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This Week's News

IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday October 24th 2021
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Club News

The next HAREC course organised by the National Short Wave Listeners
Club will start this Thursday, 28 October, on the Zoom platform. It
consists of 14 weeks of training, finishing on 10 February. This course
prepares for the current ComReg licensing examinations. 59 attendees
have already registered. If anyone would like to join please email:
training at swl.ie as soon as possible, and no later than Wednesday 27
October. NSWLC are planning to offer further HAREC courses in the
spring of 2022.

The popular Shannon Basin Radio Club nets are once again on the air.
The top band net is on Mondays at 21:00 on 1.919 Mhz +- qrm, The 80M
net is on Thursdays qt 21:00 on 3.785 MHz +- qrm, The 2 net is on
Sundays at 21:00 on the Clubs Repeater EI2SBR . All are welcome to join
the various nets and SWL reports can be emailed to admin /at/ sbrc.ie
For more information see www.sbrc.ie or the club's Facebook page.

LCARC will hold a Rally in the Radisson Blu Hotel on Sunday 7th of
November 2021. Doors will open at 11:00. Entrance fee is EUR5 per
person. As with previous Rallys, there will be a bring and buy
opportunity. Tables for bring and buy, exhibitors and related
demonstrations are free. Tables should be booked through Michael
Kingston EI2IX via email to rapidov66 /at/ gmail.com

Steve Wright EI5DD will be demonstrating digital modes and the networks
supporting them.

Please check out the current list of donated equipment for sale and
also equipment for sale by private sellers. Go to the club web site
www.limerickclareama teurradioclub.ie and follow the *market place*
drop down menu.

LCARC wishes to acknowledge the generous donation from Robbie Phelan,
EI2IP, of a new 2 metre/70cms antenna. It is now installed at the club
station in the Shannon Aviation Museum.

South Eastern Amateur Radio Group, EI2WRC were active with the Copper
Coast Scout Group on Saturday the 16th of October for the JotaJoti 2021
event. The club travelled to the scout's base in Annestown for a fun
filled day with a large number of scouts from the group. Club members
showed the scouts various aspects of the hobby including HF operation,
Morse Code, DMR, basic electronic circuits and Digi modes. The scouts
showed great interest in what they were shown and hopefully this will
lead to many of them taking up the hobby. Plans are already in place
for the club to return in 2022 with an even bigger showcase of the
hobby.

The 89th Irish Radio Transmitters Society's AGM weekend hosted by
EI2WRC will take place over the weekend of the 9th & 10th April 2022 in
the Woodford Dolmen Hotel, Kilkenny Road, Carlow. The club's event
organising committee are working away in the background in planning for
the weekend and hope to make the 2022 event a great success. We are
looking forward to welcoming radio enthusiasts from Ireland and beyond
to Carlow for the event. A special room rate is available for anyone
attending the event over the weekend. A full price list, special price
room code and booking details are all available on the Hotel section
on https://irtsagm2022cw.blogspo t.com Booking your room as soon as
possible is advised as hotel rooms are being booked rapidly and no
further rooms in the hotel will be made available once the current
allocation is gone. More details about the 2022 event will be made
known once confirmed

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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Contest News

The results of the 80 metres Counties Contest held on 5th October 2021
have now been published. 28 station logs with 604 QSOs from 16 EI and
GI counties plus 9 overseas DXCC entities were submitted, allowing 491
QSOs, that is 81%, to be cross checked. See www.irts.ie/results for the
detailed results.

The next IRTS Counties Contest is the 80 Metres New Year's Day contest
on Saturday 1st January 2022. See www.irts.ie/contests for a
Provisional Calendar of contests for next year.

The CQ WW is the largest Amateur Radio competition in the world. Over
35,000 participants take to the airwaves on SSB during the last weekend
of October, and CW later in November, with the goal of making as many
contacts with as many different DXCC entities and CQ Zones as possible.
This year's mammoth contest is held on the weekend of the 30th and 31st
of October.

The 2021 UKEI DX SSB contest took place until yesterday noon, logs
would have to be submitted online at the latest at noon on Sunday.
Expect results to be announced shortly, have a look at www.ukeicc.com

Still ongoing, but not as easy to actively participate in is the ARRL
EME contest. But you may still be able to hear some of the QRObig shots
with a good vhf or uhf beam until midnight tonight. Keeping a receive
antenna pointed at that slow moving target should be easy enough.

In Romania, the sixth edition of the 80m BUCOVINA CUP contest is run by
the Bukovinian radio amateurs this Monday, the 25th. Bukovinian is
romanian for Beech Wood, it is a historic region now straddling several
countries, and the stated aim of the Cup is to promote friendship
across borders. The format is similar to the ukeicc contests, with an
SSB and CW leg, so consider trying a new contest this Monday, from
15.00 to 17.00 UTC. Frequencies are 3675-3775 khz SSB and 3510 -3560
kHz CW. Contesters should use the contest call Bucovina Cup when
calliing on SSB, and TEST BA or TEST YO for CW. You can use google to
translate the relevant info on www.radioamator.ro
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AMSAT News

Listeners on Sunday can still catch a few hours of the AMSAT-UK
International Space Colloquium, which is currently running as an online
Zoom Webinar until 1600 local time. You don't have to be a member of
AMSAT-UK to attend, and the event is free and simple to join. For the
rest of the afternoon there will be presentations on an X-Band
Upconverter and a Dual Band L/X Patch Antenna for Space, how to get on
QO-100 using a SkyQ Dish, and about Satellite Operating from 57 Degrees
North. This year's colloquium will also be streamed via the AMSATUK
youtube channel.
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United Nations Day

