From the HindustanTimes, original post here.  By Ravik Bhattacharya, Kolkata.

he first batch of mountaineers from Bengal would soon get licences to operate HAM radios, giving a fillip to search operations on the killer peaks.

The first licence was issued on Wednesday while another 22 will be given in the next few days.  After months of training, 27 mountaineers appeared for an examination for HAM radio licence at Sodepur High School in North 24-Parganas.  Twenty three passed the test and their licences will get licences soon.

Dipankar Ghosh, one of Bengal’s well-known mountaineers who scaled 30 Himalayan peaks including Mt Everest, is also among those who cleared the test.  This comes at a time when the state is shocked by Everest climbers going missing on way to the summit.

“This may be the first licence issued to a mountaineer,” Ambarish Nag Biswas, secretary of secretary West Bengal Radio Club (Amateur club), told HT.  He trained all the mountaineers before the test.

Read: Hopes of finding missing Everest climbers from India fade

The only communication device that works in such conditions is satellite phone, which are not freely available in India.  They have to be rented from agencies in Nepal and are very expensive.  Over the past few days, Rajib Bhattacharya died while trying to conquer Dhoulagiri while two others, Gautam Ghosh and Paresh Nath, plunged Bengal in agony and suspense as they remained missing since last week.

HAM operators say, with the help of cheap, easy-to-handle HAM sets, climbers can never go missing.  Even if they fall ill, or meet with an accident, the radio sets they will be carrying will constantly emit signals that will pinpoint their location.

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From the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics, original post here.

Transmitting the contents of a conventional DVD in under ten seconds by radio transmission is incredibly fast – and a new world record in wireless data transmission.  With a data rate of 6 Gigabit per second over a distance of 37 kilometres, a collaborative project with the parti­ci­pa­tion of researchers from the University of Stuttgart and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF exceeded the state of the art by a factor of 10.

The collaborative project ACCESS (Advanced E Band Satellite Link Studies) was carried out by a research group headed by Professor Ingmar Kallfass from the Institute of Robust Power Semiconductor Systems (ILH) from the University of Stuttgart, the Institut für Hochfrequenztechnik und Elektronik (IHE) from KIT, Radiometer Physics GmbH, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF.

The team realised the record data transmission on a stretch between Cologne and the 36.7 km distant town of Wachtberg.  The stations were located on the 45-story Uni-Center in Cologne and the site of the Space Observation Radar TIRA at the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR in Wachtberg.

Record through using the latest technology

The extremely high data rates of 6 Gbit/s was achieved by the group through efficient transmitters and receivers at a radio frequency of 71–76 GHz in the so-called E band, regulated for terrestrial and satellite broadcasting.  Only in this frequency range of millimetre waves are the required high effective bandwidths available.  Only here can the enormous data rates be realized.  A further difficulty is the weake­ning of the signals over larger dis­tances.  The transmission has to be espe­cially powerful, and the amplifiers have to be correspondingly efficient.  The key to the unique combination of gigabit data rates and highest distance are the efficient transmitters and re­cei­vers in the form of fully monolithically integrated millimetre wave cir­cuits (MMICs).

The circuits are based on two innovative transistor technologies developed and manufactured by the project partner Fraunhofer IAF.  In the transmitter the broadband signals are amplified to a comparatively high transmission power of up to 1 W with the help of power amplifiers on the basis of the novel compound semiconductor gallium-nitride.  A highly directive parabolic antenna emits the signals.  Built into the receiver are low-noise amplifiers on the basis of high-speed transistors using indium-gallium-arsenide-semiconductor layers with very high electron mobility.  They ensure the detection of the weak signals at high distance.

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We don’t see a lot of (any?) Elecraft here in VK land (for some reason?), but everyone I’ve ever spoken to who own anything Elecraft wouldn’t own anything else.  I think this makes them the Apple of the Amateur Radio manufacturers!  They’ve debuted their new QRP portable HF transceiver, and it’s certainly an impressive unit:

Elecraft KX2 Transceiver

Elecraft® Hands-On Ham Radio™

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Here’s another one on display at Dayton.  I’m not sure where this fits into the Yaesu line-up – it’s not an all-mode all-bander like the FT-857, so presumably it’s not a replacement for that?  That said – the FT-991 is far from feature by feature identical to the unit it replaced (the FT-897), so perhaps it is?  It certainly has the FT-857 form factor.  Bottom unit is the external (optional) ATU:

It’s been rumoured for a while, and I’ve been hoping it wasn’t vapourware.  Meet the replacement for the (very good if I might add) Kenwood TH-D72 Handheld, and this doesn’t disappoint!:

Kenwood D-STAR Tribander 144 / 220 / 440 MHz

• Built-in high-performance GPS unit
• Transflective color TFT display
• Weatherproof toughness meeting IP54/55 standards
• Wide-band and multi-mode reception
• Equipped with IF filter for comfortable reception (SSB/CW)
• High-performance DSP-based voice processing
• Compliant with Bluetooth, microSD & Micro-USB

Of obvious note is the support for DStar – this being the first of the big three other than Icom to embrace the format.  Just to clear up a little confusion – DStar is NOT a proprietary mode – it was developed by JARL (the Japan Amateur Radio League) and is open source.  The only closed thing about it is the voice codec – it uses a proprietary AMBE Vocoder chip from Digital Voice Systems Inc.  This is the same codec as P25, DMR and C4FM – the modulation is what differs (gross oversimplification, I know).  The only completely open source amateur radio digital mode is FreeDV.

Also of interest is APRS (the best there is In my humble opinion), SSB reception (so HF RX coverage I presume?) and Bluetooth support.  I want one.  The unit is currently without a model number.