The death has occurred of Raymond McAteer GI4MFM/EI9DQ on 3rd May 2016 after a long illness.
May he rest in peace
The latest issue of the society's journal, Echo Ireland, will be mailed to members in the next few days. For those unable to attend the AGM weekend, this issue includes a report on the weekend's events as well as the Committee and Financial reports presented to the Annual General Meeting.
A wide range of activities undertaken by affiliated clubs over the past few months are covered in this issue, including participation in the Mills on the Air weekend, the Geopark Weekend and Railways on the Air.
Wire antenna construction projects always make interesting reading, and an article by Gerry EI8DRB about his homebrew off-centre-fed dipole is no exception: as well as dealing with his investigations into the most suitable balun for this antenna, Gerry describes the efforts needed to ensure that it would withstand the Springtime gales in the west of Ireland.
Looking now at our regular columns in Echo Ireland: in "Excerpts from the HX Files", Pat EI2HX talks about assembling a portable amateur TV transceiver; in "HF Happenings", Anthony EI2KC brings us up to date on recent DXing activity, plus the interesting DX that we can look forward to in the near future; while in "Contest News" we have a report on the society's first 80 metres Evening Counties Contest and the Easter Monday 2 metres event; also included are the new Irish records set during the 2015 CQ World Wide DX contest series.
Other articles that members can look forward to reading include an update on the activities of the International Amateur Radio Union, a report on one member's experiments with the use of a Raspberry Pi computer as a transmitter and an excellent summary of the various ways in which the Sun can influence radio propagation.
We recently reported on the addition of Dave Deane EI9FBB to the ARRL DXCC 'Honor Roll'. Looking at the latest update of EI call signs in ARRL’s DXCC Listings at www.irts.ie/dxcc we see that Dave Court EI3IO has now joined the small group of EIs on the Honor Roll, with 330 of the 339 current DXCC entities confirmed. For a number of years up to 2013, Dave operated from Bahrain with the call sign A92IO and was know to have good "EI ears"; congratulations to Dave on his recent achievement.
The forthcoming IRTS Committee meeting takes place in the Maldron Hotel, Portlaoise, next Saturday 11th June. IRTS affiliated clubs are encouraged and welcome to send a representative.
IRLP is back in service thanks to Liam EI7DSB. IRLP is now running on a Raspberry Pi (PiIRLP) and a Baofeng handheld. A pleasent surprise was a call in to last Monday's IRTS News, on the Limerick Radio Club 2m repeater, from Mike KC3GBV. Mike called, using IRLP, from Pennsylvania. After the news a ragchew continued for about 40 minutes with KC3GBV, EI8EM and EI7ALB. Note the Limerick IRLP Node is 5880.
This year's IARU HF World Championship takes place on 9/10th July. Dozens of IARU member-society HQ stations worldwide will be QRV on both CW & SSB on the six contest bands from 160 to 10m. IRTS holds the callsign EI0HQ for use in this contest. This year, it will be used by the newly-formed EI DX Group. They are assembling a comprehensive multi -multi station in the grounds of Garbally College, Ballinasloe - aiming for a high placed European result. www.iaru.org/contests.htm
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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