TWIAR News Feed

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Ofcom ending ham radio monthly statistics?

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 10:12 AM PST
http://bit.ly/2lbbsr0

Ofcom has not provided any monthly amateur licence statistics since the
first week in November

While no formal announcement has been made, this appears to be another
instance of Ofcom cutting back on the services they provide to radio
amateurs.

Ofcom used to provide historic amateur licence information but deleted it
all from their website in May 2016. For a short while they continued to
provide monthly figures on the Amateur Radio Information Page but these
have now stopped.

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Disaster preparedness: APRO to use amateur radio (India)

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 10:08 AM PST
http://bit.ly/2lH2Ko0

To add teeth to the disaster preparedness, Assam Police Radio Organisation
(APRO) has decided to fall back on the use of amateur radio, also known as
HAM radio.

The APRO is already working on a plan to regroup trained HAM radio
operators once again after the Government of India lifted the ban on its
use recently.

At a seminar organised by APRO on ‘Restoration of Communication in a
Disaster Scenario - Role of First Responder’ here today, Director General
of Assam Police Mukesh Sahay opined that the use of conventional and simple
gadgets should never be done away with completely as they are easy to
handle in times of crisis.

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Vice Presidents message comes through as UAE satellite begins operations

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 09:57 AM PST
http://bit.ly/2mwxHZV

A message by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai,
is being beamed across the world from space as the first to be transmitted
by the UAE’s Nayif-1 satellite.

Nayif-1 was launched last week from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India and
is being tracked by a team of scientists at a control centre at American
University of Sharjah.

The country’s first nanosatellite is transmitting the message in Arabic
which reads: ‘The renaissance of peoples, nations and civilizations starts
with education; and the future of nations starts at their schools.’

Nayif-1’s main mission objective is to send and receive messages on amateur
radio frequencies.

The nanosatellite boasts a number of advanced features, most notably it is
programmed to transfer messages in Arabic.

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Putnam CERT unveils new emergency response trailer (Indiana)

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 09:55 AM PST
http://bit.ly/2kWZeHx

The culmination of some serious fundraising throughout 2016, the Putnam
County Citizens Emergency Response Team (CERT) recently unveiled an
emergency response trailer that will serve not only CERT, but the other
local agencies the team is called to assist.

CERT member Jim Spore spearheaded the effort to outfit the unit from a
plain box trailer to a functioning response unit for the county.

The $3,000 trailer was opbtained through a grant from Indiana Department of
Homeland Security District 7.

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Storm spotters, not storm chasers (Alabama)

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 09:52 AM PST
http://bit.ly/2lbbmjc

When Lauderdale County went under a tornado warning, Rogersville Police
Chief Terry Holden got in his patrol car to find a vantage point to watch
for what could be an upcoming twister.

“I had my laptop, my ham radio, I had so much stuff in the patrol car it
was like a circus in here,� Holden said.

He drove east on U.S. 72, watching the wall cloud that appeared to be
coming up Elk River.

“I pulled into a location there at the (Elk River) bridge, and there it
was,� Holden said. “It was coming up the river. The tail had dropped down
and the cloud was swirling. It was picking up debris off the water and
picking up so much water that it looked like a water spout.

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Xenia Community Schools to close for Hamvention

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:38 AM PST
http://bit.ly/2ll4XD8

Citing an educational opportunity to its students, the Board of Education
for Xenia Community Schools in Ohio is welcoming the opportunity to host
Hamvention by cancelling classes on Friday May 19th.

In a post on their web site, they are encouraging students and teachers
to "take advantage of all the sessions associated with this program".

The transcript of the announcement is as follows:

Xenia will welcome Hamvention to our community for the first time ever this
year. Hamvention will be taking place May 19-21. Since this is the first
year of Xenia hosting it, we want our students to have the opportunity to
take advantage of all of the sessions associated with this program. We also
anticipate a large number of people from outside the city coming to Xenia
for the convention. Thus, the Board of Education has decided to cancel
school on Friday, May 19th. Teachers will be involved in professional
development programs on this day. We are excited about what Hamvention can
mean to our city. Additional information will come regarding student
tickets to the convention and any other opportunities that may be available.

