Participation has been down recently in several of the popular QRP outdoor activities. I suspect attention to Parks on the Air has whetted the usual large appetite for more radio in the field type work. Nevertheless, here is advanced notice of the Annual Summer Flight of the Bumblebees which takes place on Sunday, July 26, 2026, during the four-hour daytime window, from 1700 to 2100 UTC. This casual QRP CW event consists of hundreds of ‘Bumblebees’ who are operating portable stations at outdoor locations, and other stations who try to work as many of these ’Bumblebees’ as...

The Summer Solstice is the time of maximum light - when the countryside around us revels in colorful and fragrant splendor. This time is known in the Druid tradition as that of Alban Hefin - ‘The Light of Summer’ or The Light of the Shore’. Druidry has a great respect and reverence for places that are ‘in between’ worlds. The seashore is one such place, where the three realms of Earth, Sea and Sky meet. There is great power in places such as these. It is the time of greatest light when the Solar God is crowned by...

I haven’t subscribed to a printed newspaper in over two decades. Our local newspaper used to be pretty good, and it even came in a morning and evening editions. But then the internet. The local paper shrunk to once a day and then it kept shrinking. Probably like most smaller towns, our newspaper morphed into a business with only a few actual employees who chase a few local stories each day with the rest of the content being from a syndicate. I dropped it ending my lifetime of reading the daily news printed on actual paper. In its wake I...

I almost can’t believe our good fortune with the weather. This morning is yet another one with blue skies and low temperatures. 55F when I awoke so of course I opened the house up which had the wife running to grab a sweater. We can’t seem to agree on the perfect temperature, but this recent spate of unseasonably cool air makes me happy. I know, it’s a short-lived pleasure and the brutal heat must surely be just around the corner. I’ve gotten in the habit of calling CQ using CW at least three times a day just to see what...

I’ve been reading about openings on six meters these last few days so this afternoon I thought I’d get in on it. 30 contacts were added to the log. Nothing too exciting, but there were a handful of unconfirmed grid squares among those. Of course it was all FT8. It’s been that way on 50MHz since the new digital mode was introduced. The last CW contact I made on the Magic Band was in June 2018. The Summer E-season is always fun and occasionally exciting. Don’t miss it!