From the WIA.
Original post here.

Date : 12 / 04 / 2016 
Author : Phil Wait – VK2ASD

The WIA urges action be taken against all in-home powerline telecommunications (PLT) devices that do not comply with the CISPR 22 (International Special Committee on Radio Interference) standard.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is reviewing the regulation for PLT devices that send radio frequency signals over powerlines to enable broadband access including the internet.

The WIA actively participates in the work of spectrum management, consultative standards bodies, and as a member society also contributes its expertise through the International Amateur Radio Union.  The WIA has been very active in the PLT arena, both as a member of Australian Standards committee TE 003 and through direct representations to the ACMA and participation in domestic trials.

In a submission it called for the ACMA to continue with the CISPR 22 standard to ensure the protection of existing and future radiocommunication services from radio noise pollution or interference.  The ACMA has asked whether it should use an alternative standard (EN50561), but the WIA is against that move describing CISPR as remaining to be the most relevant organisation in the area of the PLT standard.  If the ACMA chose to adopt the alternative, the WIA wants it modified for Australian conditions including its compliance test regime, and the notching for protected frequencies be a permanent feature that cannot be removed or deactivated.  While notching has greatly reduced interference, currently not all Amateur Radio bands are given that protection.

The WIA wants a warning notice on all PLT devices that state such devices may be responsible for radio interference that needed remedial action including removing the device from use.  Suppliers have imported PLT devices that are not compliant with CISPR 22.  The WIA believes there should be more effective compliance measures for all imported devices, together with frequent random checks and audits.  Harmful interference can disrupt or degrade existing spectrum users, some of a medical nature, but that use will rapidly grow in a few years. 

Click here to view the WIA – ACMA PLT Submission.

Would make a nice EME enabled holiday destination don’t you think?  Whip-round anyone?

Via the Charleston Gazette-Mail, original post here.

A 35,000-square-foot steel building topped with a 105-foot-diameter satellite dish with intercontinental reach and surrounded by a 12-foot security fence with a motorized, digitally controlled access gate could be the ultimate man cave — especially since the property includes 103 acres of Preston County forest and farmland with prime hunting and a stocked fishing pond.

The former AT&T Lenox Earth Station is for sale. The asking price: $499,000.

The Lenox compound was built in the early 1980s by the Communications Satellite Corporation, or COMSAT, to serve as a “diversity” site for its Etam Earth Station, located 22 miles to the southwest, a short distance south of Rowlesburg.  The Etam station, built in 1968, became the world’s busiest facility for handling satellite telecommunications traffic by the mid-1970s.

When a new series of geosynchronous satellites began orbiting the Earth in the late ’70s, making the Etam station even busier, COMSAT sought permission from the Federal Communications Commission to build a new earth station at Lenox to reduce service outages due to severe weather.  According to COMSAT’s FCC filing, the ETAM station would be out of service about 90 times a year for one minute or more, totaling about 17 hours of down time annually, without the new Lenox station.

“Satellite service was transferred via microwave radio links to Lenox when there was heavy rain at the Etam location,” said AT&T spokeswoman Gayle Kansagor.

Due to its intermittent use, the station at Lenox was never heavily staffed.  During its peak operations period in the mid-1980s, nine technicians worked at the facility, Kansagor said.  But during the brief periods when the Etam station was down, the Lenox station handled telecommunications traffic that could include more than routine personal and commercial international phone calls.  Etam also carried images from major international sporting events, NASA launches and landings, and from 1978 until the late 1980s, according to published reports, was a key link in the Washington-Moscow Hotline, designed to connect American presidents and Soviet leaders instantly communicate during times of crisis.

AT&T bought and assumed operation of both the Etam and Lenox earth stations in 1988, but closed the Lenox site as back-up to the still-busy Etam facility in late 1989, after “AT&T determined that it was no longer feasible to operate,” Kansagor said.

In the mid-1990s, Lenox was re-purposed “as a disaster recovery site for various AT&T international satellite earth stations serving the Atlantic Ocean region,” according to Kansagor. “The office was officially retired in 2012 following deployment of undersea fiber-optic cables to Europe, Africa and South America.”

“The building is huge, stays cool in the summer and has high tech security fencing and lighting,” said Sheri Ball of Ball Auction and Real Estate Services in Terra Alta, with whom the property is listed.  “You could use it for a home or divide it into apartments, but right now, there aren’t any windows.  It has three-phase security lighting, so you could back up to the loading dock and use it for a tanning bed, if you wanted.”

Ball said that in addition to a five-acre paved parking lot adjacent to the building, the 103 acres that comes with the property, mineral rights included, is also level “and could be developed into a farm for raising livestock. There’s a large quarterhorse farm just down the road.”

