SARL NEWS - SUNDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2009

You are listening to ZS6SRL, the official radio station of the South
African Radio League, the national body for amateur radio in South
Africa, with a news bulletin transmitted every Sunday at 08:15 CAT in
Afrikaans and at 08:30 CAT in English. To listen to a web-stream, visit
www.sarl.org.za, click on ARMI and follow the links for details. PLEASE
NOTE: for audio via Echolink, connect to ZS0JPL-R.

You can download this bulletin and previous ones from www.sarl.org.za
and subscribe to receive future bulletins by e-mail.

Your newsreader this morning is (name), (call sign), on 145,725 and
7,066 MHz from Pretoria, with relays on 28,325; 14,235; 10,130, 7,066
and 3,695 MHz SSB, as well as 52,750; 438,825 and 1,297 MHz FM in the
Pretoria area. (Other newsreaders please change to suit.)

SILENT KEY

It is with deep regret that the passing away of Arthur Ronald Hersey on
6 November 2009 is announced. Arthur qualified as a radio amateur in
1938 at the age of 16 and received the call sign ZS1RS.

We extend our sincere condolences to his son, John, family and friends.


(PAUSE)

In the news today:

HAVE FUN WITH SATELLITES

A NEW BACAR TO BE DEMONSTRATED

RAE RESULTS IMMINENT

RADIO AMATEUR WINS A NOBEL PRIZE

You are listening to ZS6SRL. Stay tuned for more detail on these and
other important and interesting news items.

NORTHWEST AMATEUR RADIO CLUB IS HOSTING ZS10WCS

The North West Amateur Radio Club is hosting the special ZS10WCS during
the month of November. A good start was made by the Boland Amateur
Radio Club in September when they made 2 639 contacts with amateurs
from more than a hundred countries. The Oakdale Radio Club took charge
in October. At this stage it is not known how many contacts were made.
In December members of the East Rand Radio Club will operate ZS10WCS.

The preferred frequencies are as follows: CW on 28 010; 21 010; 14 010;
7 010 and 3 510 kHz. SSB on 28 480; 21 280; 14 180; 7 080 and 3 780
kHz.

QSL via the Bureau or directly via the SARL, P.O. Box 1721,
Strubensvallei, 1735.

HAVE FUN WITH SATELLITES

AMSAT has arranged a Satellite Activity weekend from 13 to 15 November
2009. Radio Amateurs are invited to submit logs for the Satellite
Activity Weekend. The purpose of the event is to encourage new
operators to join the growing fraternity of users of Amateur Radio
Satellites. AMSAT North America has specifically enabled the higher
power QRP mode on AO-51 to make operation on this satellite easier for
first-time users for the duration of the event.

The event will run from 16:00 UTC on Friday 13 November 2009 though to
16:00 UTC on Sunday 15 November 2009. Operation is permitted on any
operational Amateur Satellite in any mode to count for points, with the
proviso that all QSOs on AO-51 have to use the QRP V/U mode (145,880
MHz uplink and 435,150 MHz downlink).

RF Design will sponsor the prize of a TinyTrak 4 for the operator who
accumulates the most overall points and a TinyTak3 for the best
portable station. If these are the same operator, the TinyTrak3 will be
awarded to the operator with the second highest points tally.

The full detail can be downloaded from www.amsatsa.org.za.

A NEW BACAR TO BE DEMONSTRATED

On Saturday 21 November at 14:00, John Willescroft, ZS6EF, will
demonstrate the 2010 version of BACAR at the National Amateur Radio
centre. Its maiden flight in the Western Cape will be on Sunday 24
January. BACAR is the acronym for Balloon Carrying Amateur Radio - a
project first launched by SA AMSAT in the 70s.

BACAR will be demonstrated on a tethered launch. Radio Amateurs who are
not able to be part of the demonstration at the NARC will be able to
follow it on the Web. More details will be announced in next week's
SARL news bulletin and published on www.amsatsa.org.za.

The demonstration will follow the first Home Constructor's Course at
the NARC - which is now fully booked. Names are now recorded for a
possible second series of Home Construction courses next year.

There are still places available on the Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape
Town courses. A list of those who have been booked and confirmed is
available on the SARL web at www.sarl.org.za. Click on RTA under the
heading 'activities' and follow the links.

RAE RESULTS IMMINENT

The long-awaited RAE results will be released within the next few days.


Since the last RAE, a few things have been changed to assist ICASA in
easing the burden of doing additional admin work. The changes are as
follows: Normally we would reserve the call signs ahead of the time for
the RAE candidates. Candidates wanting to write the Class A exam have
the opportunity to write the Class B examination as well.

Once all of the marking and moderation of the exam papers had been
completed, we had to send a list back to ICASA asking them to release
all the reserved call signs for those that had failed. We would then
ask them to release call signs of those who had enrolled for the Class
A exam that had failed, but passed the Class B exam, in order to
reserve call signs for a Class B call sign. This alone created a
tremendous load on the staff working with amateur licensing and a lot
of double work had to be done.

The new process will be that only once the marking has been completed,
will we send the call signs through to be reserved for those that have
passed their exams.

We would like to urge all candidates to keep their eyes glued to the
SARL's Web page for your result. We thank you for your patience.

Should you have any queries, you may contact Mariska at the SARL office
on 011 675 2393 or e-mail her to .

ANOTHER RADIO AMATEUR WINS A NOBEL PRIZE

Around 05:30 on the morning of 6 October, George E Smith, AA2EJ, of
Barnegat, New Jersey, received a phone call that changed his life: He
had just heard he had won the Nobel Prize for Physics for 2009 "for the
invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor". Smith
will share the prize money with two other recipients: Charles K Kao, of
Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in the United Kingdom and the
Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Willard S Boyle of Bell
Laboratories. Each recipient will receive a diploma, a medal and a 25%
share of the R10 million prize money.

Kao was recognized by the prize committee for his "groundbreaking
achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical
communication". His discoveries paved the way for the optical fiber
technology that is used for almost all telephony and data communication
today. Boyle and Smith invented a digital image sensor - the CCD - that
has become the 'electronic eye' in almost all areas of modern
photography.

The CCD - invented in about an hour over lunch when Smith and Boyle
worked at New Jersey's Bell Labs - was, according to Wired Magazine,
the first practical way to let a light-sensitive silicon chip store an
image and then digitize it. In short, it is the basis of today's
digital camera. According to Wired, the "most amazing thing about the
invention" is that Boyle and Smith came up with the design so quickly.
With Bell Labs threatening to take away the funds from their department
and transfer the money to other research, Boyle had to come up with a
competing semiconductor design. He got together with Smith, and within
an hour, they came up with the idea and sketched it all out on a
blackboard.

"One morning in October 1969," Boyle wrote on his website, "I was
challenged to create a new kind of computer memory. That afternoon, I
got together with George Smith and brainstormed for an hour or so about
a new kind of semiconductor device, drawing a few sketches and
equations on a blackboard. We called it a charge-coupled device: A
'CCD.' When we had the shops at Bell Labs make up the device it worked
exactly as we had expected - much to the surprise of our colleagues."

Smith said that he knew the CCD was under consideration for the Nobel
Prize, "but we didn't know exactly if, or when, it would happen.
Research that wins the Nobel is often done many years beforehand. In my
case, this was 40-year-old research. The Prize Committee wants to make
sure the research has stood the test of time." More on Amateur Radio
Mirror International later today at 10:00. Unfortunately, the show is
about to end. The sunspot is moving toward the sun's western limb where
it will soon disappear.

WONDERFUL ACHIEVEMENT BY ZS4JAN

During the past month Jan Botha, ZS4JAN, made a wonderful achievement
by achieving the WAZS 1 000 award of the SARL. It means that Jan made 1
000 confirmed contacts with individual call signs in South Africa. It
took Jan almost 6 years to reach this milestone.

What makes this achievement môre unique is the fact that Jan is the
first amateur to gain the WAZS 1 000 award.

The President of the SARL congratulates Jan with this unique
achievement and trusts that that it will be an inspiration to other
amateurs to be môre active on the bands and to regularly confirm
contacts by means of either a QSL card or the SARL's electronic QSL
system.

Again many congratulations to Jan.

ANNUAL REMEMBRANCE DAY SERVICE

The annual Remembrance Day Service will be transmitted in Amateur Radio
Mirror International today at 10:45 CAT. The service is in memory of
South Africans who lost their lives in the protection of our country
and our people. Please observe Radio Silence between 10:45 and 11:00
CAT as a mark of respect. The service will be conducted by Rev Hannes
Enslin, ZS6JDE.

CONTEST NEWS

The second leg of the SARL HF Field Day will be on the weekend of 21
and 22 November 2009.

The contest committee has released the results of the second leg of the
SARL 80 Metre QSO Party. 1st Jan Botha, ZS4JAN, 630 points; 2nd Charles
le Roux, ZS1CF, 415; 3rd Theuns Potgieter, ZS2EC, 265; 4th Sasolburg
ARC, ZS4SRK, 255; 5th Geoff Levey, ZS6GRL, 230; and 6th The World Cup
Soccer station, ZS10WCS, operated by Dave, ZS1SG, with 205 points.

PROPAGATION REPORT

Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP, reports that the solar activity is still at low
levels. There were no sunspots visible during the last couple of days.

15 and 20 m will provide the best opportunities for DX. Conditions to
the east and the west will be good from the afternoon onwards. During
the late afternoons and early evenings, it will be good towards Europe.
In the mornings it may be possible to make contacts with Australia on
20 m. In the afternoons there are good possibilities of contacts with
the USA on 15 m. Contacts with New Zealand are going to be challenging.
During the afternoons and evenings, 15 and 12 m contacts may be
promising with Brazil.

Local conditions are going to be good on 40 m during the daytime. 80 m
may perform well during the early mornings and late afternoons over
shorter distances. 30 m will perform well over longer distances during
the middle of the day. With summer here, 20 m is also once again
becoming very useful for contacts between Divisions 1 and 6. 80 m is
the frequency of choice in the evenings.

Please visit www.spaceweather.co.za for further information.

DIARY OF EVENTS

8 November - Remembrance Day service at 10:45 this morning during the
ARMI program; 9 November - closing date for Radio ZS articles; 13 to 15
November - Satellite activity weekend; 15 November - closing date for
suggestions for the 2010 Contest; 21 and 22 November - SARL HF Field
Day; 21 November - Home Construction course and BACAR demonstration in
Gauteng at the NARC; 22 November -Intechnet with SumbandilaSat as
subject; 30 November - closing date for the essay competition and
closing date for SARL Council nominations.

SARL News invites clubs and individuals to submit news items of
interest to radio amateurs and shortwave listeners. Submit news items,
if possible in both English and Afrikaans only to
www.sarl.org.za/newsinbox.asp, not later than the Thursday preceding
the bulletin date.

The SARL also invites you to listen to Amateur Radio Mirror
International every Sunday morning at 10:00 CAT on 145,750 MHz in the
Pretoria-area, with relays on 7 082, 7 205 and 17 860 kHz. There is
also a podcast by ZS6RO. For a web-stream and Echolink by ZS6FCS, visit
www.sarl.org.za, click on 'ARMI' and follow the links. A repeat
transmission can be heard on Mondays at 21:00 CAT on 3 215 kHz. Sentech
sponsors the ARMI transmissions on the non-amateur frequencies.

You have listened to a bulletin of the South African Radio League,
compiled by Dennis, ZS4BS. The editor was Jannie, ZR6PHD.

Thank you for listening, 73.
/EX