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1. QRV: Are You Ready?

Random Wire issue 199 is big on AllStarLink this week, including:

• an updated how-to for installing to a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machine;

• getting a node up on 44Net;

• part two of a series on transcribing AllStar nets; and

• new apps for AllStar.

If I provided this level of coverage for AllStar every week, my tagline might be: AllStar, All the Time! Fortunately, topics change from week to week.

Random Wire/EtherHam Community Links

• EtherHam at https://etherham.com

• EtherHam store at https://etherham.printful.me/

• Groups.io at https://groups.io/g/EtherHam

• GitHub at https://github.com/EtherHamRadio

• Random Wire at https://www.randomwire.us/

• Random Wire Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RandomWireReview

2. Random Wire and EtherHam

I get asked now and then why I run two publications instead of one. Here’s the short answer.

Random Wire is the journal. It’s where I write about what’s happening — what I built this week, what broke, what I’m noticing, what’s rattling around in my head. It doesn’t have to be finished or tidy. A half-formed thought about digital modes, a detour into geology or fly fishing, a reaction to something going on in the hobby — it all belongs here. When I write this, I’m writing to you, one of 2,500 people who get it in their inbox every Friday.

EtherHam is the workbench. It’s where the ideas from Random Wire actually get built. The full how-to, the firmware quirk that cost me an afternoon, the radio that doesn’t leave the bench until I’ve pushed on it from every angle — that level of detail lives there, not here. If Random Wire tells you I moved my AllStar node onto 44Net this week, EtherHam is where I show you exactly how, mistakes and all.

Short version: read Random Wire to keep up with what I’m doing. Read EtherHam when you’re ready to do it yourself.

3. New on EtherHam

Installing AllStarLink on a Dell Wyse 3040 (2026 Update)

A reader wrote in, stuck on getting Debian Linux onto a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machine. After I responded, I realized my older guidance from June 2023 was quite outdated…so I updated it and published the fresh guide on EtherHam.com.

And then I realized I was simply wrong on some points, so I went to David Gleason’s (NR9V) AllScan.info site for truth and found it. That means if you read the article last Friday evening before 8:30 pm, it had incorrect information. The article as posted now is much better.

If you have a 3040 on the bench you want to dust off, or if can get your hands on a used unit in good shape, it remains a superb platform for building an AllStar node.

• Installing AllStarLink on a Dell Wyse 3040 (2026 Update)

Putting My AllStar Node On 44Net

This is the thing that took much of my time this week: moving my AllStar node 588416 from an address on my LAN to a 44Net static IP address. Sounds simple but it wasn’t. I feared this would be too complicated for me so I put this off for months, but it turned out to be a little easier than I expected. Simple? No. I was challenged, but I also achieved a positive outcome.

I moved my AllStarLink node 588416 onto a public 44Net address, nine months after ARDC announced the WireGuard-based 44Net Connect service in December 2025. The article opens by admitting the node already worked fine, so why do this? My motives may be just as interesting as the technical details: learning routing and tunnels by hand rather than in the abstract, owning an address block tied to a call sign instead of renting one from Comcast, and actually occupying address space the hobby already owns rather than admiring it from a distance.

My build centers on a MikroTik hAP ax2 router placed behind an existing GL.iNet Flint 2 router, which achieves complete isolation between 44Net and household traffic without VLANs or a managed switch.

The article closes on the day’s actual lesson: the modern, unfamiliar part worked on the first try, and every real problem was local — port defaults, PoE behavior, and a bug in a config file.

• AllStar on 44Net, Part 1: Putting My AllStar Node on 44Net

Parts two and three are in the works.

Related: MikroTik routers being attacked. Do a Google search or check here and here.

Automatic Net Logging, Part 2: What Five Live Nets Taught

Over on EtherHam, I’ve published Part 2 of my automatic net logging series, and this one’s about what happens when your code works perfectly in isolation but falls apart against real traffic. I tested my AllStarLink net-detection system against five actual nets and found four separate bugs — the kind that only surface once you throw real repeater audio at something instead of a clean test case. Each one alone just nudged the accuracy down a little; together, they made the whole system unreliable.

The bigger lesson wasn’t about any single bug, though. It’s this: unit tests can tell you every piece works and still miss the failure that only shows up when the pieces interact. Fixing that took real listening, not just better regex. If you’re building anything that has to survive contact with real-world audio, it’s worth a read.

• Automatic Net Logging, Part 1: Who It’s For, and Getting Audio Out of a Hub Node

• Automatic Net Logging, Part 2: What Five Live Nets Taught

The Anatomy of Remote Assistance over SSH

This is the tale of helping someone get AllStarLink installed on their Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machine, using an SSH reverse tunnel to take control of the terminal on the other end of the pipe. With no desktop environment installed, the usual screen sharing applications were not going to work. On top of this, the user was not an accomplished computer user, so I needed to find the simplest steps he could accomplish to provide me with remote access.

Weekly Reports

• Short Stack is even longer this week with the addition of some space-related feeds.

• Band Conditions look to be on the mend, so now’s a good time to get on the air and make up for lost time.

• Digital Radio News — The M17 Project released a new draft of the M17 specification. AllStarLink’s app_rpt code received more fixes. There’s a new commit for MMDVMHost. And LoRa APRS iGate posted some updates.

• Groups.io Digest saw RepeaterBuilder leading the pack with 155 messages, followed by TinySA (85 messages), ARDC 44Net Connect (75 messages), and APRS (46 messages).

Retevis RT85 Cheat Sheet

A subscriber asked if I had a cheat sheet for the Retevis RT85 dual-band handheld radio. I did not…so I made one. There are still a few unresolved or unconfirmed items, but if you have one of these radios, find version 7 of the cheat sheet at https://etherham.com/downloads/#cheat-sheets

I have several of these radios so the cheat sheet is a help to me, too. This is one of the easiest dual-band VHF/UHF HTs available that is both reliable and usable. When I checked earlier this week, the price for the 2-pack was about $35 on Amazon. Yes, $35, for two radios, antennas, batteries, desk chargers, belt clips, and hand straps.

Retevis RT85 Handheld Ham Radios, Portable Dual Band Walkie Talkies, 2 Pack. Emergency Two Way Radio Long Range, Built in VFO, 200CH, VOX, FM, DTMF, Flashlight, 1400mAh, for Survival Preppers Off-Grid (this is an affiliate link)

Creating the cheat sheet was an interesting exercise because some published information was missing or conflicting. The Retevis RT85 cheat sheet joins another cheat sheet I made for the RT3S when flashed with OpenGD77 firmware. Both are in the Downloads section of EtherHam.com: https://etherham.com/downloads/.

New Reference Pages

I’ve added some Reference Guide pages to the EtherHam site. The first set are:

• AllStarLink Node — Reference Guide

• fail2ban — Reference Guide

• Security Hardening — Reference Guide

Find these in the main menu under the Downloads selection. Please let me know if you have suggested edits, or if there are topics for which you’d like a simple reference sheet.

Leave a comment

4. New Amateur Radio Applications for AllStar

There is so much going on today with all-in-one dashboards! What a great time to be a ham.

One of the newest suites comes from Terry Claiborne KC3KMV. Terry first contacted me about a year ago about IAX and AllStar nodes. He dove in and hasn’t looked back. He writes:

I have a deep background in the IS field, spanning everything from Assembler, Fortran, and COBOL to C, B, C++, Unix, and Turbo Pascal. I retired at 55 and am turning 70 next year. My journey into this space started with HamVoip before I transitioned to ASL3. When I first emailed you about creating a user in iax.conf, it sparked a deep dive, and I haven't stopped since. My main goal now is to share different options and presentations to make things easier for others in the community.

Find his Amateur Radio Applications listed on his QRZ page:

• Alltune2 is a high-performance utility for BM, TGIF, YSF, D-Star, P25, NXDN, AllStar, and EchoLink nodes on ASL3.

• AllStar View is a standalone, read-only web monitor for AllStarLink 3 / app_rpt systems.

• AllStar Connect is a web dashboard for controlling and monitoring AllStarLink and EchoLink connections on an ASL3 node.

• DVSwitch Cockpit is a modern web dashboard for watching what your ASL3 / DVSwitch node is doing in real time.

• AllStar Web Transceiver — Windows is a native AllStarLink client for Windows.

• AllStar Web Transceiver — Android is a native AllStarLink client for Android 12+.

I installed the AllStar Web Transceiver on my Windows laptop. I was curious if it would install because my laptop runs on an ARM processor, but it installed just fine via the Microsoft Store. I’m listening to the W6EK Coffee Break Net using Terry’s AWT (my abbreviation) application while I type this.

It sounds great:

AWT is pretty convenient. Once you add some stations to the Favorites list, a click of the mouse and you’re connected. If you install AWT, be sure to connect to node 55553 over Web Transceiver mode to test your audio. Mine returned with “just about right.”

The dark mode is particularly nice:

I’ll be trying some of the other applications as time permits. I’m particularly interested in AllTune 2, billed as “One Dashboard. All Your Networks.” That sounds like a very practical way to use a Raspberry Pi.

Kudos to Terry for providing some great tools to the amateur radio community. Well done.

5. A Touchscreen for Your Physical AllStar Node?

Speaking of AllStar, how about this pull request for touchscreen support in the wonderful AllScan app! See: https://github.com/davidgsd/AllScan/pull/32/

Add a new /simple/ interface focused on quick, touch-friendly favorite node control. The interface is designed to behave more like a channelized radio than the full AllScan control page: favorites are shown as large channel buttons, and the normal workflow is to select one channel/node at a time.

When a channel is selected, the Simple interface uses the existing connect API with autodisconnect enabled so the local node is first disconnected from other nodes before connecting to the selected favorite. If additional connections are still present, the page shows a warning state and offers a disconnect-all control instead of treating that as the normal single-channel state.

Having a compact AllStar device that incorporates a touchscreen and simple user interface seems like a winning combination. It will be interesting to watch how this develops.

6. Interesting: SDR Without a PC

OrcSDR: Why folks no longer need a $650 SDR tells the tale:

The OrcSDR project centers on the M5Stack Tab5, a battery-powered handheld tablet powered by a dual-core RISC-V ESP32-P4 processor. By plugging an RTL-SDR directly into the Tab5's USB host port, the ESP32 handles the heavy lifting: it processes the raw digital radio stream, demodulates audio, and renders a live, touch-responsive spectrum and waterfall display on a 5-inch color screen without a PC.

This is literally a tablet with an RTL-SDR dongle plugged into it:

The simplicity of this approach, the compactness of the configuration, and the capability of the RTL-SDR makes this a very interesting project indeed.

7. These Are a Few of My Favorite AllStar Nets

Set that title to the tune of My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music. Is that stuck in your head now? You’re welcome!

WA7ABU in Salem, Oregon — AllStar node 543260 — A daily tech net at 10 am Pacific. Topical nets each evening. A community filled with rich skills and experiences. The daily tech net is also linked in listen-only mode through AllStar 55915 and AllStar 57945.

W6EK in Auburn, California — AllStar node 51018 — A daily social net, the Coffee Break Net, from 7:30 am to 10 am Pacific. An All-Nodes tech net on Monday at 6 pm Pacific. And just a friendly bunch of hams who know each other well. AllStar node 51018.

PSRG in Seattle, Washington — AllStar node 2462 — Daily social nets at 9 am, noon, and 9 pm Pacific. Also a daily Boater’s Net that starts at 7:47 am Pacific (that time must be a nod to the Boeing 747 aircraft).

8. Another Logo Design

I’m trying — inexpensively — a variation on the EtherHam logo, with an order for vinyl decals from Sticker Mule. These are “two-fers” that tell others you are an EtherHam who enjoys tinkering with technology.

Custom stickers like this are the cheapest way to check the resolution of the design. My cost for 30 decals is $48, delivered. That works out to, what, $1.60 per decal? My calculator says yes.

I can hold it up to a ball cap to see how it looks. I ordered them a bit larger than hat size because I also want to see how they look on T-shirts and sweatshirts. At 4” × 2.25”, they will work well on water bottles and the back window of the pickup truck.

These are “kiss cut” vinyl stickers. What does kiss cut mean? It’s a printing and cutting technique where a blade cuts through only the top layer while leaving the protective backing paper completely intact. Peel and stick. Done. Vinyl is more resistant to washing (think: reusable water bottles) and weather. For a sticker that might go on a laptop, vinyl will also be more resistant to damage from sliding the computer in and out of a bag.

I’m looking for feedback. If you like this, let me know and I’ll add some items to the EtherHam Store. I’d like to get a coffee mug that stares back at me with ”I tinker with technology”.

9. Transcribing Examples

These are excerpts of summaries produced by ChatGPT from my Transcript Viewer captures. Functionally, I specify the start and stop times in the Transcript Viewer page, run the query, then download the resulting text file.

I feed that text file to ChatGPT with this prompt:

Attached is a transcript of an amateur radio net, captured off the air and transcribed automatically by speech recognition. The transcription is imperfect. Call signs are frequently garbled: sometimes spelled out phonetically ("November 6 Quebec Delta Yankee" = N6QDY), sometimes hyphenated ("K-E-6-R-A-X" = KE6RAX), sometimes mangled outright.

Please give me: 1. Net control station — callsign and name, if identifiable. 2. Stations that checked in, in order, with names where mentioned. Reconstruct each call sign as best you can. Mark any you are uncertain about with a trailing question mark. 3. A summary of the net in 3-5 sentences. 4. Anything notable: announcements, technical topics, traffic passed.

Do not invent callsigns. If a station's identity is genuinely unclear, say so rather than guessing.

W6EK Coffee Break Net, Friday morning, 9/4/26

The entire AI-processed transcript is italicized below:

The Coffee Break Net was hosted by Tom, NN6H, on the W6EK repeater and associated AllStarLink/EchoLink connections. The net followed its usual informal rag-chew format, beginning with quick check-ins and later moving into longer conversations about weather, amateur-radio networking, AllStar nodes, QSO1, and personal activities. Stations checked in from across the United States and internationally, including the United Kingdom, Wales, Idaho, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Texas, and Hawaii. The net closed shortly after 10:00 a.m. Pacific, with Brian, AI6US, identified as the next day’s net control operator.

Announcements and Net Information

• The net is sponsored by the Sierra Foothills Amateur Radio Club.

• It normally runs every morning from 7:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Pacific.

• The primary repeater is W6EK, with AllStar node 51018 and EchoLink access.

• Tom mentioned the club’s support for the Auburn food bank, in connection with National Food Bank Day.

• Brian AI6US was announced as the Saturday net control.

Technical Discussion

The most substantial technical discussion involved:

• QSO1, an application used for connecting to AllStar systems.

• Possible conflicts when running multiple AllStar nodes or applications behind the same IP address.

• The IAX port, 4569, and the need to avoid port conflicts.

• The distinction between using QSO1 in IAX/node mode versus WebRTC/web-transceiver mode.

• Aaron W1ATV was troubleshooting behavior involving his AllStar node and another node apparently using the same credentials/node number.

• Greg reported apparent audio dropouts that occurred in QSO1 while RF audio continued.

Compare that AI-cleaned summary with a raw transcript — errors and all — from the WA7ABU Tech Net from September 8, 2026. You can find that on EtherHam.com at https://etherham.com/automatic-net-logging-part-2-what-five-live-nets-taught/#what-does-a-raw-transcript-look-like.

10. Gadgets

You wouldn’t think a headset would be related to AllStar, but this one is. I bought a Retevis headset, not really knowing what would arrive. Thirty bucks later, this arrived:

Retevis EHK012 Two Way Radio Headset with Mic,for RT22 RT68 RT86,1 Pack

This was especially chancy, since Amazon notes: “Frequently Returned Item: Consider linking to similar products with lower return rates.” No affiliate link in the product link above because Amazon doesn’t like frequently returned items.

But I took a chance anyway and am not disappointed. This set of cans feels pretty robust. The microphone in the Amazon photo is not covered, but mine arrived with a foam cover over the microphone element.

The K1 connector works on my Retevis radios, of course, but also on other radios with a K1 interface. I’ve tried it on my AllStar node 588411 built on a Computer Module 4 platform with AllScan UCI90 interface and it worked fine…after I figured out I had to turn the volume up on the UCI90.

Comfortable? Not really. These firm-fitting headphones sit very securely on my medium head. They also isolate sound quite well. If you need to hear outside sounds for situational awareness, these are not for you. But if you need sound isolation and a secure fit, these are fantastic.

I get a little bit of hiss (maybe better described as grungy hum) on my transmitted signal but it is not objectionable and does not interfere. If I was working a bike race with an HT while motorized traffic was zipping by — and if I was safely positioned away from traffic — these headphones would be a top choice.

Verdict: a viable choice for a noisy environment, where sound isolation and a firm fit trumps comfort.

11. More on My FTM-300DR Shutdown Problem

The same day Random Wire 198 published, I made a trip to Port Orchard, Washington. The Yaesu FTM-300DR was set up for APRS operation on 144.390 MHz on VFO B, as always. The antenna was the temporary “Justin Case” mag-mount COMPACtenna, the one that I put into service a week earlier because with the old Comet antenna, the radio was shutting off when it beaconed.

And wouldn’t you know it, but the radio shut off when it beaconed, even with the COMPACtenna. I powered the radio up and watched it while I drove, and twice more it shut down when it beaconed.

Two completely different antennas and feedlines, and the identical problem. This points away from the antenna system and shifts my attention to the power delivery system.

Final update: it wasn’t the antenna. I even tried a third antenna with the same symptom appearing. So it was time to test the power delivery and see if that affected the radio’s behavior. That was easy to test by swapping out the 12VDC power cord. The result? Problem solved. Somewhere in the old cord there is a bad connection or corrosion I just didn’t see.

12. QRT: End Transmission

Helping a Ham Get a New AllStar Node on the Air

I was honored to help a fellow ham figure out how to load Debian on his little Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machine and get AllStar running. For those of us who have done this several/many times, it’s easy to forget how utterly daunting it is to attempt this for the first time. As the other ham and I exchanged emails, I could hear his frustration through his words. But he persevered and succeeded. I have to admit that it feels pretty good to help someone experience success.

Color me surprised when I learned that Chuck bought me some coffees!

Thank You to Hunter Inman and Steve Stroh

I have really enjoyed fiddling with Hunter’s creative solution to transcribing net traffic carried by AllStar. He is moving forward on this with a revised system that is running autonomously now. See it in action at https://kk7nqn.net/viewer.html.

A big thank you to Hunter Inman KK7NQN and Steve Stroh N8GNJ (Zero Retries newsletter) for their kind words about the work I’ve been doing with Hunter’s script (see https://www.zeroretries.org/i/212220420/update-on-kk7nqn-ai-net-logger).

#APRSThursday

I checked into #APRSThursday last week from my LoRa tracker as KJ7T-3:

HamClock OHB Beta Has APRS

Great to see APRS in the HamClock display. It even picked up my portable LoRa APRS station (KJ7T-3) on a LilyGo T-Deck Plus.

Eagle-eyed readers may notice the Starship Enterprise on the display. September 8 was Star Trek Day and the HamClock software includes a built-in easter egg to commemorate it. That was a fun discovery.

Jupiter-Moon Conjunction

If you happened to be looking at the pre-dawn sky on September 8th, you might have seen what one of my radio friends remarked on: a bright star next to the Moon. But it was actually Jupiter, not a star. If memory serves, we saw a Venus-Moon conjunction back in May. It was easy to see the Jupiter-Moon conjunction because most of the Moon’s disc was dark.

13. Closing Reflections

Amateur Radio: More Than Just a Hobby

When the attacks on September 11, 2001, knocked out cell towers, police and fire radio systems — as well as the city’s own emergency command center in 7 World Trade Center — hundreds of amateur radio operators stepped in. RACES and ARES volunteers ran health-and-welfare and medical traffic, supported the Red Cross and Salvation Army, and shadowed city officials so they could keep communicating with each other when nothing else worked. It’s one of the clearest examples of why “emergency” is built into so much of this hobby’s service tradition. We “play radio” because we enjoy it, but we also give back to the communities where we live, work, and play.

Balancing Radio and Life

When I drove to Portland on Sunday to work on putting node 588416 on my 44Net address, I had a feeling something wasn’t right back home with my wife, who needs care around the clock. Nothing to point to yet — just a feeling — so I started packing up to head back to the lake house. Before we’d wrapped up everything we needed to do that day on the node move, my daughter texted: “Dad, something’s up with Mom.” The feeling had been right.

What followed was a 911 call and another ambulance ride by Mason County’s great EMS folks to an Olympia hospital. There, the doctor was certain he needed interventional radiology to assist, but nobody was available. Then came the two-hour scramble as the ER staff looked for another hospital to treat her. Finally, a very experienced nurse popped in and asked: would you mind if I try to fix this? Please do, I said. Ten minutes later, we were arranging transport back home because the problem was fully resolved. I have to say it: nurses rule.

Next week: issue 200!

With that, I’ll say 73. Remember to touch a radio every day!

1. QRV: Are You Ready?

Welcome to meteorological fall (September 1st). Astronomical fall lands on September 22nd, so I guess this is a “take your pick” kind of thing. For me, when the school buses start to slow my rate of travel between the lake house and some barista-brewed coffee, that’s my signal fall has arrived.

I’ve been asked why I use the tagline “Remember to touch a radio every day” at the close of every Random Wire newsletter. My answer is both simple and perhaps not so simple. On the simple side, when you use a radio frequently, you tend to continue to use a radio frequently. Simple.

The more complex answer is that when you remember to incorporate radio into your everyday life in some way, it becomes more a part of who you are. It lives closer to the surface of your thoughts. You begin to see commonplace things and wonder: how could that be adapted to support my radio play?

And I think it is in that space that we become more involved, more engaged, and more excited about the many ways radio touches our lives.

My tagline is a gentle reminder to work toward having that kind of indispensable relationship with radio, because as we already know, radio touches all of us in some way, every day.

RW/EH Community Resources

• EtherHam at https://etherham.com

• EtherHam store at https://etherham.printful.me/

• Groups.io at https://groups.io/g/EtherHam

• GitHub at https://github.com/EtherHamRadio

• Random Wire at https://www.randomwire.us

• Random Wire Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RandomWireReview

• Random Wire Search at https://etherham.com/rw_search/

And there are still some slots left in the EtherHam groups.io space. Join at https://groups.io/g/EtherHam.

2. New on EtherHam

There is some meaty content on EtherHam.com this week. First up is trying to get OpenRTX running on a Retevis C62 for M17, and unfortunately, it’s just not there yet. Then I modified my “shutdown your ASL3 node with three quick key-ups” script, based on reader input. The third item is the start of a three-part series on automatic transcribing of AllStar nets, but guess what? That really means it can capture any voice traffic on AllStar.

Flashing OpenRTX for M17 on the Retevis C62: Almost There

The Retevis C62 is one of the more interesting radios to land in the M17 space. Unlike the RT3S and other MD-UV380-class radios — where M17 requires physical hardware modifications, SMD rework and fine wire work — the C62 is a firmware-only target. No soldering. Flash it over the programming jack and you’re done.

That’s the promise. This is a field report on how far you can actually get today, written after a full day at the bench with a charged radio, three programming cables and a working build.

Short version: the flashing pipeline works and is now well understood. The firmware doesn’t boot yet. Both halves of that are worth documenting for those of us experimenting with this.

Addendum to: Shutdown an ASL3 Node with Three Key-Ups

A reader (thank you, Bill) wrote in after upgrading a SHARI Pi3U (kits4hams) node from HamVOIP to ASL3. He’d had a pushbutton triggering shutdown just fine before, and gave this script a try — but found three quick key-ups weren’t being recognized. He got it working by bumping WINDOW_SEC up to 10, and specifically by keying up, waiting for his node’s ack/courtesy tone to finish, then keying up again — repeating that three times.

The addendum documents my thoughts about the cause of this condition, and the solution. And then I did what I should have done in the first place: published the script to a proper GitHub repository.

Automatic Net Logging, Part 1: Who It’s For, and Getting Audio Out of a Hub Node

An idle AllStarLink hub node — no radio attached, nothing plugged into it but power and Ethernet — turns out to be a good place to record and transcribe net traffic. Part 1 covers three quite different people who'd want that: someone logging nets, a repeater owner who wants a searchable record of what happens on their machine, and an operator who can't follow the audio and would rather read it. They need the same pipeline set up differently — the net logger would rather it mistake a rag chew for a net than miss a real one, and the repeater owner wants exactly the reverse.

It’s built on the KK7NQN-TranscriptionLogger project by Hunter Inman KK7NQN, with the audio capture, transcription step and a web viewer added. There’s an awkward bit, too, which is how you record from a node that has no receiver and therefore never fires the event every guide tells you to watch for. Over three days my system captured five live nets across four repeaters and turned up four real bugs, one of them quietly discarding sixteen percent of everything it recorded. Parts 2 and 3 cover those. The code is on GitHub if you’d rather read Python than prose.

One thing in there is worth thirty seconds of your time even if transcription doesn’t interest you at all: check whether your node’s Asterisk Manager Interface is bound to 0.0.0.0. Mine was — port 5038 open to the internet and being actively scanned. One line in manager.conf fixes it.

Weekly Report: September 3, 2026

This week, the Short Stack from the Interwebs is added to the Weekly Report!

The higher HF bands, especially 10, 15, and 20 meters, should be in fine shape for both DX chasing and regional contacts.

AllStarLink code received a batch of stability fixes. The Hams Over IIP wiki was updated with a MicroSIP navigation page.

The top three monitored Groups.io groups are Repeater Builder (205 messages), TinySA (70 messages), and APRS (59 messages). Runners-up include: HotSpot Radios, M17 Users, SHARI, and 44Net Connect.

3. Ham Radio Workbench #269 on AllStarLink

I included the link to this podcast last week, and I include it again this week because it’s just such a great show.

• HRWB 269 - AllStarLink with Jason McCormick N8EI

George and the HRWB team kept me company on a drive from the lake house to Portland last Sunday. I’ve been playing in the AllStar space for several years, but I learned quite a few new things, and developed a better understanding of how AllStar works. If you are interested in AllStar, this is worth listening to. It has information for AllStar beginners and aficionados alike.

And Jason dropped some great gems toward the end of the show. He also mentions the Ampersand-ASL project by Bruce MacKinnon, which I’m running on a couple of different devices (but start here if you’re interested in running this software).

One tidbit I particularly enjoyed was learning how the AllStarLink system was designed to avoid a typical star topology (hub and spokes). The federated distribution style of the AllStar ecosystem appeals to me.

The show closes with a live demonstration of Mike Walker VA3MW getting his node up and running, then connecting to nodes for other show members.

AllStarLink is an all-volunteer effort and they need support:

The implementation of this system and its monthly upkeep is very costly. Any monetary help that you can and wish to give will be much appreciated. Allstarlink Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

AllStarLink Donations

You’ll get a thank you when you donate:

4. FreeDV RADE: For Your FlexRadio and Your Pi

ARDC has published a great introduction to FreeDV RADE, the open-source digital voice mode that swaps the usual DSP tricks for a machine-learning “radio autoencoder.” The pitch: SSB-beating voice quality down to -2 dB SNR, in about 1.5 kHz of bandwidth — half what SSB needs. It’s now built directly into FlexRadio’s 6000/8000/Aurora line as a selectable mode, but you don’t need one of those to try it — it runs just fine on a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5.

If you’ve ever had trouble picking voices out of the noise on HF, RADE might make the band feel accessible again. Hams in Australia, Japan, Europe, and South America are already running weekly RADE nets; VK3TPM says it’s noticeably easier on the ears than analog HF.

RADE v2 is in the works, targeting sub-1kHz bandwidth!

Learn more: FreeDV RADE: A New Approach to Digital Voice Over HF

5. Hunter’s Transcription Script

I can’t always listen to a net, even when I really do want the learning that comes from hearing so many great questions and answers. Then I remembered Hunter Inman's KK7NQN Transcription Logger project from the first Zero Retries Digital Conference and decided to give it a try on a spare AllStar node. Read Hunter’s overview at https://kk7nqn.net/. It is pretty amazing stuff.

However, getting it working required inferring some information and making some choices. A key choice for me was to use regular expressions instead of an AI for some transcription tasks. The system also tries to detect whether it has captured a net. Just like me, it does struggle with call signs.

Ultimately, I forked Hunter’s code and incorporated some fixes, including some new files. One of those was creating a simple transcript viewer web page. That saves me from having to SSH into the node and run a complicated MySQL query just to see a transcript. The Transcript Viewer lets me use date selectors to set a start and end date/time for the query. The query output is parsed into a table, and the transcript is downloadable as a text file.

I tested it on Sunday evening with the Puget Sound Repeater Group’s 9 O’Clock net:

This showed the system is working. Then I tried using my local OpenWebUI machine running gemma3:4b to generate a net summary and correct some call signs, but it was slow. The call sign detection wasn’t much better than what I could do just by reading the transcript. However, I can feed that text file to an online AI (I used ChatGPT) to get an acceptable summary, if desired. With this one test, I think the RegEx transcript will usually be good enough.

I tested the logger again on Monday morning with the WA7ABU TechNet, a daily net at 10 AM Pacific that is often jam-packed with great technical information.

The script I implemented, plus the transcript viewer, are available on GitHub if someone wants to experiment with it.

As noted above in the New on EtherHam section, Part 1 is published: Automatic Net Logging, Part 1: Who It’s For, and Getting Audio Out of a Hub Node

Part 2 (Automatic Net Logging, Part 2: What Five Live Nets Taught) will publish on September 8, and Part 3 (Automatic Net Logging, Part 3: The Bug That Ate 16 Percent) on September 15.

When Making the AI Smarter Made It Worse

The net logger on AllStar node 588416 has been running well enough that I’ve moved on to its weakest part: call signs. Whisper hears “Whiskey Bravo 3, Charlie, Sierra Yankee” and writes exactly that — which is useless if what you want in the log is WB3CSY. The obvious fix is a bigger transcription model, so Wednesday I sat down to benchmark one.

It didn’t work, and neither did the next two things I tried. Whisper medium is nearly three times slower than small on that little i5 computer, and on the clips that actually contained call signs, it won one and lost one across seven tests. Where it lost, it lost badly: “Kilo foxtrot zero Sierra Mike Delta” came back as “Kilo, Flaxstrad 0, Sierra, Mike Delta.” Flaxstrad isn’t a word. Conversely, the smaller model had transcribed it correctly.

So I tried priming instead — feeding Whisper the phonetic alphabet and a list of call signs it should expect. On a transmission with nothing intelligible in it at all, the primed model produced “KJ7T-OR.” That’s my own callsign, which I had put in the primer. It hadn’t heard anything; it just gave me back what I’d told it to look for, formatted to look exactly like a real check-in. Hotwords, the third approach, mangled “Sierra Alpha Yankee” into “ALFAYANKI” — which made me laugh, and which is also unrecoverable.

The pattern took me a while to see. A bigger language model has a stronger sense of what English is supposed to sound like, and the phonetic alphabet is deliberately built from words that don’t sound like ordinary English. They are unique more than normal. That’s the whole point of it. So the model’s instincts, which help everywhere else, actively fight this particular vocabulary. Priming makes it worse, because a model told to expect call signs will manufacture one out of thin air.

What finally worked was about forty lines of Python and a lookup table. small‘s literal, unclever transcription turns out to be the most useful output available, precisely because it doesn’t try to be smart — “Whiskey Bravo 3, Charlie, Sierra Yankee” converts to WB3CSY every time, reproducibly, with no AI model involved. Running it across 1,754 transmissions found more than thirty call signs that no regex could see, because they’d only ever been spoken phonetically. It also turned up a failure mode I hadn’t noticed: the first phonetic word of a call sign goes missing constantly, almost certainly caused by PTT key-up clipping at the start of the transmission. Even the net control operator’s own call sign came through truncated three times in one net.

The best part came last. Digging through Hunter Inman’s (KK7NQN) original database schema, I found he’d already built the lookup table I needed. He included a corrections table with the phonetic alphabet in it, including “king” and “box” from the old military alphabet that still sees plenty of use on the air, plus manglings he’d collected in the field. My resolver now reads from his table. Adding a new correction is one line of SQL instead of a code change.

The code and the full write-up are in the GitHub repo, and parts 2 and 3 in the series are scheduled for publication. As additional refinements are put in play, it’s possible a part 4 will emerge.

6. DroidStar 9M2PJU Mod Update

It turns out the DroidStar 9M2PJU Mod app has an update available, but you won’t find it on the Google Play Store. Go to https://droidstar.hamradio.my/ for the link to download the APK directly (but be prepared for nag screens — I counted six popups before I could proceed).

7. New and Notable: Nexus Amateur Radio Software

I picked this up from the Tuesday Project and Ham Radio Hobby Net on the WA7ABU 145.29 MHz repeater (also on AllStar node 51018). I was driving from Portland to the lake house Tuesday evening, so I had my node 588416 connected to 51018 to capture the net and catch up on it later — see the note on Hunter’s Transcription Script above. Glad I did, because I would have missed this otherwise.

Brett KG7GDB brought up a program called Nexus Modern Operating Workstation and described it as an ambitious attempt to fold a bunch of familiar ham radio applications into one modern environment. According to the net, Nexus handles:

• Rig control

• WSJT-X-style digital modes, including FT8 and FT4

• APRS — beaconing, messaging, mapping, following other stations, weather

• Slow-scan television

• Logging

• A waterfall display and modern GUI

Most of that already exists somewhere else. What caught my ear was having it all in one place. Anyone who’s built a digital-mode station knows how the software stack creeps — one program for the radio, another for FT8, a third for logging, maybe a fourth for APRS, each one wanting its own serial port or audio device or CAT interface. It works, but it gets tangled. An integrated app could cut down on that.

The APRS talk tied back to some recent conversation the group’s had about projects for radios like the Icom IC-7100. On the SSTV side, nobody had actually put hours into it yet — this was more of a “hey, look what I found” than a review. That’s usually how these things start.

Rob AJ7HR zeroed in on two details: Nexus is GPL-3 open source, and it’s written in Rust. He’d like to see more open-source software in the hobby — a lot of what we depend on is excellent, but plenty of it is tied to one platform, one maintainer, or one development model, and open source gives the community more room to poke at it and keep it alive. Rob also admitted Nexus had already gone farther than the all-in-one app he’d once thought about building himself. I think every technically minded ham has had that “I should build something like that someday” thought, right before someone else does.

It also runs everywhere — Raspberry Pi, Linux (.deb and AppImage builds), Windows, and macOS, including Apple Silicon per Brett. For a hobby that runs on everything from Pi Zeros to Windows shacks to Macs, that cross-platform reach matters.

Nobody on the net claimed Nexus replaces WSJT-X, your logging program, or your rig control software. But it generated enough interest that I’m filing it under “worth downloading and trying.” That’s usually how it goes: one ham finds something, another notices it’s open source, somebody else wonders how it’d fit their station, and pretty soon three people are experimenting. That’s a lot of how amateur radio actually gets done.

8. Meet CORE

I was introduced to the Central Ohio Radio Enthusiasts (CORE, at https://core.radio) by Justin KF8DEU. I have to say: this sounds like my kind of radio club!

From Justin:

It’s a radio club in a very broad sense, as in we talk about not only amateur radio but pretty much ANYTHING radio (mesh technologies, digital radios, reticulum, weather balloons, SDRs, etc) and meet once per month, listen to whoever wants to present something to us, while eating pizza.

Tech talk, radios, and pizza. Sounds like a winning combination! Kudos to the CORE team. They are active on Discord.

9. Configured a Spare DMR Hotspot

Digging through some storage bins, I ran across my first homebuilt hotspot, made with a Raspberry Pi 3 board, a duplex MMDVM board, and a C4 Labs case. Cosmetically, it looks identical to the later RPi 4 hotspot I built.

After futzing with it for a while to get the configuration right, I downloaded a backup of the working RPi 4 hotspot and restored that config to the RPi 3 hotspot. That worked perfectly…probably because the MMDVM board was exactly the same.

Along the way, I realized I only want to use one hotspot for PNWDigital traffic. The Retevis RT3S is flashed with the PNWDigital codeplug, so it’s already set up that way. The hotspot is configured to reach Brandmeister first and PNWDigital second. I’m thinking now this doesn’t make a lot of sense.

10. Forgotten: My ADSB Exchange Machine

On a recent trip to the Portland, Oregon QTH, I pulled up my router admin dashboard to make sure firmware was up to date. And then I noticed a machine in my client list I had completely forgotten about, named adsbexchange.

I had covered this more than two years ago in Random Wire 87.

The other thing I had forgotten was Tailscale running on my local-to-Portland ADSB machine. So I logged in, updated the Debian operating system, and made sure Tailscale was updated.

When I got back to the Lake House, I opened the Tailscale address for the machine and there it was: my flight tracker running in Portland, showing on my laptop more than 100 miles away.

I’m surprised at the coverage I’m getting with this simple antenna, mounted inside by the sliding glass doors on the ground floor:

Upgrade Version Loop Antenna MLA-30+ Plus 0.5-30MHz Rainproof Ring Active Receive Antenna Low Noise Medium Short Wave (this is an affiliate link)

The ADSB Exchange dongle for my Raspberry Pi is no longer listed on Amazon. Try the ADSBx Hardware page if you’re interested in flight tracking.

11. Gadgets

Pocket AI Recorder

I put this off for several months, but finally pulled the trigger on the Pocket recording device (https://heypocket.com/pages/pocket). It is billed as being your personal AI assistant.

Is it life changing? No. Is it helpful? Yes. I’ve started using it to listen alongside me while I monitor nets. The post-net AI-produced summary is generally good enough to provide a solid overview of the topic discussed. Pocket doesn’t do well recognizing different voices, so when there is a statement in the summary that Tom said something, I have to take that with a big grain of salt. But overall, I’m glad I made this purchase.

The M17 Net summary below was generated by Pocket AI. It listened to the net, presented me with a written summary, and I made corrections and some edits for easier reading. Pocket AI, like other AI engines, really has difficulty with amateur radio call signs.

This session was recorded live from the Tulsa Maker Faire (Maker Fest), where Jeff (AE5ME) served as Net Control for the weekly M17 digital voice net on the Kansas Citywide system. The meeting focused on technical updates for the M17 protocol, the M7 application, and upcoming amateur radio events.

M17 Protocol & Hardware Updates

• LinHD Project: Development continues on the Linux-based handheld (LinHD). A “Revision C” design is forthcoming. The project utilizes the Retevis C62 as a donor for the case, keyboard, and display.

• Hardware Compatibility: Participants emphasized using the English version of the Retevis C62 rather than the European version to ensure compatibility.

• OpenRTX Firmware: Version 0.1 is approaching release, which will introduce packet and SMS engine capabilities. Supported hardware includes the CS750, M17 Plus, and Module 17 boards.

• Hotspot Options: For high-performance M17 hotspots, the CC1200 and SX1255 boards were recommended over standard MMDVM/Raspberry Pi hats due to superior signal purity.

M7 Application Development

Greg provided a status report on the MSeven app:

• Scan Feature: New functionality allows scanning across multiple reflectors and channels.

• Dual-Receive Modes: Users can choose between a “stop and listen” mode (full audio for a set duration) or a “priority” mode where the active channel plays at full volume while others are ducked to 30%.

• Hardware Pairing: The app successfully pairs with the Mobilinkd TNC4, enabling M17 operation on any 9600-baud capable radio.

Community & Events

• Zero Retries Conference: Scheduled for October in San Ramon (about 35 miles east of San Francisco). Jeff confirmed he will attend in person to present on M17, noting that a Zoom attendance option is available for those unable to travel.

• Maker Movement: Jeff highlighted the 10th anniversary of the Maker Faire, emphasizing the importance of organic, non-commercial development in amateur radio to attract younger generations (STEM/youth groups).

• Zero Retries Info: Registration and details are available at www.zeroretries.org/p/conference.

Net Operations

Due to the high-noise environment at the Maker Faire (35 dB to 50 dB noise floor), the National Traffic System (NTS) portion of the net was bypassed. Technical discussions and check-ins were prioritized via both RF and the netcontrol.live text stream.

I have no experience with other devices that purport to do the same thing, so I can’t make recommendations. I can tell you where Pocket falls down, and that is Bluetooth…because there is no Bluetooth. If it had Bluetooth, maybe a phone call over a headset or earbuds could be picked up. As it is, it only picks up my side of that conversation. The solution is to use the speakerphone function.

I’m not going to touch on privacy laws, since every state has something a little different. My state is a dual consent state (both sides have to agree) so I usually don’t bother with Pocket on phone calls.

Cute Little Radio Project

It’s not two-way radio, but it’s still radio. It’s an ESP32-based web radio, says this Blogspot post:

I built this ESP32 based web radio this week. I’ve used a 1.9” IPS display with ST7789 driver. For the audio I’ve used MAX98357A I2S audio amplifier. This web radio is based on the excellent yoRadio project https://github.com/e2002/yoradio

I’ve said it many times: I like small devices. This build is certainly small!

12. QRT: End Transmission

It was a hectic weekend-ish time. I made three day trips to Portland: one on Friday, one on Sunday, and one on Tuesday. Sunday was particularly long as I climbed into the pickup at 5:30 am and got back to the Lake House around 8 pm. Lots of driving, but that also meant time for audio books, listening to nets, and not-to-be-missed: listening to the Ham Radio Workbench podcast.

Debian 13

I lean heavily on Debian Linux, particularly Debian 13. That is usually my “go to” distro. Turns out I’m in good company. CERN is implementing Debian 13. I guess if it’s good enough for high-energy particle physics, it’s good enough for my home lab!

146.52

I don’t hear hams on 146.52 MHz very often up in the Olympia, Washington area, but it is quite common to hear traffic in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. In Portland and Vancouver, 146.52 is treated more as a simplex channel for sometimes long conversations. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a contact in that area on 146.52 followed by a request to QSY to a different frequency. Different places, different customs. Always interesting.

Mobile antenna

And with three round trips, I got to test what was going on with my VHF/UHF antenna on the pickup. I’ve had good luck with Comet antennas, so the dual-bander on the truck is the Comet SS680SB. But something is wrong: when my Yaesu FTM-300DR transmits an APRS beacon, the radio shuts off. I thought: must be high SWR, I’ll check it. I pulled out my RigExpert STICK-500 analyzer and measured a very acceptable SWR below 1.3 near the APRS frequency. So I hooked up the radio again and as soon as it beaconed, it shut off.

I had a spare antenna under the seat, named for my good friend Justin Case. That antenna is a mag-mount dual-band COMPACtenna. Before connecting it to the radio, I measured the SWR and found it was well above 2…but that’s still acceptable. And here’s the part that doesn’t make any sense to me: the radio works fine with the COMPACtenna.

Of course, I’ve had that antenna on the roof of the pickup for more than two years. It’s seen a lot: rain, snow, hail, rocks, tree branches, a Washington-to-Texas road trip, and more. I live in western Washington so salt-laden moisture could be a factor. Maybe there is an intermittent connection that I missed when I tested the SWR. I’ve cleaned and tightened connections, but the radio still shuts down when it transmits an APRS beacon through the Comet antenna. I tested this over and over on my three long drives. (As I think about how the antenna is configured, I’ll bet it comes apart, which means I haven’t really cleaned all the connections yet.)

The next time I pop down to Portland, I’ll grab a spare antenna from the Justin Case antenna tube and try it on the same mount. If that works, then it’s the antenna. If the radio still shuts down, it’s the mount or feedline. In the meantime, my stubby COMPACtenna is doing the job for me.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

1. QRV: Are You Ready?

Last week I hit DMR topics pretty hard. Then the weekend brought us a medical issue with my spouse, and Monday I made a day-long trip to Portland and back. Add in the work I did this week on the Retevis C62 build (more on this below) and I lost about four days of potential writing time.

Fortunately, life settled back into place by mid-week, giving me some time to play with the Retevis RT3S/OpenGD77 radio on DMR. Last week, I configured my Yaesu System Fusion hotspot running WPSD software on a Raspberry Pi 4 machine to DMR. That left me without a YSF machine unless I switched the RPi4 back and forth between DMR and YSF. Instead of doing that, I plugged in my spare RPi5 hotspot and configured it for YSF. Works great.

I used the RT3S to monitor the PNWDigital Not-a-Net” gathering on Wednesday evening…with some self-created hiccups along the way. When I got set up a few hours before the gathering, I could not get reliable reception with the RT3S. I went down several rabbit holes before the light went on in my head: my DMR hotspot was using the same frequencies as my YSF hotspot. Whenever the YSF hotspot was active, my DMR reception was terrible. The fix was simple: move the DMR frequencies for TX and RX to a different pair that no longer collided with the YSF frequencies. Problem solved.

I also switched my LightAPRS Gateway antenna from a small mag-mount on a cookie sheet to an actual vertical dipole. Surprisingly, it didn’t do much. My direct connections decreased slightly while my total connections increased. Maybe in my hilly location, the more spherical pattern of the mag-mount works better than the flatter pattern of the vertical dipole. But that is purely a guess. Bottom line: both antennas work, so I’ll leave the dipole up for a while and see how it goes.

And are you ready for fall and winter? Now is the time to check your outside coax and connectors — before you notice your SWR is sky high and you have to brave that cold fall rain dripping down the back of your neck.

And speaking of antennas, my Yaesu FTM-300DR in the pickup truck started shutting itself off yesterday. My first thought was the wiring harness had gone bad…because that had happened before. But as I kept turning it on and watching as it powered down, I realized it was shutting down every time it transmitted an APRS beacon. Uh oh. I probably have a shorted antenna cable somewhere! This happened late yesterday so I’ve not had time to dig into it.

This week, I checked into #APRSThursday over LoRa APRS:

I also did some scoping of a potential project for my daughter. She likes to identify birds, so I looked at software that would allow me to identify birds by their songs. Looks like one of the most reasonable approaches is to use an old cell phone as the outdoor microphone, and have it connected wirelessly to a Raspberry Pi computer inside. More on this if/when it develops!

2. New on EtherHam

• Status of 21 AllStarLink Nodes at a Glance with a Custom TRMNL Plugin — I wrote a script to poll my AllStar nodes and give me an at-a-glance view of which nodes were up and running.

• Weekly Report: August 27, 2026 — Band Conditions This Week / Digital Radio News / Groups.io Digest. Digital Radio News is awfully light this week, with the exception of AllStarLink topics.

3. AllStarLink? Listen to Ham Radio Workbench #269

If you are into, or are interested in, AllStarLink, this is for you. Without further ado, here’s the link: HRWB 269 - AllStarLink with Jason McCormick N8EI.

N8EI is an active technical contributor on the AllStarLink Community Forum, frequently discussing system troubleshooting, software transitions, and node configuration.

4. QSO One Continues to Improve

You’ll want to take a look at QSO One, even if you don’t plan on using the software. Why? Because of the convenient Net Finder directory available on the QSO One website:

Why would you want to use QSO One? If you are looking for an all-in-one, integrated platform for all your nodes and modes, this could be what you’ve been waiting for.

For me, it looks like a great solution for my Uniwa F400. Note this excerpt from a post in the QSO One group on Facebook:

Using QSO One on a new Uniwa F400 has brought a ton of fun into my life since first installing the app. The features have helped me to gain access and experience some new-to-me digital networks (Allstar, Echolink, and YSF), and I appreciate that very much.

I wrote this early in the week and saw a few more announcements after I captured this piece. QSO One is rapidly evolving.

5. DroidStar 9M2PJU Replaced My DroidStar App

A strong alternative to QSO One is the DroidStar implementation by 9M2PJU. I’ve been testing it and finally deleted my old DroidStar app from my phone this week. The DroidStar 9M2PJU app won that battle and now reigns supreme, at least on my smartphone.

But I think I’m going to also install it on my Uniwa F400 device. Fingers crossed it works well there, too.

Learn more at https://droidstar.hamradio.my/ (but be prepared for multiple nag screens when you first open this link).

6. M17 Net

Last Saturday’s weekly M17 digital voice net on the Kansas City Wide system, led by net control Jeff AE5ME, focused on the technical evolution of the M17 protocol, upcoming firmware releases, and the protocol’s advantages over proprietary digital modes.

M17 Project & Technical Updates

M17 is a public domain digital voice and data protocol designed to eliminate the need for proprietary hardware or licensed codecs. It has received two $250,000 grants from Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) to fund its development.

• OpenRTX Firmware: Currently at version 0.4.3. The upcoming v0.5 release will be a major milestone, introducing SMS messaging and packet radio capabilities directly to radios like the MD380, MD390, and the CS7000.

• LinHT Project: A Linux-based handy talkie (HT) with a software-defined radio (SDR) core. This project enables multiple modes (M17, Tetra, DMR) and paging protocols like POCSAG to run on a single device.

• Hardware Compatibility:

  • Retevis C62: Development is ongoing for M17 support via the OpenRTX PR branch (Pull #15). Currently, it supports FM only. There was a brief discussion regarding the complexity of building the OpenRTX firmware from source for the Retevis C62. While the PR branch exists, it is not yet an “official” binary, requiring users to use a Linux command-line environment.

  • CC1200 Boards: New hats for the Pi Zero W 2 are available for M17-only hotspots.

  • Module 17: A project that allows converting existing mobile rigs into M17-capable radios.

Technical Q&A & Signal Routing

A significant portion of the net focused on how M17 signals move through different layers of infrastructure.

• SMS in QSO1: It was confirmed that the QSO1 software supports SMS text messaging via the M17 chat feature.

• Emergency Communications: The net highlighted the risks of relying on PTT over Cellular (POC) radios during disasters due to network congestion. M17 and the National Traffic System (NTS) were emphasized as more robust alternatives for handling health and welfare traffic when infrastructure fails.

7. Coming Soon: Cracking Open the Retevis C62 for M17

A $50-ish dual-band handheld built around a chip most hams have never heard of, running an open-source firmware port that’s still wet cement — that’s the Retevis C62, and it’s the next radio through my test bench. OpenRTX, the same open firmware project behind those RT3S M17 mods you’ve read about here, is now being ported to the C62’s ListenAI CSK6011B chipset, and I’ve spent the last few evenings getting a Windows toolchain to actually produce working firmware for it. Spoiler: it compiled clean, memory headroom to spare, on the first successful run — which sounds simple until you hear what it took to get there.

To be clear, what I’m trying to do is still experimental. Translation: it’s not ready for production. But I’m curious, and I know I’m not alone in trying to do this.

Well, it didn’t go smoothly. The official build instructions pointed at a Git branch that doesn’t exist where the docs say it does — turns out it only lives on a contributor’s personal fork. Then the container-based build tool quietly configured itself against the wrong internal workspace entirely, silently failing every dependency-fetch command with errors that looked like typos but weren’t — the kind of bug that eats a whole evening before you find the one diagnostic command that exposes it. I ended up manually placing four separate module repos by hand once I figured out what the build system actually wanted, and only then did the whole thing link successfully.

And that was just the build. Getting the finished firmware onto the actual radio turned into its own saga — burn mode entered fine, but the PC flatly refused to see the radio over USB, no matter what cable or computer I threw at it. Two “should’ve worked” programming cables later, and a lot of Device Manager archaeology across two completely different machines, I finally landed on the real culprit: not a driver problem, not a Windows problem, but the cable itself missing the one active chip this radio’s flashing mode actually requires. The right cable is in hand now.

I haven’t had a chance to actually flash the radio yet — that’s the next step, and I didn’t want to rush it just to hit a publishing deadline. So consider this the trailer: full build procedure, the module-workaround nobody’s documented anywhere else, the cable gotcha that cost the most time, and — assuming the C62 boots up on the other side — first impressions of OpenRTX running on genuinely new hardware. Next issue, once I’ve had the chance to actually pull the trigger.

8. PNWDigital Not-a-Net Gathering

I listened to much of the Wednesday evening “Not-a-Net” gathering held by the PNWDigital folks. I noted check-ins were made via Zumspot, Pi-Star, OpenSpot, BlueDV, and DV Mega devices, along with RF via DMR repeaters. That was a bit more texture than I expected —> many ways to get your message out on DMR.

• PNWDigital nets: https://pnwdigital.net/nets/

• PNWDigital welcome: https://pnwdigital.net/welcome-new-user/

9. Gadgets

Cardputer

I traveled a bit off the beaten path with this: the Cardputer ADV. It was about $42 from Amazon (affiliate link). As I flashed different firmwares to it and explored this tiny platform, I decided to give it a try with MeshCore. That required a special hat for the Cardputer: SX1262 LoRa Module w/GPS GNSS for Meshtastic (affiliate link).

Was this a useful purchase? Absolutely not. It was just for fun. The firmwares are interesting and I look forward to discovering what else I can do with the Cardputer.

Some people use these for hacking, but that’s not me. This is just a fun little device that slips into a shirt pocket. A word to the wise: if you use reading glasses, you might need a second pair to read the tiny screen!

I expected a fun weekend dev-platform toy. What I got instead was a proper hands-on review project, complete with a firmware bug, a Bluetooth mystery, and eventually a working MeshCore node. If you’re eyeing one of these for your own bench, here’s what actually happened, warts and all.

The keyboard takes some getting used to. There’s no touchscreen, so everything — including menus that look like they want a tap — is driven through the Fn key and a cramped arrow cluster hiding under the semicolon, comma, period, and slash keys. The keys themselves have a habit of double-registering if you’re not deliberate about your typing, which cost me a garbled WiFi password more than once.

The bigger surprise was the stock “factory” firmware — the demo suite M5Stack preloads, with its little hardware-test apps for the keyboard, IMU, SD card, and so on. The Clock app turned out to have a hardcoded UTC+8 offset that I could not override.

From there I went firmware-hopping, which turned out to be very interesting. You load firmware with the M5Burner app on your computer and a data-capable USB-C cable. M5Apps (a community launcher) fixed the keyboard quirks but couldn’t get WiFi to stick. Bruce (yes, that’s the name of the software) nailed the clock and timezone handling on the first try, confirming that the clock problem was not the hardware but the M5Stack demo firmware.

None of that was really the point, though. With a LoRa+GPS cap clipped onto the top, the real goal was turning this thing into a MeshCore node that could talk to the repeater already running on my roof and to my phone app.

That last stretch was the real adventure. Getting a MeshCore build flashed and receiving traffic on the Public channel was straightforward once the LoRa cap was installed. But getting it to join my own private #etherham channel was not easy. Bluetooth pairing failed repeatedly, even with the correct PIN. USB serial access turned out to be flash-mode-only on that particular build (a nice meshcore-cli detour taught me that the hard way). Even manually copying the channel’s secret key over didn’t get channel messages flowing.

What did work was sidestepping channels entirely. MeshCore nodes discover each other via broadcast “adverts,” and once the Cardputer and my T-Echo Plus heard each other’s adverts, direct messages worked immediately. No shared key was needed, since DMs use per-contact key exchange instead of a channel secret.

This is a genuinely capable (albeit quirky) little radio node, provided you’re willing to treat the software side as part of the hobby rather than as an inconvenience. If you’re comfortable flashing firmware, poking around GitHub issues, and treating a stuck menu as a puzzle instead of a dealbreaker, you may find the Cardputer ADV to be a fun diversion. However, if you just want a mesh terminal that works out of the box, this likely isn’t it.

Interesting: Mecha Comet

Shipping October 2026:

Mecha Comet, handheld Linux computer that's truly yours to own, build and mod.

What is it? HowToGeek has a write-up. I do like a small-but-powerful device!

New battery for Yaesu VX-6R

I mentioned last week that I bought a charger and a new battery for my Yaesu VX-6R. The original battery would not charge and was not recognized by the radio. I was hoping that putting it on a higher amperage charger might wake it up and allow it to accept a charge, but alas, that is not what happened. In fact, nothing happened. So that battery will go to hazardous waste. The new one charged swiftly and works fine. And the wall charger also works with my Yaesu FT-70D, so this is a “two-fer” for me.

TRMNL

Many moons ago, I supported a Kickstarter for a programmable display called TRMNL. I plucked it off the wall during a recent trip to the Portland QTH and brought it up to the Lake House.

It’s not doing anything fancy, like showing news or quoting famous people. I just want to see the weather at a glance, and for that, it works just fine.

The e-ink display draws very little power from the internal battery. I usually only have to charge this thing once every several months.

But I got to thinking about other ways I could use this nice screen. One thing I am always interested in is the status of my AllStar nodes. I have many because I experiment with them, but I usually only keep a handful “up” at any one time. So I wrote a custom Python script to poll the status messages at AllStarLink about my nodes. Then, with a little HTML magic, I was able to display the statuses of my nodes on the TRMNL.

Of course, it was really more complicated than that, so I’ve covered the ins and outs at EtherHam.com. That article also has the actual Python script I built to accomplish the polling of my node numbers.

10. QRT: End Transmission

Whew. Not the quality I like to share, but there is probably a little of something for everyone in this casserole-like issue of the Random Wire!

This week marked our 49th wedding anniversary. Those who have subscribed for a while know my wife has severe medical issues. She can no longer stand, sit, or walk. She can’t swallow or talk. Her disease has substantially impaired her cognition. And yet when I brought a bouquet of flowers to her today, she beamed out a great smile and her eyes told me all I needed to know. Over the past year, I’ve wondered if we’d see this milestone, but here it is: we made it to 49. Seizing these brief moments in the midst of this difficult journey is important and I’m grateful we still have time left together.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

I went a bit DMR crazy this week. Hit the DMR category on EtherHam and you’ll see what I mean. Here’s the elevator version: I used OpenGD77 on a $100 Retevis RT3S radio to install the PNWDigital codeplug. What I learned along the way is shared in my new DMR articles.

I also took a dive into Winlink, APRS, and EmComm. I wonder how this essay will land, especially with folks deeply experienced in search-and-rescue, incident command, and related activities. I suspect that my take on incident command may go against the grain for some folks. But maybe not.

A scripting error corrupted my work database, and that took a day to unravel the cause and another day to clean the data. Paraphrasing a database guru I learned from many years ago: there is no such thing as a perfect database, only those with an acceptable number of errors. The number of errors I had this week was unacceptable so I dove in and fixed the problem.

And that pretty much sums up my radio and technology week: a lot of digital radio and little bit of coding and cleanup.

I saw good uptake of the new EtherHam Groups.io space. Remember: in this first phase rollout, it is limited to 100 subscribers. We’re almost halfway there so sign up now if you are interested!

2. New on EtherHam

Winlink Tells You What Happened. APRS Tells You What’s Happening. — I’m afraid I went a bit overboard on this essay, simply because of my background in emergency services/management. I’ve been an EMT on a rural ambulance service, a hospital commissioner, an underground mine rescue EMT, a search-and-rescue member. I was part of an ARES group for a while and also served as a state agency representative to the state’s emergency management department. Those roles gave me deep appreciation for how incidents actually unfold and get managed in real time…and I think that biases my point of view toward those working at the forward edge rather than those in the command center. It’s a long read so I included a table of contents to help you. One of the best moments for me while I wrote this was learning more about how LoRa radio actually works to pick out signals buried in the noise.

This was “DMR week” at EtherHam, with parts 2, 3, and 4 published. Part 5 will cover on-air etiquette and troubleshooting — including PTT habits, why they matter more on digital than on FM, and the answer to: if you can’t scan the band to find people, how do you actually find someone to talk to?

Introduction to DMR, Part 2: The ID, the Radio, and the Hotspot — Part 1 promised the ID, the radio, and the hotspot before ever touching a codeplug — this is that piece, delivered after the fact. It walks through registering a free DMR ID at RadioID.net, then lays out the actual fork in the road on radio choice: the AnyTone AT-D878UVII Plus for anyone who wants a download-and-personalize codeplug the same afternoon, versus the Retevis RT3S and OpenGD77 path this series has been running on, for readers who want the talkgroup/frequency separation badly enough to tolerate a rougher first hour. From there it’s a full step-by-step Raspberry Pi hotspot build — parts, assembly, and WPSD configuration — reused and adapted from an earlier hands-on build, plus a hard look at how much hotspot hardware costs today versus when that build first went up. Read this one before Part 3, even though it was written after it.

Introduction to DMR: Part 3 — Building Your First Codeplug — I flashed a new Retevis RT3S with OpenGD77, built a codeplug from scratch pointed at my hotspot, keyed up — and got silence. Then got silence again, for an entirely different reason. This is the unvarnished version of that afternoon: what a codeplug actually becomes once the four concepts from Part 1 turn into specific numbers that have to match specific other numbers somewhere else, why DMR answers a single wrong value with total silence instead of a useful clue, and what it does to your troubleshooting when fixing a genuine problem changes nothing you can see. If you’ve been putting off building your first codeplug, or you’ve built one and can’t work out why it won’t talk to anything, this one’s for you.

I added an addendum at the end of this article, titled: The settings, field by field. The addendum gives you a screen-by-screen accounting of the settings I used in the OpenGD77 CPS.

It’s a long article, so if you want the answer to the question “does the Retevis RT3S DMR radio work when programmed with OpenGD77,” the answer is yes:

Introduction to DMR, Part 4: Loading Somebody Else’s Codeplug — Part 4 of the Introduction to DMR series takes the opposite approach from Part 3: instead of building a codeplug from scratch, I downloaded PNWDigital’s ready-made OpenGD77 codeplug — 125 channels, seven zones, someone else’s careful work — and it took longer than building one by hand. Not because the codeplug was wrong. Because a community codeplug is built for that community’s network, and my hotspot was pointed at BrandMeister. That single unasked question sent me chasing filters, timeslots, and call types for hours while the actual problem sat one layer up.

Along the way: the CPS button that’s invisible at the wrong browser zoom, why the codeplug arrives wearing another operator’s callsign, the difference between a repeater talkgroup list and a hotspot one, and talkgroups that stay asleep until you kerchunk them awake. The piece also includes something I felt would help you picture how DMR is structured — a single diagram of how zone, channel, contact, talkgroup list, and network actually chain together, and why you should build that chain backward from the network rather than forward from the CPS.

Retevis RT3S + OpenGD77 Cheat Sheet: Every Control, Remapped from the Radioddity GD-77 — OpenGD77 was written for the Radioddity GD-77, and it runs beautifully on the Retevis RT3S — but the two radios don't share a control layout. The GD-77 has four arrow keys; the RT3S has two buttons and a rotary knob, so the firmware reassigns them, and it reassigns them differently depending on whether you're sitting on a main screen or inside a menu. The result is that a documented shortcut doesn't fail cleanly, it does something else: the key combination the manual gives for changing zones will quietly change your transmit power instead. This sheet is every control translated for the RT3S, with the ones I've confirmed on my own radio marked as such and the rest flagged as untested.

Weekly Report: August 20, 2026 — Band Conditions This Week / Digital Radio News / Groups.io Digest. Summary:

• The predicted A-index of 11 suggests we’re not entirely out of the woods yet, so keep an eye on the numbers before investing an evening in a long-haul DX session.

• The MMDVM firmware for DMR received a merge (PR #362) that adds a configurable audio‑fidelity link option.

• AllStarLink’s app_rpt was updated to version 3.10.4; the patch series (PR #1205‑#1207) adds a client‑disconnect helper, removes duplicated sanity checks, disables autoservice during safe‑sleep, and fixes thread‑creation leak bugs.

• The LoRa APRS iGate repository received three commits on 2026‑08‑16 that update the T‑Deck hardware requirements, refresh the README, and add new image assets.

• Community posts on the AllStarLink forum report connection refusals from keyed nodes, intermittent telephone‑portal operation, and general remote‑node connectivity failures.

• Groups.io: 31 groups checked, 15 active, 493 total messages, 11 quiet. The most active groups in the set were Repeater Builder, APRS, and TinySA.

3. QSO One, the CGNAT Killer?

QSO One was built so hams could get on AllStarLink, EchoLink, IAX Direct, DMR, System Fusion, and M17 from a single app, without a Raspberry Pi, a radio interface, or a weekend of Linux. It's free. Sign up with your callsign, download it for Windows or Android, and you're on the air in about five minutes. More platforms are coming.

But one of the magical aspects of QSO One that we’re not hearing much about is that it works with CGNAT: “node mode and WT mode for AllStarLink are solid, with cellular and CGNAT handling that actually deals with carrier networks instead of just failing.”

As IPV4 addresses continue to become less available and CGNAT networks become more common, I suspect that QSO One’s secret sauce will be its ability to carry traffic through CGNAT networks.

4. APRS

#APRSThursday follow-up: the check-ins actually worked

In the previous issue, I mentioned that my #APRSThursday check-in attempts — from the LoRa tracker as KJ7T-3 and from APRSdroid as KJ7T-5 — went unanswered by ANSRVR and APRSPH. Turns out that wasn’t quite right. Digging through Sergei KJ5LOX’s APRS Observer dashboard, both check-ins are right there in the log, addressed to ANSRVR and timestamped clean. The messages went out fine; I just never got a reply back.

The reason surfaced in Michael Diturno’s weekly #APRSThursday recap: ANSRVR itself had been down, and Jeff W4JEW and the APRS Foundation rebooted it to get the net back on track for the 752 operators who checked in that week. So the silence wasn’t anything on my end — it was a server having a rough week, now fixed. Good reminder to double-check the infrastructure before assuming the bug is local.

One more thing that dashboard surfaced: KJ7T-5 (APRSdroid) is reporting altitude cleanly, but KJ7T-3 (the LoRa tracker) shows up as “Unknown” for altitude every time. Almost certainly a config setting I haven't dug into yet — but to even get in there, I'll need to break out the ToughBook. My regular laptop is ARM-based, and the T-Echo just won't talk to it over USB. More on that once I sort it out.

This week? I got checked in no problem:

Did you happen to notice the MeshCore checking from K7OLI? That looks interesting!

APRS OTA

A few days ago, I received a very nice email from Jared K0TFU, the ham who built https://aprsota.org. He wrote:

It’s been fun to watch hams begin to use this. One highlight for me was this string of QSOS from OE7BOE in the Tyrolean Alps https://aprsota.org/OE7BOE/ops/2.

I’ve now got a stats page up and running at https://aprsota.org/stats so everyone can see the usage of the service. We should pass 500 QSOs made using APRS OTA sometime later today, and have hams in 14 countries who have participated.

When you read his radiograms you can see this is fresh work. I predict APRS OTA will become another popular way to use radio and technology. It looks like it is off to a great start.

5. The Surprising Family Tree of Yahoo! Groups

If you’re a ham who misses the old Yahoo! Groups, here’s a piece of trivia that might reframe things: the person who built the service you’re pining for is the same person who built the one a lot of us use now.

Groups.io’s founder, Mark Fletcher, didn’t start with Yahoo! Groups — he started with a service called ONElist back in 1998, a free mailing-list host built for exactly the kind of niche system hams have always relied on. ONElist soon merged with a competitor called eGroups, and in June 2000 Yahoo! bought the combined company and rebranded it as Yahoo! Groups.

For a while it thrived. But Yahoo! management largely stopped investing in it. Over the next fifteen-plus years, the platform calcified under their watch: clunky moderation tools, a dated interface, and eventually real spam and security problems that group owners had no good way to address. Fletcher, watching from the outside as the company let his creation rot, eventually decided to build the successor himself. Groups.io launched in beta on September 23, 2014 — six years before Yahoo! finally pulled the plug on Groups on December 15, 2020.

That timing turned out to matter a lot for amateur radio. When the Yahoo! Groups shutdown was announced, hundreds of ham-related mailing lists — build groups, DX nets, kit-support forums, digital mode communities — suddenly needed somewhere to go, fast, with their years of archived messages intact. Groups.io was ready and purpose-built to catch them, and hams migrated in numbers well out of proportion to the general population of orphaned Yahoo! Groups. Today, ham radio groups punch way above their weight on the platform. By one count, 10 of Groups.io’s top 40 largest groups (out of roughly 100,000 total) are amateur radio communities, with the Softrock40 group alone landing at #4 overall with over 8,000 members, trailing only a couple of non-radio giants and IBM’s internal list. YouTuber Callum, better known as DXCommander, is often credited with giving the migration wave an extra push by publicly encouraging hold-out groups to make the jump.

We are living with the legacy of Yahoo! Groups. It didn’t vanish when Yahoo! finally killed the service in 2020. Instead, it moved, largely intact, onto Groups.io, which is why the platform now provides such outsized support to the amateur radio community specifically. The free, low-friction, member-run model that made Yahoo! Groups worth missing in the first place is exactly what its original builder set out to preserve and protect from further neglect when he built its successor.

If you’re active in a ham radio group on Groups.io today, you are standing on infrastructure with a direct lineage back to a scrappy 1998 mailing-list startup — one that Yahoo! bought, neglected for two decades, and finally killed, only for its original builder to come back and keep it going for communities like ours.

6. Old IEEE Articles on Amateur Radio & Tech

It’s been far too long since I dove into the past offerings of IEEE Spectrum. I did that this week, harvesting a handful of interesting titles for you to consider. Maybe one will spark a project idea.

• The Most Hackable Handheld Ham Radio Yet — March 27, 2024.

• Detect Quakes With “Raspberry Shakes” — September 27, 2023.

• Detect Solar Flares and Gamma-Ray Bursts for Less Than $100 — January 19, 2022.

• Hacking Ham Radio for Texting — November 15, 2021. This is the one that piqued my interest, because instead of two chips, I could probably use a single Arduino Uno Q to run it. It would cut the two-chip serial bridge in the original design down to one board's built-in RPC, gain Wi-Fi for APRS-IS gateway access, and get real Linux tooling for the UI/storage side. The tradeoffs would be battery life, needing to either port or replace MicroAPRS, and building a radio audio interface.

7. Gadgets

Yaesu VX-6R charging

I bought an $11 USB charging cable for my Yaesu VX-6R handheld radio. A side benefit: it also fits my Yaesu FT-70D handheld. I am finding that it works fine to charge the FT-70D battery but conversely, not with the VX-6R. I get a “NO BAT” message on the VX-6R’s screen when I try to charge with the USB cable. The radio operates as if it is on external power when I turn it on with the cable connected. When I disconnect the cable and try to turn on the radio: nothing.

USB Charger Cable for Yaesu Radio CD41 CD47 CD15A CD26 (this is an affiliate link)

So I’ve ordered a fresh battery and high-capacity charger, and neither are original Yaesu products. Fingers crossed on this purchase.

It may be that my original battery sat fully discharged too long and now the radio doesn’t even see it when it is connected. I’m guessing this might be the case. Perhaps fully charging it with the hi-cap charger will work. If not, I’ll still have a new battery.

Tri-Band Yaesu VX-6R Submersible Amateur Ham Radio Transceiver (144/222/440) (this is an affiliate link)

The VX-6R is a tri-band analog FM transceiver. The 220 MHz band operates at 1.5 watts out instead of the full 5 watts out on 70 cm and 2 meters. In the U.S. market, it comes with NOAA weather channels and maritime channels. But what I like most about the VX-6R is how it feels in my hand. It is a compact radio that fits my medium-sized hands just right. The case has enough texture to feel secure in my grip. And since I live in a place with a lot of winter rain, the IPX7 rating gives me some comfort when I carry this radio on my journeys.

8. Short Stack from the Interwebs

The Short Stack from the Interwebs, pulled from the aggregated feeds on EtherHam (etherham.com/feeds/), items from August 13–19.

SDR & Signal Hacking

• KrakenSDR Tested as a GNSS Jammer and Spoofer Localizer — RTL-SDR Blog — Putting the 5-channel coherent SDR to work finding the source of GPS jamming and spoofing.

• Carshepherd: An Android RTL-SDR App For the Early Awareness of Nearby Emergency-Service Vehicles — RTL-SDR Blog — A pre-release Android app that pairs an RTL-SDR dongle with your phone to flag nearby police/fire/EMS traffic.

• Detecting Dark Matter’s Mark with an RTL-SDR Based DIY Radio Telescope — RTL-SDR Blog — An IEEE Spectrum writeup on using an RTL-SDR, LNA, and homebrew horn antenna to measure the galaxy’s hydrogen line.

• VibeSDR Jr: Apple Watch RTL-SDR, KiwiSDR, UberSDR Client now Available — RTL-SDR Blog — The AI-vibecoded SDR client shrinks down to run on your wrist.

• More Information about the FrameRF Technical Surveillance Counter-Measures Platform — RTL-SDR Blog — A deeper technical follow-up on the Italian-built TSCM platform for bug-sweeping.

• AntSDR T510 Pre-launch: A 1 MHz to 6 GHz SDR with 2 GHz Bandwidth and a Built-In NVIDIA Jetson — RTL-SDR Blog — A high-end SDR platform pairing an AMD Zynq RFSoC with an onboard Jetson for AI-assisted signal work.

Digital Modes & Mesh

• Building an Off-Grid Meshcore Network, One Node at a Time — QRPer — A QRP-flavored look at building out a Meshcore network on sub-1W, 900 MHz nodes.

• LoRa APRS iGate V4.0.0: New WebUI, Live Stations Map, and Channel Activity Detection for ESP32 Digipeaters — Hamradio.my — A major update bringing a Bootstrap WebUI and live Leaflet station map to the ESP32 LoRa APRS iGate project.

• qFT8 Review: Is This the Best FT8 Android App for Portable Ham Radio? — Radio Hobbyist — Running FT8 from a park or summit without hauling a laptop.

• vBand USB Adapter vs CW Hotline as an Adapter vs Vail Adapter — With Varying Frequency — A hands-on comparison of internet-CW hardware adapters, including notes on latency while traveling.

• Ham Radio and Digital Data Modes: How Low-Power Signals Can Communicate When Voice Cannot — Amateur Radio Today — A primer on why digital modes keep working when voice comms break down.

Gear, Builds & Reviews

• AnyTone AT-779UV with UV-72 Antenna and Cable Review: A Compact 20-Watt VHF/UHF Mobile Radio — Amateur Radio Today — A mobile transceiver review aimed at operators who want more than a typical HT but don’t need a full base rig.

• A Basic Elecraft KX2 Setup & Orientation Video — QRPer — A 22-minute, no-frills walkthrough for getting a new KX2 up and running.

• CYD Ham Dashboard: Turn a $10 ESP32 Cheap Yellow Display into a Touchscreen Ham Radio Shack Monitor — Hamradio.my — A cheap ESP32 display turned standalone shack monitor with greyline, propagation, and DX spots.

• QMX QRP – It works! — With Varying Frequency — Getting the feature-packed QRP Labs QMX up and running after a firmware update.

• K9ZW 630m Station Build – a Few Steps Closer — With Varying Frequency — Sourcing the last cables, connectors, and adapters for a 630m station build.

• Time for antenna work. — Amateur Radio Weekly — Notes from replacing a radial plate on a Hustler 4BTV vertical.

• A Few Words from Momobeam about the Mechanical Design of Its HF Directional Antennas — On All Bands — A look at the mechanical engineering behind Momobeam’s HF beams, spotted at Hamvention.

• Geeky Gift Building – Sweeping radar style ADS-B traffic display — With Varying Frequency — A 3D-printed, radar-sweep-style ADS-B display built as a gift.

POTA & SOTA Field Reports

• Ham Radio Portable Operating Insights: Transitioning from a POTA Activator to Hunter — On All Bands — Lessons learned after years of activating parks, now applied to hunting instead.

• W8TMI: QRP Along the North Shore of Lake Superior — QRPer — A Michigan Upper Peninsula activation report from a self-described “frequent flyer” of the Mackinac Bridge.

• QRP Along the River: A POTA Activation along the Tweed Estuary — QRPer — An early-morning coffee-fueled activation on the Scottish coast.

• KB2PIZ: A Rough Start Turns Into an Easy POTA Activation — QRPer — A shaky beginning that turned into a smooth three-hour activation before work.

• GB1DOG Active in 26 — Ham Radio Operator M0YKS — A special-event station making noise across HF and satellite bands through the month.

Shortwave & Listening

• C.Crane Interview: Radio During Hurricane Helene — The SWLing Post — A conversation with C. Crane about the role radio played in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

• The New XHDATA D-226/D-228 DSP Shortwave/AM/FM/WX Portable — The SWLing Post — XHDATA is prepping two new portables, the D-228 and D-226, with NOAA weather radio built in.

• A Glimpse of Korean War Clandestine Radio in Operation Chromite — The SWLing Post — A reader spots wartime clandestine radio work in a charity-shop movie find.

• The Morrow CM-1 receiver – A relic of the cold war’s effect on amateur radio — KA7OEI — A deep dive on a CONELRAD monitor receiver born of Cold War civil defense requirements.

• Why is Lahti on the Dial of the Receiver? Where is Lahti? — Solder Smoke — Bill Meara chases down an unfamiliar city name printed on an old receiver dial.

DX, Contests, Satellites & Awards

• ANS-228 AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins — AmSat — This week’s bulletin covers the call for AMSAT Space Symposium presentations and a CubeSatSim feature in QST.

• AMSAT Canada Begins Offering Membership Options — Amateur Radio Daily — AMSAT-CA opens up membership to help fund its support of amateur radio in space.

• Happy 50th Anniversary to the Araucaria DX Group! — On All Bands — A tip of the hat to one of DXing’s most accomplished contesting organizations.

• Kopernik Observatory Seeks Amateur Radio Operators to Track August 19 Balloon Flight — ARRL News — An APRS- and SSTV-equipped educational balloon needs trackers across the northeast.

• ARISS Receives Challenger-7 Recognition — ARRL News — Amateur Radio on the International Space Station picks up a national honor.

• The ARRL Solar Update — ARRL News — This week’s propagation and solar activity forecast from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

• Contesting 101: Building a Workbench & Basic Ham Radio Troubleshooting Techniques — On All Bands — A veteran contester’s series continues with workbench setup and troubleshooting basics.

• CHOTA 2026: Churches and Chapels on the Air — Amateur Radio Daily — This year’s Churches and Chapels on the Air event is set for September 12.

Podcasts, Community & Events

• AmateurLogic 220: It’s Going To Get Meshy — Amateur Radio Weekly — This episode covers mesh networking experiments, including a solar-powered mesh node build.

• Amateur Radio Weekly – Issue 434 — Amateur Radio Weekly — This week’s roundup, including a PDF/CSV FCC “Call Book” for low-bandwidth QSO chasing.

• LHS Episode #626: The Weekender CXLII — Amateur Radio Weekly — Linux in the Ham Shack’s latest weekend-project roundup.

• SolderSmoke Podcast 266: TROUBLESHOOTING! Test Gear, LA6NCA, ZIA Rig, Australia, Nuvistors, 75 AM, MAILBAG — Solder Smoke — The latest episode digs into test gear and troubleshooting war stories.

• Looking Back at Ham Radio Friedrichshafen 2026 — On All Bands — A recap from an exchange student’s visit to the biggest ham radio show in Europe.

• Recent SKs: NU2J, K3SHD, K7AJM — KB6NU — Remembering three hams who shared a passion for the hobby.

Advocacy, Licensing & Growing the Hobby

• 10-Year-Old Receives Ham License and More — ARRL News — A brand-new young Technician-class ham in Arizona gets a warm welcome to the hobby.

• Making hams of hackers — KB6NU — A retired ham’s ARDC-funded mission to turn hackers into licensed operators.

• 9/11 ‘We Do Remember’ Special Event Returns for 6th Year — Amateur Radio Daily — The Alabama Contest Group’s K4 America special event returns for its sixth year.

Software & Apps Roundup

• 9M2PJU HamClock Installer: Space Weather, VOACAP Propagation, and Shack Automation Dashboard — Hamradio.my — A modernized HamClock distribution with native OHB backend integration and multi-arch Docker support.

• Open Hamclock Backend (OHB): Keeping Thousands of HamClocks Alive with Open Source Infrastructure — Hamradio.my — A community-run replacement for the sunsetting Clear Sky Institute backend that keeps HamClocks worldwide running.

• Android SSTV Alarm: The Open-Source Ham Radio Alarm Clock That Forces You to Decode Slow-Scan Television to Wake Up — Hamradio.my — An alarm clock that won’t stop until you’ve decoded an SSTV image.

