Mary Lewis, W7QGP, of Seattle, Washington, passed away March 12. She was 85. An ARRL Life Member, Lewis served as ARRL Northwestern Division Director from 1981-1987 and 1991-1995. She also served as ARRL Section Communications Manager for Washington and ARRL Section Manager for Western Washington, as well as ARRL Assistant Section Manager and ARRL Affiliated Club Coordinator for the Western Was…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
FCC Commissioner Julius Genachowski and FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell both announced last week that they would be leaving the Commission. McDowell announced his resignation during the FCC’s open meeting on March 20, while Genachowski made his announcement in remarks to FCC staff on March 22.
Genachowski was nominated by President Barack Obama to lead the Commission in June 2009. McDowell — …
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NASA will televise the launch and docking of its next mission to the International Space Station (ISS) beginning at 3:30 PM EDT on Thursday, March 28 (1930 UTC). NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, KF5KDR, and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov, RV3BS, and Alexander Misurkin are scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:43 PM EDT (2043 UTC). They will join Canadian Space Ag…
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Acting upon a subsequent request by the ARRL, the FCC issued an Order (WT Docket No, 12-283) on March 25, granting a temporary waiver to transmit communications on amateur service channels above 30 MHz using single time-slot Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems. The temporary waiver was granted pending the resolution of a related rulemaking proceeding (RM-11625).
Currently, amateur stati…
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George Hart, W1NJM — the chief developer of the National Traffic System (NTS) — passed away Sunday, March 24. He was 99. An ARRL Charter Life Member, Hart spent more than four decades as a member of the ARRL Headquarters staff and continued to be an active amateur and regular participant in Field Day. In 1984, the ARRL Board of Directors named Hart as an ARRL Honorary Vice President.
First lic…
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The ARRL will be promoting Amateur Radio at the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) — NAB Show — scheduled for April 6-11 in at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Members of the Las Vegas Radio Amateurs Club (LVRAC) will staff the ARRL booth at NAB, providing attendees with information about Amateur Radio. The booth also serves as a meeting place for radio amateu…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
Microcontrollers are gaining a foothold in the ham radio world. Here are some resources to help begin your explorations.
I’ve added a new book to my library: Ham Radio for Arduino and PICAXE, edited by Leigh L. Klotz Jr, WA5ZNU.
No, Arduino is not a new entity on the DXCC list, but rather a single-board microcontroller, that according to the Arduino websi…
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This past week, the average daily sunspot numbers were up 16.2 points to 101.1, while the average daily solar flux remained about the same, rising from 118.5 to 119. An eruption on March 15 caused a coronal mass ejection (CME) that hit Earth on March 17, causing the planetary A index to jump to 46. Sunspot numbers for March 14-20 were 133, 105, 90, 126, 116, 68 and 70, with a mean of 101.1. The…
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Noted DXer Luis Chartarifsky, XE1L, of Mexico City, passed away Monday, March 18 after a heart attack. An ARRL Life Member, Chartarifsky held Top of Honor Roll (Phone and Mixed), with all 340 current entities confirmed. He also held DXCC for Mixed, Phone, CW and RTTY, as well as 5-Band DXCC, and had a total of 354 entities, including deleted.
Chartarifsky became interested in radio and listening…
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Last weekend the Voice of America (VOA) Radiogram program conducted a digital test sending streams of text (and one image) while inviting listeners to submit reception reports. According to Radiogram host Kim Andrew Elliot, KD9XB, the response from the amateur and SWL community was impressive with reception reports from 16 countries and many US States.
