Kay discussed the current project of DLARC is to archive YouTube videos and other media of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – https://archive.org/details/fcc-videos. As with every change of US presidential administration and corresponding emphasis in US government agencies, priorities are changing at the FCC, and some media may be removed. In addition to the FCC YouTube videos, DLARC is also archiving the FCC Daily Digest.
Steve reported that Zero Retries now has 2500+ email subscribers, and Substack recently declared him a “Substack bestseller” because Zero Retries now has more than 100 paid subscribers.
Steve talked about Wi-Fi Sensing Array (ZR 0190) demonstration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXwDrcd1t-E that really shows how directional antennas, attenuation, reflections, etc. While that wasn’t the primary intent of the demo, it was really impressive.
Steve will be attending the HamSCI 2025 conference https://hamsci.org/hamsci2025 in Newark, New Jersey on Friday March 14, and Saturday March 15:
This year’s theme, “HamSCI’s Big Year,” celebrates the community’s achievements, including the Festivals of Eclipse Ionospheric Science (FOEIS) during the 2023 annular and 2024 total solar eclipses. The workshop features nearly 50 poster and oral presentations, four HamSCI tutorials, and a keynote address by ARRL’s Bob Inderbitzen (NQ1R) at the HamSCI Banquet on Friday March 14th.
Not mentioned on this podcast, but Kay recently did a presentation to RATPAC titled DLARC – The Free Online Ham Radio Library which is a great overview of the wide range of Amateur Radio (and other) material available in DLARC.
Kay discussed some interesting and specialized Amateur Radio newsletters recently added to DLARC including:
What’s notable is that it has been published every Saturday since beginning publication… in 1991! (As a fellow newsletter publisher, Steve admired that level of dedication!)
Steve said he was pretty sure he had seen a collection of this magazine just yesterday as he was picking up some magazines at the Bellingham (Washington) Spark Museum of Electrical Invention – https://www.sparkmuseum.org.
Steve discussed a bit of the backstory of his fiction story in Zero Retries 0183 – https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0183 – Paying it Forward in Amateur Radio about a conversation between Jennifer, a young techie Amateur Radio Operator and Jada, a young woman in her teens about Jennifer’s Amateur Radio activities.
Steve went on to discuss the recent unveiling of NVIDIA’s Project Digits which is a “1 petaflop desktop computer” and the potential for him to “talk to his desktop AI” (that would be running on a Project Digits computer) to develop a fantasized future radio system. This combination would be the equivalent of having a full time software engineer writing GNU Radio code, and Steve just uses the output of the AI in GNU Radio, tries it out, notes what works and doesn’t work, inputs that back into the AI.
Kay said that he would love to “browse” various digital modes automatically, and Steve said that we’re close to that, including:
Radios are computers – with antennas! We keep having more and more (cheap) computing power to throw at radio communications!
As an example of how abundant computer power can make a difference in (Amateur Radio) radio technology, Steve discussed the innovation of “bit flip testing and correction” that John Langner WB2OSZ implemented in Dire Wolf Software TNC – https://github.com/wb2osz/direwolf. See this presentation by WB2OSZ – https://archive.org/details/direwolf-software-tnc.
Kay joked:
If you can flip one bit and figure out what the packet is based from the CRC. Why transmit the packet at all? Just transmit the CRC and figure out what the packet should have been?
Steve said “we’re close to that”, but couldn’t recall the details during the podcast of what a Zero Retries reader mentioned in a comment that was a similar capability to what Key described.
Just a thought on multicast file distribution systems. There is a class of algorithms called erasure codes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasure_code) that take some chunk of data, run a transformation on it to break it up into blocks (the total size somewhat more than original.) Then a receiver need only receive K out of N blocks that were produced by the encoding algorithm to compute the original data. This sort of thing is used at small scale with Reed-Soloman coding and at large scale for storing files. Professionally, we used a product like this which would ingest files, generate blocks that were then stored at multiple geographically dispersed locations. By tuning K and N, you would get disaster recovery and the system overall in managing all the metadata was very scalable.
The application for amateur radio beacons and the like is to just transmit blocks and the receiver can start receiving them at any time and eventually reconstruct the original object. Some research reveals some commercial work for such a thing to be deployed on unidirectional broadcast satellite links where a reverse channel to ask for “fills” wasn’t available. Missing a block means you don’t have to wait for that one block to be retransmitted to you much later; you might still reconstruct the object sooner.
There appear to be some open-source libraries to do this encoding and decoding computation and that would then need a UI and data transport interface wrapped around it. This sounds like a great opportunity to combine ham radio and thesis work for the right person 🙂
Kay was prescient! 🙂
Kay concluded the podcast by saying that DLARC added 1.1M pages of material in 2024!
Kay discussed two of the most recent collections added to DLARC from Japan and Russia: a recent project of archiving 600 episodes of a Japanese ham radio show called Ham’s Radio:
With no Japanese language skills, this particular archive was a challenge for Kay. Fortunately there was a related blog for the show, but it wasn’t a 1:1 blog entry for each episode, so Kay had to employ advanced “script ninja” skills to parse out just the blog posts related to episodes. WIth just the episode blog posts, Kay could then use Google Translate and other tools to understand the content. Kay also used ChatGPT’s API to translate the show notes into English.
Steve expressed his excitement about the potential for real-time translation of Amateur Radio voice communications in the future, and mentioned the Radio Autoencoder project within the FreeDV project:
Kay discussed the discovery of a vast body of work by a dedicated individual, Dexter Anderson, who had been translating Russian publications into English for decades.
Translations of Russian Amateur Radio Publications 1981-2000:
Dexter’s translations were not word-for-word but provided a summary of the articles. The conversation also touched on the broader meaning of the term “radio amateur” in the Soviet Union, with a significant portion of radio enthusiasts being passive listeners rather than active transmitters, as explained in the item Summary Translation of the Soviet Amateur Magazine “Radio” 1989-08: https://archive.org/details/summarytranslati00uns_84d/mode/1up
Steve explained that similar to the “not just those who transmit” perspective of the Russian radio publications, he writes Zero Retries not just for those that are licensed Amateur Radio Operators, but also for those that are active in “Amateur Radio Adjacent” activities such as using unlicensed spectrum for experimentation.
One such “Amateur Radio Adjacent” activity that Steve admires is SatNOGS:
https://satnogs.org SatNOGS is Satellite Networked Open Source Ground Station and is a worldwide network of receive-only stations dedicated to receiving telemetry and other data from small low orbit, low powered, research satellites such as those that are conceived and constructed by university students. Such satellite builders have trouble actually conducting the research because their connectivity with their satellites from their location is only minutes per day at best. But SatNOGS stations around the world can also receive the transmissions from research satellites and relay what is received back to the satellite builders.
A SatNOGS station can be as simple as a special antenna called an “Eggbeater” (omnidirectional, but focused towards the sky rather than the horizon), an inexpensive software defined receiver, an embedded computer such as a Raspberry Pi, custom software, and an Internet connection. Building a SatNOGS station makes a great STEM, Maker, or hacker project, especially if you live in a rural area and have a good Internet connection.
Steve then segued mention of archival material in DLARC into a multi-issue project he’s working on in Zero Retries that will culminate in a concept he’s been working on that he’s calling a “SuperPeater”.
In an article Steve wrote for the Internet Archive blog:
The key concept that unlike a typical Amateur Radio repeater (including data repeaters), a PACSAT featured multiple uplink channels and in the case of multiple simultaneous transmissions received on multiple inputs, a queuing system was used. There were many other innovative features of the PACSATs, including robust modulation methods.
The connection between DLARC and Zero Retries is that all the archival information about PACSATs is in DLARC:
11 formal research / presentation papers presented at the Digital Communication Conferences
9 newsletter articles in the TAPR Packet Status Register newsletter
Even a book – The PACSAT Beginner’s Guide
What’s amazing to consider about PACSAT technology in the 2020s is that the PACSAT developers and engineers solved all the hard parts, and made it work, and proved it all out by flying multiple PACSATs. But, back then, they had to invent the technology, build custom hardware, build custom software, invent new algorithms and access protocols, etc.
Now, all of that technology is easy, inexpensive, and off the shelf – mostly software running on existing hardware:
Different modulation techniques that were tough in 1983, not so much now
Multiple uplink channels, again tough in 1983, not so much now (ka9q-radio)
Multiple inputs received – queueing (we have lots of RAM to buffer multiple inputs received simultaneously; 8 GB on a Raspberry Pi 5)
Dedicated fast computers such as Raspberry Pi for running the dedicated digital processing software
Multitasking operating systems (including, recently, realtime versions of Linux)
And, in general, Software Defined Radios hardware
Thus, imagine a terrestrial “SuperPeater” data repeater with its output on 222-225 MHz that transmits at perhaps as fast as 38400 bps in a standard repeater channel. Receiving that data stream can be received with an inexpensive Software Defined Receiver and modem software. There could be multiple input channels to the SuperPeater including on 144-148 MHz and 440-450 MHz, with various data speeds / modem types on multiple channels. The SuperPeater can queue what it receives on each channel and output it all, queued, on the high speed output channel.
As Steve envisions a SuperPeater, it’s mostly a “simple matter of software” 😀
Read the December 2024 issue of Zero Retries for more detail about Steve’s SuperPeater concept.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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.)
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.
Kay discusses their trip to Lima, Ohio to Fair Radio Sales – https://fairradio.com/, one of the last true military and government surplus stores (mostly electronic equipment). Fair Radio Sales is going out of business so the owner can retire. The business and its inventory is being auctioned and everything must go including a large amount of documentation. The owner of Fair Radio Sales agreed to allow Kay and DLARC to go through that documentation prior to Fair Radio Sales’ auction. Two vanloads of ~200 boxes were transported to the Internet Archive’s scanning facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The material will be scanned and added to the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications.
In this week’s Zero Retries 0165, Steve discusses Zero Retries hitting 2,000 subscribers. Last week’s Zero Retries 0164 featured a story about his visit to the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class Destroyer USS Sampson (DDG 102) during Seattle, Washington’s Fleet Week 2024 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Sampson_(DDG-102).
Steve discusses his ongoing education about the M17 digital voice / data system – https://m17project.org/ developed as an entirely open source project and why that really matters in Amateur Radio, especially new techie Amateur Radio Operators as those getting their Amateur Radio license at DEFCON 32 this past week – DEF CON 32: Another mind-blowing experience – https://www.kb6nu.com/def-con-32-another-mind-blowing-experience/.
Steve also discusses the newest threat to Amateur Radio operations in the 902-928 MHz band which is shared between licensed users including Amateur Radio and license-exempt uses such as Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) and most recently, Meshtastic – https://meshtastic.org.
FCC: WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUREAU AND OFFICE OF ENGINEERING
AND TECHNOLOGY SEEK COMMENT ON NEXTNAV PETITION FOR
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.
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
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.
