There's a page for it here and the source code is available here.
It does depend on hamlib for rig control. I install it with homebrew. At the moment this is left as an exercise for the reader - as they say.
Thanks to Zero Retries (an excellent ham radio newsletter) for the warm mention in the latest edition.
"Macs, thanks to developers like VK3TPM are rapidly becoming “first-class citizens” in Amateur Radio!" - golly, I'm blushing!
AI is changing all of that with being 'user friendly' the whole AI schtick!
Philip Clark is joined by Peter Marks, software developer and technology commentator from Access Informatics, with a look at what skills we will now need into the future.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/what-computer-skills-do-we-need-for-our-future/107235742
At the time of writing it's not quite out yet but it's in the release candidate of WSJT-X 3.2 so it won't be long.
Stephen, VK2BLQ, drew my attention to it and we had a chat between Melbourne and Sydney (714km {for Americans, sorry, I don't know how many football fields that is}).
We both reduced power to 1W and were able to talk without any problem.
Leaving it running on 40m I can see quite a bit of activity (click the image at left to see more).
It's great to have modes that work without the need for second accurate time synchronisation as this open the door to portable operation without internet.
Recently I've also been playing with RattleGram which is a similar idea of short messages over radio. There are apps for Android and iOS. It seems to be mostly used on VHF/UHF FM radios and probably isn't ideal for HF conditions.
I do miss the days of PSK31 when I used to have fascinating long form text contacts.
Our club is holding a fox hunt in a few months. We have a few portable UHF beam antennas but I thought I'd try a simple design that uses the phase difference between two sense antennas. It's called a HANDI-Finder and was described in QST in 1993.
It uses a CD4047 oscillator divider to make a nice square wave and two diodes to mix the incoming signals. In my case the oscillator is at around 600Hz. When the phase is equal no tone is heard, otherwise you hear the tone in a receiver tuned to the frequency you're hunting. Here's the board:
To try it out I used a NanoVNA to generate a CW signal. Here's a demo:
It's available as a kit but they kindly make the circuit easy to find here. See https://handi-finder.com/ for full information.
My electronics work bench seems to descend in to entropy of its own accord faster than I can deal with it. Part of the problem is my short attention span - I start new projects before finishing the current ones.
I've had "clean shack bench" on my daily Reminder list, haunting me for months. Finally, over two days, I've taken drastic action.
Part of the problem is all those components, plugs, sockets, adapters, and bits of wire fall between not useful enough to have a proper box to go in and not useless enough to go in the bin.
My radio shack is quite small - probably a good thing - like a gas, junk expands to fill the available volume.
Cleaning up also triggers the mind and it's hard not to see something and start tinkering with it again.
Anyhow, I'm pleased that it looks good enough to work on again.
In recent months I've been off in the land of software development and have been sadly ignoring the electronics workbench. To get me back in the mood I built another instance of the simple direct conversion receiver using two ICs described in Experimental Methods in RF Design.
NE602 mixer chips are a bit hard to find and the only ones I have are surface mount so you can see it on a little carrier board above. This design uses the on-chip oscillator. My tuning is extremely sensitive and will need some padding to give me band spread of just the 40m band. At this point I haven't tuned the front end and it's undoubtably way off so the receiver is quite deaf.
In the past I've built the, all discrete component, Soldersmoke Direct Conversion Receiver. That project is much more challenging than this little one but each has it's good ideas. I'm thinking of bringing over the PTO from Soldersmoke to this design just for fun (or perhaps over-thinking it and adding an Si5351 VFO!).
Here's the schematic.
(Click to enlarge).
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the US talking AI at the United Nations, and Nightlife looks at where this technology is heading and what it could mean for all of us.
Peter Marks, software developer and technology commentator from Access Informatics, joined Philip Clark and listeners to Nightlife with the latest tech news and information. You can listen here.
I've been a bit quiet here on the blog recently, in part due to some excellent club events I've been involved with.
The Macedon Ranges Amateur Radio Club had a great meeting with two fascinating talks.
Beekeeping Meets Radio: Building a LoRa Network for the Apiary
Bouncing Light Off Clouds: 357 km Across Bass Strait on 730 nm
The Radio Amateurs Old Timers Club had:
Melbourne ATV Repeater VK3RTV A Brief History – the journey from Analogue AM to High Definition Television by Peter Cossins, VK3BFG.
