I think it later became just "Radio Craft". At least, Gernsback was publishing a magazine with that name in 1938. There's a reprint of a special "50 Years of Radio" issue from March 1938 available for sale at Midnight Science (the crystal radio site): http://www.midnightscience.com/bookstore.html#part9

Odd behavior on CB radio? Impossible!

I'm not going to try to work them, not until the ARRL has a Worked All Pirates award.

These days computers are just as much a part of an amateur's station equipment as are things like antenna tuners and keyers, so I think that computer gear is an appropriate thing to sell at a hamfest. Likewise, since there's a lot of overlap between hams and shortwave listeners and electronics hobbyists, I don't see a problem with selling electronic parts and SWL supplies. But I think that stuff that is completely unrelated to radio, like a guy selling used paperback novels or old shoes or video games, doesn't belong there.

There are a huge number of distributions of Linux, but most are small and/or specialized in some manner. If you're new to Linux, I'd suggest picking one of the big, mainstream distributions, because they are the easiest to install and configure, and usually better suited for new Linux users. Some candidates would be Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, Slackware, and Gentoo. Any of these would probably be capable of running most of the amateur radio software that's out there for Linux.

Personally, I would recommend Ubuntu. I use it at home extensively (although not for amateur radio) and I think it's a particularly good distro for new users because of the work they've done on making installation and setup straightforward. But any of the major distros will work for what you want and they're all good.

In Canada our callsign prefixes still denote the part of the country we're in. For instance, a VE3 is from Ontario, VE4 from Manitoba, etc. If an amateur moves from one province to another, he has to get a new callsign issued.

There are several organizations that now accept eQSLs for their awards, most notably CQ Magazine. See here for info on which organizations accept eQSLs:

http://www.eqsl.cc/qslcard/OrgBB.cfm

Also, eQSL has its own awards that you can go after.

Awards aside, if you just want a QSL as a keepsake of an on-air contact, eQSL serves perfectly well - better than LOTW, in fact, since you can actually print the eQSL card if you want. If I log a contact, and the other station confirms it, and especially if he has "authenticity guaranteed", then it's as good as a paper card in my opinion.

I've got a couple of ideas.

First, most hamfests are nothing more than swap meets. Which means that if you're not interested in shopping for radio stuff, there's no point in attending. Occasionally there are also other events - presentations, etc., but it's pretty rare and not enough to draw in attendees. Perhaps a full roster of interesting talks, demonstrations, and hands-on activities would bring in more people.

Second, the hours are lousy. Every hamfest starts at 9 a.m. and is usually winding down by 11, even if the thing is officially running to noon or 1 p.m. This means if you can't get there within the first hour or so, there's no point in attending. This discourages out-of-towners and anyone who isn't an early bird from attending. I suppose it's too much to suggest starting them later, but at the very least I think hamfests should insist that vendors stick around for the advertised hours, or something close to them.

This thread is proof of one of the basic laws of amateur radio: any opinion held by an amateur radio operator, no matter how innocuous, will cause some other amateur radio operator to foam at the mouth with rage.

W3WN wrote: "But the incoming crowd starts to thin out around 10:30, and very few come in the door after about 11. So can you really blame the dealer who sees right in front of him that the crowd is thinning out, and it's time to start packing up for home?"

Yes, but I think you missed my point. Why does the incoming crowd thin out around 10:30? I think it's in part because people know that most vendors pack up early, so they don't bother coming at all if they can't get there within an hour of opening time. I certainly have skipped some local hamfests for that very reason. And to bring this back to the topic of this thread, commercial ham radio dealers are certainly going to take this into account when deciding if it's worth the time and effort to set up at a hamfest.

Just to put this in perspective: if the official hours of the hamfest are 9 to 12, but most vendors (and therefore most customers) pack it in after 11, then you've effectively reduced the length of the hamfest by a third. That's a lot. And I've seen some hamfests even worse than this - they were supposed to run from 9 to 1, but the vendors were all leaving shortly after 11, which cuts the real time of the hamfest almost in half.

I'd add one more. If your hamfest runs from, say 9:00 a.m. to noon, you should require that anyone who sets up a vendor table there actually remain until closing time. Most of the hamfests I attend, many of the vendors pack up and leave an hour or more before the official end. And most buyers figure this out after one or two hamfests, so they figure it's not worth even going unless they can get there within the first hour and a half. So effectively your three hour hamfest is actually a two hour one. And radio dealers are going to take this into account when deciding if it's worth the effort to set up at your hamfest.

At a hamfest today I picked up a homebrew QRP rig called a Lectrokit SP1. The guy who was selling it didn't know anything about it (it was on a table of items donated by hams to raise funds for an amateur radio club). It appears to be complete except for a round socket on the top that's empty. The socket looks like a tube socket, but I think it is actually for a crystal, as this is a solid-state rig.

My question: does anyone know anything about this kit, or where I could find a schematic (and maybe assembly instructions) for it? I googled for information about it, but I didn't find a schematic or assembly information. I did find out that it was a kit that was sold in the early '90s, that it was called the Lectrokit SP1 Spider, and was crystal-controlled. I also found out that there was a cover article about it in the Jan. 1993 issue of 73 magazine.

Thanks.
Greg S.

> The solar flux goes up to 72 then just when you
> think it's going to 73 it goes back down to 68
> again. The flux has been around 70 for the past 8
> months. The sun is creepy. The sun sucks!

Yes, which is why there is a growing consensus among scientific experts world-wide that the sun must be defeated and perhaps destroyed.

I'm using Ham Radio Deluxe for its logbook - in fact that's the only thing I'm using from it. It isn't perfect, but after trying many other logging programs, and after trying to roll my own solutions (using a spreadsheet was one solution, using a relational database was another), I settled on HRD as being the best choice available.

Where it is weakest is that it doesn't have much built in for doing awards tracking, for generating reports on your past activities, etc. But what it has going for it are things like:

- Full support for importing and exporting logs using ADIF and Cabrillo formats. So if you want to do awards tracking, you can easily move your logs to some other program that supports that better.

- The ability to sort logs on any column, so you can quickly group logs that share a common attribute.

- A built-in mapping program that plots all your logs on a world map. To make this work you need to record the station's latitude and longitude, or its Maidenhead grid square.

- The ability to define your own custom columns. This was important to me because I wanted to retain my QSO numbering system in the log, and I wanted to track things like SKCC and FISTS numbers.

- The ability to export logs to LOTW and eQSL formats.

I think it's a pretty good program, and worth using even if you don't use anything except the logbook.

Several times last year I tried to register on qsl.net, to set up a page there for my station. I never ever got any reply to any of those attempts. I get the impression that no one is actually maintaining it any longer.