ARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio® will close our headquarters at 12 PM Eastern time on Friday, October 9, 2026, for a staff event.

The ARRL Headquarters lobby and store, as well as W1AW, will be open to visitors from 8 AM to 12 PM EDT. Members are reminded that many transactions may be completed on our website at www.arrl.org. 

There won’t be any interruptions to the W1AW bulletin ...

Updated Friday, October 9, 2026 @ 10 AM EDT

Update - Oct. 9, 1330 UTC

The Hurricane Watch Net is up and running on both 14.325 and 7.268 MHz due to propagation conditions. Hurricane Isaias has increased in strength to Category 3 with maximum sustained winds of 120 miles per hour, making it a major hurricane as it continues to head toward the Florida panhandle and Alabama coast. Landfall is expec...

The Hurricane Watch Net (HWN) is closely monitoring Invest 92L, which is expected to become Tropical Storm Isaias in the next 24 hours. According to HWN Manager Bobby Graves, KB5HAV, the potential area of concern for this storm is a wide swath of the Gulf coast, extending from Louisiana to Florida. Graves says there is no HWN activation at this time, but the net will go into operation if offici...

Get ready to contact college and university radio clubs during this weekend’s Collegiate QSO Party, 0000 UTC October 3 through 2359 UTC ImageOctober 4 (Friday evening through Sunday in the US). Students, faculty, staff, and alumni will be on the air using the call sign of a college, university, or other post-secondary academic institution. Look for stations on CW, phone, and digital modes on an...

We are saddened to report this week on the passing of four well-known amateurs, including two members of the extended “ARRL family.” 

Longtime ARRL Rhode Island Section Manager Robert George “Bob” Beaudet, W1YRC, became a Silent Key on September 10, 2026, at age 88. An ARRL Life Member, Gold-Level Diamond Club member, and Maxim Society member in the President Class, Beaudet served as Rhode Islan...

ARRL CEO David Minster, NA2AA, was a guest on episode 103 of The DX Mentor, which aired September 19, 2026. Hosted by Bill Salyers, AJ8B, with Joe Pater, W8GEX, the discussion covered highlights from the ARRL Board of Directors’ annual Second Meeting, held July 17; the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU); the August ARRL National Convention hosted by the Huntsville Hamfest, and recent supp...

It’s been a half century since single sideband (SSB) supplanted amplitude modulation (AM) as the most popular voice mode on HF, due largely to its spectrum efficiency, occupying roughly half the bandwidth of an AM signal. Now, there’s a new digital voice mode from FreeDV called Radio Autoencoder, or RADE, that occupies half the bandwidth of an SSB signal and reportedly provides more natural-sou...

ARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio® is following two new federal proceedings concerning radio frequency (RF) exposure. On September 17, 2026, the FCC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) initiated parallel comment periods on RF safety issues. Neither inquiry changes the current FCC RF exposure rules that apply to all radio amateurs but could lead to changes in...

Solar activity is likely to continue at low levels with isolated to
occasional C-class flare activity, along with a slight chance for
R1-R2 (Minor-Moderate) M-class flare events, through September 25,
according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. The SWPC reports
that nine sunspot regions are on the visible disk, including a new
Region 4541. There were three solar flares observed in the past ...

Solar flare activity is expected to remain at very low levels, with a
chance for isolated C-class flares through September 19, according to
NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). Solar wind speed was
steady near 530 km/s, and negative polarity CH HSS (coronal hole
high-speed stream) effects are anticipated to persist through September
18, with additional enhancements likely today due to flan...

The Yagi-Uda beam antenna was invented 100 years ago, in 1926, and Contest University (CTU) is celebrating its centennial with a live Zoom webinar this Saturday, September 19, 2026, at 1600 UTC (noon Eastern). The free webinar, titled “The Yagi Turns 100,” will be available online at https://w3lif.org/yagi. There is no pre-registration. Click on the link before 1600 Zulu on Saturday to watch. Q...

Solar flare activity was at low levels in the past week with
isolated C-class flare activity, according to NOAA’s Space Weather
Prediction Center. The largest flare of the period was a C3.4 on
September 8 from otherwise stable Region 4528. Region 4530 developed
asymmetric penumbra on both its leading and trailing poles while
undergoing consolidation in its intermediate area. New flux
emergence in the...

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks will be making a special transmission on 9.11 MHz at 0030-0035 UTC on September 12, 2026 (8:30-8:35 PM eastern time Friday evening). The transmission will consist of a Morse code QST, followed by a slow-scan ...

Educator Everton Henriques, KD2ZZT, shared his experience using amateur radio to inspire students and bring engineering and technology to life in the classroom during his keynote at the 2026 ARRL New England Division Convention, hosted by Northeast HamXposition in Massachusetts on August 15. A video recording is available on ARRL’s YouTube channel.

Everton is an Engineering and Technology Teache...