SOUTH AFRICAN RADIO LEAGUE NEWS SUNDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2017

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:

SOUTH AFRICAN RADIO LEAGUE NATIONAL FIELD DAY

BACKSCATTER SIGNALS FROM ACROSS THE ATLANTIC ON 144 MHZ

AMATEUR TELEVISION (ATV) STARTING IN CAPE TOWN

HAMNET EASTERN CAPE IS AT IT AGAIN

AWA CW ACTIVITY DAY THIS AFTERNOON

2017 BEACON BUILD-A-THON

HF PROPAGATION REPORT

and

UPCOMING EVENTS

** The South African Radio League National Field Day is on the air from
10:00 UTC on Saturday 11 February to 10:00 UTC on Sunday 12 February
2017. The aim is to work as many stations as possible on all the HF
amateur bands (excluding the 2 200, 630, 60, 30, 17 and 12 m bands)
using phone, CW, PSK31 and/or RTTY. The exchange is the number of
transmitters, the Field Day operating class and your Provincial
abbreviation. A RS or RST report is not required.

You and/or your Club can participate as Class A - Field Station, Multi
operator, Class B - Field Station, Multi operator, QRP, Class C - Field
Station, Single Operator, Class D - Field Station, Single Operator,
QRP, Class E - Ultra Light Portable or if you are not allowed out then
as Class F- General Stations.

Logs, in ADIF, Cabrillo or MS Excel format and labelled "your call sign
NFD," shall be sent by e-mail to by 19 February 2017.
A photo(s) of the station in operation (JPG format) MUST accompany
every log entry.

Check the 2017 SARL Blue Book for the rules of the AWA CW Activity Day
as well as the SARL National Field Day.

** Two companies, RS Components and Trax Interconnect, have made major
contributions to AMSAT SA's Kletskous CubeSat. RS Components have
supplied components for the next generation Electronic Power Supply
system (EPS) and the controller board. Trax Interconnect supplied the
PC Boards for the EPS, the controller board and the magnetic
stabilisation system. Their support for amateur radio and amateur radio
satellites is much appreciated.

** Pieter V51PJ at Rosh Pinah was running skeds with Marcos PY1MHZ in
Brazil on 144 MHz JT65b, when he was alerted by Bernie ZS4TX that he
could see Pieter's signal at -28 dB on the Moon. The Moon was at the
time very low down on the western horizon in Namibia, and Pieter was
beaming at 259 degrees. Later after the Moon had set, Bernie reported
that he could still see Pieter's JT65b signal on the waterfall, which
appears to be more than 900 km behind him across the Atlantic. When
Meteor bursts occurred, Bernie recorded a Doppler shift around 200
Hertz off frequency, and when he changed polarization from horizontal
to vertical the signals were weaker and did not decode.

Many years ago, Professor J.A. Gledhill and his team at Rhodes
University discovered strong Sporadic-E propagation near the South
Atlantic Anomaly at night. So one could infer that the medium, which
produced the above backscatter on VHF, might have been caused by
Sporadic-E clouds over the Atlantic Ocean. It could be worthwhile to
investigate this phenomenon further, such as finding the direction
where the reflected VHF signals peaked.

** Raoul Coetzee ZS1C announced that he is currently running ATV on
1265 MHz FM, about 4 Watts into a log periodic antenna with about 9 dB
gain. He can aim it in any direction of anybody interested to do a
test, and is located in Kraaifontein and is beaming in the direction of
Bellville and Brackenfell.

Raoul says that you can use an old FM analogue satellite receiver,
simply connect an antenna and tune. These receivers are not very
sensitive on their own, so he is looking at a suitable preamplifier
with a bandpass filter for 1,26 GHz. He is running a 4 MHz bandwidth,
so any bandwidth setting seems to work on the receiver. If you see his
call sign on a piece of wood, you found it!

The transmitter is a modified SM data transmitter, and he is only using
a small portion of its intended use. There is no sound yet as he needs
to build a 6 MHz oscillator, FM it and inject it with the composite
video into the main VCO in order for the satellite receiver to receive
the audio too. He would like to thank Leon Korkie, ZS1MM, for the
transmitter and information on how to modify it.

** According to Hennie Coetzer, ZS2HC, the Hamnet members, with the
assistance of the Border Radio Club, once again supplied communications
for the IronMan 70.3 in East London. Sunday 29th January saw the 10th
edition of this race and a bumper field of athletes.

