On 22nd February 2024, Girls in a Sacramento, California Girl Scout troop are scheduled for a contact with the ISS and the selected astronaut is Jasmin Moghbeli, KI5WSL. This 10-minute contact is being made as yet another direct contact, which distinguishes this from the many, many, many contacts that happen often in the ARISS programme and often utilise Telebridge and a patch. This is not only a direct contact but the girls were involved from the start.

The collaboration between the River City Amateur Radio Communications Society and the Girl Scouts led to the development of a six-session educational program focusing on Space, the International Space Station (ISS), and Amateur Radios. This initiative included hands-on activities such as building and using radios and viewing the sky with telescopes. They did NOT build the radios used in this contact but were involved heavily in the station’s planning.

To participate in the ARISS program, the Girl Scouts and RCARCS designed and submitted an equipment plan, showcasing their capability to execute the Ham radio contact. Jen Garland, the RCARCS club coordinator, emphasized the significance of this opportunity for young women to explore practical applications of radio frequency technologies.

The Case Amateur Radio Club, W8EDU, the club station at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, is asking for amateur radio operators to help with a research project cantered around the 8th April 2024, solar eclipse.

W8EDU club member Adam Goodman, W7OKE, said the project centres around studying the effects of the eclipse on propagation to better understand the recombination time of the ionosphere.

Less than one month after an Oklahoma FM tower was toppled to loot for copper wire and tubing, an Alabama station owner is reporting an even more shocking story – his entire 200-foot tower was stolen.

Brett Elmore, who owns WJLX in Jasper, posted news of the theft on social media.

The incident was discovered early in the morning by a landscaping crew tasked with cleaning the Walker County property in preparation for further work. Upon arrival, they found the tower site’s building vandalized and the towering structure completely missing, having had its guy wires cut and the entire frame removed from the premises.