SOUTH AFRICAN RADIO LEAGUE NEWS SUNDAY 4 JANUARY 2015
Good morning and welcome! You are tuned to a news broadcast of the South African Radio League read by ..................................................... (Name, call sign and QTH).
You can tune to the South African Radio League news broadcast on Sunday mornings at 08:15 central African time in Afrikaans and at 08:30 central African time in English on HF and on many VHF and UHF repeaters around the country. Echolink listeners can connect to ZS0JPL for a relay. A podcast is available from the South African Radio League web site.
This audio bulletin can be downloaded from the South African Radio League website at www.sarl.org.za. You will find this bulletin and previous bulletins in text format under the news link on the left-hand side of the webpage. While you are there, you can sign up to receive future bulletins by e-mail.
We unfortunately have to start this mornings bulletin with news of a silent key:
It is with sadness that the Magalies Radioamateurklub announces the passing of Saar Steyn, ZS6BFW, on 24 December. She was for many years a member of Tak Noord Transvaal, now the Magalies Radioamateurklub. She will be sorely missed by all of us.
Our sincerest condolences to her children, family and friends.
PAUSE
In the news today:
HAMNET WESTERN CAPE SUPPORTED THREE RESCUE MISSIONS LAST WEEK-END
FIRST SARL@HOME FOR 2015 WILL BE HELD ON 5 FEBRUARY
CAPE TOWN WAS THE CRADLE OF VHF PIONEERING
and
WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM THE FORTHCOMING PEARS VHF/UHF CONTEST?
The President and Council of the South African Radio League (and the News team) wish all our members a prosperous 2015
Our leading story this morning
** Over the weekend of 28 December, HAMNET Western Cape was involved in three rescue missions. Paul van Spronsen, ZS1V, Hamnet National Director, was on Western Cape Search and Rescue Logistics Duty Management and it was his responsibility to deploy the appropriate available resources to three incidents.
At 21:32 on Sunday 28 December, ZS1VCC and ZS1ZW were called out to respond to Rocket Road above Sandy Bay and to accompany a metro team to provide communications support to rescue three students. The students were extracted to safety early the next morning.
Earlier that evening at 20:30 Pierre Tromp, ZS1HF, and David, ZU1D, teamed up with Johan, ZS1JVW, who was already in place near the du Toits Kloof tunnel and who had communications with SkyMed. A paramedic and a mountaineer had earlier the afternoon been dropped into the kloof. The medic treated the patient and packaged her in preparation for a chopper extraction. The chopper extracted the patient and flew back via Groote Schuur Hospital at 22:55.
The third incident was a party of 5 lost in Suicide Gorge - a kloofing trail in the Nuweberg nature reserve near Grabouw. No Hamnet members were despatched to that incident. The team there consisted mostly of members of the K9SAR team.
It just shows again the communication support that radio amateurs are able to provide the community when most needed, yet it often goes unnoticed.
** The first SARL@HOME event for 2015 will be held at the National Amateur Radio Centre on Saturday 5 February. There will be two events on the same day. Frik Wolf, ZS6FZ, will present another surface mount technology workshop where you will learn how to work with surface mount components.
The workshop includes building a small project to put your new gained knowledge into practice. The cost for the workshop is R150 for South African Radio League members and R300 for non-members. This includes the PC board and components for the project and a CD containing a wealth of information and videos. Full details are on the web. The workshop starts at 08:30
The second event on 5 February is a WSPR discussion starting at 14:00. Learn more about the South African Radio League's fascinating 5 MHz propagation research project with Stuart Moss, ZS6GSM, and Hans van de Groenendaal, ZS6AKV.
** ZS90SARL made its debut on 1 January 2015. Theunis Potgieter, ZS2EC of the Port Elizabeth Amateur Radio Society is the first station to use the call sign ZS90SARL to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the South African Radio League. Original known as the South African Radio Relay League, the national body for amateur radio in South Africa, was formed in May 1925, shortly after the formation of the International Amateur Radio Union in Paris, France.
It is fitting that the first transmissions of ZS90SARL was made from Port Elizabeth, as it was there that the first radio contact in South Africa was established. It was Edward Alfred Jennings, a telephone technician in the city who through experimentation to improve the performance of the telephone mouthpiece detected its coherer properties. He also noticed that the electric tram passing his house a little distance away caused crackling. Later that year, it 1896, he carried out an ambitious experiment to send a signals over a nearly a kilometre distance between his house in Sherlock Street to a primitive receiving station at Cooper 's Kloof. A flag was hoisted if his signals were received and indeed, they were.
For the week 12 - 18 January Mike Stokes, ZS6AI, from Kempton Park, will operate the call sign.
** Call for papers for ARiA. The Radio Technology in Action name has been finally changed to ARiA, Amateur Radio in Action 2015. If you would like to present at one or all of the events in 2015, send a brief synopsis to artoday@sarl.org.za this weekend so that the programme can be finalised.
