By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor

This week, Surfin’ revisits and updates recent installments of itself.

HamStack

I mentioned HamStack twice recently. The first time was how much I was impressed with their kits at Hamvention, The second time was after I obtained their HamStack Starter Pack and 8A Relay Board and was trying to figure out how best to use them in a cool ham radio application.

I have been kicking around some ideas. I would find it very useful to build a system that alerts me when 144 MHz is open. Maybe monitor the APRS channel and when the system detects distant packets, it sounds some kind of alarm and displays the DX packets on an LCD.

I'm not sure it’s do-able, even if I add the HamStack LCD to my collection of HamStack kits, but I am looking into the possibilities.

Still Fixing Our Writing -- Again

Following up on back-to-back columns (“Fixing Our Writing” and “Still Fixing Our Writing”), two readers -- John Stanley, N8GFO, and Jason Conklin, N2NLY -- corrected the assertion here that “entitle” only referred to rights and not naming something, for example, titling a book. Here  is Webster and Merriam’s take on the word.

Jason also sent me a link to an article, “50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice” that takes Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style to task. It is a good read.

Golden Packet

A reminder that this Sunday, July 24 is “Golden Packet Sunday.” It is an opportunity to combine APRS and hill-topping. I wrote all about it here last week; the pertinent websites to visit for more information are the East Coast and West Coast Golden Packet Web pages.

ARRL Social Media

Make sure you read this week’s ARRL Letter for news and updates on the ARRL social media front.

Until next time, keep on surfin’!

Editor’s note: Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, still hopes to fill any gaps in his neck of the woods on Golden Packet Sunday. To contact Stan, send e-mail or add comments to the WA1LOU blog.