Wireless Power Transfer: CIS/B/737/CDV rejected

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The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) International Special Committee on Radio Interference (CISPR) has rejected a proposal by the Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) lobby that would have resulted in pollution of the precious HF RF spectrum

While Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) systems nominally operate on frequencies below 150 kHz they can pollute the entire HF spectrum up to 30 MHz not only ruining people's enjoyment of radio but also potentially disrupting the communications of key services.

“the business case for WPT systems expects a wide spreading of their usage; in the ideal case, nearly one system per household when mostly electric vehicles will be used in the future.”
— WPT paper notes

Such an outcome could result in horrendous interference levels and ruin the HF radio frequency spectrum which is a precious natural resource.

WPT Paper - https://fe.um.si/images/jet/JET_november_2019_FINAL_splet-11-17.pdf

CIS/B/737/CDV Voting Result - https://www.iec.ch/dyn/www/f?p=103:7:3840419693584::::FSP_ORG_ID ,FSP_LANG_ID:1298,25



Icom IC-9700 Firmware Update (Version 1.23)

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Icom Inc. has released a firmware update for the IC-9700 VHF/UHF/1200 MHz SDR Transceiver.

The following improvements have been made:

Changes from Version 1.21

  • Changed the screen drawing sequence to keep the previous frequency screen layout when exiting from a function displayed in full screen.

  • Fixed an issue where the standby beep may sound approximately two seconds after receiving a reply when pushing PTT to key up the repeater.

Changes from Version 1.22

  • Fixed an issue where the DV Gateway function may not work properly when it is turned off and then turned on again.

  • Fixed an issue where the RTTY DECODE screen was displayed while leaving the Mark Frequency and Shift Width settings at other than 2125Hz and 170Hz.

This firmware can be downloaded from the following URL from the Icom Inc website -  http://www.icomjapan.com/support/firmware_driver/2650/

Is April the month of Solar Minimum?

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Is April the month of Solar Minimum?

April 2020 could actually turn out to be a very significant month for us space weather watchers! The NOAA/NASA Solar Cycle prediction panel predicted back in December that solar minimum would likely occur in April of 2020! There is no guarantee that solar minimum will occur this month but it is very likely that we have passed solar minimum already or solar minimum has yet to come in the near future. There is a +/- 6-month margin of error when it comes to these predictions.

There is still a lot to learn when it comes to the inner workings of our Sun which makes it really hard if not impossible to predict solar activity and the development of the Solar Cycle in advance. We have to keep in mind that there are likely more months to come with no sunspot regions at all but high latitude sunspot regions belonging to Solar Cycle 25 will become more and more common as time goes by and the Solar Cycle 24 sunspot regions close to the equator will become more and more uncommon.

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