TWIAR News Feed

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NY radio enthusiast searches for balloons & tracker that circumnavigated
globe (New Hampshire)

Posted: 25 Nov 2016 12:14 AM PST
http://bit.ly/2gGkIFT

There are many mysteries and secrets in the town’s high hills, including
most recently the whereabouts of two silver mylar balloons and the homemade
electronic tracker they carried around the world.

Mike Hojnowski, an amateur radio enthusiast and systems engineer at Cornell
University, launched the balloons and tracker at 12:58 p.m. Oct. 19 from
Rhodes Hall at the Ithaca, N.Y. school. Ten days later, he determined that
they had crashed here in Landaff, on a west-facing slope and at an
elevation of between 1,000 and 1,300 feet after encountering a storm.

Hojnowski has been back twice to Landaff to look for the tracker. If he
recovers the tracker, he would be only one of seven radio hobbyists who’ve
circumnavigated the globe with a homemade tracker, and the only one who
actually recovered the device.

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Trumps FCC advisor wants to eliminate most of the FCC

Posted: 24 Nov 2016 11:58 PM PST
http://bit.ly/2fuPlJf

A Donald Trump advisor who will help set a new direction for the Federal
Communications Commission recently argued that most of the FCC should be
eliminated.

The commission's role as an independent agency remains important in one
area: licensing radio spectrum, Trump advisor Mark Jamison argued in a blog
post last month titled, "Do we need the FCC?" That's because political
interference in spectrum licenses would dampen investment "and could lead
to rampant corruption in the form of valuable spectrum space being
effectively handed out to political cronies," he wrote.

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Mark Twain Birthday Special Event Set

Posted: 24 Nov 2016 11:47 PM PST
http://ift.tt/2gC1ql0

Members of ARRL Headquarters staff will be on the air as W1T, November
28-December 4, in honor of Mark Twain’s 181st birthday. On November 30,
Twain’s actual birthday, the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford,
Connecticut has granted permission for a special event station to be set up
in the front yard of the house from 9 AM until 4 PM EST (1400-2100 UTC).

Born in Missouri in 1835, Twain lived in Hartford from 1874 to 1891 and
wrote many of his greatest works during that time, including The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in
King Arthur’s Court.

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SKYWARN Recognition Day On-the-Air Event is Saturday, December 3

Posted: 24 Nov 2016 11:00 PM PST
http://ift.tt/2gitDum

The annual SKYWARN Recognition Day (SRD) on-the-air activity will take
place Saturday, December 3, from 0000 until 2400 UTC (starts on the evening
of Friday, December 2, in US time zones).

SKYWARN Recognition Day was developed in 1999 by the National Weather
Service and ARRL to honor the contributions that SKYWARN volunteers make to
the NWS mission — the protection of life and property during threatening
weather. During the SKYWARN Special Event, hams will operate from several
NWS offices. W1AW will take part in the event.

The object of the event is for all participating Amateur Radio stations to
exchange contact information with as many NWS stations as possible on 80,
40, 20, 15, 10, 6, and 2 meters plus 70 centimeters. Contacts via repeaters
are permitted.

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ARISS Celebrates 20th Anniversary, Plans for Future of Amateur Radio in
Human Spaceflight

Posted: 24 Nov 2016 11:00 PM PST
http://ift.tt/2gB3IRu

ARISS-International delegates met November 15-18 at the International Space
Center Conference Facility in Houston, Texas, to celebrate 20 years of
Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) and to continue
planning for the years ahead. More than 50 delegates and guests from
Russia, Japan, Italy, German, the UK, and North America took part, and
teleconferencing let individuals unable to attend in person to join the
proceedings. Special guests at the conference included Astronauts Mike
Fincke, KE5AIT, and Ken Cameron, KB5AWP, and Cosmonaut Aleksandr
Poleshchuk, RV3DP. An international group interested in installing and
operating an Amateur Radio station on the ISS first met in November 1996 at
Johnson Space Center, and ARISS was born as a result of that gathering.

“The international partners celebrated the dedication and contributions of
volunteers who have sustained it over the challenges of the past 20 years,�
said ARRL Education Services Manager Debra Johnson, K1DMJ, who attended on
behalf of ARRL. “It was clear that the vision to make the excitement of
space exploration accessible to students and the challenge of participating
in space activities through Amateur Radio is still very much alive.�
Rosalie White, K1STO, also represented ARRL at the gathering.

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Old Heatsink Lets Ham Push Duty Cycle for Digital Modes

Posted: 24 Nov 2016 11:00 PM PST
http://ift.tt/2gzXTnk

Listen to the amateur radio bands long enough, and you’ll likely come to
the conclusion that hams never stop talking. Of course it only seems that
way, and the duty cycle for a transmitter operating in one of the voice
modes is likely to be pretty low. But digital modes can up the duty cycle
and really stress the finals on a rig, so this field-expedient heat sink
for a ham transceiver is a handy trick to keep in mind.

This hacklet comes by way of [Kevin Loughin (KB9RLW)], who is trying to use
his “shack-in-a-box� Yaesu FT-817 for digital modes like PSK31. Digital
modes essentially turn the transceiver into a low-baud modem and thus
messages can take a long time to send. This poses a problem for the 5-watt
FT-817, which was designed for portable operations and doesn’t have the
cooling fans and heavy heatsinks that a big base station rig does. [Kevin]
found that an old 486 CPU heatsink clamped to a lug on the rear panel added
enough thermal mass to keep the finals much cooler, even with a four-minute
dead key into a dummy load at the radio’s full 5-watt output.

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Europe launches Galileo satellite quartet

Posted: 24 Nov 2016 11:00 PM PST
http://bbc.in/2fLox8x

Europe has extended its satellite-navigation system by putting another four
spacecraft in orbit.
They went up on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana, leaving the ground
at 10:06 (13:06 GMT).
It is the first time Europe's premier launch vehicle has been used to loft
Galileo satellites. Normally, they go up on a Russian Soyuz, two at a time.
Mission success was declared once the quartet had been safely ejected from
Ariane's upper-stage.

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Indian Radio Amateurs Report More Mystery Signals

Posted: 24 Nov 2016 11:00 PM PST
http://ift.tt/2ggO8rx

According to a Mumbai Mirror report, radio amateurs who have been hearing
mysterious signals on 2 meters for the past 5 months have tracked them down
to a source somewhere off the Maharashtra-Gujarat coast in the Arabian Sea.
Ankur Puranik, VU2AXN, a spokesperson for a local Amateur Radio club, said
the group had advised the Ministry of Telecommunications as well as defense
and law enforcement officials to take note of the unknown signals and
consider investigating them.