Hamvention announces venue for 2017
The Greene County Fair & Exposition Center will be the new home of the Dayton Hamvention.
Hamvention

Hamvention: The Fairgrounds
First and foremost, if you had worries about parking space, relax.
KE9V

NPOTA activation of The White House today
Members of the Great South Bay ARC have obtained a permit from the National Park Service to operate from President’s Park
AMSAT

Public Communications Network: What you need to know
There has been a lot of online chatter about how the public communications network (i.e., “the phone company”) fits into off grid ham radio and survival/prepping plans.
Off Grid Ham

DXpedition ethics
My first ethical quandary came in 2009 when I was fund-raising for our 2010 YI9PSE DXpedition.
N6PSE

Weak signal volume levels
One of the best and most simple noise reductions is to lower the volume.
VE7SL

Elecraft KX3 cardboard desk stand
It’s easy to make, cheap, useful and environment friendly.
SP7Q

History of the capacitor, the pioneering years
I liken it to the pioneering days of aviation when you made your own planes out of wood and canvas and struggled to leap into the air.
Hack A Day

FCC levies $25,000 fine for deliberate interference
The FCC has imposed a $25,000 fine on William F. Crowell, W6WBJ (ex-N6AYJ), of Diamond Spring, California, for intentionally interfering with the transmissions of other radio amateurs.
ARRL

Video

RTL-SDR stock antenna teardown and vna measurements
The antennas are as expected and pretuned to the DVB-T TV band at around 500 – 600 MHz.
RTL-SDR.com

Russian Woodpecker becomes drone playground
Duga was a Soviet over-the-horizon radar system that operated from July 1976 to December 1989.
YouTube

Hara Arena to shut down
Hara Arena is closing its doors after 60 years.
WDTN

Hamvention to remain in Dayton area
The event will take place on the same weekend and it will be within the region.
Hamvention

Utah County ham radio club draws attention
In less than six months, the club has amassed more than 340 members.
Daily Herald

Antennas on a Boeing 777
Antenna locations on a Boeing 777 aircraft.
Reddit

Alive and Well: Post-Coup Amateur Radio in Turkey
I can confirm that I’ve heard a number of Turkish amateur radio operators on the air since the coup attempt.
The SWLing Post

VHF/UHF Digital Voice – a peek into the future
Digital Voice on VHF/UHF is clearly here to stay. Even though the mainstream manufacturers are supporting it (their own version of it), it’s still fairly niche now. It will grow.
AmateurRadio.com

A tour of Elecraft
At a time in our hobby where many businesses are consolidating, closing their doors or failing to innovate, Elecraft is one of the few bright and innovative companies in our hobby.
N6PSE

Georgia Ham fined $1000 for failure to properly identify
Failure to transmit call sign information undermines the purpose of the Amateur Radio Service by preventing licensed users from identifying a transmission’s source.
ARRL

New SDR client, Kukuruku
RTL-SDR compatible software features multiple demodulators running at once and history browsing.
Kukuruku

Video

National Parks on The Air – Satellite Activation
This was filmed on Sunday July 17th, 2016 on the Craggy Overlook Trail on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.
KG4AKV

Sparks by static charge on a groundplane antenna
A short video showing static discharges in the form of sparks, a PL259 connector connected to a groundplane antenna, during a lightning storm.
PA2OLD

Radiosport vs. Pokémon GO
It should come as no surprise that ham radio operators are drawing comparisons between Pokémon GO and Amateur Radiosport.
ARRL

Growing 6m JT65 activity
On several occasions this week, I have heard or worked dozens of others on JT mode while the bottom end of the band appears void of signals.
AmateurRadio.com

North Korea activates numbers station
A female announcer at the radio station read numbers for two minutes on 24 June and 14 minutes on Friday.
The Guardian

What’s In your rubber duck?
I often refer to the rubber duck as The World’s Most Convenient Crappy Antenna.
K0NR

Life as a blind radio Ham
Anyone can join in the conversation and sometimes you find yourself talking to a dozen or so people across the ends of the Earth.
Largs & Millport

Smartphone vibration motor as microphone
Two researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have devised a method for turning vibration motors, like the ones found in smartphones, into makeshift microphones, capable of recording the sound around them.
Southgate

How to: GPS spoofing (to hack Pokémon GO)
As satellite GPS signals are very weak while receiving on earth, transmitted signals with the HackRF will be very strong in comparison
Insinuator

