digital modes, but no RTTY, on the 1.8 to 50MHz bands where contests are allowed, the exchange is your 4-character locator.
The RSGB National Field Day runs from 15:00 UTC on Saturday to 15:00UTC on Sunday. Using CW only on the 1.8 to 28MHz bands where contests are permitted, the exchange is signal report and serial number.
IRTS News Readers
The IRTS are currently trying to coordinate the weekly Sunday morning 40m and 80m news bulletins and form a panel of newsreaders so as to make sure that there is always someone available to read each bulletin and, most importantly, to spread the workload evenly among the newsreaders. As the old saying goes “Many hands make light work”. We have a small list of those who are currently reading the 80/40m bulletins. Ideally, if we had a list of 6 to 8, or more people who would be willing to read one of the bulletins it would spread out the workload considerably. Any of the current newsreaders will tell you that there is very little involved in reading the bulletins. If any fully licensed EI feels like that they would be interested in becoming part of the IRTS News Readers panel, can they please get in touch with the IRTS Public Relations Officer Sean EI2HZB directly on 083 4713001 or by email to irts_pro /at/ irts.ie . Likewise, if anyone has any further questions please get in touch also. Once a list of those interested has been compiled, we will set about getting a rota in place for both the 40m and 80m Sunday bulletins.
The Propagation Horoscope
NOAA predicts that the Solar Flux Index may decline to around 130 or less, dipping to its lowest value around next weekend, combined with low kP numbers. This will help the ionosphere develop and should bring good conditions, all assuming that no major earth-facing CME upsets this prediction.
The Tau Herculids, associated with Comet 73P and discovered in 1930, appear early during Monday night into Tuesday morning. In 1995 its nucleus broke up, creating a debris cloud. Meteor scatter activity should peak around 24:00 UTC on Tuesday morning.
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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