Advancing Ham Radio.. different ideas

The ARRL needs to exit publishing

2025-09-03T11:53:00.002-05:00

In my opinion the ARRL needs to exit publishing, and come up with a new game. At least their books. They have already done this at least with their magazines, as the cost for the traditional paper copy has transformed into a premium option.

Rumor on the street is they have / are considering some other source of funding other than the traditional membership method. Their membership numbers are obviously not really great which in turn means their former main membership benefit, the monthly magazine is not delivering the content potential members seek.

Meanwhile, ham radio stagnates because the general populace is less DIY than in decades ago. A lot is to blame here, from excessive income feeding a throw away society, the overall transitions from a manufacturing based economy to a consumer one… Ham radio now mostly relies on manufactures to innovate, rather than coming from within.

When radio started nearly everything was home-brewed or built by hams. Disseminating information on how to do so was a critical need that the QST magazine fulfilled. As time has passed there are better ways to get such information. (And due to legal issues a lot of things won't get printed in mainstream publications.) What we have now is the opposite problem. Circuits are now very complex and most hams are not building them on their own. There is a critical need for manufacturing partnerships more so than disseminating information.

In my opinion, the league should study the Raspberry Pi foundation, and attempt to follow in their footsteps. And to be clear, those footsteps are in working towards a goal of manufacturing partnerships to put some new technology in the hands of the masses. This is how you keep the bands active in my mind.

Over the past several decades I haven’t ever bought a new ARRL published book from them directly. This is because I have found it cheaper elsewhere. There are too many other platforms for publishing to remain a viable thing for them. The other problem I see is the league obviously values exerting their publishing rights beyond what is reasonable, but within the outdated legal framework. Case in point is even really old ARRL publications no longer for sale; they have provided pushback for inclusion in the DLARC library. This is self serving.

In my opinion, authors and potential authors should be encouraged to publish elsewhere. I’ve always liked the lulu press concept. The 75 years plus the life of the author copyright thing is not in the spirit of ham radio in my opinion. There are other licensing schemes that allow the authors to make money and not lock up resources beyond a reasonable time frame. Perhaps grants should be offered to potential authors to encourage this sort of thing.

It’s going to take some radical changes and a lot of work for ham radio to survive another 100 years, let alone make it to another 50. The status quo at the league level isn’t going to do this.

Upping the ante when the FCC fails to do its job.

2025-07-28T17:08:00.001-05:00

Short of a writ of mandamus or continually having to get an elected official (usually as equally useless) to tell the FCC to do their jobs here are some ideas.

When the ARRL files comments (publically viewable), they should kindly remind the FCC how long they have done nothing on the matter at hand. For example when I last commented I reminded them we've been waiting since January on the FNPRM for something to come from the comments they solicited. I also reminded them that for the below 30 MHz part we had to get a congress woman involved after screwing around for a decade on the matter.

Use the bulley pulpit. Wayne Green really knew how to get his readers keyed up on new technology in his editorials. Is there a reason the ARRL isn't more frank in their editorial about how unresponsive the FCC is to ham radio? If they can harness even a portion of the ham populus similar to how Wayne did, then imagine even just 100 hams commenting to the FCC. They never seem to encourage their readers to comment to the FCC. There is power in numbers, use it!

Be bold. When you do have a face to face meeting with the FCC, point blank ask them when they next expect to make a decision on the matter at hand. Tell them you'd like to set a schedule to meet bi monthly till the matter is resolved and ask what progess, sticking points etc and with who are at hand each time you meet.

Keep your membership informed on when you'll next meet and what progress was made.

Moving foward

2025-07-23T18:58:00.003-05:00

Good to see the ARRL is at least trying occasionally. If they did this more often I'd at least be able to speak more positively about them.

July 11 Notice of Ex Parte Meeting

I like this summary. It's inline with what I have been saying for some time.

The fundamental purpose of the amateur service is to encourage experimentation with radio technologies of all kinds “to contribute to the advancement of the radio art”, to encourage “advancing skills in both communication and the technical phases of the art”, and most importantly, to “expand the existing reservoir within the amateur radio service of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts”.1 Unfortunately, significant aspects of the Part 97 amateur rules no longer provide the basis and flexibility needed to foster experimentation with some of the leading modern techniques. The rules need updating to delete unnecessary provisions and outdated restrictions that impair the core purpose of the service. In short, aspects of the rules constitute an impediment to amateur efforts to attract and teach the next generation of American youth that we rely upon to enhance America’s global competitiveness by continuing America’s leadership in wireless communications technologies.

Now if the league would share what their next move is, I'd likely rejoin. Getting up in the FCC's face once a decade isn't really enough to impress me.

One other thing that remains to be seen is if the ARDC/amprnet POP's will lead to anything productive in terms of new protocols, internal network developments etc. I have this funny feeling it's going to be more of an administrative burden than the latter. For starters there its taking an unsually long time to publicly launch. I mean when it was a one man show, Brian Kantor pulled things off in an impressive turn around time while still working. A plug and play VPN has its place, like for repeater sites, espically as IPv4 addresses shrink and global NAT becomes a headache for ham radio connected applications. But there will also be a subset of people trying to use it from home. And there as of the momement is no real reason for that type of use. So I am concerned it will be used nefariously in those cases. If the internal/intranet aspects of 44net are developed then home use makes sense. I personally like a trust network of sorts where there is an educational barrier to keep out the clueless ones. Besides ham radio should be about learning. How on god's greeen earth is anyone who cannot figure out how to connect to the network right now using IPencap going to ever make any meaningful contribution to the network?

Maybe the ARDC should develop some furthering education classes? People like awards in the contesting area, and the FCC license in reality isn't very technical. We clearly need more technical people in the hobby to help move things forward.

The development of the ARDC foundation and grant giving is the right idea. But in my opinion it sadly hasn't yet managed to put any new technology in the hands of many to truely change ham radio for the better. If they or some other organization could achive something simular to what the Raspberry Pi foundation, I would be thoroughly impressed. How in the heck does ham radio get things manufactured?

In summary the two biggest issues I see for ham radio (with a USA bias) is getting outdated rules changed and getting new technology manufactured. A good start to the latter would be first to identify what we need, i.e. that technology task force idea that I have mentioned before.

The latest FCC waiting game

2025-05-18T22:05:00.002-05:00

In April I filed reply comments mostly to give the nudge to what Steve Stroh wrote. I have been down this utterly wasteful road before. Back in January of 2024 I wrote comments to the FNPRM on WT Docket 16-239 (the symbol rate).

That whole symbol rate thing started nearest I can tell around 2003 (RM-11306). And when that failed, it was reintroduced in 2013.

After it not going anywhere for a long time, the ARRL had congress woman Debbie Lesko step in. Finally in late 2023, the HF portion was enacted.

