Latvia's 100th Birthday Amateur Radio Special Callsign

The special amateur radio callsign prefix YL100 has been created to celebrate Latvia's 100th birthday. Latvia will celebrate this centenary on 18th November 2018.

Five different callsigns will be used between the 1st to the 18th November with this YL100 prefix, one from each of 4 Latvia's historical regions and the fifth from the capital city Riga. The callsigns are YL100K, YL100L, YL100R, YL100V, and YL100Z. These call signs will be operated by multiple radio amateurs from the related regions.

Special awards for working YL100 stations on different bands and modes will be issued

SAQ Alexanderson Alternator Transmission to Celebrate UN Day

An Alexanderson alternator transmission from Sweden’s Grimeton Radio Station, SAQ, will be part of UN Day festivities on 24th October 2018 at the World Heritage Site in Grimeton, Sweden.

“We celebrate this great event in international relations by sending out a peace message to the world with the long-wave transmitter SAQ, and then a concert in the Irish folk spirit with the Varberg band Green Hill”

A “Peace Party” at the site will feature Irish folk music from the Swedish band Green Hill. The music style honors the first transatlantic telegraph cable between Ireland and Newfoundland, which opened for telegram traffic in August 1866.

The SAQ CW transmission will be on 17.2 kHz and start at 16:30 UTC.

A live video stream of the transmission will be available - http://www.alexander.n.se/

Blind Glasgow Pensioner Broadcast to Mark 150th Year of RNIB

Blind Radio operator Terry Robinson, a 68 year old pensioner from Glasgow is marking the 150th anniversary of the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) using the special event callsign GR150NIB.

Terry has been a radio enthusiast since childhood, and hasn’t allowed his blindness to stop him pursuing his love of communicating over the airwaves. The pensioner’s main interest is to contact others using special call signs, and he has already logged more than 2,000 contacts.

His passion for all things technical provided the oppotunity to be introduced to Amateur Radio at school, and he quickly gained his full licence in 1967 and started making contacts in America.

“What amateur radio did for me as a teenager was liberate me from stigma, being seen as blind and different by people I didn’t know.

I could go on air and talk to people and, unless they asked a question which I couldn’t answer without declaring that I was blind, nobody needed to know or care. And that helped me a lot as a teenager. In recognition of RNIB’s 150th anniversary, I thought it would be fun to get a special call-sign, so I sought GR150NIB. Ofcom doesn’t like issuing these call-signs unless we can persuade them that they’re for an event of national significance and are likely to broaden interest in the hobby.”

— Terry Robinson

The RNIB, founded in 1868, has improved the lives of countless blind Scots.