50 MHz begint zich te roeren. De laatste week is de Eskip (sporadische E) volop van start gegaan met DX uit gans Europa. Maar ook stations buiten Europa waren te horen en te werken. Een aantal uitzonderlijke bandopening de afgelopen dagen, vrij uniek.

Donderdag 26/5 was DU7/PA0HIP geruime tijd met sterke signalen te horen. Nog uitzonderlijker was BV6CC en BM6GJL die eveneens waarneembaar waren. In de vroege avond maakte FM5WD furore en werkte heel wat stations, dit alles in CW.

Zondag 29/5 opnieuw raak, BA4SI goed neembaar en verrassend genoeg een hele reeks stations uit Japan. In de vroege namiddag korte opening naar de oostkust van de USA. Heel wat DX ondanks tegenvallende zonnecyclus, nagenoeg alles buiten Europa enkel via CW te werken. Tijd om de morse aan te scherpen!

Maandag 30/05 bracht behalve de vele regen ook opnieuw Eskip. MUF was hoog (genoeg voor 144 MhHz ES) hierdoor stations op korte afstand hoorbaar (OK OE S5).

Like you know we added a new category, 6H class, for the IARU VHF contests. The contest robot is ready for this and we tested it during the July contest, in cooperation with the S5 contest robot.

Some contesters who are contesting in the 6h class, are competing more than 6H but only send the logs with only the 6h. This is confusing for the robots, because the QSO’s out of the 6h are rejected for the stations who are working 24 hours.

So please inform you members that they should be sending the complete log. We will correct this during the upcoming meetings.

"Every participant that is planning to enter the 6H category MUST send his complete LOG even if he operated longer than 6 hours. Only first 6 active hours will be used for score evaluation, while the rest of the log (if at all) will be used for cross-check purposes".

For the past few weeks many 144MHz meteor scatter enthusiasts have been complaining of interference from AFSK packet transmissions. As a 144MHz DX enthusiast, in addition to being VHF manager I took an interest and started monitoring.

The transmissions on 144.390MHz FM AFSK occur at regular intervals, mostly on Northerly headings. The transmissions fill about 15KHz of spectrum on the waterfall display of a SDR receiver.

Because of the inclined orbit Northern European amateurs get a longer pass than those in the US which means that there is a burst every minute for a pass lasting up to about 12 minutes, repeating every 110 minutes orbit time. Whilst that is not continuous QRM one pass is enough to cause a meteor scatter QSO on 144.390 +/- 6KHz to fail if they coincide.

An FM APRS signal has been received in England causing interference to the MGM frequency and weak-signal Meteor Scatter (MS) operation which is just below 144.390 MHz. A MS DXpedition was disrupted by such activity earlier in the month and interference has been occurring at various times since.

Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, explains that the beacon was planned over 15 years ago for operation only when PCSAT is over North America based on published band plans at that time. Now, after 14 years on orbit, the ability to turn that backup beacon off has been lost.

PCSAT (now 14 years old) had a backup fail-safe beacon on 144.390 that would activate after any unknown spacecraft reset to give a backup comm link in case the primary 145.825 channel died. Being on the North American APRS frequency with hundreds of IGates there would always be at least one that would hear this "emergency call home" from PCSAT even though the channel is generally saturated. It worked.

The problem is, that now PCSAT resets on every orbit due to negative power budget and so, on every orbit that beacon comes back on. Even if we did get a command up to reset it, that setting would last only 15 minutes to the next eclipse.

We learned our lesson! That was our FIRST amateur satellite and we sure learned NOT to use a "connected-packet-command link" that needs ACKS and Retries and logon passwords just to LOGON before you can even send a SHUTUP command. All our satellites since, operate without the multiple Send, connect, ACK, retry, ACK, command, ACK overhead… just to get one command understood. Now, only the receiver on the spacecraft has to be functional to command it to silence in a single packet. But too late for PCSAT.

Thanks to the hospitality of the DARC we will be able to have an informal C5 meeting. Not only for the VHF managers but all HAM’s who are interested in the work of IARU-R1 VHF & up matters.

After a small introduction about the way of working of C5 we will have an open discussion. This could be useful to prepare for the Vienna interim meeting in 2016.

This meeting will take place on Saturday June 27th from 15.00 until 16.30 in Room A (5th floor) in the administrative building. You have to leave the exhibition(don’t forget to get your stamp) and walk to the administrative building.

We would appreciate that you inform your members about this meeting and are looking forward to seeing you there.