Russian illegal invasion of Crimea does not make it a new DXCC entity.

(Thanks to ARRL for this information)

A message from our repeater keeper.

The following information has been received from the Isle of Man repeater keeper Dave GD4HOZ.
Repeaters IOM

"On Monday and Tuesday of next week (14-15 April 2014), the DHA (Government) will be carrying out routine electrical inspection work at Snaefell.  This will necessarily involve the isolation of the mains supply to site users’ equipment including ours.

Last summer I installed a range of new equipment on Snaefell to protect us from power failures, and to provide a means to remotely control the power to various items of equipment. This can be seen in the photo attached.

The Compaq UPS is rated at 1500VA and should easily power ‘GD and ‘IM for the duration of the planned outage. Ordinarily, the UPS will only need to cover the interval between mains failure and the startup of the generator, which should be less than a minute. On this occasion, the outage will be up to half an hour, so the batteries will get a good run!

With these facilities in place, I do not anticipate any downtime but it’s as well to let people know."

Amateur Radio software being used to detect radio signals from missing aircraft.

 

(Click on the above for a clear image)

Many thanks to ARRL for this news.

 

Microsoft stops support for windows XP and Office 2003

Microsoft’s support for two major products ends today: Windows XP and Office 2003. As a result, the company will no longer release security updates for either of the two, and it recommends users who still use either to get a newer version.
If you’re wondering why April 8, 2014 is the date support for both of these products ends, it’s really quite simple. Microsoft releases regular patches on Patch Tuesday, the second Tuesday of every month.
Microsoft supports its products for many years, and depending on when service packs as well as successors are released, the company eventually announces, in advance, when it will cut off support. April 8 happens to be the last Patch Tuesday for both products, meaning if security holes are found after today’s date, they won’t be plugged.

If you are still using these products now is the time to think about upgrading and becoming less vulnerable to attack. 

Ofcom to take away some of the spectrum used by amateur radio.

(Click on the above for a clear image)