World Wide Check-In on Talk Group 91

Join the World Wide Check-In every Saturday at 16:00 UTC on Talk Group 91 via the Brandmeister Network. Started in 2015 by Dick K6SUU, the net has grown with volunteer Net Controllers ensuring smooth operations. Check in securely with a robust logging system. View log archives, upcoming nets, and schedule. Interested in becoming a Net Controller? Contact the admin team. Licensed Radio Operators can participate, while others can listen live on TG 91. Stay connected and join the global ham radio community with World Wide Check-In.

More Information - https://wiki.brandmeister.network/index.php/TalkGroup/91

New Technician Class Question Pool Released

The National Conference of Volunteer Examiner Coordinators (NCVEC) Question Pool Committee (QPC) released the revised 2026-2030 Technician Class (Element 2) question pool. It will be required for all exam sessions beginning 1st July 2026. The new pool includes 409 questions (27 new, 30 removed, and about 155 modified), compared to 412 in the prior pool. The pool also includes three diagrams used for some of the questions.

This updated question pool incorporates significant changes compared to the prior pool. The questions were checked for technical accuracy and relevance to current amateur radio practices, as well as for grammar, syntax, format, clarity, and for redundancy within and between the pools.

VECs and Volunteer Examiners must use test designs based on the new pool starting on 1st July 2026. Current ARRL VEC Technician Class exam booklets (2022 series) and computer-generated Technician Class exams created from the 2022 question pool are valid until 30th June 2026. After that, old versions should be destroyed.

ARRL will have new editions of Technician Class study materials, including The ARRL Ham Radio License Manual, Gordon West Technician Class License Prep book, and ARRL’s Tech Q&A, by May 2026.

NCVEC - https://ncvec.org/

Dan Romanchik No-Nonsense Study Guides - https://www.kb6nu.com/study-guides/

“Space Sailors” Seeking Download Help from Ham Radio Operators

A group of students at Cornell University is seeking participation from radio amateurs who are equipped with satellite stations for help in listening for signals from a retroreflective laser sail that is scheduled to be deployed later this week. The sail is currently attached to a 1U CubeSat that was launched early Tuesday 2nd December 2025, from the International Space Station, but will separate and become its own free-flying spacecraft equipped with four tiny “ChipSat” flight computers that will transmit telemetry data back to Earth.

This is the first flight of their ChipSats, and it is this data that the students seek help detecting, according to Ph.D. candidate Joshua Umansky-Castro, who has an amateur radio license, call sign KD2WTQ. The light sail’s ChipSats will be transmitting data using the LoRa® digital protocol on 437.400 MHz. The sail, stowed within the CubeSat, is expected be released a couple of days after deployment — tentatively this Thursday 4th December 2025 — and will likely function independently for no more than 48 hours due to the drag created by the sail.

Additional information, including LoRa parameters and links to a list of compatible receivers and the decoder file, may be found at alphacubesat.cornell.edu in the ChipSat Ground Station Guide (docx).

It is hoped that the ChipSat and light sail will become the trailblazer for future missions around the solar system, and one day to our closest stellar neighbour, Alpha Centauri.