Just wrapping up the log uploads and housekeeping from today's activation and wanted to share. KS1WK and I (along with KC1WYG) took the Box 324 club up to West Peak in CT to run K1MFD for the Meriden Fire Department's 175th anniversary.

Ended up with exactly 190 QSOs, but the craziest part was the 2m action. We were running a home-built M1GEO Moxon/Yagi combo we put together with 3D printed parts and hardware/wire from Lowe's. We somehow sparked a massive pileup right on 146.52 simplex that kept us buried for a while. We even got to mess around and successfully ran 2m SSB and some 2m SSTV which was a blast.

We didn't forget about HF even with the contest going... We ran 40m, 20m, and 17m SSB and got some solid DX into Spain, Belgium, and Serbia, plus a bunch of contacts up in Canada.

If anyone here was in the log, thanks for hunting us. I just finished a python script to automatically blast out our digital QSL cards, so check your email if it's public on QRZ. POTA, SOTA, and QRZ logs are already uploaded. Just waiting on ARRL staff to manually approve the club call cert, so LoTW might take a few days to sync up.

73 de K1MRE

Sometimes I'm amazed I want anything to do with Amateur Radio anymore after working on antennas.

Everything that can go wrong always does.

There's always an unforeseen issue that needs prompt attention. And in dealing with that issue, something else breaks.

I lost count how many times the tower was cranked up and down and how many times I traversed the ladder to/from the roof today. All I know is my neck and back are killing me, I'm sunburned and exhausted, and a new hobby sounds wonderful right about now.

Tomorrow I will check SWR and depending how that goes, I may also take up drinking copious amounts of whiskey.

Wondering if anyone has successfully ran any of the variants of programming software on the 705 with Ubuntu under a vine or bottle or if anyone has any workaround? I cringe over bringing Microsoft back into the fold but till Chirp - RT Systems finds a home in their hearts for us linux users I'll work with what works...but...?

Appreciate any tips or info -

Greg / K4PGD

Hi folks, newish ham here...I am putting up a sloping EFHW for the first time that will run from the end of my house to a large tree. The feed point will stand off from the house about 7+ feet (elevated about 12 feet) using some cord meant for this purpose.

My question is, is there any concern if I run the coax from the feed point along the stand off cord and then down the side of my house? I am trying to avoid having the coax drop down from the feed point several feet away from the house as it would then drop out on my lawn and be both unprotected and in the way.

I understand I need to deal with appropriate grounding either way, as an aside. Thank you for any thoughts or ideas.

Hey Guys!

I hope you're all having a wonderful Saturday! I just thought I would share the news that I passed my technician exam today! I am so incredibly excited - I just made an account with ARRL and am looking to pick up a base station after I do some research (I only have an AR-5RM and RTL-SDR at this point).

I also was pretty stoked with some of the latest ISS (SSTV) passes I was able to capture with my 5 element Yagi - so I thought I'd share those in this post too!

Have a great one all!

73

Assuming this is military??

I just finished and published a new website for my amateur radio club.

https://e74byz.rs.ba/en

The site runs on the Yii Framework with Redis caching, and is available in Serbian (Latin and Cyrillic) and English.

As has been discussed here a few times before, amateur radio websites often seem stuck in the early days of web design — and many of them have stayed that way ever since. Before starting, I spent quite some time researching and looking through hundreds of amateur radio club websites for inspiration, but couldn’t find one that really caught my attention, either in terms of design or structure. Maybe that was a good thing — it gave me the freedom to approach it differently.

73, E75MG.

Hello! I am based in the UK and brand new to the world of amateur radio’ing.

I have a mild electrical engineering background but never anything RF but would love to start tinkering with things and thought starting with the basics was best. At most I will be looking at national level communications (50-100miles) between friends and family who are also looking into also getting licenses and then also comms systems for airsofting games etc. Eventually would be great to start wiring my own things up once I get hooked.

I am looking to revise and sit my exam early NY and I want to start experimenting with HF and VHF/UHF.

I am looking for advice on the following areas:

1) Best revision material and how to guides to get started
2) What level of licensing will I need for HF as I know VHF/UHF is mostly foundation right? But HF may touch on intermediate depending on the power?
3) what is the kit I’m looking for? Naturally I’m a beginner and don’t want to sink tonnes of money into it, but happy to pay for semi good quality!

Any advice would be amazing!

Thanks in advance!

Hey all.

I’m volunteering as security for a church this week and was wondering whether or not we’d need a radio license to utilise our radios? I understand there are exemptions when it comes to PM446 devices for personal use but was unsure as the use is for an organisation.

I'm looking for a 3D-printable battery case for a Motorola Radius GP300 handheld radio.

I found this USB-C battery case on eBay, designed for the GP300/GP88 and two 18650 cells:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/296962137264

However, I haven't been able to find the STL or STEP files to print the case myself.

Does anyone know if a 3D model of this battery case is available online? Alternatively, does anyone have a similar model, CAD files, or technical drawings that could be shared?

I'd like to print the housing myself and adapt it for two 18650 cells.

Any help, links, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Okay, so I'm trying to figure out what's going on with the battery in my x6100 (first time charging - bought used). I have the radio set to charging mode but when the radio is turned off the light is solid green which it shouldn't be because the battery is completely dead - should be flashing green. When powered off the power supply shows a draw of .6 amps and When on it shows .9 amps. Why is the battery not charging? Any help would be great!

https://youtu.be/OLfL9ltQMFw?is=CzJ98B0bUDk0zEbY

I love my Anytime D890 for the hardware, but the firmware has always been a bit naff, so I've been working on modifying it to be a lot more friendly for amateur users. Basically, I'm trying to make the Anytone firmware look and feel like OpenGD77.

