Welcome to Random Wire issue 199. We are one week away from hitting the 200 issues milestone! I’m not sure why this surprises me but it does. The Random Wire exists because you subscribe to this free newsletter. Thank you, and please share with your radio friends.
1. QRV: Are You Ready?
Random Wire issue 199 is big on AllStarLink this week, including:
an updated how-to for installing to a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machine;
getting a node up on 44Net;
part two of a series on transcribing AllStar nets; and
new apps for AllStar.
If I provided this level of coverage for AllStar every week, my tagline might be: AllStar, All the Time! Fortunately, topics change from week to week.
Random Wire/EtherHam Community Links
EtherHam at https://etherham.com
EtherHam store at https://etherham.printful.me/
Groups.io at https://groups.io/g/EtherHam
GitHub at https://github.com/EtherHamRadio
Random Wire at https://www.randomwire.us/
Random Wire Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RandomWireReview
2. Random Wire and EtherHam
I get asked now and then why I run two publications instead of one. Here’s the short answer.
Random Wire is the journal. It’s where I write about what’s happening — what I built this week, what broke, what I’m noticing, what’s rattling around in my head. It doesn’t have to be finished or tidy. A half-formed thought about digital modes, a detour into geology or fly fishing, a reaction to something going on in the hobby — it all belongs here. When I write this, I’m writing to you, one of 2,500 people who get it in their inbox every Friday.
EtherHam is the workbench. It’s where the ideas from Random Wire actually get built. The full how-to, the firmware quirk that cost me an afternoon, the radio that doesn’t leave the bench until I’ve pushed on it from every angle — that level of detail lives there, not here. If Random Wire tells you I moved my AllStar node onto 44Net this week, EtherHam is where I show you exactly how, mistakes and all.
Short version: read Random Wire to keep up with what I’m doing. Read EtherHam when you’re ready to do it yourself.
3. New on EtherHam
Installing AllStarLink on a Dell Wyse 3040 (2026 Update)
A reader wrote in, stuck on getting Debian Linux onto a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machine. After I responded, I realized my older guidance from June 2023 was quite outdated…so I updated it and published the fresh guide on EtherHam.com.
And then I realized I was simply wrong on some points, so I went to David Gleason’s (NR9V) AllScan.info site for truth and found it. That means if you read the article last Friday evening before 8:30 pm, it had incorrect information. The article as posted now is much better.
If you have a 3040 on the bench you want to dust off, or if can get your hands on a used unit in good shape, it remains a superb platform for building an AllStar node.
Putting My AllStar Node On 44Net
This is the thing that took much of my time this week: moving my AllStar node 588416 from an address on my LAN to a 44Net static IP address. Sounds simple but it wasn’t. I feared this would be too complicated for me so I put this off for months, but it turned out to be a little easier than I expected. Simple? No. I was challenged, but I also achieved a positive outcome.
I moved my AllStarLink node 588416 onto a public 44Net address, nine months after ARDC announced the WireGuard-based 44Net Connect service in December 2025. The article opens by admitting the node already worked fine, so why do this? My motives may be just as interesting as the technical details: learning routing and tunnels by hand rather than in the abstract, owning an address block tied to a call sign instead of renting one from Comcast, and actually occupying address space the hobby already owns rather than admiring it from a distance.
My build centers on a MikroTik hAP ax2 router placed behind an existing GL.iNet Flint 2 router, which achieves complete isolation between 44Net and household traffic without VLANs or a managed switch.
The article closes on the day’s actual lesson: the modern, unfamiliar part worked on the first try, and every real problem was local — port defaults, PoE behavior, and a bug in a config file.
Parts two and three are in the works.
Related: MikroTik routers being attacked. Do a Google search or check here and here.
Automatic Net Logging, Part 2: What Five Live Nets Taught
Over on EtherHam, I’ve published Part 2 of my automatic net logging series, and this one’s about what happens when your code works perfectly in isolation but falls apart against real traffic. I tested my AllStarLink net-detection system against five actual nets and found four separate bugs — the kind that only surface once you throw real repeater audio at something instead of a clean test case. Each one alone just nudged the accuracy down a little; together, they made the whole system unreliable.
