Southgate Amateur Radio Club News

Newspaper reports solar storm will hit Earth
The Express newspaper carries a report on the Solar Storm expected to hit Earth and quotes radio amateur Dr. Tamitha Skov WX6SWW

HAMCAMP and HAMRADIO 2022 Friedrichshafen
The IARU Region 1 Youth Working Group has been informed that HAMCAMP will not take place during the HAMRADIO 2022 event in Friedrichshafen

BBDL online ham radio training exam results
The Bath Based Distance Learning (BBDL) team have released the exam results from their latest Full licence course and they show the percentage passing far exceeds the UK average in recent years

IARUMS newsletter – Russian HF radar activity
IARU Monitoring System (IARUMS) Region 1 newsletter reports increased interference in the amateur radio bands from Russia’s Over The Horizon Radar (OTHR) Contayner

AMSAT Discord server open to all
AMSAT is pleased to announce the availability of a Discord server for the amateur satellite community. Discord is a text, voice, and video client that has become very popular in recent years. Discord will provide the amateur satellite community with an additional option to communicate amongst each other, in real-time

Increase in RAC membership fee due to inflation
The ongoing global pandemic has caused significant disruptions in the international supply chain and this has in turn increased the cost of living and of doing business. Even before the pandemic, RAC already faced increases in the production and mailing costs associated with The Canadian Amateur magazine, but now the cost of everything is going up

SARL ‘Taking Amateur Radio into the Digital Age’ Symposium
The SARL ‘Taking Amateur Radio into the Digital Age’ Symposium will be held on Saturday 9 April 2022 starting at 10:00 CAT on the BlueJeans platform. It is free for SARL and AMSAT SA members. Register now!

CQ QRP sent on accordion with captions
I composed this simple song that plays the Morse code message ‘CQ QRP’ with captions

SARL Wednesday 80 m Club Contest
The second leg of the SARL Wednesday 80 m Club Contest takes place from 17:00 to 18:00 UTC on Wednesday 16 March with CW, RTTY and phone activity during the hour long contest

Propagation Report from Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP
Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP, reports that the solar activity is expected to be at low to moderate levels

Foundations of Amateur Radio
Introduction to the terms of contesting
One of my favourite activities is contesting. Essentially it’s a time-limited activation of your station for the purposes of testing your skill and station against other participants. Contests are controlled by rules as varied as the amateur community itself

The QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo is here
The QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo is here, live today, March 12-13, and then on-demand for 30 days afterwards. Join thousands of fellow operators to improve your knowledge, network, and get exposed to new ideas, equipment, and practical techniques. No need to spend a dime on travel – participate from your home or office!

Grassroots effort uses shortwave radio to broadcast VOA in Ukraine, Russia
A grassroots funding effort is underway to raise money to transmit Voice of America programming into Eastern Europe through shortwave radio, a more dated form of technology that can circumvent Russia’s crackdown on tech companies

Raspberry Pi based DDS-VFO for Drake 4-Line
Dan Maloney KC1DJT writes on Hackaday about a Raspberry Pi-based DDS-VFO project for a vintage Drake 4-Line station

Register now for free Foundation Online amateur radio training course
The next free amateur radio Foundation Online training course run by volunteers from Essex Ham starts on March 20 – Register Now

Link FM fined for inciting violence and offensive content
Ofcom has today imposed a financial penalty of £2,000 on The Pakistan Muslim Centre (Sheffield) Limited after our investigation found that its community radio station, Link FM 96.7, broke our broadcasting rules

A CME is heading for Earth
Earlier today the sun launched a full halo CME into space

Boat anchor twins get a little digital help staying on frequency
In the ham radio trade, gear such as the old Drake units [Dr. Scott M. Baker] has in his radio shack are often referred to as ‘boat anchors’. It refers to big, heavy radios that were perhaps a bit over engineered compared to the state of the art at the time they were designed

Propagation de K7RA
On March 11 at 0431 UTC Australia’s Space Forecast Centre issued this warning

51 new German radio hams
Germany’s DARC report that an online training course was held in 2021, as a result 51 people have now passed an amateur radio exam and got their license

ICOM SHF project　 – Super high frequency band challenge
When trying to operate in the SHF band, cable loss will be the biggest bottleneck. For example, in the 5.6 GHz band, if a 30 meter long, 15 mm diameter high quality coaxial cable is used to connect between the antenna and transceiver, the cable loss will be 7.2 dB (at 5.6 GHz) and a 2 watt output from a transceiver will be reduced to 380 mW output from the antenna

When the world got its news from shortwave radio
Swiss Radio International ceased broadcasting in 2004, an article on the site of its successor organisation Swiss Info looks at the history of the station

Radio hams interviewed about the Neighborhood Radio Watch
Capital Public Radio interviews radio amateurs Bob Hess W1RH and Alan Thompson W6WN about the Neighborhood Radio Watch in El Dorado, California

Annual Armed Forces Day cross-band exercise set for May 14
The 2022 running of the Armed Forces Day (AFD) Cross-Band exercise will be held on May 14, 1300 – 2200 UTC. A complete list of participating stations, modes, frequencies, times, and other details will be announced on April 1

Another antenna that ‘went the distance’ was right here in VK
Australia’s WIA News say: The earth’s surface often help’s you cover a short distance. Sometimes it’s even preferable when you’re using one of the lower frequencies… one such antenna recently covered a short distance in just this manner — but it wasn’t even transmitting at the time!

NZART membership stats
Recently I have been asked by a number of members, just how well NZART membership is fairing so I decided to crunch some numbers from examination results over the last few years

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