1. QRV: Are You Ready?

I went a bit DMR crazy this week. Hit the DMR category on EtherHam and you’ll see what I mean. Here’s the elevator version: I used OpenGD77 on a $100 Retevis RT3S radio to install the PNWDigital codeplug. What I learned along the way is shared in my new DMR articles.

I also took a dive into Winlink, APRS, and EmComm. I wonder how this essay will land, especially with folks deeply experienced in search-and-rescue, incident command, and related activities. I suspect that my take on incident command may go against the grain for some folks. But maybe not.

A scripting error corrupted my work database, and that took a day to unravel the cause and another day to clean the data. Paraphrasing a database guru I learned from many years ago: there is no such thing as a perfect database, only those with an acceptable number of errors. The number of errors I had this week was unacceptable so I dove in and fixed the problem.

And that pretty much sums up my radio and technology week: a lot of digital radio and little bit of coding and cleanup.

I saw good uptake of the new EtherHam Groups.io space. Remember: in this first phase rollout, it is limited to 100 subscribers. We’re almost halfway there so sign up now if you are interested!

2. New on EtherHam

Winlink Tells You What Happened. APRS Tells You What’s Happening. — I’m afraid I went a bit overboard on this essay, simply because of my background in emergency services/management. I’ve been an EMT on a rural ambulance service, a hospital commissioner, an underground mine rescue EMT, a search-and-rescue member. I was part of an ARES group for a while and also served as a state agency representative to the state’s emergency management department. Those roles gave me deep appreciation for how incidents actually unfold and get managed in real time…and I think that biases my point of view toward those working at the forward edge rather than those in the command center. It’s a long read so I included a table of contents to help you. One of the best moments for me while I wrote this was learning more about how LoRa radio actually works to pick out signals buried in the noise.

This was “DMR week” at EtherHam, with parts 2, 3, and 4 published. Part 5 will cover on-air etiquette and troubleshooting — including PTT habits, why they matter more on digital than on FM, and the answer to: if you can’t scan the band to find people, how do you actually find someone to talk to?

Introduction to DMR, Part 2: The ID, the Radio, and the Hotspot — Part 1 promised the ID, the radio, and the hotspot before ever touching a codeplug — this is that piece, delivered after the fact. It walks through registering a free DMR ID at RadioID.net, then lays out the actual fork in the road on radio choice: the AnyTone AT-D878UVII Plus for anyone who wants a download-and-personalize codeplug the same afternoon, versus the Retevis RT3S and OpenGD77 path this series has been running on, for readers who want the talkgroup/frequency separation badly enough to tolerate a rougher first hour. From there it’s a full step-by-step Raspberry Pi hotspot build — parts, assembly, and WPSD configuration — reused and adapted from an earlier hands-on build, plus a hard look at how much hotspot hardware costs today versus when that build first went up. Read this one before Part 3, even though it was written after it.

Introduction to DMR: Part 3 — Building Your First Codeplug — I flashed a new Retevis RT3S with OpenGD77, built a codeplug from scratch pointed at my hotspot, keyed up — and got silence. Then got silence again, for an entirely different reason. This is the unvarnished version of that afternoon: what a codeplug actually becomes once the four concepts from Part 1 turn into specific numbers that have to match specific other numbers somewhere else, why DMR answers a single wrong value with total silence instead of a useful clue, and what it does to your troubleshooting when fixing a genuine problem changes nothing you can see. If you’ve been putting off building your first codeplug, or you’ve built one and can’t work out why it won’t talk to anything, this one’s for you.

I added an addendum at the end of this article, titled: The settings, field by field. The addendum gives you a screen-by-screen accounting of the settings I used in the OpenGD77 CPS.

It’s a long article, so if you want the answer to the question “does the Retevis RT3S DMR radio work when programmed with OpenGD77,” the answer is yes:

Introduction to DMR, Part 4: Loading Somebody Else’s Codeplug — Part 4 of the Introduction to DMR series takes the opposite approach from Part 3: instead of building a codeplug from scratch, I downloaded PNWDigital’s ready-made OpenGD77 codeplug — 125 channels, seven zones, someone else’s careful work — and it took longer than building one by hand. Not because the codeplug was wrong. Because a community codeplug is built for that community’s network, and my hotspot was pointed at BrandMeister. That single unasked question sent me chasing filters, timeslots, and call types for hours while the actual problem sat one layer up.

Along the way: the CPS button that’s invisible at the wrong browser zoom, why the codeplug arrives wearing another operator’s callsign, the difference between a repeater talkgroup list and a hotspot one, and talkgroups that stay asleep until you kerchunk them awake. The piece also includes something I felt would help you picture how DMR is structured — a single diagram of how zone, channel, contact, talkgroup list, and network actually chain together, and why you should build that chain backward from the network rather than forward from the CPS.

Retevis RT3S + OpenGD77 Cheat Sheet: Every Control, Remapped from the Radioddity GD-77 — OpenGD77 was written for the Radioddity GD-77, and it runs beautifully on the Retevis RT3S — but the two radios don’t share a control layout. The GD-77 has four arrow keys; the RT3S has two buttons and a rotary knob, so the firmware reassigns them, and it reassigns them differently depending on whether you’re sitting on a main screen or inside a menu. The result is that a documented shortcut doesn’t fail cleanly, it does something else: the key combination the manual gives for changing zones will quietly change your transmit power instead. This sheet is every control translated for the RT3S, with the ones I’ve confirmed on my own radio marked as such and the rest flagged as untested.

Weekly Report: August 20, 2026 — Band Conditions This Week / Digital Radio News / Groups.io Digest. Summary:

• The predicted A-index of 11 suggests we’re not entirely out of the woods yet, so keep an eye on the numbers before investing an evening in a long-haul DX session.

• The MMDVM firmware for DMR received a merge (PR #362) that adds a configurable audio‑fidelity link option.

• AllStarLink’s app_rpt was updated to version 3.10.4; the patch series (PR #1205‑#1207) adds a client‑disconnect helper, removes duplicated sanity checks, disables autoservice during safe‑sleep, and fixes thread‑creation leak bugs.

• The LoRa APRS iGate repository received three commits on 2026‑08‑16 that update the T‑Deck hardware requirements, refresh the README, and add new image assets.

• Community posts on the AllStarLink forum report connection refusals from keyed nodes, intermittent telephone‑portal operation, and general remote‑node connectivity failures.

• Groups.io: 31 groups checked, 15 active, 493 total messages, 11 quiet. The most active groups in the set were Repeater Builder, APRS, and TinySA.

3. QSO One, the CGNAT Killer?

QSO One was built so hams could get on AllStarLink, EchoLink, IAX Direct, DMR, System Fusion, and M17 from a single app, without a Raspberry Pi, a radio interface, or a weekend of Linux. It’s free. Sign up with your callsign, download it for Windows or Android, and you’re on the air in about five minutes. More platforms are coming.

But one of the magical aspects of QSO One that we’re not hearing much about is that it works with CGNAT: “node mode and WT mode for AllStarLink are solid, with cellular and CGNAT handling that actually deals with carrier networks instead of just failing.”

As IPV4 addresses continue to become less available and CGNAT networks become more common, I suspect that QSO One’s secret sauce will be its ability to carry traffic through CGNAT networks.

4. APRS

#APRSThursday follow-up: the check-ins actually worked

In the previous issue, I mentioned that my #APRSThursday check-in attempts — from the LoRa tracker as KJ7T-3 and from APRSdroid as KJ7T-5 — went unanswered by ANSRVR and APRSPH. Turns out that wasn’t quite right. Digging through Sergei KJ5LOX’s APRS Observer dashboard, both check-ins are right there in the log, addressed to ANSRVR and timestamped clean. The messages went out fine; I just never got a reply back.

The reason surfaced in Michael Diturno’s weekly #APRSThursday recap: ANSRVR itself had been down, and Jeff W4JEW and the APRS Foundation rebooted it to get the net back on track for the 752 operators who checked in that week. So the silence wasn’t anything on my end — it was a server having a rough week, now fixed. Good reminder to double-check the infrastructure before assuming the bug is local.

One more thing that dashboard surfaced: KJ7T-5 (APRSdroid) is reporting altitude cleanly, but KJ7T-3 (the LoRa tracker) shows up as “Unknown” for altitude every time. Almost certainly a config setting I haven’t dug into yet — but to even get in there, I’ll need to break out the ToughBook. My regular laptop is ARM-based, and the T-Echo just won’t talk to it over USB. More on that once I sort it out.

This week? I got checked in no problem:

Did you happen to notice the MeshCore checking from K7OLI? That looks interesting!

APRS OTA

A few days ago, I received a very nice email from Jared K0TFU, the ham who built https://aprsota.org. He wrote:

It’s been fun to watch hams begin to use this. One highlight for me was this string of QSOS from OE7BOE in the Tyrolean Alps https://aprsota.org/OE7BOE/ops/2.

I’ve now got a stats page up and running at https://aprsota.org/stats so everyone can see the usage of the service. We should pass 500 QSOs made using APRS OTA sometime later today, and have hams in 14 countries who have participated.

When you read his radiograms you can see this is fresh work. I predict APRS OTA will become another popular way to use radio and technology. It looks like it is off to a great start.

5. The Surprising Family Tree of Yahoo! Groups

If you’re a ham who misses the old Yahoo! Groups, here’s a piece of trivia that might reframe things: the person who built the service you’re pining for is the same person who built the one a lot of us use now.

Groups.io’s founder, Mark Fletcher, didn’t start with Yahoo! Groups — he started with a service called ONElist back in 1998, a free mailing-list host built for exactly the kind of niche system hams have always relied on. ONElist soon merged with a competitor called eGroups, and in June 2000 Yahoo! bought the combined company and rebranded it as Yahoo! Groups.

For a while it thrived. But Yahoo! management largely stopped investing in it. Over the next fifteen-plus years, the platform calcified under their watch: clunky moderation tools, a dated interface, and eventually real spam and security problems that group owners had no good way to address. Fletcher, watching from the outside as the company let his creation rot, eventually decided to build the successor himself. Groups.io launched in beta on September 23, 2014 — six years before Yahoo! finally pulled the plug on Groups on December 15, 2020.

That timing turned out to matter a lot for amateur radio. When the Yahoo! Groups shutdown was announced, hundreds of ham-related mailing lists — build groups, DX nets, kit-support forums, digital mode communities — suddenly needed somewhere to go, fast, with their years of archived messages intact. Groups.io was ready and purpose-built to catch them, and hams migrated in numbers well out of proportion to the general population of orphaned Yahoo! Groups. Today, ham radio groups punch way above their weight on the platform. By one count, 10 of Groups.io’s top 40 largest groups (out of roughly 100,000 total) are amateur radio communities, with the Softrock40 group alone landing at #4 overall with over 8,000 members, trailing only a couple of non-radio giants and IBM’s internal list. YouTuber Callum, better known as DXCommander, is often credited with giving the migration wave an extra push by publicly encouraging hold-out groups to make the jump.

We are living with the legacy of Yahoo! Groups. It didn’t vanish when Yahoo! finally killed the service in 2020. Instead, it moved, largely intact, onto Groups.io, which is why the platform now provides such outsized support to the amateur radio community specifically. The free, low-friction, member-run model that made Yahoo! Groups worth missing in the first place is exactly what its original builder set out to preserve and protect from further neglect when he built its successor.

If you’re active in a ham radio group on Groups.io today, you are standing on infrastructure with a direct lineage back to a scrappy 1998 mailing-list startup — one that Yahoo! bought, neglected for two decades, and finally killed, only for its original builder to come back and keep it going for communities like ours.

6. Old IEEE Articles on Amateur Radio & Tech

It’s been far too long since I dove into the past offerings of IEEE Spectrum. I did that this week, harvesting a handful of interesting titles for you to consider. Maybe one will spark a project idea.

• The Most Hackable Handheld Ham Radio Yet — March 27, 2024.

• Detect Quakes With “Raspberry Shakes” — September 27, 2023.

• Detect Solar Flares and Gamma-Ray Bursts for Less Than $100 — January 19, 2022.

• Hacking Ham Radio for Texting — November 15, 2021. This is the one that piqued my interest, because instead of two chips, I could probably use a single Arduino Uno Q to run it. It would cut the two-chip serial bridge in the original design down to one board’s built-in RPC, gain Wi-Fi for APRS-IS gateway access, and get real Linux tooling for the UI/storage side. The tradeoffs would be battery life, needing to either port or replace MicroAPRS, and building a radio audio interface.

7. Gadgets

Yaesu VX-6R charging

I bought an $11 USB charging cable for my Yaesu VX-6R handheld radio. A side benefit: it also fits my Yaesu FT-70D handheld. I am finding that it works fine to charge the FT-70D battery but conversely, not with the VX-6R. I get a “NO BAT” message on the VX-6R’s screen when I try to charge with the USB cable. The radio operates as if it is on external power when I turn it on with the cable connected. When I disconnect the cable and try to turn on the radio: nothing.

USB Charger Cable for Yaesu Radio CD41 CD47 CD15A CD26 (this is an affiliate link)

So I’ve ordered a fresh battery and high-capacity charger, and neither are original Yaesu products. Fingers crossed on this purchase.

It may be that my original battery sat fully discharged too long and now the radio doesn’t even see it when it is connected. I’m guessing this might be the case. Perhaps fully charging it with the hi-cap charger will work. If not, I’ll still have a new battery.

Tri-Band Yaesu VX-6R Submersible Amateur Ham Radio Transceiver (144/222/440) (this is an affiliate link)

The VX-6R is a tri-band analog FM transceiver. The 220 MHz band operates at 1.5 watts out instead of the full 5 watts out on 70 cm and 2 meters. In the U.S. market, it comes with NOAA weather channels and maritime channels. But what I like most about the VX-6R is how it feels in my hand. It is a compact radio that fits my medium-sized hands just right. The case has enough texture to feel secure in my grip. And since I live in a place with a lot of winter rain, the IPX7 rating gives me some comfort when I carry this radio on my journeys.

8. Short Stack from the Interwebs

The Short Stack from the Interwebs, pulled from the aggregated feeds on EtherHam (etherham.com/feeds/), items from August 13–19.

SDR & Signal Hacking

• KrakenSDR Tested as a GNSS Jammer and Spoofer Localizer — RTL-SDR Blog — Putting the 5-channel coherent SDR to work finding the source of GPS jamming and spoofing.

• Carshepherd: An Android RTL-SDR App For the Early Awareness of Nearby Emergency-Service Vehicles — RTL-SDR Blog — A pre-release Android app that pairs an RTL-SDR dongle with your phone to flag nearby police/fire/EMS traffic.

• Detecting Dark Matter’s Mark with an RTL-SDR Based DIY Radio Telescope — RTL-SDR Blog — An IEEE Spectrum writeup on using an RTL-SDR, LNA, and homebrew horn antenna to measure the galaxy’s hydrogen line.

• VibeSDR Jr: Apple Watch RTL-SDR, KiwiSDR, UberSDR Client now Available — RTL-SDR Blog — The AI-vibecoded SDR client shrinks down to run on your wrist.

• More Information about the FrameRF Technical Surveillance Counter-Measures Platform — RTL-SDR Blog — A deeper technical follow-up on the Italian-built TSCM platform for bug-sweeping.

• AntSDR T510 Pre-launch: A 1 MHz to 6 GHz SDR with 2 GHz Bandwidth and a Built-In NVIDIA Jetson — RTL-SDR Blog — A high-end SDR platform pairing an AMD Zynq RFSoC with an onboard Jetson for AI-assisted signal work.

Digital Modes & Mesh

• Building an Off-Grid Meshcore Network, One Node at a Time — QRPer — A QRP-flavored look at building out a Meshcore network on sub-1W, 900 MHz nodes.

• LoRa APRS iGate V4.0.0: New WebUI, Live Stations Map, and Channel Activity Detection for ESP32 Digipeaters — Hamradio.my — A major update bringing a Bootstrap WebUI and live Leaflet station map to the ESP32 LoRa APRS iGate project.

• qFT8 Review: Is This the Best FT8 Android App for Portable Ham Radio? — Radio Hobbyist — Running FT8 from a park or summit without hauling a laptop.

• vBand USB Adapter vs CW Hotline as an Adapter vs Vail Adapter — With Varying Frequency — A hands-on comparison of internet-CW hardware adapters, including notes on latency while traveling.

• Ham Radio and Digital Data Modes: How Low-Power Signals Can Communicate When Voice Cannot — Amateur Radio Today — A primer on why digital modes keep working when voice comms break down.

Gear, Builds & Reviews

• AnyTone AT-779UV with UV-72 Antenna and Cable Review: A Compact 20-Watt VHF/UHF Mobile Radio — Amateur Radio Today — A mobile transceiver review aimed at operators who want more than a typical HT but don’t need a full base rig.

• A Basic Elecraft KX2 Setup & Orientation Video — QRPer — A 22-minute, no-frills walkthrough for getting a new KX2 up and running.

• CYD Ham Dashboard: Turn a $10 ESP32 Cheap Yellow Display into a Touchscreen Ham Radio Shack Monitor — Hamradio.my — A cheap ESP32 display turned standalone shack monitor with greyline, propagation, and DX spots.

• QMX QRP – It works! — With Varying Frequency — Getting the feature-packed QRP Labs QMX up and running after a firmware update.

• K9ZW 630m Station Build – a Few Steps Closer — With Varying Frequency — Sourcing the last cables, connectors, and adapters for a 630m station build.

• Time for antenna work. — Amateur Radio Weekly — Notes from replacing a radial plate on a Hustler 4BTV vertical.

• A Few Words from Momobeam about the Mechanical Design of Its HF Directional Antennas — On All Bands — A look at the mechanical engineering behind Momobeam’s HF beams, spotted at Hamvention.

• Geeky Gift Building – Sweeping radar style ADS-B traffic display — With Varying Frequency — A 3D-printed, radar-sweep-style ADS-B display built as a gift.

POTA & SOTA Field Reports

• Ham Radio Portable Operating Insights: Transitioning from a POTA Activator to Hunter — On All Bands — Lessons learned after years of activating parks, now applied to hunting instead.

• W8TMI: QRP Along the North Shore of Lake Superior — QRPer — A Michigan Upper Peninsula activation report from a self-described “frequent flyer” of the Mackinac Bridge.

• QRP Along the River: A POTA Activation along the Tweed Estuary — QRPer — An early-morning coffee-fueled activation on the Scottish coast.

• KB2PIZ: A Rough Start Turns Into an Easy POTA Activation — QRPer — A shaky beginning that turned into a smooth three-hour activation before work.

• GB1DOG Active in 26 — Ham Radio Operator M0YKS — A special-event station making noise across HF and satellite bands through the month.

Shortwave & Listening

• C.Crane Interview: Radio During Hurricane Helene — The SWLing Post — A conversation with C. Crane about the role radio played in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

• The New XHDATA D-226/D-228 DSP Shortwave/AM/FM/WX Portable — The SWLing Post — XHDATA is prepping two new portables, the D-228 and D-226, with NOAA weather radio built in.

• A Glimpse of Korean War Clandestine Radio in Operation Chromite — The SWLing Post — A reader spots wartime clandestine radio work in a charity-shop movie find.

• The Morrow CM-1 receiver – A relic of the cold war’s effect on amateur radio — KA7OEI — A deep dive on a CONELRAD monitor receiver born of Cold War civil defense requirements.

• Why is Lahti on the Dial of the Receiver? Where is Lahti? — Solder Smoke — Bill Meara chases down an unfamiliar city name printed on an old receiver dial.

DX, Contests, Satellites & Awards

• ANS-228 AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins — AmSat — This week’s bulletin covers the call for AMSAT Space Symposium presentations and a CubeSatSim feature in QST.

• AMSAT Canada Begins Offering Membership Options — Amateur Radio Daily — AMSAT-CA opens up membership to help fund its support of amateur radio in space.

• Happy 50th Anniversary to the Araucaria DX Group! — On All Bands — A tip of the hat to one of DXing’s most accomplished contesting organizations.

• Kopernik Observatory Seeks Amateur Radio Operators to Track August 19 Balloon Flight — ARRL News — An APRS- and SSTV-equipped educational balloon needs trackers across the northeast.

• ARISS Receives Challenger-7 Recognition — ARRL News — Amateur Radio on the International Space Station picks up a national honor.

• The ARRL Solar Update — ARRL News — This week’s propagation and solar activity forecast from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

• Contesting 101: Building a Workbench & Basic Ham Radio Troubleshooting Techniques — On All Bands — A veteran contester’s series continues with workbench setup and troubleshooting basics.

• CHOTA 2026: Churches and Chapels on the Air — Amateur Radio Daily — This year’s Churches and Chapels on the Air event is set for September 12.

Podcasts, Community & Events

• AmateurLogic 220: It’s Going To Get Meshy — Amateur Radio Weekly — This episode covers mesh networking experiments, including a solar-powered mesh node build.

• Amateur Radio Weekly – Issue 434 — Amateur Radio Weekly — This week’s roundup, including a PDF/CSV FCC “Call Book” for low-bandwidth QSO chasing.

• LHS Episode #626: The Weekender CXLII — Amateur Radio Weekly — Linux in the Ham Shack’s latest weekend-project roundup.

• SolderSmoke Podcast 266: TROUBLESHOOTING! Test Gear, LA6NCA, ZIA Rig, Australia, Nuvistors, 75 AM, MAILBAG — Solder Smoke — The latest episode digs into test gear and troubleshooting war stories.

• Looking Back at Ham Radio Friedrichshafen 2026 — On All Bands — A recap from an exchange student’s visit to the biggest ham radio show in Europe.

• Recent SKs: NU2J, K3SHD, K7AJM — KB6NU — Remembering three hams who shared a passion for the hobby.

Advocacy, Licensing & Growing the Hobby

• 10-Year-Old Receives Ham License and More — ARRL News — A brand-new young Technician-class ham in Arizona gets a warm welcome to the hobby.

• Making hams of hackers — KB6NU — A retired ham’s ARDC-funded mission to turn hackers into licensed operators.

• 9/11 ‘We Do Remember’ Special Event Returns for 6th Year — Amateur Radio Daily — The Alabama Contest Group’s K4 America special event returns for its sixth year.

Software & Apps Roundup

• 9M2PJU HamClock Installer: Space Weather, VOACAP Propagation, and Shack Automation Dashboard — Hamradio.my — A modernized HamClock distribution with native OHB backend integration and multi-arch Docker support.

• Open Hamclock Backend (OHB): Keeping Thousands of HamClocks Alive with Open Source Infrastructure — Hamradio.my — A community-run replacement for the sunsetting Clear Sky Institute backend that keeps HamClocks worldwide running.

• Android SSTV Alarm: The Open-Source Ham Radio Alarm Clock That Forces You to Decode Slow-Scan Television to Wake Up — Hamradio.my — An alarm clock that won’t stop until you’ve decoded an SSTV image.

• EmComm Tools OS Community Edition: The Ultimate Turnkey Linux Distribution for Off-Grid Ham Radio and Tactical Cyberdecks — Hamradio.my — A technical breakdown of the open-source Linux platform built for off-grid emcomm.

• DXLens: An iOS App Combining Shortwave Schedules, Propagation Data and Public SDRs — RTL-SDR Blog — A new iPad/iPhone app for listening to remote SDR receivers alongside schedules and propagation data.

Linux, Homelab & Self-Hosting

• The best way to run Docker on Proxmox depends entirely on your hardware and use-case, and it took me years to realize that — XDA Developers — Docker-on-Proxmox isn’t a one-size-fits-all decision, and this breaks down when to use which approach.

• I wish I’d learned these 5 simple Proxmox skills sooner — How-To Geek — A little practice up front that could have saved much bigger headaches later.

• Luckfox Lyra PLC – A Linux-based Rockchip RK3506B industrial controller with RS232, RS422, RS485, CAN bus, and relays — CNX Software — A Linux-based PLC with the kind of I/O that suits remote station and sensor automation.

• Google Chrome is now available for Arm Linux. We tested it on a Raspberry Pi 5 — CNX Software — Chrome finally lands officially on 64-bit Arm Linux, tested on Pi OS.

• Using the Khadas Mind Graphics 2 (NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti USB4 eGPU) on Ubuntu 26.04 — CNX Software — Getting a USB4 eGPU dock working cleanly on Ubuntu.

• Waveshare PiRack-M6F 6-node rack unit for Raspberry Pi 4/5 brings all ports to the front — CNX Software — A 2U rack-mount cluster kit for up to six Pi 4/5 boards.

• I finally self-hosted my passwords, and it’s simpler than I expected — XDA Developers — Moving off a cloud password manager and onto Vaultwarden.

• Why CachyOS is the better Arch-based distro if you’re not gaming 24/7 — How-To Geek — A case for CachyOS as a daily-driver Arch distro beyond its gaming-performance reputation.

• Pine64 hits pause on Linux devices due to RAM and eMMC shortage/high prices — CNX Software — The ongoing memory crunch forces Pine64 to pause new Linux hardware.

• Why Most Linux Users Avoid Flatpak: The Honest Technical Case Against Universal Packaging — Hamradio.my — A technically grounded look at Flatpak’s disk bloat, sandbox escapes, and stale dependencies.

• USBridge-KVM 2.0 – An open-source IP-KVM with BIOS access over SSH, OCR, and AI support — CNX Software — A compact open-source IP-KVM for remote management of servers and PCs, including systems that won’t boot.

9. QRT: End Transmission

I’m very curious how the DMR radio will work. So far, I’ve been pleased with the Retevis RT3S DMR handheld. Discovering the differences between it and the Radioddity GD-77 radio was enlightening and helpful. I’m happy I was able to map important key combinations this week.

And if DMR traffic in my neck of the woods proves interesting, I might start looking for a mobile rig to carry in the pickup truck. The PNWDigital group has a good number of DMR repeaters in the region so I would have reasonable coverage most of the places I regularly travel to and from.

On the tech and software side of the house, I’m looking at notifier systems like Pushover and Pushbullet. It would be convenient to develop a stack of circumstances that trigger automatic notifications pushed to my smartphone. My tech stack is deep enough at the house that it’s actually hard to notice if something has gone offline or if the IP address changed because the upstream provider made changes. I have a notifier set up for some websites but those “down” notices come through as emails, meaning they get swamped by all the other emails I receive. For the sites I manage, getting those notices by SMS or pushed to an app would be helpful.

And that’s it from the great Pacific Northwe(s)t, where we are actually in a drought and experiencing a record number of wildfires. I hope all who have been affected get the help they need to recover from these disasters.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!

0. Updates!

Windows

Last week it was a Debian 13 update with security vulnerabilities plugged. This week, it’s Windows: Microsoft Plugs Nearly 400 Security Holes. One of the most fundamental ways to protect yourself is to keep your computer updated.

August 11, 2026: Microsoft today released updates to remedy at least 398 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and supported software, including one weakness that is already being actively exploited and two others that were publicly detailed prior to today.

HamClock OHB

If the version number on your HamClock OHB display is red, an update is available. Click that red version number and follow the prompts to upgrade. Nice additions since I last upgraded:

• An email icon that presents a link to the OHB status page. Useful.

• An airplane icon that opens an ADSB flight tracker for your location. Interesting.

• A blue wind icon that opens the Windy.com website.

Screens are presented as a collage below because inserting them all here would take up too much space:

1. QRV: Are You Ready?

It’s been a rather frustrating week. Usually, I’m gleeful when I find problems to fix. This week, I just wanted things to work…but they didn’t. Resolving issues this week dramatically diluted my writing time. That I do find frustrating.

And I’ll gripe a little bit (again) about Claude’s Sonnet 5 model because it jumps to conclusions. That ended up costing me several hours of time this week as I chased a couple of long, involved issues down dark and twisty rabbit holes, when time was in short supply. The Opus 5 model does much better but it also burns through my credits much faster. The problem here is really twofold: I don’t know Sonnet is going to make mistakes until it makes them, and I’d rather not spend the money on Opus if I don’t have to.

Huh. Here I am complaining about AI. I wonder if this is going to become the new normal on repeaters. You know the drill: what’s the weather, what equipment are you running, how is your health, and now, what have you been doing with AI?

I have to say, though: it is so very easy to overlook all the great help now available to me through the many AI engines available. I have far more successes than difficult detours. It feels a tiny bit uncomfortable to say this plainly, but I will: at this moment in time, I am grateful for AI.

2. New on EtherHam

• Writing EtherHam Content: Untangling the Ball of Yarn — Meetings (and radio nets) rarely move in a straight line. Someone circles back to a point you thought was closed thirty minutes ago, and a strict outline can’t keep up. Thirty years of facilitating meetings taught me why; mind mapping taught me how to actually capture it. This piece walks through that shift — from a hallway conversation with a frustrated note-taker decades ago to the technique I still use today, turning a tangled ball of yarn of ideas into the straightened, sequential pieces you read on EtherHam.

• LoRa APRS: Part 3 — A T-Deck Plus Tracker, Offline Maps, and a Long Detour Through OpenStreetMap’s Terms of Service — A LilyGo T-Deck Plus running LoRa APRS will render an offline vector map of the terrain you’re standing in, hold threaded APRS conversations, and pass Winlink email — none of which a plain tracker does. Getting there took most of a day and five stacked failures, each one hiding the next: a wiki that contradicts the firmware it documents; an SD card in the wrong filesystem; 1,793 downloaded map tiles that turned out to be OpenStreetMap’s “Access blocked” graphic saved 1,793 times; a tile generator that had to be compiled from source inside Linux; and — after all of that — a map that had been working the whole time but wouldn’t render until I pressed the zoom button three more times. Somewhere in the middle, the tracker started reporting itself in the Southern Ocean while its own screen showed the correct coordinates. If you just want something that beacons your position, buy a T-Echo and enjoy long battery life. If you want the map and the messaging, here’s the whole path with the wrong turns left in, because the wrong turns are the part worth reading.

• Weekly Report: August 13, 2026 — Catch up on band conditions, digital radio news, and the Groups.io digest.

3. New: EtherHam Community Space

Over the years, the conversations around the intersection of amateur radio and technology have grown incredibly rich. While the newsletter is a great way to share these concepts, I want to give us a dedicated space to hold deeper, multi-sided discussions.

Today, I am excited to officially launch the EtherHam Groups.io Community.

This is our new clubhouse on the web—a text-based space where you can ask technical questions, share project updates, discuss technology integration, shape future Random Wire and EtherHam topics, and connect directly with other subscribers.

⚠️ A Note on Capacity (First-Come, First-Served)

Because we are launching on a lean, independent infrastructure, space is strictly limited to the first 100 members.

To protect our space from automated bots, spam, and bad actors, membership requires manual approval. We are prioritizing licensed radio amateurs, though tech-minded enthusiasts are welcome too.

How to Secure Your Spot:

1. Click here to visit the group homepage: groups.io

2. Click the Apply For Membership button.

3. You will receive an automated email asking for your amateur radio callsign (or an explanation of why you want to participate).

4. Reply to that email immediately to lock in your application for review.

Once we hit our 100-member cap, the doors will close while we settle into this new space. If you want to help shape the foundation of the EtherHam community from day one, please submit your application today.

See you in the ether,

Tom KJ7T
Editor, Random Wire
www.randomwire.us

4. IP400: The Story Behind This Important Project

I’m sure you’ve noticed the changes over time on VHF/UHF repeaters: coordinated frequencies sitting quiet, hardware from the 1990s doing the same voice relay job it’s always done, and a shrinking pool of operators who show up to keep it maintained. For years, my friend Steve Stroh N8GNJ has been touting a project called IP400, and for good reason. A recent section of his Zero Retries newsletter will likely convince you that IP400 really is an exciting initiative in our amateur radio hobby. Why? Because he’s right.

But where did IP400 come from? It traces back to a longtime radio amateur, Martin Alcock VE6VH — who spent years designing commercial broadband wireless systems before focusing that experience toward amateur radio. Alcock looked at what already existed — AREDN, HamWAN, New Packet Radio — and noticed they all shared the same limitation: they either ran on license-exempt spectrum with real power restrictions, or they came with enough administrative overhead that they never spread much beyond a dedicated core of builders. What amateur radio didn’t have, in his view, was a data and mesh networking system built from scratch for the hobby, on ham bands, without those constraints. That observation became IP400, developed under the Alberta Digital Radio Communications Society (ADRCS), the group Alcock helped found in 2022 and where he’s been able to line up grant funding — including a 2025 ARDC grant — to keep development moving.

As the project has developed, it became clear that IP400 is not trying to replace DMR, D-STAR, C4FM, or your local FM repeater. Instead, it sits next to them. IP400 is additive to our hobby, not subtractive. The hardware — a controller board called the AMNC — talks to a radio you already own and adds a data layer compatible with AX.25 KISS framing, with an eye toward working alongside Winlink, AllStarLink-linked repeaters, and eventually AREDN’s mesh network. The goal is to give existing infrastructure a reason to be upgraded rather than replaced.

What’s running today rides on ordinary FM audio, but that’s really just the first step. Alcock’s longer-term plan involves dedicated software-defined radios with a direct I/Q interface, aimed at speeds well beyond what’s possible when squeezing data through a mic jack. Where that lands, and how fast, is exactly the kind of thing Steve is covering well.

I think there’s another reason for this, one that’s a little harder to say out loud: a lot of newer hams just aren’t as focused on voice communications as the hams who came before them. These new hams grew up in a data-driven, IP-enabled world, and IP400 speaks that language. I’d bet this brings a fair number of tech-fluent people into the hobby who might not have bothered otherwise.

In my view, IP400 is one of the most exciting and fundamental developments in amateur radio today. I’ve not covered it in the Random Wire newsletter because Steve does such an outstanding job of keeping his subscribers updated on IP400. This project is worth digging into, getting excited about, and supporting. IP400 may well be one of the most important technology improvements we’ll see in amateur radio.

For more, I suggest following this topic in the Zero Retries newsletter where it is sure to be very well covered by the ZR team.

5. Curious About 44Net?

Here is your chance to learn about 44Net and about John Burwell KI5QKX, on Eric Guth’s great podcast series, QSO Today, in Episode 539.

John Burwell, KI5QKX, found his way into amateur radio through 44Net, the Class A public IP address space set aside for amateur radio almost 50 years ago, now managed by ARDC. John’s interest in connecting devices over the Internet led him to this remarkable ham radio resource. In this interview, we go deep into IP addressing and networking, opening the door to new ways licensed amateurs can learn, experiment, and build Internet-connected projects. KI5QKX is my QSO Today.

6. QSO One 3.8.5 — Your Update Has Arrived

3.8.5 is live for beta testers, and this one is almost entirely about audio. From the announcement:

The mic gain scale actually works now, a real 0 to 100 instead of everything living in the bottom sliver. There is a new audio test for every network, you talk, it meters you, and it grades you hot, good, or quiet while you adjust. And the clever part, once the app has heard enough stations on a network, it grades you against how that network actually sounds, not against a number from a lab. Every network also gets transmit protection now so you cannot blow anyones ears off, Windows choppy audio got a real fix, and Bluetooth PTT buttons finally respect your PTT mode setting.

Socials:

• Discord: https://discord.gg/4N6Wc3fsEv

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1483876283506992

• Reddit- https://www.reddit.com/r/QSOone/

It’s good to see this project moving forward.

7. POTA Heil Headset

I’ll just say this here: this new headset from Heil isn’t just for Parks On The Air, but it’s a great choice for POTA. From Michael Martens KB9VBR:

8. Waiting on Two Radios: DMR & M17

Retevis RT3S DMR Radio

I ordered this a few weeks ago:

RT3S Dual Band DMR Radio Non-GPS/Built-in GPS

Why? Because I want to try OpenGD77 as the codeplug editor, and OpenGD77 says the RT3S is compatible. In fact, there are plenty of blog posts and reviews available on this exact pairing. (I’m not hyperlinking this radio here because I’ve not received or reviewed it yet.)

I got interested in this after a subscriber asked me how to get into DMR at a reasonable cost. Of course, I do like my AnyTone 878 radio very much, but that’s a more premium option than a $100 radio and free CPS software.

I promised a part two on DMR that I’ve been picturing as a how-to on developing your own codeplug. The RT3S with OpenGD77 is going to fit right into that slot. I’m looking forward getting this working and sharing the journey with you.

A few days ago, the RT3S radio was in Chicago. Wednesday, I received the extra bits: a speaker-microphone, antenna, and spare battery. Maybe the RT3S will arrive in time for initial impressions…but probably not.

Retevis C62 Dual-band Radio…for M17

And then I ordered another radio from Retevis:

Retevis C62 UV Dual Band AI Noise Reduction 5W Long Range Durable Business Two Way Radio

What comes up on that page is a 6-pack of radios. I ordered the single radio for $55.

Then I got an email: “We noticed that you purchased the (EU version) radios. To avoid any issues, would you like us to change your order to the US version[gmrs] instead?”

I paused and thought for a few minutes about this, then replied: no. The experimental work being done by the M17 Project with the C62 is happening — I believe — in Europe, so perhaps I should stick with that version. We’ll see, of course, if it works once it gets here and I load OpenRTX on it. If it works I’ll have an M17 handheld for $55! If it doesn’t work, I’ll have another radio for the unused radio bin.

9. APRS OTA

I’ve not tried this yet, but APRS OTA does sound interesting:

APRS OTA combines the vibe of a POTA activation with a native APRS messaging bot and a website to show what’s happening. Find an operator on the air, send one message and a position report to work them, and your contact is logged, mapped, and scored here as it happens.

A bot serves as a relay and automatically logs contacts:

APRS OTA is an activity and a bot…the OTA bot relays the exchange and logs every contact as it happens. There is nothing to install and no account to create: if you can send an APRS message, you are already in.

It’s a three-part system, with a host, a bot, and chasers.

Intrigued? Visit https://aprsota.org/ for more. If you try it, let me know what it’s like!

10. And Then I Had an APRS Messaging Moment

I was driving to get my morning coffee, watching carefully for deer. Sure enough, I had to hit the brakes so a young buck with velvet antlers could bound across the road. I’ve learned to look where the deer came from, too, and saw a doe and fawn turn back into the bushes. It was at that moment that I saw my APRS radio and a thought completely unrelated to wildlife popped into my mind.

I’ll write this up in long form and post it to EtherHam.com, but my EtherHam website is offline at the moment due to a major power loss at the web host’s Phoenix data center. No word on when services will be restored (and I hope “power loss” is not code talk for “fire in the data center” because that would be very bad).

What was that APRS thought? I wondered if I could send an APRS message from APRSdroid (I’m running the 9M2PJU Mod version) to my LoRa APRS tracker. Surely that could not work, because one system flows over cellular data and the other is LoRa radio. But the aha moment for me was realizing that both probably pass messages via APRS-IS. So I tested this by sending a message from my phone (KJ7T-5) to my tracker (KJ7T-3).

I was surprised and delighted to find this worked perfectly. Replying from the tracker to the phone also worked, so APRS messaging works in both directions.

Let me just pause and sit with that for a moment, because it was a revelation to me. We get pretty locked in about whether we’re working over RF or cell or satellite or wifi or whatever. Hung up on this, even. Lost in those details is the realization that APRS shares a common backbone: APRS-IS.

APRS-IS stands for the APRS Internet System, and it’s the quiet piece of infrastructure that ties every flavor of APRS together. Stations riding RF — my LoRa tracker included — reach it through something called an IGate: a small relay station, often nothing more than a radio and a cheap computer in someone’s attic (or in my case, the garage), that listens to local radio traffic and forwards it onto the internet. Apps like APRSdroid skip the radio step entirely and log straight into APRS-IS over cellular data.

Once a packet lands on APRS-IS, its origin stops mattering. It’s all just APRS-IS traffic from that point on — it can get relayed back out over RF somewhere else, or handed off to a site like aprs.fi to show up on a map. That’s what clicked for me on the drive: my phone and my tracker aren’t two separate systems that happen to talk to each other. They’re two different doors into the same room.

And this is the secret sauce that makes APRS such a powerful tool: different radios, different frequencies, different modes, different mechanisms can all communicate cleanly because they all use the same pipeline behind the scenes.

There is more to this test, because I also tried Winlink between my laptop and my APRSdroid app. That test yielded a surprising-but-educational result I’ll share once EtherHam.com comes back up.

Finally, in a “why not?” moment, I tried checking in to #APRSThursday from the tracker (LoRa APRS as KJ7T-3) and from APRSdroid (KJ7T-5). Unfortunately, both ANSRVR and APRSPH did not respond to messages or commands. I hope the #APRSThursday folks get that fixed.

11. Short Stack from the Interwebs

Well, with EtherHam.com offline, I had to resort to a special mega feed URL which fortunately worked. The following Short Stack items were harvested from this week’s aggregated ham radio feed, covering items from August 5–13, 2026.

SDR & Signal Hacking

• Product Spotlight: A Look at the KiwiSDR2 Receiver (Video) — OnAllBands — A walkthrough of the standalone KiwiSDR2, covering 10 kHz to 30 MHz with nothing more required than a computer and internet connection to get going.

• Demod: A New iOS/iPadOS App for Exploring Remote Receivers — The SWLing Post — A new app connecting to KiwiSDR, SpyServer, and rtl_tcp servers with a built-in directory of public receivers baked in.

• MagicSDR – IOS interface to RTLSDR version 26.04 released — Mac Ham Radio — A plug-in-architecture panadapter/waterfall app for RTL-SDR dongles, covering AM/SSB/CW/NFM/WFM demodulation from an iPhone or iPad.

• Using a 5 inch Naval Gun Mount as a Rotor and Being Asked by NASA to Listen for Artemis — SolderSmoke Daily News — Pete N0OY’s station includes a repurposed naval gun mount as an antenna rotor and a 10 GHz rainscatter contact spanning 91 miles — genuinely one of the wilder homebrew station tours out there.

• Checking your Own Signal on FlexRadio — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — A quick how-to on using FlexRadio’s built-in features to self-monitor your transmitted signal.

Digital Modes & Mesh

• Digital Voice over HF with FreeDV Information from Kirk KN6UMV — MichiganOne DMR Tech Net — Follow-up notes from a net discussion on FreeDV, with pointers on where Maidenhead grid squares fit into the picture beyond just contesting.

• DX Explorer and the Thinknode Meshcore M1 transceiver — Roger G3XBM’s (Mainly) Amateur Radio Blog — A rundown of a new video on the Thinknode M1 LoRa transceiver, with a reminder that Meshcore vs. Meshtastic popularity varies a lot by region.

• QSO One 3.8.5 – Getting closer! Your update has arrived — MichiganOne DMR Tech Net — A beta release focused almost entirely on audio fixes, including a mic gain scale that finally behaves like a real 0–10 range.

• SliceLogger — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — W4TME’s logging tool gets a rebrand and a fresh v1.0.0.0 general release on GitHub.

• Digital Mobile Radio Market Size to Hit USD 16.90 Billion by 2032 — MichiganOne DMR Tech Net — An industry market report pegs U.S. DMR growth at a 12.81% CAGR through 2032, largely driven by public-safety adoption rather than the hobby side.

• Travel Internet CW — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — A cautionary field report: internet CW over shipboard wifi via a vBand adapter proved unusably laggy, and a backup Vail Adapter hit its own snag mid-trip.

Gear, Builds & Reviews

• Pebble HF ordered — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — The Pebble HF kit opened for purchase this week, and K9ZW put in his order.

• New Product Spotlight: Hamplus AS-603WL Black Automatic Remote HF + VHF 6 x 3 Antenna Switch — OnAllBands — A look at the Brazilian-made Hamplus remote antenna switch from Celso PP5CFS and Marcus PP5MS.

• Mark’s First Impressions of the PK MW Loop — The SWLing Post — A Scotland-based listener’s first impressions of Paul Karlstrand’s PK Loop magnetic loop antenna, ordered after a chance conversation while traveling in Greece.

• QMX (not QMX+) is becoming a firm favourite — Roger G3XBM’s (Mainly) Amateur Radio Blog — A nod to QRP Labs’ tiny QMX rig, which keeps showing up as a favorite in the field despite its small footprint.

• Ford F-150 Radio Install – VGC N7600 — Above Average Terrain — Bob K0NR traded in his 2013 F-150 for a 2025 model and walks through installing a mobile rig in the new truck.

• Rob spots a rare Hygain Galaxy R-1530 on eBay — The SWLing Post — A vintage-radio spotting: a Hygain Galaxy R-1530 listed “for parts or not working” at $749.95 — buyer beware, no returns accepted.

• Book Review: VHF, Summits, and More – Having Fun with Ham Radio by Bob Witte K0NR — Q R P e r — A guest review from Jock Elliott (KB2GOM), reflecting on nearly 40 years in the hobby since his Novice days.

• Margaret – A New SOTA Machine — N1CLC — An extensive build log on outfitting a new Subaru Outback Wilderness for SOTA work: mobile radio install, dedicated power distribution, a Starlink Mini, and a full house battery/solar system.

• Silly me, did not take inventory on order arrival woes — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — A DigiKey order for a touch-paddle project turned up short a hundred MOSFETs, discovered only after months of sitting unopened.

POTA & SOTA Field Reports

• The Battle of the Bands: Activation of Saint Stanislaus Conservation Area US-10954 — Q R P e r — Mark (KB2PIZ) turns an 8-minute detour near the St. Louis airport into a quick POTA activation between flight legs.

• Meeting Friends on the Summit: A Special SOTA Activation at North Berwick Law — Q R P e r — Thomas K4SWL meets up with several UK-based ham friends for a SOTA activation during a trip to southeastern Scotland.

• Hunting Fossils and POTA Contacts on Cocklawburn Beach in Beautiful Northumberland — Q R P e r — A coastal POTA outing combining fossil hunting with contacts from a KX2 and a Packtenna random wire antenna.

• KK6IK: Summer Mornings, Iced Coffee & QRP — Q R P e r — Scott Nacey weighs the Elecraft KH1 against the KX2 for travel-friendly POTA operating during a Rhode Island visit.

• Parks on the Air (POTA) — Lincoln County Amateur Radio Club — The club has set up a POTA activation account under its call sign, aiming to give newer members an easy way to get started.

Shortwave & Listening

• A Glimpse of Korean War Clandestine Radio in Operation Chromite — The SWLing Post — A reader spots radio gear featured in a Korean production about the Incheon landings, starring Liam Neeson as General MacArthur.

• Radio Bonaire 1530: A Mediumwave Station Built for Emergencies — The SWLing Post — A new off-grid, continuously broadcasting AM station on Bonaire, purpose-built to keep residents and visitors informed during emergencies.

• Texas Radio Shortwave: Schedule for September & October 2026 — The SWLing Post — Updated broadcast schedules for the fall season on Texas Radio Shortwave via WRMI.

• Carlos’ Illustrated Radio Listening Report and Recordings (August 1 – 8, 2026) — The SWLing Post — Political cartoonist Carlos Latuff’s latest illustrated shortwave report explores Javier Milei’s Argentina through the airwaves.

• The Voice of Independent Myanmar: A new shortwave broadcast providing news to Myanmar — The SWLing Post — A weekly independent news broadcast to Myanmar, launched as a joint effort between Mizzima and Reporters Without Borders.

• Alan Roe’s A-26 Season Guide to Music on Shortwave (version 4.0) — The SWLing Post — A free, downloadable PDF guide to music programming across the shortwave dial, plus companion single-page schedule grids for major broadcasters.

• Radio Waves: Georgia LPFM Wants More Power, Radio Bulgaria QSL #8, Preserving Radio Mogadishu, Shortwave HQ Updates, and Joining the CIDX — The SWLing Post — This week’s grab-bag of reader-submitted radio news, spanning LPFM power requests to archival efforts for Radio Mogadishu.

• “Holocaust” 1978 TV Mini Series Underground Radios – Warsaw Ghetto — The SWLing Post — Screenshots of an underground receiver as depicted in the 1978 miniseries “Holocaust,” starring Meryl Streep and James Woods.

• The Very Last New Commercial AM Radio Station in the USA: Here’s What We Should Do Next — Off Grid Ham — A commentary piece on the twilight of commercial AM broadcasting and where the band goes from here.

• Sunshine and shortwave — The SWLing Post — This week’s Imaginary Stations schedule, including WHFM – Herman’s Radio and Record Room airing on WRMI.

DX, Contests, Satellites & Awards

• Happy 50th Anniversary to the Araucaria DX Group! — OnAllBands — A congratulatory nod to one of amateur radio’s most accomplished DXing and contesting organizations on its 50th year.

• DX Engineering Supports the September/October 2026 9T0MD DXpedition from the Democratic Republic of the Congo — OnAllBands — The Mediterraneo DX Club heads to Africa’s second-largest nation for a multi-operator DXpedition running Sept. 30–Oct. 11.

• Radio New Zealand Features the November DXpedition to Fakaofo — The SWLing Post — RNZ’s Dateline program covers an upcoming DXpedition to Fakaofo in the Tokelau atoll.

• Contesting 101: The Art of the Possible—Gaining Perspective — OnAllBands — Kirk Pickering K4RO continues his contesting series with a piece on setting realistic goals and perspective.

• ANS-221 AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins — AMSAT — This week’s bulletin covers registration for the 44th AMSAT Space Symposium, ongoing board elections, and a new ARISS associate director appointment.

• Perseid MS shower — Roger G3XBM’s (Mainly) Amateur Radio Blog — A reminder that the Perseid meteor shower peak is prime time for meteor-scatter VHF contacts, with longer-than-usual returns.

Podcasts, Community & Events

• Paul Taylor VK3HN Talks about Homebrew and SOTA — SolderSmoke Daily News — Charlie NJ7V of Red Summit RF interviews longtime SolderSmoke friend and Melbourne homebrewer Paul Taylor, VK3HN.

• A German Builder Makes a 2 Meter Receiver – Warts and All! — SolderSmoke Daily News — A refreshingly honest “blow by blow” homebrew video showing every failed attempt on the way to a working dead-bug-style 2m FM receiver.

• Chappy Happy Builds a 25 meter Direct Conversion Receiver using a PAL VFO — SolderSmoke Daily News — A repurposed CB PAL VFO becomes a direct-conversion SW broadcast receiver, with some discussion of the AM/DSB distortion inherent to the design.

• Will N5OLA (the HW-101 Guy) Interviewed by Eric 4Z1UG — SolderSmoke Daily News — A QSO Today podcast interview with Will N5OLA, known for his soap-and-water restoration approach to old Heathkit HW-101 rigs.

• Open Sauce 2026 in San Francisco — SolderSmoke Daily News — Early reports trickling in from Open Sauce, including sightings of WSPR circumnavigating balloons and homebrew CubeSats.

• Morse Code Skills Maintenance — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — Scheduling conflicts push K9ZW toward Long Island CW Club sessions in the interim before the next CWOps course opens.

• Zero Retries 0259 — Zero Retries — This issue covers OFDM-AB and a refactored IP400, new hardware and modulation aimed at making high-speed VHF/UHF mesh networking genuinely practical.

• Berryville Hamfest 2026: Wet but wonderful — News – Shenandoah Valley Amateur Radio Club — Record rainfall didn’t keep hundreds of visitors away from this year’s hamfest.

• Mods on the Air – GB64MOD Event — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — A special-event call active through all of August for fans of the Mod scene and modern hams alike.

• International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend! — MichiganOne DMR Tech Net — This year’s ILLW (Aug 15–16) will see the group operating as K8L from Michigan’s Eagle Harbor Lighthouse.

• Lighthouse Activation — Lincoln County Amateur Radio Club — The club activates the Yaquina Head Lighthouse for ILLW on Saturday, August 15, from 10am to 2pm.

Advocacy, Licensing & Growing the Hobby

• Tell Your Lawmakers to Back the Amateur Radio Preparedness Act — OnAllBands — The proposed federal bill would bar HOAs from enacting restrictive antenna rules; non-hams can now easily lend support too via a linked letter tool.

• Question pools should make teaching classes easier — KB6NU’s Ham Radio Blog — Dan KB6NU reflects on teaching a Tech class at DEFCON’s Ham Radio Village with 66 students and a freshly updated question pool.

• Ways Amateur Radio Fosters Independence in Young Hams — OnAllBands — Katie Campbell KE8LQR, licensed at age ten, on how the hobby helped a shy kid find confidence.

• Free On-line Technician Class Course starting Sept 3 — MichiganOne DMR Tech Net — A free seven-session Zoom Technician course, sponsored by the National Electronics Museum, kicks off September 3.

• Amateur Radio Has Never Been More Affordable — So Why Do Some Things Seem So Expensive? — Q R P e r — Thomas K4SWL makes the case that the hobby is more accessible than ever, even as certain gear prices climb.

• Why we had Radio Free Europe and how Ham Radio might fit in — With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings — A look at the winding-down of Radio Free Europe’s cross-border broadcasts and where amateur radio might step into that gap.

Software & Apps Roundup

• A Wave of Mac Ham Radio App Updates — Mac Ham Radio — Marcus, DL8MRE, pushed a coordinated round of releases this week: K4-Control for Elecraft (iOS 1.139), FT-Control for Yaesu (macOS 1.139), TS-Control for Kenwood (macOS 1.139), and SDR-Control for Icom (macOS 2.9.140), alongside SmartSDR for macOS 2.9.139. Also new: HamClock Launcher 4.28, KLog 2.5.3, QRV for iOS 1.26, and WSPR Watch for iOS 4.38.

12. QRT: End Transmission

Booking it

I finally finished editing the 17 chapters in my book on conservation district management and governance. The first draft of the content happened swiftly back in May. Then I invited some experts to review the draft chapters. Now that the review phase is over, I’ve been trying to make final edits. Editing of chapters 1 through 9 went smoothly. Then life got very busy and I set it aside for a week…then two weeks…then two months. This past weekend, I pulled it up and got through editing the remain chapters, and then sent the manuscript to the publisher. I’m sure I will have another round (or two) of edits coming up, but the core content is complete and good.

“Writing a book” is far more complicated than I thought it would be. I thought writing would be the hardest part, but what I discovered is that when you care deeply about a topic and have solid life experience in it, the book almost writes itself. I spent months crafting a very detailed outline and that proved to be the turning point for the manuscript, allowing me to get started and stay on track. So what was difficult? All the other steps that come with it, like finding a publisher, selecting graphics, choosing a format, hiring a service to convert it for e-book publication, and more. As I travel this road, I’m learning a lot.

Along the way, I realized that a good purpose-built tool for managers to keep regular short notes on employee performance just wasn’t available. A diary-like approach can be very helpful for capturing such notes, and reviewing that history is invaluable when it comes time for performance reviews and implementing other employment-related actions. But finding nothing like that, I made one. It’s simple and rather austere, but it does the job. With a few Python commands, you can turn it into an EXE file to run on Windows or an APP file for macOS. Find it on GitHub.

I could have made a template for something like this in Notion, but then if someone used the template, their data wouldn’t be held locally. I prefer to be in 100% control of employee information at all times.

Coding

I also had some WordPress coding fun, creating a plugin that converts a text-based schedule of meetings to an online display. Some of the text descriptions are rather complicated, e.g.:

The [fill in the blank] Board meetings are on the second Wednesday of October thru May. Meetings in September, October, March, April, and May are at 7 p.m. Meetings in November, December, January, and February are at 6:00 p.m. Meetings are in the US Post Office Building Conference Room.

I built a parser to extract the key pieces and convert the data into a CSV file, then rendered the CSV in a monthly calendar format, with a list-based schedule below the calendar. When meeting dates or locations change, I simply download the CSV, update it, and upload it back to the server. I also added the ability to temporarily mark a meeting “canceled” without going through the whole CSV download-and-upload sequence.

All that is built into a custom WordPress plugin that produces a shortcode for use on any page on the website. It’s working great.

And then, since I was on a roll writing plugins, I wrote one to convert my 518-row spreadsheet of high school classmates into a database maintained on the class website. It has two roles: data admins and data reviewers/approvers. I included a real change log that allows changes to be rolled back. It renders output with shortcodes to display a full class list, our missing classmates, and classmates who have walked on before us. Fun little project.

That should do it for me for a week or two with WordPress plugins!

Home

I’m not really a big fan of tomatoes, but I make an exception for home grown tomatoes harvested on a sunny day at the peak of ripeness. Since I’m the only one who eats them, I have one plant growing in a pot on the deck. Unfortunately, a chipmunk (we named it Chippie) has decided it likes my tomatoes, and it is much faster to harvest them than I am! To try to protect them, I’ve covered the plant — ripening tomatoes and all — with a net. I left the net loose on the bottom the first day and the chipmunk got in and decimated a few almost-ripe tomatoes. The net is now tied tight, and I’m hoping it keeps Chippie out so I’ll get to enjoy the fruits of my own labor soon!

And speaking of home, my childhood home may, or may not, have been affected by the wildfires that have destroyed parts of Spokane, Washington. I wish I knew the status of the old neighborhood as I have many great memories of growing up there. I’m sure I’ll try to make a road trip this fall just to reassure myself that all is well with the old house in northwest Spokane.

Wildfire has been an active force on Pacific Northwest landscapes, particularly east of the north-south Cascade Mountain range:

Source: Washington Large Fires 1973-2025

EtherHam website down (but back up late Thursday)

Thursday morning dawned with a different kind of tech problem: a message from the EtherHam web hosting company!

We’re currently responding to an emergency caused by a power outage at our Phoenix datacenter…undergoing emergency maintenance…experiencing network issues. Websites may be slow, unavailable, or return 503 errors. Hosting panel access may also be affected.

Starting my day with a web outage is always a bit unsettling. At least it wasn’t something I caused (and yes, that has happened before, more than once).

As Thursday draws to a close, resolution is in sight, but it still hasn’t happened. By Friday morning, the EtherHam.com website should be is back online.

73, and remember to touch a radio every day!