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MARS Refocuses Its Mission, Encrypts Data Nets

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:52 AM PST
http://ift.tt/2mcH41g

Today’s Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS) program has changed markedly
from what it was just a few years ago. So says US Army MARS Program Manager
Paul English, WD8DBY, who contends that MARS must adapt in order to remain
relevant and useful to its sponsor, the US Department of Defense (DOD).

“Probably the most significant changes were the Navy’s decision to ‘sunset’
the Navy Marine Corps MARS program and our move to refocus Army and Air
Force MARS on providing contingency HF Radio communications support to the
DOD and the services,� English said. “In order to focus our support on the
Department of Defense, MARS leadership had to rethink, essentially from the
ground up, what it means to be a MARS member.� MARS relies on volunteers
from within the Amateur Radio ranks. Among other things, recruits receive
specialized training in military messaging formats and digital messaging
protocols.

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Texas Club Distributes Copies of Ham Radio for Dummies to Schools, Libraries

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:52 AM PST
http://bit.ly/2lGWzjH

With the explosive growth in amateur or ham radio, the Cedar Creek Amateur
Radio Club decided to spread the word about the over 100-year-old hobby.

There are now more licensed hams than at any time in history.

And no wonder. You don’t need the Internet or Wifi or cell plans. Just a
simple walkie talkie that now costs as low as $30 can connect you to
repeater systems that will send your voice across the world.

So how are new people exposed to the hobby? Through a book called “Ham
Radio for Dummies� by Ward Silver.

It is part of the “Dummies� series that explains topics and things in
simple terms. And now that the ham license no longer requires a code test,
anybody from age 5 to 95 can easily join in.

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Youthful BY70-1 CubeSat Builders: Well be Back!

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:52 AM PST
http://ift.tt/2ldEVBz

As its Amateur Radio FM transponder satellite BY70-1 was poised to re-enter
Earth’s atmosphere, its developers, China’s Amateur Youth Space Program,
said it will be mounting future missions. The 2U BY70-1 CubeSat was built
by Beijing Bayi High School students.

“We hope more amateur youth space program will be brought to you in the
near future!� the students said in a February 17 statement on the school’s
website. BY70-1 was launched on December 28 but ended up in a
lower-than-expected 524 × 212 kilometer orbit, which contributed to its
brief orbital lifetime. “Satellite BY70-1 has completed all designed
missions,� the students’ message said.

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Amateur Radio Balloon to be Part of K2BSA Activities at 2017 National Scout
Jamboree

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:38 AM PST
http://ift.tt/2mc8rMq

A high-altitude Amateur Radio balloon, K2BSA-11, will be launched from the
2017 National Boy Scouts of America Jamboree in West Virginia. The balloon
is expected to reach an altitude of 48,000 feet and will transmit on
144.390 MHz APRS. An onboard GPS/computer will shift APRS frequencies based
on the balloon’s location around the globe.

Carrying out the July 20 launch from the Summit Bechtel Reserve will be
Bill Brown WB8ELK; Keith Kaiser, WA0TJT, and other members of the K2BSA
Radio Scouting team. They are hoping that the balloon will circumnavigate
Earth.

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Storm spotters provide missing clues (Texas)

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:38 AM PST
http://bit.ly/2lVuia0

When dangerous weather strikes, meteorologists at the National Weather
Service depend on trained storm spotters to tell the really bad ones from
the scary-looking clouds, NWS warning and coordination meteorologist Mark
Fox said.

Tornados and winds occur below the level radars can see, Fox said.
Meteorologists get about 90 percent of the information from their
equipment, but require the last 10 percent supplied by trained spotters to
complete the picture. To become a storm spotter, contact the Hood County
Emergency management or Hood County Amateur Radio Club member Jeff Cashman
at or attend the monthly meeting held at 7 p.m. the first
Monday of each month at the Hood County Emergency Operations Center at 401
Deputy Larry Miller Drive in Granbury.

