Podcasts about irlp

Send us a textCurious about the scientific evidence behind treating joint infections in foals? This eye-opening conversation with Dr. David Wallace explores groundbreaking research validating common clinical practices while revealing surprising limitations.Septic joints in foals present a clinical challenge requiring both local and systemic antimicrobial therapy. Until now, veterinarians have largely extrapolated treatment protocols from adult horses without solid evidence supporting these approaches in neonatal patients. Dr. Wallace's research addresses this critical knowledge gap, examining whether concurrent intravenous regional limb perfusion (IRLP) and systemic amikacin administration achieves therapeutic concentrations in both compartments.The results offer reassurance that splitting the amikacin dose—one-third for regional perfusion and two-thirds systemically—effectively treats both joint infections and underlying systemic disease. Most joints achieved therapeutic concentrations, though significant challenges emerged with hind limb perfusions. The metatarsophalangeal joint consistently failed to reach target levels, revealing important technical limitations around tourniquet placement and vascular integrity that clinicians should consider when treating these patients.This conversation highlights numerous opportunities for future research, from evaluating alternative tourniquet designs to determining appropriate dose adjustments for multiple affected limbs. Dr. Wallace emphasizes that individual patient response remains paramount, reminding us that "foals are not small horses" and require specialized approaches. Whether you're a practicing veterinarian, student, or equine enthusiast, this episode provides valuable insights into evidence-based care for our youngest equine patients. Subscribe now to stay updated on the latest advances in veterinary medicine!JAVMA article: https://doi.org/10.2460/javma.24.10.0678INTERESTED IN SUBMITTING YOUR MANUSCRIPT TO JAVMA ® OR AJVR ® ? JAVMA ® : https://avma.org/JAVMAAuthors AJVR ® : https://avma.org/AJVRAuthorsFOLLOW US:JAVMA ® : Facebook: Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association - JAVMA | Facebook Instagram: JAVMA (@avma_javma) • Instagram photos and videos Twitter: JAVMA (@AVMAJAVMA) / Twitter AJVR ® : Facebook: American Journal of Veterinary Research - AJVR | Facebook Instagram: AJVR (@ajvroa) • Instagram photos and videos Twitter: AJVR (@AJVROA) / Twitter JAVMA ® and AJVR ® LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/avma-journals

Foundations of Amateur Radio A recent comment by a fellow amateur sparked a train of thought that made me wonder why there is a pervasive idea within our community that you need a radio transmitter and antenna to be a radio amateur, moreover that for some reason, if you don't have either, you're not a real amateur. I suppose it's related to the often repeated trope that the internet enabled modes like Allstar Link, Echolink and even IRLP, are not real radio, despite evidence to the contrary. Instead of fighting this weird notion, I figured I'd get on with it and find a way to play even if you don't currently have the ability to erect an antenna or key a transmitter for whatever reason. Before I dig in, a WebSDR is a Software Defined Radio connected to the Internet. It allows a user to open a web browser, pick from a massive collection of receivers around the world and listen in. Some of these also have the ability to transmit, but more on that later. Here's the idea. Have you ever considered tuning to a WebSDR, using it to pick a signal and using your computer to decode that signal? I'm aware that some sites provide a range of in-built decoders, but that doesn't cover the wide spectrum of modes that amateur radio represents, let alone the modes that are not specific to our hobby. As I've said previously, many of the modes in use today are essentially the width of an audio stream. This means that if you tune a WebSDR to a frequency the audio comes out of your computer speakers. If that's voice, your job is done and you can hear what's going on. If it's something else, then you're going to have to find a way to decode this to get the message. So, if you send the audio from your web browser into something like Fldigi or WSJT-X, you'll be able to decode the signal if it's supported by those tools. This is true for all the other tools too, Morse, RTTY, you name it. Depending on which operating system you're using the way to implement this will differ. Starting with a search for "WebSDR and WSJT-X" will get you on your way. You might ask why I'm advocating WSJT-X, even though it only supports a small set of modes and that's a fair question. In my experience, it's the simplest to get running and get results. Two tips, make sure you set your configuration to indicate that you don't have a radio, otherwise it's going to attempt to control something that isn't there, and make sure that your computer clock is set accurately using NTP or Network Time Protocol. You can thank me later. Now I hinted earlier at transmitting. There's a growing range of places where your amateur license will give you access to a station somewhere on the internet and with that the ability to get on air and make noise. An increasing number of radio amateur clubs are building remote stations for their members to enjoy. There are also individuals and small groups doing the same independently. A few organisations are offering this as a service to paid subscribers. These tools often implement a remote desktop session where you connect to a computer that in turn is connected to a radio. The supported modes depend on what is installed at the other end. Others implement a slightly different method where you run specialised software locally, sometimes inside a web browser, that connects to a server across the internet, allowing you to run whatever digital mode you want on your own computer. I'll point out that even if you start with receiving digital modes using a WebSDR, you can expand that into transmitting at a later stage. So, no antenna, no transmitter, no problem, still an amateur! I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The Network Effect is when you connect a network (IRLP, AllStar, Echolink, D-STAR, DMR, Fusion, etc) to a quiet, local repeater and turn on a busy nationwide or worldwide reflector, talk group, room, whatever. The repeater isn't quiet anymore… but who's talking. Nobody you know.Also, Gary K4AAQ will be volunteering for a big, new (to him) event: the Assault on Mt. Mitchell. That's a 100 mile bike ride from Spartanburg SC to the top of Mt. Mitchell in NC. With all the up and down (and the big UP at the end to the 6600' summit), the riders will see a total of 11,000 of vertical climb. And, we lost some hams this week. Bob Heil K9EID, of course, but also David W0DHG's friend Gary Apgar NY6Y, and Gary's friend and local hero Danny Hampton K4ITL. Danny was Dayton Hamvention's Ham of the Year in 2009, and founder of a regional repeater network in the Carolinas, long before the Internet came along to make it easy.

Ed Tipler, WI6RE, began his ham radio journey on a rural farm in Washington State, and ultimately landed an engineering job at the China Lake Navel Weapons Test Range in California's Mojave Desert. Ed continues to serve his community of Ridgecrest with both commercial and amateur radio services connected by IRLP and Allstar.  WI6RE is my QSO Today.

