Summer brings back memories of short-sleeves, baseball, and playing outside until the street lights came on. Fishing with my Dad was a special treat and to this day a strong whiff of gasoline transports me back to lazy days on the water with him and our difficult to start outboard boat motor. This was always a happy season when we enjoyed a respite from school, slept deeply with the windows open, napped often in the hammock, marveled at the lightning bug shows, and celebrated the 4th of July fireworks while parked in the grass at the lake.

How often we fail to realize our good fortune in living in a land where happiness is more than just a lack of tragedy…

Quotable

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

– John F. Kennedy

Notable

• TX-Factor Episode 31 - the best all-around amateur radio video program is back with the conclusion of the QO-100 ground station build and much more.
• No Nonsense Extra Class License Study Guide by KB6NU now available.
• ARRL and Momobeam Introduce Dual-band Beam Antenna for 6 and 10
• BBS & Mail for Meshtastic - The Comms Channel
• RIP - Linux network pioneer, Larry Finger, died on June 21, 2024.

Potable

• ARDC Portal 2.0 Technical Documentation AMPR | 44net
• 2024 version of SDR# Big Book by Paolo Romani, IZ1MLL.
• Thales has unveiled the first two radios in the company’s new HF XL range of resilient high-data-rate wide-band HF radios for command posts deployed by land forces in the theater of operations.
• Is Russia readying a nuke to blow up Starlink? - US officials warn Russia could be preparing new nuclear anti-satellite weapon for possible use in Low-Earth Orbit.
• Calm Down — your phone isn’t listening to your conversations. It’s just tracking everything you type, every app you use, every website you visit, and everywhere you go in the physical world.

Ham Radio in Friedrichshafen

A few more pictures from Day 2 Ham Radio 2024 at #Friedrichshafen. A big thank you to everyone who came to say hello on @theRSGB stand and to drink our tea ☕️😀 #hamradio pic.twitter.com/NsEBQpkoTS

— Steve M1ACB (@m1acb) June 29, 2024

Joe's Folly

Here’s another step in the rapidly evolving world of FT-whatever, SuperFox WSJT. This one can send reports or RR73s to as many as nine SuperHounds simultaneously. Eureka! An entire 10 day DXpedition in only 1.1 days. I assume financial support for these operations need only be for 1/9th what would normally be donated since one contact will require so little attention?

Notable

• Hackaday coronated the Quansheng UV-K5 the "king of hackable ham radios — especially now that a second version of the all-band hardware and firmware mod has been released, not to mention a new version of the radio".
• The Archinstall 2.8.1 text-mode installer for the popular Arch Linux distribution was released today (06/26) as a hefty update introducing initial LVM support and many other improvements.
• Creators of the Discovery Dish system for weather satellite reception and hydrogen line radio astronomy have announced another delay. The crowd-sourced project is going to miss it's summer promise due to manufacturing snafus. I still have fingers crossed I will receive this equipment some day.
• The Great Plains Super Launch Conference is coming August 1-3 to Colorado Springs. Considered the premier high altitude ballooning event in North America. For over two decades, the GPSL has been bringing together the brightest and most innovative amateur balloonists from the US and abroad. Full details.
• Registration for the 2024 W9DXCC Convention, which will take place at the Marriott in Naperville, Illinois September 13 and 14, is now open. This will be the 71st W9DXCC with single track DX and Contesting topics being "offered in a classroom-like setting" on Friday. Saturday will feature yet to be named speakers, exhibits, QSL card checking, CW pileup contest and that evening a reception and banquet.

Quotable

“On some nights, I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.”

– Hunter S. Thompson

Viewable

• BATC CAT23 KiCAD tutorial - Mike G0MJW gives a tutorial on getting to grips with KiCAD for designing your own PCBs.
• TX Factor - To space and back - TX date 7th June 2024. The best all-around amateur radio video program is finally back in production after a long hiatus.
• This is the 2024 update of Amateur Microwave - it's easier than you think by VK3FS.
• Begali Factory Tour - by G0PNM who says, "in this video, filmed over a couple of the days, you will join me for a tour of the Begali factory, which is located in Cellatica, Brescia".

Potable

• Decoding ERMINAZ - by Daniel Estévez, EA4GPZ - ERMINAZ-1U and ERMINAZ-1V are upcoming 1P PocketQubes by AMSAT-DL that will be launched in Rocket Factory Augsburg first flight from SaxaVord (Shetland, UK) later this year, together with other PocketQubes from AMSAT-EA and Libre Space Foundation.
• Cory Doctorow: No One Is the Enshittifier of Their Own Story
• Interesting post by Heather Cox Richardson on the last time the US had a president who was totally unfit for office.
• Online newsletter archive of the UK QRP Research Group published from September 1949 is available here

Since not every noteworthy article requires a separate post, and not all topics merit 750 words of musings, I’m going to try this format for more sharing and less commentary and hopefully you will find one or two things in the stack that tickle your curiosity.

Quotable

“Nothing spoils a good story like the arrival of an eyewitness…”

– Mark Twain

Notable

• Allen Katz, K2UYH died on June 20 surrounded by family. A global leader in EME communications for more than 40 years, he was also the longtime publisher of the '432 AND ABOVE NEWS' letter. A professor of electrical and computer engineering at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), at the time of his passing he was TCNJ’s longest-serving faculty member. Additional details available in his obituary.
• An AMSAT designed Linear Transponder Module (LTM) is scheduled to ride to orbit with MESAT-1 on a June 27th flight aboard a Firefly Alpha launch vehicle. Telemetry can be decoded using FoxTelem software.
• Field Day 2024 logs must be postmarked or submitted by Tuesday July 23, 2024. Late entries cannot be accepted. A 50-point bonus may be claimed by a group submitting their entry via web app.
• Someone asked on the IC-7610 group mailing list about options for the meters in software. A few replies included hardware options for metering about which I was unaware. Like this one, and this one. Who knew?
• WSPR Transmitters overview and comparison - ZachTek

Potable

• Straight Key Century Club Handbook is now available. It provides a handy reference of Club activities. Free PDF download.
• Stellar Sleuths: Citizen Scientists and AI Uncover Hidden Asteroids With Hubble.
• The Five-Watt QRP Movement in the US, 1968-1981 by Adrian Weiss, W0RSP
• The sun's magnetic field is about to flip. Here's what to expect.
• Walmart is switching to electronic price tags that “allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds”.

#HashTagAble

Copying the arrl field day bulletin! #arrlfieldday2024 #arrlfd2024 #rtty #teletype pic.twitter.com/hdtn6lPiRY

— Jeff G @orion3311@mastodon.social (@orion3311) June 23, 2024

It’s a good thing my plans for Field Day were more modest than usual else I might have been disappointed. It has become my habit to partake in the annual event from my own backyard, but the heatwave had convinced me if I did operate this time, it would be from inside the shack. So I figured I’d make a hundred contacts and call it quits. But life happens and plans don’t always work out and as it turned out, I didn’t get on the air at all on Saturday. Sunday morning I spent less than an hour putting just fifteen in the log before shutting down.

The first ten were on 40 and the last five on 20 meters. All CW and all using the IC-705 at ten watts into the CHA-MPAS Lite antenna. It’s a 17-foot vertical that I stuck into the backyard just for this occasion. The 705 is an excellent performer and I enjoy using it. Some days I wonder why I even own other HF transceivers.

In reasonable weather, playing outdoors would have been a lot more fun, and I would have given it more attention. Still, it was fun listening to others and imagining them working against the elements after having stayed awake all night. For hams, it’s mostly about getting together with friends and having fun, but for muggles, Field Day is an Open House for ham radio to show off.

We get lots of media attention and it’s often the first real exposure others get of our hobby, sometimes it even becomes an entry point for many new hams.

Field Day is this weekend. I have operated the event from my backyard using battery power for many years, but this time around I’ll be operating from inside the house attempting to make a hundred phone contacts. I’m not even going to maintain a log so this should be a piece of cake. When it comes to the age-old argument about whether Field Day is a contest or an emergency preparedness exercise, I come down on the side of “contest” because everything in ham radio is some kind of contest…

Now that LoTW has been down and out for as many days and nights as Moses spent on Mount Sinai, a curious thing is evolving; no one cares. The online commentary has gone from outrage to mocking humor to crickets in just 40 days and nights. The ARRL doesn’t mention it. I was surprised to see the agenda for the most recent ARRL Board meeting didn’t include the topic listed, and there wasn’t a peep about it in the most recent ARRL Letter. It’s as though LoTW never existed. Mass Delusion?

Early Solstice. The summer solstice arrived in the northern hemisphere yesterday and almost no one noticed it was early to the party. In fact, it was the earliest solstice since 1796 when George Washington issued his farewell address. The reason for the retrograde dates is purely human, blame the Gregorian calendar. Still, the solstice is set to get progressively earlier, creeping forward every leap year for the next 72 years and I don’t like it.

With Field Day this weekend, there will no doubt be many low-power enthusiasts taking to the field with their QRP equipment either by preference, or for the bonus points. While these may do well, none will garner anywhere near the bragging rights of Voyager 1 which is around one light-day away from Earth and still in radio contact.

A fact that caused one curious soul to ask: How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

The question first appeared on StackExchange and has since been picked up in a long-thread on HackerNews. The question is a good one, the math difficult, and it requires an unusually high level of technical curiosity to even ask, but, that’s science for you.

Today is the first day of Summer, Happy Solstice!

Druids consider this a spiritual holiday, the time of maximum light and the Festival of Joy - Alban Hefin.

Druidry has a great respect and reverence for places that are ‘in between’ worlds. The seashore is one such place, where the three realms of Earth, Sea and Sky meet. There is great power in places such as these. It is the time of greatest light when the Solar God is crowned by the Goddess as the King of Summer. It also brings some sadness because from now until Alban Arthan, the Sun’s strength is declining and we have entered the waning year. For some this is the time of the Dark Twin, or Holly King, who is born and will take his crown at Alban Arthan. Of all the festivals Druidry is mostly associated with Alban Hefin. The wonderful white-robed figures filmed at the dawn rituals at Stonehenge are testament to this. However, to many Druids it is the turning seasons and the cycle of life, death and rebirth – reflected in the Wheel of the Year in its completeness – which are significant.

Curium One mission set to ride onboard the Ariane 6 inaugural flight. A first in flight demonstration for the SatNOGS-COMMS, a radio transceiver developed by Libre Space Foundation.

UPDATE: Ariane 6 is set to launch July 9, 2024 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana!

Curium One is a 12-unit (12U) CubeSat designed and manufactured by Berlin-based company Planetary Transportation Systems (PTS – previously Part-Time Scientists) in partnership with the Athens-based Libre Space Foundation. With its dozen units come a variety of goals for the first flight of Ariane 6.

One aim is to contribute to CubeSat and amateur radio communities through testing and developing open-source hardware and software, helping to enhance global communication infrastructure and educational opportunities in space tech. The mission will use the SatNOGS ground station network which consists of more than 200 stations around the globe, open to anyone to use, with all results made public and data freely distributed under Creative Commons.

While it’s yet a few days before the official first day of summer, the oppressive heat wave that will soon cover most of these United States dropped into Indiana over the weekend and we’re roasting enough here to cause me to declare, “close enough” it’s summertime! No fresh corn on the cob yet, but there’s enough sweet tea and supernatural levels of air-conditiong ready and waiting. Just guessing, but I’ll probably skip Field Day this coming weekend as it’s just too hot…

I enjoy reading about adventure on the high seas during the summer months and wanted to share a few book recommendations for your summer reading joy. A few of these include a ham radio plot line and one is a technical treatise you won’t want to miss.

