Sunday next April 18, is World Amateur Radio Day (WARD). This year marks the 96th anniversary of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU), founded at the 1925 International Radiotelegraph Conference in Paris IARU has chosen “Amateur Radio: Home but Never Alone” as the theme for WARD 2021. The theme acknowledges that during our physical distancing to reduce the spread of COVID-19, amateur radio stands out as a welcome respite for its variety of activities and opportunities. All amateur radio operators are asked to get active on the day and help celebrate the event. Look out for special event callsigns from many countries, several with the suffix WARD.
The deadline for reserving your place at the IRTS Annual General Meeting being held online on April 24th at 1100 is Saturday next April 17th. Details, including annual committee and financial reports were made available to all members in the Spring edition of Echo Ireland. Clubs are invited to give short promotional presentations on their activities in the hour leading up to the Annual General Meeting. Contact Declan EI9FVB for details.
The inaugural weekly meeting of the newly formed National Shortwave Listeners Club was held on the Zoom platform last Sunday evening and attracted 60 attendees. Online classes continue on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings with over 100 students hoping to get licensed in the coming months. Club meetings are held on the Zoom platform every Sunday evening at 2000. Information about the new club is available on swl.ie.
The South Eastern Amateur Radio Group EI2WRC will be QRV as EI2IMD on Saturday April 24th as an official Marconi station for the International Marconi Day 2021. The station will be active solely from Tramore, Co Waterford. Tramore has a direct connection with Marconi as he often stayed there with his aunt, a Mrs. Cookman who resided at The Cove, Tramore. Due to the current travel situation, the organisers, the Cornish Radio Amateur Club have allowed the EI2WRC members to run the special call from their own homes, A special QSL card will be made available once printed. More details will be made known in the coming weeks in IRTS news articles and on the SEARG Facebook page and the EI2IMD QRZ page. For more information on International Marconi Day on April 24th, log on to www.gx4crc.com; For anyone that wishes to find out more about the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group and their activities you can drop them an email to southeasternarg /at/ gmail.com or please feel free to go along to any their meetings. You can check their website www.searg.ie and you can also join them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.
Results of the IRTS 80 Metres Evening Counties Contest held on 23rd March have now been published: 50 transmitting station logs and one SWL log were submitted, covering almost 1,500 QSOs during this one-hour event. The logs show activity by stations in 27 EI and GI counties and 12 overseas DXCC entities. See www.irts.ie/results for the full results. The 2 Metres Fixed ‘Home QTH’ contest held on Easter Monday was well supported, with plenty of activity for the full hour, particularly on the FM channels. Logs received to date, which are listed at www.irts.ie/logs show that more than 60 EI and GI stations took part in the contest Logs should be sent to irts.contests/at/gmail/dot/com Also in contest news, the final UKEICC 80 metres SSB contest of the 2020-2021 series took place on Wednesday last: there was a strong EI representation at this event, with16 EI stations submitting logs - compared to 39 UK stations. Enda EI2II was at the mic for the EI bonus station, EI5G. The final CW contest of the current series will take place on Wednesday 28th April.
Are you a youth Coordinator for your club? Do you help run events aimed at Youth in Ham Radio? Do you have ideas for ways to get more youth into Radio? The IRTS youth coordinator Niall, EI6HIB, is putting together a group chat for anyone involved in facilitating Youth Radio activities in EI. The purpose of this group is to generate ideas for involving young people and ultimately to show young people how great this hobby is! Email yota /at/ irts.ie if you want more information or want to be added to the group chat. In a further youth development announced this week, the IARU Region 1 Youth Working Group, are very happy to be co-operating with MRASZ, the Hungarian Amateur Radio Society to introduce a new 12 hour contest aimed at younger operators. This years’ sessions will be held on Saturdays 22nd May (0800 – 1959), 17th July (1000 – 2159) and 30th December (1200 – 2359). More details will be announced later.
The Holyland DX Contest starts at 2100 on Friday on next and runs to 2100 on Saturday. The modes are CW, SSB and Digital. Stations in Israel give report plus area and all others give report plus serial number. The Worked All Provinces of China contest, CW and SSB, starts at 0600 on Saturday next and finishes at 0559 on Sunday morning. BY stations send report and province and all others send report and serial number. The YU DX Contest starts at 0700 on Saturday and runs for 24 hours on CW and SSB. YU stations send report and county and all others send report and serial number The CQMM DX CW Contest starts at 0900 on Saturday and finishes at 2359 on Sunday.
DX news DXers will be delighted to hear that two DXpeditions to the 2nd most wanted DXCC Entity, Bouvet Island, have been announced recently. The Rebel DX Group using the callsign 3Y0I state on their Facebook page that they will leave Cape Town on December 15th 2021 and plan to spend up to 30 days on Bouvet, running eight stations. The Intrepid-DX Group have announced a DXpedition to Bouvet, with fourteen DXers leaving from Cape Town in January 2023 for a planned 20 days operation on the island. Both teams are appealing to the amateur population for further funding for their trips. JW1I is the club callsign for the Meteorological Station on Bear Island, EU-027, Svalbard. The operator is Erling, JW/LB2PG, who is expected to be active until mid-May. QSL via the bureau. On April 18th, KC4USV will be on from McMurdo Station, Ross Island, Antarctica-011 on 20 metres FT8 & SSB.
The Hex Beam, which was ordered from Waldi SP7IDX (RIP) and delivered in November, was assembled and mounted on the Air Mast during the week, by members of the Limerick Clare Amateur Radio Club. Cabling has been completed and the rotator tested. There is an issue with the antenna position- as indicated on the rotator control unit. Looks like the feed-back potentiometer on the rotator needs to be repaired or replaced. It is not a show-stopper as rotation and end stop safety features are working perfectly. The bands covered are 10, 12, 15, 17 and 20 metres. While the VSWR is satisfactory on all bands, it slightly favours the SSB section. The club plans to be active on Marconi Day.
Frank, VO1HP reports that the VO1FN 144 MHz Trans-Atlantic monitoring station will be reactivated by the end of May 2021. This SDR receiver will be using SDR Console V3 and WSJT-x and will report to the PSK Reporter website as VO1FN. The station will be located in St. John's, Newfoundland and will use two stacked 5-element 144 MHz LFA-Q quad style Yagis from Innovantennas. The antennas will be pointing at western Europe and the receiver will be listening on 144.174 MHz which is the FT8 frequency.
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 News Editor Dave EI4BZ on 087-6290574.
[N]