Zero Retries 0142
2024-03-08 — Phil Karn KA9Q on Amateur Radio Experimentation, KiwiSDR 2 Availability, and Receiver Servers
Zero Retries is an independent newsletter promoting technological innovation that is occurring in Amateur Radio, and Amateur Radio as (literally) a license to experiment with and learn about radio technology. Now in its third year of publication, with 1300+ subscribers.
About Zero Retries
Steve Stroh N8GNJ, Editor
Jack Stroh, Late Night Assistant Editor Emeritus
In this issue:
Web version of this issue - https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0142
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Commentary by Editor Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Hamvention 2024, No. 😕
Hamvention 2024 in Xenia, Ohio, USA on 2024-05-17 thru 19, countdown - 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 weeks!
This week, Tina KD7WSF and I had our final Go / No Go meeting about attending Hamvention 2024 in Xenia, Ohio, USA and decided that Hamvention 2024 was a No Go for us. We’ve had some significant, necessary financial hits this year already, and thus attending Hamvention 2024 in a couple of months isn’t within our financial means at the moment.
To answer the question in advance, the revenue from Paid Subscribers to Zero Retries are very much appreciated, but that revenue (to date) is basically offsetting some expenses that I incur in publishing Zero Retries.
I’ll continue the Hamvention 2024 countdown here in Zero Retries because it’s my guess that at Hamvention 2024, as the largest Amateur Radio event in the world, some interesting announcements and developments will emerge. As of Hamvention 2024, the Amateur Radio industry and electronics manufacturing in general will have experienced a full year or so of “normal” component availability, full factory capability, and as the severity of COVID-19 has waned, there’s increased interest in attending large events such as Hamvention. For the same reasons, I expect HAM RADIO 2024 in Europe to also be a great Amateur Radio conference.
Paid Subscribers Update
My thanks to Ron Sparrow N7RDE for becoming a Paid Subscriber to Zero Retries this past week!
My thanks to Will Gwaltney WA4GK for becoming a Paid Subscriber to Zero Retries this past week!
My thanks to Prefers to Remain Anonymous 24 for becoming a Paid Subscriber to Zero Retries this past week!
Financial support is a real vote of confidence for continuing to publish Zero Retries.
Zero Retries Isn’t Authoritative…
New subscribers to Zero Retries sometime mention (privately) how much they enjoy learning about what’s happening in “Zero Retries Interesting” Amateur Radio, that Zero Retries informs them about.
Thus I feel compelled to periodically explain here in Zero Retries… somewhat as a disclaimer… that I don’t consider what I, and the contributing authors, discuss here in Zero Retries to be an authoritative, comprehensive overview of all Zero Retries Interesting developments.
There is far more Zero Retries Interesting activity going on in Amateur Radio and adjacent / relevant to Amateur Radio than I can cover in a weekly newsletter.
Some weeks, like this one, I can only cover perhaps 20% of what’s actually occurring. I “bookmark” many more interesting developments than I‘m able to mention in Zero Retries. And, there are times when I decide not to discuss a very interesting development because I simply cannot do justice to them within the limited time and space I have available here in Zero Retries. One example is the incredible amount of activity now occurring with Meshtastic, LoRa for hobbyist use, and Reticulum Network1. Seeing daily glimpes of Meshtastic activity on several Facebook groups reminds me of the explosion of activity in the 1980s of the early years of Packet Radio.
As I write this… mid-week, in the past hour I’ve bookmarked approximately ten interesting articles, knowing that I’m only going to be able to cover two or three of them at most in this week’s Zero Retries. And, there’s rarely time / space to “catch up” on past Zero Retries Interesting developments, because more occur… daily.
In the end, I’m an individual writer, working part time to write Zero Retries, and trying to balance my time and energy to actually be doing Amateur Radio (and other fun technical activities) in my life2. To really do justice to the full scope of Zero Retries Interesting developments in, and adjacent to, Amateur Radio would require a small staff (such as the staff of Amateur Radio Newsline), to look at, evaluate, and write up Zero Retries Interesting developments and publish on a daily basis. That’s a fun fantasy, but hardly realistic. Offsetting that, I take comfort that, at least Zero Retries as it is now is surfacing some Zero Retries Interesting developments that few others are mentioning.
Zero Retries Content Distributed via Amateur Radio?
