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This Week's News

IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday 04 November 2022
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Club News

At a recent IRTS committee meeting the topic of storing and presenting
society documentation (historic and current) was discussed, a decision
was taken to form a working group to explore this topic in greater
detail and develop a proposal that the society can implement. This
group will be asked to evaluate the type of information we have and
explore the options that best suit the society going forward. We are
calling for the assistance of IRTS members with a background or
experience in digital storage to join this working group and assist in
scoping out possible solutions. Please drop an email to archive /at/
irts.ie to get involved.

The November meeting of the Galway Radio Experimenters Club EI4GRC will
take place tomorrow night, Monday the 07 of November at 8:00 p.m. sharp
at The Menlo Park Hotel, Terryland, Headford Road, Galway, eircode H91
E98N. There will also be virtual access to the meeting, please contact
the Club Secretary via an email to secretary /at/ galwayradio.com for
access details. The club website is www.galwayradio.com and anyone is
welcome to come to our club nights or contact the secretary for more
information.

Club Secretary Philip MiØMSO/EI8GPB informs that the West Tyrone ARC
will resume regular monthly meetings on Wednesday at 19:30 in Strathroy
Community Centre, Omagh, BT79 7XE. To contact the club via email, write
to info /at/ wtarc.org.uk .

The South Dublin Radio Club will host a technical talk, in person, not
live streamed. On Tuesday, the 8th of November, at 8 p.m. sharp Mark
EI4ACB will be giving an informal talk on mini computers and
interfacing to voice repeaters. Using a raspberry pi and an MMDVM
interface he will explain how the setup can be used for repeater
linking. Visitors and those with no previous knowledge are welcome to
attend.

Class Foxtrot, the National Short Wave Listeners Club's current HAREC
training course, has started on Thursday. 52 were in attendance, out of
66 who have completed the registration. There are still a few more
registering late. As of today, the NSWLC has 142 members, all of whom
are also current members of the IRTS. The course takes 24 weeks, and
will end on the 4th of May 2023. The first session made good progress,
introducing the topics and the licensing process, and covered ITU,
CEPT, and some of the Irish regulations. Next week the hard work starts
on electrical and electronic theory. The HAREC Study Guide is almost
complete, with only two out of the thirty chapters left to re-write and
edit. Rafal hopes to have them ready next week, at which point, he
hopes the wider IRTS membership will help review it with a magnifying
glass in hand.
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Contesting

Last weekend's CQ Worldwide Contest saw over 30 EI single-ops and clubs
submit their logs. The 2022 SSB CQWW will be remembered for the
excellent propagation on 10m, lasting throughout the night and filling
the band with SSB signals right up to 29 MHz. Next weekend the bands
will be busy with three major contests, so non-contesters may need to
seek refuge on the WARC bands.

The last of this year's WAE DX Contests takes place next weekend. This
is the RTTY leg, it runs from next Saturday, 0000 UTC until next Sunday
2359 UTC. Unlike the SSB and CW, RTTY station can work all countries,
not just intercontinental DX, but one gains extra points for
inter-continental QTC traffic, where DX stations transfer real
telegrams to the European stations. These telegrams contain data of
previously logged QSOs. Each of these records counts one additional
point for the sender and the receiver. During the WAE SSB and CW
contests this procedure can be a bit of a drag, but this feature is
well suited for RTTY.

Given the good propagation conditions, especially on the higher bands,
one may hear stronger than expected SSB contest traffic from the JA
International DX Contest, starting Saturday at 07:00 UTC, running for
30 hours until 13:00 UTC on Sunday. The exchange sent by JA stations is
RST ad Prefecture number, from 01 to 50, all other send RST and CQ zone
number. Because the IARU Region 3 band plan differs from ours,
especially for 80 and 40m, prospective participants in the JIDX contest
should familiarise themselves with the rules at
jidx.org/jidxrule-e.html .

CW operators can look forward to to the popular Czech and Slovakian
OK-OM DX Contest, it runs for 24 hours starting Saturday at 12:00 UTC.
QSOs are made between OK,OL and OM stations with stations outside the
two countries, making this a true DX contest. A station may be worked
once on each band, from 160 to 10m. OK, OL and OM send RST and district
abbreviations, EI/GI stations send RST and a serial number.

The JIDX and OK-OM contest organisers decided that in light of the
invasion of Ukraine by Russia and Belarus they will not accept entries
by Russian and Belarusian Stations.

