Issue 139 December 24th, 2016

Ham Radio Deluxe bricks user's software after negative review
37 pages into into this forum's discussion of HRD's brutally inept handling of a customer complaint, the co-owner of the company wades into the fray and apologizes.
Techdirt

Amateur radio fans drop the ham-mer on HRD's license key 'blacklist'
Remotely killing one customer's copy was not an isolated incident, say readers.
The Register

NPOTA contact tally tops 1 Million
Activators operating from National Park Service units across the US and Chasers around the world pushed the contact tally over its goal this week.
ARRL

EME In The '80s
Unlike today's widespread JT65B usage on eme, where signals can be many db into the noise and inaudible by ear, eme contacts could only be completed by actually copying signals that you could hear with your ears. This usually required big antennas and lots of power.
VE7SL

Keeping an NVIS antenna legal on 60 meters
To compute ERP, antenna gain must be relative to a half-wave dipole antenna. An NVIS antenna has a lot more gain than a dipole.
keep-nvis-legal-on-60m

A Cootie key
The "Cootie" key or "Sideswiper" is basically a double-sided straight key and has a reputation for being very hard to learn, possibly harder even than the Vibroplex Bug.
Ham Radio QRP

Using a GPS repeater antenna with the Yaesu FTM-400DR
My Yaesu FTM-400DR has had a difficult time ascertaining a GPS lock inside of my vehicle. Some others have also complained of this.
K5ACL

Discovering secret "Numbers Stations"
Brian and Jason have been scanning the air waves for sstv signals for two months, but what they found was something else. An old standby from the Cold War.
The Modern Rogue

Icom-7300 spectrum scope band edge how-to
For those of you wanting to customize the band edges here's a how-to.
K0PIR

DMR range test part 1 of 3: Baofeng DM-5R
In the series I am doing a range test of three different DMR radios from two locations. One location is 11km away and the other almost 19km away.
dmr-range-test

A diamond radio receiver
Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have made the world’s smallest radio receiver.
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering

Thank you for reading.
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