King Hussein UK Radio Shack Donated to RSGB

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The Radio Society of Great Britain have announced that Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan has chosen to donate the UK amateur radio equipment of His late Majesty, King Hussein of Jordan to the Society. His Majesty was a great ambassador for amateur radio and, whenever his official duties allowed him, his radio call sign JY1 could be heard on the amateur bands. His Majesty always operated modestly, never announcing himself as King Hussein, always just ‘Hussein from Jordan’.

AMSAT Orbital Elements Manager Retires

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AMSAT Orbital Elements Manager Retires

Ray Hoad, WA5QGD has retired from the position of AMSAT-NA Orbital Elements Manager.

Hoad has held this position since 8th October 1993, when he inherited it from Dick Campbell, WR5RW (formally N3FKV). He also inherited a BASIC sorting program from Dick which has faithfully produced the AMSAT TLE format each week for almost 30 years. Today an emulator is used, but it consistently produces the format we (and our computer tracking programs) expect to see.

Joe Fitzgerald, KM1P has been developing a software-based system that pulls the TLE data directly from the internet (Space-Track, 18SPCS), formats it, and sends it out to the amateur radio community. Joe has been testing it for over a month now and it is ready to go!

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Sandringham School

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Sandringham School

The amateur radio club at Sandringham School was one of those who hosted the GB22YOTA call sign during December’s YOTA Month.

Licensed students operated five separate stations, with other students helping with set up and check logging.

Station 1 was a traditional HF station, running a K3 and KPA500 amplifier on SSB 80m to 10m. Station 2 was on FT8 running a TS590s at 25W to a W3DZZ trap dipole. Station 3 was an SDR station using a Raspberry Pi 4 connected to an SDRPlay receiver and a 15m wire antenna.

Station 4 was a Yaesu FTM-400XDR transceiver using a homemade dipole on the roof of the building connecting to a couple of the local UHF repeaters with 5W FM. This station also accessed a digital repeater using the Ide-Coverage Internet Repeater Enhancement System – allowing a broadcast FM signal to be relayed across the internet to a wider audience.

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