Come take a deep-dive, the water is fine:

1. The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas – the classic work by Thor Heyderdahl. I first read this in high school and checked it out of my local library just a few days ago to enjoy it again. Among it’s bonafides, the book had been translated into more than 70 languages and sold more than 50 million copies. And why not, it’s an astonishing journey of 4,300 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean by raft that includes a large dollop of ham radio. I wanted to link to the many 1947 QST articles about this expedition, but like LoTW, the QST archive is not currently responding. You can get a sampling of the ham radio part of this story from this 2014 ARRL News item.

2. The French Atlantic Affair – this work by Ernest Lehman always intrigued me because amateur radio plays a big role in it and it was published the same time as I obtained my Novice ticket, the summer of ‘77. Because of that ham radio connection, it was featured on the cover of every radio magazine for a few months which was mighty exciting for a brand new ham! Short story: A luxury ocean liner of the French Atlantic Line is hijacked by a messianic priest, and his cult followers for a $70 million ransom in gold. Two young amateur radio enthusiasts are the only link between the ship and the outside world.

3. Typhoon – a short novel by Joseph Conrad, begun in 1899 and serialized in Pall Mall Magazine in January–March 1902. Its first book publication was in New York by Putnam in 1902; it was also published in Britain in Typhoon and Other Stories by Heinemann in 1903. Short story: No one writing in English has ever blasted wind, waves and salt-spray suspense like Joseph Conrad does in his novella “Typhoon.” Despite ominous swells, mustard-black clouds and a plummeting barometer, the mindless Capt. MacWhirr drives his steamship carrying Chinese laborers directly into the path of a North Pacific storm. Conrad wrote this rip-roaring sea yarn at the dawn of the 20th century, in part as commentary on the transition from sail to steam. No ham radio in this one.

4. Hawaiki Rising: Hōkūle’a, Nainoa Thompson, and the Hawaiian Renaissance – in 1975, a replica of an ancient Hawaiian canoe— Hōkūle’a was launched to sail the ancient star paths, and help Hawaiians reclaim pride in the accomplishments of their ancestors by traveling from Hawaii to Tahiti the “old” way. Hawaiki Rising is the saga of an astonishing revival of indigenous culture by voyagers who took hold of the old story and sailed deep into their ancestral past.

5. Software-Defined Radio for Engineers, by Travis F. Collins, Robin Getz, Di Pu, and Alexander M. Wyglinski, 2018 – just discovered this link to this free download (PDF) in the Zero Retries 0156 newsletter. It’s focus on the ADALM-Pluto caught my interest as I own that hardware. Synopsis: The objective of this book is to provide a hands-on learning experience using Software Defined Radio for engineering students and industry practitioners who are interested in mastering the design, implementation, and experimentation of communication systems. This book provides a fresh perspective on understanding and creating new communication systems from scratch. Communication system engineers need to understand the impact of the hardware on the performance of the communication algorithms being used and how well the overall system operates in terms of successfully recovering the intercepted signal.

Got a note from the Four State QRP Group that they are kitting another run of the popular Hilltopper QRP Transceiver kits. Designed by Dave Benson, K1SWL, and kitted by the 4SQRPers, it’s been a popular kit that I’ve built in every flavor. So far. I hear they are testing a 15M version this time around so maybe I’m not yet done building Hilltoppers…

Keep an eye on the web site for additional details. There’s also a group list supporting this kit project.

The Hilltopper is a high performance, single-band CW transceiver. It is the perfect solution to your portable operation needs - small, lightweight, with wide frequency coverage and low current drain, extending the life of your portable power source. The receiver is adapted from K1SWL’s SW+ Series with minor modifications. The front-end circuitry was revised to replace the now-vanished 10.7 MHz IF transformers. The receiver output is suitable for headphone use.

The transmitter strip is a proven design using three BS170 transistors for the PA. The frequency source for both transmitting and receiving is a DDS VFO employing a Si5351 PLL module. Control for the rig is provided by an Atmel ATmega328P. This runs both the frequency control and the full-featured CW keyer.

A custom silk-screened PCB enclosure is included with the kit. No drilling or cutting required!

There are two pre-installed SMT ICs on the board, but the remainder are ALL THROUGH HOLE parts, and all jacks and connectors are board mounted, the combination making this kit very easy to assemble with no external wiring needed.

NORAD has learned to check hobbyist websites to identify balloons since the US military shot down three unidentified objects in 2023.

After dubious shootdowns, NORAD now checks with balloon hobbyist groups

The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade is a hobbyist group that builds, launches and tracks “pico balloons,” lightweight balloons that can carry a small payload like a radio tracker or camera and generally cost between $12 and $200. Since 2021, the group’s balloons have circumnavigated the Earth in peace.

The club takes its name from the movie “Up,” in which the balloon-flying Carl awards a bottlecap badge to his young passenger, Russell, which had been given to him by his wife, Ellie.

Then in February 2023, the group announced that it had lost contact with one of its balloons somewhere over Alaska or possibly Canada. That same day, a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor — a $142 million fighter jet — downed an unknown “high altitude” object over the Yukon, Canada, using an AIM 9X, a $400,000 air-to-air missile.

With more than a month of continuous downtime the only thing funny about the situation is the continued chorus of those insisting, “the data is safe” and “why is everyone getting so worked up about this?” These ditties from the evolutionary descendants of those who insisted the Titanic is “unsinkable!”

I have been keeping an eye on the devolopment of Framework Laptops for months, so when I received an email yesterday declaring, “Framework Laptop 16 in stock” I quickly assembled a custom configuration and hit the order button. I’ve been told my new laptop will ship within 1-2 weeks.

The 16-inch model was appealing to me because I intend to use it mostly on my desktop in the shack where it will replace an M1 Mac mini that has been my daily driver for four years. The configuration I selected will come without an operating system as I will install Linux on this machine.

This is a continuation of my slow, steady migration away from Apple products. And it’s another piece of the puzzle when it comes to reconfiguring my radio shack where the growing collection of SDR’s is creating a need for more screen real estate and less room for actual radio equipment. I see a future where not even a single radio will sit on my operating desk.

The Framework laptop concept is an interesting innovation. Being highly configurable, it’s been designed to easily repair, replace, and swap major components making it the most configurable laptop on the market and, with a dozen older, non-working laptops stacked up in my garage, it’s difficult to not find this compelling:

We’ve all had the experience of a busted screen, button, or connector that can’t be fixed, battery life degrading without a path for replacement, or being unable to add more storage when full. Individually, this is irritating and requires us to make unnecessary and expensive purchases of new products to get around what should be easy problems to solve.

Our philosophy is that by making well-considered design tradeoffs and trusting customers and repair shops with the access and information they need, we can make fantastic devices that are still easy to repair. Even better, what we’ve done to enable repair also opens up upgradeability and customization. This lets you get exactly the product you need and extends usable lifetime too.

The unfortunate part of this cash outlay is that I have a perfectly good 15-inch Lenovo ThinkPad that was purchased when I retired (2022) that I could install Linux on and make it my primary shack computer, but that hasn’t happened because it’s the only Windows machine in my collection and stupidly, I own some rather expensive ham radio equipment that can only be updated or upgraded using that OS. I intend to eventually liquidate all my radio gear that is incompatible with my OS of choice.

The Framework Laptop isn’t cheap, but if it works out as well as I expect, it should be the perfect fit for any progressive ham shack which is where I intend to put it to work.

Raspberry Pi, the precocious little single-board computer that is universally adored and used for practically everything these days, is all grown up.

