Surfin': Are You in the Blog Now?

This week, Surfin' takes a look at the current state of the art of Amateur Radio blogging.

More at http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2008/05/30/10133/

New feature for Parma Radio Club Online

On the sidebar at the right you'll see a map showing the geographic locations of the last 100 visitors to our site. If you move your mouse over any point on the map the city and country for that visitor will be displayed. If you click on the map, a large Google map map shows the 1000 most recent visitors. This map has the normal Google map zoom and navigation features.

As time passes, data on the visitors to the blog will be compiled, and in a while you'll see how many people from all over the world check us out.

Lunchtime CW confusion !

A good lesson about sending CW.

Previous to that, my CQ was answered by another 599 station; but even if my life depended on it; I would not be able to tell you who it was that was calling me. The station answering me sent a string of letters with no breaks whatsoever. It was a jumble and mish-mash of consonants, vowels and numbers. I was able to make out my own call; but that was it.

More at http://w2lj.blogspot.com/2008/05/lunchtime-cw-confusion.html

With No Prohibition, Skimmer Gets CQ WPX CW Test Drive

After weeks of contester chatter about the impact of the CW Skimmer, some hams around the world finally gave VE3NEA's controversial program a test during a major contest, as the CQ WPX CW became the first real Skimmer proving ground.

More at http://www.radio-sport.net/skimmer6.htm

CW Skimmer

CW Skimmer may be the biggest thing to contesting since computer logging. Or, maybe not. It's software that makes use of a simple receiver used with SDR (Software Defined Radio). See for yourself at http://www.dxatlas.com/CwSkimmer/

Features

* a very sensitive CW decoding algorithm based on the methods of Bayesian statistics;

* simulatneous decoding of ALL cw signals in the receiver passband - up to 700 signals can be decoded in parallel on a 3-GHz P4 if a wideband receiver is used;

* a fast waterfall display, with a resolution sufficient for reading Morse Code dots and dashes visually;

* the callsigns are extracted from the decoded messages, and the traces on the waterfall are labeled with stations' callsigns;

* the extracted callsigns are exported as DX cluster spots via the built-in Telnet cluster server;

* a DSP processor with a noise blanker, AGC, and a sharp, variable-bandwidth CW filter;

* an I/Q Recorder and player.

HF’s Magic Carpet Ride

Not sure HF is such a good thing? Take a look at http://ke9v.net/2008/05/25/hfs-magic-carpet-ride/ . There may be more to it than you think.

Solder Smoke

Are you a home brewer or like to experiment? Then Solder Smoke is the WEB site for you at http://www.soldersmoke.com/. They have podcasts covering all sorts of technical subjects. You can also listen to the mp3 files with your media player. They also have a blog at http://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/