Winter Field Day this weekend
If you are as serious about emergency communications as we are, we welcome you to join us for our yearly event.
WFDA

New FCC Chairman praises Parity Act
Newly designated FCC Chairman Ajit Pai praised the House action on H.R. 555 and other telecommunications-related legislation that cleared the chamber.
ARRL

HamRadio360: All about APRS
APRS, oh the questions you’ve raised!
HamRadio360

CIA documents about Ham Radio declassified
The CIA has recently released around 13 million pages of declassified documents. Among these documents is a set of reports on Ham Radio in the former Soviet Union.
Ham Radio Reviews

Making broadcast towers bird-friendly
In 1976 in Gun Lake, Mich., one tower killed more than 2,300 birds in one night.
NPR

Mt Herman Winter Activation
We returned to the Most Radio Active Mountain in Colorado, Mount Herman, for a combination VHF contest, SOTA activation and winter hike.
K0NR

Simple Wi-Fi Yagi
It’s easy to make a small Yagi for a wireless router even if it lacks an antenna connector. The photo shows how I added two parasitic elements to the sleeve dipole of my Netgear WGR614.
K6STI

Building an ADS-B station
Complete guide to building an ADS-B station: theory, components, maximizing reception performance.
Radio for Everyone

Headset shootout
Headset reviews are about a dime a dozen on the internet. They’re all subjective too. Everyone’s hearing is different. Especially mine!
K5ACL

Video

Winter Field Day: 5 basic winter survival tips
Winter Field Day is an opportunity to test your gear and personal effectiveness in cold weather conditions.
OH8STN

WSJT-X Raspberry Pi split mode
WSJT-X on a Raspberry Pi.
K0PIR

Parity Act bill reintroduced in US House of Representatives
The bill’s language is identical to that of the 2015 measure, H.R. 1301, which passed in the House late last summer but failed in the waning days of the US Senate.
ARRL

Standing desks for Ham shacks?
I’m quickly realizing standing is clearly helpful, because the same problems came up, even though my new chair was more ergonomic.
N0SSC

Ham Radio EMCOMM Go Kit
In order to simplify the cabling between the SignaLink and my laptop I decided to us a powered USB hub and to make the USB hub accessible on the back of the case.
High On Solder

Amateur Radio Club Survey 2017
We’ve just launched our 2017 amateur radio survey to get a snapshot of an aspect of the hobby.
Essex Ham

Ambulances to jam car radios in Sweden
Ambulances in Stockholm are testing a system that interrupts in-car audio systems to warn drivers that they need to get through.
BBC News

Walkie Talkie Duino
An open source wireless shield for Arduino that can send data and audio.
Tindie

Property owner wants to remove ham radio towers from atop hotel
The property’s new owner wants to take down the repeater site due to what it calls safety and security concerns.
News12

Callsign lookup when portable
QRZ is one of the more popular websites for looking up callsigns but the website is not formatted for use on mobile devices.
Ham Radio QRP

Codec 2 700C
My endeavor to produce a digital voice mode that competes with SSB continues.
Rowetel

Video

Internet over powerline can wipe out the HF band
These devices allow you to use your house power cables as a convenient ethernet connection for sharing the internet. However they are extremely noisy and can wipe out the entire HF band.
YouTube

To help with your NPOTA withdrawal
Like NPOTA, WWFF was devised in order to get Amateur Radio ops off their duffs and into the Great Outdoors. I love their catch phrase – “Make nature your shack!”
AmateurRadio.com

BY70-1 Satellite camera operating guide
An open telecommand is designed to allow radio amateurs to send commands to take and download an image.
LilacSat

Today: KB6NU streaming General Class course
The classes are going to run from 10 am – noon, and will probably run through the end of March.
KB6NU

80m doublet antenna
Technically, what I have is almost an 80m Doublet – there’s about 18m of wire on each “leg” and I’ve about 20ft of 300-ohm slotted feeder which comes into the Shack and through an FT240-31 choke and then about 30cm of coax to the back of the MFJ-847 tuner.
M0PZT

First DMR QSO
Accomplished my first DMR QSO today with K5IMO (thank you Larry!) on the TG3184 TalkGroup for the State of Texas.
K5ACL

Propagation prediction tool
Area coverage maps and point-to-point HF propagation predictions.
G4FKH

Mystery cosmic radio bursts pinpointed
As the name suggests, Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are short-lived – but powerful – pulses of radio waves from the cosmos.
BBC

Automatically recognising digital modes with machine learning
There is a good prospect of using machine learning image recognition for guessing digital modes. Ideally this would be built in to clients but it might make a good app (using the phone camera to capture the unidentified signal) or a web site where you upload a screen shot.
marxy’s musing on technology

Shortwave Pirate Radio 2016 – A Year In Review
Overall, 2016 was another great year for shortwave pirate radio listeners.
RadioHobbyist.org

The missing Q signals
Some Q signals have never made it to the ARRL’s official list.
K3HRN

Video

New FM transponder satellite BY70-1
2E0ICL works 2E0SQL via a new amateur radio FM satellite, BY70-1, launched into orbit on 28 December 2016.
YouTube

How to install powerpole connectors
I introduce you to Anderson Powerpole connectors and how to solder and crimp the connector pins. This connector has become a standard among Amateur Radio operators.
K7AGE

Contact via UHF ISS Digipeater
For this video I recorded the audio from my Kenwood TH-D72a and later played it back to Soundmodem+UISS. Soundmodem decodes many more packets than my radio does. I made a screen capture of UISS and its map so you can see the complete details of every received packet.
KG4AKV

Maclogger DX walk-through
Is there a Mac in your Shack? This time I’m looking at the Maclogger DX logging software and rig control for the Mac platform.
K6UDA

2016 Year in Review

For this last issue of the year, I pulled the most popular links from each issue and complied the top 10
as a ‘look back’ on the world of Amateur Radio in 2016. Enjoy! –Cale K4HCK

#10

A stealthy HOA HamStick directional dipole
This is a sneak peek at a very detailed build, tune, and operation on 20 and 40 meter bands using both Phone and PSK31.
Prepared Ham (Issue 94)

#9

Hey, which coaxial cable should I use?
We’ll focus on the most popular cables, with 50 ohm impedance to match the output impedance of our transceivers.
Ham Radio School (Issue 115)

#8

Five common mistakes new Hams make
This short list comes from working with a gaggle of new hams over the years and trying to help them get started in ham radio.
Ham Radio School (Issue 137)

#7

Hidden Antennas for HOA restrictions?
I have a confession to make… I live in a HOA! I know most hams say what the hell did you do that for, you knew you could not put up a 60 foot tower. Turn in your FCC license…
Prepared Ham (Issue 97)

#6

Easy, homemade Outernet antenna
An antenna for less than $1 total cost, doable without power tools and soldering, in less than 30 minutes.
Radio for Everyone (Issue 136)

#5

Portable antenna options for HF
For all the choices, it’s surprisingly hard to find a portable antenna for HF that is affordable and practical.
Off Grid Ham (Issue 138)

#4

End-Fed antenna revisited
I really like the simplicity of this antenna for many aspects: fast to deploy, works on many bands, no antenna to tune…
VA2SS (Issue 126)

#3

New: Baofeng UV-50X3 tri-band mobile
Baofeng just launched the UV-50X3 tri-band mobile radio and it looks like a jab, cross and left hook to the established Japanese manufacturers who were caught dreaming about DMR, C4FM, D-STAR and other leprechauns.
QRPblog (Issue 120)

#2

Repeater owner bans Baofeng radios
Simply put, these radios do not allow for “advancing skills in both the communication and technical phases of the art” (Part 97.1).
N4NJJ (Issue 108)

#1

First impressions of the Icom IC-7300 HF + 6M transceiver
We did not use the transmit functions on the radio, but were able to test out the receiver at my campsite with a Budipole antenna on 40 meters.
AB4BJ (Issue 99)

Ham Radio Deluxe bricks user’s software after negative review
37 pages into into this forum’s discussion of HRD’s brutally inept handling of a customer complaint, the co-owner of the company wades into the fray and apologizes.
Techdirt

Amateur radio fans drop the ham-mer on HRD’s license key ‘blacklist’
Remotely killing one customer’s copy was not an isolated incident, say readers.
The Register

NPOTA contact tally tops 1 Million
Activators operating from National Park Service units across the US and Chasers around the world pushed the contact tally over its goal this week.
ARRL

EME In The ’80s
Unlike today’s widespread JT65B usage on eme, where signals can be many db into the noise and inaudible by ear, eme contacts could only be completed by actually copying signals that you could hear with your ears. This usually required big antennas and lots of power.
VE7SL

Keeping an NVIS antenna legal on 60 meters
To compute ERP, antenna gain must be relative to a half-wave dipole antenna. An NVIS antenna has a lot more gain than a dipole.
keep-nvis-legal-on-60m

A Cootie key
The “Cootie” key or “Sideswiper” is basically a double-sided straight key and has a reputation for being very hard to learn, possibly harder even than the Vibroplex Bug.
Ham Radio QRP

Using a GPS repeater antenna with the Yaesu FTM-400DR
My Yaesu FTM-400DR has had a difficult time ascertaining a GPS lock inside of my vehicle. Some others have also complained of this.
K5ACL

Video

Discovering secret “Numbers Stations”
Brian and Jason have been scanning the air waves for sstv signals for two months, but what they found was something else. An old standby from the Cold War.
The Modern Rogue

Icom-7300 spectrum scope band edge how-to
For those of you wanting to customize the band edges here’s a how-to.
K0PIR

DMR range test part 1 of 3: Baofeng DM-5R
In the series I am doing a range test of three different DMR radios from two locations. One location is 11km away and the other almost 19km away.
dmr-range-test

A diamond radio receiver
Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have made the world’s smallest radio receiver.
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering

Chinese Over-the-horizon radar QRMing 40 meters
IARU reports that one of China’s HF Over-the-Horizon radars has been transmitting on 6.999 MHz.
ARRL

Ham Radio: What are we millennials and younger doing?
We’re being hackers, engineers, leaders, developers, creators, and designers.
N0SSC

Portable antenna options for HF
For all the choices, it’s surprisingly hard to find a portable antenna for HF that is affordable and practical.
Off Grid Ham

GMRS: The other UHF band
GMRS is a licensed radio service but does not require a technical exam so it works great for basic personal communications.
K0NR

Review: WSPRlite WSPR Beacon
A small, light, & super portable WSPR beacon that transmits a WSPR signal on 20 or 30 meters.
K5ACL

Morse Toad, a Morse Code game
Morse Toad is an educational app that teaches you morse code through a series of simple lessons and exercises.
Ham Radio QRP

SSTV images received from MIR space station
April 16, 2000
N7CXI

Tracking down sources of radio noise
Yet another !&*%$! noise source…
The SWLing Post

Video

New UHF ISS Digipeater
Recently, the old VHF Ericsson handheld used for the digipeater on the ISS died and it was replaced with an equivalent UHF one. This is my first time digipeating through it.
YouTube