Southgate Amateur Radio Club News

Hamvention 2018 Marathon webcast
We will be webcasting over 48 Hours of live video from Hamvention.
We will also have many special guests plus prizes for our viewers all day on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Astronaut Douglas Wheelock, joins us again for the 5th year as a co-host

Essex Skills Night on May 21
Skills Night takes place at 7pm on Monday, May 21 in Danbury Village Hall, Essex, this free event is open to all

ICQPodcast – Good Set of Headphones
In this episode, Martin M1MRB is joined by Chris Howard M0TCH, Martin Rothwell M0SGL, Dan Romanchik KB6NU and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. This episode’s feature is – A good set of Headphones

Prince Edward Island lighthouse on-air May 18-20
Members of the Maritime Lighthouse Amateur Radio Group will set up a number of radios and antennas at the Wood Islands lighthouse in Canada on May 18

Amateur satellite operation from Islay
The AMSAT News Service reports members of Camb-Hams operating GS3PYE/P will be active on the amateur radio satellites from Islay between May 13-18

ICASA new automatic licencing system soon
SARL President, Nico van Rensburg, ZS6QL and SARL Regulatory Affairs Manager, Hans van de Groenendaal, ZS6AKV met with the ICASA CEO Willington Ngwepe and some of his senior staff to discuss several long outstanding issues that could not be resolved by the liaison committee

Work the AMSAT Hamvention Demo Station!
As previously announced, AMSAT will have it’s traditional presence at Hamvention this year, including a satellite demo station. The demo station will operate under the AMSAT club callsign W3ZM/8

DXCC Country/Entity Report
According to the Amateur Radio Cluster Network for the week of Sunday, 6th May, through Sunday, 13th May there were 214 countries active

Last Man Standing on Fox TV
Season 7 of the popular Last Man Standing show in which Tim Allen plays radio amateur Mike Baxter KA0XTT will be shown on Fox TV

TF1VHF 4 m and 6 m beacons on air
Today the TF1VHF 4 m (70,057 MHz, 20 W) and 6 m (50,457 MHz, 25 W) beacons went on air from the real beacon site in HP84WL at Álftanes about 80 km NNW from Reykjavik

17 new Hammies in Bhisho
The SARL congratulates Dave Higgs, ZS2DH and his team who ran a special RAE boot camp which saw 17 youngsters from a rural community write the Class-B RAE on April 30

Norwegian ham radio license regulations consultation
The NRRL reports Norway’s communications regulator NKOM has published the responses to the consultation on amendments to the Radio Amateur License Regulations

VK6WIA NewsWest
In this broadcast: It’s HISTORY week – and we head back to 1974, and before. To warm you up for your trip to the 2018 Gold Coast WIA extravaganza, Onno brings you a wrap of “WIA Convention #37”. Bob discusses “A funny thing happened in the shack the other night”. I’m shaking up a can of magic LPS spray. We have news of the Limited AOCP …and to end history off, a round the world yacht race

Electric blanket sparked fire which killed radio ham
New Zealand radio amateur Arthur Earle Plimley ZL1TAG was killed by 40-year-old electric blanket which had been modified to allow the voltage to be increased

Radio ham’s wizardry sends signals across Europe
The Teesdale Mercury interviews radio amateur Nick Peckett G4KUX a keen VHF, UHF and Microwave enthusiast

2017 CQWW CW Contest scoring change
A change in scoring methodology for duplicate contacts (dupes) in the CW weekend of the 2017 CQ World Wide DX Contest led to an inconsistency with the standards by which logs submitted for the SSB weekend of the same contest were scored

Amateur Radio Parity Act language in NDA Act
ARRL reports Amateur Radio Parity Act language has been inserted into the National Defense Authorization Act

Foundations of Amateur Radio #153
Why do you contest?
The other week I participated in a contest. This particular contest was on the 80m band, around 3.5 MHz. The contest itself, while worthy of a mention, the Harry Angel Memorial Sprint, runs for 106 minutes and commemorates every year of Harry’s life, at the time, the oldest radio amateur in Australia. I made two contacts. Count ’em and weep. Two

The future of Ham Radio
Retiring WIA Vice President David Ford VK4MZ looks forward to a future where amateur radio is one of the fastest growing hobbies on the planet and Multi-operator contest stations are streamed live online via YouTube and Twitch

VERON membership numbers increase
Netherlands amateur radio society VERON reports that from January 1, 2018 until May 8 the number of members has increased by 100

German ham radio regulator releases 2017 report
The German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) has presented its report for 2017 

Red airglow over the Atacama Desert
On Thursday night, the normally dark skies of Chile’s Atacama Desert lit up with rippling bands of red light. It looked like the aurora borealis, but it was not

NASA sending helicopter to Mars
The Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency’s Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet

Propagation de K7RA
Sunspots reappeared this week, after none on April 28 through May 3.
Average daily sunspot numbers increased from 3.6 (last week) to 14.6 (May 3-9)