SOUTH AFRICAN RADIO LEAGUE NEWS SUNDAY 31 JULY 2016

Good morning and welcome to the weekly news bulletin of the South
African Radio League read by ................ [your name, call sign and
QTH]

You may tune in to the South African Radio League news bulletin on
Sunday mornings, at 08:15 Local Time in Afrikaans and at 08:30 Local
Time in English, on HF as well as on many VHF and UHF repeaters around
our country. Echolink listeners may connect to ZS0JPL for a relay.

This audio bulletin may be downloaded from the League website at
www.sarl.org.za where you will find this as well as previous bulletins
in text format under the news link on the left-hand side of the web
page. While you are there, you may sign up to receive future bulletins
by e-mail.

IN THE NEWS TODAY:

SARL SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING

SARL HF CONTESTS

RADIO ZS

NEW TRANSATLANTIC TESTS STARTING BETWEEN NAMIBIA & BRAZIL IN AUGUST

WHILE THE HF BANDS ARE DEAD VHF IS VERY MUCH ALIVE

AMSAT SA TO DEVELOP A ROADMAP FOR AN SDR SATELLITE PROJECT

ZULULAND AMATEUR RADIO CLUB AGM

HF PROPAGATION REPORT

and

UPCOMING EVENTS

** The SGM started at 10:00 with 179 members present and by proxy, 172
members were needed for a quorum. Etienne, ZS6EFN, was elected as
chairman of the meeting.

Shane, ZS6ZSB, presented the financial reports as available on the
League web site. The reports were approved with the provisions made in
the reports. The names of the League Members elected to Council were
made known.

Hans, ZS6AKV, and Johann, ZS1JM, gave feed back about the Antenna
Defence Fund and the status of the work being done. Tjerk, ZS6P, gave a
report on the SARL Hall of Fame.

At the first Council meeting held after the SGM, the following
appointments were made:

President: Nico van Rensburg, ZS6QL Vice President: Chris Turner, ZS6GM
Secretary: Etienne Naude, ZS6EFN Treasurer: Shane Bailey, ZS6ZSB
Members: Dennis Green, ZS4BS

Paul van Spronsen, ZS1V

Rassie Erasmus, ZS1YT

Geoff Levey, ZS6C

Louw Erasmus, ZS6LME

** On Sunday 7 August from 13:00 to 16:30 UTC the South African Radio
League's premier HF Contest series will start with the HF Phone
Contest. The aim of the HF Phone Contest is for participants to contact
as many amateurs in Southern Africa as possible on phone between 14 125
to 14 300 kHz, 7 063 to 7 100 and 7 130 to 7 200 kHz and 3 603 to 3 650
and 3 700 to 3 800 kHz. You can participate as a Single Operator Single
Band station, a Single Operator All Band station, a Multi Operator
Single Band station or a Multi Operator All Band station.

The exchange is a RS report and a consecutive serial number starting at
001. Multi-operator stations must read General Rules Rule 5.(c). Phone
contacts count 1 point. Count two points for each call area worked on
each band and count 2 points for each station contacted on all three
bands.

Submit your log in ADIF, Cabrillo or MS Excel format and labelled "your
call sign HF Phone", by 14 August 2016 by e-mail to .
Do not use any other e-mail address. Certificates are awarded to the
first three places and the highest single band score in the contest as
well as the Silent Keys Memorial Trophy SSB and the Joseph White
Trophy.

** The South African Radio League YL Sprint is a fun activity to
celebrate Women's Day between radio amateurs in South Africa. Call "YL
Sprint" on 9 August 2016 from 09:00 to 10:00 UTC. It is a phone sprint
with activity between 7 063 to 7 100 and 7 130 to 7 200 kHz and the
exchange is a RS report and YL or OM.

Contacts between YL stations are worth 5 points. Contacts between YL
and OM stations are worth 3 points and contacts between OM stations are
worth 1 point. Log sheets in ADIF, Cabrillo or MS Excel format and
labelled "your call sign YL Sprint", shall be submitted by 16 August
2016 by e-mail to .

Get all the information in the 2016 Blue Book for both these contests.

** New trophies for the SARL HF Contest series. The Contest Committee
wants to introduce two new trophies for the SARL HF Contest series. The
criteria for the first trophy is that it will be awarded to the YL who
achieves the highest score in the three HF Contests and for the second
trophy, that it will be awarded to the young person who achieves the
highest score in the three HF Contests. Is there someone who would like
to sponsor such a trophy? Please contact Dennis, ZS4BS, at
.

** The 48-page August issue of Radio ZS is available for download from
the Members Only section of the League's web site. Chris, ZS6EZ, takes
us on a trip to the Far East in the 9M0Z Story (there is a URL to get
an English copy of the article). Henry, ZS1AAW, and Kevin, ZS6KMD,
provide you with a number of projects to work on during the winter
evenings and Kevin reviews the mcHF SDR Transceiver. Read about the
Russian Woodpecker and find out about Spy Radio sets. This and more in
the August issue.

** Pieter Jacobs, V51PJ, in Namibia and Marcos Jose Da Silva Almeida,
PY1MHZ, in Brazil will be running daily skeds throughout August 2016,
and attempt to make the first ever two-way contact across the Atlantic
Ocean on 144 MHz. Pieter is equipped with 2 x 13 element stacked Yagi
array and 1,2 kilowatt of power, whereas Marcos will be using a 43
element horizontal Yagi at his seaside holiday home. Pieter says they
will test around sunrise at Namibia and again at sunset at Brazil when
cool air across the Atlantic could enhance Tropo Ducting. Apparently
there will be several amateurs along the East coast of South America
who would be monitoring the signals, as well as a few along our West
coast as far down as Cape Town. The bridging of the Atlantic has been
attempted many times before without success, and the Brendan Trophy has
been waiting for years in Belfast for the first amateurs to accomplish
it!

** Carl Minne, ZS6CBQ, at Krugersdorp reports that while the HF bands
are dead with mostly poor conditions, VHF is very much alive. He was on
144,300 MHz during the week from about 19:30 CAT and every evening
there were a few stations on the air such as ZS6BUN, ZR6CMG, ZS6QTF,
ZS6CBQ, ZS6UB, ZS6BSB and Keith ZS6TW on Friday evening. Please try
calling on this frequency if you are in the Gauteng area when you don't
hear anything on HF.

Saturday and Sunday mornings we concentrate on working far away
stations: Rickus ZS4A in Bethlehem, Pierre ZS4PF in Welkom, ZR4MF
Michael in Bloemfontein, also stations from Kriel, Secunda, Ermelo and
Phalaborwa. Rickus is also reporting that he is helping a few stations
to build antennas and soon we can look out for more stations from
Division 4.

"This Sunday morning 24 July I worked Pieter ZS4PAW in Koppies using a
Slim Jim with reports of 5/1 to 5/5, conditions were not very good.
Pieter has almost finished a horizontal Yagi, and hoping to hear him
5/9 in the near future. Quintin ZS6QTH at Onderstepoort also managed to
make a contact with ZS4A, but conditions were just not good enough for
Jaco ZR6CMG to log the contact. Pierre ZS4PF from Welkom was 5/9 at
Krugersdorp, he logged Rickus and was heard in Pretoria by Jaco and
Quintin, but the fast and deep QSB from Tropo Scatter did not allow
them to make a contact. Come and join the fun on weekends and during
the week."

** During the first AMSAT SA SDR conversation the participants
discussed various aspects of changing transponders on future satellite
missions to Software Defined Radio. The first step in the process is to
develop a roadmap. The first roadmap proposals will be discussed at the
group's next Skype conversation on Wednesday 10 August at 20:30. The
group is also working on setting up an information sharing platform.
Visit www.amsatsa.org.za for more information on how to become a member
of AMSAT SA and to join the SDR conversation.

** Applications for membership of the South African Radio League have
been received from the following persons:

ZS6XK John Hilton ZS6AQW Evert van der Horst ZS6LCC Lodewyk Pieterse
ZSL1166 Gerhard Brand Fourie

Any objections to the acceptance of the applications must reach the
Secretary before or on the Tuesday after this bulletin. The League now
has 1194 confirmed members for the next term; there are still many
renewals outstanding. If you have not yet renewed your membership,
please do so now. At the end of August you will cease to be a member if
you have not renewed. Thirty-three clubs have already renewed their
affiliation.

** At the AGM of the Zululand Amateur Radio Club, held on the 24th July
2016 at Tattenham, the following Committee members were elected to
serve the members of the club for the forthcoming year:

Chairman: Warren Snyders ZS5WOZ Vice Chairman: Gerald Scrooby ZS5GS
Treasurer: Willie Axford ZS5WI Secretary: Dawn Snyders ZS5ME

Members: Jo Snyders ZS5PO (News Editor)

We wish them well during their term of office and thank the outgoing
members for their hard work during their term of office.

** Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP, reports that the solar activity is expected
to be at very low levels. There are currently no sunspots visible.

If you want to do your own frequency predictions, the expected
effective sunspot number for the week will be less than 5.

The 20 meter band will provide lots of DX fun.

Please visit the web site spaceweather.sansa.org.za for further
information.

** Let's look at some upcoming events:

30 and 31 July - RSGB IOTA Contest 7 August - SARL HF Phone Contest 9
August - SARL YL Sprint 13 and 14 August - International Lighthouse and
Lightship Weekend 14 August - SARL Youth Net 21 August - SARL HF
Digital Contest 28 August - SARL HF CW Contest

** To conclude our bulletin a quick overview of our main news item: At
the first Council meeting held after the SGM, the following
appointments were made: President: Nico van Rensburg, ZS6QL Vice
President: Chris Turner, ZS6GM Secretary: Etienne Naude, ZS6EFN
Treasurer: Shane Bailey, ZS6ZSB Members: Dennis Green, ZS4BS

Paul van Spronsen, ZS1V

Rassie Erasmus, ZS1YT

Geoff Levey, ZS6C

Louw Erasmus, ZS6LME

And that brings us to the end of this bulletin

Clubs and individuals are invited to submit news items of interest to
radio amateurs and shortwave listeners, if possible, in both English
and Afrikaans, by following the news inbox link on the South African
Radio League web page. News items for inclusion in the bulletin should
reach the news team no later than the Thursday preceding the bulletin
date.

You are welcome to join us every Sunday morning for the weekly amateur
radio magazine programme 'Amateur Radio Today' at 10:00 Central African
Time. The programme can be heard on VHF and UHF repeaters countrywide
and on 7 082 kHz lower side-band and on 7 205 kHz and 17 760 kHz AM.
There is also a pod cast available from Dick Stratford, ZS6RO. A
rebroadcast can be heard on Monday evenings at 18:30 Central African
Time on 3 230 kHz AM.

We welcome your signal reports, comments and suggestions; please send
these by e-mail to . Sentech sponsors the radio
transmissions on the non-amateur frequencies.

You have listened to a news bulletin compiled by Emile Venter, ZS6V,
and read by ..............

From the news team, best wishes for the week ahead.

/EX

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