EI22WAW in the log

From 1st January to 31st December 2017 Irish Radio Amateurs will be on air with nine special calls – EI11WAW through to EI99WAW.  Each call will be associated with one of the counties making up the Wild Atlantic Way.  Each call will have its own distinctive QSL card depicting a highlight of the county linked to the call.

Today, I caught up with my fifth one...EI22WAW on 20m CW. There was a bit of a comedy of errors with this one. I was adjusting the morse key beforehand to try and get a smaller gap and sure enough, it jammed just before I gave a signal report! After some frantic adjusting, it got the report across ok.

The signals was quite weak but strong enough to make a contact when the European stations weren't calling.

Four more to go.

More info about the Wild Atlantic Way award in this previous post.

World Handball Championships in Jan 2017...TM57A, TM57D, TM57H & TM57N

The 25th World Handball Championships are being held in France from 11th to 29th January 2017 and there are four special event stations on the air ...TM57A, TM57D, TM57H and TM57N.

Today, I worked the 4th station on CW.

16/01/2017 ...TM57H ...3.5 MHz ... CW
18/01/2017 ...TM57A ...7 MHz ... CW
22/01/2017 ...TM57N ...7 MHz ... CW
24/01/2017 ...TM57D ...3.5 MHz ... CW

The four callsigns H A N D spell HAND and as you can see from the image above, the four QSL cards when assembled show a ball in the centre....i.e. Handball.

From the organisers website....
The 25th Handball World Championship will be held in France from 11th to 29th January.
The city of Metz, will receive in its Arena the teams of Spain, Slovenia, Macedonia, Iceland and Tunisia. AMRA was keen to participate in its own way at this event, so the codes TM57H - TM57A - TM57N and TM57D were allocated for the period from 15 to 29/01. The four codes thus forming HAND, a special QSL will be edited for each of these indicative and the four QSL will form a puzzle as below. We look forward to your participation.


The QSL manager is Marc F-11734 and they will QSL via the bureau. See QRZ.COM

Presentation by John EI7IG at the TAPR Digital Conference in the USA

In 2016, John Ronan EI7IG traveled to the ARRL-TAPR Digital Communication Conference in the US where he gave a presentation on using APRS (Amateur Packet Reporting System) to track vehicles and bikes on the Sean Kelly cycle event.

The video of the talk was put up on YouTube in the last week by Gary Pearce, KN4AQ as part of his Ham Radio Now video series.



In the talk, John outlines some of the technical issues and difficulties in covering this large cycle event and making sure that the emergency services can be deployed where they are needed.

Additional info...
1) Sean Kelly Tour
2) John EI7IG's website

EI33WAW in the log

From 1st January to 31st December 2017 Irish Radio Amateurs will be on air with nine special calls – EI11WAW through to EI99WAW.  Each call will be associated with one of the counties making up the Wild Atlantic Way.  Each call will have its own distinctive QSL card depicting a highlight of the county linked to the call.

Today, I caught up with my fourth one on 80m CW...EI33WAW. Five more to go.

More info about the Wild Atlantic Way award in this previous post.

EI77WAW in the log

From 1st January to 31st December 2017 Irish Radio Amateurs will be on air with nine special calls – EI11WAW through to EI99WAW.  Each call will be associated with one of the counties making up the Wild Atlantic Way.  Each call will have its own distinctive QSL card depicting a highlight of the county linked to the call.

Today, I caught up with my third one on 80m CW...EI77WAW. Six more to go.

More info about the Wild Atlantic Way award in this previous post.

Rough guide to activity levels for the Wild Atlantic Way callsigns

The Wild Atlantic Way award has been running since the 1st of January 2017 and already, a number of overseas stations have worked all 9 calls.

If we make the assumption that the more active a station is then the more views they will get on their QRZ.COM page, this is a rough breakdown of the activity levels of the WAW calls so far.

Results of the 2017 IRTS 80m Counties Contest on New Year's Day

The annual IRTS 80 metre contest was held on the 1st of January 2017 and the full results are now available HERE

The chart above shows how the number of entries have changed over the years. While they are down on the initial years, they have  increased since 2014. It's good to see that the entries for the SSB/CW section have reached an all time high and now make up roughly half of all entries.

Slim Jim Vertical Half-Wave for 27 MHz & 28 MHz

Another one from an old magazine article. This design is for a basic folded half-wave vertical for the 11m CB band on 27MHz but it can also be adapted very easily for 28Mhz or 29Mhz. For 10m operation, try reducing the half wave section to 5.10 metres and the quarter wave section to 2.53 metres.

It really is a case of experimenting and see how you get on. It's likely the biggest challenge will be the mechanical construction rather than adjusting the VSWR.

One particular advantage of this antenna is that the quarter wave tuning section effectively puts the radiating element higher above ground level. This fact alone can have a significant effect on the performance of the antenna as it begins to get clear of buildings, electricity wires and other clutter near ground level.

A lot of novice CBer's get fixated on 'advertised gain' and different types of antennas whereas they should be concentrating on getting a decent antenna up as high as possible.

While the Slim Jim won't be as good as say a Yagi beam up on a tower, it should still perform pretty well.

EI44WAW in the log

From 1st January to 31st December 2017 Irish Radio Amateurs will be on air with nine special calls – EI11WAW through to EI99WAW.  Each call will be associated with one of the counties making up the Wild Atlantic Way.  Each call will have its own distinctive QSL card depicting a highlight of the county linked to the call.

Today, I caught up with my second one on 80m CW...EI44WAW in County Mayo. Seven more to go.

More info about the Wild Atlantic Way award in this previous post.

Ideas for radio clubs...

It's pretty obvious that a lot of radio clubs in Ireland and in the UK have a declining membership and many are not attractive to newcomers.

One of the more active areas in the UK is in Essex and the Essex Ham website has plenty of ideas and tips on how to make clubs more attractive and relevant.

One of these is to have a skills night where there is something for everyone...newbie and experienced alike.

http://www.essexham.co.uk/skillsformula

It obviously may not work for all clubs but there is plenty of info on that site that clubs might find useful.

New website for the Duhallow Repeater Group

The Duhallow Repeater Group operates the 70cms repeater EI7SMR and the 4 metre Simplexer EI4SMR on Seefin in County Cork. I have put together a basic website for the group which gives some details about their systems.

You can visit it at http://duhallowrepeatergroup.blogspot.ie/

2017 Wild Atlantic Way Award

From 1st January to 31st December 2017 Irish Radio Amateurs will be on air with nine special calls – EI11WAW through to EI99WAW.  Each call will be associated with one of the counties making up the Wild Atlantic Way.  Each call will have its own distinctive QSL card depicting a highlight of the county linked to the call.

QSL requests via Clublog or the Buro.  Requests for a Direct QSL via Clublog or to EI6AL enclosing $2, or €2 via paypal to payments@irts.ie

A Certificate will be made available for download to any station that works all nine calls,  any band any mode.  Apply by email to QSL manager EI6AL giving name and call.  A certificate can also be sent by post – send €5 ($5) to cover postage either through Clublog, direct to EI6AL or via paypal to payments@irts.ie

.My first QSO for 2017 in the log :o) ......Dave EI4BZ operating as EI99WAW on 80m CW at 00:10 UTC. Eight to go.