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IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday 8th January 2012


IRTS AGM & Rally 2012

The IRTS AGM, Annual Dinner and Rally this year is hosted by Dundalk Amateur Radio Society at the Fairways Hotel on the weekend of April 21st & 22nd 2012. Please keep your diaries free for this special event in our 80th year Anniversary celebrations. More details to follow.


Counties Contest

The IRTS 80 metres counties contest, held on Monday 2nd January was well supported, with plenty of activity right up to the last minute of the contest. Most counties appeared to be represented, although some made only a brief appearance. Our reporters tell us that Carlow, Cavan and Kerry were top of the "most wanted" list, with other sizeable counties like Tipperary and Waterford not far behind.

This year there was a reasonable level of activity on the CW portion of the band. As darkness fell, CW ops benefited in particular from the improved propagation between Ireland and mainland Europe, allowing some Scandinavian and Eastern European stations to answer their contest calls.

Logs should be submitted as soon as possible to contestmanager/ at/ irts /dot/ ie


Happy New Year

Our President, Paul Martin, EI2CA, wishes all of us a very happy new year. He writes, “I thank the large number of stations who turned out to participate in the 80m Counties contest last Monday. While we must await the final receipt of logs, it would appear that just over one hundred separate EI and GI stations were active for the event. This is a great start for the 80th anniversary celebrations and we look forward to an exciting 2012.”


IRTS 80th Anniversary

IRTS will be celebrating its 80th anniversary this year 2012. Details of a worldwide contest – CQIR – to take place on Saint Patrick’s Day, Saturday 17th March 2012 have just been announced. Full rules and information are available at www.irts.ie/cqir or by email to cqir /at /irts / dot/ie


The South Eastern Amateur Radio Group (SEARG)

The South Eastern Amateur Radio Group's APRS node and weather station is back up and running having been off-air for a time due to sensor problems. It is now located at the Waterford City River Rescue HQ which is on the river Suir in Waterford City. The output from it can be viewed onwww.aprs.fi, callsign is EI2WCP-2. Data (including graphs) are also available on the clubs web site atwww.searg.com/weather.php The club would like to thank Waterford City River Rescue for hosting the equipment.

The next meeting of South Eastern Amateur Radio Group will take place on Monday 30th of January at 8:30 p.m. in the Roanmore GAA centre, Cleaboy Road, Waterford and all are welcome to attend. The meeting will be preceeded by a committee meeting at 8:00 p.m., committee members are asked to attend.

For latest news from the group, visit www.searg.com and you can also follow South Eastern Amateur Radio Group on Facebook and Twitter.


Shannon Basin Radio Club

The Shannon Basin Radio Club will be holding its AGM on the 27 January 2012 at 8.30pm in Hannons Hotel Roscommon. All members are requested to attend and all newcomers are welcome to attend. For more info please see www.shannonbasinradioclub.com


Limerick Radio Club

The next club meeting of Limerick Radio Club will take place on Wednesday 11 January 2012 at the Limerick Institute of Technology at 7.30pm. A talk will be given by Ger McNamara EI4GXB on Log Book of the World LOTW. Annual club dues can also be paid on the night to Hon. Treasurer Tony Condon EI2AW. As always, new members are welcome to attend.


RSGB Commonwealth Century Club Jubilee Award 2012

The year 2012 is the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. To qualify for an attractive certificate all you need to do is to work as many different countries and call areas on the Commonwealth Century Club list during 2012.

Certificates will be awarded for working 60 and 100 different call areas. Use any mode or bands you like and QSL cards are not required. For more details follow www.beru.org.uk


DX News

Several German operators have been active from Namibia during the past few weeks. Some have returned home but those still active include V5/DJ2BQ, V5/DL1ZU and V5/DJ2HD. QSLs go via their home calls.

For those wishing to top up their logs with more Eastern Kiribati contacts following on from the very successful T32C expedition last year – which included our own intrepid DXpeditioners Paul EI5DI and Dave EI9FBB – look out for another group who will be active later this month. Six operators from USA/Canada will be active from 17 January until 2 February. Callsigns to look for are T32AU, T32CO, T32LJ, T32TR, T32TX, T32WW and in the CQ WW 160m Contest they will use T32XX.

Mike VE2XB will be QRV from the island of Dominica in the Caribbean from now until the end of January. As with previous visits there he will use the callsign J79XB.

The Pacific island of Tuvalu will be activated by two Hungarian operators, HA5AO and HA5UK, from 12 – 26 January. The call to be used is T2HA.

Prefix hunters will be interested to know that Croatia is marking the 20th Anniversary of the allocation of the 9A prefix. Operators there are permitted to insert the figures ‘20’ into their callsigns. For example 9A2AA will become 9A202AA and 9A1MM will become 9A201MM. These prefixes are available throughout 2012.


Items for inclusion in next week’s Radio News can be submitted via e-mail to “newsteam /at/ irts / dot / ie” for automatic forwarding to both the radio and printed news services. Urgent news items for the radio news maybe telephoned to the radio news editor, Aidan, EI7JC on 085 7100511.

Please note that items for the radio news should reach the editor no later than midday on Thursday in order to be guaranteed inclusion in the following Sunday’s bulletin.

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