The FUNcube-1 (AO-73) spacecraft has now been in orbit and fully operational for about 6 weeks. A Russian Dnepr rocket carried the AMSAT-UK cubesat and 18 other satellites into orbit on November 21. The FUNcube-1 team has expressed its gratitude to all radio amateurs who have uploaded telemetry data to the satellite’s “data warehouse.” The telemetry downlink frequency is 145.935 MHz (BPSK). The…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
When England’s east cost was struck by a devastating flood in 1953 that claimed more than 300 lives, evacuations were hindered by a lack of effective communication. Amateur Radio volunteers filled the gap, but at the time the UK had no volunteer emergency communication corps, such as ARES in the US. Previous attempts to establish such an organization ran into governmental roadblocks, but after …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
When the 2013 ARRL November Sweepstakes kicks into gear in a few days with the CW event, it will mark the 80th running of the oldest domestic ham radio contest, which debuted in 1930. Amateur Radio was ordered off the air during World War II, so no Sweepstakes events took place during those years. The CW event is this weekend, November 2-3, while the phone event is the weekend of November 16-17…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
When the 2013 ARRL November Sweepstakes kicks into gear in a few days with the CW event, it will mark the 80th running of the oldest domestic ham radio contest, which debuted in 1930. Amateur Radio was ordered off the air during World War II, so no Sweepstakes events took place during those years. The CW event is this weekend, November 2-3, while the phone event is the weekend of November 16-17…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
It’s been 50 years this month since now-veteran QSL manager Joe Arcure, W3HNK, began serving as a QSL manager for DX stations, starting with ZE4JS (Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe). Since then he has handled QSLing chores for more than 400 DX stations, and anyone with DX QSL cards likely has one in the collection that W3HNK handled. Licensed in 1956, W3HNK was bitten by the DX bug the following…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
On May 1, Dragan Pavlovic, YT3PDT, completed his registration process for Logbook of The World (LoTW), becoming the 50,000th person to take advantage of the ARRL’s online QSL confirmation system. According to ARRL Membership and Volunteer Programs Manager Dave Patton, NN1N, there are more than 3500 individuals from outside the US in the process of obtaining a digital certificate, and more than …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources