With Ham Radios, Santas are born

Santa, it can be argued, is in your heart. Or riding in a sleigh through the night sky.

Or delighted, over and over and a thousand times over again to find a plate of cookies for his jolly self, and a carrot to split between his eight (or nine) tiny reindeer.

Wherever he is, you can bet this is his busiest week of the year.

Still, Santa makes time to listen to every child who needs to get through to him.

It could be at a mall, on his lap, through a wish, by a letter sent to that most precise of addresses: The North Pole. Or it could be over a ham radio, crackling with the proximity of medical machinery.

Four years ago, Dr. George Noble, a surgeon at Mary Bridge Children?s Hospital and Health Center, mused on the curative power of a conversation with Santa Claus.

Noble was a ham radio operator in his spare time, causing all who heard that to wonder how a pediatric surgeon managed to find spare time!

Santa on Amateur Radio

A Feedline Energy Analysis - Amateur Radio

An Energy Analysis at an Impedance Discontinuity in an RF Transmission Line, Part I

Where Does the Power Go? [1] There continue to be many differing responses to the question within the amateur radio community and, so far, no one has presented the facts of the physics of power as understood from the field of optics.

Those facts from optics have been known and understood for decades and are consistent with the laws of physics and the equations governing the behavior of RF transmission lines. Light and RF waves are both composed of electromagnetic energy. Most of the following information comes from "Optics" [2]. In the field of optics, irradiance is the same thing as power in an RF transmission line if the cross sectional area of the transmission line is taken into account.

Irradiance has the dimensions of energy per unit area per unit time. If the light beam of a particular laser occupies the same cross sectional area as a particular coaxial RF transmission line then the irradiance of the laser beam is comparable to the RF power in the transmission line. The 1/4 wavelength thin-film deposited on glass to obtain a non-reflective surface performs in a virtually identical way to a 1/4 wavelength series matching section in a transmission line. Single-source RF energy in a transmission line and laser light are both coherent electromagnetic energy waves that obey the laws of superposition, interference, conservation of energy, and conservation of momentum.


Where Does Power Go?

AMSAT - The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation

Now is the time to begin preparing your amateur radio station to receive signals from SuitSat, the most unusual Amateur Radio satellite ever orbited. SuitSat amateur radio equipment will be installed inside a surplus Russian Orlan spacesuit.

It will become an independently orbiting satellite once it is deployed by the crew of the International Space Station during an extravehicular activity, tentatively planned for late January or early February, 2006.

Running only on internal batteries within the spacesuit, SuitSat will have a limited, but interesting lifetime beaming down special messages and an SSTV image as it floats in space.

Having no external thrust to adjust its orbit after it is hand-deployed during the EVA, SuitSat will be in a free-floating, but decaying orbit around Earth. It is expected to remain in orbit up to 6 weeks after being deployed.

Amateur Radio Suit!!

Spacewalks 'Thrilling,' Astronaut Tells Students During Ham Radio Chat:

International Space Station Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur, KC5ACR, told students gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, November 22, that taking a spacewalk is a thrilling experience.

Speaking the following day with middle schoolers in upstate New York, McArthur described space exploration as the new frontier. Both contacts were arranged by the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program.

During the Geneva contact--part of the "Science on Stage" program for European science teachers--McArthur rhapsodized about the spacewalk experience.

"It's an absolute delight, it's thrilling to be outside, it's being truly in a totally alien environment," McArthur said, "and you realize the only thing between you and vacuum is the small little spaceship that you call your spacesuit. And it is truly the most thrilling thing I've ever done."

Responding to a question involving human physiology in space, McArthur said it's theorized that bone tissue is replaced more slowly in space because it does not get stressed in microgravity.

Amateur Radio on the ISS

First Polish ham radio DX contact

Look for special event station SP0TPAX to be active in December and then again in April.

The activity is organized by the SP DX Club. Expect activity on all bands (LF, HF, VHF, UHF) on all possible modes. QSL via SP7DQR (by the bureau or direct).

This activity is to celebrate the first Polish amateur radio contact to a ham radio station from outside Poland in 1925.

Tadeusz Heftman, using the call SP0TPAX, made a QSO with N0PM - it was a station from the Netherlands.

Polish Amateur Radio History