BBC TV Archive Clip of 1949 Ham Radio Contact

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The BBC Archive shared a clip of a news item about a radio amateur's reception of BBC TV pictures in Cape Town, South Africa in 1949, it includes an on-air contact

The BBC news item describes the remarkable reception of BBC television pictures from Alexandra Palace, London on 45 MHz by Henry Rieder ZS1P in Cape Town, South Africa.

The clip features a contact between Mr C. G. Allen G8IG of Bromley, Kent and Henry ZS1P in which G8IG asks Henry questions about the TV reception.

Licence Fees for 412 MHz Spectrum

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Ofcom has today set the licence fees for the 412–414 MHz and 422–424 MHz paired spectrum, which is licensed to Arqiva and Airwave.

Arqiva won this spectrum in a 2006 auction, with a 15-year initial licence period. The initial period comes to an end in October 2021, at which point an annual licence fee will become payable. Arqiva traded the spectrum with Airwave in 2008 – making Airwave the co-licensee.

Following consultation, we have decided to set an annual licence fee of £396,000 per MHz per year for the 412 MHz spectrum, which is based on the fees Business Radio users already pay for a UK-wide licence in nearby bands.

The annual licence fee will apply from 31 October 2021.

WSJT-X version 2.5.1 released

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The development team have announced the General Availability (GA) release of WSJT-X version 2.5.1.

This release mainly contains improvements and defect repairs related to Q65 and JT65 modes when used with non-standard and compound calls. Also included is a new feature for microwave aircraft scatter, and repairs for defects detected since the 2.5.0 GA release.

A full list of changes can be found in the Release Notes - https://physics.princeton.edu//pulsar/k1jt/Release_Notes.txt

IMPORTANT: If you expect to use the JT65 or Q65 modes to make weak-signal QSOs that involve a nonstandard callsign, be sure to upgrade to WSJT-X 2.5.1!

Links to WSJT-X 2.5.1 installation packages for Windows, Linux, and Macintosh - http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx.html