SARL NEWS - SUNDAY 16 OCTOBER 2011

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 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 'Amateur Radio Today' 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 also 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 7,066 and 3,695 MHz SSB.

In the news today:

THE ORIGINAL OSCAR 1 RECONSTRUCTED

AN ADVANCED LICENCE - AN INTERESTING DEBATE

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

THE ORIGINAL OSCAR 1 RECONSTRUCTED

The AMSATNA 2011 Space Symposium will be held on Friday, November 4-6
in San Jose, California. This year's Symposium coincides with the
celebration of the 50th anniversary of OSCAR 1, the first Amateur Radio
satellite. The Symposium will feature presentations on amateur
satellites, operating techniques, news and plans from the amateur
satellite world, as well as an AMSAT General Meeting and a meeting of
AMSAT's Board of Directors.

While the final schedule is still being worked out, AMSAT has announced
that Lance Ginner, K6GSJ, will be the speaker at the banquet. Ginner
helped build and develop OSCAR 1 and OSCAR 2. His involvement with
Amateur Radio spacecraft continued with OSCAR 3, OSCAR 4, OSCAR 5 (the
first for the newly formed Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation in
1970), OSCAR 6, OSCAR 7 and OSCAR 8.

ARRL Laboratory Test Engineer Bob Allison, WB1GCM, will also be
speaking at the Symposium, accompanied by a refurbished prototype of
OSCAR 1. With help from Ginner and other AMSAT members, Allison and
W1AW Station Manager Joe Carcia, NJ1Q, refurbished the prototype. They
began tinkering with the satellite, one of three made by Project OSCAR.
One of the satellites went up into space in 1961, one is on display at
the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC and the other,
until recently, was sitting in a display case in the downstairs hallway
at ARRL Headquarters.

"We really wanted to make this work again," Allison said. "So we looked
in the February 1962 issue of QST that was dedicated to OSCAR I, the
first-ever Amateur Radio satellite to go into orbit. But the schematic
we published didn't quite mesh up with what we were seeing when we
opened up the satellite we had here at Headquarters."

According to Carcia and Allison, this could be that back in the days of
the Cold War and the space race, the US military did not want the
correct schematic falling into improper hands. "I tried for days,
tracing components on the board and it just wasn't working," Carcia
said. "So I called up Lance Ginner, one of the original Project OSCAR
people. He kind of laughed and said that he didn't think they would do
that, but you never know."

After much trial and error, Carcia finally got OSCAR I to transmit a
signal on 145 MHz, just as the original satellite did. Since specific
technical literature on the satellite was unavailable, information
taken from 1962 QST and CQ articles assisted in the reconstruction of
the transmitter in the ARRL unit. Much care was given to salvage the
original components, although time had taken its toll on most of the
circuitry. As such, although the transmitter functions, the actual
keying of the transmitter is performed using a PIC beacon keyer. Power
is supplied using a standard wall-cube providing 12 V DC.

For more information on the AMSAT Space Symposium, including how to
register online, please visit the AMSAT Space Symposium web page at
www.amsat.org.

AN ADVANCED LICENCE - AN INTERESTING DEBATE

At the RTA symposium held in last month, the question "If South Africa
gets an advanced licence what should it look like?" was actively
discussed by chairmen and representative of several Gauteng clubs and
delegates present at the RTA. The consensus was yes, the SARL should
pursue this issue with ICASA at the Amateur Radio Symposium planned for
ICASA staff in February 2012. The discussion concluded that such a
license should support two main objectives: to involve more radio
amateurs in technology and to stimulate competition amongst radio
amateurs in all aspects of the hobby. What the requirements are for
such a licence had a wide range of responses and undoubtedly will still
be debated for some time. There was a fair amount of agreement that it
should be experimentally based and not an academic examination.

An Edited (irrelevant discussion outside the subject removed) version
of the debate is available on the web. The SARL will hold an Intecnet
on the subject on Sunday 30 October 2011 at 19:30. Clubs who did not
link their local repeaters to the teleconference bridge are invited to
start making arrangements.

SARL WEBSITE UPDATE

Peter Hers, ZS6PHD, reports that the major current problem appears to
arise where a single fault occurs and the transaction is terminated
before it can correctly perform all housekeeping. This in turn prevents
further transactions from executing, resulting in the "ASP 0113"
timeouts experienced. The system then takes some time to recover.

Current work is focused on stabilising the system, and this will take
priority over any other changes, improvements and fixes to previously
existing faults. Good progress has been made in ensuring that the
server is correctly set up to support our web site. Certain sections of
the site (Swopshop, QSL system) have been temporarily disabled to
reduce the number of faults which impact on the web site availability.
These will be restored as soon as availability has been improved.

As users will have noted, when it is operating correctly, the response
from the website is excellent. The processor can easily cope with the
load, and typically runs at less than 5% utilization. Bandwidth is
ample and is not a constraint at any time. We are tracking site
availability in various ways.

Peter has set up a special email address to log problems. If you find
an unusual problem PLEASE email this to . I do
scan the forum from time to time, to check that it is working
correctly, and in case any odd behaviour is reported, but please do not
rely on the forum to communicate problems. There is very little value
in continually reporting "ASP 0113" timeouts - we are fully aware of
these via system logging. At this stage we are not considering major
changes, such as a move to PHP scripting, or ASP.NET. The costs of this
would be prohibitive to the SARL.

Finally, please remember that every one working on the SARL web are
volunteers, and have jobs, families and other responsibilities, and
also like to play amateur radio, so all work is carried out in whatever
time becomes available!

CONTEST NEWS

The last SARL QRP Sprint for the year is taking place on the 22nd
October 2011. The rules can be found in the "Blue Book". This is a good
opportunity to test your mobile or QRP rig. Lets have some fun on the
22nd October.

SARL 80 m Club Contest.

The fifth leg of this contest took place on Wednesday 28 September with
RTTY and PSK activity. The committee received six logs representing
three clubs.

1st West Rand ARC, 33 points and 4 logs 2nd Sandton ARC, 9 points and 1
log 3rd Antique Wireless Association, 6 points and 1 log

After this fifth leg, the overall results a

1st West Rand ARC, 324 points and 24 logs 2nd Antique Wireless
Association, 61 points and 7 logs 3rd Bloemfontein RAC, 39 points and 2
logs 4th Northern Cape ARC, 29 points and 2 logs 5th Sasolburg ARC, 26
points and 1 log 6th Sandton ARC, 18 points and 2 logs 7th Port
Elizabeth ARS, 17 points and 1 log

The last contest in the series is a CW contest on Wednesday 30
November.

2011 SARL VHF/UHF Results for September leg

The following stats can be gained from the logs received. 5 Logs were
received, 3 stations operated analogue only, 1 station analogue &
digital whilst 1 operated digital only. On the analogue side there were
82 stations on 2 m, 6 stations on 4 m, 26 stations on 6 m, 34 stations
on 70 cm and 2 on 23 cm. On the digital side, there were 6 stations
working FSK441 on 6 m and 2 stations working FSK441 on 4 m.

The results are as follows:- Digital Contest 1st - Andre Botes,ZS2ACP,
44 785 points 2nd - Derek Gravett, ZS5Y, 19 954 points

Analogue Contest 1st - West Rand ARC, ZS6WR, 48 070 points 2nd -
Sasolburg ARK, ZS4SRK, 31 225 points 3rd - Magalies ARK, ZS6MRK, 12 879
points

Longest distance worked (km) 6 m - analogue, 171 - digital, 1181 4 m -
analogue, 78 - digital, 1181 2 m - analogue, 368 - digital, 460 70 cm -
analogue, 135 23 cm - analogue, 8

Overall results from both legs (March & September) Analogue 1st - West
Rand ARC, ZS6WR, 48 070 points 2nd - Sasolburg ARK, ZS6SRK, 31 225
points 3rd - Magalies ARK, ZS6MRK, 12 879 points

Digital 1st - Andre Botes, ZS2ACP, 183 641 points 2nd - Derek Gravett,
ZS5Y, 163 177 points 3rd - Pierre van Deventer, ZS6A, 113 758 points

The full results have been posted on the forum. The results will also
appear in the HF Happenings.

The "Lucky Draw" winner is ZS2ACP, Andre Botes.

PROPAGATION REPORT

Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP reports that solar activity remains low, but the
quiet is unlikely to last with so many sunspots turning towards Earth.
A new spot group emerged and was numbered Region 1 320. There are
currently ten numbered regions, several producing C-class events.

For the people doing their own frequency predictions the expected
effective sunspot number for the week will be around 80.

All the bands from 20 to 10 m will provide lots of fun with DX
opportunities at varies times of the day.

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

DIARY OF EVENTS

15/16 October - Jamboree on the air. 20 October - RA Examamjnation. 22
October - Last QRP-sprint for 2011. 30 October - Intechnet on proposed
advanced license. Till 31 October - ZL-stations with ZM prefixes and
ZL4RUGBY and ZL6RWC on the air. 4/6 November - AMSAT NA Space Symposium
in San Jose California. 13 November - Pears HF Competition 12:00 till
16:00 UTC. 19/20 November - SARL Field day competition. 20 November -
CW leg of 80m Club competition. 27 November - Digital Competition. 30
November - last day to send logs for Pears HF DX-expedition. 31 January
2012 - closing date for submitting papers for SA AMSAT Space Symposium.


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 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 Today every Sunday
morning at 10:00 CAT on 145,750 MHz in the Pretoria area, with relays
on 7 082, 7 205 and 17 760 kHz (250 kW and was 17 750 kHz). There is
also a podcast by ZS6RO. For a web-stream and Echolink by ZS6FCS, visit
www.sarl.org.za, click on 'Amateur Radio TODAY', go down the green
column and click on 'LISTEN ON THE WEB'. A repeat transmission can be
heard on Mondays at 16:30 UTC on 4 895 (100 kW and was 3 230 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 Gustav, Z6SBWN.

Thank you for listening, 73.
/EX
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