YOTA Camp Shack Named In Memory Of Bob Heil, K9EID (Sk)

Young operators attending YOTA camp in Nova Scotia have been calling CQ from a shack newly named to honour the memory of Bob Heil, K9EID.

If you log the callsign VE1YOTA anytime between Sunday the 7th July 2024 and Friday 12th 2024, you will have the privilege of working young operators inside the newly named Bob Heil K9EID Memorial YOTA Camp Amateur Radio Shack. The Youth on the Air camp, hosted by Radio Amateurs of Canada, is taking place in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

“Regardless of what was needed for camp, Bob would never fail to send what we needed and more to use at camp. Youth on the Air will forever remember his legacy in the amateur radio community and his support for YOTA in the Americas.”

Bob became a Silent Key this year and Youth on the Air camp organizers are honouring him and his company, Heil Sound, for his years of generosity and support to young campers. A press release announcing the tribute to Bob recognized his support for the camp starting in 2019, its first year.

Campers are also scheduled for a contact with the International Space Station and will be activating a number of POTA locations including the Georges Island National Historic Site, on Thursday the 11th July 2024.

Don't miss a moment of the excitement on the Youth on the Air YouTube channel and meanwhile, be listening for VE1YOTA.

Spacex Awarded Contract To De-Orbit ISS

The year 2030 is not so far away - and for the International Space Station that doesn't just mean retirement but destruction.

NASA's plan to de-orbit the International Space Station by the year 2030 now has an active partner in the process. The US space agency has awarded Elon Musk's SpaceX 843 million US dollars to develop a vehicle that will destroy the orbiting space laboratory. The ISS, which has been in orbit since 1998, has also been the home of Amateur Radio on the International Space Station, or ARISS, since late 2000, when the first ham radio contact was made with the Expedition-1 crew.

According to various media reports, SpaceX will design the de-orbit vehicle and set the stage for safe dismantling and disposal away from populated areas on Earth. NASA hopes it will find its final resting place somewhere in the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and South America.

NTS Performance Analysis Tool in Development

An early project of the National Traffic System (NTS) 2.0 team was to create a “snapshot” of then-current system performance by originating test traffic to more than 150 recipients throughout the entire United States.

Key takeaways from that initial exercise included:

• System-wide, there is plenty of room for improvement in how quickly and how accurately messages get from origin to destination.

• To improve the quality of our post-exercise summaries, we need tools that make it easy for all who are involved in any aspect of a traffic exercise to report, collect, and analyze results.

In response to the first bullet above, we are developing new training materials – as well as pursuing other vehicles for raising awareness of the need to improve our system performance. (See, for instance, “Do Your PART” by W2RU in the May NTS Letter.)

To improve the value of the test exercises themselves, we need new tools to simplify the reporting process for all participants and to more quickly generate output summaries of value to net managers, STMs, HQ, and all other stakeholders, including all participants. To that end, we presently have under development a web-based Performance Analysis Tool (PAT) to fill the current void. And as soon as we can, we’ll be announcing a small exercise – perhaps as early as this fall — specifically intended to test the new tool.

Radio Relay Intl. - https://radiorelay.org/