Today, we’re proud to announce that Raspberry Pi has listed on the London Stock Exchange, as Raspberry Pi Holdings plc. This is a watershed moment for Raspberry Pi, and the start of a new phase in our evolution: access to the public market will enable us to build more of the products you love, faster. And the money raised by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in the IPO will support its ambitions for global impact in its second decade; for more on what the IPO means for the Foundation, check out Philip’s blog post here.

Raspberry Pi priced its IPO on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning at £2.80 per share, valuing it at £542 million, or $690 million at the current exchange rate. Shortly after that, the company’s shares jumped 32% to £3.70 - the company could end up raising more than $200 million during its IPO process.

But if you have thoughts about jumping onboard the fruity train, you might have to wait a few days. Retail investors can’t buy Raspberry Pi shares just yet, as only certain institutional shareholders can trade the company’s shares right now. Retail investors will be able to buy and sell shares starting on Friday.

Raspberry Pi shares soar on stock market debut

The Cambridge-based business is known for creating affordable credit card-sized computers designed to boost coding skills among children. Shares hit 392p in early trading on Tuesday, above the initial public offering (IPO) price of 280p. Raspberry Pi chief executive Eben Upton said: “The reaction that we have received is a reflection of the world-class team that we have assembled.” He said it was also because of “the strength of the loyal community with whom we have grown.”

The single-board computer has been particularly popular in the amateur radio and maker communities where it provides a small, energy efficient computer for specific purposes in projects that may have previously been handled by a full-blown PC. This cost-effective solution is often the first choice for a plethora of hobbyists adventures.

Track the progress of the IPO here.

In case you missed the news, the AMSAT mail alias service will be terminated on August 1st, 2024. The popular feature permitted mail directed to yourcallsign@amsat.org to be forwarded to any email address you chose. This feature has been a staple of satellite enthusiasts around the world for decades.

A recent AMSAT news bulletin announced the decision to end the service citing nefarious activity as the reason for termination:

Unfortunately, the unchecked rise in domain name hacking and email account high-jacking has made it impossible to sustain this service at a cost-effective level. The number of callsign@amsat.org email accounts that had been hijacked and converted to zombie spam account over the years had led many internet service providers and gateway centers to ban all @amsat.org email addresses, including those business accounts of AMSAT officers and officials. The tireless efforts of AMSAT’s all volunteer IT staff has worked for years to repair much of the damage, but AMSAT still get complaints from members who are not getting their personal emails, ANS bulletins or AMSAT-BB posts because of persistent delivery problems.

Mail aliases were once a popular way of supporting an organization while providing a relatively short, and easy to remember email address. Birthed in an era where aliasing was simple and few problems encountered, it flourished. Bad actors eventually took note of this large collection of addresses and problems followed. In the eternal war on spoofing and spamming, service providers build complex filters to trap and eliminate the most troublesome of these and one tool has been to simply ban email from entire domains. When that happens, you stop receiving email and eventually, contact AMSAT to complain about something over which they have little control.

Imagine the task of reaching out to every Internet Service Provider, big and small, globally, to explain that “amsat.org” was a legitimate concern and requesting the spam ban be lifted.

It has come to the point where the AMSAT volunteer IT staff can no longer keep up with the maintenance requirements to keep the alias mail list clean and to work with email gateways to remove blocks. And, after considerable investigation into alternative paid email services, AMSAT leadership decided that the money required to keep an email alias system alive would be better spent on building and flying satellites for its members.

This is why we can’t have nice things. The AMSAT email service has been a ham radio staple for more than two decades and it’s too bad it must be discontinued.

Persons using the Mail Alias Service should begin to migrate to different email accounts so they do not lose receipt of personal emails, AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins, AMSAT-BB posts, or official messages from AMSAT itself. Members are especially asked to make sure they are NOT using a callsign@amsat.org as their registered email address in the AMSAT membership portal. Members can easily change their registered member email address by logging into the portal and updating their profile.

