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EI2GYB > NEWS 19.08.21 20:45l 194 Lines 10832 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday August 15th 2021
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Sent: 210819/1830Z 13446@EI2GYB.DGL.IRL.EURO BPQK6.0.16
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IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday August 15th 2021
International Lighthouse Weekend
The third full weekend of August has become the regular date for the
International Weekend for Lighthouses. Countries all over the world have
become involved in lighthouse activations on HF.
A few years ago the United States Congress declared the 7th of August as
their National Lighthouse Day and during the event amateur radio operators in
America set up portable stations at lighthouses and contact each other.
Their objective is to encourage Lighthouse managers, the keepers and owners
to open their lighthouse or lightstation and associated visitors centres to
the public, thus raising the profile of lighthouses, lightvessels and other
navigational aids, and preserving their maritime heritage.
This event is known as the US National Lighthouse Week.
In Britain the Association of Lighthouse Keepers, ALK, conducts their
International Lighthouse Heritage Weekend on the same August weekend as
the ILLW.
It came into being in 1998 as the Scottish Northern Lights Award run by
the Ayr Amateur Radio Group.
The ILLW usually takes place on the 3rd weekend in August each year and
attracts over 500 lighthouse entries located in over 40 countries.
It is one of the most popular international amateur radio events in
existence, probably because there are very few rules and it is not the
usual contest type event.
It is also free and there are no prizes for contacting large numbers of
other stations. There is little doubt that the month of August has become
"Lighthouse Month" due largely to the popularity and growth of the ILLW.
Here in Ireland, the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group (Ei2WRC) will activate
Hook Lighthouse ILLW Reference Number IE0003 on Saturday and Sunday the
21st and 22nd of August. Hook Lighthouse is located on the South East coast
of Ireland in Co. Wexford. The present structure is about 800 years old and
isthe oldest intact operational Lighthouse in the world. Hook Lighthouse offers
guided tours of the lighthouse tower all year round and is one of the top things
to do in Wexford and Waterford. For more information, please see
www.hookheritage.ie
The Hook Lighthouse will go on air provided that Government guidelines and
restrictions at that time allow us to run the activation. Full social distancing
and all other recommended procedures will be in place for the event. We look
forward to speaking with you all on the 21st & 22nd of August 2021 from Hook
Lighthouse, the oldest intact operational Lighthouse in the world for the 24th
International Lighthouse & Lightship Weekend. More information at
www.lighthouse-weekend.international and www.illw.net
And for anyone wishing to find out more about the South Eastern Amateur Radio
Group and their activities you can drop them an email to
southeasternarg /at/ gmail.com or please feel free to go along to any of
their meetings. You can check their website www.searg.ie and you can also
join them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.
-+ Icelandic WEB-SDR +-
The Icelandic Radio Club reports that Ari (TF1A) installed a new web-based
Kiwi-SDR receiver, owned and operated by (TF3GZ), and that it has gone online
in Iceland, at Bláfjöll Mountain, at an elevation of 690 meters. It can handle
eight users at a time. A 70m endfed longwire covers all bands from VLF to 10m.
Two further icelandic KiwiSDR receivers are already active on the internet,
one is located at the west coast at Bjargtangar, and the other is on Raufarhöfn.
For EI experimenters, these SDR receivers form a valuable resource when
checking propagation across the big pond. The addresses for those receivers,
amongst others, can be found on www.kiwisdr.com/public
-+ The search for Flight MH370 +-
John Willliam (VK4JJW) has an update on how WSPR, the Weak Signal Propagation
Reporting remains a key source of hope in the search for the wreckage of the
missing airliner.
WSPR is undergoing some refinements to help in the search for Malaysia Airlines
Flight 370, which crashed more than seven years ago in the Indian Ocean while
enroute to Beijing. The low-power digital communication protocol, used by radio
amateurs to test propagation, is now being employed by aerospace engineer
Richard Godfrey in conjunction with a system he developed known as Global
Detection and Tracking of Aircraft Anywhere Anytime, or GDTAAA. There will be
some preliminary tests in conjunction with Qantas airliner data before a
different blind test is conducted later this year using the Malaysia
Airlines data.
The goal is to see whether tracking with help from the GDTAAA system can be more
successful this time around.
According to an article in AirlineRatings.com, the tests will take place in
October and November with an eye toward ultimately finding the exact crash
location.
