CQ Amateur Radio December 2021

DECEMBER ARCHBOLD, OHIO — The Fulton County Amateur Radio Club will hold WinterFest 2021 from 8-11 a.m. Saturday, December 4 at the Ruihley Park Pavilion, 401 W. Holland Street. Contact: Bryan Patterson, KB8ELG, (419) 822-5038 or (419) 250-6694. Email: <kb8elg@hotmail.com>. Website: <http://k8bxq.org>. Talk-in 147.195+. VE exams. MESA, ARIZONA — The Superstition Amateur Radio Club will hold the Superstition SuperFest 2021 from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, December 4 at the Superstition Springs Center, 6555 E. Southern Avenue. Email: <chairman@superstitionsuperfest.org>. Website: <http://superstitionsuperfest.org>. Talk-in 147.120+ (PL 162.2) or 449.600-(PL 100). VE exams, card checking, fox hunting, special event station K7A. TROY, MICHIGAN — The L’Anse Creuse Amateur Radio Club will hold its 49 th Annual Swap & Shop from 8 a.m. to noon, Sunday, December 5 at the Balkan American Community Center, 1451 E.…

First Bouvet … and Now Crozet After a Covid-induced pause in international travel, DXpeditions to remote locations are again on the rise. There has been much written about planned trips to Bouvet, and now a solo DXpedition to Crozet (FT5/W) is on the calendar as well. The Crozet Islands are a subantarctic archipelago and national conservation area in the southern Indian Ocean administered by France. The last ham radio operation from Crozet was in 2009 and the islands rank third on the DXCC most-wanted list. The ARRL Letter is reporting that French authorities have approved a one-person DXpedition to the archipelago between mid-December 2022 and mid-March 2023 by Thierry Mazel, F6CUK. INDEXA, the International DX Association <www.indexa.org>, has already committed to supporting the trip, although the amount of its donation was…

This is being written just a few weeks after all the hubbub about the near-space trip of “Captain Kirk” (otherwise known as actor William Shatner) aboard Jeff Bezos’s New Shepard space tourism capsule. Space, it seems, is cool again. But ham radio, it seems, is not … particularly in the eyes of many hams. Our technology, in their view, isn’t very high compared with such things as smartphones, tablets, and space travel. And many of these hams pass along this impression to neighbors, friends, and reporters. “Well, it’s not very hi-tech but it still gets through …” This is the second big lie that hams tell about themselves and their hobby (the first is that ham radio is dying, when licensing numbers are at record levels and keep growing). Let me…

Three major nominations by the White House may shape the face(s) of telecommunication policy for the next several years. Acting FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel was nominated by President Biden to another full term on the commission and as Chair. Once confirmed, she will be the first woman to formally hold the FCC Chairmanship. Rosenworcel has been an FCC Commissioner since 2012. According to the White House, she was instrumental in creating the FCC’s Emergency Broadband Benefit program to help fight the “homework gap” during pandemic lockdowns and help households struggling to afford internet service stay connected. Prior to her appointment to the FCC a decade ago, she was Senior Communications Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and previously practiced communications law. The President also nominated attorney…

December 2021 is the 100th anniversary of the December 1921 Transatlantic Test, in which amateurs in the United Kingdom (including American Paul Godley, 2ZE, who was sent over by the American Radio Relay League) listened for American amateurs. Godley set up his receiving site at Ardrossan, Scotland (about 35 miles southwest of Glasgow). This site looked out across the Firth of Clyde towards the U.S. This one-way test from the U.S. to the U.K. was successful with many CW stations and a handful of spark stations being heard. December 1921 was actually the second attempt to receive U.S. signals in the U.K. The earlier attempt the previous February was not successful — no Americans were heard due to a variety of reasons — but it was the spark (pun intended) for…

A fter hitting the Honor Roll and DXCC Challenge 2500, I decided to take a different direction in ham radio. I have participated in nearly every aspect of the hobby over the last 50 years. During those 50 years, I mostly used existing or used equipment to gauge my interest. Some inexpensive starts, like my satellite station, turned into a significant effort and investment. In 2016, I started on another item on my bucket list, moonbounce or Earth-Moon-Earth (EME). I started with the idea to do it as inexpensively as possible and let the other ham do the heavy lifting. I had read that there were large EME stations with 8 to 32 Yagis that could hear single Yagis with a hundred watts. It is amazing to see how much interest…