XPost: rec.radio.info

(BUTTON) Go Back

This Week's News

IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday 29 May 2022
__________________________________________________________________

EI90IRTS

The Irish Radio Transmitters Society was founded in 1932 and this year
the society celebrates its 90th birthday. To mark the occasion the
society has secured the special call-sign EI90IRTS. Since its initial
use the call-sign has attracted multiple pile-ups on all bands and
modes it has been used on. This call is available to activate for any
EI IRTS licensed member that's interested in activating it. The special
call can be activated on all bands and modes and the duration of any
activation is entirely up to the operator. It can be for an hour or
even a day! All logs must be submitted electronically in ADIF format.
To make sure that the call-sign is not used on the same bands or modes
at the same time, the use of the call-sign is being coordinated by
Declan, EI9FVB. A special WhatsApp group is in use to help with the
coordination. If any fully licensed EI IRTS member would like to
activate the EI90IRTS call-sign you are please asked to get in touch
with Declan EI9FVB by email to horandx /at/ gmail.com . A special QSL
card will be made available, once printed. Direct QSLs can be sent to
Dave, EI6AL. For more information including QSL details please see
www.qrz.com/db/EI90IRTS
__________________________________________________________________

Club News

The Shannon Basin Radio Club will be taking part in the CW Field Day
contest next weekend on Saturday, the 4th of June from a location
opposite the Racecourse in Roscommon Town. Anyone with an interest in
radio or field-day operations would be more than welcome to drop by.
More details can be found on our website www.sbrc.ie and our facebook
page.

The May meeting of the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group EI2WRC will
take place tomorrow night, Monday the 30th of May 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. The
South Eastern Amateur Radio Group EI2WRC will be QRV as EI2WRC/P from
the Old Copper Mine, Tankardstown, Bunmahon, Co. Waterford over the
weekend of the 4th and 5th of June 2022. Although there is no official
European Geopark Activation taking place this year the club are pleased
to announce that the location can be activated in the following
categories: Echo India Flora and Fauna as EIFF-0263, at the Mid
Waterford Coast SPA. It also has a 2 for 1 on POTA which are EI-0162,
also at the Mid Waterford Coast SPA, and EI-0163, at the Tankardstown
Copper Mine. The old copper mine building comes in as part of the
COTA-EI and we are currently waiting on a COTA designator for this.
EI2WRC would like to thank Jer Aspell of the EIFF group for all his
hard work in providing all the designators for this location. 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.
__________________________________________________________________

National SWL Club

The National Short Wave Listeners Club had 87 members as of 24 May
2022. Our biggest undertaking at the moment, the re-write and the
modernisation of the IRTS HAREC Study Guide to match the new Irish
HAREC exam structure is going well. Nine club members, including six
tutors, have been actively writing, drawing, or amending the guide
almost every day since the early April. Thirty active class Echo
attendees have been re-reviewing the chapters as they have been
produced and corrected. However, due to the sheer size of the job and
the need to carefully include new topics, such as SDR, the process has
taken longer than expected. The guide is about 70% complete but we are
about one month behind our original schedule. The guide has 150 pages
and 47000 words across 30 chapters at present. Eight chapters still
need to be re-written, and one more needs to be written from scratch.
We are hoping to get assistance from the other IRTS Clubs and the wider
membership in reviewing and proof-reading the new guide, so that it is
ready for everyone in June. Once we have published it, we will welcome
feedback and edits from the amateur radio community worldwide. We
continue to meet weekly every Sunday, on Zoom, in addition to running
the HAREC classes every Thursday evening. Sunday attendance has
averaged 27 members every week. We have covered subjects relevant to
both those recently licensed, and those still studying, including live
demos of successful propagation using CW from Ireland to Australia
using only 5 W, and to New Zealand using more power than that, on 40
and 20 m. We also did an extensive live demo of multiple operating
modes, including all voice modes as well as modern and older digital
modes. The last meeting covered the structure of on-air calls as
prescribed by the IARU and ITU guidelines. The attendance of Thursday
Class Echo sessions has seen a little drop off and runs 30-32
attendees. We hope that the remaining students will still take the exam
in July.
__________________________________________________________________

Publications Library Update

The IRTS Publications Library contains newsletters and other IRTS
publications from 1948 to the year 2000. The library now holds more
than 270 publications which have been scanned and converted to PDF for
easy viewing and downloading. Optical character recognition has been
used during scanning, to facilitate screen readers and text searching.

