Thank you and good evening everybody.  From Amateur Radio Newsline Report Number 1801, these are the Ham Nation headlines for Tuesday, February 21, 2012.

= =

The 2012 World Radiocommunications Conference has ended with the approval of a new 600 meter, medium wave secondary allocation from 472 to 479 kHz.  As a secondary user, amateur radio shares spectrum with the primary user, in all ITU regions, the Maritime Mobile Service. 

Power is limited to 5 watts ERP, except for stations within 800 km of the borders of the former Soviet bloc nations and the Arab states.  There, power is only 1 watt ERP.

Now, each nation’s communications authority must authorize use of the band by their amateurs – an area of spectrum that hams have not had access to since the earliest days of radio regulation.  

= =

Only 3 hours after launch from Katy, Texas, communications with a high-altitude balloon headed for Nanjing, China was lost. BLT-28, transmitting callsign KT5TK-11 on APRS, went silent at 45,700 feet over the Gulf of Mexico about 110 miles south of Holly Beach, Louisiana.  

There is hope that BLT-28 may have actually crossed the Atlantic Ocean sometime Monday morning, February 13th, but that has yet to be confirmed. If the APRS transponder does return to life, it should be transmitting on 144.800 MHz and will eventually appear On Various World Wide APRS Tracking Websites Such As Aprs.Fi.

I wonder what would have happened if they launched a few miles north?

= =
 
After more than a decade the Amateur Radio Newsline's web host, Ron Becker, KJ6SWB and owner of Alan Labs, has closed this part of his business.  We want to formally thank Ron for his generosity and assistance to the Amateur Radio Newsline.

Our new home is Squarespace.com.  Check it out and let us note you think.

And we also want to recognize the efforts of those who have and will continue to maintain the site for everyone's use and enjoyment.  They are Dale Cary WD0AKO and Kevin Trotman N5PRE.  They work anonymously behind the scenes, and we wanted to take this opportunity to recognize them and thank them for their hard work.

= =

Next week we hope to have time to feature another classic microphone.  But for now, that's all from the Amateur Radio Newsline – your independent source of amateur radio news, brought to you each week without interruption for almost 35 years at www.arnewsline.org.

I'm Robert Sudock, WB6FDF.  73 and we'll see you next time on Ham Nation.