XPost: rec.radio.amateur.moderated, rec.radio.amateur.space

EI7GL....A diary of amateur radio activity

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Irish regulator ComReg indicates approval for a novice amateur radio licence

Posted: 25 Dec 2021 04:54 AM PST https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2021/12/irish-regulator-comreg-indicate.html


In September of 2021, the Irish regulator COMREG issued a document
titled... "Proposed Strategy for Managing the Radio Spectrum 2022 to 2024"
- Link HERE
In response to this document, COMREG received 26 submissions about the part related to amateur radio.
• 10 responses were received from individual radio amateurs; and
• 16 responses were received from clubs, organisations, groups or societies Out of that 16, a large part were from essentially the same small
organisation so it's more like 10 radio radio amateurs and roughly 10 organisations/clubs.Some of the submissions were in relation to higher
power limits. Another however was for COMREG to consider introducing a new novice amateur radio licence.
Graphic from the original ComReg document
In response, ComReg wrote...
"ComReg’s assessment on novice licences4.61 Taking into account the support expressed for entry-level or novice-licensing andthe strong justifications given above, ComReg will seek, in the timeline of thisstrategy statement
and subject to resources, to put in place a framework fornovice licensing
in Ireland.
4.62 It is envisaged that to achieve this, ComReg will need to:▪ Consult on its proposals;▪ Make new Regulations, with the consent of the DECC Minister underSection 6 of the Wireless Telegraphy Act ,1926, as amended; and▪
tender for an external party to run any examination that may be required.At this time ComReg would consider if that examination is best offeredonline
and, as a consequence, can be taken at any time."
The document with a summary of the proposals and the response from ComReg
can be seen HERE

I was curious about what type of novice amateur radio licences were in
other countries and I found this document on the DARC website (national
society for radio amateurs in Germany). You can download it from HERE
There seems to be quite a variation in what it allowed. Some countries
have a novice licence which allows extensive use of the HF and VHF bands
and is little different from a full licence, some are VHF only and some
allow limited access to the HF bands.
We'll have to wait and see what ComReg come up with but it has to be
generous enough that it gets people interested but not undermine the
existing full amateur radio licence.
One of the submissions justified the novice licence by means of STEM -
Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths:
• such an action would align with the national policy for Ireland to be a leader in nurturing, developing and deploying STEM talent and the
availability of a novice licence would enable the amateur radio service to
act in the national interest;

It's not hard to imaging this being a good fit with say an allocation on
the VHF bands and making use of the array of cubesats now in orbit. Novices could gain experience in how satellites orbit, what doppler shift is and
how to make contacts through them.

If the novice licence includes an allocation on bands like 20m then I
suspect it that a lot of the new callsigns will just end up on modes like
FT8 and learn very little nothing in the process. It'll be just an amateur radio licence by another route.
My opinion... I'm pretty neutral about the whole novice licence and am just interested in seeing how it develops. I do hope though that ComReg look at
a licence which might attract those with an interest in science and
technology and not just those who want to go chase DX on the HF bands.


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2500km+ opening on 144 MHz between Australia & New Zealand - 23rd Dec 2021

Posted: 24 Dec 2021 02:53 AM PST https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2021/12/2500km-opening-on-144-mhz-between.html



23rd December 2021: At the moment, stations in the southern hemisphere are
in the middle of their Sporadic-E season and at times, there are openings
as high as the 144 MHz band.

The above is an example of what looks like a mixed propagation mode opening between New Zealand and the south-east corner of Australia.
ZL1SIZ in the far north of New Zealand was sending out WSPR signals on 144
MHz and these were received by four Australian stations with distances in
the range of 2451 to 2575kms. UTC (y-m-d) TX txGrid RX
rxGrid MHz W SNR drift km
2021-12-23 08:42 ZL1SIX RF64vt VK7DC QE28ww 144.490562 10 -23 0 2516
2021-12-23 08:54 ZL1SIX RF64vt VK3MHY QF22ma 144.490555 10 -21 -1 2575
2021-12-23 08:54 ZL1SIX RF64vt VK3KZM QF21os 144.490543 10 -17 0 2560
2021-12-23 09:00 ZL1SIX RF64vt VK3ALZ QF31fs 144.490554 10 -18 0 2451
2021-12-23 09:00 ZL1SIX RF64vt VK3MHY QF22ma 144.49056 10 -27 0 2575
2021-12-23 09:00 ZL1SIX RF64vt VK3KZM QF21os 144.490544 10 -23 1 2560

How do we know it was likely to have been Sporadic-E? All of the reception spots are shown above and they are all from a small time window with just
six minutes for the stations in Victoria. If it was 100% tropo ducting then
we might expect to see more reports over a much longer time period.
How do we know it was likely to be due to mixed propagation mode? Simply because the distance is further than what is possible with one Sporadic-E hop... i.e. about 2300kms.

The tropo prediction map from F5LEN suggests that conditions were
reasonable over the ocean at the New Zealand end.
ZL to VK6 on 144 MHz??? While the opening or distance described above isn't that exceptional, it does give a hint at what might be possible at some
stage.
A few days ago, I had a post up about about a 2700km opening from Western Australia to New South Wales. Now the example above shows an opening from Victoria to New Zealand.
Is a 5000km opening on 144 MHz between New Zealand and the west of
Australia possible???


There are often tropo ducts in the Great Australian Bight to the south of Australia and in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. Could
some exceptional Sporadic-E opening coincide with a large tropo duct?
Best mode??? WSPR with its two-minute transmission cycles probably isn't
the best mode for this as the Sporadic-E openings along the route may be
short in duration. Having said that, the guys in Australia and New Zealand
have a very successful WSPR network going on the 144 MHz and the
information from the WSPR reports could show what parts of the path are
open. It may be down to individuals then trying to make contacts on the FT8
or Q65 frequencies.
Links...
1) For more reports on long distance paths on 2m, see my 144 MHz page.

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