WIANEWS - AUG 24 - VK NATIONAL NEWS ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BEST NEWS YOU'LL GET ALL WEEK Oh... and to contact us with your news because If It Matters To You It Matters To Us! Email nationalnews@wia.org.au http://www.wia.org.au (click news in member area) Submit your audio news TWITTER http://twitter.com/VK1WIA Please... If you are only submitting text and not audio, write your story as you would expect to hear it being read back and NEVER send just links & url's. When you upload audio email us the txt version. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WIANEWS WEEK COMMENCING AUG 24 2014. WIA BOARD TALK President Phil Wait VK2ASD vk2asd@wia.org.au Vice President Chris Platt VK5CP vk5cp@wia.org.au Secretary David Williams VK3RU vk3ru@wia.org.au Treasurer John Longayroux VK3PZ vk3pz@wia.org.au ILLW & RD CONTEST WRAPUP ILLW sets many new records The International Lighthouse and Lighhtship Weekend (ILLW) had 541 regstrations from 56 countries this year making new records in the annual fun-event. Dubbed the 'Year of the virgin' some 20 per cent of all registrations were first-time activations. New countries for the event were from Barados and Kuwait. Outstanding this year has been the USA with 91, an all time high exceeding 80 it achieved in 2011, obviously bouyed by a large number of virgin activations. Similar first-time portable operations of former maritime navigation structures came from several countries and suprisingly numbered more than 100. Already 30 registrations are listed for the ILLW in 2015 that will be held on August 15 - 16. For reports from many who enjoyed participating last weekend can be read on the website illw.net (Jim Linton VK3PC) SILENT KEY - Ray VK4UG Hi, it’s Ray from the Redcliffe and Districts radio club incorporated. It is my sad duty to advise you that Ray VK4UG, passed away last Thursday and is now a silent key. Ray was a founding member of the club and graduated from the CB ranks in 1983 after the death of his father. Ray progressed from his novice licence in 1985 to full call in 1987. Ray’s teacher was Mick Bently, VK4AMB. Ray’s callsign was granted to him on the passing of David Richards, VK4UG and it was Ray’s wish that this callsign remain in the Redcliffe Club. Ray was awarded numerous radio awards from throughout south east Queensland including the 41 st Carnival of Flowers award, the La Balsa Award in 1986, the Rally Australia award in 1987, and Gold Coast award in 1988. He was a regular on many south-east Queensland nets over that last few years until his stroke and cancer slowed him down a little. Ray’s motto is one that maybe we all should adopt, “I might take a little longer to this, but it will be done right first time.” Ray is survived by xyl, Noelene and family. Club members will never forget the gentleman that was Ray, VK4UG. [AUDIO UPLOADED] CHOTA — Churches and Chapels on the Air There's still time to get involved with Churches and Chapels on the Air, which takes place on the 13th September between 10.00 and 16.00. Activity is mainly on 40 and 80m and over 20 stations in the UK are already planned. Contact John, G3XYF by email to g3xyf@btconnect.com if you are planning to take part. (via SouthgateARC) http://www.wacral.org/CHOTA.htm What use is an F-call? With the advance of the Internet into society in the past 20-odd years Amateur Radio has embraced the warm glow of electrons passing across copper, or light pulses across fibre, and radio waves across the ether that embodies our Internet today. One of the tools that a radio amateur might use is a thing called a DX Cluster. It's a place online where you'll find records of contacts that have been made between two stations. The time the contact took place, the date and of course the frequency. If we leave accuracy aside for a moment, since anyone and everyone can post a spot online without any form of serious authentication, we can never the less use this tool for some interesting purposes. The obvious one is to use a DX Cluster to see who's where on what band and see if you can hear them there too. You'll find that there is some limited success and some indications of where a station might be found. If you look regularly at a particular station, you may be able to figure out patterns of when they're likely to operate and on what band. I'm an unashamed computer geek. I've been playing with databases since the late 80's and so massaging some data is part of my DNA. I wondered if you extracted a bunch of DX Cluster records, if you could find out something interesting with the resulting data. So here's what I did. I queried the cluster for the past 10 thousand records containing vk6 anywhere in the record. This essentially resulted in a record of claimed amateur contacts going back one year. I stuck the data into a spreadsheet and spent some time massaging the data, that is, filtering out the day of the week, the hour, the month, the year, etc. I then created some pivot tables to see if I could see any patterns. Given that I'm on 40, 15 and 10m, I focussed only on those bands. Of the three, the most popular band is 10m, then 15m, followed by 40m - representing about one third of the number of contacts claimed on 10m. The most contacts are made on a Saturday, followed by Sunday, then Friday. On 40m, the most contacts are made between 5 and 7am local time. On 15m the most contacts were made between 8 and 10pm. On 10m between 3 and 8pm. On 10m the most contacts were made in October, on 15m in October and November and on 80m in July and August. Let me be the first to say that this is not a complete picture by any means. There is nothing in what I've told you that takes into account solar activity, contests or many other spurious influences, like a rare DX station changing the numbers. What other tools have you come across that might help another amateur? I'm Onno VK6FLAB INTERNATIONAL NEWS With thanks to IARU, RSGB, SARL, Southgate AR Club, ARRL, Amateur Radio Newsline, NZART and the WW sources of the WIA. GAREC-2014 A HUGE SUCCESS The Global Amateur Radio Emergency Communication (GAREC) conference held in Huntsville Alabama USA shared many informative presentations, videos and discussions on recent experiences plus some media interest. Organiser Greg Sarratt W4OZK said the local television station interviewed IARU Region 1 Coordinator Greg Mossop G0DUB, ARRL Regulatory Information Manager Dan Henderson N1ND, and himself, for the evening news program. GAREC-2014 was hosted by ARRL Alabama Section and the Huntsville Hamfest Association. It was attended by delegates from all three IARU regions. Greg W4OZK said that besides routine items such as IARU regional reports and a desktop exercise, presentations were received on many interesting topics. These included Emergency Communications as an element of promoting Amateur Radio, the Salvation Army's SATERN program digital modes and remote control operation, the US Defence Department use of the Military Affiliate Radio Service (MARS) for Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, and a combined Emergency Services Dispatch Centre providing interoperable communications. During the conference a number of themes emerged. These included the importance of meaningful conversations with served agencies to ensure that their communications needs are met, and to focus attention on Amateur Radio as a trusted partner in emergency response. There were reports on Brazilian floods, the Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the role of radio amateurs in the Thailand flooding and restoration of HS0AC. The role of Amateur Radio in emergency communications is constantly changing. It must continue to adapt to the needs of its partners including embracing emerging technologies and new challenges. Greg W4OZK said the delegates recorded their thanks and appreciation for the generous hospitality of ARRL Alabama Section and the Huntsville Hamfest Association, for a successful conference on August 14-15. The next and 10th GAREC will be in Tampere, Finland in June 2015. All groups and organisations involved in emergency communications are invited to attend to share their knowledge and learn from others. The final program is at http://www.w4ozk.com/GAREC14_Official%20Program.htm All presentations will soon appear on the website http://www.w4ozk.com/GAREC14.htm (Jim Linton VK3PC) MOLDOVA HAS JOINED CEPT LICENSES International Amateur Radio Union Region 1 reports that Moldova has signed the pan-European CEPT Novice and Class 1 amateur radio license agreement. The CEPT Radio Amateur License Class 1 corresponds to the United States Extra and United Kingdom's Advanced and Full licenses. The CEPT Novice License is closely compatible to the Unites States General and UK Intermediate license. There is also a CEPT entry class license which equate to the United States Technician and United Kingdom Foundation class, however Moldavia is not joining in that entry level system. At least not at this time. SW RADIO AFRICA IS CLOSED S W Radio Africa, known as the independent voice of Zimbabwe, has announced its last broadcast took place on August 10th. According to a management post at the stations website, there are a few key archive programs on the main page for the interest of their listeners until the site is taken down. They also add that their thirteen year sound archive will be hosted by archive.org and as soon as that becomes accessible they will get the word out to listeners. (Southgate) DRONE CRASHES AT YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK Yet another drone mishap in the news this week. When a photography-keen tourist headed out to America’s famous Yellowstone National Park, his equipment list included a camera-equipped aerial vehicle. Unfortunately for both the drone-pilot and the park’s largest hotspring, the wayward drone crashed and damaged the geological feature. This is not the first incident of its type at Yellowstone, with another such damaging event earlier this year at Yellowstone and others at the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. The increase in drone activity and un-friendly ‘fly-bys’ on native wildlife and other park users has caused the National Parks Department to call a ban on the use of such aircraft, which is seemingly being ignored by a growing number of park