Probably a bit overpowered by WSPR standards - running 5W as it’s the minimum output power on the FT-897 and I needed the 817 for something else.

Over the past weeks, actually, probably more accurately years, I've been carrying around an idea. It's been bubbling away and I've been trying very hard to make it solidify into something that I could explain and then hopefully attack.

Today I woke up with a hunger to do some radio and ultimately tell you about it. To get to a point where my Aha! moment emerged, I need to provide some history.

Traditional radio activities involve variations on a radio plugged into an antenna with the operator talking into a microphone or torturing a Morse key. If you want to operate digital modes, you essentially have two choices. You can use a rare radio with in-built digital modes or, more commonly, connect a computer to the radio via an audio interface, which essentially replaces the operator with a computer.

This implies that the radio is physically connected to the computer and in the same room.

What if you don't want either?

There's another aspect to this.

Modern SDRs or software defined radios, tend to use the network to get information from the antenna to the user. The network can transport the radio signal, but also control signals, to change things like frequency and mode, and if the radio supports it, bands, antennas and other fun stuff like filters.

There are ways to control a traditional radio across the network with so-called CAT commands, or Computer Assisted Tuning. This same technology can be used to connect a logging tool, so it knows what frequency and mode to log when you make a contact.

What CAT control lacks is audio. Said differently, although some solutions exist to send Morse code, you cannot use CAT to listen to the radio, or speak into a microphone. This isn't an issue if the radio and you are in the same room, but if they're not, then things get tricky.

And as a final piece of background information, a traditional radio is based around audio, that is, the information going between you and the radio, or a computer and the radio, is limited to audio. This represents about 4 kHz of signal. In other words, if you're tuned to 28.500 MHz, then a traditional radio can "hear" the radio signal between 28.500 and 28.504 MHz, sufficient for a single audio signal, but even a simple digital radio, a $50 RTL-SDR using a USB cable, can handle 2.4 MHz, plenty to cover all of the 10m band between 28.0 and 29.7 MHz with room to spare.

I've been looking for something, anything, that brings these two vastly different worlds together for a number of reasons. I've spoken previously about some of these. For example, I do not want to physically connect my traditional radio, a Yaesu FT-857d, to my computer because I do not want to have the potential of stray RF coming into my computer.

I'd also love to be able to run the same decoding and control tools for various radios, the Pluto SDR, several RTL-SDR dongles, my 857 and other radios as they come into my shack from time-to-time.

Then there's the signal processing side of things. I'd love to be able to learn how to decode Morse and eventually other modes using a computer. I also want to be able to use a voice-keyer during a contest so the whole house doesn't ring from the sound of me calling CQ Contest, or CQ DX for hours on end.

I've been making inroads into this. I managed to get rigctld to work across the network using Docker containers at both ends. I attempted to get audio working, but that has so far been a dismal failure, despite assistance on several fronts.

This morning I stumbled on the idea of using "GNU Radio" for both. I even came across some examples where two so-called "flow-graphs" can talk to each other across the network. Now at this point you're either going to be nodding your head, or you're going to be asking yourself what gibberish I just spouted.

If you're already nodding your head, stand-by, if not, GNU Radio is a software toolkit that provides signal processing blocks that you can link together to create simple or sophisticated systems to manipulate signals, like those that come from radios, or radio telescopes, or mobile phone base stations, radar, ADS-B, or whatever else you can imagine. It's widely used in academia, government, industry, research, and of course by us, hobbyists.

A collection of blocks and links is called a flow-graph and in essence it's a program or if you like, an App, that you can run. It comes with a tonne of examples and tutorials, including one where one flow-graph can manipulate another, either on the same computer, or somewhere on the Internet.

What this means is that you could build a flow-graph that can talk to a Yaesu FT-857d and one that can talk to a Pluto SDR, or an RTL-SDR, or any other radio, and use that to talk to a flow-graph that understands how to deal with audio, CAT and anything else you might want to.

It means that for the first time in years I can at least imagine a unified world where my 857 isn't a boat anchor when compared to my Pluto SDR. Of course they don't have the same functionality, but at least I can handle their signals in the same way.

Unlike the path I was previously on, where I was attempting to cobble together several tools whilst attempting to avoid a headache from banging my head against the wall, today I can use one toolkit to build Apps that run on pretty much anything with a CPU and see the fruits of my labour.

I'm working on a proof of concept and when I've got it to show-and-tell, I'll put it up on my GitHub page, cunningly named after me, VK6FLAB.

A final observation. Amateur radio means different things to different people at different times. For me, today, it's about software and GNU Radio. Tomorrow it is just as likely to be about something else. What is possible depends entirely on your imagination, so get playing, either on-air, or on-line, whatever gets you smiling and remember, the impossible happens immediately, miracles take a little longer.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

One of the oldest global aspects of our hobby, other than actually using the radio, is the QSL bureau. It uses a postcard-like system to confirm that two stations made contact, sent via the postal service as a so-called QSL card. Of course, that only works if you have each other's address which after World War II was somewhat difficult. As a result the QSL bureau was born.

Intended as a single point of contact for a country, a local QSL bureau consists of one or more volunteers, paid staff or contractors, who act as the distribution point for incoming and outgoing QSL cards. If you and I agreed to confirm our contact via the bureau, my QSL card to you would be sent to the VK outgoing QSL bureau, which would hold my card until there were sufficient outgoing cards from all over Australia to your country to package them all up and send them to the incoming QSL bureau in your country.

Your QSL bureau would then wait until there were enough QSL cards for your region to send it on, where it would eventually get into your hands in a variety of ways, via the postal service, through your local club, or at a local hamfest where the QSL bureau might have a stall. Your QSL card to me would make a similar, reverse, journey.

This process could take weeks or sometimes years.

Although not fast, this worked for many decades, but once electronic communications and computers started appearing, combined with increased costs associated with privatised international postal services, the wheels started coming off.

Getting access to historic documents has proven challenging. I can tell you that over the years the IARU, the International Amateur Radio Union, has coordinated and controlled how the QSL bureaus should work. For example, a resolution adopted in 1985 and updated in 2009 "strongly encouraged" its member societies to accept incoming QSL cards for all amateurs in their country, regardless of affiliation. It also instructed QSL bureaus to only send cards to the official QSL bureau if there was more than one.

Several years ago, the IARU administrative council recognised several trends, among them the environmental impact of unwanted cards generated in bulk by computer logging software, lower levels of adoption and ultimately the closing of some smaller QSL bureaus after being overwhelmed by undeliverable cards from increasingly popular holiday DXpeditions.

