This week in History1904 The first military experiments with radio at the
Eiffel Tower took place by French Army.
1912 First Act to Regulate Radio Communication in the
USA.
1915 Bell opens the first US transcontinental
telephone service.
Radio RalliesThe Spring Radio Rally season gets under way shortly,
starting with the Coolmine Rally on Sunday 15th
February. The venue is the Coolmine Community School,
Clonsilla, Dublin 15, and doors open at 9.30 a.m.
Rallies during March include the Radio Hobbies and
Electronics Fair in the Limerick Radisson SAS Hotel on
Sunday 8th March, The Lagan Valley Amateur Radio
Society Rally in Hillsborough, Co. Down on Saturday
14th March and the Lough Erne Amateur Radio Club Rally
in Lisnaskea, Co. Fermanagh on Sunday 29th March.
The big event in April is the IRTS AGM Weekend, on
Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th April. This takes place
in the Shamrock Lodge Hotel, Athlone. Weekend events
include the IRTS Annual Dinner, a Radio Rally and the
IRTS Annual General Meeting.
More details of these events are also available on the IRTS web site
at
www.irts.ie/rallies
DXFC EI/GI ActivationThe DXFC award differs from the DXCC award in that the
letter F in means that scoring is made by setting FOOT
in the DXCC entity and not by having a QSO with it.
Extra points are scored by being active and completing
at least one QSO from the DXCC listed entity. It is an
informal friendly competition and scoring is based on
trust and honesty
On Saturday 17th January, Roger (G3SXW) and John
(G4IRN) activated EI and GI in the same day. They both
arrived from the UK by Ryanair and were met by Declan
(EI6FR) at Dublin airport and driven to Jonesboro where
they operated /M from GI on HF.
Having completed a few CW contacts, Declan chauffeured
the two operators to Howth where they both operated
with an EI prefix using the radio equipment at EI0MAR
in the Vintage Radio Museum. Pat Herbert, the museum
curator, Tony (EI5EM) and Paul (EI5DI) were waiting to
greet the two DXFC operators and assisted them in their
operation. Having completed their QSOs, John and Roger
were driven by Declan back to the airport for their
return trip to the UK having successfully notched up a
further two DXFC entities on their score sheet.
DXFC website :
www.dxfc.org Vintage Radio Museum’s
website :
www.ei0mar.orgOn January 16, Vic Kean Jr, K1LT, of Carroll, Ohio, uploaded four years' worth of logs -- about 25,000 QSOs -- to ARRL's Logbook of The World (
LoTW). Somewhere in that batch, the LoTW counter crossed the 2 million mark. To celebrate Kean's submission of the 200 millionth QSO, the ARRL has awarded him lifetime free LoTW credits and free ARRL Awards as he qualifies for them.
"When I uploaded all of my contest logs since moving to my current location," Kean said, "I was really surprised at the number of the contacts that were immediately confirmed -- about 30 percent -- especially DXpeditions. I've been very laggard about responding to QSLs that I get. The last batch I did was by printing some card stock on a laser printer."
Kean, who mainly enjoys operating CW on 160 meters, said that he enjoys what he calls "success at contesting through technological superiority," as opposed to superior operating ability. "In other words," he said, "I work at improving my station with technology, and then test those improvements in a contest. I attempt to achieve awards by trying to get into one of the 'Top 10 boxes' in the contest results. Somewhere I have a Worked All States certificate from my youthful days. I worked about 160 countries but never got around to submitting any cards for DXCC." Kean said that he still intends to try and get at least one QSL card from every country.
"Even though we knew that Logbook of The World would explode in its popularity, 201 million QSOs in roughly the first five years of its existence show that LoTW's concept and ideas have worked beyond our expectations," said ARRL Membership and Volunteer Programs Department Manager Dave Patton, NN1N. "Vic's log contributes not only to the bottom line, but to the overall embrace of the technology and further bolsters our commitment to continue to improve and expand the system."
Kean said that he believes Amateur Radio will certainly continue to change as time goes on, "but I don't expect the hobby to ever completely go away. With cognitive radio coming, there is plenty of opportunity to experiment, even by just writing software. In the long run, I think the rules of spectrum allocation will change, but hopefully the change will benefit people in general, rather than corporations. If so, there will still be a role for communications experimenters. Man versus the ionosphere will still be interesting, no matter what the spectrum rules are."
When asked if he would encourage other hams to try Logbook of The World, Kean was enthusiastic: "If someone asked me about Logbook, I would tell them, 'Don't worry about it. Logbook of The World works, and it seems to be enjoying much greater popularity than you know.' At least, that's what I just found out!"
