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Irish Radio transmitters Society Radio News Bulletin Sunday 16 Oct 2022


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. 


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.


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.


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 .


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.

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