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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: Instructor Support (More) Parallax USB Oscilloscope -- This portable two-channel digital storage oscilloscope is a handy and affordable tool for both hobbyist and student! Modulation and Wave Fundamentals Board -- Now Shipping! -- This board is an instructional ready resource designed to support lesson presentations in wave fundamentals and modulation. This handy tool can be used in connection with Amateur Radio licensing instruction or with any classroom instruction of the basics of radio wave modulation fundamentals. What's a Microcontroller? Parts Kit and Text -- Incorporates a variety of fun and engaging experiments using motion, light, and sound. Understanding Signals -- This Stamps in Class guide shows you how to generate, view and measure a variety of wave forms with the Parallax USB Oscilloscope and BASIC Stamp-controlled circuits. Basic Electronics Course and Kit -- The Basic Electronics Course and Kit is intended for those teachers and instructors that want a ready resource that they can adapt to their instruction of electronic fundamentals. The materials include a PowerPoint presentation and instructor's script. The course is designed around affordable components, prototyping board, and VOM and uses Understanding Basic Electronics as the associated reference (sold separately).

Previous: The Amateur Radio Crossword Puzzler

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This week, visit a Web site that provides a tool for finding a location for your next hilltop radio operation.

World Wind is open source software that can help you find a new location for a portable ham radio operation.

Spring is here and the time is near for hamming outdoors.

Whether you are looking for the best site to plant a new repeater, operate Field Day, the VHF contests or just hike in the woods with your favorite portable radio in tow, you probably will consult a map before doing so.

Itinerant backpacker, Jeffrey Nast, KC0MKS, alerted me to a tool that he and his family use to scout "the best trails and vistas now that TopoZone has gone the way of commercialization." KC0MKS's son, Ted, KC0MKU, found a very intriguing substitute called World Wind.

A product of NASA, World Wind "lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there."

World Wind is an open source program, runs on Windows 2000 or XP and requires a 3D graphics card installed in the computer. The complete list of system requirements and downloading links are on the World Wind Download & Updates Web page. An amazing list of available plug-ins is on the World Wind Wiki Add-Ons Web page.

World Wind Java SDK is also available for software developers who wish to embed World Wind technology in their own applications.

Until next time, keep on surfin'!

Editor's note: Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, is still having "Dayton withdrawal" and is bummed out big time. To communicate with Stan, send him e-mail or add comments to his blog. By the way, every installment of Surfin' is indexed here, so go look it up.

Previous: The Amateur Radio Crossword Puzzler

Next: CQ Announces 2008 Hall of Fame Inductees