“…………….. The first amateur radio station on the moon, JS1YMG, is now transmitting. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, landed its Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon on the 19th of January 2024. The JAXA Ham Radio Club, JQ1ZVI secured the JS1YMG callsign and has been transmitting Morse code on 437.41MHz since the 19th of January. The probe uses 1W to a UHF antenna, with circular polarisation, and is transmitting what is described as “matters related to amateur business.” Radio amateurs have been busy analysing JS1YMG‘s signal. You can read more about this story on Daniel Estévez, EA4GPZ’s blog at destevez.net …………………”
Hacking 5G networks is far too easy German security researcher Karsten Nohl has told IEEE Spectrum, the publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers………….Read MORE ….
An exhibition to mark the centenary of the first scheduled radio broadcasts in the UK and the birth of the BBC – the world’s oldest national broadcaster continues till the end of September. It charts the first 100 years of scheduled broadcasting in Britain, with a timeline highlighting famous Radio and TV programmes and events, illustrated by items from our collection, from crystal set radios and valve wirelesses to TV cameras.
GM4COX – June 2022
Recalling great moments in broadcasting history, events of the day and other memorabilia from their collection including celebrating Royal Broadcasting in the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee year. See Museum Of Communication for further information.
“……………….One of the projects that is confirmed is a chess game that will allow radio amateurs to play having as an opponent the on-board computer sending FSK frames with the movements, to which the on-board computer will answer in its telemetry. Several radio amateurs are working on the project and if it is completed by the time the satellite is due to be delivered, it will be included………………” Read more – HERE .
On January 10, 1946, the US Army successfully bounced radio waves off the moon–the first-ever extraterrestrial communication, the birth of radar astronomy, and the opening salvo in the Cold War. The author was just shy of three years old at the time, and her father, E. King Stodola, was Scientific Director of the team that carried out the experiment, code-named Project Diana.
To mark the 75th anniversary of this historic event, Cindy Stodola Pomerleau has written a series of essays using Project Diana as a lens for examining the transformations and dislocations occurring in the US during World War II and its aftermath. Nearly half the book is devoted to World War II, with particular attention to the history of radar at Camp Evans, starting with its fumbling beginnings at Pearl Harbor and culminating in its stunning success in Project Diana. The second section is devoted to King Stodola himself and an examination of the confluence of internal and external factors that made him the right man for the moment. The last section provides a sampler of Jersey Shore life (e.g., the boardwalk, the Neptune Music Circus), contemporary American life (e.g., Sears, nylon stockings), and the author’s little-girl activities (e.g., her parakeet Archie, her Islander ukulele).
Steeped in good humour and nostalgia, these wide-ranging narratives explore Project Diana’s historical, sociological, political, and scientific context, as seen from the perspective of the tiny coastal New Jersey community where fate in the form of Camp Evans deposited the author’s parents and their neighbours. The book is a unique eye-witness account of an event and an era that marked a turning point in American history.
“……………The orbiting module beacon will transmit on 437.31 MHz using PSK31. The surface probe beacon will transmit on 437.41 MHz using FM, PSK31, and PCM-PSK/PM…………………” Read more HERE .
The recent storms to hit the northern half of the UK saw many without cellular, fixed landline and Internet access.
At the moment BT-Openreach still supply a ~48V feed via your fixed landline. Using a POTS (a plain old telephone (Service) – a telephone that doesn’t require a 230V feed) still provides a way of communicating when all else fails (unless of course your landlines have come down). From 2025 the requirement for BT-Openreach to provide this facility will be withdrawn. What then?
I suppose from an amateur viewpoint, we still have good old RF point-to-point communication – in whatever form, but remember your still need power. Have a think about your standby requirements?
(First Published 14 July 2021 – Updates 3 Nov; 21 Nov; 29 Nov; 14 Dec; 17th Dec (COX))
BACKGOUND
The first one-way amateur radio QSO across the Atlantic that took place on 12 December 1921. The ARRL have joined with a group of UK operators who plan to recreate the event in December this year.
To celebrate the centenary of Paul Godley – 2ZE’s success, in collaboration with North Ayrshire Council, special event stations GB2ZE and GB1002ZE respectively will be operating from 1 to 28 December 2021 (added to CALENDAR).
An attempt was made using GM4AGG to contact W1AW. A report was produced by Jack GM4COX on the Club’s Programme Forum – HERE as to the outcome.
