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This Week's News

IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday January 2nd 2022
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Ham Radio on the Moon

Japan's OMOTENASHI, the world's smallest moon lander, will have an
X-band and UHF communication system, although it will not carry an
amateur band transponder. OMOTENASHI is a 6 Unit sized CubeSat set for
launch via a NASA SLS rocket as early as February 2022. It will have a
mission period of 4 to 5 days. The name is an acronym for Outstanding
Moon Exploration Technologies demonstrated by Nano Semi-Hard Impactor.
Wataru Torii of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Ham Radio Club,
JQ1ZVI, said radio amateurs can play a role in gathering data from the
spacecraft.

The spacecraft is made up of two separable components, both having
independent communication systems, an orbiting module and a surface
probe. The orbiting module will take the surface probe to the moon. It
will transmit beacon or digital telemetry data on 437.31 MHz. The moon
lander surface probe will transmit digital telemetry or three-axis
acceleration analog-wave with FM modulation on 437.41 MHz. Transmitter
power is 1 Watt, enough to be picked up with a high gain yagi.

According to Torii, JQ1ZVI, if they succeed in receiving the UHF signal
from the surface probe, one could know the acceleration data of the
impact on the moon and the success of the landing sequence. They
already have a station for the uplink and downlink at Wakayama in
Japan, normally used as an EME station. However, when the moon and
satellite is not visible from Japan, help with the receiption of the
downlink signal will be needed from ham radio stations worldwide. The
orbiting module beacon will transmit on 437.31 MHz using PSK31. The
surface probe beacon will transmit on 437.41 MHz using FM, PSK31, and
PCM-PSK.
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Royal Belgian Amateur Radio Union

The Belgian IARU society UBA is celebrating its 75th anniversary in
2022. To celebrate this event, 64 different special event stations will
be active until the end of February 2022. Each special event station
will be using the prefix ON75 followed by a three letter suffix. UBA
will issue Awards for working ON75 on various bands and modes.

Starting 2022, the UBA DX Contest 2022 will have new rules. Instead of
giving the province in the report, abbreviation of the UBA sections are
now used. This means there are more multipliers for stations outside
Belgium. The highest scoring Single Operator High Power and the Single
Operator Low Power from a country of the European Union will receive
the 35th European Union Trophy. This applies to both the SSB and the CW
competition.

By way of exception, the Belgian Institute for Postal Services and
Telecommunications allows the use of th ON75 callsigns during the UBA
DX SSB Contest in January, and the CW Contest in February. However,
this is subject to the condition that these stations do not compete
with the ordinary Belgian radio amateur. That is why there will be a
separate category for these stations in 2022.
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Irish 20m Net

Robbie, Ei2IP sends in a reminder for the 2022 to call into the Irish
Net. A number of North American stations with an Irish connection would
be delighted hear news and banter from Ireland. Tune in to 14.156Mhz
for the daily 20m net, activity usually starts around 5 PM local Irish
time.
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Amsat News

CAMSAT XW-3, CAS9 for short, was launched on the 26th of December, and
is now operational with a CW beacon sending telemetry on 435.575MHz,
and with GMSK on 435.725MHz. A 30 kHz wide linear transponder listens
on 438.870MHz and sends the inverted spectrum on 435.180MHz with 20 dbm
output.

Funcube-1, also known as AO-73 is now in telemetry mode in sunlight and
silent during eclipse. This will allow the team to gather valuable
measurements, including energy consumption and battery health in
current illumination conditions.

The FO-99 NEXUS operation team has announced that the operation
schedule has changed. Recently, based on the situation where the
operation of other general-purpose transponder satellites has become
unstable one after another, the FO-99 NEXUS transponder will
temporarily operate. The following 3 passes, with the first pass on
Sunday evening, are usually scheduled for digital talker operation, but
for now used to give extra linear transponder capacity.
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Czech Radio 270 kHz QRT

Joining an ever growing list of longwave and mediumwave stations
closing down, Czech Radio on 270 kHz switched off Friday night. Their
mediumwave transmitters on 639, 954 and 1332 kHz and CRo Plus on 1071
kHz also went QRT.
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The Propagation Horoscope

Sunspot AR2916 is big and quiet, a relatively simple beta-class
magnetic field that poses little threat for strong flares, chances for
blackouts are low. Solar wind is around 400 km/s with a density of 5
particles per cm3. We're looking at a quiet week, with an undisturbed
geomagnetic field, a very low proton flux. This will result in steady,
but not spectecular conditions on all HF 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 midnight on Friday.

[C]
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