A couple of days ago, someone posted the article, “A novel way to hear weak CW signals” (CQ, January 2018) to the Long Island CW Club mailing list.

In the article, the author, Pete,, N8PR (SK) writes that you should set up your receiver to produce two tones 65 to 80 Hz apart to make copying weak CW signals more easily. The theory behind this is that the dissonance between the two tones makes copying a CW signal more copyable than just a single tone. I like this idea. I played around a little bit last night with this technique, and it did indeed seem to work better than using just a single tone.

I got this odd email from the FCC this morning:

Yesterday, one of the hams I follow on Twitter posted a link to FCC Public Notice DA-21-9, titled, “WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUREAU SEEKS INPUT ON EXPANDING THE NUMBER OF AMATEUR OPERATOR LICENSE VOLUNTEER EXAMINER COORDINATORS” (all caps theirs). The first paragraph concludes, “The Bureau seeks to determine whether the existing 14 VECs provide adequate support to volunteer examiners or whether additional VECs are needed.”

The ARRL 2021 Annual Board Meeting will be held Friday/Saturday, January 15-16, 2021. Today, I received the meeting agenda by email. (You can get the agendas, too, by logging into the ARRL website and going to https://www.arrl.org/Users/edit#!/edit-info-email_subscriptions.) I must say, though, that this is the least informative of any agendas that I’ve ever received.

I’ve owned an Edsyn DS 017 Soldapullt for probably as long as I’ve owned my Weller TC202 soldering station.

Edsyn claims that this is the original de-soldering soldering tool, and it very well could be. It works great, I’ve de-soldered many joints with it over the years.

After I replaced the cheap laptop I was using for logging and other shack type stuff with a refurb HP Elite desktop computer, I began using the laptop as an Arduino development system. Of course, the features that made it a pain to use for logging and running other ham apps, mostly being incredibly slow, made it kind of a pain for using to program Arduinos.

Well, a couple of months ago, I broke down and bought a Raspberry Pi 4 to use in the shack. I bought a “starter kit” that included a power supply, a case (with a fan), heatsinks that attach to the chips on the board, and an SD card. It was all pretty much plug and play.

I’ve been threatening to get on the satellites for years now. It’s just been one of those things that never percolated up to the top of my list. I finally bit the bullet, though, and actually made my first satellite contact Tuesday!

Several things finally motivated me to do this. One, I’ve been feeling like I’ve been in a rut. Not just with ham radio, but with life in general. I’m sure that I’m not the only one feeling this way. I felt like I needed to do something different to shake things up a bit.

After a delay caused by the covid-19 pandemic, the 2019 ARRL Annual Report has finally been published. As usual, it’s full of glowing statements about how great amateur radio is and what a fabulous job the ARRL is doing. As usual, I have a few comments of my own.

My first comment is about the cover (see right). I don’t know this guy, and honestly, he looks like someone I could be friends with, but I’m not sure that he’s the right person for the cover of the annual report. Perhaps a collage of different hams, like the one on page 2 (minus the group shot of ARRL staffers) would be more appropriate. The goal being to show the diversity of people in amateur radio and the wide range of activities that we participate in.

Is it time to put up that tower and beam? According to a NASA press release, it just might be. NASA and NOAA scientists say that Solar Cycle 25 has begun! During a media event on Tuesday, the scientists discussed their analysis and predictions about the new solar cycle – and how the new solar cycle compares to the last one the impact it will have.

I’ve written many blog posts about power supplies and electronic loads for AMETEK Programmable Power. This has been interesting to do, and I’ve learned a fair amount about power supplies and electronic loads. So much so, I’d really like to get an electronic load of my own. The only problem is that they’re still a bit out of my price range.