Zero Retries 0064

Zero Retries is a unique, quirky little highly independent, opinionated, self-published email newsletter about technological innovation in Amateur Radio, for a self-selecting niche audience, that’s free (as in beer) to subscribe.

About Zero Retries

Steve Stroh N8GNJ, Editor

Jack Stroh, Late Night Assistant Editor Emeritus

In this issue:

• Pseudosponsor - QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo
• Request To Send
• Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications Now Accepting Donations of Material
• The “Kind of” Amateur Radio Backstory of Apple’s “Emergency SOS Via Satellite” Feature
• Zero Retries Sponsorships
• Join the Fun on Amateur Radio
• Closing The Channel

Pseudosponsor - QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo

This issue of Zero Retries is pseudosponsored by the Fall 2023 QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo on Saturday 2022-09-17 and Sunday 2022-09-18.

Other than the unfortunate overlap with the 2022 ARRL and TAPR DCC the same weekend, this event has much to recommend it. Although my attention that weekend will be on the DCC, I’ll be paying the QTVHM fee just for the privilege of early access to the recordings for hours of Zero Retries Interesting presentations.

Request To Send

Countdown to Digital Communications Conference 2022 - September 16-18, in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA:
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 week… It’s happening as you read this!

Almost as long as I’ve been involved in Amateur Radio Packet Radio, “DCC weekend” is a big deal for me. I’ve attended perhaps a dozen DCCs in person, and my wife Tina KD7WSF and I helped organize DCC 1996 in Seattle, Washington. For a period after DCC 1996, Tina and I helped plan other DCCs in other cities. Even before DCC 1996, I would buy, and read the DCC Proceedings books (on paper!) just to marvel at the technological innovation in Amateur Radio. DCC 2022 is the 41st consecutive DCC - that… is… amazing!

The paper version of the DCC 1996 Proceedings is now available on Lulu.com, and there is a PDF version online. I look forward to DCC weekend every year. In the last decade, I’ve enjoyed watching the recorded presentations, and in the last few years, live streaming. By the time you read this, the Friday presentations will be over, but there are presentations on Saturday and Sunday (schedule), so as you’re reading this, you haven’t missed it.

I’ve said that of all the amazing progress that TAPR has brought into Amateur Radio, perhaps the most significant, long term impact will be that when the ARRL chose not to continue the DCC as an ARRL-produced event, TAPR picked up management of the DCC and continued it (brilliantly). Thus, kudos to TAPR for continuing the DCC.

As promised, my DCC 2022 paper - A Brief Survey of Technological Innovation in Amateur Radio, is now online for public access.

de Steve N8GNJ

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications Now Accepting Donations of Material

In December 2021, Amateur Radio Digital Communications provided an $889,405 grant to Internet Archive (IA) to create the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC).

With this grant, the Internet Archive will build the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC): an online, open-access resource that preserves the vital resources — past, present, and future — that document the history of amateur radio and communications. The DLARC will provide a key open-access educational resource, free to use for researchers, students, and the general public. It will also serve as a permanent archive for the preservation of the history of ARDC, its members, and key individuals and organizations involved in the broader amateur radio movement. The DLARC will be both an education program building a unique and unparalleled collection of primary and secondary resources, but also an innovative technical project that will build a digital library that combines both digitized print materials and born-digital content and whose curatorial focus is driven by archiving and providing unified access to both personal and organizational archival records. Building the DLARC thus includes three distinct areas of work:A large-scale scanning program that digitizes relevant print materials such as journals, monographs, books, physical ephemera, and other physical records from both institutions and individuals;A large-scale digital archiving initiative that seeks to curate, archive, and provide specialized access to “born-digital” materials, such as digital photos and audio-video, as well as websites and web-published material;A personal archiving campaign to ensure the preservation and future access of notable individuals and stakeholders involved in the founding and activities of ARDC and the broader community.

I’m delighted to report that DLARC is now ready to accept donations of material. The Internet Archive representative for DLARC (Archivist) is Kay Savetz K6KJN (link is to his LinkedIn profile). K6KJN is based in the Portland, Oregon, USA area.

Here is K6KJN’s description of his task with DLARC from his QRZ profile:

I am Internet Archive's program manager for special collections, and my job is to build the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications, which will be a massive online library of ham radio. 

Internet Archive is a non-profit online library, best known for The Wayback Machine. The DLARC library is funded by a grant from the Amateur Radio Digital Communications foundation.

