Amateur Radio Newsline Report 2125 for July 20, 2018 Audio https://www.arnewsline.org/s/Report2125.mp3 *** CLOSED CIRCUIT ADVISORY **** The following is a closed circuit advisory and not for broadcast. This is a special, extended newscast and will contain 3 segments and 2 ID breaks to accommodate an expanded report on the World Radiosport Team Championship. Thank you. ** Amateur Radio Newsline Report Number 2025 with a release date of Friday, July 20, 2018 to follow in 5-4-3-2-1. The following is a QST. Contest season heats up in Korea. A smartphone app provides a gateway to ham radio - and in this special expanded edition of Amateur Radio Newsline, we revisit the World Radiosport Team Championships. **** BILLBOARD CART HERE ** CONTEST SEASON HEATS UP IN KOREA JIM/ANCHOR: We begin this week's newscast with the good news that if you think the championship season is over, think again. With two big summer contests behind us, one of the next big competitions will take place in Korea. The focus here is on amateur radio direction-finding, or foxhunting - as Jason Daniels VK2LAW tells us. JASON: Just in case you can't get enough of the big contest scene, hams are now preparing for the action to shift to Korea where the country's natural landscape will share the spotlight with some of the hobby's best in foxhunting. The 19th World Amateur Radio Direction Finding Championships will be hosted by the Korean Amateur Radio League not far from another prominent contest venue - the 2018 Winter Olympics location in Pyeong Chang. The championship search for low-power transmitters will be held September 2 through 8th. According to the latest bulletin from the Korean radio league, 418 amateurs representing 25 countries have committed to participate so far. The panel of jurors consists of hams from Belgium, Sweden, Canada, Ukraine and Japan. The 18th World ARDF championships were held in Bulgaria in 2016. For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Jason Daniels VK2LAW. (KOREAN AMATEUR RADIO LEAGUE) ** AUSTRALIAN SCHOOL SESSION GOES SKY HIGH JIM/ANCHOR: Imagine having a guest speaker at your public school who is some 250 miles above the Earth. Well, youngsters in Melbourne, Australia didn't have to imagine. It really happened - and just as planned. Here Robert Broomhead VK3DN with those details. ROBERT: Just as planned, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station kept her appointment with the students at the Essex Heights Primary School in Melbourne Australia on the evening of Tuesday, July 17th. As the ISS approached Australia's southern coast at 27,500 kilometers per hour, the youngsters had their first conversations that took place more than 400 kilometers, or almost 250 miles, above the earth. Ham radio made it possible. "This is your little moment in history, your opportunity to do something that very few people are able to do," moderator Ciaran Morgan M0XTD had told them. From the north, Shane Lynd VK4KHZ, put out the call to astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor KG5TMT and Ciaran set the discussion in motion from his QTH in England. The students cheered and then took turns at the microphone with their questions: how does the body react to being in space? What foods do you miss most? For the children, it was ham radio's finest moment as the dialogue went forward courtesy of a telebridge between Shane in Queensland and NA1SS, the International Space Station Amateur Radio Club outside Washington, D.C. It lasted barely 10 minutes but for those twelve children joined by 400 family and friends in the school hall it would be a memory forever. The event was featured the following evening on Australia's Channel 7 evening TV News service and again the following night on Channel 10s "The Project," a news and current events talk show. For the rest of the world, you can watch the YouTube by pickup up the link from on the school's website. Visit www dot essexheightsps dot vic dot edu dot au (www.essexheightsps.vic.edu.au) For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Robert Broomhead VK3DN ** ** K2BSA SCOUTS ON THE AIR IN CALIFORNIA JIM/ANCHOR: Scouts in the U.S. are activating K2BSA again this week and opening registration for their big on-air happening, Jamboree on the Air. Bill Stearns NE4RD has that report. BILL: This week in Radio Scouting we have 2 activations of the K2BSA callsign, one activation from Scout Camps on the Air, and Jamboree on the Air registration is open for 2018. Chris Clark, W6CBC, will be activating