Subj : Amateur Radio Newsline (B) To : All From : Daryl Stout Date : Fri Jul 05 2019 11:07:36 SILENT KEY: FORMER IARU REGIONAL DIRECTOR SANGAT SINGH 9M2SS STEPHEN/ANCHOR: A satellite enthusiast and leader in Malaysia's ham community has become a Silent Key. Jason Daniels, VK2LAW, tells us more. JASON: A former director of Region 3 of the International Amateur Radio Union, and former member of the Malaysian Government's Space Committee, has become a Silent Key. Sangat Singh, 9M2SS, who was first licensed in 1962, was also a satellite enthusiast since the mid-1980s, when he first began to track them. He later operated a Satellite Ground Station that regularly made radio contacts between schoolchildren, and hams aboard the International Space Station, through the ARISS programme. According to his profile on QRZ.COM, he was an active operator on all current digital mode amateur satellites. He had served the IARU's Region 3 as director from 1987 to 2000. Sangat had distinguished himself in his professional career as the first Sikh to do planting at rubber plantations in Malaysia. He eventually became a senior plantation manager, a position he retired from in 1988. He was also a pioneer member of the nonprofit Sikh Naujawan Sabha Malaysia, a youth organization for Sikhs in Malaysia. A native of what is now Pakistan, Sangat Singh was 86. For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Jason Daniels, VK2LAW. (QRZ.COM, INDIA OF THE PAST, THE NEW STRAITS TIMES) ** SILENT KEY: RTTY CONTESTER, REFLEcTOR MODERATOR BILL TURNER W6WRT STEPHEN/ANCHOR: RTTY contesters and visitors to the RTTY Reflector discussion group are grieving the loss of an amateur, who played a major role among those using the mode. Bill Turner, W6WRT, has become a Silent Key. Licensed since 1957 at the age of 14, he was drawn later to RTTY contesting and DXing. He wrote on his QR Zed profile page that he was especially fond of the challenge of RTTY on 160 meters, and had been hoping for a Worked All States award there. He moderated the RTTY Reflector, one of the oldest discussion groups on the internet, between 2007 and 2016. The California resident was reported inactive for the past year. Bill was 77. (FACEBOOK, QRZ.COM) ** MARS MEMBERS UPBEAT OVER RECENT NATIONAL EMERGENCY DRILL STEPHEN/ANCHOR: The U.S. Mililtary Auxiliary Radio System has just completed an important drill - and Paul Braun, WD9GCO, fills us in. PAUL: Amateur radio operators and MARS stations - part of the U.S. Military Auxiliary Radio System - reaffirmed their cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense during a nationwide emergency preparedness exercise. Known as COMEX 19-2, the 48-hour drill carried the code name "Fog of War", and presented MARS members with an additional challenge requiring that they operate off the grid for the first 24 hours as they received traffic from hams around the country, and passed it along encrypted to defense offices. Michael J Molloy, W9MJM, the national public information officer for MARS Air Force, said that the exercise posed additional challenges to radio readiness, by introducing security breaches into the exercise, requiring operators to correctly identify some of the fake military call signs in use. Michael said that with no specific hour identified as the official start of the drill, operators were also given very little time to prepare - just 12 hours' prior notice that activity was to commence at the time of local sunrise, a start time that varied depending on operators' location. Michael, who also holds the military call signs AFN9I and AFA9BV, said that while it will still take more time to compile and assess all the activity between June 18th and 21st, participation was up among members of both Army and Air Force MARS. Michael told Newsline in a phone call: {quote} "From the preliminary results, we are very happy with how it went." [endquote} For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Paul Braun, WD9GCO. ** BREAK HERE: Time for you to identify your station. We are the Amateur Radio Newsline, heard on bulletin stations around the world, including the IRLP Western Reflector Channel 9258, on Mondays at 7 p.m. --- SBBSecho 3.07-Win32 * Origin: The Thunderbolt BBS - tbolt.synchro.net (454:1/33) .