ARRL, the national association for amateur radio, is remembering Walter Cronkite. The late, revered broadcast journalist was a member of the association; and he narrated a video in 2003 that explained amateur radio's story to non-hams.

Lots of hands and cool heads make for a successful Handcart Days Parade. Among the hundreds of volunteers who will make it look like a smooth, easy operation this year are 47 amateur radio or ham operators.

It was a quiet afternoon on July 11 and Rich Lippucci, KI6RRQ, of Vista, California, was monitoring the Catalina Amateur Radio Association (CARA) repeater on his base station. "I heard someone come over the repeater, calling, 'Is there anybody listening?' I responded and the caller said he was on his handheld transceiver hiking around the Mt Baldy area. He was about 2.5 miles off road and resting at the wilderness San Antonio Ski Hut. A few hikers had arrived from farther in the backcountry -- one of their friends had broken an ankle and was a mile or more up the trail and they needed help." Mt Baldy is the highest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains and the highest point in Los Angeles County.

The Federal Communications Commission is taking more comment on the issue of broadband over power line technology.

This action was prompted when a previous FCC report and order was sent back by a federal appeals court. Its order had established technical standards; but the National Association for Amateur Radio (ARRL) sued and complained that some of the studies on which the commission based its decisions had not fully been made public.

The Nanaimo Amateur Radio Association will take to the airwaves Sunday (July 26) for an active role in the Great International World Championship Bathtub Race.

And for the first time, the public will be able to track the real time progress of the race online by accessing the association’s website portal at www.ve7na.ca/tubtrack.

The most common question asked by new radio amateurs is "Now that I have my license, what kind of radio should I get?" The ARRL, in an attempt to help newcomers to Amateur Radio answer that very question, has added a bonus supplement to the ARRL Ham Radio License Manual. "Choosing a Ham Radio: Your Guide to Selecting the Right Equipment" is aimed at the new Technician licensee ready to acquire a first radio, a licensee recently upgraded to General class and wanting to explore HF or someone getting back into Amateur Radio after a period of inactivity.

Despite ever more sophisticated technology, amateur radio operators are still here, still sending call signals out into the darkness, and proud that much of the chirping on the Internet was made possible thanks to their developments. All that's lacking is a major earthquake, to prove to all of us how essential the hams still are. Way before Facebook and Twitter linked people very far away from each other, there were those for whom a conversation with someone on the other side of the globe was a routine thing. They were the ham radio operators, who had home radio stations full of equipment with which they talked to enthusiasts like themselves all over the world. From time to time they cropped up in movies and popular culture, and always had an air about them of being masters of the mysteries of technology.

The public is invited to hear Dr. Shengli Zhou, director of the Wireless Communication Research Laboratory (http://www.engr.uconn.edu/shengli) at the University of Connecticut, who will speak on Monday, Aug. 3, at 7 p.m. at the monthly meeting of NARL, a regional society of electronics and communications buffs who are also FCC-licensed radio amateurs. The speech will take place in the Senior Center in 120 Cedar St. (CT Route 175) in Newington.

The death of Walter Cronkite is an appropriate time to reflect on what’s happened to journalism in America.

Walter and I came to CBS around the same time, in the early 1950s. Sig Mickelson, head of the CBS News and Public Affairs division, at the time, brought Walter in to anchor the first television coverage of a presidential election convention in 1952 and incidentally coined the term "anchorman".

When it comes to high-tech, China has it all. But in the country with the most Internet users in the world, some are choosing to stay in touch through an older device: the radio. Armed with antennas, transmitters and receivers, a growing number of Chinese amateur radio operators, or radio hams, send out encoded messages and simple broadcasts in the hope of getting a response.