Propagation Report from Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP

Southgate ARC – Currently there is a single sunspot visible that can be the source of M-class solar flares

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VK6WIA NewsWest

Southgate ARC – In this broadcast: It’s our CLUB FOCUS week, and we’ll hear from clubs around VK6 including Ham College and the NCRG, and of course – what’s been going on at WA Amateur Radio news

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Digital Communications Conference (DCC) call for papers

Southgate ARC – Technical papers are solicited for presentation at the ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference (DCC) and publication in the Conference Proceedings. Annual conference proceedings are published by the ARRL

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AMSAT at the Hamvention – 2nd call for volunteers

Southgate ARC – Last year, we had 30 people assist with the AMSAT booth at the Hamvention. We’ve had a good response so far to our first call for volunteers, but we could really use another 10-15 people. The 2018 Hamvention is May 18-20 in Xenia, Ohio. Would you consider helping AMSAT at the Hamvention this year?

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Weather Enthusiast Wanted to Help NWS Phoenix:

eHam.net News – PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) — When rain, lightning and dust storms hit the Valley, all eyes are on the sky. For a specially trained group of people in Arizona, it’s for good reason. The National Weather Service relies on their network storm spotters to get them information. “We want to know that what we are seeing is happening in real time. So is there large hail, is there wind damage and flash floods, that sort of thing,” said Ken Water, warning coordinator for the National Weather Service Phoenix. Storm spotters get their training every year during the National Weather Service’s Skywarn classes. The course goes through a basic overview of weather from how thunderstorms form, to different types of clouds, to Arizona’s famous dust storms. “We also closely network with the amateur radio or the ‘ham’ folks out there too,” said Waters. Information from storm spotters is instant, especially with the advancement in technology. The pictures, video and reports can get to the National Weather Service in seconds. They combined that with radar and satellite information which helps them make split second decisions.

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FEMA and NRC Like Local Palisades Response:

eHam.net News – PAW PAW — Southwest Michigan emergency response agencies have passed a test of their ability to respond to a simulated nuclear accident at Palisades nuclear power plant. The term that testers from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Federal Emergency Management Agency used was “reasonably assured.” “The exercise … demonstrates reasonable assurance exists of the licensees’ ability to effectively implement its emergency plan to adequately protect the public health and safety in the event of a radological emergency,” said Michelle Garza, an NRC emergency preparedness inspector. “The exercise involved a lot of different participants,” said Dwaine Warren, supervisor team leader of FEMA’s Radiological Emergency Preparedness Program. Emergency service agencies plus schools, public health, amateur radio operators, Palisades, WCXT radio, the American Red Cross and others from Van Buren, Berrien and Allegan counties took part.

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ISWL callsigns for May

Southgate ARC – The following ISWL club callsigns will be used throughout the month of May 2018

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Hamvention 2018 live stream

Southgate ARC – W5KUB will once again be webcasting for the 17th year the Hamvention Marathon Webcast. It will be over 40 hours of live streaming of our yearly event. There are many people who can not attend hamvention due to health, finances, work, and age. Our motto is “Bringing ham radio to you”.

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Germany to get a temporary allocation on 70MHz again in 2018

Southgate ARC – A new ruling from BNetza for the German amateur radio service; Temporary admission will be granted to 70.150 – 70.180 MHz, from 2 May to 31 August 2018

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An fm transceiver from an unexpected chip

Southgate ARC – The Si47xx series of integrated circuits from Silicon Labs is a fascinating series of consumer broadcast radio products, chips that apply SDR technologies to deliver a range of functions that were once significantly more complex, with minimal external components and RF design trickery

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DX News from the ARRL

Southgate ARC – The American Radio Relay League’s round-up of the forthcoming week’s DX activity on the amateur radio bands

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The new Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and a number of RPi projects

Last month, on “Pi Day” (March 14, 2018) an upgraded Raspberry Pi 3 B was announced on the Raspberry Pi website. The new $35 B+ sports a few performance enhancements over the original–most notably:

• A 1.4GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU
• Dual-band 802.11ac wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.2
• Faster Ethernet (Gigabit Ethernet over USB 2.0)
• Power-over-Ethernet support (with separate PoE HAT)
• Improved PXE network and USB mass-storage booting
• Improved thermal management

Here’s a short promo video posted with the announcement:

Click here view on YouTube.

I immediately navigated to my favorite Raspberry Pi source–AdaFruit–and requested a notification when the new units were available to purchase. A few weeks later, I got the notification and placed an order within minutes (you see, when the Pi 3 B was first released, I hesitated a day and had to wait a few weeks for the second shipment!).

I received my RPi 3 B+ a few days ago:

I immediately attempted to put this unit into service but learned that it requires the latest firmware which was only released a week or so ago. If you have have an RPi 3 B+, here’s where to fetch the latest firmware:

NOOBS:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/noobs/
or if you want Raspbian:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
and install on SD per instructions here:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati … /README.md

After receiving this latest Pi, I quickly realized I’ve bought a number of Raspberry Pi models over the years and currently have them in service for a variety ofc projects.  Here’s a list of all of my current Pi-powered applications:

• A FlightAware ADS-B feed 
• A LiveATC feed of airport KHKY
• A desktop computer for my kids to learn Python and do homework
• A headless remote unit for transferring large files and archiving the full Shortwave Radio Audio Archive
• A Raspberry Pirate FM transmitter
• Two RACHEL-PI systems (English and French) I’m evaluating for use with ETOW (Thanks for the tip, Mark Phillips!)
• And, inspired by Tudor,  I plan to build a portable SDR station around my AirSpy HF+ and SDRplay RSP1A

That’s a total of seven RPi projects that are in service at time of posting!

As I mentioned earlier, I try to buy most of my Pi equipment from the amazing AdaFruit retailer–I like supporting what they do even if I pay a small premium.

But AdaFruit seems to rarely have stock in some of my favorite Pi bundle packages. If I’m buying a Raspberry Pi for a new application, I look for a package with at least a case, a 2.5 amp power supply, a 32 or 64GB MicroSD card, and two heat sinks (though I’m not certain the B+ needs a heatsink). I tend to grab this one or this one from Amazon (affiliate links).

Post readers: Have you ever used a Raspberry Pi? If so, in what sort of applications? How many do you own?  Please comment!

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A5A – Bhutan

APRIL 4 – Setting up earlier today (pic by E21EIC) MARCH 30 – A5A will be active again between Apr 4 – 11, 2018. Zorro, JH1AJT will travel to Bhutan with Jin, JF1IST and Champ, E21EIC. Main purpose is to meet with the foreign ministry to continue discussions on outcome and progress about the collaborative […]

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WJ2O – South Pacific Tour

Dave, WJ2O announces plans for a South Pacific DXpedition. KH8 – 8 June (2 days) 5W – 11 June (2 days) KH8 – 13 June (4 days) KH1 – 27 June (10 days with KH1/KH7Z group) 3D2 – 13 July (4 days) Dates are approximate. Dave also mentions he was surprised to learn that KH8 […]

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