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What inspires today’s youth in the amateur radio hobby? Find out what’s on the minds of our youngest hams in this captivating round-table discussion led by the Bob Phinney, K5TEC. It’s a great learning opportunity for teachers, scout leaders, or clubs wanting to attract more youth to their local radio clubs.  (Date, time, room T.B.D.)

Bob Phinney, K5TEC, retired from 38 years of teaching at a private school in Brookline, MA. He taught after-school STEM classes, radio and electronics courses, classical LATIN, math, photography, and science. In 2014 he founded New England Amateur Radio, Inc. (NE1AR), a non-profit to develop wireless educational curricula, as well as provide regular or on-call VE sessions. In 2018 he founded New England Sci-Tech, a non-profit STEM education center that teaches electronics and wireless communications with an emphasis on getting youth into the amateur radio hobby. 

Join Don Rolph, AB1PH, as he presents “Next Generation Emergency Nets, an update on progress” at the 2026 Northeast HamXposition. (Time, date, and room T.B.D.)

“The NTS digital team has been exploring next generation emergency net design. Basic functionality was demonstrated last year. Since then four teams have looked into alerting alerting and integration of the approaches to address country wide black swan events. Several exercises have been performed and a larger exercise is presently scheduled for Sep 19, 2026. This session will socialize progress and request feedback from the amateur community.”

Don Rolph, AB1PH, was first licensed in 1961 as WH6EHQ. He was re-licenced in the 1970s as WA2CNM. He was licensed as AB1PH in 2012. 

Don’t miss these associated presentations on hidden transmitter or “fox” hunting by KC1PEN, NC7R, and W1MJ. (Times and rooms T.B.D.)

Talks will include an overview of the sport of radio direction finding, including basic concepts, useful tools and methods — both basic and complex. Talks will also include dicussion on how club leaders can use fox hunting activities as an effective tool to increase club activity levels. 

Bring a 2M or 2M/70cm FM walkie talkie with its stock antenna. If you have an inline attenuator, bring it along (30 dB is a good value). There will be hands-on training, and a search together on foot for a fox located somewhere near the convention center. 

Join Tim Duffy, K3LR, as he will show and describe the current K3LR superstation, which includes 14 towers and 11 operating positions. Tim will also talk about youth activities at K3LR, and his association with HamSCI. Time and room T.B.D.

Are you plagued by high noise levels on the radio? Join Bob Meneguzzo, K1YO, and Rob Leiden, K1UI, as they give a two-part presentation addressing RFI issues, both inside and outside the home.

Inside RFI sources discussed: power supplies, appliances, wall warts, routers, lamps, etc. Outside sources may include solar energy, power line, electric fences, industrial motor controllers, and so forth. 

Be sure to attend this informative talk! (Time and room to be determined)

Come and attend this exciting talk by Dhiru Kholia, VU3CER, and Bradshaw Lupton, K1TE, entitled “Extending FT8 via OpenAI Android and IOS app generation” at the 2026 Northeast HamXposition. 

Their work—developing Android, iOS, and FT8/WSPR applications with ChatGPT as a supervised development partner—focuses on the controlled and thoughtful use of AI tools to extend today’s digital ecosystem, treating AI not as a replacement for human judgment, but as a managed instrument for accelerating understanding, experimentation, and responsible software design. 

Dhiru Kholia was first licensed as VU3CER in 2019. He received a BE degree in Electronics & Telecommunication from Pune University in 2006. He then pursued a career in software security engineering with various MNC firms. He became interested in electronics again after a long gap due to his growing passion for hardware security. Besides amateur radio, he enjoys table tennis, chess, releasing miscellaneous projects on GitHub, and reverse-engineering software and hardware stuff.

Bradshaw Lupton, K1TE, was licensed as WA2IVF in 1968. He was an engineer at Honeywell and Polaroid for 33 years, and a physics and chemistry teacher in the Boston area for 11 years. Bradshaw advises the Sandwich STEM Academy and has developed WSPR/FT8 STEM classes for the Chatham Marconi RCA museum. His STEM students are learning the power of WSJTX digital with 3.3v and 1/100 watt making it, occasionally, from Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts to Melbourne, Australia. 

Don’t miss, “The Mystery of Earthquakes in the Eastern United States: Why Does the Earth Quake in New England?” by Dr. Alan Kafka, at the 2026 Northeast HamXposition (“HamX”).

“When people think of earthquakes, they probably think of a lot of places other than the Eastern United States (EUS), such as California and Japan,” says Kafka.  “But (long ago), when I was a graduate student studying earthquakes in the Caribbean plate region, I discovered that earthquakes also occur in ‘my own backyard’ here in the EUS, and in fact they occur all around New England. Since then, I have been obsessed with the enigma of why earthquakes occur in the EUS, and in New England in particular, deep within the interior of the North American plate.”

Dr. Kafka’s research and teaching integrates geophysics, earthquake science, applied mathematics, environmental systems, and community science for the greater good. He studies earthquakes in many regions of planet Earth and has long been obsessed with the enigma of why earthquakes occur in the Eastern US, deep within the interior of the North American plate. Dr. Kafka is also active in the global community of seismologists maintaining networks of seismographs for monitoring earthquakes and other seismic events around the world. After 42 years of teaching at Boston College and conducting research at BC’s Weston Observatory (a geophysical research and science education center), he retired from his faculty position at BC at the end of 2025 to pursue his lifelong dream of being an independent scientist.