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Well.  If no one else from North Carolina is going to make the first post to the "Tarheel" section, I reckon I'll do it. Most of you learned Ham operators know that the true inventor of "Radio" was a man named Reginald Fessenden and not Guglielmo Marconi.  No offense to Guglielmo Marconi because he made some extraordinary discoveries and got other scientists interested in the possibilities of radio.  But Marconi used "spark" transmissions.  Fessenden was a proponent of Continuous Wave transmissions.   It is true that Fressenden proved his concept using a continuous spark transmission, but Fessenden went on to develop the concept to what we now know today as radio.  Much of Fessenden's work occurred on The Outer Banks of North Carolina at the same time the Wright Brothers were here doing their experiments on their "flying machine".   In 1900, Fessenden made the first transmission of speech by radio when he transmitted a 127-word voice message from his North Carolina Cape Hatteras transmitter tower to a tower on Roanoke Island, North Carolina.  In 1906 he made the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean.

Due to ut situation on the warm Atlantic Ocean, and our proximity to the cool air of the Smoky Mountains, North Carolina is the land of the word “ducting”.  Due to temperature changes occurring constantly over the water and land structures we have an absolute radio wonderland for those that are into that.  If you are interested in Hamming it up while on vacation North Carolina is the place to string up a dipole or a G5RV.  Coastal North Carolina will not disappoint you, Ten AND 6 are wide open.

The Vienna Wireless Society is hosting a special presentation by Saif Alkhayarin, A71AM, on Saturday, 10 July 2021 at 1300 EDT (1700z) via zoom. Saif is a well known ham internationally and will  be joined by other Middle Eastern hams to tell us about amateur radio in that part of the world.
The link for the meeting is here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82468835727?pwd=MGZTc2xwYVBnRFN5ZC95Q0Y5Y2ErQT09
All are invited to join in the conversation, so please plan to attend!
Questions?  contact Bill Mims, at W2WCM at ARRL.org

As many of you know, Ham Census has been gathering impressions from operators... what do we think about various aspects of the hobby. More importantly, being solutions-oriented, Ham Census asks them to send a message to various constituencies, among them, other hams.

One operator said this:

I would therefore like to both start a mini poll here and a discussion around civility in amateur radio. Also, if you believe there is a lack of civility, how do we improve things?

I started work on my key the other day.  Unfortunately none of the stores around here have 1/2 x 1/2 square stock for the beam so I'm at a stopping place until I order it online.  I wanted something more custom than the regular old generic ones, and the beautiful ones I can fnd are outrageously priced.
 

This was actually a 'test' setup prior to my motorcycle trip to the Arctic Ocean. As you can see, I was testing my electric fence to, hopefully, keep grizzly and polar bears at bay (it works). Behind the tent you can see the mast for my antenna and right next to me is the battery pack / radio combo. All this, and the tent, on the bike you see in the 'garage'!