The forwarding will end on August 1, 2024 and plans need to be made now to migrate from those addresses or risk losing email.

HAM RADIO 2024: From June 28 to 30, everything will revolve around amateur radio in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance. In cooperation with the organizers, the DARC, as the collaborative partner of Europe’s largest amateur radio trade fair, this meeting will open the doors to a world of almost unlimited possibilities. This big, wide world plays a significant role in the motto of HAM RADIO 2024: We celebrate 60 years of IOTA – Islands On The Air!

That’s why the motto of the 47th HAM RADIO is “60 years of Islands on the Air: technology meets adventure!”

Friedrichshafen is a city on the northern shoreline of Lake Constance (the Bodensee) in Southern Germany, near the borders of both Switzerland and Austria. Messe Friedrichshafen is one of the most modern exhibition centers in Europe. With 12 halls, 87,500 sqm exhibition space, conference rooms that can be flexibly varied to suit requirements, two central open-air grounds and its own lake. Over 27,000 sqm meters will be used from June 28-30 to host the largest amateur radio trade show in Europe. More than 11,000 visitors from 59 countries are expected to attend along with nearly 400 vendors from 30 nations.

Note it’s an “exhibition” and not a hamfest/rummage sale. The venue is a bit more upscale than typical ham radio ‘fests’ in the US and I don’t believe there’s a similarly-sized amateur radio show in the US operating under one roof.

Considered the “birth place of Germany’s aviation” where Graf Zeppelin built his world-famous Zeppelin airships and Dornier also worked on his unique aircraft. Other engineering companies located in the area and these are a mainstay of the high-tech region surrounding Lake Constance today.

Where Hamvention provided a view of what US vendors have in store for the community during the coming year, Friedrichshafen provides a look at what European vendors have in the pipeline. The exhibition is always attended by ICOM and Yaesu, but many US firms and organizations also appear year-after-year. A quick scan of the vendor list reveals ARRL, Elecraft, Orlando Hamcation and several others will be exhibiting at Ham Radio 2024.

The event also includes dozens of program tracks. Use the translation tool in your web browser if you need a little language help. Just a few of these include:

• Mobile travel competition
• End Fed antennas: Tips, tricks & build - Workshop
• DATV Forum
• An island is more than IOTA
• The 180-Year History and Evolution of Telegraph Keys
• Open Source SDR Transceiver project for QO-100
• ARISS & the Lunar Gateway
• The Enigma and other famous Cipher Machines

Keep an eye on YouTube soon after the event to see what all you missed. I know I will. Previous years include these videos.

Though I’ve never attended, this ham radio event certainly deserves a spot on the bucket list, maybe next year?

I’m sipping a fresh cuppa Timmy Horton’s and listening to an early morning POTA activator in Maryland. Yeah, I worked him. In fact, it’s the 17th time I’ve worked this particular activator. I stayed on frequency after our contact and am just enjoying listening to him work others. At no time has the S-meter on my transceiver budged. If you were watching this action on silent film you would think no signals were being received, but you would be wrong.

I’ve copied him perfectly since he showed up on this frequency. I suppose we could say his signal is “light, but easily copyable”, although that verbiage is not a choice on any logging program. The standard radiotelegraphy convention is for hams to use the R-S-T signal reporting method and I’m not about to rock that boat. There is tradition at stake here, not to mention CW ops fall into discernable boilerplate and they don’t like that boat rocked either.

So I’ve surrendered to tradtion and use RST for signal reporting, but you will only ever receive one of three reports from me. If your signal is strong and easily copyable, I will send you a 599. If your signal is light, but copyable, you will get a 559. If I’m having any problems copying your signal, I’ll report a 339.

