Tag: ham radio
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Winlink and VARA on Linux: Surprisingly Straightforward
For years, I’ve been hearing about Winlink, an amateur radio system for sending email over shortwave frequencies. It’s become a standard tool for ham radio emergency communications, as it enables a properly equipped station to connect an emergency shelter, command post, or staging area to email even if the internet is completely wiped out in…
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A Saturday Morning Fox Hunt
One Friday night in early December, Larry Krainson, W1AST, forwarded an email to the WMAFoxHunters email reflector, announcing that a hidden amateur radio transmitter, or “fox box,” was now active somewhere in the area, waiting for people to find it. The game was afoot. Having put together a tape-measure beam antenna and offset attenuator for…
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Releasing a New Game: Less is Morse
A couple of days ago, I released a project I’ve been tinkering with for awhile: a game for teaching and practicing Morse code reception. You can check it out here. It’s certainly different from the previous games I’ve worked on, but it stems from one of my other major hobbies. If you’ve ever wanted to…
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Supporting Open Source Software by Writing Documentation
Almost all of the software I use these days is Open Source; Free code runs this blog, most of the applications I use every day at work, and many of my hobby projects. While it’s great to get all of these power tools at no cost, I do try to support the ones I use…