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Wolf Harranth, OE1WHC — SK
· HF · admin

We are saddened by the news of the death of Wolf Harranth, OE1WHC, the founder of the DokuFunk archive. Wolf passed away on 3 August after a short, serious illness.

Many will still know Wolf Harranth from his work at Radio Österreich International — from “Kurzwellenpanorama”, “the programme for shortwave listeners”. Later it was called “Medienpanorama” (Media Panorama), finally “Intermedia” — all of them a must for shortwave listeners and radio amateurs, because the programmes not only gave a good overview of shortwave events and were always up to date, but because Wolf also offered a lot of thoughtful material — in his own critical but pleasantly communicative way.

Wolf was also the founder of the non-profit Viennese documentation archive for research into the history of radio and electronic media — Internationales Kuratorium QSL Collection — abbreviated Dokufunk-Archiv. What started as a QSL card collection is now a considerable archive on the history of radio and the amateur radio service, with many contemporary historical documents. According to Wikipedia, the archive now holds about six million items, including 1500 bequests, making it “the world’s largest institution with archival records and collections of any kind on the history of radio, with a focus on broadcasting and amateur radio.” The holdings are accessible free of charge and are constantly being added to.

It is probably less well known that in Austria Wolf was regarded as one of the country’s legendary literary translators. He was awarded the Austrian State Prize for Literary Translation and the international Astrid Lindgren Translation Prize, among others, for this work. He translated classics such as the “Jungle Book” or the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.

He was also a recipient of the Roy Stevens, G2BVN memorial award in 2017, the IARU Region 1’s highest recognition for excellence in amateur radio, for his decades of effort and work on the DokuFunk archive. 

With Wolf, OE1WHC, not only the DX scene has lost one of its greats. Wolf passed away shortly before his 80th birthday.

Photo: Wikipedia/Harranth

Tom Kamp DF5JL
IARU Region 1 HF Manager

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EC Have your Say
· SpectrumTagged · Nestor, 5B4AHZ

The EC better regulation portal permits citizens and businesses to share their views on new EU policies and existing laws. Currently the Commission has two somewhat related public consultations on EU initiatives:

(1) https://​ec​.europa​.eu/​i​n​f​o​/​l​a​w​/​b​e​t​t​e​r​-​r​e​g​u​l​a​t​i​o​n​/​h​a​v​e​-​y​o​u​r​-​s​a​y​/​i​n​i​t​i​a​t​i​v​e​s​/​2​0​1​8​-​I​n​t​e​r​n​e​t​-​c​o​n​n​e​c​t​e​d​-​r​a​d​i​o​-​e​q​u​i​p​m​e​n​t​-​a​n​d​-​w​e​a​r​a​b​l​e​-​r​a​d​i​o​-​e​q​u​i​p​m​e​n​t​_en

The title of this initiative is “Internet-connected radio equipment and wearable radio equipment”. This is a proposed Delegated Act under Article 3(3) of RED which has been the subject of discussion for some time.

Inter-connected radio equipment includes virtually all devices that have a network connection. The aim of the ACT is to improve the cybersecurity of these devices by constraining the upload of software. This has potential implications for radio amateurs and experimenters.

(2) https://​ec​.europa​.eu/​i​n​f​o​/​l​a​w​/​b​e​t​t​e​r​-​r​e​g​u​l​a​t​i​o​n​/​h​a​v​e​-​y​o​u​r​-​s​a​y​/​i​n​i​t​i​a​t​i​v​e​s​/​1​2​7​9​7​-​D​e​s​i​g​n​i​n​g​-​m​o​b​i​l​e​-​p​h​o​n​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​t​a​b​l​e​t​s​-​t​o​-​b​e​-​s​u​s​t​a​i​n​a​b​l​e​-​e​c​o​d​e​s​i​g​n​_en

The title of this initiative is “Designing mobile phones and tablets to be sustainable – ecodesign”.

This has to do with sustainability and re-use of devices and arguably the proposal above under the RED at (1) is at odds with this.

