Random Wire 177: WiRES-X 2.0 is here, what should you do?
April 10, 2026: New compact HF wire antenna. AI on my Raspberry Pi. Tracking down a Bluetooth device. AllStar on my Mac. Hams Over IP. Gear. Short Stack. Propagation digest. Radio history.
Welcome
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.
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.
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.
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.
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):
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.Type
ECHOusing the keypad. This technique uses your hotspot for the ECHO test.Confirm/save by pressing the OK key.
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.
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!
Tom, another SSH program you may want to check out is my current favorite Termius.com. It is multi platform and will sync across your systems with a subscription. They will give you a 1 week subscription free up front. If you install across your devices during the trial, all your connections and login keys will sync. After that, it runs fine on the free plan. I use it on my iPad all the time.
73,
Tom
WB8OUE
Wow Tom. Thank you for your kind words and recommendation. It's an honour to appear in your publication. I feel you are one of the hardest working writer/curators in the world of amateur Radio. I keep returning to your posts to soak up the information.
And Cheers for the tip on the case for the RigExpert. I was looking for something just like this.
Keep up the great work!
Christian
G5DOC