Topics and links for the broadcast of 22-11-2020 11:00 am (CEST)

Frisian Eleven Cities Contest.

On November 22, 2020, the "Frisian Eleven Cities Contest" will be held on the 2 meter band. The organization can be mailed at pi4lwd <at> amsat.org. Coordination of the occupation of the cities is in the hands of Peter (PE1CDA) pe1cda <at> veron.nl.

Do you have a question that is not answered about the event? Mail on time with pa2ip <at> veron.nl or pe1cda <at> veron.nl

More information at Friese elfstedencontest.

ARRL EME contest

On 28/29 November 2020 the 3th part of the EME content will be hold.

Three full weekend 48-hour periods (0000 UTC on Saturday through 2359 UTC Sunday). Dates for 2020 are:
Weekend # 1 - 2.3 GHz & Up - September 12-13
Weekends # 2/3 - 50 to 1296 MHz - October 10-11, November 28-29

Objective: To work as many amateur stations as possible via the earth-moon-earth path on any authorized amateur frequency above 50 MHz.

More information on the ARRL website.

DARC is/was offline

On Saterday https://www.darc.de/ was offline. I hope they fix this soon.

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator at webmaster@darc.de to inform them of the time this error occurred, and the actions you performed just before this error.

Note: On Saturday 11:50 am the server was back online.

Incoming news (by PC5D)

from RSGB news bulletin

The reports, presentations and minutes of the annual meeting of the RSGB Spectrum Forum 2020 are now available. The material offers a broad overview of topics in the field of EMC, HF, VHF and microwave; both from the Society and from nationally affiliated Special Interest Groups. The presentations will include updates on Ofcom's EMF proposals, IARU 2021 band plans, VHF innovation and WRC-23 and GPS press 23 cm band. Several reports contain the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The reports are online at RSGB website.

Arecibo Observatory's damaged 305m radio telescope in Puerto Rico will be decommissioned for security reasons. One of the support cables broke in August and, before the repair could be carried out, a second cable broke earlier in November. The decommissioning plan focuses only on the 305-meter telescope and is intended to keep other parts of the observatory safe.

South Dublin Radio Club has uploaded its latest video to the club's YouTube channel. It's called Signals from Outerspace! Create your own antenna to get images from Weather satellites. Designed as a budding radio project, it instructs viewers on how to build a very simple V-dipole for 137MHz, showing how it can be used along with a basic software-defined receiver and computer to decode images from passing NOAA weather satellites.

Propagation (send by PC5D)

The past week was not bad for HF propagation. The solar flux index remained around 75, but the advantage was that we had calm geomagnetic conditions. The result was that the maximum usable frequencies remained quite high, with 12 meters often open. Occasionally there was a large opening at 10 meters, including SSB contacts with Australia, especially for better equipped stations. Some Es openings at 10 and 6m have also been observed.
NOAA's forecast for next week depends on the activity of a new solar spot. The SFI can either remain in the 70-75 range, but this could easily exceed 80 with less favorable geomagnetic conditions.
On Sunday, November 22 and again on November 24 and 25, the K index can go up to 4. So it looks like the second half of the week will be better for HF propagation than the first half.

The maximum usable frequencies will vary between 11 MHz at the end of the night and approximately 24 MHz during the day. With these values, the 40m band is also open during the day for connections within the Benelux.

Oh, one more thing

I would like to warn everyone to approach social media with a fair dose of suspicion, especially when it comes to Covid-19. Only trust what our government publishes about this. More can be found at RIVM.

I also want to wish everyone happy days for Christmas and a good ending for 2020 and a good start for 2021. For this occasion I have been working on a new album and I am still working on finishing it. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did making this album. Enjoy. Album Mali Ba.