I was asked a few weeks ago if I had any objections to having Zero Retries content distributed via Amateur Radio, such as Packet Radio networks. I don’t have any objections… in fact, I’d be honored for that to happen.
To make my perspective clear, I’ve updated the “boilerplate” at the end of each issue of Zero Retries (starting with this issue) to include:
Blanket permission is granted for Amateur Radio use of any Steve Stroh content in Zero Retries for Amateur Radio newsletters and distribution via Amateur Radio such as (but not limited to) Packet Radio Networks, Packet Radio Bulletin Board Systems, Repeater Nets, etc.
In such usage, please provide appropriate authorship credit for the content.
The reason I don’t do so myself is that, for me, Zero Retries is a “pecuniary interest” (however modest). Thus US Amateur Radio regulations prohibit me from distributing Zero Retries content via Amateur Radio.
But for others to distribute Zero Retries content via Amateur Radio, who are unaffiliated with me or Zero Retries, and not at my request, I don’t see any pecuniary interest issues.
Distilled Wisdom - Ham Radio... Now What?
I was looking for something else when I found a wonderful talk by N0AX - Ham Radio… Now What? from the 2015 ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference (DCC) where N0AX was the banquet speaker. Given that I’m primarily a reader, I rarely recommend a video or audio recording and admittedly I don’t usually accept recommendations to claim an block of my time to watch a video or listen to an audio. Thus this is one of my rare such recommendations - this talk is worth watching3.
H. Ward Silver N0AX is a nexus in Amateur Radio. For decades now he has seamlessly blended the many disparate facets of Amateur Radio, between the deeply technical aspects (designing, building, experimentation) with the operational aspects (DXing, contests) with the big picture of Amateur Radio (he was staff, and is now a contractor with ARRL), and a perspective of Amateur Radio from the “real world”. N0AX is also an accomplished author (Ham Radio for Dummies, now in its 4th edition, is a favorite gift of mine to those expressing an interest in Amateur Radio)… and a mandolin player. I think of N0AX as the Robert Fulghum of Amateur Radio for his down-to-earth observations of the “Amateur Radio condition”.
In this talk, N0AX offers distilled wisdom of what is next for Amateur Radio, and what Amateur Radio is going to have to do to get there successfully, and some thoughts on how to bridge the gap. This is a talk that I’m going to watch several more times as it’s essentially a “business plan” for what I’m trying to accomplish with Zero Retries in exposing Amateur Radio to a new generation of techies to perhaps interest them in a career in radio technology… because we (US and Western society) really need radio technologists… and lots of them… and soon (now… yesterday).
One primary takeaway… if we in Amateur Radio want to get the attention of this younger generation, we have to meet them where they are… which probably means that if I want to realize the potential of Zero Retries, I’ll have to get Zero Retries onto Discord, video, and other media that I’m less comfortable with than text. I’ve known this, but I’ve been reluctant to embrace that truth, but N0AX makes a compelling case for doing so.
A second takeaway from N0AX’s talk is that I’m going to try to add the International Microwave Symposium (IMS), which N0AX called “The World Series of RF”, to my schedule, perhaps next year, to try to gather info and represent Amateur Radio.
My thanks to Gary Pearce K4AAQ for the excellent video recording of this and other talks at the 2015 DCC and other DCCs, and of course TAPR and especially (then) TAPR President Steve Bible N7HPR for his leadership in hosting the DCC over the recent decades.
73,
Steve N8GNJ
Phil Karn KA9Q on Amateur Radio Experimentation
By Steve Stroh N8GNJ
During his appearance on the 2024 NTIA Spectrum Policy Symposium, Panel Session - Pillar Four - Growth of the Spectrum Workforce, Phil Karn KA9Q offered two major perspectives about Amateur Radio to the other panelists and the audience. The first, and more dominant, of those perspectives (given the assigned topic of the panel) that was that Amateur Radio can be a component of getting younger folks interested in radio technology, and then possibly into academics and a career in radio technology (growing the “Spectrum Workforce”).
But the second point KA9Q made (several times) was probably overlooked - that Amateur Radio is a great “proving ground” for experiments and experimentation in radio technology.
