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EHAM QTH QRZ ARRL HRO ICOM KENWOOD YAESU ELBO ROOM COMMENTS WEDNESDAY EDITION: I am off to Burlington Lahey with the wife for yet more testing by another specialist.... In Memory of Ed Smylie, Whose Famous Hack Saved the Apollo 13 CrewSome hacks are so great that when you die you receive the rare honor of both an obituary in the New York Times and an in memoriam article at Hackaday. The recently deceased, Ed Smylie, was a NASA engineer leading the effort to save the crew of Apollo 13 with a makeshift gas conduit made from plastic bags and duct tape back in the year 1970. Ed died recently, on April 21, in Crossville, Tennessee, at the age of 95. This particular hack, another in the long and storied history of duct tape, literally required putting a square peg in a round hole. After an explosion on the Apollo 13 command module the astronauts needed to escape on the lunar excursion module. But the lunar module was only designed to support two people, not three. The problem was that there was only enough lithium hydroxide onboard the lunar module to filter the air for two people. The astronauts could salvage lithium hydroxide canisters from the command module, but those canisters were square. Ed and his team famously designed the required adapter from a small inventory of materials available on the space craft. This celebrated story has been told many times, including in the 1995 film, Apollo 13. Thank you, Ed, for one of the greatest hacks of all time. May you rest in peace. Header: Gas conduit adapter designed by Ed Smylie, NASA, Public domain. Blog – Hackaday Read More Hamvention 2025 Wrap-UpBy Cale K4HCK Another Hamvention is in the books and this year's event was absolutely worth the 6 hour drive to reach the amateur radio promised land. From new radios, to connecting with internet friends face-to-face for the first time, there was a lot to be excited about. This year, Nate (N8FOO), the ham originally responsible for me getting into the hobby was willing to brave the long road trip and tag along with me. A road trip is always easier with good conversation and someone keeping an eye out for abandoned long-lines towers. Hermes ProjectOne of the most compelling projects that we came across at the show was the Hermes project from Rhizomatica. Talking with this group was refreshing. The project aims to get dead simple, yet capable communications hardware into rural areas that don't have reliable internet or cellular service. The goal is to keep communities connected. What really stands out with Hermes is the focus on simplicity when it comes to building a solution. The transceivers are built around an extremely simple interface that is unsurpassed in the world of amateur radio. Tap to send a message, type out the message to send, and tap once more to send the message. Perfect for their end users relying on a tool to survive. Oh, and they're working on an Open Source replacement for VARA. MeshtasticOne of the more exciting pieces of technology that I was anxious to see in action was the amateur radio adjacent Meshtastic project. They even had a special firmware set up just for the convention. However, I was somewhat disappointed in the lack of activity. While it worked well and I was able to exchange a couple messages, there just weren't that many nodes. Maybe 2 dozen or so? I was expecting exponentially more. I'll be curious to hear what others experienced. DX Engineering and Summit RacingWe finally saw the crossover that ham radio and racing enthusiasts have been waiting for with a joint display from Summit Racing and DX Engineering. Maybe a race spec Miata outfitted with ham gear next year? Zero Retries and IP400IP400 was on display alongside the MMDVM group. It was exciting to not only see this project functioning, but to see it come together in a relatively short time span. Steve Stroh (N8GNJ) and Martin Alcock (VE6VH) have been pushing hard to get to this point and I'm excited to see what the next 6 months bring. But beyond IP400 we had the chance to spend some time with Steve Saturday night and just talk about all kinds of different aspects of amateur radio and technology. We did our best to solve all the problems, from figuring out how to light up dark repeaters to the best path to modernize the premiere publishers of amateur radio content. No one else is doing the in-depth exploration of cutting edge technology in the world of ham radio like Steve is. Zero Retries should be required reading for all hams interested in the future of ham radio. Hamvention AwardsOnce again I was invited to attend the Hamvention Awards Banquet and once again it was a surreal experience. A number of exceptional hams were honored. We had the chance to speak with Dr. Kristina Collins (KD8OXT) who was presented the Hamvention Technical Achievement Award for her work helping to develop the HamSCI Personal Space Weather Station Network. We also spent a few minutes with Julio Ripoll (WD4R) the recipient of the 2025 Special Achievement Award. He was instrumental in getting an amateur radio station into the National Hurricane Center in Miami back in 1980. I mentioned my experience with hurricane Andrew when living in Miami in 1992 and learned that Julio designed the repairs to the Turkey Point Nuclear Plant which sustained damage after a direct hit from Andrew. Incredible stories and the people behind them are uncovered at the awards banquet. Thanks to Michael Kalter (W8CI) and the awards committee for such incredible access. Hamvention is providing a great service by calling out and honoring the best of the amateur radio community. AI and Amateur RadioWe haven't yet seen AI become as pervasive in the world of Amateur Radio as it has become in the tech sector, but there were two notable points of progress to relay coming out of Hamvention. The first point has been well published, but it's worth calling out again that RADE is a digital voice mode that is built with assistance from LLMs and the result is quite possibly some of the highest quality digital audio over low-bandwidth RF available. The other point is not as widely known. The TAPR booth was showing off a project from the Time-Nuts (aka Time Lords) in which the entire Time-Nuts email mailing list (going back 30 years) was combined with additional Time-Nuts documentation and indexed by an LLM. The result was a locally running instance of an AI assistant capable of returning answers relevant to any question related to precise time keeping. Hopefully this tool will be available to a wider audience, soon. We're likely to see more examples of libraries of information being made available in similar fashion. Amateur Radio Has a Bright FutureIn the end, Hamvention illustrates the strong community that makes up amateur radio. If you can look past the surface level aspects of the hobby that most of us are well familiar with, there's an incredible amount of people working really hard to advance this hobby for the next generation. One of the most encouraging sights at Hamvention was the group of college students huddled around the ARRL Collegiate Amateur Radio Program booth. The numbers were strong. Between the younger generation simply showing up and the older generation working to foster relationships with newer hams, the hobby is in good hands. TUESDAY EDITION: After 5 hours on yesterdays hospital trip I am taking the day off from everything, we have another appointment on Wednesday for more testing. My wife is going thru it all, God bless her...French defense firm CILAS has unveiled a portable laser rifle, the HELMA-LP — a system that could become a critical asset on tomorrow’s battlefields. Few armed forces have a more urgent need for such capabilities than Ukraine’s. Amateur radio spirit continues all over world, but gathers at Xenia’s Hamvention (Ohio)
Thousands yet again flocked to Xenia this weekend for the annual Dayton Hamvention, arguably the world’s largest gathering of amateur radio enthusiasts. Asked what brings thousands of “hams” back to the Dayton region every single year, Hamvention General Chair Brian Markland said it’s the people on the other side of the radio, wherever they are in the world. “There really doesn’t seem to be a very good modern equivalent to it,” he said. “We are, at heart, explorers in this world, but we’re exploring it through radio. Rather than hiking, rather than boating, rather than climbing ice, we explore the world through radio.” Hamvention has been held annually since 1952, save for a two-year pause during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more – Dayton Daily News: https://bit.ly/4jXun6Y Tracking the Sun? Nah!If you want solar power, you usually have to make a choice. You can put a solar panel in a fixed location and accept that it will only put out the maximum when the sun is properly positioned. Or, you can make the panels move to track the sun. While this isn’t difficult, it does add cost and complexity, plus mechanical systems usually need more maintenance. According to [Xavier Derdenback], now that solar panels are cheaper than ever, it is a waste of money to make a tracking array. Instead, you can build a system that looks to the east and the west. The math says it is more cost effective. The idea is simple. If you have panels facing each direction, then one side will do better than the other side in the morning. The post points out that a tracking setup, of course, will produce more power. That’s not the argument. However, for a given power output, the east-west solution has lower installation costs and uses less land. Letting the post speak for itself:
So what do you think? Are solar trackers old hat? If you want one, they don’t have to be very complex. But still easier to just double your panels. Blog – Hackaday Read More MONDAY EDITION: I am taking the xyl to Burlington Lahey for more testing at 930am, I bet the ride down RT128 takes two hours in commuter traffic....I will update the page when I get home.,,I am still wondering how a 300 foot Mexican Naval ship ran into the Brooklyn Bridge. I saw pictures on tv, it looks like floating piñata....Why does Mexico have a naval vessel, they can't even control the border and the cartels own the police and military....and why the hell is the Mexican Navy cruising around the Brooklyn Bridge? I bet they use Baofeng for communications.... What Happened to WWW.?Once upon a time, typing “www” at the start of a URL was as automatic as breathing. And yet, these days, most of us go straight to “hackaday.com” without bothering with those three letters that once defined the internet. Have you ever wondered why those letters were there in the first place, and when exactly they became optional? Let’s dig into the archaeology of the early web and trace how this ubiquitous prefix went from essential to obsolete.created by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1990. Running on a NeXT workstation employed as a server, the site could be accessed at a simple URL: “http//info.cern.ch/”—no WWW needed. Berners-Lee had invented the World Wide Web, and called it as such, but he hadn’t included the prefix in his URL at all. So where did it come from? As it turns out, the www prefix largely came about due to prevailing trends on the early Internet. It had become typical to separate out different services on a domain by using subdomains. For example, a company might have FTP access on http://ftp.company.com, while the SMTP server would be accessed via the smpt.company.com subdomain. In turn, when it came to establish a server to run a World Wide Web page, network administrators followed existing convention. Thus, they would put the WWW server on the www. subdomain, creating http://www.company.com. This soon became standard practice, and in short order, was expected by members of the broader public as the joined the Internet in the late 1990s. It wasn’t long before end users were ignoring the http:// prefix at the start of domains, as web browsers didn’t really need you to type that in. However, www. had more of a foothold in the public consciousness. Along with “.com”, it became an obvious way for companies to highlight their new fancy website in their public facing marketing materials. For many years, this was simply how things were done. Users expected to type “www” before a domain name, and thus it became an ingrained part of the culture. Eventually, though, trends shifted. For many domains, web traffic was the sole dominant use, so it became somewhat unnecessary to fold web traffic under its own subdomain. There was also a technological shift when the HTTP/1.1 protocol was introduced in 1999, with the “Host” header enabling multiple domains to be hosted on a single server. This, along with tweaks to DNS, also made it trivial to ensure “www.yoursite.com” and “yoursite.com” went to the same place. Beyond that, fashion-forward companies started dropping the leading www. for a cleaner look in marketing. Eventually, this would become the norm, with “www.” soon looking old hat. Of course, today, “www” is mostly dying out, at least as far as the industry and most end users are concerned. Few of us spend much time typing in URLs by hand these days, and fewer of us could remember the last time we felt the need to include “www.” at the beginning. Of course, if you want to make your business look out of touch, you could still include www. on your marketing materials, but people might think you’re an old fuddy duddy. Using the www. prefix can still have some value when it comes to cookies, however. If you don’t use the prefix and someone goes to yoursite.com, that cookie would be sent to all subdomains. However, if your main page is set up at http://www.yoursite.com, it’s effectively on it’s own subdomain, along with any others you might have… like store.yoursite.com, blog.yoursite.com, and so on. This allows cookies to be more effectively managed across a site spanning multiple subdomains. In any case, most browsers have taken a stance against the significance of “www”. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge all hide the prefix even when you are technically visiting a website that does still use the www. subdomain (like http://www.microsoft.com). You can try it yourself in Chrome—head over to a www. site and watch as the prefix disappears from the taskbar. If you really want to know if you’re on a www subdomain or not, though, you can click into the taskbar and it will give you the full URL, HTTP:// or HTTPS:// included, and all. The “www” prefix stands as a reminder that the internet is a living, evolving thing. Over time, technical necessities become conventions, conventions become habits, and habits eventually fade away when they no longer serve a purpose. Yet we still see those three letters pop up on the Web now and then, a digital vestigial organ from the early days of the web. The next time you mindlessly type a URL without those three Ws, spare a thought for this small piece of internet history that shaped how we access information for decades. Largely gone, but not yet quite forgotten. Blog – Hackaday Read More WEEKEND EDITION: Rain, thunder, and lightning this morning, another reason not to launch the boat today. Amateur Radio Roundtable to Broadcast Live from HamventionA special two day live webcast will take place at Hamvention in Xenia, Ohio on Friday and Saturday. For hams unable to attend Hamvention in person, Amateur Radio Roundtable will provide multiple video feeds and reporters covering the event. The live stream will be active both May 16th and 17th from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern time. Viewers can watch on the W5KUB YouTube channel or w5kub.com. A live chat will also be available. ARRL Coverage of 2025 Dayton Hamvention – Friday, May 16Friday was opening day at 2025 Dayton Hamvention® and it was a day of superlatives — huge crowds coming through the gates, standing room only at “Salty Walt” Hudson’s portable antenna forum, and more as hams from across the country and around the world descended on the Greene County Fairgrounds in Xenia, Ohio for the first of three days of total immersion in all things ham radio. At the many booths that make up the ARRL Expo area, crowds were constant, and sentiments were similar among the employees, board members, and volunteers who staffed them. ARRL CEO David Minster, NA2AA, was in the meet and greet area and talked with ARRL members nearly non-stop the whole day. At the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES®) booth, ARRL Director of Emergency Management Josh Johnston, KE5MHV, said “It’s busy. I love it! Hamvention is an awesome opportunity to talk to hams, find out what’s going on in the field, and share ideas,” adding, “It’s a unique opportunity to hear about problems and successes and try to help get issues resolved.” He also noted that informal conversations with influential visitors can often have far-reaching benefits. Across the aisle at the ARRL Foundation booth, Development Operations Manager Christine Lessard, KC1TDM, said she “enjoyed connecting with clubs that have received club grants and answering questions about scholarship programs.” Lessard added that “It’s exciting to talk about all the good that the Foundation does for the amateur radio community.” Read more American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources – Read More Amateur Radio Newsline Report
FRIDAY EDITION: It was lousy out yesterday so I spent 4 hours or so playing with the Yaesu 950 adjusting the many menu settings. I am not a fan of the Yaesu menu system but overall I got it playing pretty well. I notice the rx audio has a little too much bass and there are not a lot of menu items to change the rx sound (plenty on the tx side with eq settings)....overall a nice radio, I will play on transmit today as soon as I get the LDG cable from HRO to connect the auto tuner. ARRL Reconsidered MAY 12, 2025 ~ RADIOARTISANA friend of mine asked recently if perhaps our angst over ARRL was misguided. There is a segment of hams that will hate the ARRL for any reason, often stupid, irrelevant reasons. I still encounter people who are angry about incentive licensing or claim the ARRL is against CW despite running daily CW bulletins. Naturally we should be angry over nefarious activities like canning directors for questionable conflict of interest claims or running shadow boards, but perhaps the decline of ARRL and its membership numbers is just due to the overall decline in the number of people interested in participating in organizations, and out of their control. We see it everywhere, from churches, to fraternal community organizations, to ham clubs with many withering away due to lack of interest. To an extent, I think he’s right. If you were a maker of buggy whips in the early 1900’s, your ox was undoubtedly going to get gored with the advent of the automobile. Amateur radio itself is in a bit of decline. If the demand for an organization to support something just isn’t there, there isn’t much an organization dedicated to that thing can do. But I’d also argue the answer is a bit more complicated and nuanced. Let’s break down what ARRL is to people. I think there are two buckets: those who see it as a magazine and publication company / content provider and those who see it like the “NRA of amateur radio”. From a magazine and publisher perspective, they have fallen behind. Magazines are dying and ARRL continues to hold tight to the “we publish a monthly periodical” way of publishing. They haven’t embraced any real sort of new electronic media; the app the publications are on is just a replacement for paper. Complicating this, there are a lot of members who feel stiffed they don’t get a paper copy in their hands each month, at least not without paying more for it. Another problem with ARRL’s magazine model and magazines in general is they just can’t compete with the breadth and timeliness of the Internet, like social media, groups, websites, or good ole email reflectors. Take me, for example. I like to build stuff. Is it likely the one article they’ll have in QST next https://blog.radioartisan.com/2025/05/12/arrl-reconsidered/ 1/4 5/13/25, 9:53 AM ARRL Reconsidered – Radio Artisan month will strike my fancy? Maybe, but probably not. I’m on a few QRP Groups.io groups. I see several postings a week that interest me and often cause me to jot stuff in my design notebook. If I’m a creator and have some great new thing to show the world, am I going to wait six months for my article to get published? No, I’m going to get it out on the Internet in some form or fashion and interact with other like-minded people who want to talk about this new great thing. In the world of “ARRL is a magazine subscription”, they have fallen short, clinging to an old, outdated model. ARRL could have also embraced and even owned amateur radio social media and integrated this in with a content publication strategy, but they totally missed the boat on this, too. The time to do this would have been back when QRZ.com changed from selling CDs to a Slashdot-clone amateur radio site and eHam was trying to be the same thing with a lousily-colored and formatted website. Both sites early on showed just how toxic mismanaged social media could be, and ARRL could have beat them all and done it much better. But they didn’t, and later they didn’t even attempt to have a notable, focused presence on social media like Facebook. They kept within their sandbox of QST and field staff shaking hands at dwindling hamfests. Then there’s the segment that considers ARRL the NRA of amateur radio. They advocate, protect, lobby, and provide services. The NRA peddles fear, fear that “they” are going to take “your” guns away. It’s how they rile up and motivate membership and keep, or rather kept the dollars flowing in so Wayne LaPierre could live the good life. But beyond lobbying and money scandals they offer everything a gun owner might want. What does ARRL peddle? Preservation. They promise to preserve amateur radio and the status quo, and occasionally raise some funds with spectrum defense. Why does ARRL still run the antiquated NTS, or push emcomm so much? Why aren’t they really involved with digital standards or pushing open systems and software? It’s easy to do what you’ve been doing for decades, and hard to do something new. You can buy a brick paver with your name on it that will adorn the back patio at HQ, and will let future generations of hams know of your kind generosity long after you’re SK and forgotten. ARRL is like amateur radio formaldehyde. Ham radio may eventually die, but they’re going to keep it from rotting. However, it will smell a bit funky. The Maker movement is the bridge to the future of amateur radio. Makers are tinkerers, like amateur radio used to be. They are essentially amateur radio operators without the radios, FCC licenses, and the “historical baggage” of their hobby, like amateur radio (we gotta do emcomm, “we provide a service to the public”, “we got to make up reasons to ham like ‘I need to collect all 50 states’ “, etc.). You look at their publications and websites and they’re just full of energy and ideas. Makers don’t need cringey magazine covers with a teenage girl awkwardly posing, touching the VFO knob of a rig she’s never used. They don’t have gatekeepers like amateur radio, where 2/4 https://blog.radioartisan.com/2025/05/12/arrl-reconsidered/ 5/13/25, 9:53 AM ARRL Reconsidered – Radio Artisan one has know some code to be a “real ham”. They don’t care if you have purple hair, or if you have an in-y or an out-y, or both. They don’t care if you sleep with someone with an in-y or an out-y. Or both. Interest and curiosity alone is enough to validate one as a Maker, and there’s no pecking order based on what tests you passed, how many 59s you exchange on a weekend and there are no “collect all X” of something as a rite of passage. Makers like new cutting-edge hardware and old, antiquated (“retro“) hardware just as much. They’ll even combine both and make things like a Raspberry Pi driving old Nixie tubes. Why? Because they can. Most makers may never have touched a ham radio, but on a philosophical level they get why one would want to pump Morse code through a satellite, or take four diodes, a DDS module, and an audio amp chip and make a direct conversion receiver. ARRL continues to this day to fail to recognize the opportunity we have with Makers. While the changing winds over the decades may have made ARRL unneeded or obsolete, I’d still call what has happened a failure of leadership, and it was preventable. With a for-profit company there is a life cycle graph that looks something like a hill. Companies start up, grow in adolescence, mature and reach a peak, get over the hill, and later die. A skillful business leader will recognize where an organization is at in the cycle and “re-invent” the business after a peak to create a new upswing, and a new, higher peak. I think the same applies to a non-profit like ARRL. The current CEO naturally can’t take all the blame, in righting the ship but he doesn’t seem too interested (https://www.kb6nu.com/another-arrl-member-lost/). We could probably trace ARRL failures in leadership all the way back to the 70s. In recent ARRL history there was only one innovator CEO, and he was unceremoniously canned. It was said he was unconventional and a bit disruptive; that was exactly what ARRL needed, and still needs today. While all ARRL CEOs were undoubtedly successful in business in their careers, I sense most were looking for a sort of “retirement position” as an ARRL CEO, pulling a paycheck but not having to really bust their butts or make waves. Until ARRL gets out of the business of preserving itself as an ongoing entity, the organization will continue its journey into irrelevancy Hacky Shack? The TRS-80 Model I StoryThe 1970s saw a veritable goldrush to corner the home computer market, with Tandy’s Z80-powered TRS-80 probably one of the most (in)famous entries. Designed from the ground up to be as cheap as possible, the original (Model I) TRS-80 cut all corners management could get away with. The story of the TRS-80 Model I is the subject of a recent video by the [Little Car] YouTube channel. Having the TRS-80 sold as an assembled computer was not a given, as kits were rather common back then, especially since Tandy’s Radio Shack stores had their roots in selling radio kits and the like, not computer systems. Ultimately the system was built around the lower-end 1.78 MHz Z80 MPU with the rudimentary Level I BASIC (later updated to Level II), though with a memory layout that made running the likes of CP/M impossible. The Model II would be sold later as a dedicated business machine, with the Model III being the actual upgrade to the Model I. You could also absolutely access online services like those of Compuserve on your TRS-80. While it was appreciated that the TRS-80 (lovingly called the ‘Trash-80’ by some) had a real keyboard instead of a cheap membrane keyboard, the rest of the Model I hardware had plenty of issues, and new FCC regulations meant that the Model III was required as the Model I produced enough EMI to drown out nearby radios. Despite this, the Model I put Tandy on the map of home computers, opened the world of computing to many children and adults, with subsequent Tandy TRS-80 computers being released until 1991 with the Model 4. Blog – Hackaday Read More Hamvention: Thousands flocking to Xenia this weekend for amateur radio show (Ohio)The world’s largest amateur radio convention returns to the Greene County Fair and Expo Center this weekend, with a slate of new and classic experiences for ham radio fans of all ages. Hamvention brought over 35,000 amateur radio enthusiasts and over 700 volunteers to Xenia last May, and organizers have seen “equally exciting” ticket sales for 2025. For comparison, the population of the entire city of Xenia is only about 25,000. Hamvention will be held Friday, Saturday, and Sunday this weekend at the Greene County Fairgrounds and Expo Center. Gates open at 9 a.m. The theme for 2025 is Radio Independence, said General Chair Brian Markland, which he said ”celebrates the freedom and resilience that have always defined amateur radio. From the earliest spark transmissions to today’s global digital modes, hams have pushed the boundaries of innovation, service, and community.” Read more – https://bit.ly/3S8y8KD THURSDAY EDITION: Good morning hamdom, I am bringing home a Yaesu FT950 and going to try it out on cw and ssb and see how it performs... Triggering Lightning and Safely Guiding It Using a Drone
Every year lightning strikes cause a lot of damage — with the high-voltage discharges being a major risk to buildings, infrastructure, and the continued existence of squishy bags of mostly salty water. While some ways exist to reduce their impact such as lightning rods, these passive systems can only be deployed in select locations and cannot prevent the build-up of the charge that leads up to the plasma discharge event. But the drone-based system recently tested by Japan’s NTT, the world’s fourth largest telecommunications company, could provide a more proactive solution. The idea is pretty simple: fly a drone that is protected by a specially designed metal cage close to a thundercloud with a conductive tether leading back to the ground. By providing a very short path to ground, the built-up charge in said cloud will readily discharge into this cage and from there back to the ground. To test this idea, NTT researchers took commercial drones fitted with such a protective cage and exposed them to artificial lightning. The drones turned out to be fine up to 150 kA which is five times more than natural lightning. Afterwards the full system was tested with a real thunderstorm, during which the drone took a hit and kept flying, although the protective cage partially melted. Expanding on this experiment, NTT imagines that a system like this could protect cities and sensitive areas, and possibly even use and store the thus captured energy rather than just leading it to ground. While this latter idea would need some seriously effective charging technologies, the idea of proactively discharging thunderclouds is perhaps not so crazy. We would need to see someone run the numbers on the potential effectiveness, of course, but we are all in favor of (safe) lightning experiments like this. If you’re wondering why channeling lightning away from critical infrastructure is such a big deal, you may want to read up on Apollo 12. Blog – Hackaday Read More
WEDNESDAY EDITION: Great club meeting this morning followed by a nice lunch at the Elks on the Ocean with a few hams... ARRL Renews Defense of the 902-928 MHz Amateur Radio BandARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio® in a recent filing encouraged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to listen to industry stakeholders about the detrimental impacts that changes to the 902-928 MHz band would have for current users. The FCC is considering a petition by NextNav, Inc., a licensee in the 900-MHz Location and Monitoring Service (LMS), to reconfigure the 902-928 MHz band to obtain more spectrum for itself and replace the LMS with high-power 5G cellular and related positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services that would supplement GPS. ARRL filed comments opposing NextNav’s proposal in September 2024. ARRL’s latest filing [PDF] was submitted on May 13, 2025, by the association’s Washington Counsel in response to an inquiry initiated by the Commission to consider more broadly ways to improve and harden GPS. ARRL’s response echoes concerns of many others and underscores the need to improve and harden the current GPS system in a manner that doesn’t impact radio amateurs and other users of the 902-928 MHz band. The band supports an extraordinary number of unlicensed consumer devices used by consumers both inside and outside the United States with which radio amateurs co-exist. ARRL strongly agrees with the many parties that point out in the record of this proceeding that, in working with its sister federal agencies on this issue, one of the Commission’s primary goals should be to ensure that existing services already operating in the spectrum, such as in the crowded 902-928 MHz band, should not be disrupted by complementary PNT if equal or better means are available. Many billions of unlicensed devices are in use to provide hundreds of applications and functionalities to the American public, and the number of devices and the functionalities that they provide continue to grow. These devices coexist with amateur radio operations in the 902-928 MHz band but they as well as amateur radio operations would be displaced if a 5G-like PNT service was authorized to use this spectrum. In the instant proceeding the FCC addresses GPS concerns holistically that also are being addressed by multiple other federal government agencies under the direction of the President. ARRL emphasized the FCC’s expertise and role in making the best use of the spectrum resource. We commend the Commission for initiating this proceeding to take a holistic approach to the problem and possible solutions thereto, rather than a piece-meal approach that might have led to systems that would unnecessarily use valuable spectrum with inferior results and take years longer to construct from scratch. The Commission is the civilian spectrum expert among the collection of agencies that are addressing this issue. We rely on the Commission to make clear the value of each megahertz of spectrum and the trade-offs in designating any particular band for the purpose of complementary PNT. ARRL’s filing is intended to emphasize the public interest in protecting amateur and others’ access to the 902-928 MHz band and to highlight that other, less disruptive options are available for PNT. ARRL will continue to defend amateur access to this and other threatened amateur allocations. Hells Gate radio club wants equipment back
Club founder
says nobody with
Asotin County is
returning calls
or emails
seeking access
to Stout Ranch
after the group
made changes to
the site,
triggering an
investigation
and termination
of former public
works director
The founder of the Hells Gate Amateur Radio Club asked Asotin County officials to return the group’s equipment at Stout Ranch on the Lewiston Hill. Kelly Blackmon, a former Clarkston city councilor, said his radio club has made repeated requests to access the site and retrieve the equipment, but no one at the county is returning calls or emails. Blackmon attended Monday’s board meeting and spoke during the public comment period. The commissioners didn’t discuss the issue any further, but Sheriff John Hildebrand said he plans to contact Whitman County law enforcement about an investigation that was launched earlier this year. “As far as we know, it hasn’t been closed out yet,” said Commissioner Chuck Whitman. In January, the ham radio club made improvements at the site, including adding repeaters, insulation, patching holes and cutting weeds, Blackmon said. The electrical work caught the attention of Clearwater Power, and a Whitman County deputy responded, along with Washington State Labor and Industries investigators. “At this time, the commissioners cut off our access to the site and turned off our repeaters,” Blackmon said. The incident also triggered the termination of Russ Pelleberg, the former public works director. He is a member of the Hells Gate club and reportedly assisted members with access to the site. Read more – Lewiston Tribune: https://bit.ly/4k21jeQ Amazing Oscilloscope Demo Scores The Win At Revision 2025Classic demos from the demoscene are all about showing off one’s technical prowess, with a common side order of a slick banging soundtrack. That’s precisely what [BUS ERROR Collective] members [DJ_Level_3] and [Marv1994] delivered with their prize-winning Primer demo this week. This demo is a grand example of so-called “oscilloscope music”—where two channels of audio are used to control an oscilloscope in X-Y mode. The sounds played determine the graphics on the screen, as we’ve explored previously. The real magic is when you create very cool sounds that also draw very cool graphics on the oscilloscope. The Primer demo achieves this goal perfectly. Indeed, it’s intended as a “primer” on the very artform itself, starting out with some simple waveforms and quickly spiraling into a graphical wonderland of spinning shapes and morphing patterns, all to a sweet electronic soundtrack. It was created with a range of tools, including Osci-Render and apparently Ableton 11, and the recording performed on a gorgeous BK Precision Model 2120 oscilloscope in a nice shade of green. If you think this demo is fully sick, you’re not alone. It took out first place in the Wild category at the Revision 2025 demo party, as well as the Crowd Favorite award. High praise indeed. We love a good bit of demoscene magic around these parts. Thanks to [STrRedWolf] for the tip! Blog – Hackaday Read More TUESDAY EDITION: We are selling a Yaesu FT950, very low op time for the club, I thought I would go over and try it out and take some pictures. I think instead of eBay I will use Craigslist and try to sell locally. Train With Morse MasterMorse code can be daunting to learn when you’re new to the game, particularly if you need it to pass your desired radio license. However, these days, there are a great many tools to aid in the learning process. A good example is the Morse Master from [Arnov Sharma]. The Morse Master is a translator for Morse code, which works in two ways. You can access it via a web app, and type in regular letters which it then flashes out as code on its in-built LEDs. Alternatively, you can enter Morse manually using the physical key, and the results will be displayed on the web app. The Morse key itself is built into the enclosure using 3D printed components paired with a Cherry-style keyboard switch. It’s perhaps not the ideal solution for fast keying, with its limited rebound, but it’s a quick and easy way to make a functional key for practice purposes. If you want to go faster, though, you might want to upgrade to something more capable. We’d also love to see a buzzer added, since Morse is very much intended as an auditory method of communication. We’ve seen some other great Morse code trainers before, too. If you’ve trained yourself in this method of communication, don’t hesitate to share your own learning tips below. Amateur radio, a hobby for all agesMeet 10 year old licensed radio operator Ivan Fry
A COLUMN By Bob Confer, pictured is Fry Last week, during an episode of WNY Tonight, my guest organization was the Lockport Amateur Radio Association. Among LARA’s members joining me in the studio was Ivan Fry, who became a licensed radio operator last year. Everyone who watched the television show was captivated by the 10 year-old — his interest and knowledge of the science and technology of communications is exceeded only by the energy and skill with which he speaks. I saw that same impact last month at Royalton-Hartland’s science fair, at which he took first place. He was busy all evening speaking to throngs of kids and adults alike about radio science, many of whom kept going back to learn more. To see that youthful energy and how he uses it to attract others to a pursuit that some might think is home to old men using old technology is awesome, especially since he comes from one of the generations of people who are “digital natives”, that is, those born or brought up during the era of digital technology who are familiar with and reliant upon computers and the internet. The web and the ubiquitous smartphone have, in a way, made the world a smaller place. They allow us to log on to Facebook and Instagram to share messages around the globe or use a device that’s in everyone’s pockets to call or text family and friends. But, as Ivan knows, there’s still a place for the joy afforded by ham radio (which is another name for the hobby). It’s exciting that you can use a small box of electronics and a wire antenna to talk to complete, but welcoming strangers, on every continent, in every neighborhood, and from every background. You might be familiar with amateur radio by its presence in pop culture. The movie “Frequency” starring Jim Caviezel and Dennis Quaid had a plot based on a geomagnetic storm that allowed a ham radio operator to talk to his deceased father decades earlier, which then allowed them to change the course of history. Tim Allen’s character on the sitcom “Last Man Standing” was an amateur radio enthusiast and it played a part in quite a few episodes of the show. You might also recognize amateur radio from its presence in the community. If you’ve taken part in events like the Ride for Roswell you’ve seen an army of men and women with handheld and mobile radios serving as communications support and observers for the riders. Perhaps you’ve seen the folks from LARA showing off their ability to communicate worldwide at the Niagara County Fair. Or, maybe you’ve heard news reports of hams connecting communities during hurricanes and other events that gut other forms of communication. Getting licensed to take part in all this is an easier task than it used to be. Nearly 20 years ago, the Federal Communications Commission abandoned the Morse code requirements for its permits, an obstacle that had proved difficult to many and had prevented them from entering the hobby. Now, you just need to pass a written exam, knowing radio and electrical theory as well as the FCC’s rules and regulations. There are plenty of study guides available and most of them actually provide the hundreds of possible questions and answers that the 35-question exams pull from. You take the exam under the watchful eye of local hams. When that time comes, information about the exam times and locations — and amateur radio in general — can be found at the website of the American Radio Relay League (www.ARRL.org). Back in 2011, I got my radio license (KC2ZZW) from the federal government after decades of participating in other radio pursuits like CB radio and listening to the police scanner or shortwave radio. With my modest low-power station I’ve talked to more than 85 countries and half of our states. I also use ham radio, specifically VHF frequencies, as a lifeline. In some areas where I enjoy the great outdoors in New York (like Allegany County and the Adirondacks) there is questionable or no cell coverage, but my tiny walkie-talkie can reach ham radio repeater systems listened to by area hams in those regions. That offers peace in mind and preparedness for any sort of emergency you can encounter in the wilderness. If you’d like to learn more about amateur radio locally, visit LARA’s website at www.lockportara.us or attend their June 7th Hamfest in the heart of Niagara County where you can meet radio enthusiasts and get into the hobby by taking the licensing exam (you have four weeks to study) and buying used but excellent equipment. Give it a try. Amateur radio is a hobby for all interests and all ages — from the young ones like Ivan to the old guys like me.
MONDAY EDITION: Sunny start here on the rock...
Hi jon, Johns Hopkins University to Hold ARRL Teachers InstituteA session of the ARRL Teachers Institute on Wireless Technology (TI) is being hosted this summer by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland. This marks the first time a major research university has hosted the ARRL program. The TI program is expanding significantly in 2025. Already, an institute was held on Staten Island, New York, to mark the first regional session…. Read more- American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources – Read More The following are updates from recently published newsletters focused on ham radio.
Ria's Ham Shack: A
preview of Dayton
Hamvention
Random Wire Review:
Issue 130
Zero Retries 0201
Experimental Radio
News 12
Radio Silence [068]
The Communicator
May-June 2025 [PDF]
The Logger's Bark
May 2025 [PDF] WEEKEND EDITION: Thanks to HRO Salem for the info below..... Dear Ham: Coming to Hamvention this year? We hope you are. The weather is predicted to be good.
Here’s a copy of our
latest newsletter with
an article about the
Hamvention Radio
Station we set up
for you on AM1620
that you can listen
to for news,
weather, traffic and
fun on the way in
each day. You can
see the station in
action at Booth 1002
in Building 1, when
you come by. This
year the radio
program features
answers to some “Way
Too Easy HAM Radio
Questions” that you
will have fun
answering. Most of
the answers
are…well…way too
easy! Bill Baker
Amateur Radio
Newsline Report
HAMS YOU MIGHT KNOW- ALIVE AND SK K1TP-
Jon....Editor of As The World
Turns....
SILENT KEYS Silet Key
KA1BXB-Don...Regular
on 3900 mornings....just
don't
mention
politics
to
him,
please! |