K2BSA/6 at Camp Chawanakee in Shaver Lake, CA, from July 28 through August 4. Chris will be operating a station at the camp in preparation for JOTA. Frederick Donkin, KA7MMM, will be activating K2BSA/9 at the National Order of the Arrow Conference in Bloomington, IN, from July 30 through August 4. The NOAC is a conference that is held every 3 years and is the second biggest national scouting activity. BSA Troop 20 Amateur Radio Club will be activating their callsign WS5BSA at the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Vic Ely, MN, from July 30 through August 4. The Canoe Trek will set up at daily campsites and make QSOs until 0130 UTC. They will most likely work 40/20 meters due to time of day and latitude. They are also hoping that one or two stations will try to work a schedule with them every evening. Find their contact information on our SCOTA.US site. Jamboree on the Air and Jamboree on the Internet is just a short 3 months away now. Registration has been opened and has been greatly simplified. You can find the registration page with our shortcut of jota2018.k2bsa.net , that's J O T A 2 0 1 8 .k2bsa.net or by searching the jotajoti.info site. Stations can register events with Boy Scout or Girl Scout units. You can even edit your event information after you have registered, so be sure to include a current email address and you'll receive a link to your registration for updating. Another event that is just 12 months away is World Jamboree. This is a quadrennial event that is held in locations all over the Scouting World every four years. In 2019 it will be hosted in North America at the Summit Bechtel Reserve in West Virginia. Our callsign for this event will be NA1WJ. You'll be hearing more about this event as it nears. For now, check out our landing page for it at na1wj.net. For more information on JOTA or Radio Scouting, or to signup for our JOTA newsletter, please visit our website at k2bsa.net. For Amateur Radio Newsline and the K2BSA Amateur Radio Association, this is Bill Stearns, NE4RD. ** YOUNG HAMS' INVITATION TO 'BREAKFAST' JIM/ANCHOR: Another way to hook youngsters on ham radio in the internet age is to start with their smartphones! Paul Braun WD9GCO tells us how one ham did it. PAUL: One of the hot topics in ham radio today is how to attract new, young hams to the hobby in a world that's full of the internet and cell phones. One ham, Denny Johnson KD5DLJ, has found a way to combine all of those. His initial plan was to get the school systems in his area to use the Skywarn training materials as the curriculum in a science class, and then get the students Skywarn certified. Since most of them had smartphones, his plan was to create a channel on Zello, a popular app that allows mobile phones to behave very much like an HT. He figured it would bring them in contact with Skywarn spotters who were also hams, and hopefully spark interest. And then he started thinking bigger: JOHNSON: So I created this Zello channel, and I thought, "You know, we need to do something a little broader, outside of Skywarn" so I created the Digicomm Cafe which is just a Zello channel open to everybody. We had this breakfast club that we started, meets every Saturday morning at 8:00 Central where we bring in different guests every time. Recently we had Don Wilbanks in as a guest and we've been doing this now for the last three months. PAUL: The Digicomm Cafe channel on Zello introduced him to the World Wide Amateur Radio Guild who had a similar mission, and they have channels of their own on a different service. They liked what Johnson was doing, so they offered to bring Digicomm Cafe in as part of the Guild. Johnson accepted. JOHNSON: I have a channel called "DigiCommCafe" without a space between "comm" and "cafe." The one with a space is for everyone, the one that's all one word is for hams only. It's linked to many RF modes, including Echolink, Allstar link, DMR, D-star, Fusion and it's also cross-linked to Zello which we only give permission to those whoare licensed hams to use, and the IRN on Teamspeak so people could come in from any one of those different modes to communicate in the channel. PAUL: Johnson's idea seems to be working: JOHNSON: I did a presentation at the local library here in Harrison, Arkansas. A young boy, 13 years old, with his father came up from Clinton, Arkansas. He's always been passionate about weather but within two days he took that test, got certified as a spotter. Two days later he got his ham license and now he is running