KA9Q said:
… When it comes to technical experimentation is we often do things before anybody else is interested. A good example of that is that in the mid 80s I wrote an Internet Protocol package for the PC. As far as I know it's the first one that was a complete implementation and we were running the internet protocols over radio in the 1980s when nobody else was interested.
…
That's another thing about ham radio I think is fascinating is that we do stuff simply because it's fun and that's often long before anybody has any thought of doing commercial use of this stuff. As far as I know the only other people doing this at that time were the military and doing it with extremely expensive hardware. We were doing it with something we could afford as individuals. So not only did we experiment, we innovate, and we educate. I think we also innovate and often very early… much earlier you might think.
…
But [also don’t] forget the potential of the ham service to contribute to direct experimentation with some of the problems you're talking about. In the Amateur [Radio] Service no one station owns a frequency. We have to sign every time we renew our licenses. It says no amateur station owns the frequency. We have to share, so we've already had to deal with these problems of spectral sharing, mutual interference, and dynamic allocation for a long time. I personally have gotten very interested in trying these out on the ham bands. In 1990 I came up with one of the techniques for dynamic spectrum sharing. [That] sounds an awful lot like what I've been hearing recently about where you get on and say “Hey I need to listen here for a certain period of time, please stay off that frequency.” I did this in 1990; I was doing it for ham radio. I didn't know… had no idea that anybody would do anything like that. Later it made its way into Wi-Fi; it’s one of the features of Wi-Fi.
So we do have potential not only for education I think but some small scale experimentation especially in the fields where apparently other people were having problems. I was surprised to hear about problems with communication between different groups who are sharing the spectrum or in going through the kinds of regulatory approvals you need to to operate a new waveform. Hams have a lot of regulatory flexibility as long as we stay within rules (one and a half kilowatts maximum power output), we have to stay in the band, stay in the bandwidth limits, [and] don't intentionally interfere with anybody. We can do pretty much what we want and that does seem to be a very big advantage of the ham service. So on a small scale and perhaps on an academic scale we can try some of these things and I'm certain we would be delighted if some of the results were useful to the larger spectrum sharing community.
The story about the Qualcomm “AI Wireless” chip, combined with KA9Q’s suggestion of experimentation triggered a memory from watching a DCC talk by Bob McGwier N4HY who stated (paraphrased, from fallible memory) that “machine learning (ML) is going to be huge in radio technology”. At the time, that statement sounded prescient, but I now know that in N4HY’s it’s classified; I can’t talk about it day job, he had already been observing (or perhaps creating) machine learning being applied to radio technology… for years.
I was working on an article about the use of AI / ML in Amateur Radio (actual usage, not the usual “AI wrote part of this article”), but I couldn’t finish it satisfactorily for this week’s issue, so it’s deferred to a future issue.
ka9q-radio
One near-term project that Amateur Radio could easily start experimenting with is creating integrated communications systems out of many disparate systems - using inexpensive compute power and Software Defined Receivers (and perhaps transmitters), and no small amount of ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking. KA9Q’s project ka9q-radio is one example. For the price of an antenna, Software Defined Receiver, and a Raspberry Pi 4, it’s now feasible to monitor all the 20 kHz (repeater and simplex) channels on any VHF / UHF band… or all of 50-54 MHz, 144-148 MHz, 219-225 MHz, and 440-450 MHz for the price of four receivers and four computers. It’s probably sufficient to use a discone antenna as the combined antenna for all four receivers.
To create an “omniradio”, you just “pipe” the output of ka9q-radio into a “console” and when your system sees a transmission of interest, the system automatically selects an appropriate radio for a transmission, tunes that radio to the appropriate frequency, and transmits.
Hailing Channel(s)
Another concept, ripe for experimentation in Amateur Radio is creating Hailing Channels. I sent this note to the members of the APRS Foundation Board earlier this week:
APRS Foundation Leadership:
Now that the APRS Foundation is getting itself settled as a functioning organization. I understand that APRS Foundation still has a lot of “backlog” work to do that falls to it in the wake of WB4APR’s death, but I think it would be beneficial for APRS Foundation, and its role within Amateur Radio, to have a vision for the future.
Thus I have a suggestion for a long-term, futuristic project that I think fits well into the APRS Foundation’s role, that would extend the concepts of APRS well into the future - create a Hailing Channel system.
I recommend that all of the APRS Foundation board watch this video:
