Archive - June 2012

JE1SCF/6 & JG4IQC/6 will be active from the Daito Islands IOTA AS-047 between June 27 to July 2, 2012.

They will be using an HB9CV for 20/15/10m and long-wire for 40m + WARC bands. Mainly active on 20/17/15m CW.

Daitō Islands (大東諸島 Daitō Shotō or 大東島地方 Daitō-jima Chihō) are three islands that lie about 217 miles (349 km) east of Okinawa. Although these islands have long been known in Okinawa as Ufuagari (the Great East), all of the islands were uninhabited until the Meiji period, when people from other parts of Japan arrived.

Long awaited HK0NA Card arrived today. Fast work by the Qsl Managers and pleased to confirm all the band and mode slots i worked…phew! Qsl was requested by their OQRS system, very fast and efficient way to obtain your cards nowadays and recommended.

If you need cards from me for any station I manage, check out my OQRS which caters for both Bureau and Direct cards. Check out the link here…… M0OXO OQRS

How big is Jupiter’s moon Io?

The most volcanic body in the Solar System, Io (usually pronounced “EYE-oh”) is 3,600 kilometers in diameter, about the size of planet Earth’s single large natural satellite. Gliding past Jupiter at the turn of the millennium, the Cassini spacecraft captured this awe inspiring view of active Io with the largest gas giant as a backdrop, offering a stunning demonstration of the ruling planet’s relative size. Although in the above picture Io appears to be located just in front of the swirling Jovian clouds, Io hurtles around its orbit once every 42 hours at a distance of 420,000 kilometers or so from the center of Jupiter. That puts Io nearly 350,000 kilometers above Jupiter’s cloud tops, roughly equivalent to the distance between Earth and Moon.

The Cassini spacecraft itself was about 10 million kilometers from Jupiter when recording the image data.

A team of 30 operators will be operating from Kaliage Besar
 Island, Seribu Islands (IOTA OC-177) between July 6-9th, 2012 with the call YE0M.

Activity will be
 from 160 to 2m on CW, SSB and RTTY.

NASA has narrowed the target for its most advanced Mars rover, Curiosity, which will land on the Red Planet in August.

The car-sized rover will touch down closer to its ultimate destination for science operations, but also closer to the foot of a mountain slope that poses a landing hazard. It was possible to adjust landing plans because of increased confidence in precision landing technology aboard the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, which is carrying the Curiosity rover. That spacecraft can aim closer without hitting Mount Sharp at the center of Gale crater. Rock layers located in the mountain are the prime location for research with the rover.

Curiosity is scheduled to land at approximately 10:31 p.m. PDT Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT, Aug. 6). Following checkout operations, Curiosity will begin a two-year study of whether the landing vicinity ever offered an environment favorable for microbial life.

Anyone receiving Direct Qsl cards from MØOXO.Com in the last few months will have found not only their requested Qsl card in the envelope, but also this flyer promoting the DX Code of Conduct.

I make no apologies for this and it is something that will be repeated for a long time to come. We need to get the message across to some of our friends that the bad behaviour on Bands that causes stress and dis-harmony to other operators just cannot be tolerated. We are aiming to make the hobby more enjoyable and causing qrm, keying up and other countless forms of noise over a Qso is really not good enough.

I have 10,000 of these flyers now printed!

The Queen Diamond Jubilee Special ‘Q’ Callsigns event in the UK ended at Midnight last night.

The Bands saw lots of activity over the last month when UK Stations had the opportunity to use the letter ‘Q’ in their prefix to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee. Awards for working 100 of these special stations are available and the event seemed very popular with good pile-ups and qso numbers despite the poor band conditions. Well done to those who took part and thanks to the chasers, a very memorable event for sure.

See you for the Olympic (‘O’) event in a few weeks time!

The 9M0L team from the recent Spratly Dxpedition have now issued the preview of their Qsl Card.

Steve, G3ZVW (also ZD8N), is is actually operating as V73/AF6SU from the V73AX club station on Kwajalein Atoll (WW Loc. RJ38UR), Ralik Chain (IOTA OC-028), Marshall Islands.

How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually.

Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth’s surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth’s radius. The above illustration shows what would happen if all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball. The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth’s Moon, but slightly larger than Saturn’s moon Rhea which, like many moons in our outer Solar System, is mostly water ice.

How even this much water came to be on the Earth and whether any significant amount is trapped far beneath Earth’s surface remain topics of research.