This Week in Amateur Radio

When natural disasters strike - like the recent, deadly tornados that devastated regions of the southeast, especially Tuscaloosa, Ala., - the public is reminded of the importance of amateur radio operators. Following Hurricane Katrina and, even now in Tuscaloosa, ham radio operators are equipped to set up communications when a region’s infrastructure and cell towers have been obliterated.

Space shuttle Endeavour vaulted elegantly into the sky Monday, a spectacle of fire and power lent a grace note by the wounded congresswoman watching from below.

The FCC announced that on May 16, it issued a Forfeiture Order of $4000 to Jose Torres, N3TX, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, "for willfully and repeatedly operating his amateur station on an unauthorized frequency at his residence, in violation of Section 1.903(a) of the Commission’s Rules." This action follows a 2009 Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture (NAL) against Torres.

A camera-toting balloon captured unique views of NASA's space shuttle Endeavour as it soared into space for the final time today (May 16), snapping pictures from the stratosphere as part of a student-led project.

Even though the storms that raged through the Southeast have long gone, the damage and heartache they left in their wake are still present. In Alabama, the state that felt the biggest brunt of the storms, hams made their way to fire stations, emergency operations centers and shelters -- anywhere they were told that they were needed.

The Rochester Institute of Technology Amateur Radio Club, K2GXT, had a successful launch of RITCHIE-1 -- a custom high altitude balloon designed by members of K2GXT -- at the Imagine RIT Festival on May 7. According to RITARC Vice President Bryce Salmi, KB1LQC, the goal of the launch was not to reach high altitudes to take images, but to engineer a reliable, modular and reusable payload with good engineering practice.

Legendary live sound pioneer and ham radio expert, Bob Heil, is set to premier a new netcast show on Leo Laporte’s TwiT.tv network. Called “HamNation,” it will focus on equipment, applications, tips and general information for the ham radio enthusiast. For those who know Bob Heil, it won’t be any surprise that his first guest will be rock star, friend, and avid amateur radio operator, Joe Walsh, who also wrote the theme music.

1961. It was the middle of the Cold War. John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States. The Bay of Pigs invasion fails in Cuba. The Beatles perform for the first time at the Cavern Club in Liverpool.

Miguel Enriquez, KD7RPP, is an Instructor with the ARRL’s Teachers Institute on Wireless Technology (TI), as well as a math and electronics teacher at Pueblo High School in Tucson, Arizona. One of his responsibilities at Pueblo is advising the school’s Amateur Radio club.

Abu Dhabi: As the only Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) country with an independent national communication satellite company, the UAE should take the lead in pushing for the creation of a new International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) region, a senior radio technology executive said in the capital on Tuesday. A new IARU region, Region 4, for the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) countries will enable a more equitable use of spectrum and orbital slots and break down the current "spectrum colonisation", said Thomas Choi, co-founder and chief executive officer of Asia Broadcast Satellite.

Leo Laporte is adding a little ham flavor to his online techie stewpot. Netcasting network TWiT.tv will have a new show called HamNation, hosted by microphone maker and ham radio enthusiast Bob Heil. It will launch on Tuesday May 24. If you attended the ham reception at the recent NAB Show, you may have seen Laporte. He was the one followed by the gaggle of admiring fans.

The weekend of June 25-26 the Rural Iowa Amateur Radio Club will be having a Field Day at North Woods County Park, located 1 mile north of Sumner, on County Road V62 (Pleasant Street in Sumner). According to club members, this is a nation-wide exercise.

Summer has arrived and balloons are being flown at Clarkson University, but it's all in the name of research. The college's K2CC Amateur Radio Club launched its first near-space weather balloon May 5 and retrieved it May 6. The balloon, which the club believes reached altitudes of more than 80,000 feet, was launched as an effort to create a reliable data collection platform for later launches.

Before there was email, texting and Web chats, there was ham radio. And even though it might seem like a lost or dying art, there are still amateur radio operators out there. Iredell County hosts some of them.

In 1996 Eric Dollard gave a talk about Tesla's Longitudinal Wave Energy at a gathering of HAM radio operators. A video recording of the event has been posted on Youtube. As one of the most knowledgeable experts in the world on the topic, such a rare talk is something to pay attention to!

Police are investigating the theft of $8,000 to $10,000 in ham radio equipment from a local fish and game club. Detective Dave Kurkul said the equipment was reported stolen around 5 p.m. on Friday, May 6 by someone at the Piscataqua Fish and Game Club on Tuttle Lane. He said a ham radio club operates out of the fish and game facility.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau is getting aggressive in fining broadcasters for safety issues involving their antenna towers. In several recent fines, the commission is taking the position that any violation - if it occurs on more than one day - is willful and a repeated violation.

Quite fittingly, it was a dark and stormy night when 20 people gathered recently in Regina for a lesson in severe weather. The land of the living skies experiences a lot of what Environment Canada (EC) calls "severe thunderstorm events." Last year, they numbered 125 - 41 more than average for the past decade. The bulk of those were hail storms, at 93 events, but it also included 11 tornadoes (that's actually one less than average). The most violent was an F-3 tornado, meaning winds were between 250 and 330 km-h, that levelled homes in the Raymore and Kawacatoose First Nation areas.

In a rescue effort being anxiously followed by space enthusiasts on Facebook and Twitter, searchers have spent the past four days trying to locate a capsule and its crew of three that parachuted from the edge of space into an alligator- and mosquito-infested marsh near the Louisiana-Texas border. Fortunately, the crew of BTS-1 has the right stuff to endure the harsh conditions in that trackless wilderness, if anyone can. The mission's commander, Camilla Corona SDO, is a rubber chicken; the pilot, Fuzz Aldrin, is a teddy bear, and the mission specialist, Skye Bleu, is a stuffed pig.

On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, FEMA Administrator William Fugate and top executives from cell phone companies AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon convened at the World Trade Center site in New York to announce the "Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN)."