A speaker mic NOT to buy
I’m guessing this one didn’t pass through quality control, if there is such a thing at the Baofeng factory.
Digital Mobile Radio

Receiving WSPR with RTL-SDR
Direct sampling mode allows you to receive HF signals on an RTL-SDR without the need for an upconverter
RTL-SDR.com

New: Baofeng UV-50X3 tri-band mobile
Baofeng just launched the UV-50X3 triband 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

Chinese radio makers versus the big leagues
Have I been burnt or disappointed? You can bet your bottom dollar I have, and many of my reviews and past blogs would tell you that.
AmateurRadio.com

Attendance at Dayton tops 25,000 for second year in a row
For those keeping track, in 2014 the official count was 24,873 visitors, and attendance in 2013 was 24,542.
ARRL

Ham radio decline in Germany
In 2002 there were about 80,000 radio amateurs in Germany, by 2015 this had fallen to 67,349.
Southgate

VU3DES: Passing a ‘Technician Class’ US License exam
FCC FRN registration has clear options for applicants without an American Contact (mailing) Address. Using the FRN I could fill out the exam application forms and appear for the exam.
VU3DES

What’s special about 50 ohms?
A cable that has least loss at 77 ohms, also has maximum power handling capacity at 30 ohms. The mean between 30 and 77 ohms is 53.5 ohms.
Hack A Day

My Jeep portable Ham Radio station
Amateur radio is part of our gear. There are times when cell service is unreliable, trails are unpopulated, or we intentionally move off the grid. The Willys offers us an opportunity to expand our use of amateur radio as part of our leisure activities.
N4AE

A guide to listening to CB radio with an RTL-SDR dongle
Mario discusses how an RTL-SDR dongle can be used to have some fun listening to CB without needing to go out and buy a full CB radio.
RTL-SDR.com

Interference from an LDG autotuner
Hans did suffer from heavy noise (S9) on his FT-817 affecting his receive especially from digital weak signals like WSPR and JT modes.
PE4BAS

rtl-trx: Transmit and receive RTTY using an RTL-SDR dongle
Local oscillator leakage from an RTL-SDR dongle can be used as a very low power FSK transmitter.
GitHub

Ham radio tower frustrates neighbors
For 10 years, residents of a Maple Ridge neighbourhood have been fighting to have an amateur radio tower taken down, but a coalition of ham enthusiasts says they’re providing a valuable service.
CBC

Video

W7L Seven Lakes
YouTube

Crossbow antenna launcher
KF7IJZ

Transmitting RTTY with an RTL-SDR
YouTube

Into the Digital age
One of the reasons for the rapid growth of DMR over D-Star and Fusion is the availability of relatively inexpensive DMR radios for amateur operators from Connect Systems and Tytera.
Digital Mobile Radio for Hams

A Radio Amateur’s guide to solar panels
Solar panels that cost over $6.00 per watt a decade ago are now available for less than $2.00 per watt. Solar is on the cusp of becoming mainstream.
Off Grid Ham

New podcast: The Workbench
Over the next several episodes, we will deep dive on information, tips, and gear needed to setup and equip your own workbench.
The Workbench

Elecraft KX2 Go Box
The project uses a water tight Pelican 1050 brand enclosure.
VA2SS

Solar Analysis Paralysis
Don’t have gear or antennas for the low-bands? Time to make an adjustment to your equipment and antenna portfolios.
KE9V

China fits final piece on world’s largest radio telescope
The 500m-wide Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, is the size of 30 football fields.
BBC News

N9EWO Review: Icom IC-7300
You can usually get a better deal with more features in a Ham transceiver and the lack of tabletop receivers these days.
N9EWO

Dear ARRL, HR1301 is Hogwash
Your homeowners association can keep you from running a simple wire antenna.
N4AE

K8BL achieves Satellite WAS after 40 years
His contacts spanned 38 years, and he submitted QSL cards to claim the award.
ARRL

Serially, are you syncing or asyncing
Synchronous communication makes the receiver’s job easier by adding a third clock line to the ground and signal lines. This is the clock the transmitter uses to shift out the bits.
Hack A Day

Video

Yaesu FT-1000MP Repair
Follow along as Paul at Mr Carlson’s Lab shows the troubleshooting and repair steps involved in making a Yaesu FT-1000MP work again.
YouTube

