Store and Forward

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (a project of the Internet Archive): https://archive.org/details/dlarc 

Zero Retries Newsletter: https://www.zeroretries.org 

The video version of this episode is at:  https://youtu.be/Mbv0f7GKUdo

Kay and Steve discussed their experiences at Pacificon 2024, a ham radio conference held in San Ramon, California on Oct 18-20 2024. https://www.pacificon.org/ Steve shared their impressions of the event, including the unique agricultural landscape they encountered on their drive there and the interesting sessions they attended. Steve was particularly impressed by a session about Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR), which allows for global communication on low power through digital signal processing. Steve shared his excitement about the new developments in the MMDVM project, including the introduction of a data mode and a transcoding system. 

Kay shared their experience at the event, where they had a booth promoting the Digital Library of Amateur Radio Communications (DLARC). Kay gave two talks, one about their experiences as a curator of DLARC and another to the Young Ladies Radio League. Kay enjoyed a group dinner and the ham shack tent outside. Kay, who hadn’t used HF in 30 years, was amazed by modern SDR technology that allows for real-time monitoring of the entire band, making it easier to find interesting signals. Steve agreed, noting that this technology has significantly changed the hobby. They also discussed the appeal of FT8, a digital mode that allows for quick communication, but Kay expressed preference for more human interaction. Steve highlighted the versatility of the hobby, mentioning the use of digital technology for email messaging and remote stations.

Kay shared their experience of attending the Internet Archive’s Homecoming/Open House Week, where they met with other employees in person. Kay shared that the Internet Archive was down for two weeks due to a hack and security issues, but is now back in read-only mode and expected to return to normal soon. They also discussed the annual celebration and talks at the Internet Archive’s open house, which Kay described as a “church for people who love libraries.”  https://blog.archive.org/2024/10/29/supporters-stand-strong-with-internet-archive-at-annual-celebration/
Finally, Kay talked about interviewing Nick Kennedy WA5BDU about his Atari computer keyer software. https://youtu.be/SoGkbA5tsRk

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The video version of this episode is at: http://archive.org/details/store-and-forward-7

Steve is relieved that the Comment and Reply Comment periods for FCC Docket 24-240 https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/search-filings/results?q=(proceedings.name:(%2224-240%22)) have ended. It’s been a pretty intense month of writing for him. Now it remains for the FCC to digest all the comments (more than 1800, and still coming in, despite the deadline of 2024-09-20) and make a decision to grant NextNav’s petition https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/10416238018537/1 to radically reconfigure the 902-928 MHz band for their proposed “supplement GPS with a terrestrial Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) system”, or not, or some variant of NextNav’s request.

Steve and Kay discuss some of the myriad uses of the US 902-928 MHz band of which Amateur Radio is just one. Steve wasn’t previously aware that all of the automatic tolling systems nationwide (such as EZ-Pass) use 902-928 MHz for communicating between the overhead “readers” and the toll “badges” inside the vehicle. Another surprise was the use of 902-928 MHz for at least some of the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags used on retail merchandise, inside warehouses, and even scaling up to freight containers. Yet another use of 902-928 MHz is Z-Wave, a home automation system, but it actually scales up to use in commercial buildings such as skyscrapers, for managing lighting. Not to mention the tens of millions of Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) systems in use nationwide. Collectively, there are billions, perhaps tens of billions of devices that operate in the 902-928 MHz band that could be affected by FCC Docket 24-240.

Steve guesses that the FCC will be surprised with the surge of comments about the use of Meshtastic https://meshtastic.org in the 902-928 MHz band,, including that it’s being used by individuals and small groups for emergency communications because it is a completely independent system that doesn’t need cellular, or Internet, or satellite.

Steve briefly discusses “SDR Television” https://www.sdr-radio.com/sdr-television-sept-19th-2024, which is a feature in development of the SDR Console software https://www.sdr-radio.com that he’ll discuss in this week’s Zero Retries 0171 https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0171. SDR Console works with most Software Defined Radio Receivers or Transceivers, including those as low-end as RTL-SDR receiver “dongles” https://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/ or an Analog Devices ADALM-PLUTO https://www.analog.com/en/resources/evaluation-hardware-and-software/evaluation-boards-kits/adalm-pluto.html Software Defined Radio transceiver. With Amateur Radio Television almost to the point of being “just software” now, Amateur Radio could easily get into providing video content – over Amateur Radio, with no need for expensive custom hardware. Amateur Television could be as simple as an antenna, a Raspberry Pi, a RTL-SDR receiver, and some software and anyone could be receiving television from an Amateur Radio ATV repeater. Amateur Radio is allowed to transmit “bulletins”…

Kay discusses the “rest of the story” of the “Problem Box” he discussed last episode. The interesting content of the Problem Box is now wonderfully archived into the Chuck Vesei Shortwave Radio Artifacts collection http://archive.org/details/vesei-shortwave in DLARC. This collection is a wonderful time capsule of two years of this (then) young man’s life of writing to international shortwave broadcast stations all over the world. Many of the stations he wrote to replied with not just the usual “confirmation of signal report” (QSL) cards, but also brochures, and a small collection of pennants.