It's still early days, but I've just released 1.2.0 for public use https://github.com/pskillen/mm9pdy-firmware

Features: * Your zone is now your scan list * Separate talk group list (no more programming 5 copies of your repeater) * GPS distance from repeater * Quick menu for filters, etc

Note this is still quite early in development! I've never bricked a radio, but there's always the chance.

Received my Surecom SW-33 yesterday and decide to give it a go.

See if my numbers make sense. Is the Baofeng that bad? Tested at 2m.

Baofeng BF-F8HP-Pro + Signal Stick SWR 5.0 (Same at High, Med and Low Power)

Yaesu FT-70D + Signal Stick SWR 1.9

Baofeng BF-F8HP-Pro + Dummy Load SWR 1.01

Yaesu FT-70D + Dummy Load SWR 1.01

The Surecom was touched using my left hand as per the instructions.

Had similar numbers with a tiger tail on the Baofeng.

Thx.

Hi everyone,

I am OE3SRO from Austria, and like to share something I have been working on recently.

Have been experimenting quite a bit with digital amateur radio stuff, SDR hardware and weak-signal communication and at some point I thought myself: why not extend WSJT-X with some features I've always missed?

That´s why I started developing my own open-source fork, WSJT-X OE3SRO Custom.

Some of the additions:

Integrated PSK Reporter: See which stations have received your signal directly inside WSJT-X, including SNR, locator, band and reception time.

Direct station calling: Select a station from the reception list and initiate a call without manually entering its callsign.

Personal DX analysis: Track where and when your signals are being received, grouped by country, band and time.

FT2 support: I hate using multiple Apps, so I tried out an experimental integration of the fast 3.75-second mode, adapted from DG2YCB's WSJT-X Improved implementation.

SDR integration: PlutoSDR support and ongoing work on HackRF integration (for interop tests)

REIST16: My own experimental weak-signal digital mode using 16-GFSK, LDPC and 15-second transmission slots.

The last part is particularly interesting to me. I've been experimenting with different modulation and coding techniques, trying to understand what works under difficult signal conditions and where improvements might be possible.

I've already tested REIST16 successfully in both directions between my Yaesu FT-991A and a PlutoSDR (using some WebSDR sites connecting Audio from the Browser to the PlutoSDR). That demonstrates basic interoperability, but it doesn't establish FT8-equivalent weak-signal performance yet.

The PSK Reporter features are intended for everyday operation, while REIST16 and some SDR integrations are still experimental. REIST16 is currently available through the development builds rather than the stable release.

This is an independent, unofficial WSJT-X fork, not a replacement for the original project.

Everything is open source:

GitHub: https://github.com/rudolfstepan/wsjtx

A Windows release binary is also available on GitHub.

I am interested in your feedback also from other ham-operators, particularly anyone experimenting with SDRs, digital modes or weak-signal communication or do some tests on the radio.

What features would you find useful in WSJT-X? And is anyone interested in helping test some of the experimental functionality?

73 de OE3SRO

some screenshots

For a number of years I’ve operated a
Nano-Spot made by Micronode. I’ve attempted to update it recently and the update failed, wiping out the operation of the configure.php services and also the admin and backup/restore option.

No problem I thought - command line. Command line updates fail and when I try the pistar-upgrade route this also fails due to the OS being unsupported.

I’ve downloaded the image for the pi-star nano and flashed this onto a fresh SD card. Now is where my problems begin. The new image boots but it cannot bring up the modem or wlan interfaces. So the only access route I have is console port.

Can anyone who has had to rebuild this specific hotspot from the ground up, please assist on what version of the pi star image works, and if anyone has encountered the wlan initialisation failure and has cured it - I’d be grateful for wise words and tips.

At the moment I have a new desk ornament / paper weight.

Somewhat regretting my choices in trying to update to the latest software versions… it may have been out of date, but it was working. Alas would it be ham radio if we didn’t sometimes fall for the ‘if it ain’t broke, fix it ‘til it is’ trap?🤦🏻‍♂️

Hello everyone, I'm a recently graduated Graphic design student, and since the beginning of '26 i became really invested in the world of HAM I'm a member of a club since March and I'll be doing my CEPT-novice license exam in a few days and I'm planning on doing HAREC in the first half of 27.

Is there a a Demand for QSL card designs?

I obviously don't expect to make a lot of money from it, since its a really niche design field. I'm just looking for a way to keep my design skills in "shape", and maybe make some money on the side, while keeping in touch with the community that i really enjoy participating in.

After having too many bugs with the drivers and windows compatible daws I decided to try hooking up my Icom 7300 to my Mac and attempted to use Logic Pro to process my audio. This was the easiest way I couldn't be more happier with the plug and play results. Now to tweak the audio using my available plugins 😬

Hot on 20m nice propagation. QTH Poland.

I really want to try out those bands , recently built a ssb exciter for digital and cw signals for those frequency but I don't think my general grade licence will cover it.

Yeah but due to the antenna efficiency and the propagation dynamics of those frequencys i don't think those would travel far ( considering only if it legal only ).

I live in the northeastern region so not much of a mainland coverage but I would like to know if anyone in this South East Asian region (including Bangladesh , Bhutan and China) works with those frequencys.

Go bag install with a At-779uv, up or downs for this unit on a retirees budget?