ARRL Audio News--OPEN--In this edition . . .; Amateur Radio Bill Passes Senate, Moves to the House; Hams Help Out with Sea Rescue; ARRL Audio News ID--Satellite Update--BREAK:; Students and Teachers Invited to ?Fly a File? on ARISSat-1; Check Out the January/February 2010 Issues of NCJ and QEX; Now You Know!: Santa?s a Ham!; ARRL Audio News--News Briefs--CLOSE

The deadline to nominate an amateur or group of amateurs for the 2009 ARRL International Humanitarian Award is coming up fast -- December 31, 2009. This award is conferred upon an amateur or amateurs who demonstrate devotion to human welfare, peace and international understanding through Amateur Radio. The League established the annual prize to recognize Amateur Radio operators who have used ham radio to provide extraordinary service to others in times of crisis or disaster.

Jerry Sevick, W2FMI -- renowned for his research and publications related to short vertical antennas and transmission line transformers -- passed away on Sunday, November 29. He was 90. In 2004, Sevick, an ARRL Technical Advisor, received the ARRL Hudson Division Technical Achievement Award; in 2005, he received the Dayton Hamvention Technical Excellence Award. The Hamvention Awards Committee noted that Sevick's April 1978 QST article on short ground-radial systems "now serves as the world's standard for earth conductivity measurements."

This feature -- including convenient Web links to useful information -- is a concise monthly update of some of the things ARRL is doing on behalf of its members. This installment covers the month of November.

The winner of the QST Cover Plaque Award for November is A. Robert Patzlaff, W9JQT, for his article "The Rockless, a VFO Controlled Low Power Transceiver." Congratulations, Robert! The winner of the QST Cover Plaque award -- given to the author or authors of the best article in each issue -- is determined by a vote of ARRL members on the QST Cover Plaque Poll Web page. Cast a ballot for your favorite article in the December issue by Thursday, December 31.

Both MF and HF offer a lot of breathing room for all interests in Amateur Radio. As the 2009-2010 Contest Season continues, two single-band events in December will highlight the magic of the opposite ends of the shortwave spectrum: the ARRL 160 Meter Contest and ARRL 10 Meter Contest.

For the final time this year, we again take up the issue of the appropriate use of Amateur Radio: the extent to which radio amateurs may (and should) provide communications on behalf of others, particularly their employers.

If you're still looking for that "just right" stocking stuffer for the ham in your life (or maybe you want to treat yourself), look no further than the ARRL Online Store. This holiday season, we are proud to present two new items: the ARRL holiday ornament and the Pocket Ref by Thomas Glover.

Our exciting period of nearly daily sunspot activity ended with the first spotless day on November 23 and the Sun has been blank since then. A look at the STEREO image shows a bright active area, perhaps five days over the eastern horizon, but we don't know if that will give us sunspots or not. Sunspot numbers for November 19-25 were 30, 31, 14, 13, 0, 0 and 0 with a mean of 12.6. The 10.7 cm flux was 76.7, 76.2, 75.8, 76.3, 75.7, 74.7 and 74.2 with a mean of 75.7. The estimated planetary A indices were 2, 1, 8, 4, 0, 6 and 5 with a mean of 3.7. The estimated mid-latitude A indices were 0, 2, 6, 2, 0, 3 and 4 with a mean of 2.4.

This week, Surfin' wonders what to do when ham radio transmissions interfere with the wireless equipment.

On Wednesday, November 25, the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) -- WT Docket No. 09-209 -- seeking to amend the Commission's Amateur Radio Service rules to clarify certain rules and codify existing procedures governing the vanity call sign system, as well as revise certain rules applicable to club stations.

Around 5:30 on the morning of October 6, George E. Smith, AA2EJ, of Barnegat, New Jersey, got a phone call that changed his life: He had just found out he had won the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2009 "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit -- the CCD sensor." Smith will share the prize money with two other recipients: Charles K. Kao, of Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in the United Kingdom and Chinese University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong, China, and Willard S. Boyle, of Bell Laboratories. Each recipient will receive a diploma, a medal and a document confirming their share of SEK $10 million (about $1.4 million US dollars); Kao will receive 50 percent, while Smith and Boyle will each receive 25 percent the monetary award.