Kay discusses the Ohio/Penn DX Bulletin https://archive.org/details/ohio-penn-dx-bulletin which ceased publication in October 2022 after 32 years of continuous weekly publication… by one person – Tedd Miraliotta KB8NW. Kay was so enthralled about having much of the entire 32 year run of this unique publication… that he was intrigued enough to talk to Miraliotta and ask if there was any chance he could recover missing first 232 issues which had been distributed via Amateur Radio Packet Radio bulletins. Miraliotta dug through a closet and found a hard drive that had those issues on it but he had to hunt around his household for an old enough Windows system that would read the hard drive, and eventually found one that was hosting his weather station. So now, for the first time ever, the entire 32 year history of the Ohio/Penn DX Bulletin is online for anyone to read.

Kay had asked the Internet Archive scanning center to prioritize the box of Fair Radio Sales catalogs (reference Episode 4) https://archive.org/details/fair-radio-sales and those are now online. Steve remembers getting the Fair Radio Sales catalog and bringing it to his high school study hall and reading all the fascinating descriptions of mostly government surplus electronics gear. It seems surreal that such an institution is no more but Fair Radio Sales is now out of business – https://fairradio.com. 

This weekend Kay will be attending the Portland Retro Gaming Expo https://www.retrogamingexpo.com with several friends from out of town. Kay will also be part of a panel discussion on Apple II Origins of Today’s Games – https://a2central.com/2024/09/prge-2024-apple-ii-games/.

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (a project of the Internet Archive) – https://archive.org/details/dlarc

Zero Retries Newsletter – https://www.zeroretries.org

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The video version of this episode is at: https://archive.org/details/store-and-forward-6

Kay discusses a subset of the ongoing DLARC project of Bob Cooper archive – https://archive.org/details/bob-cooper, discussing an obscure newsletter of Cooper’s called “Coops Technology Digest”. Despite the donation of a container full of Cooper’s personal archives to DLARC, there were missing issues of this interesting newsletter. Steve joked that the missing issues might be “forbidden knowledge”. Kay managed to track down some of those missing issues to two libraries in New Zealand (where this newsletter was published) in hopes that they’ll help DLARC and digitize the missing issues in their collections. 

Kay discusses an obscure Amateur Radio publication called The Low Band Monitor that was donated by the California Historical Radio Society – https://californiahistoricalradio.com and the DX-Peditions Collection – http://archive.org/details/dx-peditions.

Kay discusses the issue of “The Problem Box”, where well-meaning folks “throw stuff into a box” for donation to DLARC. Unfortunately, random, uncategorized, unsorted material like this are problematic for the Internet Archive scanning folks who want to “just get the scanning done” as efficiently as possible. Thus Kay needs to step in to figure out what the material is, organize it, assign metadata, and assess its priority for scanning. All Amateur Radio material is welcome for DLARC, but sometimes the human touch of an archivist like Kay needs to get involved (and that’s one of Kay’s many roles in managing DLARC).

Finally Kay does another quick on-screen tour through the DLARC Wantlist of items that are known to exist, but have not yet been found or donated to DLARC such as missing issues of a magazine or newsletter.

Steve discusses his enthusiasm for the M17 Project, which he has been covering extensively in recent issues of Zero Retries. M17 began as a well-developed open source specification for Amateur Radio digital voice and data in VHF / UHF bands. M17 has now been developed into a number of different hardware and software projects. In the past few months, a new M17 radio was developed – the Connect Systems CS7000 M17 – the first radio that does M17 “out of the box”. M17 is now at the point where “all the pieces are available” for M17 to be used as a Digital Voice repeater system on VHF / UHF, equivalent to semi-proprietary digital voice systems such as DMR, D-Star, and System Fusion.

That M17 is an entirely open source system is causing a lot of excitement and interest in newer, younger, techie Amateur Radio Operators with a strong preference for using only open source systems in Amateur Radio. Amateur Radio “powers that be” don’t get why M17 being open source is different enough to justify changing their repeaters to allow M17, but some progressive Amateur Radio clubs do get it, such as Mount Diablo Amateur Radio Club sponsoring a dedicated digital voice repeater which includes M17 as “just another digital voice mode” – https://www.mdarc.org/repeater-systems/digital-voice.