Ball said she’s had several serious inquiries about the site, from both local individuals and earth station operators from outside the state. “I’ve had a few guys fly in to look at the property and then ask about giving the earth station to them in exchange for a tax write-off.  I guess that’s something that actually happens somewhere, because I’ve heard that offer several times, now.”

The unincorporated community of Lenox lost its post office years ago, but the Lenox store along W.Va. Secondary Route 3, also known as the Brandonville Pike, operating there since 1882, and the Lenox Community Building has been hosting a New Year’s Day oyster stew dinner for the past 90 years.

“It’s in a beautiful place,” Ball said of her listing. “It’s just kind of in the middle of nowhere.”

Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelhamer@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5169, or follow @rsteelhammer on Twitter.

From ARVic, original post here.

The Radio Amateur Society of Thailand (RAST) has begun as net control for the SEANET on air gathering of radio amateurs in Southeast Asia every Monday and Friday at 1200 UTC on 14.320 MHz.

RAST Vice President, Tony Waltham HS0ZDX the net control operator begins by calling for check-ins from countries in Southeast Asia, followed by elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific, then in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North, Central and South America.

RAST will host the 2016 SEANET Convention in Pattaya, a popular beach resort on the Gulf of Thailand, from November 18-21.  To register to attend the 44th SEANET Convention see the information at the website http://www.seanet2016.com/

SEANET which began in late 1963 is a guide to propagation and a meeting point before QSYing away from the net frequency for a QSO.  The first SEANET Convention was held in Penang in 1971.

Its origins are that radio amateurs in the region met on air November 29, 1963 to promote international understanding and fellowship, and to relay emergency, medical, urgent or priority traffic.  SEANET is a guide to propagation and a meeting point before stations QSY from the net frequency for a QSO.

*** EDIT *** – Further info from RAST VP Tony Waltham, HS0ZDM:

The Southeast Asia Net (SEANET) will be reactivated next week by the members of RAST, Thailand’s national amateur radio society.

Beginning on Monday, April 11 a Thai net control station will invite stations to check into SEANET from across the Southeast Asian region on 14.320 MHz from 12.00z (7pm in Bangkok and Jakarta) onwards.

Subsequently, the net will be conducted twice a week, every Monday and Friday, when a Thai net control station will invite stations around the region to check in on a country-by-country basis.

Later this year the Radio Amateur Society of Thailand under the patronage of His Majesty the King (RAST) will host the 2016 SEANET Convention in Pattaya, a popular beach resort on the Gulf of Thailand, from November 18-21 and RAST President Jakkree Hantongkom (Jack), HS1FVL along with directors of the society believe that it is important to ensure that the net on 20 metres continues to be conducted regularly.

Amateur radio stations anywhere in the world are welcome to check into SEANET, whose main role is to be on standby to handle any medical or emergency traffic.  In the past SEANET has helped sailors and crew members on yachts in distress while also serving as a guide to propagation conditions and being a meeting point for hams in the region where they can meet friends before QSYing away from the net frequency for a QSO.

SEANET began operating on 14.320 MHz in late 1963 and the first SEANET Convention was held in Penang in 1971.  Since then the convention has been an annual event while the net had been manned by volunteer net control stations from around the region.  However, the net activity had declined and it no longer meets regularly and this initiative by RAST hopes to redress this by conducting the net at least twice a week.

It is still possible to register to attend the 44th SEANET Convention in Pattaya and full information can be found at the SEANET 2016 website: www.seanet2016.com.

Any amateur radio station can check into the net and the net control operator begins by calling for check-ins from countries in Southeast Asia, followed by elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific, then in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North, Central and South America.

For more information about RAST and amateur radio in Thailand, please check out the English-language website while there is also a website in Thai.

From the WIA, original post here.

Date : 10 / 04 / 2016

The Wireless Institute of Australia has proudly assigned VK100ANZAC to the Geelong Amateur Radio Club on July 19-21, the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Fromelles. Australia sustained 5,500 casualties in that battle, the worst 24 hours in our military history.

Geelong Amateur Radio Club spokesman Barry Abley VK3SY says the event is in recognition of a tragic period which caused loss and grief to countless people and nations.

Supported by the WIA, invitations are extended to other International Amateur Radio Union member societies to consider how to join the event.  At Geelong the venue will be historical Osborne House, Australia’s first Naval College and in a number of uses was a WWI military hospital.

Some details of the commemoration of the Battle of Fromelles on Western Front are still being finalised, but will be announced as this anniversary approaches.  This is part of the Federal Government ANZAC Community Grant program that included VI3ANZAC in August 2014 to commemorate the “First Shot of the Great War” fired by Australia.  From Fort Queenscliff the order was given to fire across the bow of the fleeing German merchant ship Pfalz, to prevent it from leaving Port Phillip Bay.

The First Shot campaign commemorated Australia’s first action in the war, and taking part was the Geelong Amateur Radio Club.