In September 2018, the IARU adopted resolution 18-1 that stated that it "resolves that member societies are encouraged to continue to offer QSL bureau service in their countries, exchanging cards with the bureaus of other member-societies, for as long as doing so is economically justifiable, and further resolves that amateurs are encouraged to adopt confirmation practices, including but not limited to using electronic confirmation systems, that reduce the volume of unwanted and undeliverable QSL cards being introduced into the bureau system."

This resolution took effect on New Year's Day, 2019. I'll also note that the IARU has its own year 2000 issue, having been in existence for nearly a century, its resolutions are named after the last two digits of the year followed by a sequential number, so resolution 25-1 could refer to 1925 or 2025, but I digress.

The internet has introduced several confirmation processes. The most vocal of these is "Logbook of The World", or LoTW. I'm not a fan and haven't been for some time. I'll get into why in a moment. Other contenders are eQSL.cc, qsl.net, qrz.com, clublog.org and others that have yet to steal the limelight. If I've forgotten the one you run, let me know.

Saying that I'm not a fan of LoTW is understating it. Recent ARRL ransomware payments aside, why do I need to legally prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I made contact with some random amateur? Why does this need to be authenticated, signed with a time-limited certificate and verified with 100 points of identity and why do we continue to roll out new and interesting procedures for what is essentially a postcard saying that on this day, time and frequency we made contact using this mode for the purposes of .. wait for it .. our hobby?

The eQSL website has an interesting statement: "One of the problems with an e-mail based system is that there is no security inherent in that mechanism. Anyone can purport to be P5ABC, and you'll have a difficult time verifying it."

So what .. and what made you think that the postcard ending up in your letterbox was guaranteed to be from P5ABC?

If you're going to the effort of pretending to be P5ABC, what harm does that do in the scheme of things? For that matter, how do you know that the station you talked to on-air was actually P5ABC? I ask because I've spoken to an amateur who recently did some HF direction finding during several popular DXpedition pile-ups. They discovered that there were several stations purporting to be the DXpedition that were not.

So. Right now we're in a situation where many if not all amateurs are connected to the internet. Most will have an email address. You already know mine, cq@vk6flab.com. If we made contact on-air, send me an email. If what you wrote matches my logs, I'll send you a reply to confirm it.

How do you get the address? One possible approach is to create an online email database where you could submit the email address associated with your callsign and you could look-up a station to contact them.

Another is for member societies to offer email addresses, the ARRL and the WIA already offer this service to current members.

I'll also point out that one of the reasons that the QSL bureau was instigated in the first place was because some addresses for amateurs were not available. If you make contact today and you want to send them an email confirmation the question to ask is simple: "Hey, what's your email address?"

Will that cover everyone?

Nope. Neither does the current system. What it achieves is that my personal private identifying information isn't stored at the ARRL if I'm not a member. Besides, in my opinion a list of email addresses combined with callsigns is hardly something worth getting excited about, unless of course it's used by manufacturers to send out product announcements and discount codes. We should be so lucky.

If you have a better idea, you know how to get in touch. What I can say is that this is the ultimate decentralised QSL system, not unlike the contact you made on HF.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

One of the unexpected benefits of this hobby is how it provides you with the ability to connect to others in ways that are not directly related to radio.

Take for example Steve. Steve appears at unpredictable times and locations, been hunted by citizens and scientists and unlike Steve's potential invisible cousin, the proton arc, has been photographed by aurora hunters many times. It looks like observations go back as far as 1705.

In 2017, physics professor Eric Donovan saw some of these photos and got curious. Assisted with GPS coordinates from an aurora hunter in Alberta, Song Despins, Eric correlated the time and location and it turns out that Steve was observed as a ribbon of gas 25 kilometres wide, 300 kilometres above Earth with a temperature of 3,000 degrees Celsius by the European Space Agency's Swarm, a constellation of magnetic field measuring satellites in orbit since 2013 and planned as a four year mission, so-far it has almost managed eleven years.

Steve? Yeah, it's not named after Steven Hawking or Steve Martin, rather, if you're seeing something unexplained, you might name it something less scary, like the hedge in the movie "Over the Hedge". Steve was given a backronym, finding words after the fact, Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, but I prefer Steve. The NASA team at Goddard Space Flight Center have adopted Steve, so it looks like a keeper.

I would never have even stopped to read the recent article in the local news, let alone dig into the various publications, if it weren't for the notion that Steve is one of many phenomena affecting the ionosphere and with it our hobby.

Here's another example.

Vance KV4P published a plan on kv4p.com, outlining a $35 project that requires minimal soldering that makes any Android phone into a handheld radio for 2m. Using a radio module, a micro-controller, a short USB cable, antenna connector, antenna and some sticky gel pads, Vance has come up with an open source project and circuit-board design that will get you on your way. He's even designed a 3D printable enclosure so you don't have to scare your friends with a bare circuit board.

Whilst the Android app is in beta, that is, not quite fit for human consumption, you'll need to drop an email to Vance to get in on the action. Source code is on GitHub.

I came across this project after breakfast, reading the "Y Combinator - Hacker News" which features all manner of weird and wonderful projects, links and questions from all over the technology sphere. The post has expansive discussion on Vance's project, including thoughts on other ideas on how to do interesting things related to our hobby.

Again, if it weren't for the fact that I'm already an amateur, I would never have taken more than a glance at this and I would never consider that this was a doable project, let alone discover other amateur radio projects like HamWAN and AREDN, or the Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network.

The point being that we as amateurs are often pigeonholed by society into the idea of obsolete, disconnected and quaint. I'm here to tell you that our hobby has made me more alive than ever, more connected to others around me, more observant to electrical and physical phenomena and if that makes me quaint, I'm Okay with that.

Also, while we're on the topic of being Okay. Charles NK8O reached out and told me that after listening to me talk about FT8 and his Morse code achievements, he cracked up and then raised the stakes by pointing out that you can get on HF with CW, that's continuous wave, or more commonly, Morse Code, for about $100, where a kit capable of SSB, Single Side Band, or more generally audio, will likely set you back significantly more. His advice, which I cannot fault, "Get on the air!", presumably to make some noise.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20878591

> Notable ham radio enthusiasts: > > Joe Walsh > Marlon Brando > U Thant > Garry Shandling > Chet Atkins > Tim Allen > Walter Cronkite > Steve Wozniak > Ronnie Milsap > Jean Shepard > Both former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and former New York governor George Pataki > King Juan Carlos of Spain > The Jordanian royal family > > For those who don't know what I'm talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio

And discussion covering all manner of related fun:

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41818609

When disaster strikes, and conventional communication systems fail, amateur ham radio operators step in to bridge the gap, providing a crucial link between those in affected areas and the outside world.

