The thing I love most about this amazing hobby of amateur radio is the sheer size of the community and the depth of knowledge that comes with it. Case in point, the other day I mentioned the spark gap transmitter at Grimeton in Sweden.
Here’s something that wasn’t on my bingo card for this year of the “MKISS” driver for ham radio being modernized in 2026 as opposed to just being dropped. The MKISS code hasn’t seen much driver activity since the original Git import of the Linux kernel more than twenty years ago.
The other day I was playing around with RDS, or Radio Data System, it’s a digital signal that’s often embedded in a commercial broadcast FM transmission. Among other things it contains information about the station, its content, frequencies and potentially other useful information, such as traffic alerts.
I had my first net over the weekend and my transmitting was a bit rough. So i took the stock antenna from my yaesue and disassembled it.
Followed a youtube video and took a spare coax cable and built a half dipole antenna!
Looking for the best solar Meshtastic node? The SenseCAP P1-Pro delivers a 5W panel, 13,400mAh of battery, and GPS for just $89.90. We ran it for weeks, tracked its power draw on Grafana, tested its range in dense urban streets, and examined every internal detail. See the real-world results.
While spending some quality time discovering what I don’t know about GNU Radio, I explored the notion of attempting to at least understand a little more about how an FM signal works. Depending on your background, the letters FM mean different things. In amateur radio it’s a way to encode information, generally audio, using something called frequency modulation. Outside the hobby, the letters point at commercial broadcast radio.
Stop fighting with ATAK plugins. Flaresat is the missing map layer for Meshtastic. Get real-time tracking, shared pins, and live routes over LoRa mesh, setup takes 2 minutes. No sideloading, no servers, just instant off-grid coordination on iOS & Android. The game has changed.
How do you make a hole? That’s a pretty straightforward kind of question, and by the time this sentence is finished, there’s going to be at least as many answers as people who considered it.
When building a radio transmitter, unless it’s a very small one indeed, there’s a need for an amplifier before the antenna. This is usually referred to as the power amplifier, or PA. How big your PA is depends on your idea of power, but at the lower end of the power scale a PA can be quite modest. QRP, as lowe power radio is referred to, has a transmit power in the miliwatts or single figure watts. [Guido] is here with a QRP PA that delivers about a watt from 1 to 30 MHz, is made from readily available parts, and costs very little.
Still excited from my minor victory in discovering a missing puzzle piece associated with the project I’m working on, I spent the past week introducing my head, if not literally, at least figuratively, to the surface of my desk in a traditional head-desk troubleshooting move that you might be familiar with. I suppose it’s an improvement on the “Bear with a Toothache” approach.
A little while ago I discussed a lovely article by programmer, artist, and game designer “blinry” called “Fifty Things you can do with a Software Defined Radio”. This week it occurred to me that I could use their article as a framework to further explore my Bald Yak project. If you’re unfamiliar, the Bald Yak project aims to create a modular, bidirectional and distributed signal processing and control system that leverages GNU Radio.
Analog TV may have shuffled off its mortal coil years ago, but there are still plenty of old CRT TV sets around that could receive it. [Kris Slyka] has just such a device, and decided to feed it something from an STM32 microcontroller. An STM32G431, to be precise, and he’s doing it using the on-chip hardware rather than in software.
FT2 is showing up on PSKReporter with a 3.8s cycle, faster than FT8 or FT4. Early reports say sensitivity takes a hit though. Anyone actually tried it yet? Worth the tradeoff or just chasing speed for speed’s sake?
The SenseCAP T1000-E has been the go-to EDC Meshtastic device, until now. RAK’s WisMesh Tag matches it on range, doubles the battery life, and builds it better. Same price. Full real-world test inside.
Possibly the single most important thing that separates science from “fiddling around” is documentation. Figuring out how to document things is often non-trivial and me telling you that “unless you wrote it down, it didn’t happen” only goes so far.
I’m picking up an idea left by Dick KK4OBI, that you can lower impedance of dipole by arbitrary ratio if said dipole is zigzagged or otherwise uniformly contorted in some meandering shape. Side effect is that dipole becomes shorter and needs more wire. While there’s data about impedance for fundamental, there’s nothing about harmonics which is something that OCFD might be expected to handle well, so guessing that the really important part is aspect ratio of meander, i’ve made a couple of VHF-scale models with different meander aspect ratios (and many more much smaller sections), and some of data i’ve been able to collect roughly matches. The thing I’m trying to figure is what aspect ratio should be to cover multiple bands while using OCFD, say 40-20-15m bands, and whether impedances at different frequencies fall at the same rate. Eventually, when i figure this out, i’ll try to make a full size 40m fundamental antenna, as I think that i’ve figured it out in mechanical terms
Why does your node see 12 satellites while your friend’s sees 6? It isn’t luck, it’s GNSS. We break down hardware differences (UBlox vs. MediaTek), atomic timing, and why relying on just “GPS” is a mistake. Learn how multi-constellation support means faster locks and a stronger mesh.
Just under a year ago I started an experiment. I set-up a beacon for WSPR, or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter, transmitting at 200 mW into a dummy load using eight bands between 80m and 10m.
📻 Happy Sunday from the HamTrax workbench. We’re heads-down on bug fixes this weekend — the Alpha is rough around the edges but we’re chipping away at it every day.
The other day a fellow amateur revealed that they qualified for membership of the QWCA QCWA, the Quarter Century Wireless Association .. twice over .. there may have been some innocent whistling involved.
Lots of people recently be curious about Meshtastic and almost everyone keep asking any good getting started guide, well here is one I compiled from our many blogs posts about Meshtastic. Please let me know if there is something wrong, or wrong information. Happy to update it.
Building a shack makes a number of assumptions about your situation and to make it abundantly clear, it’s not the only way to enjoy the hobby of amateur radio. Visiting clubs locally and remotely, being a member of a club, visiting other amateurs, setting up your station in a suitcase or a backpack, on a bicycle, in a car, on a bus, or in a boat are some of the many other avenues open to you.
Setting up access to a headless Raspberry Pi is one of those tasks that should take a few minutes, but for some reason always seems to take much longer. The most common method is to configure Wi-Fi access and an SSH service on the Pi before starting it, which can go wrong in many different ways. This author, for example, recently spent a few hours failing to set up a headless Pi on a network secured with Protected EAP, and was eventually driven to using SSH over Bluetooth. This could thankfully soon be a thing of the past, as [Paul Oberosler] developed a package for SSH over USB, which is included in the latest versions of Raspberry Pi OS.
On your amateur radio journey, you’ll likely discover that many transceivers run on 13.8 volt DC, give or take. For example my FT-857d requires 13.8 volt plus or minus 15 percent, with a negative ground, and a current draw of 22 ampere, more on that later.
Putting your station together is best described as a juggling act, since you’ll discover that everything depends on everything else and the more you plan, the more you learn and the more variables become apparent, none more so than with the selection of an antenna.
How does it fair? It’s got a few must-have features for me (LAN connectivity most of all), so I want to buy but don’t want to buy too early if there are production issues or other glaring flaws.
When you start the process of getting your hobby off the ground, either for the first time, or after a hiatus, you might be left with the impression that the only way to “do amateur radio” is to have a shack, a place where you can set-up your gear, and connected to that gear using coax, one or more antennas. While that’s a common scenario, it’s not the only one at your disposal. We are after all in the game of communication and over the past few decades options have exploded.
Such antennas are primarily to be used in person-portable / rucksack-portable activations of parks, hills and mountains, islands and lighthouses in the various amateur radio outdoor award schemes. They would also be ideal for Field-Day operations, either as the main antenna for a single-op entry, or as an alternative antenna for multi-op entries. Of course, the same antenna designs can also be used at a home QTH - just use more substantial fittings and support structures.
One of the potentially trickier aspects of putting together your shack is connecting the radio to the antenna. On the face of it, the challenge is limited to making sure that you have mating connectors on both ends, but when you actually start implementing this you’ll run into several other considerations.
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As with all my hobbies, I’ve always loved teaching my friends about them and ham radio is no different. It has been a very slow burn to get any of them to get their tickets though. Because I tend to get very excited about most things I’m learning about, many of them are happy that I’m enjoying the hobby and may even conceptually like the advantages of ham radio for emergency communications or the like, but they usually are just turned off my the idea of having to study to get in the air.
When you start on the journey of putting together a shack, in whatever form that eventually takes, you’ll need to figure out how much space is required. Of course, no matter what you choose, it’s never enough, but you have to start somewhere. Ultimately a shack is a work in progress.
Recently it occurred to me that I haven’t been using HF in my shack for much longer than I’d care to admit. Over the years I’ve spoken about my shack and how it’s set-up, more on that shortly. I effectively went off-air when I decommissioned the computer that was running tools like “fldigi” and “WSJT-X”. Mainly because it was too slow, for example, taking a good minute to launch a copy of Firefox.
Bought a pair of these on Amazon (Store page) with the intention to install Meshtastic on them. One of the reviews suggested that the correct firmware to install was the Lilygo T-Lora V2.1_1.6, so I used the web flasher to install it.
Let’s start with an observation, I’m a geek, have been all my life. Since my early teenage years that evolved as a predilection for computing. As you might already know, I became a radio amateur to essentially get away from computing. The reality turned out to be something else entirely.
Integrate Meshtastic with Grafana for real-time monitoring and customizable dashboards. Visualize device data, including location, and interact with your data using Harbor AI. Effortlessly manage and analyze your telemetry with Telemetry Harbor.
The first step in solving any problem is recognising that there is one. In my case the name of that problem is “logging”. Specifically the storage and collection of my amateur radio contact logs.
Meshnology’s N33, N35, and N32 kits turn the Heltec V3 into ready-to-assemble Meshtastic handhelds. At $23.99 with code ADR25, the N33 is a steal, but the N35/N32’s confusing $41.99 pricing raises questions.
The ThinkNode M2 delivers a Tamagotchi-style, ultra-compact Meshtastic handheld with premium build, bright OLED, and surprisingly strong range. Its charm is undeniable, but is the adorable form factor enough to overlook the battery life?
The other day I was stuck in traffic behind a vehicle proudly proclaiming that it was “electric”. I’d seen the model before, just never connected it with being available as an EV. I wondered how many other cars on the road turned out to have added an “electric” option to their line-up and how that evolution had just quietly, inexorably occurred.
The ThinkNode M1 is a polished, ready-to-use Meshtastic handheld with e-paper display, injection-molded housing, and 4–5 day battery life. With a machined knob, GPS switch, and RTC clock, it’s compact, reliable, and outdoors-ready.
Recently I spent some quality time digging into the origins of a word in common use. In doing so, I contacted the Postal Museum in the United Kingdom and received a lovely reply that included a photo of a document in their archive.
I’d like to get an international radiogram out to some family affected by weather, and don’t presently have the means to get on air and into a message net to do it. How can I do this? I’ve scoured the web and can’t seem to find any way to inject a message despite finding the Radio Relay website.
If you use a word often enough it starts to lose its meaning. The other day, during breakfast, well, coffee, whilst playing one of our start-the-day with a smile word games, the word “RADIO” turned up. I grinned and pointed out that this was my favourite word, to which my partner mentioned that in Italian, it’s referred to as “La Radio”, which made us both wonder where it actually came from, did the Italian language import the word, or export it, given that Guglielmo Marconi was Italian?
Recently I explored the use of a radio device aptly described by a fellow Aussie Electronics Engineer, “ozeng”, as “Absolute witchcraft.” .. I’m talking about an “RF circulator”, one of which is sitting quietly on my desk, roughly 60 mm square, 30 mm thick, weighing in at just under half a kilogram, unexpectedly with a 200 year history.
The other day I saw a post by fellow amateur Gary N8DMT who mentioned an “RF circulator” and a PlutoSDR in the same sentence. Amplified by a response from a fellow Aussie Electronics Engineer, “ozeng”, who helpfully added a link to a Wikipedia article about circulators, it finally twigged that I had such a gadget in my possession and for the first time I realised how I might use it.
The other day I received an email from Frank K4FMH asking me about an idea I’d worked on some time ago, namely the notion that I might monitor solar flux at home using a software defined radio. At the time I was attempting to get some software running on my PlutoSDR and got nowhere fast.
This project provides a Dockerfile that builds (and runs) the binaries used for the various tools that connect to the ADALM PlutoSDR. Much of this code is gathered from various sources and some library dependencies are duplicated as a result.
I’ve been exploring antenna designs that can fit on a protest sign. Something which would not be obvious as an antenna if carried about, but which could facilitate communications in the field.
The other day I went on my first POTA or Parks On The Air adventure, this time I was on my own. If you recall, my power company announced yet another planned network outage and I felt that I could use this time without electricity to my benefit, for a change.
Recently my local power company notified me of a planned network outage, that’s code for, we’re turning off the power and your choice is to deal with it. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll note that this is not the first time this has happened in recent times.
The pursuit of amateur radio is a glorious thing. On the face of it you’re forgiven if you think of it as a purely technical endeavour. Far be it for me to dissuade you from that notion, but permit me to expand into other areas that rarely get a mention when we discuss this amazing hobby.
At the turn of the 21st century, astrophysicists theorized that the Sun was headed toward a deep solar minimum, but a new study says that the Sun’s activity actually reversed course around 2008.
The other day I came across an article written by programmer, artist, and game designer “blinry” with the intriguing title: “Fifty Things you can do with a Software Defined Radio”. Documenting a weeks’ worth of joyous wandering through the radio spectrum it explains in readily accessible terms how they used an RTL-SDR dongle to explore the myriad radio transmissions that surround us all day and every day.
I have an Ethernet cable running PoE+ to a wifi access point outside my shack that is very close to my radios. It exhibits the typical QRM pattern, with birdies at regular intervals making a warbling sound when the rig is on SSB.
The other day I went for a walk, I know, shock-horror, outside, daylight, nature, the whole thing, in a local national park, for the first time in too many years. Almost immediately I noticed that this would be an excellent location for an activation. If you're not familiar, it's an amateur radio excuse to set-up a portable station in a new location, in this case, potentially something called POTA, or Parks On The Air, but you don't need to find a formal activity with rules to get on air and make noise.
Geostationary Orbiting Observer
Onno (VK6FLAB)
nocturne
Steamymoomilk
early_riser
einfach_orangensaft
hamtrax
fullsquare
confuser
mesa
Gsus4
667
AG7LR
