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This Week's News

IRTS Radio News Bulletin Sunday May 30th 2021.
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IRTS Contest News

Results of the IRTS 40 metres Counties Contest held on 9th May have now
been published, see www.irts.ie/results for full details. Band
conditions on 40 metres were very poor on the day, with almost no short
skip. County multipliers were therefore in short supply for EI and GI
stations. However, there was good support from overseas stations, which
accounted for almost 80% of the QSOs logged.
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Linking La Crosse, Wisconsin and Ireland via Amateur Radio

La Crosse is a city on the Mississippi River, in western Wisconsin in
the USA and this year in mid-august they will be holding their 16th
annual Irishfest. What's different this year is that amateur radio is
being introduced into the programme and the Riverland Amateur Radio
Club is issuing an invitation to Irish amateur radio clubs and
individuals to get involved in linking La Crosse with Ireland during
the festival. The plan is that operations will be held on Saturday
August 14th between 1600 and 2200utc on 14.260MHz. They will also
operate on the Riverland Club's repeater on Yaesu Wires-X room 63956.
Shawn KD9KGQ would love to hear from any Irish amateurs interested in
participating in the event. Email Shawn at eistim68 at gmail.com. The
La Crosse Irishfest website can be accessed at
www.irishfestlacrosse.org and the Riverland Amateur Radio Club's web
page is rarc.qth.com
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CW Field Day

IRTS CW Field Day takes place next weekend the 5th and 6th of June.
This contest is for portable stations and is on the CW contest
preferred segments of the contest bands from Top Band to 10 metres. It
runs for 24 hours from 1500 UTC on Saturday 5th June and there is a 24
hour section and a restricted 6 hour section. The first weekend in June
is when a number of IARU Region 1 societies would normally run CW Field
Day contests and has always been a good opportunity for European CW
operators test their skills in a portable environment. The covid
pandemic has affected field day and other contests over the past year
and no IRTS field day events were held in 2020. Following improvements
in the public health situation in recent months, we decided to proceed
with our field day events this year, subject to restrictions and
precautions that have been inserted into the contest rules. We note
that DARC, the German national society, has decided to cancel its CW
Field Day this year; while it acknowledges the improved health
situation, it is concerned that regulations or restrictions may not be
uniform throughout the country. The RSGB CW Field Day contest is going
ahead, so we can expect plenty of activity from UK portable stations.
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Contest University and Hamvention Forums 2021 now on YouTube

If you missed the Contest University 2021 on May 20th and the
Hamvention Forums on May 21st, they are now available online. The
complete program is about 8 hours and 15 minutes long. Here are some of
the presentations available. Preparing Your Station for Competition by
Frank W3LPL: "Contest Categories - Make the Most of Your Entry" by Mark
M0DXR: "Youth - the Future of Contesters" by Phillip DK6SP: "Contesting
from Russia" by Willy UA9BA: "There is Nothing Magic About Propagation"
by Jose CT1BOH: "Transceiver Performance for the HF DX and Contest
Operator" by Royce N0CB: 2021 CQ Contest Hall of Fame Presentation by
John K1AR.
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First Mauritius Satellite

Jean Marc, 3B8DU, announced the following on May 23rd: The first 3B8
satellite will be sent to the ISS (by JAXA) on the NASA SpaceX resupply
mission-22 on the 3rd of June 2021 and will be deployed in June by the
KIBO robotic arm. The callsign is 3B8MIR (MIR-1 meaning Mauritius
Imagery & Radio-communication Satellite 1). Payloads are a camera and a
digipeater (bent tube) which will be made available to the HAM
community worldwide when satellite is not downloading images or used
for experimental purposes. The uplink will be on 145.9875MHz and the
downlink on 436.925 MHz, 9K2 GMSK, as coordinated with IARU. More
information will be available on spacemauritius.com soon.
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National Shortwave Listeners Club

The National Shortwave Listeners Club meets on the Zoom platform on
Sunday nights and all shortwave listeners are invited to join in. The
club will continue to meet during the summer months and meetings will
always include information of interest to newcomers and old timers in
the hobby and there is always an opportunity to ask questions on any
area of interest. Further training for the HAREC examination will
resume after the summer break and anyone interested should secure their
place by making contact through www.swl.ie
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Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

The Interoperable Radio System aboard the International Space Station
is active in cross-band repeater mode through mid-June, according to
the ARISS website. The cross-band repeater operates on an uplink of
145.990MHz, with a 67 Hz tone, and a downlink of 437.800MHz. In
mid-June, the radio will change to the Automatic Packet Reporting
System mode. The radio will be turned off on the 2nd of June during the
Russians' Extra vehicular activity (EVA) when two Russian cosmonauts
will spend over six hours outside the Space Station carrying out
scheduled tasks and experiments. The very next day SpaceX will launch
its upgraded Cargo Dragon vehicle from Kennedy Space Center to the
station at 1:29 p.m. EDT. It will automatically dock on June 5 at 5
a.m. to the Harmony module's space-facing international docking adapter
carrying about 7,300 pounds of science, supplies and hardware. Dragon
is also carrying the first set of new solar arrays that will be
installed on upcoming spacewalk to augment the orbital lab's power
system.
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On the Air next week

The UK Six Metre Group Summer E's Contest is on next weekend starting
at 1300utc on Saturday the 5th and running for 24 hours. The modes
permitted are SSB, CW, FM, AM, SSTV & RTTY. MGM Contacts are not
permitted. See uksmg.org for the full rules. The 10-10 Int. Open Season
PSK Contest will be run from 0000Z, Jun 5th to 2400Z, Jun 6th on 10
metres only. All contacts must be 2-way BPSK31. As mentioned earlier in
the bulletin, the CW field day runs from 1500utc on Saturday next for
24 hours. Another CW contest, this one for the Tisza Cup, runs from
1200 on Saturday, also for twenty-four hours. You may work everyone but
higher points are scored for working countries on the Tisza River like
Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, and Serbia. The exchange is report
and CQ Zone. The Japanese KANHAM contest is aimed at YL and youth
operators and runs from 0600 on the Saturday the 5th for twenty-four
hours. JA stations will send RST plus Prefecture number while YL's or
young operators will add the letter Y to the exchange. This is a good
contest for anyone working towards achieving the Japanese Prefecture
Award. Stations outside Japan just send RST while YL's or young
operators should add the letter Y.

DX news VK9XX should be active from Christmas Island from the 28th of
May for between two and three weeks, during his off duty hours, mainly
operating FT8. He will be using a Yaesu FT-857D and a simple Sotabeams
antennas plus an ATAS mobile vertical.

Operators Dennis K2SX, John K4BAI, Jim K4QPL and Johnnie KR4R will be
active as VP5/homecall from Providenciales Island (North America-002)
between May 25th and June 1st. QSL via their home callsigns. EO30A is
active celebrating the 30th anniversary of the independence of Ukraine.
QSL only via LOTW or EQSL

Club station T71CC will be active on 80 to 10 metres until June 5th.
QSL direct via t70A.

Several Hawaiian Amateur Radio operators will activate the special
event station K6K to celebrate 'King Kamehameha the Great and Hawaii's
Rich History' on June 11th.
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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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