UPDATE

Amateur Tube

The amateur radio site www.cqtube.com is back active
again after some technical problems, there are some
interesting audio and video files available.


DX News

Escape2Adventure 9-14 January 2009

The 14th Australian Venture, 'Escape', will take place
in January and Amateur Radio will be a part of it.

It is a major National youth event of the Venturer
section (14-18 years old) of Scouts Australia.
Venturers and Guides from all over Australia and around
the world will be taking part.

The Amateur Radio Shack will be on-air from Friday 9th
January until Wednesday 14th January 2009 using the
callsign VK6SAA

Operation will be on HF will be on or near the Scout
Calling Frequencies:

3.650 and 3.790 DX, 7.090, 14.190 or 14.290, 21.190,
28.590, 52.160

Sked can be arranged via email: vk6scouts@westnet.com.au

Radio Rallies

15th February 2009 Coolmine Radio Rally,

The Coolmine Radio Rally, run by the Phoenix Radio Club
will be held in the Coolmine Community School,
Clonsilla Dublin 15 on Sunday 15th February 2009. Doors
open 9.30 am for table bookings and information please
contact Tony 087-2439997 or Tom 01-8211043 See map on
www.coolminecs.ie/locationmap.php



This week in History

1900 Fessenden is claimed to be first to transmit sound
of the human voice without wires.

1906 Fessenden transmits voice and music on
Alexanderson alternator.

1947 Transistor invented at Bell Telephone Labs. USA

UPDATE

2009 International Space Station Calendar

As part of NASA's celebration of the 10th anniversary
of the International Space Station, the agency is
offering a special 2009 calendar. The calendar can be
downloaded from the link www.nasa.gov/station

L-BAND EXPERIMENT ON THE ISS

Another experiment using the ham station on board the
International Space Station. From December 28th through
January 3rd ARISS plans to reconfigure the on-orbit
crossband repeater for test of its L-Band uplink
capability, which, to date, has not been proven out.

Plans call for an uplink of 1269.65 MHz and downlink on
the standard frequency 145.80 MHz. The system will be
in low power transmit. Given the substantial cable
losses of the L-band system, ARISS hopes that some big
gun stations on the ground will be able to penetrate
through, keep up with Doppler, and make a contact.


DXCC End of year approaching

In order to appear in the printed 'Annual and Honour
Roll' listings your submission must be postmarked on or
by Wednesday, December 31, 2008.

For the 2008 calendar year the minimum requirement to
appear in the Honour Roll list is 329 current entities.
Direct comments or questions to http://www.arrl.org/awards/dxcc/faq/

Radio Rallies

15th Feburary 2009 Coolmine Radio Rally, The Coolmine
Radio Rally, run by the Phoenix Radio Club will be held
in the Coolmine Community School, Clonsilla Dublin 15
on Sunday 15th February 2009. Doors open 9.30 am for
table bookings and information please contact Tony
087-2439997 or Tom 01-8211043 See map on
www.coolminecs.ie/locationmap.php


This week in History

1879 Edison demos his incandescant light at Menlo
Park, NJ. USA.

Switzerland to allocate 6m

Swiss telecommunications authorities will allocate the
50 MHz band to amateur radio on a secondary basis
beginning January 1, 2009.

Swiss and foreign CEPT class licensees will be
permitted to transmit with up to 100 watts PEP on 50 to
52 MHz without any antenna restrictions. The one caveat
is that primary users may not be disturbed. This
includes some TV stations active on the VHF band I in
Northern Italy.

Canada’s official time broadcast, frequency change

After seventy years of broadcasting Canada's official
time, shortwave station CHU will move the
transmission frequency for the 7335 kHz transmitter
to 7850 kHz. This, to avoid interference to its
operations as the result of band allocation changes
approved by the International Telecommunications
Union back in April 2007.

CHU is a part of Canada's National Research Council's
system for disseminating official time throughout that
nation. It broadcasts 24 hours a day from a location
approximately 20 kilometres south-west of Ottawa.
Transmissions include tones to mark the seconds, voice
to announce the time in French and English, and digital
data to interface with computers.

The frequency change to CHU change will occur on
January 1st, 2009 at 0000 UTC. More is on-line at
www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A PROSPERSOUS NEW YEAR
TO ALL WHO READ MY BLOG.

BEST 73's & 88's TO ALL

DE - EI5IX

UPDATE

Santa DX

Santa Claus Land active (Special Event - this one for
the kids!)

Once again OH9SCL will be active from Santa Claus
Land (SCL) in the Arctic Circle, during the month
of December.

Activity will be on 160-10 meters using CW, SSB and
the Digital modes. There has been plenty of activity
over the past week on 40/20/30 meters, some SSB, RTTY
and PSK31.

QSL via OH9UV

This week in History

1901 Marconi received the first transatlantic
communication, letter 'S'.

1961 The first amateur satellite, OSCAR I was launched.


New Worked All States Award

The ARRL has introduced a new award called the "Triple
Play Worked All States Award". This award is unusual in
that it requires confirmed contacts with each of the 50
states in the USA using three modes for each state -
CW, phone and digital. All 150 contacts must be made on
or after 1st January 2009 and must be confirmed via
Logbook of the World. All bands - with the exception of
60 meters - may be used. Further details of this and
other ARRL awards are available on www.arrl.org/awards


DXCC End of year approaching

In order to appear in the printed 'Annual and Honour
Roll' listings your submission must be postmarked on or
by Wednesday, December 31, 2008.

The DXCC Honour Roll list is scheduled for publication
in August 2009 QST. For the 2008 calendar year the
minimum requirement to appear in the Honour Roll list
is 329 current entities. The Top of the Honour Roll
total is 338 for this period. Remember, deleted
entities do not count towards the Honour Roll.

Direct comments or questions to dxcc /@/ arrl.org ....

80 metres Counties Contest

The IRTS 80 metres Counties Contest takes place on
Thursday 1st January 2009. Rules for this contest were
published in the October-November 2008 issue of Echo
Ireland - they are also available for download at
www.irts.ie/rules

In previous years, during this contest there has been a
lot of contest activity around 3.680 MHz, a popular
frequency for those chasing Worked All Ireland squares.
This frequency is however outside the contest-preferred
parts of the 80 metres band. To encourage all
participants in the Counties Contest to adhere to the
Band Plan, we have amended the contest rules to make it
a requirement that the IARU Region 1 Band Plan should
be observed. We have also provided that CW contacts in
this contest should only be made in the recognised CW
end of the band.

While 3.775 MHz to 3.800 MHz is within the SSB
contest-preferred segment of the band, the Band Plan
also indicates that priority should be given to
intercontinental operation in this segment. Given that
the Counties Contest is largely a local contest, we
have indicated therefore that no operation should take
place above 3.775 MHz.

In summary, the frequencies available to contesters in
the 80 metres Counties Contest are: CW 3.510-3.560 MHz;
SSB 3.600-3.650 and 3.700-3.775 MHz