Red River Radio Amateurs

Contribute to the advancement of radio art by participating in the (now) monthly FreeDV 48 hour Activity Day. On the third weekend of each month you can join other FreeDV users on the air for QSOs and a fun time.

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.

Take a break from your holiday preparations by introducing our youth to Amateur Radio.

One of the oldest means of electronic messaging is Morse code. Developed by Alfred Vail and Samuel Morse and sent for the first time on the 24th of May 1844, Morse code changed the way we communicate.

For nearly a century it was required to become a licensed radio amateur until in 2003, the International Telecommunications Union or ITU left it to the discretion of individual countries to decide if a budding amateur needed to demonstrate their ability to send and receive in Morse. With that decision many thought that the end of Morse code was only a matter of time.

They were wrong.

In this episode of ARRL’s monthly On The Air podcast: “For many new operators, nets are one of the easiest and best ways to connect with other hams. Some nets are focused solely on emergency communications, others provide the opportunity to pass formal traffic throughout a region, while others are purely social occasions where you can get to know other active hams. Scheduled nets can take place monthly, weekly, or daily, and no matter their frequency (see what we did there!), nets are a great way to practice using your radio and get comfortable with the conventions of communicating on the air.”¹