Your club dues are due before the end of the month! Mail them in if you have to; better yet, pay now, on-line.

There are a couple of contests in progress at the moment: the Novice Rig Roundup is almost finished, and the “Spring Stew” Stew Perry Topband Distance Challenge is having the first of its four 2018 events. This CW-only event has a unique scoring system that rewards big guns for working small stations.

The DARC will be having a trailer work-out tomorrow (3/11) at 8:00 AM. If you can commit to helping, please contact Randy, KE5JIT, by emailing his callsign at w5fc.org. Randy is also looking for volunteers who can help represent the club at the Frontiers of Flight Museum on March 31st and April 1st, 2018. This is a recruitment and social event for the club, not a strenuous public service weekend, so give it a try.

In the world of science:

A forensic anthropologist has shown that a set of bones found (and then lost) in the 1940s most likely belonged to Amelia Earhart, laying to rest a long-established mystery. The original paper makes for some interesting reading that can show you more about how modern forensic science works.

Diamonds have been in the news lately, as jeweled prisons for some interesting things. The mineral calcium silicate perovskite might be the 4th most common mineral on the Earth…but no one has ever seen any, until now. Other diamonds have revealed the first natural ice VII discovered on the Earth. And don’t worry, ice IX is not dangerous.

You probably don’t want to hear about the discovery of “a very flexible and well-oiled cyper-espionage platform” that’s gone undiscovered for six years, but it’s a day ending in “y,” so here you go.

Powerful radiation from a particle accelerator has been used to study the an extremely rare a fossil of a baby bird, without damaging it. The tiny, fragile bones would be incredibly difficult to remove from rock, so the new analysis is especially exciting.

And don’t forget to spring forward tonight! I’ll be mourning my lost hour of sleep all day tomorrow, if I can keep my eyes open.