Please click link or scroll down to read your selections. This report covers the period of 01 August 2019 through 03 August 2019.
News for Saturday 3 August
Foundations of Amateur Radio
When you join a new community you learn very quickly that each community has its own language. A word in one community has a different or extra meaning in another. For example, the word “Snowflake” in one community might refer to a phenomenon related to water and freezing, in another community it refers to a person who is sensitive, easily hurt and offended. If you mix the two meanings all manner of misunderstanding ensues
Australia: WIA board comment
In this week’s WIA News Director Peter VK8ZZ looks at the purposes of amateur radio and proposed changes to the amateur radio licenses
India: Record number of new ham radio licenses in 2018/19 Jose Jacobs VU2JOS reports the officers and staff of the Amateur Cell, WPC Wing, Department of Telecommunications (DoT) issued a record number of new amateur radio licenses in the 2018/19 financial year
VK6WIA NewsWest NewsWest for Sunday 4th August is the Club Focus Edition, where we focus on clubs, and we give time to clubs to blow their trumpets, or even a whole brass band if they want.
We have stories from the Christmas Island Amateur Radio Club, WA Amateur Radio News and Ham College
LimeRFE for ham radio bands LimeRFE is a software-definable RF front end module for LimeSDR platforms. A limited number of reduced-cost boards are being made available without Cellular but with the Amateur Radio bands
Minor geomagnetic storm warning
A large hourglass-shaped hole in the sun’s atmosphere is facing Earth and spewing solar wind in our direction. Estimated time of arrival: August 5th-6th
ITU News and Amateur Radio
Far too much for me to include with this submission – The latest copy of ITU News Magazine is good news for Amateur Radio
St. Paul Island DXpedtion
The CY9C DXpedition team are active until August 8th. Activity is on 160-6 meters using CW, SSB, EME, FT8 and the Satellites
Retrotechtacular: The Oscar 7 satellite died and was reborn 20 years later
If I were to ask you what is the oldest man-made orbiting satellite still in use, I’d expect to hear a variety of answers. Space geeks might mention the passive radar calibration spheres, or possibly one of the early weather satellites. But what about the oldest communication satellite still in use?
News for Friday 2 August
ILLW Final Countdown
Two weeks to go with 335 registrations received, organisers are expecting another 100 over the next 14 days.
One entry worthy of note was received today from GB2LG, the Mull of Galloway Lighthouse
SSA defense of 23cm band against Galileo threat
Sweden’s national amateur radio society SSA has sent a supplementary letter to the communications regulator PTS ahead of the next meeting of the CEPT ECC Conference Preparatory Group CPG-19
Satellite challenge
Many of you probably were not at Hamvention when we announced this at the ARISS forum and the AMSAT forum, but if you want a ‘real’ challenge, AMSAT and ARISS are working on the design of a ham radio system for the Lunar Gateway
Book author goes to the moon
MX0CNS, The Essex Dx Group in collaboration with EssexHam on the 27th of July sent a greetings message 384.000km to the moon and back for Dr David Whitehouse, author of the book ‘Apollo 11 the inside story’
CW OPS Open Contest
The CW Open for 2019 is now just around the corner. As in the past, the CW Open is scheduled for the first weekend of September. By the time you read this article it is less than 4 weeks away
HamSphere 4.0 SSB British contest 2019
Beam your antennas to United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey), gather as many big grids from UK as possible
The Space Weather Woman
A Coronal Hole Triple Play- The latest space weather forecast from Dr Tamitha Skov WX6SWW
Laindon Radio Club
The Laindon Radio Club will be holding a Display and Discussion night on the 30th August – and will welcome visitors and members alike
DX News from the ARRL
The American Radio Relay League’s round-up of the forthcoming week’s DX activity on the amateur radio bands
News for Thursday 1 August
Owen Garriott commemorative SSTV event ARISS plans to celebrate the life and accomplishments of astronaut, scientist and ham radio pioneer Owen Garriottwith a commemorative SSTV event featuring images from Garriott’s work with ham radio during his missions in space
Transmissions will be sent at 145.800 MHz FM in the SSTV mode PD-120
Tony’s 10m Band Report Not a bad week on Ten Metresoverall. I worked a lot of European stations but SU9JG (Egypt) and OH0V (Aland Is) stand out. There have been some shocking distorted signals about on FT8. One was +27 with me and had 6 simultaneous spots in the band activity screen!
Plenty of DX about, just check the lists below to see if you’re there
ARISS SSTV transmissions ARISS is planning SSTV transmissions to begin on August 1 at 09:40 UTC and to end at 18:15 UTC on August 4
Be alert for Perseid fireballs
Earth is entering a stream of debris from giant Comet Swift-Tuttle, source of the annual Perseid meteor shower
T6, Afghanistan update Robert, S53R (ex-YA5T), will once again be in Kabul starting in the beginning of September and may continue until the summer 2021. He will be there for two years working with the UN World Food Program
RSM traces an activated unregistered personal locator beacon
Recently, the Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) in New Zealand asked RSM for help locating an unregistered Personal Locator Beacon (PLB). The PLB was successfully located due to the capability of the RSM compliance team
Saint Pierre and Miquelon
Operators Manfred/DK1BT, Wolf/DL4WK, Annette/DL6SAK, Sigi/DL7DF, Frank/DL7UFR, Jan/SP3CYY and Leszek/SP3DOI will be active as TO80SP from Saint Pierre and Miquelon (NA-032) between October 2-14th
2018 Cass Awards Janusz Wegrzyn, SP9FIH has won the 2018 Single-Operator Cass Award.
The 3C0W team has won the 2018 Unlimited Cass Award. Sponsored by Club Log, DXLab, and the Northern California DX Club, the Cass Awards encourage DXpedition operating excellence by recognizing DX- peditions that work the most unique callsigns
Hawaii Island Amateur/Ham Radio News:
Just a reminder from Alan (AD6E/KH6TU). The Hawaii QSO Party will run from 0400Z 24 August to 0359Z 26 August 2019. Translated, “that’s 6 pm HST Friday through 5:59 pm Sunday. Work as many stations on as many bands and modes as you can.” Hawaii will operate two contest super stations: Kimo (KH7U) will be using KH6J from the KH6YY super station on Oahu, while Lloyd (KH6LC) will be working from his station in Keaau on Hawaii Island. You can get complete rules here: http://www.hawaiiqsoparty.org/Rules/HQP/HQPRules-2019-A.html
“Grid Madness 2019”, the Hawaii Island-based VHF/UHF Simplex Contest, is set for Sunday, 15 September 2019, from 1300 to 1700 HST. You can download the revised contest package here: https://gridmadness.blogspot.com
Doug Wilson (KH7DQ) is offering one more free Technician License Class this year. The next class begins on Thursday, 17 October 2019, at the Keaau Community Center in Keaau on Hawaii Island. Contact Doug for more information: douscelle@aol.com
Dan (KH6DX) is leaving Hawaii Island for the U.S. mainland. Roy (WH6FYF) is helping Dan find new homes for his high-tech equipment. Contact Roy at 960-6417 for more information.
For the latest Amateur/Ham Radio news and information, please check the blog sidebars and links. These news feeds are updated daily and weekly. Thanks for joining us today.