Every now and then you come across an idea that throws you for a loop. It comes seemingly out of nowhere and once you've seen it, you cannot unsee it. It's a lot like a 1929 painting I like called "The Treachery of Images", also known as "Ceci n'est pas une pipe", or in English, "This is Not a Pipe" by Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte. If you're not familiar with it, it's a painting of a pipe, and by being a painting, it's not a pipe. Obviously.

Before I go into the idea that rocked my world, I need to set the stage a little.

There are several modes I've discussed before, WSPR, or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter, FT8 or Franke-Taylor design, 8-FSK modulation and plenty others.

Each of these modes has one thing in common. They require that all participants are using the same time. That is, both sender and receiver need to agree on when "now" is for this to work.

A WSPR signal takes 110.6 seconds, every 120 seconds, starting on the even minute. It requires that the transmitter and receiver agree on the time within about 2 seconds.

An FT8 signal takes 12.6 seconds within a 15 second window. It requires an accuracy of about 20 milliseconds.

These timekeeping requirements are pretty easy to achieve in a modern network connected computer. You turn on a thing called NTP, or Network Time Protocol, point it at an appropriate clock and off you go.

If you're not connected to the Internet, then things get squirrelly pretty quickly. You could buy yourself a GPS, set up a link between the GPS and your computer, run some software and use the GPS clock to synchronise time on your computer.

Of course, this requires a GPS, a serial cable, software, configuration, battery power to keep the GPS running and probably a couple of other things. I've never done this, but given what I'm about to share, I don't think I ever will.

What if you used a WSPR, or an FT8 signal, from someone else to synchronise your clock? If you've ever launched WSJT-X, you'll have seen a column marked DT, that's Delta Time, or the difference in time between the clock on your computer and that of the transmitter.

If you could read the difference and use it to adjust your clock, you'd be in business.

Charles NK8O pointed me to a GitHub Gist with a single little Python script, written by Peter K6PLI. It updates the clock on your computer using the Delta Time from WSJT-X.

I'd point you at the script from here, but 3a730575, and 24 more characters, and that's just one element of the URL, doesn't run quite off the tongue, so I've cloned it into my VK6FLAB GitHub repository where it's called wsjt-time-sync. I added Peter's description to the ReadMe file, but I can take no credit for the effort, or the idea, that's all Peter.

So, synchronise your clock using the signal that you're trying to decode. Seems pretty obvious now, but that was a brand new notion for me.

Of course now I'm excited and wondering where else I might use this.

Let me know if there's more to this that tickles your fancy.

Also, just because I know Charles will poke my eye out with a Morse key if I don't mention this, you could use this script on your next POTA, Parks On The Air, or WWFF, World Wide Flora and Fauna activation, or anywhere else you go portable to make some noise.

I know, right, Charles, using FT8 instead of Morse Code, what's next, the end of the hobby? I'll tell you a secret. From time to time, he even uses his voice!

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

While some residents in hurricane-impacted areas can’t send texts or make calls, amateur radio enthusiasts are helping communicate requests for help and messages between loved ones.

We're diving into three standout Meshtastic devices from Seeed Studio: the SenseCAP Card Tracker T1000-E, Wio Tracker 1110 Dev Kit, and XIAO ESP32S3. We’ll explore their features, pricing, and usability to help you figure out which one might be the best fit for your IoT tracking projects

The other day I was packing the car to go on a little trip an hour out of the city to see the Milky Way. I briefly entertained the idea of bringing my radio gear with me to get on air to make some noise.

I resisted the urge, mainly because thinking about this didn't fill me with joy, rather it made me groan.

Now to be absolutely clear, I adore going out into the scrub with my radio gear. I love getting on air and making noise. I like doing this with friends.

If the time spent is about amateur radio, in other words, if I'm doing this with other amateurs, preparation and set up are part of the experience.

However, if I'm on my own, or with my non-amateur SO, significant other, then preparation and set up often take more time than the actual on-air activity and by the time that things are humming along, we're ready to do something else, fine food, nice view, coffee, you name it, anything other than radio.

So, how can I make the preparation and set up to be something much less time consuming? I don't really want to take over our car and bolt the radio back into it, nor do I want to strap a multi-tap antenna to the roof. At the other end, I also have no desire to bring a wire, look for a tree, do some throwing, find a place to sit and do the rest of the preparation to get on air.

In other words, I want my cake and eat it too.

What might that look like?

One of my fellow amateurs has a telescopic whip, looks like a transistor radio antenna on steroids, but using that requires that you bring something to tune it, given that the ground is going to influence the antenna in unexpected ways.

I could go out and buy a QRP radio with an in-built tuner, make the whip as long as it goes, perhaps even make it into a vertical dipole by combining two and start playing, but I'm not there yet.

Of course I'm not the first to try any of this. The Parks On The Air and Summits On The Air activators are all over this type of activity, hopefully they've written some of their learnings down. I confess that I haven't found anything yet.

How much of this have you achieved? What compromises did you make, what modes do you use when you're operating like this, mind you, I can hear my friend Charles NK8O from here, "Use Morse Onno", so I can take that as a given.

All I need to do is learn it.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

With communication still limited after Helene devastated western North Carolina, ham radio operators in the Triangle and other areas are trying to help people connect with loved ones unable to make calls or evacuate.

Article published on September 29, 2024 By Dan KB6NU

Over the past few months I've been investigating the history of the IARU, the International Amateur Radio Union, to help it celebrate a century of amateur radio achievements.

If you're a radio amateur and you pay anyone a membership fee, I have questions for you.

Let me set the stage with a quote from the IARU:

"All licensed radio amateurs benefit from the work of the IARU, whether or not they are members of their national IARU member-society. But every licensed radio amateur should be a member. Only by combining our efforts in this way can we ensure the future health of amateur radio, for ourselves and for future generations."

That's straight from the IARU website. It seems like a lofty and worthy aspiration.

Before I proceed, let me assure you that I'm absolutely committed to improving this hobby and this community, committed to strengthening its representation, its reach and increasing its activity levels.

The IARU has existed for nearly a century. It consists of a global organisation and three regional ones, each working towards improving on, and advocating for, the amateur community. Governed by different constitutions each organisation pursues similar but not identical roles within its sphere of influence.

Most, if not all IARU organisations are run by volunteers, people like you and I, who stick their hand up and help out, writing documents, attending meetings, updating websites, managing membership information and all the other things that the IARU apparently does.

I say apparently because getting anything other than motherhood statements from any of the IARU organisations is like pulling teeth. To construct a historic list of elected office bearers, President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer and various regional Directors is an exercise in archaeology and much of the information doesn't appear to exist.

That also seems to be true for what the IARU is spending its money on, your money.

The IARU is funded by the fees that we pay to the representative body in our country, either directly, or as a member of a club who contributes. In my case, if I was paying a membership fee to the Wireless Institute of Australia, like I did for a decade, some of that would pass to IARU Region 3 and then from there, some would pass to the global IARU secretariat.

Multiplied by every country and every paying member in that country across a century, there are significant, and to the best of my knowledge, unaccounted for sums of money involved.

Then there is the list of things that the IARU has achieved. I don't doubt for a moment that people have been working very hard, giving it their all, helping, working late, doing things above and beyond to make outcomes appear, as-if by magic, without any of the blood sweat and tears associated with the process. I suppose it's like sausage, nobody wants to see how it's made, and I understand the sentiment.

What of the outcomes, the published results? Should they be secret too?

At the moment the IARU claims that it represents amateur radio on the global stage and on its website lists its achievements, namely: 21 MHz, Amateur Satellite, WARC bands, more Amateur Satellite bands, more 7 MHz frequencies, easing of restrictions in relation to disaster communications, 136 kHz, 472 kHz, 5 MHz, 50 MHz in Region 1, international roaming, and emergency communications.

Impressive list right? There's twelve achievements listed in all, across 100 years, with meetings in cities all over the globe, with hundreds of people participating. Mind you, it appears that only recently has some level of coordination emerged between where meetings are held, by and large, each organisation meets every few years, staggered so there's always a meeting in a different country every year. Those frequent flyer miles must be adding up. If only there was another way to communicate across the globe.

So, let's look at this in terms of effort and reward. Let's say that across the globe that at any one point in time there are 100 people part of the IARU infrastructure across the four organisations, or 25 in each. It's a modest representation. Let's say that they each volunteered 1 hour per week, so 52 hours a year, 5,200 hours across the entire IARU per year, or 520,000 hours across a century. This means that each achievement took more than 43,000 hours of volunteer effort. Unless of course there was more achieved that is undocumented. Mind you, 52 hours a year per volunteer is also probably light on, potentially by orders of magnitude.

I note that for example there's no mention of things like quashing the 2m proposal by France where the local aviation authorities were looking to acquire some extra spectrum, or negotiations in relation to 1.2 GHz at the ITU World Radiocommunication Conference 2023 or WRC-23 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, held between 20 November and 15 December 2023.

My point is this:

What is the IARU doing? Is it really effective, or is it burning volunteer hours like it's going out of fashion? What is it spending your money on? Where is the record of all this activity? What level of accountability is there? Is your peak body looking at the IARU books? Are they holding the IARU accountable, or are they part of the problem?

There is plenty of evidence that there are other issues too. As I said, I attempted to write down who was elected president in what year in which IARU organisation. Aside from missing decades of information, there are amateurs in that line up who served as president for 26 years. Imagine that, a representative body that elects the same person for nine straight terms. I'm not naming them, the information I have is incomplete; right now I cannot tell you who was previously elected across IARU Region 3, or list anyone between Hiram Percy Maxim elected in 1925 as the first IARU president and 2009 when Tim Ellam, VE6SH and G4HUA, was elected president to the global body, but it's unclear if he was the only president between 2009 and 2024 when he was re-elected.

So, what do we do about this?

First of all, am I just tilting at windmills or is this an actual issue that needs fixing and if so, what might that look like?

Engagement would be my first guess. Is your club sending money to your peak body? Has it asked what the funds are used for? If you're a member of your peak body, have you asked them where the money goes and how much of it goes to the IARU and what it's spent on?

Contacting your peak body and asking questions might be the first place to start, but if your peak body is dysfunctional as plenty of them appear to be, perhaps it's time to contact the president of your own IARU region and ask them what gives, that is if you can find out who they are.

As I said, I think that our hobby is important, I think it needs advocacy, I think that takes money and effort, but right now I have very limited evidence that what we're doing and how we're doing it is the most effective way to go about it.

What will you do about this?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Discover the best Meshtastic devices tailored to your needs! From solar-powered options like the RAK WisBlock to budget-friendly choices like the Heltec LoRa 32 V3, this guide covers various use cases. Whether you prioritize portability, ease of use, or advanced features.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.radio/post/4500180

> Hello, > I saw this community has zero posts and I thought, this should be a good start. Sharing with fellow CW lovers out there. > > I started my HF journey last year in August. My first (failed) attempt at CW QSO in Nov > 23. Then, I gave up. Restarted CW in March this year. Around that time, I gave up FT8 and also SSB. > Still work SSB but not FT*. > So, yeah, I am proud of myself to have achieved this. > Some folks said, oh big deal, one can achieve this over a contest weekend. Maybe they can - for me it was significant work. > Next goal SKCC 100. :-) > 73 > de VU2TUM

As I sit here, away from my shack, I'm overlooking a picturesque valley that I'm visiting for a couple of days to see the stars. I learnt recently that my SO, Significant Other, had never seen the Milky Way with their Mark One Eyeball and we thought that it would be fun to remedy that.

One of the challenges in accomplishing this is that we're surrounded by light almost everywhere we go. Street lights, porch lights, car lights, stadium and building lights, traffic lights, even emergency lighting on various towers dotting the landscape.

Last night we laid on our backs on a picnic blanket tucked into a sleeping bag, looking up at the sky. The valley where we are is pretty good, there's much less light pollution than in the city, but it's not pitch black. We fantasised about knocking on neighbours' doors to ask them to turn off their porch lights, but quickly came to the realisation that this was not going to be either acceptable, or reasonable.

While I entertained the notion of creating a community Milky Way watching event, increasing local awareness of the new moon, light pollution and making it a local monthly event I discovered that Astro Tourism is a thing and our location happens to be part of the local scene.

Of course I couldn't help myself and started explaining to my SO about how light and radio are the same thing when it struck me that in our hobby we have a similar issue.

We don't refer to it as light pollution, instead we call it noise, specifically, QRM, or man-made noise, as opposed to QRN, natural noise.

I wondered what a community event might look like if we did this with radio amateurs, rather than star gazers. How far would we need to go to get away from noise and could we realistically make something that was actually noise free?

In reality the radio gear we bring, the power supplies, the solar panels, generators, inverters, computers and pretty much all the other stuff to make life come with radio noise to more or lesser degree.

How could you set up an event where that type of noise was contained? Could it be done? What would it take?

On a small scale, I can go to my local park with a fully charged 12 volt battery and a radio and get some sense of what it might look like, but all that really does is whet your appetite. What does this sound like if it's really quiet?

For star gazers, there is a project called DarkSky with a .org website. It documents where designated Dark Sky Places are and promotes the protection of communities from the effects of light pollution through outreach, advocacy and conservation.

We as radio amateurs could do with such a thing. What would our radio quiet spaces look like? How would we find them, how would we coordinate our efforts and what would outreach, advocacy and conservation look like for a radio quiet space?

From a star gazing perspective, I've experienced the middle of nowhere, Lake King in Western Australia, in a paddock, lying in my swag, looking up. The sight is overwhelming. I felt like I was falling, even though I was lying flat on my back, physically not moving.

I wonder what such a level of quiet looks like with a radio?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The other day I was handed a sheaf of paper. The person handing it to me, an amateur, was insistent that I take custody of this little collection. I asked what it was that they intended for me to do with it and the response was that because I did things with history, I should do this too.

Aside from taking on a new project, trying to juggle life and income, their observation was pretty spot on, even though I had never quite seen it in that way. Over the years I've often explained things in the context of the era in which it came into being, the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858, the first 20m contact between the UK and Australia, back in 1925, the founding of the IARU, also in 1925.

For some years I've been playing with the idea of documenting the journey from Spark Gap to SDR. I started writing down milestones, collecting information about the various protagonists along the way, attempting to capture their life milestones and their radio related accomplishments. One friend went so far as to take photos of the replica spark gap transmitter in Hobart, Tasmania as used by Douglas Mawson between 1911 and 1914 during their Antarctic expedition.

Between being entrusted with the written history of 28 Chapter of the Ten-Ten International Net and today I've started a spreadsheet. If you know me at all, you know that I love a good spreadsheet. This one is pretty simple, date, event, event type, protagonist, note and source. So far I've got about 85 rows. I'm using it to capture milestones directly related to our hobby, when the first EchoLink node went live, when RTTY came to be used on-air, the invention of FM, when we got access to the 2m band, when 160m was taken away during World War II, ultimately, all of it.

There is already a website that documents some of this but it's USA centric, even though our community is global, and it does not include any sources, so there's no way to verify any of the events, which I think is essential if you're going to capture this in any meaningful way.

I want this list I'm creating to include all manner of amateur related things, the first time F-troop went on-air, the first CQWW, perhaps even every CQWW. I have also set-up a form so you can contribute your events and over time grow it into something that captures what it is that we've done over the years. Perhaps it will grow into a section on Wikipedia, perhaps it will become its own thing, it's too early to tell.

As I've said many times, if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen. So, this is me, or us, writing it down. Perhaps we'll be able to find a way to make it through the next 100 years.

You can find the Amateur History Project under Projects on my home-page at vk6flab.com - I look forward to reading your contributions.

So, thank you Christine, VK6ZLZ for pushing that sheaf of paper into my hands. I hope I'm worthy of the history that it represents.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Hi friends!

I am in search of a small Morse Code trainer/electronic keyer small enough to fit in my pocket, and has the following features:

• Speed selectable
• Works with an iambic key, and is Type B selectable
• Has a key jack for an external keyer
• Polarity selection, I key southpaw.
• Headphone jack

Bonus:

• Can adjust tone pitch down to 440Hz

Google turns up a few things here and there, I’d just like to see if any of y’all have any immediate recommendations.

Thank you!

E: autocarrot

To get into the hobby of amateur radio is easy, but that doesn't mean it's simple. I was introduced to the hobby three times.

The first time I was a Sea Scout in the Netherlands. It was JOTA, the annual Jamboree On The Air and radio amateurs across the planet were set up at various Scouting locations with their stations showing off how to make contact with far away places.

My memory of it is brief. I recall a green heavy army tent with radios on a table. There was noise everywhere. I was told that I was hearing a station in Brazil, which seemed incongruous, given that I was standing on an island surrounded by other Sea Scouts, a place where I had been camping and sailing for several years.

We trooped out of the tent and ten minutes later I broke a finger playing a game where you sat on a mast trying to upend the other person using a canvas bag with a jib in it. I was unceremoniously upended and landed poorly and broke the middle finger on my right hand. Being a teenager that was of course a source of immediate ridicule and innuendo and getting a dink, that's Aussie slang for getting a ride on the back of the pushbike of my boatswain to the local hospital, after rowing from the island to the mainland caused me to completely forget that amateur radio experience.

The second time I came across the hobby was through my then manager, Ian, whom I now know as VK6KIH, but at the time he was a quiet spoken man thrust into the role of manager. The introduction came in the form of a Daihatsu Charade with a massive, what I suspect, was a 40m HF whip. The amateur radio aspect made little or no impression. The antenna, clearly much too large for such a tiny vehicle, did. I don't recall ever talking about amateur radio or even seeing his setup. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if I ever have.

The third time I came across the hobby was at a dinner table surrounded by fellow "dogcow" geeks. One of them, Meg, then with the callsign VK6LUX showed us her brand new shiny purchase, a drone, that could be controlled remotely via WiFi on 2.4 GHz. She went on to tell us that the range was pretty limited because it was WiFi, but because she was a radio amateur, she was going to experiment with an amplifier. This was permitted because as I learnt, the 2.4 GHz WiFi frequencies are shared with amateur radio. You might know it as the 13cm band.

I asked about this thing called amateur radio. I wanted to know what was involved, how would you become one, what would it cost, you know, all the things everyone always asks. I was told that there'd be a course in two weeks with an exam the weekend after. I asked if we needed a group booking and was told to "just rock up".

So I did.

I got my license in 2010 and my world changed forever. I will add, just to make sure that if you're planning to do this, that during my course I discovered that my license wouldn't permit my use of the 13cm band, so I'd have to upgrade. I promptly purchased the requisite course material and started reading. In the mean time I got distracted by the activities at a local club, then I bought a radio, then I was told I wasn't a real amateur because I only had a beginners' license, so to prove a point, I started having fun with my license. I haven't stopped since.

Now, some, or maybe all of this, I've shared before. Here's something new.

I'm a so-called A.F.O.L, or an Adult Fan Of Lego. It's not a guilty pleasure, I'm happy to admit it. I have too much Lego around me. My oldest set is from 1964, House with Garage, number 324-2. It's not complete any longer, the car is long gone, the garage door weights are broken off, but it has pride of place in my living room. History does not reveal how I came into possession of it. Best I can reconstruct is that in the deep dark corners of Australia it takes a little while for kits to arrive, since I was born after the kit came into existence. I do know that I had it before 1976.

The other day I was watching a documentary about Lego and one thing stood out to me. I'll share the entire quote by Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen the then President and CEO of The Lego Group:

"During the 1990s, we kept thinking that much more should be done for the adult "hobbyist builders," as we called them at the time. Most people on the management team thought we should concentrate on children instead, but I felt that a person could have an inner child at any age."

Why this is important is because of my activities as a radio amateur. We as a community keep saying that we should grow, that we're losing too many people, that we need to engage with S.T.E.M., or Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Whilst that may be true and whilst JOTA and Scouting might give us exposure to fresh new people, there's a massive community of adults who already know about our hobby. They just don't yet know how it might interact with them, personally, or how they might find it interesting, or engaging, rewarding, and all the other things that you as an amateur already know about.

So, if there's Adult Fans Of Lego, why not Adult Fans Of Amateur Radio?

While thinking about that, how would you talk to them, how would you go about finding them, relating their interests to our hobby, finding common ground and discovering even more things that we can add to the thousands of amateur activities we already know about?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The other day I lamented to a fellow amateur that my shack was not functioning well. Specifically, my main workstation died three months ago and ever since I've been struggling to reclaim my productivity. One aspect of that is my desk. For half a decade or so I've had my computer clamped to a rolling lectern. It allowed me to move around my office as my mood and the light from the window changed.

During the weekly net I'd move my lectern and computer next to my radio and host the net whilst logging on my computer.

That's no longer possible because of a number of reasons, so instead I was trying to accomplish the same thing on a tiny 13 inch screen which didn't work for me. My friend asked me why I hadn't just extended the microphone lead from my radio, so I could sit at my now stationary computer and still key the microphone. I located an Ethernet joiner, an Ethernet cable and did just that. Simple. Job done.

Then I started wondering why I wasn't on HF with my station and if there was a simple solution that was eluding me. Spoiler alert, it still eludes me. The requirements are not too complicated, well at least in my mind they're not.

I want to operate on HF. I want the computer to not be physically, or specifically, electrically connected to the radio, in any way. I need to be able to use logging software that tracks the radio band, mode and frequency. I'd like to use digital modes, I'd like to have a computer controlled voice keyer and I do not want to run Windows and if I can at all help it, I'd like to spend as little time as possible doing this without spending an arm and a leg.

So, then I started wondering what this looks like for other people. What kinds of compromises have you made in your shack? What have you accomplished and how did you get there? What choices of hardware and software did you make, and why? Did you give up, or face the challenge head on? How did you gather information and how did you find out what others did?

Not for a moment do I think that this is a simple thing to solve, but it's clear to me that I'm so far down the complicated rabbit hole that I'd like someone to show me the light at the end of the tunnel to make some progress.

Of course I've not been idle while all this is happening. I configured a Raspberry Pi, a small single board computer, to talk to my radio via USB. I connected a sound card to the audio connector on my radio. Theoretically this should give me all that I need, but the difference between theory and practice is common knowledge, in theory it works, in practice it doesn't. The Pi is a few years old, but it's not doing much at all. It connects to my network wirelessly, so my main computer isn't physically connected to the radio, but it's still pretty unreliable and I have to say, calling CQ, either using voice or digital modes, should be rock solid. You don't want your radio to keep transmitting after it's supposed to and other little issues like that.

So, how did you do this? I'm interested to know. I'm not the first person to run into this issue and I'm not the last. Your experience might help me and it might help others. Drop me an email, cq@vk6flab.com and I look forward to hearing about your adventures.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Learn how to create your own DIY Meshtastic node using the NRF52840. Take advantage of the NRF52840's low power consumption, compact size, and integrated battery management system (BMS) to enhance your mesh communication experience.

At my local hamfest on the weekend I picked up this 6-way coax switch. I've been furiously searching my little heart out, but haven't actually discovered any sign of it.

How do I wire this up? What do I need? What specifications does it have? Anything you can share?

RF Connectors

Connector view of a 6-way coax switch with common connector in the centre surrounded by a hexagonal arrangement of inputs, each an N-type connector. !

Side

Side view of a 6-way coax switch showing mounting hardware and the label !

Control Connectors

Control wire connection view of a 6-way coax switch showing 6 numbered terminals with IND marking, 6 numbered terminals with LOGIC marking and 3 central terminals marked CP, CP and 28V respectively. !

Label

Product Label with the following text:

text K&L 50140 6LMP-28-F-N-I-TTL S/N CC649-2 D.C.9002 !

The transponder of MESAT-1 amateur radio satellite has been turned On for the weekend. Many are reporting strong downlink signals. I tested during a 29 deg pass over my QTH as well and I was amazed at the strong downlink of my CW CQ call.

Transponder uplink: 145.910-145.940 MHz Transponder downlink: 435.810-435.840 MHz

I set my uplink on 145.925 MHz and started calling CQ, scanned the downlink band to find my signal. I used two radios, FT991A for uplink and Icom 705 for downlink. Hope this helps!

New Yaesu radio announced. What do we think about it? To me, it looks like the Yaesu version of Icom IC705.

The International Amateur Radio Union or IARU, is the governing body of our community. It represents us on the world stage through the International Telecommunications Union, the ITU. As I've discussed before, it consists of four separate organisations working together, the International Amateur Radio Union, the global body, and three regional ones, Region 1, 2 and 3, each representing the hobby of amateur radio. Previously I've looked at the constitution of the IARU to get a sense of its purpose in the world.

At the time I mentioned the notion of comparing the four organisations against each other, since ostensibly they're doing the same thing for a different part of the world.

Each of these regional bodies was created separately by different groups of people and their constitutions reflect that. The Global IARU constitution, last updated in 1989 consists of nine pages. The IARU Region 1 constitution, with proposed amendments from 2020 has 31 pages, the English version of the Region 2 constitution, since there's also a Spanish one, was amended in 2019 has six pages including two copies of Article 2, and refers regularly to the Global IARU constitution and finally, Region 3, amended in 2012 has 15 pages.

What is striking at first glance is just how poorly these documents are constructed. Formatting, inconsistent spelling, indentation, general layout and all are lacking attention to detail. I think that this reflects poorly on the internal workings of the IARU, but I digress.

Curiously, the Region 3 website has a whole section on proposed changes to the constitution. Many of those changes are around the election of officials and voting procedures. It also includes the use of modern communications like email and remote conference facilities on internet platforms. One paragraph stood out: "It was also realised that changes would need to be made to formally recognise that we will (as happened at the online conference in 2021) have females as well as males taking responsible positions in IARU Region 3."

It must have come as quite a shock to the delegates to learn that there are females in our hobby. This must have already happened in Region 1, since there is a reference to "he/she" in relation to being elected. Mind you, use of the word "they" must not have occurred to the authors.

But don't worry, we shouldn't rush these things, the International body and the Region 2 constitutions both use "he" for roles. I will point out that the International body has a weasel clause where it states, among other things, "words importing only the masculine gender include the feminine gender and the neutral gender". It's a good start, but falls short of standards expected today.

If you're not sure what all the fuss is about, let me illustrate:

"The term of office of the President shall be for a period of five years from the date of ratification of porcupine nomination, and porcupine shall remain in office until the nomination of porcupine successor has been ratified."

If that felt jarring for you, you might get some sense of what it feels like for someone reading that with gender pronouns that don't match the text.

A better solution would be:

"The term of office of the President shall be for a period of five years from the date of ratification of their nomination, and they shall remain in office until the nomination of their successor has been ratified."

It's not the first time we've struck this type of issue. It's high time that we did something about it. Over a year ago, I pointed out that OM, Old Man, and XYL, eX Young Lady, were derogatory and we should replace them with OP, operator, and SO, significant other. A year before that I proposed a revision of the Amateur's Code to make its language inclusive and reflective of the wider community in which we operate.

I've had discussions with people who identify across the gender spectrum about much of this and the overwhelming feedback I received is that our community is Old White Men clamouring to grow the hobby without a clue that the words they use are part of the problem.

So, credit to Region 1 for implementing some of this and to Region 3 for starting this conversation. I don't doubt that there are members in the Global IARU and Region 2 who would like to see this implemented and to you I say: It's time, high time, to review what language our community uses to identify itself to the wider community. More generally, as the governing and representative global bodies you should be leading the way and providing guidance to the member societies.

So, next time you promote our community, refer to others, link to articles, and attempt to encourage participation, you should take a moment and ask yourself if what you're saying is truly speaking to people who are not Old White Men and if that's the case, what you might do to embrace the wider community.

The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

We'll walk you through adding a vibration motor module for notifications to your ESP32-based Meshtastic Node.

It's a serious question because so far, none have.

Edit: Some context for those asking.

Eternal September refers to a time when an online community was overrun by new participants to the detriment of that community.

When new people arrive piecemeal, like they're doing right now, they join in and participate. If they make little social mistakes, they are steered by members of the community in the direction that the community has evolved into by supplying social, language and behavioural cues.

New participants alter their behaviour and the community grows a little with the new participant. If they don't alter their behaviour, it's likely that they're removed from the community by some agreed process that has evolved over time.

If the growth is sudden, then the community will be overwhelmed by "blissful or deliberate ignorance" and the systems for cues, moderation and removal fail and the community, often drastically, changes or ceases to exist.

The reference to September is that's when new University Students would get an account on the University computer systems and join Usenet News. They'd arrive every September, there'd be a blip in adjustment and the Usenet communities would absorb the new members.

Eternal September arrived when AOL joined its bulletin board to Usenet and it completely overran everything with people from all across the AOL userbase, most of them not first year University students.

I was there when this happened, alt.best.of.internet (ABOI) was a community where I participated. One of many "new groups" it was alphabetically the first on the AOL list and it imploded. Together with Malinda McCall, I wrote the FAQ in an ultimately fruitless attempt at educating the masses.

I've seen this play out over and over again across the decades I've been online, so that's why I asked.

The ABOI FAQ is here: https://www.itmaze.com.au/articles/aboi-faq

ARSI VU-DX CONTEST Dates: 28 – 29 Sep 2024 Duration: 28-Sep 12:00 UTC to 29-Sep 12:00 UTC Geographic Focus: India Participation: Worldwide Mode: SSB, CW, Mixed Bands: 40, 20, 15, 10 M

Getting started in our hobby can be a challenge. Even if you've got a shiny new license and you've been taught what the legal requirements are, you might even have your first radio, but after that it might feel like you're all on your own in this bright and shiny new world.

It doesn't have to be that way.

First thing to know is that you are exactly where all other amateurs have been before you. In other words, don't stress too much about what you don't know or what mistakes you might make. I recently read a comment from a new amateur who was so scared of making a mistake that they hadn't made their first contact. You should know that there is a massive difference between making an accidental mistake and knowingly interfering with another service.

Here's some mistakes I've made.

My license permits a maximum power level of 10 Watts. I dutifully set-up my radio to do just that, made my first contact on HF using 10 Watts, only to learn later that power levels are set separately for HF, 6m, VHF and UHF on my specific radio. So, the second time I keyed up my microphone, I was using 50 Watts. Not only that, I didn't quite understand how to set-up my radio for repeater use, so I keyed up on the output frequency and happily talked to the other station, blissfully unaware that I wasn't actually using the repeater.

It wasn't until several years later that I learnt that the minimum power level was 5 Watts on all bands, except UHF, where it is 2 Watts. And as icing on the cake, one day I managed a 2m contact across about 70 km, from my car. It wasn't until later in the night that I discovered that all the settings on my radio had reset and it was again using 50 Watts.

Another time I was in the club radio shack and having some fun with the club station. I tuned to a 2m frequency and called CQ. Didn't hear anything. Then I discovered that I'd missed a decimal point and was actually transmitting on the 20m band, where I'm not permitted with my license.

Each of those things are outside the restrictions of my license, but made by mistake, not on purpose. Instead of stressing about it, I went, oops, and carried on with a new lesson learnt. I will point out that I'm certain that there are more, mistakes, feel free to let me know.

Those concerns aside, finding people to talk to is another barrier to entry. We have all these bands and there's nobody about. It reminds me of a funny story I've shared before, told by Wally VK6YS, now SK. In his early amateur radio days he operated from Cockatoo Island, an island off the north coast of Western Australia, near Yampi Sound, which is where his callsign came from. With a new radio and transverter for 6m, Wally had been calling CQ for weeks, but nobody would talk to him. Occasionally he'd hear a faint voice in the background. Meanwhile it transpired that amateurs across Japan were getting upset that he wasn't responding to their 20 and 40 over 9 signal reports. His transmission was getting out just fine, his receiver wasn't working nearly as well. Turns out that during manufacturing, a pin on the back of his transverter hadn't been soldered correctly. Oops. Once he fixed that, he worked 150 Japanese stations on the first day and a lifelong love of the 6m band was born.

One hard learnt lesson is that the bands are constantly changing. If you cannot hear anything on one band, try another. If the band is quiet, it's likely because the conditions for that band are bad, but generally this is only true on HF. On VHF and UHF, the opposite is often true. Some bands, like 10m and 6m behave more like VHF, but not always. 20m can go from brilliant to abysmal and back in seconds, sometimes during the contact.

Each band has its own idiosyncrasies that you'll need to explore before you can hope to improve your chances of success and even years of playing will often get you surprises. I recall trying, for giggles only, to call CQ on a pretty quiet band only to score an unexpected contact with a Central European station on the other side of the globe.

A good rule of thumb is to go where the action is. If you can hear others, they're much more likely to hear you. While this is not universally true, it's a good starting point.

Of course, you don't need to physically have a radio to experience any of this. There are many websites that provide you with access to radio tuners. If you search for WebSDR or KiwiSDR you'll come across hundreds of online receivers that you can tune and operate on the frequencies they support using just your web browser. Some have the ability to decode digital modes within the web page, so you won't even have to install any extra software to play.

You might think that using such a receiver is not really amateur radio, but I'd like to point out that a transceiver is both a transmitter and a receiver. You can get the receiver right there in your web browser. The transmitter is a little more complex, but technically also possible. Many amateur clubs have a remote accessible station which will allow you to get started.

That kills two birds with one stone, you get to interact with the people in the club and you get to play on-air without needing to figure out just which radio to get and what antenna to connect it to and where to put either.

Other places to find new friends are of course social media, the so-called fediverse, a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other, has several communities. You can get started at https://mastodon.radio and https://lemmy.radio. There's plenty of other on-air activities like Nets, discussion groups where you can get to know other amateurs. I run a weekly Net for new and returning amateurs called F-troop on Saturday morning midnight UTC for an hour, where you can say hello and ask questions. We pass the microphone around a circle, so everyone gets a go. You'll find more information at https://ftroop.groups.io.

Getting started does not have to be a daunting experience. Get on-air, make noise and before you know it, you'll have forgotten just how much you worried about things that really didn't cause any issues in the big picture.

If you're still stuck, drop me an email, cq@vk6flab.com and I'll attempt to point you in the right direction.

What are you waiting for?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Enhance your Meshtastic nodes with top accessories: GY-NEO6MV2 GPS for accurate tracking, BME280 for environmental monitoring, GIZONT high-gain antenna for better range, EC11 potentiometer for easy controls, buzzer for audible alerts, and 18650 battery shield for improved power management

A breakdown Meshtastic VS PMR walkie-talkies. We'll look at what they can do, how far they reach, how they communicate, how long their batteries last, and how easy they are to use.

I went down a reading rabbit hole with the recent Meshtastic posts, and decided to pick up 2 LILYGO T-Echo units to fuss around with. One for home base and one will go in my car kit, and out on the trails.

Very excited for them to arrive!

In the mid 1980's there was this thing called a Bulletin Board System or BBS. You would connect your computer to a gadget called an acoustic coupler that you would sit next to a telephone. You'd pick up the handset, dial a phone number and wait until there was a squeal in your ear. Then you'd push the handset into the rubber cups on the coupler and watch as your computer started putting characters on your screen.

Now, truth be told, my first foray was the next generation of this, an actual modem where you didn't actually have to touch the telephone, instead, the device could dial on your behalf using so-called AT commands.

And if we're being totally honest, I never actually connected to a BBS. My adventures with global communications started with Usenet News in 1990, but I'm here to make a point, I promise.

Amateur radio is a hobby that is for experimentation. One such experiment is a thing called packet radio. Before you roll your eyes about ancient technology, this gets very cool, very fast.

At its most basic, packet radio is about digital radio communication. Until not that long ago to play you needed a thing called a TNC or a Terminal Node Controller. When I got my license in 2010 I was told that this was a magic box to make digital communication possible between a radio and other radios and amateurs.

Right now, many people are playing with WSPR, Weak Signal Propagation Reporter as well as FT8, both examples of things intended to get specific chunks of information exchanged between two stations. What if I want to chat, or send a file, or a picture?

There are tools like "js8call" which is experimenting with the idea of using FT8 to chat, but what if I told you that there's a better way?

Written by John WB2OSZ, named after a canine that became extinct 9,500 years ago, "direwolf", is software that implements an expensive piece of 1980's hardware, a TNC, that runs just fine on a $5 Raspberry pi. It's been around for over a decade, the oldest date I can find is March 2013 though undated versions before that exist.

It's an example of a so-called software-modem, simple to get started, and it implements the essential pieces of packet radio. It's currently running connected to my radio and I can see packets of information scrolling past. In this case I'm tuned to the local APRS, or Automatic Packet Reporting System frequency of 145.175 MHz.

It's the same information that you can see if you point your web browser at aprs.fi

While that's great, it's just the beginning. Tune to another 2m or 70cm frequency and you can use it to connect to a BBS being run by a local amateur, or, you can tune to a HF frequency and connect to one run somewhere else.

Direwolf also supports a technology called KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid, yes really, developed by Brian WB6RQN, Phil KA9Q, Mike K3MC and others. KISS allows you to connect a modem, like direwolf, to a computer and use technologies like TCP/IP, the primary language of the internet, across a radio link, any radio link.

Let me say that again with different words. You can use your HF radio to browse the internet. No proprietary modes in sight, weak signal, error correction included, all open source, all free, all ready to go.

While we're singing its praises, direwolf can also act as an iGate, an interface between radio and services like aprs.fi, a digipeter that receives and re-transmits APRS data and plenty more.

It gets better.

What if you wanted to use something like RTTY, PSK31, Olivia or some other mode? You could use "fldigi" instead of direwolf since it too supports KISS.

To be fair, there are lots of moving parts here and I've glossed over plenty. This isn't intended to discuss precisely how to do this, rather that it's possible at all and has been for quite some time.

I can't wait to attempt to browse the internet using my radio, for nothing other than the thrill of attempting it.

I wonder if I can do this with Morse Code as the underlying protocol. Only one way to find out.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Discover the power of Meshtastic with our step-by-step guide on creating coverage maps for your Lora nodes. These maps are key in optimizing communication range, visually showcasing signal strength and coverage areas within a LoRa mesh network.

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We'll walk you through adding a GPS module to your existing Heltec V3 Lora ESP32 Meshtastic Node. This guide will work also for any ESP32 boards but slight changes might be required.