Archived News Script

IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday 27th November 2011


IRTS Committee Meeting

Club Representatives of affiliated clubs are asked to send their email details in order to be kept up to date with notifications of upcoming IRTS committee meetings. Please send email addresses to info /at/ irts.ie or to Hon. Secretary Ger McNamara ei4gxb/ at/ gmail / dot /com The Next Committee meeting will take place on Saturday 10 December at 11.00 at the Maldron Hotel in Portlaoise, and club reps are encouraged to attend.


ECHO Ireland

The December issue of Echo Ireland will go to print in the early days of December. With the CQWW CW contest taking place that means a deadline for ECHO Ireland is two weeks from now, that is the first few days in December. No later please. Your co-operation is gratefully appreciated.


Mayo Rally

The annual Mayo Rally took place in Castlebar on Sunday of last week. There was a good attendance of traders and punters on the day, with plenty of buying, selling and eyeball QSOs taking place. We also noted that Dave EI9FBB, our local DXCC card checker, was kept busy.

On Saturday night, ahead of the rally itself, Mayo Radio Experimenters Network, the rally organisers, had arranged presentations on Amateur Television and on Logbook of the World. Pat EI2HX gave us an excellent introduction to Amateur Television, showing us some of his collection of antennas, transmitters, receivers and connectors. For those in the audience more used to working with equipment designed for Kilohertz or Megahertz frequencies, the "Gigahertz" hardware Pat works with seems almost exotic.

Dave EI9FBB, who is not long back from DXpeditioning with the T32C group on Kiritimati, explained the ins and outs of the ARRL's Logbook of the World - an online alternative to paper QSL cards for those working towards a DXCC award. Dave outlined the steps involved in setting up and maintaining a Logbook of the World account and also covered the security measures in place to ensure the integrity of the system.


Ham Radio on the Increase

There are over 700,314 ham radio licence holders in the United States, according to the FCC. There has been an increase of over 40,000 ham radio licences in the last five years alone. The ARRL refers to this era as the ‘golden years.’ According to Allen Pitts of the ARRL, he reckons that the USA has had over 20-25,000 new hams per year.


RTE

RTE may charge licence-fee payers for access to certain parts of its online operations, it has been revealed. The broadcaster is looking at ways to increase its revenue from its online and digital business. No firm decisions have yet been made.


Space Plasma Experiment

The Space Plasma experiment “Shadow” onboard the International Space Station (ISS) takes place using 145.825 MHz FM AX.25 packet radio at the end of this week Nov 25-28 and again on Dec 2-5.


DX News

Brian ND3F is at present active from the Bahamas as C6AQQ. He will be there till 6 December with activity mostly on the lower bands. QSLs go via his home call and also Logbook of the World.

Jim ND9M is back on the island of Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago. The good news for the prefix chasers is that Jim has been issued a short-term special prefix licence, VQ91JC, for use until 4 December. After that date he will be using his usual callsign VQ9JC. He expects to be on the island till early March next.

For the 60m enthusiasts there is news from Chris GM3WOJ, who is now active as ZK2V on Niue Island in the Pacific, that he has permission to operate on 5403.5 kHz. This special permit is only valid from 1 – 7 December local time.

A Belgian group operated from the island of Rockall at the beginning of October and a number of EI stations were among the 1100+ stations that made it into the log. QSLs have already been printed and are on the way to their lucky recipients. To those who were not in the log in October there are rumours that another group will try to activate this difficult and dangerous location in the summer of 2013.


New TV Repeater

South Dublin Radio Club is in the process of installing a new television repeater with coverage over the greater Dublin area. The repeater, which is located on the three rock mountain, will transmit on 2390Mhz and receive signal in on 1249Mhz. While not on the air yet, initial tests have proved sucessful with perfect pictures received 60 miles away at the EI2ATR Cavan repeater site. The repeater will be linked by radio to the existing TV repeater system currently operating in Co Cavan, This repeater currently transmits on 1276.5Mhz, 2370 Mhz and 10.040Mhz and gives good coverage of Cavan/Louth/Meath Area.


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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