SOUTH AFRICAN RADIO LEAGUE NEWS SUNDAY 6 SEPTEMBER 2015
Good morning and welcome to the weekly news bulletin of the South African Radio League read by
[your name, call sign and QTH]
You can tune into the South African Radio League news bulletin 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 our country. Echolink listeners can connect to ZS0JPL for a relay. A podcast is available from the League web site.
This audio bulletin can be downloaded from the 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 web page. While you are there, you can sign up to receive future bulletins by e-mail.
We start the bulletin with news of 2silent keys
It is with regret that we learnt that Paul Potgieter ZS6PSP, passed away earlier in this week. Paul was known as an active amateur but struggled with his health in recent years. We extend our deepest condolences to his wife, his family and friends.
It is with sadness that we have to announce the sudden passing of OM Jopie van Lill, ZS6JVL last week. He was involved with the East Rand Radio Club for many years. Our deepest sympathies goes to his wife Anett.
PAUSE
In the news today
HAMNET PLANNING A NATIONAL EXERCISE
ZS4SRK ENJOYS 50 YEARS OF FUN
THE NATIONAL FIELD DAY NEXT WEEKEND
AMATEUR EME SIGNAL PICKED UP BY THE KAT-7 RADIO TELESCOPE AT SKA SITE
Stay tuned for more on these and other interesting news items.
** HAMNET is planning a national 24 hour communications exercise late October 2015. This is the fourth edition of the HAMNET Communications Exercise, which was previously held as a "Winter Exercises" The exercise will be held from 12:00 on the 24 October until 12:00 on 25October 2015.
As in the past, teams will consist of at least of 4 members, of which the leader and at least half the team must be HAMNET members. Teams may deploy themselves at any location and HAMNET are again hoping to activate as many Disaster Centres as possible. Entries will be accepted on a "first come, first serve basis" for locations, to avoid having teams too close to one another. Teams are encouraged to find locations that are of some interest and remote to their normal points of operation.
The theme of the exercise will be "black out" where all stations are required to operate all activities off the power grid. This will include radio equipment, lighting, cooking and any other related activities. Remember that this is not a competition or contest, the exercise is held to afford teams an opportunity to learn about their capabilities and very importantly their shortcomings.
The overall success will be judged on how teams co-operate with each other. Another new concept this year will be the "priority" messaging. At various times a random team will have to get a message through to another team. The messages and times will not be disclosed before the start of the competition and the teams must use all resources at their disposal (except telephones or cell phones) to get the messages through to another team."
The closing date is the end of September to allow the organisers to make their final preparations and distribute the information packs to team leaders. The entry form must be completed and sent to grant@saao.ac.za. Entry forms will be available on www.sarl.org.za - click on HAMNET in the left-hand side column.
The heartfelt thanks of the management and members of the HAMNET Gauteng South division is herewith expressed towards Martin Nortman ZS6TMN and his XYL Mina ZS6MNT for the donation of a new axle and wheels for the HAMNET trailer to the value of R6000-00.
Thank you Martin and Mina for the generous contribution to emergency communication.
HAMNET Gauteng South meets on the first Thursday of each month at the East Rand Radio Clubhouse at Arrowe Park in Benoni.
For more information contact Chris Gryffenberg ZS6COG.
HAMNET is a public benefit organisation.
**At the 50 year amateur radio festival of the Sasolburg Radio Club, a monster loop antenna was erected. This loop antenna is one of the largest loop antennas recorded in South Africa. It consisted of a few 160m wave lengths in total and was tested on air. Contacts with ZS50SRK will be acknowledged with the special QSL cards.
Because this festival went so much better than planned, the club now have the opportunity to raffle a prize on national level.
ZS4SRK are having a raffle that will make two radio amateurs very happy! For more information regarding the raffle please visit our website specially designed for this occasion at WWW.ZS50SRK.CO.ZA . Follow the link to the raffle. First prize is an "Anytone AT-3318 Dual band handheld" to the value of R1499! The second prize is a 2metreSentinal Vertical antenna with 6dBi gain, already tuned to 145MHz to the value of R1000. The entries are open for 50 days from 5 September until 25 October 2015. We want to thank our sponsors, RFI, and WICaRD(Pty)Ltd for their support.
Thank you to all the visitors, wholesalers and organisations that came to make this day such a success.
**The second leg of the National Field Day takes place from 10:00 UTC on Saturday 12 September to 10:00 UTC on Sunday 13 September 2015, with phone, CW and digital (PSK and RTTY) activity on 160, 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10 metres. Participation can be as Class A - Field Station, Multi operator or Class B - Field Station, Multi operator QRP or Class C - Field Station, Single Operator or Class D - Field Station, Single Operator QRP or Class E - Ultra Light Portable or Class F- General station.
Equipment for Field Stations may only be set up in the 24 hours prior to the starting time of the contest. This restriction applies to antennas, masts, towers and transmitting equipment, but excludes accommodation such as a caravan, tent, etc. The exchange is a RS(T) report, the number of transmitters, the Field Day operating class and Provincial abbreviation. Log sheets, only in ADIF, Cabrillo or MS Excel format and labelled "call sign NFD" - must be sent by midnight 20 September 2015 to zs4bfn@gmail.com. Photos of the station in action (JPG format) MUST accompany every log entry. PLEASE consult the 2015 Blue Book for the complete set of rules.
**Leon Korkie, ZS1MM, of Denel Overberg Test Range informed us about an interesting EME test conducted on 1296 MHz with Dr. Lindsay Marcus on the KAT-7 radio telescope with a gain of 44,3 dB.
