John, Paul, George and Ringo are on the list. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms -- even Frank Zappa and Elvis (but not Madonna). Of course Asimov and Sagan made the cut, Mr Spock, too, but not Captain Kirk. And now ARRL -- more precisely, (31531) ARRL -- joins this prestigious company as one of more than 16,000 named minor planets in our solar system. A minor planet -- such as an asteroid --is...

The ARRL Board of Directors held its Second Meeting of 2010 July 16-17 in Windsor, Connecticut, under the chairmanship of President Kay Craigie, N3KN. International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) Secretary Rod Stafford, W6ROD, and Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) President Geoff Bawden, VE4BAW, were guests of the Board. At the two-day meeting, the Board considered a number of reports and acted on sev...

Sunspot activity increased again this week, but on Tuesday and Wednesday -- July 27-28 -- a stiff solar wind increased Earth?s geomagnetic activity, which is a negative for HF propagation. Sunspot numbers for July 22-28 were 39, 45, 41, 39, 39, 15 and 31, with a mean of 35.6. The 10.7 cm flux was 87.7, 86.4, 85.2, 85.2, 84.4, 82.6 and 85.3, with a mean of 85.3. The estimated planetary A indices...

By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
ARRL Contributing Editor

This week, Surfin? scours the Internet for yet another musical ham. 

Two weeks running, I have written here about hams I know who sing or sang for a living. In response, Paul Walcott, WD8H, e-mailed me that the late rock crooner Gene Pitney was a ham, too.

That was news to me! Gene Pitney was a Connecticut native, lived 30 miles up I-84 from me, att...

VHF/UHF weak-signal operators across North America are making the final tests on their stations in preparation for the ARRL UHF Contest, coming up the weekend of August 7-8. Most VHF+ weak-signal operation takes place on the two lowest bands of the VHF spectrum -- 6 and 2 meters; however, there is a lot of activity that takes place above 144 MHz in the UHF portion of the radio spectrum and beyo...