Thanks to the successful test, Radiogram wi…
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The Dayton Amateur Radio Association (DARA) — host of the Dayton Hamvention® — has announced the winners of its four annual awards for 2013: the Amateur of the Year, the Technical Excellence Award, the Special Achievement Award and the Amateur Radio Club of the Year. These recipients will be honored at Hamvention in May. Each year, DARA invites the amateur community to nominate hams who have …
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As the ARRL draws closer to celebrating its Centennial in 2014, its Board of Directors has launched an unprecedented $ 10 million fundraising initiative to build the ARRL Endowment and strengthen the organization’s financial future. Led by the ARRL Board and an eight-member Second Century Campaign Committee — headed by David W. Brandenburg, K5RQ — the campaign has already raised more than $ 4 m…
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Last year, the ARRL UHF/Microwave Band Plan Committee prepared — and the ARRL Board of Directors approved — updated national band plans for the amateur bands between 902 MHz and 3.5 GHz after receiving extensive and helpful input from the user community. Last year, after the ARRL Executive Committee extended the Committee’s charter to include the 5 and 10 GHz bands, it solicited additional in…
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The ARRL Executive Committee (EC) held its first 2013 meeting Saturday, March 9 in Irving, Texas. The meeting’s agenda included items concerning the FCC and regulatory items, FCC enforcement, legislative issues and organizational matters.
FCC and Regulatory Matters
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By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ explores the mysterious world of numbers stations.
Norman Wald, W9VQ, alerted me about a new film called The Numbers Station that tells the story of a black ops agent (played by John Cusack) assigned to protect “the security of a young female code announcer (Malin Akerman), code resources and [the] remote station they are assigned to.”…
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Fair warning! In keeping with its time-honored tradition, the newly released April issue of QST magazine contains no less than two items of highly dubious authenticity. Can you find them?
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The digital version of the April QST is now available to ARRL members. The digital version includes many features not available in the print version, such as:
Every issue of QST is filled with the news and features you need to keep active in Am…
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Solar indicators were mixed this week, with the average daily sunspot number down 8.4 points to 84.9, while the average daily solar flux rose 5.9 points to 118.5. Geomagnetic indices were much quieter, with the average planetary A index down 4.7 points to 4.4 and the average mid-latitude A index down 5 points to 3.9. Sunspot numbers for March 7-13 were 80, 59, 63, 89, 105, 95 and 103, with a me…
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Early on a steamy Sunday morning in August my eagle-eyed spouse, Paula, N1EOG, spotted a yellow pamphlet titled The Wireless Telephone sitting on a dealer’s dollar table at the Grafton, Massachusetts flea market. I was trying to be good and not spend the buck, but the cover drew me in.
Read More
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According to NASA, the current solar cycle — Solar Cycle 24 — should hit its “solar max” sometime in this year, but so far, solar activity has been relatively low. According to an article by NASA’s Dr Tony Phillips, this period of quiet has led some observers to wonder if forecasters missed the mark. But solar physicist Dean Pesnell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has a different explan…
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The Voice of America Radiogram show, hosted by Kim Andrew Elliot, KD9XB, will be testing a variety of digital modes on March 16 and 17.
The data transmissions can be decoded by anyone with an AM shortwave receiver using any of the popular sound-card-based programs such as Fldigi, Ham Radio Deluxe, MixW, MultiPSK, DigiPan (for BPSK31, BPSK63 and QPSK31 only), CocoaModem (for Macs) and others.
Eac…
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Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, led a group of radio amateurs earlier this month to Mammoth Cave — the world’s longest known cave system — at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky to test how the Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) can be used as a means to extend radio communications underground. “When used underground, VHF and UHF radios can only work within a few hundred feet of each other and…
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After spending 143 days in space, Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford, KF5GPP, Russian Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy and Russian Flight Engineer Evgeny Tarelkin (both of the Russian Federal Space Agency) will begin their voyage home to Earth on Thursday, March 14, marking the end of Expedition 34 on board the International Space Station (ISS). The trio will undock their Soyuz spacecraft at 8:30…
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In addition to an increase in postal rates in January 2013, the US Postal Service introduced a new Global Forever First-Class Mail International stamp. Priced at $ 1.10 each and offered in a pane of 20, the new stamp offers a single price for any First-Class Mail International 1-ounce letter to any country in the world, as well as 2-ounce letters to Canada. The stamp is available online, at post…
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After more than 20,000 ARRL members had their arrl.net and arrl.org e-mails blocked by Microsoft, the issue has been resolved. According to ARRL Information Technology Manager Michael Keane, K1MK, Microsoft told the ARRL that the mail blockage from ARRL servers to Microsoft domains (including msn.com, hotmail.com, live.com and outlook.com) was mitigated as of Sunday, March 10. Microsoft caution…
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Both the averages of daily sunspot numbers and solar flux rose, with the sunspot numbers up nearly 36 points to 93.3, and the solar flux up nearly 12 points to 112.6. The most active geomagnetic day was Friday, March 1, when the planetary A index was 27 and the mid-latitude A index was 23; Alaska’s high latitude College A index was a whopping 64.
Sunspot numbers for February 28-March 6 were 63, …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
The ARRL IT staff has been notified that Microsoft is blocking e-mail to the more than 20,000 members who use the arrl.net e-mail forwarding service to forward e-mail to Microsoft domains (hotmail.com, msn.com, live.com and outlook.com). In addition, the blockage is also affecting those members of the ARRL’s Field Organization and other ARRL volunteers who use an arrl.org alias e-mail address t…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
After a day of exploring the Green Swamp Wildlife Management Area — which covers 50,692 protected acres in Florida’s Lake, Polk and Sumter Counties — with his grandson, Joe Cody, KE4WDP, of Winter Haven, Florida, saw that the roads were flooding and becoming hazardous. As he tried to drive out of the area, Cody’s small pick-up truck got bogged down in the mud. Since he was out of cell phone r…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
Four new poll questions have just been published on the QuickStats page on the ARRL website. Let your voice be heard!
Questions in this month’s QuickStats poll:
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By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ chases meteors at the Radio Meteor Observation Bulletin website.
Mike Schaffer, KA3JAW — this week’s guest surfer — wrote the about following meteors.
Several thousand meteors enter Earth’s atmosphere each day. The vast majority of these occur over oceans and uninhabited regions, and many are masked by the sunlight. Those that occur a…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
The winners of the February QST Cover Plaque award are John White, VA7JW, and Ken Tapping for their article “The Penticton Solar Flux Receiver.” Congratulations John and Ken! The QST Cover Plaque Award — given to the author or authors of the best article in each issue — is determined by a vote of ARRL members on the QST Cover Plaque Poll web page. Cast a ballot for your favorite article in th…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
Compiled by S. Khrystyne Keane, K1SFA
ARRL News Editor
news@arrl.org
This feature — including convenient web links to useful information — is a concise monthly update of some of the things the ARRL is doing on behalf of its members. This installment covers the month of February.
Packets for the 2013 ARRL Field Day are now available.
The International Telecommunication Union is offering a free dow…
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This past week, there was a decline in the solar and geomagnetic indices: The average daily sunspot number dropped nearly 21 points to 57.7, while the average daily solar flux softened by 4.7 points to 100.9 and the average daily planetary A index declined 6.4 points to 5.1. This isn’t much of a change, but geomagnetic activity was low already, and this is even lower.
Sunspot numbers for Februar…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
The ARRL Executive Committee will meet Saturday, March 9 in Irving, Texas. See the link below for the meeting’s agenda.
ARRL President Kay Craigie, N3KN, serves as Chairman of the Executive Committee. Five Division Directors who are elected by the ARRL Board of Directors are also on the committee: Northwestern Division Director Jim Fenstermaker, K9JF; Central Division Director Dick Isely, W9GIG;…
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With the vast majority of ARRL members using Internet e-mail to contact Headquarters, the Contact page on the ARRL website at http://www.arrl.org/contact-arrl has been completely revamped with e-mail links to a wide variety of individuals and departments. This will make it easier for members to contact the correct person or department according to the nature of their question or concern.
