DX, Education and Training, Featured, General, Newsletter

The South African Radio League Web Site and Free Publications

The South African Radio League has an annual Diary of Events (PDF) online.  Between the month-at-a-glance pages, this calendar has information on certificates they administer such as the Worked All ZS award and Worked All Africa award.

South African hams operating outdoors
South African hams operating outdoors
(From the public SARL Youth Facebook page,
https://www.facebook.com/groups/217437211797100)

For a bigger picture, I like their Year-at-a-Glance (PDF) calendar, for A3 paper (11.75″ x 16.5″).  (I’ve already suggested that the ARRL take a look at it and consider offering one too.)

South African hams operating outdoors
South African hams operating outdoors
(From the public SARL Youth Facebook page,
https://www.facebook.com/groups/217437211797100)

The South African Parks on the Air program looks interesting since it includes Flora and Fauna not seen in the wild anyplace near our W1 area!

Their HF Happenings (and other DX news) newsletter is downloadable and includes African IOTA information.

South African hams operating outdoors
South African hams during a SOTA activation
Cover of September/October 2014 issue of Radio ZS
(From the public SARL Youth Facebook page,
https://www.facebook.com/groups/217437211797100)

In response to the pandemic, they made the April 2020 issue of their magazine free to everyone.  (Apparently, some other societies have done the same, so if you find one, please post a link to it!)  This issue includes an adapter to use a Baofang radio as a ‘fox’, the design for the audio part of a direct-conversion receiver (SDR), information about an amateur radio exhibit they put up at a public exhibit of hobbies of all sorts, and other projects.

Don’t worry about being able to read the articles, everything I looked at was in English, with some columns also in Afrikaans.  I found it very interesting!

As you can tell from the pictures above, they also have a public Facebook page “for members of the SARL (South African Radio League) and amateur radio enthusiasts under the age of 25“.

Aron, W1AKI

Featured, General, Newsletter

Air Force Research Lab Tracks Sporadic-E

1 Comment

Amateur radio enthusiasts have been taking advantage of Sporadic-E skip or simply sporadic-e for many years. Sporadic-E is a poorly understood propagation method that takes advantage of ”clouds” of highly charged particles in the lower atmosphere. Using this method you can ”skip” a signal off the cloud and communicate over much longer distances than you normally could at VHF frequencies.

Late spring into summer is the time of year when sporadic-E really takes off in the northern hemisphere, but Sporadic-E can show up at any time and at any place making predictions very difficult. Really the best way to see if there is any chance of skip is to check the spotting networks or just get on the radio and give a holler and see who answers you just make sure to have your maidenhead grid square locator. Here’s a good link to one – https://www.levinecentral.com/ham/grid_square.php.

Well, apparently amateurs aren’t the only ones interested in predicting Sporadic-E.

I was listening to one of my podcasts (This Week in Amateur Radio for the record) at work today and thought I would pass on some interesting information. Apparently, The Air force Research Lab is also interested in tracking Sporadic-E clouds and in a way that we may not have expected. I won’t ruin the surprise here but this discovery sounds very interesting and has far-reaching effects.

Sporadic-e
One antenna of the Sporadic-E detection array

You can read the whole article here.http://www.arrl.org/news/air-force-research-laboratory-tracks-sporadic-e.

73

-Jim K1BRM

 

Antennas, Featured, General, Newsletter, Space, Station Equipment

EME Station 2.0 Part 10 – Antennas On The Tower

After a year’s worth of planning and 10 months of construction, we have our new 2m EME Antenna System installed on our EME Tower and working! This stage of our project took about a week…

Source: EME Station 2.0 Part 10 – Antennas On The Tower

We’re making good progress on a new 2m EME Antenna System here at AB1OC-AB1QB. Our Antenanns system is up on our EME Tower and we are working through the setup and integration of the equipment and software for our EME Station.

EME Antenna Installation Using A 50 Ft Boom Lift
EME Antenna Installation Using A 50 Ft Boom Lift

We rented a boom lift and worked with Matt and Andrew from XX Towers to get our Antenna System up. Our antenna installation took a week to complete and it turned out quite well.

You can read all about this step in our project via the link above. We should have the work needed to bring the rest of our EME Station together sometime during the next few weeks. We can already receive signals that other Hams are reflecting off the moon!

Fred, AB1OC

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