SolderSmoke Daily News -- Ham Radio Blog

I had completely forgotten that my blog had at least two posts on Agent Sonya way back in 2009.  I know there is a lot of interest in her al...

Ursula Kuczynski (Agent Sonya), 1936. Credit... via Peter Beurton My recent blog post about the intrepid Soviet hams who homebrewed versions...

  Click on the image for a better read.   Like Kirk, I too was influenced by the Russian and Eastern European homebrewers.  As a kid, every ...

Around this time every year I get an envelope from the W2 QSL bureau in New Jersey.  This year, the envelope contained two QSL cards from sh...

Here are two more great museum visits by Helge LA6NCA.  In these two he visits Ragnar LA1UH.   Ragnar has a lot of maritime experienc...

I hope readers have picked up on the discussion of the Islander DSB rig out of Cuba. We had a bit of a breakthrough on this recently. I'...

November 24, 2023 Hello Bill I have just built an tested a 20 meter “Sputnik” transmitter. It uses two Soviet era “rod” tubes and is fixed t...

Click for a better view I haven't received many, but I always like QSL cards from shortwave listeners.  Someone out there is listening! ...

Peter Parker VK3YE found this message from Arnie CO2KK in the Wayback Machine.  We continue to look for more information on the Jaguey solid...

I've been reading about Polyakov (or "sub-harmonic") Detectors for a long time:  https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/search/label...

Only 85,000 Euros (that's the opening bid).  But hey, it comes with the receiver pictured on the right.  I guess that's so you can l...

  Thanks to Jeff Murray for alerting us to this.  It is obviously from World War II.   If the new neighbors had  S-38s, well, that might hel...

Thanks to Bob KD4EBM for sending this.   There is so much good info in this video:  They crack open a logic chip and look at the interna...

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0864g3p/the-secret-soviet-radar-hidden-in-chernobyl-s-shadow

Back in 1995 I was in the Dominican Republic.  I used an old 2 meter rig and a homebrew 5 element quad (see below) to talk to U.S. Astrona...

I spotted this on Hack-A-Day.  It caught my attention because many time, while riding my bike along the Washington and Old Dominion bike p...

Good evening! After my JOO moment, Bill put me in contact with Pete Eaton, who suggested that I would have a look at the schematics...

That's the Russian radio-telescope that picked up what was thought to be a possible signal from an extraterrestrial civilization.  ...

Mark K6HX pointed me to very interesting Hackaday article on Frank PA3CNO's Sputnik transmitter replica.  As blog readers will rec...

  A video about the Kon-Tiki expedition got us wondering about how you could generate hydrogen gas for an antenna balloon while on a ra...