The Society’s 75th Annual General Meeting is to be held at the Vienna Woods Hotel in Cork on Sunday April 22nd. The weekend celebrations will follow the usual format with the 75th Jubilee Dinner being held on the Saturday night. Tickets prices have been maintained at last years level and are great value at only 30 Euro. Several high profile international guests will attend the dinner and AGM and included are Dave Sumner K1ZZ, Secretary of the International Amateur Radio Union and C.E.O. of the ARRL, the American National Society. Also joining us will be the Chairman of Region 1 IARU Ole Garpestad LA2RR and the Presidents of several other sister national societies in Region 1.
The Committee is obliged by rule to nominate members for the positions of President, Vice President and eleven committee positions. These nominations will be carried in the upcoming issue of Echo Ireland. This does not preclude other nominations for any of the positions and further nominations must be made to the Secretary within fourteen days of receiving the committee’s lists of nominations. Members should read rule 23 covering nominations for office.
The Society has several awards for honouring members who have excelled in some aspect of the hobby. Nominations for these awards are now being sought and should be forwarded to the Awards Manager, Peter Grant EI4HX. Members in possession of trophies since last years AGM are requested to arrange for their return to EI4HX or any committee member as soon as possible. The AGM rally will be held on Sunday April the 22nd at the Vienna Woods Hotel and requests for tables should be directed to Dave EI4BZ on 087-6290574. There will be no charge for tables, which will be allocated on a first come first served basis.
The date of the Lough Erne Amateur Radio Show has been changed to Sunday the 22nd of April at the Share Centre Lisnaskea Co. Fermanagh. The Bangor Rally will take place on the 17th of June and the Friedrichshafen Hamfest will take place over the weekend of the 22nd to the 24th of June.
John Ronan, EI7IG has set up a mailing list for APRS users in Ireland. The purpose of which is to help new APRS users getting on the air and to give them advice.
Subscription details are available at the following address; ei7ig.org/mailman/listinfo/aprsusers_ei7ig.org
Winner of Mixed Mode was EI5FK. The SSB section was won by EI9HX and the Portable section went to EI2MRG/P. The Outside EI/GI Mixed Mode section was won by GM4FAM and the Outside EI/GI SSB section went to G3ZVW. Also thanks go to SWL EI299 for his log.
Congratulations to all the winners and the IRTS would again like to thank all the stations that participated and helped to make it such an enjoyable event. The Certificates of participation will shortly be sent to all participants who sent in their logs on time. The full results are now on the Contests page of the IRTS web site.
Would anyone interested in the 4 and 6 metre awards please send their applications not later than next Saturday to “contests at irts dot ie”. The spring 2 metre counties contest is once again nearly upon us and hopefully will be as successful as the 80 metre contest so get out there and try to activate all our counties!
The next Theory Examination for the Experimenters Licence will be held on Thursday the 28th of June next. Places for the examination are limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis. In order to reserve a place for the exam, intending candidates should forward the appropriate fee to Seán Nolan EI7CD, 12 Little Meadow, Pottery Road Dunlaoghaire, Co. Dublin. The fee is 50 Euro or 25 Euro for full time registered students, those who are retired, are unemployed or have a disability. In addition to the exam centre at the ComReg offices in Dublin, it has now been decided with the agreement of ComReg that an examination should be held on the same date and with the same paper at the Community Centre, Carrigtwohill, Co.Cork. This is to facilitate those at present attending classes for the experimenter licence examination in Cork and Waterford."
The closing date for the examination is the 16th of June and it will be strictly adhered to. Sean EI7CD's address again is 12 Little Meadow, Pottery Road, Dunlaoghaire, Co. Dublin and it can be found in the call book section of the IRTS website at www.irts.ie Sean's e-mail address for further enquiries is "ei7cd at gofree dot indigo dot ie".
The Irish Radio Transmitters Society celebrate their 75th Aniversary this year and they sent a team of EIs and GIs to Swaziland to put Ireland and Swaziland on the ham radio map. They were joined by a number of South African and Swazi hams to enter a Multi Two station in the CQ WPX SSB contest. Considering that we are at the bottom of the sun spot cycle I think the group more than achieved that. In total the group made over 15,000 contacts in the 10 days in Swaziland. In the CQ WPX SSB contest over 3000 contacts were made in 48 hours and over 9,000,000 points notched up.
The team are indebted to the help, direction and equipment provided by African DX Safaris under the directorship of Daniel Hubbard ZS6JR.
The monthly meeting of the Tipperary Amateur Radio Group will be held on Thursday next, the 5th of April at 8.00 pm in Raheen House Hotel, Raheen Road, Clonmel.
All are welcome.
The members draw took place on Wednesday the 28th of March 2007 in the Roanmore Centre, Waterford. Congratulations to Jim Cullinan (EI4DT) who won a pair of tickets to the IRTS AGM Dinner including overnight accomodation for two in the Vienna Woods Hotel. The draw was conducted independently by Michael Wadding (Centre Manager, Roanmore Centre).
With the recent switch to summertime, the change at 0100 GMT was the last one ever to be signalled from Rugby, in Warwickshire, which transmitted the time signal since 1927.
Since the 31st of March, the long-wave signal, used to keep the "pips" heard on BBC radio being broadcast from Anthorn, Cumbria.
Items for inclusion in next weeks Radio News should be forwarded to Mark Wall, EI7IS at QTHR or by phone to 051-853806 or 087-6302026. Items for the radio news can also be faxed to 087 5 6302026. News should be submitted via e-mail to “news at irts dot ie” for automatic forwarding to both the radio and printed news services. Please note that items for the radio news should reach the editor no later than midday on Friday in order to be guaranteed inclusion in the following Sunday’s bulletin.
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