Archive for 2008/01


“The Silicon Engine” Website, Now Hosted by the Computer History Museum

This is a press release I received today. Check out the site—it’s pretty cool, and you’ll learn something. For example, I’ll bet you didn’t know that in 1926 a scientist filed a patent for a FET-like amplifying device. Unfortunately, they were never successful in building function devices…..Dan
The Computer History Museum, home to the world’s [...]

Understand RF Power Amplifiers

RFDesignLine has recently published an excerpt from the book, RF Circuit Design, 2e by Christopher Bowick. The article, titled “Understanding RF Power Amplifiers” will give you a better understanding of power amplifier classes and linearity. It describes Class A, B, and C amplifiers and explains linearity, distortion, and harmonics.

Slow-Scan TV - My Next Digital Mode

Now that I’ve started having fun with PSK31, I’m getting interested in slow-scan TV (SSTV). The term SSTV can be a bit misleading, as there’s both analogue SSTV and digital SSTV. Digital SSTV signals must be less than 500 Hz wide. That allows them to be used in the same band segment as PSK31 and [...]

Ham Radio Reporting on the Net

If you want to hear radio-style news about ham radio, there are two organizations providing this:

RAIN Report: This is a weekly report lasting approximately 10 to 15 minutes. Normally, the report addresses a single topic. This week’s topic, for example is wildlife tracking by radio.
This Week in Amateur Radio and Amateur Radio Newsline: I’m not [...]

NIST Radio Station WWVH Gets Antenna Makeover

From NIST:
Radio station WWVH in Hawaii, operated since 1948 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to broadcast time, frequency and other announcements, recently powered up innovative replacement antennas. NIST has installed new antennas encased in fiberglass instead of traditional steel supports to resist corrosion from the salty ocean air. The fiberglass design [...]

CWOP a Good Use for Ham Radio

Via one of the many mailing lists I’m on, I’ve become aware of the Citizen’s Weather Oberserver Program (CWOP). This program was started by amateur radio operators and looks like a great use of ham radio. Basically, hams with weather stations collect data and transmit it via the packet radio network to a an [...]

Lunar Echo Experiment looking for Amateur Radio Participants

This bulletin from the ARRL. Look very interesting.
QST de W1AW
Special Bulletin 2 ARLX002
From ARRL Headquarters
Newington CT January 17, 2008
To all radio amateurs
The HF Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Alaska and the Long Wavelength Array (LWA) in New Mexico are planning an additional lunar echo experiment for January 18-19.
Interested radio amateurs are [...]

Outline for the 2008 General Class License Course

Last July, the National Council of Volunteer Examiner Coordinators (NCVEC) released a new question pool for General Class license examinations. Shortly after, the ARRL (and others) came out with a new license manual. That meant, of course, that I had to come up with a new outline for my General Class license course.
The new outline [...]

Propagation Forecasts Delivered

There are a bunch of propagation forecasts available on the Net, but two are available as e-mail, delivered directly to you each week:

Propagation de K7RA. This is the propagation bulletin broadcast by W1AW. The e-mail version is nice because it contains links to websites referenced by the report. To get the bulletin by e-mail, you [...]

Membership in Your ARRL

On QRZ.Com, K3UD frequently reports on the number of licensed radio amateurs. Comments on the latest item, “ARS FCC License Numbers 4th Quarter 2007, A Look At The Trends,” took a turn when WW3QB reported:

I looked up ARRL membership for a few years (from annual reports).
1996 - 175,023
2000 - 164,106
2004 - 151,727
2006 - 148,641
I would [...]