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RAC Will Not Attend Hamvention this Year
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For immediate release | Pour diffusion immédiate
April 8, 2025 | avril 8, 2025
At its meeting on March 27, 2025, the Board of Directors of Radio Amateurs of Canada voted unanimously to cancel RAC’s plans to operate a booth at Hamvention (Dayton) in Xenia, Ohio in May. This decision was not taken lightly and was made with deep regret as our members and volunteers always look forward to attending this significant international event.
Lors de sa réunion du 27 mars 2025, le Conseil d’administration de Radio Amateurs du Canada a voté à l’unanimité l’annulation du projet de RAC de tenir un kiosque à la “Hamvention” (Dayton) organisée en mai à Xenia, en Ohio. Cette décision n’a pas été prise à la légère et a été rendue avec un profond regret, car nos membres et bénévoles ont toujours hâte d’assister à cet important événement international.
The relationship between Canada and the United States has become increasingly strained due to recent trade disputes and tariffs imposed by the US government. Adding to these challenges, controversial remarks from US leaders, including suggestions of Canada becoming the 51st state, have heightened concerns about Canadian sovereignty.
Les relations entre le Canada et les États-Unis sont de plus en plus tendues en raison des récents différends commerciaux et des tarifs douaniers imposés par le gouvernement américain. En plus de ces défis, les remarques controversées faites par divers dirigeants américains, au nombre desquelles les suggestions selon lesquelles le Canada deviendrait le 51e État, ont accru les inquiétudes concernant la souveraineté canadienne.
Voice of America Developments (DOGE Target)
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Many an amateur radio hobbyist developed their interest in amateur radio through shortwave listening. Many stations have come and gone and others have morphed into the Internet of all things. Shortwave stations are generally expensive to set up and maintain. Some stations, such as at Sackville, New Brunswick are no more. It has become increasingly evident in a series of man-made events and politics that the Internet can be shut off such as revolt, revolution, war etc. Some shortwave transmissions have been re-activated as a result.
Late in the evening of March 14, 2025, President Trump declared a number of entities as no longer necessary:
- This Executive Order eliminates non-statutory functions and reduces statutory functions of unnecessary governmental entities to what is required by law. Affected entities include the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Institute of Museum and Library Services, United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, Minority Business Development Agency, and Arctic Research Commission.
- This action builds on an Executive Order President Trump previously signed to reduce unnecessary governmental entities and Federal advisory committees.
The Commonwealth
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The Commonwealth of Nations is often referred to as the British Commonwealth or just the Commonwealth. There are 56 member states, most of which are former members of what was known as "the British Empire".
They are connected by language, history and culture. Members include the United Kingdom, the former Dominions of Canada, South Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand. They also include British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It is headed by Charles III. The Commonwealth was formalized by the Statute of Westminster in 1931. There are 15 Commonwealth realms, including Canada. There are 36 republics. There are 5 other members that have different monarchs (Brunei, Eswatini, Lesotho and Tonga. {Yes, we have heard of Lesotho}.
Developments in Encryption and the Amateur Radio Service
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There have been developments about the use of encryption and the carrying-out of cryptographic experimentation in the amateur radio service. Two articles follow - 1) a press release from RAC on this subject; and 2) a portion of an article/FAQ by Dave Goodwin VE3KG – RAC Regulatory Affairs Officer.
Read more: Developments in Encryption and the Amateur Radio Service
Report of 2023 Wildfires and Response by YARS
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[2024-06-17] From about May to October 2023 a series of wildfires occurred across the Northwest Territories. The wildfires were wide-spread geographically and coincided with abnormally high temperatures and a major drought. Significant loss of forests occurred as did loss to private property including homes and infrastructure (roads, fibre optic cables, hydro-electrical transmission lines etc.). The community of Enterprise was consumed. Fort Smith, Hay River, Enterprise, Kátł'odeeche First Nation, Yellowknife, Behchokǫ̀ etc. were all evacuated amongst other locations. Fortunately there was no direct loss of life.
