N4AA: Carl Smith’s rapid-fire CW operation accounted for 300 contacts at this year's Field Day. photos by Max Cooper On a stifling late-June day, a tangle of wires snakes through the open door of the ...

Well before the days of the tweet and the status update, people communicated with each other over sweeping distances by quite literally harnessing the earth's magnetic field to send messages via radio ...

Many of today’s experienced engineers got their start in electronics through amateur, or “ham,” radio. (Many theories exist over the origin of the term “ham radio,” but there is no consensus.) Over ...

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Ham radio, especially the HF bands, can be intimidating for aspiring operators, many being put off by the cost of equipment. The transceiver itself is only part of the equation and proper test and ...

Two years ago, in my home state of Kentucky, we had a devastating tornado that traveled nearly 200 miles, leveled towns, killed scores of people, and left widespread devastation. When emergency ...

The Altoids tin has long been the enclosure of choice for those seeking to show off their miniaturization chops. This is especially true for amateur radio homebrewers — you really have to know what ...

On a gray Friday afternoon last spring, Steve Galchutt sat high atop Chief Mountain, an 11,700-foot peak along Colorado’s Front Range. An epic panorama of pristine alpine landscape stretched in almost ...