The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has commissioned the new SPECTRA system for Apparatus Licences, and thanks all for their patience during the recent two week shut-down.

Under its Project Helm (Holistic Engineering and Licence Management), the ACMA has transitioned from the old RADCOM platform that has been in use since 1996.

The SPECTRA system means a number of changes to the WIA Exams Service that will affect both the assessors and candidates. These may take a few weeks to fully filter through and assessors have been alerted to the new simpler system. The more efficient SPECTRA Enterprise platform is now handling all data for both Apparatus and Spectrum licensing. Broadcast Licences are due in early 2016.

There are a number of changes to Amateur Radio licence processing and recording, some not obvious while others reflect the new ways of doing things. No longer will specialised blue licensing paper be used but they will be on plain A4 paper, contact with licensees will be through email if that is the communication preference chosen, and the station location will be in the ACMA licensing database. The station location details, and any special conditions, were previously only included on the licence itself due to some privacy concerns.

New application forms are specific for the Foundation, Standard and Advance licence, with a single application only containing the fields relevant to Amateur Radio licences. There is also a new ACMA licence application form for repeater licences. The simpler station licence application form will be in WIA Exam Service assessment packs but the WIA will no longer collect ACMA licence fees from candidates. However, when the ACMA receives a WIA-processed licence application and callsign recommendation, it will issue an invoice to the candidate and a licence will be issued on payment.

The ACMA has discontinued its licence variation for those seeking to upgrade. Appling for a new licence is the only option. Those upgrading can keep the existing licence until it is surrendered, expires or renewed.

The WIA will also change its publically available listing of callsigns to comply with the format of the new system.

The ACMA will send a Validation Notice 90 days before licences are due to expire (not sent under RADCOM). This will be emailed if provided, and come as a CSV file. A Renewal Summary is sent for licences which have been renewed.
Project HELM, announced earlier this year, provides the ACMA with a system and tools to enhance support of its spectrum management activities.

04/09/2015

Author : Jim Linton – VK3PC

From IT Wire:

The Government has announced its response to the Spectrum Review undertaken by the Department of Communications, in conjunction with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

The Government says it will implement the recommendations of its review of the way Australia’s spectrum is managed.

The review is now complete and is available here.

From the ARRL newsletter
A Virginia Tech undergraduate researcher and radio amateur has used Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) and Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) data to study how solar flares impact HF radio propagation over the entire dayside — the time Earth is in sunlight — with communication loss related to both flare intensity and distribution. Carson Squibb, KM4MBQ, recently summarized his findings in a poster presentation, “Dayside Ionospheric Response to X-Class Solar Flare Events Observed with Reverse Beacon Network High Frequency Communication Links.” As most HF operators understand, higher-intensity flare events can cause complete signal loss on HF, while weaker flares may only partly inhibit radio propagation.

According to Squibb’s poster, a solar flare is an event in which the Sun emits high levels of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation, resulting in increased photoionization in the ionosphere, primarily in the D-layer, which is largely responsible for absorption of HF radio waves. So, as ionization increases during flare events, communication can be diminished or lost completely. Such fadeouts can occur in minutes, while subsequent recovery can take hours, “which is why understanding these flare effects is of critical importance,” Squibb said.

According to Squibb, the rate of communication loss is related to the increase in X-ray intensity, and the period of recovery is influenced by both flare intensity and the rate of decline in X-ray flux after peaking. Squibb determined that lower frequencies experience fades in propagation prior to the flare peak, with recovery taking longer, while the degree of loss is more severe as frequency decreases.

Squibb’s poster explains that SuperDARN detects a ground-scatter band that results from waves reflecting from the ionosphere and ground, and that this band is degraded during solar flare events. To determine the spatial distribution of flare effects, Squibb used data from four radars across North America. He used the RBN — an array of passive receivers which detects Amateur Radio signals and posts identifiable call signs on the Internet — to measure HF communication. Squibb chose 3.5, 7, 14, 21, and 28 MHz for study. X‐ray flux data within the 0.05-0.4 nm and 0.1-0.8 nm ranges were taken from the GOES-15 geostationary weather satellite.

Squibb said future research should focus on quantifying the relationship between flare characteristics and HF signal fadeout.

Squibb conducted his research under the guidance of graduate student Nathaniel Frissell, W2NAF, and SuperDARN group supervisors Jo Baker and Mike Ruohoniemi, as part of his participation in the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program sponsored by the National Science Foundation and hosted by the Center for Space Science and Engineering Research (Space@VT). His co-authors included Magda Moses, KM4EGE, of Virginia Tech, and Robyn Fiori of the Canadian Space Weather Forecast Center.

http://www.vk2vjb.net/2015/08/19/gpsdo-display-in-the-works/

As part of the GPSDO project I’ve been working on using a graphical display I picked up from Futurlec several years ago, a 128×64 Blue GLCD (CM12864-2) which uses the KS0108 chipset.

As I want to drive this from a Beaglebone Black I’ve opted to use a GLCD Backpack from Sparkfun to simplify the hookup and interfacing, sending serial commands should be far easier than sorting though GPIO… at least it _should_ have been.

The first issue is the backpack pinouts don’t match the pin layout on the LCD I have, so I’ll have to make up an adapter board.  Some breadboard does the job while developing so not a huge issue there.

The standard firmware comes with a number of simple operations for displaying text and some basic geometry operations, functional but nothing flash.

Unfortunately I found the standard firmware to be a little slow on the refresh rate and came with two standard fonts, big and bigger.

A little research found an updated set of firmware listed at the bottom of the page.

I modified this to include a small 3*5 font reminiscent of 80’s era computer games in place of the standard ‘large’ font, and quickly put together a nice summary page for the state of the GPSDO.

There are some minor dislikes for the font, for example the ‘H’ and ‘N’ characters are identical, but it works well enough that I may live with it.

The software was written in perl and may be shared later, its all very straight forward decoding of the GPS messages and sending serial data to the display so nothing complex in there.   I have included a ‘deltacache’ which detects data changes so only updates are posted to the LCD to conserve the limited serial bandwidth and avoid buffer overflows as I don’t have any flow control at this stage as the ‘TX’ pin isn’t connected to the BBB to avoid damaging the 3v IO pin.

All in all I’m happy with the results so far.   I still have a lot of work to do but this is a promising result.

J.

More fun and games at

http://www.m0pzt.com/morse-mouse/

Doug VK2DCR

Register now for our next Amateur Radio Foundation Licence Course & upgrade licence Assessments. Continue reading Next WARS Foundation Course is on 12&13 Septmber →

http://www.vk2vjb.net/2015/08/12/gpsdo-hardware-designblock-diagram/

Continue reading “Indoor” GPS Antenna Amplifier. →