Saturday, I actually spent most of the day out of the shack attending a meeting of the ARRL Michigan Section leadership. Being the state’s Affiliated Club Coordinator, I am a member of that team. Attendees at this year’s meeting included the:

Section Manager (SM),
Asst. Section Manager (ASM),
Section Traffic Manager (STM),
Section Technical Coordinator (STC),
Section Emergency Coordinator (SEC),
Public [...]

In the wake of the recent decision to eliminate the Morse Code requirement, there have been several proposals to set up code-proficiency testing programs. I just got an e-mail today from our division director proposing a pilot project that VEs would be responsible for running in the communities they serve. And there has been some [...]

When I was an electrical engineering student back in the 1970s, I was surprised at how many of my peers had little or no practical experience with electronics. Of course, I had the jump on them since I got my ham ticket when I was 16.
Well, apparently, times haven’t changed a bit. At Berkeley, some [...]

Here’s yet another take on SMT soldering using a convection oven: SMT Board Fabrication Project. What makes this page nice is that KD5NWA, the author of the page, includes lots of pictures.

After my successful experiment with winding a 4:1 balun, I started to think about how to package the balun. One of the problems with the Ruthroff design is that the input and output are close to one another. In the Sevick book, all of his Ruthroff baluns are shown packaged in square or rectangular boxes, [...]

SB QST @ ARL $ARLB004
ARLB004 Codeless Amateur Radio testing tentatively begins February 23
ZCZC AG04
QST de W1AW
ARRL Bulletin 4 ARLB004
From ARRL Headquarters
Newington CT January 19, 2007
To all radio amateurs
SB QST ARL ARLB004
ARLB004 Codeless Amateur Radio testing tentatively begins February 23
The ARRL has learned that the FCC’s Report and Order (R&O) in the
”Morse code [...]

I’ve written about building baluns before. I’m still quite proud of myself that I was able to build and deploy a couple of nice 1:1 baluns.
Of course, the next challenge is the 4:1 balun. I even bought a couple of AB240-125 kits to build one. Since my 40m dipole came down in the ice storm [...]

On one of the many mailing lists I’m on, someone asked if there was a simple clock program out there that would display UTC. Well, it just so happens that Vic, K2VCO, one of the regular contributors to the mailing list had written one. You can find it at http://www.qsl.net/k2vco/. It displays both the date [...]

The January 15, 2007 issue of Make: magazine’s newsletter proclaims, “It’s Learn How to Solder Month!” Included are links to the following:

Guide to Field Soldering
MAKE Soldering and Desoldering Primer
Podcast Soldering Tutorial
Soldering Tutorial PDF
Basics of Soldering Photo Gallery
DIY Hot Air Soldering Iron

There’s a lot more in the newsletter, but it won’t be available online until next [...]

I wasn’t all that active this weekend, and in the next week or so, I’ll be even less active, on the air anyway. Let me explain…
Contests and More Contests
Last weekend was the CW portion of the North American QSO Party. I had several things to do on Saturday, including helping to get our latest Tech [...]