If you like your amateur radio with a bit of a cardio workout attached, mark the calendar: the RaDAR Rally returns on Saturday 7th November 2026.

RaDAR — Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio — is exactly what it sounds like: a fast-paced, genuinely challenging outdoor activity where you set up a portable station, make five contacts, pack everything back down, and move to a new location — repeating that whole cycle as many times as you can within a four-hour window.

What does amateur radio have in common with one of America's most famous roads? Connection — plain and simple. Ham radio has always been about linking people together, and for 100 years, Route 66 has done much the same thing for motorists, connecting small towns, friends, and adventure along the open road.

To mark that centennial, 24 special event stations are on the air throughout the anniversary, running from Saturday 12th September through to Sunday 20th September.

Some anniversaries you mark on a calendar. This one, amateur radio operators mark on the air.

For the sixth year running, the Alabama Contest Group is putting K4A — call sign shorthand for "K4 America" — on the air for the 9/11 We Do Remember special event station. It's a simple idea with a lot of weight behind it: volunteer operators taking shifts across the airwaves, working stations, and giving hams everywhere a chance to share where they were and what they remember.

Twenty-five years. It genuinely doesn't feel that long since the towers fell, the Pentagon was struck, and the passengers of Flight 93 fought back over a field in Pennsylvania to stop a fourth attack. For a lot of us it still plays back like yesterday's news. For anyone licensed since, it's history worth hearing directly from those who lived through it.