Archived News Script

IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday 23rd November 2014


December is YOTA Month!

During the month of December many countries will be on the air with the YOTA (Youngsters On The Air) suffix. It is being used to encourage young people to get on the air with the help of licensed operators or indeed to use their own callsign to gain experience. Mentor operators from EI are encouraged to use the EI0YOTA callsign, with a young person to operate. All modes & bands will be used with lots of awards available to stations working the YOTA stations. QSL manager for the event is Brani OM2FY.

If you would like to book a slot to operate EI0YOTA, or need more details, please contact Ger McNamara EI4GXB via email on ei4gxb/at/gmail/dot/com or 087 2532512.


The Radio Officers’ Association

The Radio Officers’ Association Chairman, Tony Selman, would welcome membership applications from IRTS news listeners who are former Radio Officers.

Around 50% of ROA members are licensed Amateur Radio operators, most of whom mainly use CW. Their lively net on Thursdays at 7.30 local time on 7017/3538, creates a strong comradeship since they are all ex R/Os. You will enjoy meeting old friends and making many new ones.

Membership of The Radio Officer’s Association is £20 / €25 per year, which includes four copies of their quarterly journal ‘QSO’. You can establish a contact via their website ww.radioofficers.com


UKEICC 80m CW Contest

The third 80m contest organised by the UK & Ireland Contest Club takes place on Wednesday 26th November.

It's CW this time, and runs from 9 to 10pm. You can work anyone, and the exchange is your 4-character locator square, for example IO62, with points based on distance.

SD by EI5DI logs and scores your QSOs, and pre-fills many locators. It is free from ei5di.com

Logs have to be uploaded by 11pm. The results of the October SSB contest were published within 20 minutes and showed a record thirteen entries from EI and two from GI - follow the Results link at ukeicc.com

Everyone is invited to join in and have fun.


Tipperary Amateur Radio Group

The Annual General Meeting of the Tipperary Amatuer Radio Group will be held at The Park Hotel, Clonmel on Thursday 27th November 2014 at 8pm. This is the most important meeting of the calendar year and all group members are asked to attend. Short Wave Listeners are in particular very welcome. A number of radio related topics are up for discussion as well as plans for participation in up coming events for 2015. For more information about Tipperary Amateur Radio Group go to www.ei7trg.ie


DX News

To commemorate two naval battles that took place in World War One stations in the Falkland Islands may affix /100 to their callsigns until 15 December. The battles are The Battle of Coronel (November 1914) and the Battle of the Falklands (December 1914). Stations heard to date are Bob VP8LP/100 and his XYL Janet VP8AIB/100. John G3VPW is visiting the Falklands on holiday until 12 December and hopes to be active as VP8KF/100.

Rob DL7VOA will be in Grenada until 6 December. He will use the callsign J34O and will be QRV in the CQ WW CW Contest next weekend. QSLs go via the home call.

Gerben PG5M will be visiting Easter Island from 23 – 28 November. His callsign will be CE0Y/PG5M. He plans to operate 10 – 40m and possibly 80m CW only.

Tim LW9EOC will be QRV as 5K0A from San Andres Island from 26 November – 4 December. This one counts as NA-033 for the Islands on the Air Award as well as for DXCC


South Eastern Amateur Radio Group

The South Eastern Amateur Radio Group will be hosting the 83rd IRTS Dinner AGM & Radio Rally in Hotel Kilkenny, College Road, Kilkenny on the 25th & 26th of April 2015. Tickets for the annual dinner which will be held on the Saturday evening at 7:00 pm are now available from John Ronan EI7IG. Tickets are priced at €35 each. Admission to the dinner is strictly by ticket only.

The next Amateur Station Licence Examination will be held on next Thursday the 27th of November in the ComReg Offices in Dublin and all the members of SEARG would like to wish all the candidates sitting the exam the very best of luck. We look forward to hearing some new call signs on the air soon.

The November meeting of the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group will take place in the Roanmore Social and Sports Centre, Cleaboy Road, Waterford on tomorrow night Monday the 24th of November at 8.00 p.m. New members and anyone interested in learning more about amateur radio are very welcome to attend. For up-to-date news about the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group and it’s actives you can check our website www.searg.com and you can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.


Ham Radio launches to Deep Space

ARTSAT2:DESPATCH is going to launch on a mission into deep space on November 30, 2014 carrying a 7 watt CW transmitter on 437.325 MHz 

It will fly with the asteroid mission Hayabusa 2 and another amateur radio satellite Shin'en 2.

The satellite will have an elliptic orbit around the Sun and travel to a deep space orbit between Venus and Mars. Its inclination will be almost zero, which means Shin’en 2 will stay in the Earth’s equatorial plane. The distance from the Sun will be between 0.7 and 1.3 AU. An Astronomical Unit (AU) is 149,597,871 km.



Worked All Ireland Award Programme

The Worked All Ireland Award programme (WAI) was established to encourage Radio Amateurs to work 10Km x 10 Km Grid Squares in the Republic of Ireland (EI) and Northern Ireland (GI). It encompasses a combination of Grid Squares, Counties and Islands from EI/GI. There are also Awards for Book Numbers and Grid Square activation. There are over 1400 Grid Squares to chase, with Awards available for working as few as 175 grid squares, 15 counties and 1 Island rising to the Ultimate Award for which you need 1400 grid squares, together with 32 Counties and 25 Islands. Is it possible to achieve the Ultimate Award, you may ask. Well, both EI6HW and Tom EI9CJ have done so and Declan EI9HQ has activated over 1300 grid squares. A full introduction to WAI Rules and Awards may be found at www.irts.ie/cgi/wai/ cgi . More details to follow in the next edition of Echo Ireland.


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 may be 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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