WordPerfect on Linux
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Retrofuturism - Anachronistic Technology and HAM Radio
The figure above may seem rather silly. It shows WordPerfect 8.0 for UNIX running - roughly the equivalent of WordPerfect 4.2 for MSDOS - mid to late 1980s. WordPerfect 6.0 for MSDOS is shown running in the DOSBOX, an emulator for MSDOS - late 1990s). Finally WordPerfect X.13 is shown running in a virtual machine that is running Windows 7. All of these are running under Linux Mint 21.x. The laptop on which they are running is an old ASUS X55U, with motherboard manufactured in 2013.
Not For Profit Administrative Tools
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This page is devoted to not-for-profit tools that can be used by any not-for-profit (or anyone else). It is a listing of tools that are in the public domain and freely available.
Accounting Software
- GNUCASH - This is an opensource small business financial accounting software. It has double-entry accounting amongst other features.
Office Software
- LIBREOFFICE - This is an opensource office suite of programs including a word processor, spreadsheet program, a slide presentation program and a database program.
- SCRIBUS - This is a full featured desktop publishing program.
- LATEX - This is a high quality typesetting program specifically designed for technical and scientific documentation. It is not a word processor but rather a type-setting program. It handles mathematical equations really well and there is quite a bit of user support online. It saves the master file as a text file and then from that it can generate a ghostscript or PDF file all type-setted. (https://www.latex-project.org/ )
- Project Jupyter - This allows for notebooks to be made using a markdown feature. These can then be used to generate a LaTex document. In addition it includes a Python shell and can support other programming languages. It is the basis of online systems such as Amazon SageMaker Notebooks, Google Colaboratory (Colab) and Microsoft's Azure Notebook. This is probably the future of scientific publishing and it is well beyond Mathematica. Colab for instance also uses generative AI. YARS will probably start using this and LaTex in the near future.
- Internet Archive: - If old software is your thing, the Internet Archive has a collection of abandoned-ware. Consider WordPerfect on Linux and the whole retrofuturism/steampunk movement. Your old computers may be old and unable to use new software, but maybe that is not really a problem and you can use old software. For an NPO this is definitely an option and very economical.
Amateur Radio
- Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine - This link takes one to various publications re: amateur radio.
- 101 Spy Gadgets For The Evil Genius : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
- Download & Streaming : The Internet Archive Software Collection : Internet Archive
- FLDIGI - a suite of digital mode software which includes ability to send pre-formatted ICS and RAC Radiogram message traffic
- WJST-X - a suite of weak signal digital mode software including FST4, FST4W, FT4, FT8, JT4, JT9, JT65, Q65, MSK144, and WSPR and ECHO for moon-bounce. Some of these modes are used for meteor-scatter. Local amateurs have been experimenting with that. These modes use a fair bit of processing power as they use algorithms that make use of Forward Error Correction (so that 8088 XT, without the math-coprocessor that you have, just will not cut it). We thank Joe Taylor, K1JT for putting these into the public domain.
- Project Jove - A NASA program to encourage STEM. One can build a radio telescope to observe the interaction of the solar wind and the aurora of Jupiter and some of its moons (Jovian decametric radio signals).
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_electronics_circuit_simulators
Operating Systems (especially for older computers)
- https://linuxmint.com/
- https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/
- https://sourceforge.net/directory/ham-radio/
- https://archive.org/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeDOS
The amateur radio service has a tradition of recycling old equipment for its purposes including ex-military equipment, obsolete computers and old electronics and other things that can be re-used. The tradition is in part due to economy but it also facilitates resourcefulness, inventiveness and adaptation. This ties into an underlying philosophy of the Society - that we are the masters of technology and that technology serves us - we do not serve technology. Think of what that last statement means...
Aurora Borealis
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What is the Aurora?
The aurora borealis or Northern Lights is an atmospheric phenomenon that occurs in the northern hemisphere of the planet. It also occurs in the southern hemisphere where it is known as the aurora australis. Aurora are known to exist on comets, brown dwarfs, other planets and on some moons. Aurora are caused by solar wind interacting with magnetic fields and atmospheric particles. Atmospheric particles become energized and form what is known as plasma. Plasma is energized or ionized gas. It is the fourth state of matter and has been so identified since about 1972. Yes, your high school teachers who taught you the three states of matter were...well...not current in their physics. You see plasma every day when you see the sun, an operating fluorescent light or an operating neon light.