Saturday, November 29, 2008

Spy radios of WWII


Just posted a video we shot of a talk given by Al Klase - N3FRQ at the Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club in Queens New York. The subject was military, and Spy radios through history. He had many examples of WWII hardware and how they evolved throughout the conflict. In a little while I will also post another video I made of all the equipment he brought. The table was laden with an amazing collection of equipment. Starting with some large early military sets and quickly getting very portable as the technology evolved. To the right you will see a picture of one of Mr. Klases own radios. A CMS , "painter's case" unit made for the US Navy around 1940, Mr. Klase in the video explains the circuit design and use. He also has some great shot of the famous suitcase-radio popular in so many of those WWII spy movies.

Friday, November 28, 2008

73s.org,..facebook for HAMs

Just joined a new website named 73s.org. It looks like a great way to share the Amateur radio experience. The website has been covered in 2 of the amateur radio podcasts I listen to, Practical Amateur Radio Podcast of Texas and ICQ Podcast of the UK have each done segments on this new site. Chris Matthieu N7ICE the owner of the site was looking for a good amateur radio idea and struck upon a social networking "facebook for HAMs" site. While looking for domain names only the "73s" domain was available, so slightly incorrect naming it was. The site boasts many interesting bits of coding, including a callsign lookup by typing in www.73.org/-nameofcallsign-, you will get information from a few different websites at once. QRZ.rg included.