The contest calendar has a few events this weekend. The CQ WW VHF contest is on, and challenging; the RTTY installment of the North American QSO Party is taking place as well.

The next Dallas Amateur Radio Club Lecture and Lab will be happening a week from today; come on out and build the easy 2-meter antenna discussed at the last meeting!

There hasn’t been too much in the way of ham news; it looks like Slovenian amateurs have received a new 60-meter allocation; it overlaps with two of our channels.

In the world of science:

When electricity moves through a wire, the charges themselves travel very slowly; it’s the effect of the electric field that moves fast. In the same way, birds spread alarm calls at up to 100 miles an hour, far faster than most birds can fly.

If you’ve been helping the DARC with Moon Day, you should celebrate! Why not enjoy some high-resolution images from the Apollo Program? Space enthusiasts have been digitizing them and putting them on-line.

And speaking of moons: Jupiter now has 79 of them! Scientists looking for a giant planet at the edge of the solar system have made this an even better moon-s day.

Frank Zappa wasn’t the only one to sing about baby snakes; the oldest-ever snake embryo has been found, preserved in amber, and herpetologists are very excited. Little snakes are cute, and surprisingly mathematical.

If you heard the news this year about the latest Ebola outbreak in the DR Congo, you might have noticed that the news…kind of…just…stopped. It turns out that no news has been great news! Hard work and an experimental vaccine has stopped the deadly virus in its tracks.

And don’t forget to set out water for birds and other animals! This heat is serious.