I've created a section in the Forum called "Project Ideas", in the hopes that it might facilitate discussion between those with ideas and with or without expertise and those with expertise who are perhaps at a loss for ideas. I've posed a couple of ideas myself to get things started, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the OSS ham community has to say.

Pardon the slow progress, folks; I have some stuff going on that is taking a little longer to get done than I anticipated, but things should be getting underway here in earnest very soon. I found this today and figured as a first order of business it would be helpful to provide a link to this site: http://selfproject.eu/en/Coursebook_Intro_Free_Software which provides an introduction to Free Software. It attempts to provide an explanation of the history and main concepts of the Free Software movement

I've begun reinventing the site to be targeted at open-source software (OSS). Look for changes all over in the near future. I started a thread on Sourceforge.net that I'm hoping will get some nice results. Stay tuned!

73,
AE5IR

The FCC amended WE2XRH's license grant to exclude the 40m ham frequencies. More information available at arrl.org.

On Monday, October 20, the ARRL filed a Petition for Modification or Cancellation of Experimental Authorization (Petition) with the FCC with respect to WE2XRH., an experimental license issued to Digital Aurora Radio Technologies (DART), permitting operation in the 7.1-7.6 MHz (40m amateur) band using a 20 kHz bandwidth digital emission at a t

It's been a busy couple weeks; I regret being rather negligent with the site here, and thought I'd touch base. I've been itching to finally get on more than just 2m, and given my limited budget, it seems QRP is my best bet. As a result, I've been trying to work up the ambition to resume practicing CW and to set a goal speed for which I'll reward myself with a neat little kit of some sort. I'm thinking of going with a Rock-Mite but am beginning to consider my options. Anyone have any recommendations?

How I love hurricane season. That magical time starting in June and ending in November is a source of endless uncertainty each year. 2005's wretched abomination was followed by 2 years of relative calm, but this one has already been problematic. I haven't posted or updated the Hamfests This Week in a while due in part to having been on evacucation all last week for Hurricane Gustav. Now we're due back in the portion of the state expected to be affected by Ike this weekend. It's always an adventure, I tell you.

I recently wrote to the senators and congressmen for my area about the BPL issue and how it pertains to amateur radio and the current bill going through both the Senate and the House, Emergency Amateur Radio Interference Protection Act. Below is the only personalized response I received.

Ok so...yeah....I should have posted this stuff a long time ago. I finally snapped some pictures of the J-Pole AE5IR and I built, you can see them here. I recently redid most of the joints with solder vs plumbers goop. I seem to have done a decent job once I figured out that my small butane torch takes a bit to heat the copper to the proper temperature to get the solder to flow correctly.

I've finally gotten a chance to catch my breath post-vacation (funny how that works, the ironic need for a vacation after vacation). N5THX and I played a lot of radio last week. We got some copper tubing and built a super j-pole that I must admit worked like a charm. We mounted it on his mailbox and were able to hit a repeater 50 miles away with 5 watts, which I think rather surprised both of us. HamHoliday in Oklahoma City was a bit of a disappointment. It seemed as though it could have been a much bigger success than it ended up being, had it been, for example, better publicized.