As some background on this subject here is a link to a relevant article (in German): https://​www​.welt​.de/​w​i​r​t​s​c​h​a​f​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​2​3​2​7​6​1​3​3​5​/​A​p​p​l​e​-​T​e​s​l​a​-​V​o​r​w​e​r​k​-​B​i​d​e​n​-​w​i​l​l​-​d​a​s​-​R​e​p​a​r​a​t​u​r​-​M​o​n​o​p​o​l​-​k​i​p​p​e​n​.​h​tml

Here is also a link to a recent ITU News item on product sustainability:

https://​www​.itu​.int/​e​n​/​m​y​i​t​u​/​N​e​w​s​/​2​0​2​1​/​0​7​/​1​5​/​1​6​/​0​4​/​N​e​w​-​I​T​U​-​s​t​a​n​d​a​r​d​s​-​p​r​o​j​e​c​t​-​t​o​-​d​e​f​i​n​e​-​a​-​s​u​s​t​a​i​n​a​b​i​l​i​t​y​-​p​a​s​s​p​o​r​t​-​f​o​r​-​d​i​g​i​t​a​l​-​p​r​o​d​u​cts

EU/EAA based Member Societies or individual radio amateurs may wish to respond to these consultations directly or, alternatively, all who are interested may send their views to the IARU R1 PRC who are preparing a submission (Chair Séamus EI8BP).

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UPDATE: COVID-19 Situation and YOTA Activities
· EC, News, Youth General · Mario, EA1JAY

Despite the COVID-19 situation having improved over the past few months on a global scale, the development and dynamics of the pandemic remain unpredictable. The same unpredictability goes for regulations regarding the pandemic, which in many cases severely limit the ability to hold in-person events with international participants.

To deal with the pandemic situation, an event cancellation policy was introduced earlier this year (https://​www​.iaru​-r1​.org/​2​0​2​1​/​c​o​v​i​d​-​1​9​-​s​i​t​u​a​t​i​o​n​-​a​n​d​-​y​o​t​a​-​c​a​m​ps/), which introduced a four month deadline for a go/no-go decision for in-person events. This four month deadline has however turned out to slightly too far into the future for a reliable prediction.

Accordingly, the IARU R1 Youth WG, in collaboration with the IARU R1 Executive Committee, has made the following arrangement:

Youth events scheduled within 2021 will remain in the calendar for the time being. We, the IARU R1 Youth WG, will review the forecast evolution of the pandemic sufficiently prior to each event and make an announcement about whether it will take place. Generally this will be three months prior to the scheduled date. Those planning to attend should thus have sufficient time to make the necessary bookings and travel arrangements.

IARU Region 1’s intent is to ensure that any events which take place do so in an environment which respects national requirements for pandemic control and which does not place at risk the health and well-being of those participating.

The IARU Region 1 Youth Working Group

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23cm band and Sat-Nav Coexistence: Preliminary Studies considered in ITU‑R WP4C
· Spectrum · Barry, G4SJH

During the period 5 – 13 July 2021, the preparatory work for WRC-23 agenda item 9.1b continued in ITU‑R Working Party 4C (WP4C). (See Region 1 Feb 23rd news item for further background). The IARU member representatives from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, Norway, UK and USA, participated in the meeting and delivered additional information on amateur activities in this key microwave band

Preliminary studies came from France based on the ongoing CEPT work to provide initial estimates of separation distances required between RNSS GALILEO receivers and a sample of amateur emissions. The European Commission GALILEO team provided a set of observations pertaining to a RNSS interference event in northern Italy.

Global IARU Band Plans and RNSS system frequency band overlaps

The work contributed by France, although needing refinement, is going in a good direction, using ITU‑R recommended propagation models and assumptions based on operating scenarios provided by the amateur community. Further work is needed to take account of the large disparity between the RNSS service receiver bandwidths and the frequency band offsets of the amateur applications based on the measurements carried out by Germany.

One example result from a preliminary simulation run

The RNSS community have updated their RNSS receiver protection criteria with an update to ITU‑R Recommendation M.1902 that now includes parameters relevant to the GALILEO E6 signal block. However these criteria only distinguish between a narrow band and wide band interferer level at the receiver and take no account of offset frequency in the receiver bandwidth or any time variance.

The IARU is working to ensure the amateur services are realistically represented in the studies as they move forward. It remains vital that national amateur communities present their views on the importance of this band to their national regulators in a consolidated and consistent manner. The work will continue throughout the year and beyond both in ITU‑R and in the regional telecommunications organisations and the IARU is committed to ensure every group hears the amateur position on this important microwave band.

Click for the summary report from the WP4C meeting.

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