Also, t…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
Sterling Coffey, N0SSC
ARRL Youth Editor
In a typical engineering discipline, one spends four (or more commonly, five) years in classes learning more math, science, circuit analysis and classroom topics than you could ever fathom to understand. Included in those years lies a personal responsibility to acquire an internship — real-world work experience. Internships usually take place over summer …
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RadCom columnist and RSGB Life Vice President Pat Hawker, G3VA, of London, England, passed away February 21. He was 90. For 50 years — 1958-2008 — Harker penned the bi-monthly “Technical Topics” column in RadCom, the member journal of the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB), focusing on many new techniques and devices that came into being and were enjoyed by radio amateurs in the second hal…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By H. Ward Silver, N0AX
n0ax@arrl.net
The great tradition of self-learning and mutual education is alive and well at the outset of Amateur Radio’s second century. The success of that tradition leans heavily on the books — and now websites — of amateurs willing to share their radio know-how with others. This month’s quiz touches on publications from yesterday and today, in honor of the many aut…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ considers 3-D printing as a tool for ham radio makers.
Additive Manufacturing (AM) — also known as “3-D printing” — is the technology that builds “3-D objects by adding layer-upon-layer of material, whether the material is plastic, metal, concrete or one day…human tissue.”
According to the AM website, a computer, 3-D modeling softw…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
There was a modest rise in the average daily sunspot numbers over the past seven days, rising 27 points to 78.3, while the average daily solar flux was up marginally, only 1.6 points to 105.6. The geomagnetic indices also went up, with the planetary A index rising from 5.6 to 6.4, and the middle latitude A index rising from 5.1 to 6. There was a more substantial rise in both the solar flux and …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
With the CW portion of the ARRL DX Contest now a series of fading dits and dahs in the memoires of participants, preparations for the Phone portion of the ARRL International DX Contest the weekend of March 2-3 are already underway.
The high bands were in good form for the CW contest this past weekend, with many stations reporting hundreds of QSOs on 15 and even 10 meters. Will these good conditi…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
On Tuesday, February 19, François Rancy — Director of the Radiocommunication Bureau (ITU-R) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) — announced the simultaneous adoption and approval by correspondence of a new Recommendation entitled Telegraphic Alphabet for Data Communication by Phase Shift Keying at 31 Baud in the Amateur and Amateur-Satellite Services. The alphabet — commonly c…
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Montana, Arizona and Iowa will be getting new Section Managers beginning April 1. In the only contested race this election cycle, George Forsyth, AA7GS, of Great Falls, beat out incumbent ARRL Montana Section Manager Doug Dunn, K7YD, of Livingston. Forsyth received 199 votes, while Dunn received 175 votes; Dunn has served 10 years as Section Manager. Forsyth — an ARRL Life Member and ARRL Volu…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
At approximately 9:45 AM EST (1445 UTC) on Tuesday, February 19, the International Space Station (ISS) experienced a loss of communication with the ground. At that time, flight controllers in Houston were updating the software onboard the ISS’s flight computers when one of the ISS’s data relay systems malfunctioned. The primary computer that controls critical station functions defaulted to a ba…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ hears weak ones, and then identifies them the old way and the new way.
