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![Previous (earlier) Story](/images/sty-down.gif "Orrin Henry "Hank" Brown, W6HB, SK"){kind=small} Previous: Orrin Henry "Hank" Brown, W6HB, SK |  Next: FCC Proposes Low-Power FM Stations; Pirates Need Not Apply |
February 4, 1999
New "bounce" mode--E-Z-E? Palestine to be new DXCC entity; FCC's Riley Hollingsworth is net guest; Next SAREX flight delayed until July; ARRL/VEC telephone hours change; BT1WW post-contest report; FISTS Novice Round-Up; Vanity update; Mir/APRS School Club Roundup; School Club Roundup
New "bounce" mode--E-Z-E? A group of hams in the Northeastern US will attempt to bounce 2-meter radio signals off the Russian Znamya (banner) space mirror after it's deployed from a Progress rocket just after 1000 UTC February 4 by the Mir space station crew. Cosmonauts are scheduled to unfold the giant mirror in an effort to reflect sunlight to sun-starved regions of the northern hemisphere. The Russians reportedly want to find out if huge orbiting mirrors can light up the dark winters of northern Russia and possibly boost agriculture by lengthening the day. The mirror is expected to be visible in parts of Russia, Ukraine, Belgium, Germany, and Canada. A group calling itself the ZAREX (Znamya Amateur Radio Experiment) Working Group invites all hams to participate. CW on 144.100 MHz; SSB, 144.200 MHz; FM voice, 146.55 MHz. Send signal reports to ZAREX, 22 Orange St, Athol, MA 01331. The details are at http://www.bcn.net/~dhorton/zarex.html. -- Don Horton, N1ISB
Palestine to be new DXCC entity: Effective October 1, 1999, Palestine (E4) will be added to the DXCC List. Contacts made with E4 stations after February 1, 1999, will count for this new DXCC entity. Under the DXCC rules, contacts with the deleted entity of Palestine made prior to June 30, 1968, will not count for DXCC credit. There is no commonality of territory or administration. The International Telecommunication Union allocated the call sign prefix E4 for use by Palestine in its Operational Bulletin No. 685 of February 1, 1999. This is in accordance with Resolution PLEN/3 of the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference held last fall in Minneapolis. This call sign allocation meets the requirement of the current DXCC List Criteria, Section 1(b).
FCC's Riley Hollingsworth is net guest: The FCC's point man for Amateur Radio enforcement, Riley Hollingsworth, K4ZDH, put in a guest appearance January 29 during a session of the South Carolina Single Sideband Net on 75 meters. "They contacted me and asked me if I'd take a few minutes to talk with them," said Hollingsworth, who's a South Carolina native. Hollingsworth said he told those gathered for the net "where we've been, where we're going, and what we're trying to accomplish" in terms of ham radio enforcement. He said he expects to return to the airwaves from time to time and welcomes invitations from other organized nets. (His e-mail address is rholling@fcc.gov.) Hollingsworth's unannounced and unexpected appearance on 3894.5 MHz January 13 to discuss compliance and enforcement created a stir within the Amateur Radio community.
Next SAREX flight delayed until July: The only Space Amateur Radio EXperiment (SAREX) flight scheduled for 1999 has been delayed yet again. NASA sources now say the STS-93 shuttle Discovery mission--originally set for January and subsequently delayed until March, then April, then May--now has been bumped until July 9. An official announcement was pending. Students at schools on the SAREX schedule get to talk to the astronauts via Amateur Radio. The postponement will allow TRW Space and Electronics Group to evaluate and correct a potential problem with several printed circuit boards in the Chandra X-ray observatory, a Discovery payload.
ARRL/VEC telephone hours change: For 1999, the ARRL/VEC telephone coverage hours are 8 AM until 5 PM, Monday through Friday. To contact the ARRL/VEC, call 860-594-0300; e-mail vec@arrl.org; fax 860-594-0339. Call sign inquiries can be directed to http://www.arrl.org/fcc/fccld.html/ or to the FCC, toll-free, at 888-225-5322 (an automated inquiry system is in place at the FCC to handle after-hours inquiries).