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the topics I've been talking about lately is the idea that we might be able to measure the performance of your radio in some meaningful way using equipment that can be either obtained by any amateur, or by introducing a process that allows results to be compared, even if they have been generated differently. Recently I came up with a tool that automatically generates a spectrogram of an audio recording. That on its own isn't particularly interesting, but it's step one in the processing of an audio signal. In addition to the spectrogram, I also created a tool that generates a tone frequency sweep, think of it as a tone that changes frequency over time, let's call it a sweep. If you combine the two, you can generate a spectrogram of the sweep to give you a starting point or baseline for comparison. You can build on that by using your radio to transmit that sweep and record the result using a receiver. In my initial experiments, I used an RTLSDR dongle to receive the audio with some success and a boatload of spectacular harmonics, but I wanted to find a better, more accessible way to do this and during the week I realised that my Yaesu FT-857d that's sitting in my shack, is connected to a perfectly functional antenna and with a few settings it could do the job perfectly. One of the biggest issues with my RTLSDR setup was squelch. That is the difference between what is a legitimate transmission and what is noise. Set it too high and you hear nothing, set it too low and you hear everything, including background noise. Since the VHF or 2m noise levels are quite high at my location, or QTH, I normally have the squelch completely closed. This is fine if you're normally using a strong repeater, but if you're attempting to receive a weak hand-held, that's never going to work. As any self-respecting amateur I was dragged down the path of last resort to read my user manual where I discovered that in addition to CTCSS, a way to transmit a tone to open a repeater, there's also a setting called Tone Squelch or on my radio TSQ, which will keep my radio squelch closed, unless it hears the CTCSS tone from another radio. Truth be told, I had to read a different user manual to discover how to actually set the CTCSS tone on my handheld to test, but that's just adding insult to injury. It has been a while since I read any manual, even though I try to get to it once a year or so. I blame it on the lack of field-day camping. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. So, combining all this, the spectrogram generator, the sweep, CTCSS, and adding a Raspberry Pi with some website magic, if you're interested, an AWS S3 bucket, I now have a service that listens on a local frequency, opens the squelch if it hears the correct CTCSS tone, records the incoming signal until it stops, then generates a spectrogram from that audio and uploads it to a web site. None of this is particularly complicated, though I did have some bugs to work through. I've published the code as a branch to my existing frequency-response project on github and I've asked my local community to experiment with what I have on-air before I start doing more far reaching experiments. For example. If I were to tune my radio to a local repeater output frequency, rather than the simplex one I'm currently on, I'd be able to record and generate spectrograms for each transmission coming from that repeater. If that repeater was connected to the internet, using AllStar, IRLP, Echolink, DMR or Brandmeister, or even all of them, the global community could send their audio to my recorder and it could generate a spectrogram on the spot. If using that repeater, you played a sweep into your microphone, or used your digital audio interface to play the sound, you could then compare your signal path against others and against the baseline response. One of the issues with doing this is that much of the audio that travels across the internet is pretty munched, that is, it's compressed, frequencies are cut-off, there's all manner of interesting harmonics and the value of the comparison appears limited at best. Once I have my multi-band HF antenna, which I'm told is still being built, I intend to set this contraption up on HF where we can do point-to-point recordings and we end up having a direct comparison between two stations who transmit into my frequency-response software. I should add some disclaimers here too. At the moment I'm only using FM. The intent is to get this to a point where I can compare any mode, but when I move to HF, I'll likely start with Single Side Band and go on from there. One other annoyance is that any user needs to configure CTCSS to make this work, which is yet another hurdle to overcome, not insurmountable, but I like to keep things simple when you're starting to learn. Also, the harmonics still show, even on an analogue radio, so there's plenty more to discover. In the meantime, what kinds of things can you think of to use this for? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

MrpTech Podcast 194 Podcast Update Hosted By: Matthew Pray RSS FEED: http://feeds.feedburner.com/mrptechpodcast iTunes Feed: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mrp-tech-podcast/id1188171823?mt=2# MrpTech Reviews Website – http://www.mrptechreviews.com Yeonmi Park North Korean Defector – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMK1KEk5OdU Duolingo – https://www.duolingo.com/ Vote for MrpTech's Bridges here: You can vote using multiple browsers, devices, log in accounts etc. We have some big time competition with larger cities, […]

Foundations of Amateur Radio So, there's nothing on TV, the bands are dead, nobody is answering your CQ, you're bored and it's all too hard. You've run out of things to try, there's only so many different ways to use the radio and it's all too much. I mean, you've only got CW, AM, SSB, FM, there's Upper and Lower Side-band, then there's RTTY, the all too popular FT8, then there's WSPR, but then you run out of things. I mean, right? What about PSK31, SSTV, then there's AMTOR, Hellschreiber, Clover, Olivia, Thor, MFSK, Contestia, the long time favourites of Echolink and IRLP, not to forget Fusion, DMR, D-STAR, AllStar, BrandMeister or APRS. So far I've mentioned about 20 modes, picked at random, some from the list of modes that the software Fldigi supports. Some of these don't even show up on the Signal Wiki which has a list of about 70 amateur modes. With all the bands you have available, there's plenty of different things to play with. All. The. Time. There's contests for many of them, so once you've got it working, you can see how well you go. Over the past year I've been experimenting with a friend with various modes, some more successful than others. I'm mentioning this because it's not difficult to get started. Seriously, it's not. The most important part of this whole experiment is getting your computer to talk to your radio. If you have FT8 already working you have all the hardware in place. To make the software work, you can't go past installing Fldigi. As a tool it works a lot like what you're familiar with. You'll see a band-scope, a list of frequencies and a list of decodes. It's one of many programs that can decode and generate a multitude of amateur digital modes. If this is all completely new to you, don't be alarmed. There are essentially two types of connections between your computer and your radio. The first one is audio, the second is control. For this to work well, both these need to be two-way, so you can both decode the audio that the radio receives and generate audio that the radio can transmit. The same is true for the control connection. You need to be able to set the transmit frequency and the mode and you need to be able to read the current state of the radio, if only to toggle the transmitter on-and-off. If you already have CAT control working, that's one half done. I've spoken with plenty of amateurs who are reluctant to do any of this. If this is you, don't be afraid. It's like the first time you keyed up you radio. Remember the excitement? You can relive that experience, no matter how long you've been an amateur. Depending on the age of your radio, you might find that there is only one physical connection between your computer and the radio, either using USB or even Ethernet. You'll find that your computer will still need to deal with the two types of information separately. Notice that I've not talked about what kind of operating system you need to be running. I use and prefer Linux, but you can do this on any operating system, even using a mobile phone if that takes your fancy. Getting on air and making noise using your microphone is one option, but doing this using computer control will open you to scores of new adventures. I will add some words of caution here. In general, especially using digital modes, less is more. If you drive the audio too high you'll splatter all over the place and nobody will hear you, well, actually, everyone will, but nobody will be able to talk to you because they won't be able to decode it. If the ALC on your radio is active, you're too loud. WSJT-X, the tool for modes like FT8 and WSPR, has a really easy way of ensuring that your levels are right, so if you've not done anything yet, start there. Another issue is signal isolation. What I mean by that is you blowing up your computer because the RF travelled unexpectedly back up the serial or audio cable and caused all manner of grief. You can get all fancy with optical isolation and at some point you should, but until then, dial the power down to QRP levels, 5 Watts, and you'll be fine. A third issue that was likely covered during your licensing is the duty cycle. It's the amount of time that your radio is transmitting continuously as compared to receiving only. For some