Institute to Revive Amateur / Ham Radio in India

To attract youngsters to amateur radio, the Indian Institute of Hams has started an awareness campaign 

"When we created awareness during the 2012 Youth Festival held in Mangaluru, we received around 100 registrations for ham service but after that there has been no new registration. During the current awareness campaign we will focus on students' aims to use ham for global friendship, communication skills and communication in times of natural disasters when all modes of vital communication fail," said Shankar Sathyapal VU2FI, director of the Indian Institute of Hams, which is licensed by the Union ministry of Communications and IT.

Sathyapal said since Mangaluru is located in the coastal region, it is essential to have such modes of communication as it will aid during natural disasters. He pointed out how ham helped in rescue operations during the recent floods in Chennai.

Full Story - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mangaluru/Institute-all-set-to-revive-ham-radio-in-Mangaluru/articleshow/51026330.cms

Indian Institute of Hams - http://www.indianhams.com/
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New Extra Question Pool Released

The ARRL have added new Amateur / Ham Radio Extra questions to the question pool, placing greater emphasis on Digital, SDRs and Propagation

“The primary change is modernization of the pool to place more emphasis on digital communications, digital test equipment, software defined radios, and propagation/space weather.”

— Rol Anders, K3RA

The extra questions will become part of the question pool from 1st July 2016, and will be valid through to 30th June 2020. There are also some minor corrections to existing questions.

Some questions were removed due to the topics being of less importance than currently valued by the Amateur / Ham Radio community.

The amended question pool now stands at 712 questions.

ARRL Story - http://www.arrl.org/news/new-amateur-extra-question-pool-puts-greater-emphasis-on-digital-sdrs-propagation

The complete question pools for the Amateur Technician, General and Extra exams can be downloaded - http://www.ncvec.org/

First UK Amateur Radio Contact on 241 GHz

The first UK amateur radio contact on the 241 GHz (1.2mm) band took place on Friday 19th February 2016 at 15:00 GMT 

“I was transmitting on 241.01 GHz, Chris was on a nominal 241.02 though it was 1.3 MHz low on 241.0187 GHz. We used separate TX & RX. All TXs were derived from Elcom synths. Chris’s LO also, though I was using 16.0385 as LO (x15) into a Tektronix mixer. Chris used a 1mm dia. hole in the block on RX with cut-off around 175GHz, I used a piece of WR-03 - 173GHz cut-off.”

— Roger G8CUB

The contact was made between Roger G8CUB/P and Chris G0FDZ/P in locator square JO01EP. The distance was 30 metres and the CW signals were 559 and 589. 

With signal to spare both ways an attempt was evaluated to increase the distance to over 50m but with deteriorating weather likely, a decision was taken to limit to 30m as antenna alignment was taking a very long time to achieve. 

UK Microwave Group - http://www.microwavers.org/