On the transmit side Leon programmed his call sign on a PIC at very slow Morse with 2 to 3 seconds per dot, as this is the shortest integration time of their receivers. Leon used this to key a Rhode & Swartz signal generator, which was fed into his 10 Watt solid state amp via about 25 metres of half inch Heliax so that he could have the amplifier as close to the antenna feed as possible. This feed is mounted on a 15 foot auto tracking antenna that was slaved onto the Moon at a time when there was very little Sun on the Moon so as to have minimum noise. They used the central computer system of the test range to do the slaving. There was a beacon pointing at the Moon aswell causing some interference so Leon QSY a little up in the band to get rid of that.
Dr. Lindsay Magnus confirmed the reception of the signal with full scale chart recordings and also referred to the interfering signal that turned out to be the EME beacon on 1296,000 MHz radiated from Ariceibo, Puerto Rico.
How many are aware that after Karl Jansky accidentally discovered radio emission from the centre of the Milky Way on 20 MHz, it was a radio amateur who pioneered radio astronomy in the early days. Grote Reber, W9GFZ, mapped the radio skies in the Northern hemisphere and continued throughout WWII. He used a homebrew dish antenna on a frequency of 160 MHz.
You are listening to a news bulletin of the South African Radio League.
** Please note that the SARLs ISP will be performing maintenance of their systems as follows. During this time the SARL website and all facilities will be unavailable.
Please ensure that SARL News and SARL Nuus are sent out well before the scheduled start time to ensure no disruption.
Start: 22:00 on Saturday 19th September 2015
End: 05:00 on Sunday 20th September 2015
**Geoff Levey ZS6C is calling all the custodians of the various contests to let him know by the 12 September of any changes to the contests planned for 2016. Especially check the email addresses. You can send an email to contest@sarl.org.za with details of any changes.
**On Saturday 19 September 2015 the East Rand Radio club is hosting their Annual General Meeting
All members to please attend the meeting
Will be held at the clubhouse
Ebenezer Street
Arrowe Park
Benoni
Contact Judy via email zs6erb@gmail.com or via phone on 0797302030
**There will be a high altitude balloon launch for KZN HAB interest group by ZS5LT and support crew.
Launch date: 6th September 2015
Launch Site: HowickAirfield FAHC 29 33.10 S 030 12.40 E
Launch time: 7 am (depends on CAMU Clearance).
Balloon size: 1200gr latex weather balloon
Manufacturer: Pawan India
Initial Diameter: 2m
Burst Diameter: 9.2m
Burst Altitude: 32 000m
Time to burst: 3.2 hrs
Payload Telemetry 434,650mhz USB RTTY
Baud Rate 50
Carrier Shift 425
Bits per Character 7
Parity None
Stop bit 1
(use DL Fldigi in HAB mode)
Balloon can be tracked on tracker.habhub.org
Your own tracking guide using SDR: ukhas.org.uk/guides:sdr_tracker
Your own tracking software; ukhas.org.uk/projects:dl-fldigi
**Special occasion station ZS9HEL
During the weekend of 24 to 27 September 2015 a group of amateurs from the Western and Northern Cape will erect a special event station in the Gamkaskloof, also known as The HEL.
A special call sign ZS9HEL was approved for this occasion. Contacts will be primarily on phone on 80, 40 and 20metrebands but there will also be a 160 metre antenna.
Listen from Thursday 24 September till Sunday 27 September for this special event.
Paper QSL will be via the bureau but South African stations can use the SA-QSL system including e-QSL.
**Applications for membership of the SARL have been received from the following persons:
. ZS6DRH: Dr Heinrich Walter Hoehler
. ZS1LJ: L Jordan
. ZSL1168: Lezell Poole
. ZS6CNS: Celeste Searle
. ZS1KB: Johan Landman
Any objections to the acceptance of the applications must reach the Secretary before or on the Tuesday after the bulletin.
Membership of the SARL currently stands at 1453 plus 38 affiliated clubs
**Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP, reports that the solar activity is expected to be at low levels with only a few small sunspots dotting the solar disk.
If you want to do your own frequency predictions, the expected effective sunspot number for the week will be around 24.
The 20 to 15 m bands will provide lots of DX fun, especially during the late afternoons and in the evenings.
Please visit the website spaceweather.sansa.org.za for further information.
** And now for the diary of events
Today 6 September closing date for the HFCW logs
12 and 13 September SARL National field day
19 September Amateurradio in Action, Pretoria
19 en 20 September the SARL VHF/BHFContest
To end this bulletin, a recap of our main news item this morning.
** HAMNET is planning a national 24 hour communications exercise late October 2015. This is the fourth edition of the HAMNET Communications Exercise, which was previously held as a "Winter Exercises". The exercise will be held from 12:00 on the 24 October until 12:00 on 25October 2015.
**At the 50 year amateur radio festival of the Sasolburg Radio Club, a monster loop antenna was erected. This loop antenna is one of the largest loop antennas recorded in South Africa. It consisted of a few 160m wave lengths in total and was tested on air.
You are welcome to join us every Sunday morning for the weekly amateur radio magazine programme Amateur Radio Today at 10:00 Central African Time. The programme can 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 available from Dick Stratford, ZS6RO. A rebroadcast can be heard on Monday evenings at 18:30 Central African Time on 3 230 kHz AM.
We welcome your signal reports, comments and suggestions; send these by e-mail to artoday@sarl.org.za. Sentech sponsors the radio transmissions on the non-amateur frequencies.
You have listened to a news bulletin compiled by Etienne Naude, ZS6EFN, edited by Richard Stratford, ZS6RO and read by Dave Reece, ZS6DFR
From the entire news team, best wishes for the week ahead.
73 and thank you for listening
/EX
