Zero Retries 0181
2024-12-06 — Lynn Deffenbaugh KJ4ERJ is a SK, 75% of Techs Inactive After One Year?, The Use Case for Data Over Repeater - Part 2, M17 Foundation, New Low-Cost RF Power Amp for SD TX, HamSCI 2025
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 2300+ subscribers.
About Zero Retries
Steve Stroh N8GNJ, Editor
Jack Stroh, Late Night Assistant Editor Emeritus
In this issue:
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Web version of this issue - https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0181
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Commentary by Editor Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Paid Subscribers Update
My thanks to Prefers to Remain Anonymous 60 for upgrading from a free subscriber to Zero Retries to an Annual Paid Subscriber this past week! PTRA 60 included this nice note:
I enjoy reading about advances and cool ideas in digital ham radio and satellites. Your blog is definitely worth supporting!
My thanks to Prefers to Remain Anonymous 59 for becoming an Annual Paid Subscriber to Zero Retries this past week! (I sent PtRA 59 an email Thank You note, but their @arrl.net email address bounced.)
Financial support from Zero Retries readers is a significant vote of support for the continued publication of Zero Retries.
Nice Mention of Zero Retries on Facebook
Zero Retries Pseudostaffer and AREDN Ambassador Orb Beach W6BI wrote this nice blurb recently in the Facebook AREDN Group:
While not strictly oriented towards AREDN, the Zero Retries Newsletter is worth subscribing to:
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 2300+ subscribers.
Check it out!
That explains the nice bump of new Zero Retries email subscribers in the past week. Thanks very much W6BI!
Focused Foundations for Amateur Radio Technologies / Projects
In ZR > BEACON in this issue, you’ll read that the M17 Foundation has been formed.
This trend of creating focused, formal organizations to promote promising Amateur Radio technologies that have achieved some signifiant momentum and scale is, I think, the wave of the future.
“Unfocused” organizations (I won’t name names) formed with “broad, unspecific” mandates, are I think failing, or doomed to fail, because they can’t maintain a focus that promotes interest, momentum, and energy. For example, if you want to be involved in moving APRS forward, there’s now one place to pay attention to and one place to go to try to get involved - APRS Foundation.
Now, ditto, M17 Foundation - there’s now one place to pay attention to and one place to go to try to get involved - M17 Foundation.
That’s not to say that “just go form a foundation” is a panacea for a promising new Amateur Radio activity or interest or technology. Maintaining a foundation is work and a huge commitment for the principals involved, but I think it helps a lot that such organizations have a real focus and thus there’s a simple test for what an organization should be doing - is this “new thing” within the scope of our organization?
I can imagine a number of other candidates for focused organizations such as MMDVM, FreeDV, a group for coalescing Amateur Radio standards, a group for a large technical conference, a group focused on an Amateur Radio GEO satellite or payload in the Western hemisphere, and perhaps even an Amateur Radio media organization that melds YouTube, social media, newsletters, podcasts, and even a magazine1.
HamSCI 2025 Announcement
Ryan Tolboom N2BP via email:
I just wanted to reach out to you to let you know that the HamSCI 2025 conference will be held on March 14-15th this year at NJIT in Newark, NJ. It may be of some interest to your subscribers and I'm on the organizing committee so I thought I'd let you know as soon as we had some promotional material prepared.
Normally I’d put such an announcement in the ZR > BEACON section, but N2BP and HamSCI is the first (and to date only) organization that has reached out to me about their 2025 events, thus it deserves something of a premium mention. I’ll be updating the Zero Retries Guide to Zero Retries Interesting Events for 2025 in the next few weeks.
Folks that have attended past HamSCI conferences have told me that HamSCI conferences have much of the feel and energy of a Digital Communications Conference, but more so because of the large presence of university students. I probably won’t be able to make it to HamSCI 2025, but perhaps I’ll be able to attend in 2026.
My Thanks to N2BP for letting me know about HamSCI 2025.
Television Repeaters Versus Data Repeaters
I confess that I’m of two minds when I feature articles in Zero Retries about Amateur Radio Television, especially ATV repeaters. One perspective is what they are doing, especially the current practice of using Digital Amateur Television technology, is deeply technical and thus Zero Retries Interesting.
But my other perspective is why create yet another “dedicated mode system” when a more usable approach is to create a “bit pipe” repeater that can be used for things other than (digital) television?
I engaged with Jim Andrews KH6HTV, Editor of Amateur Television Journal briefly about this issue and he turned my question back on me and said in essence, “Why don’t you data folks just tunnel data over a digital television system?”. That was a fair point, given that there are likely more Amateur Radio Digital Television repeaters on the air than repeaters dedicated to data. Or perhaps “video over a data repeater” is something that has to be proven out and demonstrated to be taken seriously by the video folks.
Have a great weekend, all of you co-conspirators in Zero Retries Interesting Amateur Radio activities!
Steve N8GNJ
Lynn Deffenbaugh KJ4ERJ is a Silent Keyboard
By Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Posted to the APRS email list by Jeff Hochberg W4JEW, President of APRS Foundation on 2024-12-02:
Lynn - KJ4ERJ - author of APRSIS32/CE, passed away. We don't have any more information right now.
…
He was one of the nicest people I've ever met, and I considered him a great friend!
The APRS Foundation and the APRS community worldwide know of Lynn's contributions to ham radio. His mark will never be forgotten.
I know of KJ4ERJ only by reputation, but he was very well-respected in the APRS community and was a one of the founding Board of Directors of the APRS Foundation. KJ4ERJ was the author of one of the most capable APRS applications - APRSISCE/32:
APRSISCE/32 is a sophisticated Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) client, which unlike many other clients aims to accurately implement the entire APRS specification. And make allowances for those clients that do not.
The software also includes many advanced features, as alluded to in the feature list above.
APRSISCE/32 is under active development, and the development version is regularly updated and also freely available, New users are encouraged to use the general release version until they are familiar with the software.
…
APRSISCE/32 is an advanced Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) Client for Amateur Radio, written for Windows (x86 and x64) and Windows Mobile (CE). It will also run on Linux and Mac OS under WINE, as well as other virtual machines. It does *NOT* run on any Windows CE 5 or 6 GPS unit as of 2012/04/11.
APRSISCE/32 can be configured to run connected directly to the APRS-IS via an internet connection, as well as connected to the APRS-RF network via software modems such as UZ7HO Sound Modem, Dire Wolf or AGWPE, using a TNC, or one of the APRS capable Radios including the Kenwood TH-D72/TM-D710 and Yaesu FTM-350.
Here is a presentation KJ4ERJ did on APRSISCE/32 in 2022:
