The Dell DA-2 is a power supply for, I don't actually know. A Dell computer of some sort I assume. They're popular for running external GPUs, and can be easily modified to supply 12v at up to 18 amps, aka 200 watts with no fan and (in theory) decent performance etc.

So, let's modify one to use as a radio power supply! (Please ignore the continuity errors, I took the photos after doing the mod and whilst putting it back together.)

To open it up you'll need a "security" bit, S2 T10, it's a 6 pointed star with a bit in the middle. The screws are all under the rubber feet.

Inside the case you'll find everything wrapped up in metal which is held with tape, and shimmed into the case with two flat bits down the sides. Slide those out and the rest should come free easily.

Cut the tape and you can unfold the metal and slip the thing out.

There is a big flat copper thing that connects the earth/ground/0v from one side to the other. You'll need to unsolder this to remove it.

Yet more unwrapping! Unwrap the plastic thing and you'll finally see the actual circuit.

This is where you need to tin your soldering iron and make sure it's hot as there are two bundles of wires that need removing and it'll take a lot of heat. Be patient and make sure all the solder is liquid before pulling them out.

There are also two smaller wires that need disconnecting.

Decision time. The supply can be switched by connecting pin 5 to ground. Although not any more as we just removed that wire... If you want it to always be on you can just short the through hole marked "remote" to ground. Or you can do what I did and wire in a switch.

I've no idea what "red" is for. I didn't connect anything to it.

Time to get the soldering iron to work again and connect your +ve and -ve wires. Use something chunky enough to handle 18 amps! I used some of the cable that came with my Icom IC-706 which I'd already cut in bits and fitted Power Poles onto.

Now, put it all back together! Don't forget the copper thing. Plastic wrap, copper, metal, tape, shims down side, case, screws. Be careful you don't trap any of your new wires on the screw posts.

  Reading this very useful and detailed post from fellow blogger KA7OEI. 

https://ka7oei.blogspot.com/2024/06/reducing-qrm-interference-from-renogy.html

I extended my solar energy production with 5 extra solarpanels a while ago. It really was a bargain getting these as I bought the 260Wp panels at a cost of €50 (€10 per panel) from a colleague. The inverter was searched for on the dutch internet marketplace and I bought one for another €50. Most of the costs were the mounting rails, wiring and the #31 ferrite to make shure no RFI would reach my antennas. The last items were an additional €300. 

The open line of the inverted-V doublet is just about 1,5 meter above the solarpanels. I even got a quarter wave CB antenna near the panels to listen to some chats on CB when in the garage. I really did take all precautions to make shure I would not have any RF coming from the inverter or the panels. On the pic at the right you see that I used big #31 FT240 ferrite rings in both AC and DC lines. The earth wire is fitted with a big #31 snap-on ferrite. DC wires are mostly fitted in earthed Alu tubes were possible. Everything is earthed to a central earth point, the tubes, the mounting frames and the inverter.

https://ferrite-shop.com/prevent-solar-panel-interference/?v=796834e7a283

For Dutch readers it could be interesting to read the Dutch Telecom recommendation:

https://www.rdi.nl/onderwerpen/tips/voorkom-storingen-door-zonnepanelen

Well, I don't have any RFI from my own solarsystems. I see QRM in the waterfall of my IC-7300 from my neighbours solarsystem on 50MHz. Just to be shure it isn't my own I checked when I switch my own systems off. Of course there was no change, the QRM stays there and is not from my property for shure. Luckily the QRM is only there when I turn my beam over their house.

The 5 solarpanels harvested 165 KWh in less then 2 months. Approx 3 Kwh average per day. It is not much but anything helps. The system can be extended easily when I find another 5 or 6 secondhand solarpanels.

This Again?

I have twisted and worked my way around this problem for some time now and this probably isn’t the last time that I will revisit this topic. However, my station is evolving and as a result, I’m going to make some notes here and share what I know so that other folks can make use of it. Honestly? It’s more so that I will remember how I got here when I inevitably screw something up and have to back it out.

Why Are We Doing This Again?

My solution for the home setup, was to run Win11 on a stick PC that I could interface with the IC-7100 for Winlink email and Other Stuff. Now, what is Other Stuff? In ham radio, we have an unhealthy relationship to old and busted Windows-Only software. It’s changing slowly, but there are still weird packages that find their way into my hands that I “need” to use for This or That.

With the shift from the barely usable Win10 to the What Is This Nightmare Of Constant Advertising Win11, MS pushed me too far. Every time I touch what used to be the Start Menu, I get an advertisement or some unwanted tidbit of news with a picture of a politician or other pop culture nuisance. On top of that, they’d now like me to have an “AI” that follows me around and trains itself using my hardware?

We’re done here.

CrossOver

I don’t know how the link came to me, but I found my way to WG1V’s site and encountered a very different approach to solving the Winlink/Vara/All That Stuff conundrum.

https://www.wg1v.org/posts/2023-12-27-Winlink-and-Pat-on-M1-Mac

The author simply runs CrossOver on their Mac and all of the stuff works.

Now, back in the day, as a Frothy Linux Zealot, I was a reluctant user of Wine to address some needs I had in my day job. I wrestled with it and made it work. Over time, running VMs to handle this stuff seemed to become the new hotness and I didn’t even think about CrossOver for the Mac. The trouble with a VM is that it’s still a full install of Windows and still antagonistic to my desired mental state. Would CrossOver really do the trick?

In a word: Yes.

Following the instructions at the above link, I got VARA HF and ARDOP up and running on my Mac which is what I attach to my shiny new IC-7300 in my shack. It worked out of the box with no fiddling. Full disclosure: I hadn’t updated brew in some time so that took a minute, but with that done, everything else fell into place.

What about the Other Stuff? Most of the radio software out there that might be used for programming an HT for example, is built on ancient frameworks that happen to run reliably under CrossOver. I even pulled up some piece of software that I used to program my DMR HT and it worked out of the box. That outcome was unexpected, but most welcome.

Now What?

To send Winlink mail, I kick off rigctrl and pat with its HTTP UI from a command line and launch either ARDOP or VARA from CrossOver and send my Winlink mail. This gets me two big wins: No Windows and No Winlink Express. This is called Winning.

I have been noodling with my Surface Go to make sure that I can use the 7300 under my Ubuntu setup as well. I want my two main computing devices to be fully ready to run any rig I’ve got that can do a digital mode. On Ubuntu, it will be ARDOP and pat as well. For me, that’s a well-oiled setup with the IC-705. I need to take a minute to add the IC-7300 to the configuration. No big deal, just 10 minutes or so when I get it.

The outcome of all of this is that I now have a single shack computing device that is my Mac and I can do all of the things that I do in one place. Simplifying things is good. And I’ve even got this little stick PC that I can throw something on for an internal fileserver or something.

The Future

In an ideal world, someone (maybe me someday?) will get ARDOP running on a Mac. ARDOP is under active development again and these are exciting times for that modem. I can’t wait to see where it goes! But for now, I will leverage it in this new ecosystem with CrossOver. It works and that’s what matters.

Final

It’s probably pretty clear that I’m willing to work with all flavors of software in different evironments. I’m not opposed to paying for useful software, though my first stop will always be Free/Open solutions. The sticking point here is that I don’t have a lot of time to mess around with some of this stuff and this approach gets me from A to B rather quickly. Again, Winning.

Thanks for reading along!

Yesterday, I operated from the Silver Lake Day Use Area of US-3322, Pinckney State Recreation Area. This is a great park, and in many respects, I like it a lot more than US-3315, Island Lake Recreation Area. It’s just a little further from my house than Island Lake, and I think I’ll be spending more time at US-3322, now that I’ve hit 1,000 QSOs at US-3315.

One of the 40 contacts I made was with Jim, N4JAW. He’s not only a very active POTA operator, but also very active on Mastodon. Yesterday, after I returned home, I was pleasantly surprised to find this video posted to Mastodon. I’m re-posting it here with Jim’s permission.

Not so twisted anymore

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been contemplating ditching the twisted-pair feedline I have been using on my POTA doublet antenna, after having such good success with my friend Paul’s Cobra antenna. That antenna uses 450 Ω ladder line. I happened to have a 100-ft. roll of high-quality, 300 Ω twinlead, so I thought I’d give that a go. I’ve used this antenna twice now, and while it’s hard to prove conclusively that the antenna works better with with the 300 Ω feedline, it “feels” as if it’s working better.

Of course, it could just be that band conditions have been better during my last two activations. That’s why I’d like to actually make some measurements. It’s not that easy, though. There are a couple of articles online that explain how to use an antenna analyzer to do this (1, 2), and I’ll give these a go once I’ve read and digested this material.

The downside to using 300 Ω twinlead is that it’s bulkier and less flexible than twisted-pair wire. It also seems more sensitive to environmental factors, such as touching the ground. But, taking a  little care when setting up the antenna takes care of those issues.

QRN?? At the park?

It wasn’t all good news yesterday, though. There’s something at the park generating a hellacious noise on 20 meters. The noise is so bad that the band is practically unusable. This noise is somewhat noticeable on the other bands, but just barely, and certainly not enough to make the bands unusable.

That being the case, every one of the 40 contacts I made yesterday were on bands other than 20 meters. I started out on 40 meters, then jumped to 17 meters, which fortunately was open and active. I tried 15 meters, too, and made a few contacts there, but it wasn’t very active, so I moved back to 17 meters.

This noise is new. Last Thursday was the first time I’d noticed it. I would have made a recording of it, but I didn’t have an audio recorder handy on my phone. I will do next time I get to that part of the Pinckney Recreation Area.

On Mastodon, someone suggested that the noise was coming from a solar inverter. I hadn’t thought about that at the park, so I wasn’t really looking for solar panels, but I’m guessing that this is correct. Next time I’m there, I’m going to have to walk around and see if I see any.  I might bring a small radio, too, to see if I can pinpoint the noise source.

Even if I do find the noise source, I’m not sure what I can do about it. I suppose that I can point this out to the park officials, but I’m not sure what, if anything, they’ll be motivated to do about it. Stay tuned for more on this. If you have any ideas of what I should look for, please let me know.

After far too long, I've finally managed to get Fldigi and Quisk to work together to finally do digi modes like Olivia. The problems I had before were the following:

• When I used hamlib to set the frequency from Fldigi and switch Quisk from RX to TX via PTT, it seemed like Quisk and Fldigi were fighting each other. The frequency then jumped back and forth for so long that Fldigi became so unusable that I had to terminate the process .
• I did not see the sound devices within Fldigi

The guide by James Ahlstrom helped a lot, which unfortunately I initially hadn't understood in as much detail as I should have.

I have implemented the following instructions with the following software versions:

• Debian 12 stable with Cinnamon as DE
• Fldigi 4.1.23
• Quisk 4.2.35

Quisk: Sound Settings

The following screenshot shows how I've set up the audio settings in Quisk:

The two important settings are:

• Digital Tx0 Input: "pulse: Use name QuiskDigitalInput"
• Digital Rx0 Output: "pulse: Use name QuiskDigitalOutput.monitor"

Fldigi: Rig Control

I've switched from hamlib to flrig / xmlrpc with the following settings:

• Enable flrig xcvr with Fldigi as client
• Shutdown flrig with fldigi
• Addr: 127.0.0.1
• Port: 12345
• Flrig PTT keys modem

FlDigi: Soundcard - Devices

Check the option "PulseAudio":

Gluing the Sound Stuff together

Now comes the interesting part!

First, start both, Quisk and Fldigi. It is very important that the applications are running.

Now start the Pulse Audio Volume Control application with the command pavucontrol. You might need to install it first from the package repository.

Click on the tab "Recording". There should be a line visible with the Fldigi icon and the text "capture (some number)". Select "Monitor of QuiskDigitalOutput" in the drop down box next to it:

Click on the tab "Playback". You will notice that there is no such line with the Fldigi icon visible. This is because it is only there when you transmit from inside Fldigi. Pick a clear frequency and e.g. send a longer CQ message in Olivia. As soon as Fldigi switches to TX, a new line with the Fldigi icon and the text "playback (some number)" will be shown in pavucontrol. Select "QuiskDigitalInput" in the drop down box next to it:

That's it!

Now you are good to go: It should now be possible to change the frequency in both Quisk and Fldigi for both applications at the same time, PTT from Fldigi should work without any problems and you should be able to see the signals received by Quisk in the Fldigi waterfall and also be able to make transmissions.

POTA at Longfellow House

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to do a POTA activation at the Longfellow House National Historic Site (US-0843) in Cambridge, MA.

Come to me, O ye children!
And whisper in my ear
What the birds and the winds are singing
In your sunny atmosphere.¹

About the Longfellow House

According to its official website, the Longfellow House “was a site of colonial enslavement and community activism, George Washington’s first long-term headquarters of the American Revolution, and the place where Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote his canon of 19th-century American literature.”

The house served as George Washington’s headquarters during the Siege of Boston from July 1775 to April 1776, making it an important Revolutionary War site. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lived in the house from 1837 until his death in 1882. It was a center for literary and cultural activity during his residency. The Longfellow House was a gathering place for prominent literary figures, artists, and intellectuals of the time, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Charles Dickens.

Activating the Longfellow House

I live about 7 miles from the Longfellow House. Like the Alewife Brook State Reserve that I activated recently, this is a semi-urban site. Being Sunday, I was able to drive to the site and park across the street. Note that Cambridge has strict parking enforcement with few non-resident spaces in this area on other days. So you may want to consider a Sunday activation. Alternatively, you could take the 77 MBTA bus from Harvard Sq. to this POTA site.

The park consists of a single large lot nestled in tony West Cambridge. I walked the grounds to explore a bit and find a good place to set up my Elecraft KH1 Transceiver. In the back, there was a nice garden.

Initial Setup

Just behind the visitor center on the northern end of the house, there are some picnic tables well-suited to a small rig like the KH1.

Unfortunately, early in my activation, my radio display indicated that it was overheating and stopped transmitting. It was probably good it did so—I was so focused that I didn’t realize that I was overheating myself! So I took a break and found a new site on the southeastern side of the small park with some beautiful trees and shade. I’ll probably just set up at that location in the future. It’s out of the way of foot traffic and has great shade.

I resumed my activation. Propagation was not good that day. I had to work fairly hard for a little over 2 hours to make 11 contacts and consider my efforts successful.

You can see the map of my contacts that day. Thanks to all the hunters who stuck it out that day with my little 5-watt radio, my compromised whip antenna, and poor conditions.

Pride

While I was there, the park was hosting a Pride Month event. So this is my chance to wish all LGBTQ friends and allies a Happy Pride Month!

You’re seen and you’re loved.

Good afternoon. KJ7T is in the booth! This is Tom Salzer with some Random Wire Reflections for Issue 97 of the Random Wire Review that will publish on Friday, July 5th.

And I have to laugh a bit when I saw I'm in the booth, because the reality is I'm at my messy sit-stand workstation at home, early in the morning when it is quiet, and just pretending that I have a recording booth!

I actually recorded this podcast inside the passenger compartment of my Honda Ridgeline truck while waiting for my daughter’s prescription to be filled. I captured audio on my Zoom H4N Pro Handy Recorder with a “dead cat” filter over the sensitive microphones. The audio was later imported into Audacity for final editing. I exported the audio in mono to save space, making this podcast a bit more friendly for folks using cellular bandwidth to listen.

