Initially scheduled for July, the Northeast HamXposition, host of the 2020 ARRL New England Division Convention, was moved back to November because of the coronavirus pandemic. Now, the in-person event is off until next summer, although some activities will take place online this year. Renamed before the 2019 show, the Northeast HamXposition has succeeded the long-running annual Boxboro hamfest...

Bob Behnken, KE5GGX, was one of two NASA astronauts who made spaceflight history over the weekend. Behnken and Doug Hurley were the first astronauts since the 1970s to make a water landing, after their Crew Dragon capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday. On May 30, the pair made history as the first live crew to be launched into space in a commercial vehicle, for a stay on the Int...

ARRL Volunteer Monitors recognized 13 operators in 10 states with Good Operator letters during the second quarter of 2020. Among the operators recognized were CW and SSB operators on 20 and 40 meters, outstanding net operators on 2 meters (including a net control of the Central Indiana SKYWARN Net), and an operator on 40 meters who demonstrated exemplary courtesy and assistance to amateurs with...

With the National Hurricane Center (NHC) expecting Tropical Storm Isaias to become a hurricane again later today and make landfall this evening, the Hurricane Watch Net (HWN) reactivated at 1600 UTC on 14.325 MHz. HWN Manager Bobby Graves, KB5HAV, said the net will shift operations at 2300 UTC to 7.268 MHz, where it will remain until no longer needed by the NHC. A hurricane warning is in effect...

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The Hurricane Watch Net (HWN) activated on 14.325 MHz on July 31 at 1500 UTC as Hurricane Isaias [pronounced: ees-ah-EE-ahs] heads toward the US on an uncertain trajectory.  The Volusia County, Florida, and State emergency operations centers were reported at a Level 3 (Monitoring) status.

“For years I’ve said, ‘Just when you think you have Mother Nature figured out, she changes her mind,’” HWN M...

Tad Cook, K7RA, Seattle, reports: Finally, sunspots have returned! Two sunspots now are visible, both from new Solar Cycle 25. The daily sunspot number was 11 for July 21-27, rising to 22 for July 28-30.

Recently, we have noticed an improvement in propagation due to seasonal sporadic-E activity.

Average daily sunspot numbers rose from 3.1 to 14.1 this week, and average daily solar flux edged up f...

The ARRL Foundation has awarded $510 to the University of Alabama Huntsville's Center for Cybersecurity Research and Education. The grant will be used to get university students licensed, and then integrate amateur radio communication protocols into extant models used for cybersecurity testing for industrial system controls. Analysis will be done on how well these protocols operate in this sett...

The ARRL Ethics & Elections Committee has announced that it will be acceptable in pending and future ARRL Director/Vice Director and Section Manager (SM) elections to submit nomination signatures that have been sent via email or mail, under these guidelines:

• Petition copies must be made from the original form supplied by ARRL.

• Forms must be exactly the same on both sides (i.e, autobiographical ...

A live presentation from ARRL North Texas Section Traffic Manager Aaron Hulett, K8AMH, inaugurated the new ARRL Learning Network on Tuesday, July 28. The webinar series features 30-minute presentations from experienced members covering a variety of amateur radio topics and interests. Hulett’s webinar, “Relay Stations and the Art of Traffic Handling,” introduced techniques and skills practiced b...

The FCC has issued a Forfeiture Order (FO) calling for HobbyKing to pay a fine of $2,861,128 for marketing drone transmitters that do not comply with FCC rules. An FCC Enforcement Bureau investigation stemmed in part from a 2017 ARRL complaint that HobbyKing was selling drone transmitters that operated on amateur and non-amateur frequencies, in some instances marketing them as amateur radio equ...

The University of Maine Wireless Sensing Laboratory (WiSe-Net Lab) and AMSAT have signed an agreement to collaborate on building and operating MESAT1, Maine’s first small satellite. Carrying an amateur radio payload in addition to science payloads, MESAT1 is set to launch sometime in the next 3 years under NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI), which provides opportunities for nanosatellite s...

The Hurricane Watch Net (HWN) has activated for Hurricane Hanna, the first hurricane of the Atlantic Hurricane season. The storm is poised to make landfall along the Gulf of Mexico. A Category 1 storm, Hanna has maximum sustained winds of 75 MPH. As of 1200 UTC, the storm was about 90 miles east-northeast of Port Mansfield, Texas, and about 100 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi, Texas.

“The...

Due to travel and gathering restrictions in place because of the coronavirus pandemic, the ARRL Board of Directors met on Friday, July 17, 2020 in a remote session, using the Zoom videoconferencing platform.

During this session, the Board took the following actions:

• Accepted the final recommendations of the Band Planning Committee. Committee chair and ARRL First Vice President Mike Raisbeck, K1TW...