#ARDC

Australian Research Data Commons

meet

Amateur Radio Digital Communications

Gotta love acronyms..

My search has been without results.

My "new" model remote with a Siri button keeps needing to be reset to control my infrared amplifier. Press and hold the Volume Down and TV button works, but it's annoying when you want to change the volume whilst watching something and it doesn't respond.

Firmware version is 0x83.

Anyone got any ideas what might be causing this?

I've been using VMware for about two decades. I'm moving elsewhere. KVM appears to be the solution for me.

I cannot discover how a guest display is supposed to work.

On VMware workstation/Fusion the application provides the display interface and puts it into a window on the host. This can be resized to full screen. It's how I've been running my Debian desktop and probably hundreds of other virtual machines (mostly Linux) inside a guest on my MacOS iMac.

If I install Linux or BSD onto the bare metal iMac, how do KVM guests show their screen?

I really don't want to run VNC or RDP inside the guest.

I've been looking for documentation on this but Google search is now so bad that technical documents are completely hidden behind marketing blurbs or LLM generated rubbish.

Anyone?

So, I have a confession. I don't know everything. Shocking right?

Over the past too many months, actually, come to think of it, years, I have not been on-air with my station on HF using FT8 or Olivia, modes that use tools like "WSJT-X" and "fldigi". This has not always been the case. For a time I used a tiny computer running those tools. It had plenty of issues related to its size and capacity. Overwhelmingly it was slow, unsurprising since it was released in 2009. After one particularly frustrating session where I had to recompile WSJT-X on an older 32-bit operating system using an Atom processor, I decided that this was not helping me, and I put it away.

The idea was to use my main computer that could do all the heavy lifting without cracking a sweat. To make this happen the traditional way, I'd be expected to physically connect the radio to the computer. I'm not a fan of doing that, given the potential damage that RF could do to my computer, not to mention that I have a sit-stand desk on wheels that I move around my office as the mood or the light takes me, if you're interested, I found a mobile lectern that the computer is clamped to. Works great, been using it for years.

RF aside, moving around the office is not conducive to plugging in a radio that comes with power, coax, audio, control, microphone and expects to have some space around it to actually use it. No problem, I have a RemoteRig, a device that comes in two parts. You connect one unit to the radio, the other to the head, that is, the removable faceplate of the radio, and using a network connection, you can have the head in one place and the radio in another. The two units don't have to be in the same room, let alone the same country.

I figured that I could replace the second half of the system, the head and its unit, and instead use software on my computer to get the same functionality and be up and running in minutes. That was several years ago. Interestingly, whilst I'm putting this together I did a search for "RemoteRig protocols" and learnt a few things, so perhaps this path isn't quite as dead as I feared. I've reached out to Mikael SM2O and if that comes to anything I'll let you know.

In the meantime I've been trying to figure out how to operate my radio in software only. I can control the radio if I physically connect a computer like a Raspberry Pi to it and use "rigctld" to interact with it. This gives me access to all the standard CAT, or Computer Assisted Tuning commands. In other words, I can change band, mode, frequency, trigger the transmitter, all the stuff that you need to get on-air to make noise.

There's only one bit missing, the noise, as-in audio, either coming from the radio, or going to it. I suppose I could trigger a carrier and use it to send Morse, but that doesn't give me receive capability. I've tried using network audio using "pulseaudio" - it never worked right. I've made USB hot-plug scripts that allow you to connect a USB device into a computer and access it across the network on another computer - it mostly works for sound, but reliable is not a word I'd use. I've looked at using the USB sound card in the audio mixer on my desk, but it's subject to all manner of funky restrictions and random audio dropouts. I could use a virtual screen and connect to a Raspberry Pi that's physically connected to the radio, but that's leaving all the hard work on the Pi, rather than the computer that I'm currently using with several orders of magnitude more capability.

Whilst we're discussing this, one of the reasons I like the idea of a software defined radio like a PlutoSDR, is that the stuff coming out of the radio, and going into it for that matter, is already digital. It takes away a whole lot of complexity, admittedly replacing it with software, but that's where I feel more comfortable.

Which brings me to you.

As I said, I don't know everything.

What are you doing in this space? Are you actually on-air with your contraption, or is it still in the planning stages? Are you sending audio, or digital data across the network? Does your system have the ability to swap out a radio and replace it with something completely different? Do you rely on functions available on the radio, or could it be used for a 1950's valve radio, a twenty year old one, a current model, or any number of software defined radios without issues? Finally, is it Open Source?

I confess that I'm not holding my breath for an answer, but there is a chance that you're similarly intrigued by this collection of questions that you will poke your head above the fence and make yourself known.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The recent "incident" at the ARRL in which it disclosed that it was the "victim of a sophisticated network attack by a malicious international cyber group" brings into focus some serious questions around our community in relation to identity and privacy.

Let's start with your callsign. Right now in Australia you can use the official register to look for VK6FLAB. When you do, you'll discover that it's "Assigned to Foundation". That's it. No mention of who holds it, where it's registered or how to contact the holder, none of that.

In the case of my callsign, because I haven't surrendered my apparently now legally useless license, you can still search the previous system, the Register of Radiocommunications Licenses and discover that it's held by me, but as soon as it expires, that record will vanish and the relationship between me and my callsign will be lost to the public.

Also, there are no dates associated with any of this. You cannot use the current or previous system to discover if I held my callsign in November 2010 or not. In case you're wondering, no, I didn't, I was licensed a month later. Right now if you look for VK6EEN on QRZ.com, you'll see that it's linked to CT1EEN, but when was that information last updated? I know for a fact that I became the holder in November 2020. It appears that Sam CT1EEN used it around the turn of the century, about 24 years ago, but precisely when and for how long, is unclear.

So, from a public disclosure perspective, the links between me and my callsigns are tenuous at best.

Before I continue, I will point out that this is not unusual. For example, you can see the number plate on my car as I drive down the street, but most people don't have the ability to link it to me.

Similarly, Ofcom in the United Kingdom released a list of allocated amateur callsigns after a freedom of information request. It's unclear if this information is updated, or if it requires a new request each time. Like Australia, the dataset contains the callsign, the type of license and when the record was last updated. Nothing else.

In contrast, the United States has a full license search that returns name, address, issue and expiry dates. Japan offers both a search tool and downloads. Interestingly you can see if a callsign was previously licensed and when, but not by whom.

No doubt each country has their own interpretation in relation to how this is handled and as was the case in Australia, this is ever changing.

This leaves us with an interesting phenomenon.

We use callsigns on-air to identify ourselves, but the relationship between the callsign and our identity, let alone when, is not guaranteed for a significant proportion of the amateur community.

So, how does this relate to the ARRL incident?

Radio amateurs like to make contacts with each other and collect those contacts like you might collect stickers or postage stamps. For decades we've used QSL cards, essentially a postcard sent from one amateur to another to confirm a contact. When you collect enough cards, you can apply for an award, like the DXCC, showing that you made contact with one hundred different so-called DX entities.

In the era of computing, some organisations, like the ARRL, came up with the idea of using the internet to exchange these contacts instead of using a postcard. This reduced delays and was presented as a system to make the process more secure by requiring that people electronically sign their contacts, but could only do so after identifying themselves using traditional means, like providing copies of their license, their passport, etc. The ARRL called it Logbook of the World, or LoTW, and it was adopted by the amateur community around the globe.

While the ARRL continues to state that it only holds public information on its member database, it has made no such assurances about the LoTW system. There is personal and private information that the ARRL has and there is no indication at all what happened to it.

Other systems such as QRZ, eQSL, Clublog and Hamlog offer similar systems with various levels of authentication and verification. A new player, HQSL, is confusing the issue by offering cryptographically signed QSL cards, boasting that their system is decentralised and not restricted to any single service, but immediately requires that you sign-up with Hamlog to get going.

So, we have several organisations offering electronic logging, contact confirmation and security which claim to guarantee that this callsign contacted that callsign at a time and date, on a band, using a mode.

One problem.

None of this is real.

For starters, there is no guarantee that the station operating VK6FLAB was me. There is also no record guaranteeing that I'm the holder of VK6FLAB, or any proof that I am who I say I am. There is also no guarantee that the person confirming a contact between VK6FLAB and you is me. So, we're creating a phantom secure system that's attempting to fix the wrong problem.

In golf, when you start playing for rankings, rather than a round at the 19th hole, the process used to verify your score is dependent on peer review. You cannot mark your own score-card, someone else does.

In amateur radio we've built this electronic house of cards to track whom we've talked to and when, but it's a mirage when looked at closely.

While a DXCC award is worth nothing more than a personal achievement, we cannot go on pretending that identity verification services like LoTW are real, nor can we continue to accept that organisations like the ARRL should demand and store valuable identity information.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

There is a growing trend where organisations are strictly limiting the amount of information that they disclose in relation to a data breach. Linked is an ongoing example of such a drip feed of PR friendly motherhood statements.

As an ICT professional with 40 years experience, I'm aware that there's a massive gap between disclosing how something was compromised, versus what data was exfiltrated.

For example, the fact that the linked organisation disclosed that their VoIP phone system was affected points to a significant breach, but there is no disclosure in relation to what personal information was affected.

For example, that particular organisation also has the global headquarters of a different organisation in their building, and has, at least in the past, had common office bearers. Was any data in that organisation affected?

My question is this:

What should be disclosed and what might come as a post mortem after systems have been secured restored?

If you've heard the phrase "shortwave listeners", you might have wondered what on earth that was all about.

It relates to the length of a radio wave used to transmit information. The length of a radio wave is tied to its frequency. The longer the wave, the lower the frequency.

When radio amateurs talk about bands, like for example the 40m band, we're talking about a range of frequencies where the wavelength is around 40m. From a frequency perspective, this is around 7 MHz. The 160m band, at about 1.8 MHz, or 1,800 kHz is considered the beginning of the short wave bands.

