Rescheduled.  We’ll be building the “Mini Tesla Coil Kit”.  See elsewhere for additional information.  

There are two interesting contests going on right now: the ARRL CW DX contest, and the much more relaxed AWA AM QSO Party. Several of my rigs can operate AM,  but I’ve never even tried to make an AM contact. I guess I’d better get to work!

The next Lecture and Lab will take place on Saturday, Feb. 24th. We’ll be building the XR2206 High Precision Function Signal Generator. This kit is easy to build and it’s a useful piece of test equipment. Bring $15.00 and a soldering station to the Dallas Medical Center and meet us in the 3rd floor community room. We’ll be there from about 10:00 am to 2:00 pm, with a possible break for lunch.

We had a few interesting announcements during the net: The Irving Hamfest is coming up soon…and so is the TESSA conference. The Garland Amateur Radio Club will have technician classes starting on this coming Tuesday, February 20th.

Did you attend the Dallas County SKYWARN class today? If you didn’t, you might have to drive up to Denton. Check out the list of remaining classes here.

In the world of science:

Bird poop is surprisingly useful for studying ancient environments. It’s helping scientists understand more about prehistoric New Zealand.

The human egg cell is widely said to be one of the only single cells that you can see with the human eye. But did you ever think you could see a single atom? Well, if you make it glow brightly enough, you can.

And finally, you might have noticed that most cleaning chemicals smell pretty bad. It’s starting to look like they might be much worse for you than generally thought.