Our next club activity will be Lecture and Lab, on May 25th, 2019. Our focus will be Anderson PowerPoles, and there will be kits available for you to build. Check out the details, and let us know which kits interest you!

The contest calendar doesn’t list much of significance for this weekend, but if you catch a good opening to Europe, you could try for the Portuguese Navy Day Contest.

In news from the world of ham radio:

Of course, the Dayton Hamvention has been keeping hams entertained. If you couldn’t make it, at least one radio amateur is providing a live stream. If you’re joining us from the Hamvention via Echlink, please let us less fortunate stay-at-homes know how it’s gone.

While you do have to pay for a license renewal when you apply for a vanity call sign, the FCC is NOT reinstating the $70.00 regulatory fee for vanity calls.

In news from the world of science:

Archeologists have confirmed that a beautiful natural glass used in ancient Egyptian art came not from volcanoes, but from a meteorite impact.

Other archaeologists, working in Scotland, have been researching the location of the actual  “Red Wedding” back in 1692, not the one from Game of Thrones.

Biologists in Florida are “cautiously optimistic” about wading bird populations there after a comprehensive report shows that conservation efforts in the Everglades are starting to take effect.

But extinct birds are interesting, too—paleontologists have recently published a description of the second-oldest bird known, Alcmonavis poeschli. Alcmonavis seems to have been more like modern birds than its near contemporary, Archaeopteryx.

And if you grow your own heirloom tomatoes, you know they taste stronger and better than the ones from the store, which have largely been bread for shipping and storage, rather than flavor or canning. It looks like more breeders have been working on flavor, as a new genetic study shows that flavor genes are on their way back.