RadCom April 2024, Vol. 100, No. 4

Report April 2024 41 or experienced contesters. The RSGB Contest Club continues to provide support to RSGB contesters and volunteer operators for the HQ stations that are part of many of our contests. The Contest Club provided support to the YOTA month RSGB activity in December 2023 which was coordinated by Jamie, M0SDV. The Contest Club holds the callsign GR2HQ, as HFCC coordinates the UK’s station in the IARU HF Championship in July each year. In 2023, the RSGB station achieved third place in the HQ competition – our best result for many years. Tim, G4FJK has joined the committee with a role to develop our GR2HQ station; he is particularly hoping to encourage more UK stations to call our HQ station during the contest. In 2024 the contest will be from 1200UTC on Saturday 13 July for 24 hours and we will look for UK callers on the six contest bands from 160 to 10m, on both CW and SSB with a ‘GR2HQ Challenge’ added to our calendar. The core HFCC membership in 2023 were Nick, G4FAL; Tim, G4FJK; Gordon, MM0GPZ; Stewart, GW0ETF; Paul, G4PVM; Allan, GM4ZUK; Nick, M1DDD; and Graham, G0NBI. Chris, GM3WOJ has been authoring the RadCom Contesting column for the past two years in addition to helping the committee with the organisation of the GR2HQ station. We work closely with the Contest Support Committee and VHF Contest Committee, with Ian, G0FCT and Andy, G4PIQ and with the technical and practical support of Pete, G4CLA on web resources and Mike, G0GJV providing adjudication software – we are very thankful for their contribution to the success of our calendar of contests. We thank Jacqui, G6XSY for her splendid management of the RSGB Trophies and will greatly miss her contribution as she retires from the role of RSGB Trophy Manager. Thanks also to Stewart, G3YSX for continuing to act as our Board liaison. Nick Totterdell, G4FAL hfcc.chair@rsgb.org.uk Intruder Watch RSGB Intruder Watch (IW) collects reports from UK licensed amateurs about HF intruders. An intruder is a non-amateur transmission in an amateur band that is not entitled to be there, such as a military data link, over-the-horizon radar or broadcasting station. Fortunately, most intruders disappear within minutes or hours of their arrival. However, when an intruder is regular and persistent and has been observed by UK amateurs on three or more occasions, IW may report it to Ofcom’s Spectrum Management Centre at Baldock, which has engineering staff on duty 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. During 2023, IW made several reports to Baldock about intruders heard on a number of frequencies. Over-the-horizon radars, especially those in Russia, China and the UK Sovereign Base Area in Cyprus (Akrotiri) continued to be a nuisance. The higher HF bands are mostly affected in the morning when the path from the east is in daylight. The 7MHz band is affected mostly during darkness. RSGB Intruder Watch forms part of Region 1 of the IARU Monitoring System (IARUMS). Information about intruders is exchanged via an online database, and a mailing list, and is published in a monthly newsletter. Details of the IARU system can be found at: https://www.iaru-r1.org/about-us/committees-and-working-groups/iarums/ Intruder Watch had a change of co-ordinator in November 2023 and, although Intruder Watch has no signed-up group of watchers, the new co-ordinator plans to develop a new recognised volunteer role of Intruder Watch Watchkeeper. This new role will allow for greater inclusion and hopefully more ears on the bands. This new role will be in addition to anyone who can still report suspected intruders on a one-off occasional, as they wish, by email to the address below. Please state the date, time and frequency (not just band) of the offending transmission when doing this. While input from other countries provides useful information about intruder activity, IW can only make reports to Ofcom on the basis of intruders heard by licensed amateurs in the UK and Crown dependencies. Amateurs in other countries should report intruders to their own national coordinator. Please note, Intruder Watch does not ‘police’ activity that is likely to have been carried out by licensed amateur operators – this is outside IW’s remit. Vaughan Ravenscoft, M0VRR iw@rsgb.org.uk Legacy Committee The Legacy Committee is responsible for considering applications for funding from the Society’s legacy funds. During 2023, the Committee approved three applications for a variety of projects. The largest grant was for £11,900 to provide a solar array for the GB3MCB beacon cluster. Other grants included support for a special event station to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III and funding for a UHF port for a 2m packet node in Scotland. Richard Horton, G4AOJ g4aoj@rsgb.org.uk Microwave Manager The Microwave Manager represents UK amateur interests above 1GHz on the RSGB Spectrum Forum. These frequencies are home to a wide variety of innovation and operating modes – including narrowband, beacons, This coverage map plots listener reports to the 145.525MHz FM GB2RS transmissions from Toby, MM0TSS located in the Scottish borders. Toby is part of the team that delivers the News each Sunday at 10am. Daily listeners to the GB2RS podcast at gb2rs.podbean.com over a sample period from 24 October to 23 November 2023. There is a particularly strong following in the USA, Canada, Australia, Sweden and Germany. But this isn’t exclusive – for example, the broadcast via GB3OC in the Orkney Islands often receives reports from amateurs in Norway!