20170414 - Amateur News

The ARRL has now prohibited so-called "Duelling CQs" in all ARRL contests, bringing it in to line with the CQ-sponsored contests which already prohibit the practice where a station calls CQ on two frequencies within the same band. The IARU HF Championship Contest bans the practice for multi-operator entries. The ARRL reviewed the rules after a multi-operator station successfully used the technique to substantially boost their score.

Steve VK3JA shared with us his participation in the JIDX CW Contest. Operating from rural Melbourne, he said: "Only a couple hours of operating but good fun on ten meters.  With SFI 74 and K index at 4 the band was amazingly open.  Lots of good sigs about S7 all afternoon." With 224 contacts overall, 110 of them on 10m, Steve managed to collect a flurry of stations before a local power failure stopped the fun. Well done.

Matt VK6QS is looking for anyone who has an Ultrabeam UB-50 antenna. Get in touch with Matt who would like to discuss a problem he's experiencing.

Will VK6UU has been spending his time doing more research and found that in 1980, the WIA represented 50% of Licensed Amateurs, just over 6000 of them. Membership numbers increased by 22% from the previous year.

David VK5DGR asked the CODEC2 community for recommendations on a Windows Integrated Development Environment to write software for an STM32F4. The popular suggestion was to use System Workbench STM32. [http://www.st.com/en/development-tools/sw4stm32.html] [http://embeddedprogrammer.blogspot.com/2012/09/stm32f4discovery-development-with-gcc.html] You can find a link to setup tutorials on the vk6.net website if you're interested, or check out the CODEC2 mailing list. [https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freetel-codec2]

Bob VK6ZGN has published the latest AllStar Simple User's Guide and it's available from the vk6.net website, the f-troop website and all good news agents - sorry, that's not right - a printer near you after download. Check it out, a whole page with everything you need to know to make contact with AllStar.

That's all the things we know about. If there was more, and we're sure there was, then you need to let the news team know. The email address hasn't changed in years, it's still newswest@vk6.net, so get writing.