The Irish Radio Transmitters Society President Jim Holohan EI4HH, on behalf of the Committee and Officers of IRTS, extends best wishes to all for the coming year 2021. The patron of the Society, Mr. Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland in a Christmas message to IRTS members extended his best wishes for the Christmas and wished everyone a New Year of hope and promise.
Following a three-year campaign by the Austrian National Society, OVSV., the Austrian telecommunications regulator in an announcement just before Christmas approved the use of 60 metre and 630 metres bands by CEPT Class 1 licences in Austria on a secondary basis. 60 metres or 5 MHz is the WRC-15 Amateur Secondary Allocation of 5351.5 to 5366.5 kHz at 15 watts Effective Isotropic Radiated Power. 630 metres is the MF Secondary Allocation from the previous WRC-12 of 472 to 479 kHz at 1 watt Effective Isotropic Radiated Power
The Miracle Ship Award is an international amateur radio award organized by A.R.I. Fidenza, an Italian Radio Club, affiliated to the Italian Amateur Radio League, with the sponsorship and the historical consultancy and supervision of the "Guglielmo Marconi Foundation" (www.fgm.it) and the Marconi Museum. Originally called the Rovenska, Marconi changed the ships name to Elletra in 1921 and to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of that event, an award scheme with a different callsign each month, celebrating different technical achievements by Marconi on board the ship, will run for the year. Full details on www.arifidenza.it
A new 70cms DMR repeater was installed at Farmer's Cross near Cork city on Monday December 21st to provide DMR coverage to Cork City and surrounding areas. The set up consists of a Motorola DR-3000 repeater and the antenna is a CAT-C440 at approximately 50ft. This is the fourth digital repeater set up by the Southern Ireland Repeater Group and it will complement their other three digital installations located at West Waterford, Waterford City and Mt. Leinster. Details are as follows: The callsign is EI7FXD, the DMR ID is 272015 and the mode of operation is DMR only. The location is Farmer's Cross, overlooking Cork City, and the locator is IO51SU. The repeater output is on 430.250MHz and the input is on 439.250MHz, that’s a shift of plus 9.0MHz The access is Colour Code One. On site for the installation were Neil EI3JE and John EI8JA. Thanks to Anthony O’Sullivan and his colleague John who put the antenna up in not so nice weather conditions and to John EI8IR of Airwave Internet for the broadband connection. This repeater is a joint venture between the Southern Ireland Repeater Group and local DMR enthusiasts in the Cork City area. Many thanks for their contributions towards the project to Don EI8DJ and Willie EI7CGB.
December was designated as Youngsters On The Air Month (YOTA) and young operators were active around the world, mainly from the forty-seven registered stations with the YOTA suffix. As we go to print, a total of 127,910 calls have been uploaded to the YOTA website with 47 per cent on SSB, 25 per cent on CW, 20 per cent on FT8. Congratulations to the station owners and operators of EI0YOTA which was organised by IRTS Youth Officer Niall Donahoe EI6HIB. They have a total of 4,496 QSOs logged on the website and made it in to the top ten list of stations on the participating list. We look forward to hearing more about the EI0YOTA operation in the future.
The CQ DX Marathon, organised by CQ Magazine runs for the full calendar year and the aim is to work as many DXCC Entities and CQ Zones as possible. There are many awards available and all information is available on dxmarathon.com. The UK EI Contest Club’s monthly 80 metres SSB contest will held on Wednesday next the 6th from 2000 to 2100. The exchange is your 6-character Grid Locator and no signal report should be sent. Operation is from 3.650 to 3.775 MHz. Logs to be sent in within one hour of the finish and results will be available an hour later. A few more EI entrants would be appreciated. The Indonesian DX SSB Contest runs for 24 hours on Saturday next the 9th and everyone works everyone. The exchange is serial number plus report. It is single operator only due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The UBA PSK63 Prefix Contest starts at 12 noon on Saturday next and runs for 24 hours. Maximum power allowed is 50 watts. The Straight Key Century Club run a CW contest every month lasting 36 hours. The January event starts at 12 noon on Saturday next and finishes at midnight on Sunday. This event is particularly suitable to newcomers to CW operating and full details available on skccgroup.com. And now some DX news. Tony, 3D2AG, who has been active as 3D2AG/p from Rotuma Island (Oceania-060) mainly on FT8, with some CW, is due to go QRT on January 8th. Paulo, CT1FJZ, is now active as D2FJZ from Angola. The length of his stay is unknown at this time. Activity has been mainly on 20 meters SSB. QSL via CT1FJZ direct.
The earliest DX award was the Worked all Continent Award issued by ARRL but by the early 1930’s, it became too easy and another measure of DX achievement was needed. That turned out to be the DX Century Club where the requirement was to work and confirm one hundred countries. That award is still the most popular worldwide today and we have some listed high achievers in Ireland. Honor Roll is achieved by working and confirming at least 331 countries on the current DXCC Country list. Starting 2021, we have six EI amateurs on the Honor Roll listings. Both Declan EI6FR and John EI7BA are on the mixed, phone and CW lists, while Peter EI7CC, Alan EI8EM and George EI6S are on the mixed and phone lists and Dave EI9FBB is on the mixed list. Congratulations to them all and we look forward to seeing a few more making the list during the coming year. We also congratulate Tom EI4DQ who has the unique distinction of having achieved DXCC on eleven bands, all the HF bands plus 2 metres. Tom now has 153 entities confirmed on 2 metres. Six Echo India amateurs have achieved DXCC on ten bands. Congratulations to Trevor EI2GLB, Thos EI2JD, Dave EI3IO Declan EI6FR, John EI7BA and Dave EI9FBB. All the details, updated at the end of each month, are available on irts.ie/dxcc.
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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