The most recent additions to the library are a number of issues of the
society's monthly newsletter from 1975, from the collection of the late
Rod Mooney EI2P. The 1975 newsletters record plenty of on-air and
construction activity, as well as presentations about the various
amateur radio experiments being undertaken by members. Although solar
cycle 20 was heading towards its minimum at the time, it is clear that
some impressive DX was being worked by EI stations, often using low
power.

The IRTS Publications library is at www.irts.ie/library and is well
worth a visit. We continue to ask members to help to fill in the gaps
by lending newsletters or other IRTS publications not currently in the
library so that they can be scanned and added to the library.
__________________________________________________________________

Golden Globe Race

Pat Lawless from Limerick, now living in Ballyferriter, Co Kerry, is
endeavoring to solo circumnavigate the globe as an entrant in the
Golden Globe Race 2022. He is the only Irish entrant. The race starts
from Les Sables-d'Olonne in France on Sunday, the 4th of September
2022. All entrants must navigate using only old technology, no GPS or
computer laptop allowed, with only a Sextant in hand and the stars to
navigate the way around the globe. Participants will be allowed to use
Radio Directional Finding, RDF navigation. Pat has an IC-M710 SSB
marine transceiver onboard. He is putting out a call to the amateur
radio community in Ireland who may have a good surplus SSB receiver for
loan or purchase. That will allow him to help his navigation using RDF.
Sailing alone for 9 months or more, he would also like the company of,
and listen to amateur radio operators from around the world as he
circumnavigates the globe. If you feel you can help Pat with a general
purpose SSB receiver, please contact Pat Lawless on 087 742 6360, or
email him at lawlessfuniture /at/ hotmail.com More info about the race
can be found at www.goldengloberace.com/ ggr-2022
__________________________________________________________________

Contests

Several international contests are taking place next weekend.

Pride Radio Group is proud to announce CQ Pride, a radio contest
intended to celebrate pride month, support inclusion in amateur radio,
and to have a fun time. CQ Pride runs for 24 hours next Sunday, full
info on www.prideradio.group

The Dutch CW Field-day will be held starting next Saturday at 15:00
UTC, ending at 14:59 UTC next Sunday. The rules for this all-band
contest can be found on www.veron.nl

The ARRL International Digital Contest runs from 18:00 UTC next
Saturday to 23:59 UTC on Sunday. Using digital modes, but no RTTY, on
the 1.8 to 50MHz bands where contests are allowed, the exchange is your
4-character locator.

The RSGB National Field Day runs from 15:00 UTC on Saturday to 15:00UTC
on Sunday. Using CW only on the 1.8 to 28MHz bands where contests are
permitted, the exchange is signal report and serial number.
__________________________________________________________________

IRTS News Readers

The IRTS are currently trying to coordinate the weekly Sunday morning
40m and 80m news bulletins and form a panel of newsreaders so as to
make sure that there is always someone available to read each bulletin
and, most importantly, to spread the workload evenly among the
newsreaders. As the old saying goes "Many hands make light work". We
have a small list of those who are currently reading the 80/40m
bulletins. Ideally, if we had a list of 6 to 8, or more people who
would be willing to read one of the bulletins it would spread out the
workload considerably. Any of the current newsreaders will tell you
that there is very little involved in reading the bulletins. If any
fully licensed EI feels like that they would be interested in becoming
part of the IRTS News Readers panel, can they please get in touch with
the IRTS Public Relations Officer Sean EI2HZB directly on 083 4713001
or by email to irts_pro /at/ irts.ie . Likewise, if anyone has any
further questions please get in touch also. Once a list of those
interested has been compiled, we will set about getting a rota in place
for both the 40m and 80m Sunday bulletins.
__________________________________________________________________

The Propagation Horoscope

NOAA predicts that the Solar Flux Index may decline to around 130 or
less, dipping to its lowest value around next weekend, combined with
low kP numbers. This will help the ionosphere develop and should bring
good conditions, all assuming that no major earth-facing CME upsets
this prediction.

The Tau Herculids, associated with Comet 73P and discovered in 1930,
appear early during Monday night into Tuesday morning. In 1995 its
nucleus broke up, creating a debris cloud. Meteor scatter activity
should peak around 24:00 UTC on Tuesday morning.

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]
News Archives

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)