Amateur Radio Resources
Just some Ham radio related links I ran across while searching for gadgets...
Amateur Radio radio operators, aka Hams, may have been more active in the days prior to Cell phones and the Internet (when long distance phone calls were costly), things have changed since I first leaned electronics from the Amateur Radio Handbook.
The American Radio Relay League is a well organized group, with licensed volunteers providing communication services in the event of emergencies.
The article Millennials Are Killing Ham Radio, actually reviews some of the new activities that are contributing to Licensing to be on the rise. In addition to the traditional Ham communication methods other activities now include teletype, digital, satellite, packet, APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System), HamNet, Linked repeaters, etc.
There are some still interesting parts of the 2011 article: Ham radio in the 21s century, including bouncing signals off the moon.
One interesting convergence of technology is modified WiFi hardware and Amateur Radio transmitters, a licenced Ham can apparently amplify a special WiFi signal to as much as 1500 watts, in a High-speed multimedia radio. (commercial WiFi products are limited to 1 Watt, with effective antenna multiplied power limited to 4 Watts) Here's a not very active site on the subject: HSMM-Mesh
OpenWrt is a custom operating system that can be installed in some Linux based routers is used in these special radios, interestingly that same operating system is used by researchers using the CSI WiFi signal analysis data to detect people in the path of a signal, here's a video demo.
One Ham recreation that gets you out of your radio shack is Transmitter Fox Hunting. Using radio directing finding equipment a bit like used to track collared endangered species.
( Those less technically minded could try the GPS based alternative, Geocaching with a cell phone)
Homing In, The Art and Science of Radio Direction Finding (RDF)
Is a compilation of Articles and Links, there's also a light Wikipedia Introduction "Transmitter hunting"
---- Some Fox Hunting electronics resources. ----
Byonics Compact 2 Meter MicroFox T-Hunt Transmitters, and PicCon
Some small, more general transmitters that might be pressed into service as Fox Transmitters
HamShield Mini $50 Stacks on special Arduino Computer Controller, about 2.5" long
200mW, 144, 220, and 440 Mhs, Voice and packet radio, CTCSS, DTMF, Morse code
Would ave to be hand wired to an Ardio compter's GPIO connectors, Board pinout.
They have a Software Library includes a Fox Hunt example that:
Plays a one minute tone, then IDs at 10-13 minute intervals.
Their original $100 Hamshield, that outputs 500mW is a shield board that fits an Arduino Uno.
DrDuino Board (their paid advertisement on the ARRL site offered a $59 1/2 off sale price )
There's nothing that's radio specific, the simple Red board provides experimental connection points including Rs-232a, switches and analog input pots for a standard (blue) Arduino Uno, it looks a bit old school, an alternative may be the Adafruit Circuit Playground boards, a lower cost device with a number of integrated sensors, the new Express version uses a 32 bit processor and can run Python code.
Ham Amateur Radio ID-O-Matic IV 4 CW ID Repeater Controller Foxhunt Beacon USB $64.95+$5.95 on Ebay from a Colorado seller hamgadgets.com
The article here on using the Talkie library on a $2.50 Arduino computer to play 35 year old Speak n Spell speech, invented by Texas Instruments, may be useful for generating a taunting message for a Fox Transmitter, the 403 word aeronautics vocabulary may be useful, there is also code to speech output the time or voltmeter readings from the Arduino's 10 bit A-D converter.
A couple of super cheap simple kits I ran across on the internet, suitable for a novice-novice:
HAM Radio 1 Watt, 40M CW Shortwave Transceiver 7.023-7.026MHz Kit $4 on Ebay
Assembled S-PIXIE CW QRP Ham Amateur Shortwave Radio Transceiver 7.023Mhz 1.2W $9.99
DIY KITS Forty-9er 3W HAM Radio QRP CW HF Radio TRANSCEIVER 7.023MHz Telegraph Kit $9.96
Ham Radio Essential CW Decoder Morse Code Reader /Morse code Decoder $11.17 + $2.39 shipping with LCD Display. (If you need it, you might keep it a secret)
DC 9V-15V 10K-3GHz 26dB LNA Broadband RF Amplifier Board FM HF VHF/UHF Ham Radio $8.55 Ebay.
Adafruit Industries Feather M0 RadioFruit RFM69HCW 868/915 MHz Packet Radio $24.95
RFM69HCW packet radio transceiver, 100 mW, ’no license’ "American ISM" @ 915MHz
Range of approx. 350 meters.
Computer:
ATSAMD21G18 ARM Cortex M0 processor, 48 MHz, 256K of FLASH, 32K RAM, built in USB
Adafruit is a NY based hobby electronics supplier with lot of high tech and support code libraries. The founder created "wearable" electronics at MIT, and accidentally ended up with a $40 Million business that evolved from selling kit bags of parts.
I just noticed the hamradio.com site (which Google reports has over 8500 pages)
Some microcomputer hardware and software resources for Hams.
Book:
Hamshack Raspberry Pi, How to Use the Raspberry Pi for Amateur Radio Activities – James Baughn K9E0H 15 Sample Pages
https://www.amazon.com/RTL-SDR-Blog-RTL2832U-Software-Defined/dp/B0129EBDS2
Book:
Hamshack Raspberry Pi: Learn How To Use Raspberry Pi For Amateur Radio Activities And 3 DIY Projects, 106 pages.
For the Super Advanced: RadioBerry, Build your own Ham Radio Hat for a Raspberry Pi.
Appears to have no kits, your on your own...
PCB design files available, looks like hot air gun surface mount soldering might work.
Radioberry-2.x appears to be a fresher design
Hamlib C code library for serial interface Ham Radios, lists 215 supported rigs.
Software Defined Radios ?
Another gadget new to me are SDRs, someone recently demonstrated a spectrum analyzer dongle, that relies on your PC to do a lot of the processing, it could also demodulate the signal you have tuned in. RTL-SDR maker's site with extensive reference material.
Using a similar approach you can plug a radio receiver into your PC that covers 500 kHz to 1.7 GHz and "has up to 3.2 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth (2.4 MHz stable). (HF reception below 24 MHz in direct sampling mode)" Sensitivity has been reported to be -97.5 dBm to -110 dBm. You can get an RTL-SDR super fast from an Amazon warehouse for $21.95
This video reviewer observes that it is not great with AM modulation without alterations.
You can find a series of 28+ video posts by the Crazy Danish Hacker on Software Defined Radios on youtube.
There are a number of other applications of Software Defined Radios, beyond amateur radio.
One application is getting aircraft flight information that is transmitted by many planes.
The FlightAware rado design has an added pre-amplifier, improving sensitivity, giving 20-100% range improvement for Mode S message vs traditional RTL SDR $18.75
from Amazon. IT works with the PiAware application on the Raspberrry Pi computer. The $19.75 pro version adds a
1090 MHz bandpass filterwhich helps reject interference sources in cluttered urban areas.
ADS-B-equipped aircraft broadcast ("squitter") their position, velocity, flight number and other interesting information, position reports are typically generated once per second and flight identification every five seconds.
Building a PiAware device.
If you want to just use flightAware's equipment to get info on John Wayne Airport traffic you can go here.
Airspy Mini 24 MHz to 1800 MHz, 12-bit ADC and up to 6 MHz of bandwidth, is a highly rated, better resolution SDR costing $99+$15. A review.
List of 11 software packages that work with Airspy.
The SDRplay RSP1A is a $119.95 SDR with 14 bit resolution, superior to the 8 bit resolution the budget radios use, it can also be used to collect flight information.
It's available from ham radio.com which has a store in Anaheim, CA, at 933 N Euclid St. (may the same the store I visited in my youth.)
A couple other SDR providers:
https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/software-defined-radio
https://www.nooelec.com a big supplier using 0.5PPM, ultra-low phase-noise TCXO US/CAN
A Curiosity:
rpitx: the Raspberry Pi is capable of modulating and transmitting FM, AM, SSB, SSTV and FSQ signals anywhere between 130 kHz to >750 MHz. (works on a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero)
Could be a candidate for a Fox transmitter, (with suitable external filter to knock off the square wave output harmonics)
Can be used with the RTL-SDR receiver (above) to create an experimental Transceiver or Transponder.
rpitx Code DL and Documentation (Github) sparse rpitx Forum
Amateur Radio radio operators, aka Hams, may have been more active in the days prior to Cell phones and the Internet (when long distance phone calls were costly), things have changed since I first leaned electronics from the Amateur Radio Handbook.
The American Radio Relay League is a well organized group, with licensed volunteers providing communication services in the event of emergencies.
 |
| Ham Radio Frequency Bands (Click for details) |
The article Millennials Are Killing Ham Radio, actually reviews some of the new activities that are contributing to Licensing to be on the rise. In addition to the traditional Ham communication methods other activities now include teletype, digital, satellite, packet, APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System), HamNet, Linked repeaters, etc.
There are some still interesting parts of the 2011 article: Ham radio in the 21s century, including bouncing signals off the moon.
-----
One interesting convergence of technology is modified WiFi hardware and Amateur Radio transmitters, a licenced Ham can apparently amplify a special WiFi signal to as much as 1500 watts, in a High-speed multimedia radio. (commercial WiFi products are limited to 1 Watt, with effective antenna multiplied power limited to 4 Watts) Here's a not very active site on the subject: HSMM-Mesh
OpenWrt is a custom operating system that can be installed in some Linux based routers is used in these special radios, interestingly that same operating system is used by researchers using the CSI WiFi signal analysis data to detect people in the path of a signal, here's a video demo.
-----
One Ham recreation that gets you out of your radio shack is Transmitter Fox Hunting. Using radio directing finding equipment a bit like used to track collared endangered species.
( Those less technically minded could try the GPS based alternative, Geocaching with a cell phone)
Homing In, The Art and Science of Radio Direction Finding (RDF)
Is a compilation of Articles and Links, there's also a light Wikipedia Introduction "Transmitter hunting"
---- Some Fox Hunting electronics resources. ----
Byonics Compact 2 Meter MicroFox T-Hunt Transmitters, and PicCon
Some small, more general transmitters that might be pressed into service as Fox Transmitters
HamShield Mini $50 Stacks on special Arduino Computer Controller, about 2.5" long
200mW, 144, 220, and 440 Mhs, Voice and packet radio, CTCSS, DTMF, Morse code
Would ave to be hand wired to an Ardio compter's GPIO connectors, Board pinout.
They have a Software Library includes a Fox Hunt example that:
Plays a one minute tone, then IDs at 10-13 minute intervals.
Their original $100 Hamshield, that outputs 500mW is a shield board that fits an Arduino Uno.
DrDuino Board (their paid advertisement on the ARRL site offered a $59 1/2 off sale price )
There's nothing that's radio specific, the simple Red board provides experimental connection points including Rs-232a, switches and analog input pots for a standard (blue) Arduino Uno, it looks a bit old school, an alternative may be the Adafruit Circuit Playground boards, a lower cost device with a number of integrated sensors, the new Express version uses a 32 bit processor and can run Python code.
Ham Amateur Radio ID-O-Matic IV 4 CW ID Repeater Controller Foxhunt Beacon USB $64.95+$5.95 on Ebay from a Colorado seller hamgadgets.com
The article here on using the Talkie library on a $2.50 Arduino computer to play 35 year old Speak n Spell speech, invented by Texas Instruments, may be useful for generating a taunting message for a Fox Transmitter, the 403 word aeronautics vocabulary may be useful, there is also code to speech output the time or voltmeter readings from the Arduino's 10 bit A-D converter.
A couple of super cheap simple kits I ran across on the internet, suitable for a novice-novice:
Assembled S-PIXIE CW QRP Ham Amateur Shortwave Radio Transceiver 7.023Mhz 1.2W $9.99
DIY KITS Forty-9er 3W HAM Radio QRP CW HF Radio TRANSCEIVER 7.023MHz Telegraph Kit $9.96
Ham Radio Essential CW Decoder Morse Code Reader /Morse code Decoder $11.17 + $2.39 shipping with LCD Display. (If you need it, you might keep it a secret)
DC 9V-15V 10K-3GHz 26dB LNA Broadband RF Amplifier Board FM HF VHF/UHF Ham Radio $8.55 Ebay.
Adafruit Industries Feather M0 RadioFruit RFM69HCW 868/915 MHz Packet Radio $24.95
RFM69HCW packet radio transceiver, 100 mW, ’no license’ "American ISM" @ 915MHz
Range of approx. 350 meters.
Computer:
ATSAMD21G18 ARM Cortex M0 processor, 48 MHz, 256K of FLASH, 32K RAM, built in USB
Adafruit is a NY based hobby electronics supplier with lot of high tech and support code libraries. The founder created "wearable" electronics at MIT, and accidentally ended up with a $40 Million business that evolved from selling kit bags of parts.
I just noticed the hamradio.com site (which Google reports has over 8500 pages)
Some microcomputer hardware and software resources for Hams.
Book:
Hamshack Raspberry Pi, How to Use the Raspberry Pi for Amateur Radio Activities – James Baughn K9E0H 15 Sample Pages
https://www.amazon.com/RTL-SDR-Blog-RTL2832U-Software-Defined/dp/B0129EBDS2
Book:
Hamshack Raspberry Pi: Learn How To Use Raspberry Pi For Amateur Radio Activities And 3 DIY Projects, 106 pages.
For the Super Advanced: RadioBerry, Build your own Ham Radio Hat for a Raspberry Pi.
Appears to have no kits, your on your own...
PCB design files available, looks like hot air gun surface mount soldering might work.
Radioberry-2.x appears to be a fresher design
Hamlib C code library for serial interface Ham Radios, lists 215 supported rigs.
Software Defined Radios ?
Another gadget new to me are SDRs, someone recently demonstrated a spectrum analyzer dongle, that relies on your PC to do a lot of the processing, it could also demodulate the signal you have tuned in. RTL-SDR maker's site with extensive reference material.
Using a similar approach you can plug a radio receiver into your PC that covers 500 kHz to 1.7 GHz and "has up to 3.2 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth (2.4 MHz stable). (HF reception below 24 MHz in direct sampling mode)" Sensitivity has been reported to be -97.5 dBm to -110 dBm. You can get an RTL-SDR super fast from an Amazon warehouse for $21.95
This video reviewer observes that it is not great with AM modulation without alterations.
You can find a series of 28+ video posts by the Crazy Danish Hacker on Software Defined Radios on youtube.
- - - - - - - -
There are a number of other applications of Software Defined Radios, beyond amateur radio.
- Emergency Services unencrypted traffic.
- Listening to aircraft traffic control.
- Track ships via AIS transmissions.
- Sniffing GSM signals.
- Receiving NOAA weather satellite images.
- Decoding Inmarsat STD-C EGC geosynchronous satellites.
- Radio astronomy.
- Monitoring meteor scatter.
- Decoding taxi mobile data terminal signals.
- Listening to the ISS (International Space Station).
- Some have managed to receive space probe data with a small dish.
One application is getting aircraft flight information that is transmitted by many planes.
1090 MHz bandpass filterwhich helps reject interference sources in cluttered urban areas.
ADS-B-equipped aircraft broadcast ("squitter") their position, velocity, flight number and other interesting information, position reports are typically generated once per second and flight identification every five seconds.
Building a PiAware device.
If you want to just use flightAware's equipment to get info on John Wayne Airport traffic you can go here.
Airspy Mini 24 MHz to 1800 MHz, 12-bit ADC and up to 6 MHz of bandwidth, is a highly rated, better resolution SDR costing $99+$15. A review.
List of 11 software packages that work with Airspy.
The SDRplay RSP1A is a $119.95 SDR with 14 bit resolution, superior to the 8 bit resolution the budget radios use, it can also be used to collect flight information.
It's available from ham radio.com which has a store in Anaheim, CA, at 933 N Euclid St. (may the same the store I visited in my youth.)
A couple other SDR providers:
https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/software-defined-radio
https://www.nooelec.com a big supplier using 0.5PPM, ultra-low phase-noise TCXO US/CAN
- - - - - - - -
A Curiosity:
rpitx: the Raspberry Pi is capable of modulating and transmitting FM, AM, SSB, SSTV and FSQ signals anywhere between 130 kHz to >750 MHz. (works on a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero)
Could be a candidate for a Fox transmitter, (with suitable external filter to knock off the square wave output harmonics)
Can be used with the RTL-SDR receiver (above) to create an experimental Transceiver or Transponder.
rpitx Code DL and Documentation (Github) sparse rpitx Forum
Testing Transceiver, qtcsdr program receiving the transmission
with an RTL-SDR via attenuator
A 42 minute lecture on Whispering Raspberries?
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