Apologies for the interruption and updates
As you may have noticed, the newsletter hasn’t been published in a while. Part of it could be explained by me being busy in Europe. I can assure you that I had a blast and I will be catching up with you about it.
Sharing is caring
I would like you to share both this newsletter and also my YouTube channel in particular with a friend, or five. I would like to reach 20,000 subscribers to YouTube by year-end and only YOU can make it possible. But more importantly, I am sharing news, views and other items of importance to amateur radio and other wireless technology.
No more Ria’s Ham Shack radio/podcast on YouTube
I have decided to discontinue posting the radio show on the YouTube channel. The reason for this is that it seems that the longer format audio only shows bring down the average watch time for other videos and thus hurt the popularity of other videos with the YouTube algorithm.
You can still listen wherever you get podcasts, including google, apple podcasts, TuneIn and others. And of course you can listen on WRMI 5050 every Thursday 9PM ET (0100 UTC). It just won’t be on YouTube anymore.
If you’d like to help the channel, please Subscribe and tell a friend.
Check out some of the latest videos:
I had a rare interview with Wojciech, SP5WWP at Ham Radio Friedrichshafen. He tells the story of M17 and how you can get involved. This interview was done for ARDC, and it is also licensed as CC BY-SA so you can take an offline copy and show at your club meeting or other place, under the Creative Commons license. All I ask for is attribution (BY) and that any derivative works be used under the same license terms (SA).
I made my first QSOs on Amateur Radio’s only geostationary satellite (QO-100):
I’ve also done a short video (but not a YouTube short) about a cool French car with a wartime radio set in it:
There’s also a video about Charly25, which is an open source HF radio based on Red Pitaya:
Finally, I would like to highlight one of my youth interviews, with Suad, S79EUA who is doing Youth activities in Bosnia-Herzegovina:
Jann Traschewski, DG8NGN wins Horkheimer Prize for his work with Hamnet
Jann Traschewski, DG8NGN is the 2023 recipient of the Horkheimer Prize from the Deutscher Amateur Radio Club (DARC) for his work with Hamnet. The prize was awarded at Ham Radio Friedrichshafen in June, 2023. Hamnet is a high speed data network in Germany and other parts of Europe. It uses modified commercial gear and IP addresses from ARDC’s 44-Net IP address allocation for data communication among radio amateurs. Jann was presented with a trophy and a cheque for 2500 € from DARC.
You can see the announcement from DARC here: (German|translated to English).
Financial firms want to change HF data rules
A group calling itself the “shortwave modernization coalition” wants to change the rules for FCC Part 90 in the 2-25MHz segment. This rule would enable data exchange related to trading of securities and would potentially lower the latency for the data being transmitted. A practice known as “latency arbitrage” allows trading houses to have access to the best available pricing on securities by having low latency connections to different brokers and being able to select favorable pricing before it changes. Explanation. (this is not financial advice)
Radio waves would provide an advantage since radio traveling in the air (or free space) travels at higher speeds than light through fiber optic cable.
I have a video that explains why this could be bad for us:
Germany and UK to change amateur radio rules
Germany
Radio amateurs in the Federal Republic of Germany are set to get some new amateur radio rules, as new legislation was signed into law. Dr. Volker Wissing, Federal Minister for Digital Affairs and Transport signed the new legislation into law on June 22, 2023 and it was announced to attendees at the Ham Radio Friedrichshafen conference.
Among the benefits of the legislation include a new “foundation” or “novice” amateur radio license in Germany and increased transmitter power allowances.
United Kingdom
OfCom is also proposing rules that increase allowed transmitter output power to 1,000 watts PEP for Full licensees, 100 watts for Intermediate and 20 watts for Foundation. In addition, new callsign rules will come into effect including eliminating the need for regional locators and allowing recycling of old callsigns.
More details on the proposal are here.
Expeditioner rescued from Rockall
Cam Cameron, an expeditioner who wanted to raise £50,000 for charity by breaking the current world record for time spent on Rockall, had to be rescued by Rescue 22, a helicopter from HM Coastguard.
You can see more details at the website.
More next week
That’s it for this week! I’ll see you next week with more news. 73