K4ABT has been sending out SPAM email marketing his RASCAL rig interfaces.  Like all products advertised through bulk, unsolicited SPAM email, I assume that these products are junk and worthless.  Please do not support a company that resorts to blatantly unethical marketing practices.  Do not support SPAMMERS with your money!

HamRadioMarket.com is a spammer.  They have sent me unsolicited junk email advertising their business.  I will never, ever do business with a spammer.

I ordered a R-A-M mount (for an Icom IC-706 installation) recently from HRO, and while I like the product, and it suits my needs exactly, I had two problems with the order.  

The first problem was that the mount came in a blister pack that had clearly been opened.  When I opened the box, the mount itself was half hanging out of the plastic packaging.  Some hardware parts (standard size nuts) were missing.  This seems like a huge detail for someone at the store to have overlooked.

The other problem was the shipper.  I specifically asked them not to use UPS.  I do not like UPS, they've given me horrible customer service over the years, and I always end up having to pick up the parcels at the UPS depot across town, where it takes a minimum of a half hour for them to find my parcel.  I asked HRO to ship via the US Postal Service, and the sales rep on the phone said they would do that.  Instead, they shipped via UPS, and it was a major hassle and several additional days before I received the order.  If they had told me they couldn't accomodate my shipping request, I'd have looked for another retailer that could.  Instead, they lied to me in order to secure my order.

I am not happy with HRO.

The University of Texas Amateur Radio Club, N5XU, has an AM-6155 ampifier on 222 MHz.  It is a rack-mounted amplifier with an Eimac 8930 tube that puts out 400 watts on 222 MHz.  Airflow is from the front of the amplifier, through the body, and out the back.  The rack is pushed up into a corner (there is literally no other place to put it) with about 9" clearance from the wall bhind it.  The amplifier actually sticks out of the back of the rack a little bit, so there's only about 6" of clearance between the back of the amp and the wall.

As this was an FAA ground-to-air unit before being converted to Amateur service, I imagine that the amplifier was just put in a separate room where nobody cared about the fan noise.  The fan noise is very loud and objectionable, though, and especially so in a small radio shack of less than 100 sq. ft.  Are there any common tricks to reducing fan noise?

Six meter propagation follows two cycles: an annual cycle, and the solar cycle.  

In North America, the annual cycle is such that Eskip propagation occurs regularly in the months of May, June, July, and August, probably peaking in mid- to late-June.  Around the peak, Eskip will happen almost every day to someplace from any given QTH.  For the entire month of June, you can expect Eskip about two days out of three.  There is also a minor peak in mid-January, but the Eskip openings are a lot less frequent and less intense.  

And of course, as the solar cycle peaks, F-layer propagation on six meters become more frequent and intense.  

Six meters is certainly not dead this year.  Check out the contest results from W5KFT in the ARRL June VHF QSO Party, operating from South Texas:  http://lists.contesting.com/_3830/200006/msg00126.html.  On six meters alone, W5KFT contacted 1,354 stations in 260 different grid locators, and even worked a station in the Africa!