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.”

4 ~ Gear

Another AllStar Node

Since I had put together the Raspberry Pi 4 for an EtherHam post, I decided to purchase another AllScan UCI80M and Motorola microphone to make a new AllStar node. It took just a few minutes because I already had the Raspberry Pi 4 built and configured.

There are three layers in this stack: hardware, software, and configuration settings. The resources I used for this build are documented in these four EtherHam posts:

• Hardware: Assembling the Raspberry Pi 4 and Case

• AllScan UCI – ASL3 Installation Guide

• TechNote: Shutdown an ASL3 Node with Three Key-Ups

• SayIP for ASL3

I now have an AllStar node that announces the IP address when it boots up and I can shut it down with three clicks of the speaker-mic. I also installed one of my favorite AllStar apps:

• AllScan: AllStar Favorites Management & Scanning Web App

I set up this node to use my home wifi or my cell phone when the phone is in hotspot mode. When I travel, I’ll hear the IP address of the connection with my phone, allowing me to open AllScan on my phone.

AllStar Node: Case With UPS

I continue my experiments with using a battery system to power an AllStar node. In fact, I wrote up my work about a shutdown script that is supposed to safely shut down my node when the battery voltage starts to sag. Unfortunately, my premise was faulty. I expected USB power banks would show declining voltage as they neared exhaustion. That’s not what happened. The onboard battery management system on these USB banks has maintained voltage until it couldn’t any longer, then it abruptly shut down the power bank.

Aligned with my interest in using a battery with an AllStar node, I ordered a Pi-Shop Raspberry Pi 4 case with room for an uninterruptible power supply hat. This will be for an AllStar node that will be used at home and mobile. The reason for the UPS is to allow me to disconnect the node — while it is running — and move it to the vehicle without shutting it down.

This package is scheduled to arrive next week. I’m looking forward to putting it together. I continue to experiment with USB power banks as a power source for an AllStar node, but building a system with a built-in battery just makes sense.

Running rtl_tcp.exe as Service on Windows 11 Pro

If you’re using an RTL-SDR dongle as a network source for SDR++ or other software, you may want rtl_tcp to start automatically when your PC boots — without having to remember to launch it manually. The obvious solution is to register it as a Windows service. The problem is that rtl_tcp.exe is a console application, not a proper Windows service, and the Service Control Manager expects a program to “check in” after launching. When it doesn’t, you get Error 1053 and the service dies.

The fix is a wrapper called WinSW (Windows Service Wrapper), available at https://github.com/winsw/winsw/releases. Drop WinSW-x64.exe (renamed to winsw.exe) in the same folder as rtl_tcp.exe, then create a simple XML config file (named winsw.xml) alongside it:

<service>
  <id>RTL_TCP</id>
  <name>RTL_TCP</name>
  <description>RTL-SDR TCP Server</description>
  <executable>C:\SDRPP\rtl-sdr\rtl_tcp.exe</executable>
  <arguments>-a 192.168.68.65</arguments>
</service>

From an admin PowerShell in that folder, run .\winsw.exe install followed by .\winsw.exe start. Your RTL-SDR TCP server will now survive reboots on its own.

5 ~ If You Want to Work the ISS on APRS

It appears the only working APRS radio on the ISS at the moment is the Kenwood D710GA in the Zvezda Service Module, call sign RS0ISS. More information is available on the ISS Ham Radio Status page. and you can check recent activity on APRS.fi.

As of now, the active ISS APRS station is:

• Callsign: RS0ISS

• Frequency: 437.825 MHz FM

• Mode: 1200 baud APRS packet on 70cm/UHF

If you plan to work the ISS on APRS, remember that Doppler correction matters much more on 437.825 MHz than it did on 145.825. This means pre-programming multiple memories (±10 kHz steps) is now much more important for successful packet decoding.

6 ~ Short Stack from the Interwebs

Radios & SDR

• I turned my browser into a worldwide radio scanner, and I wasn’t ready for what I heard — “Then I discovered KiwiSDR, which made radio scanning and OSINT way more approachable. It takes a High-Frequency (HF) receiver a step further and adds a built-in Ethernet port and web server, making it visible and controllable online. Now, instead of needing expensive transceivers, I can open a browser and control radio receivers that other people have already set up, connected to real antennas, across the globe.”

• Comparing the Icom R75, JRC NRD-545, Yaesu FTDX 1200, and Perseus SDR on Shortwave — “For shortwave listeners and radio hobbyists trying to decide between a tabletop communications receiver, a ham transceiver, or an SDR setup, this comparison offers practical insight into how these radios perform in actual listening conditions rather than on paper specifications alone.”

Digital Radio

• Rhizomatica releases Mercury, a fully open-source modem for data communications on HF — “Rhizomatica is pleased to officially launch Mercury, a completely open-source Digital Radio OFDM protocol for HF broadcast and peer-to-peer ARQ connections with compatible TCP interfaces, built for reliable store-and-forward email and file transfer over HF radio links.”

• Beta/test version: PinPoint APRS v2.2 Build 260517 (May 17, 2026) — I’m running this beta version and it seems fine. Find the details here.

• APRS status on the ISS — “Please note we're still in the process of troubleshooting and testing this radio. APRS is currently active on 437.825 MHz. Feel free to check out status reports here.”

• AREDN Mesh – Beginners Guide For Joining A Network — “Presentation on AREDN mesh for beginners.”

Antennas

• Guide to Prepping for ARRL Field Day 2026: Part 3, Antennas — “In Part 3 of our series on prepping for ARRL Field Day 2026 (June-27-28), we’ll be looking at some of the Field Day antenna options available at DX Engineering…”

Computing & Artificial Intelligence

• GMKtec Mini Gaming PC, 1TB SSD 32GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS(Up to 5.1GHz), Mini Desktop Computer, Oculink, Dual RJ45 2.5G, NucBox K8 Plus — If you are thinking of a standalone AI platform on your network, this PC may fill the bill. A Mac Mini M4 is ideal, but they are scarce as hen’s teeth now…and if you do find one, they are priced accordingly. This GMKtec has a desirable AMD CPU, fast DDR5 memory, and the option to add an external GPU via the Oculink port. This is the best price I’ve found for this platform. (Not an affiliate link.)

• Local LLMs have one advantage ChatGPT and Claude can’t match, and it’s why I’m switching — “With a local LLM, when you're working strictly on your computer, your material and your work don't have to leave your computer, go to a server, and then come back. No third party collects or stores your information — it stays entirely on your device…This is where a local LLM shines: it’s one you truly control. Yes, if you don't have a supercomputer, it's not going to be the same experience as a cloud AI.”

• Top Raspberry Pi Gear for Ham Radio Enthusiasts — “The Raspberry Pi is a small, affordable computer that opens up a world of possibilities for amateur radio enthusiasts.”

• 5 things my Raspberry Pi travel router can do that other travel routers can’t — “The travel router I built out of a Raspberry Pi can do everything a regular travel router can, but it can do almost anything else you can imagine.”

7 ~📋Digital Radio News Digest

Summary

Recent developments in amateur radio digital voice and VoIP linking modes include updates to AllStarLink, with new API and automation features, as well as discussions on M17 packet mode data and activity at Hamvention. Additionally, there have been updates to the MMDVM Host and app_rpt software. The OpenRTX firmware has also been updated with a new ADC driver for the AT32F423.

Per-Mode Breakdown

DMR

The MMDVM Host software has been updated to modify the JSON to be more consistent. A new Brandmeister DMR app for Windows/Linux called VoxDMR has been announced on Reddit.

D-STAR

There is no significant recent development for D-STAR in the collected items.

YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X

There is no significant recent development for YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X in the collected items.

M17

The OpenRTX firmware has been updated with a new ADC driver for the AT32F423. The M17 Users Groups.io has discussed various topics, including M17 packet mode data, activity at Hamvention, and the use of the MMDVM_HS_Dual hotspot in M17. The m17-gateway has added SX1255 HAT support and an experimental messaging bridge.

VoIP Linking

AllStarLink has introduced a new API and automation features, including a REST API and guarded AI tool access for ASL3 nodes. The app_rpt software has been updated to version 3.9.1, with additional commits to fix issues with locks and Echolink audio processing. The Amp-ASL amp-server has also been updated with several commits to fix defects and improve functionality.

Cross-Mode Developments There are no significant cross-mode developments in the collected items.

Generated: Last run: 2026-05-21 17:16 UTC -- 50 items collected
Download the collection (with URLS): https://etherham.com/download/179602489/?tmstv=1779385736

8 ~📡Band Conditions This Week

Conditions have settled nicely heading into the weekend, with a current K-index of 1 and a predicted A-index of 7 pointing to quiet, stable propagation — good news for anyone planning some air time. With an SFI of 93, the higher HF bands aren’t exactly on fire, but 40 and 20 meters should be reliable workhorses for both regional contacts and modest DX, and 80 meters will reward the night owls. Worth noting, though: the week wasn’t all smooth sailing — that 7-day max K-index of 6.3 means we had at least one genuine geomagnetic storm roll through, so if your logbook looks a little thin from mid-week, that’s likely why.

By the way, May often coincides with strong sporadic-E propagation in the Northern Hemisphere.

• Solar Flux Index (SFI): 93.0 — Fair — lower bands performing better

• K-Index (current): 1.0 — Quiet — excellent conditions

• K-Index (7-day max): 6.3 — Storm conditions — significant HF disruption

• A-Index: 7 — Quiet (predicted)

• Sunspot Number (NOAA/USAF daily): 20

• Sunspot Number (SIDC daily EISN): 87

• Active Solar Regions: 8

Source: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (swpc.noaa.gov) + SIDC (sidc.be).
Generated: 2026-05-21 17:02 UTC

9 ~ 📻This Week in Radio History

May 18, 1980 — Mount St. Helens Eruption and Emergency Communications

The eruption of Mount St. Helens knocked out telephone infrastructure across a wide area of southwestern Washington, and amateur radio operators stepped in — supporting search and rescue coordination, damage assessment reporting, and liaison with government agencies. What's less widely remembered is that hams had been providing informal communications support during the weeks of precursor activity beforehand, as earthquakes and steam venting drew researchers and observers to the area starting in late March. The mountain gave plenty of warning; people were already watching it closely when it finally let go.

I am sharing this because it was impactful to me but not in the way you might think. The month before Mount St. Helens erupted, I had moved to Nevada to take a job as a mining geologist. As a geologist, I had watched for an eruption for years. I was tremendously disappointed to have missed this one.

10 ~ QRT: End Transmission

Another thank you

Hiding in my emails late last week was one from Michael, noting his donation to support the Random Wire and EtherHam, and telling me a bit about himself. If you’ve donated support for the Random Wire and EtherHam and I didn’t get in touch, please reach out to me. Michael, I’m glad I saw your message! I do want to say thank you because I appreciate the support very much. It helps.

Still working on the TIDRADIO TD-H9 radio

I’m still trying to figure out automatic beaconing on the TD-H9 radio. It’s mysterious. It beacons sometimes, but not predictably. I thought maybe it has Smart Beaconing built in, which would mean it would slow down beaconing while stationary and increase the frequency of beacons while moving. Nope, that didn’t happen. The beacon timing setting is also a bit of a black box as it doesn’t seem to make a difference what I enter there. I think my next angle is to install firmware updates and start over. The radio does beacon, but I can’t tell why it sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t.

Websites crashed

Several of my WordPress websites crashed this week. It turns out that one plugin was responsible for all of those white screens with the “critical error” message displayed. I found a couple of other helpful plugins: one that will automatically identify and disable a plugin that causes fatal errors and another that allows you to easily rollback a plugin to an earlier release. And then a fourth website crashed, but this time I was prepared. Five minutes later, it was running smoothly again. That felt like success.

Installed Open Media Vault

I did have fun — and learned a ton — by installing Open Media Vault on a Raspberry Pi 4 with an NVMe drive. I’m using an external USB drive for the file shares. This is preparation for installing and configuring OMV on my Proxmox server. First, I need to acquire a larger external drive so my daughter and I will have plenty of storage space!

A Bittersweet Memorial Day Weekend

Every year around Memorial Day, a few of my siblings and I make the trek to the other side of Washington State to take care of family graves. It’s an event that brings us closer together. Last year, I missed it because my spouse had a major medical event. This year I will miss it again because the medical condition has not resolved. My younger sister’s husband is also having some issues, so this year, she’ll miss it. I know all of our relatives in various cemeteries would understand. Me? I get a deep sense of peace visiting my grandparents, my mom and dad, my aunts and uncles and cousins. The great-grandparents. I will see them all again, and just wish conditions were right to visit them this year.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

00 QRV: Are You Ready?

Welcome to Random Wire issue 182. You are part of a wide-ranging, far-flung community of radio amateurs of all skill levels and interests. We are each unique, and at some level, that also makes us the same. You are welcome here.

It’s Hamvention

It’s time once again for the biggest amateur radio event in the world: Hamvention. I wish I could be there. To all of my ham radio friends attending, have a great time, be safe, and bring back stories to share!

01 Thank You…for Opening the Door

Last week, I thanked Cale K4HCK for his contributions to our community. This week, I’m looking further back—to the very first time the door to amateur radio was cracked open for me.

That door was opened by my uncle James W7FBS (SK).

Growing up in Hoquiam, Washington, Jim belonged to the “Homebrew Generation.” This was an era where you didn’t just buy a radio — you scavenged parts from old broadcast sets and built your own Glowbug transmitters. Jim was a CW operator who, as a teenager, claimed the attic room so he could run a thin wire out the window to a nearby tree.

Years later, long after Jim was gone, my curiosity about amateur radio finally took hold. I realized that Jim’s wire to the tree wasn’t just a piece of copper — for a kid in a small community, it was his connection to the world. I became a ham in part because of the magic Jim experienced by reaching out across the planet, all with a wire from the attic.

Thank you, Uncle Jim, for helping me glimpse something that has become an enjoyable, fulfilling activity: amateur radio.

02 Yaesu DR-3X: A Third-Generation Fusion Repeater, Right on Cue for Hamvention

Something interesting surfaced in the last couple of days, and the timing is too good to ignore: Yaesu appears to be preparing to announce a new repeater called the DR-3X, billed as the opening act for a third generation of System Fusion. The catch is that as I write this on Wednesday, almost nothing official has landed — and by the time you’re reading this on Friday morning, Hamvention will be underway and the picture may look very different.

So consider this a pre-Hamvention snapshot. I’ll do a proper write-up once the dust settles and Yaesu’s product page goes live.

What seems to be on the table. The earliest credible mention I can find is a Yaesu USA broadcast titled “Special Episode - Yaesu System Fusion 3 & DR-3X series,” posted to YouTube about a day before I started writing this. A Spanish-language post at xreflector.es went up the same day with what reads like a translation of the same announcement. Between the two, here’s what’s being claimed:

• 85 watts on VHF, 65 watts on UHF — a meaningful step up from the DR-2X’s 50W

• 100% continuous duty cycle — the DR-2X is rated 100% only at lower power; full-power continuous would be a real improvement for busy repeaters

• DSP-enhanced analog audio — Yaesu pitching better-sounding FM, not just better digital

• Backward compatibility with existing System Fusion radios

• A new feature called IES (Interference Evasion System) that supposedly detects interference on the input frequency, instructs compatible radios to shift to an alternate access frequency, and reverts when the interference clears. Not frequency-hopping, more like a coordinated fallback. Requires both radio firmware updates and compatible radios — so whatever this is, it’s a feature for the future, not for the existing Fusion fleet.

The honest caveats. As of Wednesday morning, Yaesu’s own website doesn’t have a DR-3X product page. There’s no brochure, no spec sheet, no firmware notes. Independent coverage — the usual ham press, retailers, eHam, the podcasts — hasn’t caught up yet. The two sources I have appear to trace back to the same Yaesu USA announcement, so it’s really one source wearing two hats.

It’s also worth noting that Yaesu was running a DR-2X purchase incentive program as recently as December 2025, which suggests this rollout is fresh enough that the previous generation hadn’t been wound down yet. That’s not a contradiction — but it does mean clubs that just bought a DR-2X shouldn’t feel like they bet on the wrong horse.

Why this is worth watching. If the headline specs hold up, the DR-3X reads like Yaesu addressing two long-standing wishlist items at once: more honest continuous power, and a smarter response to interference than “turn it off and call the trustee.” The IES concept in particular is the kind of thing that only works if the radio side keeps pace — which means it’s also a signal about where the next generation of Fusion handhelds and mobiles is heading.

Hamvention reality check. Yaesu has already announced a four-hour System Fusion education class at Hamvention 2026, and the xreflector post explicitly says the full reveal happens at the show. So if you’re reading this Friday morning and the Yaesu booth has a DR-3X under glass, that’s the real announcement — not anything I’ve written here. I’ll have a proper feature comparison in a future issue once I’ve seen the brochure and, ideally, gotten ears on one.

If you’re at Dayton this weekend, stop by the Yaesu booth and tell me what you see. I’ll happily credit the first reader who sends a confirmed photo of the spec sheet.

03 What’s New on EtherHam?

It has been a very productive week with several new EtherHam.com posts:

• Sizing Up the Enjoybot 12V 30Ah for POTA — I like the all-in-one nature of this battery with accessory ports, no case needed. (But here is a brief cautionary tale. I recall an incident with a battery when fishing with my daughter when she was about 10 years old. She pulled in her trolling gear which was on a stainless steel cable and the cable dropped right on top of the trolling motor battery terminals. Current flowed and the cable vaporized instantly. Be careful around unprotected battery terminals!)

• Hardware: Assembling the Raspberry Pi 4 and Case — If you’ve never put a Pi into a case before, it might seem a little daunting. It’s not hard. I show you how.

• One Sun, Two Rulers: Why Sunspot Numbers Don’t Match — I got frustrated that the sunspot numbers reported by two different tools were wildly different and wondered: why? There are two ways of calculating the number, and it’s helpful to understand which system your tool is using.

• Reclaiming Disk Space on a Dell Wyse 3040 Running AllStarLink 3 — My 3040 was getting a bit low on space so I took a deeper look at what was consuming capacity. And then I fixed it.

• Why Your Domain Renewals Keep Getting More Expensive (And Where This Is Headed) — My domain renewals (yes, I probably have too many domains!) are getting more expensive. Why? Here’s the answer along with my thoughts on where domain renewal prices are headed.

04 TIDRADIO TD-H9: Part 2

A bit more about the TIDRADIO TD-H9 — a 10-watt handheld with great features at a budget price. I’ve found two YouTube videos that proved helpful in understanding the radio, one by KM6LYW and the other by W6IWN (thank you, Ren, for this source).

W6IWN measured +9 watts output on 70 centimeters and on 2 meters, and he touches on many of the great features of the TD-H9:

I did get automatic beaconing working on my radio…well, maybe. I got a couple of packets to launch but so far, it has not been consistent. First, I turned OFF the PTT/Manual triggering of the beacon. I thought I could have that on with the radio also set to timed beaconing, but that does not appear to be the case. Once I turned PTT beaconing off and set timed beaconing to 180 (seconds, I assume), the radio did beacon on its own: once.

The other thing I did was switch to the “18.8inch Foldable Tactical Antenna” that came in the package. Once I did that, signals in and out of the radio improved. The path set in the radio is WIDE1-1, WIDE2-2. That is probably most appropriate in rural areas (like mine) but would be much too busy in an urban area. The more appropriate setting is probably WIDE1-1, WIDE2-1.

My APRS test is not definitive; I’m still working on it, which means I haven’t figured it out yet. Will it beacon? Yes, I’ve proven to myself that it will. Will it do it automatically? Not reliably for me, yet. I’d love to hear your report.

This radio has a built-in spectrum scope. That’s handy. (Press and hold the number 7 touchpad to activate the scope.)

Another feature I wasn’t aware of is the ability to find and load local repeaters. This is done with the radio connected to the Odmaster app on your phone via Bluetooth. The W6IWN video above explains how to do this. My first thought was: what a great radio to include in a go kit! You can look up local repeaters and move them to channels on the radio with the app.

TIDRADIO TD-H9 10Watt GPS&APRS Multi-Band Ham Radio Capable of Bluetooth Connectivity; Wireless Programming; Spectrum Analysis;SMS Message Text; NOAA Weather Receiver Handheld Two Way Radio (Green) (affiliate link)

Available on Amazon in green (I call it Ryobi green), clear, and black. However, it also comes in orange direct from TIDRADIO. I have to admit I like that orange color!

05 Why Your Antenna Hates the Tree Trunk

It is the ultimate temptation. You have a tall, sturdy tree and a long spool of wire. The easiest way to get that wire into the air seems to be running it directly up the trunk.

But before you do this, remember that to your radio, a tree isn’t just a support. It’s a giant, vertical, semi-conductive sponge. (While this sounds like something out of a 1940s Popular Science magazine, it is a real thing. Major General George Owen Squier of the US Army Signal Corps actually patented the “Tree Antenna” in 1904, calling it “floradventure.”)

1. The Microwave Effect (RF Absorption)

A living tree is full of sap — a complex solution of water and electrolytes. To an RF signal, that sap looks like a lossy conductor. When you run your wire right next to the trunk, the electromagnetic field around the wire doesn’t just radiate into space: it also couples with the tree.

Instead of your signal reaching Japan, a significant portion of your power is vibrating the molecules in the wood. You aren’t just an operator anymore. Instead, you’re trying to cook a 50-year-old evergreen from the outside in.

2. The Moving Target (Detuning)

The proximity of the tree trunk creates parasitic capacitance. This acts as a loading effect that electronically lengthens your antenna.

• The SWR Mystery: You might get your antenna tuned perfectly on a dry Monday. But on a rainy Tuesday, the bark gets soaked and the sap flow increases. Suddenly, your SWR (Standing Wave Ratio) is through the roof.

• The Velocity Factor: The mass of the tree changes the velocity factor of the wire. Because the dielectric environment is inconsistent, your antenna becomes a moving target that is nearly impossible to keep resonant on a single frequency.

3. The Bio-Load

If you run a wire too close to a tree, the tree becomes a part of the antenna system — but a very poor one. This is often called dielectric loading. The tree effectively clobbers your radiation pattern. Instead of a nice, clean signal lobe, your tree absorbs the energy on one side, creating a shadow in your coverage. You might find you can hear stations to the East just fine, but the West (where the trunk is) is a total blackout.

4. Mechanical Sawing (The Friction Factor)

Trees are not static. Even on a calm day, a tall conifer is swaying. If your wire is tight against the trunk or a branch, that movement creates constant friction.

• Insulation Failure: Bark is essentially high-grit sandpaper. Over a few months, the tree will chew through the jacket of your wire, leading to a direct short against the wet wood.

• The Snap: When the wind really picks up, a tree can move several feet. If your wire doesn’t have a system to provide slack (like a pulley and a counterweight), the tree will eventually win the tug-of-war.

The Rule of Thumb for Tree Supports

Trees are wonderful antenna supports, provided you treat them as living towers that are also conductive.

• The 2-Foot Rule: Try to keep your radiating wire at least 18 to 24 inches away from the main trunk and large branches.

• Use the “Drip Line”: If possible, use a throw-line to hang your wire from a high branch so it dangles in free air, well away from the conductive mass of the trunk.

• The Pulley is Your Friend: Always use a pulley and a weight (like a gallon of water) at the ground end. This allows the tree to sway while your wire stays at a constant tension.

Keep your wire in the air, but away from the bark.

06 How to Support This Work

The Random Wire and EtherHam sites take time, energy, and money to keep going. I choose to not burden readers with a recurring subscription. Instead, if you find value in this work, please consider buying me a coffee or using other ways of supporting the Random Wire and EtherHam.

I just received a notice from the hosting company for the EtherHam website: they are raising their renewal prices. Costs are going up (I know this isn’t a surprise — we’ve all felt this in our own wallets) and they are adjusting prices accordingly. It’s going to cost me more to renew.

I’ve been noticing the past couple of years that domain prices have also been creeping up. That surprised me, so I researched it. What I learned is shared in Why Your Domain Renewals Keep Getting More Expensive (And Where This Is Headed).

If you are a company and would like to help sponsor the Random Wire and EtherHam, please contact me.

07 HamClock Upgrade to V4.24

I’m using the OpenHamclock Backend on my HamClock, and yesterday, I noticed version 4.24 was available. Upgrading was painless. A new addition is lightning icons on the global view and an option to see lightning counts in the upper right panel.

08 I Listened to the Saturday M17 Net

Last Saturday, I used BlueDV on Windows with Bluetooth headphones to listen to the weekly M17 net on America’s Kansas City Wide Network, but I also used my HOIP phone. And you know what? The HOIP phone worked very well. Here’s how to do this if you have a SIP phone configured to use your HOIP number:

• To monitor a QSO on the Kansas City Wide (KCWide) network using your Hams Over IP (HoIP) phone, dial extension 15135.

• This extension provides a 100% digital connection directly to the KCWide digital network, allowing you to listen to ongoing conversations and nets from your VoIP desk phone or softphone app.

How to Use the Connection

• To Listen (Monitor): Simply dial 15135 and listen to the audio stream.

• To Transmit (Key Up): If you are a licensed amateur radio operator, dial *99 to transmit.

• To Unkey (Receive): Dial # to stop transmitting and return to listening mode.

If you haven’t yet set up your HoIP service:

1. Register: Create an account and request an extension through the Hams Over IP Ticketing System.

2. Configure: Follow the Hams Over IP Wiki to configure your specific hardware (e.g., Cisco or Yealink IP phones) or softphone app (e.g., Groundwire or MicroSIP) with your provided credentials.

3. Alternative Monitoring: If you cannot use your HoIP phone, you can listen to a live, delayed feed of KCWide on Broadcastify.

And I did try listening to the Kansas City Wide Digital Fusion Room 28054 on Broadcastify, too, which also worked well. It’s great to have options.

09 The Short Stack

Most of these finds are sourced from the feeds published on EtherHam.com.

• FreeDV 2.3.0 released — “FreeDV 2.3.0 has been released, including support for running it directly on a compatible Flex 8000 or Aurora series radio, enhancements to performance (thanks to the removal of Python) as well as improvements to FreeDV Reporter filtering functionality and other bug fixes.” More details available on the project’s GitHub page.

Radio

• Tube Radio Passion Projects — “So, I had fond memories of this Capehart, and I set about restoring it. It was still in good shape — in fact, the tubes all tested strong, so I recapped it and tweaked the alignment and it came right back to life. I have used it to listen to my beloved Cardinals broadcasts.”

• The Net Control Station’s Secret Weapon: How NetControl.app Is Changing the Way Hams Run Nets — “NetControl.app is a free web application built by Brian (N4AFK) specifically for amateur radio net control operators. It’s still in beta, but it’s already packed with features that make running a net cleaner, more engaging, and honestly, a lot more fun.”

Digital Radio (M17, PSK31, APRS, FreeDV)

• APRS.world: The Browser-Based APRS Map That’s Changing How Hams See the World — “APRS.world is a real time map and callsign tracker for the global APRS network. It connects directly to the live APRS-IS internet feed. That means every beacon, message, and weather packet that reaches the global servers appears on your screen in seconds.”

• A Return for FreeDV (Digital Voice) — “I will have to write a series of articles on this, as I have done some experimenting with FreeDV. I hope to chat with the FreeDV folk at Hamvention.”

SDR

• RTL-SDR Blog V4 End Of Line — “The RTL-SDR Blog V4 has been a very popular product that we released back in August 2023…the Blog V4 relied on the Rafael R828D chip, which Rafael Micro no longer produces…Unfortunately, this stockpile has now been exhausted, and as far as we are aware, no other usable stockpiles exist, so no more Blog V4 productions will be possible…Going forward, the Blog V3 will remain in stable production.”

• Feeling adventurous? RTL-SDR / LoRa / GPS / RTC, an All-in-One Expansion HAT for Raspberry Pi — “Software-defined radio, long-range communication, satellite positioning, and real-time clock — all on a single HAT. Designed for Raspberry Pi, covering everything from signal monitoring to full IoT deployments.”

Antennas

• If you haven’t looked at SignalStick products lately, you’re in for a treat. Scroll through the online store at https://signalstuff.com/shop/ for more.

• Elecraft Introduces the New AX4 Portable Antenna & BL3 Balun — “Elecraft has just introduced two new products that will likely attract the attention of many POTA activators and portable operators: the AX4 portable vertical antenna and its companion BL3 balun.”

• Portable Ham Radio Insights—Deploying Your Wire Antennas — “This time let’s focus on how to actually get them into the air when you’re operating portable. There’s no single “right” way to do it, but here are a few methods that have worked well for me.”

Raspberry Pi

• My Raspberry Pi 4 still has a job in my homelab, and it isn’t Home Assistant — “Along with a mini PC, the Pi 4 is an essential part of my home lab, keeping an eye on my network, whether I am home or not.”

10 📋Digital Radio News Digest

Executive Summary

It was a busy week in the digital voice and VoIP linking space. OpenRTX pushed firmware fixes addressing UI text input and Linux audio issues. AllStarLink released ASL3 version 3.18-1 with packaging updates and bug fixes, while the Amp-ASL project saw commits targeting buffer sizing and hang diagnosis. On the DMR side, a new Windows/Linux Brandmeister client called VoxDMR surfaced. And a native iOS AllStarLink client, OpLine, is in beta and recruiting TestFlight testers.

Per-Mode Breakdown

DMR

A new Brandmeister app for Windows and Linux called VoxDMR has been announced on Reddit — worth watching if you’re looking for desktop DMR options. Community discussion this week also touched on Bluetooth PAN connections and bridging between commercial and ham DMR systems.

D-STAR

Nothing notable this week.

YSF / C4FM / WiRES-X

Nothing notable this week.