You are listening to a bulletin of the South African Radio League
** Cape Town was the cradle of VHF pioneering. In 1934, Bert Howes, ZS1AL / ZS6HS (SK), worked several stations in the Peninsula from the top of Table Mountain with his 5 metre (56 MHz) super-regenerative transceiver. And a few years later he was the first South African to receive the BBC TV sound from Alexandra Palace, London, England on 41,5 MHz. Around this time Henry Rieder, ZS1P, experimented with the Baird mechanical TV system that used Nipkow rotating discs and demonstrated it to the public. Before World War II started, Guy Swart, ZS1AX, on De Waal Drive worked Johnny du Plessis, ZS6EH, cross-band in Johannesburg on 5 and 20 metres, respectively, during a Sporadic-E opening.
After the War, Bert Howes, now ZS6HS, established the first DX contact with MD5KW in Port Said on the new 6 metre (50 MHz) band. Brothers Charles, ZS1T, and Henry Rieder, ZS1P soon followed this, when they worked PA0UN on 6 metres for a new world record. Henry Rieder made history when he picked up the Cambridge/Oxford boat race from London on his Pye TV receiver. Later Denis Richardson, ZS1B, established a new world record on 6 metres with JA1AXE, over a distance of 14 730 km, a record that stood for 21 years before it was broken.
The pioneering spirit in Cape Town declined and VHF activity moved to the Transvaal area as well as Natal. Even the Eastern Cape came to life when VHF experimenting started there and the first Microwave amateur record on 10 GHz (3 cm) was recorded in East London. Hopefully the pioneering spirit on VHF and above will be rekindled in the Cape Town area and once again spread throughout the whole country. Participation in a VHF contest would be a good start!
** What can you expect from the forthcoming Port Elizabeth Amateur Radio Society VHF/UHF contest? Several innovations are introduced to boost the activity further in this contest. In line with the ARRL proposals, the prohibition of spotting or other forms of liaison during a VHF contest have been rescinded. This will enable distant stations to alert others when they are operating and in what direction they are transmitting, or use any method to pass on only this type of information via SMS, ON4KST, etc., and it will assist the group of amateurs in the outlying areas who are outside the normal VHF routes between the main centres.
A new fun type category on 144,400 MHz FM has also been added to encourage beginners and old-timers alike to have their first taste of VHF contesting, which will open up to them a new and exciting world on VHF and above. The rules are very simple and you can score ten points from any station you work in your own division or twenty points from another division. Sponsors have been approached in the different divisions to donate a prize for their divisional winner and it will be announced in due course.
The PEARS VHF/UHF contest is scheduled for 16 to 18 January and the rules appear in the 2015 South African Radio League Blue Book as well as in the November 2014 issue of the PEARS newsletter QSX. The PEARS VHF/UHF Contest could also inspire greater participation in the South African Radio League VHF/UHF contests, since they both have the same goal and that is to encourage VHF operation and above in South Africa.
** The Hunting Lions-in-the-Air event takes place on the weekend closest to 13 January, the birth date of Melvin Jones, the founder of the Lions organisation. This year is will be 10 and 11 January. It will not be a contest but merely a means for Lions to exchange greetings with other Lions and Lions Clubs. Radio amateurs and members of the various Lions Clubs get together and the Lions are allowed to exchange greetings with other Lions under supervision of the radio amateur. Normally the name and number of the Lions Club is the exchange
** In the HF propagation report today, Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP, reports that the expected solar activity will be at low levels. Growing Sunspot AR2253 has a "beta-gamma" magnetic field that harbours enough energy for M-class solar flares.
If you want to do your own frequency predictions, the expected effective sunspot number for the week will be around 70. The 20 to 10 m bands will provide lots of DX fun. Please visit the website spaceweather.sansa.org.za for further information.
** And now the diary of events
4 January your brief synopsis to artoday@sarl.org.za for Amateur Radio in Action 2015
5 January NARC opens for business
10 and 11 January Hunting Lions in the Air
14 January inland schools open
15 January your input to the South African Radio League about the draft amendments to the radio regulations to sarlregwg@sarl.org.za
16 to 18 January 2015 PEARS National VHF/UHF Contest
21 January coastal schools open
24 January Summer QRP Contest
To end this bulletin, a quick recap of the leading story:
Over the weekend of 28 December, HAMNET Western Cape was involved in three rescue missions. Paul van Spronsen, ZS1V, Hamnet National Director, was on Western Cape Search and Rescue Logistics Duty Management and it was his responsibility to deploy the appropriate available resources to three incidents.
** You are invited to submit news items of interest to the South African Radio League by following the news inbox link on the South African Radio League webpage. News items for inclusion in the bulletin, should reach the news team no later than the Thursday preceding the bulletin date.
You may join us every Sunday morning for the weekly amateur radio magazine program Amateur Radio Today at 10:00 Central African Time. The programme may be heard on VHF and UHF repeaters countrywide and on 7 082 kHz lower side-band and on 7 205 kHz and 17 760 kHz AM. There is also a podcast by Dick, ZS6RO. A rebroadcast may be heard on Monday evenings at 18:30 Central African Time on 4 895 kHz AM. We welcome your signal reports, comments and suggestions; send it in an e-mail to artoday@sarl.org.za. Sentech sponsors the radio transmissions on the non-amateur frequency bands.
You have listened to a news bulletin compiled and edited by Dennis Green, ZS4BS/2, and read by ................................................
Thank you for listening and from the entire news team, best wishes for the week ahead, 73's.
/EX
