An introduction to the Sideswiper

If you've never heard of a sideswiper, it predates automatic keyers. You can try out the concept with our own keyer paddle. Just connect the dot and dash contacts together and connect them to a code oscillator.

Selma's Ham radio

Voluneer Exam

The Elecraft K3 Transceiver

Dah Dah

Amateur Radio SDRadio on 40m

This is a demo of SDR (Software Defined Radio). You're looking at a computer screen and how the radio can be controlled using the computer mouse.

Ham Radio Public Service - Mt. Diablo Trailride

2007 Field day Results

This year's Field Day results can be found at http://www.arrl.org/contests/results/2007/fd.pdf

Sunspots to Bottom in March 2008

It appears that the start solar cycle 24 won't start until early next year. NOAA has stuck with their earlier prediction of July, 2007 until just recently. Rumers from others that cycle 23 would not bottom out until March of next year seem to be true. It's been along wait, but the good times are coming.

Crystal Radio with Fool's Gold for Detector

Skywarn Recognition Day Special Event

The annual Skywarn Recognition Day special event is this weekend, Friday 30 Nov 7PM (0Z Dec 1) to Saturday 1 Dec 7PM (24Z)

National Weather Service offices around the country will be on the air to celebrate the contributions that volunteer SKYWARN radio operators make to the National Weather Service.

The Cleveland office is planning to operate from 7-11Pm Friday and 9AM-7PM Saturday. We'll be on HF 10/15/20/40, and VHF 6m/2m. We could use a few good hams...to help out with the operation. You don't even have to be a ham to help. Ever want to be on the other end of a special event station? or just wonder what goes on at the NWS office? Contact Don KJ5KB @ 216-701-5593/440-333-8408 or Joe KC8DKF @ 330-388-9099

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The 2007 SKYWARN Recognition Day (SRD) is just about 24 hours away and begins tomorrow, December 1, 2007 at 0000 UTC. There are 104 NWS stations currently registered to be on the air. To view a complete list of participating stations please visit the official website at http://hamradio.noaa.gov. Sorry for any delays with the official posting, but there seems to have been some snags with the web server again this year. The checklist of all the participating stations should be available in
PDF format early Friday.

There will be a new section on the website tomorrow called “IRLP and Echolink News”. This section will give detailed information regarding the IRLP reflector, local IRLP nodes and a list of NWS offices registered to use Echolink. You can also visit http://www.voipwx.net/ for detailed information regarding information and time slots on the eastern reflector.

As always, have fun tomorrow and Saturday. Take the time to talk with SKYWARN volunteers on the air and thank them for their support and hard work over the past year.

Need Practice Before CQWW Contest?

Morse runner is the most realistic contest simulator out there. Here is a video of what it is like. You may think that this is taken off the air. It is not. All of what you will hear is generated by Morse Runner. You can find the program at http://www.dxatlas.com/MorseRunner/

Take Another Look at Learning the Code

For those who have found learning the code too difficult or if you just hate CW, this e-book at http://www.raes.ab.ca/TASRT/index.html might be worthwhile reading. It may dispel some of the misconceptions that you may have about learning the code.

Every Ham's Nightmare

YouTube Videos

Some of you may not be familiar with YouTube videos. We do
post them here once in a while. They are depicted by an
image with a right arrow in the center. To play the
video, simply click on that arrow. You do need a high
speed Internet connection or it will take for ever to
download. Happy blogging!

K3LR Super Station

Tour the K3LR supersation and antenna farm. You'll see that "super station" is a gross understatement.

How not to put up an antenna

Classical Morse

Crossword Puzzle

ACROSS	DOWN
3 Oldest name in amateur radio	1 Common FM antenna polarization
5 11 year cycle	2 Antenna tuner
7 Home to ARRL	4 Country with the most licensed hams
8 Ham Radio emergency orginazation	5 Carrier with sideband
10 Ham radio club	6 R1+R2+R3
11 Measure of capacitance	9 Feed line suceptable to weather
14 Low noise antenna	12 Hamfest
15 Satellite organization	13 A full gallon
16 Converts ac to dc	14 Send more slowly
18 Skip conditions	17 Voltage x amperes
20 10.000MHz	19 Measure of inductance
21 Can operate cw on 21.125 MHz	22 Electrical pressure
23 Needed to access some repeaters	24 Most common conductor
27 World Communication Conference	25 Should stay below 2:1
28 True power radiating from a system	26 Poor rf conductor
31 First ARRL president	29 Measure of electric current
32 Work 100 countries award	30 Rechargable battery
34 Vhf digital mode	33 Time required to charge a capacitor to full emf
35 Horizontal antenna	38 The core of most transformers
36 Measure of electrical resistence
37 Ac waveform
39 Unbalanced feedline

What makes an engineer and/or ham radio amateur??

W2ICE and Spark Transmitters

Bruce Kelly, W2ICE (SK), demoing several spark transmitters at the AWA Museum in Bloomfield, NY. For more information on the AWA visit www.antiquewireless.org. (Original video shot in 1994)

Ham Radio In Space

NASA photo of U.S. astronaut Susan J. Helms, KC7NHZ, Expedition Two flight engineer, talking with Amateur Radio operators on Earth on July 16, 2001, from the Amateur Radio station in the Zarya module of the International Space Station (ISS).

Lessons In Electric Circuits

Lessons In Electric Circuits is an excellent series of free e-books on electricity and electronics. It appears to be fairly thorough and easy reading with lots of illustrations.

Pounding Brass

"Hello..." Presentation on Amateur Radio

Here is a promotional video about ham radio that you might want a friend to see. You can do that by clicking on the envelope icon in the lower right corner of this post. A link to this post will be emailed to your friend.

No Sun spots

There have been no Sun spots for the past week. More about it at http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2007/10/19/100/?nc=1

New Meeting Time

Meetings will start at 7:30 pm, starting with the October 15 meeting.