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This Week's News

IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday October 3rd 2021
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Limerick Clare Amateur Radio Club Rally

Simon, Ei7ALB, tells us that plans are well advanced to hold a Rally on
the 7th of November 2021 in the Radisson Hotel & Spa, Ennis Road,
Limerick. V94 YA2R The venue can be contacted via email via
info.limerick /at/ radissonblu.com and their telphone number is 061
456200. Further details will follow as we go through October.
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Child Protection Policy

The IRTS have recently instated a Child Protection Policy. This policy
reflects the values the IRTS holds in making this hobby a safe and
enjoyable hobby for all ages, furthermore it underscores the IRTS'
continued drive to involve the youth in Amateur Radio. The policy can
be viewed on the downloads section of the IRTS webpage at www.irts.ie

It is suggested that all members familiarise themselves with the new
Child Protection Policy.
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Congratulations

The IRTS would like to congratulate Megan - EI5LA on the successful
completion of her licence examination, Megan is only 14 years old and
we wish her the best success on the bands. Megan joins a growing number
of Young Ops in EI and with the quality training from the National
Shortwave Listeners Club along with support from the IRTS, we expect to
see this number to grow.
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JOTI & JOTA

JOTA-JOTI takes place from the 15th to the 17th of October, hundreds of
Scout stations are taking part including many Irish Scout Troops.
Currently registered from EI are the 14th Galway Scout Group, the 17th
Longwood Meath, the 1st Meath Navan Scouts, the 2nd Laois Rathdowney
and the 5th Mayo Copper Coast Scout Group. More information, including
a full list of participating stations can be found at www.jotajoti.info
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South Eastern Amateur Radio Group

EI2WRC will be active with the Copper Coast Scout Group on Saturday the
16th October for the JotaJoti 2021 event. The club hope to have a few
HF stations on air along with other club members explaining other
aspects of the hobby with workshops where the scouts can take part in.
The group will also be active on the Southern Ireland Repeater Network
and all nodes connected to it. Special thanks to the SIRN group for
allowing us to use the repeater network for this special event. If you
hear the station on air please take a few minutes to say hello to the
scouts. Thank you! Please note due to restrictions this event will not
be open to the public.

For anyone that wishes to find out more about the South Eastern Amateur
Radio Group and their activities you can drop them an email to
southeasternarg /at/ gmail.com or please feel free to go along to any
of their meetings. You can check their website www.searg.ie and you can
also join them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.
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Repeater Interferences

Kells Radio Club are trying to source interference to the 2 Metre
repeater EI2LLX on 145.7875 MHz in Cavan and to Dublin repeater EI2KTR
on 145.7625 MHz. The interference is intermittent and is opening both
repeaters. Anyone with information or ideas to cure the problem should
contact the IRTS technical panel via the email address irtstech /at/
irts.ie.
__________________________________________________________________

DX News

The Budapest Radioamateur Society BRASZ marks the World of Hunting and
Nature Exhibition in Budapest for the next three weeks, HG5NATURE will
be active on all hf bands, all modes.

Until the end of November, Emilio, HP2NG, and others are on air as
3E200P from Colon, Panama, marking the nation's 200th anniversary of
independence from Spain. The station will be on the air until the 30th
of November on all bands, all modes. They have a special QSL card for
contacts with them on various hf bands. QSL is recommended via
ClubLog's OQRS, but also eQSL and LoTW.

And until early December the Japanese special event station 8J250IWA is
celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Japanese city of Iwakura. Given
the length of their operation it may be a good opportunity to get a
first contact with Japan and also receive a proper QSL card via the
bureau.

For the next fortnight, the S9OK DXpedition by Czech hams is active
from Sao Tome, IOTA AF-023 on CW, SSB a DIGI on all bands from 160m to
6m. IT takes a while to complete the station due to limited ferry
capacity, so for the next few days they have a limited antenna
selection for their eight operators. They plan to use the Live Stream
ClubLog for QSL.

