SARL NEWS SUNDAY 13 JULY 2104
Good morning and welcome, you are tuned to a newscast of the South African Radio League read by__________________________ (Name and Calsign) from _____________________ (QTH). You may tune in to our newscasts on Sunday morning at 08:15 local time in Afrikaans and at 08:30 local time in English on HF VHF and UHF frequencies around the country. Echolink listeners may connect to ZS0JPL for a relay and a podcast is also available from the official SARL webpage www.sarl.org.za.

You may find this and previous bulletins in text format on the SARL webpage under the news link on the left. While you are there you may also sign up to receive future bulletins via e mail.

IN THE NEWS TODAY

TONY VOORVELD TO DELIVER KEYNOTE PRESENTATION AT GAUTENG RTA's

YOU ARE INVITED TO BRIEF OUR DELEGATES TO THE IARU REGION ONE CONFERENCE

NEW WEBSITE FOR AWA

SARL@HOME OPENS ITS DOOR ON 26 JULY

VHF TRANSATLANTIC BARRIER BEING BROKEN


** Tony Voorveld ZS6CCD will be delivering the keynote presentation at the Johannesburg and Pretoria Radio Technology Symposiums. Tony will return to the RTA stage this year which promises to be an event not to miss. Bookings are now open. The Johannesburg event will be held at the National Amateur Radio Centre on 23 August 2014. Unfortunately the event will be limited to 30 delegates. The Pretoria event will be held on 13 September at the Innovation Hub. The Innovation Hub is an exciting venue and can accommodate up to 200 delegates. To book go to the SARL web and follow the links.

** Join SARL President Geoff Levey, ZS6C at the National Amateur Radio centre for a SARL@home presentation. Geoff will talk about contesting and contesting logging software. He will demonstrate the software and if you bring a memory you will be able to go home with the software. There is no charge for SARL members but you have to book so we know how many to cater for, for non-members the charge is R100. Please use the booking form available on the SARL web. Refreshment will be served and before we forget, the lecture room at the NARC is air-conditioned and heated.

** After reporting on the massive effort on the trans atlantic VHF communication record news has broken during this week that this last bastion of the VHF bands has been half conqured.

Terry Gabriel, M0VRL, at Delabole, Cornwall, England, heard a weak JT65 signal, in and out of the noise, on 144,155 MHz around 11:53 UTC on Saturday morning 5th July 2014, which occurred during the transatlantic tests conducted by VC1T, a Canadian team. Terry has a big station and shares an IARU Region 1 Tropo distance record of 4106 km with D44TD in Cape Verde Islands, established on 144 MHz SSB. The distance between VC1T, locator GN37os at Pouch Cove, Newfoundland, and M0VRL, locator IO70po, is 3457 km! They are now using WSJT 9.7, which is the latest digital version available and feeding 800 Watts into a 43 element Yagi with a gain of 24 dBd.

Breathtaking news occurred on July 6th at 13:41 UTC when John Regnault, G4SWX VHF Manager of the RSGB, received a CQ meteor burst (FSK441 mode) from VC1T. It was confirmed that the received burst was in the format transmitted by VC1T. They started the 4 hours timeframe and no further information on chat or e-mail exchanged. During that timeframe G4SWX received 3 other bursts from which 2 were CQ and one other where only the VC1T call sign was readable. Screenshots from WSJT are available as well as maps from the current tropo situation on the North-Atlantic. The Hepburn Forecasts of the North Atlantic have indicated very poor Tropo Ducting conditions so far, but there is a chance that tropospheric conditions could improve from 11 - 12 July 2014 when the tests come to an end.

A terrestrial two-way contact between North America and Europe has not been achieved so far on 144 MHz, and it appears to be even more challenging than making EME contacts over a total distance of 800 000 km on this band.

You are tuned to a bulletin of the South African radio league ZS6SRL read by ______________(Name and call sign) and we now continue with news from the league”)
League news
** Applications for membership of the SARL have been received from the following persons:
Theo Wessels: ZSL1111
P C Strydom: ZSL1112

For interest sake, a ZSL callsign indicates that the member is a listener and thus may not transmit on the amateur bands

Any objections against the acceptance of the applications must reach the Secretary before or on the Tuesday after this bulletin.
Membership of the SARL currently stands at 1821 of which 589 have already renewed


** The SARL will be holding an INTECNET on Tuesday 22 July at 19:30 to brief the SARL delegates on how to vote on the various agenda items. Links to the various agenda item will be available on the SARL web from early next week. The three delegates representing the SARL, Geoff Levy ZS6C, Rassie Erasmus, ZS1YT and Riaan Greeff, ZS4PR will discuss the various proposals on HF,VHF and contesting as wells as IARU financial issues. Clubs wishing to link their repeaters to the network should send details such the landline number to artoday@sarl.org.za by not later than 15 July 2014. The papers can be downloaded from a link on the sarl web

** The Antique Wireless Association of Southern Africa has a new web site. It is worth a visit. You can find them on www.awasa.org.za AWA hold regular nets every Saturday from 06h00 using AM on 3615, at 08h30 using SSB on 7140kHz relayed on 14140 kHz, whilst Barry ZS6AJY controls the CW Net from 14H00. John ZS1WJ who heads up the Western Cape Chapter, runs a Net every Saturday at 07h00 on 7080 SSB. Every Wednesday evening from 07h00 an AM Net is operated on 3615 with "musical frequencies" being played by those who choose to.

