The DARC is looking for volunteers to help out at the 2019 Dallas YMCA Turkey Trot! Please don’t forget to sign up—and remember that beginners are welcome.

I’ll mention here, for the second-last time, that your ballot for our West Gulf Division director must be received not later than November 15th, 2019. If you’re an ARRL member, check a box, use a stamp.

At our next DARC meeting, Tuesday, November 5th, Steve Lott, KG5VK, our ARRL NTX section manager, will give an update on the progress and programs going on in our section this year. Your public service officer Randy Patterson, KE5JIT, will also speak about Turkey Trot, answer any questions you might have, and sign up volunteers.

Just like last week’s, the contest calendar for this weekend has got one big event on it: the ARRL Sweepstakes CW weekend. Don’t forget that the SSB weekend will be coming up on the 16th of this month.

In news from the world of ham radio:

If you have L-Band (1300 MHz) capability and you want to try moonbounce, get moving! A very big dish will be on the air for just a few more hours this weekend.

In news from the world of science:

Have you even been surprised by a nasty roaming charge? So have these eagles, who flew to Iran and bankrupted a scientific study with $0.77 text messages.

There’s finally been some interesting progress on a treatment for Huntington’s disease. This disease has been well-understood for decades, but has been surprising difficult to target with drugs.

And in other neurological good news, there’s now a much better understanding of how deep, non-REM sleep helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

If you prefer aurora and e-skip to moonbounce, you’ll be glad to know that ancient Assyrian tablets have been found to contain the oldest records yet known of an aurora, from 655 to  769 BCE.

Vampire bats are scary, but a new study shows that they make friendships—or at least alliances—surprisingly well. Bats who form friendships in captive breeding programs have been shown to keep working on those relationships out in the wild.

Finally, don’t forget about the importance of vaccination. Measles not only makes you really sick, and can even kill you…but it makes your immune system loose its memory so that victims can become sick with unrelated infections for years afterwards.