CQ Amateur Radio April 2022

APRIL CORINTH, MISSISSIPPI — The Alcorn County ARES will hold the April Fool Jess Ables Memorial Hamfest from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, April 2 and from 8 a.m. to noon, Sunday, April 3 at the Crossroads Arena, 2800 South Harper Road. Website: <http://acares.reiselt.com>. Talk-in 146.925. VE exams MCKEESPORT, PENNSYLVANIA — The Two Rivers Amateur Radio Club will hold its 50 th Annual Amateur Radio and Computer Show from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Sunday, April 3 at The McKeesport Palisades, 100 5th Avenue. Contact: Bill Powers, (412) 260-5699. Email: <atsfbill2@gmail.com>. Website: <www.trarc.net>. Talk-in 146.73. VE exams. BRANSON, MISSOURI — The Four State QRP Group will hold OZARKCON from Friday, April 8 through Saturday, April 9 at the Stone Castle Hotel and Conference Center, 3050 Green Mountain Drive. Website: <http://ocon.rleepotter.com>. CLAREMORE, OKLAHOMA —…

$35 FCC License Fee Kicks In April 19th The FCC’s new $35 filing fee for nearly all amateur radio license applications takes effect on April 19th. The fee was among many adopted in December 2020 but the effective date was delayed until the Commission’s computer systems could be upgraded to handle the changes. The new fee applies to most license-related applications, including new licenses, renewals and vanity call sign requests. It does not apply to license upgrades or purely administrative filings, such as a change of name or address. The fee is separate from the exam fee collected by most volunteer exam teams and is paid directly to the FCC via its Universal Licensing System website, <https://tinyurl.com/s799xxaw>. For more details, visit <https://tinyurl.com/44m8dmxt>. Dayton Awards Announced The Dayton Hamvention® Awards Committee has announced its…

It appears that CQ Publisher K2MGA and I have single-handedly (dual-handedly?) destroyed amateur radio by taking what we believe is a morally essential stand in response to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and its tactics of specifically bombing civilian targets (actions which the U.S. government has categorized as war crimes). At least, that’s the impression one gets from reading some of the e-mails we’ve been receiving ever since deciding that, at least for the WPX SSB Contest in late March, stations in Russia and Belarus would not be eligible for awards or trophies, and that contacts with these stations would have no contest point value. We have more specifics, along with a sampling of correspondence, both pro and con, on page XX. But I’d like to use this space to…

After six long months of digital-only purgatory, we are very excited – and greatly relieved – to have our print edition back again. It’s a very long story, but a federal “economic disaster” loan that we needed to kickstart everything after Covid-related setbacks was repeatedly delayed until nearly the end of March. With that funding now in hand, we can restart the presses, get printed products back out to our non-digital readers and go back to the usual struggles to break even faced by most small businesses most of the time. All subscribers will get the number of issues they’ve paid for – all print subscriptions have been extended by the number of missed issues, and digital copies of those missed issues are available for free download at < https://spaces.hightail.com/space/NdX2BByxbQ >.…

There’s Gotta Be a Ham on This Team! NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is coordinating a project involving scientists from three universities and two commercial companies to test a device that JPL says could set the stage for a future global quantum network … and we’re pretty sure there’s at least one ham on the team that’s developing it. The milk-carton-sized technology demonstration experiment, scheduled for launch to the International Space Station later this year, is named the Space Entanglement and Annealing Quantum Experiment, abbreviated by the acronym SEAQUE (say it out loud and you’ll understand the connection!). Quantum computers have the potential of operating millions of times faster than conventional computers, according to JPL, and SEAQUE will test two new communication technologies to create quantum networks in the space environment. Building such…

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent attacks targeting civilians have set off a debate in the amateur radio community about the most appropriate way to respond, including no response at all. On March 17th, after considering a wide range of often eloquently written perspectives from members of the CQ Contest Committee and others, CQ management issued a policy statement limiting the contest participation of stations in Russia, Belarus, and the Donbas region of Ukraine to non-competitive entries. In addition, CQ will not award contact points or multipliers for contacts by others with these stations. To be clear, our action does not ban any station’s participation in any CQ contest; rather, it applies to how certain logs and contacts will be scored. As expected, our announcement has resulted in dozens of email…