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IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday 05 June 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


IRTS Radio News Bulletin Readers

The IRTS are currently trying to coordinate the weekly Sunday morning 40m and 80m news bulletins and form a panel of newsreaders 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 80m and 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 East Leinster Amateur Radio Club, ELARC has continued the portable nature of the station and has transmitted this week's news on 4m from the Ben of Howth, SOTA Reference: EI/IE-072 this morning at 10:30 local time on 70.400 MHz FM. This was their first time broadcasting the news from this location. [END OF NEW section]


Public Libraries

Irish public libraries provide all users with a wide range of free online services including eBooks, eAudiobooks, eMagazines, online courses and online newspapers. Many books and periodicals on radio-related topics are available. Of particular interest to radio operators are the availabilty of the copies of "CQ Amateur Radio" and "Practical Wireless". Registration with www.library.ie is free of charge, but subject to a visit to any of the public libraries to confirm the registration.


The Weinheim VHF Conference

The Weinheim VHF Conference has been organized by committed radio amateurs on a non-profit basis and on a voluntary basis since 1956. It sees itself in its tradition as a meeting place for everyone who is interested in radio technology and electronics. Amateurs from all over Europe present their experiences at this forum, provide information about innovative developments and share their know-how. The organizers would like to put together a varied program of lectures again this year and call on you to contribute with a presentation. The lectures are not limited to VHF topics, but cover everything that is of interest to the technology-loving amateur. Lecture topics from all areas of amateur radio are welcome - from long-wave to gigahertz applications. A growing focus of interest are topics from the field of micro-controllers, computer applications in amateur radio, SDR, HamNet and digital processes. In a call for papers to be presented at the convention the organizers ask for interested hams to send the title and approximately 300 word abstract by July 19th at the latest. The upcoming 67th VHF conference Weinheim will take place from the 9th to the 11th of September 2022. More information about this event can be found at www.ukw-tagung.org


EQSL

The eQSL service reports reaching the milestone of one billion recorded QSOs. The system currently has 342,700 users with over 438,000 unique call-signs. eQSL not only allows one to electronically confirm a QSO, but one can also send pictures cards in the format of JPEG and PNG, obtain diplomas, and interactively correct errors made by operators when logging QSOs.


1944 Normandy Landing

On the occasion of the 78th anniversary of the Allied landing in Normandy, members of the Caen Radio Club, will activate the special call-sign TM6J from Monday until next Sunday from the Merville batteries site near the landing beaches. The frequencies used will be 3.5 to 50 MHz, in CW, SSB and digital modes. They will also give CW transmissions demonstrations on 40m with a copy of a resistance suitcase, the Paraset MK VII. QSL via F6KCZ, the Caen Radio Club website is www.f6kcz.free.fr .


Contests

The German DRCG WW RTTY Contest takes place on the second full weekend of June, this year falling on the 11th and 12th. There are three eight hour contest periods, starting at 00:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC on Saturday, followed by the third leg, starting at 08:00 UTC on Sunday. Bands in use are 80-10m, the international beacon frequency 14100 kHz +/- 500 Hz must be kept free of contest traffic. Info at www.drcg.de .

Next weekend will also see the Portugal Day Contest, from Saturday noon until Sunday noon UTC, on 80 to 10m SSB and CW. Details for this contest can be found on www.rep.pt

And a third international contest on the same weekend will make sure the bands will be busy. From 15:00 UTC on Saturday till 15:00 UTC on Sunday the WW South America CW Contest, organized in Argentina will take to the 80 to 10m bands with A1A. According to their QRZnow page they will still accept paper logs.

The South African Radio League runs their SARL Top Band QSO Party, starting at 22:01 UTC next Friday, running till 21:59 UTC on Sunday next. The SARL Handbook explains that each QSO claimed for competition credit must include contemporaneous direct initiation by the operator on both sides of the contact. Initiation of a contact may be locally or by remote. Contemporaneous means: existing at or occurring in the same period of time and the operator must be in control of all the processes. In plain English – a live, air breathing radio amateur must be at both ends of the QSO. See www.sarl.org.za for details on how to submit your log in the form of a spreadsheet.


Space News

Spain's amateur satellite organisation AMSAT-EA has released the English language PDF version of their newsletter for May 2022 for free download from their website at www.amsat-ea.org . It features information about the URESAT-1 Satellite Modules, how to calculate the doppler shifted frequency for a sked via a linear transponder in a low earth-orbit, a report from AMSAT-UK at the EMFCamp 2022, and a list of satellite frequencies currently in use.

Last week, cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev installed a new Kenwood TM-D710GA transceiver on the Russian segment of the International Space Station. The transceiver was delivered on the 17th of February by a Progress MS-19 cargo ship. Artemyev successfully dismantled the old amateur radio equipment and installed the new kit, soon to be used for transmitting Slow Scan TV images on 145.800 MHz FM, probably using the SSTV mode PD-120. Listen for SSTV signals from the ISS on Wednesday from about 09:45 to 15:00 GMT, and again on Thursday from about 08:35 GMT to about about 16:15 GMT, dates and times may be subject to change. The signal should be receivable on a handheld with a 1/4 wave whip. If your rig has selectable FM filters try the wider filter for 25 kHz channel spacing. You can get predictions for the ISS pass times at www.amsat.org/track/

Kurt, DJ0ABR has developed a new "Amsat-DL High Speed Multimedia Modem" for the QO-100 Narrow-Band Transponder. This modem allows for a transmission speed of a maximum of 7200 bit/s in 8 APSK or 4800 bit/s in QPSK, both within the maximum permitted bandwidth of 2.7 kHz. It is therefore considerably more efficient than conventional methods on the QO-100 transponder. It can also be used to send all data and speech in full-duplex. The software is open source and available for free. Kurt's website with an English language section is at www.dj0abr.de .


Amateur Radio on the BBC

The GB2RS News Team reports amateur radio, and portable operating in particular, will receive some television coverage today, Sunday the 5th of June. The long-running BBC Countryfile programme airs at 6 p.m. on BBC 1, and features Flat Holm island in the Bristol Channel, the site of Marconi’s first radio transmissions over sea. Presenters Ellie Harrison and Matt Baker will be with leading Summits on the Air (SOTA) operator Ben Lloyd, GW4BML as he sets up a portable station on the island in order to contact SOTA activators on hill and mountain summits around the UK.


The Propagation Horoscope

We can expect excellent propagation conditions on all bands above 40m and a high MUF2 frequency reaching above 30 MHz, thanks to a Solar wind speed of around 500 km per second, a low to moderate proton count, no major active regions coming into view until later in the week, and no predicted flare activities or solar storms. Sporadic E will provide more frequent openings on 10, 8 and 6 meters. The large, yet somewhat unstable high pressure zone over Ireland extending into France will give ample Tropo-DX opportunities on all VHF bands.

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 Friday noon.

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