M17

The M17 Foundation published its 2025 financial report. On the firmware side, OpenRTX landed several fixes: _ui_textInputReset() wasn’t clearing the full input buffer, the M17 meta text input label was incorrect, and Linux builds couldn’t read baseband audio file sources. All three are now resolved.

VoIP Linking

AllStarLink released ASL3 3.18-1 with .deb packaging updates and assorted fixes, including a restored ability to make outgoing calls (app_rpt #1046 — useful if that broke for you recently). The Amp-ASL project saw commits for period/buffer size tuning and hang diagnosis. AllScan picked up CSS optimization, row highlighting, and RPT link count display. OpLine, a native iOS AllStarLink client, is in beta and looking for TestFlight testers. Community discussion covered issues with adding private nodes and accessing the web admin portal.

Generated: 2026-05-14 18:17 UTC -- 45 items collected. Click here to download the collected items with URLs.

11 📡Band Conditions This Week

With an SFI of 136 and the K-index sitting at a calm 1.0 today, conditions look favorable — solid performance on 20m through 10m, with good DX opportunities and lively contacts across the higher bands. The week wasn’t entirely smooth sailing though; a 7-day max K-index of 3.3 tells us there were some unsettled stretches that likely rattled the higher bands for a stretch. The predicted A-index of 22 is worth watching — enjoy the quiet window while it lasts.

Source: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (swpc.noaa.gov) and SIDC (sidc.be). Generated: 2026-05-14 18:24 UTC

12 📻This Week in Radio History

Nothing new this week, but a piece on Samuel Morse is too good to sit on, so here it is:

On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse tapped out "What hath God wrought" from the U.S. Capitol to Alfred Vail in Baltimore — 40 miles away, nearly instantaneous, and world-changing. The message itself was suggested by Annie Ellsworth, daughter of the Patent Commissioner, who had helped Morse secure the $30,000 federal grant to build the line. One of my favorite footnotes: the original machine printed marks on paper tape, but operators quickly realized they could just listen to the clicks and read the message by ear. The acoustic sounder was born, and with it, the culture of listening that still runs through every CW operator today.

13 QRT: End Transmission

Time to close the channel. It was quite the week, marked by a few notable events.

Website broke

The EtherHam website crashed. I found it odd that the home page didn’t crash, but visiting any post yielded an error page. What happened? An automatic plugin update broke the site.

Two hours of detective work later, I realized I had used a particular plugin on the pages with posts but not on the home page. I took a hard look at how I was using this complex plugin and decided I really didn’t need it, so it’s gone.

And then I wondered: did an automatic plugin update cycle bork any of my other websites? Yes! The misbehaving plugin on that site, though, was by a very responsive company and they had it fixed the same day.

Book manuscript

It’s been a busy week at the keyboard — my neck and eyes are feeling it. I’ve been pounding away at my book manuscript and when I saw I was three chapters from the end, I stopped reaching for my radio and instead spent more time at the keyboard. I managed to get the first draft done for all 17 chapters. They are now being looked at by three trusted reviewers.

There will be plenty more to do, including: get quotes (“Voices from the Field”) to amplify several points, get the ISBN, design a cover, select a printer, and more. While the timeline I created called for completing this work by this time next year, I think I’m on track to be in print by this fall.

I’ve been using AI to help with proofreading and assuring consistent formatting. Once in a while, a response from the AI engine makes me laugh, like this one yesterday:

The regex ate the </w:pPr> closing tag on the H1 paragraph

That one tickled my funny bone.

This manuscript has been pulling a lot of memories to the surface. A few chapters have impacted me more than I thought they would. That probably means the takeaways are going to be more meaningful for others…at least I hope so.

73

With that, I’ll say 73. Remember to touch a radio every day. If it touches you back, better put a choke on that antenna line!

Welcome to issue 181 of the Random Wire newsletter. I’m glad you’re here.

AllStar guide feedback requested

I’m looking for some experienced AllStar users to help check my work on a guide to getting started with AllStar using AllScan USB Communications Interface devices. It’s posted at Getting Started with AllStarLink 3 and an AllScan UCI and I could use critical feedback.

Hamvention 2026

Hamvention 2026 is sponsored by the Dayton Amateur Radio Association and will be held May 15-17. That means next week’s Random Wire issue 182 will land on the first day of Hamvention, and that means issue 182 will be too late to wish attendees well.

So this week, I'm sending my best wishes to all who will be attending — and I'm already looking forward to hearing what you bring back.

More? See The Adventure Begins in Xenia: Hamvention 2026.

01 Thank You to Cale K4HCK

I discovered that Cale K4HCK and I have something in common: we are both PseudoStaffers with Zero Retries. I also note that his popular website has a very spare design, and keeping things simple has been one of my goals with the EtherHam.com website. Birds of a feather.

This thank you is long overdue. I appreciate Cale’s wonderful contributions to our ham radio community. You might be wondering: what contributions?

• Cale is the brain and energy behind Amateur Radio Weekly: “…an email newsletter featuring links to the most relevant news, projects, technology, videos, and events happening in Ham Radio.” There is always good content to be discovered through his newsletter. I put out a weekly newsletter, so I know how much energy can get invested in this work.

• He also publishes Amateur Radio Daily with ham radio events and news updated several times per week. (If you visit https://daily.hamweekly.com/about/ and scroll down to Technical Details, I absolutely love Cale’s approach to generating and formatting this web-based content. If you want to see one site that influenced his design choices, check out sidebar.io.)

• Net Finder is working toward a future in which every amateur radio net is cataloged in a central directory on the web.

• Grid Mapper works with WSJT-X FT8 to display calling stations’ grids on a map, display previously worked grids on a map, display the station’s grid currently being worked on a map, and information about the station being worked showing up on a side panel. All in real time.

Any one of these deserves a thank you, but all four together? Amazing. I admire his work on behalf of our community, and I'm happy to extend a Random Wire & EtherHam thank you to Cale K4HCK.

02 Featured: Using a TinySA Ultra Frequency Analyzer

If you’ve been curious about spectrum analyzers but assumed they were expensive, complicated lab gear — the TinySA Ultra is a device that changes that calculus. It’s a small, palm-sized unit that connects to your antenna or radio via an SMA connector, sweeps a frequency range you define, and shows you a live graph of signal strength across that range. Taller peaks mean stronger signals. It runs on an internal battery, has a touchscreen, and costs less than 200 US dollars.

Getting started on the device itself is pretty straightforward — power it on with the slider switch, let it boot, and tap into the menu system to set your frequency range and mode. The included telescoping aerial screws into the RF port (there’s also a CAL port, so don’t mix those up), and you’re off. The display shows you markers, frequency range, and signal strength in real time. It’s immediately satisfying to sweep across 2 meters and watch a frequency spike appear when you key up a radio. In the words of Anakin Skywalker in Phantom Menace, you immediately know: It’s working!

The easiest on-ramp, though, is connecting the TinySA Ultra to a Windows PC via USB. A free application called TinySA-App gives you a much larger display, more precise controls, and — the real win — a built-in list of preconfigured band settings. Click the asterisk/snowflake icon next to the COM port selector and you get a menu of preset frequency ranges for common bands (amateur and others). No manual entry required to jump straight to 10 meters, 2 meters, 70 cm, Air band, FM broadcast, and more.

I recorded a short video of a session where I swept through several bands. On 70 cm, I could watch the signal jump when I transmitted from a handheld to one of my AllStar nodes. On 2 meters, two of my node radios showed up as consistent spikes — along with some regularly-spaced signals I wasn’t expecting. Checking the Air band turned up two frequencies with clearly elevated energy around 120 MHz and 132 MHz. One thing to watch: some bands look compressed vertically on the default scale, making it hard to read. Adjusting the vertical scale makes those spikes much more visible.

This is Part 1 of an ongoing series. There’s a lot more to explore — RFI hunting, marker use, and connecting to other software. For the full walkthrough including screenshots and video links, dive in at: Part 1: Using a TinySA Ultra Frequency Analyzer

03 Featured: TIDRADIO TD-H9: Dual Display and APRS

Over on EtherHam, I've posted a hands-on look at the TIDRADIO TD-H9 — a 10-watt GPS/APRS handheld with Bluetooth programming, spectrum analysis, and a color display, all for under $75. The post covers two things the manual doesn't: how to actually get dual display working (it's genuinely non-obvious and requires navigating several interdependent settings in the Odmaster app), and my experience trying to get APRS beaconing working. I got it beaconing in PTT/manual mode, but automatic beaconing remains a work in progress — like a lot of things with a radio this new, the community is still figuring it out.

Bottom line: solid radio, great value, awful manual, waiting for more radio users to help guide the community. Check it out at TIDRADIO TD-H9: Getting Dual Display and APRS Working.

04 Home: Streaming Audio to My Wife’s Room

My goal: FM audio from SDR++ on the iMac to an Ocean Digital WR-390 internet radio over Bluetooth. The WR-390 was already paired with the iMac, and displayed “paused” — which turns out to be normal; it just means the radio is connected and waiting for the iMac to push audio to it. However, although I could get wonderful audio through the iMac speakers, I couldn’t get the audio to the WR-390 speaker.

The situation was a little more complicated than you might think. My audio chain starts with an SDR USB dongle that is taking in the FM-over-the-air radio signal, but it isn’t attached to my iMac. The actual chain looks like this:

SDR —> rtl_tcp.exe (Windows) —> SDR++ (iMac) —> BT —> WR-390

The Windows 11 Pro mini PC is running rtl_tcp.exe, meaning that the SDR signal is sent via TCP to a listening app. In this case, that app is the SDR++ app on my Intel iMac. It sounds great directly on the iMac, but I wanted to push the FM music to my wife’s internet radio. Music has been central to our lives together, and as an elementary music educator, it was part of her daily work for decades.

The first step was going to System Settings → Sound → Output and explicitly selecting the WR-390 as the audio output device. That alone wasn’t enough, because SDR++ maintains its own independent audio sink selection rather than automatically following the macOS system output. A restart of SDR++ was required, after which the WR-390 appeared as an available audio output device within SDR++ itself. Once selected there, audio began flowing to the radio — but at very low volume even with both SDR++ and the WR-390 at maximum. The fix was simple: the macOS system output volume slider (in System Settings → Sound) had been turned down and needed to be brought back up. With that adjusted, the FM audio came through at full, usable, lovely volume.

Who helped me with this? Claude. I got all the pieces put together and working on my own, but got stuck on getting sound out of the WR-390 internet radio. Claude pointed me to the output volume slider in the iMac Sound settings. That was the missing piece.

05 LAN: RustDesk Server on Proxmox — Installation & Client Configuration Guide

Self-Hosted Remote Access with RustDesk

Most of my lab machines run headless, and when one goes offline it used to mean digging out the spare monitor and keyboard. I wrote up a full how-to on running RustDesk Server OSS as a lightweight LXC container on Proxmox — once it’s set up, every machine on the LAN registers against your own server, and you get in through the same RustDesk interface on Windows, Linux, or macOS. No dependency on RustDesk’s public infrastructure.

The guide covers the install script, service verification, grabbing your encryption key, port forwarding (or not, for LAN-only use), and client configuration. There’s also a section on headless Windows machines specifically — fixed passwords, startup behavior, and a virtual display driver that prevents the dreaded 800×600 fallback when there’s no monitor attached.

Full write-up at EtherHam.com: LAN Remote Access with RustDesk Server on Proxmox.

Why Proxmox? I find it pretty handy. I have some services I want to keep but I don’t want to devote an entire hardware stack for that single purpose. Solution? A Linux container on the Proxmox server. I have some services I’m just experimenting with. Again, I don’t want to commit a hardware platform to that one thing, so those are also on my Proxmox box. Spinning up a new container takes moments — not minutes, not hours, and no digging around to find the right power adapter and get the hardware all hooked up. If you like to experiment, or if you have limited space, running a Proxmox server can be very useful.

06 Got a Mac? Use AllStar? Try Transceive

I was honored to help test improvements to the Transceive app by Georges WH6AZ, available on the Mac App Store.

Transceive allows amateur radio operators to connect to their AllStar node from anywhere in the world. Operators can administer linked nodes, monitor traffic, and transmit audio, all from the comfort of their Mac.

I’ve been enjoying testing iterations that ultimately led to these key improvements:

• New: Universal binary (native support for Apple Silicon and Intel). This is a significant milestone. Native Apple Silicon support improves efficiency while ensuring the app remains stable and maintainable on future macOS versions.

• New: Reorder nodes with simple drag and drop

• New: Add a memo to a node entry

• Fix: DNS lookup issues when nodes use non-standard ports

• Update: Authentication updated for AllStar public access

• Improvement: More reliable node reachability indicators (green/red status updates more consistently, with less need to refresh)

The non-standard ports fix was a particularly welcome upgrade, because I run several nodes which means only one of my nodes is on a standard port. I usually use Transceive with a headset connected to my iMac and find the audio outstanding.

There is a more about Transceive to like. Visit the Mac App Store listing to learn more.

Transceive is great software. If you use AllStar and have a Mac, I think you’ll like it. I’m very pleased to award a Random Wire Recommended sticker to Transceive.

07 The Short Stack

Most of these finds are sourced from the feeds published on EtherHam.com.

Radio

• Radioddity PS30 Switching Power Supply – A Review — This SWLing.com post provides a positive review of a switching power supply. I’m seeing it on the Radioddity site for $119.99.

• Radioddity GD-AT10G Review: A High-Power Budget Entry into DMR — “The Radioddity GD-AT10G is a feature-packed handheld radio aimed squarely at amateur radio operators who want to step into the world of DMR (Digital Mobile Radio) without paying premium prices.”

Digital Radio (M17, PSK31)

• OpenRTX v0.4.4 release — New M17-related functions include: metadata text transmission and reception; packet transmission and reception; microphone noise reduction through ADC oversampling (results in a perceptibly better Codec2 behavior).

• Conversational Digital Mode Focus – PSK31 and others — This is a general piece about digital modes used for actual QSOs.

SDR

• SDR controls for Mac and iOS — There are too many individual package announcements to list here. If this is of interest, head over to Mac Ham Radio and browse their most recent posts.

• RTL-SDR.com has a couple of items, too — P25-Survey: A Tool for Scanning and Logging P25 Control Channels with an SDR and Portable ADS-B Receiver Firmware for the ESP32-P4 Based LILYGO T-Display-P4 with RTL-SDR.

• Top SDR Software Applications for Software Defined Radio — This was helpful to me when I went looking for SDR apps for my iMac. Nothing in the App Store looked good to me. It turns out that SDR++ has a package for the iMac, and not just the Apple Silicon iMac, but my Intel iMac, too. Win. “Unlike hardware guides, this page is a deep informational resource—because most SDR software is free or open-source, not sold on Amazon. Here’s the 2026 lineup.” (I’ve added the Radio Hobbyist feed to the list of feeds on EtherHam.)

• Software Defined Radio (SDR): Complete Beginner to Advanced Guide — Also from the Radio Hobbyist website, this is a great resource. “Whether you’re just getting started with an inexpensive USB dongle or building a more advanced setup, SDR opens up a wide range of listening possibilities. This guide brings together everything you need to learn SDR, including beginner-friendly explanations, setup tutorials, real-world use cases, and recommended equipment.”

Antennas

• Ham Radio Portable Insights: Reasons to Consider an End-Fed Half-Wave Antenna — “The big advantage I’ve found using an EFHW in the field is you can pull up to a site and literally be on the air in moments with barely any tuning or fuss. You can tie off the impedance transformer to a handy post or tree a few feet above the ground and then toss the wire over a convenient limb.”

• The Maxpedition Beefy Organizer makes POTA Setup Easy — While nominally about organizing for POTA operations, the gold nugget is how Michael KB9VBR organizes his wire antennas and associated parts —> in banker bags. Simple. Effective. Brilliant.

08 📋Digital Radio News Digest

Executive Summary

Recent developments in amateur radio digital voice and VoIP linking modes include the release of OpenRTX version 0.4.4 for M17, updates to the Pi-Star dashboard for DMR, and various discussions and issues reported on the AllStarLink forum for VoIP linking. The M17 project has seen significant activity, with new features and support added to the m17-gateway and discussions on using the MMDVM_HS_Dual hotspot in M17. The AllStarLink forum has addressed issues with WIFI network selection, custom audio files, and DTMF for DVSwitch.

Per-Mode Breakdown

DMR

The Pi-Star dashboard has been updated with changes to the mmdvmhost functions, including replacing log-tail shell pipelines with PHP fseek+regex and caching config + DMR_Hosts.txt within request. There are also discussions on Reddit about the new AnyTone AT-D890UV and looking for DMRs that can do a PAN connection over Bluetooth.

D-STAR

There is no significant content collected for D-STAR.

YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X

There is a blog post about using the AllScan UCI80M USB Communications Interface paired with a Raspberry Pi 4 and a Motorola speaker-microphone, but no other significant content collected for YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X. (This is pretty funny. First, this references my Random Wire post from last week. Second, the Digital Radio News Gatherer script misclassified this AllStar content as YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X. I have more script modifications to make!)

M17

The OpenRTX version 0.4.4 has been released, with updates to the m17-gateway, including support for the SX1255 HAT and an experimental messaging bridge. There are also discussions on the M17 Users Groups.io about using the MMDVM_HS_Dual hotspot in M17, connecting to the M17 reflector, and recommendations for M17 UHF frequencies.

VoIP Linking

The AllStarLink forum has addressed issues with WIFI network selection, custom audio files, and DTMF for DVSwitch. There are also updates to the app_rpt and amp-server repositories on GitHub, including changes to the chan_echolink module and support for serial controls. A Reddit user has also built a modern AllStarLink and EchoLink client and is looking for beta testers.

Notable Firmware or Software Updates

• OpenRTX version 0.4.4

• Pi-Star dashboard updates (commit ce0ea3dc, commit 3984e758, commit bc5a05a5, commit 437d34e6, commit 73cc3458)

• app_rpt updates (commit 0dec2b0e, commit 57e28c48)

• amp-server updates (commit f4beffd4, commit 5fb78034, commit 4f850733, commit 6d19b78d)

Cross-Mode Developments

There are no significant cross-mode developments reported in the collected items.

Last run: 2026-05-07 15:18 UTC -- 54 items collected. Download the collected items at https://etherham.com/download/179600844/?tmstv=1778167585

09 📡Band Conditions This Week

First: Sunspot Numbers

If you’ve been noticing that the sunspot number reported in this digest differs from what your HamClock is telling you, you are absolutely right: they are different. There is a reason. Reported sunspot numbers vary depending on the source. This digest uses the NOAA/USAF daily count, which tallies individual sunspot groups from their own observer network. HamClock and many online dashboards display the SIDC International Sunspot Number, which applies a different weighting formula across a global network of observatories — typically producing a higher figure. Both are valid. The simplified view: they're just measuring the same sun with different rulers.

The same underlying measurement, two different scales

Both numbers are counting the same thing: sunspots, using the classic Wolf formula — R = k(10g + s) — where g is the number of sunspot groups, s is the total individual spots, and k is a personal correction factor for the observer’s equipment and technique. The difference isn’t what they count, it’s how they’re calibrated and aggregated.

Where NOAA/USAF gets its number

NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) produces what’s often called the “Boulder sunspot number.” It comes from observations at a single reference point (historically the USAF/NOAA network centered in Boulder, Colorado), using their own observers and equipment with their own calibration coefficients. Numbers from individual stations — including the Boulder number — are often 20 to 50% higher than the International Sunspot Number. This isn’t an error; it’s a calibration difference rooted in history.

Where SIDC gets its number

The SIDC International Sunspot Number results from a statistical treatment of data originating from more than 25 observing stations worldwide, with the Locarno station serving as the reference to guarantee continuity with the historical Zürich series. By aggregating across a global network and normalizing everything through that reference station, the SIDC number is inherently a consensus average — smoothed across many observers and sites.

The 0.6 factor — the core of the mystery

This is where it gets interesting from a history-of-science standpoint. Back in 1849, Rudolf Wolf deliberately chose to ignore the smallest short-lived spots and internal spot structure (multiple umbrae in a large common penumbra), even though he could see them perfectly well, in order to keep his counts compatible with earlier crude telescopic observations.

His successor Alfred Wolfer disagreed with that approach and started counting everything he could see. His counts were systematically higher. But they ran parallel observations for 17 years — long enough to derive a stable ratio. To bring the new higher counts to Wolf’s scale, they had to be multiplied by a factor of 0.6. Since that time, all modern raw sunspot counts used to produce the sunspot number have been multiplied by this constant 0.6 factor.

The SIDC applies this 0.6 factor consistently across its network. Individual stations like Boulder, if they don’t apply it (or apply a different k), will read systematically higher.

The 2015 SIDC recalibration (Version 2.0) — added confusion

Things got more complicated in 2015 when SIDC released a major revision of the historical record. The biggest difference in the revised series is an overall increase by a factor of 1.6 applied to the entire historical series. This was essentially the inverse of removing a correction factor that had been improperly applied for decades. The upshot: NOAA/SWPC recalibrated its prediction coefficients in 2019 to be consistent with Version 2 of the International Sunspot Number.

So NOAA’s official long-term predictions now reference SIDC V2, but their daily operational Boulder number is still produced separately on its own scale.

What this means for you practically

When you see, say, 185 on HamClock (SIDC) and 210-220 on your propagation checker (NOAA/Boulder), they’re both describing the same sun on the same day — just measured on slightly different scales. For ham radio propagation purposes, the relative trends matter far more than the absolute numbers. Both will tell you the same story: we’re past the Solar Cycle 25 peak, conditions on 10-12-15 meters have been excellent, and we’re watching for the gradual decline. Neither number is “wrong.”

The practical takeaway: don’t try to mentally convert between the two on the fly. Just learn which number your favorite propagation tools use and calibrate your expectations to that scale. If HamClock says 150 and conditions are good, 150 is your mental reference point for “good” — regardless of what NOAA reports.

I hope this helps you understand why you sometimes see two very different measures of sunspot numbers. (Hat tip to Claude for assistance in crafting this explanation.)

CORRECTION

After publishing the above explanation, I reviewed it more carefully and concluded: it was incorrect. Following is my correction, inserted into issue 181 after publication.

A correction on sunspot numbers

In a recent issue I included an explanation of why HamClock and other propagation tools sometimes show different sunspot numbers. The historical background — the Wolf formula, the Wolfer parallel observations, the 0.6 calibration factor, the SIDC global network versus the NOAA/Boulder single-station approach — was accurate. But I got the conclusion exactly backwards, and that’s the part you actually use.

I wrote that HamClock (SIDC) would typically show a higher number than NOAA/Boulder. The opposite is true: NOAA/Boulder has historically run 20 to 50 percent higher than the SIDC International Sunspot Number — a fact the SIDC documents plainly on their own FAQ page.

There’s a wrinkle that muddies the water further. In 2015, SIDC released a major revision of their historical data series (Version 2.0). The most significant change was removing the 0.6 Zürich scale factor that had been applied for over a century, effectively resetting the SIDC series to the scale of raw modern counts. This made V2.0 numbers roughly 1.6 times larger than V1.0 numbers across the board. NOAA recalibrated its long-term prediction models to V2.0 in 2019, but the daily operational Boulder number is still produced on its own separate scale — and the relationship between the two in day-to-day use doesn’t follow a simple fixed rule.

The practical upshot, confirmed by real-world observation: on any given day, HamClock (SIDC) will often show a higher number than a propagation tool pulling the NOAA/Boulder daily figure. Today, for example, HamClock reported 68 while my propagation script reported 61. The original article had that exactly backwards.

The core advice still stands: don’t try to mentally convert between the two on the fly. Pick one scale, learn what “good conditions” looks like on that scale, and stick with it. The trends are what matter for ham radio purposes, and both sources will tell you the same story about where we are in the solar cycle.

Apologies for the error.

Second: Not My Band Propagation Summary

This comes from the Northern Lights Alerts group on Facebook:

A cluster of coronal hole “blobs” on the Sun is now rotating into an Earth‑facing position, and one of the western features is expected to become geoeffective within the next 24 hours. These regions release high‑speed solar wind streams that can disturb Earth’s magnetic field and create aurora activity even without major solar storms or official G‑scale watches.

Right now, space weather models suggest G0–G1 conditions (Kp 4–5) are possible from today through Friday. While this is not a major geomagnetic storm, it is exactly the kind of setup that often produces surprise aurora bursts, especially when the solar wind speed increases and the Bz tilts south for sustained periods. Coronal hole activity is known for creating long, steady pulses of aurora rather than explosive CME‑style storms, but these pulses can still light up the sky beautifully.

Finally: My Propagation Report

• Solar Flux Index (SFI): 155.0 — Excellent — upper HF bands wide open

• K-Index (current): 1.0 — Quiet — excellent conditions

• K-Index (7-day max): 6.3 — Storm conditions — significant HF disruption

• A-Index: 11 — Unsettled (predicted)

• Sunspot Number (NOAA/USAF): 39

• Active Solar Regions: 9

With an SFI of 155 and a current K-index of just 1, the upper HF bands — 10, 12, and 15 meters in particular — are wide open and worth a serious look for both DX and domestic contacts right now. That said, don’t let today’s quiet conditions fool you into thinking it’s been a smooth week; a max K-index of 6.3 tells us a geomagnetic storm rolled through and likely rattled the lower HF bands for a stretch, so if you’ve been frustrated with 40 or 80 meters lately, that’s probably why. The predicted A-index of 11 suggests a touch of unsettledness still lingering, but with nine active solar regions on the disk keeping that flux elevated, conditions are trending in a direction most of us are happy to see.

Source: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (swpc.noaa.gov). Generated: 2026-05-07 15:10 UTC

10 📻This Week in Radio History

Notable events from May 4 through May 8 across the years.

1933 — Armstrong Demonstrates Wideband FM

Edwin Howard Armstrong publicly demonstrated wideband frequency modulation (FM) and filed key patent applications that would later be granted through the late 1930s. His system dramatically reduced static and noise compared to AM broadcasting, making high-fidelity radio practical for the first time.

Armstrong’s work eventually transformed commercial broadcasting and influenced generations of amateur radio operators. Decades later, FM repeaters built by hams in the 1970s became the backbone of local VHF and UHF communication networks still used today for public service and emergency communication.

1945 — VE Day and the Return of Amateur Radio

On May 8, 1945, the Allied celebration of Victory in Europe Day marked more than the end of the war in Europe. For amateur radio operators, it signaled the gradual return of civilian radio activity after years of wartime shutdowns and restrictions.

Many amateurs had served as military radio operators, engineers, and instructors during the war. When peace returned, they brought home new technical skills and access to surplus equipment that fueled an extraordinary postwar boom in amateur radio experimentation. The years that followed saw rapid growth in VHF operation, weak-signal experimentation, mobile radio, and eventually FM repeater systems.

1950s — The Foundations of Packet Radio

During the 1950s, researchers and radio experimenters began exploring digital communication techniques that would eventually influence packet radio and computer networking over the air. While amateur packet radio would not fully emerge until decades later, the ideas taking shape during this era laid the groundwork for digital modes that hams would later embrace.

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, amateur operators adapted these concepts into practical systems using the AX.25 protocol, opening the door to keyboard messaging, bulletin board systems, APRS, and early wireless networking experiments long before Wi-Fi became commonplace.

1970s — The Amateur Satellite Era Expands

The mid-1970s marked a period of rapid growth in amateur satellite communication following the success of the early OSCAR satellites. Organizations such as AMSAT helped drive innovation in small satellite design, telemetry, and low-power communication systems.

For many radio amateurs, working through an orbiting satellite became both a technical challenge and a glimpse into the future of personal space-based communication. Amateur satellite programs also inspired generations of students, engineers, and experimenters who later contributed to commercial and scientific space programs.

Looking Back

Radio history is filled with moments where experimentation by individuals and amateurs eventually reshaped global communication. From Armstrong’s fight to prove FM viable to the rise of packet radio and amateur satellites, innovations once considered experimental often became essential tools for communication around the world.

History note: Dates and milestones are drawn from historical records and may reflect broader developments that unfolded over months or years rather than a single day. (Hat tip to ChatGPT and Claude for assisting in researching these items.)

11 Opinion: AI Advancing at the Speed of Fright

I was thinking about this topic when I listened to the latest Ham Radio Workbench podcast that includes a lot of back-and-forth about using artificial intelligence engines. I think the overall tone was: this is a positive step but we have concerns, even misgivings.

What does seem clear is that AI is here to stay. The AI genie is out of the bottle and we’re not going to be able to put it back. Our choices boil down to: ignore it (head in the sand tactic), use it (grudgingly learn to live with it), or embrace it (use it for more than simple chats and web searches).

I’m in the embrace it camp, even though I have concerns. (I’m probably one of those I don’t want to be left behind people.) I’m worried about unethical uses of this powerful technology. In my email inbox, I’m already seeing much more sophisticated attempts to get me to do things that may not be good for me or others. It’s getting harder to see at first glance which emails or website comments are real and which are generated by bad actors using AI.

I use AI to help with structuring content. Specifically, the book project I’m working on was simply a giant whirling mess in my mind until I asked ChatGPT and Claude for help. Claude asked me questions for an hour and then produced a very detailed structure for the book. That helped immensely as now when a key memory resurfaces, I know where to plug it into the manuscript.

I also use AI for proofreading and some editing, but I often “re-voice” what an AI suggests. I also notice both ChatGPT and Claude really like the em dash — so now, when I see that, the first thing I wonder is: did an AI write that content? Unfortunately or fortunately — depending on your point of view — I have tended to use em dashes in my writing for many years. To me, it more closely reflects how I think and speak. (My use of the em dash is not grammatically correct in that I add a space before and after the dash — like that. Without that space, it looks too much like a shortened-and-hyphenated phrase.)

I run a large language model engine on my Raspberry Pi 5 and yes, it is limited and slow. I also run an LLM on my Proxmox server where I have more capacity, but it is also pretty slow. I need a computer with a modern GPU; my Proxmox box is too old and so all AI work is done by the main CPU. Of course, since AI is advancing so rapidly (at the speed of fright!) by the time I save up for a capable machine, it won’t be capable any longer.

It feels like we are at a turning point in human history. We discovered fire. We learned to farm. We harnessed the power of steam, electricity, and fossil fuels. We became manufacturing wizards. The computer age landed and shook the world. Now AI is doing the same thing. It is happening fast, and yes, it is a bit frightening. With great power comes great responsibility and I pray that we can live up to our potential as good humans.

12 QRT End Transmission

Time to close the channel.

Thank you, subscribers (yes: you!)

The Random Wire newsletter has seen steady growth since I launched it in 2022:

Notably, this week total subscribers climbed over the 2,200 mark. I’ve said before that I try not to look at the subscriber numbers very often. I don’t want a number to influence what I write about, or how I present that information. Nevertheless, 2,200 feels like a milestone of sorts. Thank you. As always, I am happy to hear your ideas for topics and improvement.

It feels good to write

The longer I write within our amateur radio community, the more familiar it becomes. You get to know some leading lights and also work with less experienced hams who need a hand from time to time. It’s a great feeling to help others.

I remember when I first started. My Kenwood TS-520S HF radio had been well loved, and the ham who sold it to me (W7FBI, now SK) gave me a really, really good deal, including some extra vacuum tubes. Gary AC7VA gave me a manual antenna tuner. I built a small OCF antenna and strung it from the eave of the house to an old sailboat mast strapped to a fence post. The list goes on, and I used all of that low-and-no-cost gear as I got started in amateur radio.

In retrospect, I think it was those experiences that contributed to me wanting to help other hams. It is very satisfying to contribute to the hobby by helping to lift fellow hams. The very best part is getting to know others in our hobby: learning what they are doing, how they got started, what they are struggling with, and successes they’ve enjoyed. It’s really not about radio — it’s about you.

73

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

Welcome, radio friends. There is a strange bit of synchronicity as I write issue 180 —where I feature the AllScan UCI80M — and subscribers just went past the 2,180 mark. The number 80 seems powerful in my universe today!

Thank you to David WD5M

I’m once again monitoring the ISS over AllStar node 516221. I find it a bit addictive, probably because it was hearing live radio from space that sparked my interest in ham radio in the first place. Many thanks to David McAnally WD5M for providing this node. He does a lot, including:

• Streaming the ARNewsLine® reports on AllStar node 516228. See https://newsline.rfnet.link/ for more.

• Streaming the ARRL Audio News on AllStar node 516229. See

  https://arrlnews.rfnet.link/ for more.

• Providing the SPACE Mission Audio page and streaming services.

I use these services every week. Thank you, David.

This Week

Featured in this week’s issue of the Random Wire is the AllScan UCI80M USB Communications Interface from an end-user’s point of view. How does it sound? The UCI80M and Motorola speaker-mic package sounds good. You won’t be disappointed.

I spent enough time on the UCI80M piece that I ran out of time to follow-up on the TinySA and NanoVNA-H4. Those remain on the “to do” list for a future Random Wire issue.

New articles on EtherHam.com this week:

• Going Digital: Choosing Your First Voice Mode

• An Unassuming Little Box That Runs AI

• Ollama + Open WebUI Setup on Proxmox

• Inside EtherHam: April 2026

01 Featured: AllScan UCI80M AllStar Node

Recently, I purchased a new AllStar node device from AllScan.info. The units available from AllScan are designed by David Gleason NR9V. I am consistently impressed with the quality of his builds and how well they handle audio.

The UCI80M

I do love a small, capable device. As soon as I recognized the diminutive size of the UCI80M, I bought one. UCI stands for USB Communications Interface. The M stands for Motorola. The UCI80M is a small USB device that attaches to a computing device like a PC or Raspberry Pi, and uses a Motorola M-1 speaker-microphone for TX and RX audio.

David writes:

The UCI80M has the same features as the UCI80 but connects to Motorola M1 Speaker-Mics such as the PMMN4013A and PMMN4029A, which have several advantages over K1 speaker-mics: Genuine Motorola speaker-mics are easy to find at lower prices than similar quality K1 speaker-mics, and have outstanding audio quality, wind resistance, and durability; The PMMN4029A is waterproof, the PMMN4013A provides an extra 3.5mm audio jack; M1 connectors do not share a common ground between the speaker and mic, supporting bridge-configuration audio amps and up to 4x higher output volume and less distortion.

If you appreciate a beautiful schematic, the layout for the UCI80M is available on the AllScan.info website.

The audio? It’s good. Here’s a quick test to the Enhanced Parrot node 55553:

My UCI80M Stack

My AllStar node 588412 consists of a UCI80M USB Communications Interface, a Raspberry Pi 4 in an iUniker fanless case, and a TalentCell battery. These pieces are held together with some clear Alien Tape. The Motorola M-1 speaker-microphone rounds out the package.

The iUniker case

This simple, boxy case was sourced on Amazon for $10:

iUniker Aluminiun Pi 4 Case Passive Heatsink Cooler for Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8GB/4GB/2GB (affiliate link)

I’ve tried many Pi cases and find that I gravitate toward box-like shapes because the other major pieces are usually similarly shaped. That makes it easier to stack them.

I’ll touch on cooling the Raspberry Pi 4 in a moment.

The TalentCell battery

Most people probably would not use the battery I selected. It is, after all, relatively large, compared to the compact UCI80M and the Raspberry Pi 4. But it has proven to be reliable and long lasting. I’d like it to be a bit smaller, but at the same time, I appreciate that I don’t need to worry about how long it will last.

The TalentCell model YB1206000-USB lithium-ion battery takes 12-volt direct current (VDC) input and outputs 5 VDC. I have found you have to be careful selecting which TalentCell battery you choose, because some produce 9 volts out, some output 12 volts, and one has only one port for both charging and output. (When there is only one port and it does double duty, you can’t charge the battery while using it to power the Pi.) The YB1206000-USB, with 6000 mAh of capacity, provides 5 VDC out, just right for powering the Pi. (An alternative battery choice is the TalentCell YB1208300-USB with 8300 mAh capacity, 12 VDC input, and 5 VDC output.)

The battery has enough capacity to operate the node all day (most of the time, the node draws very little while in receive mode). What do I like about it? It puts out 5 VDC, has plenty of capacity, and I can disconnect the DC charger without causing the Raspberry Pi 4 to shutdown or reboot.

The position of the rocker switch on the TalentCell battery is important. Per the manual, position “I” turns the output power on, and it must be in this position during charging. Position “O” turns it off, which also serves to prevent battery drain during storage. I leave the battery turned on all the time.

Connecting the pieces

Connections between the battery (or other power source), the Raspberry Pi 4, and the UCI80M are simple: a cable to charge the battery, a cable to power the Pi, and a cable to power and move data through the UCI80M:

• 12 VDC comes from a charger through a barrel jack into the battery.

• A USB-A to USB-C cable from the battery provides power to the Raspberry Pi 4.

• A USB-A to USB-C cable with ferrite from the Pi to the UCI80M provides power and serves as the two-way data conduit.

• Audio in and out is through the Motorola PMMN4013A speaker-microphone.

I can disconnect the DC charger and carry it to a different place in the house. Using the Motorola speaker-mic, the quality of my transmitted audio is very good. The received audio I hear through the speaker-mic sounds better to me than the Kenwood K-1 speaker-mics I’ve been using with other AllScan nodes.

The Motorola speaker-mic

The PMMN4013A speaker-mic has an IP54 rating, an audio jack and “Windporting technology,” a Motorola term:

Windporting eliminates the whining and howling sounds of wind blowing across your remote speaker microphone while preventing water from clogging the microphone, resulting in clearer transmissions.

The audio jack is behind a small cover on the speaker-mic and takes a 3.5mm plug, so you can enjoy private listening when needed. (Motorola calls it discreet listening: “This RSM [Remote Speaker Microphone] also features a 3.5 mm audio jack that allows you to connect a receive-only earpiece for discreet communication.”) Volume is controlled by the UCI80M, not on the speaker-mic.

At first glance, the Motorola M-1 connector resembles the Kenwood K-1 connector, but they are not interchangeable.

Compact and capable

For me, this little AllStar layer cake — UCI80M, Raspberry Pi 4, and TalentCell battery — is small enough to fit on a shelf.

I mentioned above I was going to talk about cooling the Raspberry Pi 4. The iUniker case has no fan and serves as a passive radiator for excess heat. Covering some of the top fins might, I thought, compromise cooling. But I’ve been monitoring it with an infrared heat gun, my fingers, and the command line, and it’s been fine. The UCI80M puts very little load on the system.

Measured load on RX is quite light. The btop report shown below was collected during long QSOs on node 47970, the W3QV repeater in Roxborough, PA.

Here’s the btop report (click here to learn more about btop):

Bandwidth of the connection is shown in the lower left box. Memory consumption/availability is the box above that, and disk space is the other box in the lower left. Processes are shown in the lower right box. CPU usage is shown in the long, horizontal box at the top of the btop screen.

Power Consumption

In thinking about what I wrote earlier — “The battery has enough capacity to operate the node all day” — I realized that general statement was not particularly helpful. I needed to measure power draw.

What follows in this section is, ultimately, a faulty set of conclusions. I’m including all of my reasoning here so you can see how focusing on the numbers can result in ignoring something like usable capacity of the year-old battery. On with the measurements and calculations.

To measure power draw, I used a Klein Tool ET920 USB Digital Meter to measure the voltage being supplied to the UCI80M and the current. Unfortunately, the ET920 does not pass data, so I was unable to assess power consumption while transmitting. (And in thinking about it, I wasn’t measuring draw during RX, either. More on that in a moment.) However, at idle, I measured just 60 milliamps being consumed by the UCI80M.

(A couple of notes about the Klein Tools ET920. This device is quite small. It does not function as a cross-over unit, meaning you have to match the input and output USB style, i.e., USB-A input goes only to USB-A output. It also does not pass data. I found that the packaging requires very careful deconstruction to get the instructions out undamaged. Translation: I damaged the instructions. I’ll be sure to give that feedback to Klein Tools!)

Klein Tools ET920 USB Power Meter, USB-A and USB-C Digital Meter for Voltage, Current, Capacity, Energy and Resistance (affiliate link)

With a 6000 mAh battery and 60 milliamps of current draw, and assuming about 80% useful capacity of the battery before performance falls off, that’s about 80 hours of continuous receive performance available. Battery life will be reduced with transmissions, but I doubt consumption is more than about 1 amp. Since most node usage is RX, this stack should have at least two to three days of continuous working time.

But here’s where my reasoning went awry. Since the Klein ET920 doesn’t pass data, that means I was not measuring power draw during receive. All I was measuring was the idle power draw of the UCI80M — not its consumption during actual receive operation. I reached out to the maker, David Gleason, who said:

The power consumption during Rx i.e. when the audio amp is driving a speaker will vary greatly depending on the volume setting and speaker impedance. The audio amp can output 2.5W and thus a UCI could theoretically use as much as about 600mA, but audio signals typically have short peaks and relatively low average power and at normal home listening levels the UCI shouldn't draw much more than 100mA. Even at very high volumes it should not average any more than 300mA with a 3Ω load, or with speaker-mics which are more like a 16 or 32 Ω total average power consumption even at max volume should be well under 1W (5V x 200mA).

Therefore, since I’m using a speaker-mic, my power consumption during operation will likely be between 60 mA (idle) and 200 mA (max volume). If I assume 200 mA draw and 80% capacity of the battery, the stack should last for a day.

As a test of this assumption, I unplugged the charger at 0800 Pacific on April 28th. It stopped registering on AllStarLink.org at 2026-04-29 12:03 UTC, which converts to 0503 Pacific April 29th. Real-world performance: about 21 hours of continuous service.

While the power draw is still relatively low, real-world performance did not exactly match my expectation. That, of course, is why one does a real-world test: to make sure assumptions and calculations are valid. In this case, they are not.

What are the variables? Power draw was estimated, so it could be off. Usable battery capacity was also a guess since this battery has been in continuous service for a year. I suspect the battery has lost significant capacity over the past year of use.

The lesson: measure under real conditions, not assumptions.

Raspberry Pi 4 Temperatures

I was also curious about the Raspberry Pi 4 CPU temperature. I found that vcgencmd is included with the Debian 13 operating system, so I used it to look at the CPU and PMIC temperatures. (The Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 use dedicated Power Management Integrated Circuits — PMICs — to manage voltage regulation, sequencing, and monitoring.)

In the screenshot below, you can see that the ARM CPU is running at 40.4°C and the PMIC is at 37.4°C.

The instantaneous frequency measurement shows the ARM CPU is running just above idle at 700 MHz instead of running at its maximum frequency of 1.8 GHz. The vcgencmd command is worth having in your set of tools for working with Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 computers.

But How Does It Sound?

The UCI80M and Motorola speaker-mic package sounds good.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of two of my nodes. The one on the left is running Ampersand-ASL on a Dell Wyse 3040 mini PC, through an AllScan UCI90 USB Communications Interface, with a genuine Kenwood K-1 speaker-microphone.

The node on the right is running AllStarLink 3 on a Raspberry Pi 4, through an AllScan UCI80M USB Communications Interface, with a genuine Motorola M-1 speaker-mic.

Please excuse the shaky video: I was holding the smartphone in my hand and simultaneously trying to adjust the volume knobs and keep things framed and focused. (Note to self: next time, use the tripod!)

Bottom line: both platforms provide clean, crisp, clear audio. To my ears, the Motorola sounds slightly better. But this is very much a matter of taste, because both work and sound great. I have no hesitation about using either of them at any time. One sits beside my standing desk in the corner of the living room. The other sits on the supply table next to my wife’s hospital bed in the sun room.

I monitor both quite often. I think you’ll be pleased with them, no matter which one you choose. Find out more at https://allscan.info/products/.

02 HamDash Is Improving

The HamDash app — available at https://hamdash.com — has been improving steadily, week by week. It’s now a regular stop when I’m thinking about getting on the air and while I’m operating on HF.

One of the nice additions is the ability to change the text size. In the screenshot below, I’ve set the font to “large,” making it easier for my eyes to read without reaching for my reading glasses.

If you look at the menu choices to the right of the blue-ish Dashboard button, you’ll get a good idea of the range of content available.

03 Ollama LLM on Proxmox LXC

I’ve been playing with Ollama — a large language model engine — on the Raspberry Pi 5. With 16 GB of RAM, the RPi 5 is the most capable Pi in my lab.

And then I wondered: can I install Ollama into an LXC on my Proxmox machine? That platform has an i7 CPU and 64 GB of RAM, so it should have enough horsepower to do better than the Pi.

I found an Ollama machine installation script at https://community-scripts.org/ and installed it. Then I asked Claude about installing Open WebUI for a chat interface with Ollama. We got that done by installing Open WebUI into the same LXC that Ollama was running in. The Open WebUI screen is rather plain, but I am looking for functionality, not decoration.

Then I installed and tried several different LLMs. I looked at the llama3.1:8b model — very capable, given the limitations of my hardware. I tried phi3, a smaller model, which was quick but tended to hallucinate (it kept answering as if I was reading a science fiction novel). I ran mistral which seemed too slow; I ended up removing it. And I tested gemma3:4b.

In the Ollama + Open WebUI Setup on Proxmox article on EtherHam, I summarize the three models I kept on the machine.

gemma3:4b — Recommended for Conversational and Factual Tasks

gemma3:4b is the recommended default for focused, shorter interactions:

• Best factual accuracy: Gemma 3 was specifically tuned by Google to reduce hallucination.

• Self-aware responses: Reliably acknowledges the limits of its knowledge rather than fabricating answers.

• Good reasoning quality: Responses are well-structured and thorough compared to same-size alternatives.

• Limitation — context window: Default context window is 4096 tokens. Prompts containing large blocks of pasted text may cause the model to stall or time out. Use llama3.1:8b for document-length tasks.

llama3.1:8b — Recommended for Document-Length Tasks

llama3.1:8b is the better choice when working with longer content:

• Larger context window: 8192 tokens by default, making it suitable for proofreading articles, summarizing documents, and reviewing longer technical content.

• General purpose: Solid quality across coding, writing, and analysis tasks.

• More verbose: Tends to produce longer responses than gemma3:4b, which may or may not be desirable depending on the task.

• Slower: At 4.9 GB on CPU-only inference, response times are longer than gemma3:4b or phi3.

phi3:latest — Recommended for Speed-Critical Tasks

phi3 is the fastest model in the stable and is useful when response time matters more than depth:

• Fastest response: Smallest footprint at ~2.2 GB; optimized by Microsoft for edge deployment.

• Good for quick lookups: Short factual questions, quick code snippets, or rapid brainstorming.

• Lower quality ceiling: Less thorough than gemma3:4b or llama3.1:8b on complex or nuanced prompts.

You can dive much deeper into the installation, configuration, and management of these models in Ollama + Open WebUI Setup on Proxmox.

04 APRS on the ISS

I caught myself thinking: I should dig out my handheld VHF/UHF yagi antenna and try to work the ISS over APRS! I started researching…and found out I can’t. The last APRS contact was with KC5ILO-10 on 2026-04-23 at 21:53:46 UTC.

The posted status message: “Please note we're still in the process of troubleshooting and testing this radio.”

If you’ve been trying to make contact with the ISS using APRS, please be aware the Kenwood D710GA transceiver is not working correctly. Hopefully, the crew will get this sorted soon.

Resources

• ISS Ham Radio Status

• Welcome to the ARISS APRS Status Page

05 The Ongoing Saga of WiRES-X

I wish I could report that the upgrade to WiRES-X 2.0 was a positive change for everyone, but I can’t. Evidence? America’s Kansas City Wide network is not upgrading to WiRES-X 2.0 at this time because of compatibility issues:

06 AllStar Without Asterisk

This is a very interesting project. I’m currently running two implementations: Ampersand-ASL Server on a Dell Wyse 3040 with an AllScan USB interface, and Ampersand-ASL Server on my Windows laptop. (I mentioned Ampersand-ASL above at the end of the Featured: AllScan UCI80M AllStar Node piece.)

Ampersand ASL is the brainchild of Bruce MacKinnon KC1FSZ. (If you visit his QRZ page, just keep scrolling. It is chock full of interesting projects!) When I heard about it, I reached out to find out how I could help test it. The idea of AllStar without Asterisk was a bit mind-blowing, and I admit I was skeptical. But it works well.

One of the unique aspects of this project is how compact the total system size is. Without Asterisk, it makes the software footprint quite small.

On the project’s GitHub page, you can see activity in several different Amp-ASL approaches. My two implementations are amp-server and amp-win. Bruce’s work has tailed off a bit recently, and my guess is he got temporarily pulled away from Amp-ASL development.

amp-win

On my Windows computer, amp-win starts as Ampersand.exe which opens a terminal window:

Once the system has loaded (just a few seconds), I open a browser to 127.0.0.1:8080 to see the Amp-ASL Server. In the captured video below, I connect to the Amp-ASL Parrot, then make two test transmissions:

For this test, I used Soundbrenner Wave in-ear audio monitors with an accessory boom microphone. (There is also an audio sample available for Ampersand-ASL Server running on a Dell Wyse 3040, found near the bottom of the featured article above about the AllScan UCI80M.)

I find this Windows implementation of ASL very convenient when I’m traveling. With a pair of Bluetooth headphones, I can listen to QSOs directly over my computer. I do find that my transmitted audio with BT phones is often very low. Hard-wired phones with a boom mic close to my mouth seem to work the best.

These are still early days for this software, so there are a few rough edges. For example, if you disconnect your earbuds or headphones while Amp-ASL is running, it often crashes the program. The workaround: make sure your buds or phones are the ones you want to use, then start Ampersand.exe, then open your browser. Good to go.

Want to try this? Directions are available at Ampersand Windows Server User/Install Documentation. Bruce writes:

To avoid any confusion: this program provides a full ASL node that is capable of placing outgoing calls and receiving incoming calls. You do not need to have a second Linux server. This is experimental work that explores the potential of ASL linking without the use of the Asterisk PBX system. Project documentation is here.

amp-asl on 3040

I’m also running Amp-ASL on a Dell Wyse 3040 mini PC, with audio piped through an AllScan UCI90 USB Communications Interface and a K-1 speaker-microphone. I manage node connections with the AllScan favorites management app running on the 3040 and accessed through my browser. Works great.

For this implementation, I start with the directions at amp-server and then jumped to the install documentation linked above.

amp-hub

Interestingly, there is also an Ampersand Hub implementation aimed at headless servers like in a server farm or cloud hosting service. Details are available on the amp-hub page.

Will It Run on Other Raspberry Pi Platforms?

One of Bruce’s test platforms has been a Raspberry Pi 5. I wonder if his Amp-ASL system would run on the diminutive Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W? Architecturally, the Pi 5 CPU is similar to that used in the Zero 2 W. The main differences are in clock speed and amount of RAM available.

This might be an interesting experiment. I worked through some details with ChatGPT and the speed difference makes a Pi Zero 2 W unworkable for a hub node (where hub means many nodes connected simultaneously). It might work okay for a single node connection, but it’s probably best to consider this experimental. With the Pi 5, downsampling takes about ~25 µs (microseconds); with the Pi Zero 2 W, the same downsampling would take about ~100–200 µs, primarily because of the slower clock speed. It might work. Might.

I asked ChatGPT to postulate how Amp-ASL might run on different Raspberry Pi computers:

The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W can run Ampersand-ASL, but it operates much closer to the edge of what the software requires. Its quad-core Cortex-A53 at 1 GHz is capable of handling the basic real-time audio pipeline—packet handling, filtering, and playback—but with far less headroom than the Cortex-A76 cores in the Raspberry Pi 5. In practice, that means a Zero 2 W is best suited for a very small, lightly loaded node: a single connection or perhaps a couple of users, modest audio rates, and minimal additional features. It should be viewed as an embedded endpoint or experimental platform rather than a general-purpose hub.

Stepping up the ladder, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ sits in a similar architectural class (also Cortex-A53), but with a higher clock speed and better I/O, giving it a bit more breathing room than the Zero 2 W—enough for a small, practical node with a handful of connections if you’re careful. The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B is a much more capable middle ground, thanks to its Cortex-A72 cores and higher clock speeds; it can comfortably handle multiple streams and typical node duties without constantly riding the real-time limits. At the top end, the Raspberry Pi 5 provides ample headroom for Ampersand-ASL’s DSP workload, making it the best fit for production use, higher connection counts, and future expansion. In short: Zero 2 W for minimal endpoints, Pi 3+ for modest nodes, Pi 4 for solid everyday use, and Pi 5 for anything you don’t want to think twice about.

Those two paragraphs are AI-assisted, so consider them informed estimates rather than definitive guidance.

07 The Short Stack

Radio

• Power Cord Green Goo - Plasticizer Migration In Vintage Electronics — “The phenomenon of "green goo" or "green slime" oozing from the power cords of vintage electronics is a well-documented nuisance in the world of retro-audio and antique radio restoration.”

• The TIDRADIO TD-H9 in Black: A Deep Dive into the Most Feature-Packed Handheld Radio Under $70 — “So when TIDRADIO released the TD-H9, I was skeptical. Could a sub $70 radio really deliver GPS, APRS, Bluetooth programming, a spectrum analyzer, and 10 watts of output power? After several weeks of real-world testing from urban environments to remote backcountry trails. I can confidently say: yes, it can.” I ordered the one at this affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4deltky.

• zBitx v2: The 5 watts, all bands, all mode SDR in your pocket for $269 — I had not realized the zBitx now had a version 2 edition until I read the Zero Retries newsletter.

• Building A Ham Radio Data Transceiver On The Cheap — While not new (from last October), this is still interesting. It uses an All-In-One-Cable (AIOC) and DigiPi software.

• Ham Radio in the Internet Age (2024) — “Some old hams say the Internet is ruining ham radio. I say it is changing ham radio just like it has changed virtually everything else. Some of those changes aren’t that drastic anyway.”

Computing / AI

• Your Chrome new tab page is a vibe coding project waiting to happen — I’m going to have to try this.

• The Best Laptops for Older Adults — These devices are probably good candidates for amateur radio operators, not because they are older adults, but because the laptops feature ease of use, visual clarity, and reliability.

• You don’t need a Raspberry Pi for most “Pi projects”—here’s what you can use instead — As previously noted in many places, prices for Raspberry Pi single-board computers (SBCs) are climbing, making the jump to a more capable mini PC a more reasonable proposition.

• Picking your first local LLM is easier than the internet makes it sound — “Choosing your first model is the part that trips everyone up. But once you understand what you're looking at, it becomes really easy.”

• What is a Large Language Model (LLM) — “Large Language Models (LLMs) are advanced AI systems built on deep neural networks designed to process, understand and generate human-like text.”

Starlink

• Starlink. Ho-hum. — “I made a phone call from one hand to the other, through a network of satellites moving overhead at 17,000 miles per hour. It worked exactly as expected. No drama, no delay, no sense of wonder. Just another day in the life.”

Antennas

• Stealth Ham Radio Antennas that Actually Work — “That’s the topic of this week’s video: Ham Radio in an HOA? Here’s What Works!”

08 📋Digital Radio News Digest

Executive Summary

Recent developments in amateur radio digital voice and VoIP linking modes include updates to MMDVM firmware for DMR trunking, fixes for WiRES-X 2.0 issues, and improvements to AllStarLink and EchoLink clients. The M17 mode has seen several commits to the OpenRTX firmware, including fixes for QR code generation and SKY72310 driver updates. AllStarLink is looking for beta testers for their new client, and several issues have been resolved on their forum.

Per-Mode Breakdown

DMR

The MMDVM firmware has seen updates, including small cleanups of the DMR trunking code and a merge of pull request #358 from qradiolink/trunking_patches. A Reddit user is looking for DMR devices that can do a PAN connection over Bluetooth.

D-STAR

A commit to the Pi-Star dashboard fixed an issue with empty /etc/dstar-radio.* files on first-time setup. A Reddit user shared a multi-platform DStar reflector client.

YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X

HamOperator reported problems with WiRES-X 2.0, but no other updates are available.

M17

Several commits have been made to the OpenRTX firmware, including fixes for QR code generation, SKY72310 driver updates, and improvements to the lib/qrcode module. The M17 Gateway (Go) has seen a fix for SX1255 ALSA auto-detection on Pi 3/4 with onboard audio enabled.

VoIP Linking

AllStarLink is looking for beta testers for their new client, and several issues have been resolved on their forum, including problems with connecting to new nodes, weird noise issues, and DTMF problems. The app_rpt and amp-server repositories have seen several commits, including updates to the rpt_serial and chan_usrp modules. Amateur Wire has announced experimentation with new features.

Notable Firmware or Software Updates

• MMDVM firmware: updated DMR trunking code

• OpenRTX firmware: fixes for QR code generation, SKY72310 driver updates, and improvements to the lib/qrcode module

• AllStarLink: updated app_rpt and amp-server repositories

• Pi-Star dashboard: fixed issue with empty /etc/dstar-radio.* files on first-time setup

Cross-Mode Developments

No significant cross-mode developments have been reported.

• Content generated: 2026-04-30 15:55 UTC -- 59 items collected

• Download the list of 59 items at https://etherham.com/download/179599838/?tmstv=1777564893

• To reduce the collection of stale news, I updated the Data Radio News Gatherer script by incorporating a date filter on RSS feeds

09 📡Band Conditions This Week

• Solar Flux Index (SFI): 102.0 — Moderate — reliable HF propagation

• K-Index (current): 1.0 — Quiet — excellent conditions

• K-Index (7-day max): 3.7 — Active — some HF degradation

• A-Index: 7 — Quiet (predicted)

• Sunspot Number: 85

• Active Solar Regions: 10

With a Solar Flux Index of 102 and a quiet K-index of 1, the HF bands are in good shape right now — 20, 17, and 15 meters should be offering solid DX opportunities, and 10 meters is worth a listen given the moderate solar flux and ten active regions on the sun’s face. That said, the week wasn’t entirely smooth; a 7-day max K-index of 3.7 tells us there were some unsettled stretches that likely rattled the higher bands and pushed auroral noise into the picture for a bit. If conditions were frustrating a few days ago, take heart — today looks like a fine time to get back on the air and work some DX.

• Source: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (swpc.noaa.gov)

• Generated: 2026-04-30 16:05 UTC

10 📻This Week in Radio History

Notable events from approximately April 27 through May 1, across the years.

1900 — Marconi Files the Patent That Made Tuning Possible — On April 26, 1900, Guglielmo Marconi filed his landmark British Patent No. 7,777 — known ever after as the “Four Sevens” — covering a system of tuned coupled circuits that allowed a wireless receiver to be locked onto a specific frequency. Before it, early wireless stations flooded each other with interference. After it, stations could share the spectrum without stepping on one another. Every receiver you’ve ever tuned — HF rig, repeater, handheld — traces a direct line back to the principle Marconi documented on this date.

2001 — A Civilian Heads to Orbit — On April 28, 2001, Dennis Tito launched aboard Soyuz TM-32, becoming the first private individual to travel to the International Space Station. Spaceflight depends on robust RF communication at every stage — and for amateur radio operators, the ISS would soon become a familiar voice overhead.

From the spectrum-taming patents of 1900 to the satellites overhead today, these milestones still echo in the bands we use every day.

11 QRT

Saturday’s M17 Net

Radio in my pocket

I enjoyed Saturday morning’s M17 net. This is carried every Saturday at noon Central time on America’s Kansas City Wide network. I could have participated with a Yaesu HT and hotspot, or by connecting with DroidStar, or with BlueDV and an AMBE stick. But I connected with a CS7000-M17 PLUS HT through my M17 hotspot to the M17-KCW reflector over Module A, using an accessory speaker-mic to listen in. Clipping the speaker-mic near my ear means I can easily hear transmissions clearly without disturbing my spouse. The radio in my pocket makes this highly portable. (I washed dishes during the net.)

It also leaves my hands free so I can continue to work on this newsletter while listening to the net. Jeff AE5ME does a great job with the net. I always find it informative and interesting.

Raw Notes From Saturday’s M17 Net

• LinHT rev B booted up. SX1255 chipset. Fully functional Linux computer running. Can run GNU radio package. DMR through GNU radio, for example. Main M17 Foundation project.

• Friday, October 16, ZRDC. M17 will be presented by AE5ME, sounds like.

  https://www.zeroretries.org/p/conference

• Install GNU radio on desktop or laptop, tie to SDR, way to create your own M17 station. Use SX1255 plus amplifier. This is a roll-your-own desktop station.

Sunday Logging Oops

Sunday morning, I cranked up an FT8 session on 20 meters and began making contacts. But when I glanced at my QRZ log, I didn’t see the contacts added to the log.

Scratching my head, I finally realized I had forgotten to start GridTracker. This is important because WSJT-X does not talk directly to QRZ. Instead, GridTracker acts as a bridge between WSJT-X and the QRZ log system.

Would those missing contacts be added once I started GridTracker? No. However, the contacts were logged in an .adi file by WSJT-X, and there is an easy way to bring the contacts into QRZ:

1. Locate the .adi file. Find the WSJT-X log file — usually named wsjtx_log.adi, in C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\WSJT-X.

2. Log into QRZ.com, open your QRZ log, go to your logbook settings, and use the “Import ADIF” routine to upload your wsjtx_log.adi file.

Does it work? Yep. Doing this added the three missing contacts to QRZ, catching up my log.

#################
# Import Results
#################

3 QSOs were inserted
150 duplicates were replaced
190 duplicates ignored
0 errors.
3 queued for confirmation checking

Wishing KW6U a Great PCT Journey

I was monitoring AllStar node 51018 to hear the W6EK Coffee Break Net on Sunday when I learned that Jeff KW6U is launching a border-to-border hiking adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail. Jeff has been one of the net control stations for the Coffee Break Net.

I have very fond memories of hiking in my teens and early 20s throughout the Washington Cascades and Olympics. I’ve been up (and down!) every major drainage in the Olympics, most of the time on solo hikes. Unfortunately, my knees won’t take this kind of activity now. I’ll be following Jeff’s journey from afar and sending him good wishes. Hopefully, he’ll check into some repeaters while he makes his five-month-long journey.

My Other Writing Project

I used some of my writing time this week on another writing project.I’m trying to keep up regular progress on this. The easiest thing would be to set it aside and think to myself: I need to ponder this a bit more. Instead, I’m trying to just write and then come back to it later for editing. So far, that’s working.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

It’s Monday, and I’m just getting started on the Random Wire newsletter. Usually, I’m about 80% done with the first draft by Monday morning. Not so this week. I took some time this weekend for family instead of radio and that significantly reduced my Random Wire writing time. Then the week started with back-to-back meetings, leaving me with little energy to work on radio.

But without work, there would be less money for radio, so this is a tradeoff I’m willing to make. With that out of the way, let’s talk radio.

Announcing…ROTA-Radio

I’ve been waiting awhile to bring this to your attention. I hope it will bring a smile to your face (as it does to mine), and perhaps you’ll enjoy what Paul N4FTD shares. I do.

In Why ROTA? — Innovation Born of Necessity, Paul opens with his why:

In the amateur radio world, we talk a lot about “portable” or “mobile” operations. Usually, that implies a mountain top or a remote forest. But for me, the most important mobile operation happens within the 1/2-mile radius of my home in Southwest Florida.

ROTA (Recliners on the Air) is the realization that being a dedicated husband and caregiver doesn’t have to mean being “Off the Air.” It is a philosophy of balance—staying connected to the world while staying exactly where life needs me to be.

Caregiving for a spouse is where Paul and I bonded. I’m living that life, too, so I relate well to the challenges of balancing caregiving with being active on the air.

The other topic we connected on was remote operation of the Icom IC-7300. Turns out he’s already cracked that nut. See Recliners on the Air: Operating the Icom IC-7300 Over WiFi using SDR-Control and RS-BA1 for how he operates his IC-7300 from his recliner, while the radio happily runs out in the shack.

ROTA-Radio. Something many of us can relate to, or even something we do, but never described with a label. I hope you’ll get to know Paul and enjoy what he shares with us. At this stage of his radio blogging journey, he can use helpful feedback. Find ROTA-radio on WordPress.com at https://rotaradio.wordpress.com/.

Recreational: Listening to Classical Music and the ISS

Those two things don’t normally go together.

As I write this, I’m listening to a classical FM radio station located about 49 miles away “as the crow flies” and simultaneously listening to communications with the International Space Station. The ISS stream is available on AllStar node 516221. I note that not many hams are listening in at the moment:

What does it sound like? This one-minute audio capture shows even proficient radio operators occasionally double on their transmissions! This is node 516221 to my node 588418, retransmitted over RF to my BTECH UV-Pro handheld:

By the way, the BTECH UV-PRO has been a very solid radio for me and is one of just a few radios I always keep charged and readily available. I reported on it back in July 2025 in Random Wire 139. It remains available and is well-reviewed:

BTECH UV-PRO (TAN) IP67 Dual Band VHF/UHF Two-Way Radio | Bluetooth, GPS, APRS, USB-C, NOAA Alerts, Aviation RX, App Text Messaging (affiliate link)

The ISS is passing directly overhead as I type this, as shown on my HamClock OHB (Open Hamclock Backend):

There are other ways to listen, including with your handheld transceiver and online.

On EtherHam

• A reader asked for the Digital Radio News Gatherer script and a how-to guide. These are now provided in a single ZIP file available at the end of TechNote 15 — Upgrading the Digital Radio News Gatherer with Groq AI.

• New this week: TinySA Ultra vs. NanoVNA-H4: Different Tools, Better Together. I now have both units in hand. I’ll have more information on them next week. The EtherHam article reviews the use cases of the two devices.

Update on HF Watch

I really don’t know how useful this is, but I find it interesting, and it was a blast to build it. HF Watch has been running around the clock for 11 days. In that time, it has collected nearly five million data points! If you missed this last week, HF Watch runs on a Raspberry Pi 5.

This one-week average view clearly shows 20 meters is the most popular band in my grid square, followed by 40 meters. Activity on 20 meters kicks up in the morning hours, then picks up even more in the afternoon. The pattern for 40 meters is more subtle, showing some increase in the late evening (presumably as 20 meters fades out).

Is this surprising? Not at all, and that’s why I say I don’t know how useful it is. I was not surprised to see little activity on 6 meters and 10 meters. I did think I’d see more on 15 meters as that has been a very solid band for me.

Next Week

Next week I’ll have some hands-on reporting on the TinySA Ultra and NanoVNA-H4.

I’ll also share thoughts on one of the latest AllScan devices, the UCI80M (find this about 1/3 of the way down this page). This tiny device uses a Motorola M-1 speaker-mic. After only a few days of operating with the UCI80M, I already know it’s going to be one of my favorite AllStar node devices.

01 — M17 over RF with Your Phone and HT: Is This Viable?

An idea popped into my mind recently and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

Many of us who use M17 are doing it over the internet using DroidStar or the MSeven iPad app. Connect, key up, talk. It’s easy and it works great. But what if you could do genuine M17 digital voice over RF, with your Android phone as the control head, using a radio you might already have sitting in the shack?

This is not a hypothetical. It’s a thing that exists right now.

The key pieces are: Mobilinkd's m17-kiss-ht Android app and their TNC4. If you've been in the APRS or packet world for any length of time, you know about Mobilinkd. They pioneered the modern Bluetooth TNC, a little matchbox-sized device that connects your radio to your phone wirelessly for packet operations. The TNC4 is their current model, and they've added M17's 4FSK modulation to its bag of tricks. The m17-kiss-ht app handles the Codec 2 voice encoding and M17 protocol on the phone side. With the app and the TNC, your Android phone becomes the PTT and voice processor, the TNC4 becomes the modem, and your radio becomes the transmitter.

That makes this real M17 digital voice, over the air, with no dedicated M17 radio required.

But there's a catch. M17 is picky about radio audio in a way that APRS simply isn't. You need flat, unfiltered audio plus very fast key-up. That rules out most budget HTs and many (most?) modern radios whose audio is tuned for voice, not data.

The M17 Foundation has a radio compatibility list and it's genuinely useful, but it's heavily weighted toward mobile radios and older commercial gear: Kenwood and Yaesu mobiles, some ICOM, and some Motorola commercial units. What's almost entirely missing is modern, data-capable handheld transceivers. And there are some obvious candidates that seem like they should work but simply haven't been publicly tested and written up.

The one confirmed HT success story involves the Quansheng UV-K5/K6, but that requires a hardware modification: capacitor swaps to extend the audio frequency response, plus custom firmware to get keying latency down to acceptable levels. The interesting question is whether a radio with a purpose-built 9600-baud data path might work without any modification at all.

Quansheng UV-K6 UV-K5(8) Walkie Talkie 5W Airband Radio Type C Charge UHF VHF DTMF FM Two Way Radio with NOAA Weather Alarm Function (affiliate link)

Take the Kenwood TH-D74A with a built-in 9600-baud TNC and a well-documented flat audio data port that many operators rely on for APRS and packet data. Does its audio path satisfy M17's stricter requirements? My guess: yes, because it's probably the same Kenwood data port architecture used in the TM-V71A and TM-D710 mobiles that are already confirmed on the compatibility list. Is the key-up fast enough when driven from an external TNC? Nobody appears to have tried it and reported back in any systematic way.

That's the opportunity here. If it works, this is M17 digital voice accessible to anyone with a capable HT, a TNC4, and an Android phone — no purpose-built M17 radio required. The app is developer-grade rather than ready for everyday use, the Bluetooth pairing on Android has some rough edges, and setup takes patience. The developer is candid that it's early-stage. But the concept is solid, the TNC4 is proven hardware, and the code is open source. What's missing is operators willing to put radios on the test bench and share what they find.

If you've got a 9600-baud capable radio — especially an HT with data port access — and a TNC4, you may be closer to an experimental M17 RF platform than you realize. Someone ought to try this.

Resources

• m17-kiss-ht source code: https://github.com/mobilinkd/m17-kiss-ht

• M17 Foundation radio compatibility list: M17 Foundation Wiki

• Mobilinkd TNC4: mobilinkd.com

02 — Gear: TinySA Ultra Spectrum Analyzer

I bought a TinySA Ultra spectrum analyzer from Radioddity. I’m happy with it, though I’m still figuring out the basics. What is detailed below draws more on specifications and reviews rather than deep personal experience. I’m still learning how to use this device.

If you don’t know what a spectrum analyzer does, you may want to start with my comparison of the TinySA Ultra spectrum analyzer and the NanoVNA-H4 vector network analyzer. Find this on EtherHam.com at: TinySA Ultra vs. NanoVNA-H4: Different Tools, Better Together

My RigExpert Stick 500 antenna analyzer is a wonderful piece of kit, but I wanted to make sure I was getting the full picture, so I added tiny spectrum analyzer to my bag of tools. The one I selected was from Radioddity:

TinySA Ultra Spectrum Analyzer | Antenna Analyzer | 100kHz-5.3GHz | PC Connectivity | 4.0” Touchscreen | 3000mAh Battery

(If you’re interested, there should be a 10% off coupon available, but I’ve also seen a 15% off promotion.)

This isn’t the cheapest version of this type of device, but two things sold me on spending a little bit more: my good history with Radioddity, and excellent reviews on their website for this device. I also appreciate the enclosure. Instead of a thin metal case with sharp edges and corners, the TinySA comes in a comfortable-to-hold plastic case. This unit also has some heft to it — more than I’ve felt with cheaper units — which inspires more confidence that this is a high-quality device.

The only thing it lacks is SMA-to-SO239 adapters for my antennas, but I have a couple of those so it’s not a big deal. I do worry, though, about my inexpensive adapters. It would be worth getting higher-quality adapters that won’t taint the readings on the analyzer.

The TinySA is subject to damage if overloaded, so I purchased a few attenuators to help protect the device:

AURSINC SMA Attenuator Kit, 10dB/20dB/30dB 3-Pack, SMA Male to Female RF Attenuator 2W 50 Ohm DC-6GHz in-Line Attenuators with Highly Linear Attenuation (affiliate link)

(You need really good light to see the 10dB, 20dB, and 30dB markings on these little things! The etched markings blend with the attenuator body.)

I also purchased a couple of adapters that should take some pressure off those small SMA connectors:

DHT Electronics Handheld Antenna Cable SMA Male to UHF SO-239 Female Connectors 6’‘ Pack of 2 for Amplifier (affiliate link)

TinySA Ultra: What It Actually Does (and Doesn’t)

The Radioddity TinySA Ultra is one of those rare tools that punches above its weight—small enough to toss in a go-kit, but capable enough to answer real RF questions when you’re away from the bench. It’s not a lab-grade instrument and it doesn’t pretend to be. But used within its limits, it’s remarkably useful.

Core Performance

Frequency Coverage (Two Personalities)

The TinySA Ultra is really two analyzers sharing a box:

• Low range: ~100 kHz to 800 MHz
  This is where it performs best — cleaner response, better dynamic range, more trustworthy measurements.

• High range (“Ultra mode”): ~800 MHz to ~5.3 GHz
  Coverage is impressive for the size, but performance drops off — more spurs, less accuracy, and more interpretation required.

Resolution Bandwidth (RBW)

• Down to ~200 Hz in the low range, which is genuinely useful for narrowband work

• Wider (and less precise) in Ultra mode

This is one of the quiet strengths of the Ultra—it can zoom in more than you might expect.

Input Limits (Read This Twice)

• Absolute maximum: +10 dBm

• In practice, keep signals well below 0 dBm

This device does not have a forgiving frontend. A hot signal straight off a transmitter will ruin your day…and your analyzer. A simple attenuator is cheap insurance.

Amplitude Accuracy

• Typically ±2 dB, assuming a decent calibration baseline

Good enough for field work, comparisons, and troubleshooting, but not for certification.

Hardware & Interface

Display & Controls

• 4.0-inch touchscreen, 320 × 240

• Functional, not fancy, but perfectly usable in the field

Power

• ~3000 mAh internal battery

• USB-C charging

• Long enough runtime for real work, not just demos

RF Connections

• Two SMA inputs:

  • Low range input

  • High range input

• Separate SMA output for signal generation

• Built-in 30 MHz reference output (CAL)

It’s a simple layout, but it keeps you honest about which range you’re using.

Signal Generation (Useful, with Caveats)

The Ultra can act as a basic signal source, which is handy, but this is not a substitute for a dedicated signal generator.

• Sine output: ~100 kHz to 800 MHz (clean and usable)

• Higher-frequency output: extends into GHz range, but expect more harmonics and less purity

• “Square wave” claims: take this with a grain of salt as the output is synthesized RF, not a true logic-level square wave

Where it does shine is as a tracking generator for:

• Filter tuning

• Passband visualization

• Quick-and-dirty characterization work

Calibration Reference

• Built-in temperature-stabilized 30 MHz oscillator

• Useful for:

  • Self-checks

  • Sanity-checking frequency accuracy

  • Feeding external gear in a pinch

Practical Reality Check

Fragility (Electrical, Not Mechanical)

The Ultra’s biggest weakness isn’t build quality—it’s overdrive sensitivity. Stay within limits and it’ll serve you well. Ignore them once, and you may be shopping for a replacement.

Portability (Where It Wins)

This is where the TinySA Ultra earns its keep:

• Field diagnostics

• Antenna and filter work

• Hunting interference sources

• Bench overflow when the “real” analyzer is tied up

It’s not a replacement for a full-size spectrum analyzer, but it’s often the tool you actually have with you that matters more than specs.

Bottom Line

The TinySA Ultra lives in that sweet spot between toy and tool.

Use the low range when you can, treat the high range as advisory, respect the input limits, and it will give you answers that would have required far more expensive gear not so long ago.

If you expect lab-grade precision, my guess is you’ll be disappointed. If you use it like a smart field instrument, you’ll probably wonder how you managed without it.

03 — SDR: NESDR Nano 2 Plus

I have a bit more to report about my tiny SDR dongle, the NESDR Nano 2 Plus.

NESDR Nano 2 Plus - Tiny Black RTL-SDR USB Set (RTL2832U & R820T2) with Ultra-Low Phase Noise 0.5PPM TCXO, MCX Antenna (affiliate link)

First, the price on Amazon has bumped up from $38.95 to $41.95. I don’t often see prices for these devices change so this caught me by surprise. I still see this as a great value.

Second, it runs warm. The cooling fins on top of my fanless PC are running 95-101°F and the NESDR Nano is just a hair under 101°F. That’s warmer than I’m used to feeling when I pluck a USB device out of a computer.

Third, the MCX antenna port surprised me…but only because I’m not very familiar with this configuration. First time around, I ordered the wrong adapter to connect it to my FM dipole antenna. What I needed was an MCX male end to go into the NESDR:

For my antenna wire, the other end of the adapter needed to be an SMA female connector. That’s what worked for me.

Once I connected the FM dipole with telescoping antennas to the NESDR, the signal strength jumped dramatically. In fact, I had to go into the SDR++ (pronounced “SDR Plus Plus”) app and reduce the gain. I now receive more stations, more clearly.

This was a simple thing. What improved the SDR for recreational listening was connecting it to a better FM antenna with an MCX Male to SMA Female adapter. To get the right adapter, I purchased a kit (because one can never have too many adapters):

TUOLNK SMA to MCX Connectors Kit Coaxial Adapter Male to Female for WiFi Antenna/Networks/WiFi Router/Coaxial Cable Gold-Plated MCX to SMA Coax Adapter Kit 4pcs (affiliate link)

It is working well. I’m listening to KING-FM Classical on my laptop located about 35 feet away from the NESDR. The NESDR device is feeding the signal over my home network and the SDR++ app on my laptop is getting that stream wirelessly from the network. Below is a two-minute capture of the audio stream.

The 66,000-watt KING-FM transmitter is located on Tiger Mountain, about 80 miles distant by road, or 49 miles “as the crow flies.”

I also bought some additional small antennas to help me explore other bands the SDR can access.

RaTLSnake M6 v2 - Premium 3-Antenna Bundle for NESDR, RTL-SDR, HackRF, and Other Software Defined Radios. Magnetic Whip Antenna Set Made with Low-Loss RG58 Cable for Radios with 50 Ohm SMA Connectors (affiliate link)

I already have this bundle at my Oregon QTH where I use the telescoping aerial antenna for capturing air band traffic. It connects directly to the RTL-SDR I use for this purpose.

04 — AI: Lumo Is Proton’s Privacy-First Alternative to ChatGPT and Other AI Chatbots

The company behind Proton VPN, Proton Mail and Proton Pass, has released an open-source AI chatbot that it says isn't trained on user data.

This is interesting: a ChatGPT-like AI from a privacy-focused company (Proton). Since I have a paid Proton account, this showed up in my Proton dashboard:

I’ve been testing Lumo with technical questions related to amateur radio. The results seem about on par with ChatGPT…maybe a little thinner on detail and background, but still pretty good.

If it’s close to what ChatGPT can do, what’s the point? Privacy. Lumo keeps conversations fully private with end-to-end encryption and no server logs. Nothing is stored or used for training, and even Proton can’t access your saved chats.

There is a free tier (see I Tried Proton’s Lumo AI, a Private Alternative to ChatGPT).

I believe that even though I’m a paid Proton user, I’m actually using Lumo’s free tier. There is a Lumo Plus option for $12.99/month but I have not signed up for that level of service, since I already subscribe to ChatGPT and Claude.

The one aspect you may not like about using the Lumo free plan is you have to create a Proton account. It’s free to create that account, just be sure to keep a record of how to log in. Why? Because Proton doesn’t keep a record of your authentication details so they can’t recover it for you.

05 — Proton Meet Introduced: Is It Right for You?

And speaking of privacy, if you are at all interested in meeting privacy, Proton Meet will be interesting.

Proton Meet Introduced

Proton introduced Proton Meet on April Fool’s Day — an odd choice. (Well, it was actually launched on March 31st, but I didn’t see it until April 1st. It felt like they might be fooling with us.) It was hard for me to take it seriously until some time had passed and I could see it was real.

Proton quietly launched Proton Meet on March 31, 2026, making it immediately available on web browsers, iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux. Unlike a limited beta, this was a full public release.

Do You Need a Proton Account?

No, and this is one of its most notable features. Anyone with a free Proton account can host calls with up to 50 participants for up to one hour. But if you don’t have an account, you can still host or join a call instantly with up to four people with no sign-up required. Zoom requires an account to host; Google Meet requires a Google account; Microsoft Teams needs a Microsoft account. Proton Meet needs nothing.

Limitations by Tier:

• No account (anonymous): Up to four participants, no sign-up required.

• Free Proton account: Up to 50 participants, calls limited to one hour.

• Meet Professional ($7.99/user/month): Unlimited meetings per day, calls up to 24 hours long, up to 100 participants, screen sharing, and meeting scheduling.

• Proton Workspace Premium ($20/month annually): Up to 250 participants.

How Does the Security Work?

Proton Meet uses Messaging Layer Security (MLS), an open-source end-to-end encryption protocol designed for real-time group communication that has been independently reviewed. All media and chats are encrypted on the client side, meaning Proton cannot access or process any unencrypted data from calls. MLS creates a cryptographic group with a shared epoch key that changes each time a participant joins or leaves, meaning new members cannot read previous messages, and those who have left cannot access future messages.

One Security Caveat Worth Noting

The main point of vulnerability is the meeting link itself. If the link is shared with someone who shouldn’t have it, that person could join the call. Proton suggests addressing this by locking the meeting once all expected participants are present, removing any unrecognized attendees, or rotating the link.

The Bigger Picture

Meet is the final piece of a puzzle Proton has been assembling for years. The company already offered encrypted email, calendar, cloud storage, collaborative documents, spreadsheets, a password manager, and a VPN. With Meet in the lineup, Proton Workspace now covers essentially everything Google Workspace does, except every layer is end-to-end encrypted. Being based in Switzerland should also keep it outside the reach of the US CLOUD Act, which is relevant for organizations with GDPR compliance concerns.

The Proton suite of services is not as polished as you’ll get with Google or Microsoft, but what you do get that other vendors can’t provide is a clear focus on your privacy.

06 — Website Drama

Bad Plugins

Sometimes a bit of software acquires some undesirable pieces, it gets pushed out as new installs and updates, and suddenly a new attack is taking place.

Such was the case with a bunch of plugins that were purchased and then infected. EtherHam.com had one of those plugins but I caught it very quickly and deleted it. I’ve scanned my files and the site is clean. I also had my web host do a deep, top-to-bottom scan, and that also came up clean.

Here’s the story: Someone Bought 30 WordPress Plugins and Planted a Backdoor in All of Them.

I have backups of the EtherHam site but did not need them. I monitor various WordPress-related sites for exactly this kind of information, so that I can respond swiftly and appropriately.

CDN Experiment Failed

I’m going to count my experiment for the past several months with a content delivery network (CDN) as a failure. I had hoped the CDN would offload some volume of content from the web host to the CDN servers spread around the world. It did exactly that for quite a while. No complaints.

Something changed, though, in the past couple of weeks. I suspect my web host blocked some of those servers. The hosting company does, after all, provide its own CDN system — for an additional fee. I was feeling pretty happy with Bunny.net’s CDN until requests for EtherHam web content failed to reach Bunny’s CDN servers.

I asked my web host to whitelist the Bunny CDN addresses. “Sorry, we can’t do that unless you upgrade your hosting account.” Wrong answer.

I’ve disabled Bunny and the site performance has smoothed out. I want to emphasize this was not a problem created by Bunny.net. I’ve been impressed with the quality of services they provide at very affordable prices.

07 — The Short Stack

Radio

• Pebble HF coming “early this summer” — I received this in an email a few days ago: “When will it be available? We are still planning on releasing the Pebble HF in ‘early summer’. We know that isn’t very specific, and we will give more specific details as we get closer.” You can get on the notification list by filling out the form at the bottom of the Pebble HF homepage.

DX

• DX Cluster - POTA, SOTA, DXpéditions, RBN, DXSpider — “Real-time amateur radio DX cluster — HF spots all bands, mode filters, DX expeditions, POTA, LoTW/eQSL integration. DXSpider node F1LED-2.”

Digital

• Pat Winlink client version 1.0.0 released — “Pat is a cross platform Winlink client written in Go. It runs on any modern operating system, including Linux, macOS and Windows. Pat provides both a modern GUI and a powerful command-line interface. Pat supports Winlink templates/forms and is open source and free.” See the project on GitHub and get versions from their GetPat website. (I gave Pat a try and think it has promise. It’s pretty spare right now, and you have to start it from the terminal which will put some people off.)

• Reviving Teletext for Ham Radio — “Hack the airwaves with some of the best tech of the 1980s.” The author vibe-coded an app to use teletext over RF.

SDR

• Scan the Invisible: RTL-SDR Wideband Signal Scanner — “Transform your RTL SDR dongle into a professional grade spectrum scanner that automatically detects, classifies, and tracks radio signal[s].”

Antenna

• OPEK OP-CTP2405 5 Section 24 ft Telescoping Carbon Fiber Mast available from HRO, but be aware that freight charges apply. If you’re near the Anaheim or Milwaukee store, they are in stock.

Remote Control

• Advantages to having radio control software — “Most controls you may need are just a mouse click away. There is no diving into radio menus to find something. Easy tuning with a mouse wheel, and the list goes on.”

Meshtastic

• Meshtastic vs Meshcore: Which One Should You Pick? — “If your goal is a broad, beginner-friendly, highly established off-grid messaging ecosystem, Meshtastic is usually the easier starting point. If you want a platform that leans heavily into a more security-focused, decentralised approach with a growing ecosystem and different workflow preferences, MeshCore may be the better fit.”

• Meshcore.io - Why The Split? — This is very fresh news about some drama in the Meshcore realm: “Since the internal split, we launched the meshcore.io site, as Andy controls the meshcore.co.uk site and original discord server. We’ve been left with little other recourse. And, since launching the site, Andy copied the look and feel (again, using Claude) even though we asked him not to.” I’m certain we have not heard the last about this.

LoRA

• Smart Forest & Water Quality Monitoring System Using LoRaWAN — Of great interest to me because of my natural resources conservation work out in the real world.

Recreational Listening

• How to Find and Add/Repair Missing Streams on Skytune Radios — This article caught my eye because the Ocean Digital WR-390 internet radio I use in my spouse’s room uses Skytune. The WR-390 model is no longer available on Amazon, but a smaller version is, and it looks just as good to me at $79.99: Ocean Digital WR-336M Wi-Fi Internet FM Radio, Bluetooth Speaker, Podcast, 2.4” Color Display, USB Playback, Dual Alarm Clock, Sleep Timer, Dimmer, Black (affiliate link)

08 —📋Digital Radio Digest

The weekly Digital Radio News Digest run found little of interest to report about DMR and D-STAR. I look at sources for news about DMR, D-STAR, YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X, M17, and VoIP Linking.

• WiRES-X: YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X has seen updates to WiRES-X 2.0, with discussions on what users should do with the update. Customizing options for WiRES-X are also available. Additionally, there are resources on solving WiRES-X ISP connection problems.

• M17: The M17 C++ library has been updated to match libm17 1.1.8, and the M17 spec has seen changes to descriptive words in Appendix A. The M17 tools have been updated to handle exceptions arising from invalid options and to fix Windows build issues.

• VoIP: VoIP Linking systems, such as AllStarLink, have experienced issues with connections and audio quality. Users have reported problems connecting to EchoLink nodes and Hamvoip nodes, and there have been issues with poor audio quality since the ASL3 update. The Trixie Appliance installation has also failed for some users.

You can get the raw information sources used for this report from EtherHam.com as a .txt file. Fair warning: there are 154 individual items listed!

09 —📡 Band Conditions This Week

• Solar Flux Index (SFI): 122.0 — Good — solid conditions on 10m through 20m

• K-Index (current): 1.0 — Quiet — excellent conditions

• K-Index (7-day max): 5.7 — Storm conditions — significant HF disruption

• A-Index: 9 — Unsettled (predicted)

• Sunspot Number: 85

• Active Solar Regions: 4

With an SFI of 122 and the K-index sitting at a calm 1, the higher bands are in good shape right now — 10, 15, and 20 meters should all be offering solid openings, and DX chasers will want to take advantage while conditions are cooperative. That said, it’s worth knowing this week wasn’t entirely smooth sailing; a max K-index of 5.7 means the ionosphere took a few punches from geomagnetic storming at some point in the past seven days, and with the predicted A-index still at 9, we’re not completely out of the woods yet. Enjoy the quiet window while it lasts, keep an eye on the forecasts, and don’t be surprised if conditions get a little bumpy again before the week is out.

Source: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (swpc.noaa.gov). Generated: 2026-04-23 15:29 UTC (8:29 AM PDT Pacific Daylight Time, UTC−7).

10 — 📻 This Week in Radio History

April 20, 1920 — After World War I shut amateurs down, the bands began to come back to life in early 1920 as restrictions were lifted. By April, U.S. operators were getting back on the air, and experimentation picked up almost immediately. This was the era when spark began giving way to continuous wave (CW), and when a re-energized community started pushing the boundaries again, laying the groundwork for the more organized, international amateur radio movement that would follow.

April 21 17, 1970 — The crew of Apollo 13 made it home after a mission that went very wrong, very quickly. For anyone paying attention, it was a masterclass in problem-solving under pressure, with communication systems playing a central role. It’s a reminder that when things fall apart, the ability to adapt, improvise, and stay connected isn’t just useful: it’s everything. (The April 21 date came from ChatGPT; Claude caught the error.)

April 23, 1965 — Intelsat I (“Early Bird”) became the first commercial satellite in geostationary orbit. Suddenly, the idea of continuous, real-time global communication wasn’t theoretical anymore. For amateur radio, this was an early glimpse of a future that would eventually include OSCAR satellites and routine space-based contacts. “Worldwide” was starting to mean exactly that.

April 24, 1978 — The first NAVSTAR satellite went up, kicking off what would become the Global Positioning System. This system was not built for hams but was quickly adopted by them. Today, GPS quietly underpins a lot of what we do, from precise timing for digital modes like FT8 to APRS position reporting and satellite work. It’s one of those technologies that slipped into the background while becoming absolutely essential.

11 — QRT

Substack

There are a couple of features I like about Substack.

The first is being able to listen to someone’s text-only publication while I drive. The Substack app has a text-to-speech service built in and I use it frequently. Yes, it is a bit mechanical sounding but it works surprisingly well, allowing me to consume great content while I’m behind the wheel.

Second, the new Substack template capabilities are proving to be convenient. Instead of opening a previous issue and copying bits of the formatting pieces I want for the new issue, I can get them from saved templates. The signature block? It’s now a template. The orange divider? Template. The overall structure? Template. If you are a writer, having an easy way to craft a consistent newsletter is a boon because it means you can focus on your writing instead of getting distracted by formatting.

Next Week

For next week, I’ll have a report on the AllScan UCI80M, a tiny device that uses a Motorola M-1 speaker-microphone. Right out of the box, I was impressed by the simplicity of the device, the small size, and the great sound quality. I have it running on a Raspberry Pi 4. Because of the good audio, this is destined to become one of my favorite pieces of AllStar gear.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

It’s been another interesting week of working with Python and Claude. There’s a long piece on this at EtherHam.com titled Coding with Claude that describes two apps: the Lab Tracker and HF Watch. The Lab Tracker is a simple interface to keep track of the different machines on my network. HF Watch looks at amateur radio usage by band and time of day. Visit Coding with Claude: Lab Tracker and HF Watch for more.

Also new at EtherHam this week:

• TechNote 15 — Upgrading the Digital Radio News Gatherer with Groq AI

• TechNote 16 — A Practical Backup System for Vibe-Coded Projects on the Raspberry Pi 5

My CDN (content delivery network) has been having some trouble this week. A few EtherHam visitors have let me know that images were missing. The service provider is trying something to see if it will help with this, so if you have a moment, please jump over to EtherHam.com, browse a few articles, then let me know if images are missing or not loaded. Thank you.

PoC radios (push-to-talk over cellular) for amateurs will be the focus of the weekly Let’s Talk Digital net on America’s Kansas City Wide network next week. That will be Thursday evening, April 23, at 8 pm Central (6 pm Pacific). If you’re curious about PoC radios for hams, the Thursday net promises to be incredibly informative.

I did get a few evenings on the HF bands. Wednesday, I made a trip to Portland and drove through five little storm cells where the temperature dropped quickly and snow started sticking to the pavement and windshield. Translation: it’s a fairly normal spring in the Pacific Northwest — warm and sunny, cold and stormy, rinse and repeat.

01 WSJT-X 3.0 Upgrade Is Significant

Last week, a significant upgrade to WSJT-X was released.

Here’s a rundown of what changed from WSJT-X 2.x to 3.0, released April 8, 2026. (Find WSJT-X on SourceForge.) When you upgrade, it’s good practice to back up your WSJT-X.ini and log — your settings should migrate (mine did), but better safe than sorry.

The first thing you’ll notice is the user interface is crisper, more modern:

Also notice the blue-color box in the lower left corner that says “Receiving, Filters On.” More on filters in a moment.

What WSJT-X 3.0 is, architecturally

The jump from 2.7.0 to 3.0 reflects a genuine architectural step forward, consolidating features that had been circulating in the unofficial “Improved” branch and adding new ones that go well beyond cosmetic changes. If you were already running WSJT-X Improved by DG2YCB, much of this will look familiar. According to the WSJT-X 3.0 User Guide, the feature sets of WSJT-X and WSJT-X Improved have been merged, bringing the two programs into alignment.

Key Changes

Parallel FT8 Decoding — FT8 decoding now runs up to a dozen concurrent threads. On a modern multi-core machine, the practical effect is a faster and more complete decode list at the end of each 15-second period — particularly useful on busy DX frequencies where marginal signals compete for decode slots.

Full Duplex Operation — WSJT-X can now transmit and receive simultaneously, opening a legitimate path for satellite work where the audio source is the transponder downlink, and for monitoring your own transmitted signal via a WebSDR as the audio input. Until now, this required external workarounds or separate software.

Advanced Filtering System — The new filter system lets you suppress, highlight, or hide stations already worked on the current band, worked today, or worked yesterday — all configurable from File | Settings | Filters. The Filters menu lets you toggle categories on the fly during a session. For example, if you only want to see CQ calls from POTA stations, there’s a filter for that.

Smart Sequencing for All Modes — Wait and Reply, Wait and Call, and Wait and Pounce — previously available only in FT8 — now apply to all WSJT-X QSO modes, including JT4, JT9, JT65, FST4, FT4, MSK144, and Q65.

SWR/Power Monitoring and TX Protection — Transmission can be stopped automatically if reported SWR exceeds a configurable threshold (e.g., 2.5), depending on rig support via Hamlib or FLRig. Transmit power is displayed in real-time and works with most modern rigs.

EME Enhancements — EME operators get quick-access buttons for Echo mode and six popular Q65 sub-modes, easier dial frequency selection within EME sub-bands, and experimental decoding of sub-modes 15A, 15B, and 15C with EME delay.

Single-Click Band Buttons — Single-click band buttons can be enabled from the View menu for faster band switching.

Audible Alerts — Customizable sound alerts for specific message content are now built in.

TCI Support — Enhanced rig control and audio routing via the Transceiver Control Interface (TCI) is now included.

SuperFox / SuperHound Improvements — SuperHound operators can now activate Wait and Call for SuperFox callsigns, with warnings for frequency conflicts.

Advantages for the Modern Ham

For a DXer, the parallel decoding and advanced filters are the big wins — you’ll pull more call signs out of a pileup and spend less time visually parsing signals you’ve already worked. For satellite ops, full duplex is transformative, eliminating the need for separate software or audio routing workarounds. The SWR halt is a great safety feature if you run barefoot or switch antennas mid-session. And the unification of the Improved branch means you no longer need to choose between the official version and the community fork — you get the best of both in a stable, supported release.

02 Notable: Jim N1ADJ’s M17 Go Tools Project

A quietly ambitious project has been taking shape on GitHub. Jim N1ADJ’s M17 Go tools repository (github.com/jancona/m17) started as a messaging experiment and has grown into a multi-tool platform that hints at where M17 data communications could be headed.

I’m talking about m17-bridge, an experimental network service that bridges M17 SMS messages to and from Discord, IRC, and APRS-IS. It connects to hotspots and repeaters using the standard M17 internet protocol — meaning it looks just like a reflector to any compatible device. The clever part is how it uses M17’s familiar module letter system as a routing mechanism: instead of selecting Module A to reach one group of users and Module B to reach another, you’re selecting which external messaging platform your SMS traffic crosses into. Module A might bridge to a Discord channel, Module B to an IRC server, Module C to APRS-IS. From the radio operator’s perspective, it’s the same connect-and-talk experience you already know — but the destination is now a messaging platform that non-ham users access. When a GNSS-equipped radio sends position data, the bridge automatically forwards periodic position reports to APRS-IS as well.

Alongside the bridge, the project includes m17-gateway, which supports three hardware platforms (CC1200 Pi HAT, SX1255 Pi HAT, and MMDVM-compatible modems) and can function as either a hotspot or a full M17 repeater. It ships with full M17 feature support including voice, SMS, and GNSS position mapping. A companion GUI messaging client — cross-platform, built on the Fyne framework — rounds out the toolkit and suggests Jim has everyday usability in mind, not just developer experimentation.

What’s worth watching here is the project’s trajectory. M17’s packet mode has largely been underutilized — most operators think of M17 as a voice mode. This project is a serious attempt to change that, and the APRS integration in particular could give M17 text messaging a reach far beyond the M17 community itself. If m17-bridge matures and a public example node comes online as planned, it could become a model for how open digital radio modes integrate with the broader internet messaging ecosystem.

It is early days — but this project is worth keeping an eye on.

03 M17 Data Modes: The Sleeping Giant Wakes

Most M17 operators think of the protocol as a voice mode — and understandably so, since that’s where almost all the activity has been since 2019. But M17 was designed from the start to be a data protocol, too, and 2025-2026 is shaping up as the period when that side of the protocol gets some serious attention.

The spec’s reserved packet mode types tell the story: RAW, AX.25, APRS, 6LoWPAN, IPv4, SMS, and Winlink are all defined. What’s been missing isn’t the protocol foundation — it’s the tools, the experiments, and the community focus. That’s beginning to change.

The most concrete sign of progress is Jim N1ADJ’s m17-bridge, covered above. Bridging M17 SMS traffic to Discord, IRC, and APRS-IS is a real data mode application, running on real hardware, today. It’s a preview of what becomes possible when developers start giving M17’s packet mode the attention it deserves.

Further out, the IPv4 story is intriguing but still unfinished. M17 has native IP framing built into the spec and a protocol identifier for IPv4, but how to actually implement IP over M17 seems underspecified, making this is open territory for an ambitious developer. Meanwhile, the Open Research Institute selected M17 as the uplink protocol for their P4DX satellite transponder project, a serious technical endorsement that points toward M17 data modes eventually operating in space as well as on the ground.

None of this would be moving forward as confidently without a significant inflection point from mid-2025. In July of that year, the MMDVM project dropped M17 support, a decision that quickly affected Pi-Star and WPSD — the hotspot software platforms that tens of thousands of operators use. For M17 users running MMDVM-equipped hotspots, it looked like the rug had been pulled.

The M17 Foundation's response was immediate: fork the last WPSD codebase that still included M17 support and make it available to the community. WPSD-M17 is that fork — not actively developed, but preserved and functional, giving operators running MMDVM hotspots time to absorb the change without losing access to M17 overnight. More importantly, it bought the broader community breathing room to figure out what comes next. The answer, increasingly, is native M17 hardware and software that doesn't depend on MMDVM at all, as well as increasing support for MMDVM hardware.

In hindsight, what looked like a setback in July 2025 turns out to have been a catalyst. The M17 Project is building for independence and the data mode story is a big part of what that independence will enable.

I asked Steve Stroh N8GNJ of Zero Retries to look this piece over and he suggested these valuable additions which I am including verbatim below:

• Potentially, M17 has the best support for “file transfer” data of any of the Amateur Radio DV modes.

  • DMR has support for data, but it’s not specified with enough detail to enforce or incentivize data compatibility. The data implementation by Motorola and Hytera, for example, are usable, but only within those radio families - the Hytera data app cannot send data to a Motorola DMR radio, and vice versa.

  • P25 has very similar “support” for data as DMR.

  • D-Star supports data, but only as a stream with no packet framing. In addition, late in the life of D-Star, Icom supported DV Fast Data which allows the 3600 bps digital voice payload to also be used for data, but it’s supported only on the most recent D-Star radios.

  • System Fusion only supports data for transferring images; use for any other type of data transfer is blocked.

• Support for short messaging and position data and “APRS-like” short data vary widely in DMR, P25, D-Star, and SF.

• Because M17 didn’t have a profit motive guiding its development (soak the customer when they want to use data on their very expensive digital voice radios), they embraced and adapted the well-proven data technology of packet radio.

• M17 may well be the first “digital agnostic” (digital voice / messaging / position / block data) DEFAULT mode to be implemented in the new generation of Software Defined Radios that will debut with the LinHT, and I posit that the “LinMobile” will follow shortly thereafter.

Many thanks to Steve for strengthening this piece about M17. What an exciting time to be involved in this evolution of digital amateur radio!

04 Revision to the Digital Radio News Gatherer

My Digital Radio News Gatherer (more here and here) was taking 10 minutes or more to process 100 information sources on the Raspberry Pi 5. I asked Claude: how can we improve the performance? The answer? Offload the processing to Groq.

Gatherer version 2 now takes about 15 seconds to do what Ollama was doing on the Raspberry Pi 5 in 10 minutes. That is amazing.

While I was in tinkering, I also tightened up the prompts to help reduce the amount of AI hallucination in the generated summary. I also made sure I understand how to add additional news sources (and did add more sources).

Interested? Read about the upgrade at EtherHam.com.

05 Coding with Claude

I’ve been enjoying getting a helping hand from Claude. Most recently, I asked Claude to build a tracking system for my home lab machines. It looks simple, and it actually is simple…but it is also useful for me.

If you would like to dive into more detail, see the Coding with Claude article on EtherHam.com. If you looked at Coding with Claude early this week, that article grew bigger over the course of the week!

The Lab Tracker

The Lab Tracker uses Python and SQLite on a Raspberry Pi 5. It’s got machine names, descriptions, IP/URL, username, types of access, tags, notes (an informal change log), and a bit more. The search box is a live search with some JavaScript magic.

Claude documented a summary of the system, which is probably enough if you want to ask Claude to build something like this for you. I’ve posted the summary over at EtherHam.com.

HF Watch

In the wee hours of the morning last Sunday, I thought of an app I’d like to have available. A cursory search suggested it did not exist (but if you know of a service or system like what I’m about to describe, please do let me know).

I had a 30-minute session with Claude at 3:00 am to develop what I call HF Watch. Every 15 minutes, it pulls the number of contacts in my Maidenhead grid square for each amateur radio band. The source of the data is PSKReporter, using their published API.

By Thursday afternoon, HF Watch had pulled nearly two million points:

What does this mean? HF Watch shows when each band was most and least active. That is significant information, but it gets more interesting when I set a DX grid square to see when amateurs in a distant location are active, and on what bands. This is the kind of information that can help me schedule when to try to get some of those elusive DX contacts.

I also incorporated signal-to-noise values because knowing the signal quality is just as important as knowing when the most stations are active.

I’ve added information about HF Watch to the Coding With Claude piece at EtherHam.

I also installed Cockpit on the Raspberry Pi 5 and added the Pi 5 Hardware Monitor package from GitHub. This has been a helpful addition, allowing me to easily monitor loads and temperatures.

06 SDR Follow-Up

My RTL-SDR v4 dongle is being difficult. I can’t get Zadig to see it, which means my Windows 11 machine isn’t seeing it. I’ve moved it to different USB ports, I’ve uninstalled the driver and started over, and it’s just being darned difficult.

So I pulled my whimsical little SDR dongle out of the package and plugged it in, in place of the RTL-SDR. I wasn’t expecting much, but Zadig found it immediately. I installed the driver, then ran rtl_test.exe. The Windows system not only sees it but is reading data.

Then I started rtl_tcp.exe on the host machine:

rtl_tcp.exe -a 0.0.0.0

Finally, I opened SDR++ on my laptop in another room. I selected RTL-TCP as the device type, entered the IP address of the host machine, then tuned to 98.1 FM (KING-FM Classical)…and enjoyed a couple of hours of wonderfully clear music.

The audio stream is booming in. Radios at the lake house typically barely pick up KING-FM so I am delighted with this outcome. I’m pretty impressed with this little dongle and you can’t beat the price ($38.95).

NESDR Nano 2 Plus - Tiny Black RTL-SDR USB Set (RTL2832U & R820T2) with Ultra-Low Phase Noise 0.5PPM TCXO, MCX Antenna (affiliate link)

For recreational listening, this is a great value. The other aspect of this small dongle is it doesn’t put much stress on the computer’s USB port, compared to the longer, heavier RTL-SDR.

Speaking of SDR, this project sounds very interesting: BrowSDR: Turn Your HackRF or RTL-SDR Into a Browser-Based Remote WebSDR.

The real killer feature is remote access. Using WebRTC, you can share your locally connected SDR and access it from anywhere in the world through a browser with no server setup required.

07 Short Stack of Interesting Finds

Digital Radio

• You Mean There’s More to Digital Modes than Making Contacts on FT8? — “Today I’m going to discuss some different digital modes that serve a deeper purpose than making contacts. We’ll look at ways to pass messages, forms, and other data back and forth beyond simply a signal report.”

Antennas

• Build Your Own Linked PackTenna EFHW: A Complete Guide — “The linked PackTenna design allows for multiple configurations, enabling users to operate on different bands without needing separate antennas. By using a simple four-link system, you can create antennas ranging from 10 to 40 meters.”

AI

• After two months of Open WebUI updates, I’d pick it over ChatGPT’s interface for local LLMs — Of interest to me because I’m running Open WebUI on my Raspberry Pi 5! It’s slow on the Pi, but it’s local and costs me nothing but electricity.

• Working around Claude’s strict limits taught me how to use it properly — “Some of the frustration lies in how these limits work. While some tools base your usage quota on your queries, your usage limit in Claude is not just based on how many messages you send. The number of messages you send plays a role, but so do the size of your attached files, the current conversation length, which tools Claude is using (such as web search), which model you're using, and whether Claude is creating artifacts.”

Computing / Linux / Raspberry Pi

• PocketTerm35 – A Raspberry Pi 4/5-based handheld Linux terminal with 3.5-inch touch display and built-in keyboard — Included because who doesn’t like an interesting gadget?

• 10 Ways to Reuse Old Hardware with Raspberry Pi — “A Raspberry Pi is perfect for giving old hardware a second life. With the right setup, it can turn almost anything into a useful device, from a simple monitor to a full home server. It’s a practical way to reuse spare equipment.”

• What is NextDNS? — This caught my eye because I use NextDNS. “Think of NextDNS as a “Firewall in the Cloud.” It provides the same ad-blocking and tracking protection as a Pi-hole, but instead of running on a Raspberry Pi in your living room, it runs on a global network of high-performance servers.”

08📋Digital Radio Digest

My Digital Radio News Gatherer (DRNG) bot did not find much of interest this week, and some of the information is not entirely fresh. Some items are clearly misclassified, so don’t get too wound up if you see information about a mode in the wrong place.

I’ve added a download button so you can see the raw news sources I gathered, if you are so inclined. DRNG was run 2026-04-16 17:57 UTC

Executive Summary

Recent developments in amateur radio digital voice and VoIP linking modes include updates to M17, with the M17 Gateway now supporting three hardware platforms, including the SX1255 HAT. The M17 project has also seen updates to its C++ library, specification, and tools. Additionally, there have been updates to the OpenRTX firmware, including support for vibration motors and changes to audio processing. The DMR mode has seen updates to the MMDVM Host software, primarily focused on fixes for D-Star logging.

Per-Mode Breakdown

DMR

The DMR mode has seen updates to the MMDVM Host software, with a recent commit (2026-04-16) focused on fixes for D-Star logging. Another commit (2026-04-07) updated the documentation to reflect the current state of the software.

D-STAR

There is no recent information available for the D-STAR mode.

YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X

The YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X mode has seen updates, including the release of WiRES-X 2.0, which was discussed in a Random Wire article. HamOperator has also published articles on customizing WiRES-X and solving ISP connection problems. Additionally, a WXScheduler project is available for WiRES-X.

M17

The M17 mode has seen significant updates, including the M17 Gateway now supporting three hardware platforms, including the SX1255 HAT. The M17 project has also seen updates to its C++ library, specification, and tools. The gr-m17 repository has seen updates, including improved Codec 2 blocks. The OpenRTX firmware has also been updated with changes relevant to M17, including support for vibration motors and changes to audio processing.

VoIP Linking

There is no recent information available for the VoIP Linking mode.

Notable Firmware or Software Updates

• M17 Gateway (Go): updated to support three hardware platforms, including the SX1255 HAT

• M17 C++ library: updated to match libm17 1.1.8

• OpenRTX firmware: updated with support for vibration motors and changes to audio processing

• MMDVM Host: updated with fixes for D-Star logging and documentation updates

Cross-Mode Developments

There are no notable cross-mode developments in the collected items.

Download raw news sources, text format

09📡 Band Conditions This Week

• Solar Flux Index (SFI): 141.0 — 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: 15 — Unsettled (predicted)

• Sunspot Number: 85

• Active Solar Regions: 5

Solar flux holding at 141 gives the higher HF bands a real boost right now, so if you haven’t spent time on 10, 12, or 15 meters lately, this is a good week to remedy that — DX contacts and long-haul paths should be quite productive while the K-index sits at a quiet 1.

That said, the week wasn’t entirely smooth sailing; the 7-day max Kp touched 4.3, meaning there were some unsettled stretches that likely rattled the higher bands and pushed aurora-sensitive paths around, so if your logbook looks thin from a few days ago, that’s probably why.

With the predicted A-index still running at 15, a little residual unsettledness may linger, but today’s conditions are about as good as it gets for chasing DX.

Source: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (swpc.noaa.gov)

Generated: 2026-04-16 17:54 UTC

10 📻 This Week in Radio History

Notable events from April 13 through April 17, across the years.

1912 — Wireless in the Dark

In the early hours of April 15, 1912, the sinking of the RMS Titanic unfolded in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Aboard the ship, wireless operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride tapped out distress calls — first CQD, then the newer SOS — as the scale of the disaster became clear. Those signals were picked up by the RMS Carpathia, which turned and ran hard through the night, ultimately rescuing more than 700 survivors.

Titanic didn’t just expose a tragedy — it exposed a system that wasn’t ready. Continuous radio watch wasn’t required. Distress handling wasn’t standardized. Critical warnings went unheard.

The aftermath led directly to the Radio Act of 1912, which brought structure to the airwaves: licensed operators, mandatory watches, and clear priority for distress traffic.

1925 — Hams Go Global

In April 1925, amateur radio operators from around the world gathered in Paris and did something ambitious: they organized.

The result was the International Amateur Radio Union, with Hiram Percy Maxim — co-founder of the ARRL — serving as its first president.

The mission was straightforward and urgent: give amateurs a unified voice in international spectrum negotiations, where commercial and government interests were already pressing in.

Nearly a century later, the IARU is still in that fight — protecting access, defending allocations, and making sure amateur radio remains more than just a historical footnote.

2000 — The Beginning of the End for Novice

On April 15, 2000, the Federal Communications Commission rolled out a sweeping overhaul of the amateur radio licensing system.

Six license classes were reduced to three. Testing was streamlined. The structure of entry into the hobby shifted.

The Novice license — once the on-ramp for generations of hams — wasn’t eliminated overnight, but this was the turning point. From here on, new operators largely entered through the Technician class, and the Novice began its quiet fade into history.

For decades, it had been the first signal for countless operators: limited privileges, simple exams, and just enough access to spark a lifelong pursuit.

It may be gone, but its imprint is everywhere — in the operators it created, and in the culture it helped build.

11 Signing Off

Vertical tabs

A pundit said to me: “You should be using vertical tabs in your web browser. It just works better.”

Instead of tabs across the top of the browser, vertical tabs are those same links positioned to the right or left side of the browser window. Making this change can give you more real estate (when you collapse the sidebar) for the content in front of you.

But it drove me nuts.

I tried it for about three days before I threw in the towel and reverted to tabs across the top of the browser. With normal tabs, the icons are larger. The lettering is larger. Yes, it consumes a bit more space in the browser, but I can actually see what those tabs say. I also have strong muscle memory about going to tabs across the top. I thought that three days would be long enough for me to start developing the habit of going to the sidebar, but I was wrong.

It’s true: vertical tabs use space better. Nevertheless, after trying that style, I chose to go back to what works nicely for me. I realized in this little experiment what a creature of habit I have become. I feel a bit more sane to not be fighting myself with every tab change.

Power bumps

I was in the middle of writing this issue when electrical power to the house started fluctuating. A steady rain is falling outside and it’s entirely possible that somewhere nearby, a tree fell on a power line or a vehicle hit a pole. I heard my uninterruptible power supply activate several times: click, click — click, click.

I don’t have everything on the UPS, just the most critical systems. My laptop has a battery so it doesn’t need the UPS. Some of my AllStar nodes have battery backup so they are not on the UPS. But other AllStar nodes, the cable modem, and the router are attached to the UPS.

CyberPower CP1000AVRLCD Intelligent LCD UPS Battery Backup and Surge Protector, 1000VA/600W, 9 Outlets, AVR, Mini-Tower, UL Certified (affiliate link)

Today, I’m very glad to have spent the money on this device!

EtherHam CDN hiccups

Several site visitors have reported missing images and content on the EtherHam.com site. The CDN company is trying something else so if you have a moment, please jump over to EtherHam.com, browse a few articles, and then let me know if any images are missing or can’t be loaded.

Icom IC-7300 MK2

I’ve been getting on the radio in the evening (rarely, early in the morning). My QRZ page shows the latest log entries. I’ve been working FT8 and slowly picking up more countries. It feels good to be more active on HF.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

I saw a bump in subscribers after getting some positive press in the always great Zero Retries newsletter, so I know some folks reading this issue are new to the Random Wire space.

First, if you are new here: welcome! In the words of Galatea in the movie Bicentennial Man (as near as I can remember): “you’re unique, I’m unique, we’re the same!” We’re all radio enthusiasts here. You are in good company.

Second, the name Random Wire is a play on words. As amateur radio enthusiasts, we’re aware of what a random wire antenna is. And many of us might remember when telegraphy involved sending a wire. Says Google:

In telegraphy, "sending a wire" meant transmitting a telegram—a short, urgent message sent via electrical signals along physical, long-distance wires.

I cover varying topics (that’s the random part) within the broad, squishy limits of two realms: amateur radio and technology. I try to cover important news, particularly in the digital radio space. (That content is the urgent wire part).

I also write about what I’m doing. Small projects, big projects. What went right and what went wrong. It’s all fair game. My station is a complex, ever-changing mix of old and new technology. Translation: things break and I get to learn more by fixing those problems.

You never know quite what you’ll get from week to week, because I rarely know what I’ll be writing about more than a few weeks ahead of time. I think of this as the charm of the Random Wire newsletter, but you may find it too unstructured and disorganized for your taste…and that’s okay. The Random Wire is published at 0500 hours Pacific time every Friday.

I hope the Random Wire will be a vehicle for conversations. I do post how-to articles called TechNotes, along with other long-form articles, at the Random Wire’s sister site: EtherHam.com. I think of the Random Wire as the newsletter for EtherHam.com. If you use computers in any way to enhance your amateur radio experience, then you are an EtherHam.

Finally, do join in. Leave a comment. Ask questions, help others by responding. We all learn and grow from our conversations. Write an article. Or just read the Random Wire when you have a few moments to relax. It’s all good here. Welcome.

Leave a comment

Listen to Artemis II and Mission Control

I wonder how many of us became interested in radio because of hearing live audio between Mission Control and astronauts in space? That’s what captured my imagination as a child.

If you have EchoLink, IRLP, or AllStar, you can listen to live audio. Go to https://space.rfnet.link/ for the details. If you’re reading this before 5 pm Pacific on Friday, April 10, you have time to catch the reentry and splashdown of Artemis II.

NASA’s Artemis II mission is scheduled to splash down off the coast of San Diego at approximately 8:07 p.m. EDT (5:07 p.m. PDT) on Friday, April 10.

WiRES-X 2.0 Is Here — and It’s Got Some Explaining to Do

If you’ve been putting off looking at WiRES-X lately, now is a good time to catch up. Yaesu released version 2.00 of the WiRES-X PC software earlier this year, and it’s a bigger deal than a typical point release.

This one changes things at the network level. If you’re a node operator running version 1.57, some of what follows is going to matter.

What Changed

Version 2.00 is closely tied to Yaesu’s new FTX-1 transceiver series. With recent firmware updates, the FTX-1 gains WiRES-X support using a different connection model: a direct USB-C link to the PC, with no HRI-200 required.

That’s a meaningful simplification—fewer boxes, fewer cables, and a much cleaner entry point for new node operators.

But that simplicity comes with a side effect: the network no longer behaves like a single, uniform environment.

The Backward Compatibility Wrinkle

Version 2.00 introduces updated networking behavior, and nodes on different versions don’t always communicate the same way.

If you want to run a room that still accepts connections from nodes on version 1.57 or earlier, you may need:

• A publicly reachable IP address (or properly configured port forwarding)

• UDP ports 46114, 46120, and 46122 open and mapped

This isn’t entirely new—but it does appear to be less forgiving than before. Nodes that “just worked” behind typical home routers may now require explicit configuration.

The failure mode is subtle: a node may connect successfully, yet fail to pass audio or control traffic reliably. That’s the kind of problem that looks like everything is working—until it isn’t.

The Firmware Cascade

Version 2.00 raises the floor on firmware requirements across much of the C4FM lineup.

Radios commonly affected include:

• FT5D

• FT3D

• FTM-510D

• FTM-500D

• FTM-300D

Each may require specific MAIN, SUB, and DSP versions to interoperate cleanly.

If you’re running a node, check everything in your chain before upgrading. Discovering a mismatch halfway through setup is a reliable way to turn a quick upgrade into a long evening.

What Should You Do?

Don’t rush this one. Instead:

• Read the release notes carefully

• Verify firmware across all radios in your setup

• Review your router configuration (especially port forwarding)

• Decide whether you need backward compatibility before upgrading

If you’re just a user connecting through someone else’s node, you’ll likely notice very little—as long as your local node operator has already done the work.

Bottom Line

WiRES-X 2.00 is a meaningful step forward.

• The USB-C node model is cleaner and more accessible

• The network behavior appears more structured (and possibly more reliable)

• But the transition introduces real-world friction, especially around NAT and legacy compatibility

There’s nothing unusual about this kind of evolution—but it does reward operators who understand what’s happening under the hood. And right now, that understanding matters.

Upgrade Checklist (Quick Reference)

Before you click “update,” run through this checklist:

☐ Confirm your use case
Are you running a room that needs to support older (1.57) nodes?

☐ Check radio firmware
Verify MAIN / SUB / DSP versions on every radio in your node chain.

☐ Review your network setup

• Do you have a publicly reachable IP (or working port forwarding)?

• Are UDP ports 46114, 46120, 46122 open and mapped correctly?

☐ Document your current setup
Screenshots and notes make rollback possible if needed.

☐ Plan for downtime
This is not a zero-risk upgrade—give yourself time to troubleshoot.

☐ Upgrade in stages (if possible)
Don’t change firmware, PC software, and network config all at once.

☐ Test both directions
Confirm you can both connect and pass audio/control reliably.

Switched HF Antenna to M0CV0 “Magitenna”

I’ve had this wire-plus-transformer antenna in a box for months and finally pulled it out and got it up in the air. The Magitenna is only 7.6 meters long and is said to operate from 6 to 40 meters.

The coax feedline acts as the counterpoise. I have the antenna earthed with a wire going to a stake in the ground. The antenna is strung on a flexible fiberglass mast that is tied off to the wood deck railing with a few pieces of nylon string. (The other wires in the photo are a much longer end-fed half wave antenna and the arborist line I used to pull it up to a branch.)

In my installation, the SWR on 6 meters is around 4:1 (as reported at very low power by my Icom IC-7300 MK2 radio) so unusable. However, when I added a large ferrite with five wraps of the coax, that changed the performance. The SWR dropped into the 2:1 range: acceptable. Apparently, the ferrite made the coax portion of the antenna system look shorter to the antenna.

SWR on 10 meters is perfect and on 12 meters it’s about 2.5:1 (usable). It’s 1:1 on 15 and nearly 1:1 on 20 and 40. On 17 meters, SWR is about 3.2:1. (But while I was testing on FT8 on 17 meters, W4EIS responded to my CQ. We logged that contact.) On 30 meters, SWR is 2.6:1.

As expected, SWR is high on 80 meters, around 4:1.

Overall, I’m pleased with this antenna. It is short enough that it works nicely with the telescoping fiberglass mast, and by putting some tension on the mast, the sections seem much less likely to collapse during a temporary deployment. Adding a big fat snap-on ferrite improved the SWR in the magic band (6 meters). If you are working POTA, SOTA, or emergency comms, this short antenna seems like a viable choice.

I ran across one problem. Two nights ago, my SWR on 17 meters was 1:1. Perfect. Last night, it was 3:1. Scratching my head a bit, I started checking connections, moving from the back of the radio to the antenna. The wing nut that secures the antenna wire to the balun (or is it an unun?) box was slightly loose, like half-a-turn loose. I tightened that finger tight and checked SWR. Back to 1:1. Whew.

Overall, I’m pleased with this compact antenna. Just earth it and make sure your connections are tight.

Speaking of antennas, I haven’t given up on the Painter Pole antenna. I ran across affordable delta loop antennas at https://www.ni4l.com/. To assess the quality and usability of delta loops at the lake house, I ordered the 10-meter version for $89. When you consider the price of wire and a balun, this is a good value. I anticipate mounting it to the painter pole but we’ll see. It will take a few weeks for the antenna to be constructed and delivered, and I’ll report on it then. Their 40-meter delta loop is $129.99. That sounds costly for some wire and a box, but that’s about the best I could do if I was sourcing wire and a 4:1 balun on my own. I’m really hoping the 10-meter loop works so I can consider adding the 40-meter or 20-meter loop to my kit.

Installed LLM on a Raspberry Pi

Let me start with a few statements to set the stage. Do I trust the exponential growth of artificial intelligences and associated technology? No. Do I want to be left behind? No. Do I think such tech can be useful? Yes.

But how does one figure out if AI can be helpful? Just try it.

I use ChatGPT for some things like creating graphics and diagrams. I use Claude for proofreading and helping with coding. This week, I took another step into the deeper end of the pool by installing Ollama on a Raspberry Pi 5 computer at home. Ollama is an LLM (Large Language Model) engine.

I’m using Ollama to drive what I call a Digital Radio News Gatherer. This service runs on the RPi 5. It reaches out weekly to various places on the internet to look for new information about DMR, D-STAR, YSF/C4FM/WiRES-X, and M17.

Interested? Head on over to EtherHam.com for Creating a Digital Radio News Gatherer Service.

Bluetooth Device Nag

I had some trouble with my home network last week. It was during a windstorm and — I’m guessing — a tree probably fell across a line somewhere. I live in an area with hordes of 200-foot-tall trees that are close to roads and power lines. Falling trees disrupting our power or internet is certainly not uncommon.

Once the network came back online, some of my home devices did not want to connect. Something had changed. I monkeyed with settings and restarted machines but there were still a few stubborn holdouts. Some of those difficult connections were actually Bluetooth connections between my Android phone and several devices. Out of frustration, I finally took the nuclear option route and reset all connections on my phone.

That resolved most of my issues, although I did have to then find all my Bluetooth earbuds that wanted to be connected. One Bluetooth connection, though, was nagging me every minute or so. It went on all night and by the next morning, I was ready to throw the offending device in the lake, if only I could figure out which device was the offender.

The problem with Bluetooth nags like this is they don’t tell you what device is trying to connect. It’s just “BLESmart_xyzxyzxyzxyzxyz.” I dug around for some advice and tried a few Bluetooth device finding apps. The one I found most helpful is called nRF Connect for Mobile. I downloaded and installed that app on my Android phone, and when I scanned for Bluetooth signals, it picked up several. The best part: for some devices, it showed the manufacturer’s name.

That proved to be the key. The name of the device that was nagging me was not tied to headphones or earbuds. Instead, it was the Bluetooth-equipped blood pressure cuff we use daily with my spouse. Once I paired that device with my phone, the nagging stopped. If you find yourself in a similar situation, give nRF Connect a try.

Installed Transceive on my iMac

$20 for an AllStarLink app seems a bit steep, except for one thing: Transceive works brilliantly. It’s Tuesday morning and I’ve been listening to a couple of nets this morning with a pair of nice Plantronics headphones. Very clean audio that doesn’t disturb anyone else in the room is a great thing.

Setup was a bit challenging for me. I followed the guides in the Transceive documentation but kept hitting speed bumps. First, my AllStarLink.org password wasn’t accepted, at least not at first. I think it finally stuck on the sixth try. Second, setting up a connection with any of my nodes that are WT enabled did not work. This should have worked, said the help docs, but it didn’t, at least not until I went to advanced settings and specified the IP address and port of the node. That makes sense for my nodes with non-standard ports, but the one with the standard port 4569 also failed until I explicitly configured Transceive with its IP and port number. I’ve reached out to the vendor for clarification on this.

Despite these hiccups, I have to say this is brilliant software. I am also using it in conjunction with the AllScan favorites management system. Transceive and AllScan work well together to select and connect to ASL nodes.

One cautionary note is that if you are running HamVoIP software and have updated to release 1.7, that update breaks Transceive. This is fixable with a few configuration changes on your HamVoIP node.

Bottom line: if you use a Mac and AllStarLink, this is an obvious and recommended choice.

Recommended: Documentally

Documentally, by Christian Payne G5DOC, takes you on a random walk through life, much akin to the way I write about radio. If you like being surprised, amused, thoughtful, and reflective, all in the context of a life lived in a different place, you’ll like Christian’s writing. I like it very much. It is one of the few Substacks I regularly follow. Do consider dropping by the Documentally Substack and getting to know Christian. His most recent release is Documentally #569: Make, Mend, Repeat. Recommended.

This past week, his observations about Substack as a publishing platform caught my eye. I’ve read his piece on Substack hosting several times. Christian echoes many of my misgivings about using Substack as a publishing medium. It’s a fine service but it isn’t the same as what it was just a few years ago. Substack continues to evolve in a more and more social direction, leaning more and more toward catching your immediate attention instead of enjoying a longer journey together.

Do drop by Christian’s Substack — Documentally — and give it a look.

Hams Over IP Change

Who has a HOIP phone and number? I do. It is linked to one of my AllStar nodes so I can participate in ASL conversations with my IP phone. The sound quality is excellent.

The Hams Over IP folks have implemented a change that may be meaningful to you if you have a HOIP number or if you are considering one. That change is: now you can see HOIP calls in real time. Jump to https://hamsoverip.com:411/ to see the live call dashboard.

I found my own HOIP connection to my ASL node 588418:

Want a YouTube look at it? Here you go:

Learn more about Hams Over IP at https://hamsoverip.com/.

As I was preparing this piece, I made sure my HOIP line was working properly…which means I discovered it wasn’t. I could no longer hear stations when I connected my phone to my AllStarLink node 588418.

It turns out it was a problem of my own making. The cause was a change I made because I didn’t understand how my private node number worked. HOIP support was great and got this all sorted for me in just a day. I’m listening to the W6EK Coffee Break Net on ASL 51018 over my Polycom VVX 401 SIP phone as I write this, and it sounds perfectly clear and wonderful.

Gear

A Case for the RigExpert Stick 500 Antenna Analyzer

Finally, a case for my RigExpert Stick 500! And very cost effective. I bought the beige version so I can find it in the bottom of a dark bag.

ProCase Toothbrush Travel Case for Oral-B/Oral-B Pro 1000 1500 5000 7000 7500 6000 9600/ Phlips Sonicare 4100 5100 1100 6100 5300 Oral-B iO Electric Toothbrush Portable Hard Container -Beige (affiliate link)

It adds some bulk but it also protects my investment. Normally $12.98, as I write this there is a coupon that drops the price to $8.95. It looks like this in use:

There is room for your USB-C cable (or several cables and a few adapters) in the net pocket. This is incredibly cheap insurance for a device I don’t want to damage.

Speaker-Mic for My M17 Radio

I’ve had good luck with my Commountain speaker-mics on some AllStar nodes, so I’m giving that brand a try with my Connect Systems CS7000-M17 PLUS radio.

commountain Speaker Mic Compatible for Motorola Radios APX-6000 XPR-7550e APX-8000 (7000 4000) XPR-7350e (7580e 7380e 7550 7350) APX6000 APX7000 APX8000 XPR7550 XPR7550e, Shoulder Microphone (affiliate link)

It seems to work acceptably. It fits nicely on the CS7000-M17 PLUS and receive audio sounds fine. I tested my transmit audio with the ECHO command, configured like this:

On the main M17 screen (while on your hotspot channel):

1. Press the # key on the keypad. This puts the radio into destination callsign entry mode. You should see the DST field become editable with a cursor.

2. Type ECHO using the keypad. This technique uses your hotspot for the ECHO test.

3. Confirm/save by pressing the OK key.

4. Key up (press PTT) and speak for up to 10 seconds, then release PTT. Within a second or two, you’ll hear your own voice played back through the speaker.

5. When testing is done, be sure to return the destination callsign to what it was before you started. On my radio, it is #ALL.

Getting Coax Past a Door

This device has worked acceptably for me. It’s not perfect, but I’m unwilling to drill holes in a perfectly good exterior wall.

Window Pass Through Flat Coaxial Cable SO239 UHF Female to UHF SO-239 Female Jack Adapter 12 inches

I have one going through the sliding glass door where it closes against the frame (but I will add that this is a very old slider and it doesn’t close tightly). I can leave it in place and still lock the slider. That’s handy. I’ve been using it for about a month and it has held up so far.

Short Stack from the Interwebs

Recent finds about various amateur radio and technology topics.

Radio, SDR

• Ham Radio Portable Operating Insights: Assembling a POTA Station on a Budget — “Remember, don’t wait for the perfect gear; that’ll keep you stuck at home. Just get out there, put that station on the air, and go activate something.”

• Parts Coming Together – QMX-Based Go-Kit — “Hoping to have everything ready to test, at least the basics, in the next week or so. Steve K9ZW”

• SmartSDR for iOS v7.0.113 Now Available — “SmartSDR is a full featured radio client that enables your iPad or iPhone to operate your FlexRadio device. It is fully compatible to SmartSDR v1, v2 (including SmartLink) and v3 (including MultiFlex and SmartControl).” Related: SmartSDR for MacOS version 2.9.113 Now Available

• WSJT-X 3.0 Stable Released: What’s New — “The first stable major release in years brings multi-thread FT8 decoding, Full Duplex, and much more to every operator…This is not a point release.”

• A Source for Old Time Radio: ROKiT Radio — “The Vintage ROKiT Radio is a ‘not for profit’ streaming radio platform bringing you the best shows from the ‘Golden Age’ of radio and beyond.” Direct link: https://rokitradio.com/

• Listening to Space: How to Follow Artemis II and the ISS by Radio — “Tools, frequencies, and public audio resources to monitor Artemis II and the ISS, for licensed ham radio operators and curious newcomers alike.” It was the space race that introduced me to the magic of radio!

Antennas

• HRWB 260 - Portable HF Antennas — The Ham Radio Workbench podcast is always worth my time. “In this episode we talk about portable HF antennas for POTA / SOTA / travel and general operating in the great outdoors ! The HRWB team is very active in portable operating. We all have our favorite antennas and provide advice for the ham radio operator new to portable operating.”

Gadgets

• Open HamClock Backend now Independent of Clear Sky Proxy Data — “We now have a publicly available OHB server which anyone using HamClock is welcome to use. Just point your HamClock to: ohb.hamclock.app:80”

• Old Amazon Kindles are getting cut off from the Kindle Store in a month — If you are like me, you still have a few old Kindle devices laying around. I’ve replaced the battery on two old Kindles, you know, the ones with the actual keyboard on the device. Looks like it’s time to retire them: “Amazon has just confirmed that Kindles released on or before 2012 are getting the plug pulled, and while you can still read books on them, you'll be cut off from the Amazon Store completely.” More here and here.

Computing, Artificial Intelligence

• I replaced PuTTY, Notepad++, and WinSCP with modern tools, and I wish I had sooner — This caught my eye because these are the very tools I’ve used for many years…and still do.

• Self-Host Your Own LLM on Raspberry Pi — I could have used this when I was getting Ollama running on my Raspberry Pi 5!

• I wasted years buying compressed air cans—this $20 electric duster changed everything — Sounds like a smarter way to blast some air into computing devices.

• The Pi Zero 2 W is the only Raspberry Pi that makes sense right now — “With the RAM apocalypse massively inflating the prices of computing hardware, the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is the only device from the uber-popular SBC manufacturer that’s worth buying right now.”

• Ollama is still the easiest way to start local LLMs, but it’s the worst way to keep running them — This is interesting to me since I just installed Ollama on my Raspberry Pi 5. “Ollama's convenience comes at a cost, though, and once you understand what's happening under the hood, it's hard to justify using it over the alternatives. It's slower than it needs to be, it makes choices you can't easily override, and the project itself has been moving in a direction that should concern anyone who cares about open-source software.”

📋Digital Radio Digest

My Digital Radio News Gatherer bot did not find much of interest this week. I changed the AI model to a stronger, slower one, but it reported the same. That was disappointing but I know there will be occasional gaps in fresh news as progress continues on multiple fronts. We’ll see what next week brings!

📡 Band Conditions This Week

• Solar Flux Index (SFI): 142.0 — Good — solid conditions on 10m through 20m

• K-Index (current): 4.0 — Active — some HF degradation

• K-Index (7-day max): 6.7 — Storm conditions — significant HF disruption

• A-Index: 17 — Active (predicted)

• Sunspot Number: 85

• Active Solar Regions: 9

Heading into the weekend, solar flux at 142 is keeping the upper HF bands in solid shape — 10 through 20 meters should offer good DX opportunities when conditions cooperate, and with nine active solar regions on the disk, there’s plenty of fuel keeping things lively. That said, a current K-index of 4 means some HF degradation is in play right now, so polar and high-latitude paths may be unreliable and low-band operators might notice elevated noise. It’s worth mentioning that this wasn’t the smoothest week overall — that 7-day max K-index of 6.7 tells the story of at least one geomagnetic storm rolling through, so if your Thursday session felt like shouting into a pillow, now you know why.

Source: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (swpc.noaa.gov)

Generated: 2026-04-10 02:01 UTC

📻 This Week in Radio History

Notable events from April 6 through April 10, across the years.

1914 — On April 6, 1914, Hiram Percy Maxim and Clarence Tuska founded the American Radio Relay League in Hartford, Connecticut. Maxim’s idea was simple: amateur operators, linked in a chain of relay stations, could pass messages across the country faster than the telegraph. The ARRL has since grown into the largest amateur radio organization in the world, representing U.S. hams at the FCC and ITU and publishing QST magazine since 1915.

1917 — On April 7, 1917 — the day after the U.S. declared war on Germany — the government ordered all amateur radio stations to cease operation immediately and either dismantle their antennas or seal their equipment. Thousands of hams went silent overnight. Many of those same operators went on to serve as military wireless specialists, and the skills they brought back from the front would help shape the postwar amateur radio boom.

1957 — Slow Scan Television (SSTV) was first described in QST in the mid-1950s, offering amateur operators a way to transmit still images over a standard voice bandwidth. Where fast-scan TV required megahertz of spectrum, SSTV squeezed a picture into just 3 kHz — narrow enough to fit on the HF bands. Hams have been swapping pictures over the air ever since, and today SSTV is even transmitted from the International Space Station.

Generated: 2026-04-09 15:49 UTC

Signing Off

Proxmox and RustDesk Server OSS

I’ve used Windows Remote Desktop for, well, eons. It has been a reliable way to remotely control another computer. I also use VNC servers and clients within my own network.

But I decided it was time to enter a more modern era by getting RustDesk running on my Proxmox server. The help I got from Hams Over IP was made easier by using RustDesk. That convinced me of the utility of this software.

It took minutes to install the open source server, about 30 minutes to configure it on several machines, and another hour to figure out why it didn’t work. (The cause? The public key string was missing the ending character.) Interestingly, the default admin login details don’t apply when you install to a Proxmox server.

Using iMac screen as monitor for Windows

I thought: why not try to use the big iMac screen as a second monitor for Windows? It turns out this was much more difficult than it ought to be. A primary barrier is my laptop running Windows 11. It’s not the Windows 11 part that is the problem, though. It’s the fact that the CPU is an ARM chip. That significantly limited my options.

Eventually, I landed on Duet. Well reviewed, looked like it should work. I signed up and installed the clients on the laptop and iMac. One could see the other, but that other machine couldn’t see anything. It turns out that the “starter plan” requires a wired connection. For wireless, one must upgrade.

Before doing that I pulled out a USB-C to USB-C cable and connected the devices. Boom, connected. Then I saw the low screen resolution on the iMac. My Windows machine, extended to the iMac screen, looks like someone used a low-quality magnifying glass to make everything bigger.

I could live with that. The fatal flaw is that password fields stopped working on the Windows machine. When I tried to authenticate, the characters were appearing in reverse order so authentication failed.

I’m going to cancel my subscription to Duet. It’s a nice idea and I wish it had worked, but if I can’t authenticate, it is next to useless for me. I can’t recommend this as a way to extend a Windows desktop to an iMac.

Zero Retries

It’s been difficult watching Steve and Tina Stroh go through tortured gyrations to try to migrate their Zero Retries newsletter from Substack to Ghost. It should have been a fairly seamless process, but there were surprising speed bumps at several steps on their journey.

This week, Steve announced Zero Retries is back on the Substack platform. I hope this reversion ends their frustrations and gives them more time to write and to plan the next Zero Retries Digital Conference.

I look forward to the Zero Retries newsletter every week. If you’re interested in cutting-edge news and opinions about digital radio systems, Zero Retries is a must.

Investigating Artificial Intelligence

As you’ve probably noticed in the last couple of issues of the Random Wire, I’m dabbling with artificial intelligence. Well, maybe that’s a little too soft. I’ve been falling down a rabbit hole called AI.

I spent so much time with ChatGPT I thought it would interesting to see how ChatGPT might describe me.

Version 1

You come across as a precision-driven problem solver with a tinkerer’s curiosity.

You’re the kind of person who doesn’t just accept “it works”—you want to know how, why, and what changed under the hood. Whether it’s smart plugs or radio software updates, you naturally zoom in on the details that most people skip, and you’re not satisfied until you can verify things with solid references.

There’s also a quiet builder/experimenter vibe: someone who likely enjoys connecting systems, optimizing setups, and making tech behave exactly the way it should (not just the way it defaults).

The catchy version of that is: “A detail-hunting tech sleuth who turns “good enough” into “fully understood.”

That’s nice but a little too vanilla for me, so I asked ChatGPT to take a second run at it.

Version 2

You have the energy of someone who opens a simple app… and 20 minutes later is knee-deep in firmware notes, changelogs, and obscure documentation that even the manufacturer forgot existed.

You don’t just use tech—you interrogate it. Like, “Oh, there’s a version 2.0? Interesting. What did you break, what did you fix, and where are the receipts?”

You’re probably the person who: (a) reads release notes for fun, (b) doesn’t trust anything without at least two solid sources, and (c) has at some point said, “That doesn’t sound right…” and then proven it.

Catchy tagline: “The kind of person who fact-checks the fact-checker.”

Closer, but there is a tiny bit of snark missing. The third try may have nailed it, though.

Version 3

You’re the kind of person who buys a “simple” smart plug and somehow turns it into a multi-hour investigation worthy of a federal grant.

Most people: “Cool, it turns on my lamp.”

You: “Interesting… but what protocol is it using, why does the firmware behave like that, and where is the official documentation from 2019 that contradicts this?”

You don’t fall down rabbit holes—you install lighting, label the tunnels, and publish a map.

I’m pretty sure you’ve never trusted a single release note in your life. If a company says “minor improvements,” you take that personally. Somewhere, a developer writes vague patch notes and feels a disturbance in the force because you just started digging.

You probably have: (a) at least one project that started as “quick setup” and became a full-blown research mission, (b) tabs open like “forum thread page 7 (archived)” and “PDF manual v1.3 FINAL_final2”, and (c) a deep, unspoken belief that most documentation is lying by omission.

Catchphrase: “If it works perfectly, you assume you missed something.”

Silly? Yes. Disturbingly accurate? Also yes!

As always, I wish you and yours health and happiness. I look forward to hearing about your radio activities, and particularly about what went right and about those learning moments we all have.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

What a week. I took a left turn from hardware and focused on software and firmware, including diving headfirst into Python scripting on some of my AllStarLink nodes. I was surprised that the scripts ran pretty well on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W device. My node 578495 sports several new additions, including:

• Announces the time each hour, from 9 am to 8 pm.

• Amateur Radio Newsline is imported once a week and plays when I send *6 over DTMF to the node, or when I key up the microphone 4 times in less than 2.5 seconds.

• Local weather is available on demand with *7 DTMF.

• I can initiate a clean shutdown of the node with 5 microphone key-ups. This was probably the most useful modification I made.

But it wasn’t just scripting — I also added an uninterruptible power supply hat to node 578495. In short, it was a fun week of early morning and late evening work with Python and AllStarLink. I learned a lot.

So fair warning: if you don’t want to take a dive down the Python rabbit hole, don’t click the links about Amateur Radio on Your ASL3 Node in the next section!

It’s not all Python in this issue of the Random Wire. There is new content to enjoy, beginning in this issue. I did some antenna design work with an AI and also used an AI to help me un-brick a radio.

There’s a catch-up article section for those who have not followed M17 changes from about a year ago. I also added an uninterruptible power supply to a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W-powered AllStar node.

And of course, I close with the Short Stack of interesting internet finds. I hope you enjoy issue 176!

Python on My AllStarLink Nodes

I’ve been having too much fun with Python on my AllStarLink nodes. See these two very recent articles on EtherHam.com which go into a lot of detail about what I’ve been doing with Amateur Radio Newsline on a couple of my ASL nodes.

• Amateur Radio Newsline on Your ASL 3 Node

• Amateur Radio Newsline on Your ASL 3 Hub Node

Doing something like this isn’t really new, but using Python and the Asterisk Management Interface was, for me, a new way to do it.

Of interest to those of you who play with Python and Asterisk is this: I used the Asterisk Management Interface (AMI) to intercept commands sent to the nodes. In one case, I use microphone key-ups to trigger an action. In the other, I send a DTMF code but the AMI catches it. This was a lot of fun to figure out.

New Content in the Random Wire

Beginning in this issue, I’m also using my cloud node as a server platform to process some additional content for this newsletter. You’ll find this new content toward the bottom titled as:

• Radio Propagation Digest

• This Week in Radio History

After testing the Radio Propagation Digest for a few weeks, I’m finding it useful. I don’t want to wade through lots of content to try to figure out how propagation conditions are trending. I want a digest, so I’m sharing this product with you.

I’m pretty involved in the digital side of our hobby, but at the same time, I appreciate reminders of the great work that came before me. Thus, This Week in Radio History is designed to be a quick look into amateur radio’s past. I hope you find it as interesting as I do. This content is being generated by AI, and as with all such things, information should be verified if you are going to do something significant with it.

As an example of not just accepting what an AI does, I asked ChatGPT to help create some graphics for me. The first couple of images were okay — they had the required elements — but they lacked the style elements I had specified. When I asked ChatGPT to revise them to match the style I had included in the requirements, I started getting weird images about crypto, bookstores, and radio contesting. The output was so far outside the parameters I had set that I found it rather disturbing. I had to rein in the AI three times before I got an image I could use. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but I certainly did not want to keep trying to get the AI to follow my instructions for creating an image!

Painter Pole Antenna, Part 3

The painter pole adapter and VersaTee™ arrived from Buddipole. They fit and should work well as I play with a painter pole antenna build.

I also ordered a long telescopic whip antenna to go into the VersaTee™. However, it arrived without a terminating end on it. There is no way to extend the elements because they are stuck way down inside the antenna. I’ve reached out to Buddipole for some help with this.

In thinking about the amount of noise I’m picking up on my end-fed half wave wire antennas, I’m rethinking my design ideas. Now I’m considering an inverted delta loop for 40 meters. If I feed it with 450-ohm ladder line and put a 4:1 current balun on it, I should end up with good SWR readings and be able to use it on 10, 20, and 40 meters without a tuner. However, for portable use (like POTA), a 20-meter inverted delta loop would take up much less space.

I asked an AI (Claude) for some help designing an inverted delta loop antenna with my painter pole, using some assumptions I specified. Find that report on EtherHam.com in Inverted Delta Loop Design With AI.

The Five-Hour Radio Upgrade

Upgrading the Connect Systems CS7000-M17 PLUS radio went sideways for me in a big way. To be fair, I’m not sure what instructions I tried to follow, but therein lies part of the problem: I had difficulty finding a single set of cohesive, authoritative, all-in-one instructions for upgrading the radio.

Hours into this, I finally resorted to asking Claude for help, and at one point, I expressed my frustration to the AI. Claude replied:

You had every right to be frustrated today. That was a genuinely difficult process — poorly documented mode switching that bricked the radio, driver conflicts, BitLocker, a crashing computer with a broken zero key, and documentation pointing to files that return 404. Any of those alone would test someone’s patience. You stuck with it and got there. GPS coordinates showing live on your reflector is a great outcome for a very hard day’s work.

The positive outcome is my CS7000-M17 PLUS radio now transmits my location over M17, as shown in my M17-PNW reflector dashboard:

I thought about trying to write a tutorial on upgrading this radio, but honestly, I’m so confused by the several hours of work I did that I don’t think I can. Translation: I don’t remember what I did that worked. If you know of a clear tutorial, please do share it.

Catch Up with M17

Let’s catch you up with some significant happenings in the world of M17.

• m17-gateway 0.5.0 released (March 6) — A significant update was announced for the M17 Go tools project. The new release adds support for three hardware platforms: the CC1200 Pi HAT (original), the SX1255 Pi HAT (newly added), and MMDVM-compatible hotspots and modems. All three platforms now support the full M17 feature set including voice, SMS messaging, and GNSS-based station position mapping. Both the SX1255 and MMDVM platforms support full duplex operation, meaning they can be used as full M17 repeaters, not just hotspots. More at: m17-gateway now supports three hardware platforms including SX1255 HAT.

• LinHT hardware continues to advance A new LinHT image was uploaded on February 28 by Andreas OE3ANC, featuring updated repos, removal of gr-bokeh dependencies (making builds faster), updated raylib, and a changed default sample rate to 125k. PCBs and stencils for Rev A are in Czech Republic and ready for assembly, with Rev B still in the works. More at: LinHT – Yocto image update.

• Active GitHub development The M17 Project’s GitHub repositories show active commits through mid-March 2026, with updates to the SX1255 HAT hardware, LinHT utilities, Remote Radio Unit firmware, and the Raspberry Pi interface for digital voice modes. More at: M17 Project.

• One notable background item from mid-2025 worth knowing about: MMDVM dropped support for M17 in July 2025, which was a significant development for the ecosystem. WPSD was forked to temporarily continue support for M17 on MMDVM-equipped hotspots. The m17-gateway 0.5.0 release adding MMDVM-compatible hardware support appears to be part of the community’s response to that. More at: MMDVM Project Drops Support for M17 Mode.

As long as I’m dwelling for a moment on M17, you might be interested in how it compares to some other common digital modes. I crafted this side-by-side summary with the help of Claude:

Note: DMR, D-Star, and System Fusion all use the proprietary AMBE+2 codec (DVSI). M17 uses Codec2, a fully open-source alternative developed by David Rowe. All four modes require a valid amateur radio license to transmit.

UPS Hat on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

This proved to be too long of a write-up for the Random Wire newsletter, so I’ve published it at EtherHam.com: UPS Hat on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

Is this a useful modification to a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W? Yes, it definitely is. This project should have gone smoothly but, as is my way, it didn’t. The things that might trip you up are explained in the article.

One of the great benefits is after shutting down the node, I can slide the UPS switch to the “off” position to completely sever power to the node. Starting the node amounts to simply sliding that switch to the “on” position. No more plugging and unplugging the microUSB cable on the Raspberry Pi. That’s handy.

EtherHam Updates

What an interesting couple of weeks over at EtherHam.com. Interesting how? The site has been getting attacked by bad actors trying to log in as me. I deleted that identity and created a new one that is more obscure than my name. (To all you IT security folks, yes, I know: security through obscurity doesn’t work. Except it actually is helping in this case, because now I can trigger lockouts based on the invalid user name.) I have multiple security layers in place on the website that are working well together.

I added the Contest Calendar’s 8-day contest calendar feed to the EtherHam Mega Feed. The Contest Calendar is an amazing site, chock full of information. If you enjoy contesting, or maybe you are thinking about checking out some contests, head over to Contest Calendar by Bruce WA7BNM at https://www.contestcalendar.com/.

For accessibility, I also enabled a Listen to this service that will read a post to you. It’s a button at the top of each post that looks like this:

I have to say, though: it’s really not all that great. I selected a male UK voice because the US male voice was way too boomy. When I listen, I hear the endings of sentences running right into the beginning of following sentences. Listening to long blocks of code being read back to you is about as boring as it gets. However, for some of us, if we can listen and read at the same time, it helps with comprehension and retention. There are also some of us who need or prefer to hear it, rather than read it. I’m going to give this a try and see which way the comments lean: pro or con. If it’s important to you, please weigh in.

Short Stack

Here it is, the Short Stack of interesting items from the interwebs.

Radio

• Could JS8Call Become a Gateway for Resilient Communication Networks? — “Unlike many traditional digital modes, JS8Call is designed specifically for structured messaging, not just contacts…JS8Call fills the long-range messaging gap between local mesh systems and global communication.”

SDR

• Rundown and Ranking of SDR Radios for Amateurs — A comparative guide to SDR hardware specifically for the amateur market. Essential reading if you’re choosing your first or next SDR. Included are some comments identifying two SDR radios missed in the original review.

• OpenWebRX web-based SDR receiver — “OpenWebRX is a multi-user SDR receiver that can be operated from any web browser without the need for any additional client software. It is the ideal solution to provide access to the HF spectrum at your location of choice to a wide audience. All you need is a computer, an SDR device and network access.”

• SIGINT: Relying on CW Capture with your SDR — Julian OH8STN explores using SDR for CW signal capture in off-grid scenarios — a practical intersection of digital tools and traditional operating.

• Scott recommends the new Echo Global SDR iOS App — “Echo provides connectivity to over 2,000 remote SDR receivers (KiwiSDR, OpenWebRX, WebSDR, and FM DX), accessible by multiple search capabilities including a world map display, offline frequency library, station logging, and, owing to its native iOS development, features full background audio for uninterrupted listening. The iOS version supports both iPhone and iPad. More information is available at https://echosdr.com.”

Mesh / Off Grid / Lora

• Introducing an AREDN Chat Client — New chat functionality for the AREDN mesh network ecosystem. A notable development for anyone building or operating RF-based data networks.

• GhostNet and the Future of Off-Grid Communication: From Concept to Architecture — An ambitious conceptual piece on building resilient off-grid communication architectures using amateur radio digital modes.

• T-Display-P4 devkit with ESP32-P4, ESP32-C6, and SX1262 LoRa transceiver — New hardware combining a capable MCU with a LoRa transceiver in a compact form factor — interesting for digital experimenters building portable nodes.

IP / Computing

• IP400 Project Marks Halfway Point — Progress update on the IP400 project, which aims to bring IP networking to amateur radio infrastructure. Worth watching.

Newsletters

• Zero Retries — Steve Stroh’s weekly newsletter is consistently the best single digest of what’s moving in the amateur digital radio space. If you read only one newsletter, make it this one.

• Random Wire 175 — Last week’s issue touched on WiRES-X, AllStarLink 3, the Icom IC-7300 MK2, M17, and more — a broad sweep of the digital voice landscape in one place.

• Amateur Radio Weekly — Also recommended is Amateur Radio Weekly. It always has a variety of interesting finds and is one of the few weekly items I look forward to receiving. For even more, check out the daily edition at https://daily.hamweekly.com/.

📡 Band Conditions This Week

New this week is a summary of HF band conditions. This digest was generated on Wednesday, April 1, 2026. On Thursday, conditions were changing. The K-Index has bumped up to 3.0 (unsettled, minor degradation possible), the A-Index is 27 (active), and the Sunspot Number has increased to 59.

• Solar Flux Index (SFI): 113.0 — Moderate — reliable HF propagation

• K-Index: 2.0 — Quiet — good conditions

• A-Index: 14 — Unsettled

• Sunspot Number: 44

• Active Solar Regions: 297

Solar activity is sitting in a comfortable middle ground this week, with an SFI of 113 and a relatively calm K-index of 2, meaning the higher HF bands are worth your time — 17, 15, and even 10 meters should be showing some life for DX, particularly during your daylight hours. The A-index of 14 is slightly elevated, so don’t be surprised if propagation feels a little unsettled at times, but nothing severe enough to keep you off the air. If you’ve been waiting for a good window to chase some DX or work some long-haul contacts, conditions are decent enough to reward the patient operator.

Source of data: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center

Generated: 2026-04-01 17:02 UTC

📻 This Week in Radio History

Also new this week is a look back at radio history.

Notable events from March 27 through April 3, across the years:

1933 — On April 1st, the Amateur Radio Relay League officially moved its headquarters from Hartford to Newington, Connecticut, where it has remained ever since. What started as a relay network connecting operators across the country had grown into an organization substantial enough to need a real home, and Newington became that anchor. If you’ve ever made the pilgrimage to visit the ARRL or toured the W1AW station, you’re walking ground the organization has called its own for nearly a century.

1964 — On March 27th, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in North America — a magnitude 9.2 — struck Alaska on Good Friday, devastating Anchorage, Valdez, and the surrounding region. The tsunami that followed reached as far south as Oregon. When the shaking stopped, virtually every conventional communication system in the state had failed. What filled the void was amateur radio. Hams across Alaska — Anchorage reportedly had more licensed operators per capita than anywhere else in the country at the time — took up posts at critical locations around the city and became the primary link between stricken communities and the outside world. Their work was significant enough that the USPS issued a commemorative 5-cent Amateur Radio stamp later that year, with the first-day ceremony held in Anchorage. The Alaska-Pacific Emergency Preparedness Net, established in the earthquake's aftermath, still operates today on 14.292 MHz — a living legacy of that Good Friday response.

1973 — On March 30th, the last regularly scheduled commercial transatlantic radiotelegraph service wound down, closing a chapter that stretched back to the earliest days of wireless. Those point-to-point Morse circuits had carried everything from stock prices to wartime dispatches, and their operators were among the most skilled in the world. It’s a quiet reminder that the code skills hams still practice today once formed the backbone of global communications.

Signing Off…

I had a busy weekend, working on the UPS hat for the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and then taking a day to pop down to Portland to take care of things at the Oregon QTH. After that, I got pulled into the rabbit hole called Python coding. On Tuesday, after checking into our local 10-meter net, I tried to work FT8 for a little bit but band conditions that evening weren’t good. However, I had sporadic luck on 20 meters via the polar route, perhaps reflecting increased ionization of the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, the local weather here on Planet Earth has been unsettled: sunny one day, big fat raindrops the next. It’s spring in the Pacific Northwest so this is to be expected.

I’ve been experiencing really overwhelming noise on 10 meters, and in talking about this with a local ham, I’m going to take a look at my battery chargers. He mentioned that his Ryobi-brand charger was emitting a lot of noise so I’m going to unplug all of my charging devices and see if that makes a difference.

As always, I wish you and yours health and happiness. I look forward to hearing about your radio activities, and particularly about what went right and about those learning moments we all have.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

Random Wire 174 published at 5:00 am Pacific last Friday. RW 174 opened with a mention of the update available to take WiRES-X from version 1.57 to version 2.0, but noted only one Yaesu-hosted instance that supported this as an official release.

Later that day, Yaesu posted a WiRES-X 2.0 webinar online, announcing and describing this significant software update. It’s an odd way to release information to a community of users (release it, publish update instructions, but don’t tell anyone until later) that feels like it was not well thought out or orchestrated.

The webinar video is about 45 minutes long, providing a thorough review of the major differences between the releases, including changes, limitations, and more. While I would have preferred to embed the video here as a convenience to you, Yaesu seems to have disabled embedding. Why? I have no idea. The link worked for a day and then the video was pulled and a replacement video was published. Note that it, too, won’t embed, so click the “Watch on YouTube” link to get to it. (Maybe this will have changed by the time RW 175 goes to press.)

A major change in WiRES-X 2.0 is it allows room owners to mute (or boot) individual users from the room. This desirable feature was requested by WiRES-X room owners.

An important consideration in deciding whether to update to version 2.0 is that the updated software requires IPv6 addressing. We’re all familiar with IPv4 addressing (you know, formats like 192.168.0.12). IPv6 is different and not all internet service providers (ISPs) provide IPv6 addresses to their customers. If you don’t have IPv6 and your ISP won’t provide it, don’t upgrade to WiRES-X 2.0, because it won’t work for you.

My provider at the lake house does not provide IPv6 addresses. My TP-Link Deco router (affiliate link) does support IPv6 addresses, but without the ISP supporting them, IPv6 is not available to me. If you are running a WiRES-X system and are thinking about upgrading to 2.0, it will be worth your time to track down whether your ISP provides IPv6 addressing.

This story continues to evolve. For example, this popup appeared on Tuesday when I visited the America’s Kansas City Wide Network home page:

KCWide has reverted to the 1.57 release of Wires-X due to problems in 2.0. Unfortunately, those who have updated their home Wires-X nodes to 2.0 will no [sic] be able to see KCWide. The only solution is to reinstall 1.57. Note that these issues do not affect those connecting via YSF, DStar, DMR, etc.

What does this mean? It means we haven’t heard the last of this update and what happens if you install it.

On Wednesday, I noticed this brief article: Yaesu Screws Up Wires-X. Steve K9ZW is more direct and succinct than I am.

Speaking of WiRES-X…

I still need to get my FT-5D working on WiRES-X. I found a YouTube that provides great guidance on this:

This gives me hope I’ll finally break through the mysterious barrier that has prevented this from working.

TechNote 13 — Using Python and Three Microphone Key-Ups to Safely Shut down an ASL3 Node

I got frustrated with one of my tiny nodes because to shut it down properly, I had to either log into the Cockpit interface with a browser or open an SSH session with PuTTY. I went looking for another way to accomplish a clean shut down with a minimum of fuss. My solution? A Python script that listens for three quick microphone key-ups. Learn more in TechNote 13 — Using Python and Three Microphone Key-Ups to Safely Shut Down an ASL3 Node.

Icom IC-7300 MK2 Transceiver

Microphone connector

One of the nicest things about the new radio is very much a trivial thing, but I like it: pressing the round 8-pin microphone connector to the microphone port is silky smooth. It’s not supposed to feel like that! On all of my older radios, doing this is not smooth. The older radios all take a bit of fidgeting to get everything lined up just right, and then some conscious effort is required to actually make the connection. With the 7300 MK2, it’s like using a brand new, nonstick frying pan: slick, smooth, easy. Sometimes it’s the little things.

Desktop microphone, part 2

The W2ENY adapter and foot switch arrived. I haven’t had much time to play with them, other than to hook things up once to make sure the physical connections work.

As I’ve thought about my need to operate the radio quietly in the same room as my wife, the very affordable W2ENY headset sounds like a great option. I ordered one for the Icom IC-7300 MK2 radio. It won’t arrive before this issue goes to press, but I’ll show it in a future issue of the Random Wire.

VARA

I bought a license for VARA and installed it on my amateur radio computer, the Panasonic Toughbook CF-54 MK2. Then I installed Winlink Express. After testing Winlink over a telnet connection to make sure it would work, I configured it for the IC-7300 MK2. It looks like it worked. Now I just need to find someone I can try messaging with Winlink on HF.

Winlink.org has helpful guidance on configuring an IC-7300 transceiver (PDF format).

Pebble HF Kit

“An ultra-affordable HF radio for anyone.” This intersects with the Random Wire because digital modes will be supported with an adapter.

Pebble HF is an ultra-affordable, ultra-portable HF radio kit for anyone to get into HF amateur radio. Easy to build says the website, 5W output with 12V input, built-in CW key and microphone. Technical details are available on GitHub.

Pebble HF is coming spring or early summer 2026, for under $50.

Is it another QCX hack? I don’t really care. AI explanation of a QCX hack:

A QCX radio hack is a modification, most commonly known as the uSDX project, that transforms the QRP Labs QCX—a 5W CW (Morse code) transceiver kit—into an Arduino-powered all-mode (SSB) transceiver. This popular hack enables voice communication on a radio originally designed only for Morse code, typically involving firmware changes and minor hardware tweaks.

The price is great and the rig, if it works acceptably well, would make a great portable device. I signed up. This would be a fantastic kit to build and then throw into a rucksack with some wire.

This news was also picked up on QRPer: Pebble HF: An Ultra-Affordable QRP Radio Kit with Big Potential!

D75Link Bridges Voice to D-STAR Reflectors

Fabian VE4ELB is working on a command-line D-STAR reflector client for the Kenwood TH-D75 radio that runs on a Mac or Linux.

A D-STAR reflector client for the Kenwood TH-D75 radio. Connects via Bluetooth to the radio in DV Gateway Mode and bridges voice to D-STAR reflectors (REF, XRF, DCS) over the internet. The radio handles all audio encoding and decoding with its built-in AMBE chip. d75link bridges the radio’s MMDVM serial protocol over Bluetooth to reflector UDP packets, with a retro command center terminal interface.

Fabian wrote:

I’ve been working on a custom Linux/macOS command-line tool that connects the Kenwood TH-D75 over Bluetooth to use your computer as a portable hotspot. It’s currently in alpha, but it’s working great for getting on the reflectors without extra hardware.

Painter Pole Antenna Project, Part 2

Before I embark on a DX Commander-like build using a painter pole, I needed to find an adapter for the top of the painter pole. It turns out that Buddipole makes just such a thing (hat tip to Jim K0RGI for this lead). (How did I forget about the world-famous Buddipole?) It takes a couple of pieces to accomplish my goal:

• The Buddipole Center Tee Adapter mates to the top of a standard painter pole and terminates with 1/2” pipe threads. Made of Delrin, it should be durable.

• The VersaTee™ has standard 1/2” pipe threads on the bottom and has standard 3/8” x 24 threaded mounts on top, so it will accept standard whips and hamsticks. It also has wire attachment points for the feed line and counterpoise.

• To this, I added a Long Telescopic Whip which will allow me to extend the pole-plus-whip to about 34-feet. That should work with a tuner for multiple bands between 10 and 40 meters in a base-fed configuration. I think it will still need at least a 1:1 unun.

Those items are making their way to me from Buddipole.

Two Inexpensive SDR Devices

I tried two software-defined radio (SDR) devices. Both were quite affordable.

RTL-SDR Blog V4 R828D RTL2832U 1PPM TCXO HF Bias Tee SMA Software Defined Radio with Dipole Antenna Kit (this is an affiliate link)

That is a complete kit with everything you need except the software. See/hear a one-minute video and learn more on EtherHam.com.

This next device is simply the tiniest SDR dongle I’ve seen so far, so it piqued my curiosity. Would it actually work? Only one way to find out!

NESDR Nano 2 Plus - Tiny Black RTL-SDR USB Set (RTL2832U & R820T2) with Ultra-Low Phase Noise 0.5PPM TCXO, MCX Antenna (this is an affiliate link)

I spent a few hours with the RTL-SDRv4 device…and some of that time was quite frustrating. I do have it set up and running.

Now about the frustrating bits. RTL-SDR requires a special driver for some SDR software applications. That driver is not signed so my Windows 11 machine blocked it. I turned off “secure boot” on my laptop to try to get past this problem, and while that should have worked, it didn’t. Part of the problem is undoubtedly because my CPU is an ARM chip, not an Intel or AMD chip.

What this means is I can’t run the SDR app and direclty access the RTL-SDR device on my ARM-based Windows laptop. (Well, to be more exacting: I can run the app but I can’t access the RTL-SDR dongle.) Instead, I’m running it on a spare mini PC and streaming it over my home network. I was listening to a classical FM station earlier today on my Windows laptop, and now I’m streaming that station to my iMac. Nice.

M17

MSeven M17 app tutorial

I was asked if I knew of a tutorial for the MSeven app for iOS devices. I did not find anything like that so I asked Claude to help me make one. Claude produced it in moments, formatted in HTML. I asked Claude to reformat it in DokuWiki syntax and that only took a few moments. After reviewing the output and modifying a few items, I posted the result at: https://m17.etherham.com/resources/mseven-tutorial. Let me know what you think of it!

History of M17

During the M17 net on Saturday morning on America’s Kansas City Wide Network via M17 reflector M17-KCW module A, Jeff AE5ME recited some of the history of M17. I wondered if Claude knew about this, so I asked. The results are very interesting and available at https://m17.etherham.com/about/history.

What is Claude? Here’s the Google AI explanation:

Claude is a next-generation AI assistant developed by Anthropic, designed to be safe, accurate, and secure, often excelling in creative writing, coding, and complex analysis. It is a large language model (LLM) known for its large context window, allowing it to process long documents.

One note about ChatGPT and Claude. ChatGPT can create graphics and remembers what you were working on. You can go back to ChatGPT tomorrow or next week and it will have context for the continuation of your work. Claude doesn’t d graphics remembers nothing from your previous session...but I’ve had better luck with the information Claude has provided, especially on technical topics. I’ve had to learn to ask for a detailed summary at the end of an important session so I can upload that to Claude when I want to resume work.

Are You Still Running AllStarLink 2?

This surfaced for me as I worked on TechNote 11: Automatically Connecting/Disconnecting an ASL 3 Node. As I dug around, I came to realize that many hub nodes (AllStar nodes that are used to connect many nodes at the same time) are still running the previous version of AllStarLink.

For those folks, I want to be sure you know that the wiki for AllStarLink 2 is no longer available!

If you are still running ASL 2, please don’t panic. The old wiki content is still available in PDF format at this link: https://wiki.allstarlink.org/archive/. I will say that digging through PDF files is not as easy as using the wiki, but at least that resource has been preserved.

For ASL 3, the new manual is available at https://allstarlink.github.io/

Raspberry Pi 500+

Thank you to Steve Stroh N8GNJ, maestro of the Zero Retries newsletter, for sharing a link to Jeff Geerling’s interesting video on the Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard computer. It was a fun and interesting video because (a) I have an RPi 400 keyboard computer and (b) the RPi 500 and 500+ models offer much more capability. I’ll confess here that the 400 keyboard didn’t really float my boat, but the 500 and 500+ models do sound much more capable.

I never would have thought to try eGPU with the 500+, but Jeff makes it work.

Pretty amazing stuff.

Computer: Upgrading the Surface Pro 4 to Windows 11 Pro

Background

I have a Windows Surface Pro 4 computer. You know, the one that is a tablet with a cover that doubles as a keyboard. You’ve probably seen it on newscasts and sports shows where the computer in front of the media personality has a stand that angles out from the back of the screen. That was most likely a Surface Pro machine.

Mine sports an i5 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of storage. This is enough to run Windows 11, but my machine is stuck at Windows 10 because the TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chip does not meet Microsoft’s requirements for Windows 11. (Snark: Hey Microsoft, that seems as if it was a bit short-sighted, don’t you think?)

AI explanation of why the Surface Pro 4 isn’t eligible for Windows 11:

The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 cannot officially upgrade to Windows 11 because its Intel 6th Generation processor is not on the supported list, and it lacks the mandatory TPM 2.0 security requirement. Microsoft restricts Windows 11 to devices with newer hardware (post-2017) to ensure security and stability.

The rest of this gets technical, so I’ve posted the full article on EtherHam.com as a TechNote if you’d like to learn more.

Opinion: Do the Terms YL and OM Reflect Patriarchy or Affectionate Jargon?

Is it time for our amateur radio community to reconsider the use of gendered terms in our hobby? I think the answer is yes.

The terminology

What are the terms I’m talking about?

• YL (”Young Lady”) — used to refer to any female amateur radio operator, regardless of age

• OM (”Old Man”) — used to refer to any male amateur radio operator, regardless of age

• XYL (”Ex-Young Lady”) — traditionally used to refer to a ham’s wife (originally meaning a woman who was a licensed ham before marriage, later used more loosely)

Do these terms reflect patriarchal norms?

It’s hard not to recognize the asymmetry in these terms. “OM” suggests experience and respect, in that “old man” is, in many cultures, a term of wisdom and seniority.

“YL” seems to emphasize youth and femininity, suggesting that women in the hobby are defined by their gender and age instead of their standing in amateur radio. There is no equivalent “OW” (Old Woman) term for experienced female operators.

The term “XYL” is particularly telling as it frames a woman’s identity relative to her marital relationship with a male ham. There is no male equivalent to XYL.

Or is this situation more nuanced?

These terms originated as early Morse Code telegraphy culture became established. This was a time when brevity was everything. The terms were likely not coined with malicious intent. “OM” wasn’t really meant to convey wisdom — it was just shorthand.

Many female hams today use and embrace YL as a badge of community identity. There are active YL-focused clubs and nets around the world. Within the amateur radio community, the term often functions as neutral, affectionate jargon rather than as a means of exclusion.

Or are they both patriarchal and friendly jargon?

The shorthand terms do reflect the patriarchal norms of the era when they were first coined. That is, I think, historically accurate. The asymmetry in how men and women are labeled — and the XYL framing in particular — reflect a time when women’s roles were defined largely in relation to men.

Do those terms perpetuate those norms today? That seems more debatable. Language can outlive the attitudes that shaped it, and communities can reclaim or redefine terms. There are two audiences to consider: those inside the amateur radio community, and those outside the community. I’m concerned that those outside the community may leap to the conclusion that YL and XYL are demeaning to women.

I don’t have any suggestions that would serve as gender-neutral replacements for these gendered terms.

I also did not find much published on this point.

Previously published content

Amateur Radio the gender imbalances in Ham radio, and why I will no longer use the term YL

This 2016 blog post by a female operator directly addresses the gender dynamics of the term YL and states plainly that it contributes to women feeling like they don’t fully belong in the hobby. She argues the terms originated nearly a century ago and reflect social norms that are no longer acceptable, and notes that amateur radio is roughly 15% women in the USA.

But thinking about it, one obvious example of this to me is the fact that in Ham radio we still commonly use YL, ie "young lady," to refer to all women regardless of age. I will freely admit that this didn't annoy me much when I was a young woman, but by now I am 30 years old and am going to have a doctorate in astrophysics by the end of the year (hopefully). And being called a YL is starting to feel really patronizing and condescending to me, in a way related to calling a grown man "boy." It definitely has been said to me many times in a way that does not make me feel like just another Ham radio operator.

YL coined by ARRL in 1920

Historical context: The term YL was coined in 1920 by the ARRL. The reasoning for the term is telling — it reveals the creators were aware of the asymmetry but chose youth over experience in labeling female radio amateurs:

The term YL was coined in 1920 by the American Radio Relay League for young ladies of all ages, as “OM will not fit and OL would certainly be most inapplicable.”

ARRL documented that XYL is for unlicensed women

An ARRL publication on women’s participation in amateur radio notes that XYL is the term for unlicensed women, usually wives of male operators. No critical analysis of the term is included in that publication.

Published academic studies?

No formal academic or peer-reviewed analyses of the use of these terms seem to exist. Specifically, I was looking for publications through the lens of gender studies and linguistics.

Conclusion

It seems to me that we are at a point where a cultural realignment might benefit the hobby. We don’t need to classify women in the frame of their relationship to men. Continuing to do so may contribute to limited interest and participation by women in our community of licensed radio amateurs.

This is akin to the renaming of blackboards and whiteboards, where for some of us, this just didn’t matter, but for others, it mattered a great deal.

I’m sure some folks will read this and think I’m being too politically correct. My response is: I have daughters and I want them to have as many opportunities for growth, self-fulfillment, and success as I have enjoyed. That’s not possible when we embed terms that subtly — and sometimes not so subtly — cast women in terms of their relationship with men.

I do think we have arrived here innocently. These are terms that have been part of amateur radio culture since the telegraphy days. However, just because we use such terms without harmful intent does not mean they are not harmful.

As I continue to explore the art, science, and community of amateur radio, I have come to know men who are great operators…and some who are not. I know women who are great operators…and some who are not. The level of proficiency and helpfulness of fellow hams are the important points for me, not their gender. If using gendered terms effectively reduces engagement of potential amateurs, we should consider finding other labels.

Short Stack

And now for the part you’ve been waiting for: the short stack of interesting internet finds. Quoted content in the Short Stack is shown in italics.

ARRL

• It seems the ARRL has entered the modern era! ARRL Introduces New LIVE Online Course for Ham Radio Licensing was publicized in November of last year and I missed it. It’s nice to see the League move forward.

Radio

• Click-to-Tune for POTA. This is pretty cool. HamDash now has CAT control associated with the POTA map. Visit the site and click the POTA selection.

• Elevate Your POTA Experience with the Icom IC-7300 MK2. “This article delves into an activation featuring the Icom IC-7300 MK2 transceiver, evaluating its performance in various aspects essential for portable operations.”

• HRWB 259 - Making CW Keys with Aaron from Modern Morse. I’m only about halfway through this episode but I can tell it’s a great one. “Modern Morse keys are popular for POTA, SOTA, travel and anytime you want a portable high quality CW key. Aaron shares his journey through the design and manufacturing process for making his keys.”

• See Which Shortwave Stations Are Broadcasting Right Now. “World Radio Map is a free web application that answers that question with an interactive Google Map, showing you real-time shortwave broadcasting activity around the globe.” Source: The SWLing Post

• N7YG Digital Engine. “This program was specifically designed to function as a companion to the suite of N3FJP software and provide the users with a simple digital modem with a floating waterfall that can reside on the same screen as the logging software…Now includes support for PSK Reporter, EXTFSK, TinyFSK and K1EL Winkey FSK.”

• Guess I need to use this – N1MM Logger. “If you go back enough years perhaps N1MM was a bit more of a learning curve than I wanted to take on. With time I’d like to think N1MM and I both got better suited to working with each other.”

• Building A $50 SDR With 20 MHz Bandwidth. “Although the RTL-SDR is cheap, accessible, and capable enough for many projects, it does have some important limitations. In particular, its bandwidth is limited to about 3.2 MHz, and the price of SDRs tends to scale rapidly with bandwidth. [Anders Nielsen], however, is building a modular SDR with a target price of $50 USD, and has already reached a bandwidth of almost 20 MHz.”

• SDR vs. HDR — Are analog hams Troglodytes, stuck in a rut, resistant to change, and all that? Since I touched on software-defined radio several times in this issue of the Random Wire, this Solder Smoke post is on point. It rounds out the context around SDR. I’m not sure what is really meant by HDR in the Solder Smoke post, but the content is informative.

• Amateur Radio Weekly – Issue 413. Always a good read.

• Advice on Being the Best Elmer You Can Be. “I implore you to lay down the daggers of self-righteousness and insult and take up the mantle of encouragement. Your life and our hobby will be better for it.”

Meshtastic

• Bridging Meshtastic to SMS/RCS. “We’ve built a Meshtastic ↔ Android SMS/RCS gateway, and it’s already proving to be both useful—and honestly, pretty fun.”

Antennas

• The REZ Antennas XForm Transformer proves its worth. Michael KB9VBR writes: “REZ Antennas raises the bar on small delta loops with the introduction of their XForm 4:1 transformer. Part of the Scout XF modular antenna system, this transformer adds a variety of nonresonant antenna options to the already versatile system.”

• Lumped-Constant Loaded Dipole Antenna. Catchy name for the antenna? Perhaps. Looks like a trapped dipole to me. “This electrically shortened dipole is similar in appearance to a trap dipole except the ‘traps’ consist of coils only, causing the antenna to operate not unlike two mobile inductively loaded whips, mounted horizontally base-to-base.”

Computing

• DietPi just made it easy to host your own Google Photos on a Raspberry Pi. “DietPi v10.2 introduces Immich, the open-source and self-hosted Google Photos alternative, as a new package in the software library.”

• HAM-Toolbox version 1.8.0 released. “HAM-Toolbox provides a variety of useful Tools to help you operating your HAM-Radio…ranging from activity monitoring Tools like DX-Cluster and PSK-Reporter, to Tools helping you with resource information like Bandplan, Glossar, AWG and many more Tools.” For Mac/iOS

  systems.

• 7 settings I change after installing Ubuntu. “Every time I install Ubuntu, whether it's a fresh setup or an upgrade—I follow a checklist of tweaks I immediately apply. It's a set of changes I always make to ensure the system feels comfortable, familiar, and efficient for me.”

• The Best Laptops for Older Adults. Despite the clickbait title, reliable, easy laptops are good for all ages.

Geekery

I don’t know what else to call some of these edge case items that most hams won’t be interested in…but some of us will!

• Ampisu is a compact pocket-sized USB lab power supply with SCPI and web control (Crowdfunding). “…Ampisu [is] a compact, pocket-friendly, and isolated three-output lab power supply designed to fit in a pocket and include features of a typical full-sized power supply.”

Networking

• What The FCC’s Router Ban Could Mean for You. “The U.S. government is banning the importation of new routers made overseas, meaning consumers will no longer be able to purchase devices from many popular manufacturers.”

EtherHam Store

The sweatshirt arrived from the EtherHam Store and I see I placed the logo too low on the chest. I suppose I could add a callsign above the logo. That might work.

The logo actually looks a bit better in person than the image suggests.

I normally wear a men’s medium size. In this case, I ordered a large and it is comfortably loose. I think the sizing is accurate. This is a Champion-brand sweatshirt with a smooth, double-thick hood. The body and sleeves are fleeced inside.

Signing Off

Why do I close with the same phrase every week?

I believe that seeing and touching a radio brings it into the now, imprinting it in your consciousness. If your radio is stuck in a box or a closet, it’s likely to stay there, unused. If your radio is where you see it every day, you are much more likely to fire it up and get on the air. I like to keep a radio nearby because it reminds me — even in my most frustrated moments — that I can always connect to a community of supportive, helpful people. Radio has been, and continues to be, a great way to take a break from things that may not be going as well as I might wish. Radio grounds me (yes, pun intended)!

Radio is about science, but there is also art involved. A beautiful PCB layout, a vintage device restored or upcycled with modern features, an elegant homebrew system…all have an artistic element. Where there is art, there is also community. This surfaces when we share our appreciation for particular builds and creations.

I’m all for STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) but somewhere, somehow, we lost sight of the inspiration and energy art provides. I’m a fan of STEM, but I’m a bigger fan of STEAM: science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. Artistic endeavors connect the other elements to us as humans and to our shared membership in a wider community.

With that, it’s time to tie a ribbon around this issue. 73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

New WIRES-X Software Release Available?

I’m hearing that WIRES-X software has moved to version 2.0 and there are some incompatibilities with nodes running the previous version. I’m finding this information on social media. What I’m not finding are official announcements or press releases from Yaesu on this change.

The most reliable verification of this update is the instructions released by Yaesu on March 17, 2026. See the PDF file on the Yaesu website which briefly describes how to update WIRES-X to version 2.0. The entirety of that PDF is this single page:

Should you update your WIRES-X software now? I don’t have strong advice, other than my general information technology rule of thumb: unless it is a critical patch, upgrade slowly. Translation: let someone else be on the cutting edge of finding and solving problems!

If you have more information on this software upgrade and what it means, please do share it.

New TechNote: Automatically Connecting/Disconnecting an ASL Node

TechNote 11: Automatically Connecting/Disconnecting an ASL 3 Node contains detailed scripts/commands for a Debian 13 server running AllStarLink 3. Please note that some commands in the TechNote will not work correctly if you are running AllStarLink 2.

This long TechNote will be of interest if you run AllStarLink 3 and want to automate the process of connecting and disconnecting regularly to a particular node.

What is a bash script? See the footnote1.

I am testing this publicly on my “node in the cloud” AllStar node 57945, which you can check at https://kj7t.net/allscan/. To make sure I don’t interfere with node 55915 and any nodes connected to/through it, I’m making my automatic connection in listen-only (monitor) mode.

And since I fiddled with my ASL node 57945, I changed how I track changes. I was capturing notes in a simple text file and serving that from the 57495 web root. However, I decided to use Markdown to keep the notes.

What is Markdown? See the footnote2

The web server doesn’t automatically parse Markdown files so I installed pandoc to convert CHANGELOG.md to CHANGELOG.html. See the result at https://kj7t.net/CHANGELOG.html. It’s easier to read than a straight text file.

What Are Those Strange Sounds?

SIGIDWIKI (Signal Identification Guide) has hundreds of sound samples (and the spectrum displays of sources) for all the bands you might listen to. If you are hearing something strange, SIGIDWIKI is the place to go.

Here’s a graphical representation of what is covered there. Hearing strange sounds? Visit SIGIDWIKI!

Also:

Check out Artemis 3, the main companion app to this guide! Artemis 3 gives you all known reference signals in an easy to access offline format, with improved sorting and filters and offline audio samples and waterfalls.

Artemis 3 is available for the operating systems you are likely using:

More Exploring: the Icom IC-7300MK2

Interfacing a Desktop Mic on the IC-7300MK2

I bought a new microphone for my computer and then wondered: can I interface this with the Icom IC-7300MK2? The answer is that I should be able to. The adapter from W2ENY had not arrived by the time this issue of the Random Wire went to press.

The microphone:

MAONO PD200W Hybrid Wireless Podcast Microphone for PC, Dynamic XLR USB Mic with Desktop Stand, Software, Noise Cancellation, for Vocal Recording, Streaming, Content Creation, Home Studio, Voiceover (affiliate link)

I will say the MAONO PD200W is a pretty large microphone for the budget end of the spectrum. Once I had the sound profile to a place I liked, it sounded good. I’ve been using it via a USB connection and also via a wireless connection with my laptop computer. No complaints heard from anyone on Teams and Zoom calls!

I contacted Bob W2ENY to see if he could make me an XLR-to-Icom cable so I could try to interface the radio with the IC-7300MK2 radio. The 7300MK2 has an 8-pin round connector. Turns out Bob also sells a foot switch that works with his adapter. This would be very helpful when I want to transmit from my portable desk.

The XLR connection on the microphone is standard, so the XLR pinout should be:

• Pin 1 — Ground (shield)

• Pin 2 — Audio positive (hot, +)

• Pin 3 — Audio negative (cold, −)

However, it’s a dynamic microphone so Bob says it will need a DC blocking capacitor as Icom “has bias voltage on pin 1 that would short to ground.” I ordered the adapter and a footswitch for $80, remitted through PayPal. Find Bob’s store at https://w2eny.com/. I noted that he also has some great looking compact headsets available so I’m thinking a headset is in my future.

Remote software for the IC-7300MK2

I found these remote control solutions for the Icom IC-7300 and IC-7300MK2 transceivers:

• RS-BA1 Version2 IP REMOTE CONTROL SOFTWARE — From Icom, “RSBA1 allows users to operate their ham shack with only an IP connection.”

• Win4IcomSuite for Icom Radios — “Win4IcomSuite is a comprehensive control package for the Icom IC-7100, IC-7300, IC-7610, IC-7600, IC-7700, IC-7850/51, IC-9700, IC-7760, IC-705 with more radios to follow.”

• wfview — “wfview is a program developed by amateur radio enthusiasts to control modern Icom and Kenwood ham radios. wfview is free and open source software.”

• IC 7300 Remote Control Software — “This post is about how to remote control the IC 7300 with Simple Ham Radio Remote (SimpleHRR) Software and a Raspberry Pi.”

• SDR-Control for Icom — “Software Defined Radio Client for Icom Transceivers” (for iPhone, iPad, and macOS).

• Ham Radio Deluxe — See IC-7300 USB Setup Configuration for more information.

• RemAud - Low Latency & Low Bandwidth Amateur Radio VoIP Software — For remote audio.

• flrig - rig control program, cooperates with fldigi — Often used with RemAud, according to Reddit and Facebook users.

I had some interesting moments with wfview. I installed it, configured it, and could see the program’s version of the 7300MK2 display. I could control the frequency. But I could not get any audio into the computer — it was all going through the radio speakers. The next morning, I reset back to my saved FT8 configuration but WSJT-X no longer heard the radio. Uh oh.

I took a shortcut and asked ClaudeAI for some help. In a couple of minutes, Claude steered me to the USB AF Out setting which was set much too low. I set it back to 50%. Still no signal reaching WSJT-X. Claude suggested that the wfview program had taken control of the codec and not released it. I uninstalled wfview, restarted WSJT-X, and suddently WSJT-X could hear the radio again. However, this time it was too hot, so I turned the USB AF Out down to 30%. Perfect.

Shielded USB cable with chokes

I finally found a good quality, heavy duty, shielded USB cable with RF chokes (ferrites) installed on each end:

Digirig 2M Shielded USB-C to USB-C Cable with Ferrites (affiliate link)

I confess I bought more than one because I always seem to be hunting for a good, shielded USB-C data cable. My primary use case is to connect the Icom IC-7300MK2 to my Toughbook computer. Currently, I’m using a pretty typical USB cable with ferrites I added, but I think the Digirig cable will give me better service. If nothing else, it feels thicker and the cable-plug join feels very solid. I like these USB-C cables.

Digital voice with FreeDV

FreeDV uses Codec 2, the same codec as M17! I wanted to try FreeDV with the Icom IC-7300MK2 this week but ran out of time.

FreeDV is a suite of digital voice modes for HF radio. Our flagship mode is the Radio Autoencoder (RADE). You can run RADE using a free GUI application for Windows, Linux and macOS that allows any SSB radio to be used for high quality digital voice.

The reasons for FreeDV seem compelling to me. This is probably not a surprise, given that one of my primary interests is the intersection of the analog and digital realms.

Amateur Radio is transitioning from analog to digital, much as it transitioned from AM to SSB in the 1950s and 1960s. How would you feel if one or two companies owned the patents for SSB, then forced you to use their technology, made it illegal to experiment with or even understand the technology, and insisted you stay locked to it for the next 100 years? That’s exactly what was happening with digital voice. But now, hams are in control of their technology again!

FreeDV is unique as it uses 100% Open Source Software, including the speech codec. No secrets, nothing proprietary! FreeDV represents a path for 21st-century Amateur Radio where Hams are free to experiment and innovate rather than a future locked into a single manufacturer’s closed technology.

Trying FreeDV with the 7300MK2 is on my to do list.

Receive-only loop antenna for the 7300MK2

I’m having a horrible time trying to hear much of anything on 10 meters. This is true with the Yaesu FT-450D and the new Icom IC-7300MK2. There is something about the lake house and its environs that is not conducive to the 10M band.

I dug an old MLA-30 antenna out of a box to try as a receive-only antenna. The 7300MK2 has SMA ports on the back for a receive-only antenna so I had nothing to lose but a few minutes of time.

This is the exact model I used:

MLA-30 Loop Antenna Active Receiving Antenna 100kHz - 30MHz for Short Wave Radio (affiliate link)

I hope you won’t laugh too hard at the next photo. I didn’t want to invest a lot of time creating a strong mount for this lightweight antenna, so I improvised with a columnar cardboard box. It worked fine indoors and I had it outside for a few hours between rain showers.

It actually did pick up stations during last night’s 10-meter net. I tried rotating it to various orientations without much effect on 10 meters. I worked very nicely on 15 meters where I could hear QSOs very clearly. For the 10-meter net, I ended up using the end fed half wave antenna, though, as it was catching more RF, which also means it was picking up all the RFI around me. I turned the RF (Radio Frequency) knob way down and the AF (Audio Frequency, aka volume) knob up to for best clarity of received audio. (The RF control is used to adjust receiver sensitivity, reducing noise by decreasing gain when turned counter-clockwise.)

So the MLA-30 antenna does work. It deserves a better mounting system so I’ll work on that in the near future. I think I’ll dig out one of my SDR dongles and try the loop antenna with the SDR. That might work nicely with an SDR application on my laptop.

Portable HF antenna idea

You might have noticed that the cardboard shown with the loop antenna was the packaging for a painter pole. I bought a 24-foot painter pole. What I’m thinking is making an inexpensive version of a DX Commander antenna. I’ll need to fabricate a cap that screws to the painter pole threads with a mount for a telescoping whip. I need to get to at least 33 feet in length.

And then since this strong and light pole is actually conductive, I’ll need to make standoffs for the vertical wire for each band. Even if I get those wires two or three inches from the pole, there is likely to be some detuning going on, and that means I should start with the wires too long and trim them to the best standing wave ratio (SWR).

What is SWR? See the footnote3

I envision using some pieces of kitchen cutting boards made of polypropylene as standoffs…maybe a rectangular strip with a hole drilled in the middle for the painter pole, and smaller holes for the antenna elements.

I’ll need what, a 1:1 unun at the base of the antenna? It should work like a fan dipole where the frequency you are on flows through the resonant element, so all elements can connect to the single unun.

What is an unun? See the footnote4

And then I’ll need some kind of ground mount (or maybe one that I can slide into my tow hitch receiver) that will hold the 24-foot painter pole.

I don’t have this drawn up. Right now, the image lives in my head. First challenge: figuring out a cap with painter pole threads, something I can install an antenna mount on and robust enough to handle a telescoping aerial antenna in the wind.

Using M17 Without a Radio

How many ways are there to connect to an M17 reflector without owning an M17-capable radio? It turns out there are several software options for getting on M17 reflectors using just a computer, phone, or tablet. Here’s the rundown of what I’ve uncovered.

DroidStar — This is, perhaps, the most popular option. DroidStar is a multimode digital voice client that runs on Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android, and by jumping through a few hoops, probably iOS. (I say probably because I’ve not tried this and most of the advice I found is no more recent than 2023.) It connects directly to reflectors over the internet using just your microphone and speaker(s). For iOS, DroidStar-DMR is a fork of DroidStar that adds some features and is reportedly easier to install on iOS. DroidStar is the go-to solution for most operators and works well on a phone while driving.

M17 Web Client — Listening via the M17 Web Client is probably the easiest way to get started as there is nothing to install. The M17 Web Client is a beta application that enables receiving and transmitting M17 over reflectors from your web browser, making it very easy to get on the air without having to have any special equipment or software installed. Find it at https://m17project.org. Check out the streaming examples at https://stream.m17.app/ (and I note that the Kansas City Wide network is also available if you scroll down the streaming page a bit).

mvoice — The Linux desktop client mvoice is the original M17 client for Linux, featuring Ham-DHT support and direct routing. This is more of a power-user tool but it does have full TX/RX capability.

SDRangel — If you are an SDR hardware user, SDRangel supports both transmission and reception of M17 and runs on both Windows and Linux, working with PlutoSDR, HackRF, and other SDRs. This requires SDR hardware but not a traditional radio.

Practical recommendation: DroidStar on Android is the easiest full TX/RX option and takes about five minutes to set up. The reflector used by the M17 team is M17-M17, module C — there is a net every Friday at 17:00 UTC (10:00 am where I live) where you can ask questions and test your setup.

If you are an iOS user, the easiest path forward without a radio is the MSeven app from the Apple App Store. (I run this on an iPad Mini and it works very well.)

In this brief summary, I did not include information about M17 hotspots since these generally also require a radio.

EtherHam Store

I added a hoodie and a tumbler to the EtherHam store and then ordered one of each. The tumbler arrived yesterday and I have to say it looks very nice.

Your purchases help support the cost of web hosting, domain name registration, email, and more.

Switched My Open Source Audio Editor

I changed my audio editor from Audacity to Tenacity. Both are open source programs but Tenacity seems, well, purer. For example, Tenacity doesn’t “phone home” with data about your installation. The Tenacity interface is so similar to the Audacity front end that operating it won’t feel like something new.

Short Stack

Interesting items from the interwebs.

Radio

• FT0 Free and Open Source Digital Mode — I hope we all recognize this is satire. FT0 is not real. I laughed when I read this and hope you will find it amusing, too.

• Beginning to Build with Tubes — “There are a number of reasons to pursue tube-based projects. Vacuum tube technology is accessible; the principles on which tubes operate are straightforward. Tube circuits generally require a reasonable number of other parts.”

• Testing a $100 “Fishball” Pluto+ PlutoSDR Clone — “Over on YouTube, TheGmr140 has uploaded a video reviewing a Pluto+ clone SDR that he picked up for around US$100. He refers to it by its community nickname, the ‘Fishball’, a name that appears to be used for Pluto+ clones sold specifically by HamGeek and OpenSourceSDR Lab…”

• Native Linux Client for FlexRadio Transceivers – AetherSDR announced — “Free, open-source Linux (and macOS via homebrew) client for FlexRadio…It’s called AetherSDR — fully open-source (GPLv3), built with Qt6/C++, and built around the Flex API protocol natively. No Wine, no VMs.”

• The HF Vertical Antenna: Its Pros & Cons — “This article first breaks down what a typical quarter‑wave base vertical really costs you in buried radial losses and vertically polarized noise pickup, and what changes when you lift the vertical antenna system with a counterpoise or a ground‑plane style install.”

• The G3LZR Tribander : The charm of the Impossible Antenna — How about a compact homebrew antenna for 10, 15, and 20 meters? “Developed in the 1970s by the genius of Fred Caton (VK2ABQ) and perfected by his friend Ted Womack (G3LZR), this unique tribander defies conventional element spacing. While a standard Yagi can occupy several meters of space, the G3LZR, as evidenced by its shape, folds in on itself using a unique concept: Voltage Feedback.”

• NewTechHams Are My Hope For The Future of Amateur Radio — Steve Stroh N8GNJ with Zero Retries begins like this: “I received an email from a longtime Zero Retries reader that was some good food for thought.” I find Steve’s writing to always be thoughtful, often challenging me to think about where I stand.

• Portable Ham Radios: Your Emergency Lifeline — The author recommends five portable radios. Only one (Motorola Talkabout FRS radio) makes any sense.

• How to Stop Electromagnetic Interference: Why a Magnetic Receive Loop Wins — “…modern-era neighborhood electronics turned HF reception into mayhem until I switched to a small active magnetic loop built for high signal-to-noise ratio. Here’s why that design works, how to aim it to null interference, and what changed the moment I put it on the air.”

• Low Noise Multi-band HF Antenna for Small Gardens — Explore a historic, compact antenna design optimized for limited spaces and reduced background noise in this YouTube video. This guide covers the construction of a delta loop that utilizes harmonics for multi-band operation. Learn how to implement this solution for improved performance in challenging environments.

Artificial intelligence

• I finally started using Claude and I should have sooner — This echoes my own experience with using Claude. “Most AI tools feel like a calculator – precise, but cold. You put data in, you get a result, and then you spend ten minutes sounding like a person. When I finally started using Claude, that problem disappeared. The outputs feel more human, the reasoning is sharper, and for the first time, I’m spending less time engineering my prompts and more time actually creating.”

Computing

• My $150 mini PC runs 12 Docker containers and hasn’t broken a sweat — If you’ve been focused on Raspberry Pi devices instead of mini PCs, this article might change your mind. “Recently, I picked up a mini PC that ran me just about $150, runs Linux headless and sits in a corner in my study. More importantly, it's currently hosting over 12 Docker containers that handle everything from media management to backups and network tools with ample headroom to grow.”

• GIMP 3.2 gives Photoshop another run for its money, with new editing tools and interface improvements — Yeah, I use GIMP instead of Photoshop. “GIMP has been one of the most popular alternatives to Adobe Photoshop over the years, even though it still has some lingering usability problems. The latest GIMP 3.2 update is fixing some of those issues, along with a few other new features.”

Signing Off

Programming Cable for Connect Systems M17 Radios

I couldn’t find my special programming cable for my CS7000-M17 PLUS handheld M17 and DMR radio, so I went searching on the Connect Systems website. Nope, such a cable was missing. After reaching out to Connect Systems support, they added the programming cable to their online store. If you have such a radio and can’t find your cable, here’s the link (and it’s affordable at just $10): https://www.csi-radios.com/cs760-761-programming-cable/

Finally got some snow

It’s not much snow, but still: it’s snow! It’s not winter to me unless we get at least one snowfall. I remember a lot more snow in my childhood, but now snow has become an unusual occurrence in my neck of the woods.

The old boat has been sadly neglected since my wife’s medical incidents occurred almost a year ago. I got the old Westerbeke 13 diesel engine started but had to refresh myself on the procedure by cracking open the manual. Oh yes: run the electric fuel pump for 15-30 seconds to purge air and load the lines, and hold in the glow plug for a bit (the length of time dependent on ambient temperature). When I followed the steps, the engine clattered to life and thumped along quite nicely. As Monday dawned, I motored her to the boatyard dock for haul out and bottom paint.

There is more about the boat and other activities in Inside EtherHam: March 2026.

73 to all, and remember to touch a radio every day!

It seems a bit shocking that the Random Wire is scratching an itch for more than 2,000 people. I started this as a way to help me remember what I was doing, and then I was encouraged to share those thoughts with others. I’m no expert — far from it. But I like learning and look forward to picking up new knowledge every day. That kind of curiosity seems pervasive within our great hobby of hobbies: amateur radio.

I am thankful for all subscribers. But we also share an identity: you and I are EtherHams. I know this because (a) the Random Wire is the newsletter for EtherHam.com, and (b) we all use the internet and computing in some fashion in our amateur radio activities. I don’t know a ham who does not use the internet in some fashion. I conclude that we are all EtherHams.

Those two things — learning new things and working on a computer-based radio system — came together this week. I spent a lot of time this week rebuilding my M17 reflector. Translation: most of my content this week is about that work! However, that long story isn’t shared in this newsletter. Instead, I documented my work in a detailed TechNote at EtherHam.com: TechNote 10: Installing an M17 Reflector on a Cloud Server. If you’ve been wondering what goes into standing up an M17 reflector, or maybe thinking about building one yourself, check out my step-by-step notes. You can see the finished dashboard for my M17-PNW reflector running at http://m17pnw.net/.

I also got some operating time with my new Icom IC-7300MK2 HF transceiver. I need more time to develop stronger views on the radio, but so far, it is working pretty well for me. The 10-meter band is incredibly noisy at the lake house, but I’ve been doing well on 15, 20, and 40 meters using an end-fed half wave antenna, with a little bit of 30-meter activity as well. More on that in a bit.

I hope you find something interesting in Random Wire issue 173. As always, please do let me know how you are doing, what questions or stories you have about amateur radio, and topics you may be interested in.

Here’s a question for you that goes beyond your job title or other short, dry descriptor: if you had a free day to do anything you want, what would that look like? For many of us, the answer would be: play on the radio!

I Suppose…

As I reflect on readers of this newsletter, I suppose that some have no idea what I’m writing about. This was made clearer for me after receiving a poignant note from a subscriber who told me her father had been a ham, and while she enjoyed the newsletter, she didn’t really know what I was talking about.

That’s a failure on my part. I’ve assumed that radio amateurs were my subscribers, but clearly, not all subscribers are licensed hams. I’ll try to develop the habit of providing better background information and context in future pieces.

It will also help me to share that foundational information as I will learn more, too. In this issue, you’ll find two footnotes to help provide background for a couple of items.

M17 Reflector Rebuilt

An updated version of mrefd — a system for running an M17 reflector — was released. My implementation (https://m17pnw.net/) had not been updated for months so I thought it would be a good idea to proceed with an update. However, I had previously chosen to use a Go-based dashboard and that system couldn’t be rolled back, so I destroyed (erased) the server and started over. Unfortunately, it did not go well, at least not immediately.

For background, see footnote 1: What is an M17 reflector?1

First, I started with a fresh install of Debian 12. I hit a bump when trying to enable FastCGI on the web server. After fighting that for a while, I destroyed that server and installed Debian 13. I encountered errors while trying to install packages. Turns out Debian 13 dropped the libopendht-dev library that mrefd needs. I had not previously realized this.

So: back to Debian 12. I think all in all, I installed seven Debian servers with mrefd. I could not get them to work. (To be clearer: mrefd was working but the web-based dashboard was not.) After spending hours with the hosting company tech support team, I finally decided to restore my backup of my previously working reflector. After running updates on the server, updating DNS, and checking firewalls, I initiated the mrefd instance.

But even though the previous version was running fine, I couldn’t let go of trying to figure out how to get the newer version installed. The short version of this story is I did figure it out. If you want the details, read TechNote: Installing an M17 Reflector on a Cloud Server.

You can see the M17-PNW reflector dashboard at https://m17pnw.net. I encourage M17 users to connect to the M17-PNW reflector to make sure it works! The new location feature is not working for me. I can’t tell if I misconfigured mrefd (possible) or if my iPad app (MSeven) is not reporting my location (likely, as the app privacy note for the app says no data is collected, and my iPad Mini does not have GPS on board). Thanks in advance for your help.

Antenna in the Tree & FT8

I picked up an end-fed half wave antenna and pulled the end up to a branch about 50 feet up the tall fir tree beside the house so I could work more HF stations.

For background, see footnote 2: What is an end-fed half wave antenna?2

JYR4010-400W End Fed Half Wave Antenna for Ham Radio 400W Shortwave Radio Antenna 4 Band 10m 15m 20m 40m Long Wire Antenna 1:64 Balun No Tuning Great for POTA/SOTA (affiliate link)

This off-brand antenna is working okay. I tested it quickly on 10, 15, 20, and 40 meters. There was a lot of activity on the bands so I was able to listen to quite a few stations.

Speaking of antennas, I enjoyed this YouTube presentation of six newer antennas by Jason at Ham Radio 2.0 (I missed this when it came out in July 2025):

How did I get the EFHW wire up the tree? I have not finished my pneumatic launcher so I used an arborist slingshot. It shot a 15-ounce bag up about 50 feet, almost high enough.

Slingshot Arborist Throw Line Rope Launcher Sling Shot for Adults

I’ve since ordered a slightly lighter bag because the 15-ounce one is just a little too heavy to really get to the height I need. When I pulled my EFHW antenna into the tree, it didn’t go quite as far as it should have. I’m hoping the 11-ounce bag and a little more stretch on the slingshot will get me the height I need (just 10 more feet!)…once it stops pouring down cold winter rain!

Performance of the antenna improved when I added about 25 feet of stranded wire to the ground terminal on the EFHW balun. I connected that wire to a metal stake driven into the ground.

To test, I got FT8 going with 20 watts on the IC-7300MK2. For the WSJT-X and GridTracker programs, I’m using an old Panasonic CF-54 TOUGHBOOK running Windows 11 Pro. This worked great, once I got the programs configured and connected to my QRZ.com logbook.

I’m now designating this computer as my field computer for amateur radio. You can see what it looks like at this Amazon link:

Panasonic Toughbook 54, CF-54 MK3, Intel Core i5-7300U, 14.0 Inch HD, 512GB SSD, 16GB, Wi-Fi, TPM, Backlit Keyboard, Webcam, Windows 11 Pro (Renewed) (affiliate link)

Mine is the MK2 model. The MK1 model had a VGA port, which was replaced with an HDMI port in the MK2 and MK3 models.

Getting FT8 running on the IC-7300MK2 was an adventure because none of the directions I found online in YouTube videos and web pages worked. The gist I shared last week came close. I was able to figure out most of the settings from the gist, even though many of the descriptors for various settings did not exactly match the IC-7300MK2 radio.

Then I couldn’t identify the right COM port on the computer. I had downloaded the Silicon Labs driver from Icom, installed it, and rebooted my computer. The COM port was supposed to be identified by the Silicon Labs moniker. No COM port said anything about Silicon Labs, not even in the COM port properties. To figure this out, I finally uninstalled the driver, rebooted, and took a screenshot of the COM ports found by the Windows Device Manager. Then I installed the driver, rebooted, and compared the new, longer list against the screenshot. Two new COM ports showed up, saying just COM6 and COM7. I chose COM7 and that worked.

I thought it would be easier to get FT8 set up and operating on the IC-7300MK2. It wasn’t particularly simple. When I find some spare time, I’ll document all my settings in case it helps someone else. What I did do, once I got the radio working properly, was stick an SD card into radio and save a copy of the working configuration. That will make it much easier to get back to a working config if I change the settings later.

On Sunday, I spent some time working FT8 stations on 10, 15, 20, 30, and 40 meters. I picked up two new countries: Belize and South Africa. I guess the system is working! (The yellow star in the right column means the contact is confirmed.)

Now to figure out how to switch the radio to phone (phone means voice for those unfamiliar with amateur radio lingo) so I can try to participate in Tuesday night’s 10 meter net! It turns out this was easy: press USB-D [D for data] on the touchscreen, select SSB, and the radio switched out of data mode to USB [upper side band] on 10 meters. I was stumped for a few minutes because I had forgotten this new radio actually has a touchscreen. Clearly, I’m not used to this newer technology!

I also learned something new about FT8. I use it to help identify which directions my antenna are strong, and where it is less strong. Looking at locations of stations I contact, I learn more geography. But the new thing I learned is: I can play radio without disturbing my wife while she watches a movie or rests. FT8 is a great activity for people who can’t make unwelcome radio noise in their environment.

Another HamClock? Try HamDash!

I ran across another version of a HamClock. This one is an app served over the web and it is chock full of information of interest to amateur radio operators.

There are several screens available via horizontal tabs across the top of the app window. You’ve got one-click access to the band plan for the United States, WebSDR, contests, weather and safety info (if you allow it to know your location), shortwave stations, amateur radio stations, a live map, and DX spots. Be sure to scroll down because on some tabs, there is a lot more information provided below the fold.

Truly, there is a lot of content provided. Find it at https://hamdash.app/.

Changed My VPN Provider

I have been using NordVPN for several years. NordVPN has almost always worked perfectly for me on my computers and phones. I have no complaints. Well, no complaints until the renewal price showed up in my email: $149.88 for a year of service. Ouch.

So I went shopping. I looked at a few larger providers like Mullvad (cheaper than NordVPN, good reputation, but didn’t work well for me a few years ago when I tried it) and SurfShark (probably the budget choice here). The service I settled on was ProtonVPN as part of a package that includes the ProtonMail account I already have. Price: $119.88 for a year of the Proton Unlimited plan (monthly plan also available). This package includes:

• 500 GB storage

• 1 user

• 15 extra email addresses

• Support for 3 custom email domains

• Unlimited folders and labels

• Unlimited hide-my-email aliases

• Dedicated customer support

• Ultra fast and private VPN

• Encrypted password manager

• Encrypted cloud storage for photos and documents

• Advanced account protection