visitors. Park spokesman Al Nash said, "What we have to determine is whether the presence of this radio-controlled recreational aircraft poses a threat to that unique resource.” Nash is referring to the “Grand Prismatic” hot- spring which is the third-largest in the world and a top attraction for the roughly 3 million visitors who flock to Yellowstone each year. [Reuters.com] ************************************************************************ OPERATIONAL NEWS - DATELINE 2014 ALARA CONTEST NEXT WEEKEND GIRLS! Aug 30 - 31 Manly-Warringah Radio Society's Flagpole contest September 20. Amateur Radios International Air-ambulance Week, 9 days from Sep 28. DX Pacific tour currenly on-air: Four amateur radio operators, Stan AC8W, Brian KG8CO, Ted K8AQM and Lee N8LJ, will activate two DXCC entities in the Pacific starting late this month. Their tentative schedule is as follows: August 16-24th - From Tonga; callsigns announced are A35AC, A35CO, A35TR and A35LT, respectively, from the Island of Tongatapu (OC-049). August 26th-September 2nd - From Fiji; callsigns announced are 3D2AC, 3D2CO, 3D2TR and 3D2LJ, respectively, from the Island of Tavenuni (OC-016). Activity will be on 160-10 meters using CW, SSB and RTTY, using three K2s and one TS-590 along with two KPA-500s and one ALS-500 into verticals on the beach at both locations. QSL A35AC, A35CO, A35LT, 3D2AC, 3D2CO and 3D2LJ via K8ESQ. QSL A35TR and 3D2TR via K8AQM. [OPDX via SARC] China Special Event Look for special event station B4YOG to be active until August 28th. Activity is to celebrate the 2nd Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing (August 16-28th). Operations have been on 40/30/20/15/10 meters using CW, SSB and PSK. QSL via BD4WO, direct or by the Bureau. For more details, see: http://www.jsroa.org/index.php?app=b4yog More DX opportunities: P29NO Nao/JA2VQP East Sepic Province Papua New Guinea on air during February 2013 to January 2015 whilst volunteer teacher at Divine Word University Wewak.CW SSB and RTTY plus might try other modes. Ops pending getting materials together to make wire antennas RI59ANT Alexander/RX0QM - a member of the 59th Russion Antarctic Expedition. operating from Bellingshausen Station King George Island 10 Mar to 26 Nov webpage http://www.qrz.com/db/RI59ANT VK5CE/8 Craig/VK5CE activating Bathurst Island (OC-173) from 26 Aug to 29 Aug operating on 20 17 15 and 10metres between 2200 and 1700UTC daily Heard Island January 2015 by Cordell Expeditions http://vk0ek.org WW SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS - RESCUE RADIO When all fails, use ham radio The South Africa Radio League (SARL) reports amateur radio was used to send an important message when the satellite link to Gough Island failed. It has been said so many times "when all communication fails, you can depend on amateur radio. This was again proven on 9 August when an important message from Gough Island to the department of environmental affairs could not be sent as their links were down. The story started when Pierre Tromp, ZS1HF, volunteered to go to Gough Island in February 2014, after a member of the 2013/2014 Gough Team sadly passed away on the island. Pierre passed the necessary tests and was shipped to Gough Island, where he was allocated the call sign ZD9M. Pierre and Trevor, ZS1TR started the 7110 SARL Hamnet Emergency Net in January 2014, and established daily communication on 30 and 40m depending on propagation. "We tried to maintain daily calls, but obviously due to the distance to Gough, we had to adjust our frequencies." Trevor told SARL News. "In the summer months we could work all bands, but as the winter approached it was trickier, mainly favouring the lower frequencies." Communication later developed into a regular call-in at 10 minutes after the hour. As the winter approached the satellite signal from Gough to RSA became intermittent due to the cloud cover and other climatic conditions. Pierre's more reliable communication with home became HF Radio with Trevor relaying messages to the DEA's technician to try and get the satellite system reset and working again. During the weekend of 9 August, a serious incident occurred on Gough Island. As the Satellite connection to RSA had been bad since the first week of August Pierre decided to radiogram it to Trevor for relay via email to Cape Town. The message contained 836 words, excluding the many email recipients, and was sent a few words at a time and corrected and repeated back for confirmation. The entire process took about 1 hour 45 minutes to transfer via HF radio, which forced them to alternate between 20 and 30m as conditions were fading in and out on both frequencies. "Cramping hands and wrists with worsening handwriting was the result, as typing is much easier, believe it or not! Thereafter the message was retyped into email format for sending to the recipients." It again showed that when all fails, use amateur radio. Congratulations to Pierre and Trevor. Source South Africa Radio League (SARL) News via SARC http://www.sarl.org.za/news.asp SES Townsville/Thuringowa Division Joint Exercise. A golden opportunity to gain experience in operating with Counter-Disaster organisations in preparation for the support role that Radio Amateurs provide during times of disaster. The exercise will involve some operators on foot in forested, rocky, grassy, sandy areas, mobile in vehicles and operating out of at least two base stations that will be set up for the event. Possibility of an overnight camp-out. Sat 25 to Sun 26 Oct - SES Joint Exercise somewhere in the Townsville Region Please contact Gavin, on vk4zz@wia.org.au WW SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS - ATV WHERE EVERY PIXEL TELLS A STORY Despite software issues the World DATV Party will go ahead as scheduled. While most activity in this annual global event is based around Amateur Radio ATV frequencies, Skype is used for Interstate and International connections. However Skype is currently grandfathering out older versions and the new version does not support import video from USB Dongles such as EzCap. These are used to take the output video as received from the ATV Repeater and send it to the remote anchor station. Fortunately Peter VK3BFG has found a temporary work around, but it will be depend on the administrators of Skype and their timetable. Bottom line ... the event is on and will take place on Friday August 29 and Saturday August 30. Friday night will be locals and interstate and should start around 8pm. We will make contact with the Brisbane DATV Repeater VK4RMG and also the new DATV Repeater, VK5RDC in Port Pirie. Saturday will commence at 10am to pick up WR8ATV in Columbus Ohio. This repeater is located on the top of a tall building in downtown Columbus. All antennas are within 15 metres of their corresponding transmitters. WR8ATV has 5 outputs with one on 1268 Mhz DVB-S; it has 4 inputs. By contrast, VK3RTV has 3 inputs (one U/S at the moment) and two multiplexed outputs. The local anchor in Columbus will be Art WR8RMC. Some may recognise Art as one of the developers of the very innovative DATV Express. Around lunch time the event moves to the W6ATN network in southern California. There are nine linked repeaters based around a hub on Santiago Peak. Don, KE6BXT will be the local anchor. Later in the evening we expect to move to GB3HV and make some contacts into the UK. GB3HV has a Skype input and contacts can be made directly. There are a number of Melbourne based stations who are preparing for the event. Melbourne always puts on entertaining contacts with lots of show and tell. This year the new WIA supported ATV installation at the Eastern and Mountain Districts Radio Club will be active also. If you are unable to receive any of these repeaters direct, you can watch the activity on the BATC streaming site for all involved. Remember the dates, August 29 and 30. (Jim Linton VK3PC) HAM RADIO IN SPACE: HAM RADIO TO FLY AROUND THE MOON The Southgate News says that towards the end of the year, radio amateurs will have the opportunity to receive what might just be the ultimate DX. This, from a ham radio payload transmitting the data mode JT65B as it flies around the Moon. Amateur Radio Newsline’s Heather Embee, KB3TZD, reports: -- According to AMSAT-UK, China is planning to send a lunar orbiter around the Moon carrying a battery powered ham radio payload known as 4M-LXS. The amateur radio payload will transmit a JT65B signal on 145.990 MHz which can be decoded by radio amateurs using the free W-J-S-T software. The orbiter is one of the test models for pre-mission testing of Beijing's new lunar probe called Chang'e-5. When finally launched, Chang’e 5 will be tasked with landing on the moon, collecting samples and returning to Earth. For the initial test, the orbiter will be launched into Lunar Transfer Orbit then will perform a flyby around the Moon while sending data back home. After that it will make a return trip to our world and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere after 9 days. The launch of this ham radio orbiter is planned for 4th quarter 2014, and is aimed at testing the technologies that are vital for the success of the later Chang'e-5 round trip Lunar flight. For the Amateur Radio Newsline, I’m Heather Embee, KB3TZD, reporting. -- The orbiter has already arrived at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. As soon as an exact launch date is announced we will let you know. More on this story is posted at amsat-uk.org. (Southgate, AMSAT-UK, xinhaunet.com) [AUDIO UPLOADED] WW SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS - INTERNET THE HAMS DOMAIN 512k ROUTES OUGHT TO BE ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE! Last week someone announced some more IPv4 allocations on the Internet. There’s nothing particularly surprising or special about that, although the IPv4 space is pretty much exhausted at this point. The big news that came along with this recent update was that the global routing table has exceeded 500k entries. These routes explain how to get internet data to different places. With little chunks of internet addresses belonging to so many different companies, and those companies using different telecommunications companies’ infrastructure, and with different geographic layout, speed, cost, etc, it has become a very complex process to work out how to get the smallest amount of data from one side of the planet to the other! This has caused a lot of very popular Cisco router models located in key traffic points on the internet run out of space to hold all the entries. Typically set to their default of 512k-table size, and what gets kept in each router will be subtly different depending on where you are on the internet. Due this variability there thankfully wasn’t a magic number that caused them to ‘tip-over’ at the same moment, so the traffic flows were getting choked up and changing around for days and in many cases causing some parts of the internet to be un-contactable from some other points. This default value can be changed, but it requires a reboot of the routers, and while 99% (or more) of the internet traffic was still flowing correctly it becomes a difficult outage to approve and schedule. So, if you noticed some gurgling in the internet tubes last week, this is probably why. 640k OUGHT TO BE ENOUGH FOR ANYONE! There’s a ‘well known’ quote, “640K ought to be enough for anyone”, that some of you might have recognised referenced in the title of the previous news article. Most of you probably know that Bill Gates said it… Some of you might even know that Bill Gates NEVER said it! Yep! It’s a long time misattributed quote that Mr Gates himself has set the records straight on. We thought this would be a suitable time to let a few more of you know about it. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9101699/The_640K_quote_won_t_go_away_but_did_Gates_really_say_it_ http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484 SOCIAL SCENE 2014 Sep 13 VK4 Sunshine Coast AR Club's SUNFest, Woombye School of Arts Sep 14 VK3 Shepparton and District AR Club Hamfest kicks off at 10am. Sep 28 VK3 Melbourne Amateur Radio Technology Group Hamfest Keilor East. Oct 3 VK4 Townsville Amateur Radio Club's Cardwell Gathering 4 day event. Oct 25 VK4 HAMFEST on the Gold Coast. ( hamfest@gcars.com.au ) Nov 2 VK5 HamFest Adelaide Hills Amateur Radio Society Nov 9 VK3 Yarra Valley AR Group Hamfest 10am Gary Cooper Pavillion. Nov 15 VK7 Miena Hamfest (My-enah) Nov 30 VK3 SPARC HamFest at Rosebud ( howardjones155@gmail.com ) ============================== NEW WIA NEWS BROADCAST FEEDBACK =============================== Hi,a word of complaint first, why have you decided to triple space lines of most items, with huge spaces between. Makes the thing very difficult to read on a small netbook. Otherwise keep up the good work. A suggestion regarding the finances of the WIA. AR costs a lot to produce and distribute. WIA has just started to make it available on the Internet. I suggest that publication be put up for tender. Perhaps Jaycar would love to have anyone wishing to read AR would first have to log onto their website. They would even be encouraged to develop kits to sell. Rat Hinks VK4LU Memb 263214 I don’t think we need a paper copy anymore Along with the callbacks from VK4, Stuart VK4MSL made a true and accurate comment in response to something I said last week. Stuart says: “Your missus doesn't need a license to hear what you said, just a receiver tuned to the broadcast or a computer streaming it from the WIA.” Coincidentally, she asked me this week “How do I hear one of your recordings?” — Bryan VK3GR Submitting news items If you would like to submit news items for inclusion in the VK1WIA broadcasts, please email your item in text to nationalnews@wia.org.au to submit audio read "how to submit items" in the weekly news page on wia.org.au Remember the sooner you submit material the more the likelihood of it being broadcast in the very next edition of WIA National News. Each item will only be broadcast once, if you want a couple of mentions, please submit different slants to keep your event 'fresh ‘and always if the news room is to read your item write in the 3rd person. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ============================================================================= WIANews - we've reported...YOU decide. TWITTER http://twitter.com/VK1WIA Societies and Club News Letter Editors can EXCHANGE a feed prior to the actual broadcast date, e-mail nationalnews@wia.org.au Call-backs follow the RF editions, but also for text readers you may lodge a quick reply to let us know you read it, who knows, you might even get a "cheerio call". Thanks to our dedicated band of broadcast volunteers who utilize their time and equipment in bringing you this weekly broadcast. The purpose of "WIANews" is to rapidly provide news of interest to active amateurs residing in Australia and the globe. We strongly encourage membership in the Wireless Institute of Australia and participation in the activities of local clubs. Opinions expressed in "WIANews" are those of the writers who submit material and do not necessarily reflect those of the rebroadcasters, nor the National WIA, but are broadcast in the spirit in which they were submitted." Material may be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form, a credit to WIANews wouldn't go astray... Compiled by VK3GR on behalf of the National WIA.