Thursday, January 31, 2013

Ham : 70 MHz in Italy



Italian Amateurs have again access to 70 MHz from February 1st until December 31st 2013. These are the specifications:

All Italian stations are authorized except the ones 30 km or less from Italian border with Austria, Switzerland and France.

Frequencies: 70,100 – 70,200 – 70,300 with 25 kHz of bandwidth

All modes with a maximum power of 50 Watt ERP

(Source : Alex, IV3KKW, via IARU-1)

Ham: WICEN involvement in flooding

The great flood disaster in the Australian state of Queensland continues, but as it begins its big clean-up and recovery phase, a picture of emergency communications provided by radio amateurs is starting to emerge.
Initial reports from Ewan McLeod VK4ERM, the WIA National WICEN Coordinator, are that HF links were requested by Queensland's Water Police from Brisbane to Cairns.

Other WICEN help was given to the Townsville and Rockhampton regions pending repair of Telstra of its fibre optic cables to north. 

Widespread power and communication disruption will take a number of days work by repair crews. 

No more is immediately known about WICEN and its emergency role, but this should be learnt in coming days.

At least six people have died in Queensland. Others are missing.

Many thousands are homeless and sheltering in relief centres, while some towns remain inundated and isolated. 

The weather system, ex-tropical cyclone Oswald that caused record flooding in many areas, has moved south to affect many parts of New South Wales.

Jim Linton VK3PC,
Chairman IARU Regon 3 Disaster Communications Committee (Via Southgate Amateur Radio News)

Celebrate World Radio Day at UNESCO Headquarters

On 13 February, we invite you to Celebrate World Radio Day at UNESCO headquarters.

Free online registration

Seven International Radio stations will broadcast live from the Open UNESCO Hall.
UNESCO invites you to a series of conferences and debates with various experts to discuss a wide range of topics including youth radio, shortwave broadcasting and the safety of journalists. 

When: 13 February, 11:00 - 18:00 

Location: 7, place de Fontenoy - Paris, France 75007

(Source : UNESCO)

UK: The voice of the people: Meet the amateurs taking over the airwaves



The Independent, UK, Saturday 05 January 2013, A new community radio station is launched every fortnight - from the residents of Melton Mowbray running The Eye, to one man broadcasting beats from above a pub in east London.


It wasn't the slickest of plans. Femi Adeyemi had been made redundant from his job as an online manager for a fashion company. He was 28 years old and soon found the days were skidding past: "I didn't know what I was going to do. I had a girlfriend at the time who worked in a bar with a little space that wasn't being used," he says.

"I asked the owner one night what he was doing with it and he said, 'What did you have in mind?'. On the spot I said, 'I'm going to set up a radio station'. It was the first thing that came into my head. He said, 'Go on then'."
Once the panic had subsided, Adeyemi set to work, digging deep into his archive of musically-minded friends. For his first show, he signed up a bloke called Martin whom he'd met at a party the night before.

It was April 2011 that the volume was turned up on NTS Live for the first time, with a four-hour session of Sunday-night-friendly house and electro. Eighteen months later, Martin is a distant memory, but NTS is here to stay.

Today, Adeyemi has eight staff members at the station's HQ at a suitably trendy spot in Dalston, east London. They are applying the finishing touches to an exciting new project. Following on from a musical extravaganza in New York City in 2012, NTS is heading to Krakow for the next instalment of a programme that sees local DJs and cultural know-it-alls lead a 10-day exposé of the music scene in selected cities. After Krakow, Tokyo and Sydney are next on the hit-list.

NTS, a purely internet-based station, already blasts its unique medley of non-mainstream music and random chit-chat to 10,000 listeners a day – exporting 150 presenters in the process. They include Leyla Pillai, whose slot, 'Who's That Girl', focuses on a different female artist each week, and the eponymous, 'James's Show', which has been known to fill a whole hour with nothing but static noise.

The key to NTS's success, Adeyemi says, is the element of surprise – and if you don't like what you hear when you switch on, there is a whole back-catalogue of podcasts on their website to choose from.

The smart kit the station uses to trace its listeners already shows little black blobs in Russia, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, the United States, France and Germany – with more appearing every day. This goes some way to explaining why the presenters on the station pay for, rather than get paid for, their time on-air, to the tune of £25 to £50 a month.

"Lots of these guys want to be professional DJs, so they use this as a platform to get themselves out there. It's a tough game to get in to…" Adeyemi says. "This way, you get heard and you can end up getting lots of bookings and make that money back tenfold."

Now big brands, too, are queuing up to bask in the station's glory. Nike and Red Bull are among those who pay to have their events broadcast through the hippest station in town.

The majority of presenters on NTS are from, or live in, the Hackney area, and with a little help from the internet they are beaming their collective voice to all corners of the globe
.
But in villages, towns and cities across Britain, local people are clubbing together to create a more intimate conversation.

There are now some 200 community radio stations filtering through airwaves across Britain, according to a new report from Ofcom. These local projects, which operate through tune-in FM frequencies rather than online, cover small areas and serve the needs of a specific population.

Melton Mowbray is a picturesque Leicestershire town, best known for its world famous pork pies. It is also home to 103 The Eye, the first community radio station to be awarded a licence by Ofcom, back in 2005.

Since then, the station, which is run entirely by volunteers, has gone 24-hour, broadcasting from a range of premises, including a school and various presenters' living rooms. "This morning, as part of our Sunday community focus programme, we had someone on from Vineyard Church in Melton, then a lady came on to talk about a new food bank being established in town, followed by a local councillor and a member of the rotary club talking about their charity club," explains the station's co-managing director, Christine Slomkowska.

There are 45 presenters on The Eye, their ages spanning 16 to 77. Their voices echo across an area home to some 80,000 people – through Melton Mowbray, past the Vale of Belvoir and beyond to Rushcliffe. "We are the community," Slomkowska says. "What we can offer that others can't is localness. We give a voice to people that a larger station could not."


(Source : The Independent, UK)

BBC World Service launches BBC Indonesia and BBC Hausa mobile sites in Responsive Design


29 January, 2013, BBC World Service has announced the launch of new mobile sites for BBC Indonesia and BBC Hausa in Responsive Design – a technology which tests mobile users’ screen sizes and ensures they download the most optimised version for their device.

With the launch of these two “responsive” sites, all mobile users who visit the BBC Indonesia and BBC Hausa mobile sites automatically will be routed to the mobile optimised versions, thus getting the best possible user experience their device can deliver.

James Montgomery, Controller of Digital and Technology, BBC Global News, says: “These are milestones in the digital development of BBC World Service. This technology - already adopted on the BBC’s international news website, bbc.com/news - unlocks our ability to deliver the very best mobile user-experience. It is particularly well suited for BBC World Service, whose audiences use a huge variety of handset types to access our content, from newest editions of smartphones to low-tech ‘feature’ phones.”

The BBC is at the forefront of the move into Responsive Design in the Asian and African mobile news markets. In February, BBC World Service is planning to launch this technology for its Russian-language news website, bbcrussian.com.

For more information please contact:
Lala Najafova, BBC Global News Communications
+44 7912 583836; lala.najafova@bbc.co.uk

(Source : BBC Media Centre)

UK: FM frequencies for in-car transmitters


We would like to petition the Broadcasting Governing Body in the UK to clear and provide 3-5 FM radio channels for motorists using iPods and transmittors while driving. It is impossible for people now to find a clear channel to tune their devices to.

We would like to address this issue with great urgency and millions of UK drivers are affected by this and we need to get this formalised.

Is their anyone else who feel this way? How can we proceed with this in a formal way? DO we need to start a petition and send it to the Government? Any ideas and suggestions welcomed.

(Source : len van den berg via Media UK)

Challenges Dog Community Radio, Finally on Air in El Salvador



JIQUILISCO, El Salvador, Jan 16 2013 (IPS) - For the first time in El Salvador, a community radio is broadcasting under its own licence. The struggle continues, however, for legislative change that will give these kinds of broadcasters more airspace.


After years of challenges, Radio Mangle finally began broadcasting this week to over 200 communities in the area known as Bajo Lempa, in the municipality of Jiquilisco, in the south of the province of Usulután.

“This is a historic moment, the result of years of hard work and social pressure,” radio presenter Mario Martínez, coordinator of the Mangle Association, which developed the project, told IPS. As of Jan. 14, the radio station is broadcasting on 106.1 FM from the community of Ciudad Romero, in the El Zamorán district of Jiquilisco.

In October, the state-run General Superintendence of Electricity and Telecommunications (SIGET) awarded this frequency to a public agency, which transferred it to Radio Mangle, making it the first community radio in the country to obtain a licence. Since then, the Mangle Association has been busy preparing for its maiden broadcast.

The emergence of community radios in El Salvador dates back to 1992, at the end of the 12-year civil war, when opportunities for sharing opinions and dissent opened up. But these radios have faced issues for lacking permits; some radio stations have been closed down and violently evicted from their premises by the police.
The Telecommunications Law of 1997 tacitly allows community radio stations to operate, but they must acquire their frequencies through public auctions, putting them at a disadvantage with respect to business media groups

ReadMore


(Source: Inter Press Service News Agency-IPS)