Woke this morning to rain, something that has become a semi-rare occurrence of late. I like it. Not only does the ground get a needed break, so do I. It’s a good excuse to stay inside and enjoy a little “me” time. We’ve been working outside at a frenetic pace (whatever that is for old people like us) trying to get some things done before it turns cold. Painting and a small project requiring concrete that has to be finished while it’s still warm enough.

Funny how having the day “off” dramatically improves the aroma and flavor of the morning coffee!

  • The 40th AMSAT-NA Space Symposium and Annual Meeting took place last weekend in Minnesota. Proceedings from that event are available now to AMSAT members via the Member Portal.
  • Daniel Estévez, EA4GPZ announced a new stable release of his gr-satellites is now available. This includes support for some recently launched satellites, a phase unwrap block for precise phase observations, bug fixes and small features.
  • The CQ WW Phone contest is this weekend, possibly the most popular contest event of the year. Expect the bands to be crowded and noisy with thousands of stations on the air.
  • Looking for a new logging program? Club Log maintains a listing of the various logging software products that have been detected each month.
  • Dave Winer announced: “…my newest product, FeedLand, is open to anyone who wants to use it. Hopefully a foundation for building out the user side of feed reading.” Interesting, but it does require a log-in from Twitter. Screenshot here.
  • DP0POL/mm is now permanently accessible via QO-100. The new station was officially commissioned aboard the research vessel Polarstern in an opening ceremony. Andreas DL3LRM, operator of DP0POL/mm and Peter DB2OS at station DK0SB of AMSAT-DL and Observatory Bochum, performed the initial connection. After that, the satellite station is permanently available for general radio calls via QO-100, of course only as long as the free time of the radio amateurs on the ship allows it.