History of the BNC connector

Interesting article on the development of the BNC connector.

BNC Connector

M7 licences now being issued by OFCOM

Foundation Licences (OFCOM)

Now issuing

M7 + 3 letters

Formerly issued

M3 + 3 Letters
M6 + 3 Letters

New Amateur Radio Licence Syllabus for Great Britain.

The Radio Society of Great Britain have now issued a new Syllabus which comes into effect from August 2019.  There will be three levels of examination (and licence) The Foundation, the Intermediate and the Full licence.
Details are as follows:

licence syllabus for 2019

How much time do you spend on the Internet - OFCOM report.

The following OFCOM report makes for interesting reading (? are you using Network Radio)

OFCOM report

New Zealand may ban the import of certain Radio's

New Zealand's RSM Compliance team are working on a Prohibition Notice to limit the import and illegal use of a range of low end two way radios.  There are a variety of these radios on the market, like Baofeng, Pofung and Woxun for example. They allow users to programme their own frequency from the front panel or via a USB cable.  Although designed for the Amateur Radio Operator, these radios in the wrong hands have been attributed to malicious calls on police, forestry and rail frequencies. The import of Amateur two way radios locked to the Amateur bands won’t be affected by this new Notice.

UK Callsigns at 5th July 2018

OFCOM have supplied the following information about live UK callsigns registered on their database. 

Call Sign Count of Live Prefix Call Signs 
20 8612
21 1596
G0 8615
G1 4910
G2 164
G3 4631
G4 9157
G5 58
G6 4901
G7 5829
G8 4837
M0 8363
M1 2275
M3 9961
M5 297
M6 13777
Grand Total 87983

• Foundation are M3 and M6 
• Intermediate are 20 and 21 (in use a Regional Secondary Locator is inserted after the 2)
• Full are all the other prefixes
............................................................................................................
Another OFCOM statistic say the following:

OFCOM can confirm that the total number of individuals holding one or more current UK Amateur Radio Licenses is 9971.

(at 1/4/2018)

(? 8 callsigns per individual, something adrift with OFCOM stats?)

RSGB reviews licence examination results for 2017

RSGB Report (Examinations)

(Click on the above link for the full report)

The 2018 RSGB Examinations Standards Committee report has been released. It discusses the UK amateur radio exams system in detail, including pass statistics, ongoing work on the administrative system and comments on the question bank, among many other topics. 

Irish amateurs get new frequencies.

Additional Frequencies

In December 2015 ComReg published a Draft Radio spectrum Management Strategy 2016-2018. The Society responded with a comprehensive submission to this draft and a summary of this was published in the March 2016 edition of Echo Ireland.

In June 2016 ComReg published its final Radio Spectrum Management Strategy 2016-2018 and indicated its intention to grant some additional spectrum to the amateur service. This has now been done and is in line with some of the requests made in the Society’s submission.

The 70 MHz band has been extended to 69.9 MHz to 70.5 MHz. This is an increase of 275kHz over the existing band of 70.125 to 70.450 MHz and is the full band that may be allocated to the amateur service under the European Common Allocations table.

Further spectrum covering all modes including digimodes has been granted on a secondary basis at 30 to 49 MHz and 54 to 69.9 MHz. The latter band also includes digital television in addition to all other modes. These new frequency bands are listed among the bands available generally to radio amateurs in Annex 1 of a recently revised version of the Amateur Station Licence Guidelines document ComReg 09/45 R4 which is available on the ComReg website.

The new bands in the 40 MHz and 60 MHz regions will, among other things, facilitate modern type beacons in the region of these frequencies as well 

(Thanks to the IRTS for this information)

Latest 5mhz News Letter

5mhz News