SARL NEWS - SUNDAY 30 MAY 2010
You are listening to ZS6SRL, the official radio station of the South African Radio League, the national body for amateur radio in South Africa, with a news bulletin every Sunday at 08:15 CAT in Afrikaans and at 08:30 CAT in English. To listen to a webstream, visit www.sarl.org.za, click on ARMI and follow the links for details. PLEASE NOTE: for audio via Echolink, connect to ZS0JPL-R.
You can download this bulletin and previous ones from www.sarl.org.za and also subscribe there to receive future bulletins by email.
Your newsreader this morning is (name), (call sign), on 145,725 and 7,066 MHz from Pretoria, with relays on 10,130, 7,066 and 3,695 MHz SSB.
In the news today:
HAS YOU CLUB, OR HAVE YOU MADE ARRANGEMENTS TO PROMOTE AMATEUR RADIO TO THE YOUTH ON 16 JUNE 2010
FRENCH QSL MYSTERY RESOLVED
LISTEN TO AMATEUR RADIO FROM DEEP SPACE
You are listening to ZS6SRL. Stay tuned for more details on these and other important and interesting news items.
HAS YOU CLUB, OR HAVE YOU MADE ARRANGEMENTS TO PROMOTE AMATEUR RADIO TO THE YOUTH ON 16 JUNE 2010
Clubs and individual radio amateurs are encouraged to set up stations in public areas like shopping malls to celebrate Youth Day 2010. It is a great opportunity to demonstrate amateur radio as the greatest of all scientific hobbies and a great primer to encourage young people to take up careers in electronics and communications.
In last week's SARL News Gerhard Coetzee, ZS3TG, said that with the World Cup in full swing and schools on holiday, Radio Amateurs have an unique opportunity to celebrate youth day on 16 June with the SARL Sprint and give South Africa's young people a taste of Amateur Radio and hands-on experience.
There are many prizes to be won during the sprint as well as lucky draw prizes for all who submit a log with a minimum of 10 entries.
Clubs setting up stations are requested to send details to armi@sarl.org.za for inclusion in media releases to be handled by the SARL PIO Network.
Full details of the event are available on www.sarl.org.za from the home page click on youth activity.
Individual radio amateurs are invited to adopt young people for the day and invite them into the shack to operate under your supervision.
FRENCH QSL MYSTERY RESOLVED
Earlier this year, a consignment of QSL parcels destined for overseas Bureau's - including one for France - were dispatched. Shortly after that South African Radio Amateurs started receiving cards destined for France back in the mail. The mystery has now been resolved and the Post office taken to task.
After dispatch, the Post Office went on strike and during this strike period it appeared that one of the QSL parcels was "broken open" by one or more strikers possibly looking for valuables. Now the French Bureau took the trouble to return the empty parcel to us which proved that the SARL QSL Bureau's suspicion was correct.
We sincerely apologize for the negligence displayed by the Postal authorities. We are awaiting a response from the Post Office.
The QSL bureau has already made changes in the packaging material which will make it more difficult for parcels to be opened without some major effort. The QSL bureau has unfortunately no control over employees of the Post Office breaking parcels to check for valuables - which appears to be a common complaint!
LISTEN TO AMATEUR RADIO FROM DEEP SPACE
An informal network of amateur radio experimenters, scientists and CW enthusiasts called FlyVenusCom - a nonprofit, cross-cultural effort - has been created to support communication efforts by Japanese scientists with its CubeSat Venus probe, UNITEC-1.
UNITEC-1 was developed by 20 universities of the University Space Engineering Consortium (UNISEC), the Japanese community developing nano-satellites. Specifically, the Japanese UNITEC-1 team has called for amateur radio assistance worldwide in improving and testing two areas of the CubeSat's mission: Technologies to receive and decode very weak and low bit rate signal coming from deep space, and, technologies to estimate orbit and signal Doppler shift of the satellite based on the received RF signal, essential for tracking and receiving signals from a satellite in deep space.
Bill Vartorella, KJ4ORX, is spearheading the informal FlyVenusCom effort: "The wave of the future is increasingly small, inexpensive, private and non-profit enterprise satellites. The trade-off is many of these satellites will not have sufficient power for robust communications. What should spur amateur interest is that UNITEC-1 will transmit an Amateur Radio telemetry beacon at 5,840 GHz.
Vartorella said that the signal from UNITEC-1 is mainly a CW beacon of about 1 bps speed. At the core is the Japanese consortium's emphasis that this is the first university-developed interplanetary satellite that will provide a unique and exciting opportunity for the radio amateurs to experiment with receiving signals from deep space. More as the project develops.
PROPAGATION REPORT
Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP, reports that the solar activity is still at low levels. Sunspot 1 072 is slowly decaying with no sign of a successor yet. The effective sunspot number is expected to be less than 10 for the coming week.
15 m will provide the best opportunities for DX followed by 17 and 20 m. Conditions to India will be good from the afternoons onwards. During the late afternoons and early evenings it will be good towards Europa. Contacts with the USA are once again becoming challenging. Contacts with Australia and New Zealand will be challenging. During the afternoons and evenings 15 m contacts may also be possible with Brazil although conditions are becoming slightly challenging.
Local conditions are going to be good during the day time on 40 m. 20 m is still useful over the longer distances during the middle of the day. 80 m is best for the shorter distances and also early mornings and late afternoons.
80 m is the frequency of choice during the evenings.
Please visit www.spaceweather.co.za for further information.
DIARY OF EVENTS
5 June – Flea market at 10:30 at the ZERABI reception centre half-way between Klerksdorp and Potchefstroom;
16 June – Youth Day celebrations, SARL Sprint;
26 June – VHF indaba at the NARC starting at 12:00;
18 July – Intechnet at 19:30 on VHF/UHF/MICROWAVE matters;
24 July - RTA symposium in Cape Town;
21 August - RTA symposium in Port Elizabeth;
31 August - Closing date for submission of proposals for the 2011 SARL Contest Manual;
18 September - RTA symposium in Gauteng;
30 September – closing date for phase 1 of the Innovation project.
SARL News invites clubs and individuals to submit news items of interest to radio amateurs and shortwave listeners. Submit news items, if possible, in both English and Afrikaans to www.sarl.org.za/newsinbox.asp, not later than the Thursday preceding the bulletin date.
The SARL also invites you to listen to Amateur Radio Mirror International every Sunday morning at 10:00 CAT on 145,750 MHz in the Pretoria-area, with relays on 7 082, 7 205 and 17 560 kHz. There is also a podcast by ZS6RO. For a webstream and Echolink by ZS6FCS, visit www.sarl.org.za, click on 'ARMI' and follow the links. A repeat transmission can be heard on Mondays at 21:00 CAT on 3 215 kHz. Sentech sponsors the ARMI transmissions on the non-amateur frequencies.
You have listened to a bulletin of the South African Radio League, compiled by George, ZS6NE.
Thank you for listening, 73.
/EX
