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Current Feature Articles   Nov 20 The Amateur Radio Crossword Puzzler   Nov 20 Adventure in the Arctic: VO2A Expedition to Labrador   Nov 20 Surfin': More Radio Piracy on the High Seas   Nov 16 Youth@HamRadio.Fun: Fall Magic   Nov 13 Surfin': The Real Pirate Radio   Nov 06 Surfin': Homebrewing Today   Nov 05 DX the Hard Way   Nov 02 ARRL In Action: What Have We Been Up to Lately?   Nov 01 It Seems to Us: It Doesn't Just Happen   Oct 30 Surfin': Mapping Up ARRL Products: History/Adventure (More) The Story of the Queen Mary and W6RO -- DVD. A story about W6RO and its impact on the Amateur Radio Service through its operation aboard the Queen Mary. RSGB 1940s Amateur Radio Special Edition -- 6 book set. The Secret Wireless War -- The Story of MI6 Communications--1939-1945 (World War II). This is an extraordinary story that includes hams among those patriots that undoubtedly helped the allied war effort. Softcover. World War II Radio Heroes: Letters of Compassion -- A story about ham radio operators and others who helped ease worries during a time of war. Don C. Wallace: W6AM, Amateur Radio's Pioneer -- This book traces the life of Don Wallace and with it the early history of Amateur Radio.

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Building from scratch and from kits is alive and well in Amateur Radio as witnessed by the Web sites we visit this week.

Siniša Tasić-Tasa, YU1LM, is a QRP contester and radio homebrewer who began building ham radio receivers as a 13-year-old boy in elementary school. Ham radio receivers became his passion, electronics became his profession, and he has built some interesting radio projects during his career.

YU1LM has put together a Web page that documents some of the homebrew projects he has built, including a variety of software-defined radios (SDRs). Each project is documented with an Adobe Acrobat portable document format (pdf) file that includes schematics, block diagrams, printed circuit board layouts, parts placement diagrams and full descriptions of each project. "Projects are free only for personal use," he says.

These projects include a variable bandwidth XTAL filter, a tunable band-pass filter for all HF bands and a variety of SDR HF receivers, transmitter and transceiver projects.

TAPR Marks Quarter Century

The TAPR Kits Web page features the current cutting edge projects of that digital innovator now celebrating its 25th year.

In two weeks, the Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) celebrates 25 years of digital innovation at the annual ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference (DCC) in Tucson, Arizona where it all began a quarter-century ago. TAPR's two TNC (terminal node controller) designs (the "TNC 1" and "TNC 2") were the basis of virtually every TNC to see the light of day during the heyday of packet radio.

Today, TAPR is a digital innovator of a variety of projects on the cutting edge of Amateur Radio, such as the TAPR Vector Network Analyzer (VNA), the HPSDR project, which is an open source hardware and software project intended as a "next generation" SDR, the N4XI weather station kits, the Reflock II universal synthesizer and the N8UR TADD timing projects.

Until next time, keep on surfin'.

Editor's note: Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, is an unabashed fan of homebrewing, kit building and TAPR. To discuss parts, kits, and other neat stuff, e-mail Stan or add comments to his blog.

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Next: Youth@HamRadio.Fun: Accomplishments of Young Hams, Upcoming Events and More!