Video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/1BG-YfcXe_I
Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (a project of the Internet Archive): https://archive.org/details/dlarc
Zero Retries Newsletter: https://www.zeroretries.org
Amateur Radio Digital Communications: https://www.ardc.net
GNU Radio Conference 2025: https://events.gnuradio.org/event/26/
Zero Retries Digital Conference 2025: https://www.zeroretries.org/p/conference
IP400 Network Project: https://adrcs.org/adrcs/ip400-network-project/
Hamvention: https://hamvention.org
Steve discussed his top few items of interest at the Hamvention 2025 in Xenia, Ohio a week ago. He wrote about his Hamvention Experience in Zero Retries 0203 – https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0203.
Steve was really impressed with FlexRadio’s new Aurora unit which incorporates an HF radio, 500 watt amplifier, antenna tuner, and power supply all in one unit. Aurora is so power-efficient that it can be used with a (US) standard 120 volt 15 amp power circuit. https://edge.flexradio.com/www/offload/20250515182542/FlexRadio-Aurora-Brochure.pdf
Steve was equally impressed with FreeDV’s Radio Autoencoder (RADE) digital voice system for HF. At Hamvention, RADE is open source and was demonstrated as having been ported from running on a modern Windows PC to running on a Raspberry Pi 5. https://freedv.org/radio-autoencoder/
Steve’s other mentions about Hamvention in this episode include Rhizomatica open source Mercury Radio Modem Software – https://github.com/Rhizomatica/mercury, and the Kenwood TM-D750A Mobile “Data” Radio (https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/rsv-tm-d750a – apologies, best info link I could find).
Steve was really impressed with the Timebot (aka, Virtual Time Nut) AI project bounded to multiple decades of material on “Time Nuts”, created by John Ackermann N8UR. See Steve’s writeup in Zero Retries 0203 – https://www.zeroretries.org/i/163245188/timebot-aka-virtual-time-nut.
Kay discussed his ramping up DLARC activities, such adding Wireless Institute of Australia’s Amateur Radio Magazine, from its start in 1933 through 2012 – https://archive.org/details/wia_amateur_radio?sort=date
Another significant addition to DLARC, which will require some help to fully annotate with metadata is the archives donated by Hank Magnuski KA6M – https://archive.org/details/dlarc?tab=collection&query=col_number%3A3990&sort=-addeddate
Hank’s archives include correspondence about the creation of Amateur Radio Packet Radio – the beginnings of the AX.25 protocol. Hank is also known for creating the first Amateur Radio Packet Radio digipeater – http://pprs.org and being the person to request the 44 Class A address space that was the basis of what is now Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) – https://www.ardc.net/about/faq/ and see How did ARDC get started?
Steve and Kay discussed Kay’s work in unearthing many documents about Alohanet – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALOHAnet. Thanks to some interesting mentions on obscure email lists, Kay has found a lot of material on this first combination of packet networking and radio that predates much of the Internet. None of the material Kay has been finding has ever been online previously.
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