Anthony ZS2BQ and Ivan ZS2ILN operated the VOC with the assistance of
Alistair ZS2AB, Andrew ZS2EL, Hennie ZS2HC, Nick ZS2NB, and Phil ZS2NP.
Garth ZS2AAR manned the cross band repeater providing coverage for
those not in reach of the town repeater. Adequate coverage of the event
was made possible by the team who handled both logistical and emergency
traffic for the event. A big thank you to all involved.

The East Londoners are not resting though - they are already preparing
for the Surfers Marathon on the 18th February where they will once
again be out flying the flag of amateur radio.

In Port Elizabeth, things have been happening as well. On Sunday 29th
January, Andrew Gray was on the beach at Sardinia bay when there was a
report of a possible drowning. Andrew contacted the Hamnet group and
several members arrived to assist with the search. The Hamnet members
offered spotters with communication between themselves on the emergency
simplex frequency of 145.225. NSRI, Coastal water rescue, and
paramedics were also on the scene.

The body was later spotted by helicopter and the search called off.
Thank you to those who responded.

PEARS and Hamnet Eastern Cape are also getting ready for a bumper
season with the Herald Mountain bike race on the 19th February followed
a week later by the road race.

A new event on the horizon for these outdoor enthusiasts is the Addo
Extreme 100 Mile (160Km) trail run. The event takes place over the
weekend of 10-12 March in the mountains around Addo and Kirkwood. The
terrain poses significant challenges - not only to competitors, but to
the radio hams too. Not only as far as communications are concerned,
but simply "getting there" will also be a challenge. The radio hams
will need to set-up camps in some very remote areas, but this is why
they do what they do!

** This afternoon from 13:00 - 15:00 UTC, you can participate in the
Antique Wireless Association CW Activity Day. The aim of the AWA CW
Activity Day is for participants to contact as many amateurs as
possible on the 20, 40 and 80 m amateur bands. The exchange is a RST
report, your name and you grid locator. You can take part as a single
operator all band, low power, a single operator all band, QRP, a single
operator single band, low power or a single operator single band, QRP.
Log sheets must be submitted by Monday 20 February 2017 to
.

** Leon, ZR6LU, reports, "There is a group of active amateurs who have
all built their own beacons successfully and are all actively beaconing
around the country and the world. The record is currently somewhere
around 19 000 km on 200 mW or something of that order.

The beacons were constructed mostly under my supervision, although some
guys were winding better toroids than I wind and making much better
Perspex cases anyway.

The demonstration beacon is currently hosted in Cape Town and anyone
can apply to host it for a while. Current plans are to move it to Port
Elizabeth next and then maybe to Kwazulu-Natal. It is small, the size
of a thick paperback.

We want to repeat the success of last year's Build-A-Thon and have thus
organised the 2017 Beacon Workshop for 11 March 2017 with even more and
better inputs from the guys who have all done it already. There will be
about an hour of discussions in the morning, followed by hands-on
melting of solder and bending of wires!

There are still a few kits available for sale to the more technical
amateurs, as well as completed kits that were constructed by fellow
amateurs ready to go.

Contact me on 082 573 5580 for more information."

** Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP, reports that the solar activity is expected
to be at low levels. There are a few sunspots visible but none are
actively flaring.

If you want to do your own frequency predictions, the expected
effective sunspot number for the week will be around 3.

The 15 to 30m bands will provide lots of DX fun.

Please visit the website spaceweather.sansa.org.za for further
information.

** Let's look at some upcoming events:

5 February - AWA CW Activity 11 - 12 February - SARL National Field Day
18 February - SARL Youth Sprint 18 February - SDR Workshop 25 February
- West Rand ARC Flea Market 26 February - SARL Digital Contest 4 March
- CTARC Bumper Flea Market 5 March - SARL Hamnet 40m Contest

** To conclude our bulletin a quick overview of our main news item: The
South African Radio League National Field Day is on the air from 10:00
UTC on Saturday 11 February to 10:00 UTC on Sunday 12 February 2017.
The aim is to work as many stations as possible on all the HF amateur
bands (excluding the 2 200, 630, 60, 30, 17 and 12 m bands) using
phone, CW, PSK31 and/or RTTY.

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

======================= Message Ends =======================

To edit or remove your entry from this mailing list go to
www.sarl.org.za/members/admin/maildat.asp