AST SPACEMOBILE EYES CELLULAR SATELLITE LAUNCH WINDOW

AST SpaceMobile, which has asked the FCC for permission to use amateur radio frequencies for a planned constellation of satellites providing cellular-based broadband service, has announced it expects to have launched between 45 and 60 satellites by next year.

In its second-quarter earnings report this month, the Texas company said that it plans satellite deployments every one to two months into 2026 and expects to begin providing service in the United States by the end of this year. In the first quarter of next year, the company hopes to begin rolling out service as well in Canada, the UK and Japan.

In two separate deals pending, the company is planning to acquire use of portions of the S-band and L-band spectrum for global delivery of its services.

AST SpaceMobile, which is considered a rival to SpaceX, was recently approved to use the amateur radio band on an experimental basis for a low-earth orbit satellite - a prototype known as FM1. It was assigned the callsign WP2XRX, which is valid through the 1st of July, 2027. The company plans to use the 70 cm amateur frequencies to conduct telemetry, tracking, and telecommand between ground stations and its satellites.

IT'S TIME FOR REMEMBRANCE DAY - BUT WHAT TIME, EXACTLY?

It's that time of year when many hams prepare for the Remembrance Day Contest, a major amateur radio event here in Australia on the Saturday closest to the 15th of August. It marks the signing of the Armistice and Japan's unconditional surrender, ending the second World War in 1945. It honours amateurs who died in that conflict.

However, another potential conflict persists - one of time. The contest starts at 1300 Australian Eastern Standard Time, which is 0300 UTC on the 15th of the 8th month -- August - but observers of history know that the Armistice was signed later that year.

The answer is: radio! Although history records the signing correctly on September 2nd of that year, this important contest makes note instead of the time and date that Japan's Emperor Hirohito broadcast his nation's surrender over radio. He delivered an announcement at noon on the 15th of August. With Japan's time being UTC plus 9 hours, that places its timing at 0300 UTC. With AEST being UTC plus 10, that places the time at 1300 UTC.

Got that? We thank Michael Johnston, VK2HFN, president and secretary of the Central Coast Amateur Radio Club, for sorting this one out, all the while keeping an eye on the clock before the contest started.

YOUNG AMATEURS IN AUSTRALIA PREP FOR 1ST YOTA CONTEST

The VK YOTA Contest is coming to shacks Down Under as the Fisher's Ghost Amateur Radio Club has announced it will be hosting the event, encouraging hams anywhere in the world to join in. The contest is being held in cooperation with Youngsters on the Air, a programme of Region 1 of the International Amateur Radio Union. The purpose isn't so much to be the highest-scoring operator but to simply be on the air enjoying new contacts and renewing some old ones.

In other words, rag chews are absolutely encouraged! The contest begins 00:00 UTC on the 1st of December and ends at 23:59 UTC on the 31 of December.There will be a bit of overlap with the YOTA contest organised by the Hungarian Amateur Radio Society. Three days before the Fisher's Ghost club contest ends, Round 3 begins for the YOTA contest hosted by the Hungarian operators. That's on December 29th beginning at 10:00 UTC and ending at 21:59 UTC.

It looks like December is already heating up down here in Australia.

UK HAMS TAKE ON CHALLENGE TO BUILD TRACKER FOR BALLOON

On Saturday, the 20th of September, a high-altitude balloon will be launched with a cross-frequency LoRa APRS Digipeater as its payload. Ben Lloyd, GW4BML, a director of the Radio Society of Great Britain, will send the balloon on its way () at 11 a.m. local time from Welshpool in Powys. The balloon is expected to be in the air for about two hours, reaching an altitude of 90,000 feet.

The challenge for amateur radio operators is to build or re-code a LoRa tracker using instructions provided on the RSGB website - then try to get the farthest signal from the launch site. Successful transmissions will reach the airborne relay and be retransmitted to one of the Internet gateways local to the launch site.

