While it’s yet a few days before the official first day of summer, the oppressive heat wave that will soon cover most of these United States dropped into Indiana over the weekend and we’re roasting enough here to cause me to declare, “close enough” it’s summertime! No fresh corn on the cob yet, but there’s enough sweet tea and supernatural levels of air-conditiong ready and waiting. Just guessing, but I’ll probably skip Field Day this coming weekend as it’s just too hot…

I enjoy reading about adventure on the high seas during the summer months and wanted to share a few book recommendations for your summer reading joy. A few of these include a ham radio plot line and one is a technical treatise you won’t want to miss.

Come take a deep-dive, the water is fine:

  1. The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas – the classic work by Thor Heyderdahl. I first read this in high school and checked it out of my local library just a few days ago to enjoy it again. Among it’s bonafides, the book had been translated into more than 70 languages and sold more than 50 million copies. And why not, it’s an astonishing journey of 4,300 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean by raft that includes a large dollop of ham radio. I wanted to link to the many 1947 QST articles about this expedition, but like LoTW, the QST archive is not currently responding. You can get a sampling of the ham radio part of this story from this 2014 ARRL News item.

  2. The French Atlantic Affair – this work by Ernest Lehman always intrigued me because amateur radio plays a big role in it and it was published the same time as I obtained my Novice ticket, the summer of ‘77. Because of that ham radio connection, it was featured on the cover of every radio magazine for a few months which was mighty exciting for a brand new ham! Short story: A luxury ocean liner of the French Atlantic Line is hijacked by a messianic priest, and his cult followers for a $70 million ransom in gold. Two young amateur radio enthusiasts are the only link between the ship and the outside world.

  3. Typhoon – a short novel by Joseph Conrad, begun in 1899 and serialized in Pall Mall Magazine in January–March 1902. Its first book publication was in New York by Putnam in 1902; it was also published in Britain in Typhoon and Other Stories by Heinemann in 1903. Short story: No one writing in English has ever blasted wind, waves and salt-spray suspense like Joseph Conrad does in his novella “Typhoon.” Despite ominous swells, mustard-black clouds and a plummeting barometer, the mindless Capt. MacWhirr drives his steamship carrying Chinese laborers directly into the path of a North Pacific storm. Conrad wrote this rip-roaring sea yarn at the dawn of the 20th century, in part as commentary on the transition from sail to steam. No ham radio in this one.

  4. Hawaiki Rising: Hōkūle’a, Nainoa Thompson, and the Hawaiian Renaissance – in 1975, a replica of an ancient Hawaiian canoe— Hōkūle’a was launched to sail the ancient star paths, and help Hawaiians reclaim pride in the accomplishments of their ancestors by traveling from Hawaii to Tahiti the “old” way. Hawaiki Rising is the saga of an astonishing revival of indigenous culture by voyagers who took hold of the old story and sailed deep into their ancestral past.

  5. Software-Defined Radio for Engineers, by Travis F. Collins, Robin Getz, Di Pu, and Alexander M. Wyglinski, 2018 – just discovered this link to this free download (PDF) in the Zero Retries 0156 newsletter. It’s focus on the ADALM-Pluto caught my interest as I own that hardware. Synopsis: The objective of this book is to provide a hands-on learning experience using Software Defined Radio for engineering students and industry practitioners who are interested in mastering the design, implementation, and experimentation of communication systems. This book provides a fresh perspective on understanding and creating new communication systems from scratch. Communication system engineers need to understand the impact of the hardware on the performance of the communication algorithms being used and how well the overall system operates in terms of successfully recovering the intercepted signal.