We are lucky to have so many excellent speakers and events here in Victoria, Australia.
There have been reports recently of 20m openings so I left WSPR receiving and noticed the US was coming in. Switched over to FreeDV RADEV1 using my macOS version of the software called FreeDVNeo. Keyed down and on Reporter I could see that Dudley WA5QPZ in Austin Texas was receiving me. Not perfect copy, but not bad either.
Also, I'm running the release candidate of macOS 27 Golden Gate which will be out in a few days. So far it seems stable and fast.
I would visit every few months when in Melbourne to catch up with friends and he was always excited to see me and hear about the evolution of ham radio technology. Once I dropped in on the way back from the Rosebud Radiofest and gave him a copy of the 1956 ARRL Handbook. He leafed through it and exclaimed "nothing's changed!".
On another visit I brought along an IC-705 and showed him the waterfall display. He was impressed.
In later years he had a 2m radio but rarely was on air.
Robert, and his wife my dear aunt Peggy (who was an amazing person in her own right and the subject of this ABC program), were always kind and encouraging to me as a child and rather lost teenager.
I asked Robert about his ham radio history during a visit in 2025.
Robert got his amateur licence when he was seventeen. You had to have morse code which he had known from childhood. The morse test “wasn’t too much of a problem for me”. 15 words per minute. People would buy tapes, punch tapes, to learn the code.
Callsign was W6HWA “Hard working American”
An early transceiver he owned was a Hallicrafters SR-150. He may have had a Collins KWM-1.
He had a three element beam for 20, 40 and 80m.
At Albany road he had a tilt-over tower with a beam that did 20 and 10m.
At seventeen, Robert lived in California.
Robert had contacts both locally and overseas. Mostly just calling CQ rather than regular nets.
I showed Robert a QMX transceiver. He was amazed at the size and the fact that it did multiple bands including 80m.
We discussed the difficulty of soldering to enamelled wire used to wind toroids.
We discussed QST magazine and the ARRL.
Robert moved to Australia in 1950. He rattled off a series of addresses in California where he had lived.
We discussed WSPR beaconing and low power operation. There had been a large solar flare in the last few days.
Robert commented “how times have changed!”.
Henry Radio was a shop he used.
Robert asked if the ham radio license is easy to get these days. We discussed the levels and the fact that tests are now multiple choice rather than essay.
“A lot of water has gone under the bridge”.
Robert’s dad was a real estate broker in California. Mainly houses. Beverly Hills. Beachside communities.
I mentioned the Palisades where there have been fires. Robert said he lived there at one point but got out in time.
Robert’s older brother had married a girl from Melbourne and he came out to visit his brother. His brother was nine years older. He introduced Robert to Peg who he used to produce on radio. Robert just stayed in Australia after that. He can’t even recall going home for a visit (but he must have).
“Time marches on, we’re all getting older.”
Farewell dear Robert. I will always remember you. Ex W6HWA , VK3QA & VK3DRG SK.
It might be seen as nepotism except for the fact that she's much more qualified and certainly smarter than me. Here's her spot:
The UK has just taken its first step into the Robotaxi era, with Wayve's self-driving cars now available to book through the Uber app; but there'll still be a licensed human driver in the front to take over if needed.
Communications Minister Anika Wells has announced that the draft Digital Duty of Care law will be introduced into parliament this week, including a requirement that platforms offer the ability to 'opt-out' of their algorithms. What does this all mean?
Cat Marks, data scientist and Principal at Ember Advisors, joined Philip Clark and listeners to Nightlife with all the latest in tech news. Listen here: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/nightlife-tech-cat-marks/107131014
On the trip north to the recent walk I was lucky enough to fly on a couple of different recent Airbus planes in the Qantas fleet. The last one was an A220 which has this USB power port on the seat back:
Having bought, and tested, a few Chinese chargers, I'm a bit sceptical of the Watt claims on USB-C ports but I'm happy to report that Airbus is telling the truth. The macOS WhatCable tool is very handy.
Yep, 20V at 3A = 60W. Great stuff.
The internet connection on the A220 tested at 18Mbps which is fine for general use. The plane I caught up to Sydney last week was a brand new Airbus A321-XLR and the internet speed was outstanding:
Malcolm Turnbul wouldn't need this speed but I thought it was great to see it.
Along the way are stunning beaches, charming bush tracks, and a bit of rather challenging rock scrambles. To mix things up there's a couple of river crossings, two of which required boats to pick us up.
