One stop daily Amatuer radio news update!

While surfing the net last week I came across two great sites if you want Amateur radio news at a glance with the opportunity to look into each story more in-depth via a link. In the past I have visited Southgate, Eham and ARRL for up to date ham radio news. These websites bring bring it  all together in one easy to navigate site. They are updated daily to keep you informed on what’s going on in the radio world. Check them out a lot of work and time goes into each  and in my humble opinion it’s a nice jumping place to keep up to date. The first info site is called Ham Radio update, it's updated daily and you are greeted with a headline some brief info. If the news item interests you then you can click on the link and read further.  Ham radio new is easy to navigate and you can be brought up to speed on Amateur radio news quickly. The other site is called Ham Radio Daily, this site is more in depth with not only news item but YouTube, DX Cluster, Top HF spots and propagation just to mention a few.   Here are the links and let me know what you think............Ham Radio Update and 

Ham Radio Daily

The Yaesu FT-897 is coming to it's end

I read the report on Southgate Amateur radio news that the Yaesu FT-897 is coming to an end. This is a great rig for both portable, mobile and home use. You can have up to 20 watts on battery power and up to 100 watts from  your DC power supply. Not only do you get HF but VHF and UHF as well. This rig being an all in one was just great to the new ham who can't afford the large price tag with some of the larger rigs but with features that this radio comes with. There is no news from Yaesu as of yet of a replacement or even if there is going to be one.

Where does the money come from???

For some time now there has been a rumour of a new radio coming out from Kenwood.
In Japan Kenwood is anouning a new addition to the family of radios. They are saying the TS990S will be released Feb 2013.  It's a great radio with many features and great specs...but it comes with a very steep price tag.....9,138.78. I am just not sure how folks come up with the cash for rigs like this.

Early release of Dayton eye candy!!

Dayton with many more surprises

My issue of QST came in yesterday and the back page made the new Kenwood rig official !!  There is a great pic there of the new TS 990S but with little to no spec's. The available spec's brag of a top RF output of 200 watts, HF and 50mhz, built in antenna tuner,built in power supply and really thats about all the info Kenwood released in the full page release. Viewing the picture one can see two USB ports which are nicely placed on the front of the rig. A very impressive color TTF display along with a band scope, not if the rig houses two independent receivers but it would seem so as there are independent controls for each receiver on the right hand side of the radio. Not sure as of yet what the optional components of the TS 990S are.  So what are your impressions of the new kid on the block??

Yaesu FT-818 fact or fiction??

I just came across some info regarding a replacement for the road warrior FT-817 it's the mystery FT-818? I have read some comments on blogs that wrote about the FT-818. Some seem to be drooling while others see it as wishful thinking. I did try a link on one blog that boasted of a Yahoo group for the FT-818 but it did not exist. The "up coming rig" sure does boast of some very impressive improvements.

QST is going digital..............

This afternoon when I checked my email there was a very interesting email from the ARRL. In June of this year QST is going digital!! Well almost they are still going to offer their paper addition but ARRL members will also have access (free of charge) to the QST digital version. The digital version will have some content that is only offered in the digital layout along with videos and hyper-links. Now if you are a regular reader of this blog you may remember back in August of 2011 I posted about Monitoring Times digital addition. They were offering a digital only subscription at a cheaper price than the paper version. I went for it and well...it was the reason the alarm bells went off

Amateur Radio Newsline

If you want to get a report of what's new's in Amateur radio then Amateur Radio Newsline may be for you. It's about a 30 minute report of what's up in ham radio over the past week. It comes out on Friday each week and gives a run down of what has happened, is happening and some upcoming items as well.  It is anchored by Jim Davis W2JKD who as of 2010 has been in broadcasting for 50 years. The news segments are about 30 minutes in length and are very professional sounding. There are links at the website to either download the news in MP3 format, a news script can be printed, a pod cast and finally you can pick it up on YouTube as well. Below is the YouTube version it is 28 minutes in total so you may want to listen to it in segments or jump through it to get the feel of Newsline. Enjoy!!

CHECK THIS VIDEO OUT !!!!!
The VE2DXY DXpedition saw that HP was looking for unique stories of how HP computers are being used. Well the VE2DXY team thought ham radio was unique and a DXpedition more so. They contacted HP with the story and the video below was the outcome.



 Let us all take the challenge...... unique ways to get ham radio out there!! How about a commercial featuring  Ford or GMC using their 4x4 getting ham radio to remote and rare grid locations for VHF contests? Honda generators in times of natural disasters delivering reliably power to the ham radio life line? How cool would that be to see as a commercial during an NFL game?
Hats off to the VE2DXY team for getting ham radio out there.