ARRL

The University of Maine Wireless Sensing Laboratory (WiSe-Net Lab) and AMSAT have signed an agreement to collaborate on building and operating MESAT1, Maine’s first small satellite. Carrying an amateur radio payload in addition to science payloads, MESAT1 is set to launch sometime in the next 3 years under NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI), which provides opportunities for nanosatellite s...

The Hurricane Watch Net (HWN) has activated for Hurricane Hanna, the first hurricane of the Atlantic Hurricane season. The storm is poised to make landfall along the Gulf of Mexico. A Category 1 storm, Hanna has maximum sustained winds of 75 MPH. As of 1200 UTC, the storm was about 90 miles east-northeast of Port Mansfield, Texas, and about 100 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi, Texas.

“The...

Due to travel and gathering restrictions in place because of the coronavirus pandemic, the ARRL Board of Directors met on Friday, July 17, 2020 in a remote session, using the Zoom videoconferencing platform.

During this session, the Board took the following actions:

• Accepted the final recommendations of the Band Planning Committee. Committee chair and ARRL First Vice President Mike Raisbeck, K1TW...

Listen to the new episode of ARRL Audio News on your iOS or Android podcast app, or online at http://www.blubrry.com/arrlaudionews/. Audio News is also retransmitted on a number of FM repeaters. Click here and then scroll down to see the list.

Phil Karn, KA9Q; Randy Standke, KQ6RS, and members of the Mount Carmel High School Amateur Radio Club (MCHSARC) in San Diego have constructed and deployed an amateur radio marine buoy in the Pacific. The buoy, which transmits WSPR on 14.0956 MHz USB, has already been heard around the continental US, Brazil, Hawaii, Japan, Costa Rica, Australia, and South Africa.

“Over the past year, Randy and I ...

 A well-known contester and the co-builder of contest stations in Texas and Nevada, Grady Ferguson, W5FU (ex-NA5R), died of COVID-19 on July 14. He was 76.

He was best known for his activities with the Texas DX Society in the 1970s and 1980s and, with Tom Taormina, K5RC, built a multioperator contest station in Texas that had a few outings before Hurricane Alicia destroyed it in 1983. In 2007, ...

Christopher “Chris” Brault, KD8YVJ, of Liberty Township, Ohio, has been selected as the 2020 Bill Pasternak WA6ITF Memorial Amateur Radio Newsline Young Ham of the Year (YHOTY). The son of Jocelyn, KD8VRX, and Kimberly Brault, Chris, 18, was the recipient of the 2015 ARRL Hiram Percy Maxim Award. A ham since 2014, he credits his father for being his guide into amateur radio, recalling watching ...

ARRL is launching a new webinar series to help introduce more members to the variety of activities and opportunities that radio amateurs enjoy. The ARRL Learning Network will offer live presentations by member-volunteers, for members. Like hamfest forums and radio club presentations, the webinars are intended to help participants get more active, involved, and engaged in amateur radio.

Presentat...

The ARRL Foundation has announced the recipients of its 2020 scholarship awards. There were 103 awards this year, totaling $144,450. The non-profit Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) has generously awarded a grant to the ARRL Foundation to match each scholarship award on a dollar-for-dollar basis, lifting the grand total of scholarships awarded to $288,900.

The ARRL Foundation General F...

The Deutscher Amateur Radio Club (DARC) reported unauthorized transmissions in the 144 MHz satellite segment of the 2-meter amateur radio primary allocation. DARC said that signals from illegal transmitters in the 144.010 to 144.020 MHz range are coming from “water vitalizers” or “water energizers.” The manufacturer specifies 144.015 MHz as the transmit frequency in its product description. The...

Peru’s Radio Club Peruano (RCP) reports that Guillermo Guerra, OA4DTU/XQ3SA, and the Peruvian Relief Net assisted an air ambulance en route to Easter Island on July 9 after its satellite communication equipment failed. The aircraft was about 1,000 nautical miles from the continent, so the pilot tuned to the Peruvian Relief Net on 7100 kHz.

Net control station OA4DTU and Giancarlo Passalacqua, OA...

Listen to the new episode of ARRL Audio News on your iOS or Android podcast app, or online at http://www.blubrry.com/arrlaudionews/. Audio News is also retransmitted on a number of FM repeaters. Click here and then scroll down to see the list.

The Radio Club of America (RCA) has announced its 2020 award recipients and fellows, several of whom are radio amateurs. Recipients and fellows will be celebrated at RCA’s 111th Banquet & Awards Presentation on Friday, November 20, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

• Barry Goldwater Award: Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, for unique contributions to the field of amateur radio.
• Edgar F. Johnson Pioneer Citation A...

Nature Communications Article Features LO-94, First Lunar-Orbiting Ham Radio Spacecraft A July 9 Nature Communications article, “Design and flight results of the VHF/UHF communication system of Longjiang lunar microsatellites,” describes the Longjiang-2/Lunar-OSCAR 94 (LO-94) spacecraft, which carried the first amateur radio communication system into lunar orbit.

As a part of China’s Chang’e-4 l...

It turns out last week’s bulletin ARLP028 did not get posted to the ARRL web site and did not go out via the usual channels. If you need a copy, check the bulletin archive link given at the end of this bulletin (perhaps tomorrow), or email a request to the author at k7ra@arrl.net.

Over the past week, July 9-15, just one day had sunspot activity, and that was July 10 when the daily sunspot number...

Edward E. “Ed” Wetherhold, W3NQN, of Annapolis, Maryland, died on July 9. He was 93.

Licensed in 1947, Wetherhold was an electrical engineer who served in the US Air Force Reserve before spending 30 years at the Annapolis Signal Analysis Center of Alliant Techsystems (formerly the defense division of Honeywell).

Wetherhold was best known within the amateur radio community for designing and manufa...