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EHAM QTH QRZ ARRL HRO ICOM KENWOOD YAESU ELBO ROOM K1TP@YAHOO.COM
WEEKEND EDITION: The balloon is headed for China, follow our latest balloon launch.....Ok I did it, I bought a Icom 7300MKII from a local ham, a review later. I sold my original 7300 to a friend and I bought the Yaesu FT710 which I will now sell.....it's fun to try different radios!
Amateur Radio
Newsline Report How the Grid’s Harmonic Filters Keep the Power Clean
A fun way to think about a national electrical grid is as a massively upscaled electrical circuit, one in which you have multiple power supplies injecting AC power, with various bits and bobs involving resistors, inductors and capacitors in between working to synchronize and clean-up this power before it gets to the end users. Recently [Jordan Taylor], also known as [The Electric Brit] took a look at the grid’s harmonic filters that do a lot of this sinewave scrubbing after the HVDC to AC conversion. Using a UK-based line-commutated converter (LCC) HVDC converter station as a physical example [Jordan] takes us through the elements of this harmonic filter, what it is, what it does and why it’s a necessity. The design considerations with components at this immense scale are also covered, along with the types of filters possible. The Cliff’s Notes version is that following the conversion step from said HVDC there are harmonics introduced in the AC, not unlike in a much lower-voltage converter. This results in a noisy sinewave that can potentially cause harm to AC-powered devices, not to mention cause heating and other losses along the way. The answer is naturally to add an LC-filter, just on a slightly larger scale than for consumer electronics. Also noted by [Jordan] is the nice synergy of these harmonic filters when it comes to absorbing and generating reactive power on the AC grid, due to their massive capacitors and inductors. This helps to dampen oscillations on the grid and thus further contributing to its stability.
THURSDAY EDITION: The balloon is visiting Libya today and to points unknown, follow our latest balloon launch.....NYC is getting 17 new public bathrooms, with digital entry and a 10-minute limit....MIT researchers have developed a new technique that helps generative artificial intelligence models find solutions to high-stakes problems. "Active" call sign probably isn’t what you thinkBy Rob Rosenberger (K4HST) Do this: visit the FCC call sign lookup and search for W0QUF. It says right there on the page: "Status: Active." Except it's not. Look farther right and you'll see its grace period started in January. Now search for it at the ARRL call sign lookup. They give you no hint it's in a grace period. Do an FCC lookup on KD0NZJ. It's long expired, right? Except it's not. Look to the left and you'll see a "PA" icon, which means it remains active pursuant to FCC rule 1.62. If you look it up on ARRL, it'll say "(Administrative Update Applied)" below the expiration date. They give you no hint you can lawfully communicate with them. Neither FCC nor ARRL offer visual cues on their search pages when you look up a call sign. You must inspect the data with your calibrated eyeballs to confirm its status. So, let's go over what you need to know. We'll break it down into five categories: A "live" call sign is marked active and can transmit. It has not reached its expiration date. Roughly 90% of all "active" call signs fall into this category. A "dagger" call sign is marked active and can transmit regardless its expiration date. A "pending application" extends its life. Roughly 430 call signs fall into this category (a scant 0.05%) and the FCC often spends years resolving them. A "grace" call sign is marked active yet cannot transmit. It exceeded its expiration date, lies within its two-year grace period, and has no pending application. Roughly 10% of all "active" call signs fall into this category. A "zombie" call sign is marked active yet cannot transmit. It exceeded its grace period with no pending application, yet the ULS database failed to mark it expired. The most recent example is KI4FHE. (If you run an FCC lookup, do not have any liquids in your mouth! You've been warned.) Zombies might pop up for a day or two if the second anniversary of their expiration date falls on a holiday Monday. A "dead" call sign is marked canceled, expired, or terminated. Enough said. You might ask "where did these five terms come from?" The short answer: The interwebs apparently had no terms for them and I needed a taxonomy for the niche PDF amateur radio call books I produce. My searches of online amateur radio literature, developer repositories, and the FCC's ULS documentation revealed no similar published model ... so I offer this to the public domain:
Ta da! You now understand what "active" means when you look up a call sign on a search page. Calibrate your eyeballs for the FCC, shame the ARRL webmaster for me, and 73!
WEDNESDAY EDITION: The balloon is visiting Algeria today and to points unknown, follow our latest balloon launch...The repeater fix was easy yesterday, the Astron ss30 was putting out only 9 volts which powers the Kenwood repeater, we switched to another Astron linear supply and she is up and running. Is it me or are Astron's getting a shorter and shorter working life span? Video: Educator Shows How Amateur Radio Is Inspiring StudentsEducator Everton Henriques, KD2ZZT, shared his experience using amateur radio to inspire students and bring engineering and technology to life in the classroom during his keynote at the 2026 ARRL New England Division Convention, hosted by Northeast HamXposition in Massachusetts on August 15. A video recording is available on ARRL’s YouTube channel. Everton is an Engineering and Technology Teache… Read more American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources – Read More Teardown Shows Low-Fi Microphone is Surprisingly SophisticatedThe Ting FX EP-2350 by Teenage Engineering is a standalone microphone with a few extras, including samples and built-in effect presets that can be modified by the user. It also has a distinctive design, and [Sam Holland] does an in-depth teardown that offers some insights that are worth keeping in one’s back pocket. The large, side-mounted lever in particular is an interesting bit, but more about that in a moment.
Inside the device is a single PCB, which has a cutout in the middle for a pair of AAA cells. A Raspberry Pi 2350 drives the device’s functions, supported by various components which [Sam] identifies, although he mostly looks at everything from the perspective of a mechanical engineer as he critiques the design. It’s a clean-looking, intentionally low-fi design that belies how complex the device really is. The multi-function, chunky, spring-loaded side lever is of particular interest. It has three sensors: two switches and a potentiometer. One switch detects when the lever is at rest, or depressed by any amount at all. The potentiometer mates with the pivot point of the lever, allowing the device to directly sense how far the lever is pushed. The last switch triggers when the lever is pushed all the way in. Together, it forms an intuitive input that combines powering on (the device wakes up from sleep mode as soon as the lever is pressed) with the ability to adjust effects in proportion with how far the lever is pressed, while also bottoming out with a distinct click that itself acts as an input signal. One other interesting bit is the light pipes that carry light from multiple indicator LEDs to the outside of the device. A textured surface acts as a diffuser and helps the lit surface look smooth, while a coating of silver paint prevents light bleed and (probably) maximizes light transmission through the plastic. Hot glue makes a pretty good light pipe material but if DIY light pipes end up in your next project, sanding the exit surface and giving the rest a coating of silver paint just might be worth a shot. TUESDAY EDITION: Our 2 meter repeater ent down yesterday, it looks like I have some work this morning. We have a backup repeater at the site if needed....the balloon is visiting Morocco today and points unknow, follow our latest balloon launch
Reading isn’t Rocket Science… But In This Case…While Hackaday’s bread and butter is, of course, hacks, we sometimes cover things that most of us are interested in that are probably out of reach for the typical hacker. Space, for example, is undeniably cool, even though your chances of putting yourself or even your own rover on the Moon aren’t very good at the moment (but, of course, give it time). If you are looking for something to put on your e-reader and you are also interested in space, save your money and get some downloadable books directly from NASA. There’s something for everyone on the site. The site has four main categories: aeronautics, Hubble, science, and NASA history. Aeronautics has two volumes of “NASA’s Contributions to Aeronautics,” a book on the X-15, and a book about aviation pressure suits. Want to know more about the giant wind tunnel at Langley? For the Hubble, you’ll find titles that have great images, of course, but also a book with an overview of the telescope or, if you prefer, about gravitational lensing. The science titles go really deep with books on black holes, Landsat, the Cassini mission, and the Spitzer telescope. If you prefer history, there’s everything from a history of near-Earth object research to lessons from the Columbia tragedy for engineers, managers, and leaders. We were also interested in the book “Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication.” The books are typically available in EPUB or PDF, and they are all free. Just what you need for your next plane trip or to round out your Calibre library. We do love free books, we just can’t get enough. MONDAY EDITION: Its time to follow our latest balloon launch!.....I understand the Windsor, Maine hamfest over the weekend was well attended and he wx was perfect..... An Early History of Space Stations: The Brick Moon Made RealA Moon Made of BricksIn 1869, Edward Everett Hale published The Brick Moon in The Atlantic Monthly. The moon in question wasn’t natural. Hale imagined building a 200-foot-diameter sphere made from bricks and putting it into orbit as a navigation aid. Sailors could sight it and use its known orbit to determine their longitude. There was only one small problem: the thing was accidentally launched with people aboard. That makes The Brick Moon generally regarded as not only the first fictional artificial satellite, but also the first fictional space station. Hale followed it in 1870 with Life on the Brick Moon, describing how the accidental colonists got along up there. Hale didn’t have rockets. He proposed flinging the thing into the sky with giant flywheels, but, then again, it was 1869, so we’re inclined to cut him some slack. As the 19th century turned into the 20th, however, people started doing the math. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is best remembered for putting rocket flight on a sound theoretical footing. The Russian schoolteacher wrote extensively about orbital flight and space habitation, envisioning people living in orbit long before anyone had demonstrated that a liquid-fueled rocket actually worked. His ideas included rotating habitats to provide artificial gravity. Hermann Oberth’s 1923 book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen — The Rocket into Planetary Space — Oberth went beyond fiction and seriously considered a permanently inhabited station. He envisioned it being periodically supplied by smaller rockets, serving as an observation and communications platform, and even acting as a jumping-off point for trips farther into space. He also suggested spinning the station to give the crew artificial gravity. Enter The Wheel But the space station that looks like the space station in your head probably comes from a different Hermann. Herman Potočnik was an Austro-Hungarian army officer and engineer who wrote under the name Hermann Noordung. In 1929, he published Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums, translated by NASA many years later as The Problem of Space Travel: The Rocket Motor. Noordung didn’t merely say, “We should have a space station.” He drew one. His station consisted of several components, but the memorable one was the Wohnrad — literally the habitation wheel. Living quarters occupied a rotating ring connected to a central hub. Rotation provided artificial gravity, while other portions of the complex could remain weightless. He considered power, communications, observing Earth, astronomy, docking, and the practical business of living in orbit. NASA calls his work one of the first detailed technical designs for a space station. If you have seen Wernher von Braun’s famous wheel station from the 1950s, you may notice something. Von Braun certainly knew Noordung’s work — he had cited it years earlier — and the family resemblance between Noordung’s 1929 Wohnrad and the wheel station that von Braun and Willy Ley presented to American readers in Collier’s in 1952 is hard to miss. The only place we have found the articles is the reprints in Horizons, by the AIAA (start with page 46). Whatever the exact family tree, von Braun was the man who put the wheel-shaped station into American popular culture. In 1952 he described a 250-foot-class rotating station in Collier’s, accompanied by some gorgeous Chesley Bonestell artwork. A few years later he took the idea to television with Walt Disney. If you’ve never seen these, they are worth your time. Disney’s 1955 Man in Space and Man and the Moon let von Braun explain a remarkably detailed vision of rockets, orbital stations, and trips to the Moon to a mass television audience. A generation of kids grew up expecting this stuff. What happened? Gravity, More Or LessThe attraction of the wheel is simple. You can’t really make gravity, at least not without bringing along a planet-sized lump of mass, but acceleration will do nicely. Stand on the inside of a rotating ring, and the floor keeps accelerating you toward the axis. In your rotating frame, it feels as though something is pushing you outward against the floor. The acceleration is a=ω2r where (r) is the radius and (ω) is the angular velocity. Sadly, the numbers explain part of the problem. If you want one Earth gravity at the floor, you need to either spin fast or have a large ring. For example, at 1 RPM the ring has to be 1.79 km in diameter. Speed up to 2 RPM, and you can get away with 447 meters. At 4 RPM, you are down to 112 meters. Seems like you could just keep going faster, but there’s a problem. Four RPM doesn’t sound very fast until you are inside the thing moving your head around. Humans can adapt to rotation, but increasing the speed makes Coriolis effects increasingly noticeable. Move your head, climb a ladder toward the hub, throw something, or even walk spinward instead of anti-spinward, and the results aren’t quite what your inner ear expects. NASA artificial-gravity studies have often used approximately four RPM as an important practical region for human tolerance, although this isn’t a hard physical limit and training matters. There’s also a gravity gradient. Your feet are farther from the axis than your head, so they weigh slightly more. Make the radius large enough, and you won’t notice. Make the station small enough, and things get strange quickly. So bigger is better except when it comes to cost, of course.  There is another oddity that movies sometimes get wrong. The outside circumference of the wheel is the floor. “Down” is away from the hub. Imagine a tire in space. You aren’t walking around on one of the flat sidewalls with the axle beside you. You are walking around the inside of the tread. So when a movie gives you a nice conventional room with a picture window on what looks like the outer wall, stop and think about where gravity ought to be pointing. Depending on the geometry, that window would probably be underfoot. Stanley Kubrick got this wonderfully right in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both Space Station V and the rotating centrifuge aboard Discovery make “down” follow the rotation. The famous jogging sequence works precisely because the circular wall of the set becomes the floor as the camera watches. Next TimeNext time, I’ll look at early attempts to make a space station ranging from TASSEL, MTSS, and MARS to real Soviet and U.S. stations that had varying degrees of success. Spoiler alert: none of them are going to rotate for gravity. Of course, people didn’t just imagine space stations. They also imagined moon bases, both fictional and actual.
WEEKEND EDITION: Windsor, Maine hamfest today.......I have a Samlex SEC1223 switching power supply rate at 23 amps at 12vdc. It started switching off my FT710 while tuning up on cw at 100 watts. I assume I was drawing 22 amps or so according to the radio specs. I looked online to see what problems that power supply had and found the most common problem was the three 2200uf electrolytics....I checked and sure enough they were beginning to swell up. I went to Mouser and Digikey for parts and found them cheap enough but the shipping cost was crazy. I looked on eBay and found the same thing for $9.00 shipped saving me over $10! So the order is placed and we will see how it turns out... Helioclock Review: An In-Depth Look at a Well-Crafted Situational Awareness DisplayBy Cale Mooth (K4HCK) Amateur Radio Daily Anthony (KA9NWM), the creator of Helioclock, was kind enough to send along the Live USB Stick version of Helioclock for me to review. I've been evaluating Helioclock in my shack and home office over the last two weeks. There has been a deluge of ham radio focused, situational awareness "dashboards" that have entered the market over the past several months. Some are free and some cost hundreds of dollars. I've been a HamClock user for many years, and full disclosure, I've contributed code to the Open Ham Clock Backend project to help keep HamClock running. I've also been a regular user of Open Ham Clock since it was released earlier this year. There are many others including DXLook, Ham Radio dashboard, HamDash, 73QRZ, HAM-HQ, and on and on. Most aren't great. A few are very good. Until recently, there were only two main players in the situational awareness dashboard space and that was Geochron and HamClock. Geochron is the gold standard, exquisitely crafted (and very pricey), while HamClock provides similar information in a more utilitarian package at the low price of free. Where does Helioclock fit on the spectrum? A beautiful and well-designed display piece that gives Geochron a run for both its price and design. Setting up and customizing HelioclockFor this review I ran Helioclock on my old gaming rig with 16GB of RAM and a graphics card capable of pushing the full 4K experience to a 55 inch 4K television. Helioclock's minimum specs support a Raspberry Pi 4, so it should be quite capable on a range of hardware. Helioclock was easy to set up using the Live USB Stick. I plugged it into my rig, pointed the BIOS at the USB stick, and everything just worked. Without a single click or press of a key, a default version of Helioclock starts up, ready to be customized. I tend to blindly click around in these initial states simply exploring and trying to figure things out for myself. Initial customization steps aren't incredibly intuitive so I would recommend at least glancing at the documentation and getting some queues from the keyboard shortcuts section. Muscle memory sets in quickly, but then you're presented with a new challenge: The sheer amount of potential information and widgets to display. I won't list every data point that Helioclock provides, but if you can imagine it, it's probably there. I'll call out a few that are unique or presented in a unique way:
After using Helioclock for a few days it becomes clear that there are two main user types that this device is catering to. Hams, and non-hams that may be interested in weather, planetary events, news, and astronomy. Helioclock provides a pulse on all of these things. The weather focus makes sense considering the author's background as a meteorologist and producer of weather graphics and systems for broadcast television. I'm rarely on the air with my ham activities. (Too much time spent sifting through content on the internet for my weekly amateur radio newsletter.) As a result, I gravitated more toward the weather and planetary event aspect of Helioclock, eventually turning off most of the ham radio related information. (All the ham info is there. DX spots, PSKreporter integration, WSJT-X integration, POTA, SOTA, satellites, and more.) The result is a beautiful world map with plenty of eye candy, from lightning strikes to aurora, tropical storms, and a news crawl of my favorite news sites. (You can import any news source with an RSS feed.) At a glance from across the room, Helioclock feels polished, looks professional, and is quite visually interesting. It's a wonderful addition to a techie space such as a ham shack, home office, or even a corporate environment. It looks like an interface you might find in a sci-fi movie, and absolutely worth the $40 to get started. Let's talk designI was a designer in a previous career (including designing