SOUTH AFRICAN RADIO LEAGUE NEWS 7 SEPTEMBER 2014

Good morning and welcome, you are tuned to a newscast of the South African Radio League read by ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬__________________________ (Name and call sign) from _____________________ (QTH). You may tune in to our newscasts on Sunday morning at 08:15 CAT in Afrikaans and at 08:30 CAT in English on HF and VHF and UHF repeaters around the country. Echolink listeners may connect to ZS0JPL for a relay and a podcast is also available from the official SARL webpage at www.sarl.org.za as well as from www.podpage.co.za

You may find this bulletin 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.

SILENT KEY

* * We start this morning’s bulletin with news of a silent key. It is with regret that we have to announce the passing of Skip van Niekerk, ZS4Z, at the age of 84 years on 2 September. A memorial service was held for Skip on Friday 5 September in Bethlehem. He was a member of the Vrystaat Amateurradioklub for many years. We will all miss him dearly.

We extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends

PAUSE…………………

IN THE NEWS TODAY

ICASA DRAFT IMT ROADMAP MAY HAVE IMPLICATIONS FOR AMATEUR RADIO

YOUR FINAL CHANCE TO ATTEND THE RTA IN PRETORIA

NEW INTERNATIONAL MAINLAND AFRICA CONTEST PROPOSAL

and

YOUTH NET THIS AFTERNOON

Our leading story this morning

** On 27 August, ICASA published a 233 page document giving notice regarding the draft International Mobile Telecommunications roadmap for consultation. It is also known by its abbreviation IMT Roadmap. Comments are invited and have to reach ICASA by 7 October. The IMT Roadmap proposal may have implications for amateur radio in the 70 cm band as well as for the amateur allocations in the 2 and 5 GHz bands.

The SARL Regulatory workgroup members have been requested to study the Government Gazette and a teleconference is scheduled for later this month to assess the implications and formulate a document for submission to ICASA. A copy of the document, gazette number 37948, is available for download from the ICASA website. SARL members can also request a copy of the Gazette by sending an email request to sarlregwg@sarl.org.za

* * The RTA will be held at the Innovation Hub on Saturday 13 September. Full details, programme and registration forms are available on the SARL web. Booking for this event will close at midnight on Tuesday 9 September. The programme will be the same as presented on 23 August at the NARC with Tony Voorveld, ZS6CCD, exploring his magic lamps, Stewart Moss, ZS6SGM, taking you through the WSPR programme and the 5 MHz research projects plus all the other interesting presentations.

** New International Mainland Africa Contest Proposal. What started out as an e-mail discussion between Pierre, ZS6A, and Roger, ZS6RJ, about the current SARL "Blue Book" contest rules and proposed changes, evolved into a chat about the potential for an international SARL contest. Towards the end of July, Pierre opened up a forum topic covering this idea under the contests and awards forum section in the SARL discussion forum.

It quickly became apparent that aside from Roger and Pierre's thoughts in this direction, a lot of other South African radio amateurs had brought this idea up in the past, either during informal discussions or at various amateur radio meetings and events. This resulted in a small group of South African radio amateurs forming to further this idea.

The proposal rapidly progressed into one focused on the idea of implementing the first international DX contest for the whole continent of Africa. Currently dubbed the "All Mainland Africa, All-mode International DX Contest, or "AMA" for short, a group of eight South African radio amateurs have put pen to paper and drafted an AMA contest proposal for an annual 24 hour event covering all modes. The proposal is designed as the initial framework to share with all radio amateurs in South Africa and provide an opportunity for anyone to get involved with good ideas changes or constructive criticism to be included in the final proposal.

Currently, the new contest proposal is updated weekly and a different version published. Since last week, a link to the draft proposal has been posted on the SARL discussion forum and is open to all for general comment and feedback. The latest proposal is version 4, and we encourage all radio amateurs to visit the SARL discussion forum and take a look under the contest and awards section, read the thread, and provides us with your feedback and ideas to potentially improve the proposal. The plan is to gather feedback for another 2 to 3 weeks via this route, after which a finalized proposal will be handed to the SARL for further consideration as an official contest to be included on the annual calendar and governed by a contest committee.

To gain some international perspective, the contest proposal is also currently being shared with some well-known overseas DXers with previous Africa DXpedition experience, as well as the British Amateur Radio Teledata Group (BARTG) to gain their insight and feedback on the RTTY perspective of this contest. The contest is also seen as an opportunity to be a useful catalyst for promoting RTTY in the African region.

Your feedback may be provided via the SARL forum, or directly to Roger, ZS6RJ, who is coordinating and drafting the proposal on behalf of involved amateurs. His email details are available both on QRZ.com and the SARL website.