• EmComm Tools OS Community Edition: The Ultimate Turnkey Linux Distribution for Off-Grid Ham Radio and Tactical Cyberdecks — Hamradio.my — A technical breakdown of the open-source Linux platform built for off-grid emcomm.

• DXLens: An iOS App Combining Shortwave Schedules, Propagation Data and Public SDRs — RTL-SDR Blog — A new iPad/iPhone app for listening to remote SDR receivers alongside schedules and propagation data.

Linux, Homelab & Self-Hosting

• The best way to run Docker on Proxmox depends entirely on your hardware and use-case, and it took me years to realize that — XDA Developers — Docker-on-Proxmox isn’t a one-size-fits-all decision, and this breaks down when to use which approach.

• I wish I’d learned these 5 simple Proxmox skills sooner — How-To Geek — A little practice up front that could have saved much bigger headaches later.

• Luckfox Lyra PLC – A Linux-based Rockchip RK3506B industrial controller with RS232, RS422, RS485, CAN bus, and relays — CNX Software — A Linux-based PLC with the kind of I/O that suits remote station and sensor automation.

• Google Chrome is now available for Arm Linux. We tested it on a Raspberry Pi 5 — CNX Software — Chrome finally lands officially on 64-bit Arm Linux, tested on Pi OS.

• Using the Khadas Mind Graphics 2 (NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti USB4 eGPU) on Ubuntu 26.04 — CNX Software — Getting a USB4 eGPU dock working cleanly on Ubuntu.

• Waveshare PiRack-M6F 6-node rack unit for Raspberry Pi 4/5 brings all ports to the front — CNX Software — A 2U rack-mount cluster kit for up to six Pi 4/5 boards.

• I finally self-hosted my passwords, and it’s simpler than I expected — XDA Developers — Moving off a cloud password manager and onto Vaultwarden.

• Why CachyOS is the better Arch-based distro if you’re not gaming 24/7 — How-To Geek — A case for CachyOS as a daily-driver Arch distro beyond its gaming-performance reputation.

• Pine64 hits pause on Linux devices due to RAM and eMMC shortage/high prices — CNX Software — The ongoing memory crunch forces Pine64 to pause new Linux hardware.

• Why Most Linux Users Avoid Flatpak: The Honest Technical Case Against Universal Packaging — Hamradio.my — A technically grounded look at Flatpak’s disk bloat, sandbox escapes, and stale dependencies.

• USBridge-KVM 2.0 – An open-source IP-KVM with BIOS access over SSH, OCR, and AI support — CNX Software — A compact open-source IP-KVM for remote management of servers and PCs, including systems that won’t boot.

9. QRT: End Transmission

I’m very curious how the DMR radio will work. So far, I’ve been pleased with the Retevis RT3S DMR handheld. Discovering the differences between it and the Radioddity GD-77 radio was enlightening and helpful. I’m happy I was able to map important key combinations this week.

And if DMR traffic in my neck of the woods proves interesting, I might start looking for a mobile rig to carry in the pickup truck. The PNWDigital group has a good number of DMR repeaters in the region so I would have reasonable coverage most of the places I regularly travel to and from.

On the tech and software side of the house, I’m looking at notifier systems like Pushover and Pushbullet. It would be convenient to develop a stack of circumstances that trigger automatic notifications pushed to my smartphone. My tech stack is deep enough at the house that it’s actually hard to notice if something has gone offline or if the IP address changed because the upstream provider made changes. I have a notifier set up for some websites but those “down” notices come through as emails, meaning they get swamped by all the other emails I receive. For the sites I manage, getting those notices by SMS or pushed to an app would be helpful.

And that’s it from the great Pacific Northwe(s)t, where we are actually in a drought and experiencing a record number of wildfires. I hope all who have been affected get the help they need to recover from these disasters.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

Windows

Last week it was a Debian 13 update with security vulnerabilities plugged. This week, it’s Windows: Microsoft Plugs Nearly 400 Security Holes. One of the most fundamental ways to protect yourself is to keep your computer updated.

August 11, 2026: Microsoft today released updates to remedy at least 398 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and supported software, including one weakness that is already being actively exploited and two others that were publicly detailed prior to today.

HamClock OHB

If the version number on your HamClock OHB display is red, an update is available. Click that red version number and follow the prompts to upgrade. Nice additions since I last upgraded:

• An email icon that presents a link to the OHB status page. Useful.

• An airplane icon that opens an ADSB flight tracker for your location. Interesting.

• A blue wind icon that opens the Windy.com website.

Screens are presented as a collage below because inserting them all here would take up too much space:

1. QRV: Are You Ready?

It’s been a rather frustrating week. Usually, I’m gleeful when I find problems to fix. This week, I just wanted things to work…but they didn’t. Resolving issues this week dramatically diluted my writing time. That I do find frustrating.

And I’ll gripe a little bit (again) about Claude’s Sonnet 5 model because it jumps to conclusions. That ended up costing me several hours of time this week as I chased a couple of long, involved issues down dark and twisty rabbit holes, when time was in short supply. The Opus 5 model does much better but it also burns through my credits much faster. The problem here is really twofold: I don’t know Sonnet is going to make mistakes until it makes them, and I’d rather not spend the money on Opus if I don’t have to.

Huh. Here I am complaining about AI. I wonder if this is going to become the new normal on repeaters. You know the drill: what’s the weather, what equipment are you running, how is your health, and now, what have you been doing with AI?

I have to say, though: it is so very easy to overlook all the great help now available to me through the many AI engines available. I have far more successes than difficult detours. It feels a tiny bit uncomfortable to say this plainly, but I will: at this moment in time, I am grateful for AI.

2. New on EtherHam

• Writing EtherHam Content: Untangling the Ball of Yarn — Meetings (and radio nets) rarely move in a straight line. Someone circles back to a point you thought was closed thirty minutes ago, and a strict outline can’t keep up. Thirty years of facilitating meetings taught me why; mind mapping taught me how to actually capture it. This piece walks through that shift — from a hallway conversation with a frustrated note-taker decades ago to the technique I still use today, turning a tangled ball of yarn of ideas into the straightened, sequential pieces you read on EtherHam.

• LoRa APRS: Part 3 — A T-Deck Plus Tracker, Offline Maps, and a Long Detour Through OpenStreetMap’s Terms of Service — A LilyGo T-Deck Plus running LoRa APRS will render an offline vector map of the terrain you’re standing in, hold threaded APRS conversations, and pass Winlink email — none of which a plain tracker does. Getting there took most of a day and five stacked failures, each one hiding the next: a wiki that contradicts the firmware it documents; an SD card in the wrong filesystem; 1,793 downloaded map tiles that turned out to be OpenStreetMap’s “Access blocked” graphic saved 1,793 times; a tile generator that had to be compiled from source inside Linux; and — after all of that — a map that had been working the whole time but wouldn’t render until I pressed the zoom button three more times. Somewhere in the middle, the tracker started reporting itself in the Southern Ocean while its own screen showed the correct coordinates. If you just want something that beacons your position, buy a T-Echo and enjoy long battery life. If you want the map and the messaging, here’s the whole path with the wrong turns left in, because the wrong turns are the part worth reading.

• Weekly Report: August 13, 2026 — Catch up on band conditions, digital radio news, and the Groups.io digest.

3. New: EtherHam Community Space

Over the years, the conversations around the intersection of amateur radio and technology have grown incredibly rich. While the newsletter is a great way to share these concepts, I want to give us a dedicated space to hold deeper, multi-sided discussions.

Today, I am excited to officially launch the EtherHam Groups.io Community.

This is our new clubhouse on the web—a text-based space where you can ask technical questions, share project updates, discuss technology integration, shape future Random Wire and EtherHam topics, and connect directly with other subscribers.

⚠️ A Note on Capacity (First-Come, First-Served)

Because we are launching on a lean, independent infrastructure, space is strictly limited to the first 100 members.

To protect our space from automated bots, spam, and bad actors, membership requires manual approval. We are prioritizing licensed radio amateurs, though tech-minded enthusiasts are welcome too.

How to Secure Your Spot:

1. Click here to visit the group homepage: groups.io

2. Click the Apply For Membership button.

3. You will receive an automated email asking for your amateur radio callsign (or an explanation of why you want to participate).

4. Reply to that email immediately to lock in your application for review.

Once we hit our 100-member cap, the doors will close while we settle into this new space. If you want to help shape the foundation of the EtherHam community from day one, please submit your application today.

See you in the ether,

Tom KJ7T
Editor, Random Wire
www.randomwire.us

4. IP400: The Story Behind This Important Project

I’m sure you’ve noticed the changes over time on VHF/UHF repeaters: coordinated frequencies sitting quiet, hardware from the 1990s doing the same voice relay job it’s always done, and a shrinking pool of operators who show up to keep it maintained. For years, my friend Steve Stroh N8GNJ has been touting a project called IP400, and for good reason. A recent section of his Zero Retries newsletter will likely convince you that IP400 really is an exciting initiative in our amateur radio hobby. Why? Because he’s right.

But where did IP400 come from? It traces back to a longtime radio amateur, Martin Alcock VE6VH — who spent years designing commercial broadband wireless systems before focusing that experience toward amateur radio. Alcock looked at what already existed — AREDN, HamWAN, New Packet Radio — and noticed they all shared the same limitation: they either ran on license-exempt spectrum with real power restrictions, or they came with enough administrative overhead that they never spread much beyond a dedicated core of builders. What amateur radio didn’t have, in his view, was a data and mesh networking system built from scratch for the hobby, on ham bands, without those constraints. That observation became IP400, developed under the Alberta Digital Radio Communications Society (ADRCS), the group Alcock helped found in 2022 and where he’s been able to line up grant funding — including a 2025 ARDC grant — to keep development moving.

As the project has developed, it became clear that IP400 is not trying to replace DMR, D-STAR, C4FM, or your local FM repeater. Instead, it sits next to them. IP400 is additive to our hobby, not subtractive. The hardware — a controller board called the AMNC — talks to a radio you already own and adds a data layer compatible with AX.25 KISS framing, with an eye toward working alongside Winlink, AllStarLink-linked repeaters, and eventually AREDN’s mesh network. The goal is to give existing infrastructure a reason to be upgraded rather than replaced.

What’s running today rides on ordinary FM audio, but that’s really just the first step. Alcock’s longer-term plan involves dedicated software-defined radios with a direct I/Q interface, aimed at speeds well beyond what’s possible when squeezing data through a mic jack. Where that lands, and how fast, is exactly the kind of thing Steve is covering well.

I think there’s another reason for this, one that’s a little harder to say out loud: a lot of newer hams just aren’t as focused on voice communications as the hams who came before them. These new hams grew up in a data-driven, IP-enabled world, and IP400 speaks that language. I’d bet this brings a fair number of tech-fluent people into the hobby who might not have bothered otherwise.

In my view, IP400 is one of the most exciting and fundamental developments in amateur radio today. I’ve not covered it in the Random Wire newsletter because Steve does such an outstanding job of keeping his subscribers updated on IP400. This project is worth digging into, getting excited about, and supporting. IP400 may well be one of the most important technology improvements we’ll see in amateur radio.

For more, I suggest following this topic in the Zero Retries newsletter where it is sure to be very well covered by the ZR team.

5. Curious About 44Net?

Here is your chance to learn about 44Net and about John Burwell KI5QKX, on Eric Guth’s great podcast series, QSO Today, in Episode 539.

John Burwell, KI5QKX, found his way into amateur radio through 44Net, the Class A public IP address space set aside for amateur radio almost 50 years ago, now managed by ARDC. John’s interest in connecting devices over the Internet led him to this remarkable ham radio resource. In this interview, we go deep into IP addressing and networking, opening the door to new ways licensed amateurs can learn, experiment, and build Internet-connected projects. KI5QKX is my QSO Today.

6. QSO One 3.8.5 — Your Update Has Arrived

3.8.5 is live for beta testers, and this one is almost entirely about audio. From the announcement:

The mic gain scale actually works now, a real 0 to 100 instead of everything living in the bottom sliver. There is a new audio test for every network, you talk, it meters you, and it grades you hot, good, or quiet while you adjust. And the clever part, once the app has heard enough stations on a network, it grades you against how that network actually sounds, not against a number from a lab. Every network also gets transmit protection now so you cannot blow anyones ears off, Windows choppy audio got a real fix, and Bluetooth PTT buttons finally respect your PTT mode setting.

Socials:

• Discord: https://discord.gg/4N6Wc3fsEv

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1483876283506992

• Reddit- https://www.reddit.com/r/QSOone/

It’s good to see this project moving forward.

7. POTA Heil Headset

I’ll just say this here: this new headset from Heil isn’t just for Parks On The Air, but it’s a great choice for POTA. From Michael Martens KB9VBR:

8. Waiting on Two Radios: DMR & M17

Retevis RT3S DMR Radio

I ordered this a few weeks ago:

RT3S Dual Band DMR Radio Non-GPS/Built-in GPS

Why? Because I want to try OpenGD77 as the codeplug editor, and OpenGD77 says the RT3S is compatible. In fact, there are plenty of blog posts and reviews available on this exact pairing. (I’m not hyperlinking this radio here because I’ve not received or reviewed it yet.)

I got interested in this after a subscriber asked me how to get into DMR at a reasonable cost. Of course, I do like my AnyTone 878 radio very much, but that’s a more premium option than a $100 radio and free CPS software.

I promised a part two on DMR that I’ve been picturing as a how-to on developing your own codeplug. The RT3S with OpenGD77 is going to fit right into that slot. I’m looking forward to getting this working and sharing the journey with you.

A few days ago, the RT3S radio was in Chicago. Wednesday, I received the extra bits: a speaker-microphone, antenna, and spare battery. Maybe the RT3S will arrive in time for initial impressions…but probably not.

Retevis C62 Dual-band Radio…for M17

And then I ordered another radio from Retevis:

Retevis C62 UV Dual Band AI Noise Reduction 5W Long Range Durable Business Two Way Radio

What comes up on that page is a 6-pack of radios. I ordered the single radio for $55.

Then I got an email: “We noticed that you purchased the (EU version) radios. To avoid any issues, would you like us to change your order to the US version[gmrs] instead?”

I paused and thought for a few minutes about this, then replied: no. The experimental work being done by the M17 Project with the C62 is happening — I believe — in Europe, so perhaps I should stick with that version. We’ll see, of course, if it works once it gets here and I load OpenRTX on it. If it works I’ll have an M17 handheld for $55! If it doesn’t work, I’ll have another radio for the unused radio bin.

9. APRS OTA

I’ve not tried this yet, but APRS OTA does sound interesting:

APRS OTA combines the vibe of a POTA activation with a native APRS messaging bot and a website to show what’s happening. Find an operator on the air, send one message and a position report to work them, and your contact is logged, mapped, and scored here as it happens.

A bot serves as a relay and automatically logs contacts:

APRS OTA is an activity and a bot…the OTA bot relays the exchange and logs every contact as it happens. There is nothing to install and no account to create: if you can send an APRS message, you are already in.

It’s a three-part system, with a host, a bot, and chasers.

Intrigued? Visit https://aprsota.org/ for more. If you try it, let me know what it’s like!

10. And Then I Had an APRS Messaging Moment

I was driving to get my morning coffee, watching carefully for deer. Sure enough, I had to hit the brakes so a young buck with velvet antlers could bound across the road. I’ve learned to look where the deer came from, too, and saw a doe and fawn turn back into the bushes. It was at that moment that I saw my APRS radio and a thought completely unrelated to wildlife popped into my mind.

I’ll write this up in long form and post it to EtherHam.com, but my EtherHam website is offline at the moment due to a major power loss at the web host’s Phoenix data center. No word on when services will be restored (and I hope “power loss” is not code talk for “fire in the data center” because that would be very bad).

What was that APRS thought? I wondered if I could send an APRS message from APRSdroid (I’m running the 9M2PJU Mod version) to my LoRa APRS tracker. Surely that could not work, because one system flows over cellular data and the other is LoRa radio. But the aha moment for me was realizing that both probably pass messages via APRS-IS. So I tested this by sending a message from my phone (KJ7T-5) to my tracker (KJ7T-3).

I was surprised and delighted to find this worked perfectly. Replying from the tracker to the phone also worked, so APRS messaging works in both directions.

Let me just pause and sit with that for a moment, because it was a revelation to me. We get pretty locked in about whether we’re working over RF or cell or satellite or wifi or whatever. Hung up on this, even. Lost in those details is the realization that APRS shares a common backbone: APRS-IS.

APRS-IS stands for the APRS Internet System, and it’s the quiet piece of infrastructure that ties every flavor of APRS together. Stations riding RF — my LoRa tracker included — reach it through something called an IGate: a small relay station, often nothing more than a radio and a cheap computer in someone’s attic (or in my case, the garage), that listens to local radio traffic and forwards it onto the internet. Apps like APRSdroid skip the radio step entirely and log straight into APRS-IS over cellular data.

Once a packet lands on APRS-IS, its origin stops mattering. It’s all just APRS-IS traffic from that point on — it can get relayed back out over RF somewhere else, or handed off to a site like aprs.fi to show up on a map. That’s what clicked for me on the drive: my phone and my tracker aren’t two separate systems that happen to talk to each other. They’re two different doors into the same room.

And this is the secret sauce that makes APRS such a powerful tool: different radios, different frequencies, different modes, different mechanisms can all communicate cleanly because they all use the same pipeline behind the scenes.

There is more to this test, because I also tried Winlink between my laptop and my APRSdroid app. That test yielded a surprising-but-educational result I’ll share once EtherHam.com comes back up.

Finally, in a “why not?” moment, I tried checking in to #APRSThursday from the tracker (LoRa APRS as KJ7T-3) and from APRSdroid (KJ7T-5). Unfortunately, both ANSRVR and APRSPH did not respond to messages or commands. I hope the #APRSThursday folks get that fixed.

11. Short Stack from the Interwebs

Well, with EtherHam.com offline, I had to resort to a special mega feed URL which fortunately worked. The following Short Stack items were harvested from this week’s aggregated ham radio feed, covering items from August 5–13, 2026.

SDR & Signal Hacking

• Product Spotlight: A Look at the KiwiSDR2 Receiver (Video) — OnAllBands — A walkthrough of the standalone KiwiSDR2, covering 10 kHz to 30 MHz with nothing more required than a computer and internet connection to get going.

• Demod: A New iOS/iPadOS App for Exploring Remote Receivers — The SWLing Post — A new app connecting to KiwiSDR, SpyServer, and rtl_tcp servers with a built-in directory of public receivers baked in.

• MagicSDR – IOS interface to RTLSDR version 26.04 released — Mac Ham Radio — A plug-in-architecture panadapter/waterfall app for RTL-SDR dongles, covering AM/SSB/CW/NFM/WFM demodulation from an iPhone or iPad.

• Using a 5 inch Naval Gun Mount as a Rotor and Being Asked by NASA to Listen for Artemis — SolderSmoke Daily News — Pete N0OY’s station includes a repurposed naval gun mount as an antenna rotor and a 10 GHz rainscatter contact spanning 91 miles — genuinely one of the wilder homebrew station tours out there.

• Checking your Own Signal on FlexRadio — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — A quick how-to on using FlexRadio’s built-in features to self-monitor your transmitted signal.

Digital Modes & Mesh

• Digital Voice over HF with FreeDV Information from Kirk KN6UMV — MichiganOne DMR Tech Net — Follow-up notes from a net discussion on FreeDV, with pointers on where Maidenhead grid squares fit into the picture beyond just contesting.

• DX Explorer and the Thinknode Meshcore M1 transceiver — Roger G3XBM’s (Mainly) Amateur Radio Blog — A rundown of a new video on the Thinknode M1 LoRa transceiver, with a reminder that Meshcore vs. Meshtastic popularity varies a lot by region.

• QSO One 3.8.5 – Getting closer! Your update has arrived — MichiganOne DMR Tech Net — A beta release focused almost entirely on audio fixes, including a mic gain scale that finally behaves like a real 0–10 range.

• SliceLogger — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — W4TME’s logging tool gets a rebrand and a fresh v1.0.0.0 general release on GitHub.

• Digital Mobile Radio Market Size to Hit USD 16.90 Billion by 2032 — MichiganOne DMR Tech Net — An industry market report pegs U.S. DMR growth at a 12.81% CAGR through 2032, largely driven by public-safety adoption rather than the hobby side.

• Travel Internet CW — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — A cautionary field report: internet CW over shipboard wifi via a vBand adapter proved unusably laggy, and a backup Vail Adapter hit its own snag mid-trip.

Gear, Builds & Reviews

• Pebble HF ordered — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — The Pebble HF kit opened for purchase this week, and K9ZW put in his order.

• New Product Spotlight: Hamplus AS-603WL Black Automatic Remote HF + VHF 6 x 3 Antenna Switch — OnAllBands — A look at the Brazilian-made Hamplus remote antenna switch from Celso PP5CFS and Marcus PP5MS.

• Mark’s First Impressions of the PK MW Loop — The SWLing Post — A Scotland-based listener’s first impressions of Paul Karlstrand’s PK Loop magnetic loop antenna, ordered after a chance conversation while traveling in Greece.

• QMX (not QMX+) is becoming a firm favourite — Roger G3XBM’s (Mainly) Amateur Radio Blog — A nod to QRP Labs’ tiny QMX rig, which keeps showing up as a favorite in the field despite its small footprint.

• Ford F-150 Radio Install – VGC N7600 — Above Average Terrain — Bob K0NR traded in his 2013 F-150 for a 2025 model and walks through installing a mobile rig in the new truck.

• Rob spots a rare Hygain Galaxy R-1530 on eBay — The SWLing Post — A vintage-radio spotting: a Hygain Galaxy R-1530 listed “for parts or not working” at $749.95 — buyer beware, no returns accepted.

• Book Review: VHF, Summits, and More – Having Fun with Ham Radio by Bob Witte K0NR — Q R P e r — A guest review from Jock Elliott (KB2GOM), reflecting on nearly 40 years in the hobby since his Novice days.

• Margaret - A New SOTA Machine — N1CLC — An extensive build log on outfitting a new Subaru Outback Wilderness for SOTA work: mobile radio install, dedicated power distribution, a Starlink Mini, and a full house battery/solar system.

• Silly me, did not take inventory on order arrival woes — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — A DigiKey order for a touch-paddle project turned up short a hundred MOSFETs, discovered only after months of sitting unopened.

POTA & SOTA Field Reports

• The Battle of the Bands: Activation of Saint Stanislaus Conservation Area US-10954 — Q R P e r — Mark (KB2PIZ) turns an 8-minute detour near the St. Louis airport into a quick POTA activation between flight legs.

• Meeting Friends on the Summit: A Special SOTA Activation at North Berwick Law — Q R P e r — Thomas K4SWL meets up with several UK-based ham friends for a SOTA activation during a trip to southeastern Scotland.

• Hunting Fossils and POTA Contacts on Cocklawburn Beach in Beautiful Northumberland — Q R P e r — A coastal POTA outing combining fossil hunting with contacts from a KX2 and a Packtenna random wire antenna.

• KK6IK: Summer Mornings, Iced Coffee & QRP — Q R P e r — Scott Nacey weighs the Elecraft KH1 against the KX2 for travel-friendly POTA operating during a Rhode Island visit.

• Parks on the Air (POTA) — Lincoln County Amateur Radio Club — The club has set up a POTA activation account under its call sign, aiming to give newer members an easy way to get started.

Shortwave & Listening

• A Glimpse of Korean War Clandestine Radio in Operation Chromite — The SWLing Post — A reader spots radio gear featured in a Korean production about the Incheon landings, starring Liam Neeson as General MacArthur.

• Radio Bonaire 1530: A Mediumwave Station Built for Emergencies — The SWLing Post — A new off-grid, continuously broadcasting AM station on Bonaire, purpose-built to keep residents and visitors informed during emergencies.

• Texas Radio Shortwave: Schedule for September & October 2026 — The SWLing Post — Updated broadcast schedules for the fall season on Texas Radio Shortwave via WRMI.

• Carlos’ Illustrated Radio Listening Report and Recordings (August 1 – 8, 2026) — The SWLing Post — Political cartoonist Carlos Latuff’s latest illustrated shortwave report explores Javier Milei’s Argentina through the airwaves.

• The Voice of Independent Myanmar: A new shortwave broadcast providing news to Myanmar — The SWLing Post — A weekly independent news broadcast to Myanmar, launched as a joint effort between Mizzima and Reporters Without Borders.

• Alan Roe’s A-26 Season Guide to Music on Shortwave (version 4.0) — The SWLing Post — A free, downloadable PDF guide to music programming across the shortwave dial, plus companion single-page schedule grids for major broadcasters.

• Radio Waves: Georgia LPFM Wants More Power, Radio Bulgaria QSL #8, Preserving Radio Mogadishu, Shortwave HQ Updates, and Joining the CIDX — The SWLing Post — This week’s grab-bag of reader-submitted radio news, spanning LPFM power requests to archival efforts for Radio Mogadishu.

• “Holocaust” 1978 TV Mini Series Underground Radios – Warsaw Ghetto — The SWLing Post — Screenshots of an underground receiver as depicted in the 1978 miniseries “Holocaust,” starring Meryl Streep and James Woods.

• The Very Last New Commercial AM Radio Station in the USA: Here’s What We Should Do Next — Off Grid Ham — A commentary piece on the twilight of commercial AM broadcasting and where the band goes from here.

• Sunshine and shortwave — The SWLing Post — This week’s Imaginary Stations schedule, including WHFM – Herman’s Radio and Record Room airing on WRMI.

DX, Contests, Satellites & Awards

• Happy 50th Anniversary to the Araucaria DX Group! — OnAllBands — A congratulatory nod to one of amateur radio’s most accomplished DXing and contesting organizations on its 50th year.

• DX Engineering Supports the September/October 2026 9T0MD DXpedition from the Democratic Republic of the Congo — OnAllBands — The Mediterraneo DX Club heads to Africa’s second-largest nation for a multi-operator DXpedition running Sept. 30–Oct. 11.

• Radio New Zealand Features the November DXpedition to Fakaofo — The SWLing Post — RNZ’s Dateline program covers an upcoming DXpedition to Fakaofo in the Tokelau atoll.

• Contesting 101: The Art of the Possible—Gaining Perspective — OnAllBands — Kirk Pickering K4RO continues his contesting series with a piece on setting realistic goals and perspective.

• ANS-221 AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins — AMSAT — This week’s bulletin covers registration for the 44th AMSAT Space Symposium, ongoing board elections, and a new ARISS associate director appointment.

• Perseid MS shower — Roger G3XBM’s (Mainly) Amateur Radio Blog — A reminder that the Perseid meteor shower peak is prime time for meteor-scatter VHF contacts, with longer-than-usual returns.

Podcasts, Community & Events

• Paul Taylor VK3HN Talks about Homebrew and SOTA — SolderSmoke Daily News — Charlie NJ7V of Red Summit RF interviews longtime SolderSmoke friend and Melbourne homebrewer Paul Taylor, VK3HN.

• A German Builder Makes a 2 Meter Receiver - Warts and All! — SolderSmoke Daily News — A refreshingly honest “blow by blow” homebrew video showing every failed attempt on the way to a working dead-bug-style 2m FM receiver.

• Chappy Happy Builds a 25 meter Direct Conversion Receiver using a PAL VFO — SolderSmoke Daily News — A repurposed CB PAL VFO becomes a direct-conversion SW broadcast receiver, with some discussion of the AM/DSB distortion inherent to the design.

• Will N5OLA (the HW-101 Guy) Interviewed by Eric 4Z1UG — SolderSmoke Daily News — A QSO Today podcast interview with Will N5OLA, known for his soap-and-water restoration approach to old Heathkit HW-101 rigs.

• Open Sauce 2026 in San Francisco — SolderSmoke Daily News — Early reports trickling in from Open Sauce, including sightings of WSPR circumnavigating balloons and homebrew CubeSats.

• Morse Code Skills Maintenance — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — Scheduling conflicts push K9ZW toward Long Island CW Club sessions in the interim before the next CWOps course opens.

• Zero Retries 0259 — Zero Retries — This issue covers OFDM-AB and a refactored IP400, new hardware and modulation aimed at making high-speed VHF/UHF mesh networking genuinely practical.

• Berryville Hamfest 2026: Wet but wonderful — News – Shenandoah Valley Amateur Radio Club — Record rainfall didn’t keep hundreds of visitors away from this year’s hamfest.

• Mods on the Air – GB64MOD Event — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — A special-event call active through all of August for fans of the Mod scene and modern hams alike.

• International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend! — MichiganOne DMR Tech Net — This year’s ILLW (Aug 15–16) will see the group operating as K8L from Michigan’s Eagle Harbor Lighthouse.

• Lighthouse Activation — Lincoln County Amateur Radio Club — The club activates the Yaquina Head Lighthouse for ILLW on Saturday, August 15, from 10am to 2pm.

Advocacy, Licensing & Growing the Hobby

• Tell Your Lawmakers to Back the Amateur Radio Preparedness Act — OnAllBands — The proposed federal bill would bar HOAs from enacting restrictive antenna rules; non-hams can now easily lend support too via a linked letter tool.

• Question pools should make teaching classes easier — KB6NU’s Ham Radio Blog — Dan KB6NU reflects on teaching a Tech class at DEFCON’s Ham Radio Village with 66 students and a freshly updated question pool.

• Ways Amateur Radio Fosters Independence in Young Hams — OnAllBands — Katie Campbell KE8LQR, licensed at age ten, on how the hobby helped a shy kid find confidence.

• Free On-line Technician Class Course starting Sept 3 — MichiganOne DMR Tech Net — A free seven-session Zoom Technician course, sponsored by the National Electronics Museum, kicks off September 3.

• Amateur Radio Has Never Been More Affordable — So Why Do Some Things Seem So Expensive? — Q R P e r — Thomas K4SWL makes the case that the hobby is more accessible than ever, even as certain gear prices climb.

• Why we had Radio Free Europe and how Ham Radio might fit in — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — A look at the winding-down of Radio Free Europe’s cross-border broadcasts and where amateur radio might step into that gap.

Software & Apps Roundup

• A Wave of Mac Ham Radio App Updates — Mac Ham Radio — Marcus, DL8MRE, pushed a coordinated round of releases this week: K4-Control for Elecraft (iOS 1.139), FT-Control for Yaesu (macOS 1.139), TS-Control for Kenwood (macOS 1.139), and SDR-Control for Icom (macOS 2.9.140), alongside SmartSDR for macOS 2.9.139. Also new: HamClock Launcher 4.28, KLog 2.5.3, QRV for iOS 1.26, and WSPR Watch for iOS 4.38.

12. QRT: End Transmission

Booking it

I finally finished editing the 17 chapters in my book on conservation district management and governance. The first draft of the content happened swiftly back in May. Then I invited some experts to review the draft chapters. Now that the review phase is over, I’ve been trying to make final edits. Editing of chapters 1 through 9 went smoothly. Then life got very busy and I set it aside for a week…then two weeks…then two months. This past weekend, I pulled it up and got through editing the remaining chapters, and then sent the manuscript to the publisher. I’m sure I will have another round (or two) of edits coming up, but the core content is complete and good.

“Writing a book” is far more complicated than I thought it would be. I thought writing would be the hardest part, but what I discovered is that when you care deeply about a topic and have solid life experience in it, the book almost writes itself. I spent months crafting a very detailed outline and that proved to be the turning point for the manuscript, allowing me to get started and stay on track. So what was difficult? All the other steps that come with it, like finding a publisher, selecting graphics, choosing a format, hiring a service to convert it for e-book publication, and more. As I travel this road, I’m learning a lot.

Along the way, I realized that a good purpose-built tool for managers to keep regular short notes on employee performance just wasn’t available. A diary-like approach can be very helpful for capturing such notes, and reviewing that history is invaluable when it comes time for performance reviews and implementing other employment-related actions. But finding nothing like that, I made one. It’s simple and rather austere, but it does the job. With a few Python commands, you can turn it into an EXE file to run on Windows or an APP file for macOS. Find it on GitHub.

I could have made a template for something like this in Notion, but then if someone used the template, their data wouldn’t be held locally. I prefer to be in 100% control of employee information at all times.

Coding

I also had some WordPress coding fun, creating a plugin that converts a text-based schedule of meetings to an online display. Some of the text descriptions are rather complicated, e.g.:

The [fill in the blank] Board meetings are on the second Wednesday of October thru May. Meetings in September, October, March, April, and May are at 7 p.m. Meetings in November, December, January, and February are at 6:00 p.m. Meetings are in the US Post Office Building Conference Room.

I built a parser to extract the key pieces and convert the data into a CSV file, then rendered the CSV in a monthly calendar format, with a list-based schedule below the calendar. When meeting dates or locations change, I simply download the CSV, update it, and upload it back to the server. I also added the ability to temporarily mark a meeting “canceled” without going through the whole CSV download-and-upload sequence.

All that is built into a custom WordPress plugin that produces a shortcode for use on any page on the website. It’s working great.

And then, since I was on a roll writing plugins, I wrote one to convert my 518-row spreadsheet of high school classmates into a database maintained on the class website. It has two roles: data admins and data reviewers/approvers. I included a real change log that allows changes to be rolled back. It renders output with shortcodes to display a full class list, our missing classmates, and classmates who have walked on before us. Fun little project.

That should do it for me for a week or two with WordPress plugins!

Home

I’m not really a big fan of tomatoes, but I make an exception for home grown tomatoes harvested on a sunny day at the peak of ripeness. Since I’m the only one who eats them, I have one plant growing in a pot on the deck. Unfortunately, a chipmunk (we named it Chippie) has decided it likes my tomatoes, and it is much faster to harvest them than I am! To try to protect them, I’ve covered the plant — ripening tomatoes and all — with a net. I left the net loose on the bottom the first day and the chipmunk got in and decimated a few almost-ripe tomatoes. The net is now tied tight, and I’m hoping it keeps Chippie out so I’ll get to enjoy the fruits of my own labor soon!

And speaking of home, my childhood home may, or may not, have been affected by the wildfires that have destroyed parts of Spokane, Washington. I wish I knew the status of the old neighborhood as I have many great memories of growing up there. I’m sure I’ll try to make a road trip this fall just to reassure myself that all is well with the old house in northwest Spokane.

Wildfire has been an active force on Pacific Northwest landscapes, particularly east of the north-south Cascade Mountain range:

Source: Washington Large Fires 1973-2025

EtherHam website down (but back up late Thursday)

Thursday morning dawned with a different kind of tech problem: a message from the EtherHam web hosting company!

We’re currently responding to an emergency caused by a power outage at our Phoenix datacenter…undergoing emergency maintenance…experiencing network issues. Websites may be slow, unavailable, or return 503 errors. Hosting panel access may also be affected.

Starting my day with a web outage is always a bit unsettling. At least it wasn’t something I caused (and yes, that has happened before, more than once).

As Thursday draws to a close, resolution is in sight, but it still hasn’t happened. By Friday morning, the EtherHam.com website should be is back online.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

Here’s the headline: New Debian 13 “Trixie” Kernel Security Update Fixes 68 Vulnerabilities. The takeaway: If you’re running AllStarLink (ASL) on Debian 13, it’s time to update.

1. QRV: Are You Ready?

Welcome to Random Wire issue 194. Sometime in the past week, subscriber numbers hit 2,300…and kept climbing. This was a surprise because a few dozen subscribers ended their subscriptions last week, too.

This week, I got my MeshCore repeater functioning. The problem was a simple on-off switch I failed to see when I put the repeater into service the first time.

I also got a T-Echo (not the newer Plus version) configured as a LoRa APRS Tracker. It is communicating with my LoRa APRS igate/digipeater in the garage.

2. New on EtherHam

• Building a MeshCore Node — Part 2: The Repeater That Should Have Been Easy — Part 1 ended with a MeshCore repeater configured in ten minutes and beaconing right on schedule — a clean win, or so it seemed. Part 2 is the two weeks that followed. I encountered a debugging tool that was quietly resetting the very device I was troubleshooting, my antenna’s blind spot, a paywalled feature with a free workaround that didn’t actually work, and a repeater that went dark for five days over something hiding in plain sight the whole time. By the end, the hardware and firmware check out clean. What doesn’t check out, it turns out, is the ten miles of Pacific Northwest terrain standing between me and my nearest MeshCore neighbor.

• LoRa APRS: Part 2 — LoRa APRS Tracker with a T-Echo — A brand-new LilyGo T-Echo goes dark after a routine firmware flash — no display update, a red LED blinking like an alarm, and every obvious fix leading nowhere. What follows is a genuine debugging rabbit hole: a Windows error that’s secretly good news, a bootloader chase that turns out to be a red herring, an independent firmware swap that finally proves the hardware was fine all along, and a BLE pairing quirk that ends up eating more time than everything else combined. If you’ve ever stared at a “bricked” board and had to figure out which symptoms were real and which were noise, this is that story, from first red flag to a live beacon on aprs.fi.

• Weekly Report: August 6, 2026 — Catch up on band conditions, digital radio news, and the Groups.io digest.

3. My Talk2Me Radio is Working Well

My little Talk2Me PoC (push-to-talk over cellular) radio is working quite nicely. Last Saturday, I had a long drive to a high school class reunion. Unfortunately, that drive coincided with Saturday’s weekly M17 net. The M17 net is always interesting and I learn a lot every time I tune in.

To the rescue: my Talk2Me radio. I already had it set to listen to America’s Kansas City Wide network using Hamlink PoC (programmed into the radio by the vendor). So while driving at 60 MPH toward Tacoma, Washington, I turned it on, turned up the volume a couple of notches, and slipped it into the chest pocket of my shirt. I listened to the complete net during the drive and even checked in from the pickup truck.

I usually pick up the M17 net at home over my hotspot, or with BlueDV on my laptop, or with my M17 radio and an M17 hotspot. Before the Talk2Me radio, I could not get KC Wide over RF while I’m driving in the Seattle-Tacoma area. Now I can listen in and participate, thanks to my Talk2Me STANDARD PLUS radio.

Honestly, I’m quite impressed. Because of this fabulous little radio, I was able to enjoy one of my favorite nets while I traveled to my reunion. The radio? It. Just. Worked. Isn’t that what we really want? For our devices to just work? This one does.

4. My MeshCore Repeater Made the Map

I finally got my MeshCore repeater working. I don’t know why I so often get a product without any instructions, but in this case, there was supposed to be a card inside the box…and there wasn’t. So I experimented for days, trying different things. Finally, I put my magnifying visor on and took a careful look at the boards inside, only to discover an on-off switch! It was a small little slider, hiding from my unmagnified view.

After sliding it to the on position and charging the 18650 battery, I put the repeater outside on top of the gutter. (By this time, I had been up and down the ladder at least a dozen times to place/retrieve the repeater on the roof. Testing on the gutter was a lot easier and safer than climbing up on the roof over and over.) And it worked. It beaconed on startup, but more importantly, it beaconed regularly after that.

About a day later, it showed up on the MeshCore map:

I’m still getting to know how this all works. I can’t reach other stations directly with my handheld device (T-Deck Plus), which is why I put up a repeater. Currently, my local MeshCore chain has three pieces: a repeater, a relay, and an app. The PeakMesh repeater is on the roof. A LilyGo T-Echo Plus at 910MHz with Bluetooth serves as a relay between the repeater and my phone. The MeshCore app is on my Android phone.

I also have a LilyGo T-Deck Plus at 910MHz with internal antenna that is a portable, handheld device. It isn’t a necessary part of my MeshCore chain.

If you happen to be using a MeshCore device, try adding the #etherham channel and pushing a message my way. That would be fun to try.

5. My LoRa APRS iGate/Digi Works

It works! The LoRa APRS igate/digipeater I installed in the garage actually works. The range? Minuscule, but more on that in a moment.

I bought a second LilyGo T-Deck Plus on 433MHz and configured it as a LoRa APRS tracker. Then I went for a drive. My igate/digi (KJ7T-2) picked up the mobile tracker (KJ7T-3) about 1/8 mile from the digi. It works.

But it only works for a short distance. The small external antenna on the T-Deck Plus is insufficient for much range when the igate/digi is located in a basin…and that is what a lake is: a topographic low filled with water. I’m surrounded by hills so that tiny antenna doesn’t stand much of a chance of getting a signal out.

You can actually see the signal strength (RSSI = Received Signal Strength Indicator) drop off as I drove away from my igate/digi (KJ7T-2) yesterday morning.

SNR (signal-to-noise ratio, in dB) is arguably the more meaningful number here. It describes how far above the noise floor the signal actually was, which is what determines whether the receiver can hear it well enough to decode it at all.

Looking at the photo, the oldest is at the bottom of the list of three exchanges. The signal went from -61 RSSI/SNR 7 (strong, near the start of the drive) down to -107/-5 and then to -117/-14 as I drove farther away, right before it dropped out entirely around 1/3 mile distant.

Here’s something worth noting: successfully decoding at -14 dB SNR is a real demonstration of LoRa’s advantage over conventional radio. FM APRS generally needs a positive SNR to decode anything — LoRa’s chirp spread-spectrum modulation (especially at SF12, which you’re running) has enough processing gain to pull a signal out well below the noise floor. That last successful frame wasn’t a fluke; it’s LoRa working as designed, right up until the combination of distance and terrain finally buried it.

I’m considering putting up the dual-band dipole antenna I have on order (note: ordered more than a month ago and my emails to the company are bouncing!) on a pole outside the garage. Maybe I can try a diplexer and run the LightAPRS Gateway on the VHF dipole and the LoRa APRS igate/digipeater on the UHF dipole. Two devices, one feedline, a diplexer, and the dual-band antenna. Just another 10-15 feet in clear air and I’ll bet I can reach at least a mile away on LoRa.

As noted in the New on EtherHam section above, I configured the T-Echo (not the Plus) as a LoRa APRS tracker. The advantage of the T-Echo is long battery life. It’s a small device so I can easily tuck it out of the way inside the pickup truck cab.

6. AI: Trying DeepSeek

I use Claude. I use ChatGPT. At the suggestion of a friend, I’ve started using Gemini a bit more. And now I’m exploring DeepSeek, which I’m finding to be very fast…but also more shallow than those other engines. Whether it will stand up to Claude when it comes to coding, I don’t yet know, but I doubt it. I’ve added DeepSeek to my Open Notebook instance running on my Proxmox server.

One thing to be aware of with DeepSeek: it stores API data on servers in China and its terms permit training on your inputs by default. I don’t plan to use it for anything important, but if you handle sensitive information, you’ll want to bear this in mind if you choose to use DeepSeek.

Me? I still lean toward Claude for the things I do.

7. Short Stack from the Interwebs

Pulled from the aggregated feeds on EtherHam (etherham.com/feeds/), items from July 30–August 5. This Short Stack turned into a Long Stack!

SDR & Signal Hacking

• Scanner Command: Mapping Incidents from Live Radio Calls and ADS-B to Airband Voice with AI — RTL-SDR Blog — A follow-on to DeepSDR: another public-safety-scanner-plus-LLM incident mapper, this time tied to airband/ADS-B traffic.

• Turning a Local ADS-B Feed Into an Easy to Read Dashboard — N3BKV’s Ham Radio Hacks — Building a clean dashboard on top of a SkyAware feed to see what’s flying overhead.

• Large-scale LoRaWAN deployments become easier through QR codes and relays — CNX Software — QR-code provisioning and relay support aimed at simplifying big LoRaWAN rollouts.

Digital Modes & Data

• bkjbbs: A Node.js Packet Radio BBS Library for Direwolf — Hamradio.my — A modern Node.js library for running a packet BBS on Direwolf, with full AX.25/KISS support and TypeScript types.

• Retevis C62 OpenRTX port and the cskburn update — M17 Project News — Progress notes on the OpenRTX port for the Retevis C62, alongside LinHT work.

Gear, Builds & Reviews

• Wanneton UV5F Ham Radio Handheld Dual Band Two-Way Radio Review — Amateur Radio Today — A hands-on look at a budget dual-band HT aimed at entry-level and emergency-prep users.

• The Best Inexpensive HF Antennas for Amateur Radio — Amateur Radio Today — Pushing back on the idea that HF requires an expensive antenna.

• Chameleon LEFS Feather Antenna QRP with the Elecraft KX3 — J-Pole Antenna — QRP field pairing of the Chameleon LEFS Feather with a KX3.

• Build Your Own DIY Compact FM Transmitter — Hackster.io — A step-by-step 88–108 MHz FM transmitter build.

• A Homebrew Workbench from Norway — Please Comment: What would you have done differently? — Solder Smoke — A reader’s shack workbench, with Bill Meara asking for critique.

• But did he really create this device? What do you think? — Solder Smoke — A skeptical look at a dubious “invention” video making the rounds.

POTA, SOTA & Field Ops

• A Wet POTA Experiment: Hunting, Calling CQ, and Changing Modes — QRPer — Mark (KB2PIZ) on how long to stick with a band/mode before switching things up during an activation.

• CE7ET: Mini POTA DXpedition to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) CL-0105 / 3G0YT — QRPer — A POTA activation report from one of the more remote parks you’ll see on the air.

• DF7CW: Field Testing the IC-705 and SOTAmāt in Märkische Schweiz (DE-0083) Before a Swedish Trail Adventure — QRPer — A newly-licensed German ham field-testing gear ahead of a bigger trip.

• The best-laid plans do work out, after you pivot a few times — QRPer — Vince (VE6LK) on activation plans that only came together after repeated pivots.

• More POTA notes, 7/30/26 — KB6NU — Dan’s real-world notes on running down the limits of a 9 Ahr BioEnno battery across activations.

• 9M LLOTA: Malaysia Joins Lakes and Lagoons On The Air — Hamradio.my — Malaysia’s entry into the Lakes and Lagoons On The Air program, with a growing reference list.

Shortwave & Listening

• A New Novel from DXer Ralph W. Perry: Pacific Dream — The SWLing Post — A longtime DXer’s new novel gets a nod from the SWLing community.

• Illustrated Radio Listening Report reaching Nepal — The SWLing Post — Cartoonist Carlos Latuff’s illustrated QSL-style reports have made it further than he expected.

• Radio Prague: “Microphones against tanks” — The SWLing Post — The latest in Radio Prague International’s history series on Czech broadcasting.

• BBC Radio 5 Live Closing More AM Transmitters — The SWLing Post — The BBC continues trimming its mediumwave footprint.

• Pirate Radio on the HF Bands: The Hidden World of Shortwave Broadcasting — Amateur Radio Today — A survey of the pirate shortwave scene for hams who make contacts but rarely just listen.

Podcasts & Community

• Ham College 142 — Amateur Radio Weekly — General exam prep covering transmitter power rules and 60-meter operation.

• LHS Episode #624: National Jamboree 2026 — Amateur Radio Weekly — Linux in the Ham Shack’s coverage of this year’s National Jamboree.

• Amateur Radio Weekly – Issue 432 — Amateur Radio Weekly — This week’s roundup, leading with a Kentucky family suing after a school resource officer seized a student’s radios without a warrant.

• Legendary DXer Bob Locher, W9KNI, Presents Tales from a Serial Sniper Part 2, “Looking South” — On All Bands — Part two of Bob Locher’s DXing memoirs.

• Talking to Silent Keys — With Varying Frequency — A reflective piece on how the community keeps engaging with the memory of hams who’ve become Silent Keys.

• One lump or two (or three)? — KB6NU — Dan’s take on the perennial argument over how many license classes ham radio should have.

Linux, Homelab & Self-Hosting

• Proxmox releases full support for the Arm64 architecture, with a few key caveats — XDA Developers — Arm64 support lands, but access is request-only for now.

• Proxmox ships with a broken repo by design, and here’s the 30-second fix every home user needs — XDA Developers — The rite-of-passage repo fix for every fresh Proxmox install.

• NightRun UEFI application boots a local LLM on Raspberry Pi 5 and x86 PCs without an OS — CNX Software — Running an LLM straight from firmware, no OS required — relevant if you’re squeezing extra life out of Pi-based nodes.

• 3 Raspberry Pi Projects I Use Every Day — Raspberry Tips — Practical, daily-driver Pi projects rather than one-off builds.

• Jellyfin vs Plex on Raspberry Pi: Which Is Best? — Raspberry Tips — A head-to-head for anyone running a Pi as a media server.

• A Mac Mini server is running headless in my closet — it manages my photo library and handles my backups — Tom’s Hardware — A refurbished Mac Mini pulling backup and photo-library duty.

• AppFlowy finally feels like real Notion, and self-hosting it fixed my biggest complaint — XDA Developers — A self-hosted Notion alternative that’s matured enough to switch to.

• Issue 522 – Minimus Releases Hardened Images For Free – What Does It Do Differently? — Awesome Self Hosted newsletter — Free hardened container images, and what sets them apart.

• My router was doing 5 things that I never asked it to, and I wish I had changed them earlier — XDA Developers — Default router settings worth turning off.

• This E-Ink Home Assistant display cut my phone notifications in half — How-To Geek — An always-on e-ink dashboard for Home Assistant that pulls attention off the phone.

• I turned an old Android phone into a Home Assistant voice satellite—no speaker needed — How-To Geek — A cheap way to repurpose old hardware, in the same spirit as hotspot/node builds.

Also Noted (Tech)

• AI enthusiast unlocks and mods BIOS with Claude Code — AI defeats RSA-2048 signature checks and unlocks 55 hidden settings — Tom’s Hardware — A Redditor used Claude Code to unlock a laptop’s hidden BIOS settings.

8. QRT: End Transmission

Radio history

I do enjoy reading radio history, and The Discovery of Radio Waves was an article I found very interesting.

Just proves to me once again that we all stand on the good work of those who came before us.

Claude and CSS debugging

As I was debugging a CSS load problem (the problem being a specific file was not loading) on a website, I started to use a tried-and-true method: turn off plugins one by one, test, re-enable, move to the next plugin. Well, this site has 67 plugins and that takes an awfully long time.

And then I thought: I wonder if Claude can help me with this? Using the Sonnet model, Claude had trouble understanding what I wanted and kept trying to hand it back to me. So I switched to the Opus 5 model and was delighted when — after I gave it permission — it proceeded to walk through all 67 plugins and test them, without me having to intervene.

Claude found one plugin that no longer parsed CSS after the plugin was recently updated. We rolled that back to a previous version, resolving the problem. That saved me hours of digging.

LoRa radio

I’m enjoying learning about this technology. New? Not…but it feels new to me, simply because while I’ve dabbled my toes in the LoRa waters, I haven’t taken a dive like in the past several weeks. It’s interesting stuff, especially how it is able to send and receive data way below the noise floor.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

The Random Wire newsletter is the journal of what I’m doing during the week, and serves as a companion to EtherHam.com where more detailed, technical content gets published. I hope you enjoy both the newsletter and the website.

I enjoy hearing from readers and hope you’ll share what is on your workbench!

KJ7T Tom

1. QRV: Are You Ready?

Coding

Not a lot of radio play this week, as I got caught up in “the zone” while coding for my day job. Two days in a row, I started in on a project and when I looked up, the clock said ten hours had elapsed. It’s been a while since I entered a flow state like this. I kind of miss it. Time flies and the work can be very satisfying. (If you code, you know.)

What did I do? First, I rebuilt an issues-and-actions tracker for work that covers a five-year rolling time period. Then I converted a +800-person directory from a PDF document to an online database embedded in a WordPress site, to help my work team keep our member information updated. This was honestly much more complicated than it sounds.

For the online directory, I also added some protection against scrapers (bots that grab everyone’s email from a website). Emails in the directory are never displayed in the public HTML page, instead being protected by signed tokens and a rate limit with a lockout if exceeded. Clicking the email link opens a “reveal page” that shows the email address as visible text (with an app-launch attempt on top). The reveal links are rate-limited per visitor, so a bot trying to harvest hundreds of addresses in bulk gets throttled and locked out — a real visitor clicking a few links will likely never notice.

And then one of my work teammates cranked up our annual conference web pages and asked for help, resulting in another day two days of revisions and coding. Along the way, I found several plugins that were weighing down every page. Click click, poof — they are gone, and what they were doing has been replaced with some custom fields, Cascading Style Sheet magic, and a few custom-built plugins. I saved a lot of memory overhead and the pages load faster. Yes, satisfying.

Ultimately, we ended up with a group of custom plugins, all nested together under “Conference” in our Dashboard menu. This will help us manage most of the content for our annual conference and business meeting. It will also greatly reduce the repetitive entries we would normally make in the actual HTML pages. That will mean fewer errors and less time spent figuring out all the little gotchas that can be so hard to find in hundreds and hundreds of lines of content.

Radio

I was able to hang out on the M17 net last Saturday, using my Talk2Me PoC radio and, out of curiosity, simultaneously listening with BlueDV on my laptop. The M17 net is always educational, and it’s fun to hear about the continued evolution of M17 as a protocol, in hardware, and in apps like MSeven.

If you click this Talk2Me PoC radio link, you’ll discover a new feature I’m just starting to build out at EtherHam.com: a compendium of the gear I’ve used, reviewed, or recommended. I’m just getting a start on this so content is light. Translation: more to do!

I also finished up my series on push-to-talk over cellular radios and started a new series on MeshCore. Still in process are some articles on DMR.

APRS continues to be on my mind. I run it in my pickup truck on my Yaesu FTM-300D mobile radio…and on my phone with APRSdroid. But I also have the LightAPRS Gateway (a VHF 1-watt fill-in digi and igate) in the garage, and now a LoRa APRS igate/digi (UHF) running about 100 milliwatts. I’m waiting on another T-Deck Plus built around 433MHz so I can play with APRS messaging over the LoRa APRS station.

In summary, it was a week of coding with some radio and writing, too. As Julie Andrews sang:

♫ These are a few of my favorite things ♫

2. New on EtherHam

• Push-to-Talk Over Cellular: The Buyer’s Checklist — Part 4 of 4. Part 1 was the lot walk. Part 2 was my own radio purchase, start to finish. Part 3 was the radio itself, on the bench and on the road. Part 4 is the short version — everything worth checking, without the weeks it took me to learn it. Three articles, several weeks, and my own money all contributed to this list. If you only read one piece in this series, spend your time with this one.

• Building a MeshCore Node — Part 1: Why, What, and How — CascadiaMesh, the MeshCore community covering the Pacific Northwest, promises you can get on the mesh in three easy steps: pick a device, flash it, pair it to your phone. I wanted to test that claim the honest way — buy the hardware, do exactly what the guide says, and see where it actually breaks. Spoiler for Part 1: it worked fine. Flashing a LilyGo T-Echo Plus turned up one genuine hardware-vs-host-computer mystery (solved), and getting a companion radio talking to a repeater took about as long as promised. Part 2, where I will cover building and configuring a MeshCore repeater, is where things promise to get more interesting.

• Expanding Technician Privileges: The Fix Needs a Push — There’s a real, already-written fix for one of Technician licensees’ most common complaints — and it’s been sitting in an FCC docket since 2018. The petition would open modern digital modes like FT8 to Technicians on 75, 40, and 15 meters, plus some phone privileges, with almost no opposition on record. Seven years later, it’s still stuck — not from pushback, but from plain bureaucratic inertia. I dig into why it hasn’t moved, what it still wouldn’t fix (including a telling admission buried in ARRL’s own petition language), and why right now — with the FCC’s current deregulatory docket wide open — is the moment to actually push it through.

• Weekly Report: July 30, 2026 — The usual: Band Conditions, Digital Radio News, Groups.io Digest.

A New “EtherHam Gear” Page

I added a gear page on the EtherHam.com website. As my content catalog grows, I am finding it harder to come back later and find the equipment I’ve reviewed or recommended. Going forward, I’ll populate the gear page with those devices, and then link to the gear listing in my articles.

This methodology should make it easier for visitors to find the items I talk about. It will also make it easier for me to maintain links to items, because those links do change at vendor sites.

The Gear page is produced by a custom WordPress plugin, which was a lot of fun to build.

Frankly, there are already plugins that will add short, custom links to an item, but as I researched them, I found them bloated and complicated. Some require a connection to a third-party service. I also don’t like using anything that says it features “link cloaking.” Even though this is actually a common practice, it just sounds and feels wrong. My plugin is trim, does only what I want, and lives entirely on EtherHam.com. If you run a WordPress site and want the code, drop me a line. It is one PHP file, 419 lines long.

3. On The Bench

Last week, I included this item in the Short Stack:

APRSdroid 9M2PJU Mod: The Enhanced APRS Companion for Android, Built by Hams, for Hams — Hamradio.my — A ham-built mod to APRSdroid. Given the LoRa APRS iGate work on EtherHam right now, this is a natural companion piece.

Well, I installed it. If you go down this road, there are a few wrinkles to be aware of. First, you must uninstall APRSdroid if that is already on your Android device. Second, the app requires granting several permissions, but fortunately, granting permissions is as easy as pushing one button, then tapping “allow” on the ensuing popups.

Enter your call sign and your APRS passcode (just search online for “APRS passcode”) and you’re ready to go.

I’ve been using it in the pickup truck as KJ7T-5 and it is working fine.

I installed this version because it offers the ability to connect with LoRa devices if they have Bluetooth low-energy (BLE) and use a KISS TNC protocol. This means that with the right LoRa tracker, I’ll be able to connect to the other APRS network most amateurs aren’t aware of that runs on LoRa radio at 433MHz. There is a clear, step-by-step guide for this at https://aprsdroid.hamradio.my/#lora.

My 433MHz LoRa device is on its way to me from across the Pacific. I’m just very curious how this will work. One surprise for me was learning that LoRa APRS stations that are igated hit APRS-IS, so they show up on sites like aprs.fi. (Click to see my LoRa APRS station on aprs.fi.)

4. M17 Net Notes

From Saturday’s M17 net on America’s Kansas City Wide network.

• M17 is a digital voice and data protocol with hardware and software solutions.

• The LinHT handheld transceiver continues to move forward. Uses GNU Radio software.

• Other software that runs M17 includes DroidStar, the MSeven app, and QSO One.

The M17-KCW reflector carries primary KC Wide network traffic on module A (M17-KCW A). The B module on M17-KCW (also called “the B side”) is for M17 only; it is not connected to the A side. In the screenshot below, you can see some stations on module A and on B in the right-hand side of the reflector dashboard.

There is also a great service offered through KC Wide: seeing your live audio level. Find this at https://level.kansascitywide.com/. The interface looks like this:

There was very interesting commentary about FreeDV on HF and 2-meter sideband. Exploring FreeDV is on my list of things to dig into.

The net closed with some conversation in the net chat about radiograms. Some of the helpful links that were shared in the chat are:

• https://nts2.arrl.org/radiogram-portal-quick-start/

• https://nts2.arrl.org/radiogram/

• https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nts-radio/id1204567739

5. Short Stack from the Interwebs

Pulled from the aggregated feeds on EtherHam (etherham.com/feeds/), items from July 28–30.

SDR

• Testing Airspy’s New WebSpy Web SDR Interface with an RTL-SDR — RTL-SDR Blog — A look at Airspy’s new browser-based SDR interface.

• Building a $50 BOM Software Defined Radio with a HT9201 20 MHz ADC and an FX2LP USB Controller Clone — RTL-SDR Blog — Budget homebrew SDR build, bill-of-materials and all.

• Radio Silence: A Native iOS App for Listening to Public KiwiSDRs — RTL-SDR Blog — A dedicated iOS client for the public KiwiSDR network.

• TunerScope: A Browser App to Help Optimize HDTV Antenna Positioning with an RTL-SDR — RTL-SDR Blog — Clever repurposing of an RTL-SDR as an antenna-aiming tool.

• DeepSDR Updates: Live Public Safety Incident Map with an RTL-SDR, Whisper and an LLM — RTL-SDR Blog — RTL-SDR plus Whisper transcription plus an LLM, mapped live. The standout item this week.

Digital Modes & RTTY

• H-Mode: An Open HF Digital Mode That Turns Errors Into Ionospheric Measurements — Hamradio.my — A new open digital mode that uses decode errors themselves as ionospheric data.

• Someone Turned a Sony PSP Into an RTTY Encoder — Hamradio.my — Exactly what it sounds like, and a fun homebrew read.

• 5D Web Programmer: A Free, In-Browser Codeplug Editor for the Yaesu FT-5D — Hamradio.my — Open-source, browser-based codeplug editing — no vendor software required.

Shortwave & Listening

• RTI French Service Announces August 2026 Shortwave Broadcasts to Europe and North Africa — The SWLing Post — Fresh broadcast schedule for shortwave listeners.

• Japan Times: The Uncertain Future of Shiokaze’s Shortwave Broadcasts — The SWLing Post — A look at the funding and future of the Shiokaze shortwave service.

• Carlos’ Illustrated Radio Listening Report and Recording of Multiple Stations (July 21–28, 2026) — The SWLing Post — A week’s worth of DX catches with recordings.

Podcasts & Community

• HRWB 268 – Diversity Reception with Dave AB7E — Ham Radio Workbench — Podcast episode on diversity reception techniques.

• Ham Radio and the Possibility of Internet Over Ham Radio — Amateur Radio Today — A think piece on running internet traffic over ham bands.

• Two Big Store Updates: Ship with DHL or UPS, and Taking PayPal Payments — TAPR — Practical update from the Tucson Amateur Packet Radio store.

Also Noted (Tech)

• Amazon Accidentally Spent $1.8 Million Using Claude for Menial Coding Task, Went 860% Over Budget — Tom’s Hardware — A cautionary tale on agentic AI cost management.

• These 3 Raspberry Pi Projects Solve Real Problems — and One Brings Back Cassette Nostalgia — How-To Geek — Relevant to anyone running Pi-based nodes or hotspots.

• PSA: Your Watch Band May Be Messing With Your Laptop — Tom’s Hardware — Magnetic clasps triggering laptop lid sensors — a weird, easy-to-miss gotcha.

6. QRT: End Transmission

Plumbing, part 3. Get a dehumidifier, the plumber said, so I did. And I went low cost:

Dehumidifiers for Home, 1000 Sq.Ft Dehumidifier with 95oz Water Tank, Quiet Dehumidifier for Basement Bathroom Bedroom with 7-Color Ambient Light & Auto Shut Off, Sliver (this is an affiliate link)

The device has been pulling about a cup-and-a-half of water out of the air daily. It’s not silent — the fan noise is like white noise in the background, not really unpleasant at all. It remains on during my Zoom calls without disturbing me or the people on the call. The good-sized water tank and the automatic shutoff were key factors in my choice.

And the new moisture meter did arrive:

Klein Tools ET140 Pinless Moisture Meter for Non-Destructive Moisture Detection in Drywall, Wood, and Masonry; Detects up to 3/4-Inch Below Surface (this is an affiliate link)

Since I’m trying to sense moisture underneath the old linoleum flooring, I’m using the drywall setting. I don’t get exact/true measurements this way, but I do get relative measurements by comparing a known dry area against a suspected damp area. A week ago, the areas affected by the leak were about 10% higher moisture than the dry areas. As of today, measurements in the damp spots show about 6% more moisture. Meanwhile, the dehumidifier continues to pull moisture out. I’m guessing I’ll be ready to try the heat gun in about a week. I’m hoping this will let me flatten the tiles, and if I’m really lucky, the existing mastic will re-adhere to those lifted edges.

And with that, it’s time to say 73 and send my best wishes to you for a great radio-focused week ahead!

Remember to touch a radio every day!

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I found a message from N0LSR in my junk mail folder yesterday, and it was important. It’s about the failing Clear Sky Institute server. If you are an Inovato or N0LSR HamClock customer, “all users must switch to the new OHB (Open HamClock Backend) to ensure continued updates and reliable operation.” Find more information on the N0LSR home page.

There’s a quick way to tell if you are on the correct server: “If you are currently on any version below 4.26 and do not get the upgrade offered to 4.27 then you are on the wrong backend server.”

Once upgraded, the version will say 4.27 and you’ll see an envelope just below the version number. Click on the envelope icon for a status message.

1. QRV: Are You Ready?

It may seem as if there is little radio content in this issue, but that’s because the bulk of my radio work landed on EtherHam.com this week. Specifically, I took several days to develop a detailed hands-on look at my new Talk2Me push-to-talk over cellular radio. The pointer for that is below in the New on EtherHam section. If you’re interested in PoC radios, you’ll find this worth your time.

After looking at how these radios and services are marketed, how the ordering and fulfillment process actually happens from the end-user point of view, and how the radio and service function, I’ve concluded: this is not a mature market. Several companies are vying for your dollars. The actual hardware and services offered are in a state of continuous change, so I think it is very difficult for a vendor to keep up with onboarding information, documentation, and even fulfillment steps. This shouldn’t dissuade you from entering this space if you are interested in PoC radio, but do be prepared for a rockier process, from start to finish, than you may be used to experiencing with mainstream amateur radio products. Why would you do this? Because PoC radios can offer an unprecedented level of connectivity and convenience.

2. New on EtherHam

• Push-to-Talk Over Cellular: Hands-On with a Modern PoC Radio — Part 3 in a series. My radio arrived with no instructions. I learned how to use it by pushing every button and chasing every menu. Thirty minutes to enter a WiFi password. An SOS mode hiding behind the flashlight button. A Bluetooth pairing that is not obvious how to undo. And when I finally found the official manual online, it described a radio with no WiFi and no Bluetooth — not the radio I bought. The device itself works, and it puts Kansas City Wide in my pocket, at home on my network and while I’m on the road. Should you buy it? Overall, I’m happy with the device and the service.

• Building a LoRa APRS iGate/Digipeater — Part 1: Why, What, and How — I already run conventional VHF APRS from the lake house, so when I heard about LoRa APRS, I wanted to see what it would take to get a station on the air. (LoRa APRS is a newer parallel network built on chirp spread-spectrum instead of classic AFSK packet.) When I checked the LoRa APRS live map, I found exactly one LoRa APRS station in the whole area, and it hadn’t heard anything over RF in over two months. Here’s how I turned a LilyGo T-Deck Plus into KJ7T-2 — a live 433.775 MHz iGate and digipeater — including recovering from installing the wrong firmware and the hidden BOOT button.

• Weekly Report: July 23, 2026 — Band Conditions, Digital Radio News, Groups.io Digest.

3. New on the Bench

MeshCore Repeater — I bought a MeshCore repeater from an Etsy seller. It is solar-powered with a single 18650 battery inside to keep it running in the dark times. I am halfway between two other MeshCore devices, each about 15 miles away. You can explore the worldwide MeshCore map at https://map.meshcore.io. In the screenshot below, I’ve placed a Random Wire sticker on my location. You can see I have stations to the southwest and to the northeast.

I’ve magnetically attached the repeater to the steel chimney cap.

Even though my device is up above the roofline, I’m on a lake, and that means I occupy a topographic low. I do have a 915MHz mag-mount antenna coming that I hope will extend the reach of this device, but I’m not optimistic. Still, it’s an interesting device and system to explore.

T-Deck Plus — This LilyGo device will probably arrive the day after this Random Wire issue publishes. This is a 915MHz device that I plan to flash with MeshCore firmware so I can talk to my repeater and perhaps get that repeater onto the MeshCore map. If MeshCore doesn’t work out, I can flash it with Meshtastic. I might also try a T-Echo Tracker on 915MHz, too.

T-Echo Tracker — This is a second T-Echo, but this one is configured for 433MHz. It should connect to my LoRa APRS igate/digipeater running as KJ7T-2. I want to use the T-Echo to see how far KJ7T-2 will reach.

APRS testing — I’ve been monitoring APRS on APRSdroid, aprs.fi, and my mobile radio, wanting to see if those were picking up my KJ7T LightAPRS Gateway device…and they are. What surprised me was that my LoRa APRS box, running as KJ7T-2, is also picked up by aprs.fi.

I also see that my internal battery voltage on the LightAPRS Gateway device has come up from the 4.5V range to nearly 4.7V. That’s because I changed the 1A wall charger to a 2A device.

4. Website: EtherHam CSS Cleanup with Claude

This may only be of interest to other webmasters. If you don’t manage a website, read this as: Claude can help you handle some mundane tasks…and feel free to skip it if the idea of cleaning up CSS code makes your eyes cross!

When I was first setting up EtherHam.com, I chose to use WordPress as the content management system. I’ve been working with WordPress for years. While it is a bit bloated for my needs, I know it inside and out. Just like using a favorite radio, there is a certain comfort in that.

I worked my way through several block themes, each requiring some Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) customization. Many fragments got orphaned along the way — leftover CSS doing nothing but cluttering the file.

I'd read that Claude could help manage a WordPress site, but hadn't trusted it enough to try. This week, I decided to give it a try. First, I backed up the entire site, including making a copy of the CSS file I was about to change. Then I asked Claude for help.

I installed the Claude in Chrome extension when prompted, and after that, Claude had direct access to what I had open in the browser. This process worked well. We cleaned up the CSS settings, and along the way, I identified a few plugins that I had tried but never used, so those got removed.

Since I was on a roll, I asked Claude for help making formatting consistent between the home page, sub pages, and posts. In just a few minutes, we aligned formatting in these different views.

I posted the exact CSS file Claude helped me clean up on EtherHam, if you’re interested. It is nicely organized and well commented.

If you’re curious, you can download a copy as a text file.

Bottom line: EtherHam.com looks fine and the styling is cleaned up and consistent throughout the site.

5. Vehicle Super Starter: Why I Didn’t Buy It

This isn’t amateur radio, but it could intersect with licensed operators if they run a mobile radio in their rig.

What is this about? I thought about buying a super capacitor for my truck. The sales messaging I’ve been seeing seemed compelling and I find the concept quite clever, so I gave it more than a cursory look.

Ancel sells a device called the Super Starter — a permanently installed super capacitor that wires into your battery terminals and sits under the hood, taking over most of the cranking load every time you start the engine. The pitch is straightforward: your battery stops absorbing the punishing current spike of a cold start, wear and tear drops, and the battery lasts longer. No cables, no remembering to charge a separate pack, no getting out of the truck. Connect it once, forget it exists, and let it quietly do its job for years.

I’ve had dying and weak vehicle batteries, so I really like the concept. I like anything that takes a known failure mode — batteries dying at the worst possible moment — and tries to engineer it away rather than just selling you a booster with a flashlight and jumper cables.

But a few things stopped me before I clicked buy. First, the fit-to-cost problem: the base model is rated for engines up to 3.0 liters, and my Ridgeline runs a 3.5L V6. The unit that actually matches my truck runs closer to $220 than the $150 headline price on the smaller model — a detail that’s easy to miss if you’re moving fast.

Second, the marketing language has a familiar look to it. If you’ve watched the push-to-talk-over-cellular space the way I have, you’ve seen this pattern before: a genuinely interesting piece of engineering wrapped in urgency — limited-time pricing, breathless “why didn’t this exist sooner” copy, glowing coverage that reads like it was written by someone with an affiliate link. None of that makes the underlying tech bad. But it’s usually a sign the vendor wants you to make the purchase decision before you’ve had time to ask the boring questions, like whether the battery-life claims hold up after a real winter under the hood. This product launched this year. There’s no multi-year data available yet, independent or otherwise.

However, there is a review published by Car and Driver that touches on the utility of the device for cold winter vehicle starts. It sounds solid, and it is a real-world, hands-on kind of review. If you’re interested in this tech, this is worth a read: This Clever Supercapacitor Accessory Is a Smart Fix for Cold Car Starts.

Third, and this is the part that’s specific to the Random Wire audience: if you’ve got a mobile rig hardwired into your vehicle’s electrical system, this device is doing something to your crank and start-up voltage profile that nobody’s characterized yet. It’s not a fuse-blowing concern in the classic sense — the Super Starter probably doesn’t add current through your radio’s own power leads, so an overcurrent trip on that circuit isn’t the likely failure mode. The more concerning question is voltage transients on the 12V bus itself. During the crank event, the capacitor is absorbing most of the starter’s draw and then handing off to the battery and alternator; right after start, it’s pulling current back from the alternator to refill itself. Either transition could produce a brief dip or overshoot on the bus that a normally-fed rig wouldn’t otherwise see — and mobile radios are already notoriously sensitive to exactly that kind of thing, which is why so many of us add extra transient suppression to a hardwired install in the first place. I haven’t found research measuring the 12V bus with and without one of these installed, from Ancel or anyone independent. Until someone runs that test, I wouldn’t want it anywhere near several hundred dollars of mobile radio gear.

Fourth, and the part that actually killed it for me: the thing only helps the vehicle it’s bolted to. I have kids with vehicles in various states of mechanical health, and I’m the guy who often gets the call when one of them won’t start. A device clamped to my own battery terminals is no use to them. This means I’d still need to carry a portable lithium booster in the truck regardless of whether I installed the Super Starter. And if I’m already carrying a booster that covers every situation the Super Starter covers plus the ones it doesn’t, the case for spending another $220 on a single-purpose, single-vehicle install gets thin fast.

So here’s where I landed: it’s a legitimately clever idea, and I like the concept. If you’ve got a vehicle that sits for long stretches, hauls a heavy accessory load, or otherwise chews through batteries, I understand the appeal. But for a daily-driven rig with a battery in decent shape, and a household where “helpful” means being able to jump anyone’s vehicle, not just your own, a $60 portable booster under the seat does more for less money — and doesn’t ask you to trust a new product category on faith. I’ll keep an eye on this space. If the independent, multi-season reviews start showing up and the numbers hold, I may revisit it. For now, my jumper cables and a charged lithium pack are in the truck.

6. Short Stack from the Interwebs

Pulled from the aggregated feeds on EtherHam (etherham.com/feeds/), items from July 20–23.

Antennas

• The Crown Antenna: A Wire Loop That Hugs the Roof and Works the World — Hamradio.my — A roof-hugging wire loop design for HF. Worth a look if you’re antenna-restricted.

• Part 2 of… Antenna solve one problem to only create another — Amateur Radio Weekly — the classic antenna-tinkering trap: fix one issue, discover a new one. Relatable.

Propagation & Science

• HamSCI Ray Tracing Working Group — HAMSCI.org — HamSCI’s group working on ray-tracing tools for ionospheric propagation modeling.

• The ARRL Solar Update — ARRL News — Latest solar/propagation conditions rundown.

Satellites

• UmKA-1 (RS40S) Satellite to Transmit SSTV, Audio Clips — Amateur Radio Daily — New satellite planning SSTV and audio transmissions — worth tracking if you’re into satellite work.

APRS & Digital

• APRSdroid 9M2PJU Mod: The Enhanced APRS Companion for Android, Built by Hams, for Hams — Hamradio.my — A ham-built mod to APRSdroid. Given the LoRa APRS iGate work on EtherHam right now, this is a natural companion piece.

DIY / Gadgets

• Flash a $2 Pi-hole From Your Browser: The 9M2PJU ESP32-C3 AdBlocker — Hamradio.my — Browser-flashable ad-blocker on a $2 ESP32-C3. Not radio, but exactly the kind of cheap-hardware hack that fits the workbench.

History & Culture

• How Amateur Radio Built the Indonesian Internet: PaguyubanNet, Packet Radio and the Pioneers of 1986–1994 — Hamradio.my — Deep history on how ham packet radio bootstrapped Indonesia’s early internet. Genuinely excellent long-read, easily the standout item this week — from both the curated and mega feeds.

Reference

• DXing Techniques for Amateur Radio: A Complete Guide to Working the World — Amateur Radio Today — Solid DXing primer, good bookmark-and-share material.

Community / Silent Keys

• DXer and DXpeditioner Kan Mizoguchi, JA1BK, Silent Key — ARRL News —Passing of a notable DXpeditioner.

Also Noted

• San Diego Section of IEEE Invited Talk Intersects ORI’s Antenna Work — Open Research Institute

• VHF for Parks On The Air? — Amateur Radio Weekly

• The W9IMS Brickyard 400 Special Event: Third Time’s a Certificate — The SWLing Post

• Records with Soul and a WAVE — The SWLing Post

7. Ported Scripts to My Proxmox Server

This week, I moved a few scripts to my Proxmox box. The backstory? The Raspberry Pi where those scripts lived…died. And it wasn’t just any Pi — it was the one that handled my home lab tracker and processed the Digital Radio News Gatherer script every week.

I had been planning to move those scripts to my Proxmox server — someday — so the failure of the Pi changed that to right now. Fortunately, I was keeping regular backups of the scripts and data on a USB thumbdrive, in ext4 format. Proxmox can read ext4, so my backups provided the smoothest way to transfer scripts, settings, and data to Proxmox containers.

The Pi’s death wasn’t quiet. First it was a service crash-looping on the lab tracker. It turned out a routine apt autoremove had quietly pulled Flask out from under a process that had been running fine for weeks, and nobody noticed until the next reboot forced it to reload a dependency that was no longer there. In other words, it was already broken, I just didn’t know it.

Then the real trouble started: the case ran hot, SSH sessions began dropping mid-command, and one by one, services stopped responding. Cockpit, gone. Docker, gone. The web apps stayed technically alive but started throwing I/O errors the moment they tried to touch the disk. That’s the signature of a filesystem giving up, not just a CPU getting warm. A fan and a reboot bought some time, but a few hours later it came back worse — even basic commands like tail and sudo started failing. The NVMe drive, a budget no-name unit, may well be on its way out…or is possibly underpowered by the HAT. Pi 5 NVMe bases are known to be stingy on current under sustained load, which can look exactly like a failing drive without one actually being bad.

By the time I went to grab the backup drive, every way I had of reaching the Pi remotely had stopped working — the usual command-line connection, the web-based control panel, even the official remote-access tool. I pulled the thumbdrive and plugged it into my Proxmox box. After that, recovery was almost anticlimactic: I could read straight from the drive without disturbing anything, and there sat every night’s backup, the program and its database both untouched. From there, I built a new home on the Proxmox server: a small, self-contained slice of the machine, running its own private copy of the software it depends on instead of sharing whatever happens to be installed system-wide. That last part matters more than it sounds like it should — it’s the difference between a routine cleanup silently breaking your service, and your service carrying its own dependencies with it, immune to whatever else happens on the machine.

The Digital Radio News Gatherer had its own separate gremlin — a Groq API key that looked fine in its config file but wasn’t actually making it into the running process, because the cron job launching it never sourced the environment file, and even after fixing that, the file itself was missing an export in front of the key. Two small, easy-to-miss mistakes stacked on top of each other, neither one loud enough to point straight at the cause. That is sorted now, and worth remembering for anyone else running scripts out of cron with secrets tucked into a separate file.

These are lessons for anyone running similar infrastructure off a Pi — and I know plenty of you are: back up more than just your data. A solid backup process is what saved me here, not a database export. (All of my Proxmox containers are backed up weekly to an external target.) And if you can move a service that matters onto something with real redundancy, consider doing that before the hardware makes the decision for you.

8. Open Notebook on Proxmox Server

I’m starting to play with an open source project called Open Notebook. So far, it looks interesting and seems to run fine on my Proxmox server. I’m going to use it for capturing meeting agendas and notes, and then see if that kind of content proves useful.

I installed it several weeks ago and already an update was waiting. Updating it was very easy — much easier than I expected. It runs in a Docker container, so just three commands took care of the version upgrade:

docker compose down
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

Docker Compose makes it pretty painless — three commands and your data stays untouched since it lives in the mounted volume, not in the container. I wish all updates were so easy!

9. QRT: End Transmission

Plumbing, part 2. We’re still dealing with the plumbing leak I reported last week. We now have a new faucet that works well. I had to add a plug to the unused hole in the sink top, but that was not much money and only a quick trip to Ace Hardware. The continuing issue is the water that seeped under the kitchen floor tiles. That lifted several tiles along the edges. I’ve been running a fan and a dehumidifier constantly since then to try and dry the moisture out from under the floor. A new moisture meter is arriving this week: pinless, so I can take relative measurements, comparing dry, unaffected spots with the parts that did receive some seepage. I need to make sure that wood won’t grow mold when I fix some of those tiles.

Frustrated with bad UI. I’m trying to configure an events plugin for my work website, and the user interface is full of labels that don’t mean what they say. Example: “configure calendar” is actually a shortcode generator. Or two labels that sound identical, one above the other. A “configure” link hiding under the “other data” label. An unlabeled, bright orange button in the usual “submit” position with an arrow on it…that doesn’t appear to actually do anything. If you couldn’t tell, I really, really don’t like poorly designed UIs!

And that’s enough to close Random Wire 192. I hope you had a productive, interesting radio week.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

1. QRV: Are You Ready?

I started a series on DMR radio this week, because my coverage of DMR has been a bit light. Why? Because I don’t really understand it. The best way to learn DMR is to use it, and I find that organizing what I’m learning and writing about it really helps to cement that knowledge in my mind.

I fixed a bug in my AllStar node running on an Arduino UNO Q board. It is reliable again. Speaking of reliability, I also implemented a backup routine for one of my primary AllStar nodes that is driven by a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client PC.

There are a few write-ups about artificial intelligence in Random Wire 191. I had an interesting experience with two different models in Claude. I also gave Hermes Agent a try and found it is too powerful and complex for what I need, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t right for you.

Following up on my deep dive into the push-to-talk over cellular space, I ordered a PoC radio. This is a leap of faith. I want to experience what a typical buyer experiences, and I’m hopeful the new radio will be fun to use. This week I touch on some purchasing friction points. Next week I should have the radio in hand.

I learned about CascadiaMesh this week…and it is interesting enough that I ordered a solar-powered mesh device to go on the roof. Fingers crossed it works well.

I signed up for QSO One and tested it for a few days. It has great promise, but right now, the UI is still a little rough around the edges, at least in my experience.

And I saw a strange glitch in my APRSdroid display. It was odd enough that I did some research on it and documented it in a bug report filed on GitHub.

I also tried a speaker-mic on the Uniwa F400 smartphone with DVSwitch and DroidStar installed. Did it work? Yes as a remote speaker, no as a microphone. I’ll be exploring button mapping as a way to try to get it working with that platform.

That’s Random Wire 191 in a nutshell. I hope you enjoy reading about these amateur radio and technology topics this week. I’m always open to learning and trying new things, so please do send your ideas and suggestions to me!

2. Thank You

I want to thank all the innovators and all the folks who form the solid backbone of our hobby. Last week, I wrote a brief piece about crossing the chasm, in the context of adopting amateur radio technology.

This week, I’m leaning in on this concept. I usually occupy the “early market” part of the curve — innovators and early adopters. Trying new things, or things new to me, is what I enjoy most. The makers, designers, builders, and coders keep the magic alive in our hobby. I doubt we’ve ever seen as much innovation and creativity in amateur radio as we’re experiencing now.

But people like me are actually a small percentage of the hobby, compared to the much larger group: the “mainstream market” folks. The early majority, late majority, and laggards (not my choice of term!) form the spine that holds up amateur radio, year in and year out. They buy the gear that keeps major players in the game, and that benefits all of us.

The “early market” folks are one side of the amateur radio coin; the “mainstream market” folks are the other. We can’t have one without the other — both are needed to keep the hobby healthy and vibrant.

Thank you to the innovators and early adopters. Thank you to the larger group that keeps the hobby together. No matter which side of the coin you prefer, you’re important to all of us.

3. New on EtherHam

Some fun radio-related topics this week.

• Introduction to DMR: The Four Wheels on the Car — This is Part 1 in a short series on DMR, written for those of us who find DMR, well, daunting. DMR asks new users to understand codeplugs, timeslots, talkgroups, and networks before they’ve even keyed the mic — and most guides bury that in jargon before you get near your first contact. This piece cuts through it with one idea: DMR is like a car, and those four concepts are its four wheels. Get all four turning and you’re on the air; skip one, and you’re not going anywhere. Part 1 of Tommy’s Guide to DMR builds that mental model — no gear list yet, no codeplug, just the four ideas you need before any of the rest makes sense.

• AllStar on Arduino UNO Q: Part 2 (The Bug That Killed My Node…Until I Fixed It) — If your UNO Q AllStar node runs for hours and then drops dead — heartbeat LED red, lsusb empty, nothing but a full power cycle bringing it back — the culprit is a documented bug that silently flips the board’s USB-C port out of host mode. The fix is a one-line command, made permanent with a small systemd service, and it’s all laid out in Part 2. The QNode is now rock solid, and yours can be too. Part 1 is at How to Run AllStar on the Arduino UNO Q.

• Backing Up Your AllStar Node: Why I Do It Even Though “eMMC Never Fails” — Every AllStarLink node builder has an opinion on whether the storage in their node will ever fail — and one popular take is that the eMMC in a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client basically never does. That might even be true. But I learned decades ago, the hard way, what it feels like to lose weeks of irreplaceable work to a single bad disk, and I’ve never wanted to relearn that lesson on a node that also connects to my ham phone. Here’s why I back up my node anyway, what eMMC actually gets right (and wrong) compared to microSD, the one AllScan file I almost forgot to include, and a free, MIT-licensed script you can use so a dead drive is a shrug instead of a crisis.

• Hardening SSH Access to Your AllStarLink Node: Moving Beyond Port 22 — Your AllStarLink node isn’t just a simple appliance — you’re running an unattended Debian server with a direct line to your radio and your home network, and automated bots are scanning for it right now. A compromised node isn’t just an inconvenience: it can mean unauthorized transmissions attributed to your callsign, or a foothold into every other device on your LAN. This walkthrough shows how to close a common gap in an afternoon — moving off the default SSH port, adding real rate-limiting, and locking down Fail2Ban correctly on Debian, including the exact reason it silently fails for a lot of people.

• Push-to-Talk Over Cellular: The Actual Buying Experience — I ordered a PoC radio from Talk2Me USA on July 11, expecting to click “buy” and wait for a box. Instead, the next four days were an inbox: a $15 billing mix-up that was later reversed, a new Terms of Service that arrived the day after I paid, and login credentials for three separate radio networks — before the hardware itself had even shipped. The ad copy sells “buy now.” The actual experience is “buy now, then wait” — and it turns out most of what a buyer needs to know happens in that gap, not at checkout.

4. Claude AI: An Hour with Sonnet, Ten Minutes with Fable

I reported last week that the default engine on Claude had changed from Opus to Sonnet. I also reported that Fable had been released, then blocked, and then made available again. I got a chance to use the high-powered Fable engine this week, and therein lies a story.

This relates to the UNO Q item directly above in this newsletter. As I tried to figure out what was going on with my Arduino UNO Q-powered AllStar node, I eventually turned to Claude for some help. Using the default Sonnet engine, we went round and round for an hour. It got to the point where I would tell Claude: no, we’ve tried that twice already, I do not want to repeat that process…and Claude would push it forward anyway.

Eventually, I asked for a written summary of that conversation, closed the thread, and opened a new one with Fable as the engine. Ten minutes. That’s what it took to do the proper research and lead me to a solution that worked.

To be fair, this comparison isn't perfectly clean. It's tempting to blame Sonnet for an hour of churning — but that churning is what produced the diagnostic evidence, including the exact kernel log signature of the failure, that let Fable's first web search land directly on a known bug report. A fresh session armed with documented dead ends gave Fable a real head start.

There’s a workflow lesson here that applies no matter which AI you use: when a session starts going in circles, ask for a written handoff summary, close the thread, and start fresh. That technique rescued this project as much as the model swap did.

Honestly, Opus was a capable engine. I’m not particularly pleased with Sonnet, at least for sleuthing code and hardware problems. Fable burns through credits faster, but I was very pleased with how thoroughly and surgically it developed a solution. As noted, though, the work I did with Sonnet gave Fable a leg up as we reached the finish line.

5. Hermes Agent: Complex and Powerful

Some weeks ago, I set up an instance of Hermes Agent on my home server. I started by powering the reasoning side with Grok, but it burned through my credits faster than expected, so I downscaled to Gemini (free), which worked well.

Hermes Agent is an open-source AI agent framework, and “agent” is the operative word — it’s not a chat window, it’s a system meant to run unattended and act on your behalf. It can execute multi-step tasks autonomously across your terminal, your IDE, and more than ten messaging platforms (Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, email). It remembers things across sessions — your preferences, your environment, lessons learned — and it can save reusable procedures as “skills” so it gets better at your specific workflows over time. You can point it at almost any LLM provider (OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, local models) and swap between them mid-workflow, run multiple isolated instances with their own memory and config, and extend it with plugins, custom tools, webhooks, and cron jobs. On paper, it can handle coding and debugging, research, system administration, data analysis, content creation, and even home automation.

That list alone tells you something: this isn’t a “download an app and go” tool. Getting it running means configuration files, API quotas, provider swaps, and troubleshooting that assumes you’re comfortable poking around under the hood.

I spent a couple of days putting it through its paces — switching models, testing its WordPress and GitHub integrations, watching how it handles tool-calling. It’s genuinely capable, and I came away with real respect for what it can do. I also hit real friction: a crashed gateway, a free-tier quota that ran out faster than expected, and copy-paste quirks that took some digging to sort out.

Here’s my takeaway. If you have a specific need for an autonomous, always-on agent — something that runs unattended, chains multiple tools together, or watches your systems continuously — Hermes Agent may be worth the investment of time it takes to learn. But that’s not the problem I have. I mostly want a smart assistant to review my writing, help me code, or think through a problem. For these tasks, a standard AI chat interface gets me there with a lot less overhead. Hermes is a great solution for a problem I just don’t have.

6. PoC Radio Followup: I Ordered One

I’ve had some interesting exchanges about my push-to-talk over cellular deep dive (see: Buying Push-to-Talk Over Cellular Without Getting Taken). Even though I’ve previously purchased three PoC units, those were generally low-end devices. I’ve ordered a modern unit at a higher price point that meets these criteria:

• Cellular connectivity

• Wi-Fi connectivity

• Can use the HamLink PoC app by Talk2Me

Why? Two reasons. First, I want to put myself in the shoes of a typical buyer who is trying to find the device that meets his/her needs. Second, I want a PoC device that will also let me connect to America’s Kansas City Wide Network, and HamLink PoC offers that capability. I ordered through Talk2Me specifically because it appears to be one of the leading vendors in this market space, which gave me more confidence going in than I’d have with an unknown seller.

Worth saying up front: I trusted Talk2Me enough to send them $200 for a radio I hadn't yet held, on the strength of that reputation. That's the lens for everything below. These are observations from a buyer who chose them for good reason, not grievances against a vendor I regret choosing — and precisely because I went with a name I trusted, the friction points I ran into are worth knowing for anyone buying a PoC radio, from any vendor.

So far, the buying experience is about what I expected. Details about each radio choice were hard to find. The HamLink PoC app was supposed to be free with a radio purchase — instead, I was charged for it, and later told that charge will be refunded. This kind of behavior ("it's free" but then you get charged) makes it harder to trust vendors. To be clear, these observations are necessarily about Talk2Me, since that’s who I bought from, but I have no reason to think Talk2Me is worse than other vendors in this space. If anything, the fact that friction shows up even with a leading vendor is the point: these are things any PoC buyer should watch for, regardless of who they order from.

I was pleased that for the HamLink PoC app, I was asked to provide a copy of my FCC-issued amateur radio license. That gives me confidence that app usage will be limited to licensed operators.

The radio was originally tracking to arrive Saturday, July 18, at the early end of the vendor’s 7-11 day estimate. Since then I’ve received a delay notice pushing delivery to July 20. Another friction point worth flagging for anyone shopping this category: the delay notice didn’t explain a cause, and there’s still no order-status page or tracking link that gives more detail than “delayed.”

I also received a new terms of service notice before the radio or the app were even in my hands. The timing felt odd — as though placing the order triggered it, rather than it being a routine notice sent to all customers. If it’s the latter, the coincidence is remarkable. I can’t say which it is, and I’m not accusing Talk2Me of anything here. However, a buyer in the middle of an active order is not in a great position to evaluate a new ToS agreement on its merits. That’s worth naming as its own category of friction, separate from the pricing and shipping issues above.

For a purchase already made opaque by pricing and add-on confusion, a shifting delivery date without explanation and an untimely ToS update amount to small trust deductions. None of this is disqualifying on its own, but it’s the kind of accumulated friction that shapes whether a buyer sticks with a vendor for a second purchase.

I’ll have more on this once the device arrives and I get it configured — and with a radio in hand, issue 192 will shift away from the purchasing process and focus on the device itself. Fingers crossed this is not a $200 mistake. I’m actually hopeful the device and service will prove useful and enjoyable!

7. Have You Heard of CascadiaMesh?

Thank you to subscriber Joe who brought CascadiaMesh to my attention.

CascadiaMesh is a volunteer community project (not a company or nonprofit) that's building out a regional mesh network across British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, using solar-powered nodes for "grid-down" resilient comms. It's grown fast — over 2,300 active nodes as of today. The network runs on MeshCore, an open-source LoRa mesh protocol, and the site provides onboarding guides, device recommendations, node-building tutorials, a live map, and links to sibling regional meshes (Puget Mesh, Salish Mesh, etc.) across the US, Canada, and Europe.

My take? CascadiaMesh appears to have positive momentum. Here’s a 30-second screen recording of the live map to give you an idea of the vibrancy of the network. It is operating not just across town, but across state and provincial lines.

Important: MeshCore has its own iOS/Android app, its own web flasher (flasher.meshcore.dev), and its own config tool. A MeshCore node can't talk to a Meshtastic node — they use different protocols and encryption.

OK, color me interested. I ordered a small solar-powered node from an Etsy vendor. I’m hoping to put it up on top of the galvanized steel chimney cap which sits above the peak of the roof. Maybe there are other MeshCore nodes near me!

If MeshCore interests you, too, you should probably be aware there is a battle going on over trademarking the MeshCore name. Ultimately, I don’t think this will affect the codebase or the community, but it could result in the project getting renamed. I hope not, because MeshCore is perfectly descriptive.

8. QSO One, Part 2 — Testing

QSO One's pitch is bold: "Amateur radio, reimagined." The marketing promises a single modern client that puts AllStarLink, EchoLink, DMR, and M17 all in one app, on Windows or Android, with no node to build, no hotspot to flash, and no radio interface to wire up — twenty-five dollars and five minutes between you and being keyed up on any of it. It's framed as the client nobody else had bothered to build: a clean, cross-platform answer to IAXRpt's abandonment, DVSwitch's complexity, and the fragmented, one-app-per-mode reality most of us have been living with for years.

If this is real, it will have real value for radio amateurs. So I downloaded the QSO One app and installed it on my Windows laptop. This is what I like doing: poke at something to make sure it lives up to its billing. I’ll have a full write-up on this in the near future because the experience was a bit rocky. Essentially, the UI doesn’t really lead you through how to get set up and connected. I spent quite a bit of time poking around, trying to figure things out.

But once I got it connected with my AllStar node 588418, it worked well. The audio had a bit of choppiness to it but I suspect that is my network, not the app. To test that, I shut down QSO One and used the venerable iaxRpt app to connect to my node, and heard exactly the same choppy audio.

I was not successful at getting M17 to connect. It did find my reflector M17-PNW but then errored out. This appears tied to a connection-handoff bug in the app rather than something wrong with M17.

At this point, I would describe QSO One as a very good "built from the ground up" new app that is still rough around the edges, in active development, and shows promise. This one is definitely worth watching.

9. Chasing a Weird APRSdroid Display Glitch

A few weeks ago I noticed something odd in APRSdroid’s Hub view on my Android smartphone: my mobile’s SSID was showing up as “KJ7T-9_1” instead of “KJ7T-9.” At first I assumed I’d fat-fingered something on the radio, so I changed the SSID to -11. Same thing happened — “KJ7T-11_1.” Then I saw Jeff’s portable, W7NEE-9, and it had its own additional underscore and number: “_3.” Whatever this was, it wasn’t just me, and it clearly wasn’t an SSID problem, since the SSID itself was displaying correctly in the title. The mystery character was showing up as a second line, like a comment.

The next step was to stop guessing and go look at the actual data. Pulling the raw packets for KJ7T-9 from aprs.fi’s raw packet view showed the underscore-digit baked right into the transmitted Mic-E packet. APRSdroid was not inventing this — it was real. And critically, aprs.fi wasn’t displaying it as a comment at all. That told me the “_1” was actual data that one piece of software was interpreting correctly and another wasn’t.

It turns out this is a documented part of the Mic-E spec. Bob Bruninga WB4APR (SK) produced a reference table of Mic-E “device identifier” bytes — a two-character suffix that radios append to the end of the Mic-E info field to identify themselves, positioned right after the base-91 altitude data. Per that table, “_1” decodes to a Yaesu FTM-300D and “_3” decodes to a Yaesu FT5D. The spec is explicit that receiving software should recognize these bytes and strip them from the displayed text (or use them to show the radio model) rather than showing them as if they were part of a comment. aprs.fi does this correctly. APRSdroid, at least as of the current release on my phone, doesn’t.

Rather than just grumbling about it, I filed a bug report on APRSdroid’s GitHub page. I made sure to include the actual raw packet as evidence, a link to the spec document that defines the correct behavior, a clear statement of what I observed versus what should happen, and a specific suggested fix. I also included my app version and Android version, since that’s the first thing any maintainer will ask for anyway.

I’d encourage anyone who runs into a quirk like this in ham radio software to consider doing the same thing. Many of these tools — APRSdroid included — are maintained by one or two volunteers in their spare time, often for free, and often for years. A report that says “this looks broken” is easy to ignore. A report with raw data, a spec citation, and a proposed fix is something a maintainer can act on in five minutes instead of an hour. It also means the next ham who hits the same weirdness can search the issue tracker and find an answer instead of struggling to figure out a diagnosis from scratch. Bug reports help the maintainer, but they also help the community.

10. Speaker-Mic for Uniwa F400 Phone

Will it work? That has been on my mind since I ordered this through Amazon (this is an affiliate link):

Portbale Microphone for UNIWA F400 and Anysecu W400 4G Network Radio

(Yes, portable is misspelled. That’s the way it is listed.)

It certainly makes the smartphone look more like a radio, but will it work? It arrived, I attached it, and it works well as a remote speaker. However, the push-to-talk button works the same as the PTT on the phone itself, which is to say it doesn’t work with DVSwitch Mobile or DroidStar. I didn’t really expect it to, but I also haven’t explored button mapping apps to see if I can get the PTT to work with one (or both) of those apps.

Two resources I’ll be exploring to try to get the PTT functioning the way I want.

• Button Mapper: Remap your keys (by developer flar2) — the most established option, free, no root required for most actions, works via Android’s accessibility framework. Nearly 11,000 reviews on Google Play. Handles volume keys, camera buttons, headset buttons, and “custom buttons” (which is the category a PTT accessory would likely fall into). Find it in the Google Play Store.

• Key Mapper (open source, by sds100) — more technical/granular option, popular in the XDA/hobbyist crowd. Supports multi-key combos and sequences, and unlike Button Mapper it’s fully open source if your readers want to see exactly what it’s doing under the hood before granting accessibility permissions — which is a reasonable thing for a security-conscious ham audience to want. Find it on GitHub.

Note that both of these apps rely on Android’s accessibility service to intercept the keypress. Also, remapping only helps if the target app already accepts input from some other bound key (like volume-down) that these tools can redirect the PTT press to. It’s a promising rabbit hole, not a guaranteed fix.

11. What’s On The Bench

• Antenna Launcher — I still have my pneumatic antenna launcher to complete. The wiring diagram for the electrical trigger was not clear, so I requested (and received) additional information from the vendor. But that was months ago, so I need to review it all again before I commence with the last phase of soldering. Considering that my end-fed halfwave wire fell out of the tall Douglas fir tree, completing the launcher has become more urgent.

• UHF/VHF dipole — A small dipole antenna is coming from a vendor in Oregon. I’ll strap this to a telescoping painter pole to get my LightAPRS Gateway antenna out of the garage and higher in the air. That should improve performance considerably.

• T-Beam ordered — I plan to set up an APRS-over-LoRa digipeater on 70 cm. This is different than normal APRS on UHF because LoRa uses spread spectrum radio — the two types of APRS on UHF are not compatible. Maybe I’ll discover a few more people are doing this; I hope so. The device was shipped on July 16 and may arrive in time for Random Wire 192.

12. Recipes for Radios

I had a problem with APRS on my Yaesu FTM-300DR mobile radio. VFO B is set to use SmartBeaconing while I’m mobile…but it stopped working right after I made a backup copy of the frequencies and settings to a microSD card. Thinking about it, I realized I must’ve fumble-fingered a setting while trying to remember how to write a copy of the radio to the card. It’s also possible that a voltage spike scrambled some settings.

Short version: I got it working again. SmartBeaconing had been turned off and the beacon interval was set to manual. Enabling SmartBeaconing and setting the interval to Smart solved the problem, as shown in the track below for KJ7T-9:

You can tell it is using SmartBeaconing because the dots are farther apart on the lengths of road with higher speed limits. Closer to town and in town, at lower speeds, the dots are closer together. (The other thing I’m happy to see is at the end of this track when I returned home, my own KJ7T digipeater picked up my beacon.)

The takeaway: I’m again reminded of the value of recipe cards. In the IT space, we call the step-by-step instructions to accomplish tasks not done very often by a special term: runbooks. However, I think of them as recipe cards. Even though I know some of my mother’s favorite recipes by heart, I always refer to the old recipe card while I’m making one of those dishes. The same kind of system — a recipe card for a particular configuration you want to work right every time — also works for your radios.

If keeping a notebook or computer file of particular steps seems too onerous, try some 3x5 cards contained in one group with a rubber band. This system does not need batteries or an internet connection.

For important settings you rarely change — or perhaps as memories fade with time — recipe cards can save you from an immense amount of frustration.

13. Short Stack

Community

• Join Hams Over Video Conference 24/7 — What is this? It’s a Jitsi Meet server hosted by the same ham who runs AmateurWire (Roger Radcliff KE8LCM), and it appears he has a partner in this (Murray Green K3BEQ). I tested it in a browser on my laptop and in the Jitsi app on my Android phone, and both work fine. Ham radio is about connecting with others, and this service helps you do that.

Podcasts

• HRWB 267 - Designing The Pebble Radio — “In this episode we meet Becky Spiceland N4BKY, Mike Spiceland N4FFF and Barb Asuroglu WB2CBA the amateur radio operators behind the Pebble radio project.”

• Solder Smoke episode 265 is available — listen to it or watch it on YouTube.

APRS & Digital

• aprs.world — “APRS World is a modern, open-source client for the global APRS-IS amateur radio network.” Accessible through a web browser and has an Android app.

• DroidStar 9M2PJU Mod — I installed this customized build of DroidStar on my Android phone and found it works fine. I tested it on YSF, M17, and IAX. For those of us who have been waiting for DroidStar connections over IAX to be fixed, in this build, it works!

• Learn About FlexRadio’s Aurora Transceiver from the Team that Developed It (Video) — “A few months before Hamvention, DX Engineering’s Michael, KI8R, caught up with Tony, K1KP, Steve, N5AC, and Gerald, K5SDR, from FlexRadio during Orlando HamCation for a deep dive into this breakthrough rig.”

Computing & AI

• Microsoft Just Patched a Record 570 Flaws in Windows — The takeaway? Patch now as this release included patches for three zero-day vulnerabilities.

• Someone connected a Raspberry Pi 4B to an old, unsupported Kindle, and now it’s an e-ink dashboard — Probably because I have old Kindles and some Raspberry Pi boards, this looks like a great way to combine old and new tech.

• The People Who Will Thrive in the AI Age — “The general pattern that the research points to is that many people don’t use the time they save using AI to do less; they use the time to take on new tasks.”

14. QRT: End Transmission

I thought it would be an easier week but a plumbing leak in the kitchen dispelled that notion. As I type this, I have a fan going to keep air moving and a dehumidifier operating to try and dry out the wood under the kitchen linoleum tiles.

The good news is we have a new faucet. The bad news is the cost of the plumber to install the faucet was about what a new mid-range HF radio costs. When I heard the price, I was gobsmacked. But it works well and that is what is important.

I added a few nylon mooring cleats to my little dinghy to make it easier to tie to the dock. When I say little, I mean tiny: it is a six-foot-long fiberglass dinghy I bought for dragging behind the sailboat. Right now, though, it’s at the lake house with a small electric motor on it. As long as it’s not too windy or choppy on the lake, I feel perfectly safe out on the water. On the weekends when the wakeboard boats are generating big, sharp waves? The dinghy stays tied to the dock.

We have been settling back into a regular routine since last week’s ER visit. That gave me a little more time to work on the lawn and flower beds. My lavender plants really took off this year, making the bees very happy. I have a long line of nasturtiums coming up along a border and am looking forward to those flowering, too. The bees and hummingbirds are enjoying my flower pots on the deck, and that is where I sit with my Kindle e-reader and keep an eye on my spouse through a window.

Closer to radio, I realized it’s been a while since I logged into my Mastodon account: @kj7t@mastodon.radio. I think I need a weekly reminder to do that, so I don’t abandon folks who are waiting for a response.

I have much to be thankful for and appreciate my amateur radio hobby and radio friends very much.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

This week has raced by. It’s Thursday as I type this, and I’m behind schedule because of, well, life.

On the good news front, I got my LightAPRS Gateway device working. The story is on EtherHam. What I didn’t write about is learning about APRS over LoRa 70cm radio. While that has nothing to do with the LightAPRS device, it does touch APRS. I’m curious about this so I ordered a device (T-Deck Plus with GPS on 433MHz) to experiment with. Here’s the kicker, though: when I look at a map of APRS stations using LoRa, I find exactly one in Washington State. It’s an APRS-over-LoRa desert here. However, if I get my device running properly, maybe I can make a contact with the other station about 30 miles away. I might have to find a hill with line-of-sight to Seattle to make this happen. We’ll see!

For the LightAPRS device, I have a small dipole VHF antenna coming. I intended to set that a bit higher in the air on a fiberglass painter pole because I’d like to get a better signal in and out of the digi. I’m feeling pretty good about one watt through a small mag-mount, though:

2. Thank You…Supporters!

I have several people to thank for their support over the past few months. Most support comes in through the “buy me a coffee” system but there have also been EtherHam store purchases. Everything helps and is greatly appreciated.

• Coffees: Thank you to Rich, Ray, and David.

• EtherHam store: Thank you to Jeff, Rich, Joe, and Ren.

3. New on EtherHam

• Buying Push-to-Talk Over Cellular Without Getting Taken — I researched the current market, and this sent me down a deep rabbit hole. The push-to-talk over cellular field is confusing, and that confusion leans in favor of vendors, not buyers. If you’re thinking about buying one, or you already bought one and discovered it wasn’t quite what you expected, this guide walks through what nobody tells you upfront — using a car-lot analogy that will feel uncomfortably familiar. Read more in this EtherHam-exclusive guide.

• Concept: Using the Arduino UNO Q for Home Power Monitoring — What really drew me to this idea was the Arduino UNO Q's split-brain design: one board handling both real-time sensor capture and higher-level computing. These are jobs that used to require two separate devices. I sketched out (conceptually — not yet built) a whole-house power monitor with non-contact current clamps on the split-phase legs and an isolated voltage sensor. These are all read by the microcontroller side while Linux handles the math, logging, and dashboarding — no direct contact with bare conductors, ever. Full write-up, with parts list, firmware split, and dashboard options, is up on EtherHam.

• LightAPRS Gateway iGate Beacon Success — Troubleshooting Log — A week of ruling out CGNAT, firewalls, servers, and a suspicious libc6 upgrade led nowhere. The real fix turned out to be something I hadn’t considered: the callsign’s SSID itself. This post walks through the manual nc tests, the reboot comparisons, and the variable-isolation process that finally got KJ7T’s iGate beacons landing on aprs.fi — even though the server-side root cause remains a mystery. Bottom line: the digipeater is now working well, and I feel comfortable recommending the LightAPRS Digipeater, available from QRP Labs, as a fill-in digipeater and igate.

• Crossing the Chasm: Which Amateur Radio Technologies Actually Made It — Why did DMR and FT8 become fixtures in the shack while D-STAR and Fusion have not yet achieved that status? This piece maps ham radio’s real technology winners and still-rising projects — CW, SSB, FM, AllStarLink, AREDN mesh, and more — onto the classic “crossing the chasm” adoption curve. Borrowing a framework shared by an amateur radio friend, it asks what actually separates a solved problem from a brilliant piece of engineering still waiting for its moment. Along the way, it builds context to help you place your own favorite radios, modes, and projects on that same curve.

• Weekly Report: July 9, 2026 — The weekly report covers band conditions, digital radio news, and a digest of Groups.io messages. The Repeater Builder group was the most active this week with 142 messages posted.

4. QSO One: A New Way onto AllStarLink

There’s a new app making the rounds in the AllStarLink and EchoLink space, and it’s worth a mention here even though I’m not ready to give it the full workbench treatment over at EtherHam. It’s called QSO One, and the pitch is simple: get on AllStarLink, EchoLink, DMR, and M17 from a Windows PC or Android phone, with no node to build, no hotspot to flash, and no radio interface to wire up. Twenty-five dollars, five minutes, and you’re keyed up.

I’ve spent some time this week reading through the developer’s own posts on the AllStarLink community forum, and the backstory is a good one. A ham out of Willoughby Hills, Ohio — Frank, KD8JKK, node 46369 — got pulled back into the hobby by a bad storm earlier this year, found his local repeaters quiet, drifted over to EchoLink, heard AllStarLink had grown, went looking for a modern Windows client, and found nothing. IAXRpt has been abandoned since 2019. So he built his own, reverse-engineering the IAX2 protocol frame by frame rather than leaning on an existing library.

That’s the kind of scrappy, solve-my-own-problem origin story I have a soft spot for. It’s also exactly why I’m not writing this up as a proper EtherHam review yet.

The open beta only went live in early May. As recently as this month, the developer rebuilt the entire audio engine from scratch — giving each network its own dedicated audio lane — because testers were reporting stuttering and garbled audio, the kind of thing one beta tester colorfully described as “wrestling the alligator to the ground.” Early reports since the rebuild sound genuinely improved, but that’s a few weeks of data, not a few years. There’s also been at least one credential-storage bug that could silently drop saved logins, but that has since been patched with a self-healing backup.

None of that is damning for a young project. But it does mean the honest way to describe QSO One right now is “promising and moving fast” rather than “proven.” Worth noting, regardless of how the audio engine matures: this is, as far as I can tell, a one-person operation. One developer wrote the IAX2 stack from scratch, runs the beta, answers the forum posts, and — per the latest update — now runs the backend account system that stores your saved nodes and favorites.

It's also a closed codebase, so there's no way for the community to audit the IAX2 reverse-engineering work, verify what happens to saved credentials, or fork it if Frank stops maintaining it. If Frank steps away for any reason, there may be no one else who understands that code well enough to keep it running. That’s a real single-point-of-failure risk for anyone thinking about leaning on it for a regular net check-in.

So this is an app worth watching, built by someone clearly solving a problem, at a price low enough that trying it costs you little. I find it a very interesting project and hope it continues to mature and grow. I’ll keep an eye on it, and if it’s still standing — and sounding good — in a few months, it’ll earn a proper look on the EtherHam workbench.

5. Claude’s Wild Two Weeks: Export Bans and a New Default

I’ve been seeing changes over the past few weeks in the models made available in Claude, so I naturally wondered what was going on. I learned that Anthropic just had one of its busiest stretches yet. If you use Claude for anything, here’s what you should know.

I’m on the Pro subscription, so the default model change described below affects me, and that change is what caused me to dig into this topic.

The default model quietly flipped. On July 1, Claude Sonnet 5 became the default model for Free and Pro users, replacing Opus. That’s not a small swap — Sonnet 5 ships with a 1 million token context window and performs close to flagship-level Opus 4.8 on many tasks, at a fraction of the cost ($2/$10 per million input/output tokens through the end of August, then $3/$15). Opus is still there if you’re on Max, Team, or Enterprise, but it’s no longer what most people get by default. Anthropic is clearly betting that “good enough and cheap” wins more users than “best but pricey.”

If you are a Claude Pro user, three things change in practice. For those using a Claude Pro subscription, you’ll see three basic changes when you use Claude with the default Sonnet 5 engine:

• Speed and quota: Sonnet 5 is cheaper to run than Opus (roughly a fifth the cost per turn), so on a usage-capped plan like Pro, the same 45-prompts-per-5-hours allowance now stretches much further before you hit a limit. Responses also tend to come back faster since Sonnet is a lighter model.

• Capability: for the bulk of everyday tasks — writing, coding, research, general Q&A — Sonnet 5 performs close enough to Opus 4.8 that most people won’t notice a quality drop. Its 1M token context window means it can also handle very large documents or codebases in one go, which Opus couldn’t always do as cheaply.

• What you lose: for the hardest problems — deep architectural decisions, gnarly debugging, subtle reasoning tasks — Opus 4.8 still has an edge. On Pro you’d now need to manually select Opus for those cases rather than getting it automatically; Max, Team, and Enterprise plans keep broader access to it.

Net effect: most people get faster, more plentiful, “good enough” responses by default, with the option to reach for Opus deliberately when a task actually needs it.

The government forced Anthropic to pull its own flagship model offline. This is the wilder story. Claude Fable 5 and its sibling Mythos 5 launched June 12 — and three days later, the U.S. Commerce Department issued an export-control directive ordering Anthropic to cut off access for any foreign national, anywhere, including Anthropic’s own foreign employees. The trigger, reportedly: Amazon researchers found a jailbreak that got Fable 5 to write exploit code for a real software vulnerability, which was enough to get it treated like a controlled technology. Anthropic complied, access came back starting July 1 once the controls were lifted, and the company extended Fable 5’s free trial as an apology of sorts. It’s a preview of a regulatory fight that’s probably not over — frontier models getting treated like export-controlled hardware is new territory.

Opus 4.1 is on its way out. Deprecated on June 5, hard retirement on the API August 5. Anthropic wants everyone on Opus 4.8 instead, which also came with a real price cut — down from $15/$75 per million tokens to $5/$25, about a 67% reduction. If you’ve got anything hardcoded to claude-opus-4-1, you’ve got a month to migrate.

Cowork is leaving the desktop. Anthropic’s file-and-task agent tool, previously desktop-only, is expanding to web and mobile, with workflows able to keep running without an active browser session. Small item, but it fits the pattern: Anthropic is pushing agents further into everyday, non-coding work.

The takeaway: Anthropic is optimizing for cheaper defaults and broader access, while getting a real taste of what “AI as a national security concern” looks like in practice. It’s worth watching whether the export-control precedent becomes a recurring headache or a one-off situation. This is new ground for all of us.

Sources: Anthropic, TechCrunch, Forbes, Anthropic export control statement, Claude Platform Docs, Claude Sonnet 5 vs Opus 4.8: Price, Limits, and Benchmarks (SmartScope), Opus 4.8 vs Sonnet 5 vs Haiku 4.5: Which Claude Model to Use (The AI Career Lab)

6. An AI Price War Is Underway

While Anthropic was busy reshuffling its own model lineup, a bigger story has been playing out across the industry: the major AI labs are cutting prices against each other, hard.

It started at Google’s I/O conference in May 2026, where Google cut prices on its AI subscription plans — its top-tier Ultra plan dropped 20% — and rolled out a cheaper Gemini tier. Google’s Sundar Pichai pitched the math directly to enterprises: shift 80% of your AI workloads to Gemini and save over $1 billion a year. That was a shot aimed squarely at OpenAI and Anthropic.

Both companies responded. OpenAI has pricing pressure of its own to manage, and Anthropic followed with steep cuts on its side: Opus 4.8 came down from $15/$75 to $5/$25 per million tokens, and Sonnet 5 launched even cheaper at $2/$10. Meanwhile, cut-rate entrants like DeepSeek are underpricing all of them, competing with frontier-class models at a fraction of the cost.

The catch is this isn’t discounting from a position of strength. Running these models is genuinely expensive, and by most reporting, OpenAI and Anthropic are both still losing money at scale even before the price cuts. One data point making the rounds — Uber reportedly burned through its entire 2026 AI budget in four months after Claude Code adoption jumped from 32% to 84% of its engineering division. Cheaper per-token pricing helps users, but it raises the obvious question of how long labs can keep pushing prices down while costs stay high.

Sources: Welcome to the OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google price wars (Sherwood News), Following Google Gemini price cuts, OpenAI also set for price reduction wave (TradingKey), AI Price War: OpenAI and Anthropic Face New Economics (The AI Chronicle)

7. Retevis RA89R Radio: FM and Weather Radio

Retevis advertises that the RA89R includes NOAA weather radio and weather alerts. I did not find pre-programmed weather frequencies in the radio. You can enter those frequencies directly in VFO mode, or program them yourself into the radio. That seems different from other radios that advertise NOAA weather channels — at least in my experience, with most including those as pre-set frequencies in the radio and accessible with the press of a button or two.

Here’s where the mini-manual let me down. How to tune to FM broadcast radio stations and how to receive NOAA weather broadcasts are not made clear. Exploring the Retevis app on my Android phone makes it evident you can set FM broadcast radio frequencies in the app, and when you write the data to the radio, they are also saved there.

The only place I found to set NOAA weather radio frequencies is in the app, then you write the data to the radio and call up those frequencies as saved channels.

So: if you are looking for FM broadcast radio frequencies or NOAA weather stations in your new Retevis RA89R radio, they aren’t there. The easiest solution is to use the app over Bluetooth to program those into the app and then write those settings to the radio.

8. EFHW Came Down

Monday morning dawned, and since I was up early, I thought I’d fire up the IC-7300 MK2 transceiver and work some FT8 while my wife was waking up. First things first, though: check the antenna. And surprise: it had come down from the tall branch above the deck!

This could be the catalyst for me to finally finish soldering the last few wires on my pneumatic launcher kit.

9. QRT: End Transmission

Another interesting week is in my rearview mirror.

I’m on my high school class reunion committee. A few years ago — at my urging — we formed a 501(c)(7) nonprofit “social club” to govern the finances and provide activities for our surviving classmates. Why? Because some classmates have substantial net worth and did not want to be held personally liable if something went wrong at/after a reunion event. The nonprofit social club approach tackles that exposure (along with event insurance), and it also helps us not to lose track of each other in the years between events.

We actually have a great time when we get together. This year will be a picnic and barbecue, and we’ll take lots of pictures for our classmates who could not attend.

On the IT side of this, I’m in charge of the class database and the website. We had more than 500 students in our senior class, so it’s a bit of a lift to keep up with all of them. Many people have passed and we’ve lost touch with quite a few folks, but we remain in contact with more than 200 classmates. All in all, I think our news reaches about 300 classmates. While I wish it could be more, that’s pretty good, considering how many years it has been since we flipped our tassels and walked off stage.

The other big challenge this week was a medical issue with my wife, resulting in a trip to the emergency room. I always figure a minimum of four hours to get in and out of the ER — this one consumed eight hours. The ER was swamped with people, so my wife’s procedure was done in the hallway, and that’s where I stayed by her side that entire time. The important conclusion to this: she’s back home and feeling better.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

1. QRV: Are You Ready?

Welcome to Random Wire 189.

This past week was interesting as I worked on this Random Wire newsletter. The week prior, I got busy with projects while writing RW 188, including experimenting with the Arduino UNO Q. That struck a chord with about a dozen subscribers, and it was apparently not a welcome sound: they unsubscribed this week. I’m guessing about why they dropped, of course. At the same time, I welcome the several new subscribers who joined the Random Wire family this week.

As I’ve thought about this, I think it’s probably a natural outcome of how people choose to subscribe. They find something about the Random Wire newsletter in a publication or by word of mouth, and since they learn of this newsletter from amateur radio sources, they assume it’s all about amateur radio. And of course, it is about amateur radio, but it is not only about radio. I look at the modern, internet-connected, technology-focused side of amateur radio. For subscribers expecting “all RF, all the time,” this would be a disappointment.

I have my RF-only days, too. I get it. At the same time, focusing only on RF is a bit like driving a car with a manual transmission, manual steering, and roll-up windows: it works, but it isn’t as comfortable as a modern personal vehicle. We live in a technology-dominated world, and I choose to let tech augment my amateur radio play. Not everyone chooses to do that, and that’s okay.

For those of us who do marry technology and radio, you are in good company. I call us “EtherHams” and it’s why I named the workbench-focused side of this newsletter EtherHam.com.

And speaking of EtherHam.com, a big thank you to Jeff for purchasing a quality Champion-brand hoodie from the EtherHam store. Store purchases help support this newsletter and the EtherHam site. I wish I had permission to use his photo because it looks great!

2. Thank You…Paul N4FTD

Community shows up in all sizes — sometimes it’s a hoodie purchase, sometimes it’s something that changes how you see the whole hobby. This week I want to talk about the second kind.

Coming straight from the heart, this won’t be a highly polished thank you note.

I extend my sincere gratitude to Paul N4FTD who took time months ago to reach out and build a friendship with me. It turns out we share many of the same things, from caring for our spouses to how we grew up. It has been, and continues to be, a joy to recognize someone traveling alongside me, albeit on the other side of the country. You can find Paul’s radio writing in ROTA-Radio.

As radio amateurs, we usually talk with our radio friends about radios, antennas, and technology. But much of this hobby is really about connecting in a meaningful way with other radio amateurs. I’m reminded of how COVID impacted some of our most vulnerable amateurs who, it turned out, didn’t just look forward to being with like-minded people at their monthly ham radio club meeting — they needed that contact. When COVID took that away, they suffered. Socializing at the monthly meeting was vital for their well being. When meetings resumed, they made sure to attend each one. I noticed their joy at being back in the room with other amateurs.

We are important to each other in ways we may not always see or understand, but it is real and impactful. I hope you’ll choose to reach out to someone new to you in our wide, far-reaching amateur radio community, even if only to say hello.

That kind of connection is the reason I do any of this. But most of my hours this week were spent somewhere less sentimental — the workbench.

3. New on EtherHam

I didn’t do any original coding this week. Instead, I’ve been fixing code, testing my Arduino devices, and starting a few more projects.

• Weekly Report: July 2, 2026 — Catch up with band conditions, digital radio news, and the Groups.io digest.

• LightAPRS Gateway 1.0 — First Impressions — There are updates posted at the end of the article, because while I thought I solved the issue, it turns out I had not. RF beaconing has been reliable, igating has not. It does not appear to be a fault with the device but I’m not sure yet what the problem is. I worked on this for three days before reaching out to LightAPRS support for help. We’ve been changing parameters, letting the device run, then looking at logs. Hopefully this will get resolved very soon.

4. In The Shack

While the LightAPRS mystery simmers, a new radio showed up that deserves its own writeup.

4.1 Retevis RA89R: Very First Impressions

I saw a review of the Retevis RA89R radio and was intrigued. The $65 Retevis RA89R arrived Wednesday evening and I immediately put it on the charger. Thursday, I turned it on for the first time.

Retevis RA89R Ham Radio, Cross-Band Repeater, APP Setting, Dual Band Handheld Radio, High Power Two Way Radio, 2800mAh USB-C Rechargeable, IP54, Long Range Walkie Talkies for Emergency, Survival (this is an affiliate link)

My very first impression? Solid build. The radio with the battery installed has some heft to it. The battery back is rounded, making it fit nicely in your hand. The two PTT buttons take a moment to get used to, because if you are trying to use VFO B but are pressing the VFO A push-to-talk button, it’s not going to work (more on this in a moment).

When I went into the menu, I immediately noticed the radio was set to a wider frequency range than my license allows. I changed the start and end frequency to 144-148 MHz for VHF and 420-450 MHz for UHF, per the ARRL band plan.

I was able to set frequencies through the radio keypad but my CTCSS tone did not stick when I saved it (probably user error). So I cranked up the Retevis app on my Android phone, connected to the radio over Bluetooth, and set the tone there. Once saved to the radio, that worked fine.

In a few minutes, I was checking my audio on my duplex AllStar node 588418. That node intakes RF on 431.180 MHz and transmits to my radio on 147.47 MHz. The 431.180 frequency also requires a CTCSS tone. I have the RX frequency (147.47) in VFO A and TX (431.18) in VFO B. While testing and not having any success, I realized I was pressing the VFO A PTT instead of the VFO B PTT. It’s a simple thing, but it will trip you up if you’re not used to having two PTT buttons. (Note that the manual calls these Band A and Band B buttons.)

Here’s another counterintuitive “aha” moment: it doesn’t matter which VFO is active on the radio. If the arrow is pointing at VFO A and you push the VFO B PTT, you will transmit on VFO B.

The display is easy to read…indoors. Outside in the sunshine, it fades and is hard to read, even set to the brightest setting.

The radio sounds good…maybe not quite as nice as my BTECH UV-PRO, but the audio is clear and has plenty of volume for me.

USB-C charging is a welcome feature, with a USB-C charging port on the battery and on the desktop charger. This makes it easy to grab the radio and go, knowing you can recharge it in the field. However, I noticed that none of my Power Delivery-capable chargers would charge the radio. Instead, I had to use a small “dumb” wall wart like we used to get when we bought a Kindle e-reader. One advertisement indicates it requires a 5V 2A charger, and that agrees with my experience.

The belt clip attaches to the battery. I’m not a fan of this arrangement. The base of the radio is large enough and flat enough that it stands nicely on a desk or shelf.

The product page says it has airband receive, FM broadcast receive, and NOAA weather alerts, but I have not yet tested those capabilities.

One ad says the radio is “moisture resistant” but without an IP rating, I can’t determine what this means.

One other slight gripe is the functions associated with keypad buttons are not labeled on the radio. You have to look at page 6 in the manual to know what they do. Nobody wants to carry a manual with them. Fortunately, the manual is not just a sheet of paper — it’s a real mini-manual that is well written.

So two strikes right out of the gate are: dim display in sunlight and the belt clip attaches to the battery instead of the radio body. But on the plus side, this dual band radio has a solid build, good audio, and a 2800MAh battery, at a very attractive price point. If you need a tough analog VHF/UHF radio and don’t want to spend much money, consider the Retevis RA89R.

The Retevis will need more bench time before I trust a verdict. The other project living on my bench this week has already earned mine: the UNO Q ASL node.

4.2 The UNO Q ASL Node is Working Well

Last week I went all-in on the Arduino UNO Q, and after setting up and using a couple of different Q devices, I’m still a fan. They are working delightfully well. Unlike my Raspberry Pi devices, I worry much less about the Q-based devices because they use durable eMMC storage instead of damage-prone microSD cards.

The AllStar node I’m running on a UNO Q uses Ampersand-ASL for AllStarLink connectivity and an AllScan USB Communications Interface for audio. It’s a very compact package:

In the view above, the UNO Q is in a metal case, forming the bottom layer of this little cake. A small USB-C hub is the next layer up, and the AllScan UCI80M tops the pile.

The user interface (UI) for Ampersand-ASL looks different than what you may be used to. You add favorite nodes on the Configuration screen, then on the Home page, you select one of those nodes to connect to it. In the screenshot below, you can see the favorites (green buttons) I’ve set for node 588414 on the UNO Q:

A quick note about the two different parrots. Node 2002 (ASL Parrot) is a standard parrot node running on the conventional ASL3/Asterisk and app_rpt stack. That stack has a hard-coded 8kHz sample rate. Node 2002 is locked to 8K audio because that’s simply what Asterisk/app_rpt does everywhere, including in parrot mode.

Node 61057 (AMP Parrot) runs on Ampersand-ASL, Bruce MacKinnon KC1FSZ’s from-scratch C++ reimplementation of the AllStarLink protocol that implements the IAX2 protocol directly, uses ALSA natively for audio, and does not use Asterisk at all. Because it was built from the ground up rather than inheriting Asterisk’s legacy code, it was easy to support 16Ksps codecs — that’s the whole point of the project’s design freedom. (16Ksps is 16,000 samples per second — a sampling rate of 16kHz. In contrast, standard telephone-quality audio that Asterisk-based systems use is 8,000 samples per second.)

4.3 Ampersand-ASL Gets an Update

Bruce MacKinnon KC1FSZ isn't done improving Ampersand-ASL. He pushed a fresh update to Ampersand-ASL this week, and I applied it to my AllStar node without a hitch. The update tidies up compile warnings, fixes the sluggishness that had been making the Configuration tab painful to use, and folds the boot race condition workaround — the ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 10 fix I documented on EtherHam — into the official user documentation. The full update procedure and what changed is covered in the updated EtherHam article, How to Run AllStar on the Arduino UNO Q.

I also discovered this week that Bruce was kind enough to mention KJ7T on the main Ampersand project documentation page — both as a link to the EtherHam article and in the project’s contributor acknowledgements. That’s genuinely appreciated. Bruce is doing interesting work, he’s responsive to feedback, and he’s building something that matters to the ham community. If you’re running an AllStarLink node — or curious about running one on hardware that ASL3 doesn’t yet support — the Ampersand project is worth your attention.

4.4 Amp-ASL and the Pi Zero 2 W — A Quick Experiment

I looked down on my bench and saw TomStick, a Pi Zero 2 W in a Geekworm USB dongle case, and wondered: could Ampersand-ASL by Bruce KC1FSZ run on this single-board computer? The Zero 2 W is arm64, Debian-capable, and a lot of hams have one sitting around. If it worked, it would be a compelling option for a low-cost, low-footprint AllStarLink node using hardware you might already own.

The short answer: you can’t build Amp-ASL on a Pi Zero 2 W. The compiler ran out of memory twice trying to compile WebUi.cpp, even with a 512MB swap file added. The second time, the OOM (out of memory) killer was aggressive enough to terminate the SSH session along with the compiler. TomStick was fine afterward, but the message was clear: you can’t build Amp-ASL on this platform.

This isn’t really a knock on Amp-ASL — it’s a build-time constraint, not a runtime one. On my Arduino UNO Q node, the running amp-server process uses about 4.2MB of RAM. The Zero 2 W would probably run Amp-ASL if you could get the binary onto it. The problem is getting there: WebUi.cpp is simply too large to compile on 512MB of RAM, and the OOM killer has the final say.

Could you cross-compile on a more capable machine and copy the binary over? Probably — but that’s a different project for a different afternoon.

The practical takeaway: if you want to build and run Amp-ASL on arm64 hardware, you need more than 512MB RAM. It's worth noting that Bruce's documented test platforms are a Raspberry Pi 5 and a Dell Wyse 3040 mini-PC — both with substantially more RAM than the Zero 2 W's 512MB. I knew when I started this little side trip that the Pi Zero 2 W was going to be outside the tested envelope.

The UNO Q with 4GB RAM had no trouble at all. A Pi 3B+ (1GB) or Pi 4 (2GB or better) would be worth trying, and those results would be interesting. If you try it, let me know how it goes.

4.5 LightAPRS Digipeater: Hold the Phone

Not every experiment this week ended cleanly — and the LightAPRS saga from last issue still isn't over.

The LightAPRS Gateway I mentioned last week turned out to have a subtle reliability problem: it was beaconing to APRS-IS once on startup and then going silent. I thought I fixed it with a watchdog script to restart Direwolf if it stopped sending packets. However, the timer interval was too short, creating a doom loop that prevented the 60-minute scheduled beacon from firing.

As I continued to monitor the device, I discovered my watchdog script didn’t really fix the problem. Even with the fix, Direwolf’s iGate beacons were reaching APRS-IS on startup but subsequent scheduled beacons were silently disappearing. They appeared in the local journal as sent, the APRS-IS connection shows as verified, and yet neither aprs.fi nor findU.com shows they were received.

The most telling clue is that packets marked qAR — those received via RF and gated by other iGates in the area — appear on aprs.fi consistently. Only packets marked qAC, sent directly from this gateway to APRS-IS, go missing after the initial startup beacon. I have reproduced this using different APRS-IS servers and can rule out local network issues. I’ve submitted a detailed bug report to LightAPRS support and am working with them on a solution.

4.6 GitHub, git, and Me

Bug reports and waiting rooms aside, I've been fighting a different kind of frustration this week: GitHub.

I am discovering that I don’t speak GitHub at all well. If you want to post some code on GitHub.com, there are several sequential steps you must follow. I’m sure for experienced coders who have adapted to GitHub, it all makes sense. For me? Not so much. The sequence to accomplish anything strikes me as a bit convoluted and arcane. The interface and sequential process were crafted by coders for coders, and it is taking me some time to get used to it.

It’s getting better, though. I still look at my “GitHub recipe card” when I’m updating code in my GitHub EtherHam space or creating a new repository, but I’m starting to think ahead of the recipe.

Behind the scenes, I’m also using git. If I thought GitHub was oblique, git doubles down on that. However, git is ultimately made simpler to use and understand because there is no graphical user interface like GitHub uses: git is 100% through the terminal. That means I don’t have to split my brain between terminal and GUI, and I do find that a bit simpler.

One thing I am certain of: it’s going to take me a while — months, maybe years — to really grok GitHub and git. These systems do not align with how my brain processes information and procedures. But as with all things about amateur radio, part of the joy is in learning new things, and GitHub and git are definitely stimulating learning! They no longer feel quite as new and raw when I use them.

4.7 Panasonic ToughBook CF54 Media Bay

GitHub isn't the only thing that fought me this week. My ToughBook did too — just with screwdrivers instead of a terminal.

The batteries in my ToughBook appeared to be original and were no longer holding much of a charge, so I replaced the main battery. Talk about a night and day difference! Where I would get about an hour out of the main battery, now I get at least five hours.

The ToughBook’s media bay held a similarly worn-out accessory battery. Replacing it would be expensive at about twice the price of the main battery so instead I ordered a multi-drive.

Well. Installing the DVD multi-drive proved to be more complicated than I expected. It isn’t plug-and-play. Instead, the bottom plate on the laptop must be removed, then several bits of black plastic shielding need to be pulled back or removed to expose the socket. It takes a ribbon cable that is attached to the back of the drive. Once the drive is inserted, the ribbon cable goes in the matching socket…but this one looked odd. No release levers on it. No cover over it. It was not like any ZIF (zero insertion force) socket I’ve seen.

I tried sticking the ribbon cable under the socket — nope, no space. No place for it to go in the socket, either. Trying to manipulate the socket I could feel how brittle the plastic was. It wasn’t going to accept much force before breaking. I concluded that the cover on the socket had previously been broken off, so this was never going to work.

I backed out of this and reassembled the bits, then ordered a dummy plug to seal the media bay from dust and foreign objects. That will be good enough. I have an external USB drive for CDs and DVDs, and that will have to do. Once everything was buttoned up again, I tested to make sure the computer booted up cleanly…and it did.

4.8 Try the Random Wire Archive Search

After all that hardware wrangling, it was nice to end the week with a piece of software I wrote that just worked.

If you are a Substack author, you already know how abysmal is Subtack’’s search capability. I wrote Substack Search to be a full-text search index for your Substack archive, self-hosted on your own web server. The code and instructions are available in my EtherHam GitHub space.

For my subscribers, the value of building my own search function is in the improved search results. Try it yourself at: https://etherham.com/rw_search/index.html

The interface is very simple. If you want to search on a phrase, enclose it in parentheses.

I’ve updated the code a couple of times to address update and search issues. All should be working well now, but if you encounter problems, please do let me know.

5. Are ESP32 Processors Used in F1 Racing?

Not everything on my bench this week was a repair or a tool, though. Some of it was just a question I couldn't let go of.

While watching the Formula 1 Austrian Grand Prix race, I wondered: do the sensors on the race cars use ESP32 boards? The short answer: definitely not in actual F1 cars, but surprisingly, ESP32s show up around F1 in some really fun hobbyist ways. Here’s the full picture.

On the actual cars

Real F1 cars are a world apart from consumer microcontrollers. An F1 car has around 300 sensors, and the standard ECU — the TAG-320B — monitors over 4,000 parameters. Those sensors connect either through analog systems to the ECU, or through a series of CAN buses (Controller Area Network — an automotive-standard network bus). There are 17 separate CAN buses on a car in its typical configuration, each communicating with many different devices. (More: Feature: Data and Electronics in F1, Explained!)

Today’s F1 cars generate on the order of 1 terabyte of data per car per race weekend. Teams use high-bandwidth radio systems to send telemetry in real time to the garage, where engineers monitor car health and performance on multiple screens. The central data logger runs on an Intel Atom-based unit on a Linux RTOS, with 1 GB of integrated logging memory, GPS, and an integrated telemetry unit. (More: How Many Sensors Does Formula 1 Have?)

So the electronics are custom aerospace-grade hardware — nothing close to an ESP32 in terms of specs, hardening, or regulatory approval.

Where ESP32s show up

The hobbyist/maker community has embraced the ESP32 for F1-adjacent projects:

• Makers have built F1 pit wall displays using an ESP32 CYD (a ~€10 board with a built-in 320×240 touchscreen and Wi-Fi) consuming live timing data from the OpenF1 API. The architectural lesson from that project is telling: the ESP32 works best as a display device, not a data processor — a Raspberry Pi or other server handles the API aggregation, and the ESP32 makes a single HTTP request for pre-digested data. (More: Build an F1 Pit Wall Display with ESP32 CYD and OpenF1 API)

• In lower-tier electric racing (not F1), ESP32 microcontrollers have actually been used for real telemetry — handling analog data acquisition, local preprocessing, and wireless communication via LoRa in Colombia’s National Electric Drive Vehicle Competition. (More: An IoV-Based Real-Time Telemetry and Monitoring System for Electric Racing Vehicles: Design, Implementation, and Field Validation)

• Sim racing enthusiasts use ESP32s to parse the UDP telemetry packets that the F1 video game series broadcasts, building physical dashboard displays for their rigs.

So ESP32s are great tools for watching F1, but the actual cars run purpose-built, FIA-regulated electronics at a scale and spec where a $5 Espressif chip would be completely out of its depth.

What about radios?

As I was diving headfirst into ESP32s and Formula 1, I also wondered: what radios are used in F1 racing? Are they anything we are familiar with? It turns out there are two distinct radio systems at work.

Vehicle telemetry data

According to a former F1 engineer, the telemetry system uses a proprietary WiMAX 802.16 implementation managed by McLaren Applied for all teams, based on technology from former startup Picochip. It runs on 3.5 GHz spectrum that’s virtually available worldwide. For each circuit, temporary base stations are built so the mesh provides complete coverage. (More: F1 telemetry dissected: from sensor to strategy in milliseconds)

Data is sent using 1,000 to 2,000 telemetry channels, transmitted wirelessly at around 1.5 GHz or a frequency allowed by local authorities. All data is sent in encrypted form, and the typical delay between data collection and reception at the garages is 2 milliseconds.

So the telemetry is operating in the 1.5–3.5 GHz range, depending on the source. The discrepancy in this range isn’t fully explained by what I found, but let’s agree these are outside the frequency ranges most radio amateurs use.

Team voice communications

Voice communications use a completely separate system. The vast majority of F1 teams and officials use a single TETRA digital trunked radio system provided by Riedel Communications, operating in the 420–430 MHz range (downlink) and 410–420 MHz (uplink). Some teams use alternate systems — Williams and McLaren switched to a Kenwood NXDN Nexedge system operating in the 446–473 MHz range. (More: Formula 1 (F1) by TheRadioReference Wiki)

In amateur radio terms: voice comms are solidly in the 70 cm UHF band, while the data telemetry is up in the microwave range — much more like 802.11 Wi-Fi territory.

6. Short Stack of Internet Finds

As you might expect immediately following Field Day, a Google search on “amateur radio” yields a trove of Field Day news items.

Radio

• REMINDER: RadioID.net to require annual verification — “Beginning July 1, 2026, RadioID.net will implement an annual verification process. On the anniversary of each account's creation, RadioID.net will send an email to the account holder requesting confirmation that the assigned ID(s) are still needed and that the account information remains accurate and up to date.”

• Requiem For Long Wave, As The BBC Goes Silent — “Something happened…which will have been unnoticed by many, but which for a certain breed of radio enthusiast marks the end of an era. The BBC stopped broadcasting Radio 4 on their 198 kHz Long Wave frequency, ending over a century of transmission in the band.”

• Measuring Radio Noise and Interference in Amateur Radio: Field Strength Meter, Gauss Meter, and Better Tools — “The short answer is this: for amateur radio interference, a radio-frequency field strength meter, SDR, spectrum analyzer, or receiver with a suitable antenna is normally more useful than a gauss meter or tesla meter.”

• America’s 250th Birthday Bash Special Event Station — “Join me on JULY 4TH on the hf bands and help me help you celebrate America’s Birthday.

  I have secured the special event callsign W2A.”

• Overview of Retevis RA89R and RA89G — I’m intrigued by the RA89R as it advertises dual bands with cross-band repeat, suggesting that it might actually have independent VFOs. I doubt it, especially at this price point. I believe it is actually a half-duplex radio. But I do think it might work for pseudo-duplex use with a full-duplex AllStar node by configuring one VFO for transmitting and one for receiving, but I won’t know until I try it. With USB-C charging, Bluetooth programming, and up to 10 watts of output, it’s worth gambling $65 on this.

• Ham Radio Digital Mode Frequencies Chart [HF Through 70cm] — “Unlike voice contacts, where activity is spread across an entire band, digital operators usually meet on well-established “watering hole” frequencies.”

• HRWB 266 - All About AMSAT With Drew Glasbrenner KO4MA — “In this episode we meet Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA, the new president of AMSAT, the amateur radio satellite organization.”

Computing

• It’s now the Arduino Uno Q’s turn to get a price hike — “Two versions of the single-board microcomputer will be $15 to $20 more expensive starting next month.” Glad I stocked up with a few spare boards!

• Best Raspberry Pi Alternatives: 4 Options to Consider — This is an article I wish I had written. It’s a good overview of alternatives, even if it doesn’t include the Arduino UNO Q board.

• 5 things to build with the $4 chip that’s outselling the Raspberry Pi — “There are tons of cheaper Raspberry Pi alternatives that work just as well, and one among them is the ESP32. It won't run Linux or host your home server, but at just $5, this chip can do more than it lets on.”

• Raspberry Pi Locator Website To Shut Down In July — “As announced by [André] on Bluesky, next month the much loved Rpilocator.com website will cease displaying the stock status and pricing of Raspberry Pi computers from various online retailers.”

7. June 17, 1936: The Day Radio Heard Itself Clearly

One story from ninety years ago felt worth pulling out of the noise…literally.

On June 17, 1936 — ninety years ago this month — Edwin Howard Armstrong walked into the Federal Communications Commission headquarters and changed what radio sounded like. He played a jazz record over conventional AM radio, then switched to an FM broadcast. A reporter in the room wrote that if the fifty engineers present had closed their eyes, they would have believed the jazz band was playing in the same room. No static. No hiss. No interference. Just music.

Armstrong had been working toward that moment for years. Frustrated by AM’s vulnerability to static and interference — a physics problem baked into amplitude modulation itself — he pursued a different approach: instead of varying the strength of the radio wave to carry sound, he varied its frequency. The result was a signal that natural static simply couldn’t touch. FM didn’t reduce interference. It eliminated it. The silence between the notes was actually silent.

You would think that kind of demonstration would change everything immediately but it didn’t. RCA’s David Sarnoff, who had been Armstrong’s friend, saw FM not as a breakthrough but as a threat. Thousands of AM transmitters and millions of AM receivers could become obsolete. The broadcast networks had enormous investments in AM. And Sarnoff had his eye on television — he didn’t have the bandwidth to also champion a new radio system. So RCA used its considerable influence to slow FM down: lobbying the FCC, disputing Armstrong’s patents, and eventually developing their own FM technology while refusing to pay royalties on his.

The fight consumed the last years of Armstrong’s life. By 1954 he was financially exhausted from the legal battles and deeply depressed. He died by suicide in January of that year, never knowing how the story ended. His wife Marion continued the patent fight after his death, and in 1967 the Supreme Court ruled that Armstrong had indeed invented FM. He was right all along — he just didn’t live to hear the verdict.

Every time you tune an FM radio, every time a silent passage is actually silent, you’re experiencing what Armstrong proved in that FCC hearing room in 1936. He didn’t get the recognition or the royalties he deserved, but he got the physics right. For radio amateurs, his story is a reminder that the people who build the tools don’t always get to enjoy the world those tools create. We work the bands they made possible, often without a second thought about who fought to make them available.

8. Gadgets: Headphones, DAC, and Player

I found myself thinking about Armstrong and audio fidelity again this week for a much lighter reason: new headphones.

I bought a pair of SENNHEISER HD 599 Open Back Headphones on special during Amazon Prime Days. They were roughly one-half their normal price. I’ve paired them with a Fosi Audio K5 Pro DAC. My digital music catalog is stored on my Beelink network-attached storage box, and I play that library with MusicBee on my laptop. Player Preferences in MusicBee is set to WASAPI (Exclusive) to bypass the Windows sound system.

If you’re a basshead, these are probably not the headphones for you. They deliver a flatter response across audible frequencies and present a more open, airy soundscape. Of course, you can dial up the bass with an equalizer or with the DAC. If I dial up the bass all the way on the DAC, audio is still clear but the deep tones overpower mid and high frequencies, at least for my ears.

I am not an audiophile but I do like clear audio where I can separate instruments and voices, and where I can feel like I’m in the hall with the performers. The open back headphones provide a wonderfully open sound without the sound pressure that some closed headphones can project. The funny thing about saying “I’m not an audiophile” is good quality recordings and equipment provide an experience that is viscerally and audibly better than poorer equipment. You don’t have to be an audiophile to appreciate good sound.

On the DAC, I have the bass and treble controls set at the one o’clock position. To me, this moves the sound stage a bit forward, as if the performance is closer to me. Need more bass? Try setting the DAC bass control to three o’clock or more. In MusicBee, I’ve set the equalizer to the Acoustic profile, which I find most pleasing for the music I listen to.

One of the wonderful things about this combination is the silence. Silence during pieces, and between songs, have no hiss, no hum, no thrumming sound, nothing. Just silence. That really plays well with The High Kings when they punctuate their tight harmonies with moments of silence before the next attack.

I would describe this combination of headphones, DAC, and player as a solid mid-tier setup for someone who likes to hear parts and harmonies. As I write this, I’m listening to acoustic sounds by The Wailin’ Jennys (40 Days album) and The High Kings (Grace & Glory, and The High Kings). Also, The Corrs, as well as Chris Botti.

Acoustic Highway by Craig Chaquico sounds amazing. I can hear the left and right background instruments clearly. There is more texture to his music than you might hear over a radio. And Jazz Samba by Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd is astounding: very present, very clear.

It’s not all quiet stuff. Earth Wind and Fire’s punchy, percussive music sounds delightfully crisp. The overtones of Eddie Van Halen’s high notes on Eruption come through with clear brilliance, and Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love sounds like it is being played on a wide sound stage. If you like that song but also like musical interpretations, I invite you to compare it with Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love by Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox on the Lounge Language Models album.

9. QRT: End Transmission

Good sound isn't the only thing that's mattered to me this week.

Earlier this week, two women who taught alongside my wife for fifteen years came to visit her. My wife can no longer speak (rarely, she says a few words), but she was present in every way that mattered — attentive, tracking the conversation, trying to engage. Watching her with her friends, I was reminded of what I wrote earlier in this issue about Paul: we are important to each other in ways we may not always see or understand.

That evening, she looked over at me and clearly said, “Hi Tom.”

This was more meaningful than it might appear, because twice in the past month, she has looked at me and asked: “Who are you?” So you’ll understand why those two words — “Hi, Tom” — stopped me cold.

I’m glad she knew me in that moment. I’m glad her friends came. Some things matter more than radio.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

00 QRV: Are You Ready?

This was the week of Q — no, not the Q from the James Bond franchise, but a tiny Arduino-based computer board. The UNO Q is featured in three articles about using it for amateur radio use. One is a comparison with other platforms, one details an AllStar build with Ampersand-ASL, and the other describes setting up a Q with WSJT-X and GridTracker2 for HF digital work.

It’s ARRL Field Day weekend! Enjoy yourself on the air, and hopefully you’ll be able to attend a local Field Day event. For some, it’s a contest. For others, it’s a party. For many of us, it is a fine excuse to visit with our radio friends.

01 Thank You…ARISS

Some things lodge themselves in your memory so firmly that you can still feel them sixty years later.

I was almost six years old on February 20, 1962, when John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. I remember sitting transfixed, listening to his voice coming live from space. I didn’t fully understand what I was hearing, but I understood that a human being was up there, and his voice was coming down to us through the air. That moment planted something.

The Mercury program didn’t involve amateur radio, but the connection between space and radio has deepened considerably since then. Through ARISS — Amateur Radio on the International Space Station — astronauts have been talking to schoolchildren from orbit for decades. A kid with a handheld transceiver and lightweight beam antenna can have a two-minute conversation with a crew member on the ISS. I can’t think of a better recruitment tool for this hobby, or a better use of the radio spectrum.

So: thank you, John Glenn, for planting the radio bug in me. And thank you to everyone at ARISS who turned that wonder into something kids can still experience today. You bring the magic of radio into young hearts and minds.

02 New on EtherHam

With three new articles this week about the Arduino UNO Q board, it is apparent that I’m quite taken with this little ARM-based computer.

• LightAPRS Gateway 1.0 — First Impressions — I received this device last night and had it on my network and working within 20 minutes.

• Resurrecting a Forgotten HSR-USB as an AllStar Node — A forgotten HSR-USB board in the back of the drawer had no documentation and I had no memory of what frequency it was programmed on. Eventually, I was able to interrogate the SA818 chip to determine frequencies and CTCSS tones. The device is rescued from the drawer and back in service as AllStar node 578498.

• The Arduino UNO Q: Affordable, Ready to Run, and Surprisingly Capable — In this piece, I develop a high-level comparison of the UNO Q with the Raspberry Pi 5, Dell Wyse 3040, and N-series mini PCs. If you’ve never thought about trying the UNO Q, start with this article.

• How to Run AllStar on the Arduino UNO Q — Seeing that this had been done by a few others, I dove in and documented how to get Ampersand-ASL running on the UNO Q platform.

• FT8 Digital Modes on the Arduino UNO Q: Installing WSJT-X and GridTracker2 — This was a big little project this week and a quite satisfying one, at that. The result? I have a dedicated WSJT-X/GridTracker2 platform attached to my Icom IC-7300MK2 transceiver. I no longer have to set up my ham radio laptop to do FT8 work, and even better, I can run FT8 remotely from another part of the house.

• Build Your Own Substack Archive Search — I started publishing on Substack in 2022, and over the years, I’ve grown more and more frustrated by the truly abysmal search capability on that platform. So I did something about it with my own search system.

• Weekly Reports: June 25, 2026 — The 20 and 17-meter bands should be reliable workhorses this coming week. Digital radio news was very light this cycle. On the Groups.io front, I checked 26 groups with 465 messages.

03 Built and Working: AllStar with an Arduino

I’ve been wanting to try building an AllStarLink node with an Arduino UNO Q board for a while. The UNO Q runs full Debian Linux on a Qualcomm ARM64 processor, costs around $60, and fits in your hand. If you’ve been eyeing a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 for a project like this and balking at current prices and availability, the UNO Q is worth a serious look.

Getting AllStar running on it turned out to be more interesting than I expected. The mainstream ASL3 software stack doesn’t quite work on the UNO Q yet — the board’s custom Qualcomm kernel is missing an audio interface that ASL3 depends on. That’s being worked on, and it might be resolved by the time you read this. But today, the proven path is a project called Ampersand-ASL, written by Bruce MacKinnon KC1FSZ. Bruce built a complete AllStar node implementation from scratch in C++ — no Asterisk, no DAHDI, no kernel module compilation. Just clean code that speaks IAX2 natively and connects to the AllStarLink network the same as any other node.

I named my ASL node the QNode. It’s running on the AllStarLink network as node 588414 under KJ7T, connected via a USB radio interface and a Motorola speaker-mic. The audio quality is solid — I pulled a clip from ARRL Audio News through the node and it came back clean and clear. You can hear it below:

(For the audio fade in and out, I used Tenacity, a fork of Audacity.)

The software build itself took an afternoon, mostly because I ran into three non-obvious gotchas that anyone attempting this will hit: a HID device permissions issue that silences PTT, a missing group membership for the arduino user, and a systemd race condition that causes silent audio on every boot until you add a ten-second startup delay. None of them are hard to fix once you know what you’re looking at.

I’ve written it all up in detail over at EtherHam, including the ASL3 situation, the full build walkthrough, and the troubleshooting steps. If you want to put an AllStar node together on a budget and don’t mind building from source, this is a genuinely satisfying project. The article is titled How to Run AllStar on the Arduino UNO Q and it’s live now at EtherHam.com.

04 SuzieQ Gets a Job: FT8 with an Arduino

A subscriber sent me a note a few weeks ago saying he’d gotten WSJT-X and GridTracker2 running on an Arduino UNO Q. That was enough for me.

I spent a Saturday getting it working on my own UNO Q (named SuzieQ) which now lives next to the IC-7300MK2 in the sun room. The short version: it works, and it works well, with WSJT-X decoding signals, GridTracker2 painting stations on a world map, QSOs logging automatically to QRZ. All this runs headless on a board half the size of a playing card, accessible from anywhere in the house via RustDesk. I made the first confirmed QSO from the other side of the house, which felt like the right way to prove the point.

The total hardware cost — UNO Q, case, power supply, and USB hub — came to $120. For comparison, a 4GB Raspberry Pi 4B kit with storage runs $130 and up today, and with that you are stuck with a microSD card instead of the UNO Q’s soldered eMMC. I’m not saying the Pi isn’t a fine machine. I’m saying the math has changed.

The full write-up is at EtherHam.com, with all the commands, settings tables, and gotchas documented in enough detail that you should be able to follow along with your own hardware. If you have a radio with USB connectivity and you’ve been thinking about a dedicated digital modes platform, this is worth your time: FT8 Digital Modes on the Arduino UNO Q: Installing WSJT-X and GridTracker2

05 Code Fix: Substack Search

In continued testing of the Substack Search tool, I discovered I didn't code it right the first time. Searches for common terms like “Meshtastic” were returning HTTP 500 errors instead of results. The error log told the story: fts5: missing row 63 from content table. The full-text search index and the posts database had gotten out of sync.

The culprit was the update tool — the web page that lets me upload a fresh Substack export zip to add new issues to the index. The original code was doing incremental updates: deleting each post’s entry from the search index and reinserting it. That approach scrambled the internal row numbering that SQLite’s FTS5 search engine depends on, and searches started failing.

The fix was straightforward once the problem was clear. Instead of updating the search index one post at a time, the new code processes all the posts first and then rebuilds the entire index in a single clean pass. The result is the same — all posts indexed and searchable — but the internal bookkeeping stays consistent no matter how many times you run it.

If you grabbed the code from the EtherHamRadio/substack-search repository before this week, pull the updated update.php. If you built your initial database using Claude as described in the article, you may also need to rebuild the database from a fresh Substack export — the corruption only affects databases that have been through the update tool at least once.

06 In the Shack

Some Trouble with WPSD

I had some trouble with my Raspberry Pi 5 hotspot running the great WPSD software. My Wi-Fi would no longer connect and the region showed AD (Andorra), not US. When I reconfigured and hit save, nothing actually saved. I could boot up with the Ethernet cable connected and all was well. But I had no Wi-Fi connection: my router didn’t see the device and my settings wouldn’t save.

I downloaded a backup of the configuration and burned a fresh image, then booted up while connected via Ethernet. That gave me the opportunity to configure Wi-Fi, and this time, it saved it. Then I disconnected the Ethernet cable and rebooted again. After a few minutes, the dashboard came up. I restored my saved backup and the hotspot was functioning once again over Wi-Fi.

At first I thought: did I find a bug? But as I ran through the logic chain in my mind, I realized it was more likely the microSD card had become corrupted. To eliminate that possibility, I started over fresh. It turns out this was the right move.

If your Wi-Fi settings aren't saving and your region keeps reverting, don't waste time troubleshooting — just burn a fresh image. It's faster than chasing a corrupted filesystem.

A few days later, it wouldn’t boot. Eventually, I removed the cover and pulled off the MMDVM hat. Then it booted cleanly. While it was running, I put the MMDVM hat back on and suddenly there was my display. I suspect a bad connection on one of the GPIO pins…could be due to heat, could be oxidation. In any event, once I re-seated the hat, my problem went away.

And then I noticed my Raspberry Pi 4-based WPSD was set on simplex, not duplex. The modem version matched, so I wondered: if I restored my saved RPi 5 hotspot configuration to the RPi 4 machine, would it work? It should, since the hats were the same. At least that’s what I postulated, so I tried it. And it did work. My separate frequencies for TX and RX came in on the RPi 4 machine after restoring the RPi 5 backup to it. One gotcha, though: the hostname carried over from the RPi 5 backup to the RPi 4. This was easy to correct in the configuration screen.

Now I have two hotspots with frequencies programmed exactly the same, meaning one is now turned off and waiting in the wings in case my primary hotspot bites the dust.

ToughBook Battery, Part 2

I mentioned last week that the batteries in my old Panasonic ToughBook MK2 laptop appeared to be (a) original and (b) worn out. Accordingly, I bought a generic replacement battery and crossed my fingers that it would work. Well, it worked great. After charging it in the laptop, I got several hours of operating time from the battery. I ran it until the laptop shut down to condition it (although new tech batteries probably don’t need it like the older ones did).

The cost of the battery for the media bay is rather high — about twice the cost of the main battery for only 2/3 of the contained watts. The better play is to buy a media drive for that bay (done!) and buy a second main battery as a spare (not done). One main battery plus a spare will give me plenty of cushion for a long POTA session with the ToughBook.

Just Arrived: APRS Digipeater

My APRS device is being shipped from halfway across the planet, from Mugla, Turkey, to be exact. Surprisingly, it took just seven days for this to arrive on my doorstep.

This is the LightAPRS Gateway 1.0 sold by QRP Labs, and I’ve posted my first impressions in LightAPRS Gateway 1.0 — First Impressions.

DAC for laptop and headphones

I like small, capable devices. And I like listening to music while I work, often with headphones rather than earbuds. My Surface Laptop 7 computer has a 3.5mm audio jack but not all of my computers are so equipped, so several months ago, I bought a USB-C digital audio converter:

Moondrop Echo-A 32Bit/384kHz Portable USB Type-C to Headphone DAC/AMP with 3.5mm Audio Jack Adapter (this is an affiliate link)

The current cost of the Moondrop DAC is $22 but when I bought it, it was on a deal for about one-half that. Does it work? Yes.

This week, I tried a newer, similar product, for $18:

USB C to 3.5mm Headphones Adapter, Dual Chip CX31993 MAX97220 DAC Dongle with HiFi Amplifier, 8-Strand 4N Single Crystal Copper Silver-Plated Cable, USBC to aux for All USBC Devices (this is an affiliate link)

I can’t actually tell the difference in sound between the two devices. Both work well to convert from USB-C to a 3.5mm headphone connection. They even work with my cell phone that has no headphone jack. Both sound great. Oh, and if you have an inline microphone with your headphones, both of these USB-C devices pass transmitted audio, too.

If you need separate lines for RX and TX, try this Creative Labs product for $19:

Creative Labs Sound Blaster Play! 3 External USB Sound Adapter for Windows and Mac. Plug and Play (No Drivers Required). Upgrade to 24-Bit 96Khz Playback (this is an affiliate link)

I have all three devices. They all work well.

USB Dongle Board

As I was digging through the parts drawer, I found a GeekWorm USB Dongle Board (this is an affiliate link) stuffed all the way in the back. Apparently, I bought it in 2025, mounted it to a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, and then it migrated to the dark recesses of the drawer. The dongle costs $8.

What does it do? The Geekworm USB Dongle Board converts a Raspberry Pi Zero or Zero 2 W into a USB stick form factor by adding a full-size USB-A connector, allowing it to plug directly into any USB-A port. When configured for USB gadget mode, the Pi can present itself to the host computer as a network adapter, serial device, or keyboard — or it can simply draw power from the port while communicating wirelessly over WiFi.

I did not configure it in gadget mode. Instead, I have it plugged into my ORICO USB hub ($34, this is an affiliate link) where it is running as a utility Debian Linux machine over Wi-Fi on my home network.

My first test? Install uCareSystem to automate system updates. Unfortunately, OpenPGP verification failed, and the alternative methods to install the key also failed. The good news? I didn’t impact one of my working systems with this test!

07 Opinion: Just Read the Manual

For years, I’ve been seeing the same response when someone asks a question about how to operate a specific feature of an amateur radio: just read the manual. I saw it again this week when someone on Facebook asked a question I didn’t know the answer to — despite having read the manual myself, more than once.

It used to be easier. Fewer configuration choices meant the radio had buttons and dials instead of deeply nested menus. Manuals were logically organized and clearly written. Those days are largely gone, at least for the handheld transceivers that arrive at my door from distant lands.

Today, the manual is often poorly written in English — sometimes a translation, sometimes written by someone whose language skills don’t quite meet the demands of clear technical writing. And since many of us are now above a certain age, our memory may not retain information the way it once did. I recognize that the sponge in my head is simply not as absorbent as it used to be.

So there are three real problems with “just read the manual” advice: manuals that are poorly organized — or in the case of at least one radio brand I’ve wrestled with, nonexistent; English that isn’t up to the task of technical guidance; and the perfectly normal fact that human memory fades over time.

Telling someone to “just read the manual” solves nothing. I don’t think the people who say it realize how they come across to others.

The good news is that they're easy to ignore — and doing so leaves more room to appreciate the hams who genuinely want to help others learn. That community is larger, and it's the one I choose to spend my time with.

08 Short Stack of Internet Finds

There’s just not a lot for the Short Stack this week, which is a surprise, considering Amazon Prime Day sales and Field Day events.

Radio

• SwR Shortwave Radio: A New Android App for Listening to Public Online Shortwave Receivers — “This is an Android-only app that lets users easily listen to KiwiSDR and Web-888 receivers. The app appears to be free, with no in-app purchases.”

• The Ultimate Handheld Walkie-Talkie Guide for Amateur Radio Beginners — “This comprehensive guide breaks down how to choose your first HT, why more functions cost more money, the best upgrades for portable operation, and the top brands dominating the global market.”

Software

• DokuWiki Markdown Support — This may only matter to me, but… DokuWiki is a flat-file wiki system that I truly love. Except for the DokuWiki editor which does not match standard Markdown formatting. It looks like Markdown support will soon be baked into the core, and I think this is a tremendous thing.

09 QRT: End Transmission

I began crafting Random Wire 188 on Sunday, June 21: Father’s Day. It was a bittersweet moment as I recalled my father who walked on some years ago. This week, I replaced the mailbox Dad put up by the road oh, about 20 years ago. The metal bracket had become weakened due to rust and the wooden bits had grown quite soft. Frankly, I’m surprised the postal delivery person didn’t complain. It was a rickety thing.

But what I found endearing as I deconstructed Dad’s construction were the several generations of fixes Dad had implemented. I could see the first installation: a couple of lag bolts to secure the bracket to the 4x4 post and a couple of machine bolts to hold the mailbox to the bracket. And then there was a plywood bracket he added as the lag bolts lost their purchase, apparently to try to stabilize the main bracket. Finally, there were several applications of deck screws, inserted at various angles, to hold things together as the whole assembly began to weaken.

He would have installed the mailbox around age 70. As he and the mailbox aged, his reasoning got softer just as the mailbox support system did. I could see that by how he tried to use deck screws — probably in his 80s — to hold it all together. As I removed Dad’s work and replaced it with my own, I felt very close to him. Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

Walter Cronkite has been a silent key since 2009, so there is now an entire generation who know nothing about him…but I remember him. I remember his calm demeanor. I remember the feeling that this is someone who is telling me the truth. And I remember the origin story of Cronkite becoming a licensed ham. This strongly influenced my decision to seek my license, so Random Wire 187 opens with a thank you to Walter Cronkite KB2GSD (SK).

RW 187 also brings you:

• Four new EtherHam articles

• Some shack notes

• An APRS device I ordered

• The ARRL radio comparison table

• A new music player on my network-attached storage box

• Some gadgets (headphones and USB hubs)

• My Panasonic CF-54 ToughBook needs a battery

• An opinion piece about using AI as an assistive tool for hams that need some help

• And the Short Stack of Interesting Internet Finds

01 Thank You, Walter Cronkite KB2GSD (SK)

Walter Cronkite was born on November 4, 1916 in St. Joseph, Missouri. His family later moved to Texas, where he spent most of his childhood, and his passion for journalism ignited when he read an article in Boys’ Life as a young boy. He enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin to study political science, economics, and journalism, but left school to take a position at the Houston Post — and never looked back.

His career accelerated during his time at the United Press, where he served as a World War II correspondent and afterward as Chief Correspondent for the Nuremberg trials. He joined CBS News in 1950 and was named anchor of the CBS Evening News in 1962. The defining moment that made him a household name was his announcement of President Kennedy’s assassination. Over nearly two decades behind that desk, he was the calm, steady voice that walked Americans through the moon landing, Vietnam, Watergate, and a string of national tragedies that might have broken lesser men.

He is the last news anchor I fully trusted, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. There was something in his delivery — no spin, no wink, no performance. He became something of a national institution, known as “Uncle Walter” to many, with an unflappable delivery and a voice that guided viewers through national triumphs and tragedies alike. On March 6, 1981, he anchored his final newscast and signed off with: “Old anchormen, you see, don’t fade away, they just keep coming back for more. And that’s the way it is.” For me, the world felt a little less reliable after that.

Now here’s the part that matters to us. At CBS, Cronkite was surrounded by hams — most notably his friend and the program’s radio engineer, Steve Mendelsohn, W2ML, who over time talked about the hobby often enough to ignite a slow-burning interest in his news anchor friend. Cronkite had even purchased a receiver and would listen on the bands from time to time, but he resisted taking the licensing exam because of the Morse code requirement.

The breakthrough came in the studio one evening before the nightly broadcast, when Mendelsohn needed to test the tone of the audio recorders. He grabbed a copy of the New York Times and sent Morse code with the tone key for ten minutes. After the broadcast, Cronkite walked into the control room and presented his script — on the back of it was the entire text Mendelsohn had sent in code. Mendelsohn and CBS Evening News Director Dick Muller, WA2DOS, exchanged a look and told Cronkite he had just passed the Morse code test. Cronkite laughed and asked when the formal exam was scheduled — only to learn that with two licensed general class operators present as witnesses, he had already passed.

Weeks later Cronkite took and passed the written test, and became officially licensed as KB2GSD. His first QSO was on 10 meters. He was immediately snubbed by a Midwestern ham who didn’t believe the famous newscaster was who he claimed to be: “That’s the worst Walter Cronkite imitation I’ve ever heard!” followed by, “Walter Cronkite is not even a ham, and if he was, he certainly wouldn’t be here on 10 meters.” Mendelsohn said the two of them laughed about that one for weeks. Walter Cronkite, KB2GSD, passed away on July 17, 2009 at the age of 92 — but this story of hams helping others become licensed is exactly the kind of thing that makes this hobby worth thanking people for.

02 New on EtherHam

• After Elwood: A Survey of HamClock Successors and Alternatives — I take a look at the variety of HamClock-like systems available and manage to extend appreciation for Elwood Downey’s great contributions to our hobby.

• Getting the Arduino UNO Q Running Headless with Remote Desktop — This is cutting-edge stuff for me and I’m enjoying it. The Q has been running quite well for a week. Since I booted it up, I’ve also learned you can run WSJT-X and GridTracker on it! I’ve not tried that…yet.

• One Step Better: The Gamma 601 and the Bitaxe Firmware Underneath — The key takeaway: for three times the cost of the lightweight Nerd Miner, I’m getting 1,000 times more hashing.

• Weekly Report: June 18, 2026 — Band Conditions This Week, Digital Radio News, and the Groups.io Digest.

03 Radios

“Touch a radio every day!” is my closing tagline for this newsletter. I certainly did that this week. I organized the chargers for various handhelds:

• BTECH UV-PRO

• Wouxon KG-UV9D Plus

• Yaesu FT-3D and Yaesu FT-5D

• Connect Systems CS 7000-M17 Plus

• Baofeng UV-5R Mini

• Various TIDRADIO handhelds

I discovered that when I rebuilt the hotspot I use for YSF/C4FM, I changed the frequency. Rather than revert to the old frequency, I chose to manually reprogram two radios. I got the FT-3D configured with split TX and RX frequencies but have not completed that task with the FT-5D radio.

While I was doing these things, I was listening to our local C4FM repeater, to the W6EK repeater, to America’s Kansas City Wide network, and to the ISS. These regular stops provide good company all week. I also participated in the weekly M17 net held every Saturday on KC-Wide; I always learn new things there.

A radio friend asked for help so I spent some time testing an installation package for a radio system. Yes, I’m being a little cagey here because this package is not yet ready for prime time, but it is coming along very nicely. I’ll have more on this in a future issue.

On the HF side, I started organizing my HF rigs, too. I brought multiple Ten-Tec Scout radios with me to the lake house to test and haven’t had time to try them. My tried-and-true Yaesu FT-450D is in a Pelican-brand case next to my desk. The Icom IC-7300 MK2 is in my wife’s room. The other radios are in Harbor Freight cases, ready to be shifted to the garage.

04 APRS

I’ve been wanting to stand up a small fill-in digipeater, but I rarely have a lot of time to dig into projects like this. That’s why I was very pleased to see the LightAPRS Gateway by QRP Labs. I have one on order and am looking forward to getting it on the air.

Since I’m using my sister’s lake house right now, I can’t really drill holes in the wall to pass coax through. However, there are a few unused TV cable pass-throughs available. I have the bits and pieces coming to run coax from the galvanized chimney cap to a TV pass-through. While I know the TV F-connector and cable have 75-ohm impedance and we want 50 ohms, I don’t think it is going to make a lot of difference for this application.

What will make a difference is getting a good mag-mount above the roofline with a reasonable metal ground plane under it.

Maybe this will work fine, maybe it won’t. As is my way, I’ll try it and let you know how it goes.

05 ARRL Radio Comparison Table

This may be useful for radio amateurs: Find the Right Rig: New Comparison Tool for ARRL Members.

In the screenshot below, I tested by selecting handheld VHF/UHF radios with APRS capability:

As you can see, there are a number of well-known APRS-capable radios missing from the list, including the Kenwood TH-D74/75 radios. Why? Because the database only covers radios tested by ARRL. If a radio wasn’t tested, it’s not in the database.

Testing by the ARRL is generally thorough, so if a radio is listed, you can have confidence in the summarized results and the detailed review of the device. If a radio is not listed, that does not mean it performs poorly — it just means ARRL hasn’t reviewed it yet.

06 New Music Player for the NAS

I got tired of the OwnTone interface — slow, clunky, and not particularly friendly. This week, I installed Navidrome, an open source music player/streamer. It is working quite nicely. Fingers crossed that it continues to do so.

I could have installed it in a Docker container, but there was no good reason to do so. Instead, I followed the Linux installation instructions to install it directly on the Beelink network-attached storage box. All went well and the interface looks very nice:

There are a variety of client applications for iOS, macOS, Android, Linux, and Windows that can pull from the Navidrome instance. It’s nice to have choices.

I’ve kept OwnTone for now because I have some audiobooks in it. In the meantime, I’ve installed AudioBookShelf as a potential replacement.

07 Gadgets

Headphones

I’m always on the lookout for comfortable headphones that sound good. I’m not an audiophile — my hearing is no longer good enough to hear the very highest notes. I’m also not a bass head, so that opens up possibilities with off brands.

I am pleasantly surprised by a pair of wired headphones that arrived this week:

NUBWO Studio Monitor Headphones, Hi-Res Wired Over Ear Headphones with 1/4 inch to 3.5mm Jack, 45mm Drivers, Professional DJ Headphones for Piano Guitar APM Recording Mixing-HD01 (Black) (this is an affiliate link)

They sound pretty good. I got them on a deal for $50 and so far, I think they are worth more than that. They are comfortable on my head and ears, and the sound is crisp and clear. These headphones come with two cables.

At this price point, long-term durability is always a question. Nevertheless, I like them. My test? Listening to The Ultimate Yes, a three-disc album set. I’m pushing the volume and not encountering distortion. If you are a Yes fan, you know the bass work is exceptional, and while the bass is probably a little light for some folks, I find it just right. The sound has some sparkle in the upper registers, I can clearly hear the bass line, and the mid-range is ample.

Even Nickelback and the Bee Gees sound good with these phones.

USB Hubs

I bought two USB hubs, one for the Arduino Uno Q and one for my desk. The UGREEN hub I bought for the Q did not work for me, but this Acer model did:

acer 6 in 1 USB C Hub with Ethernet, 4K@60Hz USBC to HDMI Multiport Adapter, 100W PD Charging, USB A/USB C Data Ports USB C Splitter for MacBook Neo/Pro M5/Air, Acer, iPad, iPhone 17/16/15 (this is an affiliate link)

The UGREEN got quite warm when it was connected to Ethernet but the Acer 6-in-1 hub is staying nice and cool. More important for me is I’m able to pass data and power through the single USB-C port on the Q. Also, the Acer hub is about the size of my Roku remote control, meaning it doesn’t take up much real estate on the desk.

The other hub I picked up for the edge of the shelves beside my desk.

ORICO Clip Docking Station, 8-in-1 Clamp USB C Hub with 4K@60Hz HDMI, 100W PD, Gigabit Ethernet, 4xUSB Port, AUX, 10Gbps Clamp Docking Station for Laptop, MacBook, PC (Adapter Not Included) (this is an affiliate link)

This device clamps onto the edge of a shelf where it stays close at hand but still out of the way. Unlike many other hubs, this device features a variety of ports. Very handy.

08 My Panasonic ToughBook CF-54

I picked this up a few years ago, finding it to be a solid — if unspectacular — performer. However, the batteries (yes, there are two) are not holding a charge for very long. When I pulled them, I saw they are Panasonic-brand batteries which means they are probably original to this ruggedized laptop.

Time to go shopping.

Buying specialized batteries online can be a hit-or-miss proposition. In this case, I headed to Amazon and started looking at reviews. I found the reviews not entirely helpful. It feels like there is a lot of gaming of the system going on when it comes to battery reviews.

Eventually, I picked one that had a very large number of reviews. It wasn't the highest-rated battery, but a large review count feels more trustworthy than a handful of five-star ratings.

I had one other surprise with the CF-54. With nice weather, I like to take a laptop or tablet out on the deck from time to time. My Kindle Paperwhite works brilliantly in the sunshine, but my laptops become very hard to see due to insufficient nits (brightness) and their highly reflective screens. Then I tried the CF-54 in full sunlight and was shocked at how well it performed, once I turned the screen brightness up. Of course, this consumes a lot of battery power, which is why (and now the story comes full circle) I need a new battery!

09 Keeping Every Ham at the Table

A friend of mine has some special needs that make conventional computer use difficult. Thinking about his situation in the wake of setting up a self-hosted AI agent on my home server, I realized: this could open a door for him that other technologies have kept closed. The agent can speak, listen, remember, and respond — offering an alternative path around the screen and keyboard entirely. That thought led to a bigger one: how many hams are in situations like his, and are we paying any attention to what technology like this could mean for them?

Here’s the thing: you’ve probably already worked someone over the air who has significant special needs. You didn’t know, because they were smooth. They had figured out how to do what the rest of us unthinkingly do, just by a different route. That legally blind net control operator running a clean, efficient session. The ham with tremor who has adapted their keying. The operator whose memory isn’t what it was but whose passion for the hobby hasn’t dimmed one bit. They’re already in our community. They’re already on our repeaters. And most of us have no idea.

We don’t talk much about accessibility in the amateur radio community, but we should. The demographics of our hobby are skewing older. A significant portion of licensed amateurs are in their post-retirement years, and with age comes a familiar constellation of challenges you’ll hear on many repeaters: vision changes, arthritis, tremor, hearing loss, cognitive shifts. These are not reasons to leave the hobby. They’re reasons to think harder about the tools we use and the tools we build. Organizations like Blind Hams (blindhams.network) and BlindHams.com have been doing this work quietly for years. The conversation is not new. What’s new is what technology now makes possible.

What I’ve been experimenting with is called an AI agent. Specifically, I’m trying Hermes Agent, an open-source project from Nous Research. Unlike the chatbots most people are familiar with, an agent is persistent — it remembers what it learned. It can be given tasks and then carry them out autonomously. And critically, it doesn’t have to live in a browser tab on a bright screen. It can live on a server in your shack, accessible through a phone, a voice interface, or a messaging app. I've not seen it examined anywhere. Who has explored what this kind of tool could mean for operators with special needs? That gap is what this piece is trying to close.

That last point is where accessibility enters the picture in a new way. One of the most interesting configurations I’ve been contemplating pairs the agent with Telegram, a messaging platform available on any smartphone. With that connection in place, a ham could interact with an AI agent entirely through voice messages. Speak your question into your phone; the agent transcribes it, thinks it through, and speaks the answer back. No keyboard. No screen that needs to be read carefully. No bright display in a dark room. On the other side of the microphone, you’d never guess the radio operator had any difficulty because the tools help instead of hinder.

The applications practically write themselves. Imagine an agent that knows your callsign, your equipment, and your operating habits: one that can tell you current band conditions, look up a frequency, summarize what’s happening on a net, or walk you through a procedure step by step in plain language. For someone with macular degeneration, that’s not just a convenience. It’s the difference between staying active in the hobby and stepping back from it. For someone with arthritic hands who finds typing painful, a voice-commanded assistant could dramatically change the calculus of using a radio and logging contacts.

Dexterity issues affect more hams than we acknowledge. Essential tremor, post-stroke motor changes, the simple stiffening that comes with decades of living: these make keying harder, tuning harder, and interacting with software harder. An AI agent that responds to voice, that can look things up and report back, that doesn’t require precise finger movements on a keyboard, addresses a real need we rarely discuss. The hams managing these challenges mostly figure it out on their own, quietly, without asking for help. We could be doing better by them.

Cognitive support is another frontier worth taking seriously. Early-stage memory changes are more common than people let on, and they don’t disqualify someone from enjoying the hobby they’ve spent decades building. An agent with persistent memory, one that knows your station, your typical contacts, your preferences, can serve as a patient, non-judgmental assistant that helps fill in the gaps without any stigma attached.

The self-hosted dimension matters here too. Many hams in this demographic are rightly cautious about privacy, about subscriptions, about depending on services that might change their terms or disappear. A self-hosted agent runs on hardware you own, on your local network, with no data leaving your house. It doesn’t require a monthly fee. It works when the internet goes down. These are not small things for someone on a fixed income who has learned, over a lifetime, to be skeptical of anything that requires a recurring payment and a Terms of Service agreement.

I don’t have a complete solution to offer yet. The Telegram voice interface I described is still in development on my end, and there’s real work ahead in making any of this genuinely accessible rather than just theoretically possible. What I have is a working experiment, a growing conviction that this is worth pursuing seriously, and a question for the community: who among us has thought about this? The AI tools now exist to make amateur radio more accessible in ways that weren’t previously possible.

The need is real, and the people who could benefit are already part of our community: running net control, logging contacts, maintaining repeaters, Elmering new hams, doing extra things we never have to think about, just to stay at the table. They deserve tools that make that easier. And the rest of us? We benefit, too. Those are experienced voices, hard-won skills, and decades of institutional memory. We are all made better when we keep the table full.

10 Short Stack: Interesting Internet Finds

Radio

• New Annual Verification process by RadioID.net — “Beginning July 1, 2026, RadioID.net will implement an annual verification process.”

• Beyond the Sunspots: Understanding 10 Meter Propagation — “…the dramatic differences we see between seasons on 10 meters are driven by complex changes in the Earth’s atmospheric chemistry and magnetic field.”

• Unbox the Affordable HamSpot 5 Digital Hotspot Today — “The HamSpot 5 is a notable innovation in the world of amateur radio, offering a versatile and affordable solution for digital voice communication.”

• Ham Radio: The Hobby of a Thousand Hobbies — I chuckled at this title because when I describe amateur radio to my friends, I call it a hobby of hobbies.

• BTECH FRS-A1 All-Purpose Walkie Talkies — Not all of our family members are licensed, so sometimes an FRS radio is the way to stay in touch. The selling point for me? USB-C charging.

• Comms Cards by Ready Radio — “Comms Cards are quick-reference guides for radios that give you instant access to frequencies, channel layouts, and key settings without needing an app, signal, or memory.”

M17

• LinHT Rev B status: what works, what broke, and why Rev C is next — “This post summarizes that progress. It starts with what Rev A proved, then goes through what we changed in Rev B, how we built the first boards, what worked during testing, what failed, and what we need to fix before Rev C.”

SDR

• SDR++ Setup Guide: How to Install and Configure SDR++ — “For years, SDR# (SDRSharp) was the default recommendation for most SDR enthusiasts. While SDR# remains extremely popular, many hobbyists have migrated to SDR++ because of its modern interface, excellent performance, and support for Windows, Linux, and macOS.”

• I Built My Own Flight Tracker with a Raspberry Pi — “For this project, I’m using the FlightAware Pro Stick Plus, which combines the filter, amplifier, and SDR receiver into one USB dongle. You plug it into the Raspberry Pi, connect an antenna, and install the software.”

Meshtastic

• Meshyface — “Meshyface is a chat-first Meshtastic dashboard that runs as a single Python service and serves a single-page web UI over HTTP.” As near as I can tell, it’s a web interface that shows the topology of a Meshtastic network.

AI

• How AI Is Changing Ham Radio (And What Operators Can Use Today) — “Artificial intelligence is rapidly finding its way into amateur radio, and many operators are already using AI-powered tools without realizing it.”

• Google’s Gemini-Enabled Home Speaker Is Officially Available for Preorder — “Google's chatbot is fully integrated into its newest smart speaker, known as the Google Home Speaker, and it's almost here: You can preorder it today for $99.99, and it will officially launch on Thursday, June 25.”

• I’ve tested so many desktop AI tools, but Hermes with Ollama is my new favorite - here’s why — “Local AI is the way to go, and Hermes with open-source Ollama is my preferred setup right now.”

11 KJ7T Shack Notes

• Using the Groups.io Digest script means I can eliminate a bunch of daily emails in my inbox! Find the script on GitHub.

• A subscriber made some needed corrections to my code in the HFWatch repo, and I appreciate those improvements.

• The Great Plains Super launch is gearing up for the weekend. Many balloons beaconing on APRS.

• I’ve been noticing more stations popping up on 6 meters in my HamClock display, so the “magic band” season must be upon us.

• When I started reading about Tailnet Lock for Tailscale users, I became quite interested…until I realized this is really an edge case that is unlikely to affect my use case. Shared here in case it lands for you.

• Internet failures are happening more frequently at the lake house than they have for several years, so I’m thinking about a low-cost cellular hotspot for resiliency.

• You may be aware of a service called Ham.live that allowed net control operators to also check in people over the internet and have side chats during radio nets. Well, Ham.live is going dark but the dev has released the code on GitHub. Want to run your own version? Now you can.

12 QRT: End Transmission

I did not get as much writing time in this week as I wanted. Instead, I spent last weekend preparing for a board of directors meeting for my state association — the one meeting each year I think of as The Most Important Meeting. Why important? Because the board debates and decides on our annual budget, and this year, we had to pull from reserves to balance the budget.

Why did it weigh on me so heavily? The state association exists to serve our 45 member districts, and they in turn deliver programs communities depend on. When the association hits a budget speed bump at the same moment state agencies are being squeezed, the ripple effects are real. That's the context — and it's why I didn't sleep much last weekend.

The good news? My board adopted the budget as proposed. The bad news? We know we’ll have a tremendously difficult challenge next January, so we’re going to be investing a lot of time and energy preparing for that. Making this even more complicated is the turnover in the state legislature — we won’t know until early November who will be representing Washington State citizens when the Legislature convenes in January.

Fortunately, I have a lot of radio things and thoughts to keep my mind busy. Thank you for sharing this journey, and as always, please let me know your ideas and feedback. Without you, there would be no Random Wire newsletter or EtherHam.com website.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

But those marker moments are also cause for reflection, and some of my ruminations spilled over into the amateur radio realm. The first piece in this issue of the Random Wire is about where AI is taking our hobby: The Machine Learns to Listen. The second piece is about re-centering the Random Wire and EtherHam, and seeking feedback: The Journal and the Workbench.

As a fun diversion, I wrote up how to use a small ESP32-powered device to mine for Bitcoin: Playing the Bitcoin Lottery at Home. The crossover with amateur radio? Learning about ESP32 devices in general. The ESP32 is everywhere in the maker/IoT world. I’m hoping the Bitcoin article will give hams a friendly on-ramp through something as immediately tangible as "plug it in and it does a thing." Bitcoin lottery mining is probably the most motivating possible introduction to the platform — much more fun than blinking an LED. I expect to be learning, and sharing, about the ESP32 platform in future issues.

I also did some Python coding to pull recent topics from a variety of Groups.io conversations into a one-page summary: Groups.io Digest with Python. I already learned something new from making it easier to harvest this information.

Yesterday, I went looking for a traffic reporter for YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X, and that took me to a place of realization I didn’t quite expect. The full piece is on EtherHam at Walled Gardens and Unlabeled Mazes: Why C4FM Users Can’t Find Each Other.

And I fiddled with some radios and added a fan to a Raspberry Pi 4-based AllStar node. Nothing special, but certainly enjoyable. Lots of projects on the bench to work on, including an Arduino Uno Q board — I’m really looking forward to playing with this platform. It has 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of eMMC storage for just $59. Fingers crossed.

The bench didn't slow down just because I was feeling reflective. Let’s dive into the Random Wire topics for this week!

A Thank You Long Overdue

Some tools become so woven into how you operate that you stop noticing them. APRS is like that for me. The little icons moving across a map, a beacon confirming a friend made it over the pass, a weather object appearing before the storm does — it’s just part of the fabric of how I think about being on the air. My Yaesu FTM-300DR radio in the pickup truck runs APRS automatically.

None of that would exist without Bob Bruninga, WB4APR (SK).

APRS traces back to 1982, when Bruninga wrote his first data map program to plot the positions of U.S. Navy ships on an Apple II computer. A few years later he was running packet communications on a VIC-20 and C-64 to support an endurance race. By 1988 the program had moved to the IBM PC, and in 1992 it got the name we know: APRS. He kept pushing it — not just as a position reporting system but as a live tactical picture of whatever a community of operators needed to share.

Bob was a retired U.S. Naval Academy senior research engineer who never seemed to retire from the work that mattered. He founded the Appalachian Trail Golden Packet event, fielding APRS nodes from Stone Mountain in Georgia all the way to Mount Katahdin in Maine every July. He wrote. He answered questions. He kept the vision alive long after he could have handed it off and walked away.

Bob passed away on February 7, 2022, at age 73, after a battle with cancer complicated by COVID-19. His key is silent now. The network he built is not.

I’m lucky to know someone who carries that tradition forward locally. Herb, KB7UVC, is one of those hams who has forgotten more about APRS than most of us will ever learn — and who will actually sit down with you and work through a problem until it makes sense.

So: thank you, Bob. Thank you, Herb. APRS may mean “automatic” but I know the work to build and support APRS has been anything but.

This "thank you" section is a weekly feature to share my gratitude and appreciation for radio amateurs that have helped make my journey more enjoyable.

The Machine Learns to Listen

Those of us who came up turning dials have watched amateur radio change beneath our hands. The rigs got quieter, then smarter, then started doing things we couldn’t do ourselves. I’ve been thinking about that arc lately — from the glow of a tube radio warming up, to FT8 pulling signals out of noise I couldn’t hear, to what comes next.

Because something is coming next. Machine learning is already reshaping weak-signal decoding and interference rejection. Further out are transceivers that model your RF environment and learn your operating patterns over time — not radios that operate themselves, but genuinely intelligent partners. The hardware headroom already exists. This is a software problem now.

I wrote a longer piece about all of this over at EtherHam — where the arc came from, where it appears to be going, and what I think the real question is for our hobby as AI starts showing up in high-end rigs. If you’ve ever felt the particular unease of watching a machine exceed your capabilities, or wondered whether the vintage operators and the SDR experimenters are in conflict or in conversation, I think you’ll find it worth the read. See: The Machine Learns to Listen.

Exciting News: M17 Audio Over RF

Jeff AE5ME posted this YouTube video early this week about using Greg W5GGW’s M17 app on iOS with a Mobilnkd TNC4 to send M17 audio over RF, and to receive it in the app from an RF signal. This is a great moment for M17!

This nine-minute video describes and demonstrates how to configure the M17 app and the TNC4 to send and receive over-the-air M17 audio.

Jeff’s video was also picked up by the M17 Project.

The Journal and the Workbench

I started writing the Random Wire because I wanted to capture what I was doing so I didn’t have to relearn it later. I had been keeping project notes and a radio friend suggested I publish what I was working on because “other hams are having the same problems.” So I did, and I named this journal of my amateur radio explorations the Random Wire newsletter.

As time went on, the articles got longer and more detailed. Deep dives with plenty of workbench-level detail. Some of them amount to A-to-Z how-to guides. At some point I realized I was writing two different kinds of things: a journal of what I was experiencing, and a workbench record of what I actually did and learned. That’s when EtherHam was born.

The Random Wire is the journal. EtherHam is the workbench.

Everything published on both platforms comes from direct personal experience. I built it, or it broke and I fixed it, or I tried something and it didn’t work the way I expected. The knowledge sitting in my head does nobody any good if I don’t share it — and whatever problem I just solved, someone else has already hit that same wall, probably at 11pm with their soldering iron in hand.

This split in style is not a true dichotomy because the two often overlap. You can’t really separate what you are experiencing from what you are doing. But they come at the same territory from different directions, and I think of them as a complementary pairing rather than competing platforms.

Along the way, I added sections to the Random Wire — band conditions, radio history, a digital news digest — that felt like things a newsletter should have rather than things that naturally belonged here. Good content, wrong home. I’m moving those sections to EtherHam where focused reference material belongs, and the Random Wire goes back to being what it started as: a craftsman's journal, written at the end of a week at the workbench.

I wish I knew more precisely how subscribers and readers perceive these two platforms. The available metrics are genuinely useless unless you think total subscribers or page hits tell you something meaningful. I don’t. What matters to me is hearing from you that something I wrote was useful, or saved you an evening of frustration, or pointed you somewhere worth going. That’s the whole measure of success here.

So here's what I'd genuinely like to know: when something I've written has been useful to you, what kind of article was it? A build walkthrough? A troubleshooting story? A short take on something new? Tell me in the comments or drop me a note. That feedback helps shape what lands on the workbench next.

Leave a comment

TIDRADIO TD-H9: More

Since I’ve always had good luck with programming software and cables from RT Systems, I ordered their programmer and special cable for the TIDRADIO TD-H9. I have two TD-H9 radios. One will probably be largely devoted to APRS work. The other will be for general analog use. Being able to program them both with one program and one cable will be efficient.

The RT Systems package arrived and I loaded up the programmer on my old ToughBook. However, I was taken aback by the sparseness of the programming interface. I had hoped to be able to configure other aspects of the radio, such as APRS beaconing, through the programmer. I’m not seeing where to accomplish that from within the RT Systems software. This means that to get the radio working correctly for you, you’ll still need to dive into the radio menus through the front keypad.

It’s easy to enter a frequency, specify whether it is simplex or a repeater frequency with an offset, and set the power level. That is truly more convenient than wading through the menus in the radio. But if you want to enable GPS, turn APRS on or off, and enable beaconing, you’re stuck doing that directly on the radio.

I don’t regret buying the RT Systems package for the TIDRADIO TD-H9 radio. It works brilliantly for what it is. But I wish it did more than just the basics of frequencies, channels, offsets, and power level.

Groups.io Digest with Python

I monitor a lot of Groups.io mailing lists — ARDC, PNW DMR, LinuxHam, TinySA, and a bunch of others — and I got tired of checking them one at a time. So I built a Python script that does it for me. When I want to catch up, it hits the Groups.io API, pulls recent activity from every group on my list, and generates a digest report that opens in my browser with everything ranked by activity and every thread title linked directly to the discussion. It took longer to figure out the API quirks than to write the script, but the result is exactly what I wanted.

The script is free, requires no external Python libraries, and runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. I wrote it up in detail on EtherHam — including how to handle subgroups, restricted groups, and scheduling it to run automatically every morning. Grab it at etherham.com or directly from the EtherHamRadio GitHub repo (and thank you to the subscribers who urged me to set up a GitHub space for code like this).

Listening to W6EK on Baofeng UV-5R Mini

While grinding up my wife’s morning meds, I grabbed the Baofeng UV-5R Mini transceiver to listen to traffic on the W6EK repeater. I never thought I’d say that I like a Baofeng radio…but I do like this one. It sounds fine, it slips easily into a pocket, and is just a very convenient package to use:

BAOFENG UV-5R Mini Ham Radio Long Range Handheld Two Way Radio, Bluetooth APP Programming Walkie Talkies 2 Pack, 999CH One-Key Copy Frequency, NOAA Weather, USB-C Charging, Dual-Band, Green (affiliate link)

I added a stubby antenna to make it even more convenient at home:

ABBREE Ham Radio Antenna Dual Band VHF/UHF 144/430Mhz 1.96inch AR-805S SMA- Female Long Range Stubby Short Antenna for Baofeng UV-5R Mini 5RM BF-F8HP PRO, K5 Plus, DM32, UV32 Radio Accessories, 2 Pack (affiliate link)

In this photo, the radio is sitting on the kitchen stove while I listen to the W6EK repeater through my AllScan ANF101 node that is transmitting to the Baofeng.

Later, while finishing this section, I listened to ASL node 516221 which carries ISS radio traffic, passing through my local ASL node 588418.

I shared my first impressions of the tiny UV-5R Mini back in February. I continue to be surprised at how much I like this little transceiver.

B.B. Link Adapter: Last Chance

If you use an iPhone or iPad and have a Kenwood TH-D74 or D75A transceiver, this alert may be for you. Georges WH6AZ reached out to me last week with an aloha and a note about the last stock of his B.B. Link adapter.

Meet B.B. Link, the adapter that allows iPhones and iPads to connect to Kenwood TH-D75 and D74 radios via Bluetooth. iOS devices, which are limited to Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), can't pair natively with these radios. With this adapter, iOS applications like RadioMail can access the radio's built-in KISS TNC packet modem for off-grid communication. Simply plug the adapter into a USB-C port for power, turn your radio on, and you're set.

Georges authored Transceive, an AllStar app I use on my iMac. Transceive received a rare Random Wire Recommended sticker from me. I like Transceive.

His B.B. Link product is reaching the end of its production run and he does not plan another run. He writes:

Nearly two years ago, I introduced the B.B. Link, an adapter that allowed apps like RadioMail, Packet Commander, and now Radio Messenger to use the built-in packet TNC of the Kenwood TH-D74 and TH-D75 radios. At the time, iPhone-friendly ham radio interfaces were scarce, and B.B. Link filled a real need.

The landscape has evolved. We now have capable audio adapter options such as the Digirig Lite and AIOC, which let software modems interface over audio directly. We also have reasonably priced HT radios like the UV-PRO and VG-N76 that expose their TNCs over BLE.

I hope radio manufacturers continue this trend and ensure future hardware exposes a TNC, or at least a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi–accessible audio interface, so more people can participate with less friction.

I never set out to become a hardware maker. I built the first prototype for myself and hoped I might sell the initial batch of 100 to recoup my cost. Demand far exceeded that, and I’ve been humbled by the reception.

But B.B. Link has always been a handcrafted project. Managing supply chain challenges, tariffs, assembly, testing, order fulfillment, and support has been meaningful work, but also time consuming. It’s time for me to reclaim that bandwidth and focus fully on software development, where I can deliver the most impact for the community.

With that in mind, B.B. Link availability will end once the current batch sells out. I expect most who want one already have it, but if you need a spare (or know someone who would) now is the moment.

The firmware remains open source for anyone who wants to build their own DIY version.

If you use an iPhone or iPad and have a Kenwood TH-D74/D75 radio platform, this is a “last chance” notice to get a useful tool that eases access to the TNC in those radios. I do have a TH-D74A so this notice applies to me, too!

Playing the Bitcoin Lottery at Home

A friend of mine has been running a tiny Bitcoin miner on her home network for the better part of a year. She knows — with complete mathematical certainty — that she is almost certainly never going to find a block. She does it anyway. “It’s the cheapest lottery ticket I’ve ever bought,” she told me, “and it never expires.” That was enough to get me curious.

The device is called a NerdMiner — an ESP32 microcontroller running open-source firmware called NMMiner — available on Amazon for around $22. It draws a fraction of a watt, connects to your WiFi, and quietly submits hashes to a solo Bitcoin mining pool around the clock. Your odds of finding a block are approximately those of winning the Powerball. But the hardware costs less than a tank of gas and runs indefinitely on any USB charger, so the ongoing cost is a few cents a day.

Setting one up is more involved than plugging it in — the shipped firmware is out of date, there’s a specific pool configuration that actually works for low-powered devices, and there’s one bootloader quirk that will stop you cold if you don’t know about it. I’ve written up the complete walkthrough, including the COM port gotcha that would have saved me time if I’d known it going in.

If the idea of a perpetual lottery ticket running quietly on your shelf sounds like your kind of thing, the full article is at EtherHam.com.

Added a Fan to the RPi4 AllStar Node

My AllStar node 588410, built on a Raspberry Pi 4 platform with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) hat, was running rather warm. Not the 80°C temperature where the SoC (system on a chip) begins to self-throttle, but much warmer than I liked.

I bought a very inexpensive 30mm fan from Pi-Shop that was made to fit my tall RPi4 case. It fit perfectly. Even though it is a 5-volt fan, I powered it from a 3.3V GPIO pin on the hat. Why? Because the fan runs slower at 3.3V, and slower means quieter. It is running silently and doing a good job of bringing the 60°C temps down to the mid 40°C range: quite acceptable.

I’m happy with this small addition to the package. Node 588410 now has the RPi4 and UPS and cooling fan inside a single case.

During this journey, I learned of a useful alternative to the Enhanced Parrot node 55553, and that is AllStar node 2002. I knew this but had forgotten it until I read this in the SHARI Groups.io group: “…call Allstarlink node 2002, which is a parrot that has a built-in IAX ping diagnostic. If after you connect, it comes back and says ‘your node is unreachable’, then either your port is not forwarded correctly, or something upstream is blocking incoming packets to that port, i.e., CG-NAT.” Node 2002 provides useful information, whether you are testing the accessibility of your node or just checking your transmitted audio volume.

Walled Gardens and Unlabeled Mazes: Why C4FM Users Can't Find Each Other

If you’ve ever keyed up on a WiRES-X room and heard nothing but silence, you’re not alone — and you’re not doing anything wrong. The problem isn’t your radio or your node. It’s that the C4FM ecosystem was never built to help you find where the conversation is happening. This week on EtherHam I went looking for the monitoring tools that should exist for YSF and WiRES-X users — the kind DMR and AllStarLink operators take for granted — and what I found was a more interesting story than I expected.

It turns out open protocols don’t automatically produce open, navigable ecosystems. Somebody still has to build the town square. WiRES-X and YSF aren’t just two names for the same thing — they’re two fundamentally different systems with different governance, different infrastructure, and different reasons why the tools that would make them navigable never got built. One is a classic corporate walled garden. The other is something stranger: an open protocol that the community never quite organized around…but still could.

The full piece is on EtherHam. It gets into why this happened, what partial solutions exist, and whether it’s fixable. Spoiler: one side of that answer is more hopeful than the other.

Weekly Reports Moved to EtherHam

I’ve moved the Band Conditions, Digital Radio News, and Groups.io Digest reports to the EtherHam website. This week’s post is Weekly Report: June 11, 2026.

I’ll use the same header image as shown here for each weekly report. That will make it easier to key in on this regular informational feature. In general, I run my routines once a week, on Thursday, for publication by Friday morning.

Short Stack

APRS

• LightAPRS Gateway 1.0: A Standalone APRS Digipeater and iGate in a Small Box — $130 for a standalone digi and igate!

• Build a Low-Power APRS Station with Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W — “Building a low-power APRS station using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W…a comprehensive guide on setting up Graywolf on Tixie OS Lite, allowing you to operate a compact and efficient APRS station or digipeater.”

• Radio Messenger Is What Ham Radio Chat Should Have Been All Along — “Radio Messenger is a new iPhone and iPad app that…takes the underlying technology of APRS – the same open amateur radio protocol that’s been quietly running on VHF frequencies worldwide – and wraps it in a messaging interface that looks and feels like a chat app.”

• APRSdroid NA7Q Edition: The Most Feature-Rich APRS Client for Android — “While the official APRSdroid project remains a popular choice, the NA7Q Edition takes the application significantly further.”

Shortwave

• Tecsun PL-520: An Excellent Upgrade — I don’t find this nicely reviewed radio in stock on Amazon. Apparently, “stock fluctuates.”

Windows

• This 20-year-old Windows tool fixed my dead PC when nothing else would — I’d forgotten about Hiren’s, but I’ve used it in the past few years. When I look through my collection of saved USB sticks, I see one labeled: Hiren’s. “If you're an oldhead like me, you probably know all about Hiren's BootCD, but it's one of the most useful tools anyone can have handy.”

AI

• I’ve tested so many desktop AI tools, but Hermes with Ollama is my new favorite - here’s why — “Local AI is the way to go, and Hermes with open-source Ollama is my preferred setup right now.”

Support

Occasionally, I remind subscribers that supporting the Random Wire and EtherHam is very helpful. There are many ways to give support as described on the Support EtherHam page, should you choose to do so.

I’ve been trying to add a summer hat in time for Field Day but my EtherHam store is rejecting the custom embroidery for some reason. Looks like a nicely ventilated booney hat will have to wait until I get that sorted out.

As I noted several issues back, the location of the EtherHam logo on the Champion sweatshirt was not quite right. I adjusted it and the new location looks better.

Thank you to all who support the Random Wire and EtherHam. Support doesn’t mean you contributed money — it also means you subscribe and read and comment from time to time.

And who are EtherHams? We are. Since we all use computers in some aspect of our amateur radio activities, I think we are all EtherHams.

Home

I found a box of old compact discs in the closet. It’s a box of memories, really, of the many great times my wife and I shared with music. She was a music educator her entire working life, so music was ever-present in our lives. For many years, I also functioned as her roadie, setting up music concerts, repairing band instruments, and fixing amplifiers and wires. Those are great memories, both of helping my wife and of all of her great students.

Many of the CDs are so old they don’t have metadata encoded on the disc. When I rip the music to my network storage, it often shows up as Unknown Artist and Track 1, Track 2 instead of names, and doesn’t show any cover art.

To fix this, I started using Mp3tag to edit the metadata for tracks I’m saving on the new network-attached storage box. This is a bit time consuming, but it also lets me dwell a bit on the songs. (Lots and lots of memories!) After editing the metadata, I open the album in MusicBee and ask it to find the cover art…and it usually does. Then I re-scan my music folder on the NAS to add the album and named tracks to my music library.

But then I discovered a shortcut — I found I can rip CDs directly into MusicBee. The app does a good job of finding metadata and album cover art as part of that process. I rip the CD to my laptop, then copy the entire folder to my NAS drive and tell OwnTone to rescan my music library. Very easy.

Music really does touch the soul. When I listen to these songs, I’m remembering where we were, what we were talking about, how we were feeling. What’s more important is that these old songs evoke memories and emotions in my wife, despite her cognitive challenges. It’s truly amazing and I’m happy to help her experience such moments.

Right now? We’re listening to a two-disc collection of Tom Jones greatest hits. There are a ton of memories embedded in those tunes!

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

Welcome to Random Wire 185.

On the amateur radio side, I’m very pleased to share a positive outcome after a month of trying to get APRS beaconing working reliably on my TIDRADIO TD-H9 handheld transceiver. As is often the case with stubborn problems, the solution ended up being a simple on-off setting, but finding that took extensive trial-and-error testing. It's a small thing that felt like a very big thing when I finally cracked it

On the technology side, I’m also happy to share my new network-attached storage (NAS) solution using a Beelink ME Mini PC. It’s affordable, quick, and should be reliable. This project is well within reach of anyone who runs Linux on a computer, and it’s a great learning opportunity if you’re just getting started.

Find links to these below in the New on EtherHam section.

01 Thank You…America’s Kansas City Wide Network

This week’s thank-you goes to the team behind America’s Kansas City Wide Network — one of the most reliably busy watering holes on the digital amateur radio scene. Dedicated volunteers keep the lights on, and a very active group of regulars keeps it from ever getting too quiet.

I tune in when I travel. There’s a Portland repeater on the network, which means I can monitor and participate whenever I’m in range — a small thing that makes a long drive considerably more interesting. What I especially appreciate is that KCWide hasn’t stood pat. They’ve linked an M17 instance, extending a warm welcome to the new kid on the block. That kind of openness matters.

If you haven’t found your way to KCWide yet, consider this your invitation. Thank you to everyone who keeps it going.

02 New on EtherHam

It was a very satisfying week with several big wins.

The TIDRADIO TD-H9: A $70 APRS Radio Worth the Effort

The TIDRADIO TD-H9 offers 10 watts, VHF/UHF, AM airband, a built-in TNC, GPS, APRS, Bluetooth, and a spectrum analyzer for around $70. The hardware delivers on that promise. Getting APRS automatic beaconing to work reliably, however, took two radios, weeks of testing, packet log analysis, and a lot of time on aprs.fi. The culprit turned out to be an undocumented interaction between two settings — and once identified, it was a one-sentence fix. This is what I learned, so you don’t have to learn it the hard way.

The full writeup is on EtherHam: settings, firmware notes, real-world packet data, and more. Make the jump to Getting APRS Working on the TIDRADIO TD-H9 for the details.

An AllStar Node on the Seeed reRouter CM4

The Seeed Studio reRouter CM4 1432 is a compact mini-router built around the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 — and unlike standard Pi builds, it stores its operating system on onboard eMMC flash rather than a microSD card. For AllStar node builders who’ve lost a node to card corruption, that’s a compelling detail. This article walks through converting the reRouter from its factory OpenWRT installation to Raspberry Pi OS, installing ASL3 on Debian 13, and building a fully functional AllStar node — including UCI radio interface setup and thermal testing of the passive cooling system.

Read the complete article: An AllStar Node on the Seeed reRouter CM4.

Retiring the Pi 4: Building a Better Home NAS with the Beelink ME Mini

The Beelink ME Mini is a purpose-built NAS mini PC that competes directly with a Raspberry Pi 5 kit on price but wins decisively on performance, thermal design, and expandability. It ships with an Intel N150 processor, 16GB LPDDR5, a 1TB NVMe, dual 2.5GbE ports, and six M.2 slots — all in a compact enclosure with a substantial internal metal heatsink and a built-in power supply. If your Pi-based NAS is running out of steam, this is worth a serious look. Here’s my experience migrating a home NAS and OwnTone music server to this platform, running Debian 13 and OMV 8, including the gotchas worth knowing before you start.

Visit Upgrading the Home NAS: From Raspberry Pi 4 to Beelink ME Mini for more.

DroidStar IAX Still Broken — But the Fix Exists

DroidStar's IAX/AllStar connection mode stopped working for many users in early 2026 — the Connect button simply does nothing. This article traces the bug to its root cause, tests available prebuilt Android APKs, and then builds DroidStar from source on a Raspberry Pi 4 utility machine to confirm that the fix is real, the IAX handshake works, and the problem is that nobody has shipped a working Android build yet.

Learn more at DroidStar IAX Connections: Broken Builds, a Working Fix, and a Rabbit Hole Worth Falling Down.

03 Gadgets

USB Cable Tester

I got a little frustrated last week trying to find a USB-C cable that carried data. It seemed like every cable I pulled out of the box was a charge-only cable.

Time for a cable tester. I ordered this one, even though it requires the user to interpret the LED lights displayed when testing:

Treedix USB Cable Tester USB Cable Checker Data Wire Fast Detection for Type-C, USB-A 3.0, Micro-B 3.0, Micro-B 2.0, Mini-B 2.0, and for Lightning Cables by Checking the LEDs (this is an affiliate link)

It is rated 4.5 stars by more than 100 users. For $19, I think this will save me a whole bunch of frustration. There is a less expensive version with clear acrylic panels and open sides, but since this will get tossed in the radio bag, I was more comfortable with an enclosed case.

Marking tested cables was the next problem — I didn't want to test the same cable twice. I thought about heat shrink, but that seemed like overkill. Colored electrical tape would work, but cables hit the floor and tape ends lift, collecting lint and dirt. The solution I landed on: red and green gel nail polish. Charge-only cables get red. Data-capable cables get green. I cure the dots with the UV flashlight I carry when I travel.

365nm Black Light Flashlight, UV Flashlight Rechargeable with LCD Display, Powerful Ultraviolet Lights for Pet Urine Detection, Resin Curing, Rockhounding, Scorpion, Uranium Glass, A/CLeak (this is an affiliate link)

That seemed to work. It took about a minute of exposure to cure the nail polish dots to the point they were firm and no longer tacky.

And I have another use planned for the red polish. Mom used to love going trolling for trout. Her favorite lure was a Dick Nite spoon. She always used a spot of red polish to put an eye on her lure. She called it her "Tricky Dicky" lucky lure. Good memory.

Earbud for AllScan UCI80M

I went looking for a way to monitor conversations on AllStar using one of my nodes configured with an AllScan UCI80M USB Communications Interface. The UCI80M uses a Motorola M1 speaker-mic connector. I found an earbud with an M1 connector and gave it a try. These are common in K1 (Kenwood) configurations but harder to find in M1.

It works. The push-to-talk mic tested as "good audio" with the Enhanced Parrot on node 55553. Transmitted audio isn't studio quality, but it's understandable.

More interesting is the earbud itself. It's a single unit with a rubbery tip that fits comfortably in the ear canal. When I first plugged it in, the audio level was painfully high and distorted.

In AllStar, TX and RX audio levels are set in /etc/asterisk/simpleusb.conf. It's somewhat counterintuitive: the audio you hear is set on the TXMIXASET line, and the audio you transmit is set on RXMIXASET. I worked my way down from the default of 500 — tried 400, 300, 100, 50. Still too loud. At 40, still too loud. At 30, clear and comfortable. Below 30, no output at all. So 30 it is.

The package also included an acoustic tube earbud. I normally skip those — never liked how they feel — but tested it anyway. Surprise: barely any audio at 30. Cranked TXMIXASET back to 500 and got excellent, clear audio at a comfortable level. Pro tip: if the standard earbud is too loud, try the acoustic tube before fiddling with the config. Also, if you're getting static, try rotating the plug slightly in the PTT housing.

2 Pin Earpiece M1 Ear Piece Headset Ptt Mic to 3.5mm Aux Audio Earphone for Motorola cp100 cls1410 gp300 cp200d bpr40 CLS 1110 1410 cp185 dlr1060 rdm2070d dlr1020 rmu2040 rdu4100 dtr700 (this is an affiliate link)

This device has only 3.1 stars on Amazon, but from a sample of seven reviews. I thought it was worth the gamble at around $20. I’d give it 3.5 stars myself — maybe 4 if it proves durable. It does exactly what I needed: a way to monitor and participate in AllStar conversations through the UCI80M.

Fair warning: overmodulated stations really punch through when the speaker is millimeters from your eardrum. Great in a noisy environment. In a quiet room, bring TXMIXASET down.

04 Run Your Own NotebookLM — Locally

If you’ve used Google’s NotebookLM, you already know the appeal: drop in a document, ask questions, get answers grounded in your actual source material rather than whatever the model feels like inventing.

Open Notebook is the self-hosted version of that idea. Same workflow — upload PDFs, web pages, or documents, chat with an AI about the content, generate notes and summaries — but running entirely on your own hardware, with your choice of AI provider. It supports Ollama, so if you’re already running local models, you’re most of the way there.

I spun it up in a morning in an LXC container on my Proxmox server, pointed it at my existing Ollama instance, and had it ingesting a budget document within the hour. The install is Docker Compose — two containers, a config file, and you’re done.

The Open Notebook project is at github.com/lfnovo/open-notebook. If you’ve got a home lab and you’ve been curious about NotebookLM but prefer keeping your documents off Google’s servers, this is worth your time.

05 Digital Radio News Digest

Digital radio news is a bit light this week.

Recent developments in amateur radio digital voice and VoIP linking modes include updates to AllStarLink, with improvements to QSO One stability and the introduction of YAAMon, a new AllStarLink monitor. The MMDVMHost repository has also seen an update, and the app_rpt repository has received several commits, including fixes for call failures and additions to non-blocking PTT kick pipes. The Amp-ASL amp-server repository has been working on a custom Pi image to streamline installation.

06 Band Conditions This Week

With a solar flux of 144 and a sunspot number well into the triple digits, the higher HF bands are in fine shape right now — 10 through 20 meters should reward anyone willing to spin the dial, and DX contacts are well within reach. Today’s K-index of 1 points to quiet, stable conditions, but don’t let that lull you into thinking it’s been a smooth week; a max K of 4.3 tells us the geomagnetic field threw a minor tantrum at some point, likely giving the polar paths a rough go and knocking the low bands around for a stretch. If propagation felt frustrating earlier in the week, today’s the day to get back on and make up for lost time.

• Solar Flux Index (SFI): 144.0 — Good — solid conditions on 10m through 20m

• K-Index (current): 1.0 — Quiet — excellent conditions

• K-Index (7-day max): 4.3 — Minor storm — HF disruption likely

• A-Index: 42 — Minor storm (predicted)

• Sunspot Number (NOAA/USAF daily): 211

• Sunspot Number (SIDC daily EISN): 149

• Active Solar Regions: 14

Source: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (swpc.noaa.gov) + SIDC (sidc.be)
Generated: 2026-06-04 21:03 UTC

07 Radio History

Sixty-three years ago this week, radio amateurs put their second satellite into orbit.

OSCAR 2 lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on June 2, 1962, riding piggyback as ballast on a Thor-Agena B rocket carrying a classified military reconnaissance satellite. The irony is hard to miss — while the Air Force was running a spy mission, a group of volunteer hams had quietly hitched their homebuilt spacecraft along for the ride.

OSCAR 2 was nearly identical to OSCAR 1, which had launched just five and a half months earlier in December 1961. The team had learned from the first flight. They adjusted the thermal coatings to keep temperatures lower inside the spacecraft, tweaked the temperature-sensing system to get better data as the batteries aged, and dropped the transmitter power from 140 mW to 100 mW to stretch battery life. The satellite operated for 18 days before going silent, re-entering the atmosphere on June 21.

What’s remarkable isn’t the hardware — it was a simple battery-powered beacon in a metal box — it’s what it represented. By June 1962, amateur radio operators had already placed two satellites into orbit, making them among the earliest civilian participants in the Space Age, arriving only four years after Sputnik. That Project OSCAR lineage runs in a direct line to today’s AMSAT satellites, CubeSats, and the ARISS station aboard the ISS.

Not bad for a bunch of volunteers working on weekends.

08 Short Stack

Digital Radio

• The Iconic aprs.fi App Finally Lands on Android! — “If you are an APRS enthusiast, a portable HF operator, or an automation geek, this is arguably the biggest software drop of the year.”

• Empower Your Emergency Communications with ACK Off Grid Server — “The ACK Off Grid Server presents a transformative solution for emergency communications, catering specifically to amateur radio operators and emergency response teams.”

• Discover Graywolf: The Ultimate APRS Station Software — “Graywolf emerges as a revolutionary all-in-one APRS station software, combining multiple functionalities into a single, user-friendly interface.”

• What Is FT8 and How Does It Work? — “FT8 is a digital ham radio mode designed for making reliable contacts using extremely weak radio signals.”

• APRStac: A Modern APRS Suite in a Single Binary — “APRStac is an APRS web client, digipeater, I-Gate, BBS, fileshare host, email gateway, and multi-protocol bridge developed by KN4MKB under the ModernHam project.”

SDR

• How to Listen to Aircraft with an SDR — “This guide will walk you through everything you need to know to start listening to aircraft using an SDR.”

LoRa

• When Amateur Radio Meets Search and Rescue: LoRa APRS in the Search for Missing Hiker Jaslinda — “As search and rescue teams worked tirelessly to locate missing hiker Jaslinda Saludin, technology from the amateur radio community became part of the operation. Members of the Cameron Highlands Amateur Radio Club supported the effort by providing LoRa APRS tracking devices…”

Antennas

• Should You Disconnect Your Antennas During Thunderstorms? — I do. “If a thunderstorm is close enough that I can hear thunder, I disconnect my antennas. That practice is common among experienced ham radio operators and shortwave listeners alike.”

• Ham Radio Tech: Do Nearby Metal & Trees Significantly Affect Antennas? — “Radio waves don’t exist in isolation. Every antenna interacts with its environment. Houses, gutters, vehicles, power lines, aluminum siding, steel towers, wet leaves, and even your neighbor’s rusty trampoline all become part of the antenna’s ‘neighborhood.’”

Gadgets

• HRWB 264 - Gadgets For The Shack With Randy Hall K7AGE — There are plenty of gadgets listed in the show notes, and as always, the Ham Radio Workbench podcast is a great time.

AI

• NotebookLM finally has an open-source rival, and I’m hooked — “Open Notebook is a project by developer Luis Novo, available freely on GitHub. It does what NotebookLM does. You upload sources, chat with them, ask questions, generate summaries, and even make podcasts.”

• Engineer builds AI laser defense system that wiped out every mosquito in his home — My first thought was: what could go wrong? “A computer vision specialist has built a system that uses deep learning and a laser-based targeting setup to hunt down mosquitoes. Steven Cheng, who works in computer vision and robotics, documented the project as he developed what he calls "the ultimate mosquito killer," turning a simple household annoyance into an engineering challenge.”

Security

• Your Android phone is already a security key and most people never turn it on — I just don’t know about this. We are so dependent upon our phones that they are becoming single points of failure in our lives. Making my phone my security key? I just don’t know.

09 Privacy-Focused Document Software

Do you need an alternative to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace? If so, you’ve probably looked at LibreOffice and OnlyOffice, or maybe Nextcloud. These are document creation and editing packages, sometimes self-described as content collaboration systems.

Something new is on the near horizon: Euro-Office. This software is based on OnlyOffice but comes with a consortium of vendors backing it. It is being updated for the European market with an initial release date of June 9.

Euro-Office doesn’t have the email offering that draws people to M365 or GW. However, it appears that Office.EU will combine Euro-Office and email into a Europe-focused suite, compliant with GDPR and avoiding the U.S. Cloud Act (but I’m not a lawyer, so don’t bank on this conclusion). If all that sounds attractive to you — and it kind of does to me! — head over to https://office.eu/.

If privacy-centered software is your cup of tea, you may also want to think about where your website is hosted. Hetzner, based in Germany, is an affordable option with a solid reputation.

10 If I Win the Lottery: Coffee, Curiosity, and Radio

I’ve often thought: if I win the lottery, I’ll build a clubhouse for my local amateur radio club. It would be great to have a space with different operating stations, maybe some workspaces for making and repairing gear, and since we’re hams: coffee — lots of coffee.

This is purely a thought experiment. As I’ve pondered this, I’ve started to wonder if this might be a way to attract new people into the hobby: a coffee shop with amateur radio operating stations. Certainly the local hams would visit, so we’d often have licensed, experienced people available. But would younger people visit? Maybe — if it was positioned as a coffeehouse where makers and radio operators were doing things with hardware and software and radio waves.

Is that enough of a draw? I don’t know. I do know it’s different than what I hear in conversations about attracting people to the hobby. Clearly, what brought licensed hams into the community over the years has varied. Service in the military is one group of people. Silicon Valley folks another. I’m a Sputnik/Apollo kid, so NASA and hearing radio coming to Earth live from space was a big deal for me. Later, we’ve seen preppers getting licensed.

People in each of these groups saw amateur radio as something they could use to do something with. And for most of them, worldwide communication was not something they carried around in their pocket. That has changed. Getting connected is no longer the draw — the smartphone solved that problem decades ago, and younger generations have never known a world without it.

But maybe, just maybe, connecting locally over a cup of coffee in a tech-oriented space would pull the curtain back on this mysterious thing called amateur radio, at least for some people.

Will I ever do this? I would have to buy lottery tickets, and that’s something I almost never do. But if I did, and if I won, I think creating a radio maker space with coffee would be a grand thing to do. The best part: I’d never run out of coffee.

11 QRT: End Transmission

New Mini PC by HP

HP announces new OmniDesk Mini PC: World’s first “AI Mini PC” with Intel Core Ultra and Thunderbolt Share — I do love me a good PC by HP. No idea how much this is going to cost (undoubtedly too much) but might be worth watching for on eBay in a few years!

The Knack

I overheard some conversation on the W6EK repeater in California about “the knack.” This brought back memories of how I would disassemble many things in my childhood…and only occasionally getting them put back together again in working order. I share this Dilbert YouTube in case you find the humor entertaining. I do.

I’m guessing that “The Knack” is a real thing. The disassembly-to-reassembly success ratio in childhood is probably a reasonable predictor of career trajectory in this great hobby of hobbies: amateur radio.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

Welcome to Random Wire 184.

It’s great to see the sun again — we don’t get all that many warm, clear days during winter in the Pacific Northwest. And while I am really enjoying baking the winter cold out of my bones, I’m concerned that we’re in for another historic wildfire season. We had a warm-ish winter and the snowpack is generally well below average. Predictions are for a hot, dry summer that may set new records. We joke about Californians moving to Washington and Oregon, but it’s not quite as funny that California weather is also creeping northward. I have my fingers and toes crossed, hoping that we don’t have a perfect storm of wildland fire conditions this year. In short: please be careful out there!

01 Thank You…to Field Day Operators

ARRL Field Day 2026 is just around the corner and savvy radio operators are busy organizing their gear and making plans. For some, this is a contest. For others, it’s an annual social event. And for others, it’s a chance to give the general public a glimpse into our very wide and deep hobby. Whatever camp you’re in, I want to express gratitude for participating in one of the biggest annual amateur radio events in the world. Have fun, make lots of contacts, and share your challenges and successes with others. That’s how we learn how to do it better next time and to be prepared!

02 New on EtherHam.com

It was a busy week in all aspects of my life, but I still found some time to dive into a few topics…mainly Raspberry Pi-focused, but interesting, nevertheless:

• AllStar Node with Raspberry Pi 4: New Case and UPS Hat

• Inside EtherHam: May 2026

• Monitoring and Managing a Raspberry Pi 4: Three Tools, Three Jobs

• Your Raspberry Pi 4 Makes a Surprisingly Good Home NAS — With Music Streaming

For next week, I’ll also be working up an article on using a mini PC powered by an N150 CPU as the basis for a network-attached storage (NAS) device. As I tie a ribbon around this issue, I have that NAS box running on my LAN and streaming Steely Dan music to my laptop. It is working much better than the Raspberry Pi 4 NAS, running the same software stack. This is a win and I’m looking forward to sharing my write-up with you. Here’s a teaser photo of the interesting hardware platform I built this on.

Vertically cooled, six NVMe spaces, two 2.5GB Ethernet ports, and powered straight off the mains (no power brick or wall wart). It is much more responsive than the Raspberry Pi 4-based NAS build, and just as important to me, it runs much cooler.

04 TIDRADIO TD-H9: Still Working On It

I spent more time — lots of time! — trying to get APRS to beacon automatically on the TD-H9. I’ve not been able to figure out cause-and-effect with this radio. I change a setting and the behavior doesn’t change. Then I don’t change a setting and the behavior does change. It beacons when I move the radio, then it doesn’t. Or it doesn’t beacon at all, even though it is set to do so. I’ve driven to town with the radio set to beacon and it beacons when I leave, but not again. I’ve driven to another city, and once it beaconed and the other time it didn’t.

Confusing doesn’t begin to cover it.

I find no explanation of the differences between two firmwares: a TD-H9 1.0.32 version dated May 7, 2026, and a TD-H9 APRS 1.0.15 version dated January 9, 2026. Maybe I need to try the APRS firmware version…but first, I’ll update to the latest and greatest firmware and try that.

I did not find a USB-C cable that worked, nor do I have the proper K-1 programming cable. I will before Friday, though, so hopefully I’ll get this done in time for this issue of the Random Wire.

I have a second radio coming so I can make sure this isn’t baked into the radio. It’s orange and you’ll want to see pictures, so I should have more to report and show you next week.

Bottom line: still working on it, stay tuned.

05 Repackaged AllStar Node and Restored Configs

I bought a case with room for a Raspberry Pi hat, and added an uninterruptible power supply hat to the Pi. The AllStar node is built on a Raspberry Pi 4 and uses the AllScan UCI80M USB Communications Interface for high-quality audio. That seems to be working well, although there are two modifications I want to make: add a momentary on/off button to trigger a safe shutdown if the system locks up, and add a cooling fan. Find the article on the EtherHam site: AllStar Node with Raspberry Pi 4: New Case and UPS Hat

Once I got the Pi moved into the new case, did some scripting, and tested, I noticed that the system was unstable. Suspecting a microSD card that was beginning to fail, I chose to install a fresh AllStarLink 3 Appliance package to a new microSD card.

Normally, I would then walk through the configuration menus and manually enter all the necessary settings. This time, I didn’t do that. This time, while running on the failing microSD card, I copied a host of configuration files to a network drive. Then I shut down, installed the ASL3 Appliance package to a new microSD, booted from the new card, and copied those configuration files to the new card.

There were a couple of permission issues that interrupted things. The Allmon3 package had no password set, so I took care of that manually. And the Cockpit interface kept failing, but that was because it was reading old cookies from my browser. Once I flushed those cookies, the system stabilized and all was well.

I don’t think I saved any time doing it this way, but I did prevent most of the inevitable fumble-fingered mistakes that always come with manually configuring settings. I wanted to test how easy it was to mount a network drive, move files from the node, then move files back to the node. That worked nicely.

The performance of this particular platform proved to be poorer than I expected, so I changed some settings to push the chip a little harder. That increased the operating temperature, with the CPU reaching 70°C — still below the point where throttling begins at 80°C, but warmer than I’m comfortable with. To resolve this, I’ve ordered a fan to add to the system and should be able to report on this next week.

06 The Short Stack

EmComm

• Ham Radio EmComm Insights: A Look at the Narrow Band Emergency Messaging System — “…the Narrow Band Emergency Messaging System…is an open-source software package that allows licensed amateurs to send data via RF.”

• The Best Two-Way Radios for Bug-Out Bags and Off-Grid Emergency Communications — “…not all radios are equal, and there’s an enormous amount of bad information online right now. If you’re building a bug-out bag or emergency communications kit, here’s what actually matters — and what doesn’t.”

Shortwave

• The internet’s creepiest radio mystery is live on shortwave, and you can hear it for yourself — “I found some genuinely strange signals. Some of them were ordinary military, utility, or timing signals, but some of what I found have a genuinely creepy and interesting history behind them.”

Raspberry Pi

• Why Are Raspberry Pis So Expensive? (+Tips to Get One Cheap) — “I dug into the reasons why, and there are a few tricks that can really help.”

• RAKwireless WisMesh Pi HAT RAK6421 turns your Raspberry Pi 4/5 into a modular Meshtastic gateway — “RAKwireless WisMesh Pi HAT RAK6421 is a modular Meshtastic gateway expansion board for Raspberry Pi 4/5 that adds support for the company’s WisBlock ecosystem. Designed for users running meshtasticd (the Linux-native Meshtastic service), it enables scalable, always-on Meshtastic base stations, MQTT gateways, and backbone relay nodes.”

Logging

• Best Amateur Radio Logging Apps for Android and iOS in 2026 — “Here are the best amateur radio logging apps for Android and iOS right now, based on features, LoTW/QRZ support, contest use, and offline capability.”

07 Digital Radio News Digest

Perhaps the most interesting item to me is the update on the LinHT project. I’m looking forward to eventually getting one of these open source transceivers in my hands and on the air.

Summary

Recent developments in amateur radio digital voice and VoIP linking modes include updates to M17 hardware testing, AllStarLink forum discussions on Asterisk core dumps and Debian 12 server issues, and GitHub commits for various VoIP linking systems. The M17 Project has reported on the hardware testing status of LinHT Rev B, while the AllStarLink community has been discussing issues with Asterisk core dumps and server setup. VoIP linking systems have seen updates to app_rpt, ASL3, and amp-server.

Per-Mode Breakdown

DMR

There is limited information available for DMR, with only one GitHub commit mentioning a cleanup involved with renaming in MMDVMHost.

YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X

Random Wire has published an article on upgrading MMDVM hats, but there are no other notable updates for YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X.

M17

The M17 Project has reported on the hardware testing status of LinHT Rev B, and there have been GitHub commits for OpenRTX firmware, including a fix for the miosix GCC toolchain path.

Wojciech Kaczmarski was kind enough to alert me to an update published on the M17 Project page. Find that at: LinHT Rev B – hardware testing status.

VoIP Linking

The AllStarLink community has been discussing various issues on their forum, including Asterisk core dumps, Debian 12 server setup, and Echolink loopback. There have also been several GitHub commits for VoIP linking systems, including updates to app_rpt, ASL3, amp-server, and asl-parrot.

Notable Firmware or Software Updates

• app_rpt version 3.9.3

• app_rpt version 3.9.2

• ASL3 commit to improve Broadcastify Experience

• OpenRTX firmware commit to fix miosix GCC toolchain path

• amp-server commit to overhaul call state management

• asl-parrot commits to overhaul call state management and update to latest amp-core

Last run: 2026-05-28 22:07 UTC -- 23 items collected.
Download the collected items here.

08 Band Conditions This Week

Conditions: a decent setup heading into the weekend, but not without caveats. An SFI of 108 and a quiet K-index of 2 put us in good shape for reliable HF propagation, with 20, 17, and 15 meters likely performing well for both regional ragchews and longer DX paths.

That said, the past week wasn’t entirely smooth sailing; a 7-day max Kp of 3.7 hints that we saw some unsettled stretches that may have rattled the higher bands, and with the predicted A-index sitting at 11, it’s worth keeping an eye on conditions rather than assuming the calm will hold. With 15 active solar regions and a healthy sunspot count, the sun is staying busy, so there’s plenty of potential energy in the pipeline — for better or worse.

• Solar Flux Index (SFI): 108.0 — Moderate — reliable HF propagation

• K-Index (current): 2.0 — Quiet — good conditions

• K-Index (7-day max): 3.7 — Active — some HF degradation

• A-Index: 11 — Unsettled (predicted)

• Sunspot Number (NOAA/USAF daily): 103

• Sunspot Number (SIDC daily EISN): 155

• Active Solar Regions: 15

Source: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (swpc.noaa.gov) + SIDC (sidc.be)
Generated: 2026-05-28 22:05 UTC

09 Radio History

A few milestones cluster around this time of year that are worth a moment of reflection — especially if you’re the kind of operator who thinks about where we came from…and maybe wonder where we’re going!

May 1919: QST comes back to life

When QST returned in May 1919, it came back as an eight-page bulletin with no cover, barely resembling the magazine it had been before the wartime shutdown. Amateur radio had been banned since April 1917, and hams still weren’t back on the air — that wouldn’t happen until that October, when a supplement to the fall issue famously proclaimed “BAN OFF.” But the magazine’s return was the signal that the community intended to survive the hiatus.

June 1933: The first Field Day

The first ARRL Field Day was held June 10–11, 1933, under the name International Field Day. Ed Handy, W1BDI, then ARRL Communications Manager, is credited with the idea. About 50 portable stations participated, and the point was straightforward: could amateurs pack up their gear, get out of their shacks, and keep communicating under field conditions? Ninety-three years later, that question still drives the last full weekend of June every year. POTA, portable ops, and EmComm culture are all downstream of that original experiment.

May 1952: The 15-meter band opens — but just for CW

On May 1, 1952, the FCC opened the 15-meter band to U.S. amateurs — CW only. Phone privileges on 15 meters didn’t arrive until March 1953, and the same 1952 rulemaking also extended phone operation to 40 meters, which had previously been CW-only. Taken together, these changes reshaped HF operating and helped accelerate the slow migration from AM toward SSB that would play out across the rest of the decade. It’s one of those regulatory moments that didn’t look like a turning point at the time, but really was.

A personal aside: I missed the real Kon-Tiki anniversary

I wanted to work the topic of the Kon-Tiki into this column, but I missed the anchor: the raft departed Peru on April 28, 1947. That’s a late April anniversary, not late May, and I didn’t catch it until after the fact.

Still worth saying: the Kon-Tiki expedition carried an amateur radio station — callsign LI2B — operated by Knut Haugland and Torstein Raaby, both former Norwegian resistance radio operators from World War II. Over a 101-day voyage across the Pacific, they maintained regular contact with American, Canadian, and South American ham stations, relaying position and meteorological data to the Norwegian Embassy in Washington. The December 1947 issue of QST called it “the most unusual expedition ever to place reliance on amateur radio for communication.”

I read Heyerdahl’s book over and over as a kid, long before I knew anything about ham radio. His writing instilled in me a taste for adventure, and a realization that sometimes, one had to think outside the box to achieve something wondrous.

It turns out the radio operators on that raft were doing something I’d later spend a lot of time thinking about: proving that if you have the right gear, the right skills, and a schedule to keep, you can communicate from anywhere.

That’s not a bad way to describe Field Day, either.

10 QRT: End Transmission

Busy Week

I was surprised by how busy I was this past week. The biggest event was a medical incident requiring taking my wife by ambulance to the emergency room. We got home 11 hours later. The good news: we got home. The bad news: we’re going to have to make that trip to the hospital again to fully resolve the situation.

Domain renewals

If you followed Random Wire issues 182 and 183, you know I’ve been talking a bit about the rising cost of domain renewals. Hours after issue 183 was published, I receive a notice that my EtherHam domains were up for renewal. I’m glad they remind me and I immediately paid to renew them…and yes, costs are rising.

Embarrassing Shack Moment

There I was, concentrating on my laptop screen, when I heard audio on my AllStar node beside me. That’s odd, I thought — that node isn’t supposed to be connected to anyone right now. I turned up the volume but it didn’t respond. I looked at Allmon3 and AllScan to try to figure this out but wasn’t getting anywhere. Then I asked Claude what might be causing connected nodes not to show up, and boy, that was a rabbit hole.

Several minutes later, I reached for the node and that’s when I noticed what I had done: I had put my M1KE device right behind the speaker-mic stand. I wasn’t hearing my node. I was hearing our local YSF/WiRES-X repeater through the M1KE. This is where that SMH abbreviation — shaking my head — really hits home.

The good news? The M1KE audio sounded almost as good as my AllStar node!

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

The other was something about requiring manufacturers to include the ST-Link v2 dongle to “democratize” electronics. Nope, I didn’t say that, either.

Nevertheless, there is some value to be had from this interpretive verbalization of my written content. If nothing else, it can be humorous to listen to the AI voices pronounce technical words incorrectly and then make leaps of logic that are invisible to the rest of us. I hope you enjoy this.

Hamvention

How was Hamvention? I wasn’t able to go, but during the event, I got emails from ham friends who were there. It sounds like it was a grand time.

As I expected, Yaesu did announce the new DR-3X repeater series. I’m sure we’ll be learning how some of the new/advanced features play out and what that means for your existing Yaesu radios.

1 ~ Thank You to…My Local Club Members

When I was a brand new ham with a shiny Technician ticket, I had a handheld transceiver. With that, I participated in nets on the local 2 meter repeater and worked satellites with a handheld Yagi antenna. I got a lot of mileage out of very little gear and I learned a lot.

Today, I want to say thank you to my club members — the ones who helped me get started, who encouraged me along the way, and who continue to help others join and enjoy this great hobby.

There really are too many to list, but some stand out for me. (If I left you off the list, I blame age and memory!) Some of the folks who have been impactful in my amateur radio journey include:

• Gary AC7VA — That free MFJ antenna tuner made it possible for me to get on HF once I built my antenna and got an HF rig!

• Lee W7FBI (SK) — I have an old Kenwood TS-520S I bought from W7FBI (SK) in good but “well loved” condition. It still has Lee’s #2 pencil marks on the Drive dial. I enjoyed this radio very much during the earliest part of my amateur radio journey, getting on HF with a homemade off-center-fed antenna.

• Dave N7HT — I never — never! — would have been able to get my Extra Class ticket without his tutelage. His patience with me was astounding. I didn’t understand most of the terms so he built my knowledge from the ground up.

• Brian NT7Y — Brian held the club together during the challenging Covid years and I usually chat with him in person every week.

• Jeff W7NEE — Leading the charge into digital radio for our local ham radio community, including standing up a YSF/WiRES-X repeater.

• Ben AB7I — Club president for several years, expanding meeting content and pulling in new members. A local POTA master.

• Anne AI7PS — She has picked up the POTA torch and is running with it!

There really are many other folks who have been great to me. I feel lucky to be part of such a great group of amateur operators who also like to help others.

2 ~ No M17 Net on Saturday

It is Memorial Day weekend. Last Saturday, Jeff AE5ME announced there would be no M17 net on Saturday, May 23, because of the Memorial Day weekend. This net is normally held every Saturday at noon Central time and is carried over America’s Kansas City Wide Network.

3 ~ New on EtherHam

It was another big week for deeper content on EtherHam.com with five new articles: three articles relating to Raspberry Pi computers, one about selecting a computer for your home AI platform, and a very deep dive into updating a stubborn MMDVM hat.

• Headless Raspberry Pi 4 in the Home Lab: A Practical Setup Guide — “Setting up a headless Raspberry Pi 4 as a utility machine in the home lab sounds straightforward — until you’re forty-five minutes in and wondering why you can’t connect to your own machine. This guide covers OS selection, SSH, IP reservation, RustDesk remote desktop, firewall setup, and a few hard-won lessons about dummy plugs and drifting IP addresses.”

• How to Back Up and Restore a Raspberry Pi microSD Card with Win32 Disk Imager — “MicroSD cards fail. If you run Raspberry Pi-based AllStarLink nodes long enough, it’s not a matter of if — it’s when. Win32 Disk Imager is a solid free tool for creating and restoring card images, but the interface offers almost no guidance and there’s a gotcha when restoring to a replacement card that trips up a lot of people. This guide covers the complete workflow, including a tool called PiShrink that most Pi users probably don’t know about.”

• You Want a Home AI Machine. You Can’t Find a Mac Mini. Now What? — “The standard advice for running AI locally has been consistent for over a year: get a Mac Mini M4. Apple Silicon’s unified memory architecture is well-suited to the task, Ollama works out of the box, and the thing runs nearly silently. The problem is that right now, in mid-2026, Mac Mini M4 models are scarce and expensive — $1,000 or more if you can find one at all. The eBay refurb play that used to work on Apple hardware? Gone. So let’s talk about what you can actually buy today.”

• Undervoltage Shutdown Monitor for Raspberry Pi AllStar Nodes — “Most inexpensive USB power banks aren’t true pass-through devices — connect or disconnect a charger while the Pi is running and you’ll get a hiccup just long enough to cause an unclean shutdown and risk microSD corruption. Here’s a lightweight bash script and systemd service that uses the Pi’s built-in vcgencmd to detect undervoltage and shut down cleanly before the bank dies completely.”

• Unlocking the “Locked” MMDVM Dual Hat: A Firmware Recovery Guide — “If your MMDVM Dual Hat hotspot is throwing a “locked by vendor” firmware update error, don’t order a new board yet. There’s another way in — and it involves a $10 tool that embedded developers use every day but most ham operators have never heard of. This guide walks you through the complete procedure for recovering and updating your board’s firmware using an ST-Link V2 programmer, written by a ham operator who learned it the hard way so you don’t have to.”