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This Week's News

IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday April 11th 2021
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April 18th World Amateur Radio Day

Sunday next April 18, is World Amateur Radio Day (WARD). This year
marks the 96th anniversary of the International Amateur Radio Union
(IARU), founded at the 1925 International Radiotelegraph Conference in
Paris IARU has chosen "Amateur Radio: Home but Never Alone" as the
theme for WARD 2021. The theme acknowledges that during our physical
distancing to reduce the spread of COVID-19, amateur radio stands out
as a welcome respite for its variety of activities and opportunities.
All amateur radio operators are asked to get active on the day and help
celebrate the event. Look out for special event callsigns from many
countries, several with the suffix WARD.
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IRTS Annual General Meeting

The deadline for reserving your place at the IRTS Annual General
Meeting being held online on April 24th at 1100 is Saturday next April
17th. Details, including annual committee and financial reports were
made available to all members in the Spring edition of Echo Ireland.
Clubs are invited to give short promotional presentations on their
activities in the hour leading up to the Annual General Meeting.
Contact Declan EI9FVB for details.
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National Shortwave Listeners Club.

The inaugural weekly meeting of the newly formed National Shortwave
Listeners Club was held on the Zoom platform last Sunday evening and
attracted 60 attendees. Online classes continue on Tuesday, Wednesday
and Thursday evenings with over 100 students hoping to get licensed in
the coming months. Club meetings are held on the Zoom platform every
Sunday evening at 2000. Information about the new club is available on
swl.ie.
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South Eastern Amateur Radio Group

The South Eastern Amateur Radio Group EI2WRC will be QRV as EI2IMD on
Saturday April 24th as an official Marconi station for the
International Marconi Day 2021. The station will be active solely from
Tramore, Co Waterford. Tramore has a direct connection with Marconi as
he often stayed there with his aunt, a Mrs. Cookman who resided at The
Cove, Tramore. Due to the current travel situation, the organisers, the
Cornish Radio Amateur Club have allowed the EI2WRC members to run the
special call from their own homes, A special QSL card will be made
available once printed. More details will be made known in the coming
weeks in IRTS news articles and on the SEARG Facebook page and the
EI2IMD QRZ page. For more information on International Marconi Day on
April 24th, log on to www.gx4crc.com; For anyone that wishes to find
out more about the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group and their
activities you can drop them an email to southeasternarg /at/ gmail.com
or please feel free to go along to any their meetings. You can check
their website www.searg.ie and you can also join them on Facebook and
follow them on Twitter.
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Contest News

Results of the IRTS 80 Metres Evening Counties Contest held on 23rd
March have now been published: 50 transmitting station logs and one SWL
log were submitted, covering almost 1,500 QSOs during this one-hour
event. The logs show activity by stations in 27 EI and GI counties and
12 overseas DXCC entities. See www.irts.ie/results for the full
results. The 2 Metres Fixed `Home QTH' contest held on Easter Monday
was well supported, with plenty of activity for the full hour,
particularly on the FM channels. Logs received to date, which are
listed at www.irts.ie/logs show that more than 60 EI and GI stations
took part in the contest Logs should be sent to
irts.contests/at/gmail/dot/com Also in contest news, the final UKEICC
80 metres SSB contest of the 2020-2021 series took place on Wednesday
last: there was a strong EI representation at this event, with16 EI
stations submitting logs - compared to 39 UK stations. Enda EI2II was
at the mic for the EI bonus station, EI5G. The final CW contest of the
current series will take place on Wednesday 28th April.
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YOTA

Are you a youth Coordinator for your club? Do you help run events aimed
at Youth in Ham Radio? Do you have ideas for ways to get more youth
into Radio? The IRTS youth coordinator Niall, EI6HIB, is putting
together a group chat for anyone involved in facilitating Youth Radio
activities in EI. The purpose of this group is to generate ideas for
involving young people and ultimately to show young people how great
this hobby is! Email yota /at/ irts.ie if you want more information or
want to be added to the group chat. In a further youth development
announced this week, the IARU Region 1 Youth Working Group, are very
happy to be co-operating with MRASZ, the Hungarian Amateur Radio
Society to introduce a new 12 hour contest aimed at younger operators.
This years' sessions will be held on Saturdays 22nd May (0800 - 1959),
17th July (1000 - 2159) and 30th December (1200 - 2359). More details
will be announced later.
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On the Air next week

The Holyland DX Contest starts at 2100 on Friday on next and runs to
2100 on Saturday. The modes are CW, SSB and Digital. Stations in Israel
give report plus area and all others give report plus serial number.
The Worked All Provinces of China contest, CW and SSB, starts at 0600
on Saturday next and finishes at 0559 on Sunday morning. BY stations
send report and province and all others send report and serial number.
The YU DX Contest starts at 0700 on Saturday and runs for 24 hours on
CW and SSB. YU stations send report and county and all others send
report and serial number The CQMM DX CW Contest starts at 0900 on
Saturday and finishes at 2359 on Sunday.

DX news DXers will be delighted to hear that two DXpeditions to the 2nd
most wanted DXCC Entity, Bouvet Island, have been announced recently.
The Rebel DX Group using the callsign 3Y0I state on their Facebook page
that they will leave Cape Town on December 15th 2021 and plan to spend
up to 30 days on Bouvet, running eight stations. The Intrepid-DX Group
have announced a DXpedition to Bouvet, with fourteen DXers leaving from
Cape Town in January 2023 for a planned 20 days operation on the
island. Both teams are appealing to the amateur population for further
funding for their trips. JW1I is the club callsign for the
Meteorological Station on Bear Island, EU-027, Svalbard. The operator
is Erling, JW/LB2PG, who is expected to be active until mid-May. QSL
via the bureau. On April 18th, KC4USV will be on from McMurdo Station,
Ross Island, Antarctica-011 on 20 metres FT8 & SSB.
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Limerick Clare Amateur Radio Club

The Hex Beam, which was ordered from Waldi SP7IDX (RIP) and delivered
in November, was assembled and mounted on the Air Mast during the week,
by members of the Limerick Clare Amateur Radio Club. Cabling has been
completed and the rotator tested. There is an issue with the antenna
position- as indicated on the rotator control unit. Looks like the
feed-back potentiometer on the rotator needs to be repaired or
replaced. It is not a show-stopper as rotation and end stop safety
features are working perfectly. The bands covered are 10, 12, 15, 17
and 20 metres. While the VSWR is satisfactory on all bands, it slightly
favours the SSB section. The club plans to be active on Marconi Day.
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VO1FN 144 MHz Trans-Atlantic monitoring station

Frank, VO1HP reports that the VO1FN 144 MHz Trans-Atlantic monitoring
station will be reactivated by the end of May 2021. This SDR receiver
will be using SDR Console V3 and WSJT-x and will report to the PSK
Reporter website as VO1FN. The station will be located in St. John's,
Newfoundland and will use two stacked 5-element 144 MHz LFA-Q quad
style Yagis from Innovantennas. The antennas will be pointing at
western Europe and the receiver will be listening on 144.174 MHz which
is the FT8 frequency.
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That is the news for this week. Items for inclusion in next week's
radio news can be submitted by email to newsteam/at/irts/dot/ie for
automatic forwarding to both the radio and printed news services. The
deadline is midnight on Thursday. Urgent items for the news may be
telephoned to News Editor Dave EI4BZ on 087-6290574.

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