The International Amateur Radio Union has been the worldwide voice of radio amateurs, securing and safeguarding the amateur radio spectrum since 1925. Read more about us →
Have you already submitted your idea for HAMChallenge 2023? Did you receive a confirmation email? If not, reach out to us again via hamchallenge@iaru-r1.org Due to a technical error, we have not received all submissions. The technical issues has been resolved by now.
Deadline to submit is coming closer! Deadline: 1 July 2023
We are looking for your ideas! We are inviting you to take part in one of the HAMChallenges:
Amateur Radio is about fun, radio communications, technology, experimentation, self-training, and friendship.
Do you have a mind-blowing idea you would like to share with the community?
The International Amateur Radio Union Region 1 is inviting you to come with a game-changing idea, which increases awareness of amateur radio. We are looking for your cool idea or project which you think is part of the future of amateur radio.
Make a team, share your idea, present your proposal, and bring this to reality. This is the time present the amateur radio with a different perspective, and we are looking for you!
The best proposals will be rewarded, don’t miss this opportunity!
The challenges
Challenge #1 Oriented to young persons and/or participants without amateur radio license What is amateur radio? Many people haven’t even heard about it. This should change! Amateur radio is about radio communications, technology and experimentation, but also about friendship, self-training and fun. Be creative, why would like to learn more about HAM radio? What makes you curious? Share and explain amateur radio in a fun way, in which you believe it will be attracted and known by more people. Hint: ideas to share on social media and reaching a huge audience. Make use of reels, pictures, etc.. No limits on creativity!
Challenge #2 Oriented to licensed amateur radio operators Use your imagination, what will amateur radio look like in 10 years? Yes, we are talking about the future. Amateur radio is changing, in the past we never heard about satellites, digimodes or SDR: And these are just a few examples. We ask you to share a cool idea or project which you believe will be changing amateur radio but is also fun to share. This could be in the direction of a technology project, experimentation or digital development.
Don’t be limited ! We ask you to share your ideas which are contributing to the amateur radio community.
Come and meet IARU and learn what we are doing or ask anything what’s on your mind! We will be present at the IARU booth A1-860 and our Youth Working Group at the IARU Youth booth A1-766. Visit for the first time the IARU Open Innovation Zone A1-864, where ham radio experimenters will share their experiences, this is the zone where innovation meets passion. At this moment we can already share that 7 teams requested a slot. We are looking forward to meet you at the booths or in one of the other events!
Friday 23 June
Event
Location/Room
12:00 – 16:00
International Emergency Communications meeting (EMCOM)
Bodensee
14:30 – 15:00
IARU-R1VHF+ prizing ceremony
Main stage
15:00 – 15:45
December YOTA Month (DYM) — YOTA Contest prizing ceremony
Main stage
15:45 – 16:30
How to Youth Work — A view into the Train The Trainer Program
Main stage
14:00 – 15:00
IARU Region 1 program “Shaping the Future”
Liechtenstein
16:00 – 17:00
International IARU-R1 meeting, including Political Relations Committee (PRC) and Spectrum and Regulatory Liaison Committee (SRLC)
The special station, which will earn you 5 points in the competition for the 100th anniversary of the start of regular radio broadcasting in Czechoslovakia and the connection to it is a condition for obtaining the gold diploma, will be activated on the weekend of 3 and 4 June 2023 and will be identified by the call sign OL100R. To commemorate the pioneers who started radio broadcasting, this station will broadcast on medium waves on the frequency 1233 kHz with the A2 and A3 modulation and the connections to this station will be established crossband.
Station OL100R will announce the frequencies in the amateur bands on which it will listen to your call and will answer to you on 1233 kHz. Frequencies will be announced on 1233 kHz and at www.ceskyradioklub.cz. Operation will begin Saturday evening at 8 pm and will continue as long as there is interest in joining. If there is interest, the station may be activated later. Please use CW mode for telegraphic contact, OL100R will correspond to you with A2 modulation, for phonic contact use SSB mode, OL100R will correspond to you with A3 modulation. Listen to us on medium wave on 243.3 meters, 1233 kHz.
On the occasion of the centenary of the beginning of Czechoslovak radio broadcasting on May 18, 1923, the Czech Radio Club is organizing a radio amateur competition:
1. CRC requests the issuance of special call signs OL100RADIO, OL23RADIO, OL23RJ ‚OL100RJ, special call OL100R
2. These stations will be active between May 18 and June 18, 2023 on the KV and VHF bands.
3. Those interested will have the opportunity to obtain electronic diplomas
bronze for 3,
silver for 15,
gold for 25 points
5 points for a contact to the special station . The frequencies and time of operation of this station will be published later, follow the communication channels of CRC.
2 points for 1 a contact with stations OL100RADIO, OL23RADIO, OL23RJ and OL100RJ on different bands and different types of traffic — CW, SSB.
1 point for 1 a contat with OL100RADIO, OL23RADIO, OL23RJ and OL100RJ stations on different bands and different types of traffic — FT4, FT8 and RTTY-
The contacts repeated on the same band by the same type of traffic is not counted.
In order to receive a gold diploma, connection with the special station is mandatory.
4. Diploma manager — OK1MP, The same conditions for obtaining a diploma apply to listeners, they only demonstrate listening. Requests are sent to ok2za@atlas.cz.
5. QSL cards — sent (QSL service CRC, or direct) QSL cards will be answered with a card after verification of the connection, QSL manager: OK1MP. We recommend using the OQRS system on Club Log to request QSL cards. You will not overload the QSL service!
6. All contacts with OL100RADIO, OL23RADIO, OL23RJ and OL100RJ will be put on LOTW.
7. You find all informations about all results of an activity on special web www.cro100.cz .
After repeated complaints about the QRPP beacon YO8RIX in the 17 m band, IARU Region 1 HF Manager Tom Kamp, DF5JL, made direct contact with the operator. Most recently, “yo8rix qrpp beacon” was observed on the frequency 18100.53 kHz in the range of the International Beacon Project IBP. In the meantime, assurances have been given that the beacon’s frequency will be changed as soon as possible.
Step by the IARU Open Innovation Zone, where we invite you to explore exciting projects from our community. From software-defined radio to powerful digital signal processing tools and captivating citizen science initiatives, you’ll witness the future of amateur radio unfold before your eyes.
Active members of our community will introduce you to their projects, expertise and inspiring stories that will ignite your imagination and propel you into your own exciting radio adventures. Discover the possibilities, connect with fellow enthusiasts, and be part of a revolution that pushes the boundaries of amateur radio.
This initiative is organized in collaboration with the ICSSW.
Program
We are happy to invite you to discover the following projects:
The M17 Project
SatDump
GNU Radio
Web Radio Control
Charly 25
SPINO
MESHCOM 4.0
YOLOn Air
The M17 Project : M17 is developing a new digital radio protocol for data and voice, made by and for amateur radio operators.
This freedom to build, understand, and innovate is core to amateur radio, but has been missing from the commercially available digital voice modes. This is part of why amateur radio digital voice modes have largely stagnated since the 1990s and we’re almost wholly dependent on commercial products that aren’t well designed for amateur radio users. M17 is about unlocking the capabilities that amateur radio hardware should already have. Led by Wojciech Kaczmarski (SP5WWP), M17 Project received ARRL’s Technical Innovation Award in 2021.
The team has received funding from the ARDC and is currently working on the OpenHT. The Team will showcase OpenHT and Module17 devices. Additionally, handhelds running OpenRTX firmware will be presented to the audience. OpenRTX is a free and open source alternative firmware for ham radios.
SatDump is a free & open-source software dedicated to receive, demodulate and process data from satellites. It is able to handle a very long list of meteorological or scientific satellites, compatible with most of the SDR receivers you can find on the market.
Alan, the creator of SatDump, will present and explain his software.
GNU Radio is a free & open-source software development toolkit that provides signal processing blocks to implement software radios. It can be used with readily-available low-cost external RF hardware to create software-defined radios, or without hardware in a simulation-like environment. It is widely used in research, industry, academia, government, and hobbyist environments to support both wireless communications research and real-world radio systems.
Marcus Müller, who contributes directly to the design of the GNU Radio project, will propose demos and tutorials to introduce the magic of this great open source application.
Web Radio Control is a project supported by the IARU “Shaping the Future” initiative. Web Radio Control allows you to operate your amateur radio station using a web browser. The built-in reservation calendar makes sharing of a club station effortless: operators may book the station for exclusive access. The actual software runs at your station on a Raspberry Pi, a credit card sized computer. You don’t need expensive radio equipment: a radio transceiver capable of computer control and a wire antenna are enough to get started! A specific program dedicated to the IARU Region 1 member societies is detailed here.
Mikael OH3BHX will present his tool on the IARU Booth.
Charly25 is a project created by Erwin (DL1FY), Edwin (DC9OE), Markus (DG8MG) and Markus (DG8GM), from the DARC club C25. The team started in 2014 to explore the capabilities of SDR technology.
The knowledge acquired over the years allowed them to build their own high-quality transceivers including all the bells & whistles commercial products would offer plus their own ideas on top. The Charly 25 project started with the idea to build a small CW-transmitter with a class E amplifier and the receiver was meant to be a realized using an SDR-Stick – the aim was to inspire our young members in electronics and telegraphy. In the meantime, the team ended up with a real SDR transceiver which covers all bands from 630 m to 6m and in the near future it will work up to the 9cm band (plus Oscar 100 of course).
The team will come to present their project.
SPINOis a versatile telecommunication solution suitable for nanosatellites and Cubesats. Operating in UHF and VHF bands, it features tight integration with amateur radio service and the worldwide amateur radio community. The development of the SPINOSC board was initiated by enthusiats involved in non-profit / educational space projects. Since 2019, the project is supported by the joint efforts of two non-profit organizations: AMSAT-Francophone (site.amsat‑f.org) and the hackerspace Electrolab (electrolab.fr).
The SPINOSC board features functions dedicated to the spacecraft infrastructure :
Receiver function for remote control commands from ground…
Managed or Autonomous beacon (support for OBC failure)
Data stream (uplink and downlink)
Antenna deploy support And functions dedicated to the amateur radio community :
a versatile digital transponder
a digital mailbox service
The SPINOSC board will be a pre-validated open source brick available off the shelf for any nanosatellites mission. Daniel F6JMV and Michel F1AFW will be on the booth to introduce the board and explain how it works.
MESHCOM 4.0
The Institute of Citizen Science for Space and Wireless Communication an innovative project called “MESHCOM4.0“, which is a very flexible and resilient Mesh-network based on an idea of Mike, OE3MZC, to use very robust and effective LoRa spread spectrum modulation in Amateur Radio.
MESHCOM4.0 allows for CHAT-type of data communication using your smartphone as user interface (APP by Rainer, OE1KFR). The MESHCOM4.0 software created from scratch by Kurt, OE1KBC, co-founder of ICSSW, and well known to the Amateur Radio community from his activities in DMR (IPSC2-server network), D‑Star, TETRA and other digital voice systems via HAMNET, is running on a variety of hardware boards, including ESP32 micro controller and SX12xx LoRa-Chipset, like Heltec, TBeam, LilyGo TLora and RAK modules.
The MESHCOM4.0 protocol is entirely based on the existing APRS-Standard protocol stack and fully compatible to transport short messages, position data, weather and telemetry data in correct format, that it can be shown on aprs.fi. (http://www.aprs.org/doc/APRS101.PDF). The mesh-architecture, which makes every user to act as an intelligent repeater, iss elf structuring and self healing and makes MESHCOM4.0 a very resilient communication toll for Emergency Communication situations (EMCOMM).
MESHCOM4.0 is operating primarily on 70cm band (433MHz) and with power of 100mW distances of 5km (urban) to 30km(rural) can be expected. The MeshCOM4.0 network is enhanced by a powerful backbone network using gateways connected via HAMNET or the internet. This allows to connect mesh-clouds of different cities in different countries over longer distance. It also allows for an informative DASHBOARD, that shows all active nodes , gateways and messages on the system. (https://srv08.oevsv.at/meshcom/#)
In the sense of “unified communication“ MESHCOM4.0 also offers interfaces to existing messaging systems like APRS, HAMMESSENGER, DMR, VaraAC and DAPNET, just to name a few of the possible future options. MESHCOM4.0 will also support CITIZENSCIENCE approaches, by transmitting observations and warnings regarding extreme weather situations or earthquakes even from remote areas.
More developments are to be expected. Come and join the fun!
YOLOn Air
Today emergency communications are not only voices exchanges during a crisis situation, we can do more ! A lot of new technologies are available, but most of them are using internet or mobile datas to communicate. Why not let them communicate on our bands and try some experiments with them using our reliables systems to communicate ?
Let’s see together what we can do with AI, SDR and programming to improve our capacities in case of major crisis or to prevent it.
Enzo F4IAI will introduce you to Yolo (You Look Only Once) connected to GNU Radio
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