JRC Radio Club

As part of the “European week of mental health and loneliness,” JRC’s Human Resources Directorate asked cultural clubs to demonstrate their activities. We could not exempt ourselves! On October 12, 2023, our Club answered the call and organized yet another technology gazebo. We brought a lot of equipment and met many colleagues who were interested in the activities. We also distributed our FAQ sheet.

Many people have asked us about the upcoming amateur radio exam preparation course. Fear not, classes will resume in March/April. In the meantime, nothing prohibits you from contacting us to begin to understand what this is all about!

On Wednesday, April 12, 2023, at 9 p.m., at the ARI headquarters in Largo Gigli 2 in Varese, the new course for the amateur radio exam starts.

The instructor will be our member and colleague Eng. Claudio Bergonzi IK2YWN of the JRC Radio Club.

The course aims to prepare future radio amateurs to pass the ministerial test, which is required by law and will be held in Milan at the regional headquarters of the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy (MIMIT).

Participants will be provided with a background knowledge of radio phenomena, the regulations governing radio communications and amateur radio service, and all the basic operating concepts that an amateur radio operator needs to know.

The topics will be explained in a simple and easy-to-understand way for everyone to pass the theory exam and become a full-fledged amateur radio operator.

Please contact us for more information!

The JRC Radio Club couldn’t help but participate in an amateur radio contest entitled European Union DX!

The EUDX Contest is a worldwide competition organized to promote radio contacts among radio amateurs in the EU and beyond. This year’s competition took place on February 4-5 and was facilitated by excellent ionospheric propagation on the high-frequency bands, which also allowed many contacts on the high bands (i.e., 21 and 28 MHz).

Michele IZ1POA and Francesco IK2VXT of the JRC Radio Club joined friends from radio station IQ1RF in Chieri to participate in the contest. IQ1RF is a well-equipped station housed at the Civil Defense facility in Chieri (near Turin). The station, operated by Sergio IW1FSQ, has multiple directional antenna systems mounted on steeltowers, while other wire antennas were mounted ad hoc. The Contest rules awarded more points for EU contacts than for an intercontinental contact, so we decided to install low-elevation wired antennas that radiate the signal at a greater angle than top-mounted antennas, with the goal of better coverage of close-range communications.

The competition lasted 24 hours, from 1 p.m. local time on Saturday to 12:59 p.m. on Sunday. We could operate 3 radios at the same time, but since we were competing for the single-transmitter multioperator category, we could only radiate a single signal at a time, so we interlocked the radios to avoid multiple simultaneous transmissions. We started and ended our contest on the high bands, which have better propagation in daylight. During the night we focused on the low bands, 40-80-160m, making sure to contact as many European regions (NUTS2) as possible because each new NUTS2 would work as a multiplier of our score. During the contest contact, we exchanged with the other ham radio operator a signal strength report (usually 59, where readability 5 means perfectly readable, and signal strength 9 means an extremely strong signal), and the NUTS3 code, in our case we would transmit IT14 for Piedmont. During the competition we alternated voice contacts in SSB (sideband) emission and Morse code. We managed to make as many as 933 contacts in all regions of the world, from the Americas to Oceania, scoring a over 9 million points and ranking fourth in the world!

Our setup worked very well…proving once again that it is essential to run well-equipped stations in terms of antenna systems (hear, hear!).