graphics for broadcast television!) and to this day I can't avoid looking at everything with a designer's eye. I notice every little detail and many times I wish I didn't. Most readers of this section won't notice or care about what I'm pointing out. For the slim percentage of you that do, it's not a deal-breaker. There are some picky issues such as the satellite imagery not spanning the full map (due to NOAA sats not covering the poles) and the lack of smooth scrolling of the news feed. (This can probably be fixed with some fancy CSS hacks.) The overall style is very "high-tech," even movie UI-esque, but it also looks like a lot of the AI generated web applications out there in terms of color and typographic choices. This one is better than most, but if that style knocks you over every time you see it, be prepared. To be fair, in this context, that style can work really well. The only major design issue I struggle with is whether Helioclock should be viewed from across the room, or up close on a desk. I don't think Helioclock has figured that out quite yet. Maybe the intent is both. For example, sitting at my workstation, Helioclock is three feet away on a 55 inch 4K TV. The map looks great and is readable. I can pick out every state and country, timezones, POTA spots, etc. What I can't read is most of the information in the panels. The typography is set very small. The information panels, including the clocks, are completely illegible across the room. (Sizing can be adjusted by reducing the resolution to 1080 or simply hitting control+plus on the keyboard.) Conversely, standing next to the TV, I can read everything, to the point where I have to physically move my head to take everything in. I'd be very curious to try Helioclock on a small monitor next to my desk and see if that might be a better experience for me since I'm interested in the information within the panels. If the goal is eye candy across the room, none of this really applies. Helioclock vs. HamClock vs. GeochronThere's really no comparison between Helioclock and HamClock other than they present a lot of the same data points. HamClock feels dated and archaic next to Helioclock's modern design and high resolution maps. It's 1996 vs. 2036. The most interesting comparison in my view is Helioclock vs. Geochron. Helioclock is very much a contender with the Geochron offering, especially in terms of visual presentation and available data layers. Helioclock provides a very similar experience at $500 less and no recurring subscription for additional data layers. If I were Geochron, I'd be watching Helioclock closely, especially with regard to Atlas. APRS Connect: A Messaging-First APRS Client for Android, Free Over APRS-ISAPRS Connect is a new APRS client for Android, built around conversations rather than a packet console. It is free to install and use over APRS-IS. APRS Connect Pro, a subscription after a 7-day free trial, adds radio connections, offline map downloads, the radar layer, track export, extra beacon profiles and capture replay. An iOS version is in progress. Most of what answers on APRS is a bot that expects exact wording. APRS Connect keeps a directory of 22 of them and gives each a guided screen instead of a command to memorize: WXBOT and WXNOW weather, the REPEAT repeater finder, WHO-IS lookup, the SMS, email, Winlink and WhatsApp gateways, the QRX missed-message mailbox, APSPOT and APRS2SOTA self-spotting, and ANSRVR group nets. The exact packet each button will send can be shown before it goes out, and you can always type a command by hand instead. #APRSThursday and other ANSRVR groups appear as a single net room rather than a thread per stranger, and APRS OTA ops can be hosted and chased from one screen. Messages are kept as one thread per station, with delivery state on every message and automatic retries. All of this is in the free app. With Pro, the app connects to KISS TNCs over Bluetooth Classic, Bluetooth LE, USB serial, or TCP, or to a radio’s speaker and mic through a built-in AFSK 1200 audio modem with VOX or wired PTT. Several links can run at once as named channels, alongside APRS-IS, and every received frame is tagged with the link that carried it. The map is a vector basemap rendered on the phone. Every tile you view is cached and redraws with no connection; whole regions download ahead of a trip with Pro. Every frame heard is stored and decoded field by field in the packet log, which can be filtered and exported as a capture file. More at https://aprsconnect.com, with what is free and what Pro adds at https://aprsconnect.com/docs/free-and-pro and the full feature list at https://aprsconnect.com/features. Google Play: https://aprsconnect.com/get/89x5bv. Source: APRS Connect Fire Prevention Week Special Event Highlights Fire SafetyThis year, Fire Prevention Week will be from Sunday October 4th through Saturday October 10th. In Ontario we will be using special event call sign VE3FIRE, operating as a Wild Card station, and in the US there will be stations using the call signs N0F through N9F along with KF2IRE, another Wild Card station. All twelve stations are working to highlight fire safety regarding the charging of lithium-ion batteries during Fire Prevention Week. This event is not a contest. As we make contact with hams worldwide, this is more of a public service event where we will be giving tips to our contacts about the possible hazards inherent in overcharging lithium-ion batteries and tips on how to use and charge these batteries safely. While this event is not a contest, a downloadable printed certificate will be available for those who work ten or more of the twelve stations. More about getting the certificate is available on the hamfire.com information site and QSL information is available on the VE3FIRE QRZ page. THURSDAY EDITION: 85 and balmy out today, another day on the island.... Activate All RI POTA EventActivate All RI aims to get all 61 of Rhode Island POTA parks on the air September 11–13. Think of it as a POTA take on a state QSO party: get a bunch of us out operating and give everyone else a weekend of Rhode Island parks to chase. Activating every park in a state over one weekend is one of those things we can actually tackle because we’re so tiny. Might as well put that to good use! We start at 0600 EDT Friday September 11th and end 1800 EDT September 13th. For hunters, it’s a chance to fill in missing parks toward Worked All RI, or just chase a few of us from home or park-to-park. The website has an activation schedule, live RI spots, and a tool that lets hunters import their POTA hunted-parks history and get a schedule for just the parks they still need. Watch Soldering Up Close and From Any Angle, in VRA manual skill like soldering is so much easier to learn and grasp when one can watch it in action, and there’s a brand new way to do that using virtual reality (VR). It isn’t just a series of 3D videos shot at someone’s workbench, either.  PCB Hand-Soldering Basics is a series of thirteen videos that demonstrate soldering using Gaussian splats, a method of displaying 3D content that allows the viewer to freely look at things from any angle. Gaussian splats aren’t new, but what makes this different is the sheer level of detail and the fact that it’s focused on handheld tool use rather than displaying a famous location, landmark, or something similarly “big”. Throughout the videos fine detail on the iron, parts, and the PCB itself remain visible from any angle and even from close up. Here’s a short video captured from within a VR headset that is probably the next best thing to seeing it yourself. An educational production, it was was made in cooperation with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London. A few more details are in a LinkedIn post by [Tanmay Lad], who was part of the team involved in the production. The goal is to offer a unique, front-row seat to hand soldering with the ability to zoom in or look at it in 3D from any angle. Not familiar with Gaussian splats? We’ve previously covered a great overview. They look great and are computationally cheap to render, and being able to get up close and see such detail is not really something one expects. Blog – Hackaday Read More Using Starlink’s Satellites to Study Earth’s Upper Atmosphere Aside from global access to cat videos, the presence of thousands of Starlink broadband internet access satellites in LEO has a very pleasant side effect for atmospheric researchers. Starlink publicly publishes near-real-time ephemeris data on its individual satellites. From this data you can deduce many details about the atmosphere at that altitude, including its density at specific altitudes at specific times, information which otherwise would be very hard to gather. Recently, this allowed [Mamoru Yamamoto] to determine the density of the thermosphere using tomography. In a similar 2025 paper by [Zhuoliang Ou] et al. as published in Remote Sensing, this same data source was used to investigate details of the thermosphere. With Starlink publishing this data since 2021, this provides an invaluable dataset for studying this outermost part of the atmosphere. Commencing just before the generally recognized transition into ‘space’ at 100 km altitude and below the Earth’s exosphere, the thermosphere‘s thickness fluctuates due to factors like solar irradiation and, with it, the exact altitude at which the exosphere begins. Generally, though, it is well above 600 km altitude. This places Starlink satellites as well as both active space stations (ISS and Tiangong) in the thermosphere. [Zuholiang Ou] et al. established that the Starlink data matches well with that from a dedicated research satellite like SWARM-B, thus making it a useful source of scientific data. The innovation in [Yamamoto-san]’s paper is that instead of using the typical two-line element (TLE) set, a more comprehensive tomographic approach was used, which essentially uses more data for a larger reconstruction, with the resolution claimed to be about on par with that of the SWARM satellites. This implies that although these Starlink satellites were never designed to be more than data relays, they may have accidentally become the biggest development in thermospheric research in a long time. Of course, you can’t please everyone. Blog – Hackaday Read More WEDNESDAY EDITION: Microwave oven installed without too much swearing, now to take the old one apart...Indian Scientists Use Treated Human Waste To Make Concrete 42% Stronger.... HAARP Notice of TransmissionThe following is a message from the HAARP Program Office: The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) will be conducting a research campaign September 8 – 11 UTC, with operating times specified in the table below. Operating frequencies will vary, but all HAARP transmissions will be between 2.8 MHz and 10 MHz. Actual transmit days and times are highly variable based on real-time ionospheric and/or geomagnetic conditions. All information is subject to change. Note that, because the experiments generally require real-time schedule and frequency adjustments based on ionospheric conditions, no frequencies are specified in the table below. The included transmission notice supplement contains information on the frequencies HAARP is authorized to transmit. HAARP transmissions will only occur on our authorized frequencies. There are no specific data collection requests by investigators, but reception reports are appreciated and may be submitted to our online form at https://haarp.gi.alaska.edu/form/reception-reports. Transmission ScheduleSeptember 8 September 9 September 10 September 11 For updates on ionospheric conditions in Gakona, please consult ionograms from the HAARP Diagnostic Suite: https://haarp.gi.alaska.edu/diagnostic-suite Resources for Reading IonogramsUnderstanding HF Propagation and Reading Ionograms from Bootstrap Workbench: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTFKNCo3Cl8 Reading Your Ionogram-Keeping It Simple from John (VE6EY): https://play.fallows.ca/wp/radio/shortwave-radio/reading-your-ionogram-keeping-it-simple/ NASA Tests Featherweight Radar Antenna for SkyFall Mars HelicoptersAfter the little Mars helicopter Ingenuity blew everyone away with its performance, it was clear that a future Mars mission should involve more helicopters like it, with even more capabilities. The main proposal here is NASA’s SkyFall mission which would involve three autonomous helicopters, capable of searching for resources like water. To this end they would need a ground-penetrating radar system, with the antenna somehow folding away for landings, an idea that JPL is currently testing. The SkyFall mission is currently penciled in to commence in 2028, following which it will be deployed from the Space Reactor-1 fission reactor-powered spacecraft based around elements of the now discarded Lunar Gateway space station. This obviously poses some uncertainties around when and if this mission will actually take place, but that doesn’t prevent JPL engineers from solving issues with these SkyFall helicopters. As the antenna for the ground-penetrating radar extends beyond the landing legs, it was crucial that said antenna was flexible enough to simply fold in on itself like fabric. For this they used an existing flexible antenna design called Vivaldi, which was downscaled for the helicopters and subsequently tested to see how many simulated Mars landings it would be able to resist, as well as the effect of the cold nights and warm days. We’re looking forward to seeing these SkyFall helicopters zip over the Martian surface. Maybe they can even swing by Ingenuity while they’re in the neighborhood. TUESDAY EDITION: Welcome back Mike-XW....My microwave over the oven went south last week. The new one arrived yesterday on Labor Day, surprising, so I pulled out the old one and today I have a little project. Install the new hanger and drill some new holes to hang it. The old hanger and holes for placement are different of course! I think I will take the old one apart and grab the transformer and see what trouble I can get into! Researchers Hack an Airline AnalogModern airliners are rather complicated feats of engineering. Innumerable safety-critical components are connected with tens of miles of wiring, complex digital buses, and dozens (perhaps hundreds) of computers. But, as hackers, we know that any computer can be hacked and, of course, aircraft avionics are no different. Modern aircraft typically use the ARINC 429 protocol. This differs from many protocols we see where multiple transmitters are allowed. ARINC 429 has a single transmission source. This makes a transmission-override attack hypothetically difficult, as an attacker was thought to need to physically replace a legitimate transmitter (like a flight management computer), a rather daunting task. However, the ARINC 429 transmitters sit behind a pair of 37.5 ohm resistors, so by transmitting on the same line, an attack device can simply override the legitimate transmitter’s power.
With this methodology, the researchers created a proof of concept demonstration using a GE 2907A4 flight management computer (FMC), a GE 577F1 multipurpose control and display unit (MCDU), and an Integrated Flight Systems Accessory Unit (IFSAU). These are all components commonly used on the ever-popular Boeing 737, wired together as would be standard on that aircraft. The FMC communicates over ARINC 429 with the pilot’s MCDU, which is used to program the autopilot and perform takeoff calculations (among other things). After analyzing the protocol between the FMC and MCDU, they were able to freeze the pilot’s display, overwrite it, or even change values received and displayed. With this methodology, three attacks were proposed. Most dramatically, the autopilot could be reprogrammed, bringing the aircraft to a new waypoint. However, it was also possible to modify the weight and balance information in the FMC. These values are critical for flight safety, and even subtle miscalculations could spell disaster. However, it’s worth noting the pilots do retain full control of the aircraft, especially on the fly-by-cable 737. Still, any number of these attacks could lead to unsafe conditions aboard an aircraft. However, this is all theoretical. Can it actually be pulled off in the real world? Unfortunately, yes. Though the obvious attack vector would be tapping into wires, this proves challenging by nature of individual wires being difficult to find in such large bundles, and ARINC 492’s operation probes to look for misbehaving devices. Rather, the researcher found an open maintenance port in the 737’s electronics bay with access to ARINC 429. They designed a tiny device capable of tapping into the port, which they believe can be inserted in 30 to 60 seconds by someone on the ground without even needing a ladder. Access to an aircraft is unfortunately poorly restricted, and determining exactly where the device came from would be extremely difficult. The device itself is a tiny ESP32 board that plugs into the data port. Operation is over WiFi. Though the paper assumes the ever-troubled 737 is the target, nothing stops this from working on other aircraft. Moreover, by retaining physical controls, the 737 may have ended up being safer than some other aircraft.
WEEKEND EDITION: I heard from Mike- XW and he has made it to Ohio and enjoying the start of his cross-country journey with his xyl in the new camper . Have fun Mike, we miss you on the air.... Chuck N1UC (83), former manager of HRO in Salem, NH is a SK. RIP.....Does anyone have a photo of Chuck?
Good
afternoon
Radio Active
Cape Ann!
Make sure to
get K1C into
your ham
alert as my
good friends
James NV1U,
Max N4ML,
Joshua
AF5ID, and
Adam AA1N
activate an
ATNO (POTA)
in Maine
(US-0338)
Cross Island
Wildlife
Refuge
starting
TOMORROW 5th
September at
1000Z -
2300Z. It's
also an IOTA
designation
NA-055 Maine
State East
Group.
https://www.qrz.com/db/K1C
https://discord.com/.../1371507881949.../1544520710020534292
Need
to
add
some
Asian
countries
to
your
DX
list?
All
Asian
DX
Contest,
Phone
Fri
Sep
4,
8:00
PM
to
Sun
Sep
6,
8:00
PM
Mode:
Phone
Bands:
160,
80,
40,
20,
15,
10m
Exchange:
RS +
2-digit
age
Amateur
Radio Newsline
Report
Kenwood TM-D750A Digital Triband Mobile Transceiver, the ultimate triband transceiver designed to elevate your mobile communication experience. These state-of-the-art transceivers operate across the 2m, 1.25m, and 70cm Amateur bands, providing unmatched features and functionality. Price $1199 estimate Software Fix Keeps Veritium HFClock RunningUsers of the Veritium HFClock now have a fix available to keep their HamClock based device functional. N2TBN and AI4Y have teamed up to provide detailed, step-by-step directions aimed at getting Veritium HFClocks working again. The procedure requires removing the rear panel and flashing the device's firmware. Once the new firmware is applied, users will run through a few brief setup steps and HFClock will continue to operate. HFClock owners can download PDF instructions that describe how to fix their device. THURSDAY EDITION: Much needed rain all night and continuing this morning....Flatheads were a good engine in their day.....contest calender is handy Special Event Coming UpThe Yavapai Amateur Radio Club (YARC) of Prescott, AZ, will operate a special event station November 17, 2026, in celebration of the NRA’s 155th birthday. The amateur radio station will operate from the Gunsite Academy’s 3,000-acre campus north of Prescott, AZ. The special event call sign will be K7NRA, an FCC-licensed amateur radio station. It will conduct operations on the following amateur frequencies from 0800 MST to 1700 MST: 7.250, 14.040, 14.250 and 21.335 MHz. A unique NRA/Gunsite certificate (acknowledgment of communications) will be available to those stations contacted during the event. All amateur stations, especially those operated by NRA members and Gunsite alumni, are urged to participate. More information can be found at YARC’s Web site: http://www.w7yrc.org/nrabirthday/ thanks Buzz- K7GST Scanning for Lifesigns with ESP32 and Raspberry Pi
It’s a sci-fi trope that you can ‘scan for life signs’ and detect if there are humans — or suspiciously human-shaped aliens — present, but in real life it’s harder than that. [The Masked Bear]’s wifisense-pi project isn’t really scanning for signs of life, either, unless you happen to consider breathing a sign of life. Even then, it’s not detecting breathing per se, but the subtle motion that goes with it: it’s a very sensitive motion detector that relies on the fact that we fleshy bags of goo disturb WiFi signals with our presence, and motion alters those disturbances. The device uses an ESP32-S3 to measure the radio channel 100 times per second, while a Raspberry Pi 4 provides the signal processing muscle. It can detect the slightest motions, and even determine the presence of a perfectly still human by their breathing, though you can hide your presence for as long as you can hold your breath. A single sensor, no matter how sensitive, cannot give position information, and while multiple humans will distort WiFi more than a single one, [The Masked Bear] reports you cannot reliably extract that signal. So this project answers the question: “are there humans in this room?” Or, even more likely, “are there any large breathing animals in this room?” We can’t imagine a 50 kg Mastiff looking any different to this sensor than an equivalent mass of quivering human flesh. Before you dismiss this as just another motion sensor, keep in mind that it is sniffing the signals already present on the 2.4 GHz band, and, like the WiFi signals themselves, it can work through walls. So we think it’s pretty nifty. Of course, there are many other ways to detect humans, from machine-learning cameras to millimeter-wave sensors to a simple PIR. This isn’t the first project we’ve seen that uses WiFi like this. It isn’t even the first with an ESP32, but it’s an interesting implementation worth checking out. Blog – Hackaday Read More Entrepreneur and Amateur Radio Operator Invests in the Next Generation of Problem SolversARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio® announced today a historic and transformational $1 million gift from Dr. James M. Galm, W8WTS. An entrepreneur and amateur radio operator who spent his career solving complex energy and engineering challenges, Galm is now investing in the next generation of problem solvers through his support of ARRL. The gift will directly support ARRL programs and activities, including the ARRL STEM education initiative within the Education and Technology Program, and ARRL’s work defending access to amateur radio spectrum through the Spectrum Defense Fund. He didn’t stop there, however. Dr. Galm expressed how important ARRL is to the future of amateur radio by designating a significant portion of his gift as unrestricted support to the ARRL Diamond Club, which supports ARRL’s general fund, and the Second Century Fund, ARRL’s unrestricted endowment fund, which will be invested and support ARRL operations in perpetuity. James M. Galm, Ph.D., W8WTS, is from Chardon, Ohio and is a 50-year ARRL member, a member of the ARRL Legacy Circle, and an accomplished amateur radio contester. He frequently operates from PJ2T and has served as President and Secretary/Treasurer of the Caribbean Contesting Consortium, PJ2T. He also operates a popular and reliable DX Cluster at dxc.w8wts.net with both ARC 6 and CC Cluster nodes. With his transformational gift, Dr. Galm will be inducted into the ARRL Maxim Society at the Millennium Class. He joins Margaret Valentine at this extremely generous level of giving. Valentine, along with her late husband Michael Valentine, W8MM (SK), made the first pledge of $1 million to ARRL during the Second Century Campaign. First licensed as WN8WTS in 1975, Dr. Galm has more than 40 years of experience in engineering, research, manufacturing and product development. He holds nine patents and has published many scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals. In 2001, Galm co-founded LayerZero Power Systems, Inc., which grew to become the world leader in ultra-reliable AC power management equipment for mission-critical applications, including AI and machine learning, hyperscale computing data centers, semiconductor manufacturing, and financial transaction processing. The two owners sold a majority interest in LayerZero to a global private equity firm in 2025. Dr. Galm holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics from Case Western Reserve University. He is a Professional Engineer licensed to practice in Ohio. Now retired, Dr. Galm serves on boards of directors for LayerZero and Type One Energy. Galm's gift represents a significant investment in ARRL's mission by supporting initiatives that help develop students as innovators, protecting the future of amateur radio spectrum, and strengthening the organization for generations to come. WEDNESDAY EDITION: The club is open for business this morning from 10-noon, stop by if you are in the area...Planting crops in fields of solar panels is more efficient, protects the plants and helps keep workers cool, study finds Another Radio on a Chip DesignIt used to be a rite of passage to build some sort of AM radio receiver. Many people started with a crystal radio, of course, but you’d graduate to maybe a TRF or superhet design. FM radio projects were not as common, because demodulating an FM signal was harder, as was making things work in the 100 MHz range. These days, though, you can get everything on a chip like the TEA5767, and [turtushig22-blip] has an open design that uses that device on a breakout board, a display, a knob, and an external amplifier. An ESP-32 pulls it together. You can see two videos about the project below. Unlike older FM radio designs, the TEA5767 doesn’t require any adjustments. RF goes in, and stereo audio goes out. You can control the device through I2C or a 3-wire serial interface. Software-wise, you send a five-byte control word and the chip sends back five status bytes. You don’t set the frequency directly, but provide a PLL divisor. For example, with a 32 kHz reference crystal, setting 100.1 MHz would be: 4*(100.1 MHz + 0.225 MHz)/0.032768 MHz = (about) 12247. The radio uses a 225 kHz IF and can autonomously seek stations. You can select whether the search is up or down, and the minimum acceptable signal strength. One unusual feature: the TEA5767 can select the positive or negative mixer output, which might be useful for image rejection in some cases. The output is purely analog, and there’s no RDS/RBDS decoder. So don’t expect station information on the OLED display. Still, a nice, easy FM radio build. Naturally, not the first TEA5767 build that we’ve seen. Or even the second. Call Sign WB4MZ0 (Numeral Zero)By Rob Rosenberger (K4HST) The FCC erroneously issued call sign "WB4MZ0" (numeral zero) on December 5, 1994 to the Wedixie