The ARRL Letter
November 5, 2020
* ARRL Comments on FCC Draft WRC-23 Recommendations
* ARRL Pacific Division Director Jim Tiemstra, K6JAT, SK
* New NIST System Detects Ultra-Faint Signals Using Quantum Physics
Principles
* ARRL Podcasts Schedule
* A Sweepstakes "Clean Sweep" Means Working 84 Sections This Year
* Neutron-1 CubeSat Deployed from ISS; Other Sats Pending
* The K7RA Solar Update
* Just Ahead in Radiosport
* ARRL Learning Network Webinars
* Announcements
* IARU Region 2 Executive Committee Meets in Multiple Virtual
Sessions
* In Brief...
* Upcoming ARRL Section, State, and Division Conventions
ARRL Comments on FCC Draft WRC-23 Recommendations
ARRL has submitted comments on two draft recommendations approved in
October by the FCC's World Radiocommunication Conference visory
Committee (WAC). The comments focus on draft recommendations for World
Radiocommunication Conference 2023 (WRC-23) Agenda Item (AI) 1.2. AI
1.2 will consider the identification of frequencies in the 3.3 - 3.4
GHz and 10.0 - 10.5 GHz bands, among others, "for International Mobile
Telecommunications (IMT), including possible additional allocations to
the mobile service on a primary basis," in accordance with WRC-19
Resolution 245. ARRL urged no change to the 3.3 - 3.4 GHz international
secondary allocation to the Amateur Service in ITU Regions 2 (the
Americas) and
3 (Oceania), and no change to the 10.0 - 10.5 GHz worldwide secondary
amateur and amateur-satellite allocation.
"Radio amateurs make substantial use of both bands," ARRL said in its
comments. "They have conducted experiments and designed systems that
protect primary users. The lack of interference complaints is evidence
that they have been successful in doing so. In this manner, new
spectrum horizons are explored and new techniques are developed that
put spectrum to productive use that otherwise would represent lost
opportunities and waste of the natural resource."
ARRL stressed that the WAC preliminary views make no suggestion that
the international secondary allocations to the Amateur Service should
not continue in both bands. ARRL said it wanted to reaffirm that these
secondary allocations continue to be important and useful and that
WRC-23 should not consider changing either secondary allocation.
"Sharing between primary users and secondary amateur radio users has
been highly successful, and the US domestic Table reflected the
International allocations until this year," ARRL said. In September,
however, the FCC adopted an Order to delete the secondary amateur and
amateur-satellite allocations in the 3.3 - 3.5 GHz band. Amateur radio
operations may continue on a secondary basis, subject to decisions to
be made on issues raised in a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in
the proceeding, WT Docket 19-348.
ARRL maintained that amateur radio should remain secondary in the
international allocations at 3.3 - 3.4 GHz "until more is known about
the technical characteristics of equipment that will be used by new
services and the extent of geographic build-out."
With regard to 10.0 - 10.5 GHz, ARRL noted that it has been used for
many amateur terrestrial experiments and tests that have helped to
develop the technical characteristics of the band. The band is also
heavily used throughout much of the world as the downlink for the
Qatari amateur satellite Es'hail-2 (QO-100).
ARRL noted that radio amateurs utilizing the secondary spectrum at 3.3
- 3.4 GHz and 10.0 - 10.5 GHz "have developed and honed their equipment
and capabilities to share with the existing services."
"The Amateur Service has earned its reputation for making careful and
non-preclusive use of its secondary allocations and will continue doing
so," ARRL concluded. "Therefore, we respectfully request that the
Amateur Service and Amateur-Satellite Service be continued as secondary
services in the above bands."
ARRL Pacific Division Director Jim Tiemstra, K6JAT, SK
ARRL Pacific Division Director Jim Tiemstra, K6JAT, of Oakland,
California, died October 30. An ARRL Life Member, he was 65.
Tiemstra was ARRL Pacific Division Vice Director from 2009 through
2017, sitting on the ministration and Finance, and Programs and
Services Committees of the Board. He became ARRL Pacific Division
Director in January 2018. He was a member of the ministration and
Finance Committee, the Legal Structure Review Committee, chair of the
Legislative vocacy Committee, and an advisor to the Amateur Radio
Legal Defense and Assistance Committee, among other Board assignments.
Licensed in 1970 as WN9ELU in Chicago, Tiemstra was the president of
his high school radio club in Illinois. Early on, he built most of his
own gear from Heathkits. In 1977, he married Lilah Greene, KE6EHD, and
they moved to California, where Tiemstra became N6OIK, later choosing
K6JAT as a vanity call sign. He'd also held V26JAT and 3D2TJ and had
operated from Curacao and Hawaii.
Primarily a contester and DXer, Tiemstra had been a DXpedition member
and had long been involved in the public service aspects of the hobby.
As a member of the Oakland Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES)
group, he was among those responding to the Loma Prieta earthquake in
1989 and the Oakland Hills firestorm in 1991, receiving a Certificate
of Appreciation from the American Red Cross. He championed the
Emergency Communication Ham Operation (ECHO) proposal to install
amateur radio equipment in his city's Emergency Operations Center and
in each of its 30 fire stations.
Tiemstra worked with his ARES group to gain RACES recognition, wrote
the RACES Operations Manual, and was instrumental in forging a formal
Letter of Understanding with the City of Oakland. He served as
Oakland's RACES Radio Officer for more than 14 years, was on the
mayor's Emergency Management Council, and was ARRL East Bay Section
Emergency Coordinator. In 2002, he was recognized by the Oakland Fire
Department as Community Volunteer of the Year.
Tiemstra retired in 2018 as a federal practitioner in the private
practice of law. Read more.
New NIST System Detects Ultra-Faint Signals Using Quantum Physics
Principles
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) have devised and demonstrated a system that could dramatically
increase the performance of communication networks while enabling
record-low error rates in detecting even the faintest of signals. This
has the potential to cut the total amount of energy required for
state-of-the-art networks by a factor of 10 to 100. The
proof-of-principle system consists of a novel receiver and
corresponding signal-processing technique, entirely based on the
The incoming signal (red, lower
left) proceeds through a beam
splitter to the photon detector,
which has an attached time register
(top right). The receiver sends the
reference beam to the beam splitter
to cancel the incoming pulse, so
that no light is detected. The
receiver uses exact times of photon
detection. The combination of
recorded detection times and the
history of reference beam
frequencies is used to find the
frequency of the incoming signal.
properties of quantum physics and able to handle extremely weak signals
with pulses that carry many bits of data.
"We built the communication test bed using off-the-shelf components to
demonstrate that quantum-measurement-enabled communication can
potentially be scaled up for widespread commercial use," said Ivan
Burenkov, a physicist at the Joint Quantum Institute, a research
partnership between NIST and the University of Maryland. Burenkov and
his colleagues reported the results in Physical Review X Quantum.
"Our effort shows that quantum measurements offer valuable, heretofore
unforeseen advantages for telecommunications leading to revolutionary
improvements in channel bandwidth and energy efficiency," Burenkov
added.
Modern communications systems work by converting information into a
laser-generated stream of digital light pulses in which information is
encoded -- in the form of changes to the properties of the light waves
-- for transfer and then decoded when it reaches the receiver. The
train of pulses grows fainter as it travels along transmission
channels, and conventional electronic technology for receiving and
decoding data has reached the limit of its ability to precisely detect
the information in such attenuated signals.
The signal pulse can dwindle until it is as weak as a few photons -- or
even less than one on average. At that point, inevitable random quantum
fluctuations, called "shot noise," make accurate reception impossible
by normal ("classical," as opposed to quantum) technology because the
uncertainty caused by the noise makes up such a large part of the
diminished signal. As a result, existing systems must amplify the
signals repeatedly along the transmission line, at considerable energy
cost, keeping them strong enough to detect reliably.
The NIST team's system can eliminate the need for amplifiers because it
can reliably process even extremely feeble signal pulses: "The total
energy required to transmit one bit becomes a fundamental factor
hindering the development of networks," said Sergey Polyakov, senior
scientist on the NIST team. "The goal is to reduce the sum of energy
required by lasers, amplifiers, detectors, and support equipment to
reliably transmit information over longer distances."
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ARRL Podcasts Schedule
The latest episode of the On the Air podcast (Episode 10) includes an
interview with ARRL Lifelong Learning Manager Kris Bickell, K1BIC,
about ARRL's new "Learning Network" webinars.
The latest edition of Eclectic Tech (Episode 20) features an interview
with ARRL Emergency Preparedness Director Paul Gilbert, KE5ZW, about
the future of amateur radio technology in public service, and will also
cover a new power source that uses diamonds and nuclear waste.
The On the Air and Eclectic Tech podcasts are sponsored by Icom. Both
podcasts are available on iTunes (iOS) and Stitcher (Android), as well
as on Blubrry -- On the Air | Eclectic Tech.
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A Sweepstakes "Clean Sweep" Means Working 84 Sections This Year
The ever-popular ARRL November Sweepstakes (SS) weekends are upon us --
one for CW and the other for SSB. This year, participants will have to
search out an additional Section. The CW event takes place November 7 -
9 (UTC), and the SSB event is from November 21 - 23 (UTC). Each
Sweepstakes leg begins at 2100 UTC on Saturday and runs through 0259
UTC on Monday. Stations may operate 24 of the available 30 hours. An SS
Operating Guide package, available via the SS web page, explains how to
participate in Sweepstakes. Clubs or public service teams that are
considering participating in SS will find
the guide to be a useful source for information. This year marks the
79th SS event, which attracts more than 3,000 entries each fall for
both weekends.
The number of ARRL and Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) Sections rose to
84 earlier this year with the addition of Prince Edward Island (PE) as
a separate entity. The objective of SS -- or "sweeps" -- is to work as
many stations in as many of the 84 Sections as possible within 24 hours
of operating. The number of Sections worked is a score multiplier, and
working all of them -- a "clean sweep" in SS terminology -- is the goal
of many SS aficionados, who qualify for a clean sweep coffee mug.
Hardcore SS operators try to run up the contact and multiplier counts
by operating for the allowed 24 hours.
Some multipliers are rarer and/or harder to work, and these can vary
from year to year. For many years, the most difficult SS multiplier was
considered to be Northern Territories (NT) in Canada, where J. Allen,
VY1JA, in Yukon Territory, was often the only station available. Allen
has stepped back from amateur radio, however, owing to health issues.
Making a clean sweep also requires working Alaska and Hawaii (or
another station in the Pacific Section), as well as
Newfoundland/Labrador (NL) and Prince Edward Island (PE) in the other
direction. On the rarer side, finding -- and working -- stations in
Alberta (AB), North Dakota (ND), Northern New York (NNY), US Virgin
Islands (VI), Wyoming (WY), and Delaware (DE) has proven vexing for
some SS operators.
Nonetheless, even stations with modest equipment and antennas can
enjoy success. Many stations like to operate in the QRP category (with
an output of 5 W or less), although that challenge has been more
daunting at this point in the solar cycle.
ARRL November Sweepstakes is the oldest domestic radiosport event (the
first was in 1930). The SS contest exchange has deep roots in
message-handling protocol and replicates a radiogram preamble. In SS,
stations exchange:
* A consecutive serial number (NR). Operators do not have to add
zeros ahead of numbers less than 100.
* Operating category (Precedence) -- Q for Single Operator, QRP; A
for Single Operator, Low Power (up to 150 W output); B for Single
Operator, High Power (greater than 150 W output); U for Single
Operator, Unlimited, regardless of power; M for Multioperator,
regardless of power, and S for School Club.
* Your call sign.
* Check (CK) -- the last two digits of the year of first license for
either operator or station.
* Section -- ARRL/RAC Section.
Full contest rules and an Operating Guide that includes examples of log
formatting are available on the Sweepstakes web page. The deadline to
submit CW entries is November 16. The deadline to submit phone entries
is November 30.
Direct questions to the ARRL Contest Program.
Neutron-1 CubeSat Deployed from ISS; Other Sats Pending
The Neutron-1 3U CubeSat was deployed from the International Space
Station (ISS) on November 5 at 10:40 UTC. For the satellite's first
month and during its commissioning phase, the Neutron-1 beacon will
transmit 1,200 bps BPSK telemetry every 60 seconds on 435.300 MHz.
Developed by the Hawaii Space Flight Laboratory (HSFL) at the
University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), the satellite's payload includes a
VU FM amateur radio repeater during available times and according to
the spacecraft's power budget. The Neutron-1 science mission is spelled
out in a formal paper, Neutron-1 Mission: Low Earth Orbit Neutron Flux
Detection and COSMOS Mission Operations Technology Demonstration.
HSFL operates and maintains a satellite UHF, VHF, and L/S-band amateur
radio ground station at Kauai Community College.
The primary mission of Neutron-1 is to measure low-energy neutron flux
in low-Earth orbit (LEO). The science payload, a small neutron detector
developed by Arizona State University, will focus on measurements of
low-energy secondary neutrons -- a component of the LEO neutron
environment.
A number of other amateur radio satellites are expected to launch or be
deployed in the next few months. AMSAT's RadFxSat-2 (Fox-1E) is
expected to go into orbit by year's end on Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne
vehicle. RadFxSat-2 carries a 30 kHz wide VU linear transponder.
The Tevel Mission -- a series of eight Israeli 1U CubeSats, each
carrying a UV FM transponder -- is expected to launch from India on a
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in December. Also from the Herzliya Science
Center is a 3U CubeSat called Tausat-1, which is scheduled to launch on
a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) ISS resupply mission in
February for subsequent deployment. Tausat-1 carries an FM transponder.
AMSAT-Spain (AMSAT-EA) reports that its PocketQubes, EASAT-2 and HADES,
have been integrated for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in December, while
GENESIS-L and GENESIS-N have been integrated for launch on Firefly's
Alpha rocket. Read more. -- Thanks to AMSAT News Service
The K7RA Solar Update
Tad Cook, K7RA, Seattle, reports: On November 4, the solar flux density
reached 88.1, its highest level since October 14, 2016, when, during a
waning solar cycle, it was 92.8, with an average daily flux for that
week of 76.9, and average daily sunspot number of 18.7, similar to what
we're seeing now.
The average daily planetary A index this week was 6.3, down from 12.3
last week. The average daily mid-latitude A index was 4.9, down from
9.9 last week.
Spaceweather.com reported on November 3 that the new sunspot group
produced a minor solar flare, and a pulse of UV radiation "briefly
ionized Earth's upper atmosphere, causing a low-frequency radio
blackout over the Indian Ocean." Check the STEREO satellite images:
360° view | Conventional format. A large, new sunspot group, AR2781, is
the largest so far in new Solar Cycle 25, according to
Spaceweather.com. It should be geo-effective (facing Earth) over the
next 10 days.
Predicted solar flux is 88 on November 5 - 10; 83 on November 11;
dropping to 75, 74, and 75 on November 12 - 14; 76 on November 15 - 21;
75 on November 22 - 27; 74 on November 28 - 29; 72 on November 30 -
December 5; 74 on December 6 - 10; 75 on December 11; 76 on December 12
- 18, and 75 on December 19.
Predicted planetary A index is 5, 8, and 8 on November 5 - 7; 5 on
November 8 - 16; 10, 5, 10; and 15 on November 17 - 20; 12 on November
21 - 22; 8, 10, and 12 on November 23 - 25; 5 on November 26 - 27; 10
on November 28; 5 on November 29 - December 13; then 8, 5, and 8 on
December 14 - 16; 12 on December 17, and 10 on December 18 - 19.
Sunspot numbers for October 29 - November 4 were 35, 32, 26, 12, 11,
15, and 18, with a mean of 21.3. The 10.7-centimeter flux was 84.6,
79.6, 76.8, 77.3, 81.6, 82.9, and 88.1, with a mean of 81.6. Estimated
planetary A indices were 14, 5, 6, 10, 3, 3, and 3, with a mean of 6.3.
Middle latitude A index was 11, 4, 6, 8, 2, 2, and 1, with a mean of
4.9.
A comprehensive K7RA Solar Update is posted Fridays on the ARRL
website. For more information concerning radio propagation, visit the
ARRL Technical Information Service, read "What the Numbers Mean...,"
and check out K9LA's Propagation Page.
A propagation bulletin archive is available. For customizable
propagation charts, visit the VOACAP Online for Ham Radio website.
Share your reports and observations.
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Just Ahead in Radiosport
* November 7 -- IPARC Contest (CW)
* November 7 - 8 -- Ukrainian DX Contest (CW, phone)
* November 7 - 8 -- SKCC Weekend Sprintathon (CW)
* November 7 - 9 -- ARRL November Sweepstakes (CW)
* November 7 - 15 -- AWA Bruce Kelley 1929 QSO Party (CW)
* November 8 -- IPARC Contest (SSB)
* November 8 -- EANET Sprint (CW, phone, digital)
* November 9 -- K1USN Slow Speed Test (CW)
* November 9 -- 4 States QRP Group Second Sunday Sprint (CW, phone)
* November 10 -- Worldwide Sideband Activity Contest
* November 11 -- VHF-UHF FT8 Activity
* November 11 -- 3.5 RSGB 80-Meter Autumn Series (SSB)
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ARRL Learning Network Webinars
Visit the ARRL Learning Network website (a members-only benefit) to
register for upcoming sessions and to view previously recorded
sessions. The schedule is subject to change.
Amateur Radio's Role at the Boston Marathon Bombing: Steve Schwarm,
W3EVE
Amateur radio has played a significant role in public service
communications for the Boston Marathon for several decades. That role
was put
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