You really can't do this without support and in our case the trip was supported and guided by Marcus from Home Comforts Hiking.
Walking south is certainly the best way to do it. We had the sun, and usually the wind at our backs.
I'd just left Drummond, Victoria, where it was 10C and I'd had the fire heating the house and arrived where it was 30C for much of the walk.
Happily I did not suffer from any blisters or other mishaps and felt faily fit probably due to my daily bush walks at home. Having said that, my feet were a bit sore at the end of each day but recovered by the morning.
Our guide Marcus did a wonderful job and the logistics all worked well bar a coffee shop that didn't open as advertised for breakfast one morning.
Could choosing your trusted news sources help support journalism in the age of AI summaries and algorithmic feeds?
Also, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled “Value misalignment of X’s feed algorithm” found, unsurprisingly, that the site’s algorithm prioritised engagement above all else when it generates a users “For You Page”.
What’s been revealed is that rather than simply showing more of what we agree with, the algorithm is deliberately mis-aligned in that it shows us things they know we don’t agree with so that we are prompted to comment on it, often angrily.
Finally, in the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates hearing aids and last week they approved Samsung Galaxy Earbuds under a category of “over the counter” hearing aids.
This follows a similar decision in 2024 about Apple AirPods Pro. Having the two biggest manufacturers of smartphones able to sell hearing aids at a fraction of the price of prescription products: $400 rather than $4,000 is a major win for people with milder types of hearing loss.
You can listen here: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/nightlife-tech-talk-with-peter-marks/107077464
Beloved next door neighbour Hansen Yee aged just 82 has died.
Hansen was charming, modest and clearly intelligent. He was Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Sydney University. Aparrently a brilliant student.
After his wife Cora died, he joined us for Xmas dinners and was a lovely part of our children's lives. He tutored daughter Cat in Maths.
Vale Dr Hansen Yee BSc BE PhD, MIEEE.
The "Cheap Yellow Display" boards are a low cost board with an ESP32, a colour touch screen and a bunch of other useful I/O. I've long used them to display my solar stats (generating, using, net). I just noticed this excellent project HenrysCat esp32-cyd-ham-dashboard. There's an excellent web flash tool which works well.
It can roll through seven screens (you can turn some off if you wish). Here's a few:
The web flash tool shows this. I used the first option.
But my screen came up mirrored so I tried the second. In that case the screen was blank white so I went back to the first. When it boots up it creates a Wifi network with a captive portal. I found that the setting default to mirrored - which seems like a poor choice.
It's a great gadget to stick up in the shack. Great work to HenrysCat and claude. Source code here.
I hand down my old laptops and phones to the kids who happily use them for years. Sometimes I try to hand down an update and are met with resistance - this (old) one still works fine, why should I change? When they do, they're stunned by the performance improvement. They are still going through the Intel to Apple Silicon transition.
Recently I got an 11-inch, Mid 2013, MacBook air back, and decided to get it going. The battery was completely dead. I paid $45 for a battery on AliExpress. They are easy to install on the 11 inch Airs and the battery came with the two screwdrivers needed.
There was quite a lot of dust and fluff to remove but the fan still moves well. My daughter got very good use out of this machine. It has a few dents in the edge but the screen is good and all the keys work. (I've done a lot of cleaning with a cotton bud but more to do). What's striking is that she's typed so much on it that the most used keycaps have worn the labels off them.
Even with "just" 4GB of RAM, the machine is surprisingly usable for email and web surfing. But being stuck on macOS 11 means that there are many apps that won't run and lots of sites complain about the version of Safari.
Some apps, like my beloved BBEdit, still keep old versions available.
I love the compact size of these and the fact that I could replace it for under $200 if the need arose means that this would be a good laptop to take somewhere where it might be stolen or damaged without too much anxiety.
Apple should make a new compact laptop. I love my modern Air but would be very attracted to something smaller for my messenger bag.
Many sites that create content - be it news or analysis - are funded either by advertising or subscription. The reduction in traffic threatens their business model.
Peter Marks, software developer and technology commentator from Access Informatics, joined Philip Clark and listeners to Nightlife with the latest tech news and information. Listen here and read Sue Ahearn's piece here.
Paul is an inspiring QRP home brewer. Great interview on a recent podcast. https://youtu.be/Rkd1o2PQI9M?si=gzKmEFHAueIDsdYK
Recommended.
