An important component used in our radios is 75 years old today!

On December 16, 1947, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen—two physicists who were members of Mervin Kelly’s Solid State Physics Group and Semiconductor Sub-Group at Bell Labs—managed to make the first working transistor, now known as the point-contact transistor.

W2AEW has posted a short video on his YouTube channel showing some of his solo Field Day setup at the Guglielmo Marconi Memorial Park in Franklin Twp NJ - former site of the Marconi Wireless Corp East Coast transmitting station.

Be a part of the Amateur Radio tradition of experimentation and learning!

Try out FreeDV—the Open Source Amateur Radio Digital Voice mode—during the February 2022 FreeDV Activity Day.

This ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit does not appear to impact Amateur Radio Super High Frequency (SHF) operation since—according to the ARRL US Amateur Radio Frequency Allocations page and Wikipedia ITU Region 2 frequency allocation chart—the 6GHz band is outside the Amateur Radio 5cm allocation (5.650–5.925 GHz).

From ARRL News …

Channels 1 and 2 on 60 meters will be available starting on August 30 for interoperability between US government and US amateur radio stations involved in Hurricane Ida emergency communications. This situation will remain in place until the storm has passed and the need for these channels no longer exists, or on September 6, whichever comes first.

These frequencies will be used: Channel 1 Primary voice traffic 5332 kHz channel center, 5330.5 kHz USB voice; and Channel 2 Digital traffic 5348 kHz channel center, 5346.5 kHz USB with 1.5 kHz offset to center of digital waveform. Stations on 60 meters are asked to yield to operational traffic related to Hurricane Ida. ¹