Graham Coomber, G0NBI has been appointed as General Manager of the Radio Society of Great Britain. His role will be to work with the Board to develop and implement the strategic vision and the changes needed to create a financially sound, membership responsive, Society. Graham is an active radio amateur, with interests in both the DX and contesting arenas. He has also worked for RAIBC and has an interest in WAB. He also holds the call SV0XBA.
Poland will soon join the growing number of countries with access to the 70MHz and 3.4GHz bands. From 2200UTC on 31 May, Polish amateurs will have access on a secondary basis to 70.1-70.3MHz and 3400-3410MHz, subject to a 20 watt EIRP power limit.
CQ magazine has announced its 2012 Hall of Fame inductees, celebrating the 45th anniversary of the CQ DX Hall of Fame. The CQ Amateur Radio Hall of Fame honours those individuals, whether licensed or not, who have made significant contributions to amateur radio; and those amateurs who have made significant contributions either to amateur radio, to their professional careers or to some other aspect of life on our planet. The 2012 inductees include Richard Garriott, W5WKQ, the younger half of first US father-son team to travel in space. He worked Budbrooke Primary School in the UK from the ISS in 2010. Later that year, he visited the school to meet the pupils involved in the contact. Also honoured are British amateurs Rowley Shears, G8KW, silent key, founder of KW Electronics, who helped re-establish amateur radio in Germany after World War II and Louis Varney, G5RV, silent key, inventor of the G5RV antenna.
Would you like to see your children or grandchildren taking an interest in amateur radio? Then the volunteers of the Direction Finding committee have come up with an event that might interest you. For a child in the age range 8 – 15, or thereabouts, racing round a forest with a directional radio receiver hunting down hidden transmitters has an exciting appeal. On Sunday 24 June at Swinley Forest, Bracknell, the ARDF Committee will be running an introduction to DF for young people. The day will comprise some instruction on the use of a DF receiver, the sounds that the hidden transmitters emit and how to measure the bearing of the transmitter and plot this on a map. There will then be a group of four very low power transmitters to locate in a fairly small area by way of practice. This is followed by a full scale course over a distance of 2 to 3km in the beautiful Swinley Forest, part of the Crown Estate. More details were published in the May RadCom. There is a fee of £5 per child. To sign up go to the RSGB shop at www.rsgb.org/YoungPersonsEvent. At the checkout stage the name of an accompanying responsible adult has to be provided, along with contact details for more detailed information.
The Worked All Britain Awards Group has organised a special award to coincide with the passage of the Olympic flame around the country. Various amateur radio clubs around the UK will be operating from locations along the route used by the Torch Bearers for that particular day. They will use the callsigns G4WAB and G7WAB. The main call will be G4WAB, the exceptions for this being Shetland and Orkney, Jersey and Guernsey, when both callsigns will be used on the same day. There will be three versions of the award, depending on the number of stations worked: Bronze, Silver and Gold. The award will be issued as a PDF as standard, with the option of a paper version for those that require it. Full details of the cost, route and club stations are available on the WAB website, www.worked-all-britain.co.uk.
Amateur radio satellite HORYU-2 was successfully launched on 17 May at 1639UTC and its signals have been received around the world. The satellite’s callsign is JG6YBW and radio amateurs are asked to listen for the telemetry downlink at 437.375MHz, plus or minus 9kHz Doppler shift. Telemetry is sent using 20wpm Morse or 1200bps AX25 FSK packet. There will be a monthly competition for those who send data received from the telemetry to the KIT server, via the free HORYU-2 telemetry analysis software. Details of the competition and software can be downloaded from http://kitsat.ele.kyutech.ac.jp/ by clicking on the English button.