As an example of why M17 being an open source project makes a difference, a recent project of M17 added public key / private key “signing” of M17 transmissions; if a public key signature is known (and trusted), a transmission that is “signed” with a person’s unique public key can be reasonably trusted to be from that person (who is the only person who can create a public key with the use of their unique private key).

Steve is also enthusiastic about M17 because it is unique among the digital voice systems that was developed from the beginning to accommodate data transfers on an equal priority basis with digital voice transfers. A recent development by M17’s primary developer created a prototype dedicated messaging app for M17.

M17 Project main website – https://m17project.org/

Connect Systems CS7000 M17 – https://www.connectsystems.com/products/top/radios/CS7000_M17.htm

Good overview article on M17 from Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) RadCom Magazine – The M17 Project by Ira Brodsky KC9TC https://archive.org/details/m17_project

Recent Zero Retries stories about M17:

Zero Retries 0163 – Why M17 Is Significant – Part 1 – https://www.zeroretries.org/i/147023976/why-m-is-significant-part

Zero Retries 0164 – Why M17 is Significant – Part 2 – https://www.zeroretries.org/i/147323902/why-m-is-significant-part

Zero Retries 0165 – Playing for “Those Five”, Microcomputers in 1976, Linux… and the M17 Project – https://www.zeroretries.org/i/147534885/playing-for-those-five-microcomputers-in-linux-and-the-m-project

Steve does yet another passionate plug for the entire run of 73 Magazine – https://archive.org/details/73-magazine being publicly available on DLARC with no restrictions, to anyone in the world… in marked contrast to other publications from the “Amateur Radio Publishing Industrial Complex” (Amateur Radio publications hidden behind a paywall). Kay put in a plug for another great magazine – Monitoring Times – https://archive.org/details/monitoringtimes that gave permission to be publicly available on DLARC.

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (a project of the Internet Archive) – https://archive.org/details/dlarc
Zero Retries Newsletter – https://www.zeroretries.org

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Video version of this episode: https://archive.org/details/store-and-forward-5

Kay and Steve were prepared to tell each other about a great, newly released video of US Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper’s 1982 talk to the US “No Such Agency”. In these videos, the late Admiral Hopper was in great form, with lots of humor and history about her career in the US Navy. She begins the talk reminding everyone that the first electronic computer was built by the US Navy. Title of the talk was “Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People”. Both Kay and Steve highly recommend these two videos.

Grace Hopper on Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
Part One – https://archive.org/details/youtube-si9iqF5uTFk
Part Two – https://archive.org/details/youtube-AW7ZHpKuqZg 

Kay played a newly found 30 second Public Service Announcement by Pernell Roberts and Gregory Harrison, stars of the TV show “Trapper John MD” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapper_John,_M.D.)

ARRL Emergency Communications PSA – https://archive.org/details/205220-emergency-communications-dlarc-3674-master

Kay discusses another portion of the ongoing DLARC project, the Bob Cooper Archive https://archive.org/details/bob-cooper

Steve discusses the main story in Zero Retries 0166 (published 2024-08-23), the new Masters Communications DRA-Pi-Zero, a new Amateur Radio data communications interface (essentially, a modem for radios) – https://www.zeroretries.org/i/147797445/the-new-dra-pi-zero. This unit is just another option for using the very cool software called DigiPi created by Craig Lamparter KM6LYW – https://craiger.org/digipi/.

Steve discusses another trend he is tracking in Zero Retries – the messaging capabilities built into Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) – http://www.aprs.org/aprs-messaging.html. APRS Messaging has been available and usable for years, but generally poorly implemented being built into radios where you can only input text with the buttons on the radio’s microphone. The Meshtastic app (https://meshtastic.org/), used on unlicensed bands like 902-928 MHz in the US, is showing how “messaging” can be… and should be… much more usable. Example apps in Amateur Radio are RadioMail – https://radiomail.app/ and VarAC – https://www.varac-hamradio.com/. Steve will be “encouraging” the development of “Messaging First” apps for APRS messaging in future issues of Zero Retries.

