School for Deaf Children to talk to an astronaut on the International Space Station in a world first radio communication
At 1212 hrs on 12 October 2021 Lloyd Farrington from the Newbury and District Amateur Radio Society (NADARS) will be calling the International Space Station using Amateur Radio equipment and callsign GB4MHN to enable ten deaf children to speak to NASA Astronaut Mark T. Vande Hei

Ham radio exams in Nieuwegein, Netherlands
On October 2, the amateur radio Novice (equivalent to UK Intermediate) and Full exams were held in Nieuwegein. A day later, the Stichting Radio Examens (SRE) announced all the provisional exam results

Numbers taking up amateur radio in UK declining
Figures in RSGB Board Proceedings suggest there has been a decline during this year in numbers joining the hobby but numbers are still much better than those before RI online exams were introduced

IARU Region 1 prepares for Workshop
On October 17-21 IARU Region 1 is holding a Workshop ‘Shaping the Future’ to discuss the future direction for amateur radio

ARDC gives grant to help students
Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) is helping high school Computer Science students become Makers by providing a grant to purchase Raspbery PIs and Arduinos

The BBC World Service has published its performance review covering the period of 2016 – 2020
During the period covered by this review, the total reach of BBC World Service has grown significantly, by 42 percent, from 246 million people on average each week in March 2016 to 351 million people in March 2020

Amateur Radio WSPR in The Times and Guardian newspapers
On Saturday, October 2, page 44 of The Times newspaper (p44) carried a story about the use of amateur radio WSPR data to track the course of missing flight MH370

Falkland Islands new prefixes
Due to an administrative oversight in the new Falkland Islands Communications Ordinance implemented way back in 2017, new VP8 licenses for use in the former Falkland Islands Dependencies have not been available for some years now

Radio operators demonstrate how to communicate when disaster strikes
Amateur radio operators in central Illinois held a practice session Saturday to demonstrate how to keep up communication when disaster strikes

AO-92 and FalconSAT-3 shut down
AO-92 (Fox-1D) had started to change its behaviour after several weeks of being powered on

South Eastern Amateur Radio Group
EI2WRC will be active with the Copper Coast Scout Group on Saturday the 16th October for the JotaJoti 2021 event. The club hope to have a few HF stations on air along with other club members explaining other aspects of the hobby with workshops where the scouts can take part in

Minami Torishima
Be looking for Take, JG8NQJ, to once again be active as JG8NQJ/JD1 from Marcus Island, Minami Torishima (OC-073, JCG 10007), sometime this week for 3 months until mid-December. He is usually there to work on the island’s weather station

DXCC Country/Entity Report
According to the Amateur Radio Cluster Network for the week of Sunday, 26th September, through Sunday, 3rd October there were 213 countries active

IOTA News from OPDX
Weekly IOTA News – compiled by Tedd Mirgliotta, KB8NW