the Little Rock Skywarn Zello channel! PAUL: For more information about The Guild and Digicomm Cafe, please visit their website at TheGuildGlobal dot ORG. For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Paul Braun, WD9GCO. ** FIRST BREAK HERE: Time for you to identify your station. We are the Amateur Radio Newsline, heard on bulletin stations around the world including the K2ADA repeater in Ocala Florida on Fridays and Saturdays at 7 p.m. ** OLD RADIOS DIE HARD - OR NOT JIM/ANCHOR: The actor Bruce Willis might be the last person you'd expect to be talking into an HT. But it happened on screen 30 years ago this year and his costar, it turns out, was a Kenwood model that's now vintage. Here's Neil Rapp WB9VPG. NEIL: As the blockbuster action-thriller "Die Hard" marks the 30th anniversary of its theatrical release in the U.S., there are still plenty of people who believe that Bruce Willis was the movie's star. Remember him? His portrayal of New York City cop John McClane came into sharpest focus during a dramatic hostage rescue scene in Los Angeles. Everyone recognizes Bruce Willis, of course, a tough guy who takes no prisoners even in the face of those who do. But his costar? Trivia buffs might offer the name of Bonnie Bedelia who plays his wife, or identify Alan Rickman as the evil Hans Gruber but - guess again. Amateur radio operators know better: In the July 2018 issue of the ARRL's magazine QST, it is revealed that a Kenwood HT - the model TH-31BT to be exact - was Bruce Willis' real co-star. This was the radio that John McClane managed to grab from one of the hostage-takers and later used to spy on the captors' conversations. Ultimately the radio helped him save the day when he used it to call emergency response to the scene and keep him connected to outside support as the drama unfolded. Well hams aren't surprised at all by this revelation. Why should they be? Admiration for radio's potential - like the movie - dies hard. For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Neil Rapp WB9VPG. (QST Magazine) ** SLOVENIA GETS ALLOCATION ON 60 METER BAND JIM/ANCHOR: Welcome to the 60 meter band, Slovenia! The Association of Radio Amateurs of Slovenia has notified Tom Kamp DF5JL, the Region 1 HF Manager of the International Amateur Radio Union, that all Class A operators now have access to the 60 meter band on a seconary basis between 5351.5 kHz to 5366.5 kHz. The hams are given a maximum EIRP of 15 watts. According to the IARU, the change took effect on the 14th of July. (SOUTHGATE) ** CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF NETWORKING REPEATERS IN KANSAS JIM/ANCHOR: There's nothing like togetherness, whether it is a gathering in person for eyeball QSOs or hams getting together on the air. Networked repeaters bring another kind of important togetherness. In Kansas, hams are noting two decades of that interconnectedness in the most appropriate way possible. Lloyd Colston KC5FM has the details. LLOYD: The nice folks in Kansas are celebrating twenty years of statewide networking repeaters with a net on August 18th at 9 p.m. Central Time on the K-Link system. Today the system has 20 repeaters linked with worldwide connectivity on IRLP NODE 9335 and ALLSTAR NODE 46304. Justin NV8Q reports that in 2008, the tenth anniversary net had 54 check-ins. Details can be found at WWW.KS0LNK.NET If you are in Kansas on the 18th, head over to Salina on the 19th for the Kansas American Radio Relay League State Convention. For Amateur Radio Newsline this is Lloyd Colston KC5FM reporting. ** NEW BALLOTS BEING MAILED FOR AMSAT-NORTH AMERICA ELECTION JIM/ANCHOR: If you're a member of AMSAT-North America and you voted in the election for the Board of Directors, you'll be getting another ballot soon. A printing error occurred with the original ballots that were mailed to members for the July 15 election and those ballots have been declared void. Watch the mail for ballots labeled "CORRECTED BALLOT 7/20/2018." They are printed on yellow cardstock and replace the original beige-colored ballots. Members are being asked to vote for no more than three of the five candidates. Three directors will be chosen along with two alternates. (SOUTHGATE) ** THE WORLD OF DX Meanwhile, in the World of DX, be listening for Geoff ZL3GA who is operating on Vanuatu until the 25th of July. He will be using the call sign YJ0GA and operating both CW and FT8 as his main modes. Logs will be uploaded to Logbook of The World and QSLs go via Club Log OQRS. Don't forget the IOTA contest