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This Week's News

Irish Radio transmitters Society Radio News Bulletin Sunday January 9th 2022
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Silent Keys

We regret to announce the death of Janet Serridge GI0VVC/EI6IH of
Warrenpoint, Co. Down on January 3rd 2022. Janet was the wife of the
late Paddy GI0PED/EI6ID, who served on the IRTS committee for many
years in the 1990's. They were a couple who were very well known
throughout EI over the years as they travelled the country in their
camper van. Janet was laid to rest on Thursday last in Monkshill
Cemetery in Newry. We extend our deepest sympathy to her children
Bridie, Mark, Paddy, Janet and all her relatives.

Packet radio pioneer Brian Rogers, N1URO is now a silent key. He passed
on Tuesday evening. Brian was the author of the URONode packet radio
software and an important contributor to various software packages, not
just his own. He was also a very active AmprNet coordinator and a
mentor to many who wanted to operate packet nodes or set up an apmr.org
station. He had a broad knowledge of many other node operating systems,
keeping nodes of all types running at his QTH. He was a wealth of
detailed knowledge and will be missed immensely.
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IRTS Constitution Review

The review sub-committee would like to thank everyone that has already
submitted proposals for amendments to the IRTS Constitution and would
like to advise that the latest date for proposals is 15th January 2022.
No proposals will be accepted after that date.
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The Slow Morse Club

As membership of the Slow Morse Club surpasses eight thousand this is a
little reminder to those who might be thinking of joining the apparent
renaissance of CW operating. The club welcomes all who are interested
in operating slow CW on air regardless of ability in the mode. For the
more experienced there is the chance to coach and for the newbies, the
chance to learn, and more importantly, use CW on air perhaps for the
first time. Knowing that your contact is a 'friendly face' who is not
going to chastise you if the QSO doesn't quite abide by the normal
conventions of CW QSOs, for example if you make a mistake, helps
overcome some of the anxiety of using this most skilful of radio modes.
The club has a FaceBook page for general chit-chat and uses the Signal
instant messaging app for arranging skeds and advising others of slow
CW contacts in real time. If you think you may be interested, why not
look up "The Slow Morse Cub" you'll be very welcome.
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On The Air

The London BBC Radio Group was granted an extended special event
callsign GB100BBC. Throughout 2022, GB100BBC will celebrate the start
of regular BBC broadcast services from Savoy Hill in 1922.

On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Belgian UBA, more than
60 stations with the special ON75 prefix will be on the air during the
months of January and February.

The Norwegian 'Bergensgruppen av NRRL' celebrates its first 100 years.
The club was founded in 1922 under the name Bergens Radio Amatør Klub.
It was only fitting that the club was founded in Hotel Transatlantic,
only few months after the first transatlantic contact between radio
amateurs. Centenary activities will be based in the club station in
Totland, Bergen, grid locator JP20RH. LA100B will be activated
throughout the year in many modes on HF and 6m. During contests expect
to also hear the callsign LN1B.
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News from Spain

The Union of Spaniard Radioficionados, URE has requested from the
Secretariat of Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures an
extension for their use of the 23cm band. URE was granted the extended
use of 2400,05 to 2410,00 MHz, combined with power and antenna limits,
tailored for the QO-100 satellite.

URE also reports that permission has also been granted for 2022, for
the use of the topband segment of 1,850 to 2,000 KHz during national
and international contests.
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Orbital Radio

Integration of EASAT-2 and HADES satellites into the Falcon-9 vehicle
are complete. The launch is set for next Thursday, at 15.25 UTC. Both
satellites should have been released a year ago, but the launch was
repeatedly scrubbed due to commercial and technical problems. Both
satellites offer FM voice communications and data retransmission with
FSK or AFSK up to 2400 BPS, such as AX.25 or APRS frames. Both have
voice beacons in FM with the AM5SAT and AM6SAT indicators, as well as
CW. After launch, listen for downlink activity on 436.666 MHz and
436.888 MHz.

Amsat-DL sponsored a new QO-100 satellite antenna for the antarctic
hams at DP0GVN. Located at the Neumayer-Station III, it requires a
larger and more rugged antenna than usual. A severe storm damaged the
old antenna last August. In December, the new antenna arrived at the
edge of the polar ice aboard a supply ship. Finally, on Wednesday, a
crane lifted the radom and spare sat antenna atop the research station,
operations have now resumed.