modes, like WSPR for example, you'll be transmitting for a full 2 minutes at 100%, so you'll be working your radio hard. Even harder might unexpectedly be using FT8, which transmits in 15 second bursts every 15 seconds, so there may not be enough time for your radio to cool down. Investing in a fan is a good plan, but being aware of the issue will go a long way to keeping the magic smoke inside your radio. I'm sure that you have plenty of questions after all that. You can ask your friends, or drop me an email, cq@vk6flab.com and I'll be happy to point you in the right direction. Next time there's nothing good on TV, get on air and make some digital noise! I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the many vexing issues associated with getting on-air and making noise is actually making that happen. So, let's look at a completely restricted environment. An apartment building, seven stories off the ground, no ability to make holes, an unsympathetic council, restrictive local home owners association, et cetera, et cetera. On the face of it your amateur radio hobby is doomed from the start. In reality, it's only just beginning. So, to hear HF right now, today, you can go online and listen to a plethora of web-based software defined radios. There's the canonical WebSDR in Twente and a whole host of others using the same or similar software. There's KiwiSDR, AirSpy, Global Tuners, and many more. This will give you countless radios to play with, coverage across the globe, the ability to compare signals from different receivers at the same time on the same frequency, the ability to decode digital modes, find propagation, learn about how contests are done, the sky's the limit. I'll add that you don't need an amateur license for many of these resources, so if you're considering becoming part of the community of radio amateurs, this is a great way to dip your toe in the water. Think of it as a short-wave listening experience on steroids. I hear you say, but that's not amateur radio. To that I say, actually, it is. It's everything except a physical antenna at your shack or the ability to transmit. Permit me a digression to the higher bands. If you want to listen to local repeaters on UHF and VHF, listen to DMR and Brandmeister, you'll find plenty of online resources as well. You can often use a hand-held radio to connect to a local repeater which can get you onto the global Echolink, IRLP and AllStar networks. Failing that, there's phone apps to make that connection instead. Of course if you want to expand your repertoire to transmission, beyond a hand-held, you can. There are online transmitters as well. Many clubs have their club station available for amateurs to use remotely using a tool like Remote Hams. You'll get access to a radio that's able to transmit and you'll be able to make contacts, even do digital modes and contests. You will require an amateur license and access to such a station. Some clubs will require that you pay towards the running of such a service and often you'll need to be a member. Then there's actually going to the club, you know, physically, going to the club shack and twiddling physical knobs, though for plenty of clubs that's now also a computer since they're adopting software defined radios just like the rest of the community is. Using a radio via a computer can be achieved directly in the shack, but there's no reason to stay on-site. You can often use these radios from the comfort of your own shack. If you do want to get physical with your own gear, receiving is pretty simple. A radio with a wire attached to it will get you listening to the local environment. I have for example a Raspberry Pi connected to an RTL-SDR dongle that's connected to a wire antenna in my shack. It's listening across the bands 24/7 and reporting on what it hears. If you want to use an actual transceiver and you don't have the ability to set-up an antenna, kit out your car and go mobile. Failing that, make a go-kit with batteries, which as an aside will stand you in good stead during an emergency. Take your go-kit camping, or climbing, or hiking. Plenty of opportunities to get on-air and make noise. I hear you asking, what about having an antenna farm? Well, you can set one up in a farmers paddock and connect to it remotely - you will need permission from the land-owner - there's plenty of amateurs who use their country abode as a remote station. If you want to make noise at your actual shack, the antenna might be a piece of wire hanging from the balcony after dark, or an antenna clamped to the railing. You can use a magnetic loop inside your house. Some enterprising amateurs have tuned up the gutters in their building, or made a flagpole vertical, or laid a coax antenna on the roof. Have a look for stealth antennas, there's a hundred years of amateurs facing the same problem. My own station is very minimalist. There's literally a vertical antenna clamped to the steel patio. Using that I'm working the world with 5 Watts, 14,000 km on 10m, no kidding. Getting on-air and making noise doesn't have to start and finish with a Yagi on a tower. There's plenty of other opportunities to be an active amateur. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Hello and welcome to Episode 367 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts tackle some interesting topics from the death of IRLP to higher FCC fees …

Foundations of Amateur Radio A regular lament is the lack of things to do in our hobby. I know, it's foreign to me, but there are plenty of amateurs who express frustration at the lack of activity, no contacts, nothing new, no challenges. For my poison, I started the process of contacting 100 different countries using 5 Watts. I've been at it for a number of years and truth be told, since my latest domestic move, over two years ago now, my efforts have been put on hold. Not because I didn't want to, but because I was getting annoyed with having to leave my home and wanting desperately to have a functional shack at home. As you might know, that's a project that's still in hand and thanks to some magnificent assistance from various places, I'm still making progress. That said, your perspective might be dulled by the notion that this pretty much concludes the on-air activity possibilities that exist. Within my own license class, until recently, I was permitted to use voice modes like SSB, AM and FM and I was permitted to use hand-keyed Morse. I have access to 10 Watts and am currently allowed to use six different amateur bands, namely 80m, 40m, 15m, 10m, 2m and 70cm. So together with the four modes, I'd be able to make 24 different contacts to 100 different countries, that's 2400 different combinations. Of course there are more than 100 countries, that is, DXCC entities. The 2018 list has 340 of them, so that's over 8-thousand different options for getting on air and making noise. Last year all that changed. The local regulator in Australia, the ACMA decreed that all amateurs in Australia were permitted to use all modes. It's taken a little while for that to sink in. Specifically what it means for me. A quick search reveals that there are at least 60 different digital modes, think RTTY, Olivia, PSK31, etc. In addition to those, there's a plethora of other modes like IRLP, AllStar Link, EchoLink, CODEC2 and Brandmeister. So conservatively I'm going to estimate that I now have got access to over a hundred different modes, across six bands with 340 countries, that's over 200-thousand different options for making a contact. Of course it's unlikely that I'll make a contact between say Belize V3A and Perth VK6 on 2m using Olivia, but even if we limit our calculation to HF, we still have at least 136-thousand opportunities for adding something interesting to your logbook. I've been hunting for a canonical list of all the various amateur modes and the tools needed to make and receive them. No doubt that will take me some time. I'll be documenting it on the projects page on vk6flab.com if you want to follow along. Speaking of which, you'll also find past episodes of this podcast there. I suppose I should start by converting my current efforts into some pretty pictures that show what I've been up to so far, but that's a mapping exercise that I'll have to add to my to-do list, since I'm guessing it involves learning how to use some fun mapping tools. If 136-thousand opportunities isn't enough, you can also add grid-squares, large and small, different prefectures in Japan, provinces in the Netherlands, CQ zones across the world or ITU areas, prefixes and operating modes. Clearly there's plenty to do and see. I wonder if there's an award for all modes all bands all countries and I wonder what happens if someone invents a new mode? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio If you've ever had the pleasure or misfortune to hear an on-air net, you might have considered, however briefly, how that net came to be, how it's run and what's involved behind the scenes to make it happen. I host a weekly net called "F-troop". It's been running every week since the 12th of June in 2011. Since then I've made over 5000 contacts with stations scattered all over the globe. A typical net has about ten people, but depending on the weather, what's on TV or if people had a hard Friday night that number fluctuates. The biggest was about 40, the smallest just two. At this point I could tell you that the infrastructure to make this happen, the preparation, management processes, network and marketing are what take up the bulk of my week. I mean, there might be a weekly stand-up between stakeholders on a Wednesday, a plan for the content, what to discuss, you know, the typical. If I told you that, I'd be lying. The reality is that F-troop is an organic animal. I generally get to my radio a couple of minutes before we start, midnight UTC, switch on, kerplunk the local repeater and wait for the clock to tick over. I then launch into my opening spiel, something along the lines of: "Hi folks, it's me, it's F-troop, who's awake?" After taking a few calls and logging them, I'll circulate through, call for more people, rinse and repeat. There are two invisible things happening, one required, the other I do because I'm a computer geek. The required activity is logging. I chose to log in an online spreadsheet. It's helpful because it makes for a single place where all contacts are stored and it allows for others to host the net if I happen to fall off the air, either by being somewhere else, like a holiday every decade or so, or because my radio isn't being cooperative. The other thing that logging gives you is a memory. I generally recall a person's name from their callsign, but if you listen closely you'll notice that every now and again I'll extend my babble so I can search for a callsign and appear not to be suffering from memory loss. The other thing that happens is that I update the website. I'll be merrily adding articles from emails or discussion as it's happening. If someone mentions a product or a website, a callsign or a project, I'll often be searching for it in real time and adding it as a post to the F-troop website. That way people who want to refer back at a later time, that includes me, can search and find the thing that someone showed us. As simple or as complex as that sounds, depending on your level of experience, it's really not rocket science. You can do this with pen and paper. I know, I've done it, standing in a car-park with a notepad, whilst dodging rain showers and preparing for a field-day. It's fun to test your skill and to get out of your comfort zone every now and again. I should interrupt this story for a word from our sponsors. Don't have a kitten, we're not talking about advertising, we're talking about repeater and network operators who graciously give of their time and resources to link the main F-troop repeater to others around the world. The network of AllStar, Echolink, IRLP and IRN radios that carry F-troop is astonishing to me. We have regular participants all over Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. There have been contacts with stations in Asia and Europe. For that to happen I don't do a single thing. Well, technically I let repeater operators know I exist and when it breaks, but that's pretty much the sum total of my efforts. Why am I telling you this? Last week it broke. My radio was acting up and someone commented on that. I handed over the reigns and let them at it. They were very unsure. I let them know that F-troop is for beginners. It's expected that people are going to make a mistake, I know I do, plenty of times. It occurred to me afterwards that hosting a net can be scary. If you have no idea what's involved, how to make it happen, what to do, then hosting must be immensely daunting. I hope that sharing how I do this will give you the confidence to host your own net in your own community. Perhaps you can tell me more about it, or come and visit F-troop. Saturday morning at midnight UTC. If you want I'll even help you host it. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Jeff Lehman N8ACL joins us to talk Voice over IP / Radio over IP options beyond D-Star/DMR/Yaesu System Fusion, etc.  We explore technologies like IRLP, Echolink, and AllStar.   PERMALINK - https://www.HamRadioWorkbench.com/podcast/Voice-Over-IP-for-Ham-Radio Our Website - http://www.hamradioworkbench.com/ Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/hamworkbench Contact us for feedback and ideas - http://hamradioworkbench.com/contact Connect with us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/hamradioworkbench/ BrandMeister Talkgroup 31075 - https://hose.brandmeister.network/group/31075/ Save $100 on the Digilent Analog Discovery 2 Package by using code “HamRadioWorkbench2019” in your cart prior to checkout - https://store.digilentinc.com/ham-radio-workbench-bundle/ React International Public Service through Communications - https://reactintl.org/ GMRS - https://www.fcc.gov/general-mobile-radio-service-gmrs Linux Logical Volume Manager Intro - https://opensource.com/business/16/9/linux-users-guide-lvm FLIRC Raspberry Pi 4 Case - https://flirc.tv/more/raspberry-pi-4-case USB Booting of Raspberry Pi 4 (until the bootloader supports this) - https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-usb-boot-config-guide-for-ssd-flash-drives/ Cactus Intertie Network - http://www.cactus-intertie.org/ Voice over Internet Protocol - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_IP Radio over Internet Protocol - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_over_IP Internet Radio Linking Project - http://www.irlp.net/ Echolink - http://www.echolink.org/ AllStar Link - https://web-tpa.allstarlink.org/ Asterisk IP Telephony Software - https://www.asterisk.org/ HamVOIP - https://hamvoip.org/ AllStar Universal Radio Interface - http://dmkeng.com/index.htm Turn-key node hardware - http://www.micro-node.com/ USB AllStar Interface - http://usham.net/ Examples of Network Radio Hardware - https://network-radios.com/ HamShack Hotline - https://hamshackhotline.com/

While exposed to amateur radio at an early age, it was not until Mark Rosenberg, 4X1KS, got his first license and upgraded quickly within a few short months, in Memphis, Tennessee.  In Memphis, Robert Barbee, W4AMI, became Mark’s ham radio mentor driving Mark to satellite excellence. Now in Israel, Mark is active in just about every on-air activity, as well as being the consummate fixer and home-brewer.  4X1KS is my QSO today.

Foundations of Amateur Radio The topic of how radio evolves and embraces available technology is one that describes the hobby itself. From spark-gap through AM, SSB and FM our community picked up or invented solutions to make communication possible. When the internet came along it too became a tool ripe for picking and in 1997 a connection between a radio and the internet was made with the Internet Radio Linking Project or IRLP when Dave VE7LTD, a student at the University of British Columbia, joined the UBC Amateur Radio Society. Using a radio, some hardware and a computer, you could send audio between radios across the internet. Since then this field has exploded with D-STAR, Echolink, DMR, AllStar, Wires, CODEC2, System Fusion and Brandmeister. At a glance they're all the same thing, radio + internet = joy. Looking closer there are two distinct kinds of internet radio contraptions, those where the radio is digital and those where it's not. IRLP is an example of an analogue radio connecting to hardware that does the encoding into digital and transmission across the internet. At the other end the reverse process, decoding, happens and another analogue radio is used to hear the result. This encoding and decoding is done by a piece of software called a CODEC. If we continue for a moment down the analogue path, Echolink, AllStar and Wires do similar things. In 2002 Echolink made its way onto the scene, similar to IRLP, but it didn't need any specialised hardware, any computer running the Echolink software could be used as both a client and a server, that is, you could use it to listen to Echolink, or you could use it to connect a radio to another Echolink computer. AllStar, which started life in 2008 went a step further by making the linking completely separate. It uses the metaphor of a telephone exchange to connect nodes together, which is not surprising if you know that it's built on top of the open source telephone switching software Asterisk. In 2012 or so, Yaesu introduced Wires which is much like Echolink and AllStar. There are servers with rooms, not unlike chat rooms, where you connect a node to and in turn your radio. Blurring the lines between these technologies happened when you could build a computer that spoke both IRLP and Echolink at the same time. Now you can also add AllStar to that mix. Essentially these systems do similar things. They manage switching differently, handle DTMF differently, use a different audio CODEC and handle authentication in a variety of ways, but essentially they're ways of connecting normal hand-held radios, generally FM, to each other via the internet using intermediary computers called nodes. Before you start sending angry letters, I know, there's more to it, but I've got more to tell. While Dave was busy in Canada inventing IRLP back in the late 1990's, in Japan the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications funded research, administered by the Japan Amateur Radio League into the digitisation of amateur radio. In 2001 that research resulted in what we know today as D-STAR. Two years later, ICOM started developing D-STAR hardware which resulted in actual physical radios less than a year later. Today you can get D-STAR hardware from ICOM, Kenwood and FlexRadio Systems. Unlike the other technologies where the audio was converted at a central place, in D-STAR the audio is encoded in the radio and a digital signal is sent across the airwaves. That in turn means that the software that does the encoding, the CODEC, needs to be inside the radio. Since the information is digital right from the point of transmit, you can send other information, like GPS locations and messages along with the audio. In 2005 DMR started life as a group of companies, now up to around 40, agreeing on some standards for digital audio in much the same way as D-STAR. Mostly in use by commercial users, DMR has the ability to have two users simultaneously on-air using alternate channels by having separate time slots for each channel, alternating between the two of them. They agreed to use the same CODEC to ensure compatibility. Formal interoperability testing has been happening since 2010, but because DMR allows