Individual hams and some ham clubs may boost their chances through the use of a high-gain antenna or by operating from a summit or other high ground at the same time to get a line-of-sight advantage. If your tracker build is successful, it will beam up packets to the airborne relay to be retransmitted.

The event is part of National Coding Week, in which the RSGB is participating in during the third week of September.

For details, visit the website rsgb.org

CELEBRATING A PARK'S CENTENNIAL BY PUTTING IT ON THE AIR

There is a rich history in Pokagon State Park, one that dates back to its designation as the fifth state park in Indiana in 1925. What was originally known as Lake James State Park was renamed to honor Leopold and Simon Pokagon, the father and son leaders of the Potawatomi Native American tribe who made their home in the region in the 19th Century.

The Land of Lakes Amateur Radio Club is joining with Friends of Pokagon on the 23rd of August to mark the park's centennial. Special event station K9P will be on the air from the park from 9 a.m. until dusk.

The celebration acknowledges the importance of the park, where the government's Civilian Conservation Corps lived and worked from 1934 to 1942, helping shape the park's wooded hills, wetlands and open meadows through the addition of landscaping elements built from natural stone and logs. The park is on the shores of Lake James and comprises 1,260-acres. It carries the POTA designation of US-4182.

GRANT ASSISTS YOUNG AMATEURS IN MALAWI

A handful of new and newly upgraded amateur radio operators in Malawi are celebrating their achievement in late July: the young radio operators have passed their exams with support of a grant from the Yasme Foundation to cover all fees and related costs.

Foundation president Ward Silver, NØAX, announced in late July that there are now five new licensees and four amateurs with upgraded licenses. The Yasme Foundation has been assisting the Malawi Project, which was launched by members of the HacDC Amateur Radio Club, W3HAC, in Washington, DC, under the leadership of Don Jones K6ZO/7Q6M. The project works with aspiring young amateurs in Malawi, the Comoros and Uganda. It is now part of the Jeffrey Dahn Memorial Foundation, which promotes education in electronics to young people in Africa.

3YØK DXPEDITION CANCELS LOTTERY, CITING 'LEGAL ISSUES'

Even as the Bouvet Island 3YØK team begins packing and shipping their equipment and other supplies for next year's DXpedition, the team has called off its plans for a lottery to help raise funds. Organizers announced on the team website that the cancellation is the result of [quote] "legal issues brought to the team's notice." [endquote] The announcement did not offer any specifics.

Preparedness workshop and other activities still lay ahead for the operators well in advance of their scheduled departure date from Cape Town, South Africa on the 1st of next February. The 21-day DXpedition has a budget in excess of $1.6 million in US currency and had hoped the lottery would help cover expenses. The announcement of its cancellation included assurances that all tickets already purchased will be fully refunded through PayPal.

FLORIDA RETIREES GIRD FOR STORM SEASON WITH RADIOS

During Atlantic hurricane season, many residents of Sun City Center, Florida might feel as if they are living in Storm City Center instead. A disaster radio program, managed by the Kings Point Amateur Radio Club, has been growing strong within this retirement community to address those concerns.

Launched six years ago, the program has woven an increasingly robust safety net and now provides assurance to as many as 800 residents, most of them between 70 and 80 years of age. It is all overseen by Eileen Bishop, AB9T, the club's emergency communications chair.

Low-power FRS radios are provided to those who pay a $15 program registration fee at the community clubhouse. The little handheld transceivers, which do not require a license, connect them to any of 25 control stations around the community who can monitor and transmit on a common channel using their own licensed GMRS radios. According to club vice president Eric Nisenfeld WA4EMN, most of these operators are also hams. The control center, Radio Alpha, is based at the clubhouse and hams there monitor the system as well. The control stations and Radio Alpha can both summon the appropriate emergency service when necessary.

Eric said associates are asked to check in at weekly nets at least four times a year to receive signal reports and ensure all is working properly. HOA and community management are also being added to the network.

Sun City Center may not be able to stop the hurricanes but with the power of radio, they can help residents brace for them.

US LEGACY WEATHER SATELLITES BEING DECOMMISSIONED

As the US government had announced previously, the remaining satellites in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's legacy constellation of Polar Operational Environmental Studies are in the process of being decommissioned. The POES system satellite known as NOAA-15 was to be taken out of service on the 12th of August and another, NOAA-19, on the 19th of the month. Earlier this year, both were declared in the End of Life stage, along with a third constellation satellite, NOAA-18, which was decommissioned in June. For years, these satellites were relied upon by many for vital weather data via their 137 MHz APT transmissions, providing data used in monitoring the environment, forest fires, volcanic eruptions and global vegetation.

Although previous reports said that the satellites' transmissions would continue, an article on the RTL-SDR website said that the transmitters will be turned off. The end-of-life status means they are no longer eligible for repair or recovery efforts and NOAA advises that they should not be considered reliable sources of information for critical or emergency purposes. None of the satellites are scheduled for deorbiting. NOAA issued an advisory on its website saying " Direct users should make plans to discontinue use of POES data."

US NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE REHIRING AFTER MASS FIRINGS

Hundreds of jobs that were eliminated by cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency are to be refilled at the National Weather Service, which has been told it can hire as many as 450 radar technicians, meteorologists and hydrologists. A CNN report said that the rehiring comes as the agency looks back on the deadly floods that ravaged Texas last month while preparing for the arrival of hurricane season in a few weeks. The CNN report noted that the cuts have led to many agency staffers taking on bigger workloads and longer hours and cited the reduction in data available to the weather service - the result of fewer launches of weather balloons.

Meteorologist, Louis Uccellini, former director of the National Weather Service, told the Associated Press that the hirings were [quote] "great news for the NWS and the American public" [endquote] adding that he would like to see them get under way. He was NWS director from 2013 until he stepped down in 2022.

STALKING SOME QSOS IN HIS FIELD OF DREAMS

The smiling radio operator greeting viewers of his YouTube videos calls himself "Cornfield Kevin," and yes, Kevin KØKLB is outstanding in his field -- which happens to be an Iowa cornfield. There, in August of 2022, Kevin harvested two SSB contacts between Iowa and Texas while operating on 5 watts using a 20m vertical antenna fashioned ... from cornstalks. He called his creation "The CornTenna."

This year, Kevin is making the QSOs -- and the corn -- pop all over again. In his latest video, he shows how he put cornstalks back to work recently, this time using stalks from a fresh harvest to build a horizontal 20 metre dipole. He tested the corn-tenna over a two-day period and, sadly, made no contacts on the first day. The next day, after cutting fresh new stalks, he worked his brother Bruce, KEØQQE, on 10 metres. Bruce, who was nearby, gave him a 5 5. Then a POTA activator in Ohio copied him and gave him a 4 4, telling him he was [quote] "down in the weeds." [endquote]

Well those weren't exactly weeds Kevin was standing in but the POTA op was correct about the challenging RST. Nonetheless, satisfied with his project, Kevin is sharing the build on his YouTube channel, "Ham Radio QRP - KØKLB." While you're there, check out Kevin's earlier project for the original vertical corn-tenna. After all, when you're a ham on a farm in Iowa, every day can be field day.

ENIGMA MACHINE-STYLE EVENT CHALLENGES DECODING SKILLS

The Enigma machine that the Germans used during World War II to create encoded secret messages is about to be put back into action. KPH, the maritime radio station in California, will be transmitting messages using Enigma encryption for broadcast via both CW and RTTY. Listeners copy the message and then, using an actual Enigma machine they may have in their shack or a simulated one available online, work to decrypt the message which will be sent in groups of five letters each.

This annual tradition recalls the hard work of World War II era cryptographers who ultimately cracked the code.

Certificates are awarded for proof of successful decode, first to decode and for use of original or replica hardware.

The broadcast begins at 2000 UTC on the 30th of August on all KPH CW and RTTY frequencies.

For more details, visit the link in the text version of this weeks newscast at arnewsline.org

KATIE CAMPBELL, KE8LQR, PRESENTED WITH NEWSLINE'S YHOTY AWARD

On Wednesday, July 30th it was my honor to present the 2025 Bill Pasternak WA6ITF Amateur Radio Newsline Young Ham of the Year award to Katie Campbell, KE8LQR. As Katie will be in Germany as a foreign exchange student for her senior year in high school on the weekend of the Huntsville Hamfest, we presented the award live on Ham Nation, a first for us. Our corporate partners Yaesu USA, Heil Ham Radio and RadioWavz Antennas will have some gifts to show their appreciation.

Appearing with Katie, along with our Ham Nation regulars Josh Nass KI6NAZ, Amanda Alden K1DDN and Gordon West WB6NOA, were Young Ham of the Year committee chairman Mark Abramowics NT3V, judge Rich Moseson W2VU, Newsline editor Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT, Newsline's Neil Rapp WB9VPG, DX Engineering's Tim Duffy K3LR and Huntsville Hamfest chairman Mark Brown N4BCD.

If you missed it live, you can watch the replay on YouTube on the Ham Radio Crash Course channel, or just type Ham Nation in the YouTube search bar. Our sincere congratulations go out to Katie for her amazing contributions to the amateur radio hobby and service. We're looking forward to next March when we again open nominations for the 2026 Young Ham of the Year award. Again, many thanks to our corporate partners Yaesu USA, Heil Ham Radio and RadioWavz, as well as you, our listeners and

ARRL'S RADIO ALPHA MUSEUM TRACKS HAM RADIO'S EVOLUTION

What began as the project of Chuck Penson, WA7ZZE, is slowly growing into Radio Alpha, a ham radio museum and research resource hosted by the ARRL. The historian's vision is to build a tool where documents detailing amateur radio equipment and technology - and its evolution - can be accessible to everyone in a central location.

Announcing the project on the ARRL website, Chuck wrote: [quote] "This database will be a living resource, regularly updated and expanded through ongoing research and community contributions, fostering a deeper appreciation and understanding of amateur radio's profound impact on communication, technology, and society,” [endquote] Chuck is looking for volunteers to assist him in building and collecting the content, especially hams with deep knowledge of particular product brands or operating modes.The project is being supported by the ARRL's Historical Preservation Fund

If you are interested in assisting him, he can be emailed at radioalpha at arrl dot org [radioalpha@arrl.org] That's radioalpha - one word - at arrl dot org

To see how the collection has already grown, visit the link in the text version of this week's newsline script at arnewsline.org

SILENT KEY: FORMER ARRL SE DIVISION DIRECTOR FRANK BUTLER, W4RH

A longstanding and well-respected member of the amateur radio community has become a Silent Key. Frank Butler, W4RH, had been active in ham radio since the 1940s, when he received his commercial and his amateur licenses. He spent part of his professional career as a broadcast engineer at several radio stations. By many accounts, he gave back generously to amateur radio over many decades. He served for nearly 30 years as the Southeastern Division director of the ARRL until he stepped down in 2007. He had begun his service with the league in 1957 as communications manager for the Western Florida Section.

According to a posting on the Facebook page of the Alabama section of the ARRL, Frank became a Silent Key on Tuesday the 5th of August. He was 100 years old.

On March 6th of this year, on the occasion of his becoming a centenarian, the Okaloosa County Board in Florida proclaimed the date "Frank M. Butler Jr. Day."

Hams throughout the division and beyond posted on social media, recalling him as a gentleman and a frequent and prominent guest at Huntsville and other hamfests. His generous spirit was also widely known: He was a member of the ARRL Maxim Society, which recognizes donors for their extraordinary monetary gifts to the league.

PROJECT BY INDIAN STUDENTS, HAMS SEEKS PATENT

Leave it to ham radio operators to know how destructive, and even fatal, a lightning strike can be. That's why a number of years ago educators at a school in rural West Bengal, India, sought input from local hams for a project by physics students to help protect farmers when they are caught in the fields during storms and lightning strikes. According to reports in the Indian media, the homebrew, affordably built device, which resembles a bicycle’s wheel, has been evaluated by the Central Power Research Institute. It also received recognition in 2020 at the National Children's Science Congress, a national showcase for innovative technology devised by youngsters between the ages of 10 and 17. Newsline described the simple device in its first report on the project in November of 2019, noting that it affixes a wheel-like component to the top of a high bamboo pole. An electrical wire connects it to metal in the earth to ground it.

The secretary of the West Bengal Radio Club said in media reports that 40 such devices have already been put in place at 40 locations throughout northern Bengal where the fields for the farmers and their animals are moist and marshy.

Now the waiting begins: The Times of India reported that the patent application for the project was filed on the 27th of July.

SPECIAL EVENT HONORS NAVAJO CODE TALKERS OF WW2

Although the 14th of August has been designated as Navajo Code Talkers Day, a group of proud amateur radio operators are taking several days to honor this special unit of brave Marines who served in the US military during the second World War.

Few of these hams could be prouder than Herb Goodluck N7HG, whose late father, John V. Goodluck, had been one of the Marines who used their own Navajo language to craft a wartime code that could not be broken.

Herb will be among those calling QRZ from the 10th to the 15th, using the callsign N7C. Operators will be using CW, phone and FT-8. Additional details, including operating frequencies, can be found on QRZ.com

The hams will be operating from Window Rock, Arizona at the Navajo Tribal Park and Veterans Memorial.

CREW-11 ARRIVES, BEGINS WORK ABOARD ISS

NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 arrived at the International Space Station in the early hours of Saturday, the 2nd of August after a launch that suffered a one-day weather delay due to poor weather

Commander Zena Cardman, KJ5CMN and pilot Mike Fincke, KE5AIT were accompanied by two mission specialists, JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. During their seven-month tenure aboard the orbiting laboratory, the team will conduct experiments on the impact of microgravity on bacteria-killing viruses. They will also study plant-cell division and human stem cells.

The ISS assignment marks the first time in space for both Zena Cardman and Oleg Platonov.

AST SPACEMOBILE DEFENDS PROPOSED AMATEUR-SPECTRUM USE

A Texas telecommunications company asking for FCC permission to use amateur radio frequencies between 430 and 440 MHz has submitted a response to the US regulator, defending itself against concerns from ham radio operators over interference. The letter, written by AST SpaceMobile assures the agency that its satellites are designed to "mitigate interference." The company also said it would shut down its use of the band if interference was found. The company's filing, reported on the PC Magazine website, reads in part that the FCC has found that AST SpaceMobile’s prior demonstrations of no interference conform to ITU regulations and are "sufficient to authorize a limited, nonconforming use.”

The PC Magazine website noted that the FCC has received more than 2,500 comments in protest of the company's proposed use of the band.

JOINT INDIA-US SATELLITE FOCUSES ON NATURAL DISASTERS

An unprecedented joint satellite project between the Indian Space Research Organization and NASA is giving researchers the hope of better studying the Earth's climate and helping improve responses to natural disasters by monitoring the most subtle changes on Earth, including in its glaciers and wetlands.

The satellite is known as NISAR, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar mission. Its launch aboard an ISRO spacecraft on the 30th of July from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, sent it on its mission to send microwaves to collect data from different surfaces on the planet. When processed, the data will be visible in an exceptionally high resolution. An estimated 80 terabytes of data will be collected daily. Scientists have said that the method has "unprecedented accuracy." Researchers and governments around the world will be able to view the data via a cloud platform where they will have open access.

The project is being praised as the first collaborative satellite mission of its kind between the Indian and US space agencies.