Our next club meeting will be on Tuesday, August 7th; our club officers will present an AREDN update.

If you enjoyed today’s Lecture and Lab, or if you missed it, you can review the antenna dimensions on-line, or contact the club if you have any questions.

This coming Monday is going to be the 5th Monday of the month, so instead of one of our regular nets, we’ll be having trivia night on the air. Get ready to compete against the smartest hams in the area!

Tonight’s Afterglow Movie will be The Green Hornet, and if you can put up with commercials, you can watch it for free on-line.

On the contest calendar, the main stand-out is the RSGB IOTA contest, in progress now, but you’ll have to get moving: the contest ends at 7:00 am tomorrow, Dallas time.

In ham news, the ARRL is now doing on a national scale what the DARC does locally: promoting ham radio to aviation fans. The first-ever ARRL both at the Oskosh Airventure is operational—and a success.

In the world of science:

UPDATE: Rollin, WA5RFG, mentioned that there’s more than once cycle keeping us down and depriving us of sunspots: in addition to the familiar 11-year cycle, there are 88-year, 200-year, and 2,400-year cycles.

This week’s biggest science news is the discovery of a hidden lake on Mars, similar to Lake Vostok in Antarctica. I’m pretty skeptical about the prospect of life on Mars, but NASA’s “follow the water” strategy has shown that Mars has more interesting chemistry and geology than most people thought it did.

Also found under the ice: a P-38 Lightning, in Greenland! The same group that is working to find, recover, and restore the Lightning is also helping to find the remains of missing U. S. Coastguard aviators.

The high maternal death rate here in the U. S. has been making news for years. Recent medical reporting shows that the problem is mostly simple things that are being neglected, not something mysterious like Ebola.

Oh, and speaking of Ebola, it looks like Ebola Virus Disease can be spread by survivors long after an outbreak appears to be over. I hope the good news about a vaccine pans out, because widespread vaccination after an outbreak might be more necessary than previously believed.

And while the North Texas heat is taking its toll on local birds, you can always set out water in your yard—just remember to change it often to prevent mosquitoes from breeding.