Overview

OK, let's take a dive into Random Wire Review issue 97.

Topics in issue 97 include:

• Independence Day;

• a new (to me) Dakota Lithium battery;

• the Digirig Mobile and Digirig Lite devices; and

• a terminal node controller by MFJ.

I also offer some reflections on encryption of radio traffic and on APRS. The closing notes include a short bit about cloning my hotspot microSD card, a sound clip from an AllStarLink net, and a few photos from the Hillsboro Hops baseball game.

If you are interested in AllStarLink, you’ll want to stay tuned to the very end where late-breaking news is shared about a major version upgrade for AllStarLink!

Independence Day Edition

Since issue 97 will publish on July 5th, I'm calling it the Independence Day Edition.

On July 4th, my wife and I will attend a baseball game that pits the Hillsboro Hops against the Eugene Emeralds. We'll try to eat a few hot dogs, have a beer, and watch the fireworks show that will be featured at this game. Usually we get together with family, but having a night out for the two of us seems like a great way to celebrate Independence Day this year.

In issue 97, I refer readers to a Reddit thread about the First Amendment and ham radio. Reading through those comments helped me appreciate the many privileges we enjoy as licensed amateur radio operators even more.

New Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery

I succumbed to a deal on Facebook for a 12-volt, ten amp-hour battery from Dakota Lithium, for $69. That’s a nice price for a portable battery.

This little guy is a bit larger than my off-brand 12.8V 6 amp-hour battery by TalentCell. I'm surprised the Dakota battery doesn't weigh much more than the TalentCell battery.

I tested the battery by clipping the power leads from my Ten-Tec Scout 555 to the spade lugs on the Dakota battery. It worked great and I can tell this is going to be a mainstay in my ham radio kit.

Digirig Mobile and Digirig Lite devices

I have a Digirig Mobile device that I bought because I couldn't get an MFJ TNC some time ago. The Digirig device works great. It's about the size of a large thimble, as in the protective device you put on your thumb when sewing.

Actually, the Digirig kind of blows my mind. Essentially, it's an external sound card that is just tiny.

The catalyst for me to look again at the Digirig products was an issue of Steve Stroh's great newsletter titled Zero Retries. Steve included a bit about the new Digirig Lite device that incorporates some of the needed cabling into the device.

I love a tiny and complete solution so the Digirig Lite is on my "must acquire" list.

If you like content that is interesting and future focused, produced by an experienced and capable ham, I recommend Steve's newsletter to you. A subscription button is included in issue 97 of the Random Wire.

A New TNC Arrived in the Shack

And speaking of terminal node controllers, Steve's mention of the Digirig Lite caused me to remember why I bought the Digirig Mobile, so I went looking for an MFJ 1270X TNC again. Most vendors I checked list this device as out of stock, but Ham Radio Outlet had some in Sacramento.

I very swiftly logged into my HRO account and ordered up another 1270X. It arrived a few days later. I include unboxing photos in issue 97.

Encryption of Radio Traffic

I overheard an interesting conversation from an east coast reflector while on a morning drive for the coffee that fuels the start of my day. Somehow, those hams got onto the topic of encryption of radio traffic by city, county, and state agencies.

I reflect a bit on this in issue 97. I'm of two minds. Normally I would prefer radio be open to all. But I've been in the public safety arena and I understand the need to protect people, families, businesses, and public officials. If encryption makes public safety officials safer and better able to do their jobs, then I support it.

How Do You Do APRS?

I actually did laugh out loud when this title popped into my head because it echoes a line in the 1980s movie The Last Starfighter. In that scene, an alien astronaut is meeting the hero's friends and family on Earth, and when one of the people asks him "How do you do?" he responds with: "I do WELL! How do YOU do?" That's the intonation I hear in my mind when I read How do YOU Do APRS?

I run APRS in my mobile rig: a Yaesu FTM-300DR on VFO B. I also have APRS enabled on my desktop AllStarLink node and on my Yaesu System Fusion hotspot. These latter two devices simply report the position of the devices. They aren't digipeating or igating APRS traffic.

I'd love to know how you use APRS, and if you don't, why not? The technology has been around for a while but I consider that a strength because it means there are a significant number of APRS digipeaters around the world.

I've been kinda sorta thinking of adding a digi on my home network, and that means either getting a pre-built device like the WX3in1 Plus or building a fill-in digipeater. There are links to some interesting digi projects in issue 97.

Notes

I did clone my hotspot microSD card as I suggested I should a few weeks ago. The clone is currently in the hotspot and running fine. The original card is labeled and in my workstation drawer. The image file that I can use to burn more microSD cards is stored on my file server. That's about as backed up on this system as I need to be.

Something I'd like to do in Random Wire Review issues is include a sound clip of a particular operating mode. In issue 97, I link to a seven-minute clip of an AllStarLink net that let's you hear the wide range of audio quality among the participants. Audio ranges from smooth and clear to completely broken.

One of my goals is to help subscribers who have not used some of these modes experience the kind of audio you might hear.

I think I'll throw in a few photos from the Hillsboro Hops game, just for fun. Getting away from radio for a few hours can be a refreshing change that helps provide a bit more perspective when you come back to it later.

LATE BREAKING NEWS

Hours after Random Wire 96 was published last week, AllStarLink announced the availability of ASL 3. This is presented as a Beta release. If you take a look at the online manual, this is a big step forward for ASL:

• Supported Hardware & Software

• Any x86_64/amd64 hardware device

• Any emulated x86_64/amd64 virtual machine

• Any arm64-based device such as Raspberry Pi

• Any emulated arm64 virtual machine

• Debian 12

I welcome this big version change but I think it should come with a caution. Many of us will want to upgrade to the latest and greatest version which is now ASL 3 Beta. If your node is running fine, I suggest waiting a bit to see if undiscovered bugs or problems come to light, especially if your node is publicly accessible.

Despite my sense of caution, I must say well done to the AllStarLink folks. I feel like my financial support of AllStarLink is helping to make a difference. AllStarLink is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization so your donations may be tax deductible.

I’m sure I’ll give it a try soon. My cloud node is definitely a public-facing system so I’ll capture multiple backups of the working node before I go down this path. Step one, though, is to read the user manual!

With that, I'll say thank you for taking the time to listen and to comment. 73 to all. This is KJ7T and I'm clear.

Credits

• Intro music: Positive Uplifting Music For YouTube Videos by UNIVERSFIELD — https://freesound.org/s/702873/ — License: Attribution 4.0

• Fades between segments: Atmospheric, ambient fade by waveplaySFX — https://freesound.org/s/384695/ — License: Attribution 4.0

• Closing music: Unforgettable Moments by UNIVERSFIELD — https://freesound.org/people/UNIVERSFIELD/sounds/698550/ — License: Attribution 4.0

• Cover art: The cover art for the podcast stream is by Wallace Chuck — https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-headset-on-condenser-microphone-3587478/

• The other cover: If you see a photo of a person with a headset, that is a selfie of Tom Salzer KJ7T using a Heil headset.

This post is not a detailed guide to buying a Motorola radio but rather a list of things that I think you as a ham should know about before buying a used device. I am also not a Motorola expert. My experience is based solely on the purchase of two Motorola SL1600 (SL300 in the US). The following are my observations and comments:

If you buy a used Motorola, you will need a commercial Customer Programming Software (CPS) to be able to program it. Especially with a device like the SL1600, which has neither a proper display nor a keypad, nothing can be done without a CPS (I am sure that there are Motorolas that you can program on the radio itself but I have no experience with them). This program is either expensive to purchase or can be downloaded illegally from shady web sites. The Motorola CPS is Windows software, so there is no way around a Windows system for programming. It furthermore is annoyingly bad and has limitations depending on the version as described further down.