The library will be an online, open-access resource that preserves vital resources — past, present, and future —documenting the history of amateur radio and communications. The DLARC will provide a key open-access educational resource, free to use for researchers, students, and the general public. This innovative technical project will combine both digitized print materials and born-digital content.

[Same bullet points from the grant description.]

If you have material to contribute to the DLARC library or questions about the project, email me at kay @ archive.org

K6KJN is getting started reaching out to individuals and organizations about collections of Amateur Radio (and “communications”) material for possible donation to DLARC, including books, magazines, newsletters, technical material, software, and online resources. Material submitted to DLARC will be digitized and put online for public access. Because DLARC has funding from the ARDC grant to pay for digitization, material donated for DLARC is prioritized for digitization in the near term (weeks or months, not years). This was a specific concern of mine from past donations of material to Internet Archive that (to my knowledge) have yet to be digitized and made available online.

Note that DLARC is not limited to the US - DLARC is for Amateur Radio (and “communications”) worldwide.

The first step in arranging a donation is to contact K6KJN via email

kay@archive.org.

(K6KJN gave me permission to share his email address.)

From my correspondence with K6KJN about donating my collection, it’s helpful (but not required) if you assemble some info in advance:

• Lists of material you’d like to donate to DLARC
• Photos are great!
• Quantities of material

If you’re a creator of Amateur Radio content such as - presentations, videos, podcasts, photos, etc. and would specifically like your material to be incorporated into DLARC and publicly shared, contact K6KJN via email to make arrangements. In my case, I plan to provide IA / DLARC with some kind of blanket permission to use any of my material that DLARC discovers already online (such as articles, presentations, etc.) and material that I subsequently submit to them. The point of my writing about Amateur Radio has always been to “give back” to Amateur Radio for all the incredible fun and growth that I’ve enjoyed as an Amateur Radio Operator.

Donation of material to DLARC is especially useful to long-established clubs that have archive material - club newsletters, old Amateur Radio magazines, old technical material such as service manuals, etc.

To answer a question in advance, copyright will be respected at Internet Archive by using their Controlled Digital Lending process. An example (my understanding of Controlled Digital Lending) is that I will be donating a number of magazines and those magazines will be digitized. For each physical magazine that IA has in their inventory, a digitized version of that magazine (some complete with mailing sticker on the front cover) will be available for checkout via Controlled Digital Lending - an electronic version of the traditional role of a library lending out printed material for a limited period, then it is digitally returned to the library by the borrower.

Although it’s not a stated goal of Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC), I hope to see an assemblage of unassailable evidence of technological innovation that first occurred in Amateur Radio. Amateur Radio had a fantastic history of technological innovation that paralleled commercial radio technology throughout most of its more than a century of existence. But, in the last few decades of cellular phones, trivially easy international communications, etc., the relevance of Amateur Radio is increasingly called into question. With DLARC doing the “heavy lifting” of assembling a digital, curated, easy to browse archive of all manner of Amateur Radio material, it will hopefully be much, much easier for content creators like me, those working to update Amateur Radio regulations, academics, researchers, etc. to assemble a compelling case for Amateur Radio’s continuing relevance by demonstrating historical, and ongoing, technological innovation within Amateur Radio.

I’ve said before, and I continue to say, that in my opinion, DLARC is a big deal for Amateur Radio and I can’t wait to see my, and other’s Amateur Radio material made available online for sharing.

Disclaimer - I was one of the volunteer members of the ARDC Grants Advisory Committee that evaluated IA’s DLARC grant proposal. What I’ve written here in Zero Retries, and my future interactions with IA regarding donations of material to DLARC, are entirely independent of ARDC. I don’t speak for ARDC, and ARDC doesn’t speak for me.

The “Kind of” Amateur Radio Backstory of Apple’s “Emergency SOS Via Satellite” Feature

In Zero Retries 0063, Apple iPhone 14 Features Satellite Communication. I teased:

Update - Turns out, there’s a very cool postscript to this story that involves Amateur Radio technological innovation. But, there’s no space 🤨 for that story this week.

Part 1 - Diving a Bit Deeper on How SOS Might Work.

Disclaimer: I have no… absolutely zero… inside information about how SOS actually works in the iPhone and the satellite system. What little I think I know is from public sources, and the rest is pure supposition on my part, from my experience as an Amateur Radio Operator.

It’s significant when Apple specifically mentions limitations of a new feature in an iPhone - such as Emergency SOS Via Satellite (SOS). If you’re curious, check out Apple’s Far out. streaming event on 2022-09-07 beginning at 59:30: