Monday Overdrive for January 20th, 2025

January 20, 2025Each week so much compelling content is considered for Amateur Radio Weekly but there’s always a handful of great links that just can’t fit. These are the links that didn’t make it into issue 365 of Amateur Radio Weekly.

• A Top Loaded End-Fed Half-Wave Antenna for 20m
  Imagine this: a short, vertical antenna for 20m that requires no ground, no counterpoise or radials… And… no tuner.
  Ham Radio Outside the Box
• FCC Targets AM Pirate Signal in Boston
  Property home to Radio Energy Boston’s 1620 AM receives notice.
  RadioWorld
• Vanishing Culture: Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications
  Amateur Radio has been a hobby for well over 100 years. For as long as there has been an understanding of electricity and radio waves, people have been experimenting with these technologies and advancing the state of the art.
  Internet Archive Blogs
• A Subtle Shift in My Field Gear: Rethinking the external ATU
  This past week, I’ve been revisiting my shack, paring down, and reorganizing. By that, I mean separating the wheat from the chaff and reevaluating my grab-and-go radios and accessories.
  QRPer
• Carnarvon’s Decommissioned NASA Satellite Dish Back In Service After 40 Years
  Recently the 29.8 meter parabolic antenna at the Australian OTC (overseas telecommunications commission) station came back to life again after nearly forty years spent in decommissioning limbo.
  Hackaday

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Source: Amateur Radio Weekly open_in_new

IP400 Network Project Announced

January 19, 2025Designed by Martin Alcock (VE6VH) with support from the Alberta Digital Radio Communications Society (ADRCS), the IP400 Network Project is designed to enhance amateur radio repeaters. IP400 aims to bring digital voice modes, data transfers, messaging, and a data networking layer that links repeaters together via RF.

The latest issue of Zero Retries features in-depth write-ups of IP400, including a message from VE6VH outlining the history and vision of the project.

We have a ground floor opportunity to develop our own mesh network in the 420-450 MHz band that can be used for many different applications, the limit of which is the imagination alone. The first step is to get a simple chat and beaconing application running to experiment with the technology. From there we can layer on other features and frame types, and then consider moving into the repeater world. To give the project a name, it has been dubbed ‘IP400’, for Intelligent (not Internet!) Protocol.

• Those interested in the project can join the IP400 Groups.io list.
• A GitHib repository of initial software has been established.
• IP400 project home on ADRCS.

Source: ADRCS open_in_new