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A Summer of E-Skip
Tired of the lousy conditions on the HF bands? Come join the crowd on the "Magic Band." Each summer regardless of where the sunspot cycle is,
sporadic E -- or E-skip -- blooms on 6 meters and sometime even on the bands above that. What often appears to be a dead band jumps to life with signals -- some relatively close, only hundreds of miles away -- but some representing worldwide DX on 6 meters.
New 70 MHz beacon in Portugal
A new 4 meter beacon in Portugal will operate on 70.166 MHz with the callsign CS5BFM. Sited at locator IM59rd,
the antenna, which is a horizontal doublet dipole, is at 12m above sea level. The power level is at 10W
using A1A mode. Reports can be e-mailed to
geral@ct1arr.org or the DX-Summit Spot Database.
Danish 4m band extended
The Danish 4m band allocation has been extended. You will now be able to find Danish station on
69.9875 to 70MHz; 70.2375 to 70.2875 MHz and 70.4875 to 70.5125 MHz. [RSGB]
National Railways on the Air weekend
Bishop Auckland Amateur Radio Club is coordinating the National Railways on the Air Weekend that will take
place on Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 September. This date celebrates the anniversary of the first steam powered
passenger railway, which took place on 27 September 1825. The first passenger train ran on a line in the North
East of England from Darlington to Stockton. The Club is expecting to operate the special event station GB2EVR
at the Eden Valley Railway. If you would like to take part by running a station, approach your nearest preserved
railway, ask if they are celebrating the birth of passenger railways in this country and would they like to have
an amateur radio station as part of their event to promote awareness of their railway. Once you have their agreement,
apply for a special event licence in the usual way with Ofcom.
Please leave plenty of time for this application to be published. When you have the details of the station, please
register at www.barac.m0php.net. Please click on the
‘Register for the Railways on the Air Weekend’ link and enter details of your special event station in the contact box.
Icom to broadcast from WWII sea fort
This summer, Icom UK is to sponsor a unique radio station on the outskirts of Kent.
In fact this special station called Red Sands Radio will be
8.5 miles offshore from Whitstable on the North coast of Kent in an old WWII Army Sea Fort on the Red Sands.
The radio station, which will be on-air from early July, will be broadcasting to 1,000's of listeners in Kent
on 1278kHz and via the Internet at http://www.redsandonline.co.uk.
As part of the sponsorship agreement, Icom UK are planning to operate an Amateur Radio special event station. Ofcom has issued GBORSR the special call sign for this occasion.
Icom will be broadcasting on HF using an IC-756PROIII in the evening and on VHF/UHF in the day. Icom UK also plan to conduct D-Star transmissions into a repeater system and the Internet. A vertical antenna will be affixed to the stanchions on the Southern Gun Tower roof to support the
communications.
The Red Sands forts in the Thames Estuary
Project-Redsand is a Registered Charity that aims to preserve the Red Sands Army Fort as they are the last complete set of its kind in the world.
Red Sands Radio is part of that task but in addition has the ambition to provide real 'Local Radio for Local People'.
Programme Director, Bob Le-Roi said, 'Icom have a mutual interest in what we are doing & we’re delighted they’re aboard. We’re offering Icom UK an opportunity to broadcast world-wide during this summer transmission period.'
He added, 'preparing the Fort for broadcasting is a mammoth task. We install generators, set up the radio station, erect an antenna system and make it habitable. It will be a big job for us all.'
Icom UK Managing Director Phil Hadler said, 'We very much enjoyed the programmes from Red Sands Radio last year, it was a breath of fresh air hearing something different, that was topical and local, that played a wide range of music. We as a specialist organisation realised how difficult it was to pull off the initiative and are pleased to be supporting the project hereon'
Radio Red Sands launches in early July 2008.
For more details of this unique station including operating times and frequencies stay tuned to this website
http://www.icomuk.co.uk or
http://www.hamlife.co.uk
| August, 2008 | |
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