Don’t forget that Winter Field Day is right around the corner! The DARC Lecture and Lab will be taking place at the same time and location, but keep an eye on the weather: both events are shine-only.

There’s only one big event on the contest calendar right now: the ARRL January VHF contest is in-progress now; it ends at 03:59 UTC on the 22nd.

The FCC reports that it will be open at least for the first part of the current partial government shutdown.

January 26th marks Australia day, which is not a holiday I usually remember…but Australian amateurs will be operating with a special prefix. See who you can work!

Finally, there’s now a WSPR beacon in Antarctica, at the Wegener Institute’s Neumayer Station III. Erin has photographed one of their DC-3s flying over Dallas…that institute gets around.

In the world of science and technology:

The recent meteor over Michigan left pieces that Earthlings are beginning to find.

NASA has been working on ways to use nuclear reactors on Mars. This is a continuation of research that you can read a neat paper about on-line. Who knew there were experimental nuclear reactors that you could fit on a ping-pong table?

And after very considerable delay, Christa McAuliffe’s lessons that were intended to be transmitted from the space shuttle Challenger are now planned to be transmitted from the ISS.