Issue 109 April 30th, 2016

P5: Disease or Sickness?
It's time for the ARRL to do the responsible thing and delete P5 from the DXCC list.
KE9V

Breached secrecy foiled North Korea DXpedition, group leader says
"What we did not have was the support of those we asked to remain quiet, nor the support of anyone we asked for help with funding."
ARRL

Three new CubeSats now in orbit
Signals have been received from the three CubeSats launched April 25 on Soyuz flight VS14 from the Kourou spaceport in South America.
Southgate

The Icom IC-7300 vs. Elecraft KX3: Which do you prefer for CW/SSB?
At the end of this post, I have an embedded a survey in which you can vote for the sample recordings you like best.
The SWLing Post

Power Genius XL sneak peak
This baby uses a pair of state-of-the-art LDMOS chips and cruises at 1,500 Watts 100% duty cycle (no worries in RTTY or JT65) and covers 160m to 6m.
With Varying Frequency

FCC Invites Comments to eliminate 15 dB gain limit on amplifiers
Expert maintains that the 15 dB gain limitation is an unneeded holdover from the days when amplifiers were less efficient and the FCC was attempting to rein in the use of Amateur Service amplifiers by Citizens Band operators.
ARRL

USB soldering iron is surprisingly capable
We know what you’re thinking. There’s no way an 8 watt USB-powered soldering iron could be worth the $5 it commands on eBay.
Hack A Day

How the End-Fed antenna gets a bad reputation
When used in a shack you hear all manner of stories of how the end-fed random wire antenna absolutely reeks havoc with RF at the station. So what's the deal?
Ham Radio QRP

Dissecting D-Star streams between reflectors
In preparation for some software development work contributing to XLX reflector software I wanted to disassemble the UDP stream exchanged between D-Star reflectors and a reflector and a connected node respectively.
Notizbl0g.

W1UL free Ham license preparation
The W1UL method is a ham cram on steroids.
Ham Cram

Company settles charges of operating cellphone jammers
An Alabama company has agreed to pay $20,500 in civil penalties to settle charges that it illegally operated cellular phone jamming devices on its premises, in violation of FCC rules.
Southgate

Thank you for reading.
73