This implies that there are longer waves as well. If you've ever seen or owned a mid 1980's transistor radio, you'll have seen the notation MW, which stands for Medium Wave, today it's called the AM band. Older radios might have the notation LW, or Long Wave.

The medium wave band is a broadcast radio band that runs between about 500 and 1,700 kHz. The wave length is between 600 m and 170 m.

When radio was still in its infancy, there was also a popular long wave band, with wavelengths between 800 m and 2,000 m, or 150 to 375 kHz.

Today much of that has gone by the wayside. With the advent of digital radio, in Australia it's called DAB+, Digital Audio Broadcasting, the whole idea of "wave" has pretty much vanished.

Some countries like Japan and the United States are in the process of discussing the phasing out of the AM broadcast band. Much of that appears to be driven by car manufacturers who claim that the AM band is no longer useful or used, but forget to tell anyone that they really want to stop having to put AM radios in their cars because it's difficult to isolate the electrical noise from their modern contraptions in order to make it possible to actually listen to that band.

If you ask me, it's a good incentive to make electronics RF quiet, something which is increasingly important in our wirelessly connected world.

This might lead you to believe that all activity on air is moving to higher and higher frequencies, but that's not the case. The properties that made long wave and medium wave radio possible in the early 1900's are still valid today. For example, there are WSPR or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter beacons on the 2200m band, or at 136 kHz.

Whilst your RTL-SDR dongle might not quite get down that low, most of them start at 500 kHz, you don't need to spend big to start playing. My Yeasu FT-857d is capable of tuning to 100 kHz, plenty of space to start listening to the 2200m band, even if I cannot physically, or legally, transmit there.

If you want to build your own receiver, you can check out the weaksignals.com website by Alberto I2PHD where you'll find a project to build a receiver capable of 8 kHz to 900 kHz using a $50 circuit board.

If that's not enough, there's radio experimentation happening at even lower frequencies. Dedicated to listening to anything below 22 kHz, including natural RF, with a wavelength greater than 13 km, Renato IK1QFK runs the website vlf.it where you'll find receivers and antennas to build.

Given that most sound cards operate up to around 192 kHz, you can start by connecting an antenna to the microphone port of your sound card and use it to receive VLF or Very Low Frequencies. On your Linux computer you can use "Quisk" to tune.

There are VLF transmitters on air. For example, SAQ, the Grimeton Radio Station in Sweden opened on the 1st of December 1924. Capable of 200 kW, today it uses about 80 kW and transmits twice a year on 17.2 kHz.

While we search for higher and higher frequencies, there is still plenty of fun to be had at the other end of the radio spectrum. Consider for example that VLF or Very Low Frequency radio waves, between 3 and 30 kHz can penetrate seawater.

I'll leave you to explore.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Updated 6/4/2024

On or around May 12, 2024, ARRL was the victim of a sophisticated network attack by a malicious international cyber group. ARRL immediately involved the FBI and engaged with third party experts to investigate.

This serious incident was extensive and categorized by the FBI as “unique,” compromising network devices, servers, cloud-based systems, and PCs.

ARRL management quickly established an incident response team. This has led to an extensive effort to contain and remediate the networks, restore servers, and staff are beginning the testing of applications and interfaces to ensure proper operation.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as our staff continue to work through this with an outstanding team of experts to restore full functionality to our systems and services.

We will continue to update members as advised and to the extent we are able.

Today I want to talk about something that might feel only tangentially related to our hobby, but it likely affects you.

Recently the ARRL announced that it was "in the process of responding to a serious incident involving access to our network and headquarters-based systems". A day later it sought to assure the community that the "ARRL does not store credit card information" and they "do not collect social security numbers" and went on to say that their "member database only contains publicly available information". Five days after that it's "continuing to address a serious incident involving access to our network and systems" and that "Several services, such as Logbook of The World(R) and the ARRL Learning Center, are affected.", but "LoTW data is secure". Over a third of the latest announcement, more than a week ago, was to assure the community that the July QST magazine is on track but might be delayed for print subscribers.

Regardless of how this situation evolves, it's unwelcome news and much wider reaching than the ARRL.

LoTW, or Logbook of The World, is used globally by the amateur community to verify contacts between stations. The IARU, the International Amateur Radio Union, is headquartered at the ARRL office.

I've been told that I should have empathy and consider that the ARRL is only a small organisation that may not have the best of the best in technology staff due to budget constraints and finally, that LoTW being down for a few days is not going to kill anyone.

All those things might well be true and mistakes can and do happen.

The ARRL has been in existence for well over a century, bills itself as the answer to "When All Else Fails" and has even registered this as a trademark, but hasn't actually said anything useful about an incident that appears to have occurred on the 14th of May, now over two weeks ago. By the way, that date is based on the UptimeRobot service showing less than 100% up-time on that day, the ARRL hasn't told us when this all occurred, it didn't even acknowledge that anything was wrong until two days later.

This raises plenty of uncomfortable questions.

What information did you share with the ARRL when you activated your LoTW account? For me it was over a decade ago. I jumped through the hoops required and managed to create a certificate. What information I shared at the time I have no idea about. As I've said before, I do know that security was more extreme than required by my bank, even today, and the level of identification required was in my opinion disproportionate to the information being processed by the service, lists of amateur stations contacting each-other.

Something to take into account, on the 30th of October 2013, Norm W3IZ wrote in an email to me: "Data is never removed from LoTW." - I have no idea how much or which specific information that refers to.

If you used the ARRL Learning Center, what information did you share? If you're a member of the ARRL, or you purchased something from their online store, what data was required and stored? Is the data at the IARU affected? What infrastructure, other than the office, do they share?

While I've been talking about the ARRL, this same issue exists with all the other amateur services you use. QRZ.com, eQSL.cc, eham.net, clublog.org, your local regulator, your amateur club, your social media accounts, all of it.

What information have you shared?

Do you have an internet birthday, address and middle name?

Recently I received a meme. It shows two individuals talking about life, the universe and everything. They discuss their favourite books, the first movie they ever watched, the name of their pets, what car they learnt to drive in, their interests and other things you talk about when you meet someone new and interesting. The last image of the meme shows the heading: "Security Questions Answered, Welcome Amanda."

So, my question is this: What's your favourite colour and your mother's maiden name?

Seriously, next time you access a service online, have a look at what data that service has. When you sign up, consider the requirements for the service and how much information that's worth. Do you really need to send your birthday, your gender and your physical address with a copy of your passport or another government approved identity document? If you're being asked for the name of your first pet, consider answering something unique. In my case, I generate a random string of characters to use as an answer for each security question.

The ARRL "incident" is the tip of the iceberg. This problem is't going away, it's only going to get bigger and happen more often.

Final observation. With the potential of a global shopping list for thieves coming out of the database at the ARRL, will you be sharing your station address next time and if you're subject to the GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation, perhaps it's time to ask your online service providers just exactly what they're doing to protect your information, and that includes the ARRL.

I have sent two emails to the ARRL in relation to these questions, but have yet to receive an acknowledgement, let alone answers.

By the time this reaches you, perhaps the ARRL has answers to my questions and more.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

It's hard to imagine today, but there was a time when there was no such thing as either the 80m or the 20m amateur band, let alone 2m or 70cm.

Picture this. It's the roaring 20's, the 1920's that is. Among a Jazz Age burst of economic prosperity, modern technology, such as automobiles, moving pictures, social and cultural dynamism, the peak of Art Deco, we're also in the middle of a radio boom where the world is going crazy buying radios as fast as they can be constructed, there are hundreds of licensed broadcasters, the bands are getting crowded, radio amateurs have been banned from the lucrative radio spectrum above 200 meters, and can only play in the "useless short waves" using frequencies greater than 1,500 kHz. And play they did.

On the 2nd May 1925 amateurs proved they could communicate with any part of the world at any time of the day or night when Ernest J. Simmonds G2OD and Charles Maclurcan A2CM made a daylight contact between Meadowlea, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, England, and Strathfield, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia on what we now call the 20m band. This contact occurred not once, but regularly, for several days, using 100 Watts.

To give you a sense of just how big news of this feat was, on the second scheduled contact the Prime Minister of Australia, Stanley Bruce, sent a message to England's Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin: "On occasion of this achievement Australia sends greetings."

If you recall, the IARU, the International Amateur Radio Union, was a fortnight old at this point. Less than a year later contact was made using voice.

Between the banning of radio amateurs from frequencies below 1,500 kHz at the London International Radiotelegraph Conference in 1912 and the Washington International Radiotelegraph Conference in 1927 the world had irrevocably changed. In 1912 the discussion was almost all about ship to shore communication. By 1927, the world had tube transmitters, amplitude voice modulation, higher frequencies and what the 1993 IARU President, Richard Baldwin, W1RU calls, "literally an explosion in the use of the radio-frequency spectrum".

In 1927 individual countries were beginning to control the use of spectrum, but there was no universal coordination, no international radio regulation and as we all know, radio waves don't stop at the border.

Richard W1RU, writing in 1993 says: "In retrospect, the Washington conference of 1927 was a remarkable effort. It created the framework of international radio regulation that exists even today. It had to recognize and provide for a multitude of radio services, including the Amateur Service. It was at this conference that amateur radio was for the first time internationally recognized and defined. Bands of harmonically related frequencies were allocated to the various radio services, including the Amateur Service."

While the IARU was two years old, it really hadn't represented amateur radio on the international stage, until now.

The 1927 conference defined an "amateur" as a "duly authorised person interested in radio electric practice with a purely personal aim and without pecuniary interest."

The harmonically related frequencies that were allocated to the Amateur Service are recognisable today. I'll use current band names to give you some context.

1,715 kHz to 2 MHz, or 160m, 3.5 to 4 MHz, or 80m, 7 to 7.3 MHz or 40m, 14 to 14.4 MHz or 20m, 28 to 30 MHz or 10m, and 56 to 60 MHz or 6m.

