I attended DEF CON 32 a week or so ago, and like many “hacker” conferences, attendees got an electronic badge. This year’s badge was built around the new Raspberry PI microcontroller, the RP2350. It actually works like a GameBoy, and you can add games like you would a GameBoy. Here are a couple of videos that talk about the DEF CON 32 electronic badge:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWxjNNbiQ5Y
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPrIO0fhikE

Some of the “villages” or special interest groups, such as the Aerospace Village created their own badges.

At DEF CON, I attended a talk by a fellow who’s created an open-source design—both hardware and software—upon which you can build a badge for your event. He calls his badge OpenTaxus, and you can find the documentation here.

Since these things are so popular at hacker conferences, I wonder why they aren’t more popular at amateur radio events? Is it because hams are just too cheap to buy something like this? Or, maybe, it’s because hams are just not as “creative” as hackers.

At any rate, I’m thinking about coming up with some kind of electronic badge for the 2025 Dayton Hamvention. If any of you have ideas for the badge—or would perhaps be interested in working on the badge hardware or software—let me know. If we are going to do a badge, it would probably be a good idea to get started on it now.

On Thursday, May 16, I attended Four Days in May (FDIM), an event put on by the QRP Amateur Radio Club International (QRP ARCI). The first FDIM was held in 1996, and QRP ARCI has held it every year since, excluding the Covid years. This year, nearly 300 people attended the event.

Like the name implies, there are FDIM events on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but the main event is the series of talks on Thursday. These start at 8 am and run until 5 pm. This year, the talks included:

• The Construction and Use of a WhoZat by Jack Purdum, W8TEE. Jack is a retired professor from Purdue University, a frequent speaker at FDIM, and the designer of many microcontroller-powered ham radio projects, including transceivers and antenna analyzers. This year, he talked about his latest design, the WhoZat. WhoZat is a portable, battery-powered device that allows an operator to type in a call sign prefix and obtain information about the country associated with the callsign. It will give you the country name, and the azimuthal bearing from your location to that country. One of the takeaways from this talk is that the WhoZat is powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico, and Jack encouraged everyone to consider the Pico for future projects because it has more computing power and more memory than most Arduinos.In addition to talking about the WhoZat, Jack was promoting his latest book, Digital Signal Processing and Sofware Defined Radio. It’s available on Amazon for $45.
• Top 10 Junkbox Projects by Hans Summers, G0UPL. Hans is the genious(?), madman(?), entrepreneur(?) behind QRP Labs. In this talk, he extolled the virtues (as I have done) of a well-stocked junkbox. The project that resonated the most with me is the one-tube transmitter.The reason it resonates with me is that I’ve been threatening to build one for years myself. Hans actually did it, though. In fact, he made his first QSO with a transmitter he built from an ECL82 tube.At the end of his talk, Hans gave a little plug for his newest transceiver, the QMX+. The embedded SDR rig covers 160 – 6m, in a slightly bigger form factor than the QMX, for only $125. It’s incredible, really.
• zBitx–A Portable Station for the CW Operator by Ashar Farhan, VU2ESE of HF Signals. In this talk, Ashar described his zBitx, a portable CW/FT8 SDR transceiver. This isn’t a radio that Ashar is selling (yet!), but it does look like a complete design. And, of course, that design is completely open source, something he ribbed one of the other presenters about.

  

  This radio is powered by a Raspberry Pi, specifically the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. This module costs $15 and runs Linux. Ashar says, “If Arduino was a matchbox RC car, this Raspberry Pi is an Airbus A380, both in terms of size and speed. It can run WSJT X, fldigi, and full-stack SDR.” The radio also takes advantage of the WiFi capablity of the RPi. There’s an app that runs on a smart phone that acts as a front panel.

  At the end of his talk, instead of flogging a product, Ashar passed out a small PCB assembly called the sBitx Hat. Designed to plug into a Raspberry Pi, it includes an Si5351 clock generator and a 96 kbps, dual-channel audio codec. It looks it will be a fun thing to play with.

• Adventures of a QRP Evangelist by Cliff Batson, N4CCB, proprietor of the QRP School YouTube channel. Cliff gave us a primer on QRP operation and on how to make YouTube videos. He encouraged us all to go out and make videos. I’m not so sure about this myself. It seems to me that there is already too many ham radio videos to watch.
• Amplifying Your Adventures, Minimizing Your Power by noted YouTuber Tom Witherspoon, K4SWL. In his presentation, Tom concentrated on the personal and operating aspects of QRP, not the technical. The conclusion published in the proceedings does a good job of summarizing his talk. It reads, “Since my journey into ham radio began in 1997, I’ve encountered countless naysayers proclaiming, ‘That won’t work’ or ‘Life’s too short for QRP.’ These discouraging words often came from individuals who lacked firsthand experience in the field. Rather than accepting the pessimistic views, I’ve treated them as a checklist of challenges to overcome. my approach has been simple: get out there, experiment, and fully immerse myself in the moment. It’s through this hands-on exploration that I’ve discovered the true joy and potential of QRP operations.”
• Designing the Elecraft KH1: From Vision to Reality by Wayne Burdick, N6KR. Wayne certainly needs no introduction. His talk concentrated on how he made some of the decisions he made in designing the Elecraft KH1 hand-held HF transceiver. It was a great talk that gave quite a bit of insight into the design process. Personally, I’m not sold on the KH1, but Elecraft can’t make them fast enough, so I guess that tells you how valuable my opinion is.
• The Amazing Thermionic Valve by Greg Latta, AA8V. Greg is a professor emeritus of electrical engineering from Frostburg State University. He delved into some of the theory of how vacuum tubes work and some of the practical applications.
• Stealth Operation from Hotel Rooms and Other Unlikely QTHs by Ross Ballantyne, VK1UN.

Unfortunately, Ross was unable to present, either in person or via Zoom. According to the paper in the proceedings, Ross was part of several peace-keeping missions to remote spots around the world. On these trips, he operated from many hotel rooms and gained quite a bit of experience doing so. For example, he writes that virtually all of his antennas are made from wirewrap wire, which he gets from Ali Express. To couple the wire antenna to the transmitter, he uses a Z-match tuner or a modified Z-match tuner called the FRI match ATU. It’s a shame that Ross wasn’t able to adress us in person, as he sounds like quite an interesting fellow.

A walk with VU2ESE

After the talks, I decided to take a walk and stretch my legs. Just as I got to the street, I ran into a friend of mine, Arun, W8ARU, and Ashar, VU2ESE. We decided to walk together, and ended up walking about a mile and a half or so.

Arun and Farhan have been friends for many years. In fact, Arun hired Ashar to work for a company that Arun owned when he lived in India. (Arun now lives in Ann Arbor, MI, which is how I got to know him.) Arun once told me the taught Farhan how to solder. I confirmed that story at Hamvention last year when Ashar visited the ARDC booth.

In addition to all his development activities, Farhan recently joined the board of directors of Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), the private foundation that I retired from last May. We had a great chat about the future of ARDC and amateur radio in general, among other topics. It will be interesting to see in which direction the new board members take ARDC.

Vendor Night

Thursday evening, FDIM holds Vendor Night. It’s a great deal for vendors. There’s no charge to participate as a vendor, and it’s a lot of fun. A couple of years ago when I did Vendor Night, I also shared a booth with the Dayton Makerspace on Friday and Saturday at Hamvention and ended up selling more books in 2 hours at the FDIM Vendor Night than I did in 2 days of Hamvention.

This year, I sold about $150 worth of books. What was even better was meeting everyone, including those who have used my books to get licensed or to upgrade. For example, Tom, K4SWL, came over and shared his story with me.

He said that one year his wife said that she would also get her ticket as an anniversary present. He gave her my study guide and ten days later, she had her license. How cool is that?

Kudos to QRP ARCI for another successful FDIM. If you’d like to get a copy of this year’s proceedings, you can contact them by emailing toystore@qrparci.org or n8et@woh.rr.com. QRP ARCI also has some other goodies, if you’re interested, in their Toy Store.

I really had a blast at this year’s Dayton Hamvention. My 2024 Hamvention experience included:

• Parks on the Air (POTA)
• Four Days in May
• New product introductions: QMX+, zBITx, Icom X60, Flex 8000
• Forums
• Kids
• Food
• Friends, lots of friends

Rather than try to write about it all in one big blog post, I’m going to split it up into a bunch of smaller posts. Here’s the first installment…

POTA, POTA

I’m retired now, so I can take as much time as I want for events like Hamvention. That being the case, my first decision was to not only go to Hamvention, but also Four Days in May (FDIM), put on by the QRP Amateur Radio Club International. The biggest part of FDIM is the all-day seminar held the Thursday before Hamvention. The talks begin at 8 am and run until 5 pm.

I only live about three and a half hours from Dayton, so in the past, I’ve driven down verrrry early Thursday morning, so that I could get there in time. My wife thinks I’m getting too old to do that, though, so I drove down on Wednesday. Since the drive is so short, however, I took advantage of the fact that I had a lot of time and activated two parks along the way: Van Buren State Park and Grand Lake St. Mary’s State Park. Both of these parks are not far from I-75, and I was kind of excited about doing this as it would be my first “rove” on my own.

I left my house at 9:30 am. It was raining as I left, and for most of the way to Van Buren State Park, which is just north of Lima, OH. When I got there, though, the rain had stopped, and I got set up quickly. While eating lunch, I made 18 contacts in a little over an hour.

Onward and southward

I packed up and headed to Grand Lake St. Mary’s State Park. On the way, it began raining again, but by the time I reached the state park, it had stopped and the sun was shining.

As the name implies, it’s quite a big lake for a man-made lake. In fact, according to Wikipedia, Grand Lake is the largest inland lake in Ohio, and at one time, was the world’s largest man-made lake. The lake was constructed in the early 19th century as a reservoir for the Miami and Erie Canal, which connected the Ohio River with Lake Erie. The canal system thrived for about thirty years in the mid-to-late 19th century before it was replaced by the railroads.

One of the attractions for me is that there is a lighthouse on the lake. That being the case, my first choice for an operating position was at the lighthouse. Unfortunately, the lighthouse is on private land, so I couldn’t operate from there. Instead, I chose a spot on the west side of the lake, from which I could see the small lighthouse. It was a very nice spot, and like the first park, I made 18 contacts in a little over an hour.

The adventure started after I packed up to go. While finishing up the activation, I noticed that battery in my phone was draining quicker than usual, but I still thought that I had enough battery power to get to Dayton. I started out on the route that Google Maps gave me, but I only got about ten miles, before the phone went completely dead. I plugged it into the car’s USB port, but it just didn’t want to charge up. I kept driving going first south, then east, then south again, reasoning that I’d eventually hit I-75.

That strategy worked quite well, and I evenutally ended up in Fort Loramie, OH. I stopped for a bite to eat, hoping that I could charge up my phone there, but the battery was completely dead. It wouldn’t take a charge at all. I lost that POTA logs and all of the photos I had on the phone.

After eating, I headed south on I-75, hoping that once I got to Dayton, I could figure out how to get to the hotel in Fairborn. That was wishful thinking, of course. After getting off the freeway, I asked for direction several times, but even so, I wandered around northeast and nothwest Dayton for at least an hour before I got to where I was going.

Fortunately, the hotel was close to several stores that sold Tracfones, which is the cell phone service that I use. I was able to purchase a new Samsung for $50, and after some wrangling with their tech support was able to get my phone number assigned to it. I was back in business. At that point, it was time to hit the sack.

Stay tuned for more of my Hamvention 2024 adventure. Tomorrow, I’ll be blogging about the Four Days in May talks and Vendor Night.

At the Dayton Hamvention this weekend, ICOM put on display are number of printed circuit boards from what is supposed to be the 60th Anniversary Concept Model “X60”.

ICOM-UK write... "Referred to internally as the "X60" all lips are very tightly and firmly sealed about this project and the exciting concept model behind the secrecy. Only a carefully selected handful of our very top development gurus and members of our absolute senior management in Osaka know the complete and full details about this very special project.

The full reveal will be at the Tokyo Ham Fair which will be held over the weekend of August 24th & 25th 2024. Full details on the new model, its name, its specification and its availability, plus its target price will be disclosed there."

What is it??? Well, it's not a handheld!  Considering the number of PCB's and the fact that the one in the middle and at the top has plenty of toroids and relays, it probably is some sort of flagship HF transceiver.

On the PA board PCB, there is 'PA200W' written on it which would certainly suggest a top end HF transceiver.

If it's just another expensive HF & 6m model then I doubt if the hype is worth it. If it's a 'shack in a box' and includes some VHF and UHF bands then it certainly could generate some excitement.

We'll have to wait and see.

More photos below...

Antenna Tuner Board

Ham Radio With K0PIR

I've shared a video featuring Michael Kalter, W8CI, presenting fascinating details about Hamvention 2024 news at HamCation. The information shared is truly engaging. Looking forward to seeing you there! Best wishes and safe travels. Hamvention 2024 News This video provides...

The post Orlando HamCation Hamvention 2024 News appeared first on Ham Radio with K0PIR - Icom 7300 and 7610 SDR Transceivers and now Elecraft!.

Carl and Jim and the line for tickets

I flew out of Boston Logan on May 19th with Jim to Columbus, Ohio, where we met up with former Massachusetts native Carl, N1FY, who had settled down there after traveling the world until COVID struck. 

From there, we drove to Dayton and checked into a Doubletree hotel in Miamisburg, Ohio. Then the next day it was off to Hamvention!

There I was inducted into SLARC among other things, met some new people and came across those I knew. I also got to tour DARA's clubhouse!

All in all, a good time. We left on Sunday and drove back to Columbus, spent the night at Carl's and flew back home the next morning.

I will definitely be going back next year!