New Irish Beacon on 60 MHz Now on the Air

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Back in early 2018, the 60 MHz (5-metre) band was allocated to radio amateurs in Ireland (EI) on a secondary non-interference basis. Now we have news that the very first beacon on 60 MHz went on air on the 16th of December 2019 using the call EI1KNH.

It is on 60.013 MHz and runs 25 watts into a vertical folded dipole. This is currently the only 5-metre beacon operational in the world.

The new 5-metre beacon is co-sited with some of the existing Irish beacons - EI0SIX on 50 MHz and EI4RF on 70 MHz. The elevated site has a locator of IO63VE and is located about 20 kms to the south of Dublin.

More Information - https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2019/12/new-irish-beacon-on-60-mhz-now-on-air.html


VO2AC - Canadian Lighthouse Operation

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Operators Chris VE3FU (VO2AC), Frank VO1HP and Dave VE9CB (VO2AAA) will be active as VO2AC during the 2020 CQWW 160M CW Contest (January 24-26th) from the Point Amour Lighthouse, the tallest lighthouse in Atlantic Canada, on the south coast of the rare Labrador (LB) multiplier.

Point Amour is located in the southeast part of CQ Zone 2 and has a saltwater path from NE clockwise through SW. The team will be putting in a serious Multi-Op/High-Power effort as VO2AC.

Expect some pre-contest activity as VO2AC, VO1HP/VO2 and VO2AAA on 160m as they get their wire vertical array and beverage working; they will especially be looking for JA/Asia on CW and FT8.

If time permits, they may also be active before the contest on 80m, 60m, 40m and the amateur radio FM satellites (AO- 85, AO-91 and AO-92) from Grid GO11.


Ham Radio to Encourage Student Interest in Science

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Ham Radio to Encourage Student Interest in Science

Open Space Foundation was started in 2013 by Surender Ponnalagar (23), Bharath Kumar VU3BRE (21), Dinesh Kumar (19) and Anupama Pradeepan (23) - all of whom met at various science events. While Anupama is currently employed, the other three are doing their Masters'.

“Our idea is to take science to rural students. There are many opportunities for students to explore science, but most are unaware of these. We ourselves got to know about it only later. The idea of OSF is to develop science hobbies in children,” he explains.

Initially, the four would travel to different schools with simple science equipment like a telescope, microscope etc to conduct one-day science forums. A couple of years later, they realised that this method was not helping their mission. That's when they came up with Open Science Centres (OSC) in schools

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