Of those, the 20m and 80m bands were exclusive to amateurs. The 10m and 6m bands were shared with experimenters and the 160m and 80m bands were shared with fixed and mobile services. You'll notice the absence of bands we use today, the 2m and 70cm bands, 15m and the so-called WARC bands to name a few.

The final ratified document goes into great detail about the requirements, the restrictions, how to deal with interference, how to allocate frequencies and numerous other provisions, many of which will look familiar, almost a hundred years later, if you've ever looked at the rules and regulations under which you operate as a licensed amateur today.

There were various radio amateurs at the 1927 conference, but as Richard W1RU puts it: "much of the credit for the success of amateur radio at that conference has to go to two representatives of ARRL -- Hiram Percy Maxim, president of ARRL; and Kenneth B. Warner, Secretary and General Manager of ARRL."

While Richard points to their roles in the ARRL, you might recall that Hiram was elected international president of the IARU and Kenneth its international secretary-treasurer.

Whichever way you look at it, whichever organisation you credit, today we have amateur bands thanks to those efforts made nearly a century ago.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Over the years you've heard me utter the phrase: "Get on air and make some noise!". It's not an idle thought. The intent behind it is to start, to do something, anything, and find yourself a place within the hobby of amateur radio and the community surrounding it.

Since starting my weekly contribution to this community, thirteen years ago, almost to the day, I promise, this wasn't planned, you'll see why in a moment, I've been working my way through the things that take my fancy, things that are of interest to me, and hopefully you. From time-to-time I don't know where the next words are going to come from. Today they came to me five minutes ago when a good friend, Colin, VK6ETE, asked me what inspires me, after I revealed to him that I didn't know what I was going to talk about.

That's all it took to get me rolling.

There are times when getting to that point takes weeks, I do research, figure out how something works, explore how it might have been tackled before, if at all, and only then I might start putting my thoughts together, often I'll have multiple stabs at it and if I'm lucky, sometimes, something emerges that I'm astonished by. Today is much simpler than all that, since the only research required is to remember the people I've interacted with.

Last week I met an amateur, Jess M7WOM, who was in town. Until last week, we'd never met and interacted only online. We discovered that we have a great many things in common. A joy for curiosity, exploration, technology, computers and a shared belief that we can figure out how to make things work. That interaction, over the course of a day, continues to fuel my imagination and provides encouragement to try new things.

The same is true for a friend, Eric VK6BJW, who asked what they should do with the hobby after having been away for a long time with family, children, commitments and work. Just asking a few simple questions got the juices going and provided inspiration to start playing again.

Another amateur was bored and claimed to have run out of things to do. A few of us started asking questions about their exposure to the hobby. Had they tried a digital mode, had they built an antenna, had they tried to activate a park, or as I have said in the past, any of the other 1,000 hobbies that are embedded within the umbrella that we call amateur radio.

Right now I'm in the midst of working through, actually truth be told, I'm starting, Okay, actually, I've yet to start, reading the online book published at PySDR.org. Prompted by a discussion with Jess last week, I started exploring a known gap in my knowledge. I likened it to having a lamp-post in front of my face, I can see to either side, but in-between is this post, obscuring an essential piece of knowledge, how one side is connected to the other. In my case, on one side, I can see the antenna, how it connects to an ADC, or an Analogue to Digital Converter. On the other, I can also see how you have a series of bytes coming into your program that you can compare against what you're looking for, but the two are not quite connected, obscured by that .. post. I know there's a Fourier Transform in there, but I don't yet grok how it's connected.

Recently I discussed using an RDS, or Radio Data Systems decoder, called 'redsea', connected to 'rtl_fm', in turn connected to an RTL-SDR dongle, that is, you connect an antenna to a cheap Digital TV decoder, tune to an FM broadcast station and use some software to decode a digital signal. It turns out that the PySDR book serendipitously uses this signal path as an end-to-end tutorial, complete with all the code and example files to make this happen. I actually read the chapter, but it's assuming some knowledge that I don't yet have, so I'm going to start on page one .. again.

So, what has this got to do with Inspiration, you ask. Well, everything and nothing. Inspiration doesn't occur in a vacuum. It needs input. You cannot see light without it hitting something, radio waves don't exist and cannot be detected until it hits an antenna, the same is true for inspiration. It needs to hit something. You need to react, it needs to connect.

That is why I keep telling you to get on air and make some noise.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Much is made in our hobby about working DX, that is sending and receiving distant radio signals. How distant is up for debate. Depending on where you are, DX might be outside the continent, outside the country, or in my case you could easily say, anything outside of my state, since the nearest border is about 1,240 km away from here. For giggles, the distance between Albany in the South West and Wyndham in the North East of the state is 2,400 km and that's via radio wave. By car it's 3,570 km. To be clear, we're still inside VK6.

All that to say, DX is in the ear of the beholder.

If that's not enough, there's a group of amateurs who are of the strident opinion that for DX to count it must be a two-way contact. That is, both stations need to hear each other and as such, those amateurs believe that a mode like WSPR, the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter can't possibly be considered DX, even if you can discover that your station was heard on the other side of the planet.

I'm going to skip right over those who tell anyone who will listen that FT8 isn't real radio because it's just computers talking to each other.

