Zero Retries 0194
2025-03-21 — Impressions of HamSCI 2025, From FCC - IN RE: DELETE, DELETE, DELETE, Web Based decoders for horus and wenet, Raspberry Pi Official Image Tool, SDRBERRY, Packaging VARA FM on Raspberry Pi
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 2500+ 2600+ subscribers.
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Steve Stroh N8GNJ, Editor
Web version of this issue - https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0194
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Commentary by Editor Steve Stroh N8GNJ
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My thanks to John Kiernan KE2UN for renewing as an Annual Paid Subscriber to Zero Retries this past week!
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2600 Email Subscribers to Zero Retries!
I’m constantly amazed at the varied ways that new subscribers find their way to Zero Retries. In this case, the “big bump” of this tier seems to be a recommendation by Steve Herman on his The Newsguy newsletter on Substack. I was puzzled at first by this rush of subscribers (and Substack “followers”) given that Herman doesn’t write (that I’ve seen) about Amateur Radio. Some reading of his Substack newsletter revealed that in addition to his extensive journalism career, Herman is also W7VOA. Reading his About page revealed why his name was familiar - he was profiled in QST in the 2024-03 issue. Thank you W7VOA for the recommendation.
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Tina KD7WSF and I at HamSCI 2025
Tina KD7WSF and I both attended HamSCI 2025 and we’re both rocking our Zero Retries logo’d shirts. (Thanks Honey - you dress me up really well!)
HamSCI 2025 was especially memorable for Tina because her late father Peter Lewesky is a graduate of Newark College of Engineering Class of 1943, now named New Jersey Institute of Technology. Tina was able to visit the NJIT Alumni Office and found her Dad in the 1943 NCE Yearbook.
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One of the Better Moments of HamSCI 2025 - Meetup with Steve Davidson K3FZT
I was honored that my friend, and Zero Retries Founding Member 0000 Steve Davidson K3FZT made the trek from Philadelphia to Newark and NJIT just to chat with me for a few hours
When I began the wild experiment of Zero Retries back in mid-2021, K3FZT was one of the first outside my immediate circle of acquaintances to substantively engage with me about the bigger picture of ZR… for which I am profoundly grateful to him.
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Have a great weekend, all of you co-conspirators in Zero Retries Interesting Amateur Radio activities!
Steve N8GNJ
Impressions of HamSCI 2025
By Steve Stroh N8GNJ
From About HamSCI - What is HamSCI's scientific focus?:
HamSCI was started by ham-scientists who study upper atmospheric and space physics. These scientists recognized that projects such as the Reverse Beacon Network, WSPRNet, PSKReporter, DX Cluster, ClubLog, and more are generating big data sets that could provide useful observations of the Earth's ionosphere and related systems. Because of this, HamSCI's initial focus is on these fields of research. In the future, other researchers may join HamSCI and broaden its scope. For scientists, working with the amateur radio community is a way to access individually managed stations, available by the hundreds in dozens of countries, with receive and transmit capabilities across the electromagnetic spectrum, easily identified in areas of interest and deployed to remote locations, for free. You can read more about the utility of amateur radio as a teaching tool in this Eos article.
In this article, I won’t attempt to describe all of the various presentations at HamSCI 2025. HamSCI 2025 was streamed live via Zoom, and videos of all the presentations will all be available on YouTube (and elsewhere?) in the near future after editing by Jason Johnston KC5HWB of Ham Radio 2.0 (who attended HamSCI 2025).
Prior to attending HamSCI 2025, I’ve been told that the HamSCI workshops were the closest thing - technical focus, good presentations, very interesting people… to the (formerly TAPR) Digital Communications Conferences, and that intrigued me. For HamSCI 2025, the logistics of the timing and the venue (New Jersey Institute of Technology - NJIT, in Newark, New Jersey, USA) worked out for my wife Tina KD7WSF and I. We attended both days.
It set a great “tone” for HamSCI 2025 that NJIT President Dr. Teik C. Lim opened the conference and spoke enthusiastically about how great it was that the HamSCI Workshop was being held at NJIT again and he asked when it was going to held at NJIT again. It was so cool to hear Lim’s enthusiasm for what, in the end, is an Amateur Radio activity - that serves scientific inquiry and experimentation.
Another great tone was just attending in the presence of so many young people. There were plenty of us older folks, but we were in the minority, in the audience learning from the younger folks as they presented their topics. We older folks were largely learning from the younger folks presenting, and that gives me ample hope for the future of Amateur Radio.
Attending HamSCI 2025 was very stimulating. The presentations were excellent and despite not currently being a scientist or currently involved in any of HamSCI’s research activities, I learned a lot and had a good time. The level of stimulation, the interesting people, and knowledge shared, and just the excitement about science, knowledge, radio technology, and just the very, very nice people made HamSCI 2025 an overall great experience for Tina and I.
High points for me:
- HamSCI 2025 (and, I gather, HamSCI in general) was one of the few Amateur Radio activities I’ve attended where folks under 30 were in the majority. Not to mention, very smart.
- I’ve seen a number of activities where Amateur Radio is “tacked on” - not really integral to the stated activity. That was not the case with the projects described at HamSCI 2025 - as the name HamSCI (Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation) implies, Amateur Radio is integral to these activities.
- It was very cool to see the cross-collaboration between a number of universities such as University of Scranton, Case Western Reserve University and New Jersey Institute of Technology - all involving Amateur Radio. And all of those universities have new or updated collegiate Amateur Radio stations and clubs with active participation.
- It wasn’t all scientific discussion - there was ample interesting focus on typical Amateur Radio activities such as a comparison of various HF antennas and a great primer on using developing Software Defined Radio apps with GNU Radio and GNU Radio Companion.
- It was cool to see that the sections of the presentations were organized by students giving them experience at running such a conference. In fact, it was great to see that the students were the primary organizers of the conference.
The Poster Sessions portion of the conference on Saturday afternoon was a great idea. Poster sessions have not been a feature of other conferences I’ve attended in the formal way that HamSCI 2025 did. In the few weeks prior to the conference, a notice went out that there were ten “poster” slots available, and I applied for one to discuss the IP400 Networking Project. The HamSCI 2025 staff made a PowerPoint template1 available for a 3 foot by four foot poster, with good instructions, and I just filled in the blanks as specified. The conference printed the poster, and it turned out great2.
I appreciate that Bob Inderbitzen NQ1R interviewed me for a brief video by ARRL -
