ARRL visual website tour video

For the November meeting of my amateur radio club, we had Katie Glass, KB1ULQ, the Digital Content Manager for the ARRL give a visual tour of the new ARRL website. This tour included some of the new features of the ARRL website such as social media components and popular older content like accessing the extensive ARRL archives and product reviews. Katie was a complete professional, taking questions from the audience and giving a thorough presentation. Attached is a video I made of the presentation.

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

This is the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) presentation by Mark Steiner, K3MS. I recorded and edited this video for HOSARC my amateur radio club. The talk was given at the Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club general meeting in October of 2011. Mark touched on many different aspects of amateur radio on the ISS, including satellite launches, equipment on board the ISS, and ground stations. What did come out during the Q&A section of the talk was that if you would like to get some your own technology into space, design an easy system to change the Kenwood radio from school transmit mode to repeater mode easily via computer control. Seems the current process for changing the radio includes many more steps than busy astronauts have time for. If you can make it happen quickly, easily, and reliably, you could have your own tech in space! It is a high bar, but how many gear-heads do you know with systems they have designed in space. Please check out the video and leave comments. Full disclosure, the video does have pre & post-roll commercials. All money generated by these commercials will be donated entirety to the club. I hope you enjoy the video.

Greene County still needs help after Hurricane Irene

Last night I spoke with Len Signoretti, N2LEN. He was tired but still working hard at the Greene County ARES deployment. He is still looking for volunteers and could use all the help he can get. If you have any time this week and are in the New York area, please contact him at: (phone number removed after event) It is a rural area and they have a 2M / 440 local repeater up running for main communications. If you have a good 2M / 440 mobile rig, you are most welcome. Please help out if you can.

Update 9/9/11:
Just spoke to Len this evening. The ARES activation for Greene County was deactivated Tuesday Sept. 6th followed by a one day ARES activation on Wednesday Sept. 7th for area flooding and to fill in for a cellular outage in the area. I called Len on and off during the week and that man was working so hard I doubt he even remembers talking to me. Hats off to everyone who volunteered for the relief effort. Len said he had people coming in from far and wide to help out.

Queens ARES response for Huricane Irene

If you are a Queens New York based ham who would like to help ARES with the amateur radio response to Hurricane Irene, please contact  Jeff Spiro via the following email address: N1JSP[at]arrl.net. Licensed Amateur Radio operators with HTs & Mobile Units welcome.

Best of luck to them in their efforts. 

 

FieldDay 2010 Photos.

Here are a few pictures taken during the HoSARC 2010 ARRL Fieldday. We had a great time and made many contacts, amid the wind and the occasional pileups.

ARRL.org redesign getting off the ground soon!

As per the ARRL website the redesign and launch is headed toward completion! I for one am looking forward to the new site. They have been working on it for some time and it promises to be a big help for promoting our hobby. I was calling ARRL regarding an unrelated matter and a member close to the project was nice enough to tell me that this weekend should see a change in one of our favorite web watering holes.
Update:4/8/10
Looks like April 12 is the new go live date.
The new www.arrl.org is now live!
And it looks great! The interface looks smooth and up to date. Each day you can see that they are adding new features and tidying up loose ends. It was not a small job, but I think it is a significant step in the right direction. The archive information is easier to find and access. They even tell you how many days are left on your subscription! Nice job all around.

Hams, Twitter, and the Web 2.0 social media.

Just read a great ARRL article concerning the Web 2.0 social media phenomenon and on Twitter in particular. I have a few experiences of the speed and power of twitter myself. In addition to Amateur Radio, I am active in the Open Source community, in particular the BSD operating system. Last week I made a video recording an interesting talk about PFSense. On the way out the door to make the recording I "tweeted" about making the recording. I was surprised to see within a few minutes, Scott Ullrich the co-founder/developer on the project, had "re-tweeted" my message to his thousand plus followers.

I can not wait to see how this very powerful tool will be used by inventive Hams. One use for twitter is the ability to dispense very important information quickly. Some of the first pictures of the "Miracle on the Hudson" actually came from TwitterPic the twitter picture sharing service. I would not be surprised to see a version of this used over D-Star network to get information out of emergency zones. Of course to be used responsibly, there will have to be controls in place, and that will come in time.

No two people will use this information tool the same way, but it is good to know it is available to us should we need it; kind of like amateur radio.

New Year, New QRZ Forum update.

Seems QRZ.com is getting into website upgrade activities in addition to the ARRL. I just tried to update a post I had made on the QRZ forums and was greeted by the page you see below. Looks like 2010 is shaping up to be a great year for Amateur Radio. If you would like to see a larger version of the picture, please double click on it.

ARRL Website redesign.

I was just listening to Jerry Taylor's Practical Amateur Radio Podcast Volume 2 Episode 32 with an interview with Katie Allen, K1KRB. Jerry's interview covers the upcoming redesign of the ARRL website. Jerry also mentions the QST article on the same subject in the Dec. 2009 edition page 55. I have to admit, I am looking forward to the upgrade as it should make finding out information about our hobby much easier. It is good to see such helpful resources get updated. I think it will help to grow our hobby. It is through the web that I have found information on our hobby and I am sure I am not alone. My hope is that this update will help bring more people into our ranks as the years progress. The new website should be launched in late January 2010.
Happy Holidays to everyone and I will see you in 2010.