This to give you some context when I introduce the next idea, namely FM Broadcast DX. I'm acutely aware that this isn't amateur radio, there's no two-way communication, it's probably not DX and besides, it's computers. That out of the way, let me tell you about something I discovered.

Many, but not all, FM broadcasters transmit multiple signals when you tune to their station. One of those is a signal called RDS, or Radio Data Systems. It's used to show you the name of the station, sometimes what song is playing, what style of station it is and other information like road traffic alerts and emergencies. You can decode this using an RDS decoder.

Recently I was browsing YouTube. I came across a video on the Broken Signal channel that digs into the world of FM-scanning to log any RDS information for the purpose of finding DX stations. The video goes into great detail on how to set this up with Windows, by copying files into various places, updating XML files, configuring sample rates, connecting virtual audio cables, running several tools simultaneously and it goes on to demonstrate how this all hangs together.

While I was impressed with the idea, the implementation didn't speak to me, since I wince at the notion of copying random files into an application installation directory and besides I'm a Linux user.

So, I went hunting.

Turns out that there is an RDS decoder for Linux, called "redsea", written by Oona OH2EIQ. It's on GitHub. Compiling it is pretty straightforward, follow the instructions and it should work as advertised. You'll also need to have "rtl-sdr" installed so you can run a tool called "rtl_fm". Again Oona's instructions should help you out. I will add that I'm assuming that you have a so-called RTL-SDR dongle, it's a cheap USB device that can be coerced into pretending to be a software defined receiver with about 2.2 MHz of bandwidth.

Based on the example shown, I immediately tuned to a local station and RDS information started filling my screen. To let you know how simple this is, you run the "rtl_fm" tool and send its output to "redsea" which decodes the information and displays it on the screen. That's it. No more moving parts, no XML files, no shenanigans with virtual audio cables and the like.

Stage one complete, on to stage two, scanning.

The "rtl_fm" tool has the capability to scan a range of frequencies. I tried this, but didn't really get anywhere, since for the scanner to work you need to set the squelch in order to switch between frequencies, but if you're aiming for a weak signal, it will never be heard if your local FM broadcasters are belting away 24 hours a day.

So, instead I'm scanning each frequency between 87 MHz and 109 MHz, every 10 kHz, for 10 seconds, to see if there's any RDS data to be heard. I send that to a file and when I feel the urge, I can go check to see what I've heard.

I haven't yet put this up on GitHub because I'm considering making it a contribution to the "redsea" project instead of a project of my own.

Now, at this point you might wonder what all the fuss is about. Well, the same method could be used to decode your local amateur repeater idents, or the NCDXF beacons, or any other kind of interesting information. I saw one user link "rtl_fm" to "multimon-ng", a tool I've spoken about before.

You should also check out Oona's website, windytan.com, there's a whole range of signal processing stories to be found, including dealing with flutter distortion on Steamboat Willie and a very cool spiral spectrogram.

I'll leave you with one question. Why haven't you installed Linux yet?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Now here's some serious signal processing happening!

Anyone know of any scriptable asynchronous communication tools?

The closest so-far appears to be Kermit. It's been around since CP/M, but apparently there's still no centralised language reference and the syntax predates Perl.

Some life lessons require additional reinforcement from time to time. This week I was strongly encouraged to remember a lesson that can be summarised as: "A place for everything and everything in its place." It was first uttered like that to me a quarter of a century ago by a client who used it frequently around their staff.

It means that all the stuff that fills up the space around you, in this case, physical stuff, needs to have a specific home and if you're not actively using it, that is where it should be. This is useful in a context where you have lots of little things that you need from time-to-time, or if you have several people dependent on the availability of a single thing, like say the labelling machine used to tag equipment.

The other day an incident involving a tiny tablet that went flying across the kitchen bench, bounced over the edge and vanished, not helped by the fact that taking the tablet was time sensitive and the fact that the vacuum cleaner was right there - no the tablet was not inside, I checked. I walked around the bench to the other side and started rolling on the ground with the aid of the torch on my phone. Ten minutes in, still nothing. I remembered that my go-bag has a torch, so I went to get it from its place.

One problem, it wasn't there. I turned the bag upside down and went through it. Nope, no torch. That's two things that vanished. Neither has resurfaced at this point. I went to the chemist to get another tablet and took it 40 minutes late.

The torch however was not so easy to resolve.

My, what I call go-bag, has a bunch of life affirming essentials. It started pretty soon after becoming a radio amateur. It has two jumpers, long-leg underwear, an under shirt, a towel and a microfibre cloth, leather gloves, mosquito net, medication, band-aids, toilet paper, soap and some empty bags. It also has a torch, well, not right now it doesn't.

After failing on my mission to locate the torch, I started stuffing the contents of my go-bag, straight back into its bag, only to realise that I wasn't helping future me. I stopped, pulled everything back out and started folding everything neatly. Then I repacked the bag.

I've put in a stand-by torch, in Dutch they're called a "knijpkat", or a mechanically operated torch. You squeeze it in your hand and in doing so you move a dynamo that charges either a battery or a capacitor. It's called a "pinch cat" because it sounds a little like that. The light is fine for getting around in the dark, but you wouldn't mistake it for a super bright, eyeball burning, LED torch.

In case you're wondering why I'm going into such detail about this, it's because you never know when you need something. It might be urgent, or it might not be. Having your stuff organised in such a way that you can find it, can sometimes be the difference between life and death.

Now I get it. Not everyone works like this. I have for decades had a system on my desk where I know where all the bits of paper are and it's not helpful if someone cleans it up, because at that point I have no reference to anything and I will have to go through the whole box of things to find what I need.

When my partner and I travelled around Australia in an Iveco Daily stuffed to the gunnels with electronics equipment, clothes, food, camping gear, a two metre satellite dish and plenty of other things, I had a system that involved four filing cabinets bolted into the van, combined with a dozen or more crates, metal hooks, straps and a safe. I was forever putting things away in the exact same place, each time.

It's not a process that comes naturally to everyone and so we settled on a process where I would pack the van so I could lay my hands on anything within seconds, from the socket set to the satellite signal finder, from a clean pair of shorts to a raincoat, from a fuel funnel to a water funnel. Pro-tip, don't mix the two. Tools aside, of course this system also applies to the first aid kit and the fire extinguisher, the fire blanket, band-aids and medication, and in this case a torch.

You might ask how this could apply to amateur radio. Go-bag aside, looking around my radio shack, it has lots of little things, like adaptors, measuring gadgets, chargers, fly leads, microphone clips, coax switches and plenty of other stuff.

If everything in your shack is in use, this isn't an issue, but if you're like me and don't have your NanoVNA, and all the SMA to something adaptors, or plenty of other things lying around for that "just in case" time, then having a place for everything and everything in its place is a very productive way to keep things organised so you don't spend half your life looking for things.

Similarly, if you know where your portable shack is, your battery charger, an emergency antenna, or some other essential item, you'll discover that when it comes down to the pointy end of a situation, this might make a difference.

So, how do you keep your life, and shack, organised and what other processes and methods have you tried?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

After pulling my hair out for a bit and some wonderful support from jeffpc@mastodon.radio, I have now compiled hlog and hlog-contest, a console based logger that supports contests defined in #lua and published the result on GitHub for your enjoyment.

In the early 1920's long distance communication using radio was a growing interest. At the time it was thought that communication that we take for granted today, over long-distance HF, was limited to long wave or extremely low frequencies, the lower the better. With that restriction came massive antennas and high power transmitters, available only to commercial and government stations.

Then radio amateurs let the cat out of the bag by discovering that so-called "short wave" radio could be heard all across the globe. As an aside, today, "short wave" seems quaint, because we've discovered that even shorter waves can be used to communicate, right down to nanometre communication as shown by NASA in its XCOM technology demonstration on the 12th of May, 2019. On a daily basis we use 120 mm and 60 mm waves when we use 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi for example.

As a result of the discovery of short wave radio, a gold-rush emerged. There was a hunger in the community for radio, businesses and communities adopted the new medium, there were radio courses being taught in Universities, church services and other forms of entertainment started filling the airwaves. Comedy, talk shows, music, concerts, serials and dramas spread across the electromagnetic spectrum and radio amateurs who had discovered the phenomenon were running the risk of being pushed aside by commercial interests willing to pay for access.

As I've said before, in many countries at the time, amateur radio was actively discouraged, sometimes it was even illegal.

Before we continue, I should quote some statements made about radio before the gold-rush which at the time was seen as "Telegraphy Without Wires".

In 1865 a Boston Post editorial proclaimed: "Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value."

Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, said: "Radio has no future." and went on to say: "Wireless is all very well but I'd rather send a message by a boy on a pony", he also said: "Heavier-than-air machines are impossible." and "X-Rays will prove to be a hoax."

Not all statements aged as badly. The New York Times said in 1899: "All the nations of the earth would be put upon terms of intimacy and men would be stunned by the tremendous volume of news and information that would ceaselessly pour in upon them."

Back to the IARU. Before a business trip to Europe, the board of directors of the ARRL asked their President, Hiram Percy Maxim, to encourage international amateur relations, which on 12 March 1924 resulted in a dinner given, at the Hotel Lutetia in Paris according to Hiram, a "certain dining room" by "the most distinguished radio men of Europe."

Hiram goes on to say that: "This A.R.R.L. President has sat in at a good many very impressive radio meetings in the past, ranging from Maine to California, but he has never sat in at a meeting where there was quite as much thrill as at this meeting in Paris where the amateurs of nine different countries sat down together."

The countries were, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, Canada and the United States. Hiram remarks that "Denmark was represented by a letter in which regret was expressed at the inability to have a representative present and asked that the amateurs of Denmark be counted in." You should dig up a copy of the May 1924 edition of QST to get a sense of occasion where the ARRL president compares the thrill of the "hamfest" to the atmosphere during that dinner and pities those who have never experienced it.

During the meeting it was decided to form an organisation which was going to be called the International Amateur Radio Union. A temporary committee was formed that appointed Hiram Maxim as the chair and Dr. Pierre Corret as secretary to take charge of the details to create a permanent organisation. The final decision was to call for a general Amateur Congress on the Easter Holiday of 1925 where the IARU would be formalised.

On the 14th of April, 1925, 250 radio amateurs from 23 countries met in Paris and over the next four days the details of the new Union were hammered out. Among those details were that the organisation was chiefly for "the coordination and fostering of international two-way amateur communication, that it should be an organisation by individual memberships until strong national societies had been formed in the principal nations and a federation would be feasible, and that its headquarters would be located in the USA."

The constitution was written over a day and night session and by the morning of the 17th of April, every delegate had a copy and then the hard work began, approving the constitution, section by section, by the entire Congress. On the morning of the 18th, elections were held and Hiram U1AW was elected international president, Gerald G2NM, international vice-president, Jean F8GO and Frank Z4AA councillors-at-large and Kenneth U1BHW international secretary-treasurer.

With the election complete, the IARU was officially in business.

The new constitution was published in English, French and Esperanto. Why Esperanto, you ask? In the middle of 1924, the ARRL adopted Esperanto as its official auxiliary language. According to Clinton B. DeSoto, W1CBD, author of a fabulous book "Two Hundred Meters And Down - The Story of Amateur Radio", that might have been the highest official recognition that language ever received.

Credit to Clinton for much of the time line and wording I've shared here. I'll leave you with one final quote from his book.

Clinton W1CBD writes: "One day amateur television is bound to come, however remote though that day may be. It is, indubitably, inevitable that one day amateurs will be able to see each other, as well as talk with each other; and when that day comes the development of amateur radio as a social institution will have taken another great step forward - at least according to present standards. But by then the standards will have changed, and amateurs will have something more to work toward, and the ultimate will still not have arrived. There are always new goals, new horizons. May it fall to amateur radio to march many steps toward the goal of complete knowledge ere its footprints are lost in the sands of time!"

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

A great deal of energy is expended on the notion of operating portable. I've talked about this plenty of times. Issues like power, antennas, suitable radios, logging, transport and time of day all come to mind. Some activities are framed specifically as portable operations. Things like Summits On The Air, or SOTA, Parks On The Air, or POTA, World Wide Flora and Fauna, or WWFF. There's field days, portable contests and specific activities like the 2014 activation of FT5ZM on Amsterdam Island and the 2016 activation of VK0EK on Heard Island. I mention those last two specifically since I had the distinct pleasure of meeting those teams and had the opportunity to interview each amateur whilst enjoying a typical Aussie BBQ. I'll point out that no shrimps were thrown anywhere. You can find those interviews with FT5ZM and VK0EK on my website at vk6flab.com.

Each of these activities are framed in the context of the activity, as-in, you climb a mountain with a radio and then you make noise.

That's not the only way to go portable. One of my friends checks in to the weekly F-troop as a portable station most weeks. Glynn VK6PAW gets in his car, drives to some random location and participates from wherever he happens to be at the time. In doing so, the radio part of it, is the add-on between leaving home and arriving at a destination for a cup of coffee.

Charles NK8O works all over the United States. When he checks into F-troop, he's rarely in the same place two weeks in a row. In between work and sleep you'll find him activating a nearby park. He's been doing this for quite some time. While this is a POTA activity, he finds parks that fit into his life, rather than point at a park and make a specific trip there to activate it.

Before I continue, I'd like to mention that I'm not dismissing making a specific trip. Far from it. The point I'm making is that making any such trip is extra work. It's an added activity in your life. Whilst entirely enjoyable, there's plenty of times where that's just not possible.

Instead I'd like to look at this from the other side.

Both Glynn and Charles have a radio with them. Perhaps not all the time, but often enough that they can activate their station when they happen to be in a suitable location.

I've similarly put a radio into my luggage when going on a holiday. It might transpire that it stays there, or it might be that I happen to find a picnic table at the side of a water reservoir that happens to be in the shade and just begging to try a radio at.

In other words, if you have a radio handy, you can handily use it when the opportunity comes to pass.

So, what do you bring with you? If you're like Charles, you'll have a QRP radio, a Morse key, a battery and a wire antenna. Glynn has a vertical that lives in his car and the radio is bolted in.

For a while I had my radio permanently mounted in my car and I suspect that will return there in the not too distant future. It was removed for a service that involved the transmission being replaced after it failed after only a 140,000 km on the clock. Thankfully a fellow amateur had a spare car we could use, but I wasn't game to drill holes for an antenna and I'm pretty sure they were pretty happy about that.

The more I look at the activities that others report on, the more I have come to realise that the people who get on-air the most are the ones who have found a way to weave radio into their day-to-day life, rather than rely on specific amateur radio activities and plans.

I confess that I miss sitting by a local lake making noise or finding a random car park with shade that is just begging for someone, anyone, to turn on a radio and have a go.

So, how do you approach radio in your life, and how might you find ways to incorporate it into the gaps?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB