In addition to the e-mails about restrictive antenna covenants, I’ve gotten several e-mails from hams who had a hard time finding Elmers. After describing his search, one guy wrote, “How many other hams have been lost
along the way because they couldn’t get just a little bit of real-world
help?”
This situation puzzling to me. Ham radio has [...]

QST finally published my op-ed piece “No Ham Left Behind” in the September issue. I’ve already gotten several e-mail comments. A couple of them have mentioned restrictive homeowner’s agreements as a factor in ham inactivity. While I don’t mean to minimize the problem of restrictive covenants, there are ways to get around them.
First and [...]

Tonight, I couldn’t buy a QSO. I know that band conditions weren’t all that great, but I was hearing a fair amount of stations, and some of the were pretty strong. Even so, I just couldn’t get anyone to answer my CQ.
I called CQ at least ten times, and I could hear other stations making [...]

I had hoped to work the New Jersey QSO Party this weekend. With my 40m dipole, I usually do pretty well in New Jersey, so I had hopes of adding another certificate to my collection.
Unfortunately, there didn’t appear to be much activity. I turned on the rig just after 4 pm and didn’t hear a [...]

Although it’s been published only for about six weeks, I’ve already gotten some kudos and some good feedback on my No-Nonsense, No-Code Tech License Manual.
One new ham commented,
Thank you. I bought the ARRL Ham Radio License Manual and read through it (doing all the questions as I went along). I was doing fine on [...]

Norm Fusaro, W3IZ sent this to the club president’s mailing list about six months ago. I thought you’d find it useful….Dan

Resources for clubs
Multi-Media Library
The multi-media library has videos and programs that clubs can use for meeting programs. Many new PowerPoint programs are free to download.
Club Callsigns
Does your club have a unique callsign? Download [...]

From the MAKE blog:
In the 50s and 60s, John T. Frye, W9EGV/Popular Electronics published a series of fiction stories called “The Carl and Jerry Stories.” In each story the pair acquired new skills, got their ham radio licenses, and used their knowledge of electronics to get out of a jam or solve a mystery. There [...]

Links to the story “Backward Sunspot” have appeared in quite a few of the maililng lists I subscribe to.  Aside from the good news that the backward sunspot  may signal the start of a new sunspot cycle, the article is interesting reading.
Here’s something I just learned about sunspots:
“Backward” means magnetically backward. [David] Hathaway, [a [...]

Here are some more links I’ve found useful in my travels through the Internet:

Technick.Net. This site contains a wealth of basic electronics information, including pinouts for a wide variety of connectors and interfaces, tutorials on various electronics topics, and a section of circuits. The circuits section is a little light on ham radio circuits, but [...]

CW operators pride themselves on being friendly. I attribute that to the fact that it’s harder to be hostile and insult someone on CW than it is on phone. Even so, I had a somewhat disturbing experience last night.
I fired up the rig on 40m, and since the Worked All Europe was still going on, [...]