Ham Radio and April Fool's Day - Past and Present

Another April 1 has come and gone and now the April Fool's Day pranksters have to start planning for next year. I decided to see how many April Fool's Day pranks I could find recorded that relate in some way to Ham Radio. Here are a handful that gave me a chuckle.

In a memorial article about longtime American Radio Relay League staffer, By Goodman, it tells about his dry sense of humor and his series of QST April Fool parodies under the pseudonym Larson E. Rapp, WIOU. Here is one example:

"In the April 1960 issue, a phony full-page ad announced the formation of "Larsen E. Enterprises, Inc," supposedly off Route 128 in "Kippering-on-the-Charles," Massachusetts, with Larsen E. Rapp as president. Bearing a "Not a Advertisement" disclaimer, the ad offered customers free access to the company's air-conditioned "Wonder Workshop" with each kit purchase.

"If you don't have the time to assemble the entire kit yourself, one of our engineers will be glad to do it for you, just for the pleasure it gives him," the ad promised. " More...
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This one, from 2005, is simply titled: Converting a 1955 warbird into a modern ham radio DXpedition shuttle. What a whopper. Read more...

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This one, from 2007, tells how the FCC has made an announcement in the broadband powerline (BPL) interference issue. Read on...
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Here's another scary FCC announcement, from 2004, to take effect in 2008. We're almost there...
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One facet of the hobby enjoyed by Ham radio enthusiasts is direction finding and tracking things like weather balloons and amateur rockets. Radio beacons are put in these devices before launch or release and the ham operators attempt to find them later to retrieve any data collected on the flight. These next two involve those activities.

This one involves a group of ham radio operators who are members of Stratofox, an Aerospace Tracking and Recovery Team. This one was in 2005.

"This year's April Fools' joke was based on the premise that it needed to have the punchline, "the weasel has landed." About a dozen Stratofox members and some of their friends set out to see if it was really possible to fool anyone, even for a moment, that a fictitious organization called "TubeRat Aerospace" had landed a probe on the moon."More...
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This one is a little more tongue-in-cheek. Here is an excerpt from the "Voyage of the Peep-o-nauts" from way back in the year 2000.

"Soon afterward the balloon ruptured on schedule at an altitude of 110,000 ft. Unfortunately, no one had briefed the Peeps about this part of the mission! The audio downlink transmitted a mixture of wind and the payload's audio beacon. You can clearly hear the sounds of rushing wind when the balloon popped (at something over 100,000 feet) and began its plummet toward the ground."Continued...

Well, that's all the fun for now.

Until next time...

'73 OM

DE WA2KKG
K