But this latest request in April for suggested changes to techical rules is not new. In 2017 the Technological Advisory Council (TAC) made a Technical Inquiry Into Reforming Technical Regulations. Bruce Perens, K6BP wrote an excellent look at things. But there were no changes to Part 97. Yet other services did manage to see changes.

So the question is what has the FCC done recently for ham radio? And how long are we going to wait this time?

Three things.

There ought to be a way to write off wasted time interacting with the government on your taxes, this might provide them an incentive to do their jobs. (Don't even get me going on Thomas Woodrow Wilson)

Writ of Mandamus. Now that we are paying fees, aren't we entitled to some level of service? (By the way it would be interesting to calculate how much money ham radio as a whole annually submits to the Failed Clown College)

And lastly, the more sane thing would be if the FCC would be more transparent and state in their inital request the expected time frame for decision-making. Heck if you're over 70-80 years old I see no reason to waste your time writing anything to them as you'll never see the fruits of your labors. You should be made aware of this up front.

Again in my opinion if they cannot modify rules in a timely manner they do not serve our interest well. Technology is advancing faster than we can get rules changed. We'd be better off having the whole administration of the amateur service moved to a third party. So much of it is already, like the testing, repeater coordination. All things they used to do.

44Net

2025-05-07T12:36:00.000-05:00

In my last post I shed some light on how I feel there are good things being funded by the ARDC, but in the end its not really changing a whole lot.

It's origional inception was loaning address space to hams. And when you read their page:

"The goals are to of advance the state of the art of Amateur Radio networking, and to educate amateur radio operators in these techniques."

It's not clear what people are doing within the space. Is any of it aligning with the above stated goals? Or is the bulk of address space merely being used as an extension of the internet?

I'm a bit of an advoate for building the 44 intranet (read that again). The internal network. I have pointed out somethings a while back.

I'd also like to see some networking advancements. Are there any hams as cool at Brian Kantor these days, writing new protocols like he did way back when with NNTP? Could hams contribute to a movement to get the rest of the world to better adopt IPv6?

The problem as I see it, is a lack of direction. Identifiying things that ought to happen, (be researched written or built) and matching that with a bounty grant makes more sense to me than doling out the cash when ever club wants to have an ARES trailer.

Meshtastic

2025-04-24T22:28:00.002-05:00

Years ago I had built a 900 MHz analog repeater. Mostly to learn about the propagation, and because my friend in Milwaukee needed someone to build a 900 MHz repeater. So I built two. Mine was a lower power, the lower profile one on my tower at home.

So anyway when friend or two brought up messing with Meshtastic on 900 MHz, I was like sure because I already have spare antennnas and other things. The other part is because we were never able to deploy a wideband (useful) mesh network here due to the terrain and a lack of sites. So this is sub GHz, where things are more forgiving and there is a lot of multipath. It's also narrowband (less useful transport though), so the signal strengths can be less, etc.

So far its been interesting. And I want to read more about doing codec2 over it. I'd also like to see more technical information out there. Receiver (BER) performance data. Reviews of the Chinese amplifiers. Are they harmonic spewing junk, or decent. If I was the ARRL, this is what I would print in QST in place of the endless of traditional HT product/equipment reviews.

Speaking of that, this is exactly the type of thing I'd like to see in a 5 watt handheld. Repeater sites are getting hard to obtain and maintain, so if you can just use everyone else to relay your signal that seems ideal. If this was something M17 could do, I guess I'd be more interested in it.

On another topic, I filed FCC reply comments, but honestly I don't have a lot of hope. That is why I kept my effort in the matter brief. For the amount of time I spend communicating with government officals (mostly in vain), there really should be a way to write off the time I am waisting on my taxes. Maybe then with that mechanism they would get off their duffs.

As usual the ARRL's comments did not impress me. They are still beating the emcomm drum, and have some sort of Winlink penchant. If they wanted no bandwidth limits for HF (which doesn't seem like the best idea), then why did you seek 2.8 KHz, and thus waste the FCC's time? And once again they don't seem to give a rip about VHF/UHF.... yet those are the most idle bands and bands of use to commerical interests.

So while I haven't had much hope for the ARRL, the ARDC I had hope for. And honestly I am losing that as well. There really needs to be a guy like Wayne Green with some vision. I have written the ARRL about the concept of bringing back the future systems committee, but they are to busy sinking their own ship it seems. I really think the ARDC needs to take a survey or form a committee to identify benefical technology the community could use. And then offer bounty grants to make it happen. The bulk of the grants they give really don't do a whole lot to potentially change the present amateur radio dynamic. To do that you have to have vision and also get things into peoples hands.

I mentioned M17 before. Does anyone know how many radios are flying off the Connect Systems shelves? Jerry has always been fairly open about things, perhaps one of the video podcasters could interview him on the M17 matter?

Hamvoip dead?

2024-07-16T21:40:00.000-05:00

There hasn't been a post on their list since May 2024.

And now that AllstarLink has annouced:

"AllStarLink is proud to announce ASL3, the next generation of AllStar repeater and hotspot software. ASL3 is built to run on Asterisk 20, the latest operating systems, and modern hardware. Asterisk 20 brings over 15 years of bug fixes, security improvements, and enhancements."

It begs the question if anyone will continue to care about hamvoip. While it wasn't opensource it may have served a role as a competitor to AllStarLink's distribution an caused them (ASL) to buckle down on development.

What is sad is all the time and improvements made to the hamvoip distribution is now effectively lost and a wasted effort since the source code was never made public.

This is kind of what needs to happen to the ARRL. They need a competitor so that they buckle down.... but I digress...

Death to FM

2024-05-29T12:29:00.002-05:00

It's no secret that I feel it's out lived it's usefulness. We are at a point where the commerical two way is near non-existant. That has mosly all moved to cellular. In the past we have had a lot of repurposed equipment from public safety and commerical markets. We've also seen "cycles" in the hobby. It started with spark and CW, then AM voice, then SSB, then the 70's and FM. In the 90's there was quite a fuss about spread spectrum, but sadly it never really look off in the hobby.

How we have the VHF/UHF bands carved up and regulated and adminstered by overbearing repeater coordination bodies plays a part on moving from FM to something more useful. If you have been reading my ramblings you know that I feel we could likely so with less repeater coordination. I feel more shared non protected pairs should exist for any system less than 100 watts and 100 feet etc, should just use those.

You've also likely noticed how I feel about mode disparity. Data has significantly more stringent regulations than other modes.. and well Spread Spectum... it's just unclear if this even exists as a mode, since we classify our transmissions by the content they carry, which is also just stupid.

I'd like to see the tables turned to promote advancements in the hobby. Make FM ugly and over regulated. Make voice also the ugly red headed step child.

It's time for QAM and other types of modern modulation.

But there are no radio's you say? Well that is where changing regulation will force a manufacturing change. An example of this is when PL became required for repeaters in the late 80's and early 90's. This mandate was from coordinaton bodies and in a few years user end radios began to have PL encoders in them as a standard. (Prior to that you had to wire in your own PL deck.)

