Subj : Amateur Radio Newsline (A) To : All From : Daryl Stout Date : Thu Mar 09 2023 21:07:08 Amateur Radio Newsline Report 2367, for Friday, March 10th, 2023 Amateur Radio Newsline Report Number 2367, with a release date of Friday, March 10th, 2023 to follow in 5-4-3-2-1. The following is a QST. A trio of hams arrives aboard the ISS. Digital Voice technology gains big financial support -- and get ready for the "Nervous Novices Net." All this and more, as Amateur Radio Newsline Report Number 2367, comes your way right now. ** BILLBOARD CART ** GRANT WILL ADVANCE FREEDV HF TECHNOLOGY STEPHEN/ANCHOR: Our top story this week is about a boost for cutting-edge amateur radio. A major open-source ham radio technology for HF digital voice has received a major grant to advance its development. Kevin Trotman, N5PRE, has that report. KEVIN: The FreeDV Project, an open-source software initiative created by an international team of hams, has received $420,000 from Amateur Radio Digital Communications. The team plans to use that money to help bring FreeDV into the mainstream. According to an ARDC press release, the goal is to [quote] "open the path to widespread adoption of a truly open-source, next-generation digital voice system for HF radio." [endquote] Some of the funds will go towards the hiring of digital signal processing developers to work alongside FreeDV volunteers to improve the readability of digital voice carried over SSB under poor HF conditions. The plan is to improve low signal-to-noise ratio operation and improve speech quality. The team also hopes FreeDV can also be embedded in some more commercial radios. Towards that end, specialists will work alongside some commercial HF radio engineers. The FreeDV website mentions some versions of the technology that are already in use, including the special version in use over the QO-100 geostationary satellite. FreeDV is also being employed to overcome poor propagation through experimental combinations of internet and HF radio. FreeDV encompasses the Codec 2 speech codec/modem and all are open source. This is Kevin Trotman, N5PRE. (ARDC, Dan Romanchik, KB6NU) ** COMPETITION FOCUSES ON VISION FOR HAM RADIO'S FUTURE STEPHEN/ANCHOR: Hams in Region 1 of the IARU are being asked to brainstorm in a competition envisioning amateur radio's future, as we hear from Jeremy Boot, G4NJH. JEREMY: Hams in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Northern Asia are being asked to take the challenge of seeing into the future. Region 1 of the International Amateur Radio Union is inviting teams and individuals to engage in two types of brainstorming as part of the region's HamChallenge competition. Both challenges are designed to inspire projects that increase awareness of amateur radio's vitality and relevance today. The first challenge asks hams to create projects that reach out to people who do not have a radio licence. The project could be a social media campaign, a video, a storyboard or some other creative venture that showcases the power ham radio has in building friendships and expanding scientific knowledge. The second challenge focuses on a project that reaches out to other hams showing the way amateur radio might look in 10 years. Entries in this part of the challenge can be a technology project, an experiment or something else. All ideas should be sent to the IARU Region 1 by July. Proposals should be sent by email to hamchallenge at iaru hyphen r1 dot org. (hamchallenge@iaru-r1.org) There are monetary prizes and a chance for the winners to carry their message to a wider audience. I'm Jeremy Boot, G4NJH. (IARU REGION 1) ** TRIO OF HAMS ARRIVE ON BOARD THE ISS STEPHEN/ANCHOR: Four astronauts are now on board the International Space Station. The crew includes the first astronaut from the United Arab Emirates to fly aboard a commercial mission. He also happens to be an amateur radio operator. Paul Braun, WD9GCO, has that story. PAUL: Four astronauts, three of them licensed amateur radio operators, arrived on the ISS on Friday, March 3rd, for a six-month stay in orbit. One of them, astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi, KI5VTV, is also making his first trip into space. The Crew-6 launch took place a day earlier from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The other members of the team are mission commander Stephen Bowen, KI5BKB, pilot Warren "Woody" Hoburg, KB3HTZ, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, who - like Al Neyadi - is making his first space flight. The crew will conduct a variety of experiments including a study of the way certain materials burn in microgravity and an examination of microbial samples collected from outside the spacecraft. This is NASA's sixth crew to use the commercial SpaceX transport system. I'm Paul Braun, WD9GCO. (CNBC) --- SBBSecho 3.14-Win32 * Origin: The Thunderbolt BBS - Little Rock, Arkansas (954:895/7) .