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New on HamWiki:

2 November 2026

New to ham radio? Start here
  1. What is amateur radio? — what the hobby is and what you can do with it
  2. Getting licensed — the three US license classes and how to pass the exam
  3. Call signs — what yours will look like and what it means
  4. Your first radio — why most people begin with a handheld
  5. Your first contact — how to use a local repeater
  6. Phonetic alphabet and Q-codes — the shorthand everyone uses on the air

See the full step-by-step path

Featured article of the week

ARRL Sweepstakes

The ARRL Sweepstakes, usually called SS, is one of the best-known contests in North America and one of the oldest sponsored by the ARRL. Stations in the United States and Canada work each other, trying above all to contact every ARRL and Radio Amateurs of Canada section, a feat called a clean sweep. CW runs on the first full weekend of November and phone on the third. A long exchange makes accurate copying as important as speed, and a modest station with a dipole can reach most sections. Read more…

More featured articles

Did you know…
  • … that MFJ Enterprises began in 1972 with a CW filter kit made in a room of a Starkville hotel?
  • … that a variable capacitor with a 10-to-1 capacitance range tunes a circuit over only about 3.2 to 1 in frequency? See Resonance and Q.
  • … that the Maidenhead Locator System of grid squares is named after the town west of London where European VHF managers agreed on it in 1980?
  • … that a US ham visiting Canada adds the local prefix after the call sign, as in W0ABC/VE3, though most countries put it before? See Call signs.
  • … that on a contest weekend the 17-meter band is a refuge for ordinary conversations, because by worldwide convention contests are not held on the WARC bands?
  • … that trans-equatorial propagation links the southern US with Argentina because in the Americas the geomagnetic equator lies south of the geographic one?
Featured picture of the week

A straight key from about 1900, first used on the Gotthard railway and later by a Swiss ham See Straight Key Century Club.

More featured pictures · Photo gallery

Coming up on the air in November
  • First full weekend: ARRL Sweepstakes, CW, 2100 UTC Saturday to 0259 UTC Monday.
  • Second full weekend: the Worked All Europe DX Contest, RTTY.
  • Third full weekend: ARRL Sweepstakes, phone.
  • Last full weekend: the CQ World Wide DX Contest, CW.

All twelve months · About contests

November in ham radio history
  • 2 November 1920 – Westinghouse station KDKA in East Pittsburgh broadcast the Harding–Cox election returns, a service inspired by Frank Conrad's broadcasts over his experimental station 8XK.
  • 15 November 2018 – A Falcon 9 launched Qatar's Es'hail-2, carrying amateur radio transponders in geostationary orbit, later named QO-100.
  • 22 November 1930 – Owen Garriott, W5LFL, the astronaut who later operated ham radio from space, was born in Enid, Oklahoma.
  • 27 November 1923 – Fred Schnell, 1MO, in Connecticut and Léon Deloy, 8AB, in Nice, France, made the first two-way transatlantic amateur radio contact.
  • 28 November 1983 – Columbia launched on STS-9 with Owen Garriott, W5LFL, aboard; during the mission he became the first ham to operate from space.
  • 30 November 1858 – Jagadish Chandra Bose, the Indian physicist who pioneered millimeter-wave radio experiments, was born.

All twelve months

Browse by topic
Bands Overview · Band plans · IARU regions · 2200 m · 630 m · 160 m · 80 m · 60 m · 40 m · 30 m · 20 m · 17 m · 15 m · 12 m · 10 m · 6 m · 4 m · 2 m · 1.25 m · 70 cm · 33 cm · 23 cm · Microwaves · 13 cm · 9 cm · 5 cm · 3 cm · 1.2 cm
Software WSJT-X · Fldigi · JTDX · GridTracker · Direwolf · VarAC · LinBPQ
Recent changes
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2 November 2026

N    15:46  Collegiate QSO party diffhist +34 HamWiki Editors talk contribs (Round 22: contest pages, rule checks and small fixes) Tag: New redirect
N    15:46  ARRL 10 GHz and Up Contest diffhist +31 HamWiki Editors talk contribs (Round 22: contest pages, rule checks and small fixes) Tag: New redirect
N    15:46  ARRL 222 MHz and Up Distance Contest diffhist +31 HamWiki Editors talk contribs (Round 22: contest pages, rule checks and small fixes) Tag: New redirect
N    15:46  ARRL VHF Contests diffhist +31 HamWiki Editors talk contribs (Round 22: contest pages, rule checks and small fixes) Tag: New redirect
N    15:46  September VHF Contest diffhist +31 HamWiki Editors talk contribs (Round 22: contest pages, rule checks and small fixes) Tag: New redirect
N    15:46  June VHF Contest diffhist +31 HamWiki Editors talk contribs (Round 22: contest pages, rule checks and small fixes) Tag: New redirect
N    15:46  January VHF Contest diffhist +31 HamWiki Editors talk contribs (Round 22: contest pages, rule checks and small fixes) Tag: New redirect
N    15:46  ARRL September VHF Contest diffhist +31 HamWiki Editors talk contribs (Round 22: contest pages, rule checks and small fixes) Tag: New redirect
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