N4AA: Carl Smith’s rapid-fire CW operation accounted for 300 contacts at this year's Field Day. photos by Max Cooper On a stifling late-June day, a tangle of wires snakes through the open door of the ...

Well before the days of the tweet and the status update, people communicated with each other over sweeping distances by quite literally harnessing the earth's magnetic field to send messages via radio ...

Ham radio, especially the HF bands, can be intimidating for aspiring operators, many being put off by the cost of equipment. The transceiver itself is only part of the equation and proper test and ...

The biggest stories of the day delivered to your inbox.

Many of today’s experienced engineers got their start in electronics through amateur, or “ham,” radio. (Many theories exist over the origin of the term “ham radio,” but there is no consensus.) Over ...

On a gray Friday afternoon last spring, Steve Galchutt sat high atop Chief Mountain, an 11,700-foot peak along Colorado’s Front Range. An epic panorama of pristine alpine landscape stretched in almost ...