AMSAT says it had to maneuver some regulatory challenges in establishing its partnership with the University of Washington to share the just-launched HuskySat-1. The satellite went into space on November 2 aboard a Cygnus cargo vessel, which docked to the International Space Station. HuskySat-1 will be boosted into a higher orbit and deployed in January, and once it completes its primary missio...

[UPDATED and CORRECTED @ 1625 UTC on November 2019] The latest International Amateur Radio Union Region 1 Monitoring System (IARUMS) newsletter reports the Russian “Contayner” over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) has been active in the 7, 10, 14, and 18 MHz amateur radio allocations (amateur radio is primary on 40, 20, and 17 meters). The OTHR transmissions have been 40 sweeps/second, FM on pulse, and...

The IARU Region 1 (Europe, Africa, and the Mideast) Youth Working Group has announced that its December YOTA Month take place again this year.

“We would like to invite you to take part with a call sign with ‘YOTA’ in the suffix,” the YOTA announcement said. “The idea for this is to show Amateur Radio to young people and to encourage youngsters to be active on the amateur bands.”

YOTA said Decembe...

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. If you visit the Audio News page on the ARRL website, be sure to take our brief survey!

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. If you visit the Audio News page on the ARRL website, be sure to take our brief survey!

Participants at the 45th meeting of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) Administrative Council (AC) in late September discussed the organization’s role in advancing amateur radio going forward. The IARU released a summary record of the meeting this week. IARU President Tim Ellam, VE6SH/G4HUA, who chaired the AC meeting in Lima, Peru, observed that the IARU and amateur radio are reachin...

Two new sunspot groups appeared this week, on two consecutive days, each lasting for only a day, with a daily sunspot number of 11 and 13 on Friday and Saturday of last week, just in time for ARRL CW Sweepstakes. Both sunspot groups had a magnetic polarity signature indicating Solar Cycle 25 and appeared after 4 weeks of no sunspots.

Spaceweather.com reported both appearances as region AR2750, y...

Nathaniel Frissell, W2NAF, now a University of Scranton physics and electrical engineering professor, has won a $1.3 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study weather effects in the ionosphere by leveraging a network of amateur radio stations. Frissell is perhaps best known within the amateur radio community as the founder of HamSCI, the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation in...

The Boy Scouts are urging stations that participated in the 2019 Jamboree on the Air (JOTA) to submit a report telling about their experiences. Information will be compiled into the US Jamboree on the Air Report.

If you don’t have exact numbers for some of the information, provide a judicious estimate. An additional page seeks a list of communication modes used at your location as well as your s...

Well-known contester and DXpeditioner Paul H. Newberry, Jr., N4PN, of Macon, Georgia, died on November 5 after suffering a massive heart attack. An ARRL Life Member, Newberry turned 82 on November 1.

A major ARRL November Sweepstakes participant and perennial high-scorer, Newberry was first licensed in 1953 and operated under a long list of call signs, both foreign and domestic, and was on the a...

December 11 marks the 98th anniversary of the success of ARRL’s Transatlantic Tests in 1921, organized to see if low-power amateur radio stations could be heard across the Atlantic using shortwave frequencies (i.e., above 200 meters). On that day, a message transmitted by a group of Radio Club of America members at 1BCG in Greenwich, Connecticut, was copied by Paul Godley, 2ZE, in Scotland.

Whil...

Another attempt to activate Bouvet Island is in the planning stages, according to the 3Y0I website. Efforts are under way to secure the necessary funds.

“As you probably know, our first attempt to reach the island of Bouvet in March 2019 failed,” the news update said. “Despite complex preparations and training received in Cape Town, South Africa, our vessel got hit by a big storm so badly that w...

The American Legion Amateur Radio Club (TALARC) headquarters station, K9TAL, will anchor Veterans Day operations for special event N9V on Monday, November 11.

K9TAL will be joined by several TALARC stations around the US for its annual national salute to veterans. The American Legion is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Operation will be from 1800 to 0000 UTC on or about 7.285, 14.285...

Waldo County, Maine, is implementing the nation’s first county-wide emergency AM radio station with the help of radio amateurs.

“We realized that the last option [in emergencies] most people have for getting information is by broadcast radio,” said Waldo County Emergency Management Agency Director Dale Rowley, KC1LKI. He recalled an ice storm a few years ago that took down the power grid for a w...

The first week of World Radiocommunication Conference 2019 (WRC-19) saw agreement reached on several issues on which discussions prior to the conference had revealed consensus. Those were the easy ones; the rest will be more difficult, the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) said. The conference is under way in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. The IARU said the early agreements were only possible b...

The VP6R DXpedition to Pitcairn Island shut down at 1800 UTC on November 1, reporting 82,700 contacts. They reported excellent weather for the teardown and got everything packed and aboard the Braveheart, which is taking them to Mangareva. According to their update, the oldest resident of Pitcairn Island died on November 1, and the VP6R team attended the funeral the next day. The individual was...