 Radio Amateurs know that space weather affects radio communications across the globe, but now it turns out that we also affect space weather in return. It turns out that VLF radio waves have formed an unintentional bubble around the planet. Propagating outward about 2.8 times the radius of the Earth, VLF radio appears to prevent high energy electrons from approaching Earth. For more on that, download the article on the vk6.net website. You'll also find links to space weather, solar forecasts and other goodies relating to Amateur Radio propagation. If you're looking for a new build project and want to boost a QRP signal - not sure why you'd want more power - then HF Projects has a miniHFPA kit that runs off a 4 AH lipo battery and provide you with 30 to 35 Watts between 160m and 10m. Perfect for the next SOTA activation. Download the flier and see the link on vk6.net. If you participated on the 2016 Oceania DX Contest, the results are now available. Congratulations to all the participants, especially the winners who triumphed over the poor radio conditions. Low solar activity in the PHONE section, and high QRN in the South Pacific for the CW section, made the OCDX contest one of the more challenging events. The contest committee are delighted to report an increase in the number of entrants: 1,192 logs were received, a pleasing advance on 2015's total of 1,169. Remarkably, despite the challenges, some 26 new continent records and 144 new country records were set in 2016. The next OCDX contest will be held on the first two full weekends of October 2017. The Northern Corridor Radio Group have announced the first dates of their Foundation and Standard courses. The Foundation Course dates are 22-23 July, 16-17 September and 14-15 October with exams on the weekends following. The NCRG Standard Course will commence on the 25th of July and last six to eight weeks. Click the link on vk6.net. The VKFF Paul VK5PAS, also known as the awards fairy has been sprinkling awards left right and centre and the latest recipients are: Ivan VK5HS, Mick VK3GGG, Eugene UA3GJM, Alexei RW3XZ, Peter VK3TKK, Luc YO8SSB, Andrey RN3AKK, Kirt DL5ZB, Ken VK2KYO. If you'd like to get an award, get on air and make contact with Amateurs getting cold and wet in a National Park somewhere in Australia. On the SOTA front, David VK3IL is half a goat and managed to qualify two summits using CW. If you'd like to read about David's adventure, complete with a swag of phots, head on over to his blog where you'll find his article "Three summits off the Dargo Rd". The link is on vk6.net. Several videos have been published about the WIA AGM last weekend. You can find them on the NewsWest YouTube Channel. Congratulations to Bob VK6KW for the WIA President’s commendation for Bob's involvement in the VK Travelers net. Staying on the topic of the AGM, the outgoing WIA board distributed a pack with information prior to the AGM held last Saturday. The document outlines the official response to the disallowed motions on notice. This document has been scanned and can be downloaded as a PDF from vk6.net Steve VK6SJ has reminded us that articles are due for the next issue of AR magazine. If you'd like to contribute to the VK6 section in AR magazine, get in touch with Steve now. If you want to experiment with CODEC2 and play with satellites, now you can. Trevor M5AKA lets us know that late afternoon on Thursday, May 25 GMT the Codec2 transponder on the LilacSat-1 CubeSat was switched-on. The AMSAT-UK site has the details. And finally, as many of you may know, there is going to be a total solar eclipse this August 21st that will affect almost all of North America. Nathaniel W2NAF is both a ham radio operator and a ionospheric scientist, and is coordinating a contest-like event during the Eclipse to help study the effects of the eclipse on the ionosphere. We need as many operators as possible to participate!Nathanial was also at Dayton this weekend with the HamSCI group, and he gave a number of talks about the eclipse and the SEQP. Videos and photos are available. Check the links on vk6.net for more information. |
