Zero Retries 0176
2024-11-01 — What's New at DLARC - 2024-10, Revisiting the US Amateur Radio 219-220 MHz Band, TAPR Annual Meeting 2024, DigiPi v1.9 is Released, ARDC VPN Service Announcement - Is It Ready Yet???
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. Radios are computers - with antennas! Now in its fourth year of publication, with 2200+ subscribers.
About Zero Retries
Steve Stroh N8GNJ, Editor
Jack Stroh, Late Night Assistant Editor Emeritus
Fiona and Shreky Stroh, Late Night Assistant Editors In Training
In this issue:
What’s New at Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications - October 2024
Comments for This Issue (redirect to Comments page)
Web version of this issue - https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0176
Request To Send
Commentary by Editor Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Paid Subscribers Update
My thanks to Peter Neubauer KD0QXJ for renewing as an Annual Paid Subscriber to Zero Retries this past week!
Financial support from Zero Retries readers is a significant vote of support for the continued publication of Zero Retries.
It’s been an odd and busy week in our household, including the US Halloween “holiday”, and publication day (Friday) is consumed with a sobering trip to the memorial service of another good friend. Thus I don’t have a lot to report from either Zero Retries Research or N8GNJ Labs other than I cannot wait to be done with US presidential election season and US Daylight Saving Time. Contrary to the majority of the US, the Pacific Northwet is not suffering from an overabundance of sunshine or abnormally warm weather for very late in October.
I’m still not done compiling my notes from Pacificon, so that’s deferred yet again. But as K6KJN notes in his article, we discussed our experiences at Pacificon 2024 in Episode 8 of our Store & Forward podcast.
Have a great weekend, all of you co-conspirators in Zero Retries Interesting Amateur Radio activities!
Steve N8GNJ
What’s New at Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications - October 2024
By Kay Savetz K6KJN
Program Manager, Special Collections
Internet Archive, Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications
Zero Retries Pseudostaffer
Editor’s Note - K6KJN was handicapped by the cybersecurity issues at Internet Archive and thus couldn’t complete his October column until today. There will be another What’s New at DLARC column for November, 2024 later this month.
Happy November from DLARC World Headquarters. October was a month of both challenges and successes. Let’s dive in.
On the positive end of the spectrum: my visit to Pacificon. It was my first time at that ham radio conference, which was first held in 1920. I had a booth for DLARC, where I got to tell hundreds of folks about the project. It didn’t take long to hone my pitch down to just five enticing words: “FREE ONLINE HAM RADIO LIBRARY.” I handed out flyers and stickers, gave two presentations, and enjoyed a libation with our esteemed editor Steve Stroh. (Steve and I talk a lot more about our reactions to Pacificon in the new episode of the Store & Forward podcast.)
On the more challenging edge of the spectrum, Internet Archive (where DLARC lives) was either completely down or terribly hobbled for most of the month after a denial of service attack and a hack. The site is getting back to normal now. As I write this, logins and uploads aren’t enabled yet, so if things don’t seem quite right when you look at the items that I mention below — they’re working on it, try again a little later.
Material from Bob Cooper’s estate continues to pour in. I recently added 215 issues of The 50 MHz DX Bulletin from Bob’s collection. This was a newsletter dedicated to the understanding and utilization of long distance propagation in the 6-meter amateur radio band, founded by Harry Schools KA3B, then taken over by Victor Frank K6FV. Headlines include “Six Meters Opens to Antarctica!” (November 1993) and “R.I.P. Magic Band?” (April 2008.) The newsletter was published from 1990 through at least the end of 2008. We have most of 1991 through 2008, but we’re missing all of 1990, and some of 1991, and post-2008 issues (if those were even published.) Do you have them?
Coop was a prolific writer and publisher himself. You can see some of his earliest work in a the new Bob Cooper's Early Publications collection. There you’ll find issues of CB Horizons, DXing Horizons, VHF Horizons, Television Horizons, Communication Horizons, Video Communication Journal, and TV and Communications magazines. These publications span 1960 through 1964. In those four years, Cooper seemed to weave between topics and publication titles as he sought to find his footing and audience in the realm of radio and TV communications. I expect to have more to report from the Cooper trove next time.
In the meantime, we have Tedd Mirgliotta KB8NW to thank for a complete collection of every issue — all 1,795 issues — of the Ohio/Penn DX Bulletin. Focused on amateur radio DX news, Ohio/Penn DX Bulletin was one of the first free amateur radio bulletins to be distributed on packet clusters and the internet. It was published by Mirgliotta for an astounding 31 years — 1991 through 2022.
Here’s the part that just warms my archivist heart: 232 of the issues in DLARC have never been on the Internet before. Those first 232 issues were distributed on packet radio and dial-up BBSes, but that was so early in the birth of the Internet that they were never posted on the web. Earlier this year, Mirgliotta answered my request to dig into his stack of old hard drives. He found the earliest issues so they could be shared in the DLARC library.
I also added 109 issues of the Northern Ohio DX Association "Rag" newsletter from 2003 to the present. NODXA is an amateur radio DX club in the Cleveland, Ohio area.
Here’s a fun newsletter covering the fringe end of radio. Numbers & Oddities, also known as The Spooks Newsletter, covers the fascinating world of numbers stations and all kinds of odd signals heard on HF. Sometimes reaching hundreds of pages per issue, the contributors are meticulous about notating the specifics of the weird stuff they hear on the air.
Last month I teased an item, a collection of vintage QSL Pennants and Radio Stickers. I’m exited to share the rest of this new collection with you: Chuck Vesei Shortwave Radio Artifacts. This collection has a great backstory: While he was in high school in the 1980s, Chuck Vesei was fascinated with shortwave radio and DXing. He listened to shortwave broadcasts from around the world and mailed away to the far-flung radio stations that he heard on his Uniden CR-201 radio. Those stations mailed Chuck broadcasting schedules, QSL cards, reception report forms, newsletters, stickers, pennants, and other ephemera. This is Chuck's collection of shortwave radio material, which he collected from 1984 to 1986. (Want more details? I wrote a longer version of the story for Internet Archive’s blog.)
California Historical Radio Society donated to DLARC some material from the estate of Jim Maxwell, W6CF. Jim was once the ARRL’s west coast director. The CHRS Jim Maxwell, W6CF Collection includes about three dozen items, an interesting mix of audio and videotapes, which we digitized. Among them is a 1994 video of Jim giving a presentation titled “The Golden Years of DX” at River City Amateur Radio Communications Society. It’s one of a variety of bits of amateur radio history from the 1980s and 1990s.
If you prefer something a little older, I present this new addition to DLARC: 761 issues of The Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review, spanning 1872 to 1891. We have every issue of this publication, scanned from microfilm. 150 years ago, the publication explored the development of battery power, advancements in the telegraph, and the growth of “telephonic communications." If you can get past language that is both old-timey and technical: “We were recently informed by a friend that certain well-known firms who were using the electric light in large works had found that the younger illuminant was cheaper to them than gas had been. This, of course, was an item of much interest to us, and we desired to obtain particulars and definite figures to lay before our readers.” The pages are filled with fascinating history — like the 1883 Telegraphers’ strike. The operators demanded higher salaries and “fewer hours of labour.” Before the strike, a telegraph operator might earn 34 cents per hour; they wanted a 30% increase. Also, workers demanded that both sexes shall receive equal pay for equal work.
One last thing: we just added a pretty new marquee to the DLARC home page. This is a just-developed feature at Internet Archive, to help visitors get oriented to what could be an overwhelming amount of material. There’s a new “Collection Highlights” section to marquee some of the most popular and interesting items in the library. Let me know what you think of it.
Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications is funded by a grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) to create a free digital library for the radio community, researchers, educators, and students. If you have questions about the project or material to contribute, contact me at kay@archive.org.
DLARC want list: https://archive.org/details/dlarc-wantlist
Revisiting the US Amateur Radio 219-220 MHz Band
By Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Open Research Institute (ORI) recently convened a videoconference to discuss a novel (in this era) approach to making the US Amateur Radio allocation at 219-220 MHz actually usable.
ORI’s 219 MHz FCC Rules Revision Workshop was held 2024-10-29 from 10:00 - 11:00 Pacific.
As background about what’s previously been discussed about the 219-220 MHz band, see Zero Retries 0053 - US 219-220 MHz Band. That discussion was more of an exploration of what’s the current state of dysfunction with this band.
Also as background… keep in mind that this band was allocated, both for its primary usage, and Amateur Radio’s secondary usage, in the early 1980s, which predates commercial / civilian access to the Internet, and broadband Internet access via mobile telephone and mobile satellite technology and networks as we now know them. In that era, entities that wanted a ubiquitous voice and data radio communications network for their unique requirements had to build it themselves and create their own technology, which required “new”, “virgin” spectrum.
Disclaimer - I didn’t take detailed notes from this discussion, and I haven’t had the time to watch the recorded video. Thus most of what I’ll write from this point forward is from memory, and I may get details wrong. If I do, I’ll edit this article with corrections.
This workshop was convened by ORI with an interesting premise. If NextNav can submit a Petition for Rulemaking (FCC Docket 24-240) to radically reconfigure a major band (the 902-928 MHz band), why can’t… why shouldn’t… Amateur Radio do the same thing for a band such as 219-220 which has been unused because of too many restrictions since it was allocated?
Kudos to ORI for the imaginative leap of this possibility. This isn’t something I would have imagined doing, but having heard the idea… it’s brilliant and I’m in full support.
I missed most of the primer to this discussion which was a detail-filled slide deck The Haunted Band which was (confusingly) started well before the stated start time at 10:00. The event was recorded and is now available online:
