GB2RS
Special Event News – 3 December 2017
The main special event station news is GB17YOTA on the air for Youngsters on the Air month. This call sign will be aired by clubs up and down the country during the month of December. This Sunday, the 3rd, sees the Wessex Contest Group operating the call. On Tuesday, Carrickfergus ARG take over, then Southampton […]
Contest News – 3 December 2017
The ARRL 160m contest ends its run at 1600UTC on Sunday the 3rd. Using CW only, the exchange is the usual signal report. US and Canadian stations also send their ARRL or RAC section number. The RSGB 144MHz AFS contest takes place this Sunday, the 3rd. Running from 1000 to 1600UTC on the 2m band […]
Propagation News – 3 December 2017
HF propagation for last week’s CQ Worldwide CW contest was fair to middling. There was a 10 metre opening on Saturday, but otherwise the money bands were 20 and 15 metres during the day, with 40 and 80 metres coming into their own after sunset. The predicted poorer geomagnetic conditions on Sunday didn’t really materialise, […]
New FM repeater satellite
A new easy-to-use amateur radio satellite was launched last weekend and was switched on for general use on Thursday. AO-91, also known as RadFxSat and Fox-1B is a Cubesat that carries an FM transponder. The uplink is on 435.250MHz FM, plus or minus Doppler, with a mandatory 67Hz CTCSS tone for access. The downlink is […]
ITU-R celebrates 90 years
The International Telecommunications Union celebrated 90 years of ITU-Radiocommunications study groups on 21 November 2017. A 90th anniversary celebration issue of the ITUNews magazine can be downloaded (65-page/11.5MB PDF). Also, ITU HQ station 4U1ITU will be active in the CQ World Wide DX CW contest. QSL via operators’ instructions.
SDR pioneer dies
Sad news now. One of the pioneers of software-defined radio, Dr Vanu Bose, died suddenly at the age of just 52 on 11 November 2017. He gained his PhD at MIT, founded, and was CEO of Vanu, Inc. His company made much early progress in SDR, including developing the first SDR GSM mobile phone base […]
