IARU Member Societies ARA (Algeria) and ARAT (Tunisia) have started this week a series of online knowledge sharing sessions for their members and the public. The sessions last for an hour each. Topics are presented by volunteering members from both associations. 

Following the Covid-19 outbreak, both ARA and ARAT, like most member societies around the globe, were obliged to suspend their activities in Algeria and Tunisia respectively. So it was suggested to benefit from the fact that people are locked down at home to initiate knowledge sharing sessions and thus maintain interest among members.

The first online session was conducted on April 5^th, open to members and the public. It was chaired by Mohamed 7X2TL who took participants through electronics principles. 

The sessions will continue to be planned and conducted 2 to 3 times a week. The plan for the future is to extend the range of contributions by inviting hams from other countries to give interactive lectures if a particular (advanced) topic is requested by members. For more information contact Ash, KF5EYY / 3V8SF at: 

Radio amateurs will share the concerns of everyone about the seriousness of the COVID-19 outbreak. Governments all over the world are advising “social distancing” to slow the spread of the virus and to give health services the chance to cope.

Field days bring radio amateurs together and so represent an environment where social distancing is difficult to achieve. We must recognise that many radio amateurs are in the older, higher risk age groups. IARU Region 1 therefore asks national societies which promote field days and multi-operator contests to reconsider their position on these events for the next few months of 2020. Field days are essentially team contests, and so IARU will not sponsor the Region 1 HF-CW Field Day in June. It is a matter for national societies to decide whether and how they continue with their national field day events. 

IARU Region 1 believes more generally that multi-operator contests are not consistent with the principle of ”social distancing” and should not be promoted at this time. 

The position on other IARU events in 2020 which involve multi-operator categories is under review.

Single operator contests, however, remain a great way for those forced to stay at home to enjoy the magic of amateur radio!

Don Beattie, G3BJ, President IARU Region 1

IARU has published on its global website a summary of the above. It reads:

Here are some notes about how the IARU is dealing, as of March 19, with the restrictions now in place to slow the spread of COVID-19.

The ITU has cancelled some meetings, postponed others, and converted still others into E‑meetings with no in-person dimension. ITU Headquarters in Geneva is not accessible to visitors until April 17 “at the earliest.” IARU representatives are adjusting their plans accordingly.

The largest amateur radio gathering in Europe, Ham Radio in Friedrichshafen, Germany, is still scheduled for June 26 – 28 and plans are going forward for a two-part IARU stand, including a dedicated one for youth. Whether the event will take place is unknown at this time.

The IARU Region 1 Executive Committee was scheduled to meet April 17 – 19. A series of virtual meetings will be held instead.

IARU Region 2 was planning workshops on Emergency Communications and Satellite Communications in Trinidad & Tobago, May 30 – 31, but has announced that the workshops will be held online instead. Interest and registrations have surged since the announcement. These workshops will be held in English but preparations are underway for workshops in Spanish to be held later.

IARU Region 3 has cancelled its first Youngsters on the Air (YOTA) Camp that had been planned for Rayong, Thailand, in early October.

Reminder: World Amateur Radio Day, April 18, is just a few weeks away! Help us celebrate amateur radio’s contributions to society, the 95^th anniversary of the founding of the IARU, and that amateur radio is the best way to practice social distancing!

More than 30 “SDR Geeks” attended the first SDR Winter School, organized jointly by RCN-EG, the R.E.F. and group of trainers (Sylvain F4GKR, Eric F5HSV, Evariste F5OEO and Mehdi F4IHX) in the south suburbs of Paris from the 17^th to the 21^st of February.

The event was open to everybody and was attended by a very wide audience: whilst there was just a majority of licensed amateurs, there were 14 non-amateur attendees, some having no idea of what amateur radio is. Those attending ranged from 19 to 74 years old, coming from 4 countries (France, Belgium, Algeria and Senegal), many by train and plane. 

The teaching program was structured in two parallel tracks:

• The initiation track, dedicated to overview existing applications and tools (GnuRadio, LuaRadio, AdalmPluto, DATV etc.);
• The expert track, focused on theory, DSP tips and tricks, covering topics like sampling, decimation and interpolation, demodulation, FFT processing, software architecture etc. For each topic a set of Jupyter Notebook Python examples were provided to implement the theory.

We also welcomed three guests for special sessions:

• Satellite communication, presented by AMSAT‑F;
• SDR Hardware, presented by Yannick F4HDA;
• Radio astronomy by Jean-Jacques F1EHN.

While the entire program was free, it was possible at a limited cost to use the facilities available at the venue (restaurant and bedrooms). IARU R1 and REF also sponsored a few of the youngest visitors who could not afford the full cost.