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This Week's News

IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday November 28th 2021
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Truskmore Back On Air

Dave, Ei5IMB reports that the Donegal Amateur Radio Club, EI1DRC are
happy to announce that the long-time offline but very well-known
Truskmore 2m FM Analogue Repeater, EI2TKR has been rebuilt and
resurrected in the form of a TAIT TB8100. It is currently active
on-test beside the QTH of its new Keeper, Dave, EI5IMB, with an input
of 145.100MHz, 77Hz tone, and an output of 145.700MHz. The temporary
location allows ease of access to test and tweak the repeater until
January, when it is planned to move it back to its rightful home on the
mountain. We would invite all operators and SWL in range to give it a
go and send a signal report to Dave via email at irishhamradio /at/
gmail.com
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East Leinster Amateur Radio Club

Tom, EI5IEB informs us that the club continues to meet twice a week via
zoom. The club also meets in person weekly, when government guidelines
allow, to set up and operate portable field stations. Members are
routinely calling into both the 2m and 80m news while operating
portable. These in-person meetups also facilitate the testing of new
and homebrew equipment, tuning homebrew antennas while having fun in a
sample field station scenario. The Club continues to broadcast the
monthly IRTS news on 4m and has built up a steady stream of regular
callers and SWL's. The next broadcast will be next Sunday, December 5th
at 1000 local time. We look forward to receiving signal reports from
both SWL's licenced amateurs, and new members are always welcome.
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South Eastern Amateur Radio Group

The November meeting of The South Eastern Amateur Radio Group which was
due to be held, tomorrow night Monday the 29th of November at 8:00 p.m.
at The Sweep Bar, Adamstown, Kilmeaden, Co. Waterford has been
cancelled. Due to Covid and high numbers of new cases been confirmed in
the past few days it would not be safe to have the meeting. Member's
safety and the safety of the public must be foremost in the interests
of the club. Hopefully there will be brighter days ahead soon for all
of us and we will all get to meet in person. Thanks to all of you for
your understanding.

The 89th Irish Radio Transmitters AGM weekend will take place over the
weekend of the 9th and 10th of April 2022 in the Woodford Dolmen Hotel,
Kilkenny Road, Carlow. Tickets for the Gala Dinner can now be
pre-booked from John EI7IG for collection on arrival at the event.
Tickets cost EUR35 and more information including contact details for
John can be found on the IRTS Gala Dinner section on
www.irtsagm2022cw.blogspot .com

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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December YOTA Month

Niall, Ei6HIB reports that the 1st of December marks the start of
December YOTA month. This month-long event is all about getting young
people involved in our wonderful hobby. EI0YOTA is one of the many YOTA
callsigns taking part, and will be active throughout the month on a
variety of modes and bands. The EI0YOTA operators are looking forward
to a busy month. The entire month of December several youngsters will
become active with YOTA as suffix in the callsign. The idea for this is
to show the amateur radio hobby to youth and to encourage youngsters to
be active on the ham radio waves. For more information on the activity
and the awards available see www.events.ham-yota.com, 45 stations with
the YOTA callsign from all continents have already registered.
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Dwingeloo Radio Telescope

A collaboration of Members of the CAMRAS Foundation, ESA, Lacuna Space,
and Jan, PA3FXB have sent the Observatory's callsign PI9CAM on a round
trip of 730,360km to the Moon and back. This is hardly anything new, as
this telescope was commissioned in 1956, played an important role in
the early exploration of the structure of the Milky Way using 21 cm
hydrogen radiation, and also has a long history of amateur radio
experiments. It's often used for Moonbounce, but this was the first
time a data message was bounced using a small RF chip. An off-the-shelf
Semtech LR1110 RF transceiver chip was hooked up to a 350 Watt
amplifier, in turn feeding the obveratory's 25-metre dish. The same
dish and chip was used to receive the signal on its return from the
Moon 2.44 seconds later. The short data format of LoRa messages allowed
for the amplifier to be bypassed in time to receive the echo with the
same chip. The LR1110 chip was also used to measured the round trip
time of the message, as well as the frequency offset due to Doppler
shift caused by the relative motion of the Earth and the Moon.
Calculating the distance to the moon from the round trip time and
comparing this with the theoretical position effectively created a
radar image of the surface. This impressive demonstration shows the
power of LoRa with its low bandwidth, usually low power, low cost and
its small size.
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Shortwave & Contesting

