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GB2RS NEWS Sunday the 25th of April 2021 The news headlines: 400 lockdown nets for Hambleton Martin, G3YJO on Radio Four Free Contest University online   On the 22nd of April, Hambleton ARS passed the 400th consecutive day of a net on 2m FM. It was started during the Covid-19 lockdown to keep members and amateurs in the area in touch and able to summon help or assistance if required. The net starts at 11 am on the calling frequency and usually moves to S18 if clear. All amateurs are invited to join in and, so far, over 70 different stations have been logged. The net controller is usually Tony, G3MAE, who has ‘missed’ less than five days of operating during that time. A Cabin Fever award is available for any station taking part, issued by Tim, G0TYM via email, see QRZ.com. This week, Radio 4’s programme, The Life Scientific, featured Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, G3YJO. He is the pioneer of microsatellites. He talked about his progress from UOSAT 1 via Cubesats to the Surrey Satellite Technology sale to Airbus. You can hear the interview online via BBC Sounds. The Dayton Hamvention may have been cancelled for 2021, but the Contest University will still take place on the 20th of May. It will be held online, free of charge, via Zoom, starting at 1300UTC. Registration is open at contestuniversity.com. There is an IET webinar about amateur radio on the 12th of May starting at 7.30 pm. You might be interested to see how the presenter, Phil Gould, presents the hobby to the audience. It is a free lecture, entitled To the other side of the world and beyond: An appreciation of amateur radio. Go to events.theiet.org and scroll through until you reach the 12th of May. You can register via the button there. The Radio Club of Haiti’s 10m FM repeater project is now live. It operates with its transmitter on 29.620MHz and its receiver on 29.520MHz. The tone is 103.5Hz. At the moment the callsign is HH70X/R but that will be changing to HH2BM/R in honour of Bernard, HH2BM who sadly didn’t see the project go live before becoming silent key. The Youngsters On The Air Summer Camp due to be held in Croatia has been postponed until 2022 due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. News on the rearranged camp will be available nearer the new date. SOS Radio Week is an annual event that sees many amateur radio stations get on the air. The aim is to raise awareness of the voluntary work of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and National Coastwatch Institution. The event starts at 0000UTC on the 1st of May and coincides with the RNLI’s own Mayday fundraising month. For further details of the event please visit sosradioweek.org.uk. The Hungarian Amateur Radio Society will commemorate the 230th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Morse with nine special callsigns. Look for activity on CW and SSB until the 27th of April. See MRASZ.org and click on S Morse Award 2021 for all the details. Now the DX news Joe, 9H5JO will be on the air at weekends during April from Malta. Between 1200 and 1300UTC each Saturday and Sunday, he will listen specifically for Foundation licensees on, or very near to, 14.268MHz. This could be a really good opportunity to get Malta in your logbook. Matthew, M0ZMS will be seconded to the RAF station at Mount Pleasant, Falkland Islands, SA-002, from late April to late August. He will be active as VP8ZMS, hopefully using the Royal Air Force ARS club station shack. He operates digital modes, CW and some SSB. QSL via home call and Logbook of The World; logsearch on Club Log. Ali, EP3CQ will be back in Mogadishu, Somalia from the 25th of April for two months. In his spare time, he will operate mainly FT8 on various bands as 6O1OO. QSL direct to details on qrz.com. Take, JI3DST will be active as JI3DST/5 from Shodo Island, AS-200, from the 29th of April to the 5th of May. He will operate SSB, CW and FT8 on the 40 to 6m bands, and will also be on the air as JR8YLY/5. QSL via Club Log’s OQRS. Now the Special Event news 8N1MORSE is a special callsign celebrating the 230th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Morse and other significant landmarks in the history of CW. It will be on the air until the 28th of February 2022. A website is under construction at 8n1morse.org. Now the contest news With different parts of the UK having different lockdown restrictions, please make sure you follow the appropriate rules. Several contests now accept portable entries, so please check the contest rules. Above all, please follow relevant national and local restrictions. This weekend the SP DX RTTY contest ends its 24-hour run at 1200UTC today, the 25th. Using the 3.5 to 28MHz contest bands, the exchange is signal report and serial number. SP stations also exchange their Province code. Today, the 25th, the BARTG Sprint 75 contest runs from 1700 to 2100UTC. Using the 3.5 to 28MHz contest bands, the exchange is just the serial number. On Tuesday the SHF UK Activity Contest runs from 1830 to 2130UTC. Using all modes on the 2.3GHz and up bands, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. Wednesday sees the UK EI Contest Club 80m contest run from 1900 to 2000UTC. It’s CW only and the exchange is your locator reference. On Thursday the 80m Club Championships runs from 1900 to 2030UTC. Using RTTY and PSK only, the exchange is signal report and serial number. Next weekend, the 432MHz to 245GHz Trophy runs for 24 hours from 1400UTC on the 1st of May. Using all modes on those bands, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. Saturday the 1st of May sees the 432MHz trophy contest run from 1400 to 2000UTC. Using all modes, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. Next Sunday, the 2nd, the 10GHz Trophy runs from 0800 to 1400UTC. Using all modes, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. Next weekend, the ARI International DX contest runs for 24 hours starting at 1200 on the 1st. Using CW, Phone and RTTY on the 3.5 to 28MHz contest bands, the exchange is signal report and serial number. Italian stations also give their Province code. Next Sunday, the 2nd, the UK Microwave group Low Band Contest runs from 1000 to 1600UTC. Using all modes, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. The UK Six Metre Group Summer Marathon runs from the 1st of May to the 1st of August. Just exchange your 4-character locator. Now the radio propagation report, compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA & G4BAO on Friday the 23rd of April. Last week was marked by solar flares, perhaps giving us a taste of things to come as the solar cycle progresses. The Kp index hit four on Monday after the weekend’s high of five. But luckily things then calmed down and we have been seeing the Kp index down to two overall. There was even one three-hour period where it was zero. We have had more sunspots this week, which are always welcome. Region 2817 has now rotated off the Sun’s visible disk, but regions 2816 and 2818 have been very active. They pushed the solar flux index to 86 on Monday, but it was back down to 78 by Thursday. The first M-class solar flare since the 29th of November 2020 was observed around region 2816 in the Sun’s southeast quadrant at 2342UTC on the 19th of April. Luckily, this occurred at night so had zero effect on the ionosphere over the UK. A coronal mass ejection, or CME, associated with this flare has been assessed as passing just behind Earth, but the Met Office’s space weather team said there was a slight chance of a glancing blow in the coming days. A long-duration C-class flare around the same region occurred at approximately 0415UTC on the 22nd and looks to have produced a possible Earth-directed CME. If this is the case, we may expect the Kp index to rise, perhaps early in the weekend, resulting in reduced maximum usable frequencies. HF conditions have been relatively lacklustre this week, although there has been some activity on 10m FT8. EA has been copied, perhaps via early-season Sporadic-E, and Bob, VP8LP on the Falkland Islands has put in an appearance during the late afternoon, as have numerous South American stations. Daytime MUFs over a 3,000km path have generally struggled to exceed 18MHz at times, although there have been the odd DX openings on 21, 24 and even 28MHz. Next week NOAA predicts the SFI will remain low, perhaps even dropping into the high 60s. Geomagnetic conditions are predicted to be generally quiet with a maximum Kp index of three. But do look out for further solar flares, which could cause short-lived disturbances on HF and the strong possibility of coronal mass ejections that could impact the Earth one or two days later, depending on the solar wind speed. And now the VHF and up propagation news. Conditions are starting out with a Tropo frame of mind into this weekend, but there are hints of a small low tracking south across Scotland at the end of this weekend, and probably across the North Sea to establish low pressure to the east of the UK after midweek. This will probably mean that the Tropo period is weakened gradually and with further lows near southern Britain at the end of the week, there is likely to be a subtle shift to rain scatter propagation for the GHz bands. We keep flagging up the forthcoming Sporadic-E season and clusters show it's just getting underway in an FT8 sense. It will no doubt start to show up with 10m or 6m beacons soon, so worth checking your favourite beacon list regularly. If you haven’t got one yet, this would be a very good time to save a list of half a dozen frequencies for each band in the rig memories to make sure you can check for openings easily. From a jet stream perspective, initially, paths to Scandinavia look promising and by midweek probably more towards southeastern Europe and Ukraine. Moon declination went negative today, so Moon windows are short and the Moon is at low elevation. The upside is that we have low path losses with perigee tomorrow (Monday). The April Lyrids meteor shower produced some good meteor scatter QSOs last week and with the Eta-Aquarids set to peak on the 5th of May, the new meteor scatter season is well underway. Look at the usual frequencies for the mainly digimode activity. And that’s all from the propagation team this week.