ARRL Headquarters will be closed in observance of Labor Day on Monday, September 7. ARRL Headquarters will reopen Tuesday, September 8 at 8 AM Eastern Daylight Time. We wish everyone a safe and festive holiday weekend.
No, it’s not a song about workshop inhabitants from the off-Broadway hit musical Little Shack of Horrors, but rather a quiz about some of the gadgets and doo-dads we use all the time in building our stations and keeping them on the air. Slip this quiz into the chuck and tighten up — this is [...]
Sunspot numbers for August 20-26 were 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 and 0 with a mean of 0. The 10.7 cm flux was 67.6, 66.4, 66.6, 67.3, 67.6, 67.1 and 67.3 with a mean of 67.1. The estimated planetary A indices were 11, 8, 5, 5, 3, 3 and 4 with a mean of [...]
This week, Surfin’ discovers the story of a group of hams that became Marine Corps MARS during the Vietnam War.
In a case that goes back more than 10 years, the FCC has told a Pennsylvania utility that the utility is responsible for paying for "efforts to locate and correct instances of [power line] noise." At least one amateur has been complaining to the FCC since 2000 regarding harmful radio interference possibly caused by power [...]
With World Cup soccer coming to South Africa in 2010, hams in that country will commemorate the event starting in September 2009 with a special call sign: ZS10WCS. According to the South African Radio League (SARL), that country’s IARU Member-Society, the call sign will be used in two ways: In the months leading up to [...]
Responding to solicitations in the July and August issues of QST, ARRL members in the Central, Hudson, New England, Northwestern and Roanoke Divisions have nominated 11 candidates for the 10 positions of Director and Vice Director of each of the five divisions. Seven incumbents have been declared elected without opposition, while there will be balloting [...]
The SuitSat-2 project — an Amateur Radio satellite housed in a Russian spacesuit — now has a new name to go with a new shape: ARISSat-1. On Wednesday, August 19, Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) Chairman Gaston Bertels, ON4WF, announced the new name for the satellite and project. According to ARRL ARISS [...]
Tuesday’s launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-128) was scuttled when thunderstorms — including a lightning strike just five miles from the launch pad — popped up unexpectedly Monday evening, continuing into Tuesday morning. The shuttle, with a new launch date of Wednesday, August 26, will carry a crew of seven astronauts, including three radio [...]
Along Coastal New England and the Canadian Maritimes, residents boarded up windows in preparation for Hurricane Bill. Even though the storm — downgraded from Category 4 to Category 1 — was considerably weaker than it had been when it was in the Caribbean earlier last week, those who live and work in the region were [...]
All 2009 Field Day logs that have been received have been posted to the Claimed Scores page on the ARRL Web site. They reflect all applications sent from the b4h.net Web applet, as well as those received via the US Postal Service and usable electronic submissions sent via regular e-mail (non-Web applet submissions). If you find an [...]
In preparation for Hurricane Bill, WX4NHC, the Amateur Radio station at the National Hurricane Center, the Hurricane Watch Net (HWN) and the VoIP Hurricane Net (VoIP Net) will activate on Sunday, August 23. Presently, Bill is a Category 1 hurricane with wind speeds up to 85 miles per hour. The storm is expected to weaken [...]
The quiet Sun continues to baffle us. If there are no sunspots today — and I don’t expect any to emerge — this will be the 42nd day in a row with no sunspots; July 10 was the last day we saw any spots. There is really no way to predict when the next sunspot [...]
This week, Surfin’ unveils more ham radio connections to the three days of peace, music and mud.
ARRL DXCC Manager Bill Moore, NC1L reports that the logs for the 2000 DXpedition to Yemen, 7O1YGF, have been uploaded to Logbook of The World (LoTW). Last week, Moore announced that after more than an eight year delay, the DXCC Desk approved the operation after a review of "recently received information," as well as "additional [...]