RAC Ontario Sections Bulletin for October 7, 2023
Official Bulletin Station for Radio Amateurs of Canada
with this week’s bulletin.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL NEWS
1. Comment Deadline on Proposed 60 Meter U.S. Band Changes (U.S.A.)
A public period is open until October 30, 2023 for radio amateurs to comment
on proposed changes to the 60 Meter band. ARRL is asking all U.S. radio amateurs
to join it in urging the FCC to continue the existing use of the band. ARRL
is encouraging expressions of support to the FCC for the current 100 watt
ERP power limit (instead of reducing the power limit to 15 watts EIRP) and
continuing secondary access to the current channels.
ARRL will continue to advocate to maintain the 100-watt limit for 60 meters,
continued authorization for the four channels outside the WRC allocation that
are being used today, and adoption of the new 15 kHz allocation with the same
100-watt power limit.
In the NPRM, the FCC recognizes that Canada adopted rules equivalent to those
proposed by the ARRL.
— see arrl news for full article
ONTARIO SECTION NEWS
ITEMS OF INTEREST
2. A Raspberry Pi 5 is Better Than Two Pi 4s
What’s as fast as two Raspberry Pi 4s? The brand-new Raspberry Pi 5, that’s what.
And for only a $5 upcharge, it’s going to be the new go-to board from the British
House of Fruity Single-Board Computers. But aside from the brute speed, it also
has a number of cool features that will make using the board easier for a number
of projects, and it’s going to be on sale in October. Raspberry Pi sent us one
for review, and if you were just about to pick up a Pi 4 for a project that needs
the speed, we’d say that you might wait a couple weeks until the Raspberry Pi 5
goes on sale.
– Hackaday https://hackaday.com/2023/09/28/a-raspberry-pi-5-is-better-than-two-pi-4s/
3. MMDVM-Based Projects to Merge Into One Open-Source Project
Funded by a grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), Jonathan Naylor
(G4KLX) has been hired as a full-time software developer. Jonathan is a pioneer of
digital voice software, developing software for D-STAR, DMR, System Fusion, M17,
NXDN, P.25, and POCSAG.
With a full-time software developer dedicated to the MMDVM project, many important
tasks can be carried out.
Work has started on the software upgrades to MMDVM, and many of the long-term bugs
in the software have been fixed. Regarding their progress toward improving MMDVMHost,
they have added support for AX.25, and they now provide full support for
amateur-driven M17 digital voice protocol.
Work is currently underway to develop 9600, 19200, and 38400 baud packet modes that
support narrow bandwidth using a modulation (4FSK) similar to Digital Mobile Radio
(DMR). The packet modes include support for IL2P, which is a new link layer protocol
with integral forward error correction (FEC).
To learn more about the MMDVM project, visit mmdvm-project.org.
— ARDC (Amateur Radio Digital Communications)
4. Hot Iron Newsletter for Amateur Radio Operators
Frank (W4NPN) along with Peter (G6NGR) produce the quarterly amateur radio newsletter
“Hot Iron”. Each issue is full of technical projects and commentary from antennas to
transmitters to power supplies.
Going on 10+ years, each newsletter is available in PDF format.
— https://www.w4npn.net/hot-iron-directory/
This concludes this week’s bulletin.
Bulletin sent from Official Bulletin Manager VA3PC
RAC Ontario Sections Bulletin for October 7, 2023