I have been having a lot of fun this winter chasing DX on the AM broadcast band. I am always surprised when I am able to log a new one that is transmitting low power. For example, on Monday I logged two traffic advisory radio stations run by the Connecticut Departm…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
The digital version of the March QST is now available to ARRL members. The digital version includes many features not available in the print version, such as:
Every issue of QST is filled with the news and features you need to keep active in Amateur Rad…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
Solar activity continues at the low levels that we have seen in the past few weeks. The sunspot numbers have been remarkably consistent, with the average daily numbers for the weeks since January 17 at 56.4, 55.7, 50.7 and finally 51.3 for this past week. As you can see, the average daily sunspot number rose less than 1 point from the previous week to the past week, while the average daily sola…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has proposed changes to spectrum usage in the 2300 to 2302 MHz band that will make it off limits to Australian amateurs. The ACMA wants to re-allocate the spectrum to LTE (Long-Term Evolution) wireless data systems, the kind popularly used for mobile broadband applications. The proposed change would give LTE services 100 MHz between 2300 …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
The MicroHAMS Digital Conference will be held Saturday, March 23 at the Microsoft Studios West Campus in Redmond, Washington. The conference, which focuses on digital networking, will feature two local efforts that are leveraging off-the-shelf wireless networking technology for Amateur Radio: NW-MESH — a spin-off of the ARRL HSMM program — and the HamWAN project that is attempting to provide …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
New England
As a blizzard swept across New England February 9-10, SKYWARN was ready. The storm dumped heavy snowfall — with some areas receiving upwards of 3 feet of snow — as blizzard conditions brought hurricane force winds that created power outages and significant tree and power line damage over Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. ARRL Eastern Massachusetts Section Emergency Coord…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
In an episode to air in mid-March, the hit ABC comedy Last Man Standing — starring Tim Allen as Mike Baxter, KA0XTT — will prominently feature scenes with cast members using Amateur Radio. This episode will be the first episode to feature Amateur Radio since the middle of the show’s first season.
According to Last Man Standing Producer John Amodeo, NN6JA, the episode called “The Fight” will fe…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
ARRL Headquarters will be closed in observance of Presidents Day on Monday, February 18. There will be no W1AW bulletin or code practice transmissions that day. ARRL Headquarters will reopen Tuesday, February 19 at 8 AM Eastern Standard Time. We wish everyone a safe Presidents Day holiday.
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
Effective February 14, Harbach Electronics will discontinue producing and selling the Peter W. Dahl line of transformers. In 2007 after more than 40 years in business, Peter Dahl, K0BIT, retired and sold his company — the Peter W. Dahl Company — to Harbach Electronics. According to an announcement on the Harbach Electronics website, the company is in negotiations with other manufacturers to t…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
In a Report & Order (R&O) — FCC 13-15 — released February 4, the FCC adopted numerous changes to its Experimental Radio Service (Part 5), revising and streamlining its rules. With the new rules, the FCC states that the Experimental Radio Service will have “a more flexible framework to keep pace with the speed of modern technological change, while continuing to provide an environment where cre…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ repositions an airplane finder app to APRS-equipped vehicles.
I downloaded a free app for my iPhone: Plane Finder AR. You simply point the iPhone camera at an airborne airplane and the app displays the plane’s flight number, aircraft registration and distance from your location. A $ 2.99 version of the app displays more information inc…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
The average daily sunspot numbers hardly changed from last week and the week prior, but the average daily solar flux bounced back to about the level it was from two weeks ago: The average daily sunspot numbers were down 5 points to 50.7, while the average daily solar flux was up 7.7 points to 106.4. Sunspot numbers for January 31-February 6 were 47, 65, 54, 79, 30, 41 and 39, with a mean of 50….
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
Due to the incoming storm, ARRL Headquarters will close at 12 PM (EST) on Friday, February 8. Headquarters will re-open at 8 AM (EST) on Monday, February 11.
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) Region 2 conference will be held later this year in Mexico. The Region 2 conference — held every three years — is attended by delegations from the national Amateur Radio societies in the western hemisphere that are members of the IARU. The ARRL is the IARU Member Society for the US.
One of the topics on the conference agenda will be the Region 2 HF …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
The Universal Postal Union (UPU) has introduced the newest model of the International Reply Coupon (IRC): The Doha model — so named for the 25th Universal Postal Congress that took place in Doha, Qatar in October 2012 — will replace the current model, known as the Nairobi model. Although the US Postal Service (USPS) no longer sells IRCs, they are still available in other countries and post of…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
Proposals are now being accepted from US schools, museums, science centers and community youth organizations to host an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact between November 1, 2013, and May 1, 2014. To maximize these radio contact opportunities, US ARISS program partners — the ARRL, AMSAT and NASA — are looking for organizations that will draw large numbers of par…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources