The Tir Conaill Radio Club will be activating Aranmore Island, WAI square B61 Co. Donegal, over the June Bank holiday weekend. There will be several operators using their own callsigns with of course the EJ prefix and the club callsign EJ5TCR will also be used. This year they will have a new QTH on the highest point of the Island over 200 metres above sea level. This should help the VHF operators. The station will be active from Saturday June the 5th to Monday June the 7th. They will call on the WAI frequencies 7.068, 3.680 and 145.350MHz. Further information from Danny EI6GS.
The May meeting of the Mayo Radio Experimenters Network held in the Wishing Well, Ballyvary, observed a minute's silence in memory of the late Mike Crosbie EI3GP, and a vote of sympathy to his family was passed. Arrangements are well under way for the establishment of a 2 metre repeater in the county and the sub committee of Pat Duffy EI5IS, Chris McGinty, EI7IV and John McDonnell, EI6IR hope to have the repeater on the air for the summer. A vote of congratulations to Kevin O'Herlihy EI7IM, was passed, for the excellent Yearbook produced recently. Theory and Morse classes continue in the county and examinations on both will be held in Kiltimagh on Thursday June 10th. Anyone wishing to sit these examinations should contact either of the course instructors, John McDonnell EI6IR on 094-60127, ei6ir@tinet.ie or John Corless EI7IQ on 094-81856.
Congratulations to Padraig EI7GK who has been awarded the first of the new WAI Thousand Awards. Paddy has worked in excess of one thousand squares and fifteen islands to achieve his award.
Members of Tipperary Amateur Radio Group will activate rare squares in Tipperary for WAI on Sunday nights after the IRTS Radio News, which is read from Ardfinnan at 7.30pm. on 145.450MHz. Following the call-in, a Tipperary Group member will be available in a rare square to give reports.
Later this afternoon, a group from South Dublin Radio Club should be on the Cuilcagh Mountains (Cavan - Fermanagh border), to activate the rare H02 Fermanagh square on HF and 2 metres - weather permitting. They expect to be on HF from about 3.00 pm local time. None of the participants are familiar with the Cuilcagh Mountains, so the trip will only be made if the weather is suitable.
The Belgian Group who are planning the Trans-Atlantic attempt on 2 metres for the Brendan trophies are still on course for a week long effort from July the 10th to the 18th. Support from other station in Europe has been poor so far and nobody turned up on the 20 metre sked a few weeks ago. They will carry out initial tests on their equipment on June the 5th and 6th in the Belgian VHF/UHF field day. A further test and perhaps 'attempt' will be carried out on July the 3rd and 4th from a site in north west France in IN77 or IN78 to coincide with the Region 1 IARU contest. The real attempt will be from Portugal starting July the 10th at a site yet to be decided. This time scale has been chosen because of the likelihood of good tropospheric ducting propagation conditions. Anyone interested can contact Pedro ON7WP on Email at
pedro.wyns@emmaus.be
The next meeting of the Southeastern Group will be held on Wednesday next May 26th in the Roanmore Centre, Cleaboy in Waterford City. The feature of this meeting will be a talk by Ritchie EI9HR on radio astronomy. All amateurs and Shortwave Listeners are welcome to attend.
The next big international contest on the calendar is the WPX CW event which will be held over 48 hours next weekend. The action starts at midnight utc on Friday and runs to midnight on Sunday night. The exchange is signal report plus a three digit serial number and the object is to work as many different prefixes as possible. The full rules are available from EI4BZ for an SAE.
The Region One CW Field Day will take place over the weekend of June the 5th and 6th. There are two categories in this one. A restricted section only allows a single element aerial and an open section with no restrictions on aerials. The Pete Daly Cup is awarded to the winners of the open section and the Paddy Smith Cup goes to the restricted section winners. Stations intending to take part must notify the Contest Manager of site location. The Contest manager is John EI6IR and his e-mail address is ei6ir@tinet.ie. His telephone number is 094-60127.
The VHF/UHF Field Day will be held on July the 3rd and 4th and the IOTA contest will be on July 24th and 25th.
The Donegal Rally will be held this year on Sunday June 27th in Jackson's Hotel in Ballybofey. Enquiries to Gerry EI8HO on 072-52598.
Input for the radio news should be sent to Dave EI4BZ at 021-291099 during the day or at 021-883555 in the evenings.
Input for the Newsletter should be sent to Kevin EI7IM at QTHR or on the phone at 01-4509514 or by E-mail to EI7IM@tinet.ie All input to either the radio news or newsletter can also be sent by e-mail to news@irts.ie for automatic forwarding to both news services.
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