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This Week's News

IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday 7 August 2022
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Club News

Congratulations to Dave (EI4BZ) and Ryan (EI8KW) for their successful
nomination and admission to the CWops Club last Thursday. To become a
CWops member one must be capable of sending and receiving International
Morse Code at no less than 25 words per minute and should be capable of
carrying on a conversation in English using CW. It is a good sign for
the future of CW seeing an experienced ham and a newcomer joining the
prestigious ranks of CWops on the same day.

The East Leinster Amateur Radio Club will be holding its AGM on Sunday
the 14th of August 2022 at The Man O'War Pub, Courtlough, just outside
of Skerries, Co. Dublin, at 3pm. This is open to all club members.
Anyone interested in Amateur Radio and who would like to join the club
is welcome to drop by. Some of the Clubs highlights for the past year
include another successful year of reading the IRTS 4 Meter News from
SOTA Summits and other portable locations. ELARC made seven first-time
POTA activations in Ireland and 22 SOTA activations including the 1st
EI call-sign to activate Snowdon in Wales. There was a two-day portable
activation of St Johns Point Lighthouse Co. Down for the International
Lighthouse Lightship Weekend 2021. ELARC participated in the Winter
Field Day 2022, and also gave a full day of Amateur Radio
demonstrations at Balbriggan Mini Maker Day 2022. For more information
about ELARC and its activities please contact info /at/ ei0el.com

As previously reported, Tony EI5EM is the net controller for the Monday
night Irish language net on the Kippure two-metre repeater, EI2KPR at
8pm local time. It caters for all levels of fluency and none. The net
has a bilingual format, so everybody is welcome to call in, in
either Irish or English. Last Monday night saw a very special QSO, when
Tommy EI9IPB called in to the net. Tommy only recently passed the HAREC
exam, and wanted to make his very first QSO in the Irish language. Tony
was pleased and honoured to be part of what is possibly a very unique
occasion. A QSL card, in Irish of course, is on its way to Tommy for
this, his very first QSO ever. Congratulations and well done Tommy. At
the moment, this is a pilot project. However, it is hoped soon to have
an Irish HF net on either 40 or 80 metres for wider national coverage.
Tony is currently working on a glossary of terms in Irish to assist
participants in the net. Watch out for this in the next issue of Echo
Ireland.

Rafal (EI6LA) announced on Friday that the National Short Wave
Listeners Club (swl.ie) has reached a symbolic milestone of 100 current
members, although it is not the highest number to-date. 150 individuals
were on the mailing list at one point in 2021, before a change of the
membership rules requiring pupils to join as full club member in early
2022. As of now, the club has assisted over 250 prospective amateurs.
The membership of NSWLC is transitory by design, encouraging everyone
to join a local, physical club. Many other clubs have presented at our
weekly Zoom Sunday Socials. If you run a club affiliated with the IRTS,
please introduce it to the NSWLC members. Rafal goes on to say: "We
have been very active on and off the air. Our members, including SWLs,
participate in many ways: promoting radio, taking up IRTS officer
roles, volunteering on subcommittees -- and doing our novice best to
win contests! As a club, NSWLC has always campaigned on behalf of its
members. We have worked with the IRTS to modernise the Irish HAREC
exams, provided extensive input to ComReg submissions, and we have been
writing the new, over 200 page teaching curriculum. Our seven tutors,
who are also Club officers, have put well over 2000 hours into serving
the Irish amateur radio community in just over a year. This year alone
we have held 43 online 2-hour meetings, including 18 class Echo
sessions. Although our Constitution does not admit experienced,
licensed amateurs to the general, passive membership, we are actively
looking for teachers. Our sixth HAREC course, class Foxtrot, starts
later this year. If you are willing to dedicate serious time to
teaching or to admin, please contact us. On behalf of the NSWLC may I
thank everyone who has been helping us grow and secure the future of
amateur radio in Ireland."
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Visiting Ham

Robbie (EI2IP) reports Barry, W4TGA a.k.a. EI4VYG is visiting Limerick.
He has Family participating in the Lacrosse World Festival at Limerick
University from August 10th to 20th. He will be active on the local
repeaters, so if folk could listen for him, perhaps they could give him
a call.
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YOTA in Croatia

Ryan (EI8KW) writes: The "Youngsters on the Air" summer camp near
Zagreb, Croatia gets under way today and runs until the 13th of August.
There will be seven YOTA stations operational on SSB, CW and digital
(FT8, FT4, RTTY). They are looking for as many contacts as possible.
Each QSO with a 9A YOTA station in a different band or mode combination
earns you one point. Duplicates do not count. It will be worth looking
out for these stations as the prize for platinum position operators
above the age of 25 is a 9A5N key, plus a weekend break for a family of
four in the city of Karlovac, Croatia. The prize for platinum position
operators under the age of 25, is a CircuitMess Synthia plus a
surprise. More information and registration is at
www.hamradio.hr/yota-croatia in the "Award" Section.
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ISTRA Contest Meeting

The Croatian 9A1P Contest Team is organising the first annual
"International Contest Meeting" for HF and VHF contesters. The idea was
born by 9A1P in 2019 due to the current lack of quality events of this
kind in Europe, aiming to encourage experience exchange, further
improvements, networking, and of course to have fun. Among the event
highlights are presentations by speakers from well known "big signal"
contesters Robi (S53WW), the Team D4C, Richard (9A1TT), Fabio (I4UFH),
TeamC (S50C) and Dave (9A1UN), Ranko (4O3A), the Italian WRTC-team, and
Emir (E77DX/OE1EMS), followed by a VHF Contesting Forum, a SSB/CW "Pile
Up" competition, round tables, a guided tour of Porec old city, finally
closing with a "Contest Party" under the motto "Until the last HAM
standing" . The 4 Day event takes place at the 3 Star Hotel Materada in
Porec, near Novigrad at Croatia's Adriatic Coast, from Thursday to
Sunday, the 6th to 9th of October. Details about travel connections,
accommodation, nearby attractions and the conference can be found at
the website of 9A1P at icm2022.9a1p.com
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Lighthouse on the Air

Dave (EI4BZ) forwards the following from Roman (SQ2RH) : "On behalf of
the Pomeranian Local Branch of the Polish Amateur Radio Association
(PZK) I would like to invite amateur radio community from your country
to participate in our award competition related to the "The 200th
anniversary of the Polish Lighthouse ROZEWIE (1822-2022)". On this
occasion, from August, 1st till 31st August, 2022 there will be 9
special event stations on the air, as SN200R, SN200O, SN200Z, SN200E,
SN200W, SN200I, SP200E and plus two joker stations as 3Z200LHR and
3Z25ILLW operating only during lighthouse weekend. Two way QSOs with
these stations are included to apply for our /at/ -award. Welcome to
the pages of our website at: otpzk.gdansk.pl , there are described in
details our award competition, on-line log, /at/ -award download and
others information." Rozewie Lighthouse is located on Cape Rozewie, in
the Puck district, at the northernmost point of Poland, 55 km northwest
of Gdansk. The beautiful tower has the largest nominal range of all the
lighthouses on the Polish coast. For more information, follow the
shortcut at the centre-left, titled "Nasze akcje" (Our Activities), on
otpzk.gdansk.pl
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New Band Allocations in Canada

The Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) report two new additions to their
spectrum. They gained 472 to 479 kHz, also known as 630 metres, allowed
to run a maximum of five watts EIRP, using emissions with a maximum
bandwidth of one kHz. They can now transmit on 5351.5 to 5366.5 kHz in
the 60 metre band with a maximum of 100 watts ERP, using emissions with
a maximum bandwidth of 2.8 kHz. The new 60 metre band portion is in
addition to their existing fixed-frequency allocations at 5332, 5348,
5373 and 5405 kHz. The new 15 kHz-wide allocation overlaps the existing
authority to use 5358.5 kHz. Canadian Amateurs are unique in having
authority to use 100 watts ERP on the four spot frequencies and within
the new 15 kHz worldwide segment. Amateurs in most countries are
limited to 25 watts or less and may operate only in the new 15 kHz-wide
segment. Please note that Amateur Radio is a secondary radio service on
these bands.
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2024 Olympic Games

On July 22 France's National Frequency Agency ANFR announces that the
amateur radio 144,430,1240,2300 MHz bands will be used by the 2024
Olympic Games. REF has issued a statement explaining that the frequency
allocations will be phased in not before 2023, strictly limited
geographically and in duration.
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AMSAT News

OSCAR-29 (FO-29 JAS-2) returned to full sunlight, the
linear-transponder and the CW beacon were switched on again on the 19th
of July, and should remain usable until the middle of April next year.
FO29's frequencies of the invering 100KHz wide linear-transponders are
145.900 - 146.000 MHz LSB/CW for the uplink on 2m, and 435.900 -
435.800 MHz USB/CW for the downlink on 70cm. The beacon transmits on
435.7950 MHz CW. FO-29 includes an attitude control system that
consists of a sun-sensor, geomagnetism sensor, magnetorquer and data
processor. Since 2007 use of the Mode-J satellite is restricted to
periods when it is in full sunlight due to power supply problems.
Current information about the operational status can be found on
www.amsat.org .
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The Propagation Horoscope

This weekend's Solar wind is at around 400 km per second with a low
proton count, and a kP of 2, not expected to rise soon, steadying
propagation after a week of critical frequencies quickly changing
around the 40m band, causing deep QSB. The 3000 km hop MUF drops below
the 20m at night, rising above the 17m band during the day,
occasionally climbing to the 15 and 12m bands. Expect to hear louder
signals on 17m than on 20m when listening to the Far-East in the the
early hours. The last of the Sporadic-E openings for this year will
yield contacts on 10m and above, helped by the high pressure zone
extending into Central Europe, especially before noon. The Perseids
will peak next Friday, listen out for the typical pings on your VHF SSB
and CW receivers and catch a reflection off the trails from the radiant
in the Perseus constellation.

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.

[C]
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