Latest Amateur / Ham Radio news from around the world including latest radio equipment, DMR, Repeaters, Special Events, CubeSAT, QRP, 70cm, 2m, 4m, 6m, 20m, 40m, 80m, SSB, VHF, UHF and CW
A four metre port has been added to the 70 centimeter repeater EI7MLR.
The repeater which is on RU76 (430.950MHz +7.6MHz) is licensed to theSouth Eastern Amateur Radio Group and located at Mt. Leinster, Co. Carlow.
This port allows access to the repeater from the four metre band.
The frequency is 70.400 MHz and a tone of 67Hz is required to access it. The output power is 10 watts into a folded dipole antenna.
The VK3FI CW beacon on 473 kHz at Mildura in northwest Victoria has had more than 50 reception reports from all over Australia since early this year and will continue its transmissions.
The most distant reports have been from West Australia VK6. Is it also heard in New Zealand. The ZL stations have begun listening for it and expect conditions to improve during the southern hemisphere winter.
Some overseas inquiries have been received asking when it will be on different weak modes, but the intention is to continue the experiment with the home-brew beacon on CW, for a little while yet.
While reports are most welcome, including those who have reception at different times or days, many more are needed.
The band 472-479 kHz is now a secondary allocation in many countries. The beacon encourages use of the new band. A couple of VKs have advised that they are now gearing up for reception.
In Queensland, John Goldfinch VK4FNQ east of Charters Towers was the first from that state to report, followed by Rick Freemantle VK4RF, north of Brisbane, and Dougal Johnston VK4EKA near Toowoomba who recorded reception during lightning activity.
Among those in South Australia is Ian Maxted VK5ZIM at Adelaide. In West Australia Phil Hartwell VK6GX was first to provide a reception report.
He was followed by Peter Zwarecz VK6APZ on a 350 metre long wire at fence height, and then came Derek Zeck VK6DZ.
Noel VK3FI is amazed that his beacon has been heard from VK6 at an average distance of 2400 kms, and as we experience the winter season with longer nights and less lightning activity, reception conditions should improve.
He now has hopes that spurred on by reception reports throughout Australia, the beacon will be detected across the ditch in New Zealand.
Crossing the Tasman Sea would be quite an achievement and is now an aim of Noel VK3FI.
The CW beacon on 473 kHz is on most nights 1100 to 2200 UTC. Reception reports please on email to vk3fi@wia.org.au
The RILGES Repeater Group working party gathered on the Helenswood Academy Site, on The Ridge in Hastings, and annouced that GB3HE is now operational once again, following a small period of outage during keeper/management changes.
The repeater is currently running on a temporary transceiver and on reduced power (10W ERP). The receiver is at commercial spec and currently has no pre-amp installed during coverage initial testing and trials.
Signal reports received so far are looking very encouraging and a credit to the team who enabled the repeater to get back on air.
RILGES Repeater Group website - http://www.rilges.org.uk
A new 70cms beacon GB3UHF, to be located at the same site in Kent as the 2m beacon GB3VHF, is now licenced.
Chris G0FDZ, the beacon keeper, will now apply for a site sharing agreement and once an agreement has been finalised the new beacon will appear shortly afterwards. This process may take some considerable time so an early appearance of the new beacon is unlikely.
The proposed hardware will be similar in principle to that used for GB3VHF in that the frequency will be GPS locked and the keying format will be the same as used for GB3VHF.
The antennas will use the same type of 3 element yagis (Amphenol Jaybeam 7040420) and will point in the same directions (288 and 348 degrees) as those used at 144MHz and with a similar E.R.P.
A beacon operating on 432.430 MHz will provide a very useful tool together with GB3VHF for determining propagation at both VHF and UHF over long distances from the same site
More information- http://www.gb3vhf.co.uk/GB3UHFdetails.html
A new 70cm repeater has been added to the Southern Ireland Repeater Network in the North Cork area. The project has been completed by East Cork Amateur Radio Group.
The repeater is located near Bweeng at about 410m ASL. The repeater callsign is EI7BWR and it operates on 430.875 with a shift of +7.6 MHz (Channel RU-70) and an access tone of 103.5 Hz.
The repeater was installed on Saturday March 22nd by Neil EI3JE, John EI8JA and special thanks to Gareth EI7FZB, who braved the elements on an extremely cold day to install the antennas and cables. This brings the number of repeaters on the network to six.
Reception reports to Neil EI3JE via e-mail - neilpowell1@eircom.net or sirnrepeaters@gmail.com
All Point Radio Island Link & Friends Of Our Link are pleased to announce that the Isle of Man (GD) will shortly be host to the very first UK narrow split repeater on 70 MHz (4m) call sign GB3AF.
Our island is a very strange place, and it has been almost impossible for amateurs in the north to talk to those in the south on 4m due to the mountain range in the centre of the island, hence our need for a repeater. Our chosen location is of course the tallest mountain on the island – Snaefell.
Standing at 2036 feet above sea level, and with fantastic take off in all directions, the repeater output power will be limited to 20 watts – more than enough to have a rag chew all over the island, and probably much further afield.
Input will be on 70.025 MHz, with a CTCSS tone of 110.9 Hz the “very narrow split” is 500 Hz making it accessible for the many elusive island amateurs and those around the Irish Sea basin.
The cavity filter has been specially manufactured from a pair of locally sourced Okell’s Brewery aluminium kegs, and some very detailed and extensive evening analysis by the team was required in order to prepare the barrels for use.
Our duplexer has been specially sourced from a manufacturer in China, who luckily for us was selling on eBay. We managed to sneak this item in below the Customs barrier marked as a “Toy”, again saving us some money which has been spent on a 50m reel of RG58, some PL259’s, and a roll of insulation tape (eBay special).
The antenna we have sourced is a 4m collinear, with a gain quoted by the manufacturer of 12dBi. The signal pattern for the antenna shows a very good all over island coverage, and signals should be wall to wall (good enough to blow some peoples windows out!) on both the west coast of UK, south of Scotland and the east coast of Ireland. It is uncertain as to how coverage will extend towards Wales as it was very misty the last time we ventured up Snaefell and we couldn’t see as far as Anglesey.
The repeater is currently being receiving a rewiring upgrade of the repeater control logic to allow it to connect to the internet via Echolink and Allstar, again opening up more opportunity for people around the world to log in and use 4m. It is hoped that cross band will be achieved with GB3IM and GB3GD to further enhance the possibilities for multiple communication paths, and enable repeater pileups.
The group hope that the repeater will be as popular as GB3GD is on 2m, and that amateurs worldwide take the opportunity to work those rare GD calls through the new internet linked system.
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