** The SARL Youth on Sunday 6 July at 15:00 was well supported. It will now be a monthly event on the first Sunday of every month. The next net is on 3 August at 15:00. The net will operate on 7070 kHz. Clubs are invited to activate their club station and facilitate young people to join the net.
The objective is for the net to bring young people together. If you are not in the youth category please give the young people a chance by not joining the net but by just listening.

Winners of the current photographic competition will be announced next Sunday. For this first net there was a photo competition. The closing date has been extended to the tonight (Sunday) at midnight.

The prize is a Velleman Edukit valued at R395 and sponsored by Electronics FG, of Faerie Glen, Pretoria.


Contest news
Three major annual SARL contests are held during August each year. The SARL HF SSB Contest takes place on 3 August, the SARL Digital Contest on 17 August and the SARL HF CW Contest on 31 August. It is now time to get your antennas for 20, 40 and 80 metres checked out and get your station ready for the event. The full details are available on the contest pages on the SARL web. In each of the HF contest there will be a lucky draw for an ARRL Antenna book valued at over R900. To enter the luck draw participant must submit a log with a minimum of 15 contacts.

To learn more about how to succeed in contest join Geoff Levey at his SARL@home session the week before.

** The winter QRP contest is comming up. The QRP contests are intended to be fun activities to promote QRP operation between radio amateurs using homebuilt equipment or operating as a portable or field station and using temporary antennas, however this is not a requirement. The Winter QRP Contest will be run from 12:00 to 15:00 UTC on Saturday 19 July. It is a phone and CW contest using 5 watts (PEP) output or less and a station may be worked once per band per mode. There are no antenna restrictions.

The first hour is limited to the 40 m band only, the remaining two hours the contesters are free to use any HF (non-WARC) band as they see fit. Please comply with the contest preferred segments as detailed in the general rules. It would be advantageous to use the standard QRP calling frequencies as the starting point.

The exchange is a RS or RST report and your grid locator. Please consider exchanging realistic RS(T) signal reports. Please use the full 6 character grid locator. e.g. KG10xu. If the station's grid locator is unknown, then use some other means that identifies the station's location. Logs shall be submitted by 26 July 2014 to contest@sarl.org.za. A photos of the station in .jpg MUST accompany every log entry.

Please read the complete rules in the 2014 SARL Contest Manual.
HF Propagation report

Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP, reports that the expected solar activity will be at moderate levels. Big Sunspots AR2108 and AR2109 have "delta" magnetic fields that harbor enough energy for X-class solar flares.

If you want to do your own frequency predictions, the expected effective sunspot number for the week will be
around 100.

All the bands from 20 to 10 m will provide lots of DX fun with 15 m providing the best openings with 20 m not
far behind. Some exciting 6 m openings are also a possibility during the early evenings.

Please visit the website spaceweather.sansa.org.za for further information.

Diary of events
19 July sees the winter QRP contest, on 26 and 27 july the RSGB islands on the air event is taking place while on 3 August you may join the SARL HF Phone contest, 9 August you may once again partake in the SARL YL Sprint and 16 and 17 August is the international lighthouse and lightship weekend.
You may find out more on these and other happenings by downloading the latest copy of the SARL diary of events.
We end this mornings newscast with a quick recap of our leading story: Tony Voorveld ZS6CCD will be delivering the keynote presentation at the Johannesburg and Pretoria Radio Technology Symposiums. This event takes place on 23 August and 13 September at the National Amateur radio center and the Innovation hub respectively. Find out more from the SARL website
And that brings us to the end of this news bulletin compiled and edited by ________________
You are invited to submit news items of interest to the SARl by following the newsinbox link on the SARL webpage. Newsitems should reach the newsteam not later than the Thursday preceding the bulletin date for inclusion in the bulletin.

You may also join us every Sunday morning for the weekly amateur magazine program Amateur Radio Today at 10:00 local time. The program may be heard on 7082 Lower side band and on 7205kHz and 17660kHz Am . A. replay may be heard on Monday evenings 18:30 local time on 3230kHz AM. The non transmissions on the non namateur bands are sponsored by Sentech

You have listened to a news bulletin compiled and editied by ____________________, thank you for listening from me _________________________ (Name) and the entire news team best wishes for the week ahead, 73’s

/EX