Then there is the M17 labs that we don't hear really anything about. And for that matter in 2015 TAPR mentioned they's like to see the OFDM work of John, KD6OZH advanced...

In short FM is 40 year old technology. And most of the current Digital Voice modes are not using modulation that is a whole different than conventional analog FM. The only way to achieve better data rates is move to modulation that is significanly different than FM.

Some times I think the ARDC ought to post bounty grants to help move certain things forward.

When I got into ham radio is was still being used as a test bed for things we'd see later in the commerical world. Most of the manufacturing has left America which is part of the problem. Back then there were a fair number of smaller USA based manufactures. The other reason I feel we don't see them useing ham radio as a test market is because the rest of the world moved on from narrow band analog at 20 years ago give or take.

Status of Further Notice (FNPRM) ?

2024-05-24T22:02:00.005-05:00

In January I filed express comments on what bandwidth limit for above 30 Mhz should be set if any to replace the symbol rates for data in relation to the furhter notice for WT Docket 16-239.

I considered writing a longer paper, but Steve Stroh had already done that, covering everything nicely. The other reason I opted for the express route is because in the back of my mind I figued the good old (freaking) FCC would sit on this like the main HF part for god only knows how long. I even remarked on how it was unclear when a decision would be made by the commission.

I must be getting more impatient as I get older, as even at work and in other projects I particpate in, I look at what the outcome is and when it will be achived Before donating my time. Short summary: I like things the bear fruit.

So are we going to have to get congress woman Lesko involved again to kick the FCC in the rear end again?

For what its worth, in a somewhat private circle I have brought up the idea of having the whole amateur regulation business outsourced since the FCC does such a poor job. It seems almost inconceivable to accomplish, but I do believe we'd be better off that way.

Quansheng UV-K5

2024-03-16T16:52:00.008-05:00

I have 4 hand helds now. I know people with a lot more than that, but in the end that IS NOT helping the digital fragmentation / manufacturing problem.

I picked up one of those Quansheng UV-K5's that there was a lot of buzz about in terms of aftermarket firmware development.

The chip/microcontroller that is has really limits what it could be doing (digital modes like M17, P25 etc).... it sad really.

If nothing else I hope the Quansheng's open popularity is noticed by other manufactures (Covalue?) to encourgage that sort of thing.

What hams should be doing is directly asking manufactures at Dayton and on their social media platforms when they will see a radio that does more tham one digital flavor.

As I said in the first part, continuing to buy radio after radio, without holding out for your principles is NOT helping change anything.

Another repeater rebuild

2023-09-10T14:25:00.002-05:00

Since 2003, I have been the hope to the former Ashwabenon High School Tech Club's VHF repeater. It started with a Micor at the high school and about 2004 is when we rebuilt it using a Kenwood TKR-750.

I live on a bit of a high spot, though most the area is pretty flat with the exception of Scray's hill where the TV transmiters are.

Over the past 20 years I have basically come the conclusion a 50 ft VHF repeater serves little purpose. I've watched the noise floor grow considerably.

The concept this lower profile repeater was started by a friend that will retire in less than 5 years and I promised him long ago I would continue being its home till then. The concept started in the 90's when all the repeaters were very active and it served as a place for a younger generation to hang out and "shoot the shit."

While I wasn't really interested in another rebuild, I welcomed the Kenwood TKR replacement. The TKR-750 and its poor internal isolation between the transmitter and receiver at 600 KHz splits. (The only solution to that noticeable desense and annoying mixing is to run the thing less than 15 watts, use a larger split or, get a new repeater.) The guy who started the club donated a Motorola Quantar which is capable of mixed mode; analog and P25. I am not sold on any specific digital mode I do see P25 as somewhat logical. Its been around since the early 90's so there are options on the used market for radios from several manufacturers. The vocoder is also out of patent and there is a good sounding open source implementation.

It will mostly be used in analog mode, but this does permit others play with another mode.

So I am still doing things in ham radio for anyone wondering.

VHF/ VHF Radio Firmware

2023-04-30T18:17:00.001-05:00

For those of you who have noticed, I have not been active.

I started this blog many moons ago, when blogging/RSS was new as were smartphones. There was a pretty good following then as most web content wasn't very mobile friendly.

A different Steve, Steve Stroh, N8GNJ has been pointing out much of the same sort of thing I had been doing here. Advancing ham radio, this blog's title was supposed to focus on more modern things, that the traditional sources I felt overlooked.

So I encourage you to check out his news letter, which he calls Zero Retries: https://zeroretries.substack.com/

Wayne Green once said he was impatient with new technologies. I can see that had rubbed off on me. I am beyond annoyed that we still don't have a mainstream radio that we can load our own firmware on.

I've written about that at length here as it related to AMBE and M17.

As a matter of fact in 2008 (15 years ago), I made the observation that ;

Technology is ever changing, which makes standards hard to set. This is why open standards are so very important. It expedites production and advancements , as you are effectively working together or sharing information. Be wary of any thing proprietary, as this impedes technology and is terribly unhealthy for the hobby.
Protocols and standards need to be dynamic as possible to avoid equipment obsolesce. This is where the software defined radio (SDR) concept is key. However once again between here and there, manufactures should highly consider flash/field upgradeable firmware.

While some very talented hams have spent the time and effort reverse engineering a few radios to bring us closer, the fact is, 15 years later we still have a manufacture controlled firmware scenario instead of that radio with an open application space (apps) idea.

And I am pretty much tired of beating the drum that we need better leadership than the ARRL knuckleheads who are really good at drama, but sadly not very good at their job of advancing the radio art.

PS; If you are thinking of publishing a ham radio book, please do NOT reach to the ARRL to be the publisher. I have spent a good portion of my life trying to track down and obtain copies of information (mostly obscure/local history) that is out of print. Here is to hoping future content creators are smart and don't give all their rights away all haphazardly like in years past. Self publishing and crowd funding are more logical this day in age, than continuing to fund the ARRL and their tantrums.

Repeater sites

2022-06-12T22:37:00.001-05:00

Repeater sites are hard to obtain and keep access too. You may recall a recent ARRL posting about the Forest Service fees. Here in the midwest, or maybe its just even more locally, TV and radio broacasters are ham radio's greatest friends when it comes to repeater sites.

I keep close tabs on whats going on in broadcast, since my interests aren't just related to ham radio. It also stems from my fathers involvement in broadcast. Mowing the grass at the sites, and keeping in touch with the engineers is what its all about. Most of the towers that the hams are on are owned directly by the stations themselves. That is not common for any recently constructed towers. Newer ones are owned and managed by a holding company and are harder to work with for hams.

My recent radio exerimenting has to do with ATSC 3.0 / Netgen since locally we have a transmitter. So I went out and bought a Silicon Dust Flex so I can receive this stuff. I was using an older Silicon Dust receiver for building my own MythTV DVR.

