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This Week's News

Irish Radio transmitters Society Radio News Bulletin Sunday 16 Oct 2022
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Harec Exams

The IRTS Examination Board would like to wish all candidates that
undertook the HAREC examination at Cork and Dublin venues on Saturday,
the 15th of October the very best, and wish to remind candidates that
the results will be communicated via the ComReg elicensing portal in
due course. The number of candidates sitting the recent examinations
has remained strong which is very positive for the Amateur
Radio community in Ireland.
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JOTA 2022

Jamboree On The Air (JOTA) is an annual event in which Scouts and
Guides all over the world communicate with each other via amateur
radio. JOTA 2022 ends its 48 hour run at 2359 UTC on Sunday. The
Recommended JOTA frequency is 3.690 Mhz +/- QRM, so have a listen out
for the EI JOTA stations after the news. Any EI/GI or SWL that work
some, or all the above Jota stations, can submit a log to
radioscoutingireland /at/ gmail.com. All confirmed logs will go in a
draw for this year's wonderful prize: a much-coveted camping mug and a
2022 Jota-Joti badge. Deadline for the logs is next Sunday at 18.00z,
and the winner will be announced on the following Sunday.
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Contests

The Stew Perry Top Band Distance Challenge Warm-Up on 160m CW takes
place next weekend. This event was created by a small group of
contesters who were interested in 160 meters TopBand. The most unique
feature of this contest is that the point value of QSOs depends on the
distance between the two stations. You are given one point plus another
point for each 500 kms of distance. Points are also multiplied for
lower power categories, for both the sending and receiving station. The
activity levels for this contest continue to grow, but the band tends
to be less crowded than the other contests, making it easier to work
DX. The December 17th event, which is the "Big" Stew, has the highest
participation, which is due to the good conditions for the Northern
Hemisphere, but also due to the Plaques that are sponsored. Lew, W7EW,
has been sending out plaques and they are in shacks all around the
world. The organiser is The Boring Amateur Radio Club, and the Stew
Perry Contest web-page is at www.kkn.net/stew The Contest period is
from next Saturday, from 1500z for 24 hours. Maximum on-time is 14
hours. Off-times must be a minimum of 30 minutes with no QSOs.

Two weeks from now will see the SSB leg of the CQ WW Contest. Expect a
lot of activity in the contest segments from topband thru 10m during
this gruelling 48 hour shouting duel. The SSB leg is on October 29th
and 30th, the CW leg is on the weekend of November 26th and 27th. Last
year saw EI7M come 10th overall, with over 20 logs entered by EI
stations. See www.cqww.com for details.
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Space Snippets

The GB2RS Newsteam reports that on Saturday of last week, at the 2022
AMSAT-UK Colloquium, a new bandplan for the use of the narrow-band
transponder of the QO-100 geostationary amateur satellite was
announced. Among other changes, AMSAT has allocated a new `broadcast'
spot frequency which is intended for the news services of amateur radio
organisations. The RSGB website gives details about their news team
successfully making good use of QO-100's large footprint.

Lez EI4GEB reports on irts.groups.io about Ireland's first satellite
moving a step closer to launching, thanks to a successful UN
registration. EIRSAT-1 stands for the Educational Irish Research
Satellite 1. Jeremy Boot G4NJH reports on Amateur Radio Newsline that
the team developing EIRSAT-1 has returned from Belgium, where the
project underwent rigorous testing at the CubeSat Support Facility,
including an assessment to ensure it would survive launch. The
University College Dublin team includes David Murphy, EI9HWB, and Lána
Salmon, EI9HXB. They are developing the low-earth-orbit CubeSat as part
of the European Space Agency's "Fly Your Satellite" programme. ESA
administrators have said in the past that they view the project as a
way to grow a new generation of space scientists and engineers to
nurture a space programme for Ireland. The satellite is tentatively
scheduled for a launch from an ESA base in French Guiana by early 2023.
The Project's website is at www.eirsat1.ie .
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The Propagation Horoscope

Seven active sunspot regions are visible, the solar activity remains
high. More M-flares are considered likely, as is a small chance of
X-class eruptions from active regions 3112 and 3116. The impact of fast
solar winds from coronal hole CH30 continues, with a Kp index of 2 or 3
lighter radio blackouts cannot be ruled out. NOAA expects the solar
flux index to fall from 160 to 140 in the coming week and the plasma
density to slowly increase. The average weekly sunspot number is at
115. During this week last year, there were only 30 sunspots and the
flux was at 87, meaning Solar Cycle 25 progression is better than
predicted. Expect openings in the upper HF bands almost around the
clock, with unfamiliar prefixes from Asia appearing on 40 to 10 meters
until noon. The maximum usable frequency will range from 25 to over 30
MHz during the day, not dipping lower than 10 MHz at night.

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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