I used to write for an engineering trade magazine, Test&Measurement World. If anything that I’d written had caused “widespread misconception” it was undoubtedly because it was poorly written, and the fault was mine. It was most definitely not the fault of my readers.
Maybe it’s just me, but everything I’ve read from the ARRL on this [...]

CNN reports that a government panel charged with forecasting the next sunspot cycle predict that
the current solar cycle will probably end next March, when Solar Cycle 24 will begin. That will mean Cycle 23 lasted 12 years, slightly longer than the usual 11-year cycle.
They are divided, however, on when the peak of the next [...]

I know ham radio usually costs us money, but once in a while the skills and/or equipment we accumulate can actually save us some cash. In this case, I figure it saved me about a hundred bucks.
What am I talking about? Well, over the weekend, I noticed that my refrigerator wasn’t keeping things as cold [...]

According to The Onion, “Even CEO Can’t Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business.”
Funny stuff. Even funnier is the Google ad for the RadioShack Official Site - www.RadioShack.com.

Last Saturday, the 2007 version of the Michigan QSO Party took place. My club, ARROW, once again made this a club event, with Tom Snoblen hosting this year. We had a pretty good turnout with about ten guys showing up at one point or another.
We had three stations going from just after noon to [...]

Here are some random operating notes:

Since I still haven’t gotten my 40m dipole back up in the air, I’ve been operating a lot of 80m lately. Many of the stations I work complain about the noise, with many saying that the noise level is S9. I just don’t have that problem here.
I’m guessing that it’s [...]

From the ARRL Letter, 4/20/07:
FCC POISED TO CUT VANITY CALL SIGN FEE BY MORE THAN 40 PERCENT
The FCC has proposed reducing the regulatory fee to obtain or retain an Amateur Radio vanity call sign by more than 40 percent starting later this year. In a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), “Assessment and Collection of [...]

Three months ago, my 40m dipole came down in an ice storm when a big branch fell on top of one of the elements. The weight of the branch plus all the ice actually broke the FlexWeave wire.
Today, I finally decided to fix it. Being the cheapp guy that I am, I thought that I [...]

A couple of months ago, Louis Frenzel, an editor with Electronic Design, wrote an article, “Whatever Happened to the Electronic Hobbyist?” In the article, he bemoaned the dearth of electronics magazines we had way back when, but concluded:
Electronics has evolved and so, as a result, has the hobbyist. So perhaps the whole electronic hobby thing [...]

Also arriving in yesterday’s mail was an attractive certificate from the Washington State Salmon Run, a contest sponsored by the Western Washington DX Club. It seems as though I finished second in Michigan in the low-power, CW category. I don’t recall making all that many contacts, so I was probably second out of two. :) [...]