Monthly Archives: June 2025

We Are In Hurricane Season!

Posted on by

The first tropical storm of the 2025 season, Andrea, has formed.  While this storm doesn’t appear likely to impact the US at this time, it is a reminder that we ARE in Hurricane Season.

The last hurricane to make landfall in New England was 34 years ago – Hurricane Bob.  Averages indicate that our area has a hurricane landfall every 11.5 years, so we are very much overdue for one.  For New England, our season typically runs from mid-August thru September, but you never know.

NOAA is predicting a busier that usual season this year. Part of their reasoning has to do with much higher than normal sea temperatures off the Atlantic Coast.  Southern New England is usually protected by a very cold band of water to our South that tends to rapidly weaken hurricanes into tropical storms.  This year, that area of the sea is running warmer than normal as well.

There is a decent discussion of the 2025 season on the Accuweather website. A more technical discussion of tropical weather can be found at Tropical Tidbits.

No matter what, the time to get your preparations done is now, while the weather isn’t blowing a stink.

Are Technicians Missing out on 10-meter digital modes?

Posted on by

The Technician license has been the entry level for most hams.  Many of whom think it is a VHF and above license.  Those that do are missing out on the fact that they have digital privileges on the 10-meter band from 28.000 to 28.300 MHz.  That includes the very popular FT-8 frequency of 28.074 MHz.

Ten meters isn’t always open, but during the peak of the solar cycle (where we are right now), it is often open many of the daylight hours.  Sometimes, global DX is available 24×7 – it all depends on solar activity.

Given the popularity of FT-8, that might be an excellent way to get HF experience, along with Digital and DX excitement.  Especially using FT-8, Parks On The Air (POTA) can be more productive than voice.

This snapshot showing HF privileges for Technicians is from the ARRL:

image.png

The software is free and it is pretty straightforward to set up modern radio gear, like the IC-7300.  Check out https://wsjt.sourceforge.io/wsjtx.html