of the Radio Society of Great Britain which is a good source for contacts. The dates are July 28th and 29th. Here are some of the contacts you can make: Be listening for Taka, JA8COE, who will be active from Hokkaido Island. Send QSLs via JA8COE. A number of operators on the Island of Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides will be operating as GM7V. Send QSLs via Steve, N3SL. Listen for Ian, G3WVG, operating as MX5A from St. Mary's on the Isles of Scilly. QSL via LoTW and ClubLog. Branislav, OM2FY will be operating as SV8/OM2FY from Kefalonia Island. QSL via OM2FY. Andreas, DL1KZA and a number of friends will be using the call sign DK3R from Ruegen Island. QSL via DL1KZA. (OHIO PENN DX) ** KICKER: WHEN HAM RADIO REALLY DELIVERS - TO THE MAILBOX JIM/ANCHOR: Most hams know that when you've got an amateur's call sign, that's really all you need to confirm the contact with a QSL card. In most cases a QRZ listing or a quick email inquiry can get you an address or postal code. But what happens when you have neither? Well, then, you need a postal carrier with a sharp eye and just maybe an affinity for ham radio. Here's Jeremy Boot G4NJH. JEREMY: How do you deliver a piece of mail that has little else but the recipient's name and their amateur radio call sign? Someone out there - an anonymous postie in Derry - managed to get the job done with little else but that. The QSL card was sent to "Monsieur Stevie Gillespie" from Pierre Miet F4HXW the amateur in France with whom Stevie had made contact on HF only four days earlier. Stevie MI0GTA of course was delighted. He had eagerly awaited this confirmation of his QSO between his Waterside home and the South of France. But wait - the mail contained no postal address and Stevie, a ham since 2002, got to wondering. How could the postie have known? Could the card's destination been sorted out by someone who is a ham himself? Well, it's not really known how it all unfolded but Stevie, appreciative of the mystery mail delivery, made sure the Royal Mail got a note of appreciation from him nonetheless. As for Pierre, he got something too - a return QSL card from Stevie, a fan of the Derry City Football Club, featuring a picture of the late defender Ryan McBride. For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Jeremy Boot G4NJH. (THE DERRY JOURNAL) ** SECOND BREAK HERE: Time for you to identify your station. We are the Amateur Radio Newsline, heard on bulletin stations around the world including the KA6TSA repeater on Wednesday evenings at 8 in Palos Verdes, California. ** SPECIAL REPORT FROM WRTC JIM/ANCHOR: The World Radiosport Team Championship is now history and reporter Ed Durrant DD5LP was there for this global contest that put the best of the best on a level playing field in Germany. Here is his special report in this expanded segment of Amateur Radio Newsline: ED: Think of an event organized by a small group of Hams that is a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP with 124 contestants, 300+ volunteers and a small management team, that costs half a million Euros to put on needs 4 years work and negotiations with 3 regional governments, and you have the World Radiosport team championships or the Olympics of Radio Contesters as some know it. I was very happy to offer my support as a volunteer and was allocated to the Media team, in the heart of the organisation. What I saw in my position was an amazingly well organized, highly skilled and effective organisation of which any large company in the world would be happy to have and these are all unpaid workers doing it for the love of the hobby. Contestants, referees and the majority of the volunteers arrived on the Wednesday and there were various meetings and events arranged over the next couple of days until on Friday the contestants saw their sites for the first time before returning on Saturday for the contest itself. The WRTC championship coincides with the IARU HF contest and apart from 160 metres takes place on the same bands but with only 100W output to completely identical antenna systems on identical locations as far as ground geography is concerned around the Wittenberg-Jessen area in the eastern part of Germany. The organisers had another surprise up their sleeves to make sure there would be enough stations calling the championship stations they got a very special range of call signs allocated from BNetZa the national licencing authority and they were call signs starting with Y8 call sign letters that belonged to the old East Germany and were stopped 28 years ago. While the BNetZa has this range available, they issued the required 63 short callsigns but ONLY to be used for the 24 hours of the contest. That adds a special reason for amateurs from around the world to call the WRTC stations as it is quite possible that these callsign prefixes will never be used again. Linked to the championships there were regular daily video reports as well as text & picture press releases. The opening and closing ceremonies were live streamed to the Internet and during the competition, the biggest hot item for the spectators was the online, real time scoreboard, where on a minute by minute basis everyone APART FROM the contesters (as they are allowed no Internet access), could watch how each of the teams were doing. As well as the materials and Internet broadcasts produced by the WRTC media team, RADIO-DARC a group linked to the national radio society put out two special radio shows on Short Wave AM using a pair of 300kW transmitters from the ORS company near Vienna, Austria. One in English on the Saturday covering Europe and North America and one for Europe in German on the Sunday. However everything almost didnt go to plan. The 20dB curtain antenna used with one of the two 300 KW transmitters to put 30MW of EIRP into the US was damaged in the week coming up to the WRTC. The professional teams worked long hours to try to repair the damage and the transmitter site manager (who just happens to be a Ham) called in two local Hams to help out and . On Friday evening the antenna was fixed and working. A case of both ORS and the Vienna amateur community putting in extra effort to make sure everything went without problems with the WRTC. Back in the organisations centre problems were logged in the ticket system and efficiently resolved. Such interesting calls came in as one (obviously rather large) operator kept breaking chairs and had to have them replaced, in the end with a heavy duty one. On one site the Port-a-loo was blown over and was unable to be righted, so a backup was sent. A couple of antennas were damaged prior to the start of the contest and replaced from the spares. Overall for such a large and complex event everything ran very well. So youre all waiting to hear WHO WON ? At the time of recording the Monday following the contest, the result is not official and will only be announced at the closing ceremony however its unlikely that the record-breaking score set by the Lithuanian team of Gedas, LY9A, and Mindis, LY4L will be beaten. Your reporter was lucky enough to be outside the tent of the winning team right after completion of the 24 hour, no-break, competition. So what did the LYs say was the secret of their success? It seems, practice, practice, practice is the answer. They also mention their respect for the organisation and especially the volunteers at WRTC2018 in the following short audio clip. <<< Insert Audio Clip here >>>>> So it only now remains for me to wish those planning to compete in WRTC 2022 all the best and remember PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE and of course I congratulate ALL teams that took part in WRTC 2018 ! Thanks to the organisers for letting me be a small part of this great event! For Amateur Radio Newsline, this is Ed Durrant DD5LP JIM/ANCHOR: Our thanks to Ed DD5LP for his thorough coverage throughout the championship. At the closing ceremonies it was announced that the 2022 contest is to be held in Bologna, Italy, the birthplace of Guglielmo Marconi in 1874. So, as Ed advises, practice, practice, practice! ** NEWSCAST CLOSE: With thanks to Alan Labs; Amateur News Weekly; ARISS: the ARRL; CQ Magazine; the Derry Journal; Hap Holly and the Rain Report; Irish Radio Transmitters Society; Korean Amateur Radio League; K2BSA; Ohio-Penn DX Bulletin; QST Magazine; Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio; Southgate Amateur Radio News; Ted Randall's QSO Radio Show; South African Radio League; Wireless Institute of Australia; WTWW Shortwave; and you our listeners, that's all from the Amateur Radio Newsline. Please send emails to our address at newsline@arnewsline.org. More information is available at Amateur Radio Newsline's only official website at www.arnewsline.org. For now, with Caryn Eve Murray, KD2GUT, at the news desk in New York, and our news team worldwide, I'm Jim Damron N8TMW in Charleston West Virginis saying 73 and as always we thank you for listening. Amateur Radio Newsline(tm) is Copyright 2018. All rights reserved.