Geoff Levey, ZS6C, will take the proposal along with him to the upcoming IARU Region 1 Conference toward the second half of September and use the opportunity to socialize this idea with the African delegation while he is there.

You are tuned to a bulletin of the South African Radio League and we now continue with local news and news from the league.

** When the SA Agulhas 2 set sail for Tristan da Cunha this past Thursday, a number of radio amateurs were on the quay side to wish two radio amateurs, Paul, ZS1S, and Nigel, G3TXF, bon voyage. They were on their way to erect a DX station on the island. Paul as ZD9ZS on SSB and Nigel as ZD9XF on CW will be operating from 10 September to 3rd October. This was the beginning of a DXpedition which, as Paul said, took more than two years to finalize. For details and photographs www.g3txf.com can be visited.

* * The next 5 MHz activity weekend will be held on 20 and 21 September 2014. SARL members are invited to take part in a 5 MHz activity weekend dedicated to propagation research. The activity is focussed from 13:00 - 20:00 on each day and comprises various activities during designated time slots. The activity is open to all SARL members and to all radio amateurs living permanently outside the borders of South Africa. More details are available on the SARL web.

* * The SARL Youth Net will be on the air every first Sunday of the month. If you are under the age of 25 years do tune in at 15:00 CAT on 7 070 kHz. The Youth Net is not just for giving a report but to have a discussion on a youth relevant subject. In this afternoons net you can chew over the subject, “Facebook: are there other social media platforms that you think are better? Remember you must be under 25 to take part.

** According to Vonnie, the SARL administrator, payments received for membership was quite brisk this past week. She asks members to be patient when it comes to acknowledging payment of their membership fees. A number of members forgot to add their name and call sign to their payment, thus causing a problem to determine who paid and who did not pay. Please make sure that you add your name and call sign when paying your membership fees.

** No applications for membership of the SARL have been received during this week. Membership of the SARL currently stands at 1 396 plus 31 clubs affiliated to the SARL. If you have no access to the website, your membership is probably not up to date. Phone or email the office to check.

** The contest committee has received 20 logs for the SARL HF CW Contest held on Sunday 31 August 2014. Sixteen of the logs are from South African stations and the other four come from Saudi Arabia, Japan, India and Madagascar.

You have until midnight this evening to submit you log in Cabrillo, ADIF or MS Excel to zs4bfn@gmail.com

** Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP, reports that the expected solar activity will be at moderate levels. Active regions 2152, 2153 and 2157 have complex magnetic configurations and may produce M- class solar flares.

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

The 20 to 10 m bands will provide lots of DX fun with 15 m providing the best openings with 20 m not far behind.

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

DAIRY OF EVENTS

7 September – Youth Net at 15:00 this afternoon and at midnight the closing time for logs for the HF CW Contest
13 September - RTA at the Innovation Hub in Pretoria, book before 9 September
20 & 21 September – The SARL 5 MHz Activity weekend

We end this news bulletin with this mornings leading story:-

On 27 August, ICASA published a 233 page document giving notice regarding the draft International Mobile Telecommunications roadmap for consultation. It is also known by its abbreviation IMT Roadmap. Comments are invited and have to reach ICASA by 7 October. The IMT Roadmap proposal may have implications for amateur radio in the 70 cm band as well as for the amateur allocations in the 2 and 5 GHz bands.

That brings us to the end of this week’s news broadcast

The South African Radio League invites you to listen to Amateur Radio Today every Sunday morning at 10:00 CAT on 145,750 MHz in the Pretoria area, on the 145,650 MHz network in Johannesburg with relays on 7 082, 7 205, and 17 660 kHz. There is a podcast by Dick, ZS6RO. For web-streaming and Echolink by Chris, ZS6FCS, visit www.sarl.org.za, click on 'Amateur Radio Today', go down the green column and click on 'LISTEN ON THE WEB'.

A repeat transmission can be heard on Mondays at 16:30 UTC on 3 230 kHz. The website also lists various other retransmissions. Reception reports, comments and suggestions are invited. Send an email to artoday@sarl.org.za. Sentech sponsors the transmissions on the non-amateur frequencies.

South African Radio League News invites clubs and individuals to submit news items of interest to radio amateurs and short-wave listeners. Submit news items, if possible in both English and Afrikaans, to www.sarl.org.za/newsinbox.asp, no later than the Thursday preceding the bulletin date.

And that brings us to the end of this news bulletin compiled by Johann du Plessis ZS6PSS, edited by Dennis Green, ZS4BS and read by …………………………..

73 from the SARL News team

/EX