BT1WW post-contest report: Martti Laine, OH2BH, reports that the People's Republic of China did appear on 160 meters for the CQ WW 160-Meter Contest the weekend of January 30-31. BT1WW was billed by The Chinese Radio Sports Association (CRSA) as a special event experimental station. "The US pileups were huge, but unfortunately so was the noise level in Beijing," he said. Because of that, only two dozen stateside stations made it into the BT1WW logbook. He reports they were(in QSO order): N7RT, N6RO, W6UB, W7TVF, N6FF, W6YA, K6VX, W2VJN, K6SE, W6UE, N6ED, W6AJJ, N2KK, WU6T, KF6T, N7UA, K6UR, KG6I, W6PBI, W7IUV, KC7V, W7XR, N7DD and AB6LF. QSL to Martti J. Laine Unit No. 21H North Lodge China World Trade Center, No. 1 Jianguomen Wai Ave, Beijing 100004, People's Republic of China; send any comments to martti.laine@nmp.nokia.com or crsa@public.bta.net.cn.
FISTS Novice Round-Up: The 1999 Novice Round-Up, sponsored by FISTS CW CLUB, starts Friday, February 12, 1700 UTC, and ends Monday, February 15, 2359 UTC. Traditionally, the Novice Round-Up promotes CW contacts with Novice stations. Only QSOs made in the Novice/Tech Plus CW band segments will be valid. Novice/Tech contacts count 5 points; non-Novice/Tech QSOs count 2 points. Exchange: call sign, name, RST, license class, and QTH. Multipliers are US states (total=50). Scoring: Claimed score = (the number of Novice/Tech CW QSOs ´ 5) + (the number of non-Novice/Tech QSOs ´ 2) ´ the number of multipliers (states) worked. Certificates go to the top-scoring Novice/Tech and non-Novice/Tech. Winners get a year's membership in FISTS CW Club. Entries: Mail logs, summary, and check sheets to Novice Round-Up, c/o Dennis Franklin, K6DF, 4685 Capitan Dr, Fremont, CA 94536-5448. Entries must be postmarked by March 16, 1999. -- Dennis Franklin, K6DF
Vanity update: The FCC office in Gettysburg reports it has processed vanity call sign applications received through January 14. On February 3, it granted 172 applications. Another 198 landed in the work-in-process, or WIPs, stack. The FCC reports it received a total of 12,152 vanity applications during 1998. It picked up another 1417 in January, attesting to the program's continued popularity within the amateur community. The vast majority of applications were filed electronically. The FCC reports that fewer than 20% of last year's applications arrived on paper.
Mir/APRS School Club Roundup: The annual ARRL School Club Roundup runs from February 8-13 (see QST, Jan 1999, p 92, or visit http://www.arrl.org/contests). The objective is to get as many schools on the air as possible (all bands, all modes). Coincidentally, the orbit of the Mir space station during that week is over the USA during school hours, providing an ideal opportunity for students to participate in satellite communication as well. As part of the ongoing APRS/Mir/School experiments, MIREX has endorsed the participation of all schools to use the Mir digipeater for SCR exchanges during this weeklong event (do not connect to Mir). APRS style (UI) operations can handle as many as 100 stations per pass, so any school with a 2-meter FM radio, omnidirectional whip antenna, and a TNC should be successful on 145.985 MHz. The APRS/Mir portion of this event is not a contest but an opportunity for students and schools to learn about space communications. Everyone is encouraged to contact a local school science teacher and schedule a time period during that week when you can help set up and/or operate a school club station. Even if you cannot transmit for some reason, the live Mir downlink is always visible on the Naval Academy's MIREX Web page, http://web.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/mirex.html. --Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, via SpaceNews
School Club Roundup: Support youth in Amateur Radio and have fun at the same time by participating in the 1999 School Club Roundup, 1300 UTC Monday, February 8, to 0100 UTC Saturday, February 13. Chat with youths or just give a quick exchange. (See QST, Jan 1999, p 92 for details or http://www.arrl.org/contests/announcements/99/scr.html.)
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