Kerry Amateur Radio Group issued an additional callsign

The Kerry Amateur Radio Group, based in Co. Kerry, Ireland, are pleased to announce that we have been issued with an additional callsign, EI1K.

Kerry Amateur Radio Group issued an additional callsign

Kerry Amateur Radio Group issued an additional callsign

The club intend to use the callsign EI1K for contest operating, while our other callsign EI1KARG will continue to be used for club field day operations and special event stations.

The Kerry Amateur Radio Group have a qrz.com page for the callsign EI1K where photographs of our various activities and details of our club can be found.

IARU R1 to discuss possible loss of 23 cm

A paper to be discussed at the IARU Region 1 Conference in Varna-Albena, Bulgaria, 21-27 September 2014 highlights the threat to continued amateur radio usage of our 23 cm allocation which is now being used by the Galileo GPS system  

The amateur 23 cm allocation includes a key Amateur Satellite Service uplink band at 1260-1270 MHz.

Michael Kastelic OE1MCU, Chair of the IARU R1 VHF/UHF/Microwave Committee has written the paper VA14_C5_36 which says:

After the last reports and slides received by the author, it seems that radio amateurs will lose the 23 cm band in the near future. That is the reason for this late proposal.

We can be optimistic, but more than a small piece of spectrum for near band communication will not survive. Also the enthusiastic testing with ATV on 70 cm is not a replacement for 23 cm, because this will cause disturbance to our amateur satellites and all cars will stay locked if the ISM band is used.

Proposal

Radio amateurs need a new allocation (like 1300 -1310 MHz) for the agenda of the World Radio Conference 2018 (WRC2018) so that amateurs get back spectrum near the existing 23 cm band.

Further it is proposed to engage the EC after WRC-2015 to bring this theme to the agenda for WRC-2018 with high priority

Read the paper - http://tinyurl.com/IARU-VA14-C5-36

Potential Interference To Galileo From 23 cm Band Operations - http://www.southgatearc.org/articles/galileo.htm

IARU R1 VHF/UHF/Microwaves discussion forum - http://www.thersgb.org/forums/index.php?forums/vhfmicrowave/

RFinder now finds repeaters over routes worldwide

The RFinder team has released The World Wide Repeater Directory - Repeater Routes!

As always we encourage new users to obtain access to RFinder via purchasing the app in Google Play on Android and The Apple App Store on iPhone/iPad/iPod. Once you register your email and password in the app, use that on http://routes.rfinder.net or http://web.rfinder.net, RT Systems, CHIRP, etc.

The web version allows downloads in a variety of formats including csv, tpe and several GPS POI formats including the AVMAP Amateur Radio GPS.

The annual subscription for the World Wide Repeater Directory is only $9.99 and for that one price, includes access from any platform RFinder is available on: Android, iPhone, web, RT Systems, RadioBuddy (iPhone), and two new third party applications coming soon for Windows (by KB2SCS) and Macintosh (by KD2DMH).

More information - http://www.rfinder.net