In preparation for the CQ WW CW Contest on the 26th and 27th of
November, a number of teams and single-ops will be on air with some
much sought-after prefixes. A Slovenian team will be active as TKØC in
Corsica during the CQWW CW contest. Before and after the contest,
listen for the various team members using their personal calls with the
TK/ prefix. Also listen for Doug, VA3DF, and Anthony, VE3RZ, operating
from Grand Turk during the contest using the call-sign VP5Y. Outside
the contest, Doug and Anthony will be operating mainly CW on 160-10m
with the call-signs VP5/VA3DF and VP5/VE3RZ. Christopher, HB9FIY a.k.a.
M0ISF, will be active as ZD7CA from St. Helena Island, IOTA reference
AF-022, between now and the 26th of this month. Activity is limited to
his spare time. He is using 40, 20, 17, 15 and 10 meters SSB, PSK31,
RTTY and WSPR, the rig is a a KX3 and KXPA100 into a vertical fan
dipole. QSL goes via EA5GL. All logs will be uploaded upon his return
in early December.
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OPDX Editor Retires

After just under 32 years of publishing the free Ohio Penn DX Bulletin,
Tedd Mirgliotta KB8NW announced his retirement. Tedd, the president of
the Northern Ohio DX Association, has made this free resource available
on the internet. Before that, stretching to 42 years in total, he used
packet clusters and international dial-up Bulletin Boards to spread DX
news. The edition of October 31st, 2022 is the final bulletin,
available at www.papays.com/opdx1586.html . The bulletin's webmaster,
John Papay, K8YSE, said on the website that the archived issues of the
bulletin will continue to be available on the EIDX Network at
papays.com.
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Orbital News

ARISS Europe chairman Oliver Amend DG6BCE informed that the application
deadline for school contacts in the second half of 2023 has been
extended until the 27th of November. The mission of the Danish
astronaut Andreas Mogensen, KG5GCZ is also planned in that time frame.
Application details can be found on www.ariss-eu.org . Currently, the
ARISS amateur radio system in the space station's COLUMBUS module is
still in transponder mode and can be used by all licensed hams as far
as no scheduled radio contacts are ongoing.

The latest bulletin at www.amsat.org reported an AMSAT-constructed
linear transponder module is included in the MESAT 3U satellite to be
deployed as part of NASA's upcoming ELaNa 43 mission. MESAT-1 is a
stack of three tech-stuffed 4-inch cubes assembled at the University of
Maine and to be launched before the end of this year. MESAT-1 carries
three imaging experiments and a 2-way radio for use by ground control
and amateur radio. Released into a Sun-synchronous orbit about 555
kilometers above Earth, it will fly nearly over the poles travelling at
about 7.8 kilometers per second, making a full orbit in roughly 100
minutes. Any given location on Earth will experience 4 to 6 passes per
day, with each pass lasting under 15 minutes. The telemetry beacon
downlink will be at 435.800 MHz 1200 baud BPSK, the transponder uplink
will be on 145.910-145.940 MHz with a downlink on 435.810-435.840 MHz.
To take full advantage of this new satellite, a new version of FoxTelem
has been released ahead of the launch of MESAT-1, allowing to decode
MESAT-1 telemetry. MESAT-1 has an AMSAT Linear Transponder Module (LTM)
and will transmit health data and images at 1200bps using BPSK.
FoxTelem will decode and display the images from the University of
Maine multi-spectral camera, as well as other data about the
spacecraft. This software is available from the website of Chris G0KLA,
at www.g0kla.com and information about the satellite itself is
available at www.mainesat.org
__________________________________________________________________

The Propagation Horoscope

The CQ WW SSB contest showed that the 3000 km MUF2 did not drop below
30 MHz for most days of last week, but geomagnetic instability dampened
propagation in the past three days. The planetary k index peaked at 5
on Thursday, currently dropping back towards 2. The X-ray flux levels
are at B to C level, the solar wind comes at around 450 km per second,
with an medium proton count. The recurrent trans-equatorial coronal
hole CH1111 was Earth facing on midweek, with moderate activity. A
southern hemisphere coronal hole, numbered CH1112 will rotates across
the central meridian this weekend, It seems no major flares and CME's
are on the cards for now. In short: these are the best propagation
conditions from Topband to above 30 MHz one can hope for, there are
even reports of numerous contacts on 6m via trans-equatorial paths.
Check the eastern directions on 40m and above, especially before noon.

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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