The SSB part of Scandinavian Activity Contest will start next Saturday
at 1200 UTC, and runs for 24 hours. Each part of this "Polar Battle"
gathers over 1000 contesters from all around the world. SAC offers
non-Scandinavians a unique opportunity to work the propagationally
challenged Arctic nations and practice your skills. From the CW part in
September this year they received almost 1400 logs and out of the
received logs they report that as in 2020, more than 1500 stations have
participated. The rules for entering this contest can be read on
sactest.net
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Ham Radio in Laos

Simon, XW0LP, also known as G6JFY, HS0ZIB and XZ2A, is probably the
only active ham in Laos. He reports about his troubles renewing his
license, after a run-in with the local military. According to Simon,
the situation was resolved with the good assistance of the Lao radio
licencing department, who explained to the police and military that he
was legally allowed to operate his ham equipment. The XW0LP licence now
only permits 160, 40, 20, 17, 15, 12 and 10 metre bands, 80m and 30m
are only on a secondary basis in Region 3, and those bands were not
included in his new license any longer. XW0LP is on air with basic
equipment and homebrew antennas, his qrz.com page is certainly
recommended reading.
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IARU Bandplan Overhaul

One hot topic at the next five days long IARU Region 1 General
Conference Workshop taking place in Novi Sad, Serbia in a fortnight's
time will be a proposal for an IARU HF Digital Mode reorganization.

IARU author Tom, DJ5Fl, reports that over the past 18 month a proposal
has been undertaken by representatives of all three IARU Regions. The
objectives were to review the data modes usage of the Amateur Radio HF
spectrum and propose changes that reduce inter-mode conflict between
dissimilar operating modes and facilitate the expansion of new
technologies.

In conducting the review it was realized that it was necessary to
update the manner in which the IARU creates its band plans.
Accordingly, the IARU's band planning definition toolkit were
redefined, and additional data mode definition characteristics has been
added to help separate activities that are fundamentally incompatible
within the data mode family.

With the band planning process updated, the proposal then revised the
band plans of all three IARU Regions, focusing on the data sub-bands
and taking into consideration popularity and capacity requirements, and
existing band users and inter-mode compatibility assessments.

The team also took the opportunity to harmonize the band plans of all
three IARU Regions to the greatest extent possible of course. The
proposal is now being discussed in the relevant committees.
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Oscar7 Distance Record

A distance of 7247.8 km was bridged between Bernd, DL6IAN, and Joseph,
KE9AJ, via the aging Oscar7 satellite. They set this new record using
CW via mode A at 1744 utc, 17th of September. Oscar7 was launched in
1974 into a circum-polar orbit at an altitude of around 1450 km. Unlike
previous satellites, Oscar7 was launched with an active battery
regulator, which eventually saved the oldest amateur satellite in
active service. In 1981 the power supply failed due to a dead short in
one of the batteries, taking the transponder off-line. During the
summer of 2006 the short circuit cleared itself, and mode A and mode B
have become available again, but only during periods of full
illumination of the solar panels.
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No News from Mars

Martian spacecraft will get a temporary break from their normal work
schedules when the space agencies pause sending any commands from their
mission controls during the upcoming Mars solar conjunction. Every two
years, Mars and Earth find themselves on opposite sides of the Sun,
completely invisible to each other because a large orb spewing plumes
of hot, ionized gas happens to be in the way. Therefore it is
impossible to upload new commands to the Martian rovers, landers, or
orbiters until the 16th of October.

NASA operators parked the Ingenuity drone 175 metres away from
Perseverance, and the rovers themselves are instructed to gather audio
recordings and observe dust devils, and just store their observation
data. As soon as Earth gets a better line-of-sight to Mars as the
conjunction passes, all that data will be beamed to the Deep Space
Network. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory staff will spend a week
downloading and sifting through the information before regular
spacecraft operations can resume.
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The Propagation Horoscope

The Stereo A solar observatory is orbiting the Sun just inside one
astronomical unit, preceeding Earth as it orbits about the Sun. This
currently gives us a view of what is about to appear on the eastern
limb of the solar disc. So we know that a new active region is about to
appear, and it will hopefully be as productive as last week's region
2871, now weakening after multiple C, a few M1 flares, and a single M2
flare. That leaves us with a steady increase of the solar wind with
around 10 particles per cubic centimeters hitting us at a speed around
600km per second. KP is at two and expected to increase to 4, and SFI
is also expected to increase from currently mid 70's to near 90 towards
next weekend. Conditions on the low bands are already good, apart from
fair to good regular propagation on 40 to 20m, there will be some short
hops late evenings on 17 and 15m via sporadic E, but the sun is still
too quiet for 10m miracles.
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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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