A meeting was held on Zoom for prospective students for a HAREC examination course on Wednesday last and fifty-eight people joined in. Plans for classes are well advanced and the first class will be held on November 18th. Due to the large numbers, additional parallel courses will have to be run and you can still register until Wednesday next November 11th. If interested, either as a tutor or a student, send an email to training /at/ irts.ie.
Larry EI9CN reminds clubs that the club public liability insurance scheme provided free to affiliated clubs by IRTS has a renewal date at the end of the year. If club details have changed over the year, then they should be advised to Larry by email to lmcgrisk /at/ iol.ie New clubs should also make contact with their details. Remember that after January first, details cannot be amended and new clubs cannot be admitted to the scheme.
More than a third of members are now receiving the society's quarterly journal "Echo Ireland" by way of electronic download instead of in paper form. This gives them access to the almost 100 issues of the journal from 2001 to date. The downloads are in PDF form and are smaller files than the versions sent for printing, to allow rapid downloading on mobile platforms. Following a suggestion from a member, we have now added the high-resolution printer's copy of the journal as a download option: this is available on the download page for all issues from 2014 to date. Members who are still receiving the society's journal in paper form may switch over to electronic download by contacting the Treasurer and Membership Records Officer, Dave O'Connor EI6AL, his email address is memrecords\at\irts\dot\ie
Last Tuesday’s South Dublin Radio Club presentation by Joe Ryan EI7GY titled "Radio Experiments by Colonel Dennis EI2B" is now available on the South Dublin’s Club YouTube channel. This presentation covered experiments in radio communications from 1898 to the late 1930s by Colonel Dennis EI2B, who is widely regarded as the world's first radio amateur. IRTS were invited by the Dennis family to look after the radio equipment at Fortgranite, the ancestral home of Colonel Dennis in Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow after the property was sold. The recovered equipment is now housed in the Computer and Communications Museum of Ireland on the first floor of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, IDA Business Park, Dangan in Galway while the documentation is available on the IRTS website. Unfortunately, the museum is presently closed due the current medical emergency. Thanks to Robert EI5KH and Joe EI7GY who spent a lot of time at Fortgranite recovering the material.
A team of students and professors at University College Dublin (UCD) are currently designing, building, and preparing to launch Ireland’s very first satellite. In addition to making history, through its development, UCD space science and engineering students have the opportunity to develop sought-after skills in the industry. When it is completed, it will carry three experiments on its Low Earth Orbit at an altitude of 400km. To find out more about this project, have a look at the presentation made to South Dublin Radio Club by David Murphy and Fergal Marshall on the club’s YouTube channel. The EIRSAT-1 team would like you to get involved in the project by monitoring the satellite and reporting what you receive. Satnogs is an open source global network of satellite ground stations run by the Libre Space Foundation. Log on to satnogs.org for all the information on how you can get involved
The Galway Club’s Annual General Meeting will be held on November 15th at 8pm. This was originally planned for the Menlo Park Hotel but due to COVID-19 Restrictions, it will probably be held via JITSI. Contact the Club for more details at secretary /at/ galwayradio.com
The 2nd Annual Galway Club Journal will be published on November the 15th and will be available on the Club’s website galwayradio.com and also on the EI7GL page at ei7gl.blogspot.com. The fifty-two page publication, edited by Steve Wright EI5DD, will also be distributed to all club secretaries for forwarding to their members. They would appreciate receiving other club’s journals.
The UKEI Contest Club’s monthly 80 metre SSB contest held last Wednesday evening attracted a large entry with a good representation of EI stations among the 87 entrants. Participants found conditions patchy and skip was long at the start, but the bands seemed to become noisy towards the end of the contest. The top three EI stations included first placed Aidan EI8CE who finished in sixth place overall and in second place in the high-power unassisted section with 91 QSOs and 210 points. David EI5KG was in 7th place overall and in third place in the high-power unassisted section with 79 QSOs and 179 points. Stefan EI4KU was in 8th place overall and in second place in the low power unassisted section with 70 QSOs and 170 points. Enda EI2II had the best DX with UT2II at 3,262 kilometres. The next UKEICC 80 metre SSB contest will be on January 6th and the next CW one will be on November 25th. The UKEICC DX SSB contest was held over 24 hours on October 31st and November 1st. The provisional results show that 360 logs were received and the leading EI station was Stefan EI4KU.
Contests next weekend include the Worked All Europe RTTY DX Contest running for 48 hours starting at midnight Friday. Everybody works everybody and the exchange is a signal report and serial number. The Japan International SSB DX Contest runs from 0700 on Saturday to 1300 on Sunday 15th. The exchange for us is signal report plus CQ Zone number while Japanese stations will send their 2-digit prefecture number. The OK/OM CW Contest starts at 1200 on Saturday 14th and runs for 24 hours. OK/OM station send signal report plus 3 letter district code and we send report and serial number. Now, some DX news. Yoshida, JE1SCJ is currently active as 9M4DXX from Penang Island Asia-015, West Malaysia until the end of the year. Apparently, his plans are to concentrate on the low bands FT8 during the weekends. QSL direct to JA0DMV. The Russian Robinson Club DXpedition team should now be active as 7Q7RU from Malawi. They hope to be active on all HF bands with three stations until November the 19th. As we go to print, the 7Q7RU team have been unable to board their flight from Nairobi due to Visa issues but we hope that by the time you hear this, their Visa issues will have been resolved. The JX0X, Jan Mayen Island Expedition led by Kenneth LA7GIA planned for September next year has been cancelled. All donations made to the team will be refunded.
The six agencies involved with the International Space Station celebrated the 20th birthday of having a crew on board continuously. There were three radio amateurs among the Expedition One crew on November 2nd 2000 and amateur radio has been a constant since with the ARISS programme being very successful in allowing school children around the world talk directly with astronauts abord the ISS. The ARISS program was created and is managed by an international consortium of amateur radio organizations and space agencies. See ariss.org for more information.
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/dot/ie for automatic forwarding to both the radio and printed news services. The deadline is midnight on Thursday. Urgent items for the news may be telephoned to 087-6290574
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