Anyway what is going on locally is all the stations main channels are being transmitted from one tower in the new format. This host station's old ATSC 1.0 channels have been scattered to other towers as subchannels by the other broadcasters. Interesting stuff. Lots of working together.

If this new format with monkier NextGen TV catches on, it should help broadcasters to be more competitive. I see this as important since most of the inital towers put up in the 1950's are continually derated in terms of the load they can bear by insurance carriers as they age. Thusly they are becomming almost non profitable since you cannot rent space to other tennants. So ultimately they will need to be replaced, which is a major expense.

There are provisions in the new standard to simulcast which will replace the old translater (on a different channel) approach for the fringe areas. Anyway I cannot see broacasters going back to their own towers once this ATSC 3.0/ NetGen layover period where they broadcast in both formats ends. Hopefully from the SmartTV feedback channels broadcasters will finally be able to show their adversisters who watches what and when, just like the cable guys do.

So in the end, new towers will be erected replacing the old. And due to the legal world we live in they will be managed by holding companies and hams will be in a worse place than they are now.

I find the M17 project a noble effort, and impressive to see hams from some many corners of the world working together on it. But honesty it doesn't "blow my skirt up", as its still based on ages old traditional narrow band FM carrier technology. That and I don't expect to see it materialze and displace the incumabnt modes in my life time.

I wish something like Tetra was in the works. What I find especially good about that modes is their mesh like extension that allows a portable radio that might not be able to reach the main site directly to same channel (TDMA) repeat though any other Tetra radio it can reach. This is a part of their DMO mode. This modern day radio relay / mesh style stuff is what I wish was baked into M17. I view this as important as repeater sites become fewer and harder for clubs to maintain/obtain. Short of technology addressing this site acccess problem that will just get more prevelant and difficult as time goes on, then the league or someone really needs to write a Dale Carnegie style book on how to shake hands, win friends and be a good site neighbor.

Coordination bodies should promote MMDVM

2022-04-26T23:44:00.003-05:00

Seven years ago a smart UK ham gave us the means to retrofit repeaters to do this. Yet manufactures still just want to continue stomping their feet insisting their single mode is king.

And at the same time people (coordinators and repeater owners) don't feel passionate about the duties of coordination like they used to. The fact is in most of the coordination bodies guidelines their own purpose is to make most efficient and interference-free use of the limited frequency spectrum.

Here in Wisconsin there have a been several years where the annual update (still done by mailing in a form) was waived by the coordination body. Then there are people who have requested coordination and have waited over a year for a pair.

I don't feel more short lived coodination volunteers is the answer. The solution in my eyes is to ease the bureaucratic burden by changing the existing policies.

Also some general guidance / editorial ship when it comes to putting things on the air makes sense to me. Most areas don't have easy acccess to good sites, and thus can't support one analog, one D-Star, one DMR and one YSF system, etc. Repeater owners should be at least thinking about retrofitting with a STM32-DVM to enable more than one mode. Coordination bodies is in a leadership position to suggest such best practices. And do they really want to deal with coordinating all those seperate machines? I've noticed most digiatl modes go in fads, and then a mode/repeater sits idle when the next one becomes popular.

I feel users should be deciding what the future of digital voice modes are, not the repeater owners (with good sites) and coodination bodies. Promoting MMDVM modems helps level the playing field in this regard. I am not sure if anyone ever really thinks about this.

In addition to promoting smarter spectrum use and cutting down on coordinating extra machines, I think in the long term this could signal to manufactures that user radios that do more than one mode are logical. It's like how PL mandate on repeaters helped encourage PL built into user radios which became the norm later.

To be clear when I speak of MMDVM I am not referring to the low power personal hotspots. I am referring to the origional implementation of using a MMDVM modem to flat audio drive an analog system.

MMDVM - Blog and interface ordering from Bruce, VE2GZI

INADVM - MMDVM (type) interface board from INAD Communications / Kevin, W3KKC

RB_STM32_DVM - Repeater Builder Multi-Mode Digital Voice Modem.

Teensy MMDVM - Interface board and microcontroller from Micro-Node International.

Evangelism

2021-10-15T22:38:00.003-05:00

In my last blog post I urged you to find someone in the ham radio arena to study.

Since my interests are radio and Linux, it shouldn't be suprising that I tend to pay attention to Bruce Perens. Well know as the open source definition guy, but also a ham, K6BP.

A not too distant DCC paper titled "Open That Which is Closed," will give you a pretty good snapshot of the guy and what makes him tick.

I've always been a marginal coder, so I've always adopted the "what I can't do in software, I'll do in hardware", since I was into electronics before computers became common. Now things are so much software and less hardware, so I'm feeling old and dumb. Never fear, there is this thing Bruce does that he calls "Evangelism," and it can work for you too!

Basically stuff outside of his abilities or that require group effort he gets on the pulpit about. He explains how that works attacting like minded folks in that DCC PDF. A recent example would be the Codec2 thing. He felt closed source vocoders in the hobby were bad, thus a movement was born and in comes some talent named David Rowe.

I've found the same logic works, so don't sit idle with your thoughts folks. Because thats what makes ham radio great, everyone has a talent in a specific area, and when that can all work together the community benefits.

Here are some things I've harped about (some right in this blog), that have come to light thanks to other talented hams;

802.11, HSMM (1999-> ongoing)

-Part 97 only 802.11 channels (Nov 2013)

SAME/FIPS software decoder (May 2010) (multimon-ng)

D-Star AMBE DTMF decoder (Sept 2009-Jan 2011)

AMBE voice software decoder (March 2010)

IPV6 embeded callsign application (July 2012)

Linux streamer to Zello (Jun 2020)

Rants and grants

2021-09-07T13:21:00.023-05:00

I have been following the TH-D74 Firmware reversing project. The previous MD-380 project was great, but a lot more could be accomplished if the hardware was more capable. (Bigger flash space etc.) Either way the MD380 project opened the door for the OpenRTX project.

Apparently the few that are working on the TH-D74 project so far are having some dificulty with the Ghidra reverse engineering.

I think it would be benefical for a wider audience to understand the former md380 project... maybe Linux in the Ham Shack could interview someone so others better understand (& appreciate) the motiviations and process (stumbling blocks and all), etc.

I feel there are important lessons that can be learned, especially since manufactures apparently are content with pumping out the same old crap. Props to the folks working on these projects trying creative ways around that problem.

The problem is two fold. Obisuoly a lack of these fine folks; hackers, engineers, or just plain technically oriented folks. Then there are the gadget obsessed folks...

Oh! we changed the color of display and added another 1000 memory channels, come buy our new HT!

(which is really the same crap as the last model).

But then there obviously fools falling for this gimic buying this nonsense. I call them gadget obsessed dimwits. They seem to have more money than brains, cannot put on a connector etc.

