All about Ham Radio
An introduction to the world of amateur radio.
SparkFun

JumboSpot DMR Hotspot
One of the latest crazes in the world of DMR radio is the Chinese iteration of the DMR hotspot. The principal attraction? Low cost. The Jumbospot costs about $45.
John Hagensieker

Light Up 2 Meters Night, an FM Simplex Event
August 26, 2018 7-9pm local time.
K5ACL

Radio hams at DEF CON 26
DEF CON 26 is taking place August 9-15 in Las Vegas and radio amateurs will be there giving presentations on HAARP, amateur satellite communications, and SDR’s.
Southgate

DIY vs. commercially made solar panel
The price of commercially made solar panels on eBay is around $1 per watt and have been for a few years, but the price of individual solar cells are likewise at a low price per watt, around $0.48.
Hack A Day

Receiving GOES weather satellite with a 2.4 GHz WiFi grid antenna
GOES 15/16/17 are geosynchronous weather satellites that beam back high resolution weather images and data.
RTL-SDR.com

Moving Pictures: First dabbles in Amateur TV
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks experimenting with some Amateur Television ATV and Digital ATV.
AmateurRadio.com

Wisconsin residents embrace Amateur Radio
An estimated 2 million people are on the airways worldwide, according to the American Radio Relay League. About 830,000 amateur radio stations are located across North, Central, and South America alone.
U.S. News

A primer on grounding for Hams
Nothing like a fierce electrical storm to get Hams talking about susceptibility to lightning strikes. Well, we experienced just such a storm in early August, which provides the perfect opportunity to review the topic.
VE7SAR

Video

Building a multi-band HF dipole antenna
Here I build a multi-band dipole antenna for HF use on 40-20-15-10-6 meters. Some call this a fan dipole.
RadioHamGuy

Nashville Amateur Radio Club Field Day 2018
NARC Field Day 2018 at Lock 2 Park, Nashville, TN
K4CPO

ISS packet radio system back late this year
The currently silent packet radio system on the International Space Station could be back on the air by year’s end.
ARRL

Tutorial: Plot and decode weather balloon data
A radiosonde is a small weather sensor package that is typically attached to a weather balloon. As it rises into the atmosphere it measures parameters such as temperature, humidity, pressure, GPS location etc, and transmits this data back down to a receiver base station using a radio signal.
RTL-SDR.com

Edwin Armstrong’s Battle for FM Radio
It is a story of innovation, but also a story of personal vanity, corporate greed, stubbornness, marital problems, and even suicide. The only thing missing is a long-lost identical twin sibling to turn it into a full telenovela.
Hack A Day

Locating Sources Of Noise
As our lives become filled with technology, the likelihood of electronic interference increases. Every lamp dimmer, garage-door opener or other new technical “toy” contributes to the electrical noise around us.
Surrey Amateur Radio Club

Digital nets on 11m
Digital modes (ROS, FT8, SSTV, PSK31) are emerging on 11 meters.
Delta Alfa

Milliwatt DX on 868 MHz
Packets transmitted by the gateway of Ryan Walmsley, member of The Things Network East Coast, Great Yarmouth, was received 235 km away in Utrecht, Netherlands.
Southgate

Q&A: Summer of Tariffs
Will a 25 percent tariff be material on a single switch purchase costing a few dollars? Of course not. But this helps illustrate that once you start entering into the hundreds and thousands of dollars, these tariffs begin having an impact.
SparkFun

Ruth Willet is 2018 Hiram Percy Maxim Memorial Award recipient
The Hiram Percy Maxim Memorial Award is given annually by the board to a radio amateur under the age of 21 whose accomplishments and contributions to both Amateur Radio and the local community are of an exemplary nature.
ARRL

Video

QRP vs 20 Watts – What is the Practical Difference?
Running one hour in a contest at 5 watts, and the next hour at 20 watts.
Outdoors On The Air

Flight of the Bumblebees 2018
This is a popular QRP CW amateur radio event. The Bumblebees are portable stations.
N4KGL

Compact Homebrew End Fed QRP Antenna
I built this antenna specifically for low wattage QRP use to be compact and inexpensive. It utilizes a 9:1 unun wrapped on a T106-2 toroid and minimal hardware to be lightweight.
WI9LL

Significant changes in store for FT8 and MSK144
Enhanced versions of the MSK144 and FT8 protocols will extend the message payload to 77 bits.
ARRL

ISS SSTV activation July 30-31
The Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station are expected to activate amateur radio Slow Scan Television (SSTV) transmissions.
AMSAT UK

Why wire diameter is important
The larger the cross-sectional area of the conductor, the more electrons are available to carry the current.
VE7SAR

3D printed Arrow II portable satellite antenna clips
WI9LL has designed clips for use with the Arrow II Portable hand held satellite antenna.
WI9LL

Operating tips for VHF SOTA
I’ve been using VHF and higher frequencies for SOTA exclusively and have activated over 100 summits in Colorado and other states.
K0NR

FCC proposes $18,000 fine for Ham in interference case
“Given his history as a repeat offender, these apparent violations warrant a significant penalty.”
ARRL

A visit to the home of FreeDV and codec2
I knew I was in the right place when the squid pole supporting a corner dipole came in to view.
Marxy

WWFD in AM HD
America’s only AM HD station.
The SWLing Post

Is your repeater ID boring? Try something like this.
If your repeater ID is getting a little stale, perhaps this will give you some ideas on how to freshen it up a bit.
KB6NU

Receiving astronaut Amateur Radio conversations with an RTL-SDR
If you live in an area that can ‘see’ the ISS at the same time as the school then you can easily pick up the downlink.
RTL-SDR.com

Send APRS data/telemetry via Xastir command line
You can do it all via RF if your Xastir setup is already paired to the radio and configured to transmit.
S55MA

Ham radio technology used in Thailand cave rescue
UK radio amateur John Hey G3TDZ (SK) designed the special low frequency radio equipment, the Heyphone, used in the recent cave rescue in Thailand.
Southgate

SDR: Direction finding techniques
Public KiwiSDRs distributed around the world can be used to pinpoint the physical locations of any 0 – 30 MHz transmitter using the TDoA technique.
RTL-SDR

New: No Nonsense Amateur Radio Podcast
The No Nonsense Amateur Radio Podcast is a discussion of where we are in amateur radio and where we’re going. It is a production of Dan, KB6NU, and Tom, KB5RF.
No Nonsense Podcast

A short guide on baluns
Unless precautions are taken to minimize it, all coax fed antennas will have significant current flowing on the outside of the coax shield while transmitting.
Surrey Amateur Radio Club

ARRL contest award certificates now available for download
This new online certificate feature will offer enhanced content over what has been offered previously on ARRL certificates.
ARRL

88 MHz Trans-Atlantic signals heard in Ireland
Northern Ireland managed to hear a Canadian radio station across the Atlantic at 88 MHz.
EI7GL

W6/NC-353, Burdell Mountain – 2018
I did this summit late last year as my first morse code activation. Last time it was a combo POTA/SOTA activation. This time would be only SOTA. And it was a heck of a lot warmer too!
KE6MT

Shortwave radio listening continues its steep decline
Shortwave audiences are virtually disappearing in Pakistan, and down substantially in Nigeria.
BBC

3D printed 10KV tuning capacitor
I will show you how to build a super-cheap tuning capacitor that will tolerate up to 10,000 Volts of RF and allow you to use up to about 100 Watts of RF into my 14MHz (20m) antenna.
The SWLing Post

Directive Systems 2 Meter Rover Yagi
With an 8 foot boom, it’s just the right size to fit on the roof of my SUV for transport and works great on the fiberglass push-up mast.
K5ND

Video

Make your own LED battery level indicator
In this video I will show you how we can use the classic LM3914 IC to create an LED Battery Level Indicator.
YouTube

K4R Dry Tortugas EL84 roving trip on schedule
Robert KE4AL, Rich N4ESS, and Matthew, NJ4Y will be arriving on Garden Key, EL84np in the Dry Tortugas mid-day on Friday July 6, staying all day Saturday, and then leaving Sunday morning July 8.
Southgate

Postmortem decoding of SSTV/APRS
SSTV decoding went quite fine using the Android app Robot36.
Notizbl0g.

Exposing hospital pager privacy breaches
It has been a known open secret that for years many hospitals have been transmitting sensitive patient data over the air completely unencrypted via their pager network.
RTL-SDR.com

The legacy of Iraq’s amateur operators lives on
People from all over the world reached out to Baghdad’s team of “hams” in hope that they could lend a helping hand.
The National

Radio Amateur to pay $7,000 to settle FCC interference case
Ham intentionally interfered with the communications of other Amateur Radio operators and failed to properly identify.
ARRL

Home Beaches On The Air
Beaches On The Air (BOTA) is an award scheme for radio amateurs and shortwave listeners that encourages portable operation from beaches.
BOTA

No more bullying
This form records reports of bullying within Amateur Radio in Australia.
VK6

Pentagon Amateur Radio Club
The Pentagon Amateur Radio Club (PARC) is open to all active duty military, government civilians, or contractors assigned to the Pentagon.
K4AF

15 kilometre LoRa SSH link with RNode
I decided I’d try to see if I could create a useable SSH link over a distance of 15 kilometres, with just two RNodes, and no intermediaries.
unsigned.io

Video

How to hack your 433 MHz Devices
Hacking an outdoor awning to auto retract based on windspeed gathered from a home weather station.
YouTube

Receive SSTV from Space June 29-July 1
These images will commemorate the various satellites that were hand-deployed from the ISS.
AMSAT UK

Attendance holds steady at Hamvention 2018
At 28,417 visitors, Hamvention recorded its third-largest attendance ever in its second year at its still-new location in Xenia, Ohio.
ARRL

“Baker is Brutal!” KH1/KH7Z DXpedition team reports
“They say it never rains on Baker,” the DXpedition noted in its June 28 update. “At midnight giant squalls came through knocking out one of our three antennas that we worked so hard to get up.
ARRL

That wasn’t good – that was great
180 degree opposites! As much as I feared that I wasn’t into Field Day this year, that’s how much it turned out to be a truly great experience.
W2JL

Field Day 2018 – Every day is field day
One of the primary goals of my station configuration, whether at home or in the field, is keeping the station as small and uncomplicated as possible.
OH8STN

The N4Y 2018 ARRL Field Day Report
Field Day this year was a two operator, one transmitter operation on emergency power.
N4KGL

The Apollo Survival Radio
The transceiver and its cylindrical battery pack were water-tight. It could operate in beacon mode for up to 24 hours.
The SWLing Post

Activating Southern Britain’s Highest Mountain on Top Band
I was pretty confident that I’d have enough space for an 80m dipole, as long as I setup well away from the main summit.
Adventures in Ham Radio

13 Colonies special event begins July 1
Celebrating 10 years honoring the original 13 colonies.
13colonies.net

Cuban special event
Activity is to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the Naval Battle during the Spanish, Cuban, American War.
Southgate

Video

Building a giant 2m corner reflector antenna
For GOES-16, pulsars and more.
YouTube

Basics of RF Bias Tees including applications and examples
Bias Tees are RF components that are used whenever you need to couple a DC, power or low-speed control signal onto an RF signal path.
W2AEW

Field Day site locator: Find a Field Day event near you
This page shows public Field Day sites that members of the public and media can visit.
ARRL

Increased solar activity for Field Day
We have not seen numbers such as this since last September. This is good news just before ARRL Field Day, assuming the activity does not produce any geomagnetic disturbance.
ARRL

Field Day 2018: Give Them A Reason To Care
When you go to Field Day 2018, bring someone with you and convince them that amateur radio matters.
Off Grid Ham

Field Day Bulletin Schedule
Those participating in Field Day can earn 100 bonus points for copying the special Field Day bulletin transmitted by W1AW or by K6KPH.
ARRL

Shortwave station WTWW featuring live call-ins during Field Day
9930 and 5085 KHz. Call in toll free: 833-390-5085
QRZ

Broadcaster to Transmit Field Day Greetings in MFSK64
A 100 kW HF broadcast transmitter in Nauen, Germany, will send Field Day greetings to North American radio amateurs in MFSK64.
ARRL

Field Day Site Survey for a Horizontal Loop Antenna
We are seriously considering a 260-foot loop that is one wavelength at 80 meters. It can be a square or triangle.
N4KGL

Explaining the current capacitor shortage
In short, we are in the middle of a global capacitor shortage the likes of which the electronics manufacturing industry has not experienced since 2008.
WAi

Building an RF Direction Finding Robot with an RTL-SDR
The goal is to set up an ISM band transmitter as a beacon, and use the RTL-SDR on the robot as the receiver.
RTL-SDR.com

1970s Citizens Band Radio culture
“It was before mobile phones, before the internet. It was the initial form of mass communication, a way you could chat to your friends for free,” says David Titlow as we talk about CB Radio, the now-obscure 1970s and 80s technology.
British Journal of Photography

Video

Why We Love Field Day
An 8 part video series highlighting the best aspects of Field Day.
DX Engineering