manufacturers to build in extra features many brands cannot actually work together on the same network. For many years D-STAR and DMR-MARC, the DMR Motorola Amateur Radio Club World Wide Network, were the main digital radio systems around in amateur radio. That changed in 2013 when Yaesu introduced System Fusion. It too made digital audio at the radio, but it added a wrinkle by making it possible to have both analogue and digital audio on the same repeater. Depending on how the repeater is configured, analogue and digital radios can coexist and communicate with each other. The Wires system that Yaesu rolled out was upgraded in 2016, renamed to Wires X and now also incorporates digital information to allow the linking of their System Fusion repeaters. In 2014 at the Ham Radio Exhibition in Friedrichshafen in Germany, Artem R3ABM planned to make an alternative master server for DMR+ and DMR-MARC and the result was a German wordplay which we know today as Brandmeister. It acts as a network for digital radios in much the same way as DMR, but it's run as an open alternative to the commercially available options made by Motorola and Hytera. The story isn't complete without mentioning one other development, CODEC2. It started in 2008 when Bruce Perens K6BP contacted Jean-Marc Valin, famous for the SPEEX audio compressor and David Rowe VK5DGR about the proprietary and patented nature of low data use voice encoders such as those in use in D-STAR, DMR and System Fusion. David had already been working in this area a decade earlier and started writing code. In 2012 during Linux Conference Australia, Jean-Marc and David spent some time together hacking and managed to make a 25% improvement and CODEC2 was well under way. Today CODEC2 forms the basis of several projects including FreeDV in software, the SM1000 FreeDV adaptor in hardware and the roadmap for the future of open and free digital voice is bright. I should mention that this information is specifically brief to give you an overview of the landscape and hopefully I've not made too many glaring errors, but feel free to drop me a line if you do find a problem. Digital radio and the internet, it's not just a single mode, a whole cloud of modes, and I haven't even started with WSPR, FT8 or JT65. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Last week during F-troop something very interesting happened. If you're not familiar with F-troop, it's a weekly net for new and returning amateurs and every Saturday we welcome callers to the one hour net to discuss anything and everything amateur radio. It's been going for about seven or so years, about as long as I have been making this weekly contribution to the hobby. Normally there's a host, often it's me, but not always, handing the microphone to the next person who then in turn hands the microphone back and the host passes it on to the next caller. This is helpful for new amateurs who then only need to remember two callsigns, their own and that of the host. It's a safe place where people can ask questions and hopefully find an answer, make a mistake, say the wrong callsign, have their roger-beep turned on, be off frequency, all the typical things you do when you're learning or when you've dusted off an old radio after having been away from the hobby for a while. Last week we had a surprise visitor, a special event station, VI4GAMES, operated by Reg VK2MNM who in the midst of the Commonwealth Games was having little success on HF and decided to join in on our net. After saying hello and calling in other stations I started handing the microphone to each caller, encouraging them to make contact with VI4GAMES so they could each claim a contact, end up in the log and get a QSO card for their trouble. Sitting on the side was hard, but at the same time it was extremely rewarding. I witnessed stations calling a special event station for the first time in their life, dealing with strange callsigns, interruptions, distortions and delays, misheard phonetics, incorrect procedures, you name it, I heard it all. There were some who just made the contact and moved on, handing the microphone back to the host and others who started a whole discussion about their life, their station and their joy in making the contact. There were stations just saying their callsign without phonetics, or saying it once, or fast, stomping on the other station, all the things that happen in real life when you're trying to make a contact using HF and SSB. Just to re-iterate, this was on 2m FM, connected via IRLP, Echolink and Allstar to repeaters across the globe, with callers in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. It was eye-opening for me. In the past I've attempted to make contest examples, to make DX contact simulations and tried to get people to change frequency and check back in. As serendipity would have it, this was by far the most learning I've ever seen in the 7 years of this net and I'd encourage anyone to try this at home. Some of the direct take-away tips from this are that using phonetics on 2m FM is not stupid and sometimes it's even required. Repeating your callsign to a new station is not a waste of airtime, since you have no insight whatsoever as to the state of their receiver. You don't know if they have a poor antenna, or if they're connected via the internet, if the link is not optimal or the volume not set correctly. Waiting until the carrier drops on the repeater is a must for many repeaters and keying and talking at the same time is a recipe for being misunderstood. Key your microphone, wait a heartbeat and then start talking. Leaving gaps between overs allows other players onto the field and you should see that as an opportunity, not a burden. I'm sure there were other things that were learned on that random Saturday and who knew that you could learn that much from 2m FM, special event stations and some patience. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio What is amateur radio? What's not part of the hobby and what is? The more you dig into this, the deeper the rabbit hole goes. I'll start with an analogy to set the scene. In aviation, Sir George Cayley was the first person to investigate heavier-than-air flying vehicles. He invented the aeroplane in 1799. The first full-sized glider, built in 1849 carried the first person in history to fly, the ten-year-old son of one of his servants. Since then the Wright brothers made their flight at Kitty Hawk. We saw the invention of commercial aviation, the turbo prop, the jet engine, the space-shuttle, helicopters, drones, rockets, hot-air balloons, the Hindenburg, the Goodyear blimps, hang-gliders, gyro-copters and many, many other contraptions. Each of those are considered aviation and the person controlling the device is considered a pilot. In amateur radio we talk on the radio. We also create repeaters and talk on them. We link them together using what ever technology is available. We make it possible to connect to such networks using software such as Echolink, AllStar Link, IRLP and other internet based systems. We create digital networks with DMR, use WSPR to exchange information, make contacts using CODEC2, have contests using CW and Morse code. We build software defined radios where we use computers to decode and encode radio signals, test back scatter using all manner of signal processing, use packet radio, RTTY, Hellschreiber and bounce signals off the moon and nearby meteors or an overflying aircraft. We make auto-tuners with a Raspberry-Pi or an SWR meter with an Ardiuno. We build valve based amplifiers and program mp3 voice-keyers, GPS lock radios, map propagation using the internet and have a rag chew on the local 2m repeater. We investigate 13cm propagation, do experiments with amateur television and we set up radio stations on top of mountains, in light houses and on remote islands. All of this is amateur radio, and frankly I've only just scratched the surface. There are heated discussions about if a linked repeater using the internet to create the link is real amateur radio or not, whether using your mobile phone as a node on the Echolink network is real amateur radio or not, if using a computer to create contacts on a digital mode such as JT65 is real radio or not. Each of these questions highlights a misconception about our hobby. There are no boundaries in amateur radio. We're a bunch of inventors, mavericks, people who attempt the unthinkable, try the impossible and make progress. There are people who are passengers on planes, and there are people who fly them. There are people using technology and there are people who invent it. We have a unique perspective as a community. We have the ability to imagine something that doesn't yet exist. Why would you spend any energy on whether that thing is real amateur radio or not? Amateur radio is a myriad of things, some of them related to antennas and radio spectrum, some not. This hobby is what you make of it, so go forth and invent something, try something, get on air and make some noise! I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Steve Herman, W7VOA’s, love of amateur radio and media led him into a career as a news correspondent for the Associated Press, freelance overseas journalist,  and ultimately with the Voice of America (VOA) as its White House correspondent, traveling and reporting on the President of the United States. Even with his 24 X 7 busy schedule, W7VOA has time for amateur radio and this QSO Today with Eric, 4Z1UG.

Robert Macedo, KD1CY and Lloyd Colston, KC5FM talk about the Voice over IP Hurricane Net tonight. We will talk about how you can listen and participate in the net over EchoLink and IRLP, and take questions and comments from callers LIVE at 812-NET-HAM-1 and Skype at hamtalklive. We also take questions and comments via Twitter @HamTalkLive during and leading up to the live show.

Foundations of Amateur Radio Over the past six years or so I've single mindedly been producing a weekly segment about Amateur Radio. Over time this has evolved into a podcast which gets about half a million hits a year. Naturally I receive emails and I do my best to respond in a timely fashion. One of the other things I do is announce a new edition of the podcast on several different sites where listeners have the opportunity to share their views about what ever is on their mind. Sometimes their response is even about the podcast itself, though I confess that some comments appear to indicate that listening isn't part of a requirement to actually form an opinion about what it is that I have said that week. All that aside, I find it immensely fascinating that the responses I receive vary so much in perspective. It's not hard to understand and observe that our community comes from people along all walks of life. From nine-year olds to ninety-year olds and everything in between. I tend not to comment directly on such feedback, since everyone has their own opinion, but I came across one post recently that made me sad about the spirit of some Amateurs. In a seemingly bygone era there was a sense that Amateurs would help new people join the community and help them find their way into this vast range of discovery. A place where no question was wrong, where shared experiences are cherished and where the lack of knowledge was an opportunity for learning. It seems that the moniker that we carry, that of HAM, supposedly because when compared to Professional Telegraphers, we were considered HAM-fisted, went on to form the basis of a proud tradition of experimentation and renewal. Across the globe we see a refresh of the license conditions on a regular basis. We saw that here in Australia with the introduction of the so-called Z-call and K-call, looked down upon by Real Amateurs who had a much more stringent licensing regime. We discontinued Morse Code as a requirement for an Amateur License as part of a global treaty agreement in 2003. In Australia this meant that from the 1st of January 2004, Morse Code was no longer required if you wanted to obtain an Amateur License. As you know, that didn't signal the end of Morse, just that it wasn't legally required any more. I'm one of many Amateurs learning Morse because I want to, not because I have to. I'd also point out that it was discontinued by global agreement, not two random guys in Canberra. Back to my point about the spirit of this hobby. The point that was being made is that the Foundation Class license isn't a real license and that it is just being handed to anyone who asks, not like their requirements for Morse Code and a written exam, rather than a multiple-choice test. Essentially conveying that my undignified license and that of my fellow Foundation Licensees isn't to be confused with the noble one that a Real Amateur holds. This kind of response saddens me and frankly I hear it too often. It's as-if we as a community still have not learned that the world moves on. Technology, in many ways the basis of Amateur Radio, evolves. For example, in the current requirements for an Amateur License there is a long-winded discussion about the impacts of spurious transmissions on Analogue Television. In Australia, the last Analogue TV broadcast happened on the 4th of December 2013, that's years ago, but it's still required reading on the Amateur License Syllabus. Similarly we learn about Valves, but attempting to actually obtain such a device is nigh-on impossible. Should we still be learning about those aspects of Electronics, or should we move on? Amateurs are an inventive lot, we make up new modes, link up new technologies, experiment with all manner of stuff and sometimes we end up with something new, like IRLP, AllStar, SDR, Digital Modes and the like. All because someone got curious, couldn't help themselves and started to fiddle. As things fall off the radar at one end, Analogue TV, Morse Code, Valves, the other end picks up things, JT65, Digital TV, Lithium Polymer Batteries and whatever else comes around the corner. So, I'm sad that there are people who feel that my license isn't a real one. As many of my peers, I have a piece of paper from my regulator that begs to differ and a community of enthusiastic eager people who are attempting to find their home among our hobby as it evolves into the future. Last week I talked about the death of our hobby and that it was vastly mis-represented. As I said, year-on-year, more and more Amateurs join, but overall the numbers decline. I think that opinions expressed about the lack of real licensing, decrying the death of Morse etc. is a symptom of why it is that we have a retention problem in our hobby. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but that doesn't mean I have to agree. This is my hobby too and disdain is my fuel! I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Ingenuity is the name of the game in Amateur Radio, building, inventing, solving and helping are all part and parcel of this hobby. We like to lay claim to being the source of all that is good in the world, all that was invented came from Amateur Radio first, right? Seriously though, sometimes we pick up a technology along the way from other places. If you've ever picked up your microphone and pushed one or more buttons on it whilst the push to talk button was down, you've likely used this technology that's set out in an ITU recommendation called Q.23. It has the quaint title of: "Technical Features of Push-Button Telephone Sets". It's a brief document as such, all of four pages, two title pages and one mostly dealing with why this Push-Button idea is a great one and how it relates to international phone calls etc. The meat is in the final page, showing eight frequencies and how you combine them to generate voice frequency signals. If you've been paying attention, you might recognise this as DTMF or Dual Tone Multiple Frequency signalling. It's pretty nifty. Send two discrete frequencies at the same time across some link and decode it at the other end. It's nifty because these frequencies might happen during a normal conversation, but not at the same time for a particular duration. As Amateurs we use this to communicate with our repeaters, to send signals to it, to activate links, to power on and off stuff and all manner of other interesting things. So, how does it actually work? Well, you have two sets of four non-overlapping frequencies which you can combine into 16 different combinations, enough for 10 digits, four letters and two symbols. To make this work, the frequencies must be pretty stable, the ITU recommends less than 1.8% off the nominal frequency and distortion must be 20 dB below the fundamental frequencies. Today producing such a thing is trivial, a chip for a dollar will do the job and another one at the other end to decode it. Four bucks and you're good to go for two-way DTMF at both ends. Bargain. Being the curios type I went looking to find out what a DTMF circuit might look like before we could buy such products. The closest I came was a build-your-own voice mail system in BYTE! magazine of April 1982 using LM567 tone decoders, but a quick look at the box shows that these are also something that we'd call an Integrated Circuit. I'm going out on a limb here, since DTMF has been around since it was first supplied to customers in 1963 and suggest that the original DTMF decoders were not quite as trivial as a dollar chip. They likely contained many discrete components including eight separate filters and ways to combine them so signals could be added to each other to detect the existence or absence of a specific tone, but I've yet to actually lay eyes on anything more fundamental than the tone decoders. That being said, you can connect your all-in-one dollar chip, the CM-8870, to something like an Arduino and do your own decoding of DTMF signals. Seems that the 1982 BYTE! magazine article was just the beginning of the revitalisation of DTMF, robot controllers, home automation, in-vehicle signalling and more, not to mention, using it to activate IRLP and other wonderful radio services. Before you start sending me email about this non-Amateur invention, I'll point out that Amateurs also didn't invent copper wire, that was two Scots, or was it Dutch, I forget, fighting over a coin. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Technology is a moving feast. New ideas spring new inventions which in turn change our lives. Amateur Radio is at the forefront of such inventions. Radio Amateurs have been until recently the only soldering iron brigade around. We've been building things for over a hundred years and we continue as a community to think of new ideas and ways to make them happen. For example, we take technologies like AllStar Link, EchoLink, Wires and so on all in our stride. We think nothing of having our radios connected to each other using techniques other than radio spectrum. In November 1997, when iPhone still meant Internet Phone, an inquisitive 22 year old amateur called Dave Cameron VE7LTD came up with a way to link a radio to the Internet and the first three Internet Radio Linking Project stations were connected to each other and the now global network of IRLP nodes was born. Dave built a DTMF decoder which allowed remote control of a computer and the radio that was attached to it, and made it possible to send the audio from the radio to the sound-card of the computer, which in turn sent that audio in digital format across the Internet to a similarly equipped system where the audio was turned back into a radio transmission. This bridging idea took off and many different systems were developed, many of which are in active use today. The various systems all use some form of Voice over IP to transmit audio across the Internet, but there are many variations on how the audio gets to the system in the first place. In IRLP - as I mentioned - the audio can only come in via an Amateur Radio. EchoLink uses a similar system, but in addition