Today, Sunday the 24th of October is United Nations Day. For this
occasion the unique and historical Alexanderson alternator in Grimeton
Sweden, with call sign SAQ, is scheduled to send out a message to the
whole world on 17.2 kHz CW. Unless one already has a dedicated receiver
or up-converter for VLF, ad-hoc receiption is made surprisingly simple
by using a computer or laptop soundcard and suitable software made
available by the Grimeton crew, and a long piece of wire as an antenna.
Brief test transmissions were already heard on Friday with such setup.
True armchair amateurs may resort to listening on an internet based SDR
receiver. The startup on Sunday commences at 1430UTC and one can
monitor how it takes a while for the frequency of the transmitter's
flywheel to settle on 17.2 kHz. The CW message will be sent starting
1500 UTC. There will be an amateur station on air for the Grimeton site
operating as SK6SAQ on 3.535, 7.035 kHz and 14.035 KHz CW and also on
3.755 and 7.140 kHz SSB.

Also marking the United Nations Day since 1948 is the Italian special
event station 4U24. Members of the Global Service Centre ARC, 4U1GSC
are now active as 4U24OCT from Brindisi, Italy. Activity is on 160-10
meters. QSL via 9A2AA or ClubLog.
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DX News

The latvian RSF team is still active as 3DA0WW, and was heard from
eSwatini on 40 and 20 meters. Frequencies in use can be seen at
www.lral.lv until their departure Monday evening.

John, OX/OZ1LXJ is active with CW on topband from Kangerlussuaq,
Greenland. Listen for him between 1930-2300z.

Gavin, GB60ANT is on the air for another week from Scotland to mark the
60th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty Signature. Send QSLs to GM0LVI

The Gambia can be heard on all bands until the 19th of November. Four
french and british operators will use the callsign C5C, but not before
hauling a lot of equipment to the tropics. Therefore the first few days
the operation is limited to 60-10m and 100W. Using all modes, they also
hope to get on QO100 for some of the time. For more details, have a
look at the dxpedition section on www.m0npt.com

Tom, OH6VDA is on air from Svalbard with the club staion callsign JW5E
until the end of the month, he has been heard on SSB on 40m using a
rotatable dipole, but also uses other bands and digital modes.
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F5LEN Webcluster

Following many requests the creator of the F5FLEN WebCluster software
added a filter called NO-DIGI. As the name suggests, it allows you to
display DX spots between 1.8 MHz and 145 MHz that are not in digital
modes. A new version for the desktop and for mobile devices can be
downloaded from cluster.f5len.org
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Forward to the Past

Don't forget to adjust your clocks next week, when our local time will
thankfully be the same again as UTC, making writing your log that litle
bit less confusing. But if your electronic clocks already went haywire
today, here the explanation: there is a bug in GPSD, the software
daemon responsible for deriving time from the GPS system, and it
triggers today, the 24th of October 2021, jumping the time back to
March of 2002. For most systems it is just a matter of a software
upgrade. Embedded devices, however, may not be so simple to fix.
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AM Radio

A recent british government publication states that AM radio reaches
around three percent of listeners, responsible for a considerable part
of the electricity bill of the UK radio industry, which is calculated
to consume around 115 GWh/year of energy at an estimated £16 million
per annum on electricity for transmission. That is the electrical
energy equivalent to that used by 30,000 households. This represents
around 0.03% of UK energy use. Of this, around three quarters of the
energy is used for analogue radio broadcasts and one quarter for
digital radio broadcasts. Most of the radio stations provided as
analogue broadcasts are duplicated on DAB transmission networks which
also carry many digital-only services. The Department for Culture,
Media and Sport report states that only FM is to be retained until
2030. It recommends that the UK's three national medium wave networks
be closed in the mid 2020s, though the final decision is to be left to
the individual broadcasters.

The Friday evening net of the Society for the Preservation of AM, also
known as SPAM, has been running now for 30 years, and unlike their
professional UK counterparts, they are not likely to go away that
quickly. They are also unconcerned about their power consumption.
Unfortunatly, it's not a net we can participate in from IARU Region 1.
The special call ZL6AM continues to attract a small, but enthusiastic
group from all over New Zealand. Looking at their monthly newsletter it
is obvious that they are a lively bunch, using a mix of old
professional grade equiment and modern tranceivers. Their net runs on
Fridays from 0830, and Wednesdays at 1130 New Zealand time. It's their
net frequency that is of interest to us, as 3850 kHz is outside our
allocation, meaning that their weaker AM Signals are not drowned by
european stations around morning greyline time. Which brings us to our
last item.
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The Propagation Horoscope

After a spotless sun on the 17th, a large southern hole in the sun's
atmosphere spewed solar wind that missed us on Thursday. Region 2886
will shortly be joined by region 2880 for another rotation. This will
increase flux values slightly. As of Friday, the X-ray flux is a mid
R0, the Proton Flux is also quiet at S0,and the geomagnetic KP index is
undisturbed at G0. There is moderate auroral activity over nother
latitudes, leaving the high paths undisturbed for good topband
conditions on medium and high hemisphere circuits. The higher
frequencies have clearly improved with 10m open across the Atlantic and
into Europe late afternoons via long single hop F2. Expect short
openings on higher bands, and good dx opportunities up to 17m. The
nightime MUF is around 6Mhz, 20m will open at around 0630 local time.
On VHF you might catch the last Orionid meteors until the 7th of
November. The peak was the morning of the 21st of October. The nearly
full Hunter's Moon made visual observation difficult, but pings are
still clearly audible.
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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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