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By Tom EI5IEB One of the founding principles of the club is to have fun, build project and to prepare members for the HAREC exam. Over time we have developed training programs covering the theory with practical demonstrations for members and created a number of quiz's as training aids to highlight areas requiring more study. In the past few months a club,  the  National Shortwave Listeners Club , (SWL Club) has been setup with the purpose of helping members take and pass the HAREC exam. Meetings are held regularly over Zoom. This is a great step forward in encouraging new people in to the hobby. All courses are led by volunteers who are experienced radio operators, have specialist knowledge and others who are experienced trainers. Having all the knowledge in one place is a great combination. Two of our club members are also members of the SWL Club and are studying to pass the HAREC exam. Last night, Tuesday 28 April 2021, I was invited to attend a Zoom meeting of the National Short

One of the core principles on which the club was founded was to have fun while operating portable. Members are routinely calling in from portable stations to the Sunday afternoon 2 Meter and 80 Meter  IRTS News stations. Weather permitting this is completed with out fail on a weekly basis even in the winter. Over the past few months experiments were carried out between club members and other amateur's on the 4 Meter  band using a combination of repurposed PMR mobile rigs and 4 Meter band amateur mobile rigs to see what kind of coverage and how good the audio sounded from various locations around the county. We were excited to find that QSO's could be had, without difficulty, between Skerries, Kildare, Meath and Carlow. In the interests of making more use of the 4 Meter band among amateurs we decided to approach the IRTS with a proposal to read their News on 4 Meters Announcements and publicity for our reading of the IRTS News were made in the weeks leading up to it. These inclu