SKCC WES: “Old Timers and Summer Bands” “Old Timers and Summer Bands” theme - If you held an amateur radio license 25 years ago or longer you are an “Old Timer”! It is not necessary for you to have been continuously licensed for twenty-five years. “Old Timer” stations will send their name/XX (XX is number of years licensed). Total up all those years licensed and that will be your bonus points. ...

I got an email today from someone I don’t know telling me: “I want to share something we’ve been quietly working on for a while. You know how, after the hundredth FT8 contact in a session, your wrist starts complaining? How you find yourself wishing the computer would just… handle it, so you could focus on the radio and the band conditions and the coffee getting cold?” “So I built something. It’s...

I’ve been taking a deeper dive into the K4 transceiver. Despite owning it for more than a year I haven’t bothered learning too much about it. There’s a lot to learn. But a recent firmware update implemented what Elecraft calls Spectral Subtraction Noise Reduction (SSNR) algorithm in the DSP. It works remarkably well causing signals to pop out of the noise floor and now I find myself using Phone more than CW. I’ve even...

Field Day 2026 is just around the corner. My plan is the same as the last two dozen times – operating from the backyard until the batteries wave the white flag. And I’ll do that in the cool of the day, assuming it doesn’t rain. I’m not ashamed to be a fair weather outdoor radio enthusiast. One of the local clubs will operate at a nearby park and as usual I’ll stop by to offer...

It seems to me the recently released UFO files haven’t created much actual news, at least not like the Epstein files which was at least worthy of starting a war to deflect attention from it. Still, I would have thought by now the smoking gun on aliens visiting earth would be front page news. That hasn’t been the case though I found it interesting when confronted with certain bits of “alien evidence” some clergymen responded...