I would strongly recommend buying such radios only from radio amateurs. Here you can be relatively sure that it is not a device that comes directly from the commercial sector. Sometimes devices are sold that have been used in supermarkets, for example, and then find their way onto classified ad portals via more or less legal channels. The people who then sell them usually know nothing about the programming or the general condition of the device and cannot be sure whether the device is password-protected. If the latter is the case, the buyer is faced with a problem (more details on this later). The seller is furthermore most likely not aware of which licenses have been bought for this particular device. The features activated via licenses are not only important for operation, but also a decisive factor for the price. In my opinion, the "5-Tone Signalling" and "RX Audio Leveling" are useful licenses. The former is needed, for example, to open a relay with a 1750Hz tone, the latter is particularly useful in DMR operation, as not every ham is able to set a decent audio level.

I had initially thought that I could simply buy a second SL1600 and then conveniently write the same code plug on both devices. Unfortunately, this is not possible if the devices have different licenses installed. This is also the transition to the next, much more serious problem: If a device is password-protected and you don't have the password, you can't read out the code plug. If you now think that you can simply create a code plug in the CPS and write it to the device, you are mistaken. You must either have a suitable code plug or read it out of the device. The password-protected device thus initially becomes a paperweight. The options known to me are as follows:

• Buying a code plug: You buy a suitable code plug from a web shop that exploits an over-commercialized system even more commercially

• Reading out the password: If you connect the device to the computer via the programming cable, the CPS communicates with the radio via a virtual network interface. If the device has a very old firmware, it is easy to read out the password using Wireshark, as the radio sends the password in clear text to the CPS for verification. Newer firmware versions have fixed this "issue".

• Patching the CPS: If you have the CPS version 16 and a radio with a slightly older firmware than the latest one (which is therefore still supported by CPS 16), you can use a hex editor to modify a DLL in the software so that the CPS still asks you for the password, but accepts any password you enter. You can then read the code plug, remove the password and write it back. The older CPS 16 is the better, faster and less space consuming software in comparison to CPS 20 but might not be compatible anymore with radios that have the most recent firmware.

For legal reasons, I cannot provide links to all of these programs, information, etc.

If I notice anything else, I will update this post.

The content created by the community in OpenSource.radio is of course also open source. However, the content in the form of raw data in DokuWiki format could previously only be viewed and downloaded in a roundabout way. The latest article in the Zero Retries newsletter gave me food for thought with the following section:

"While this article is within the semi-authoritative easy to find Wikipedia… the OpenSource.radio Wiki seems to be the better project for contributing one’s efforts to document the many open source projects within Amateur Radio that have been developed over the decades. We’re just going to have to figure out how to insure its survival as an information database - at a minimum, regularly “snapshotted” by Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and perhaps regular mirroring to other sites."

I then came up with the following solution to the problem: A script is automatically executed once a day, which then writes all changes or new content of the wiki to a public Git repository. Normally I would use my own Git server for this, but it runs on the same server as OpenSource.radio. Therefore I decided to use a repository on Github, which can be found here: https://github.com/DK1MI/opensource.radio

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email with a link to the draft agenda for the second meeting of the ARRL Board of Directors. It reads:

Draft Agenda
ARRL Board of Directors
2024 Second Meeting
July 19-20, 2024

1. Roll Call
2. Moment of Silence
3. Courtesies
4. Consideration of the agenda of the meeting
5. Receipt and consideration of financial reports
6. Motion to Adopt Consent Agenda
7. Receipt of Officer’s reports
8. Consideration of items removed from Consent Agenda
9. Consideration of recommendations of the Standing Committees
10. Consideration of additional recommendations as contained in report
11. Proposals for amendments to Articles of Association and Bylaws
12. Directors’ motions
13. Any other business
14. Closing courtesies
15. Adjournment

If you can figure out what they’re going to discuss from reading this, you’re a better ham than I am. So, I contacted my director, Scott Yonally, N8SY. I wrote, “I bet you guys received a more detailed agenda than this. Anything that you’d care to share?”

He wrote back:

For full “Transparency” (sic) there’s very little difference between what I get to what you get. I’m sure that you are aware of the issues Headquarters has had recently, and I’m sure that particular topic will consume a huge slice of the Board’s time this time around.

This response is hardly transparent, if you ask me. I tried a second time to get more information out of him, especially item 11, “Proposals for amendments to Articles of Association and Bylaws.” If you recall, it was an issue with proposed amendments to the articles of association and bylaws that raised a big stink last time. Unfortunately, he went silent on me.

If it really is true that the directors don’t get much more than this draft agenda, then that means the directors are going into this meeting very much unprepared. That doesn’t sound good to me. I’m guessing—and this is only a guess—that N8SY isn’t sharing because I’ve been critical of the ARRL in the past. If so, I wish he’d just say that.

Anyway, if you have concerns that you’d like the ARRL board to consider, be sure to get in touch with your division director. If you have concerns about the proposed amendments to the articles of association and bylaws, perhaps you can cajole more information out of your division director.

By the way, if you are an ARRL member, you can have meeting agendas and minutes sent to you. First, log in to the ARRL website, then go to www.arrl.org/opt-in-out and check the box next to “ARRL Board meeting agendas and minutes.” You can also email ARRL Members Services at members@arrl.org.

Zero Retries is an independent newsletter promoting technological innovation that is occurring in Amateur Radio, and Amateur Radio as (literally) a license to experiment with and learn about radio technology. Now in its third year of publication, with 1800+ subscribers. Radios are computers - with antennas!

About Zero Retries

Steve Stroh N8GNJ, Editor

Jack Stroh, Late Night Assistant Editor Emeritus

In this issue:

• Request To Send

• Two Projects for Making Amateur Radio Open Source Software Easier to Find and Use

  • Radio Catalog: Ham Radio Software Preservation and Restoration

  • Open Source in Amateur Radio Wiki

• ZR > BEACON

  • Darryl Smith VK2TDS Highlighted in ARDC Newsletter

  • Digital only POTA Activation using FT8 on the sBitx V3

  • ARDC Grantees Include Society of Women Engineers (SWE) 2023 Programs

  • Followup on Fixing the Linux Kernel AX.25 ARDC Grant

  • BBS and email for Meshtastic

• Join the Fun on Amateur Radio

• Closing The Channel

• Footnotes for this Issue

Request To Send

Commentary by Editor Steve Stroh N8GNJ

Paid Subscribers Update

My thanks to Rick Gilmore W3TM for becoming an Annual Paid Subscriber to Zero Retries this past week! He included this nice message:

I learn something new in every post. And learning is what this grand hobby is about, IMHO.

My thanks to Eric Stammers M0REQ for becoming an Annual Paid Subscriber to Zero Retries this past week!

My thanks to Prefers to Remain Anonymous 34 for becoming an Annual Paid Subscriber to Zero Retries this past week!

Financial support is a real vote of confidence for continuing to publish Zero Retries!

Major Conference Countdowns

• HAM RADIO 2024 in Friedrichshafen, Germany on 2024-06-28 thru 30 - this weekend. I’ve received some hints that there will be some interesting projects shown there. Zero Retries readers that will be attending HAM RADIO 2024, please provide some reports of Zero Retries Interesting projects and products.

• JARL Ham Fair 2024 in Tokyo, Japan on 2024-08-24 and 25, in 8 weeks!

See the Zero Retries Guide to Zero Retries Interesting Conferences for other such events.

Zero Retries Correspondents Wanted - Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, etc.

Of necessity, most of what I report as Zero Retries Interesting here in Zero Retries is US-centric, with occasional contributions from Zero Retries readers, and occasional stories about ZRI developments in Europe (such as QO-100) and Japan. I’d really like to cover more frequently the Zero Retries Interesting developments occurring in countries with active Amateur Radio technical activities - data communications, satellite / space, creation of interesting, specialized Amateur Radio hardware, etc.

I’m not asking for folks to write an article. While I feature co-authors whenever I’m offered articles, I understand that writing an article is daunting to most folks in this era. The more usual circumstance these days is for folks to get in touch with me and point out something that’s Zero Retries Interesting. I take it from there, with credit to the correspondent (if they want). To keep Zero Retries interesting and relevant, I need folks like you Zero Retries readers to tell me what’s going on - point me to local clubs doing Zero Retries Interesting things, data networks, technical activities, etc.

Please don’t take offense if I don’t feature your info (there are times when there are just too many items to include), or that I’ve previously mentioned your info in a previous issue of Zero Retries. It’s better to be over-informed than under-informed. If I really miss something significant, please remind me.

The countries listed in the headline are my biggest “mystery countries” at the moment, with practically no visibility about Zero Retries Interesting Amateur Radio activities there.

I hope Zero Retries readers can help. If I get at least a few volunteers, I’ll set up an email list for “Zero Retries Contributors” where we can be in touch with each other instead of purely private correspondence with me (though that is, of course, an option if you’d prefer).

Google NotebookLM

Speaking of “previously mentioned your info in a previous issue of Zero Retries”, there are times that I forget what I’ve covered. It’s also painful at times to find when I’ve mentioned something in a previous issue of Zero Retries. Substack’s search tool has become ineffective because it now defaults to also searching other Substack publications… and items in Zero Retries are already obscure and hard to search for.

But citing previous articles is a significant part of Zero Retries and with three years of weekly issues, it’s getting ponderous to do manual searches. To help with that I’ve experimented with pouring a subset of text versions of Zero Retries into a single file so I can do faster searches. That didn’t go well.

But a fellow writer, of much longer standing and much greater stature than I experienced the same frustrations, and his public plaints on the matter were heard. A few years ago Steven Johnson was invited to join the team that created Google’s new NotebookLM. That sounds like that’s exactly the tool that I’ve been hoping for. My “Zero Retries Notebook” in Notebook LM will be restricted entirely to the content I put into each notebook. All I have to do is to finish exporting all three years of Zero Retries into PDF versions, which unfortunately is a semi-manual process because of the odd ways Substack creates its web pages, I usually have to fuss with the creation of the PDF to get it to turn our right. If I “respected” Substack’s warnings about “too large for email” then I could have shortcut this process by exporting just the email versions of Zero Retries, but oh well.

I’ve become wary of investing my efforts in Google projects… because Google has, in my opinion (and others) become actively predatory, and because Google has become infamous for its many Killed by Google projects. But I haven’t seen a better alternative than NotebookLM for my specific requirements for Zero Retries, and Johnson is a trusted name in non-fiction writing and he’s putting his name behind NotebookLM. Plus, having created the PDF library, my data will be secure and under my control, and it’s all public anyway, in the likely event that Google decides to “overshare” my Zero Retries Notebook in .

With those factors, a Zero Retries NotebookLM seems worth a try. A bonus will be that I can do limited sharing of the Zero Retries NotebookLM, and since the sharing is limited, that may end up being a perk of Zero Retries paid subscribers.

Just to stretch your imagination a bit, NotebookLM can be used with any collection of PDFs. Given that 73 Magazine is already in PDF form, that might be my next NotebookLM project.

Guilty of Optimism

As I put the finishing touches on this issue Friday morning, I had an email exchange about politics with an old friend, and they accused me of optimism (as in the opposite of realism)… and I replied that I wear the epithet of “Optimist” with pride.

It’s easy to be pessimistic about the future of Amateur Radio. It’s an activity that was begun in the early years of the previous century and in this modern society of wristwatches having their own cellular radios, light bulbs having a TCP/IP stack and a Wi-Fi radio, and mobile phones now having direct-to-satellite connectivity… it’s easy to think of Amateur Radio as an anachronism. The “realistic” point of view about Amateur Radio is that it is inevitably declining - in licensees, in relevance to society, in innovation, etc.

But from my “optimism” perspective, I believe that Amateur Radio has a role to play in the 21st century as our society has transitioned wholly to radio technology for the last miles, last few feet, and last few inches our electronic communications. Just as the previous century required vast numbers of those skilled in working with internal combustion engines, this century will require vast numbers of those who understand radio technology beyond the simple act of plugging in a Wi-Fi access point or using a mobile phone.

Amateur Radio is a perfect vehicle for developing such knowledge and skills and Zero Retries is a testament to that perspective and my optimism about Amateur Radio.

Happy Independence Day

To Zero Retries readers in the US, Happy Independence Day this coming Thursday. Despite our vast shortcomings as a nation and as a people, we continue to struggle to continually create a “more perfect union” for 248 years now. Despite sometimes vastly different perspectives between us, we collectively continue to try to make ourselves better as a nation and as a people. For my part, I consider myself blessed beyond all reason to have been born in the US and thus a US citizen with no effort on my part. Many wonderful friends of mine were not similarly blessed. That they chose to work very hard and sacrifice much to become citizens of this incredibly imperfect nation tells me that the US is at least doing some things right.

73,

Steve N8GNJ

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Two Projects for Making Amateur Radio Open Source Software Easier to Find and Use

By Steve Stroh N8GNJ

One of the most significant issues in Open Source development in Amateur Radio is the creation of multiple, sometimes incompatible implementations of various applications or functions that are made available as open source software (or hardware) … somewhere… (often somewhere obscure, such as a personal blog or website). Various implementations of the AX.25 stack for use with Linux comes readily to mind as an example of this issue. Two recent projects should start helping to make various Open Source Software much more visible so that there is less “reinvention” needed, and thus more (defacto) standardization and interoperability.

Radio Catalog: Ham Radio Software Preservation and Restoration

Ham software is becoming increasingly hard to find. Decades worth of development person-years are at risk of being lost.

I've noticed a lack of best practices for managing the open source software projects that many hams have built and rely on over the past couple decades. It's understandable given that these were often hobby projects, but it would be a shame to lose some of the great contributions to our community. As many of these hams are getting older or become silent keys it becomes increasingly difficult to locate many of the original source files for these projects. This is often due to these sources no longer being hosted on their original sites, entire domains being taken offline, link rot, or for a number of other reasons.

I propose building a software catalog to aggregate many of these long-standing, open source ham software projects into history preserving code repositories using git, a modern source control management system and the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC) archive. These code repositories would also serve as a place for continuous future development and iteration. I'm a software engineer in my day job and it's something I would be very interested in helping put in place. I believe it would go a long way to making these projects remain accessible and relevant across our ham community going forward.

List of 10 software projects for preservation:

• ardopc - mode for HF Winlink

• QtSoundModem - multi-platform port of UZ7HO's SoundModem

• arim - Amateur Radio Instant Messaging

• rmsgw - Linux RMS Gateway for Winlink

• ax25mail - Utilities for packet radio mail exchange with the BBS

• 4NEC2 - Antenna Simulation and modeling software

• LinFBB - F6FBB BBS software for bulletins and messages distribution via Packet Radio and wired networks

• OpenBCM - packet radio mailbox system by DL8MBT

• Linpac - A modular console-oriented amateur radio AX.25 keyboard to keyboard chat and PBBS program

• Paclink-unix - A UNIX/Linux client for the Winlink 2000 ham radio email

(Excerpts of the grant proposal used with permission of Rob Hernandez KM6BLU.)

While ARDC has not made this (approved) grant public, I received permission from the principal of this grant, Rob Hernandez KM6BLU to mention this project in Zero Retries.

At present, there is not yet an online presence for this work as their grant was only recently approved and KM6BLU and his collaborators are just getting the work organized.

Update 2024-06-30 - At present, there is not yet an online presence for this work as their grant was only recently approved and KM6BLU and his collaborators - Paul Harvey M0SET and Matthew Croughan are just getting the work organized with their fiscal sponsor - National Upcycled Computing Collective (https://www.nuccinc.org).

Although this team’s initial software projects to preserve is a good start1, there are many such open source projects that are equally critical and influential within Amateur Radio, and thus the methodology, standards, display format, etc. that KM6BLU and team will develop for this work will be probably more foundational for Amateur Radio in the long term.

I’ll be watching this work and am looking forward to reporting on this project in future issues of Zero Retries.

Open Source in Amateur Radio Wiki

Michael Clemens DK1MI / N1BSD on Reddit r/amateurradio:

[OpenSource.radio] is a wiki, which in the first step categorises and lists all open source software and hardware projects for amateur radio that I/we know of. Later, more detailed pages on the individual projects will be added. I also envisage adding setup descriptions for open source based amateur radio stations or collections for GNU Radio blocks/flowcharts or Node Red flows, functions and scripts.

Open Source in Amateur Radio

Welcome to the Open Source in Amateur Radio wiki! This resource is dedicated to providing information about open-source software and hardware as well as free home-brew projects for amateur radio enthusiasts. The idea of this website or wiki is to give a (future) radio amateur an overview of all available open source projects. The aim is to promote the use of open source software and hardware in amateur radio. Depending on personal requirements, it is now possible to set up an amateur radio station whose main components are open source.

The OpenSource.radio Wiki (clever domain name!) is also a recent project which has a similar goal (at least in my mind) of creating a directory of Amateur Radio Open Source projects (notably, not just software) and thus would also serve the goal of reducing the creation of multiple, sometimes incompatible implementations of various applications or functions that are made available as open source. In short, why reinvent something if someone has already done it? The trick, prior to this project, is knowing that a specific open source project even exists; it’s tough to search for an open source implementation if you don’t know if such a project exists, and especially its name.

OpenSource.radio is off to a good start, and I plan to get involved in adding to it with some of my favorite open source projects such as adding to the Packet Radio section.

The current nine contributors could use some additional help:

Help!

This wiki cannot be filled and maintained by one person alone, which is why I call on people to register on the wiki in order to correct errors, add information, translate articles and/or create new content.

Please visit How to contribute for further information.

I’m sure there are many able contributors in the Zero Retries readership.

Wikipedia - List of Amateur Radio Software

Lastly, this Wikipedia article seems to be a poorly maintained or abandoned list of some software used in Amateur Radio. While there are a few mentions of proprietary software, most items seem to be open source software.

While this article is within the semi-authoritative easy to find Wikipedia… the OpenSource.radio Wiki seems to be the better project for contributing one’s efforts to document the many open source projects within Amateur Radio that have been developed over the decades. We’re just going to have to figure out how to insure its survival as an information database - at a minimum, regularly “snapshotted” by Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and perhaps regular mirroring to other sites.

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ZR > BEACON

By Steve Stroh N8GNJ

Short mentions of Zero Retries Interesting items.

Darryl Smith VK2TDS Highlighted in ARDC Newsletter

ARDC Newsletter June 2024 (not yet posted on their website):

A member of the inaugural [Grants Evaluation Team - GET], Darryl has enjoyed analyzing the results of the work that ARDC has funded, stating “I feel privileged to be a part of the team.” Licensed in Sydney, Australia more than 30 years ago, Darryl became a ham to experiment with packet radio and has “loved every minute of it.” After many years of focusing on VHF, Darryl got his first HF radio early last year. When he’s not volunteering at ARDC or on the air, Daryl is a consultant electrical engineer, where he had the amazing opportunity to work as a microwave and satellite engineer & RF technician on the set of Furiosa - A Mad Max Saga, work he cites as the work he’s most proud of. In his spare time, Darryl also enjoys recreational running, where he averages running about one marathon a year.

VK2TDS is also beginning his 8th three-year term as a Board Member of TAPR.

I’m looking forward to seeing Furiosa when it’s available on one of my streaming services, especially now knowing that VK2TDS was working on the complicated communications required for that movie.

Digital only POTA Activation using FT8 on the sBitx V3

David Saylors WK4DS on his WK4DS Amateur Radio Blog:

So today was a good day for radio. I had a block of time and wanted to see how hard it would be to get the activation only on FT8. I know it is possible to do this, but I also wanted to do it on 15 meters too and that is where the problems come in. You see the last couple of weeks have been tough for 15 meters operations what with the solar flares and CMEs and all. So to secure the activation on the higher bands will be… interesting…

…

One of the things that I like most about this radio is the clean layout of the FT8 mode. It is not cluttered with an endless array of different information and on screen settings. The other programs, while very versatile and powerful, are rife with buttons and information that really is not needed for simple QSO contacts. The sBitx could be a little easier though so it is not perfect either. One thing that has come up a couple of times is that it needs the ability to be able to sort the information display to just stations calling CQ so you can pick one easier. I agree with this as it can be tough to grab a calling station in that 2.5 second window of time. So being able to sort by CQ would be a big help there. One other thing that is mildly frustrating is that there is no way to scroll the display so if there is a lot of stations on the band then you will not be able to see them all. It pushes them off the top of the screen and then they are just gone.

What WK4DS did as a Parks On The Air (POTA) activation with a data-only radio (in his case, the sBitx v3), is pretty much what I was imagining for a data-only Field Day activity. Based on a Raspberry Pi, the sBitx v3 seems so elegantly designed for data use. I didn’t know what exactly I was looking for until I saw it with the sBitx v3, which is now on my wish list… unless perhaps the zBitx becomes a reality.

My thanks to Amateur Radio Weekly Issue 336 for the pointer to this story.

ARDC Grantees Include Society of Women Engineers (SWE) 2023 Programs

I thought this post from ARDC about the impact of their grantmaking was Zero Retries Interesting:

Society of Women Engineers (SWE): SWE 2023 Programs

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) is an organization that promotes diversity and inclusion in STEM fields. In 2023, ARDC funded 30 of SWE’s Global Scholarships, as well as contributed to multiple programs that help women in engineering fields excel professionally and showcase their achievements. Last month, SWE published a blog post that included testimonials from scholarship recipients, emphasizing the significance of ARDC-funded scholarships on their educational pursuits. You can check out the blog post in its entirety at https://alltogether.swe.org/2024/05/the-impact-of-the-ardc-foundations-scholarships-for-women-in-engineering/.

ARDC also supported a first-time analysis into the impact of SWE scholarships on women pursuing a STEM degree. The results of this analysis can be found at https://swe.org/research/2024/the-impact-of-swe-scholarships-on-retention-in-engineering-and-computer-science/.

Funding also supported the SWENext High School Leadership Academy. You can check out a year in review of the SHLA program in this blog post: https://alltogether.swe.org/2024/06/fy24-shla-year-in-review/.

The Community Collegiate Affiliate Support & Expansion (CCASE) is designed to encourage more women in community colleges, particularly those facing exceptional financial challenges and from underrepresented backgrounds, to pursue a STEM degree. In its first program year, CCASE helped establish seven new community college affiliates/sections and added 81 SWE members.

Pull quote of the study that ARDC supported:

That result is fantastic! Note that Amateur Radio isn’t mentioned, and there’s no Amateur Radio involvement in the SWE scholarships (you don’t have to be an Amateur Radio Operator)… but I cannot imagine that those scholarship recipients didn’t take note that an organization called Amateur Radio Digital Communications helped to fund their STEM degree.

Followup on Fixing the Linux Kernel AX.25 ARDC Grant

Grant: Fixing the Linux kernel AX.25
Date: December 2021
Amount: €179,690

Changes to the Linux kernel over the years have improved and modernized the kernel, but have also made existing AX.25 implementations incompatible and turned preexisting issues into bugs. This can make systems unpredictable or even unusable. Linux kernel development is complex, requiring deep specialized knowledge, and bugs are hard to trace. This may be one of the reasons, why the Linux kernel AX.25 stack is currently in such a bad state.

This ARDC grant funds will allow the Deutscher Amateur Radio Club to hire software developers who can create a stable Linux AX.25 implementation and prevent Linux distributions from dropping pre-compiled AX.25 support. The fixed and functional Kernel-AX.25 stack will improve global amateur radio infrastructure. Professional kernel development can bring Linux AX.25 back to life.

It’s a shame that ARDC rarely issues status reports on how grants like this turned out. ARDC formed a Grants Evaluation Team (GET) in 2024, but to date, there have been no results from that team publicly disclosed.

Now, two and a half years after this grant was awarded, we get a small glimpse of the outcome of this grant from a brief statement on ARDC’s 44Net email list by ARDC Grants Manager Chelsea Párraga KF0FVJ:

The AX.25 team ran into some challenging circumstances and they were unable to carry out the grant. In these situations we work with the grantee to return funds to us. If you'd like to know more about the project I suggest reaching out directly to those working on it!

Of course, the above description is all that ARDC has publicly released about this grant, and thus there is no contact information for “those working on it” provided by ARDC for us to to actually be able “reach out directly”. Since there was no progress on this grant, there seems little point in further followup. But given that unless ARDC chooses to feature a grant in one of their stories, which usually includes names of those involved with the grant, ARDC doesn’t otherwise disclose details about their grants such as the names and contact info associated with the grant… so that it actually is possible to “reach out directly”.

Such lack of detail when ARDC does report a grant being made, and lack of followup (publicly reported) on most of the ARDC grants, even years later, has been a continuing frustration to those of us following ARDC’s grantmaking.

BBS and email for Meshtastic

TheCommsChannel / TC2-BBS-mesh on Github:

This is the TC²-BBS system integrated with Meshtastic devices. The system allows for message handling, bulletin boards, mail systems, and a channel directory.

YouTube video - BBS and Mail for Meshtastic! (queued for future watching), unfortunately no transcript available to excerpt.

As an active participant in the rise of Packet Radio systems in Amateur Radio, it’s fascinating to me to see the rapid evolution of Meshtastic and seemingly exponential interest in building out Meshtastic networks as a hobby activity. Now Meshtastic users will be able to discover the fun and utility of Bulletin Board Systems.

While Meshtastic does feature better physical layer technology (Semtech’s proprietary LoRa, an implementation of Chirp Spread Spectrum) versus Amateur Radio’s 1200 bps Audio Frequency Shift Keying, Meshtastic users will soon discover the limits of simple radio physics - crowded channels, low throughput, and the limitations of ad-hoc mesh networks when they become popular and over-used.

We experienced Amateur Radio Operators could, and I would argue should get involved with our local Meshtastic activities and offer our perspective of what has worked in the past, at least to the limits of what the LoRa technology is capable of.

And perhaps, as we “tap into” the energy and excitement of these new Meshtastic users and networks, we can rediscover some energy and excitement that we can apply to recreating what we know now to work in Amateur Radio networking. Things such as leveraging the vastly better technology we now have available - higher speed modems, forward error correction, more robust modulation techniques, etc. And… rediscovering the fun of building something collaboratively with our fellow Amateur Radio Operators.

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Join the Fun on Amateur Radio

If you’re not yet licensed as an Amateur Radio Operator, and would like to join the fun by literally having a license to experiment with radio technology, check out
Join the Fun on Amateur Radio for some pointers.

Zero Retries Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) — In development 2023-02.

Closing the Channel

In its mission to highlight technological innovation in Amateur Radio, promote Amateur Radio to techies as a literal license to experiment with radio technology, and make Amateur Radio more relevant to society in the 2020s and beyond, Zero Retries is published via email and web, and is available to everyone at no cost. Zero Retries is proud not to participate in the Amateur Radio Publishing Industrial Complex, which hides Amateur Radio content behind paywalls.

My ongoing Thanks to:

• Tina Stroh KD7WSF for, well, everything!

• Founding Members who generously support Zero Retries financially:
  Founding Member 0000 - Steven Davidson K3FZT
  Founding Member 0001 - Prefers to Remain Anonymous 01

  Founding Member 0002 - Chris Osburn KD7DVD
  Founding Member 0003 - Don Rotolo N2IRZ
  Founding Member 0004 - William Arcand W1WRA
  Founding Member 0005 - Ben Kuhn KU0HN
  Founding Member 0006 - Todd Willey KQ4FID
  Founding Member 0007 - Merik Karman VK2MKZ
  Founding Member 0008 - Prefers to Remain Anonymous 14
  Founding Member 0009 - Prefers to Remain Anonymous 19

• Numerous Annual and Monthly subscribers who also generously support Zero Retries financially!

Want to Support Zero Retries?

• The most effective way to support Zero Retries is to simply mention Zero Retries to your co-conspirators that are also interested in knowing more about technological innovation that is occurring in Amateur Radio and encourage them to become a fellow subscriber.

• One particularly effective method of promoting Zero Retries is to add a mention of Zero Retries to your QRZ page (or other web presence) and include a link:

  https://www.zeroretries.org

• If you’d like to financially support Zero Retries, becoming a paid subscriber is greatly appreciated and helps offset expenses incurred in publishing Zero Retries. Paid subscriptions for Zero Retries are entirely optional, as explained in this special issue of ZR:
  Zero Retries Administrivia - Activating Payment Options.

These blogs and newsletters regularly feature Zero Retries Interesting content:

• Dan Romanchik KB6NU mentions “Zero Retries Interesting” topics so regularly on his blog (that I otherwise wouldn’t know about) that I’ve bestowed on him the honorific of Pseudostaffer.

• Jeff Davis KE9V also mentions “Zero Retries Interesting” topics so regularly on his blog (that I otherwise wouldn’t know about) that I’ve bestowed on him the honorific of Pseudostaffer.

• Amateur Radio Weekly by Cale Mooth K4HCK is a weekly anthology of links to interesting Amateur Radio stories that often feature “Zero Retires Interesting” topics.

• Experimental Radio News by Bennet Z. Kobb AK4AV discusses (in detail) Experimental (Part 5) licenses issued by the US FCC. It’s a must-read-now for me!

• RTL-SDR Blog - Excellent coverage of Software Defined Radio units.

• TAPR Packet Status Register has been published continuously since 1982.

• Hot Iron - The Journal of the Constructor’s Club is a delightful quarterly newsletter.

• Other Substack Amateur Radio newsletters recommended by Zero Retries.

These YouTube channels regularly feature Zero Retries Interesting content:

• HB9BLA Wireless by Andreas Spiess HB9BLA

• KM6LYW Radio by Craig Lamparter KM6LYW (home of the DigiPi project)

• Modern Ham by Billy Penley KN4MKB

• Tech Minds by Matthew Miller M0DQW

These podcasts regularly feature Zero Retries Interesting content:

• Ham Radio Workbench by George Zafiropoulos KJ6VU (and friends)

• Foundations of Amateur Radio by Onno Benschop VK6FLAB

Zero Retries is currently using the Substack email publishing platform to publish Zero Retries. It’s particularly suitable for small newsletters as you can get started for no cost.

If you’re reading this issue on the web and you’d like to see Zero Retries in your email Inbox every Friday afternoon, just click below to join 1800+ other subscribers:

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Email issues of Zero Retries are “instrumented” by Substack to gather basic statistics about opens, clicking links, etc.

More bits from Steve Stroh N8GNJ:

• SuperPacket blog — Discussing new generations of Amateur Radio Data Communications — beyond Packet Radio (a precursor to Zero Retries)

• N8GNJ blog — Amateur Radio Station N8GNJ and the mad science experiments at N8GNJ Labs — Bellingham, Washington, USA

Thanks for reading!
Steve Stroh N8GNJ / WRPS598 (He / Him / His)
These bits were handcrafted (by a mere human, not an Artificial Intelligence bot) in beautiful Bellingham (The City of Subdued Excitement), Washington, USA, and linked to the Internet via Starlink Satellite Internet Access.

2024-06-28

Blanket permission is granted for TAPR to use any Steve Stroh content in Zero Retries for the TAPR Packet Status Register (PSR) newsletter (I owe them from way back).

Blanket permission is granted for Amateur Radio use of any Steve Stroh content in Zero Retries for Amateur Radio newsletters and distribution via Amateur Radio such as (but not limited to) Packet Radio Networks, Packet Radio Bulletin Board Systems, Repeater Nets, etc.

In such usage, please provide appropriate authorship credit for the content.

If you’d like to republish an article in this issue for other uses, just ask.

All excerpts from other authors or organizations, including images, are intended to be fair use. Unless otherwise noted in the article, there are no paid promotional items in any Zero Retries articles.

Portions Copyright © 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 by Steven K. Stroh.

Footnotes for this Issue

Why Do I Need A New Antenna?

When I started my ham radio journey, I lived in a suburb of Philadelphia. The house was a twin that sat at the convergence of three hills. Essentially, it was in a depression or, well, crater. It was also a corner lot with power lines running both ways. If I’d wanted more RF noise I wouldn’t have known where to start to create it. In the midst of this, I put a diplole antenna running the length of the attic. It wasn’t stellar. But then again, it was 2017 and the solar cycle wasn’t doing anyone any favors even with good setups.

A lot has changed since then. When we moved to Ohio, I strung the same dipole in the attic and went back to business as usual in the new QTH. It wasn’t much better than before. This is not a surprise. But I got into POTA and started doing a lot of portable operating. In fact, the bulk of my contacts over the last 3 years have been from my portable station. It’s been wonderful! I ended up not paying a lot of attention to just how poorly my attic dipole was performing.

The dipole in question is tuned for 40 and 20-meters. It’s from MFJ and it does what it does. But it’s not very versatile and it’s inside the house. That’s great for some things but getting out or being flexible aren’t really on the menu.

What To Do?

I don’t live in a place with restrictions on antennas but I also don’t live on some massive plot of land in the middle of nowhere. I’m still on something akin to a hillside, but it’s not nearly as dramatic as at the old place. A vertical seemed like a good idea since I didn’t really have a place to hang a dipole that would work. Enter the DX Commander Classic 2.

The Cons

Let’s start with the liabilities, shall we? The place where I can put a vertical is on the side yard of my house. The space between the house and the neighboring fence is about 40 feet. Running front to back (E-W) there is a long stretch to the road and then a shorter stretch to the fence that contains the backyard and associated dogs. It’s a weird rectangle and the overhead space is odd as well because of the house and several trees that I don’t control. That means the position of the antenna is dictated by, as always, Not Me.

The other cons? I dunno yet. We’ll give it some time.

The Pros

A vertical has a small footprint and is easy to mount in a semi-permanent fashion. I can put a spike in the ground and position the antenna on top of it if I so choose. I can also just guy it out and hope for the best. Lots of options.

With 6 elements, it covers 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 12, 10, 6, and 2-meters. That’s a lot of bands. It’s so much more flexible than my string o’ wire in the attic that it really can’t do much other than improve my situation. It is also easier to set up, take down, get to, and maintain. Lots to like here.

The thing is also really easy to put together and remarkably tolerant when it comes to installation. Another win for THIS vertical.

The Plan

This is the part where I should be talking about how I took measurements and planned out the orientation of everything. Instead, after months of thinking, “I should do that this summer or something” I grabbed my phone and placed a pick-up order at DX Engineering. That is the blessing and curse of being 20 minutes from the largest ham radio equipment dealer in the country (world?). It’s just so easy to click buttons and drive over to pick things up. I ordered the DX Commander Classic 2, a window passthrough panel from MFJ, and a bag of turf staples to hold down my radials and that was that.

The Big Decision

The DX Commander Classic 2 comes with the option to replace the 30-meter element with an 80-meter element. This is done by making an inverted-L using a nearby tree or other support. I don’t really have a great place to do that. I’m sure I could make it work, but I’m also sure that I’d use 30-meters more than 80. That was the only real decision that was required prior to sitting down and putting it together.

The Build

This antenna is probably the least frustrating assembly of anything I’ve done lately. I can’t remember anything else just kind of going together and working quite like this. The mast is really simple. There are clamps to put in place to make sure the segments don’t fall down. There are also spacers that need to be put over the mast to hold the elements in place. No stress there. In fact, even the base with all of its wingnuts and whatnot is just threading screws. The entire assembly of the hardware took less than 15 minutes (the clamps have screws and I have clumsy fingers).

The instructions include a cut chart. Not frequencies and wavelengths and cool math stuff. Just a list of “Cut it here” lengths and a couple of spools of wire. My daughter and I went onto the driveway and pulled out a tape measure. We measured the wire and cut it to length. Then I crimped fork connectors onto the ends and shrink-wrapped them. That’s it.

Stringing the elements to the mast is also very simple. The forks are attached to the base with wingnuts and then the elements are strung up through the various spacers. When they get through the last spacer, there is a tiny foldback into a loop that is then either taped or shrinkwrapped in place. Some shock cord is then run through the next available element, tied off, and a stopper knot put in place to keep the cord attached to the element. The element stays tight and nothing flops around in the wind.

With all of that done, it gets set up and guyed out. Again, my daughter came to my rescue and held the mast while I tied off the guy lines. With it up, I attached some radials and…that was it?

The approach the maker takes to radials seems controversial, I guess. Math supports him and physics is what it is. There is a minimum amount of wire you need for radials and then you hit a point of diminishing returns. I used enough to cover my space.

Huh… I mean… Wow.

With the antenna up and the radials deployed, I plugged it in to my RigExpert Stick Pro. I was kind of dumbstruck. All of the bands except 10-meters and 6-meters were at or below an SWR of 1.5:1 out of the box. Even 30-meters was practically 1:1. The 20-meter element is going to get some attention because it’s a bit long according to my measurements on the RigExpert but it is not a big deal. I’ll probably only take off an inch if I feel like it. In truth, the tuner will take care of that without any sweat at all.

To give some perspective, here are the AntScope2 readings for the bands covered by the antenna with NO TUNING adjustments. These are the elements installed as per the cut chart in the instructions.

Did I mention this thing tunes 2-meters like an antenna that should be able to use 2-meters? I’m sure it’s not great, but… Well, no I’m not sure of that. I will need to hook up a 2-meter rig and see what I can hit with it. Why not?

I will say, I had an Oh No! moment when I hooked it up to my IC-7100 to get on the air. With everything in place, I played with FT8 for a minute or two. But…the tuner didn’t kick in. The radio was happy enough with things as they were which was unexpected. Engaging the tuner manually got me down to 1.1:1 on my SWR meter and, well, that was that. The tuner is NOT doing a lot of work here. After I took it down and tuned up some of the elements, 10 and 6 improved quite a bit. All of the bands are quite healthy!

Current Thoughts

There are no final thoughts for this post. This is going to be something that I study for quite some time. I will say that my initial impressions are good. Incredible, really. I didn’t expect it to work this well without a lot of fiddling with things. But as Callum M0MCX says, it’s not like physics is going to change between his shop and my yard. The rules are the rules.

With new bands available to me, I’m going to spend some time on CW and FT8 and see how I do. I’ve already had some great contacts like Japan on 17-meters with 15 watts on FT8. I’m excited to get out and do some POTA hunting and up my game with my CW from home. I’m genuinely delighted with the out of the box performance of this antenna. It’s like starting the hobby all over again!