Our next Lecture and Lab will be an RTL-SDR Roundup. Club experts will help you solve software problems and guide you to get the most from your RTL-SDR dongle.

The club still needs volunteers for the 2018 Prism Health Lifewalk on Sunday, October 7th, 2018. Please contact the club and sign up!

We could always use a few more presenters for Tech Net on the Hill on October 27th. Let us know if you could share your skills!

There are a couple of very cool things on the contest calendar this weekend: the ARRL September VHF Contest is going on now, and the “other DARC” is sponsoring a major event, the Worked All Europe DX Contest. European stations get points for working non-European stations, and you can get extra points for sending message traffic—excerpts from your own station log. Please check out the rules for full details.

UPDATE: Bill Brady, KF5ZBL, would like to remind us that the W9IMS Indianapolis Motor Speedway Special Event is almost done for 2018! Because of poor propagation conditions, they’re also on FT-8.

In news from the world of ham radio:

The Route 66 Special Event is on the air, now through September 16th.

Amateur radio operators have been receiving images from the Chinese Longjiang-1 microsatellite, now in orbit around the moon.

Speaking of satellites, be very careful! It looks like some digital radio hotspots have been interfering with VHF satellite work. Amateurs who listen to satellites often use very sensitive receivers; a hotspot on the wrong frequency, even if it’s across town, can cause major interference.

In news from the world of science:

A project led by Ohio State University has resulted an incredible new map of Antarctica, making it now the best-mapped continent on earth!

The blue parrot featured in Rio, the Spix’s Macaw, appears to be extinct in the wild. There are several dozen Spix’s Macaws still alive in captivity…but it’s not the same!

A new study shows that the bonnethead shark isn’t just a fearsome killer—it’s an omnivore, the first known omnivorous shark. Even when meat is abundant, up to 62% of its diet consists of grass.