What I’m actually trying to convey to the operator on the other end is some level of my copy. Such as, “signals weak and this is rough copy, I’m gonna need you to send each important component twice”. That’s the value of a signal report to me. I just need to know how well (or not) you’re copying me so I can adjust how and what I send to you. I’m incredibly uninterested in the scientific values an S-meter might represent, and I’ve yet to meet the human who could, by ear, determine a signal to be 50 microvolts at the receiver’s antenna input.

But there are those who seem to enjoy endlessly debating the purity and efficacy of signal reports. These are dismayed about the apparent non-chalance others (me) afford the hallowed reporting system. They voice their disgust that they can’t get an “honest signal report” during contests, etc. These are those who will send foolishness like, “UR RST 527”. They are the hams you should pray you aren’t seated next to at the DX Dinner…

Quick Tip - if you see a vehicle with a bumper sticker that says, “A signal strength of S2 corresponds to received power of -115 dBm or 0.40 microvolts in 50 ohms on HF” - run away!

An exception might be made for the “T” component of the RST rating system. If a radio has a “tone” problem the operator might need to be made aware of it. But take care and use your report judiciously. Poor tone is rare in the 21st century, but should be expected during those occasions when ops are employing old boat anchors for fun. I actually enjoy hearing a little whoop-whoop from the sagging output of a 75 year-old power supply and consider it an homage to the good old days of radio.

Bottom Line: Signal reports are a necessary evil, but tilting at that particular windmill isn’t well-spent hobby time.

I’m wheels down in Grand Rapids, Michigan this evening with plans to attend the nearby Hudsonville Hamfest tomorrow. It’s billed as ‘West Michigan’s Largest Hamfest’ and I look forward to finding out for myself as I’ve never attended this one. I’m not looking for anything in particular, I’m really here to meet up with a couple of long-lost friends, but if the local hams want to throw a big fest, I can do that too! The hours are short, 8am-Noon so I expect to be back home tomorrow afternoon, pending the weather. Rain and thunder are expected…

Woke up to a new award for having successfully hunted 700 unique reference areas in the Parks on the Air program. My goal here is to hit the 1,000 level after which I’ll end my chase for POTA activators. It’s been enjoyable, and often the only way I can find CW activity, but I figure with a thousand unique parks in the log it will be time to look for something else to chase.

Random Notes: WB2CBA won the first annual Logic-IC Transmitter Power Challenge at FDIM 2024. He details his winning entry in this excellent blog post.

HamShack Hotline program announced their intent to move from 10-digit numbers to 7-digit in the next 30 days so I re-configured my phone with the shorter number (610-1193).

ARRL coughed up a few more deets yesterday (05/29/2024) about the hackathon in Newington without providing an ETA for recovery from the entire incident.

That giant sunspot that supercharged auroras on Earth? It’s back and may amp up the northern lights with June solar storms.

The house from Home Alone is for sale.

Mysterious Soviet Era Radio Signal Transmitting For 40 Years Baffles Scientists.

News outlets getting an early start on Field Day - here, here, here, and here, for example. Meanwhile, ARRL has the bling you know you want for Field Day.

With LoTW on the road to becoming a defunct service, I thought it prudent to order some new QSL cards, just in case. I queried the QRP-ARCI mailing list looking for suggestions thinking I would throw my business to a frequent advertiser in the QRP Quarterly, but there doesn’t seem to be one?

Upon querying those on that mailing list, most recommended KB3IFH QSL Cards so I went that route.

Working with Randy was quick and painless and now I have a fresh supply of new cards, adorned with the artwork of Otto Eppers, headed this way. In 2015 when I gave up paper QSLing forever I never considered returning to this practice, but then, I didn’t expect a global pandemic or that LoTW would go SK…

I remain convinced that the postal exchange of QSL cards is unsustainable, the cost of postage will only get higher as the years pass. But I’ll mail a paper QSL card to anyone who wants one, and who sends a SASE with their card. If LoTW ever makes a comeback I’ll confirm all contacts via that method too, but I’m getting comfortable with the notion of leaving a paper trail across the hobby and across time.