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This Week's News

IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday 26 June 2022
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EI3BK SK

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Jeremiah
O'Sullivan, EI3BK from Bishopstown, Co. Cork. Jerry passed away
peacefully on Saturday morning at Cork University Hospital. We offer
our deepest sympathies to his family and friends. We'll observe a
moment of silence in memory of Jerry, EI3BK. May he rest in peace.
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2022 IRTS VHF/UHF Field Day

The 2022 IRTS VHF/UHF Field Day takes place over the weekend of
Saturday the 2nd and Sunday the 3rd of July, from 1400 UTC Saturday
until 1400 UTC Sunday. Last year after following consultation with
contesters, to provide greater flexibility this field day was arranged
to run as 5 separate contests - one on each band 50 MHz (6m), 70 MHz
(4m), 144 MHz (2m), 432 MHz (70cm) and 1296 MHz (23cm). There is an
Open 24-hour and a 6-hour Restricted option for each band, stations may
enter one or more bands or all five bands. Also, entries on different
bands from a station may be mixed between Open (24-hour) and Restricted
(6-hour) sections. The deadline for submitting logs is Sunday, July
17th. For more details and a full list of rules please see
www.irts.ie/rules
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South Eastern Amateur Radio Group EI2WRC

The June meeting of the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group EI2WRC will
take place tomorrow night, Monday the 27th of June 2022 at 8.00 p.m.
sharp at The Sweep Bar, Adamstown, Kilmeaden, Co. Waterford (Eircode
X91 H588). New members or anyone interested in learning more about
amateur radio or the group are as always very welcome to attend. 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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No Transmission at Grimeston

There will be no transmission from the mechanical 200 kiloWatt
transmitter SAQ at Grimeston, Sweden on 17 kHz VLF for this year's
Alexanderson Day on the 3rd of July. The team running the transmitter
twice a year cite problems obtaining spare parts for the 98 year
transmitter, currently undergoing maintenance work. The Radio Station
is again open to visitors, who can witness two start-ups of the large
rotor, however no RF will be radiated from SAQ's toploaded vertical.
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Repeaters in Norway and Switzerland

On the 14th of June, NRRL's Executive Board approved a new plan,
prepared by their repeater manager Håvard, LB9RE, for the tones used
for opening relay stations in Norway. All repeater managers are asked
to implement the new plan as soon as possible, no later than the end of
2023. A nationwide use of a 1750 Hz tone-burst has eventually been
replaced by CTCSS or subtones. Relay stations with a built-in logic
often do not have 1750 Hz tone decoders and the choice most often falls
on the use of CTCSS and other subtones. Since there are many subtones
to choose from, it has been tempting to choose their own, or a separate
one for each region of the country. The new frequency plan for the
entire country allows for either a tone-burst, or CTCSS and DTMF for
both analogue and digital modes, using just two frequencies each, or a
combination of these. Visitors to Norway can get detailed information
about this change on www.nrrl.no

The Repeater Coordinators of the Union of Swiss Shortwave Amateurs,
USKA has also published a new list and an updated online map of their
voice repeaters, making it easy to find coverage areas and information
about talk group settings, and how to open the analogue repeaters. More
information is on www.uska.ch, but also have a look at
www.repeatermap.de for an zoom-able map for all of Europe.
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EUHFC 2022 Contest canceled

Not long after the Slovenian Contest Club announced a new experimental
QRP section in the European Championship contest, originally scheduled
for the 6th of August, they had a change of mind and canceled the
contest altogether. Robert Bajuk, S57AW, reports that the SCC Contest
Committee has decided to cancel EUHFC 2022 due to the war in Ukraine.
They do not see the point in competing for the title of European
Champion without the presence of our Ukrainian friends, and in the
absence of contest activity in most other EU countries. The Contest
Committee says: "It was a difficult decision, who would have thought
that we will ever need to even discuss these things, but we don't want
to further separate amateur radio friends and hope for a better
tomorrow. Hoping for peace, we will meet again in August next year in
EUHFC 2023!
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Voyager 1 & 2

Nasa has begun turning off the spacecraft Voyager's systems, signaling
the beginning of the end of the probe's 50-year career. Voyager 1 and
Voyager 2 were launched in 1977 and travelled to the edge of the solar
system. 44 years into this journey, NASA must power down some of the
probes' systems in order to keep them operating until 2030. The first
Voyager craft has four remaining functioning instruments, while Voyager
2 has five, powered by converting decaying plutonium into electricity.
This battery has had its output dropping by about four watts every
year, requiring tough choices about what to switch off next. The final
instruments Nasa will disable are likely to be the magnetometer and the
plasma science instrument inside the body of the spacecraft. These are
warmed by the excess heat of the computers. The other instruments are
suspended on a 13 meter fiberglass boom, heating them requires more
power. It takes a radio signal almost 22 hours to reach Voyager 1 and
just over 18 for Voyager 2.
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AMPR-Hamnet

The 44Net has been around since the 1980s, allowing amateur radio
operators to experiment with internet routing, using public IP
addresses in the 44-range, for free. This news bulletin has been sent
via such connection in the ampr.org domain. The internet address space
for amateur radio and experimenters is run by the non-profit foundation
Amateur Radio Digital Communications. ARDC has started a public survey,
trying to find out what, if anything, needs to be improvement in the
running and usage of this valuable resource. They encourage a lively
participation by all YLs, OMs and SWLs. Have a look at the start pages
of www.ampr.org and the ARDC pages. Our Coordinator for the Irish part
of the ampr.org address space is John, EI7IG. Stefan, EI4kU has started
a thread on our irts.groups.io forum on the topic of TCP/IP high-speed
networking.
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The Propagation Horoscope

A California wildfire cut off power to the Solar Dynamics Observatory
Data Center at Stanford University, making predictions somewhat less
reliable. Last week's sunspot number increased to 125, up from 74 the
previous week. The average daily solar flux rose from 124 to 140,
expected to decrease towards around 110 for next week, as the currently
active regions rotate out of view. New active regions are appearing on
the eastern limb, likely affecting next weekend's propagation.
Geomagnetic conditions are calm. All factors combined means that the
maximum usable frequency will remain well above 20 MHz, and we can
expect good to excellent conditions on all higher bands. But keep in
mind that the grey-line is late in the evenings, DX opening into the
Americas will be well after 22:00 UTC. The night-time critical
frequency will continue to give good NVIS on 7Mhz, day-time D-layer
absorption will silence 80m and 60m until well into the evening. The
magic 6m band will produce long distance DX openings in all directions
helped by strong Sporadic-E, reaching peak ionization early in July.

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 evening.

[C]
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