This year's build session kit is the

This year we digress from building the usual Four State kit, and instead build a commercially available kit. Thus saves a tremendous amount of effort and angst for all of us involved in the buid session. We are working hard to bring new kits our product line, as well as another great OzarkCon conference, and time is at a premium this year.

The Humanalight is sold by the charitable organization Ears To Our World as a means of providing radios and flashlights to those in need of communication and light. Thomas Witherspoon, K4SWL, is the founder and excecutive director. Here is their mission statement, copied from their website. "At ETOW, we believe access to information is access to education. We provide innovative, simple and appropriate technologies to schools and communities in remote, rural and impoverished regions of our world."

This little flashlight makes use of the most commonly available battery in the world, the ubiquitous AA. Equally common are "dead" AA batteries. The Humanalight is an adaptation of the Joule Thief circuit with a pcb designed by our own David Cripe, NMØS. Here is another excerpt from the ETOW web page recognizing Dave's efforts.

"Ears To Our World, and those we serve, are very much in debt to our volunteer engineers who made this possible. Many thanks to Gregorgy Majewski for developing and designing the original HumanaLight circuit--he put many hours into testing this amazingly efficient circuit and bringing it to fruition. We also thank David Cripe (NM0S) for designing the HumanaLight circuit board and kit--David made this kit affordable and functional."