The next Lecture and Lab will take place one week from today, and it isn’t cancelled—it will be a virtual event, focusing on using digital modes like FT8 and FT4. The Lab will take place at 11:00 am on Saturday, April 25th. Please see our post about virtual meeting information for instructions on how to participate.

Today is World Amateur Radio Day. I’ve hope you’ve been on the air having fun!

The contest calendar has quite a few entries for this week and this weekend, but please not that Texas State Parks on the Air has been cancelled. Instead, you could try your hand at the RSGB Hope QSO Party, still ongoing, or the Michigan or Ontario QSO Parties. If you’re a new ham or you’ve never made an SSB contact before, the ARRL SSB Rookie Roundup will be taking place tomorrow. Please note that in-person mentoring is strongly discouraged.

In news from the world of amateur radio:

Some clubs have begun testing video exam sessions, so there might soon be some practical instructions available for giving license exams in the era of social distancing.

And yet another 2-meter transatlantic distance record has been set, from Curaçao to the Cape Verde Islands.

In news from the world of science:

This is an old story, but a fun one—it’s hard to fool birds to accept a nest into their egg, and even harder if you’re scientist only pretending to be a cuckoo or a cowbird. Fake fakes are hard to make!

In a space first, a satellite has “repaired” another satellite for the first time. It didn’t really fix the defunct com-sat, but it did grapple on to its engine so that it could act as a new engine.

In astronomy, defunct Kepler space telescope has discovered an Earth-sized world in the habitable zone around its star. Data is truly the gift that keeps on giving!

And yeah, I’m focused on space today, largely because of this good news: a target date of May 27th has been announced for the first launch of astronauts on a SpaceX rocket.

And if all this talk about space has given you the blues, then you should enjoy this neat bit of literary research and chemistry: scientists have re-discovered how to make an ancient and rather pretty blue dye by studying medieval manuscripts.