Amateur Radio Club in Marietta, Georgia. Somebody typed it wrong into the FCC's database. The club's call sign trustee, David Budner WA4PUB, perhaps didn't notice it? The club never brought it up to the FCC. Four-and-a-half years went by. The FCC's database continued to grow. And WB4MZ0 remained an active call sign! In mid-1999, the FCC prepared to elevate its ULS database as the "system of record" for all call signs. That's when somebody (perhaps a database administrator?) discovered the error. The FCC researched it and they discovered "WB4MZO" (letter) had not yet been assigned. On July 21, 1999 they canceled WB4MZ0 and issued WB4MZO to the club. Twenty-six days later, on August 16, 1999, the FCC declared its ULS database the "system of record." Its underlying software now handles all call signs. No one manually types an amateur call sign. If you download the ULS files, you'll see five relational database records for WB4MZ0. And you'll see nine relational database records for WB4MZO. Wedixie Amateur Radio Club disbanded and canceled its call sign on February 22, 2024. The "O" (letter) call sign became available for vanity assignment on February 23, 2026. If you know any elmers in Marietta, ask them for more details about it! TUESDAY EDITION: Let it rain, we are parched on the island.... Special Event Station CS5AIRA/M to Activate São Jacinto Military AreaThe following is a message from Association International Radio Amateur (AIRA): AIRA - Special Activation, São Jacinto Military Area, Infantry Regiment No. 10. On September 12, 2026, from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, AIRA will promote the activation of Infantry Regiment No. 10, located in Aveiro. We invite amateur radio operators and enthusiasts to participate in this special activity. The call sign will be CS5AIRA/M. The activity will take place on the 20 and 40-meter bands, VHF, and UHF, including connections through the LART Lusophone Network, as well as on the DMR Digital Network via Talkgroup 268 and Talkgroup 91 on the BrandMeister platform. More information is available on the AIRA website.
My old 1962 Chevy II had the first trunked radio system.This is a summary of an old Ecomm Radio Car operating in Los Angeles, CA. The emergency activations took place under an umbrella organization called the Emergency Communications Corp, a California Non-Profit corporation and it had operating agreements with several local cities: City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Chapter of the American National Red Cross, etc. The equipment I used was to complement the ECC Communications Van. See "The ECC Story", https://www.eham.net/article/47820 Most all communications were done on SERS Commercial channels, but the old Gonset Communicator was still used for LA City Civil Defense communications. "LA City Civil Defense in the 1960's" https://www.eham.net/article/47821 My ‘Trunk Radios’ were: 47.66 MHz, Motorola 80D, 30W, LA City Command Channel, (All city department Chiefs were on this frequency). The Base station was on Mt. Hollywood, and it was controlled 24/7 by an LAPD Dispatcher.
This was the comm link for making assignments, who goes where and when. Service messages: like "was that a dozen sandwiches or 12 dozen sandwiches? (There was a big mix up like that once before). Pacific Telephone System ZM/ZY, Motorola 140D, 60W, w/WE 106A decoder ZM-76244, KG6685. We took over the ZM channel during the Baldwin Hills Dam break,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_Hills_Dam_disaster
using it for car to
car and car to Red
Cross HQ's all at
the same time. Pacific Telephone System YJ/YR, Motorola 80D, 30W, w/WE 106A YJ-54322, KG6685(It was only $7.70 per month for a mobile phone, and you got 30 minutes free airtime).
The W6AQY repeater was only a few miles from the epicenter of the Sylmar/San Fernando Earthquake but was not damaged. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_San_Fernando_earthquake It was not used for this event because we were using the 47.42MHz Red Cross frequency. If I keyed 2 - 140D's on the air at the same time at a stop sign my engine would die or the fan belt would rip off. I carried extra fan belts. Collins KWM2A Transceiver. This radio had an 'Unbalance' knob that allowed 10/11 Meter AM operation and also added a 10 dB down pilot tone for the Pacific Telephone HF Ship to Shore system (WG9846). It could cover (4 to 26 MHz) and provide communications over the Mojave Desert and Edwards AFB Area. It was only $15 per minute!
RCA FM Receiver
for 159 MHz, KMA787.
MONDAY EDITION: A beautiful start to the day. I am going to the club to solder up a new cable to connect the HG-10 vfo to the Heath DX60 and see how the transmitter works. Another member is going to pick it up on Wednesday and recap the transmitter and make a few adjustments....
We found an old childhood friend in a closet: a Radio Shack 200-in-1 electronic kit. We put it through its paces and made a few repairs along the way. As you might expect, the batteries had long ago leaked out their magic juice. If you missed these, they were a host of real electronic components with springs connected to the leads. To make a circuit, you bend the spring over, insert a wire, and let go of the spring. By changing the wiring, you could make radios, alarms, computer circuits, and more There were dozens of these kits, some more capable than others. This was a particularly nice one with a loaded front panel and several exotic components. In the end, they made a code practice oscillator, and it worked. While you can’t find kits exactly like these anymore, you can make your own. Or try Snap Circuits and print your own modules. You take solderless breadboards for granted today, but they haven’t always been around or affordable. HAMS YOU MIGHT KNOW- ALIVE AND SK K1TP-
Jon....Editor of As The World
Turns....
SILENT KEYS
Silent Key:
N1UC- Chuck- Was
the former
manager of HRO
in Salem, NH
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