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via HACKADAY: Interview: Nacer Chahat Designs Antennae for Mars CubeSats

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:38 AM PST
http://ift.tt/2lLlDa5

You have a shoe box sized computer that you want to use in a Mars fly by.
How do you communicate with it? The answer is a very clever set of
antennas. I got to sit down with Nacer Chahat, one of the engineers on the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory team responsible for antenna design on Mars Cube
One (MarCO). Two of these CubeSats that will soon be used to help a lander
reach Mars. We talked about the work that went into MarCO, the deployable
radar antenna he’s worked on for the RainCube project, and the early
progress on OMERA, the One Meter Reflectarray.

This is a fascinating discussion of dealing with a multitude of engineering
challenges including lack of available space for the antenna components,
and power and weight limitations. Check out the video interview to see how
the people at JPL fit it all into this, and other tiny satellites, then
join us below for more details.

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Totality-minus-6 months: Ten ways to get fired up for an all-American solar
eclipse

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:38 AM PST
http://bit.ly/2lllqaj

Six months from today, millions of Americans will watch the sun darken
during a rare coast-to-coast eclipse – and it’s not too early to get into
the spirit of totality.

It’s definitely not too early to figure out where you’re going to be: Hotel
rooms in the track of the total solar eclipse for the time around Aug. 21
were scarce six months ago, and they’re virtually impossible to find now.
In the Pacific Northwest, you’ll have to settle for a room in, say,
Portland or Walla Walla, plus a significant drive.

What’s the attraction? You’ll be in on one of our planet’s weirdest
phenomena, a minute or two when the sun turns black, surrounded by a
shimmering corona. It’ll be much more than an astronomical event.

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Radio far from over for Scouts in digital age (Australia)

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:38 AM PST
http://bit.ly/2lGXlNZ

It may be the age of the internet but a group of Castlemaine Scouts has
turned to amateur radio to socialise and learn skills that could send their
voices around the world.

Eight venturer Scouts are preparing to apply for their amateur radio
foundation licence in the next month.

The Scouts were learning the new skills in a bus retrofitted with radios
and other necessary equipment.

Trainer Tony Falla said amateur radio was an important and vital tool for
communication, especially during emergencies.

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Orlando HamCation a Hit, Posts New Attendance Record

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:38 AM PST
http://ift.tt/2lwxer5

When Orlando HamCation® hosted the ARRL Southeastern Division Convention
February 10-12, it posted a new attendance record. As a result of its
growing popularity, the Orlando show may now be the third largest ham radio
gathering in the world — behind the JARL Tokyo Ham Fair, with an estimated
37,000 attendees in 2016, and Hamvention®, which attracts some 25,000
visitors each May. This year, HamCation logged a record 19,000 attendees,
up from 2,000 last year, moving it ahead of Ham Radio in Friedrichshafen,
Germany.

HamCation’s sponsor, the ARRL-affiliated Orlando Amateur Radio Club, has
announced the retirement of HamCation Chairman Peter Meijers, AI4KM, who
has headed up the show for 10 years. Michael Cauley, W4MCA, will succeed
him. Cauley has served for 7 years as HamCation’s Tailgate Chairman, for 6
years as the IT Chairman, and for 1 year as Finance Chairman.

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via HACKADAY: Ham Goes Nuts for Tiny Transmitter

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:38 AM PST
http://ift.tt/2mnkgMC

What’s the minimal BOM for a working amateur radio transmitter? Looks like
you can get away with seven parts, or eight if you include the walnut.
You’ve got to have a walnut.

