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SOUTH AFRICAN RADIO LEAGUE NEWS SUNDAY 13 MARCH 2016

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 in to 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 the country. Echolink listeners can connect to ZS0JPL for a relay. A podcast is available from the League's web site.

This audio bulletin can be downloaded from the League's 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.

In the news today,

SARL YOUTH NET THIS AFTERNOON

SARL VHF/UHF CONTEST NEXT WEEKEND

and

CONTEST RESULTS FOR FEBRUARY

Stay tuned for more on these and other interesting news items.

** The monthly SARL Youth Net will be on the air this afternoon at 15:00 UTC on 7 070 kHz. All the young people are invited to join SARL Youth Coordinator, Koos Fick, ZR6KF, for the young people get-together on the air.

** The first leg of the SARL VHF/UHF Analogue and digital will be run from 10:00 UTC on Saturday 19 March to 10:00 UTC on Sunday 20 March with FM, SSB, CW and digital operation on 6, 4 and 2 metres, 70 and 23 cm. The contest is open to all licensed radio amateurs in South Africa and neighbouring countries.

You can participate as a base station, a field station, a club or multi operator station or a 4 hour limited category station. Contacts must be two-way and the exchange is your call sign, a signal report and a six-digit grid locator. The 2016 Blue Book contains all the information about this contest. Log sheets shall be submitted by Sunday 3 April by e- mail to contest@sarl.org.za

Following the successes of the PEARS VHF/UHF Contest, here is another chance to break those records.

** VHF amateurs in Division 1 from Cape Town along the West Coast, including Division 3, should start preparing for tests on 144 MHz with Bruce Salt, ZD7VC, on St Helena Island. Bruce is located at Jamestown on St Helena and is currently acquiring a 144 MHz beam antenna with a telescopic mast to operate portable from the fort on the mountain, which has a clear view towards the west coast of South Africa. He will be joined by Pieter Jacobs, V51PJ, at Rosh Pinah, Namibia, who is already equipped with a very high gain horizontal antenna array for Transatlantic tests on 144 MHz. Pieter operates both analogue and digital modes, including on 50 and 70 MHz bands and is looking for contacts with all the divisions in South Africa.

Tropo Ducting frequently manifests along the West coast and could provide Cape Town with strong SSB signals on 144 MHz emanating 3 000 km away from St Helena or Namibia; as often logged from Reunion Island over a similar distance. Many years ago Terry Cotton, ZS1HS (now ZS1AYJ), had daily contacts with Gerhardt Schlorf, ZS3B, at Luderitz while he was resident at Green Point in Cape Town. So make an effort and do some real amateur radio pioneering on VHF.

** The Working Group for Western Cape Repeaters has created a very useful website, where information of all repeaters in the Western Cape is available to all who wish to access it. The weekly status report is there, information on the repeaters themselves, their frequencies, the APRS digipeater and its coverage prediction pattern, the six metre beacon's details and hopefully the soon-to-be-installed Cape Town two metre beacon. One of the tabs shows the entire network diagram, with all linking frequencies included.

Under the Maintenance tab, you will see all the recent work done by its members. The latest is the news of the 12 hour day put in by three local amateurs last Sunday rebuilding the 145.600 MHz repeater installation at Sir Lowry's Pass, while the rest of us were sleeping in, watching cricket or riding the Cape Town Cycle Tour. The Western Cape Repeater Working Group is lucky to have voluntary members like these who donate their off-time to keep all the repeaters alive and working.

Please type only the words 'wcrwg.co.za' in to your browser and you'll see the up-to-date webpage.

** The theme for the April 2016 issue of Radio ZS is home construction - masts, antennas, power supplies, morse keyers, QRP rigs and accessories, APRS kits, sound card interfaces, software for amateur radio, etc.! Get your article to the Editor by Tuesday 22 March and send it to radiozs@sarl.org.za. It can be one page in length or even eight pages in length - there is enough space in Radio ZS.

You are listening to a news bulletin of the South African Radio League.

** You can join the SARL for the remaining period of the financial year for only R240 as a full member; if you are a pensioner and over 65 years of age, the rate is R140. If you join now you will be a member till 30 June 2016 when the League will invoice you for the next year's membership. Full details are on www.sarl.org.za and select membership in the left-hand column. For more information call Vonnie at the NARC at 011 675 2393. Join the SARL today, it is the right thing to do if amateur radio is important to you.

** Application for membership of the South African Radio League has been received from the following persons - Johan Gibson, ZS4JG, Etienne L Simon, ZS1HQ, and Daniel John Freedman, ZR6DMK.

Any objections to the acceptance of these applications must reach the League Secretary before or on the Tuesday following this bulletin. The membership of the League currently stands at 1 639 members and 47 affiliated clubs

** Results of the SARL National Field Day. The committee received 14 logs and 3 check logs for the February leg of the National Field Day. Thank you to those Clubs and individuals who did submit a log.

Class A - multi-operator

1st West Rand ARC, ZS6WR, 136 080 points
2nd Highway ARC, ZS5HAM, 111 720 points
3rd Pretoria ARC, ZS6PTA, 83 640 points

Class C - Single Operator
1st Mitchell Mynhaart, ZS6YH, 57 120 points

Class D - Single operator, QRP
1st Johan van Zijl, ZS4DZ, 54 594 points

Class F - General stations
1st East Rand Branch, ZS6ERB, 12 264 points
2nd Stephan van Jaarsveldt, ZS6SVJ, 1 200 points
3rd Roy Walsh, ZS3RW, 680 points

Check logs were received from Joop Hesp, ZS6JP, Bruce Dunn, ZS5XT, and the Durban ARC, ZS5D

** The results of the SARL Youth Sprint held on Saturday 20 February have been released. The committee received five logs from young people.

1st Mitchell Mynhaardt, ZS6YH, 98 points
2nd Nathan Busse, ZU6X, and Robert van der Meulen, ZU6BOB, 53 points each
4th Connor Middelton, ZU6CM, 49 points
5th Chané Greeff, ZS4CG, 24 points
Congratulations to all.

** The results of the SARL Digital Contest held on Sunday 21 February have been released. The committee received five logs.

1st Mitchell Mynhardt, ZS6YH, 816 points
2nd Sydney Smith, ZS1TMJ, 546 points
3rd Allan Saul, ZS1LS, 483 points
4th Ryan Gibson, ZS6GGR, 198 points
5th Theunis Potgieter, ZS2EC, 165 points
Congratulations to all.

** Two logs were received for the Leap Year Challenge! Thank you and congratulations to Johan van Aarde, ZS2I, with 177 QSOs who wins the prize of a SARL subscription for 2016/2017. The other log came from Geoff Levey, ZS6C, with 18 QSOs.

** Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP, reports that the solar activity is expected to be at low levels. Currently only a few small sunspots are visible and none of them poses a threat for serious solar flares.

If you want to do your own frequency predictions, the expected effective sunspot number for the week will be around 24. The 20 to 10 m bands and will provide lots DX fun. Please visit the website spaceweather.sansa.org.za for further information.

Now for the diary of events

Today the SARL Youth Net at 15:00 UTC on 7 070 kHz as well as the closing date for logs for the Hamnet contest
15 March - Radio ZS editorial teleconference
19 and 20 March - the SARL VHF/UHF analogue and digital contest
22 March - closing date for articles for the April Radio ZS
31 March - closing date for proposed papers for the SA AMSAT Conference, send it to saamsat@intekom.co.za
2 April - the RaDAR Challenge
3 April - closing date for SARL VHF contest logs
7 April - SARL 80 m QSO Party

To end this bulletin, a recap of our main news item this morning.

** The monthly SARL Youth Net will be on the air this afternoon at 15:00 UTC on 7 070 kHz. All the young people are invited to join SARL Youth Coordinator, Koos Fick, ZR6KF, for the young people get-together on the air.

** Clubs and individuals are invited to submit news items of interest to radio amateurs and shortwave listeners, if possible, in both English and Afrikaans, by following the news inbox link on the South African Radio League web page. News items for inclusion in the bulletin should reach the news team no later than the Thursday preceding the bulletin date.

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 Dennis Green, ZS4BS, edited by Richard Stratford, ZS6RO, and read by ...................

73 and 88, thank you for listening

/EX