ARRL Logo

What came first, the American Radio Relay League ARRL logo or the rock group "Arcade Fire" logo?

http://www.youtube.com/ArcadeFireVEVO

http://www.arrl.org/

I'm not saying... I'm just saying. Maybe those Canadian rockers are also ham radio operators??
73,
NG9D

Yellow Radios

Tucson, Arizona has a nice aerospace museum. While visiting, I saw this vibrant, yellow military emergency radio designed to be used by downed pilots. It was designed for Morse code operation, and had a big button labeled "KEY".


There was also a kite antenna on display. The kite was intended to support the emergency radio's antenna while the downed pilot floated in a life-raft.


Imagine bobbing around in the open sea after having been shot down... cranking the hand generator and keying - dididit dahdahdah dididit - hoping that your buddies would hear and be able to rescue you!

Reminds me of a good book: "FLYBOYS", written by James Bradley. The story of six
WW2 carrier pilots downed in the Pacific. Unbelievable stories. Anyway, these are my yellow radios. They may be more likely to send or receive a dahdahdididit dididitdahdah (73 which means "BEST REGARDS") than an S0S.









dahdit dahdahdit dahdahdahdahdit dahdidit (NG9D)

Bike Sold

After thousands of miles of two-wheel motoring fun I sold the bike. In those thousands of miles on various bikes I was involved in two road accidents: an approaching car turned left into my path on highway and in another case I was struck from behind while stopped at a traffic light. In both cases a helmet lessened the deceleration of my brain impacting the pavement.



Biking is such fun, but on the road, my personal experience suggests that even a safe rider is at the mercy of other drivers. Those two drivers (that easily could have killed me) were just normal folks who "didn't see" me. There are plenty more unsafe drivers who are careless, clueless, impatient, distracted or impaired. Try not to be one. I will too.

Kit Building

Kit building is a fun aspect of ham radio. And even if you don't have your amateur radio license yet, you can build a shortwave receiver and listen to hams and foreign radio broadcasts.

Here are a few of the radios I have built. The one in the upper right is a regenerative type shortwave receiver. Here is what that international broadcast sounds like on that radio:

Fun Antenna Project

A simple loop antenna, tuned with a variable capacitor, makes a fun project that improves the performance of AM broadcast radios. You can experiment with the number of turns and size of capacitor to find various resonant frequencies. Other types of variable capacitors and construction techniques are of course possible. There is no need to use a hula-hoop and no need to make the loop circular -- smaller square loops with various numbers of windings also work great! Have fun, de NG9D . .