Some hams really love the challenge of QRP, or the deliberate use of
low-power transmitters to provide a challenge to making long-distance
contacts. We’ve covered the world of QRP before and noted that while QRP
rigs don’t throw a lot of power, it doesn’t mean that they need to be
simple. Some get quite complex and support many different modulation
schemes, even digital modes. With only a single 2N3904 transistor, [Jarno
(PA3DMI)]’s tiny transmitter won’t do much more than send Morse using CW
modulation, but given that it’s doing so from inside a walnut shell, we
have no complaints. The two halves of the shell are hinged together and
hold a scrap of perfboard for the simple quartz crystal oscillator. The
prototype was tuned outside the shell, and the 9-volt battery is obviously
external, but aside from that it’s nothing but nuts.

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via the RSGB: More Convention lectures now online

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:38 AM PST
http://ift.tt/2mfHNlP

The RSGB has added more from the RSGB 2016 Convention to the new video page
for Members.

They are freely available for you to download but please read the RSGB’s
conditions of use first.

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via HACKADAY: Universal Radio Hacker

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:38 AM PST
http://ift.tt/2l5Ol1g

If you are fascinated by stories you read on sites like Hackaday in which
people reverse engineer wireless protocols, you may have been tempted to
hook up your RTL-SDR stick and have a go for yourself. Unfortunately then
you may have encountered the rather steep learning curve that comes with
these activities, and been repelled by a world with far more of the 1337
about it than you possess. You give up after an evening spent in
command-line dependency hell, and move on to the next thing that catches
your eye.

You could then be interested by [Jopohl]’s Universal Radio Hacker. It’s a
handy piece of software for investigating unknown wireless protocols. It
supports a range of software defined radios including the dirt-cheap
RTL-SDR sticks, quickly demodulates any signals you identify, and provides
a whole suite of tools to help you extract the data they contain. And for
those of you scarred by dependency hell, installation is simple, at least
for this Hackaday scribe. If you own an SDR transceiver, it can even send a
reply.

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Two Amateur Radio CubeSats Carrying Transponders Set for Future NASA
Launches

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:38 AM PST
http://ift.tt/2mu1TEP

Two satellites with Amateur Radio transponder payloads have been selected
for future NASA launches.

AMSAT reports that the TJREVERB CubeSat, developed by students at Thomas
Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia,
will carry a 435/145 MHz FM transponder. The University of
Washington-Seattle’s HuskySat-1 has a 145/435 MHz SSB/CW transponder and
was developed by students at the University of Washington in Seattle. The
satellite will demonstrate plasma propulsion and high-gain telemetry, in
advance of a larger CubeSat lunar mission.

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HAARP Goes Classical During New Experimental Campaign

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:38 AM PST
http://ift.tt/2lPMcLn

The just-concluded run of ionospheric investigations conducted from
Alaska’s High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) observatory
— quite likely the most powerful HF transmission facility in the world —
revived the latent short-wave listener (SWL) lurking within most radio
amateurs. Operating under Part 5 Experimental license WI2XFX, HAARP this
month even aired some classical music as it conducted its first scientific
research campaign since being taken over 18 months ago from the military by
the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Geophysical Institute.

UAF Space Physics Group Assistant Research Professor Chris Fallen, KL3WX,
focused on two experiments — one called “airglow� that literally aimed to
light up the ionosphere, and another to demonstrate the so-called
“Luxembourg Effect,� first noticed on a 1930s Radio Luxembourg broadcast.
Public engagement was part of his plan, and Fallen this week said the
Twitter and e-mail feedback from his transmissions had been “fantastic,�
and that his science campaign had become “quite an event.�

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New Section Manager Appointed in West Virginia

Posted: 25 Feb 2017 08:38 AM PST
http://ift.tt/2lCHcZW

Dan Ringer, K8WV, will become West Virginia’s Section Manager starting on
March 1. He has been appointed to succeed Phillip Groves, N8SFO, who is
stepping down for personal reasons after serving since July 2015. Ringer,
an attorney who lives in Morgantown, will serve the remainder of the
current term of office, which ends on September 30.