QRZ DX and The DX Magazine Publisher and Editor Carl Smith, N4AA, of Asheville, North Carolina, died on October 20. An ARRL member, he was 77 and had been a radio amateur and DXer for more than 6 decades. Smith and his late wife Miriam, KB4C, bought

“Carl was a ham’s ham, as he dabbled in many aspects of our great hobby,” The Daily DX Editor Ber...

The past reporting week (October 12-18) saw very little solar activity, with a sunspot number of 12 on October 15, meaning the average daily sunspot number was only 1.7, down from the already low average of 8.4 over the previous seven days.

Over the same two periods, average daily solar flux declined from 76.8 to 70.5, while average daily planetary A index increased from 8.9 to 21.1 and average ...

The next AMSAT Fox-1 satellite, RadFxSat (Fox-1B), is scheduled to launch on November 10 at 0947 UTC. RadFxSat (Fox-1B), which will carry a 435/145 MHz FM transponder, is one of four CubeSats making up the NASA ELaNa XIV mission, riding as secondary payloads aboard the Joint Polar Satellite System-1 (JPSS-1) mission. JPSS-1 will launch on a Delta II vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif...

ARISS International Chair Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, has been honored with the Ron Broadbent, G3AAJ, Trophy. The presentation came during the AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium this past weekend.

“AMSAT-UK totally shocked me yesterday at the colloquium with the Ron Broadbent Trophy,” Bauer reacted. “I was nearly speechless when asked to come up and receive the trophy for ARISS work. I mentioned t...

With nearly 600 stations in the US registered to take part in Scouting’s 60th Jamboree on the Air (JOTA) October 20-22, and many more planning to operate around the world, expect some additional activity on the bands. Listen for JOTA stations and help to introduce some Scouts to Amateur Radio. JOTA uses Amateur Radio to link Scouts and hams around the world, around the nation, and in communitie...

The Amateur Radio linear (SSB/CW) inverting transponders on the CAS-4A and CAS-4B satellites were activated on October 18. CAMSAT’s Amateur Radio payloads piggybacked on the optical remote-sensing micro-satellites OVS-1A (CAS-4A) and OVS-1B (CAS-4B), launched on June 15.

CAS-4A (call sign BJ1SK) has a CW telemetry beacon on 145.855 MHz, and 4.8 kB GMSK telemetry on 145.835 MHz. The uplink is 435...

“Dirty Transmitters” is the topic of the current episode of the “ARRL The Doctor is In“ podcast. Listen...and learn!

Sponsored by DX Engineering, “ARRL The Doctor is In” is an informative discussion of all things technical. Listen on your computer, tablet, or smartphone -- whenever and wherever you like!

Every 2 weeks, your host, QST Editor-in-Chief Steve Ford, WB8IMY, and the Doctor himself, J...

San Francisco Section District Emergency Coordinator Len Gwinn, WA6KLK, in the Redwood Valley told ARRL this week that Amateur Radio volunteers in Mendocino and Lake counties have stood down, and things are “kind of back to normal, in that no emergency stations are being operated.” Gwinn, who spent more than 3 decades with Cal Fire and a few more years as a volunteer, said the sound of the wild...

Emergency communication will be a prominent part of the program at Pacificon 2017, the ARRL Pacific Division Convention, October 20-22 in San Ramon, California, sponsored by the Mount Diablo Amateur Radio Club.

National SATERN Liaison Bill Feist, WB8BZH, will speak on Saturday and Sunday. The Saturday session will cover “SATERN and Amateur Radio Emergency Communications in the 21st Century,” whi...

The 22 “Force of 50” radio amateurs who deployed to Puerto Rico earlier this month as American Red Cross volunteers have ended their mission and will be back on the US mainland by week’s end. They had been in Puerto Rico for about 3 weeks.

“The Force of 50 volunteers demonstrated an extraordinary range of skills possessed by this accomplished team,” said ARRL CEO Tom Gallagher, NY2RF. “There wa...

The US Senate today confirmed ARRL member David Trachtenberg, N4WWL, of Burke, Virginia, as the next Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Trachtenberg, 60, is the president and CEO of Shortwaver Consulting LLC, a national security consultancy. He is National Planning Coordinator and Northeast Division Director for USAF MARS, and is active in the Pentagon Amateur Radio Club (P...

Amateur Radio’s two newest bands came to life on Friday the 13th. Both 630 meters (472-479 kHz) and 2200 meters (135.7-137.8 kHz) now are available to radio amateurs who have notified the Utilities Technology Council (UTC) of their intention to operate and did not hear anything back during the ensuing 30 days.

“Many of us filed notices with the Utilities Technology Council on September 15, the d...

The Northern California DX Foundation (NCDXF) has announced a major contribution to the Baker Island DXpedition planned for June 2018 by the Dateline DX Association. Baker-Howland is #4 on the Club Log’s DXCC Most Wanted list, and likely will move up by one place after the Bouvet DXpedition next year. In 2016, NCDXF invested $156,000 to support DXpeditions activating five of the ten most-needed...

In remarks made on International Disaster Reduction Day, Friday, October 13, Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) Secretary-General Bernadette Lewis described Amateur Radio as a “bedrock of sustained communications” during emergencies, and strongly suggested cultivating a new and younger generation of radio amateurs to carry this role forward. She spoke as part of a panel on emergency telec...

The North Bay Amateur Radio Association’s (NBARA) Gary Gross, KE6QR, recruited Amateur Radio volunteers on October 13 to support the shelters housing those evacuating because of the Napa Valley Fires. Gross, an ARRL Official Relay Station (ORS) in the East Bay Section, said the specific need was for back-up communication between the Crossroad Shelter in Napa, the Napa Community College Shelter,...

E-mails have gone out to an undetermined number of US radio amateurs from the Utilities Technology Council (UTC), approving the stations’ intention to use 630 meters (472-479 kHz) and/or 2,200 meters (135.7-137.8 kHz).

“UTC has determined that your proposed Amateur Radio station would not operate within a horizontal distance of one kilometer from a transmission line that conducts a power line ca...

ARRL San Francisco Section Manager Bill Hillendahl, KH6GJV, says the message he stresses during the weekly Sonoma County Radio Amateurs (SCRA) ARES net is this: “When an incident occurs, take to the air and form a net. Anyone can act as net control.” Radio amateurs took that lesson to heart, he said, in the wake of the devastating, destructive, and deadly wildfires in Northern California this p...

An unknown station transmitted “Freedom for Catalonia” in a CW loop on September 26 (1710 UTC) at 14.001 MHz, the International Amateur Radio Union Region 1 Monitoring System said, in its September newsletter.

Topping the intruder list, however, was a Stanag-4285 digital mode signal that appeared on 7.001.8 MHz for several days. The transmitting station was believed to be in Turkey. IARUMS Regio...