Our next club event will be a “catch-all” lecture and lab day on Saturday, April 27th. We’ll have digital multi-meters you can build (mine works great!), more discussion about APRS and the DRAWS digital workstation, and  a limited supply of “Borg Cube” LED cubes that you can assemble to practice your soldering. The topic for our May Lecture and Lab has also been announced: The Anderson Powerpole!

We have several contests in progress or about to take place this weekend: there’s the Yuri Gagarin International DX Contest, the ARRL Rookie Roundup, the famous Texas State Parks on the Air, and QSO parties in New Mexico, North Dakota, and Georgia. There’s also the European FT-8 Contest, if you know how to get WSJT-X to transmit your state.

In news from the world of ham radio:

Did you enjoy our February meeting program on fox hunting? Have you been practicing? If you’re good enough, registration for the direction-finding championships is now open.

SSTV transmissions from the ISS will continue through at least 18:00 UTC tomorrow.

And if you’d like to help fund amateur radio on the ISS, you could bid on some astronaut-autographed amateur radio items to support ARISS.

In news from the world of science:

We have now seen the silhouette of a rotating black hole. It’s blurry, but it’s very much just what Einstein predicted. Unfortunately, this picture came with some very large shipping and handling charges.

It’s bigger than the Spruce Goose, and it really flies! Stratolaunch, designed to launch small satellites, flew for the first time today.

And it’s not just monarch butterflies that are mimicked: small downy woodpeckers are evolving to look like their slightly larger, more aggressive cousins.

Not all new hominid species that are proposed aren’t always accepted, but scientists have announced the discovery of Homo luzonensis based on fossils found in the Philippines.