to Amateur Radio as a source, you can register your callsign and use several different applications on your computer or mobile phone to link into the network. AllStar takes this idea further, instead of making a point-to-point connection, the AllStar system is based around an open source telephone exchange called Asterisk and it's used to link together the various systems. Other variations also exist. The idea of using Voice over IP techniques spawned a whole set of radio technologies that use similar methodologies to compress voice and then instead of transmitting it across the Internet, use radio waves to send them from one radio to the next. Technologies such as D-Star, System Fusion, MotoBro and DMR built on this idea. Of course these technologies also use the Internet to share information and connect users across the globe. There is some contention around these systems. Many Amateurs consider them to be "Not Real Radio", but then I suspect if you look at the birth of SSB, you'll find die-hard CW operators with a similar complaint. The same is true for low power propagation modes like WSPR which aren't real radio because you cannot have a QSO. Other issues in the technical sphere also exist. The IRLP software is closed source. You can only buy IRLP hardware from one place and it doesn't allow you to connect in any other way than via a radio. EchoLink now charges for conferences being registered in the system. In the past I've already spoken about Fusion, D-Star and MotoBro and their restrictions around interoperability, licensing and closed source nature. From a practical perspective, there are also concerns about the use of these systems in the case of massive failures during local disasters and the like. If the Internet is down, many of these systems will simply become local radio networks. Coverage could perhaps be extended by creating a local mesh network, but HF radio still very much has its place in our world. For me this is all about learning and innovation. Ultimately which system you use is up to you. I live in a software world where Open Source rules for good reason and my vote will always go to Open Source. To be clear, I'm not adverse to making money, we all have to pay the rent, but making innovation and invention secret is not the way to go in our hyper-connected world. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm going to talk about repeaters. These invisible services that sit on a particular frequency and do magic things to your signal. First of all, the best way to think of a repeater is to think of it as two radios. One is the receiver, the other the transmitter. The way it works is that the receiver hears your signal and sends that audio to the transmitter which sends it out over the air. For this to work, there need to be two frequencies in use, the one that you're transmitting on and the one that the repeater is transmitting on. From this simple idea, many different things flow. There is no rule that states that the receiver and the transmitter need to be in the same place, let alone on the same band; if they're on different bands, it's called a cross-band repeater. If the receiver and the transmitter are on the same band, the system needs to deal with the fact that a strong signal is being transmitted by the repeater right next to where the receiver is. If you're not careful, the transmitter will overwhelm or de-sense the receiver, making it harder to get your signal into the repeater. Several techniques are used, a contraption called a cavity filter is set-up to specifically let either the receive frequency through, or to block all frequencies except the transmit frequency. Some combine both of these techniques to make the repeater hear weak stations better. If the receiver and transmitter are on the same band, the difference between the two frequencies in use is called the offset. It varies per band. On 2 meters, the offset is normally 600 kHz, but it varies, on 70cm the offset is 5 MHz, but on 10m, the offset is 100 kHz. So different bands use different configurations and of course each of these is subject to local variation. There may be local interference on the standard offset, so it may be varied. There are some other things going on with repeaters. You can have a repeater that receives and transmits on the same frequency, it's called a parrot repeater and it sits there waiting for you to transmit, stores the incoming audio for a set period and then when you stop transmitting, it sends out the audio on the same frequency. This is useful to see how you sound on-air. Other techniques include adding computers to create IRLP, Echolink and AllStar Link. Essentially the receiver is connected to a computer which sends the audio across the Internet to another computer which in turn sends out the audio to another transmitter. After you stop transmitting, the chain is reversed and the other station can talk to you via a reverse path. There are also specialised repeaters that can listen in one mode, like FM and transmit in another, like AM, or SSB. This allows a 2m user to use HF from their FM hand-held radio. If all that's not enough, there are other things possible with repeaters. You can use a special tone to identify to the receiver that your signal is a valid audio signal. This is used in environments where noisy local signals often trigger the repeater, resulting in ongoing kerplunking of the transmitter. Next time you key up your local repeater, have a think about what's happening when you key-up your radio and say thanks to the owner of the repeater who spent time and effort, not to mention money, to make this invisible friend on the air work for you. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Jack Rowland KE0VH SBE Society of Broadcast Engineers Chapter of The Air on IRLP and Echolink

What use is an F-call? If you've had a license for a while it becomes harder to remember what it was like just after you received it. Fortunately I get to speak with new comers to the hobby on a regular basis, so my memory of my own experience gets refreshed regularly. Getting on air is as simple as getting a radio, right? I've talked about the process of purchasing a radio in the past, and while it's important, I'll skip past that step today and look at what else needs to happen. There is an assumption that your radio works, that you have an antenna and that you've got it all set-up and working. I realise that this in itself is not a trivial process, but all the puzzle pieces need to be there for this Amateur Radio magic to actually happen. Getting on air is simple, press the push to talk and open your mouth, right? If you have a VHF or UHF radio, the likely spot where you'll do that is a local repeater, a place that will over time attract other Amateurs who use it to talk to each other, to get in touch and to keep track of the community. The local repeater is also likely to host the national amateur news and if you're lucky a local version of the news as well. Note that not all repeaters have the news, so you might need to pick a repeater that's not right next door. In some locations there are conversations after the news, in others there are regular nets where you can go on air and talk. I host with several able and dragooned helpers a weekly net called F-troop. It runs from 0:00 UTC for an hour every Saturday morning, specifically for new and returned hams, and if you're in VK6, you can hear it on the local VK6RAP repeater, outside of there, you can connect to IRLP node 9558 or Echolink conference *VK3JED*. And yes, as a foundation licensee, you are allowed to use IRLP and Echolink. If you have a HF radio, you can also find news broadcasts, regular nets and discussions and all manner of activity. A regular net which will put you in contact with Amateurs from around Australia and New Zealand and beyond is the 7130 DX net. It's held on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 0930 UTC for a couple of hours. During that net you'll be able to check in and make contacts. Bring pen and paper and keep track of all the call-signs you hear, add in the operator name as you hear it, write down the signal report when you hear the station and you'll have lots of fun. Those two nets, F-troop and the 7130 DX net are the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of nets around. You'll find some of them listed online at vk6.net. So, get on air, get listening and participate! I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? The Amateur Foundation License in Australia has a range of obligations and restrictions that differentiate it from the other Amateur Licenses. The most visible of those is a limit on power of 10 Watts, the bands that are allowed, 80m, 40m, 15m, 10m, 2m and 70cm. Another restriction is related to the use of a computer and your radio. The interpretation is often made along the lines of: "You cannot use a computer connected to your radio." ... and that's simply not the case. The current LCD, as of January 2014, says: "The licensee [..] must not operate an amateur station using automatic mode or computer controlled mode." And it says: "The licensee [..] must not operate an amateur station that is directly connected to a public telecommunications network. It adds in italics a note: "An amateur foundation station may be indirectly connected to a public communications network through a gateway operated by another licensee." This means that you can use your radio to connect to Echolink and IRLP, both Internet based radio technologies. What you cannot do is run an Echolink node on your computer, connect the computer to the radio and have incoming connections activated by somebody over the Internet. You cannot do this, not because it's a public telecommunications network, more on that in a moment, but because the computer is controlling the radio without your input, which you're not permitted to do. Now, the public telecommunications network part. I know that some of you are already spluttering, but, but, but. The amateur station isn't directly connected to a public telecommunications network. It's connected to a computer, which in turn is connected to a network, which in turn is connected to the Internet. This restriction isn't about the Internet, it's about connecting an Amateur Radio to the telephone network, about having someone ring a phone number and the audio that comes in, be sent out over the air on your radio. It's about ensuring that only appropriately licensed persons access the station to transmit. It's an example of how regulation and invention are often not in sync. Another point. APRS, Automatic Packet Reporting System, is a way to use Amateur Radio to transfer packets of information to people who want it. For example, it can be used to report a GPS location, the state of a battery at a repeater site, the read switch on a security door, what ever you can dream up. As a Foundation Licensee, you cannot use the digital mode to send packets using your radio, but nothing prevents you from using APRS on your phone. This has nothing to do with your Amateur License or with the ACMA. It's a system built and used by Amateurs, but if you're not using your radio, you're good to go. Also, there's nothing stopping you from listening to packet radio. You might even pick up an ArduSat or two and help out school science in the process. Other modes you might look at are PSK31, RTTY, JT65, WSPR. The sky is the limit when you listen. Go forth and have fun. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? Every week between midnight and 1am UTC we host a 'net for new and returning hams. It's called F-troop and can be accessed in VK6 via VK6RAP, 146.7 MHz and via IRLP node 9558 or Echolink conference VK3JED. Conversations are about all things Amateur, upgrading licenses for those inclined, Morse Code, antennas, choosing HF rigs, logging software and any question in between. We recently celebrated 100 nets. The more we talk, the more we realise that Amateur Radio is a vast hobby that includes technologies far and wide. From propagation, dealing with the ionosphere, ground waves, Kepler elements when talking to satellites or the International Space Station, the Internet Radio Linking Project, electronics, audio, antennas, social activities, talking on-air, microphone techniques, physics, chemistry, competitions, software, hardware, you name it, and you'll find a link back to Amateur Radio. The most powerful part of this wide span of interests is that it all relates back to a single purpose. With people conversing and sharing on the subject, you're never short on a subject that might catch your fancy. And if you're in a situation where the topic at hand is done and dusted, the people around you come from such a wide range of society that there is more than enough other things to talk about. If you're wondering what to do, get involved, check into the 'net, or if you don't yet have a license, visit your local club and get one. A Foundation or F-call can be obtained over a weekend and you'll be able to do more than dip your toes into this fine hobby, dive in and get wet all over - you know you want to! In case you missed it, F-troop is one of many places where you can join in, VK6RAP, 146.7MHz, IRLP node 9558 or Echolink Conference VK3JED, Saturday morning, midnight to 1am UTC. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? In June 2011 I started a weekly net for new and returning Hams. It was born from the idea that there had to be a place where people could congregate and learn. At the time the ink on my license was barely dry and my amateur radio on-air time could be measured in minutes, rather than hours. The net is called F-troop and in the past I’ve spoken a little about it here, how you can participate and when it’s on. For the record, it’s on from 08:00 to 09:00 every Saturday morning, Western Standard Time, or midnight UTC. Locally it’s on VK6RAP, 146.7 MHz, or via VK3JED Echolink conference or IRLP node 9558. But that’s not what I want to talk about today. Its more about the impact of the net within Amateur Radio. As a direct result I have people contacting me via email, phone and radio and meet people face to face every week. These interactions stimulate inventions, ideas and experiments and in turn encourage new people to participate. I get regular comment about people listening in on the side and learning; we regularly have people use the net for their very first QSO. It’s become a magnet for interest and variety. I’m telling you this because this was all very unexpected. The side effects of creating a place where people can congregate with similar interests far exceed those of the one hour that F-troop represents. You can participate in F-troop as it stands, or you can do your own thing, start up your own little group of adventurers. Joining a club is one way of interacting, starting a discussion group, or planning a camp-out, or a BBQ, or any such activity, is another way of getting in touch with other Amateurs. When I started F-troop, I knew nothing about Amateur Radio. Today, I know a little more and it’s because I went out to the community and talked to them. There is no rule book that you have to follow, no-one you need to ask for permission to have an idea. If you have an interest, get out and talk to someone. Don’t be afraid to look like a goose - I do it every day. I’m Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? If you've just passed your Amateur Radio exams and you're waiting for your license to arrive, you're where I was two years ago. Surrounded by people who have had their license longer than I've been on the planet, with so many options and not a single idea where to start. Let me start with saying, Welcome to Amateur Radio. There are many of us here and I'm confident that you'll find people around you in the community that share your interests and pursuits. Just like in any other community, you need to find the town square so to speak. That you're listening to this is an indication that you've found at least one part of the Amateur Community. This little corner, a weekly segment about having and using a Foundation Call is part of a weekly news system, in Western Australia, where this originates it forms part of the weekly News West news, nationally it's part of the VK1WIA news. Perhaps you've downloaded this, or you're listening to a local repeater, or any number of other ways that this particular segment can make its way to you. As I said, Welcome. Now you should go and explore and find other parts of the community. You'll find them on-air, on the local repeater, on the Internet, via Echolink, IRLP, via clubs, community events, during car rallies, or times of emergency. Amateurs are everywhere. Look into your local clubs, a Google Search for Amateur Radio will give you much to start finding things. You can look into the Wireless Institute of Australia, the world's oldest Amateur Radio club, the RSGB in the UK, the ARRL in the US, or hundreds of country based clubs and associations around the world. I'm Onno, VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? Over the past few weeks I've been playing with an Amateur Radio technology that links my work-life and my hobby together. For some, that might be a boon, for me, I have been trying to get out of the office - I work from home - to have a life and Amateur Radio is my escape from the world of Information Technology. Little did I realise at the start that the two go hand in hand. You win some, you lose some. Anyway, the technology I've been playing with is called Echolink. It's a way of linking radios across the Internet which allows you to communicate with Hams across the world, without needing HF, or even a radio for that matter. Before I get too far into this, I should point out that there is a common held misconception that Foundation Licence holders are not allowed to use this technology. This is not true. You are not allowed to hook your computer to your radio, but there's no license condition that prevents you using the set-up that another Ham is running. This means that you cannot run an Echolink Sysop node, but you can obtain and legally use Echolink with your Foundation call-sign. I should also point out that there are two Internet linking technologies - well, there are many more, but for the purposes of this discussion, two - that achieve similar things. Echolink is one, IRLP, or Internet Radio Linking Project, is the other. Both allow you to link Hams together. IRLP links radios (using specialised hardware and a copy of Linux), Echolink on the other hand links software, which may or may not be connected to a radio. That's right. You can use Echolink on your computer without a radio. You can also use it on your iPhone and Android powered phone. No projects under way for any other smart phones at this time. And of course, you can use Echolink and IRLP via a radio if you are in range of an IRLP node or an Echolink Sysop none, using DTMF tones to control them. Back to Echolink. You can download it for nix at echolink.org and once you've scanned in your Amateur License and emailed it to Echolink to verify that you're in fact a licensed Ham, you're good to go. You'll find that there are places where you can link to many Amateurs at once, or you can have a one-on-one QSO with another Ham. I should also mention that there are also special nodes that have both Echolink and IRLP installed, which allows you to link the two. You'll find that there are many 'nets around that use this technology. A home grown one is the Friday Night Technical Net, which is run by Reg, VK6BQQ, on Friday Night - Ontario Time, and Saturday Morning in VK. You can find it at the VAN-IRLP Echolink node, which is run from Vancouver. With the help of a few local Amateurs, I'm working on making the F-troop 'net, which is a weekly hour of chat that I host for New and Returning Hams available via Echolink too, which will allow people across the country to sign in and participate. So, if you don't have a radio yet, or if your radio is no where near where you are, you can use Echolink to still stay in touch. I'm Onno VK6FLAB