Steve mentioned a cool new press release from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC):

Unlock the Secrets of the Invisible Radio Universe with SuperKnova®
Funded by a grant from ARDC, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) has developed two no-cost, self-paced online courses on SuperKnova, an online educational platform accessible to learners of all ages: the Technician Amateur Radio License and EMS Course and the General Amateur Radio License and EMS Course. These courses introduce the fundamentals of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS), which will not only help learners get their amateur radio license, but will also contribute to the longevity of the amateur radio community. In addition to applications in amateur radio, these concepts taught in the courses are also applicable in many career paths.
https://www.ardc.net/wp-content/uploads/218-nrao-superknova-ardc-joint-press-release.pdf
https://public.nrao.edu/news/unlock-the-secrets-of-the-invisible-radio-universe-with-superknova/

One of the NRAO facilities is the array of big dish antennas in New Mexico that was a primary location in the movie “Contact”.

Steve’s big task in the next few days is to assemble his thoughts and comments in preparation for filing comments by the deadline on the “Spectrum Grab” currently in progress for the US 902-928 MHz band. The deadline for those comments to be filed by the FCC is next Thursday 2024-09-05. He plans to do a special mid-week issue of Zero Retries just on this topic.

ARRL’s announcement and discussion with instructions on how to file – https://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-urges-protecting-the-amateur-radio-902-928-mhz-band

FCC Public Notice on WT Docket No. 24-240 – https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-24-776A1.pdf

FCC Electronic Comments Filing System for 24-240 – https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/docket-detail/24-240

Click Search for Filings button

307 comments to date

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (a project of the Internet Archive) – https://archive.org/details/dlarc
Zero Retries Newsletter – https://www.zeroretries.org

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Our longest episode ever! Kay tells of their trip to Denver to sort through Bob Cooper’s material, and learns the story of HBO signal hacker Captain Midnight. Steve gushes about Bennett Z. Kobb’s book Wireless Spectrum Finder and “Irrational Exuberance in Amateur Radio” in Zero Retries 0162 this week – https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0162. Steve talks a bit about the weird unlicensed / Amateur Radio band at 902 – 928 MHz. 

Bob Cooper Archive at DLARC (work in progress): https://archive.org/details/bob-cooper?sort=-addeddate 

Shout out to Dan, the proprietor of Dr. Dan’s Vintage Audio Repair in Denver – https://drdanselectronics.weebly.com/#/. He worked with Kay find a good home for the electronics units that were part of the Bob Cooper collection that otherwise would have ended up in an electronics recycling bin.

Wireless spectrum finder: telecommunications, government, and scientific radio frequency allocations in the U.S., 30 MHz-300 GHz by Author Bennett Z. Kobb AK4AV https://archive.org/details/wirelessspectrum0000kobb

Primary theme of Zero Retries 0162 was “Irrational Exuberance”. ​​https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0162 

Dan Romanchik KB6NU:

• Hackers On Planet Earth conference https://hope.net
• Article – Back to the future: Are hackers the future of amateur radio? – https://www.kb6nu.com/back-to-the-future-are-hackers-the-future-of-amateur-radio/
• Article – Wanna work with satellites? Get an amateur radio license – https://www.kb6nu.com/wanna-work-with-satellites-get-an-amateur-radio-license/

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications https://archive.org/details/dlarc

Video version of this episode: https://archive.org/details/store-and-forward-3

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In this episode, Kay discusses their summer travel plans to collect material for DLARC, and Steve talks about beginning the fourth year of the Zero Retries newsletter.

Sites mentioned in this episode:

Texas Packet Radio Society (TPRS) Quarterly Report newsletter https://archive.org/details/texas-packet-radio

Bob Cooper’s web site http://bobcooper.tv

Fair Radio Sales https://fairradio.com

73 Magazine at DLARC https://archive.org/details/73-magazine

Zero Retries 0160 https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0160

Using DLARC, Amateur Radio Operators are Resurrecting Technical Ideas from the Past, Using 21st Century Tech https://blog.archive.org/2024/07/10/using-dlarc-amateur-radio-operators-are-resurrecting-technical-ideas-from-the-past-using-21st-century-tech/

Video version of this episode: https://archive.org/details/store-and-forward-2

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In the first episode of the podcast, Kay and Steve explain why they’re interested in amateur radio’s future… and past.

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications http://archive.org/details/dlarc 

Zero Retries newsletter https://www.zeroretries.org/

LinuxFest Northwest https://linuxfestnorthwest.org/

MFJ Library https://archive.org/details/MFJlibrary?sort=-addeddate 

DX-peditions https://archive.org/details/dx-peditions

Communications Academy conference archive https://archive.org/details/comm-academy 

Pile-Up Busters video parody https://archive.org/details/Pile_Up_Busters 

KiwiSDR 2 – https://kiwisdr.nz/products/kiwisdr2-1

Video version of this episode: https://archive.org/details/store-and-forward-1

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