A military institution designed to provide emergency communications has moved to new quarters in the Pentagon. On October 21, John G. Grimes, the former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration, cut the ribbon on the new Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS) station, now located on the fifth floor of the Pentagon. The facility -- manned by the Pentagon Amateur Radio Club (PARC) -- is packed with amateur radios, radio-telephone patches, computers and data links. "This is a great facility, manned totally by volunteers," Grimes told the crowd who came to see the new station. "It's a crucial capability for our country."

This feature -- including convenient Web links to useful information -- is a concise monthly update of some of the things ARRL is doing on behalf of its members. This installment covers the month of October.

The winner of the QST Cover Plaque Award for October is John E. Portune, W6NBC, for his article "The Quadrifilar Helix as a 2 Meter Base Antenna Station." Congratulations, John! The winner of the QST Cover Plaque award -- given to the author or authors of the best article in each issue -- is determined by a vote of ARRL members on the QST Cover Plaque Poll Web page. Cast a ballot for your favorite article in the November issue by Monday, November 30.

Earlier this year, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) named 13 men -- including three radio amateurs -- to the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame. The honorees were inducted last month at CEA's Industry Forum in Phoenix, Arizona. Former ARRL Rocky Mountain Division Director Walt Stinson, W0CP, of Englewood, Colorado; Former ARRL Vice President and Central Division Director R.H.G. Mathews, W9ZN (ex-9ZN) (SK), and Karl Hassel, W9PXW (ex-8AKG) (SK).

The W1AW Frequency Measuring Test (FMT) has taken several different formats over the past few years. This year, we return to the "classic" FMT -- measuring the frequency of an unmodulated carrier. Accurate frequency measurement is required of all hams for both regulatory compliance -- "stay in the band!" -- and operating convenience, particularly on the new digital modes. The W1AW FMT will run on November 12, 2009 at 0245 UTC (this is Wednesday evening, November 11, 2009 at 9:45 PM EST). It will replace any W1AW bulletin normally scheduled for that time. It is recommended that participants listen to W1AW's transmissions prior to the event to get an idea of conditions to see which band (or bands) will be best for measurement purposes.

Are you enjoying the fall operating season? Whether it's because radio conditions improve or just because our attention returns to indoor pursuits as the days get shorter, on-the-air activity always picks up at this time of the year.

Around 9:45 on the night of October 23, while attending an overnight event at the Boy Scouts' Camp Emerald Bay on Santa Catalina Island, Karl Tso, KI6PCW, and his wife, Deborah Ava, KJ6CRZ, of Topanga, California, decided to climb a hill to check out the view -- and to see if they could get into the repeater on the island with their handheld transceivers. As they climbed the hill, the two radio amateurs heard a sound; Tso turned his high-powered flashlight on the source, only to discover a man who had fallen 48 feet to the rocks below, bleeding and severely injured.

Well, what a week it has been. The solar flux hit 82.3 on Tuesday, the highest recording yet since the first-observed "new cycle sunspot" in January 2008, the "official" visual start of Solar Cycle 24. Even as I write this, the flux is still at 80, thanks to sunspot region 1029, so let's hope that it is a sign of better things to come. Sunspot numbers for October 22-28 were 0, 30, 21, 28, 29, 29 and 26 with a mean of 23.3. The 10.7 cm flux was 71.6, 72.9, 75.6, 75.5, 81.3, 81.5 and 79.9 with a mean of 76.9. The estimated planetary A indices were 14, 8, 8, 5, 3, 3 and 2 with a mean of 6.1. The estimated mid-latitude A indices were 12, 7, 5, 3, 3, 2 and 3 with a mean of 5. The region (1029) produced several B-class solar flare events and a single C2.2 class flare on the 28th, but luckily CQWW SSB was unaffected for the most part.