17 November 2009
On Sunday 11 April 2010, SHARE again hosts Lough Erne Amateur Radio Club’s annual rally
AMATEUR RADIO AT SHARE
On Sunday 11 April 2010, SHARE again hosts Lough Erne Amateur Radio Club’s annual rally. Several hundred visitors are expected from Northern Ireland and the Republic, and a few from Great Britain, for Ireland’s most important gathering of its kind, it being the major annual meeting place for northern radio amateurs and southern radio experimenters since the first famous Lough Erne Amateur Radio Club rally away back in April 1982.
This will be LEARC’s fourth rally at SHARE, a venue particularly suited in practice and in principle. In practice, location, accommodation and facilities are all excellent. In principle, amateur radio fits exactly with SHARE’s aims of inclusion of disabled and non-disabled people in a wide range of creative, educational and recreational activities. Many amateur radio interests and activities can be as easily pursued whatever be the physical handicap.
Amateur radio is a world-wide movement, licensed by national authorities in line with international agreements. Amateurs must identify themselves when on-air with call signs. The Northern Ireland prefix is GI or MI, and the Republic’s EI, for example. Call signs are allocated on passing a technical examination, at three levels in the UK, starting with Foundation for beginners.
So, other SHARE plans with LEARC include a Foundation course and examination in early 2010 for a group of disabled and non-disabled people. Their new amateur call signs will hopefully be heard on air by April.
The picture shows Foundation course tutors, Alan Gault Gi6PYP and Michael Clarke Mi5MTC operating a special radio station. There may be one of these stations - Share on Air – for new licensees to make first contacts with fellow amateurs across these islands and further into Europe and world wide.
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Text Michael Clarke LEARC Chairman. 6862-1436
Photograph, Herbie Graham, GI6JPO