High power AM transmitters are not easily sourced now, but Radio
Caroline got lucky, finding a Harris DX25. They are now back on the air
on 648 kHz, transmitting from Orfordness with over 4 KW and a 100 meter
tall tower. First reception reports indicate a much improved signal
across the British Isles. Station manager Peter Moore is asking
listeners to leave an SWL report, using the form provided on their
website www.radiocaroline.co.uk

The following three International Short Wave League Club club callsigns
will be used throughout the month of December 2021: GX4BJC/A, operated
by George, G1IPU, located in Clacton on Sea, Essex. MX1SWL/A, operated
by Merv, G0UJD, located in Skegby, Nottinghamshire. QSL to those two
callsigns via via Dick, M5DIK. And GB75ISWL is operated by Herbie,
G6XOU, from Walton on the Naze, Essex. QSL via G6XOU.

The 2021 QRP-ARCI Top Band Sprint takes place from 0000Z to 0300Z on
the 2nd of December. The scoring is favourable for very low power
stations, dropping output from 10 Watts to 100 miliWatts on SSB
twenty-folds the score. Even if You are not a contester or using more
than 10 Watts on HF, have a listen at the lower band edge around 1810
kHz, SSB activity is centred around 1910 kHz.

Shortly after, another topband contest coming up is the ARRL 160m CW
Contest. The objective is to work US American and Canadian stations
from Friday 3rd, starting 2200 UTC, until Sunday 5th, at 1559 UTC.

Henning Andresen OZ2I, the Contest Manager of the Danish EDR, was
invited by Gerard, Ei5KF, to operate from his well equipped station in
Mitchelstown during this weekend's CQ WorldWide CW Contest. Henning
used the temporary callsign EI7EE, and hopefully he can still be worked
after the contest.

Also staying on a little longer is Rafal, SQ9CNN, on air as JW5E from
the Longyearbyen club station on Spitzbergen, IOTA EU-026. Rafal will
be active until late Monday as JW/SQ9CNN.

A chance to work Lichtenstein, possibly after this weekend, is with
operators Silvio, HB9LCW, Haaf, PA3FGA, and Claudia, PA5CT and Aurelio,
PC5A. They are HB0A during the current CQWW DX CW Contest.

Another rare prefix in Europe is OI. Military radio amateurs will
celebrate Finland's Independence Day on amateur radio frequencies next
Monday, the 6th of December. There is an award certificate available
for working ten different OI stations. More info at www.sral.fi
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SSTV from the ISS

Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station ISS will soon
again broadcast SSTV images on 145,800 MHz. The broadcasts are part of
the SSTV experiment of the Moscow Aviation Institute. The broadcast
schedule is set for Wednesday from 12:10 to 19:10 UTC, and Thursday
from 11:40 to 17:20 UTC. Participants can upload images received on the
ARISS website gallery.
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The Propagation Horoscope

Wednesday noon last, a filament eruption was observed in the Sun's
southern hemisphere. A partial halo CME was observed afterwards in
LASCO imagery. The main components of this CME just missed Earth, only
causing moderate geomagnetic disturbances this weekend. A second, Earth
facing filament eruption was observed in the northeast quadrant
starting at midnight on Thursday and peaking early on Friday. This one
is likely to affect propagation from Monday onwards, but not strong
enough to cause deep radio blackouts. NOAA predicts a Kp index of 4,
the X-ray flux is around flare class B, the proton flux is at R0, the
solar wind is at 350 km per second, and proton density is at 5
particles per cubic centimeter, but expect those values to rise Monday
morning. The MUF for a 3000 km hop reached 21 MHz on most days,
occasionaly reaching 30 Mhz around noon. Watch for long path opening
into the pacific regions on 20 meters, just after sunrise.
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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/dot/ie for
automatic forwarding to both the radio and printed news services. The
deadline is midnight on Thursday

[C]
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