24 hours of JT signal reception
This video shows which stations can be received using the JT65 and JT9 digital modes throughout 24 hours on 20m/14MHz, & how propagation changes during the day.
M0CUV

Sun has likely entered new evolutionary phase
The Sun is in the process of crossing into its magnetic middle age, where its 11-year Sunspot cycles are likely to slowly disappear entirely.
Forbes

13 Colonies Special Event
All HF bands will be in play, including the WARC bands, with the exception of 60 meters. Simplex on 2 meters and 6 meters is encouraged.
13 Colonies

Folded Skeleton Sleeve Antennas
The design is a unique way to build a dual-band resonant dipole or groundplane vertical.
High on Solder

Hams could be superheroes when the earthquake hits
When the big one hits, one of the best technologies to rely on for communication may not be cell phones or computers.
KUOW

Middle Tennessee Ham Quest
The Greater Nashville & Middle TN Ham Quest is a new project dedicated to combining traditional Hamfest elements with less traditional offerings that will help to unite the Ham community.
Ham Quest

K5EHX repeater search tool
Enter a city or zip code for near-by repeaters.
K5EHX

GQRX for digital signals
The idea was to show how GQRX can be combined with other software to use it’s nice GUI. With some plumbing, that’s easily possible.
Carriers Everywhere

How do you measure the success of Field Day?
I’m the president of our club, so if the experience isn’t great, then a large portion of the blame falls on me. After this year, I have a feeling some folks are ready to have me impeached.
KK4DSD

First Field Day as a CW operator
Field Day 2016 with the Knightlites QRP club.
Ham Radio QRP

Field Day 1929 style
The transmitter was a 27-24-24-865 job more or less straight out of July 1931 QST.
AmateurRadio.com

Direwolf: Software soundcard, modem/TNC and APRS encoder/decoder
It can be used stand-alone to observe APRS traffic, as a digipeater, APRStt gateway, or Internet Gateway (IGate).
WB2OSZ

Video

APRS timelapse
Video made of APRS screenshots from aprs.fi map.
DF2ET

Properties of different types of capacitor
Find out all about the different properties of the various capacitor types: electrolytic; ceramic; tantalum; plastic film.
YouTube

Field Day 2016 is upon us!
Sean, KX9X, Media and Public Relations Manager for the ARRL comes by to share the League’s perspective of the event as well as some tips and tricks to make this Field Day one to remember.
HamRadio360

Field Day 2016 site locator
To find a location near you, type in your town and state in the Location or Call Sign box on the left.
ARRL

It’s Field Day weekend 2016: find a local event, have fun
If you live in North America and have an interest in becoming a ham radio operator, this is the weekend to check out what amateur radio is all about.
The SWLing Post

Are you ready for Field Day?
I’ve been working on my set up for portable HF operations for the last couple of months. It is nothing elaborate or even remotely fancy. It does work and that is good enough for me.
N0RVS

VLF, LF, MF experimenters will transmit ARRL Field Day greetings
A number of Experimental (Part 5) licensees — nearly all of them radio amateurs — have been plying the depths of the radio spectrum as the ham radio community awaits FCC action on the new 2200 and 630 meter bands.
ARRL

Field Day 2016: Activate Off Grid Systems!
Be flexible and understand that Field Day means different things to different people. For some, it’s a serious disaster preparedness drill. For others, it’s a contest, a public outreach effort, or a picnic in the park with radios.
Off Grid Ham

Checklist for a GOTA station
So, I don’t forget to bring anything, I thought I’d come up with a checklist for the station.
KB6NU

Special event station K1D to operate satellites on Field Day
In an effort to encourage more kids and their families to get involved in the hobby, the kids at Ham Radio (dot) World are working to put an all-kids Special Event ARRL Field Day station on the air.
Southgate

“Amateur Radio Week” proclamations abound in advance of Field Day
Several states, counties, and communities across the US have officially recognized the public contributions of Amateur Radio.
ARRL

New Mexico wildfire emergency threatens some Field Day sites
Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES®) volunteers in New Mexico late last week responded to the Dog Head fire, which is affecting Torrance and Bernalillo counties, and that activation continues.
ARRL

Field Day 2016 rules [PDF]
Field Day is open to all amateurs in the areas covered by the ARRL/RAC Field Organizations and countries within IARU Region 2. DX stations residing in other regions may be contacted for credit, and may submit entries as check-logs.
ARRL