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This Week's News

IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday 22 May 2022
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Club News

Brian Whelan, EI8EJB, the Secretary of the Dundalk Amateur Radio
Society reports: The Dundalk Amateur Radio Society EI7DAR has resumed
physical meetings in our clubrooms at Marconi House, 113 Castletown
Road, Dundalk, with our first meeting that took place on May 4th. The
last time we met at Marconi House was in February 2020. Our next
meeting is scheduled for 8 p.m. on Wednesday, the 1st of June. Details
of all upcoming meetings can be found on our website at www.ei7dar.com
. All are welcome and as always, visitors or possible new members are
welcome to attend.

Padraic Baynes, EI9JA, the Secretary of the Mayo Radio Experimenters
Network, EI7MRE reports: The Mayo Radio Experimenters Network has an
active membership of people involved in the hobby of amateur radio. The
club holds it's meetings on the first Wednesday of every month at 9:00
p.m. local time in Breaffy House Hotel, Breaffy, near Castlebar.
Anybody interested in amateur radio, short-wave listening, electronics,
computers etc. are very welcome to come along and we would be delighted
to meet and help you. The Club is a member of the Irish Radio
Transmitters Society, IRTS, the national body representing radio
amateurs in Ireland. The committee elected at the last AGM for 2021 and
2022 is as follows: The Chairman is Jimmy Kelly EI2GCB, the Treasurer
is Padraic Baynes EI9JA and the Secretary is John McDonnell, EI6IR.

And Sean, EI2HZB, the Public Relations Officer of SEARG writes that the
May meeting of the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group EI2WRC will take
place on Monday, the 30th of May 2022 at 8:00 p.m. sharp at The Sweep
Bar, Adamstown, Kilmeaden, Co. Waterford, Eircode X91 H588. New members
or anyone interested in learning more about amateur radio or the group
are as always very welcome to attend. The South Eastern Amateur Radio
Group EI2WRC will be QRV as EI2WRC/P from the Old Copper Mine,
Tankardstown, Bunmahon, Co. Waterford over the weekend of the 4th and
5th of June 2022. Although there is no official European Geopark
Activation taking place this year the club will once again make this
QTH their home for the weekend. More details will be in next weeks IRTS
news bulletins, the groups website www.searg.ie and also the groups
Facebook page. 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 of their meetings. You can check their web-site www.searg.ie and
you can also join them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.
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WPX CW Contest

The WPX Contest is based on an award offered by CQ Magazine for working
all prefixes, drawing thousands of entries from around the world. This
major CW contest takes place next weekend, the 28th and 29th of May,
from 00:00 UTC on Saturday until 23:59 UTC on Sunday. Info and Rules at
www.cqwpx.com
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Activities on HF

Marc, F6HQP will be active from Oleron Island, IOATA EU-032 until
Wednesday. He could also be QRV from the nearby islands of Nole and
Madame. Main operations are on 40 and 20 metres SSB. QSL via the bureau
to F6HQP.

Bob, W7YAQ will be active holiday style as MM/W7YAQ from the Shetland
Islands, IOATA EU-012 until next weekend, including the CQ WW WPX CW
Contest.

Bodo, DF8DX will be active as Z68QQ from Gjilan, Kosovo until next
weekend. He will participate in the CQ WW WPX CW Contest as Z66BCC
along with DL2JRM. QSL for Z68QQ via LoTW, Club Log's OQRS, or via
DF8DX. QSL for Z66BCC via DL2JRM.

Gerard F5NVF, Luc F5RAV and Abdel M0NPT will be QRV again as C5C from
Kololi, The Gambia from the 23rd of May until the 10th of June. They
will be on 80 to 6 metres using CW, SSB, FT8, FT4 and the QO-100
satellite. They also plan to be briefly active again as C5B from the
Bijol Islands, IOTA AF-060. QSLs via LoTW, eQSL, or direct to F5RAV.

On the last weekend of May, the Hungarian Radio Amateur Society MARSZ
will be on the air in Budapest's City Park for the "Children's Day
Event" as HG5RUG on 40m, around 7.095 .
__________________________________________________________________

IARUMS

The IARU Region-1 Monitoring System has published its report for April.
It reports a marked increase of intrusions to our allocations, mainly
due to the war in Ukraine, detailing the signal types and the affected
frequencies. One can find the report under the heading "Spectrum" on
www.iaru-r1.org .
__________________________________________________________________

Space Telecoms

Two military satellites recently exchanged more than 200 gigabits of
data over a distance of about 100 kilometers using laser communication
in space. Satellites generally do not communicate directly with each
other. Instead, they use radio signals to transfer data down to a
ground station on Earth, which then relays this data to another
satellite. Optical terminals between satellites are considered to be
faster and more secure. The two satellites, named Able and Baker, were
launched last summer by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency as part of its Blackjack project.

A much slower data transfer takes place under more challenging
conditions when communicating with humanity's outpost beyond our solar
system. NASA engineers are investigating anomalous telemetry data
produced by the venerable space probe Voyager 1. They are now trying to
debug the probe, a formidable task as data flows from Voyager at 160
bits per second, and signals take 20 hours and 33 minutes to reach the
probe. A Wednesday announcment states that the probe is operating
normally, receiving and executing commands from Earth, and still doing
science and phoning home with data. But Voyager 1's attitude
articulation and control system (AACS), that helps point the probe's
antenna towards Earth, does not currently reflect what's actually
happening onboard. NASA says the AACS data may appear to be randomly
generated, or does not reflect any possible state the AACS could be in.
The good news is that the craft is still doing fine. It's not needed to
enter safe mode and its signal is still strong, so it appears the main
antenna is properly aligned even if system data suggests otherwise.

In their latest weekly news bulletin AMSAT announced the publication of
a detailed paper which describes the reception of the Tianwen-1 Chinese
Mars mission carried out by AMSAT-DL using the 20 meter dish at Bochum
Observatory in Germany. A real-time GNU Radio decoder has been used to
receive and store telemetry almost every day over the course of 10
months. Some of the telemetry variables, such as the trajectory
information, have been successfully interpreted and used to track the
progress of the mission. A PDF of the report is available for download
at www.amsat.org .
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The Propagation Horoscope

A steep increase of active regions on both hemispheres with over 170
spots on the Earth-facing side of the Sun has raised the Solar flux to
over 160 units, the Solar wind is currently at around 450km/s. Last
week several strong flares caused repeated radio blackouts and a high
attenuation on all bands due to a pronounced D-layer. For next week low
solar activity is expected, with a kP of 2 to 3, but a high probability
of M-class flares, causing few minor to moderate radio blackouts and
only a slight chance for X-class flares. Expect an increase in
Sporadic-E and Tropo for the higher bands, listen for signals on 10m
from Asia, VK and ZL during early morning openings.

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.ie for
automatic forwarding to both the radio and printed news services. The
deadline is midnight on Friday.

[C]
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