Two separate searches for wreckage after the 2014 crash came up empty, although
more than 30 pieces of debris washed up in various places.
-+ No more VP8 licences +-
The government of the Falklands Islands no longer issues VP8 licences for
amateurs operating on the former Falkland Islands Dependencies. According to a
decision made by Britain's OfCom, it looks like the islands of South Sandwich
and South Georgia will be using part of the old VP4 prefix previously used for
Trinidad and Tobago. It would mean VP4 and a three letter suffix begining with
A to be used for South Georgia and South Sandwich, and a three letter suffix
beginning with B for the UK Antarctic Territories including the South Orkneys and
South Shetlands.
The VP8 prefix ceased to be used in those regions recently as a result of new
communications legislation in the Falklands.
-+ Scavenging electricity from waste heat +-
Thermoelectric generators turn waste heat into electricity, for example powering
the voyager space probes, navigational bouyes in arctic waters, and the Mars rovers.
They all make use of waste heat from radioactive decay, carrying a small amount
of fission material with them. The generators are made from semiconductor metal
wafers placed on a hot surface, and cooled on the other side. The heat pushes
electrons from one side to the other, and suitably placed electrodes form the
electrical poles. The tricky bit is to prevent the hot side from heating up the cold
surface, or current stops flowing. So far, this complication and the high cost of
these devices has prevented their widespread use. Turns out that the materials used
for the first type of semiconductor rectifiers, known to older hams as selenium stacks,
are making a comeback. The alloy of tin-selenide, first used nearly a hundred years ago,
can be used to build a much improved thermoelectric generator. Over the past twenty years
thermoelectric materials with increasing ability to isolate the heatflow from the hot
to cold side have steadily improved, with the first breakthrough around 2014 using
crystaline tin-selenide. But it turned out too be too brittle for practical applications.
However, making grains of polycrystalline tin selenide is cheap, and those grains
can be compressed into ingots that are 3 to 5 centimeters long, a useful size for direct
use as a generator. Baking off the heat-bridging oxides that are coating each grain
also improves the thermal properties. When polycrystalline tin selenide is spiked
with sodium atoms, it forms a p-type semiconductor, and spiking it with bromium
results in an n-layer. Once paired like to a semiconductor diode they form
efficient generators.
Initial use will be the scavanging of electricity from waste heat, like furnaces,
boilers, combustion engines and heatpumps. But one can expect to soon find this
new technology from old materials in low power radio devices, medical applications
and wearables.
On the HF Bands
Jean Louis (F4FSY) is active with the callsign F4FSY/p from Ile de Oleron, sout
of La Rochelle, until the 20th of August 20th. He is on the HF bands using SSB
and FT8. QSL via LoTW, eQSL, by the bureau of the french radio club REF, or direct.
Members of the Union of Swiss Radio Amateurs USKA, supported by the Radio
Amateur Club Swissair (HB9VC), join the celebrations around the Antarctic Treaty
with the callsign HB60ANT from Zurich. They will be on air until the end of
this year, drawing attention to the interesting website about the Antarctic
Treaty at www.waponline.it
Pasi (OH3WS) will be active as OJ0WS from Market Reef, IOTA EU053 from Monday
until the end of August. He will operate on HF Bands, CW. Recent DX Spots OJ0WS
and QSL via his home call OH3WS
Also until the end of the month, Giovanni (IZ2DPX) will be active as CT8/IZ2DPX
from three locations in the Azores using SSB and digi modes. His QSLs go to IK2DUW
via ClubLog.
-+ The Propagation Horoscope +-
The sun is not showing much turbulence, so for the next few days expect good
night time DX on the lower HF bands, and good and stable conditions on the higher
bands in the mornings and evenings with occasional sporadic E surprises. No sunspots
are expected to come into view, the solarwind is on the lower end at 420 km per
second with a low density of under two parts per cubic centimeter. The x-ray
flux is a flat line without notable flares.
Although the Perseids already peaked on Thursday and Friday, it should be
worthwhile to point the six or two metre band antenna towards the magnitude 2 star
Mirfak and try to catch a few pings. See www.pingjockey.net for current conditions
at the end of this year's perseids.
That is the news for this week. Items for inclusion in next weekâ€Ös radio news can
be submitted by email to newsteam /at/ irts.ie for automatic forwarding to both
the radio and printed news services. The deadline is midnight on Friday.
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