The bigger lesson wasn’t about any single bug, though. It’s this: unit tests can tell you every piece works and still miss the failure that only shows up when the pieces interact. Fixing that took real listening, not just better regex. If you’re building anything that has to survive contact with real-world audio, it’s worth a read.
The Anatomy of Remote Assistance over SSH
This is the tale of helping someone get AllStarLink installed on their Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machine, using an SSH reverse tunnel to take control of the terminal on the other end of the pipe. With no desktop environment installed, the usual screen sharing applications were not going to work. On top of this, the user was not an accomplished computer user, so I needed to find the simplest steps he could accomplish to provide me with remote access.
Weekly Reports
Short Stack is even longer this week with the addition of some space-related feeds.
Band Conditions look to be on the mend, so now’s a good time to get on the air and make up for lost time.
Digital Radio News — The M17 Project released a new draft of the M17 specification. AllStarLink’s app_rpt code received more fixes. There’s a new commit for MMDVMHost. And LoRa APRS iGate posted some updates.
Groups.io Digest saw RepeaterBuilder leading the pack with 155 messages, followed by TinySA (85 messages), ARDC 44Net Connect (75 messages), and APRS (46 messages).
Retevis RT85 Cheat Sheet
A subscriber asked if I had a cheat sheet for the Retevis RT85 dual-band handheld radio. I did not…so I made one. There are still a few unresolved or unconfirmed items, but if you have one of these radios, find version 7 of the cheat sheet at https://etherham.com/downloads/#how-to
I have several of these radios so the cheat sheet is a help to me, too. This is one of the easiest dual-band VHF/UHF HTs available that is both reliable and usable. When I checked earlier this week, the price for the 2-pack was about $35 on Amazon. Yes, $35, for two radios, antennas, batteries, desk chargers, belt clips, and hand straps.
Retevis RT85 Handheld Ham Radios, Portable Dual Band Walkie Talkies, 2 Pack. Emergency Two Way Radio Long Range, Built in VFO, 200CH, VOX, FM, DTMF, Flashlight, 1400mAh, for Survival Preppers Off-Grid (this is an affiliate link)
Creating the cheat sheet was an interesting exercise because some published information was missing or conflicting. The Retevis RT85 cheat sheet joins another cheat sheet I made for the RT3S when flashed with OpenGD77 firmware. Both are in the Downloads section of EtherHam.com: https://etherham.com/downloads/.
New Reference Pages
I’ve added some Reference Guide pages to the EtherHam site. The first set are:
Find these in the main menu under the Downloads selection. Please let me know if you have suggested edits, or if there are topics for which you’d like a simple reference sheet.
4. New Amateur Radio Applications for AllStar
There is so much going on today with all-in-one dashboards! What a great time to be a ham.
One of the newest suites comes from Terry Claiborne KC3KMV. Terry first contacted me about a year ago about IAX and AllStar nodes. He dove in and hasn’t looked back. He writes:
I have a deep background in the IS field, spanning everything from Assembler, Fortran, and COBOL to C, B, C++, Unix, and Turbo Pascal. I retired at 55 and am turning 70 next year. My journey into this space started with HamVoip before I transitioned to ASL3. When I first emailed you about creating a user in
iax.conf, it sparked a deep dive, and I haven't stopped since. My main goal now is to share different options and presentations to make things easier for others in the community.
Find his Amateur Radio Applications listed on his QRZ page:
Alltune2 is a high-performance utility for BM, TGIF, YSF, D-Star, P25, NXDN, AllStar, and EchoLink nodes on ASL3.
AllStar View is a standalone, read-only web monitor for AllStarLink 3 / app_rpt systems.
AllStar Connect is a web dashboard for controlling and monitoring AllStarLink and EchoLink connections on an ASL3 node.
DVSwitch Cockpit is a modern web dashboard for watching what your ASL3 / DVSwitch node is doing in real time.
AllStar Web Transceiver — Windows is a native AllStarLink client for Windows.
AllStar Web Transceiver — Android is a native AllStarLink client for Android 12+.
I installed the AllStar Web Transceiver on my Windows laptop. I was curious if it would install because my laptop runs on an ARM processor, but it installed just fine via the Microsoft Store. I’m listening to the W6EK Coffee Break Net using Terry’s AWT (my abbreviation) application while I type this.
