SOUTH AFRICAN RADIO LEAGUE
SARL NEWS SUNDAY DECEMBER 3 2000

This is Amateur Radio Station ZS6SRL transmitting Amateur Radio News, a
service by the South African Radio League, the National Society for Amateur Radio in South Africa, for the interest of all Radio Amateurs, Short-wave Listeners and Electronic Enthusiasts. For a complete list of broadcast
times and frequencies please send a SASE to Amateur Radio News, SARL, P O
Box 1721, Strubensvallei 1735.

This bulletin is also available on the SARL's web pages hosted by Intekom at www.sarl.org.za, as well as the packet radio bulletin board system. You may also request sarlnuus@mweb.co.za to e-mail it to you in either text or
MSWord 6.0 format.

Here are the headlines of today's news:

RESULTS OF SARL 2000 HF CONTESTES

ENTRIES FOR THE TINUS LANGE AWARDS INVITED

SUNSAT MONITORS ANTARCTIC WEATHER

SECOND SOLAR PANEL INSTALLED ON ISS

SMS BY ALBERTON AMATEUR RADIO CLUB FOR AMATEURS

PROPAGATION FORECAST

You are listening to ZS6SRL. The news follows in detail.

RESULTS OF SARL 2000 HF CONTESTES

The Contest Committee has announced the results of both the Phone and CW contests.

In the Phone contest, Hans Kappetijn, ZS6KR, and Tjerk Lammers, ZS6P, from Pretoria Amateur Radio Club were followed by John Kramer, ZS5J, of Zululand. The overall winner also produced the best single band score, and an
error-free log.

On CW, Bernie van der Walt, ZS4TX, from Bloemfontein returned after an
absence of some years. He was fresh from the recent World Radiosport Team Championships in Europe, and showed all comers a clean pair of heels by also winning the Single Band title on 7 MHz. He was followed by the Phone
winner, Hans Kappetijn, ZS6KR, from Pretoria, and old-timer Vidi la Grange, ZS6AL, from Vaal Triangle. Michiel Kr=FCger, ZS6MJK, made a respectable single-band showing on 7 MHz to grab the First Year CW award, a mere five months after receiving his licence.

The club competition this year was a walk-over for the Pretoria Amateur
Radio Club. Although Midlands presented a stiff challenge in the Phone contest, their CW results left them in the lurch.

Full details appear on the SARL Web site and in an forthcoming edition of RadioZS.

ENTRIES FOR THE TINUS LANGE AWARDS INVITED

Entries are now invited for the SARL Tinus Lange 7066 Technical Excellence Awards.

The awards were introduced by and are financed from a special fund set up by the family of the late Tinus Lange in recognition of his contribution to Amateur Radio.

There is a junior and senior category. The junior category has an age limit
of 25 while the senior category is open to all. The objective of the award
is to encourage technical excellence in design and construction of Amateur Radio equipment and accessories including the design and/or construction of projects such as a pre-amp, a SWR bridge, patching unit, automatic ID-er, practical antenna ideas, mast, portable gear, power supplies, software for
use in the shack etc.

The submission must include the following:

1) the actual item ( if size and mass allows it) or photographs (particular
in the case of antennas/mast etc) 2) a complete write-up in article form
with illustrations/pictures ready for publication in Radio ZS 3) All written material must be submitted in word or RTF format on a stiffy and two hard copies.

In both the junior and senior category the award will be a certificate and R350.

All entries will be displayed (where practical, otherwise photographs) at
the AGM and the award will be presented at the annual awards function
arranged at the time of the AGM. The date for 2001 is 28 April. The
closing date for the 2000/2001 award is 15 February 2001. The submission
must be addressed to the SARL Tinus Lange Award, P O Box 1721 Strubensvallei 1735

SUNSAT MONITORS ANTARCTIC WEATHER

On 6 December the SUNSAT team at the University of Stellenbosch shipped an automated Sunsat ground station to the South African base in the Antarctic
to relay weather information collected by two weather stations to be
operated by Stanford University. As SUNSAT passes over the South Pole every 100 minutes, the information will be uploaded to the satellite and
rebroadcast from SUNSAT and relayed to meteorologists world-wide via the Internet. Frequency details will be announced early next year.

SECOND SOLAR PANEL INSTALLED ON ISS

The crew of the US Space Shuttle Endeavour successfully deployed a second
solar panel installed on the International Space Station to produce
electricity for future scientific experiments, Nasa announced.

The operation carried out by commander Brent Jeff via remote control took
about two hours, according to officials from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The first solar panel was deployed in just 13 minutes, but its deployment
was not complete because of two loose cables that got in the way. That was
one of the reasons why flight managers decided to proceed with the
deployment of the second panel slowly.

The two 600-million-dollar panels are the first of four sets of solar panels that will eventually power the space station, providing enough electricity through their 66 000 photovoltaic cells to run 15 homes on Earth, Nasa officials have said. At 73 metres (239 feet), the panels' length exceeds
that of the wingspan of a Boeing 747.

Until now, two smaller 10-kilowatt panels have supplied the station's two Russian modules, Zarya and Zvezda, with electricity. The new panels will provide an additional 64 kilowatts - enough to power the US laboratory
Destiny, bound for space in January, as well as Zarya, Zvezda and the US
Unity vessel, dark since the November arrival of "Expedition One" station residents William Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalov.

Astronauts Carlos Noriega and Joe Tanner were scheduled to conduct their
second spacewalk on Tuesday to attach cables connecting the station with the panels.

The ISS is expected, in due course, to become the brightest shining star visible from the earth.

SARL HEAD OFFICE WILL BE CLOSED FOR MORE THAN FOUR WEEKS

The SARL Head Office will close on the 13 th December and reopen again on January 17 next year. There is thus 3 days left to finish off any urgent matters with Head Office.

POSTAL BALLOT ON PROPOSAL THAT LEAGUE AGM MAY BE HELD IN OTHER PROVINCES

Wally Sime, ZS6WAL, told Sarlnews that despite the correct mailing address appearing on the postal ballot and the item in last week=92s bulletin which drew members=92 attention to the correct address, many postal votes had
still been received at the league=92s head office. Head office closes on
the 13 th December and any votes received thereafter will only be forwarded
to the scrutineers after the 17 th January next year. Please if there are still postal votes to be mailed it must be sent to the correct address which is: SARL Postal Ballot, P O Box 2105, Dennesig, 7601.

SMS BY ALBERTON AMATEUR RADIO CLUB FOR AMATEURS

With technology not standing still, the Alberton Amateur Radio Club has
started an automatic server that will send a message via SMS (Short Message Service) to any subscriber on the MTN or Vodacom network, or to any other network that supports SMS around the world.

Information like upcoming club events, interesting new news, upcoming satellites and a whole lot more can be sent in a text format of 160
characters that will reach the recipient immediately. This service is FREE
to any HAM operator.

Some stat's from the SMSC (Short Message Service Centre) is that the
database at this moment is standing at 102 subs and that if a global group
SM is sent out, we get a report back of 5 to 8 SM's per second depending on
the load and the time the message was sent.

A group for you own club can be set up so that only information relating to your club can be sent to the different individuals to inform them about the current activities in your area.

We passed the 3-month test phase and the system is now fully operational.
The response that we had was excellent. If you would like to be added to
the global group, or start your own club group, you can get in contact with Michiel (Pronounced "Magiel"), ZS6MDK, on 083-212-5711 or e-mail at zs6tdk@hotmail.com or dekock_m@mtn.co.za.

PROPAGATION REPORT

Ean Retief, ZS1PR, reports as follows:

HF propagation conditions were a bit in the doldrums during the past week.

There were two causes for the problems. On the one hand the sunspot count
is fairly low, while on the other the Earth is currently under the influence
of a high-speed coronal hole solar wind stream, which is having a constant effect on the earth's magnetic field.

Today you will find the Maximum Usable Frequencies lower than forecast by at least 5% on all routes. On routes approaching the polar regions the MUF may
be down by as much as 15% on the predicted monthly values.

The solar flux should remain in the 130 region until about Thursday, when it should start to rise rapidly to a value in the 170 region over the weekend. Such a rapid rise may be accompanied by a major solar flare or two.

From Tuesday there should be a marked improvement in the higher bands and

from Thursday to Saturday conditions should be good. The 20 meter band
should stay open around the clock while the 30 meter band should be
excellent for inland work, with virtually no skip and cross country contacts
at the same time - thus very suitable for mobile working.

DIARY OF COMING EVENTS

There is this week nothing under this heading; we await next year.

The SARL News Service invites Clubs and individuals to contribute
information regarding Amateur Radio to sarlnuus@mweb.co.za with a copy to gth@mweb.co.za. Please submit in Afrikaans and English wherever possible.

Also join us in the following activities:

The President's Net on Sundays 12:00 on 7082 kHz. Amateur Radio Mirror International Sundays at 10:00 on 9750 and 21560 kHz which is repeated
Mondays at 20:00 on 1 kHz. Relays on various 2M repeaters can also be
heard.

Correspondence for Amateur Radio Mirror International is via armi@intekom.co.za. Include your telephone number to allow the producers to call you for a possible interview. Send written reports to PO Box 90438 Garsfontein 0042 and include a self-addressed envelope and sufficient
postage so that you may receive a QSL card.

These transmissions are sponsored by Sentech, the common carrier for broadcasting signals in South Africa and Telkom who provides the
transmission lines. Various local repeater frequencies on 2 metres and 70
cm are also used in your area.

We thank all contributors, especially clubs, to this bulletin and all
stations who so reliably relay these bulletins. This bulletin was compiled
by George, ZS6NE, and read by ZS.... in.......

You have been listening to ZS6SRL.

This transmission now ends and we wish you a pleasant week.

/ex
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Internet feed from ZS6ZY moved by Richard de ZR6CK

Regards,
Richard.

--- Msged/Q 1.60
* Origin: QTHR KG44DG, Novell User Group, Pretoria, RSA (5:7106/22)