The Shop run by the French REF now offers a lighter single channel
version of MinitiounerPro, especially for QO-100 users. It is smaller,
and it comes with a box. Information about the MinitiounerPro can be
found on www.f1te.org, and the REF shop with many interesting kits and
parts on offers is at boutique.r-e-f.org
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Contests and Awards

The new RSGB Contest Calender can now be downloaded from www.rsgbcc.org

The UBA PSK63 Prefix Contest starts on 12:00 UTC next Saturday, and
runs for 24 hours, on the 10, 15, 20, 40 and 80 meter segments.

Congratulations to Dave, Ei4BZ, for his excellent score as the leading
EI station during last week's UKEICC one hour long 80m SSB contest. A
deep dead zone made local contacts almost impossible, but many EI
stations took advantage of good DX far into Eastern Europe.

For their big contest, the Hungarian Society 'Magyar Rádióamato"r
Szövetség' states the aim of 'Increasing activity on the air,
strengthening the reputation of amateur radio operators, demonstration
and improvement of technical skills and knowledge across the world.'
It's an important 24 hour contest starting next Saturday at 12:00 UTC,
on all bands from 160 to 10 meters. The modes are A1A and A3J. There is
now a special YOTA category, allowing for a 6 hour entry by a single
YOTA operator. Detailed info on www.mrasz.hu

WRTC, the World Radiosport Team Championship was conceived as an
Olympic style competition among radio contesters, where teams of two
compete from the same locations, using identical stations, thereby
being a true test of operator skills. The championship is usually held
every four years and is run over twenty-four hours in conjunction with
the IARU HF Championship on the second full weekend in July. This years
event was to be held in Italy but has been postponed to 2023 due to the
Covid-19 pandemic. The WRTC organisers are running an award programme
from January 1st to July 10th to promote the competition in Italy next
year. Special event stations will be active on all bands and modes from
each of the Italian call ares using the suffix WRTC. Each CW QSO will
be worth 10 points, SSB 5 points and RTTY 4 points. You will need 50
points to qualify for the award. QSO totals and award hunters scores
are available in real-time on wrtc2022.it/award.
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Drive-By QSL

The Luxembourg QSL bureau office organized a "Bring and Take Away",
according to the "QSL Drive-In" principle. The event took place on
Saturday morning at the Club's shack in Eisenborn, when the new QSL
Manager greeted the RL members who deposited and took away their QSL
cards.
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SolarEdge and Growatt RFI

The Swedish PV-Magazine reports that the Swedish Electrical Safety
Agency found that three companies were not in compliance with Sweden's
current EMC rules. As a result, the manufacturers were banned from
selling the products that were found to be in breach in the country.
The inspection was triggered by several reports received by the Agency,
in which photovoltaic systems were said to have disrupted the radio
communications of the police, of aircraft, and the military. The ban
applies to Israel-based power electronics supplier SolarEdge for a
number of its optimizers. Chinese manufacturer Growatt was also found
to have fallen foul of the regulators, for its 8000TL3-S inverter
series, which in Sweden are distributed by Sunnytek Solar Sweden AB,
and a second company that has not been identified yet. SolarEdge
expressed surprise at the banning, insisting that their equipment
complies with relevant regulations. They claim that the complaints
filed with the Electrical Safety Agency came from a handful of amateur
radio operators.
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The Propagation Horoscope

Registration for presenters and participants soon opens for the fifth
annual HamSCI workshop, scheduled for the 18th and 19th of March, at
the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. HamSCI brings
together the amateur radio community and professional scientists. This
year's theme is 'The Weather Connection'. The keynote by Dr. Tamitha
Skov, WX6SWW is not to be missed, it's titled 'Ionospheric Impacts of
Space Weather'. Dr. Skov is known as the 'Space Weather Woman', her
website is certainly a refreshing take on propagation forecasts. For
this bulletin, various sources at NOAA, Soho, Solen and DigiSonde are
used. After a quiet week, a low MUF and a solar wind below 300 km/s,
two small coronal holes now facing us, and more active regions about to
reappear will bring a steady increase in X-ray background again.
Currently, the plasma of a CME are starting to impact the dayside,
expect some blackouts to occur throughout Monday.

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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