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WEDNESDAY EDITION: Open house at the club this morning if you are in the area, free coffee and donuts....

The Mysterious Shortwave Radio Station Stoking US-Russia Nuclear Fears

The HP 115BR is not one of the most well-known products from Hewlett-Packard. And yet, it was remarkably important nonetheless. This hardware once synced time around the world. Now, for our 2025 One-Hertz Challenge, [curiousmarc] has taken on the job of restoring it. 

The HP 115BR itself was not used alone, but in concert with the HP5060A atomic clock. The latter would output a 100 KHz reference output. It was the job of the HP 115BR to divide this frequency down to provide a superbly accurate 1-second tick.

The example on [curiousmarc]’s bench showed up in poor shape. It was “very broken,” and he reported that it had also previously been hacked to some degree. However, he has been able to restore it to proper functionality, including the special modification for continuous tick adjustment, as used in the 1964 flying atomic clock experiment. He was even able to sync it to NIST’s current atomic clock signal from Fort Collins using the WWV radio signal.

We’ve seen plenty of old HP metal restored over the years; it’s always pleasant to see how well things were built back in the day. Video after the break.

Meshtastic: How to stay connected after a hurricane hits

When the power goes out and cell towers fail after a hurricane, staying in touch can be next to impossible.

But a new open-source technology called Meshtastic is giving Southwest Floridians a way to communicate when all else fails.

Dana Dash of Cape Coral is one of the local pioneers testing this system. The first thing you notice when visiting his home is the antenna on the roof. It's not for satellite TV or the internet, but for a radio communications network.

“It’s called Meshtastic. It’s an off-grid communications protocol,” Dash explained. “There’s no license required. It uses LoRa band technology to connect your cell phone to other devices on the network.”

Meshtastic runs on a frequency once used by older cell phones. The FCC has since opened it for public, license-free use. Unlike ham radio, which requires training and certification, Meshtastic is designed to be accessible to anyone.

Dash says the system could be critical after disasters like Hurricane Ian, when cell and internet service were knocked out across Southwest Florida.

“When a hurricane happens, I’m out finding where there’s water, fuel — any necessities,” he said. “People with no comms at all can’t call to ask if gas stations are open. We can broadcast that information over the network to anyone with a node in Cape Coral, North Fort Myers, wherever.”

The devices, called “nodes," can connect by Bluetooth to your phone through a simple app. Type a message, and it hops across the mesh network until it reaches another user. With the right placement, a single node can extend coverage up to 100 miles.

Ben Giddens of Cape Coral, a licensed ham radio operator, carries a pocket-sized node every day. He sees it as a powerful backup.

“It was used in Eastern Tennessee after Hurricane Helene,” Giddens said. “About 120 radios were deployed to volunteers for search and rescue communications.”

Once you buy a node, you’re automatically connected to the “mesh.” Messages can be sent publicly or privately, hopping up to seven times across the network.

“There are probably about 10,000 users in the United States,” Dash noted. “I’ve seen about 400 online in Florida at any one time.”

Unlike traditional services, Meshtastic is open-source and community-powered. If one node goes down, others can still pass messages through.

“It’s not commercialized. Nobody can pull the plug and shut the whole system down,” Dash said. “The more people on it, the more powerful it becomes.”

As storm season continues in Florida, some residents see Meshtastic not just as a hobby, but as a lifeline

TUESDAY EDITION: Installed the 9-1 balun up 25 feet and coax run to the shack. today I have to shoot a line over a maple tree to attach the 124 foot FlexWeeve wire to complete the job. I never have tried a end fed antenna at home but have deployed one on field day, I just want to see how it performs. Balun Designs suggested the wire lengths for best performance but added it is a compromise antenna, I thought that was interesting.

2025 One-Hertz Challenge: A Software-Only AM Radio Transmitter

We’ve been loving the variety of entries to the 2025 One-Hertz Challenge. Many a clock has been entered, to be sure, but also some projects that step well outside simple timekeeping. Case in point, this AM transmitter from [oldradiofixer.]

The software-only transmitter uses an ATTiny85 processor to output an AM radio signal in the broadcast band. It transmits a simple melody that you can tune in on any old radio you might have lying around the house. Achieving this was simple. [oldradiofixer] set up the cheap microcontroller to toggle pin PB0 at 1 MHz to create an RF carrier. Further code then turns the 1MHz carrier on and off at varying rates to play the four notes—G#, A, G#, and E—of the Twilight Zone theme. This is set up to repeat every second—hence, it’s a perfectly valid entry to the 2025 One-Hertz Challenge!

It’s a simple project, but one that demonstrates the basics of AM radio transmission quite well. The microcontroller may not put out a powerful transmission, but it’s funny to think just how easy it is to generate a broadcast AM signal with a bit of software and a length of wire hanging off one pin. Video after the break.

The Best of Amateur Radio Honored With ARRL Awards

F.C.C. hits pirate radio station in Worcester, MA with $25K fine

45 Fremont Street in Worcester Google

WORCESTER — The Federal Communications Commission recently proposed a $25,000 fine against Noah Opoku Gyamfi for allegedly operating an unlicensed radio station on 103.9 FM in Worcester under the name “Unity Radio.”

F.C.C. field agents said they traced transmissions during a 2024 enforcement sweep to a commercial building at 60 Fremont St. and matched the over-the-air programming to an online stream promoting itself as “Unity Radio.”

During an on-site inspection, a man identifying himself as “Frank” and “Opo National” allowed agents into the facility and powered down the transmitter at their request; investigators linked the alias to Gyamfi and to the station’s listed contact number, according to the notice dated August 7th. 

Regulators said Gyamfi had been warned in 2019 after agents found an over-limit signal on the same frequency at 45 Fremont St., but unauthorized operations allegedly continued, contributing to the penalty amount.

The pirate operation is not affiliated with Unity Radio, WUTY-FM 97.9, a licensed Worcester station that has been broadcasting since 2017.

The agency said pirate broadcasts can interfere with licensed stations and public-safety communications, including Emergency Alert System messages. Under the PIRATE Act, maximum penalties can reach $2,453,218 in total for violations.

MONDAY EDITION: I started painting the second of three  bathrooms, I have it half cut in and will go do the other half when I get thru with this blog. Foggy and cool, good day for inside work.....

The ARRL Solar Report

On August 22, Spaceweather.com reports a fast-moving Coronal Mass
Ejection, or CME, left the Sun on August 21.  However, it is not
Earth-directed, and is predicted to strike the planet Mars.

Solar activity has decreased back to low levels with a few weak
C-class flares observed from areas located in the northeast quadrant
of the solar disk. There are currently three sunspot regions on the
solar disk …

Read more

American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources – Read More

Ham Radio Users Explain Why They're Worried About AST SpaceMobile's Satellite Plans

AST SpaceMobile’s attempt to justify its use of the amateur radio band for its satellites has done little to assuage concerns from the ham radio community.

“AST is again economical with the truth,” an amateur radio operator in Germany named Mario Lorenz wrote to the FCC on Friday. 

AST SpaceMobile wants to use the 430 to 440MHz bands outside the US to control and track its constellation of 248 satellites, which promise to beam cellular connectivity to smartphones across the globe. However, these bands have long been allocated to amateur radio operations, raising fears that AST’s operations will create widespread interference.

On Tuesday, Texas-based AST defended using the radio band, telling the FCC that any radio interference should be minimal. It would use the 430 to 440MHz band for "very limited, non-routine" use, such as for “emergency operations when other frequency bands are unavailable." 

However, the amateur radio community says AST is already using those bands. On Friday, AMSAT-Deutschland sent a letter to the FCC that says amateur radio users have detected signals from AST’s satellites over the radio bands. 

The claim is therefore either a misrepresentation or a deliberate falsehood,” AMSAT-Deutschland wrote. In particular, AST’s BlueWalker-3 satellite was spotted using the radio band up until July 23 as the amateur radio community began campaigning against the spectrum use. 

Ironically, AMSAT-Deutschland operates as a group devoted to the advancement of satellite communications, along with amateur radio satellites. In the letter, the group even noted: “We applaud AST SpaceMobile’s ambitious goals. However, innovation must not come at the expense of internationally recognized and community-supported amateur radio services.”

AMSAT-Deutschland also tells PCMag the clash with AST has hit a nerve with the amateur radio community over concerns it could “set a precedent” if the FCC greenlights the company’s use of the 430 to 440MHz bands for satellite control. In addition, the group is worried that the FCC is “effectively shifting the resulting interference risks to other countries.”

“If similar authorizations are granted to other commercial operators, the 430-440 MHz band could gradually become unusable for amateur radio. What is framed as ‘exceptional use’ today risks becoming the norm tomorrow — to the detriment of a long-standing and diverse community of amateur radio users,” the group said. 

“It also raises questions about AST’s technical maturity,” the group added. “Other large-scale satellite operators — such as SpaceX, with over 6,000 Starlink satellites in orbit — appear to manage TT&C (Telemetry, Tracking, and Command) functions without resorting to use of the amateur UHF band.”

AST didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the company submitted a third-party analysis to the FCC that claims to show the risk of interference to be “extremely unlikely” to amateur radio operations.  

However, Mario Lorenz, the amateur radio user who helped kick off the protest campaign, told the FCC on Friday that the third-party analysis was flawed. “Yet again, AST tries to get away with handing in only half the homework it was supposed to do,” Lorenz wrote. “Despite its title, the study addresses only a single scenario of interference in the AMATEUR RADIO SATELLITE service," not amateur radio use on the ground. 

The Bulgarian Federation of Radio Amateurs also told the FCC last month: “Even slight interference under these operating conditions can result in harmful interference as defined in (FCC regulations) 47 CFR §2.1, disrupting communications, damaging experimental data integrity, and jeopardizing control of amateur satellites.”

 

WEEKEND EDITON: Great weather for the ham fest and  great turnout as well, ham radio is alive in New England. the big news is the new Icom 7300MKII. I love the built in hdmi port, enhanced rx and tx, cw decoder....wonder what the initial price will be?

Hamfest dinner

Enhanced Performance

Firsts for Icom HF radios

Other Highlights

More Information

Amateur Radio Newsline Report

AST SPACEMOBILE EYES CELLULAR SATELLITE LAUNCH WINDOW

NEIL/ANCHOR: Our top story takes us to Texas, where the cellular service provider that is seeking use of ham frequencies to assist its future satellites has announced it is starting to plan its launches. Kent Peterson KCØDGY brings us up to date.

KENT: AST SpaceMobile, which has asked the FCC for permission to use amateur radio frequencies for a planned constellation of satellites providing cellular-based broadband service, has announced it expects to have launched between 45 and 60 satellites by next year.

In its second-quarter earnings report this month, the Texas company said that it plans satellite deployments every one to two months into 2026 and expects to begin providing service in the United States by the end of this year. In the first quarter of next year, the company hopes to begin rolling out service as well in Canada, the UK and Japan.

In two separate deals pending, the company is planning to acquire use of portions of the S-band and L-band spectrum for global delivery of its services.

AST SpaceMobile, which is considered a rival to SpaceX, was recently approved to use the amateur radio band on an experimental basis for a low-earth orbit satellite - a prototype known as FM1. It was assigned the callsign WP2XRX, which is valid through the 1st of July, 2027. The company plans to use the 70 cm amateur frequencies to conduct telemetry, tracking, and telecommand between ground stations and its satellites.

This is Kent Peterson KCØDGY.

(CNBC, LIGHT READING.COM)

**
NASA TOLD TO END GREENHOUSE-GAS TRACKING SATELLITE MISSION

NEIL/ANCHOR: NASA has begun developing a plan to terminate the missions of two high-tech satellites that are monitoring carbon dioxide buildup on the Earth. We have the latest from Travis Lisk N3ILS.

TRAVIS: In the US, the White House has told NASA employees to end two widely used, state-of-the art satellite missions that keep a watchful eye on greenhouse gases heating up the Earth. The satellites, known as Orbiting Carbon Observatories, are the federal government's only ones of their kind and are relied upon by farmers, scientists and the nation's oil and gas companies to keep track of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

In a post on NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory website dated the 15th of August, the agency said the 10-year-old mission is viewed as [quote] : the gold standard for carbon dioxide measurements from space and has quietly become a powerful driver of technological, ecological and even economic progress." [endquote]

Recent media reports about the directive have said no reason has been given for the terminations, which would destroy one of the satellites and its sensitive instruments because the spacecraft would burn up on re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere. The other satellite is attached to the International Space Station.

This is Travis Lisk N3ILS.

(AMSAT, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO)

**
EMERGENCY-ALERT GRANTS TO EXCLUDE PUBLIC RADIO

NEIL/ANCHOR: Here in the US, some of the nation's public radio stations have learned that they will not be involved in the government's new emergency-warning system. Randy Sly W4XJ tells us more about what happened.

RANDY: An updated emergency-alert system to be rolled out in the United States will exclude funding for it at public radio stations. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which faces closure at the end of next month after its own defunding, has told member stations that applied to its warning-system grant program that there is no money for them.

In an August 18th email, the corporation's CEO Kathy Merritt wrote: [quote] "CPB is deeply disappointed that critical equipment intended to protect the American public in times of emergencies will go unpurchased.[endquote] She said, however, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had no choice.

The nation's emergency-alert system, which delivers public-safety traffic when severe weather or other threats are imminent, has been under review by the Federal Communications Commission.

This is Randy Sly W4XJ.

(CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING, FCC)

**
YOUTH INVOLVEMENT A CORE PART OF SOUTH GEORGIA DXPEDITION

NEIL/ANCHOR: A rare DX activation in the sub-Antarctic region is going to involve young amateurs in core roles, as we hear from Jason Daniels VK2LAW.

JASON: The planned DXpedition for South Georgia Island in March of 2027 isn't just about activating one of the rarest and more challenging sites for portable amateur radio. A central focus for the team will be its role in mentoring the young radio amateurs who will be accompanying the more experienced operators to the sub-Antarctic island. The team, using the callsign VPØSG, is giving these youngsters top priority.

Project team leader Rune, LA7THA, told Newsline in an email that one or two licensed young operators are expected to be part of the operations on the island. He said: [quote] "They will be involved in every phase of the expedition - from setup and daily operations to teardown - working alongside veteran DXpeditioners in challenging real-world conditions." [endquote] He said the team is working closely with NCDXF on this initiative, which is in sync with so many amateur radio youth engagement activities around the world.

Meanwhile, there is much work to be done regarding this environmentally sensitive DX entity with its mountainous landscape and volatile weather patterns. The shore camp will have five operating positions but details still remain unclear on any additional stations that are capable of being operated remotely. Rune said that final team composition and operating plans also need to be fine-tuned.

The DXpedition fulfills the mission of the Norway-based Amateur Radio DXpeditions, which devotes itself to giving hams around the world a chance to contact remote parts of the globe.

This is Jason Daniels VK2LAW.

(ARDXPEDITIONS; RUNE, LA7THA)

**
HAMCATION PLANNERS SEEK AWARD NOMINEES

NEIL/ANCHOR: With the Huntsville Hamfest barely one week behind us, organizers of next year's HamCation in Orlando, Florida, are asking attendees to think ahead to the event. Jack Parker W8ISH tells us why.

JACK: Nominations are now open for awards to be presented at HamCation early next year - and one of the three honors will be making its debut: The Amateur Radio Hero of the Year. This honor was created to recognize the radio operator whose selfless and extraordinary actions provided exemplary public service in times of crisis, whether during a natural disaster or in some other critical or emergency scenario.

Nominations are also being accepted on the HamCation website for the two other annual awards: Gordon West Ambassador of the Year and Carole Perry Educator of the Year.

Think of the amateurs you know and admire anywhere in the world and what they have brought to the community. Then visit hamcation dot com slash award [hamcation.com/award] to get them in the running. HamCation, which is taking place on the 13th through to the 15th of February, is the convention of the ARRL's southeastern division.

**

CANADIAN STUDENT SATELLITE PROJECT MOVES AHEAD

NEIL/ANCHOR: University students in Canada have passed a milestone that leads to the manufacture of a series of nine CubeSats with support from the Canadian Space Agency. Sel Embee KB3TZD brings us that update.

SEL: The Canadian Space Agency's CubeSats Initiative for STEM, a project known as CUBICS, is moving ahead toward the manufacturing phase after its design passed final review recently.

Professors and their students are involved in the design, build and launch of satellites as part of CUBICS at nine universities. Ultimately the nine 3U CubeSats are to be deployed next year by Exolaunch, a German launch-services company based in Berlin. The satellites will conduct a number of experiments relevant to amateur radio and utilise the ham spectrum for their command and control. They will also conduct research on wildlife migration, monitor oceanic and atmospheric changes and study radiation-mitigating technologies that can be used in space.The payload will include digipeaters as well as digital and CW telemetry beacons.

**
INDIAN OFFICIALS ACT AGAINST UNAUTHORIZED HANDHELDS

NEIL/ANCHOR: In India, officials are taking aim against the sale and marketing of hand-held radios that they say violate consumer and telecommunications regulations. Jim Meachen ZL2BHF explains.

JIM M: Authorities in India have announced a crackdown on the listing and sale of hand-held transceivers from China that they say break laws governing consumer protection and the unauthorised use of radio frequencies.

Stories in various Indian media outlets identify some of the 13 e-commerce sellers in question as Facebook, Amazon, Flipkart and IndiaMART, among others.

The nation’s consumer affairs commissioner Pralhad Joshi said that the violations of the Indian Telegraph Act, the Wireless Telegraphy Act and rules governing the use of low and very low power short-range RF devices were being broken. Acting as an advocate for radio users, the West Bengal Radio Club’s secretary, Ambarish Nag Biswas VU2JFA, told the Statesman website that users of these radio sets could interfere with police and other agencies’ communications and gather sensitive information relating to national security.

**
RSGB AWARD INVITES WORLD TO WORK THE UK

NEIL/ANCHOR: If you enjoy working hams the UK and you’re up for a bit of a challenge, this next story from Jeremy Boot G4NJH might be just what you’re looking for.

JEREMY: The newest award series available from the Radio Society of Great Britain is open to anyone anywhere in the world - but the real winners are most likely to be hams throughout the UK and its Crown Dependencies. That’s because these awards encourage people to make contact with them.

Available at many different levels of achievement, the new “Worked All UK and Crown Dependency Prefixes Award” recognises contacts among UK amateurs themselves as well as those from around the world with UK amateurs. There are awards for collecting prefixes in Scotland, in the Crown Dependencies and even the entire UK. The top award is called - just as its name suggests - the Worked United Kingdom Prefixes Supreme Award. Details of how to achieve this award or any of its subsets () can be found on the RSGB website - and at the link that appears in the text version of this week’s newscast script at arnewsline.org

You will also learn ways to share your story about chasing some of these new awards - because after a QSO, almost everyone likes to hear a good story too.

**

WORLD OF DX

In the World of DX, listen for CW2ØØDI, the special event callsign for members of Radio Club Uruguay. Operators are marking the bicentennial of Uruguayan declaration of independence and will be on the air until the 18th of September. The anniversary date itself is the 25th of August 1825. See QRZ.com for QSL details.

The Dutch Marine Radio Amateur Club is using the special event callsign PA4ØMARAC until the end of the year to celebrate its 40th anniversary. See QRZ.com for QSL and other details.

Kasimir DL2SBY is celebrating 50 years in amateur radio by operating from the Seychelles as S79/DL2SBY. Listen for him from the 28th of September through to the 12th of October. He will be on the HF bands and will be operating on 6m using a five-element Yagi. See QRZ.com for QSL details.

The Dutch Radio Club is operating "The Dutch Lighthouse Hunt" from the 1st through to the 30th of September. There are several callsigns that will be in use, including PAØ1LH, PDØØLH and PDØ1LH. For a full list of callsigns and QSL details, see the QRZ.com page for PAØ1LH.

If you're looking to log a contact with Playa Blanca Island, IOTA Number SA-084, be listening later this year for Renato, PY8WW. He will be operating there from the 12th to the 16th of November and is still awaiting the callsign he will be using. The island is part of the Utría National Natural Park, an environmentally sensitive area that prohibits the use of fossil fuels. Renato expects his activation to rely entirely on an EcoFlow power bank system and solar panels. He will be providing updated information about his activation when it becomes available.

(DX WORLD, 425 DX BULLETIN)

**

KICKER: FOR THIS EXPLORER, 15 WAS THE AGE OF DISCOVERY

NEIL/ANCHOR: A teenager chasing DX might not be a big deal these days - but 100 years ago this month, an Iowa 15-year-old logged a contact that would eventually shape the future of radio communications and its technology. Jim Davis W2JKD has our final story this week.

JIM: High up in attic room in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, young Arthur Collins often got a view of the world from the other end of his 20-meter radio signal. On the 3rd of August, 1925, those high-frequency transmissions brought the frozen landscape of Greenland into sharp focus for him: Arthur made contact via CW with the Arctic Expedition undertaken on behalf of the US Navy by explorer Donald MacMillan. Their exchange of CW messages ultimately traveled so much farther, in a way, because the shortwave signals from Arthur's 1,000-watt homebrew transmitter accomplished what the Navy's longwave transmissions, lacking the ability for skip, could not. Media attention followed, of course, and the teenager's smarts with radio technology soon became well-known.

Like MacMillan, Arthur Collins himself was an explorer and his new paths across - and above - the world were shaped with increasingly shorter radio waves. The young inventor became a pioneer, pushing that early technology in inventive ways. He was barely a decade away from becoming a businessman and seeing the rise of Collins Radio, Rockwell Collins and Collins Aerospace.

The Collins Aerospace Museum in Cedar Rapids has been celebrating him all month on the 100th anniversary of that MacMillan contact, displaying artifacts, documents and photographs that capture his decades of discovery that began when he was a young explorer. The museum features a replica of the attic space that was his laboratory and radio shack where it all began. The replica room was created by Arthur A. Collins Legacy Association with help from students at the Cedar Rapids Metro High School. Like young Arthur Collins, no doubt many of these teenagers are already on course to make some cutting-edge discoveries of their own.

FRIDAY EDITION: Ham-X is underway today and local club member are going down to enjoy the festivities and sell some junk....I hope Joe-K1JEK takes some photos for me, hint, hint....Great White shark sighting yesterday on the beach across the street, police ordered everyone out of the water for a few hours. Today all beaches are closed due to high waves and riptides from the hurricane offshore...

if you are lucky today you might find a bargain like this at the hamfest. A new display and
a little buffing and this beauty will be back on the air.

Transparent PCBs Trigger 90s Nostalgia

What color do you like your microcontroller boards? Blue? Red? Maybe white or black? Sadly, all of those are about to look old hat. Why? Well, as shared by [JLCPCB], this transparent Arduino looks amazing.

The board house produced this marvel using its transparent flexible printed circuit (FPC) material. Basically, the stuff they use for ribbon cables and flex PCBs, just made slightly differently to be see-through instead of vaguely brown.

The circuit in question is a Flexduino, an Arduino clone specifically designed to work on flexible substrates. It looks particularly good on this transparent material, with the LEDs glowing and the white silkscreen for contrast. If you like what you see, you can order your own circuits using this material directly from JLCPCB’s regular old order form.

Most of all, this project reminds us of the 1990s. Back then, you could get all kinds of games consoles and other electronics with transparent housings. There was the beloved PlayStation Crystal, while Nintendo did something similar with the N64 while adding a whole line of tinted color and charcoal versions too. Somehow seeing a bit of the inside of things is just cool. Even if, in some cases, it’s just to avoid smuggling in prisons.

It took decades before you could get custom PCBs quickly and easily. Now, board houses are competing for the enthusiast (consumer?) market, and competition is spurring development of crazy stuff like transparent and even glow in the dark PCBs. What next? We’re thinking edible, ROHS and WEEE be damned. Drop your thoughts in the comments.

Models of Wave Propagation

[Stoppi] always has interesting blog posts and videos, even when we don’t understand all the German in them. The latest? Computer simulation of wave propagation (Google Translate link), which, if nothing else, makes pretty pictures that work in any language. Check out the video below.

Luckily, most browsers will translate for you these days, or you can use a website. We’ve seen waves modeled with springs before, but between the explanations and the accompanying Turbo Pascal source code, this is worth checking out.

We can’t explain it better than [Stoppi] who writes:

The model consists of individual atoms with the mass m, which are connected to each other by springs with the spring constant k. To start, I deflect the first atom sinusoidally. According to this, the individual atoms obey Newton’s equation of motion F = m·a, whereby Hook’s spring law F = k·Δl is used for the force F. I solved these differential equations iteratively using the Euler method. The movement of the atoms is restricted in the y-direction. At the beginning, the number of atoms, their mass m and the spring constant k must be entered. In addition, you can choose between transverse or longitudinal deflection and whether you want the reflection at the free or fixed end.

Can you get better simulations? Of course. But will this help you develop more intuitive understanding? Maybe. If you are interested in simulating the physical world, don’t forget TinkerCad has added that capability.

THURSDAY EDITION: The shoreline should be pretty rough for the next few days with the hurricane coming up offshore, no boating for a few days. the kids go back to school next week and the summer is kaput. The nice thing is the tourists finally go home and its busy only on weekends thru the fall...

IP400 Network Project Sells Out Second Product Run

ADRCS has announced that the second run of IP400 Mini-Nodes units have sold out and are now shipping. In addition, to satisfy the requirements of the recently approved ADRC grant, ADRCS has been certified by NGO Source.

About the Alberta Digital Radio Communications Society
Alberta Digital Radio Communications Society (ADRCS) was formed in 2022 to promote the use and develop new technologies using digital communication in Amateur Radio. It is the sponsor of the AREDN network in Western Canada, and the IP400 Project.

The IP400 Project aims to deliver a data communications system capable of 100 kbps minimum data speeds. Initial hardware in the form of Raspberry Pi Zero HAT transceivers were demoed at Hamvention. To learn more about the project, join the Groups.io list, or visit the project home page. Source code is available on GitHub.

How Laser Headlights Died In The US

Automotive headlights started out burning acetylene, before regular electric lightbulbs made them obsolete. In due time, halogen bulbs took over, before the industry began to explore even newer technologies like HID lamps for greater brightness. Laser headlights stood as the next leap forward, promising greater visibility and better light distribution.

Only, the fairytale didn’t last. Just over a decade after laser headlights hit the market, they’re already being abandoned by the manufacturers that brought them to fruition. Laser headlights would end up fighting with one hand behind their back, and ultimately became irrelevant before they ever became the norm.

Bright Lights

Laser headlights were first announced by BMW in 2013, with the German company promising the technology would be available on its new halo car, the i8. Fellow German rivals Audi would end up pipping the Bavarians to the punch, launching the limited-production Audi R8 LMX with laser headlights just months before the i8 entered production. Both brands would later bring the technology to a range of luxury models, including sedans and SUVs.

The prime selling point of laser headlights was that they could project a very bright, very focused beam a long way down the road. As we’ve explored previously, they achieved this by using blue lasers to illuminate yellow phosphors, creating a vibrant white light that could be bounced off a reflector and directed up to 600 m ahead of the vehicle. They weren’t so useful for low-beams, with that duty usually passed off to LEDs. However, they were perfect to serve as an ultra-efficient long-throw high beam that wouldn’t disrupt other road users, albeit with the aid of steerable headlamp assemblies and camera-based tracking systems.

Laser headlights were more expensive to produce, but were also far more capable than any conventional bulb in terms of throw distance. They were also more compact than just about any other automotive lighting technology, giving automotive designers far more freedom when creating a car’s front end. They were even able to outperform LEDs in the efficiency stakes. And yet, both Audi and BMW would come to abandon the technology.

The culprit? Regulations. In particular, headlight rules enforced in the United States. The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard rule 108 deems that headlight intensity must not exceed 150,000 candela, while beam range must not exceed 250 meters. These rules effectively mean that laser headlights can’t outperform older technologies without falling afoul of US regulations. The rules stand in stark contrast to European regulations, which allow headlights to reach up to 430,000 candela. In an echo of the sealed beam era, US regulations were once again stymying European innovation by being firmly stuck in the past.

Of course, US regulations don’t apply everywhere. European automakers could have kept pursuing laser headlight technology, however, other factors have also come into play. LED headlight technology has continued to improve, with newer models improving brightness and light distribution. Adaptive matrix LED headlights also allow sections of the headlight beam to be turned on and off at will to provide the best illumination without dazzling other road users.

To that end, laser headlights are facing decline. While a few models in the Audi and BMW lineups still feature the headlights, both automakers are phasing them out for the future. Speaking on the matter last year, BMW’s large-car product manager, Andreas Suhrer, noted that solely LED-based designs were the future. “At the moment, we still have laser lighting on the G26 and the X7, but we don’t have future plans,” Suhrer stated. “The G60 and G61 do not have it, and the new 7 Series does not have it. I don’t think it’s completely done, but for the next models, we are making the LED Matrix lights our focus. The laser lights are pretty good with absolute range but the latest generation of Matrix LED lights does a better distribution.” Meanwhile, Audi released statements in 2024 noting that there were no plans to implement laser lighting modules in future product.

Ultimately, laser headlights were an expensive, fancy solution to a minor problem. Better high beams are surely a good thing, but given how rarely most motorists use them, they’re hardly a critical feature. Combine their high price and limited usability with the fact that one of the world’s largest car markets just made them useless, and it hardly made sense for Audi or BMW to continue pursuing this unique technology. They will go down as a luxury car curio, to be written about by bloggers every few decades as a reminder of what was once deemed cutting edge.

The good old days...

WEDNESDAY EDITION: The 600 mile row from Gloucester, MA to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia in a small dory was completed yesterday by Jimmy T and his partner Sarah, quite a row!....Northeast HamXposition™ HamX™ – Northeast HamXposition.....

200 Amateur Radio Operators To Raise Spirit Of National Day On Air (Malaysia)

A total of 200 amateur radio operators will be conducting the Call Que (CQ) programme in conjunction with National Day and Malaysia Day starting today until Sept 20.

Malaysian Amateur Radio Transmitters’ Society (MARTS) deputy president Zanirul Akhmal Zanirun said his party would also activate 14 special amateur radio stations nationwide for the programme.

“The organisation of the annual CQ National Day and Malaysia Day programme aims to strengthen and invigorate the spirit of independence, especially among amateur radio operators and their family members in the country, in line with the National Day theme, “Malaysia Madani, Rakyat Disantuni”.”

Annealing in Space: How NASA Saved JunoCam in Orbit Around Jupiter

Although the radiation damage to JCM was obvious a few dozen orbits in – and well past its original mission’s 34 orbits – the big question was exactly was being damaged by the radiation, and whether something could be done to circumvent or fix it. The good news was that the image sensor itself was fine, but one of the voltage regulators in JCM’s power supply was having a bad time. This led the engineers to try annealing the affected part by cranking up one of the JCM’s heaters to a balmy 25°C, well above what it normally is kept at.

This desperate step seemed to work, with massively improved image quality on the following orbits, but soon the images began to degrade again. Before an approach to Jupiter’s moon Io, the engineers thus tried it again but this time cranked the JCM’s heater up to eleven and crossed their fingers. Surprisingly this fixed the issue over the course of a week, until the JCM seems as good as new. Now the engineers are trying their luck with Juno‘s other instruments as well, with it potentially providing a blueprint for extending the life of spacecraft in general.

Keeping the airwaves alive: ILLW celebrated on the Rock

TUESDAY EDITION: I repaired the dryer yesterday, never again. Shoot me if I say I m going to fix the washer or dryer again, I concede. YouTube made it look easy, a 45 minute repair. Me, two fricken hours of sweat and swearing. It would have been easier to rebuild a 327 Chevy than open up that fricken Maytag dryer again. It came apart easily but them the fun started. To replace the bearings I needed slip ring pliers, I had to run over to the shop and grab them. Now all I had to do was install the new belt and I was golden! Wrong. I took me 45 minutes of swearing, cutting up my arms on sheet metal, and finally reaching behind the drum and fumbling around to get the idler pulley relaxed so I could blindly put the belt on the motor and around the idler. I wish I had known there was an access plate on the back which exposed the motor and idler pulley and could have made the job a snap, it didn't show that in the damn video! Lastly putting it together with two different length screws, which of course I did not note to myself as I ripped it apart........all this because I hate to call appliance repair when I know I can fix it myself and not to mention too damn cheap....remind me to stop climbing ladders, I have to clean out the gutters sometime soon...

Club Week is Coming This Fall

This fall, the National Amateur Radio Alliance (NARA) will sponsor Club Week, a special event for clubs to make contact with one another on the air.

Unlike a contest, Club Week does not involve earning points or submitting logs to NARA. Instead, it’s a relaxed and engaging event where clubs can operate from a club shack, a member's home, a park, or any public location. Clubs are encouraged to organize additional activities to make the most of this opportunity. Participants should be prepared to send and respond to QSL cards, which provides additional opportunities to engage and teach new hams.

Club Week will span 9 days. While a final date hasn't yet been finalized, clubs can register early for the event on the NARA website.

Association celebrates 100th anniversary of major radio breakthrough in Cedar Rapids

See Collins’ attic the way he did through Collins Aerospace Museum exhibit

CEDAR RAPIDS — Years before the first trans-Atlantic phone call, and decades before international direct dialing would become available, a Cedar Rapids teenager had a direct line to one of the most remote places on earth.

And decades before companies like Collins Radio and Rockwell Collins became multibillion dollar enterprises, a 15-year-old’s ham radio was connecting Arctic explorers with the world from an attic on Fairview Drive.

On Aug. 3, 1925, Arthur A. Collins made headlines as the first person to communicate with MacMillan scientific explorers in Etah, Greenland on short-length radio waves — what The Evening Gazette in Cedar Rapids hailed as “a new chapter into the history of radio.”

For weeks, his rudimentary technology would be their lifeline to the Chief of Naval Operations at National Geographic, and the world.

It wasn’t the first time he had communicated with the world. By then, he had talked wirelessly to people in Australia, Belgium, England, Guam, India, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Scotland.

But this thrill was the catalyst that would launch not only his own career, but the careers of thousands in Cedar Rapids whose technology continues to shape major world events to this day.

“He never had received a greater thrill than that when he talked to his friend on the famous expedition bound northward to explore a mystic continent,” The Gazette reported in 1925.

How he did it

Understanding the phenomenon of propagation in radio waves made it possible.

Near the turn of the 20th century, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi — who is largely credited with inventing the radio — started laying the groundwork for wireless telegraphy in the United Kingdom. But by 1925, the technology was still relatively archaic.

In the 1920s, the U.S. Navy, a sponsor of the Arctic expedition, was an ardent advocate for long-wave radio technology. But Collins and mentor John L. Reinartz, a pioneer of shortwave radio, had other ideas.

“(Collins has) got these inventions, all kinds of them,” said Mike Dupree, president of the Arthur A. Collins Legacy Association. “But the bigger thing he does is take all these inventions and makes them work.”

Longer radio waves, like the ones used by AM radio stations, tend to follow the surface of the earth and become weaker with distance. But with shorter, higher frequency waves, the ionosphere of the Earth’s atmosphere reflects the signals back with “skips.”

“They’re experimenting and discovering what physicists had predicted was ‘skip propagation’ on shortwave frequencies, which is the ionosphere reflecting the signal back for long distances in daylight,” said Rod Blocksome, a founding member of the Collins Legacy Association and retired Rockwell Collins electrical engineer. “It was a fabulous station by their standards.”

By 1925, Collins knew he could reach the East or West coast with just a couple skips. The ceiling of his attic setup, covered with “QSL” postcards from across the country, documented his morse code communications with amateur radio operators across the country — a custom between “hams” that serves as confirmation of their communication.

“I don’t think they realized they were talking to a 15-year-old,” said Blocksome.

For a while, Collins used a 50-watt transmitter that consumes less power than many light bulbs. Most amateur radio stations in 1925 had power levels of 50 watts or less.

For the MacMillan Expedition, Collins prepared a 1,000-watt transmitter on a “breadboard,” with a $110 vacuum tube purchased by his father — what would cost more than $2,000 in today’s dollars, if adjusted for inflation.

“Considering the state of electronics and radio in the 1920s, it’s advanced,” Blocksome said. “You know he had to have studied a lot on his own to figure all this out.”

His understanding of propagation, as well as previous experiments with Reinartz, allowed them to reach Greenland in a way not understood by most.

Not even the United States Navy, whose confidence in long-wave radio failed the mission. As Collins received important messages and rode his bike to the Western Union station to telegraph them to the National Geographic Society, the Navy lost contact with the expedition.

The messages mostly contained Naval information. But a few offered novel insights into discoveries up north that left readers on the edge of their seats.

One day, Collins heard those aboard the U.S.S. Bowdoin sing “America.” Another later report noted that he missed an “Eskimo concert” broadcast by the MacMillan expedition when he wasn’t able to receive it.

Over the weeks of August 1925, he set records communicating via shorter and shorter radio waves as he moved from using 20-meter waves to 16.

“Biblical miracles were scarcely more weird than this one, and such an achievement as this would have been belittled vehemently 2,000 years ago,” The Gazette reported on Aug. 11, 1925.

The exhibit

Today, you don’t have to imagine how the birthplace of Collins’ legacy looks. Now, you can see it set up at the Collins Aerospace Museum in Cedar Rapids.

If you go:

Tours of the Collins Aerospace Museum are available every Wednesday from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

To arrange a visit of the Collins Aerospace Museum, visit thecollinsstory.org or contact Becky Woodward at tours@thecollinsstory.org. Advance notice and a photo ID are required to participate in the tour.

The exhibit, which took residence at the museum in July, has interactive pieces, explanations that put a teenager’s social life into perspective, radio artifacts and a life-size replica of Collins’ attic radio station.

MONDAY EDITION: 65 and breezy, a fall day on the island...

The Death of Industrial Design and the Era of Dull Electronics

It’s often said that what’s inside matters more than one’s looks, but it’s hard to argue that a product’s looks and its physical user experience are what makes it instantly recognizable. When you think of something like a Walkman, an iPod music player, a desktop computer, a car or a TV, the first thing that comes to mind is the way  that it looks along with its user interface. This is the domain of industrial design, where circuit boards, mechanisms, displays and buttons are put into a shell that ultimately defines what users see and experience.

Thus industrial design is perhaps the most important aspect of product development as far as the user is concerned, right along with the feature list. It’s also no secret that marketing departments love to lean into the styling and ergonomics of a product. In light of this it is very disconcerting that the past years industrial design for consumer electronics in particular seems to have wilted and is now practically on the verge of death.

Devices like cellphones and TVs are now mostly flat plastic-and-glass rectangles with no distinguishing features. Laptops and PCs are identified either by being flat, small, having RGB lighting, or a combination of these. At the same time buttons and other physical user interface elements are vanishing along with prominent styling, leaving us in a world of basic geometric shapes and flat, evenly colored surfaces. Exactly how did we get to this point, and what does this mean for our own hardware projects?

Bold And Colorful Shapes

Industrial design is less of a science and more of an art, limited only by the available materials, the constraints of the product’s internals and the goal of creating a positive user experience. Although design has always played a role with many products over the millennia, these were generally quite limited due to material and tooling constraints. As both plastics and electronics began their stratospheric rise during the 20th century, suddenly it felt like many of these constraints had been removed.

No longer was one limited to basic materials like stone, metal, wood and paint, while internals got ever smaller and more flexible in terms of placement. Enclosures now could take on any shape, while buttons, knobs and dials could be shaped and placed to one’s heart’s content. This change is clearly visible in consumer devices, with the sixties and subsequent decades seeing a veritable explosion in stylish transistorized radios, home computers and portable entertainment devices, with industrial designers getting the hang of all these new materials and options.

The peak here was arguably achieved during the 1990s and early 2000s, as electronic miniaturization and manufacturing chops led to device manufacturers basically just showing off. Personal Hi-Fi systems and portable devices along with computer systems and laptops grew curved, translucent and transparent plastic along with a dazzling array of colors.

These days we refer to this era as the ‘Y2K Aesthetic‘, which was followed around the mid-2000s to early 2010s by the sweetly named ‘Frutiger Aero‘ era. During this time both hardware and software underwent a transition from mostly utilitarian looks into something that can be defined as tasteful to over the top, depending on your perspective, but above all it embraced the technologies and materials in its industrial design. Futurism and literal transparency were the rule, as a comfortable, colorful and stylish companion in daily life.

From Brick To Slab

Ask someone to visualize a Nokia 3310 and even if they’re born after 2000, there’s a good chance that they will be able to tell you what it is, what it does and what it looks like. Then ask that same person to describe any modern cellphone, and while the feature list should be quite easy, asking them to draw what differentiates, say, an iPhone 16 from a Samsung Galaxy S25 is effectively impossible unless they have memorized the layout of the cameras on the back and perhaps the side button placement.

Over the decades, cellphones have seen their displays grow larger and larger. With voracious appetite, these displays have consumed bezels, front speakers, keyboards and home buttons.

Along with the demise of these features, front facing cameras were only preserved by literally punching a hole in the display, but notification LEDs vanished right along with headphone jacks, IR blaster LEDs, swappable covers, removable batteries, etc.

The current scuttlebutt is that Apple will be the first to drop any and all connectors from its iPhone cellphones, with the iPhone 17 reportedly nearly becoming the first to do so. Along with eSIMs, this would leave smartphones as glued-together slabs of plastic-and-glass with only a screen, some cameras and a couple of buttons.

In marketing shots smartphones are always shown with a lock- or home screen open on the screen, because otherwise there would be just a lifeless black slab of glass to look at from the front. From the side you can see the same slab, which easily wobbles on its ever-growing camera hump that’s sticking out of the razor-thin case like a bad case of optical melanoma. At this point in time, the most exciting thing about cellphones is whether it can flip or not, followed by whatever subdued color is applied to the slippery glass back that you want to cover up with something concealing and grippy as soon as possible anyway.

Naturally, it’s not just phones either, but also computers, with the iMac’s evolution showing a clear ‘evolution’ from colorful and bold designs to geometric slabs:

Whether you call it ‘modern’ or ‘clean’ design, the trend is quite clear. Curves are removed, colors are purged or at the very least muted and the overall design reduced to the level of excitement experienced while being stuck at an Ikea showroom during a busy weekend with the family.

Lifeless Slabs

There was a time when televisions had a recognizable look to them, with a stylish bezel, a real power button, as well as a couple of front input connectors and buttons to adjust basic settings like volume and the current channel, which could also be hidden behind a small flap. This is now all gone, and TVs have become as visually striking from the front as modern smartphones, with the speakers fully nerfed since there’s no space on the front any more.

All inputs and any remaining controls are now hidden on the back where reaching them is borderline impossible after installation, never mind if you mounted it on a wall. You’re not supposed to find the TV visually appealing, or marvel at the easy user interface, just consume whatever content is displayed on the bezel-less screen.

The rest of any home entertainment setup has undergone the same process, with the HiFi stacks and mid-sized sets of yesteryear replaced by the same smartphones and TVs, along with a bit of plastic that you can stick into a slab TV to stream content with from some internet-based service.

Rather than a stereo – or better – HiFi setup, most people will have a bunch of usually mono Bluetooth speakers scattered around, each of which possessing the visual appeal of a radar dome. If you’re lucky there are still a couple of touch buttons to fondle, but virtually all of your interactions with such devices will go via an app on your slab phone.

Touch controls are also all that you will get these days, as physical buttons, dials, sliders and switches are almost completely faux pas in modern-day product design. Everything has to be smooth, stealthy, invisibly present and yet always there when you crave that entertainment fix.

This design language isn’t just afflicting home electronics either, as over the past years car interiors have seen physical user controls vanish in favor of one or more touch screens, with cars like those from Tesla being the most extreme example with just a single large touch screen on the center console as the sole user interface. Users are however pushing back against this change, with a number of studies also showing that touch-only controls are less effective and less safe than fumbling around on a big screen while driving to adjust something like the climate controls or radio station.

There Is An App For That

Want to set up your new formless slab of plastic or fabric? Please download this special mobile app to do anything with it. Got a new pair of headphones? Better pray that the mobile app works well on your slab phone or you’ll be stuck with whatever preset defaults it came with, as physical controls on the device are for dummies.

Whether we like it or not, the human user interface part of industrial design has been mostly taken out back and replaced with software running on a slab phone. Whatever vestigial controls still remain on the device itself will only be a small subset of what its electronics and firmware are capable of. The slab phone has thus become the user interface, with that part of industrial design often outsourced to some third-party mobile app developer.

This has massively backfired for some companies already, with Sonos in 2024 releasing a ‘new and improved’ version of its slab phone app that was so buggy and plagued with issues that it rendered the Sonos speaker hardware effectively useless. While physical user interfaces have their issues, sinking an entire company due to a badly arranged set of knobs is not as easy as with a slab phone app or equivalent, not to mention the potential to retroactively brick the user interface of devices that people have already purchased.

Yearning For That Human Touch

Here we can see parallels with computer user interfaces, where much like with industrial design there’s a big push to reduce shapes to the most basic geometric forms, remove or reduce color and remove any ‘superfluous’ styling including skeuomorphism. These parallels are perhaps not that surprising, as companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft produce both consumer hardware and software.

Google, for example, has heavily invested in its Material Design design language, which can be summarized as having flat color backgrounds with the most simplistic UI elements suspended in said void. UI elements like the ‘hamburger’ icon are used to hide menus not just on phones, but also on desktop systems, where a form of extreme minimalism is being pushed to its ultimate extremes.

In the case of consumer electronics that means devices that lack any distinguishable features, as minimalism is a poor way to distinguish one product from another. The removal of visually pleasing and physically practical elements also means a dull, stimulation-free experience.

There are no pleasing elements to rest your eyes on, no curves or colors that invoke an emotional response, no buttons to press, or any kind of auditory or physical response. Just lifeless touch controls on slabs of plastic and glass with maybe a sad beep as confirmation of a touch control having been triggered.

In this context, what is often called the revival of physical media can be interpreted as not just a yearning for a more visceral audio-visual experience, but would together with so-called retro-computing be a way to experience personal electronics in a way that stimulates and invigorates. Where physical buttons are pressed, sliders slid, dials turned and things go click and whirr as one’s fingers touch and manipulate the very real user interface elements.

We know that chronic boredom can be extremely harmful to non-human animals, with enrichment toys and activities prescribed to make them happier and more content. With modern day consumer electronics having become incredibly dull due to the death of industrial design, it would seem that us human mammals are seeking out our own enrichment activities, modern design sensibilities be damned. If this means repeating the sins of early 2000s or 1990s industrial design in our personal hobbyist projects, it’s a price worth to pay for keeping ourselves and our fellow humans happy and enriched.

Hams Prepare for Forecasted Busy Hurricane Season

The 2025 hurricane season has been underway for almost two months and there has activity on the both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.   

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted in June there would be 13 to 18 named storms, 5 to 9 hurricanes, and 2 to 5 major hurricanes (Category 3 or greater) for the 2025 season. This aligns with Colorado State University’s forecast …

Read more: American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources – Read More

WEEKEND EDITION: Robot boxing....The next time you’re enjoying a scoop of ice cream this summer, consider this: Throughout the 1800s, people regularly died from eating the frozen treat, with whole groups at picnics and fairs falling violently ill after indulging.

The potential culprits were everywhere—additives made from rancid butter that supposedly produced a “pineapple” flavor, arsenic-contaminated dyes, and the general lack of dairy pasteurization. Scientists at the time never landed on one cause they could prove, but it’s likely that some combination of these factors made eating ice cream such a gamble. And it’s worth remembering that, without any food safety regulations to speak of, even milk itself could be adulterated with ingredients like plaster and cleaning products. 

Pirate Radio Operator Settles with FCC

The Enforcement Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has reached an agreement with an operator of a pirate radio station in Brockton, Massachusetts.

According to a Consent Decree issued by the FCC, Jean Marius, the pirate radio station operator, has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $10,000 to settle charges in connection with operating a radio station without a license in 2023. His broadcasts reportedly exceeded the field strength limits for operation under Part 15 of the Commission’s rules.

In addition to the $10,000 civil penalty, Marius also agreed to pay a further penalty of $587,000, should he fail to pay the agreed-upon amount, or if he is found liable for pirate radio broadcasting efforts anytime over the next 20 years.

Marius did not dispute the FCC’s findings and agreed that the Consent Decree “includes a true and accurate description of the facts underlying the Enforcement Bureau’s investigation” into his illegal radio broadcasts.

The FCC’s Consent Decree in connection with Marius is available at https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-412746A2.pdf.

ARRL Serving its Members: NU2W’s Story

The world’s first robot games were a clumsy mess

This week, China’s leading robotics minds gathered in Beijing for a hotly-anticipated, Olympics-style event dubbed the world’s first “Humanoid Robot Games.” 

Over the course of just over an hour, an assortment of wobbly, bipedal robots “competed” in soccer, running, and kickboxing. Others danced alongside far more coordinated children, while a handful struggled to play pre-programmed instruments. The entire awkward affair, touted as a showcase of the country’s robotics prowess, highlighted how far the industry still has to go to approach anything resembling human-level performance.

Humanoid Games: soccer, dancing, running, and lots of falling 

The event, which began Thursday and runs through the weekend, features 500 humanoid robots from 280 teams across 16 countries. Teams include both private companies and researchers from top Chinese universities. The Associated Press notes three middle school robotics teams also participated. All of the robots required ample space to move—and, in many cases, stumble. To accommodate them, the event was held in the National Speed Skating Oval, a 12,000-seat arena originally built for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Livestreams of the competition showed a smattering of empty seats throughout the arena. Tickets reportedly cost between $25 and $80.

Coverage kicked off, after some delay, with a 1,500-meter race. Unitree, arguably China’s best-known robotics company, won the race handily, with its entries taking first and third place. X-Humanoid, which won the first-ever humanoid robot half marathon earlier this year, came in second. But others didn’t finish at all. The Guardian reported that one robot was forced to retire from the race after its head flopped off while rounding a corner.

“Keeping [the head] balanced while in movement is the biggest challenge for us,” Wang Zizi, one of the robot’s 19-year-old creators said, according to The Guardian. 

FACT: Breathing through your butt could save your life 

In this week’s episode features returning guest and best-selling author Mary Roach. Her latest book, “Replaceable You,” is “a rollicking exploration of the quest to re-create the impossible complexities of human anatomy.” 

For her appearance on the podcast, Mary shared some facts about “enteral ventilation via anus”—AKA breathing through your rectum. Yes, this is very real science, and it also involves what one researcher delicately described as “one long continuous fart.”

The technique works best with a special liquid called perfluorocarbon. This “perfluorocarbon enema” method has been known since 1966, when scientists kept rodents alive underwater for four hours. The rectum can absorb about 20% of what your lungs can handle—not great, but better than nothing.

FRIDAY EDITION: Gorgeous day on the island, no humidity and a light cooling breeze to start off the day...

 An Open Source Flow Battery

The flow battery is one of the more interesting ideas for grid energy storage – after all, how many batteries combine electron current with fluid current? If you’re interested in trying your hand at building one of these, the scientists behind the Flow Battery Research Collective just released the design and build instructions for a small zinc-iodide flow battery.

The battery consists of a central electrochemical cell, divided into two separated halves, with a reservoir and peristaltic pump on each side to push electrolyte through the cell. The cell uses brass-backed grafoil (compressed graphite sheets) as the current collectors, graphite felt as porous electrodes, and matte photo paper as the separator membrane between the electrolyte chambers. The cell frame itself and the reservoir tanks are 3D printed out of polypropylene for increased chemical resistance, while the supporting frame for the rest of the cell can be printed from any rigid filament.

The cell uses an open source potentiostat to control charge and discharge cycles, and an Arduino to control the peristaltic pumps. The electrolyte itself uses zinc chloride and potassium iodide as the main ingredients. During charge, zinc deposits on the cathode, while iodine and polyhalogen ions form in the anode compartment. During charge, zinc redissolves in what is now the anode compartment, while the iodine and polyhalogen ions are reduced back to iodides and chlorides. Considering the stains that iodide ions can leave, the researchers do advise testing the cell for leaks with distilled water before filling it with electrolyte.

If you decide to try one of these builds, there’s a forum available to document your progress or ask for advice. This may have the clearest instructions, but it isn’t the only homemade flow cell out there. It’s also possible to make these with very high energy densities.

Churches and Chapels on the Air 2025

Churches & Chapels On The Air encourages ham radio operators to active local churches on September 13, 2025. The event originated in 2006 in the United Kingdom as a way to bring awareness to a local fundraising event. In 2024, 54 stations were on the air across the globe.

More information can be found on the WACRAL website. K4FMH has published information about activations taking place in the US for 2025.

THURSDAY EDITION: New England: We are running the 6 meter Fish Net tonight at 730pm on 50.2 MHz on usb, listen in and give us a call.....Having solved all the problems of the world, all radios working and the antenna farm under control I find myself with idle time. The Maytag Neptune dryer started squeaking and screeching when first turned on and then smooth's out, I go to YouTube for the fix. It most likely is the belt but while it is apart, why not replace the bearings and idler pulley. I ordered the kit from Amazon and it will be here on Friday. I see two possible scenarios; one, I fix the damn dryer or two, call the repairman to bail me out. The smartest scenario is to call the appliance repair guy and have him do the job, estimated at $250, I just can't seem to do it!

Route 66 Goes On the Air (Arizona)