GB2RS News for Sunday, 25 November 2012

| November 25, 2012

Members assembled for the RSGB EGMRSGB EGM result announced

At the RSGB EGM held on 17 November, the Special Resolution put to the membership was supported by 96.8 percent of those who voted. The Interim Board will now take the necessary steps to bring the new governance structure into effect. To this end, advertisements for candidates for the next RSGB President and Board Directors will appear in the January RadCom.

New CP-16 data mode for Chinese text

If you look at the data modes in use today you may notice that the vast majority can only be used to communicate using the English language alphabet. That presents a real problem for countries such as China where the language requires graphical characters. This shortcoming is critical when using amateur radio to support emergency and disaster relief operations. To overcome this, the Chinese Radio Amateur Club has devised an ingenious new mode that uses a 16 by 16 dot matrix to send each character. Known as CP-16, the system uses sixteen 17Hz spaced tones that allow the transmitted characters to be displayed by any receiver that uses a waterfall display. So, if you spot Chinese characters on your waterfall whilst tuning around, you’re seeing CP-16 in action.

South coast beacons get best DX

The microwave beacon complex at Bell Hill Dorset, IO80UU59, has entered its 11th year of 24/7 operation across the bands 2.3 to 47GHz. On Wednesday 14 November, auto reports started to arrive from www.beaconspot.eu advising of DX reception, probably due to high level overland/sea ducting. During the evening, reports from stations in DL, OK and OE arrived, with the resulting best distance reception achieved by each beacon amounting to 1221km. Looking at the records for best DX kept on Beaconspot during its last five years of operation, these reports represent the best DX for any beacon in the EU area in the bands 2.3-10GHz. The South Coast Repeater & Beacon Group would like to thank all who have contributed to the ongoing operations of these beacons. They hope that having GPS frequency locked outputs in conjunction with modern multimode identifiers continues to provide DX indication for microwavers throughout Europe. Full details of GB3SCS, GB3SCF, GB3SCC and GB3SCX can be found at www.SCRBG.org.

Also in GB2RS this week

US to implement WRC 2007 allocation decisions

The ARRL report that the FCC proposes to amend parts of the Commission’s rules. These changes will implement allocation decisions from the 2007 World Radiocommunication Conference that concern those portions of the radio frequency spectrum between 108MHz and 20.2GHz, and make certain updates to the rules in this frequency range. The FCC is requesting comments on changing the allocation to the amateur portion of the 160m band, allocating a new amateur service band at 135.7 to 137.8kHz, and cleaning up the rules for the 10.0 to 10.5GHz band. You can read the full ARRL story at www.arrl.org/news.

US embassy in Haiti operating amateur radio station

The amateur radio station at the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is now up and running. It plans to run a weekly US Embassy Welfare Net on 7.178MHz, ± QRM, starting on 28 November at 1930UTC. The net control callsign will be HH2USA.

Correction to last week’s broadcast

The RSGB regrets that the story reported last week concerning an amateur assisting an American aircraft diversion appears to be unfounded. The item was broadcast by GB2RS in good faith on the basis of reports from BBC news and other media organisations.

Category: GB2RS Headlines