SOUTH AFRICAN RADIO LEAGUE NEWS FOR SUNDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2017
Good morning and welcome to the weekly news bulletin of the South African Radio League read by ................ [your name, call sign and QTH]
You may tune in to the South African Radio League news bulletin on Sunday mornings, at 08:15 Local Time in Afrikaans and at 08:30 Local Time in English, on HF as well as on many VHF and UHF repeaters around the country. Echolink listeners may connect to ZS0JPL for a relay. A podcast is available from the League’s web site.
This audio bulletin may be downloaded from the League's website at www.sarl.org.za where you will find this as well as previous bulletins in text format under the news link on the left-hand side of the web page. While you are there, you may sign up to receive future bulletins by e-mail.
In the news, today:
RESULTS OF THE SARL HF CONTESTS
SARL SUBMITS INFORMATION PAPER TO IARU CONFERENCE
and
AMSATSA TRANSPONDER TO FLY ON BACAR
Stay tuned for more information on these and other interesting news items.
RESULTS OF THE SARL HF CW CONTEST
The Contest Committee received 14 logs for the SARL HF CW Contest held on Sunday 27 August 2017.
1st Hans Kappetijn ZS6KR - 120 points
2nd Raoul Coetzee, ZS1C - 114 points
3rd Jan Botha, ZS4JAN - 112 points
4th Barry Nugent, ZS2NF, and Ed Willers, ZS6UT - 102 points each
Highest score on a single band
Barry Nugent, ZS2NF, and Georges Schleger, ZS1II - 60 points each on 40 metres
Club Competition
1st Pretoria ARC - 222 points
2nd Bloemfontein ARC - 112 points
3rd Port Elizabeth ARS - 102 points
OVERALL RESULTS OF THE SARL HF PHONE, DIGITAL AND CW CONTESTS
The combined results from the three SARL HF Contests can be found in HF Happenings 766. Here are the top places in the individuals and Club competitions
1st Jan Botha, ZS4JAN - 445 points
2nd Hans Kappetijn, ZS6KR - 234 points
3rd Barry Nugent, ZS2NF - 207 points
4th Bruce Dunn, ZS5XT - 149 points
5th Woody Collet, ZS3WL - 139 points
Club Competition
1st Bloemfontein ARC - 546 points
2nd Pretoria ARC - 427 points
3rd Highway ARC - 386 points
4th Port Elizabeth ARS - 336 points
SARL SUBMITS AN INFORMATION PAPER TO IARU REGION 1 CONFERENCE
The SARL has submitted an information paper about the HF RF Noise Floor Monitoring project to the IARU EMC Committee for discussion at the Region 1 Conference starting in Germany next weekend. The SARL will be represented by Nico van Rensburg, ZS6QL, and Rassie Erasmus, ZS1YT. The document is available from the SARL home page. The meeting agenda covers many important topics. For more information, papers and the agenda visit www.iaru-r1.org.
BLOEMFONTEIN AMATEUR RADIO CLUB ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
The AGM of the Bloemfontein ARC was held on Saturday 2 September. The following members were elected to serve on the committee for 2017/2018.
Chairman: Michael Roodt, ZS4BFN
Vice-chairman: Andre van Rensburg, ZS4APA
Treasurer: Neil Nathan, ZS4NN
Secretary, web site and QUA: Dennis Green, ZS4BS
Technical: Hennie Greyling, ZS4HG
AMSATSA TRANSPONDER TO FLY ON BACAR
The AMSATSA Kletskous transponder will be flown on the next BACAR flight, which is now scheduled for 21 October 2017 to coincide with the JOTA and CQ Hou Koers weekend. The transponder was recently successfully demonstrated at the AMSAT SA and SARL SDR workshop. The transponder is linear with an uplink on 70 cm and a downlink on 2 metres. More details, frequencies and other payloads on BACAR 2017 will be announced soon. To view a demonstration of the Kletskous transponder point your browser to www.amsatsa.org.za
You are listening to a news bulletin of the South African Amateur Radio League.
ELECTRIC CARS ARE GREATER THREAT TO AMATEUR RADIO THAN PLT
Electric cars, or at least the charging stations pose a greater threat to amateur radio than Power Line Telecommunication (PLT) also known as Broadband Powerline (BPL). The looming problem was extensively discussed at the IARU EMC committee meeting on Monday last week. There is currently no consensus amongst various technical bodies such as ETSI, CEPT, CIPR and ITU about the inference limits. One of the problems the committee identified is that the delegations who attend these meetings are not necessarily people experienced in radio and telecommunications and are more concerned about how fast these electric car batteries can be charged. This is one of the aspects that will be discussed at the IARU Region 1 meeting with a call to mobilise national societies to start talking with their standard bodies. The SARL is represented on the TC73 committee of the SABS where EMC and EMI matters are dealt with. The SARL representative, Hans van de Groenendaal, will also raise the issue at Working Group 5 of TC73 due to meet in the next two months.
Currently there are not many electric vehicles operating in South Africa, but this is likely to change over the next 5 years. The SARL believes that action now may save many headaches in the future. "We need to ensure that South African delegations to the internal bodies are full briefed on the situation." ZS6AKV said
PROPAGATION REPORT
Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP, reports that the solar activity is expected to be at moderate levels. Sunspot AR 2673 still has a complex magnetic configuration and may continue to produce M- or X-class solar flares. If you want to do your own frequency predictions, the expected effective sunspot number for the week will be around sixty. The 10 to 30 m bands will provide lots of DX fun. Please visit the website spaceweather.sansa.org.za for further information.
Finally, a Diary of some upcoming events:
10 September – the SARL National Field Day
16 and 17 September – SARL VHF/UHF Analogue/Digital Contest
16 and 17 September – Africa All Mode International DX Contest
30 September – East Rand Club AGM
05 October – SARL 80 m QSO Party
To conclude our bulletin a quick overview of our main news item
The combined results from the three SARL HF Contests have been released and can be found in HF Happenings 766.
This concludes our bulletin for this morning.
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 program, 'Amateur Radio Today' at 10:00 Central African Time. The program 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; please 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 Andy Cairns, ZS6ADY, edited by Dick Stratford, ZS6RO, and read by ..............
From the news team, best wishes for the week ahead.
/EX