Please study and learn to apprecaite the few fine folks that don't play that game. Those who are moving things forward, both past and present players. Ham radio needs their inspiration!

Here is my list on interesting / inspirational people:

Wayne Green, Phil Karn, Bruce Perens, Aaron Schwartz, Richard Stallman, Jason Scott, Cory Doctorow, George Carlin. Some of all time favorite article authors: Doug Demaw, Ray Marston, Joseph Carr, Harold Kinley, Bill Cheek, Don Rotolo, John Champa

Not all are hams, but they all to me thought a bit out of the box. The first guy that I payed attention to, was Phil Karn, since I entered ham radio with an interest in packet radio. Its interesting to learn a bit about the people behind certain things and their logic & motivations to see if you can understand what makes them tick.

To me there has been a lot of stagnation in the hobby lately, so I haven't been overly active. I spent the last half dozen years working with some more fearleess tower climbing folks here in my home state. Our goals were to help "get shit on the air" with as few strings for folks as possible. Getting on towers and working on them has been a big problem here in Wisconsin. A lot of clubs and indivduals don't have the resources for that. We got a lot done.

Now another one of my main tower climbing folks is taking a job out of state, so that is winding down, and I am looking for my next thing to dive into. I have to say sadly there really isn't a whole lot that holds my interests these days.

I like what is going on with the ARDC grants, but I think it will take some time for those funded initiatives to bear fruit.

There are two to me of interest, the M17 Grant, and the Allstarlink grant.

I'm glad this happened:

The ARRL Board granted several awards at its July 2021 meeting.

The Board bestowed the 2021 ARRL Technical Innovation Award on Steve Haynal, KF7O; Wojciech Kaczmarski, SP5WWP, and Roger Clark, VK3KYY. Haynal was cited as the instrumental and driving force behind the Hermes Lite 5 W HF SDR transceiver as a fully open-source hardware and software project. Kaczmarski was recognized for developing the open-source digital radio communication protocol M17, leading to the development of DroidStar (an Android application) by Doug McLain, AD8DP. Clark was cited for spearheading a successful effort to augment a low-cost handheld radio for use by visually impaired operators, significantly lowering the cost of entry for such amateurs.

Once upon a time the ARRL had a "Future Systems Committee", the RSGB has an "Emerging Technology Coordination Committee".. I think the ARRL needs to reinstitute this concept.

Too bad we don't have a technology director, but somehow Emcomm still is apparently even in the light of firstnet and starlink.

http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-seeking-emergency-management-director

http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-hires-paul-z-gilbert-ke5zw-as-director-of-emergency-management

In the past, the leauge techical specialist was more vocal and had written regular pieces for QST. Not so these days for whatever reason. From their past censure tatics and over all lackadaisical attitude its time to write these good old boys off.

In short of anything ever changing at the league level (and it likely never will), I think the best option is to find a good number of hams willing to particpate in a coordinated social media and in person campaign to become more vocal to manufactures on what we'd like to see brought to the market. I believe if 100 hams would commit to making a point at Dayton to being more vocal to the reps then we might get something other than a "new HT" that in reality has a few extra memory channels and a new color display.

Modernizing Amateur Radio Regulations

2021-07-26T16:12:00.017-05:00

Steve, N8GNJ asked me to consolidate my regulatory changes that I think are required to modernize US Amateur Radio.

What I am about to present isn't new. Bruce, K6BP wrote a well thought and researched overview in 2017 in response to a Technological Advisory Council (TAC) on reforming technical regulations across all FCC radio services.

Several of the personal radio service rules (Part 95) were subsequently.

https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/business-and-law/fcc-to-consider-changes-to-part-95-rules

http://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-personal-radio-service-revisions-will-affect-gmrs-frs-cb-other-part-95-devices

And some are still in motion:
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-374114A1.pdf

Meanwhile there are number of ham radio requests, some even from the ARRL that have gone no where. (Symbol Rate Petition of 2013, and the 2018 Technician Enhancement Proposal). And as Bruce pointed out most of our regulations have been unchanged for 65 years or more.

ex:
Oct 2017 (Puerto Rico):
http://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-grants-temporary-waiver-to-permit-higher-symbol-rate-data-transmissions>

Sep 2019:
https://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-renews-request-for-fcc-to-replace-symbol-rate-with-bandwidth-limit

Sep 2021 (Hurricane Ida):
https://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-grants-60-day-waiver-of-part-97-data-rate-rules-for-hurricane-relief-traffic

So here we go:

Our Basis and Purpose MUST be freshened up to relect the educational benefits and purposes for continued justification of spectrum allocation to the Amateur Service.

Our emergency services role continues to diminish (with the advent of FirstNet and Starlink) and the other currently-stated missions of Amateur Radio have already reached irrelevance.

Examples:
Bruce pointed out the context of "enhance international goodwill" was written before direct dialing of long distance calls (transatlantic telephone cables). So, Radio Amateurs were the only people who regularly had casual conversations with people overseas.

He also pointed out that the word "reservoir" is critical to understanding this statement:
"Expansion of the existing reservoir within the amateur radio service of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts"

The U.S. was at war in Korea as this statement was written, and World War II had concluded less than a decade before. The military had a need for a reservoir of trained radiotelegraph operators who could go to war.

Bruce pointed out the word “education” doesn’t appear in §97.1, and there is no tie-in to the oft-promoted need to educate young citizens in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).

This second part is my own hot button topic since data is my fotre.

"§97.305 through §97.309 spell out a limited set of modes, modulations, and digital data codes which Radio Amateurs can use on the air. They date back to the analog age, and limit innovation because they do not permit the use of modern modes and modulations in the Amateur Service"

I've written before on how I feel its just plain silly that we classify our transmissions by how we use them (what we convey) and that defines what rules apply. i.e Digital voice modes, while all ones and zeros don't fall under the data rules, the fall under the voice rules. I've also harped about how the fast scan amateur television rules let video modes occupy 6 MHz or more (actually no bandwith limit), while data is limited to 100 KHz.

And its dumber that just all that. Now that FreeDV is starting to become more common on HF, its classified as a voice mode since that is what is being conveyed. So its required to be in the voice segments, not the data, etc.

Regulation based on the bandwidth of the transmission, rather than the modulation type and mode is overdue folks. Its the only thing that makes any sense.

I'm partial to the 2.8 kHz below 30 MHz proposal, and no maxium bandwidth or data rates above 30 MHz.

Whatever you wish for please keep in mind that is almost next to impossilbe to get the FCC to change anything for Part 97 and takes decades to do so. We'd be best off with as few rules as possbile and just implementing more gentlemans agreements. It's not like the FCC does any active enforcement anyway.

Per W5NYV who serves on aa FCC TAC "movement at our current FCC happenings are when there are compelling economic or public safety motivations. Preferably, both."

That does explain why N9NB put the open communications for the sake of national security spin on things.

It does not explain how Part 95 services were granted their requests and ours are in limbo.

Linux in the Hamshack

2021-05-28T13:21:00.008-05:00

I think this podcast has been around since about 2008. Or thats about when I first learned of it. Russ, K5TUX (like the penguin) is one of the main co-hosts.

In the grand scheme of things I think this podcast is serving an area that the ARRL isn't by promoting collorabative software development. Years ago a lot of collorabative hardware projects were thanks in a large part to the now dying print media. Wayne Green's, 73 Magazine, as well as other technically oriented publications like Ham Radio Magazine, provided a platform to show the general ham populas what some talented folks were working. Others would use and build upon those ideas, and that is a large part of how technology marched forward.

Since the fall of of the previously good publications and transition to other information descimation methods like the internet, that leading force with all its subsribers has changed. With the ARRL's latest introduction of another watered down publication, I had hoped that meant some of the more intermediate topics would make QST, and the begginers stuff would be shifted to this "On The Air Magazine." Well folks, sadly that hasen't happened, and I think its time I throw in the towel for my ARRL hopes. The time spent checking perodicaly to look at the QST editorial is likely a waste. Instead I encourage you to focus that time in other place and with other ham oriented organizations and causes.

"Linux in the HAM Shack is a podcast designed to help amateur radio enthusiasts to migrate to Linux and Open Source from Microsoft or other closed-source software. Our goal is to provide a sound foundation in Open Source and demonstrate how it can help amateur radio operators participate in many of the best parts of the hobby."

So here are some of the LHS podcasts that I have bookmarked as they fit my mostly VHF/UHF interests:

Episode #138: Being David Rowe
https://lhspodcast.info/2015/01/lhs-episode-138-being-david-rowe/

Episode #206: Hamlib
https://lhspodcast.info/2018/01/lhs-episode-206-hamlib-deep-dive/

Episode #242: FreeDV/Codec2
https://lhspodcast.info/2018/08/lhs-episode-242-freedv-codec2-deep-dive-2/

Episode #310: DMR
https://lhspodcast.info/2019/11/lhs-episode-310-dmr-deep-dive-2/

Episode #340: Hamlib
https://lhspodcast.info/2020/04/lhs-episode-340-hamlib-deep-dive-redux/

Episode #343: YSF and WiRES-X
https://lhspodcast.info/2020/05/lhs-episode-343-ysf-and-wires-x-deep-dive/

Episode 393: DUDE-Star
https://lhspodcast.info/2021/02/lhs-episode-393-dude-star-deep-dive/

Episode #396: M17
https://lhspodcast.info/2021/03/lhs-episode-396-m17-deep-dive/

Episode 399: OpenRTX
https://lhspodcast.info/2021/03/lhs-episode-399-openrtx-deep-dive/

Episode 403: MVoice and MRefD
https://lhspodcast.info/2021/03/lhs-episode-403-mvoice-and-mrefd-deep-dive/

DudeStar (DroidStar)

2021-03-27T15:04:00.001-05:00

I like this project as it finally provides a way to retrofit an existing analog rig to do multiple digital modes. It and its user base should show potential manufactures what the community wants.

Sadly what seems to get the most interest is the DroidStar app. But that is okay too, as I see that helping fuel attention to the underlying software vocoder performance issues. I am hoping sooner or later someone with the software skills will step forward.

And for the app, I do think this makes more sense than having to buy multiple digital radios and a "hotspot", to effectively talk (maybe 10 feet over RF) over the internet on these modes.

Yaesu and Chirp

2020-09-09T13:33:00.003-05:00

There has been a fuss about this topic in a variety of places. Radioreference, reddit and the old YaesuSystemFusion Yahoo email reflector.

John Kruk, N9UPC Yaesu National Sales Manager Amateur Division writes "CHIRP damages the internal firmware and programming of the radio BEYOND repair."

John Hays, K7VE wrote the best reply:

The converse is having the radios built so that 'bad programming' doesn't damage them.
Also, having vendor provided software that runs on more than Windows, especially Linux and MacOS. Including easy import and export of data in a vendor neutral format.
Quality engineering and open system design is the proper way to go.
Listen to your customers' needs and desires.

Others ham mentioned that Chirp hasn't caused them any problems, and that RT Systems has a business relationship with Yaesu. Chirp does not.

Just in case someone from Yaesu ever reads this. Open source is good for ham radio. Please embrace it.

A number of hams on the email reflector wrote why would anyone use Chirp on a Radio that is supported by the manufacturer? For some the point of ham radio isn't talking on the radio, the point of it to understand how it works, and maybe even build or modify your own equipment. In order to learn we must be able to inspect; to tinker, or at the very least have access to a specification we can build from.

For a good number of years at various DCC meeting the concept of a radio with open firmware has been brought up.

Let's take a quick look at why this would be good for the hobby:

The Linksys WRT54G WiFi router of the early 2000's was a good example of the good that can come from open firmware/open source. The history here was the original factory firmware was discovered to be based on Linux components, which are covered by the GPL. This required the manufacturers to release the source code. With the code in hand, developers learned exactly how to talk to the hardware inside and how to code any features the hardware could support. It has spawned a handful of open source firmware projects for the WRT54G that extend its capabilities, and reliability, far beyond what is expected from a cheap consumer-grade router. In short, due to open source, one can load a third party firmware on the router and give a $60 consumer home-grade router all the functionality of a $600 Cisco professional router.

Lets keep in mind that Yaesu was the latecomer (2011) to bring something to the amateur digital arena.

You may recall at the time there was speculation at the time that Yaesu might adopt the P25 or DMR standard. This made sense because between 2007 to 2012 there was an 80% joint venture between them and Motorola.

At the TAPR digital conferences between 2009 to approximately 2013 there was quite a few talks about the digital fragmentation problem. With theoretical solutions presented by; Chris Testa, KD2BMH - Practical Handheld Software Radio. Bruce Perens K6BP Talking about the HT of the future, and David Rowe, VK5DGR's Codec2 to replace AMBE.

They didn't listen to the digital fragmentation problem then. They introduced another total incompatible digital flavor. They still aren't listening apparently when it comes to the open firmware desires of the ham community.

Apparently they haven't been paying attention to the recent radio firmware reverse engineering efforts. The most well known is the MD380 project by Travis, KK4VCZ. The hobby can use a lot more of this and a lot more people like Travis. We haven't yet figured out how to re-write a radio's firmware to create that elusive digital radio that can do more than one digital mode. But that day may still come. Software Defined Radio was likely a foreign concept to many 20 plus years ago when this problem was first brought to our awareness by Bruce Perens. USRP, HackRF, HamShield, RTL-SDR, are known to many now, and having to have a hardware dongle to do the speech coding with those is illogical.

The Yaesu radios are firmware update-able (yet no open for third party development). So those thing were done right, however their digital design is disappointing, as well as their internet linking tie-in. The design took a 30 year step backwards in digital communications by releasing a design based on P25 Phase 1, but occupies more bandwidth to do less.

For what its worth, I used to always buy Yaesu, but I haven't since 2011.

Yaesu (DR-1X) Fusion repeater converted to DMR

2020-06-09T18:35:00.002-05:00

Paul, KB0P is sorta new to the Green Bay area. He used to live in the Upper Peninsula. He recently emailed me about setting up a DMR repeater back home in the U.P. (Ishpeming/Marquette).

He said a number of his U.P. ham friends have been getting on the air with DMR using hotspots as there are no DMR repeaters in the Marquette area.

Paul was writing to come up with the least expensive way to go this. He already had an fairly unused analog repeater and a site etc.

I replied and informed him that a good number of the Motorola XPR8200/8300 repeaters that hams have on the air were graciously provided as refurbs from a ham who works at Motorola. So Paul could reach to this guy, but these units have high PA failure rate. A surge suppressor and isolator are highly recommended if you are going to use them. And you'll want to crank the transmit power back if you are 24/7 linked to high transmit rate talkgroups like WW, etc.

With that in mind, and the headaches of having to swap the transmit and receive radios around when they blow-up (and it seems to be just a matter of time), I suggested he roll his own.

Paul has been in the hobby since the mid 80's I think, and I knew he had no qualms about using a soldering iron a service monitor.

I wrote, another option that might be better is MMDVM. And I am note referring to that flea power hotspot junk. I am talking about using an adapter like the INADVM MMDVM, or RB_STM32_DVM and using that to drive existing analog equipment. As a bonus you'll be able to support all the other digital modes if you take the time to set them up.

A couple weeks later he wrote:

A new DMR repeater has now been installed in Marquette, Michigan (da U.P.). It can be reached on the U.P. Talk Group 31268.

http://kb0p.com/index.php/hara-dmr-repeater/

We converted a Yaesu DR-1X repeater to a DMR repeater using the STM32-DVM system by Repeater Builder consisting of a Raspberry Pi computer and a MMDVM Top Hat board, using the Pi-Star software.

Nice job Paul!

An inside look at a TE Systems Amplifier

2020-05-03T21:00:00.000-05:00

This is what the cover removed from a TE Systems VHF Amplifier: (1412RRN) 25-45 watts in, 160-200 out, continuous duty convection cooled looks like"

Intellectual Property and Ham Radio?

2020-03-01T19:41:00.001-06:00

Early on, Bruce Perens, K6BP, amateur radio and open source advocate voiced concerns about D-Star’s use of a proprietary vocoder. Asking; does it really fit into the spirit of the hobby? Bruce makes a strong argument that an Open Source vocoder needs to be developed. The codec2 development started in 2009, when David Rowe, VK5DGR stepped up to the challenge.

While the Codec 2 development was and is good, here we are 2020, and sadly there hasn’t been a lot of work in my opinion, for a drop in replacement for VHF/UHF radios. Presently that seems to best match up to FreeDV’s 2400B mode. Most of the work has been for HF applications. Or at the very least, Codec2/FreeDV hasn't been adopted by VHF/UHF manufacture like many would have hoped.

The bad part is Bruce brought an awareness to the AMBE patents that probably would have otherwise not have been thought about much by fellow hams. So the bad part is Bruce created a stigma. And it was further improperly (in my opinion) used as a sly marketing tool by some of the ham manufactures of the AMBE DV Sticks.

And from what I have seen, there are still hams out there that think the AMBE patents surrounding D-Star are still an issue. (they aren't, they expired in 2017) And more than likely the the big-bad-boogie-man is gonna come nab you if you meddle with trying to create your own open source AMBE, or using something that has someone else’s non-licensed AMBE, etc.

Facts of the matter are;

When you buy consumer electronics and other things that might have technology under the cover that might be covered by patents, does it impact your buying decision? Likely not. However, truth be told since the majority of electronic things are manufactured in China, it’s not uncommon for there to be cloned (improperly/unlicensed/bootleg - whatever you want to call it) intellectual property under the cover. (If you don’t believe me, go look at the Indusic chip in your Chinese DMR handheld, then go look at DVSI’s note on their website)

Second, non-commercial/research usage of patented technology is, and always has been covered by exceptions on the definition of "patent infringement”. By our very definition, ham radio is all about non-commercial, experimental and research activities.

Have you ever heard of anyone actually successful at litigation, if the defendant never made any money off your patent? No, and no one is coming to your local court to instigate that fruitless endeavor against you.

And if you are still biting your damn nails, remember that; Bruce told us that there is prior art from David Rowe that would likely invalidate the AMBE patents, and that DVSI used the AMBE codec in commerce before some of their patent applications, potentially invalidating their own patents.

Let’s look back:

Patents have been around longer than ham radio. In radios formative years there were a lot of patents, and since that time, have obviously expired.

I have been trying to research how those patents impacted ham radio operators. Back then, then pretty much had to build everything from scratch. Nowadays, if a new thing is patented related to radio (perhaps something like LoRA), hams generally are buying something from a supplier to use that mode or technique. This pretty much moves any possible legal concerns off the individual hams shoulders and on to that of the supplier. (These days it’s America’s (and the worlds) convenient way of evading legal repercussions).

So I have been combing the archives of QST magazine and other sources trying to understand if anyone seemed concerned that back then, when things like the Hartley oscillator were under patent. I haven’t found one mention of concern.

If you were a ham messing around with SSB in the 1930's the Hartley patent might have been a problem. But there wasn't a lot of specialized parts back then rather than general purpose components.

However, it does appear that you had to pay RCA for certain parts necessary to build a transmitter with then, current technology as they held the patents and were the only source/supplier.

I tend to think a patent on a circuit design (as opposed to a component) would be easy enough for an amateur to copy without much worry of being sued for infringement.

Truth be told, I have a tough time understanding radio circuits with solid state components and tubes, so its hard to imagine what was possible then.

With "Single Sideband for the Radio Amateur" published in 1954 it would seem things were pretty wide open by that time. The forward to that says the first QST mention of single sideband was in 1948, at which time the Hartley patent would have been expired.

However, in more recent years (post print media), I personally do recall some possible patent issues;

Satoshi’s D-Star GMSK node adapter and his supposed patented pseudo real time monitor circuit? There were clones of this circuit initially.

The ZUM Hotspot? Some say jumbo/china spot was an improper clone of Jim, KI6ZUM’s design. But it actually seems to have been released with an Open Hardware license?

In summary:

I feel these patent concerns have been over amplified for the individual ham/end user. They are valid concerns and something to ponder when it comes to the ability and impact of smaller businesses being able to feed the needs of the ham community. Like I pointed out, if you are making money then you do need to pay attention to this sort of thing as litigation becomes a potential real thing.

Fortunately, much of the innovation in ham radio is now is purely in the form of software, which is much easier to mass-produce than hardware.

Multiprotocol DV

2020-02-11T13:27:00.000-06:00

Multiprotocol Digital Voice

Most of my ham radio "on the air" time has historically been mobile. It’s a convenient way to enjoy the hobby when you'd otherwise not have the time to sit in front of a radio. So that is VHF/UHF. Unfortunately we have a lack of standards adopted by the community so we have this digital fragmentation problem. While repeater-to-repeater network layer cross mode solutions exist (like DVSwitch and XLXD), we still are waiting for a digital HT and or mobile radio that supports more than one digital mode.

But the problem is worse than that. We don't even have a direct way to talk on the various modes over our smartphones, like you can with Echolink.

A number of people seem convinced the AMBE patents are a part of the problem. Lets review:

Patents are protected for the longer of 17 years from issue date or 20 years from filing date. Patents are still applicable for DMR, YSF (Yaesu Fusion), and NXDN. They should all expire by 2022, but sadly Patent 8,359,197B2 was filed on April 1, 2003. USPTO tardily granted it on January 22, 2013. In compliance with legal guarantees, USPTO granted the patent a 5-year and 51-day extension. This patent would expire on May 22, 2028.

Open source advocate, Bruce Perens gave a talk a while back about possibly trying to invalidate it some years back. But since that costs money to pursue, and there are exceptions for non-commercial/ research usage of patented technology, that would really only benefit potential manufactures.

The AMBE patents aren't really the biggest problem. Solutions already exist. If you want better solutions those won't just come along when those patents expire anyway.

As an example, D-Star is already fully cleared of AMBE patents and has been since 2017. A potential conflict, impeding software AMBE is the dplus person, AA4RC. The creator of the DV dongle.

Software decoding (and encoding) tools exist. DSD, DSD+, op25, md380 emulator, etc. And a couple of those are open source. I'd say it’s just a matter of finding coders.

https://github.com/nostar/dudestar

http://git.osmocom.org/op25/tree/op25/gr-op25_repeater/apps/tx/multi_tx.py

http://git.osmocom.org/op25/tree/op25/gr-op25_repeater/apps/tx/dv_tx.py

In my opinion, Max, KA1RBI and Doug, AD8DP should have a large fan base, as they are the unsung heros trying their best to move things forward, with zero monetary interest.... true hams!

I suspect another part of the problem why we don't have chipless AMBE access over the internet to at least the D-Star networks is because our current architecture relies on hardware AMBE for authentication/access. If software AMBE apps were easily and readily available then this would open a can of worms as there is no current way to restrict access to just hams.

So this is something that needs thought by the US Trust (REF) and truthfully is more likely to be supported by some of the other splinter reflector network operators, like XRF, DCS, XLX..

And Brandmeister, Marc and other DMR network operators also need to get together and do some thinking too and come to a consensus on a new network protocol that actually has end user protocol level authentication, ie, password/ auth token.

As software AMBE becomes easier to install, presently I don't see anything that prevents someone from streaming AMBE audio at an IP address/UDP port and having it coming out over a repeater or group of repeaters.

If you are interested in ever seeing a cheap HT that can do more than one digital voice mode, then I suggest promoting and starting to learn about the above mentioned open source Digital Voice projects. It's fairly clear to me after waiting years for things like the CS7000, DV4mobile and the “HT of the Future” to materialize, we (the hams) need to repeat the steps of the how the TNC (for packet radio) came to be readily available from commercial suppliers.

So let’s look back at how that came to be:

If you recall the TNC was started by Vancouver Area Digital Communications Group (VADCG) and it started as kits. Kantronics and Paccomm came later to offer it commercially. That is how it is supposed to work. We the hams innovate, and commercial guys can pick it up if they see it as something there is a business model for.

The Vancouver guys (especially Doug Lockhart) were the real pioneers, but it was a small experimentally-minded group that wasn't really thinking about mass-marketing yet.

A couple of Arizona hams with a vision took things to the next level. They designed their own TNC and formed Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) to market it as a kit. The TNC-2 (their second version) eventually became a huge hit. But TAPR was (and still is) a volunteer organization, and volunteers can only go so far in making hardware. Even if you're a nonprofit, somebody has to sink a lot of money into a parts inventory. You need boards made. You need somebody to take the orders, package up the kits, and ship them. For volunteers, that eventually gets old though I'm amazed at how dedicated some of them still are.

So TAPR approached ham manufacturers and gave them the complete TNC-2 design for free. Yet TAPR still had to plead and beg them to build and sell it. TAPR wasn't trying to make a profit, they were simply trying to get packet radio into the ham mainstream and they couldn't do it alone.

Ham manufacturers are a fairly conservative bunch. They don't want to invest in anything unless they know it's going to sell. And that's hard for the kind of radical innovations that technically oriented hams like to work on just for fun. To coin a phrase, there's a real impedance mismatch between the two groups. Fortunately, much of the innovation now is purely in the form of software, which is much easier to mass-produce than hardware. So all you need the manufacturers for is to make general purpose SDR hardware, which is an easier sell than some new special mode.

The purpose of this article isn't just to bring awareness, it’s to hopefully attract some dormant hams with software coding skills to join forces and to help propel the projects and move ham radio forward.

An updated DV Adapter?

2020-01-19T15:21:00.001-06:00

Back when D-Star was new to ham radio (around 2008), Satoshi Yasuda 7M3TJZ/AD6GZ, created a DV adapter.

He also created the first GMSK node adapter. The node adapter was more well recognized, as a way to retro-fit analog radios to become hotspots and repeaters (entry points) into the D-Star internet linked network. Now a days this has morphed into the well known Pi-Star, using much lower power integrated transmitters.

But lets go back and revisit the forgotten and overlooked DV adapter.

Shortly there after Jonathan Naylor, G4KLX crafted one of his first software projects. A D-Star client that created all the underlying GMSK signalling with a sound card/FOB. Much like Satoshi's adapter this too interfaced to the packet radio port of an analog radio.

The difference here between these ad the node adapters/ Pi-Star, is that these you plug microphones into and talk into directly rather than a something you use as a passive gateway device with a HT.

Since a number of efforts to create a true HT that does more than one digital mode still haven't come to fruition (like the DV4mobile, CS7000, etc), this is something the ham community should take another look at and work together at.

This time around, rather than the big user interface and display, all that could be served over a web interface to your cellphone over wifi or bluetooth. (much like the VGC VR-N7500) So just think a magic box, that has a microphone and a 5 pin mini-din to connect to your existing analog rig.

The mode, D-Star, Yaesu Fusion (YSF), P25, or NXDN as well as userid, and talkgroups could all be selected over the web interface.

Doug, AD8DP is working on something of this DV adapter nature.

There is a great starting place here for someone, thanks to the work of Max, KA1RBI.

If you know of other similar developments please contact me. I feel this is an area we need to be putting some focus on if we ever want to true multiprotocol radio.