A YouTube Video Of The W1AW End Of The Proceedings
KLARC OPERATIONS (Copied off KLARC Website)
“……..Kilmarnock and Loudoun Amateur Radio Clubwill activate a special event station adjacent to the original location of the Paul Godley experimental station at Ardrossan, Scotland in 1921. The activation will be on air from 1200 UTC on Saturday 11 December 2021 until 1200 UTC on Sunday 12 December 2021. The callsigns will be GS2ZE(licence holder Jason GM7VSB) and GB1002ZE (licence holder Bob GM0DEQ) using CW, SSB and data modes on bands between 160m and 10m. GB2ZE (licence holder Bob GM0DEQ) will be used by the Ardrossan station for the first hour of the ARRL/RSGB 160m QSO Party (0200z – 0300z). During this first hour of the 160m QSO Party at Ardrossan, GB2ZE will be exclusively on CW. The GB2ZE callsign will be taken over by members of the GMDX Group on an hourly rota for the remainder of the QSO Party. An attempt will be made to re-enact Godley’s original successful reception of transatlantic amateur radio signals at exactly the same time and on the same date as 100 years ago. Attempts will be made to record any US re-enactment signals received at Ardrossan and also at other UK locations for sharing with the amateur radio community…….”
And a KLARC summary of the Event over the weekend of 11/12th December – Copied off their Website:
We were on the air ahead of schedule and had our first QSO with DL1DCT on 30m FT8 at 11:37 UTC on Saturday 11 December 2021. The first SSB QSO was with LY3YY on 20m. Band conditions on HF turned out to be very poor overall and the highest band we made QSOs on was 17m. We made 401 contacts in 60 different DXCC countries using three callsigns – GS2ZE (licence holder – Jason GM7VSB), GB2ZE and GB1002ZE (licence holder for both – Bob GM0DEQ). The final QSO was at 11:21 UTC on Sunday 12 December 2021 with RM9W on 20m SSB. The callsign used for the majority of the activation was GS2ZE.
Thank goodness we had an FT8 station on air – it came to the rescue under the challenging HF propagation conditions we had and got some very good DX into the log. The map below, produced by Barry GM5BDX, shows the geographical spread of our contacts.
At the start of the 160m Godley Trans-Atlantic QSO Party (0200 UTC) we used the callsign GB2ZE . We tried to have a QSO with the ARRL station W1AW on 1814 kHz. We heard them calling us and tried to respond but they couldn’t copy us unfortunately. A video of our attempt is on The KLARC YouTube Channel – see below for link. The plan we had was for NA2AA to call GM3YEH initially and then change callsigns to W1AW and GB2ZE if contact was established. We then operated in the QSO Party using GB2ZE for 22 minutes and worked quite a few US, Canadian and European stations on CW (Morse Code) before going into radio silence to take recordings of the period during which the re-enactment transmission from W2RCA was to take place. A video of us operating in the QSO Party is on the KLARC YouTube Channel.
One major target was to try and hear and decode the re-enactment transmission of the original message that Paul Godley 2ZE heard at Ardrossan, Scotland 100 years earlier. At 02:52 UTC – exactly the same time and date that Godley copied his message in 1921 – we copied W2RCA (The Radio Club of America) on 1825 kHz sending the same message…SUCCESS! We have a video recording of this momentous event on our KLARC YouTube Channel. In addition to the KLARC Members and some others on site, the historic successful reception was witnessed by Stewart Bryant G3YSX, President of the RSGB. Also on the KLARC YouTube Channel is a video of how the W2RCA re-enactment transmission was heard by Don G3BJ in Shropshire, England.
After our spell using GB2ZE and the recording of the W2RCA re-enactment transmission, we used the callsign GS2ZE for the remainder of the time we were in the QSO Party. During this period we listened for the transmissions from W2AN/1BCG on 1820 kHz but heard nothing from that station.
We had 139 contacts on the network assisted FreeSTAR station running with GS2ZE callsign. The first contact was Oscar 2E1HWE in Essex. The farthest station to call in was ZL1BOB who congratulated the KLARC team and wished us well from New Zealand. There were several operators who were thankful for being able to call in through the network as they did not have HF capabilities at their location or could not reach us due to propagation conditions at the time.
We had a lot of visitors to the site including local folk and various radio amateurs, some of whom had travelled a distance to get to us. The visitors we had on site from southern climes apparently thought we had bad weather, but those of us from Ayrshire were not too troubled by the horizontal driving sleet, in fact it seemed slightly better weather than we had anticipated. The endless shared stories, jokes and banter that went on all weekend kept us all very cheery. On reflection, I think I agree with the guys who have said we should do this again…but maybe in the summer 🙂 We don’t need to mention all the people who contributed to make this activation such a massive success – there are far too many and you all you know who you are. It is, without a shadow of doubt, the highest profile event that KLARC has ever delivered…genuinely fantastic!
“……………………During the ARRL Convention held in Chicago that year (August 31 – September 3, 1921) is was announced “to a wildly enthusiastic audience” that a second series of Transatlantic tests would take place in December and that a well-known American amateur (Paul Godley, 2ZE) would be going to Europe……………………..
………..Godley duly arrived at Southampton on November 22, 1921……………………”
Old radios didn’t have much in the way of smarts. But as digital synthesis became more common, radios often had as much digital electronics in them as RF circuits. The problem is that digital electronics get better and better every year, so what looked like high-tech one year is quaint the next. [IMSAI Guy] had an Icom IC-245 and decided to replace the digital electronics inside with — among other things — an Arduino. Read MORE ……………
