QSO Today – George Zafiropoulos KJ6VU
George Zafiropoulos, KJ6VU, is the the co-host of the Ham Radio Workbench Podcast, one of the more popular ham radio podcasts

VHF/UHF workshop to boost activity above 30 MHz
The SARL/AMSAT SA VHF/UHF workshop will be held at the SARL National Amateur Radio Centre on Saturday 9 February. Some of the discussions and presentations include: the cost of a decibel on two metres; VHF and UHF propagation forecasting; a discussion of the various modes of VHF/UHF propagation, and methods that can be deployed to predict the likelihood of such conditions 

British Columbia QSO Party 2019
Join us! It’s always a whale of a good time. There’s never been a better time to collect some nice wallpaper for the shack wall

Update: Australian 2 x 1 contest calls
“The item on the recent WIA news re: 2 x 1 contest calls was incorrect”, RASA President Glenn Dunstan VK4DU said

Space Symposium paper proposal submissions close on Tuesday
Some interesting subjects will be presented at the 2019 AMSAT SA Space Symposium on Saturday 16 March 2019 in Gauteng. Added to the agenda this past week is: Application of Artificial Intelligence to identify radio signals

AMSAT 50th Anniversary Awards Program
To help celebrate 50 years of Keeping Amateur Radio in Space, AMSAT is proud to announce the AMSAT 50th Anniversary Awards Program. Throughout 2019, your satellite and HF QSOs can help you achieve one of these special awards

Fox-1 CubeSat model kits available
Through the dedicated work of John Kludt, K4SQC, and Stefan Wagener, VE4NSA, AMSAT can again offer a 1:1 scale cardboard model of the Fox-1 CubeSat

Tropospheric ducting event hits NBN fixed wireless services
Australia’s WIA News report the NBN fixed Wireless Services in Northern Tasmania, South and East coast of Victoria suffered from a tropospheric ducting event in recent days and it is being handled as a major incident

WIA complimentary membership for new ham radio qualifications
The WIA has announced complimentary membership for 1 year to operators who pass any Australian amateur radio exam – Foundation, Standard or Advanced – backdated to January 2018

Australian 2 by 1 contest callsigns
WIA News reports discussions have taken place between the RASA and the regulator ACMA about issuing 2 by 1 amateur radio contest callsigns such as VK1A

Phased array antennas move while standing still
Al Williams WD5GNR writes on Hackaday about the talk by Hunter Scott at Supercon 2018 on the subject of electronically scanned phased array antennas

Spectrum Policy for Radio Technology Experiments
Michael J. Marcus N3JMM has released an article that looks at the approach of different countries to authorizing experimental use of spectrum

RAC Amateur of the Year Award 2018 presented to Gabor Horvath, VE7JH
Through the Amateur of the Year Award, Radio Amateurs of Canada recognizes the outstanding contributions made by Canadian Amateurs

VK6WIA NewsWest
In NewsWest for Sunday 13th January 2019 we look into  Amateur Radio History, and we’ve got some interesting snippets for you from way back

Propagation de K7RA
In this reporting week, January 3-9, average daily sunspot number increased from 4.1 to 7.7. Average daily solar flux increased from 70.4 to 71.6

Foundations of Amateur Radio #188
Fan Vertical Antenna
One of the single most recurring topics within our community is that of antennas. Everywhere you look is a story or a photo or a website or a contact about an antenna that came into being because somebody had an idea

Ham radio exams continue despite partial Fed shutdown
The Cleveland Daily Banner newspaper reports amateur radio license examinations are to continue during the partial Federal Government shutdown

Mysterious radio signals from deep space detected
Astronomers have revealed details of mysterious signals emanating from a distant galaxy, picked up by a telescope in Canada

Venus and Jupiter in conjunction
Venus and Jupiter are converging for a beautiful conjunction in Ophiuchus, the unofficial ’13th constellation of the zodiac.’

Smartphone app uses AR to visualize the RF spectrum
Have you ever wished you could see in the RF part of the radio spectrum? While such a skill would probably make it hard to get a good night’s rest, it would at least allow you to instantly see dead spots in your WiFi coverage. Not a bad tradeoff

DX News from the ARRL
The American Radio Relay League’s round-up of the forthcoming week’s DX activity on the amateur radio bands

Tony’s 10m Band Report
A bit sparse every day.
Nothing special in the way of DX.
SF5O is of course Sweden, ZB2TEN/B is of course a beacon on Gibraltar and CX2DK is a hound in Uruguay.
Don’t have a name for the hound but they say he has good ears for DX

Image: Tony Dixon G4CJC

Launch of ‘BARC Diamond Jubilee Year 2019’
The Bangalore Amateur Radio Club will be completing 60 years in 2019 and it is proposed to celebrate the ‘Year 2019’ as the Diamond Jubilee Year of Bangalore Amateur Radio Club – VU2ARC

IARUMS reports on OTH Radar on 21 MHz
IARU-R1 Monitoring System reports an Over The Horizon (OTH) radar located on the island of Cyprus has been active on 21.170 MHz

Measuring a geomagnetic storm with a Raspberry Pi magnetometer
Ciarán Beggan of the British Geological Survey describes how a network of 9 Raspberry Pi magnetometers were deployed to schools around the UK to measure geomagnetic storms

Connecting to the magic of wireless with ham radio
The Moapa Valley Progress reports on the magic of amateur radio.Amateur Radio is a worldwide network of people united by a common interest in wireless communications. There are nearly 700,000 licensed Amateur Radio operators in the United States and nearly three million people around the world who call themselves “hams.”

2018 DX Sound Bites!
Tom, K8CX, has done it again. He has provided DXers with 118 memorable rare DX sound clips (now in MP3 format) from Ohio during 2018

Morse code keyboard 1939 style!
If you want to learn Morse code and you don’t have a teacher, you’d probably just head over to a website or download a phone app. Before that, you probably bought a cassette tape or a phonograph record. But how did you learn Morse if you didn’t have any of that and didn’t know anyone who could send you practice?

Anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany
Look for special event stations DM70GER and DL70BRD now active until December 31st, 2019. Activity is to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany which was established on May 23rd, 1949 

DXCC Most Wanted (ClubLog)
The DXCC Most Wanted entities list has been updated on ClubLog as of December 28th