It sounds great:
AWT is pretty convenient. Once you add some stations to the Favorites list, a click of the mouse and you’re connected. If you install AWT, be sure to connect to node 55553 over Web Transceiver mode to test your audio. Mine returned with “just about right.”
The dark mode is particularly nice:
I’ll be trying some of the other applications as time permits. I’m particularly interested in AllTune 2, billed as “One Dashboard. All Your Networks.” That sounds like a very practical way to use a Raspberry Pi.
Kudos to Terry for providing some great tools to the amateur radio community. Well done.
5. A Touchscreen for Your Physical AllStar Node?
Speaking of AllStar, how about this pull request for touchscreen support in the wonderful AllScan app! See: https://github.com/davidgsd/AllScan/pull/32/
Add a new /simple/ interface focused on quick, touch-friendly favorite node control. The interface is designed to behave more like a channelized radio than the full AllScan control page: favorites are shown as large channel buttons, and the normal workflow is to select one channel/node at a time.
When a channel is selected, the Simple interface uses the existing connect API with autodisconnect enabled so the local node is first disconnected from other nodes before connecting to the selected favorite. If additional connections are still present, the page shows a warning state and offers a disconnect-all control instead of treating that as the normal single-channel state.
Having a compact AllStar device that incorporates a touchscreen and simple user interface seems like a winning combination. It will be interesting to watch how this develops.
6. Interesting: SDR Without a PC
OrcSDR: Why folks no longer need a $650 SDR tells the tale:
The OrcSDR project centers on the M5Stack Tab5, a battery-powered handheld tablet powered by a dual-core RISC-V ESP32-P4 processor. By plugging an RTL-SDR directly into the Tab5's USB host port, the ESP32 handles the heavy lifting: it processes the raw digital radio stream, demodulates audio, and renders a live, touch-responsive spectrum and waterfall display on a 5-inch color screen without a PC.
This is literally a tablet with an RTL-SDR dongle plugged into it:
The simplicity of this approach, the compactness of the configuration, and the capability of the RTL-SDR makes this a very interesting project indeed.
7. These Are a Few of My Favorite AllStar Nets
Set that title to the tune of My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music. Is that stuck in your head now? You’re welcome!
WA7ABU in Salem, Oregon — AllStar node 543260 — A daily tech net at 10 am Pacific. Topical nets each evening. A community filled with rich skills and experiences. The daily tech net is also linked in listen-only mode through AllStar 55915 and AllStar 57945.
W6EK in Auburn, California — AllStar node 51018 — A daily social net, the Coffee Break Net, from 7:30 am to 10 am Pacific. An All-Nodes tech net on Monday at 6 pm Pacific. And just a friendly bunch of hams who know each other well. AllStar node 51018.
PSRG in Seattle, Washington — AllStar node 2462 — Daily social nets at 9 am, noon, and 9 pm Pacific. Also a daily Boater’s Net that starts at 7:47 am Pacific (that time must be a nod to the Boeing 747 aircraft).
8. Another Logo Design
I’m trying — inexpensively — a variation on the EtherHam logo, with an order for vinyl decals from Sticker Mule. These are “two-fers” that tell others you are an EtherHam who enjoys tinkering with technology.
Custom stickers like this are the cheapest way to check the resolution of the design. My cost for 30 decals is $48, delivered. That works out to, what, $1.60 per decal? My calculator says yes.
I can hold it up to a ball cap to see how it looks. I ordered them a bit larger than hat size because I also want to see how they look on T-shirts and sweatshirts. At 4” × 2.25”, they will work well on water bottles and the back window of the pickup truck.
These are “kiss cut” vinyl stickers. What does kiss cut mean? It’s a printing and cutting technique where a blade cuts through only the top layer while leaving the protective backing paper completely intact. Peel and stick. Done. Vinyl is more resistant to washing (think: reusable water bottles) and weather. For a sticker that might go on a laptop, vinyl will also be more resistant to damage from sliding the computer in and out of a bag.
I’m looking for feedback. If you like this, let me know and I’ll add some items to the EtherHam Store. I’d like to get a coffee mug that stares back at me with ”I tinker with technology”.
9. Transcribing Examples
These are excerpts of summaries produced by ChatGPT from my Transcript Viewer captures. Functionally, I specify the start and stop times in the Transcript Viewer page, run the query, then download the resulting text file.
I feed that text file to ChatGPT with this prompt:
Attached is a transcript of an amateur radio net, captured off the air and transcribed automatically by speech recognition. The transcription is imperfect. Call signs are frequently garbled: sometimes spelled out phonetically ("November 6 Quebec Delta Yankee" = N6QDY), sometimes hyphenated ("K-E-6-R-A-X" = KE6RAX), sometimes mangled outright.
Please give me: 1. Net control station — callsign and name, if identifiable. 2. Stations that checked in, in order, with names where mentioned. Reconstruct each call sign as best you can. Mark any you are uncertain about with a trailing question mark. 3. A summary of the net in 3-5 sentences. 4. Anything notable: announcements, technical topics, traffic passed.
Do not invent callsigns. If a station's identity is genuinely unclear, say so rather than guessing.
W6EK Coffee Break Net, Friday morning, 9/4/26
The entire AI-processed transcript is italicized below:
The Coffee Break Net was hosted by Tom, NN6H, on the W6EK repeater and associated AllStarLink/EchoLink connections. The net followed its usual informal rag-chew format, beginning with quick check-ins and later moving into longer conversations about weather, amateur-radio networking, AllStar nodes, QSO1, and personal activities. Stations checked in from across the United States and internationally, including the United Kingdom, Wales, Idaho, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Texas, and Hawaii. The net closed shortly after 10:00 a.m. Pacific, with Brian, AI6US, identified as the next day’s net control operator.
Announcements and Net Information
The net is sponsored by the Sierra Foothills Amateur Radio Club.
It normally runs every morning from 7:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Pacific.
The primary repeater is W6EK, with AllStar node 51018 and EchoLink access.
Tom mentioned the club’s support for the Auburn food bank, in connection with National Food Bank Day.
Brian AI6US was announced as the Saturday net control.
Technical Discussion
The most substantial technical discussion involved:
QSO1, an application used for connecting to AllStar systems.
Possible conflicts when running multiple AllStar nodes or applications behind the same IP address.
The IAX port, 4569, and the need to avoid port conflicts.
The distinction between using QSO1 in IAX/node mode versus WebRTC/web-transceiver mode.
Aaron W1ATV was troubleshooting behavior involving his AllStar node and another node apparently using the same credentials/node number.
Greg reported apparent audio dropouts that occurred in QSO1 while RF audio continued.
Compare that AI-cleaned summary with a raw transcript — errors and all — from the WA7ABU Tech Net from September 8, 2026. You can find that on EtherHam.com at https://etherham.com/automatic-net-logging-part-2-what-five-live-nets-taught/#what-does-a-raw-transcript-look-like.
10. Gadgets
You wouldn’t think a headset would be related to AllStar, but this one is. I bought a Retevis headset, not really knowing what would arrive. Thirty bucks later, this arrived:
Retevis EHK012 Two Way Radio Headset with Mic,for RT22 RT68 RT86,1 Pack
This was especially chancy, since Amazon notes: “Frequently Returned Item: Consider linking to similar products with lower return rates.” No affiliate link in the product link above because Amazon doesn’t like frequently returned items.
But I took a chance anyway and am not disappointed. This set of cans feels pretty robust. The microphone in the Amazon photo is not covered, but mine arrived with a foam cover over the microphone element.
The K1 connector works on my Retevis radios, of course, but also on other radios with a K1 interface. I’ve tried it on my AllStar node 588411 built on a Computer Module 4 platform with AllScan UCI90 interface and it worked fine…after I figured out I had to turn the volume up on the UCI90.
Comfortable? Not really. These firm-fitting headphones sit very securely on my medium head. They also isolate sound quite well. If you need to hear outside sounds for situational awareness, these are not for you. But if you need sound isolation and a secure fit, these are fantastic.
I get a little bit of hiss (maybe better described as grungy hum) on my transmitted signal but it is not objectionable and does not interfere. If I was working a bike race with an HT while motorized traffic was zipping by — and if I was safely positioned away from traffic — these headphones would be a top choice.
Verdict: a viable choice for a noisy environment, where sound isolation and a firm fit trumps comfort.
11. More on My FTM-300DR Shutdown Problem
The same day Random Wire 198 published, I made a trip to Port Orchard, Washington. The Yaesu FTM-300DR was set up for APRS operation on 144.390 MHz on VFO B, as always. The antenna was the temporary “Justin Case” mag-mount COMPACtenna, the one that I put into service a week earlier because with the old Comet antenna, the radio was shutting off when it beaconed.
And wouldn’t you know it, but the radio shut off when it beaconed, even with the COMPACtenna. I powered the radio up and watched it while I drove, and twice more it shut down when it beaconed.
Two completely different antennas and feedlines, and the identical problem. This points away from the antenna system and shifts my attention to the power delivery system.
Final update: it wasn’t the antenna. I even tried a third antenna with the same symptom appearing. So it was time to test the power delivery and see if that affected the radio’s behavior. That was easy to test by swapping out the 12VDC power cord. The result? Problem solved. Somewhere in the old cord there is a bad connection or corrosion I just didn’t see.
12. QRT: End Transmission
Helping a Ham Get a New AllStar Node on the Air
I was honored to help a fellow ham figure out how to load Debian on his little Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machine and get AllStar running. For those of us who have done this several/many times, it’s easy to forget how utterly daunting it is to attempt this for the first time. As the other ham and I exchanged emails, I could hear his frustration through his words. But he persevered and succeeded. I have to admit that it feels pretty good to help someone experience success.
Color me surprised when I learned that Chuck bought me some coffees!
Thank You to Hunter Inman and Steve Stroh
I have really enjoyed fiddling with Hunter’s creative solution to transcribing net traffic carried by AllStar. He is moving forward on this with a revised system that is running autonomously now. See it in action at https://kk7nqn.net/viewer.html.
A big thank you to Hunter Inman KK7NQN and Steve Stroh N8GNJ (Zero Retries newsletter) for their kind words about the work I’ve been doing with Hunter’s script (see https://www.zeroretries.org/i/212220420/update-on-kk7nqn-ai-net-logger).
#APRSThursday
I checked into #APRSThursday last week from my LoRa tracker as KJ7T-3:
HamClock OHB Beta Has APRS
Great to see APRS in the HamClock display. It even picked up my portable LoRa APRS station (KJ7T-3) on a LilyGo T-Deck Plus.
Eagle-eyed readers may notice the Starship Enterprise on the display. September 8 was Star Trek Day and the HamClock software includes a built-in easter egg to commemorate it. That was a fun discovery.
Jupiter-Moon Conjunction
If you happened to be looking at the pre-dawn sky on September 8th, you might have seen what one of my radio friends remarked on: a bright star next to the Moon. But it was actually Jupiter, not a star. If memory serves, we saw a Venus-Moon conjunction back in May. It was easy to see the Jupiter-Moon conjunction because most of the Moon’s disc was dark.
13. Closing Reflections
Amateur Radio: More Than Just a Hobby
When the attacks on September 11, 2001, knocked out cell towers, police and fire radio systems — as well as the city’s own emergency command center in 7 World Trade Center — hundreds of amateur radio operators stepped in. RACES and ARES volunteers ran health-and-welfare and medical traffic, supported the Red Cross and Salvation Army, and shadowed city officials so they could keep communicating with each other when nothing else worked. It’s one of the clearest examples of why “emergency” is built into so much of this hobby’s service tradition. We “play radio” because we enjoy it, but we also give back to the communities where we live, work, and play.
Balancing Radio and Life
When I drove to Portland on Sunday to work on putting node 588416 on my 44Net address, I had a feeling something wasn’t right back home with my wife, who needs care around the clock. Nothing to point to yet — just a feeling — so I started packing up to head back to the lake house. Before we’d wrapped up everything we needed to do that day on the node move, my daughter texted: “Dad, something’s up with Mom.” The feeling had been right.
What followed was a 911 call and another ambulance ride by Mason County’s great EMS folks to an Olympia hospital. There, the doctor was certain he needed interventional radiology to assist, but nobody was available. Then came the two-hour scramble as the ER staff looked for another hospital to treat her. Finally, a very experienced nurse popped in and asked: would you mind if I try to fix this? Please do, I said. Ten minutes later, we were arranging transport back home because the problem was fully resolved. I have to say it: nurses rule.
Next week: issue 200!
With that, I’ll say 73. Remember to touch a radio every day!
