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KARS News - 6th March
ARRL
DX SSB – The ARRL DX Phone contest is on all this
weekend, a chance to increase your US states score. Some
amazingly strong US stations on 40M in broad daylight!
Deliberate
QRM – Its interesting to note that some action is
in the offing about the growing problem of Deliberate QRM and
Jamming which seems to be getting to epidemic proportions on Dx
expeditions for instance. The following quote is from Richard,
G3WKL who seems to be tasked with looking for a solution to the
problem. Many believe that misuse of the DX cluster is a big
contributor to the present situation. Sadly, much of the very
worst behaviour seems to originate from Europe!
QUOTE
“I am pleased to be able to report that at the recent IARU
Region 1 Interim Meeting we had a measure of success in this
difficult issue of deliberate QRM (DQRM). You may recall my
posting a couple of weeks ago saying that my approach, following
the failure of a more direct approach in 2007 and 2008, was to
invite the meeting to explore the issues through a workshop. As I
had hoped, this helped to open minds to the extent that we could
agree a programme of activity over the rest of this year. This is
that several national societies will undertake an analysis and
identify options for combating the part of the problem that has
come to be known as the "me – me / intentional"
type of interference. “ UNQUOTE
Amateur Radio item in the
Dunfermline press – Ian,
GM0URD was interviewed in the local press; you can view Ian's
piece here: gm0urd_interview.pdf
Radiobanter – an
interesting site
– Here
is a useful site which I came across recently. It covers a wide
range of topics such as Homebrew (radio not beer!), Antennas, Boat
Anchors ( that's old radio gear and its restoration). Find it
here: http://www.radiobanter.com/index.php
US Frequency allocations
– If
you are working the USA it is worth knowing their band plans, just
tx'ing anywhere on 20M for example, will exclude many of the USA
licencees who don't have Advanced or Extra class. You can download
and print a nice colour chart from here:
http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/regulations/bands.html
The ARRL Technical
Information service - Lot's
of useful information, you can find it here at:
www.arrl.org/tis/tismenu.html
80M Clubs Contest CW leg
– The next
session of this popular multi mode contest is a CW one and takes
place on Wednesday evening, 10th
March from 20:00z to 21:30z.
There seems to be some interest
in
having a go at the CQWPX contest, we have four or five potential
operators for this SSB event. Contest virgins are entirely
welcome, if you fancy having a go don't hesitate to let me (ZBE)
know. We are entirely happy to train operators from scratch, rest
assured you WILL be very welcome! This
contest is on the 27th
and
28th
March,
we will need to check out the station in advance for this, e.g.
logging, CAT - rig control, antenna matcher, amp etc? Anything I
can help with? (gm3zbe).
BERU information and some analysis –
Or
as the politically correct among us would have it the
“Commonwealth Contest”. BERU stood for the “British
Empire Radio Union” but it was changed to avoid causing
offence. There is an informative website here www.beru.org.uk
There is a lot of interesting data on this contest, for instance
this activity analysis:
http://www.beru.org.uk/2009Activity/Activityanalysis.htm
BERU is a different style of contest which requires SWL skills and
propagation knowledge, its not a “WHAM - BAM UR 599”
type contest. It requires real old fashioned DX hunting radio
skill, This makes it an attractive CW contest to many operators;
the dates to note are 13/14th
March.
That's
next weekend!
An antenna project? -
Some
club members have kindly volunteered to help me with an antenna
project at the ZBE antenna farm. In discussing this I said I
needed to build some remote antenna switch boxes. There was a
surprising number of people expressing an interest in building one
too. Maybe there is a club project there? If you are interested,
let me (ZBE) know.
I've
done some further research on this. I have identified a useful kit
which has the pcb and main components, it seems capable of
handling up to 1.3KW. I have also identified some suitable modern
relays for a potential homebrew unit.
I've
only heard from one person on this, I guess there is not that much
interest?
80Metre AFS SSB results now out –
We
did even better on this one, 21st
out
of 97 and second place in Scotland. Despite the fact that I took
an hour off during the contest. If I had stayed on we would have
made it into the top 20. Well done to all the ops – top 15
next year?
Reverse beacons
– Here
is a neat idea, you can use this site to check your signal
strength at various locations. A quick CQ and you can check your
signal strength, useful for comparing antennas for example. You
can also accurately compare your signal with someone else in a
contest for instance. Its here: www.reversebeacon.net
CW Practice net. There is a
KARS CW practice net at 19:45 on 1.837
MHz +/- QRM each weekday evening – we have a break at
the weekends! GM4WLN, GM3TAL and GM3ZBE all take part. Learning
contest type CW operating with training programs such as Morse
Runner greatly improves you ability to copy calls and serial
numbers quickly. However it is not as effective at improving your
ragchewing ability. Hence the object of the net is to improve our
conversational CW ability. We normally operate at about 18 to 22
wpm but if anyone wants slower practice then we would be pleased
to slow down to your speed. If necessary sessions could be split
in two, say 10 minutes slow followed by 15 Mins faster. Note
the nominal frequency has changed to 1.837MHz.
73Alex GM3ZBE
Propagation News and Tip of the Day
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