Random Wire Review 100: July 26, 2024

A mini PC instead of a Raspberry Pi 5. POTA people to the rescue? Speech to text for Asterisk. Miscellaneous radio (two Meshtastic nodes) and some non-radio topics, including Yellowstone and gold!

Milestones

As I schedule issue 100 (a milestone!) of the Random Wire Review for release on Friday, July 26, 2024, I note another milestone: my subscribers just shot past 1,000 people.

I am humbled that so many people are interested enough to subscribe. I am thankful and grateful to you for sharing this journey with me. I also admit I feel a bit of pressure to continue to improve my content and style. However, it’s a pretty good feeling!

Thank you for subscribing and for letting me know when something is, or is not, interesting.

Sincerely yours,

Tom KJ7T

Special note on audio captures of QSOs

I’ve been capturing audio of QSOs over AllStarLink (using both ASL and SHARI nodes), DMR, Yaesu System Fusion, WIRES-X, Echolink, and analog RF. I’ve been planning on sharing examples of audio quality over these various systems. However, it has come to my attention that this may not be legal in every part of the United States. Because of this, I am suspending this activity until I can ascertain whether capturing and sharing such conversations is legal.

This is a confusing, unclear topic. For example, the FCC says:

The FCC and the Communications Act do not forbid certain types of interception and disclosure of radio communications, including…Divulgence of transmissions by amateur radio or citizen band radio operators.

The statutory basis for the FCC’s summary appears to be 47 U.S. Code § 605 - Unauthorized publication or use of communications, which includes this statement:

This section shall not apply to the receiving, divulging, publishing, or utilizing the contents of any radio communication which is transmitted by any station for the use of the general public, which relates to ships, aircraft, vehicles, or persons in distress, or which is transmitted by an amateur radio station operator or by a citizens band radio operator.

Seems abundantly clear at the federal level. It becomes murky, though, at the state level because each state treats the interception of wireless communications differently. Essentially, a state can’t have regulations that are less protective than federal law, but it can have regulations that are more protective.

In defense of recording and sharing audio clips of amateur radio conversations, I would say that (a) we have no expectation of privacy when we are engaged in amateur radio communications, and (b) because there is no actual or implied sense of privacy in such communications, all amateur radio operators consent to being overheard.

Generally, it is permissible to record conversations if all parties to the conversation are aware and consent to the interception of the communication.

There is a kicker, though, and that has to do with obtaining personal gain from recording and divulging such conversations. Since no subscription is charged for Random Wire products or services, I feel comfortable saying no personal gain accrues from this activity.

Clear? Not to me. So I’ll hold off on this activity until it becomes clear to me that it is legal to capture and share amateur radio transmissions.

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Contents: Issue 100

1. Why Not a Mini PC Instead of a Raspberry Pi 5?

     Context: an AllStarLink node

     A note on power consumption

2. Call the POTA Guys!

3. Wish List: Speech to Text for Asterisk

4. Following Up

     Digipeater on the cheap?

5. Miscellaneous (radio)

     Flying a repeater with a balloon

     New outdoor Meshtastic node

     New Meshtastic node from Rokland Tech

     Amazon Sidewalk network

     SkywarnPlus on virtual node 588411

     How about some amateur radio research?

     Heard neighbors on the Alaska Morning Net

6. Other (not radio)

     Remember the rotary engine?

     Solid state batteries are here

     Audacity 3.6.0 is released

     AI on your own computer

     I thought I had the best software, but…

     The Yellowstone supervolcano

     Podcast promoters

     New fighters for the Portland National Guard

7. Closing Notes

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1. Why Not a Mini PC Instead of a Raspberry Pi 5?

I’m wondering: why not a mini PC instead of a Raspberry Pi 5? I note that a Beelink mini PC on Amazon specs out better than a Canakit RPi 5 kit at close to the same price. (In fact, I purchased the mini PC for a dollar less than the RPi kit by clipping a coupon on Amazon! I already have a different Beelink product and it has been a solid performer.)

The N100 CPU in the mini PC is faster than the RPi 5 and the mini PC has more RAM and more storage. The N100 has four cores running at 100 MHz but that speed can increase to 3.4 GHz, based on demand:

The Intel Processor N100 is a mobile processor with 4 cores…It is part of the Intel Processor lineup, using the Alder Lake-N architecture with BGA 1264. Processor N100 has 6 MB of L3 cache and operates at 100 MHz by default, but can boost up to 3.4 GHz, depending on the workload.

Similarly, the RPi 5 has four cores running at 2.4 GHz:

The Raspberry Pi 5 features a Broadcom BCM2712 SoC with four ARM Cortex-A76 CPU cores clocked at 2.4GHz. This lets it run circles around the Pi 4, which uses older ARM Cortex-A72 cores that are considerably slower than Cortex-A76 cores even when both are operating at the same clock speed.

If you’d like to dive a bit deeper into comparing the N100 against the Raspberry Pi 5, check out Raspberry Pi 5 squares off against a scrawny Intel CPU. Also, Explaining Computers has a YouTube where he evaluates the performance of both platforms to demonstrate how they compare:

I think the five reasons to go with the RPi 5 are:

1. You need access to what the GPIO pins offer. You don’t have that kind of flexibility with the mini PC.

2. You want to use an MMDVM hat (see What You Need to Know About MMDVM Hotspots for more about MMDVM) for a radio interface. If you want an RF-based node that uses an MMDVM hat, the mini PC is not the right choice.

3. You need the lowest power consumption. The RPi 5 (or an old Dell Wyse 3040 thin client) is going to consume less juice than the mini PC.

4. When a single-purpose machine meets your needs. (This statement is probably more accurate for the RPi models that came before the RPi 5. The RPi 5 is certainly a more capable processor than previous models.)

5. It may be less expensive than a mini PC.

If you don’t need those things — or rather, if you need a wider range of capabilities — it’s hard to argue against the mini PC.

A note on power consumption

The Beelink device includes a 12V/3A adapter. That calculates out to 36 watts maximum. Reportedly, the Beelink idles at about 10 watts.

The RPi’s power consumption, as measured by CNXSOFT, is 8.8 watts max. It consumes 1.7 watts with the power switched off. Idle for the RPi 5 was 3 watts in headless mode with wifi and 3.6 watts with monitor, keyboard and mouse, Ethernet, and wifi.

For comparison, here is what Dell says about the Dell Wyse 3040 thin client that runs my desktop node 588412:

“Extremely compact and energy efficient, the Wyse 3040 runs on less than 4 watts and offers many years of efficient, secure and high-performance service.”

I don’t know how long the Dell Wyse 3040 will last. It is already long in the tooth. Nevertheless, it has been a stable, long-lasting platform that is well-suited for running a radio-less AllStarLink node.

Context: an AllStarLink node

Here’s my example. To build an AllStarLink node, I could go with a Raspberry Pi 5 and ASL3. That would get me the new control console. Or I could buy the Beelink mini PC for a few dollars less than the Canakit and get twice as much RAM, an M.2 slot on the motherboard, and 500 Gb of SSD storage. Replace the supplied Windows 11 Pro operating system with Debian 12 and you would have a machine that would likely run circles around the Pi.

Even better, you could virtualize an AllStarLink node on the Beelink, thus giving you a W11Pro machine that can be used for other things. Having a backup computer that also runs ASL3 could be very handy indeed.

My proof of concept for this is my node 588411 which has been running 24x7 for several weeks in a virtual machine on my home server. That node runs as a hub, i.e., it has no radio. I use my SIP phone to connect to/through it. The audio is clean. (I have the node automatically announcing the time at the top and bottom of the hour.)

---

Here is an example of AllStarLink audio as heard through my Cisco SPA525G SIP phone. What you hear in the recording is audio coming through the speakerphone. Recording was done with a Zoom H4n Po handy recorder held about 12 inches from the Cisco phone. Dave KK7LMD was filling in as temporary net control for the Alaska Morning Net and you can hear how wonderfully clear his audio is. A little later, a mobile station using RF radio checked in. I did process the audio to normalize the audio levels but I did not apply any noise reduction.

This section was edited to remove the audio clip. See the note at the beginning of this issue for the explanation of why.

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Where this idea falls apart is if you want an MMDVM hat so that you can use a handheld radio to connect to the node. I do wonder if a CM108 fob in the Beelink would function with a virtualized node, though. In fact, I wonder if the HotSpotRadio - USB would work with a virtualized node, or perhaps one of the ANR kits by David NR9V.

I’m sure the ANR devices would work with the Beelink if the operating system on the Beelink was replaced with Debian 12. After all, my desktop node 588412 runs on a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client running Debian 10. Seems like I could test this pretty easily.

Similarly, I do have a HotSpotRadio - USB device that I could use for testing.

What did I do? I bought the Beelink mini PC running Windows 11, then I installed VirtualBox on it. To run VirtualBox I also had to install Python and some dependencies on the mini PC. I exported a copy of my 588411 node virtual machine and imported it into VirtualBox on the mini PC.

Did it work?

So did it work? Did running node 588411 in a virtual machine on the mini PC actually work. Yes, it did. When I ran the node on the mini PC, it worked fine after I changed the network settings to match the network hardware on the mini PC. Allmon3 works on the mini, as does Allscan.

An advantage to the mini PC when moving from place to place is it is easier to configure networking in the mini PC. My model of Dell Wyse 3040 does not have the wireless networking board that came in some versions of this platform. In contrast, wifi is built into the mini PC.

A variation of this theme would be to simply put a copy of the virtual machine on my laptop. This is where virtualization becomes a powerful tool because it means I don’t have to buy more hardware to operate more machines. It also means that my node is already set up and ready to go with me. I’m looking forward to trying this, particularly with the HotSpotRadio-USB device!

Installed to the laptop

In fact, what the heck. I went ahead and installed VirtualBox on the laptop. This mean that I also ran into the “missing Python dependencies” issue but that was easily solved by following these video instructions:

After that, I installed the pywin32 package from the command terminal:

And then I updated pip:

And VirtualBox is now running on the laptop:

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2. Call the POTA Guys!

Recently, I caught part of net of folks in Texas, with fewer participants from other parts of the country. Most of the fellows were ex-military. The part that made me sit up and take notice is when they were describing amateur radio operators as useless in an emergency. In their deployments, they had never worked with ham radio people, and from that, they concluded that there really wasn’t a place for hams in emergency response situations.

Huh.

That is so different from my experience. In Washington and Oregon — the two states where I’ve done most of my radio operating — amateur radio is often a key part of emergency response plans. Many clubs drill for such situations. Many counties have close links to groups of amateurs in case those skills are needed.

I suppose this may simply reflect how local authorities view amateur radio. Maybe they don’t know, or have forgotten, some of the lessons from Katrina:

• https://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/docs/advisory/hkip/GSpeakers060306/ACT1045.pdf

• https://mst.rice.edu/PHYS501/SPR2007Papers/ORTMANKatrina.pdf

• https://www.lobservateur.com/2020/09/02/ham-radio-operator-reflects-on-hurricane-katrina-15-years-later/

One complaint I heard on the net was about the kind of radio operator who had an overblown sense of his or her own importance. They spoke of “people in yellow vests” showing up at the scene of accidents or emergencies and then trying to direct others. I have seen that before. I get it. However, those folks seem to be the exception, not the rule. I don’t think “people in yellow vests” adequately describes the approximately 750,000 licensed amateurs in the United States.

One thing they said had some real meat to it, though. In an emergency, one of them said, “call the POTA guys!” Parks On The Air operators have portable stations that are ready to deploy. Those operators are used to taking their station to another location, setting up, and getting on the air quickly. This is one of the things about POTA we rarely talk about. We know we perform in a stressful situation to the level we’ve practiced. POTA operators do this all the time.

If you’ve been on the fence about POTA, you might consider how it helps you keep your station and your skills sharp and ready to go if needed in an emergency. And it’s a fun way to practice your radio skills.

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3. Wish List: Speech to Text for Asterisk

A useful adjunct for AllStarLink would be a speech-to-text service for Asterisk. There is at least one project published for this, but it is designed for slightly older versions of Asterisk, not the very recent version included in ASL3.

This package contains an example Node.js program that uses the Asterisk External Application Protocol (AEAP) to facilitate external speech to text translation in Asterisk 18.12.0+ and 19.4.0+.

Since I’m not finding an appropriate package for Asterisk 20, I tried using Otter.ai on my smartphone to convert speech to text. The results aren’t entirely useless but they are sometimes rather amusing.

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4. Following up…

Digipeater on the cheap?

I mentioned in issue 98 my interest in setting up a digipeater at home. This device looks very interesting, especially for less than $70:

• PLXDigi - APRS Digipeater

The PLXDigi does not include an Ethernet port so it is intended to digipeat RF signals. This might make a nice little fill-in APRS digi.

The WX3 devices do include an Ethernet port so they would work for i-gating traffic.

• WX3in1 Mini - APRS Advanced Digipeater/I-Gate

• WX3in1 Plus 2.0 - APRS Advanced Digipeater/I-Gate

Differences between the two WX3 units include:

• Mini is plastic, Plus is metal body

• 100g weight for the Mini, 270g for the Plus

• 256Kb flash in the Mini, 512Kb in the Plus

• One RS-232 port in the Mini, two in the Plus

• No thermometer port in the Mini, one in the Plus

• APRS packet rates more limited in the Mini

• No APRS-IS mini server in the Mini, present in the Plus

Based on all the above, an RF-only fill-in digi could be made with the PLXDigi. Otherwise, the WX3in1 Plus 2.0 sounds like the way to go.

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5. Miscellaneous Radio

Flying a repeater with a balloon

I’ve wondered how hard it would be to send up a small, battery powered repeater, or perhaps a Meshtastic node, on a weather balloon. It can be done. It has been done.

This came to mind as I read about amateurs using drones to take antennas aloft. That seemed like an expensive and chancy approach to temporarily getting and antenna “up there.”

And I know this is not an original idea. Just search Google for “antenna attached to balloon” and you’ll find a ton of resources!

A few of the most helpful resources I found are: Laws of Flying a Weather Balloon and Has someone ever attempted to attach a repeater to a balloon/drone in order to increase range? You could do something similar with an RC plane or drone, said “AustinGroovy” on Reddit:

Years ago we used a Kenwood dual-band ham HT in cross-band mode, wrapped in towel, rubber-banded to a Navistar 40 RC plane, flew up to 400' and flew figure-8's for 45 minutes. Worked great until we ran out of gas.

The UK High Altitude Society has a great link to launch your thinking on high-altitude radio play: A Beginners Guide to High Altitude Ballooning

Seems like this kind of thing would make for a great collaborative project between an amateur radio club and a high school class. You would not need a license like you do with a drone (at least a drone with sufficient payload capacity to lift a radio). It should be relatively safe if you tether the balloon.

Another use case could be working an event or an emergency where you need line-of-sight communications but local topography gets in the way. Lofting an antenna for several hours isn’t practical with a drone but could be accomplished with a tethered balloon. I’ve worked a few bicycle races and comms were always a bit sketchy. I imagine radio communications would have worked much better if I had been able to get an antenna 100 feet up in the air!

Also, check out Steely-eyed Balloon Men at https://www.ve7nfr.com/pico-balloons.html. Their most recent article covers a high-altitude launch with APRS, a crossband repeater, and camera on July 7, 2024.

New outdoor Meshtastic node

I purchased a weatherproof Mestastic node called…well, wait a minute, hold the phone. The new node ran for a few hours and then died. I’ll hold off on talking about this until I can get this resolved with the vendor.

New Meshtastic node from Rokland Tech

Meanwhile, I did it again: I ordered up another Meshtastic node. I’m excited about this one as it checks a bunch of boxes for me.

• RAK device? Check.

• GPS? Check.

• Pocketable? Check.

• Bigger battery? Check.

It is a RAKwireless WisMesh Pocket All-in-one Meshtastic Handheld 915 Mhz Radio with LoRa Antenna & GPS pre-ordered from Rokland Tech. The shorter name is the WisMesh Pocket node.

This device should consume less power than most of my Meshtastic nodes and it has a larger battery than some. It’s compact. It has an acceleration sensor (accelerometer) so you can set the display to go off after a few seconds and it will come back on as soon as you move the device. Since displays consume a lot of power, that feature alone will save some juice. It has an external physical switch to turn the unit on and off.

It’s not here yet. When it arrives, I’ll be sure to take some photos for you.

Amazon Sidewalk network

File this one under: did you know that LoRa radio is also used by Amazon?

Let’s start with a description of Amazon Sidewalk:

Amazon Sidewalk is a shared network that helps devices like Amazon Echo devices, Ring Security Cams, outdoor lights, motion sensors, and Tile trackers work better at home and beyond the front door. When enabled, Sidewalk can unlock unique benefits for your device, support other Sidewalk devices in your community, and even locate pets or lost items.

I also note that like Meshtastic, Amazon Sidewalk utilizes LoRa radio:

The Sidewalk network is designed as a long-range shared community network. It works over three existing wireless radio technologies — Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for short distances, LoRa for long range, and frequency shift keying using 900MHz.

That’s pretty interesting, especially in an Internet-of-Things context as this means trackers of people, pets, and things. Where might this go? Who knows, but maybe only Amazon has enough widely distributed hardware to make something like this work.

Personally, I’m intrigued by the potential for an intersection of Meshtastic and Sidewalk via LoRa radio. I haven’t heard of that happening but I’ll be watching for it.

SkywarnPlus on virtual node 588411

I followed the steps at https://github.com/Mason10198/SkywarnPlus to install and configure SkywarnPlus on my ASL3 node running in a virtual machine (node 588411). It didn’t work for me. It should have, based on the documentation:

SkywarnPlus works with all major distributions, including AllstarLink, HAMVOIP, myGMRS, GMRS Live, and more.

Testing generated no audio and I saw nothing reaching the Asterisk CLI. We also received a heat warning today that my Amazon Echo devices relayed to me, but node 588411 did not announce it.

I did not find instructions on uninstalling SkywarnPlus so I’ve reverted my settings. Specifically, I rolled back all of my rpt.conf settings, removed the crontab entry, renamed the config.yaml file, and rebooted. The node is operating fine, just as it was before I tried to get SkywarnPlus working.

I’d like to try this again at some point when I have more time to figure out why I couldn’t get it to work. I missed something along the way, I’m sure.

UPDATE: This week, an automated installer was added to SkywarnPlus. I’ll give that a try. Find the project at https://github.com/Mason10198/SkywarnPlus.

How about some amateur radio research?

You will find interesting content at the following links which I list alphabetically, not in any order of importance:

• AMRAD: Amateur Radio Research and Development Corporation

• AMSAT: Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation

• ARDC: Amateur Radio Digital Communications

• ARHAB: Amateur Radio High Altitude Ballooning

• HamSCI

These are great starting points if you’re curious about the scientific and experimental sides of amateur radio.

Heard neighbors on the Alaska Morning Net

I was listening in during the Alaska Morning Net on AllStarLink node 29332 on July 19th and heard several people from around the region, some near, some far. Dave KK7HLD served well as fill-in net control, keeping the conversation going. He is a near neighbor, just a few miles north of me in Portland, Oregon.

6. Other (Not Radio)

Remember the rotary engine?

This note is for those of us who are fascinated by mechanical things. This article reminded me of the old Rotax rotary engine but this particular evolution of the rotary idea seems like it might actually work well. It marries a single piston to a planetary gear. Very interesting in a mechanical sense: This Super Small, Rotary Combustion Engine Could Power Your Next Motorcycle

Solid state batteries are here

Solid state batteries is a very interesting topic. What is a solid state battery? Says Wikipedia:

A solid-state battery is an electrical battery that uses a solid electrolyte for ionic conductions between the electrodes, instead of the liquid or gel polymer electrolytes found in conventional batteries.

Compared to lithium ion batteries, solid state batteries are expected to be lighter, safer, and last longer. This is good news if you do POTA or SOTA. It’s also good news if you use a laptop computer, carry a smartphone, or use an e-bike, as less weight and more safety will benefit a wide range of consumers.

The safety aspect is particularly meaningful when you consider how a thermal runaway condition in a lithium ion battery can have devastating outcomes. Lithium-ion battery fires are a growing public safety concern. Lithium ion batteries are everywhere.

I know what you’re probably thinking: “Oh great, another way for manufacturers and vendors to dig into my wallet again!” That is undoubtedly true. In this case, though, I think the benefits will be worth it.

I’ve had a few incidents with lithium ion batteries in smartphones. In one, the swelling battery broke the phone back. In another, the battery started to overheat; in that instance, I was able to pry off the back and remove the battery to an airtight, fireproof container. Either of those situations could have turned ugly very quickly.

There is a good article on Jalopnik about a new power station built around a solid-state battery pack. This is real. You can buy a solid-state power station right now. The Jalopnik article includes a helpful video but if you take that dive, expect to also hear a pitch about the sponsor, Ground News.

See also:

• https://www.topgear.com/car-news/future-tech/volkswagens-made-a-breakthrough-solid-state-batteries

• https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/ceracharge-solid-state-battery-power-sluggish-apple-tdk/

Solid state batteries are a big deal.

Audacity 3.6.01 is released

Recent changes to Audacity are described in the change log. I have to say I continue to be amazed at this free sound editing tool. As my skill in using it grows, I’m usually able to produce good quality audio files. I think the limitation in Audacity is me, not the software! What a great tool is Audacity.

Between the time I captured this note and published issue 100, Audacity released version 3.6.1 (see the change log).

AI on your own computer

If you wanted to experiment with artificial intelligence, there’s a project available on GitHub that looks interesting: GraphRAG: New tool for complex data discovery now on GitHub

GraphRAG uses a large language model (LLM) to automate the extraction of a rich knowledge graph from any collection of text documents.

I thought I had the best software, but…

A browser that minimizes memory use, a “search everywhere” app, Microsoft PowerToys, and 7-Zip: 7 Apps That Every Windows PC Should Have (And Why)

I use PowerToys and 7-Zip. I’m going to add Lightshot to my technology stack.

The Yellowstone supervolcano

Here is a very interesting article about the Yellowstone supervolcano…at least it was interesting to me, with my geology background! I think most of us don’t realize how tremendously huge the Yellowstone system is.

• The Yellowstone supervolcano destroyed an ecosystem but saved it for us

Back in 2020, an article was published in the journal Geology that identified two super-eruptions from the Yellowstone hotspot. This information was recast by several media sources to be easier for non-technical folks to understand.

If this kind of information is interesting to you, you might enjoy this video by Nick Zentner of Central Washington University. Nick has a very different and engaging style. (Yes, I know this isn’t radio, but it is about disasters, and maybe that broadly intersects with amateur radio.) If you watch the YouTube, the Yellowstone segment doesn’t start until 17 minutes 25 seconds into the video.

The Yellowstone hotspot has special meaning for me because I worked in a gold deposit north of Elko, Nevada, that was probably formed as the North American plate slowly moved over the Yellowstone hotpot. At the time I worked in that region, we had no idea that the Yellowstone hotspot might be related to the gold we were discovering and mining. In a geologic sense, this is breaking news. It’s exciting.

See the abstract for Is the ancestral Yellowstone hotspot responsible for the Tertiary “Carlin” mineralization in the Great Basin of Nevada? for a bit more, or download a PDF from the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology titled Eocene magmatism: The heat source for Carlin-type gold deposits of northern Nevada.

Imagine my surprise when…

Imagine my surprise when, just a few days after recording the podcast preview of Issue 100, a geyser exploded at Yellowstone. Technically, this is a hydrothermal explosion: “hydro” for water and “thermal” for heat. (One mine I worked at in northeast Washington had an ancient hydrothermal eruption layer that was later buried by the Klondike Mountain Formation. We mined up the fossilized hydrothermal vents and into the eruption layer.)

Video of the event: https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1816001870176903192

We are very lucky that nobody was seriously injured. You can see some of the damage caused by the eruption at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz9x25gl4pno.

This kind of explosion is not uncommon at Yellowstone.

Phys.org has a good article on this kind of hydrothermal explosion.

Podcast promoters

Color me surprised to be receiving promotions from entities purporting to help push my podcast to millions of people. Sorry, but no. That is not my plan. I’m going to enjoy this journey. I’m not going to try to push people into experiencing something they don’t want. So to all those promoters: you won’t be getting a reply from me!

New fighters for the Portland National Guard

The Portland National Guard just got some new F-15EX Eagle II fighters. The 142nd Wing in Portland defends the skies over the entire Pacific Northwest. I heard one of them fly overhead on July 19th and called up my ADS-B Exchange system, only to discover it was not reporting its position.

That’s a bit of a surprise, considering how many aircraft were in the air at the same time over and near Portland! I think my childhood fascination with fighters is never going to abate!

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7. Closing Notes

I received some feedback on the audio clip I have been using in the Random Wire Reflections podcast to separate topics. The audio bothered a few people so starting with the Reflections podcast that previews issue 100, I’ll use Morse Code clips. I’m echoing this by using Morse Code as my content separators in issue 100.

I also have a new Shure microphone coming that I’ll try for podcast recording. Even if it doesn’t work as well as I’d like, it is sure pretty to look at. If it works well, I’ll put a link to it on the Support page.

Shure MV5 Digital Condenser Microphone

I had a piece prepared for issue 100 on sources of RF in the home, but as the content for issue 100 grew and grew, I’m saving the RF article for a future Random Wire Review.

More closing of the closing notes…

The two CM108 USB fobs I ordered arrived from the UK. These are already soldered and ready for building a ANR-type device. One of these will (I hope) go into the Kenwood PC-1A Phone Patch box I mentioned in Issue 99. I think I’ve got all the other parts I need so I’m open to suggestions…before I start building! I would have purchased already prepared CM108 fobs from David NR9V but he notes on his website the following: “NOTE: I am temporarily not providing assembly services, but can still ship kits. Please check back in September for updates.“ I look forward to David’s return this fall!

Kenwood PC-1A with board removed, showing the CM108 fob

After looking at the modified CM108 fobs, I have changed my plan. Instead, I’m going to use a Master Communications RL-20 adapter. I think that will give me a cleaner build with a well-proven device. I contacted Master Communications a few days ago and asked for the RL-20 without the DB9 adapter installed and that’s what will be coming in a few days. This will be fun.

I have a new-to-me mic and digital interface coming. I started looking at the Behringer MIC500USB Tube Microphone Preamp and then noticed this was also available as part of a bundle with a Behringer microphone. I wasn’t feeling very committed at the $159 price but then saw the bundle on eBay for $79. At that price, it’s worth taking a chance on it. It can output to USB so that means I can use it to record podcasts on the computer. I have a dynamic mic with an XLR interface, so along with the Behringer C-1 condenser mic in the bundle, I’ll have some options to play with for recording podcasts.

I have a very busy week and weekend coming up due to a long-awaited, heavily planned high school class reunion. I’m on the reunion committee and we are down to the wire before delivering events on August 2, 3, and 4. That might mean Random Wire Review #101 is a little lighter than normal!

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Again, thank you for achieving two great milestones with me: 100 issue and +1,000 subscribers! I am deeply grateful.

73 to all!

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