Store and Forward

Video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/yg2mGqmBBHI

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (a project of the Internet Archive): https://archive.org/details/dlarc

Zero Retries Newsletter: https://www.zeroretries.org

As evidenced by a six month gap in episodes of Store & Forward, the latter half of 2025 was busy for both Kay / DLARC and Steve / Zero Retries.

The big project for Steve and his wife Tina KD7WSF in 2025 was the decision to hold the first Zero Retries Digital Conference (2025) in Everett, Washington on September 13, as well as continuing to publish Zero Retries weekly. ZRDC 2025 Archive – https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-digital-conference-2025. There was an amazing amount of preparation work to be done for ZRDC 2025, and we were also volunteers for GNU Radio Conference 2025, held the week before, and in the same venue, as ZRDC 2025.

The big project for Kay and Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC) was receiving a second grant to continue acquiring and digitizing and organizing additional material for DLARC. DLARC scanned about 750,000 pages in 2025 of ham newsletters, manuals, and documents, much of it never online before, now searchable. And that number doesn’t include audio, CD-ROMs, video, reel-to-reel, even some movie filmstrips.

Two big highlights of Kay’s work for DLARC in 2025 were:

Locating and publishing Packet Radio Temporary Notes (early packet radio development documents from the 1970s–80s, informally circulated, never formally published). He says many still remain to be found.

Permission from AMSAT (NA / US) to add everything they have published, including newsletters and magazines like AMSAT Journal and Amateur Satellite Report, sourced from paper scans and DVDs. Orbit Magazine, published for only a year or so, was a particular highlight.

One of Steve’s primary highlights of 2025, besides ZRDC 2025, was the emergence of the LinHT (Linux Handheld Transceiver). LinHT is an open source project to develop an open source Software Defined 420-450 MHz transceiver in a portable radio format. The big news about LinHT is that it runs GNU Radio natively, not a stripped down version. The LinHT prototypes are working and have a few modes such as M17 already running, and Revision 2 is already in development. More info at https://m17project.org/linht-hw/.

Another of Steve’s highlights of 2025 was late in the year, 44Net Connect (which Steve had been calling 44Net VPN) competed its beta testing phase. 44Net Connect is now available for any Amateur Radio Operator to request a block of static IPv4 IP addresses with a free Virtual Private Network service. This is particularly useful for Amateur Radio Operators whose Internet service provides IPv4 addresses via “Carrier Grade Network Address Translation”, such as Starlink.

In 2026, Kay looks forward to continuing to acquire and digitize material for DLARC. Steve is looking forward to a (likely) ZRDC 2026, perhaps some involvement in requesting regulatory changes by the FCC to remove symbol rates and bandwidth limits from the VHF / UHF bands, a new book from ARRL titled Digital Networking for Ham Radio, and working with ARDC once again on their new Grants Communications Team.

Video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/1BG-YfcXe_I

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (a project of the Internet Archive): https://archive.org/details/dlarc

Zero Retries Newsletter: https://www.zeroretries.org

Amateur Radio Digital Communications: https://www.ardc.net

GNU Radio Conference 2025: https://events.gnuradio.org/event/26/

Zero Retries Digital Conference 2025: https://www.zeroretries.org/p/conference

IP400 Network Project: https://adrcs.org/adrcs/ip400-network-project/

Hamvention: https://hamvention.org

Steve discussed his top few items of interest at the Hamvention 2025 in Xenia, Ohio a week ago. He wrote about his Hamvention Experience in Zero Retries 0203 – https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0203.

Steve was really impressed with FlexRadio’s new Aurora unit which incorporates an HF radio, 500 watt amplifier, antenna tuner, and power supply all in one unit. Aurora is so power-efficient that it can be used with a (US) standard 120 volt 15 amp power circuit. https://edge.flexradio.com/www/offload/20250515182542/FlexRadio-Aurora-Brochure.pdf

Steve was equally impressed with FreeDV’s Radio Autoencoder (RADE) digital voice system for HF. At Hamvention, RADE is open source and was demonstrated as having been ported from running on a modern Windows PC to running on a Raspberry Pi 5. https://freedv.org/radio-autoencoder/

Steve’s other mentions about Hamvention in this episode include Rhizomatica open source Mercury Radio Modem Software – https://github.com/Rhizomatica/mercury, and the Kenwood TM-D750A Mobile “Data” Radio (https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/rsv-tm-d750a – apologies, best info link I could find).

Steve was really impressed with the Timebot (aka, Virtual Time Nut) AI project bounded to multiple decades of material on “Time Nuts”, created by John Ackermann N8UR. See Steve’s writeup in Zero Retries 0203 – https://www.zeroretries.org/i/163245188/timebot-aka-virtual-time-nut.

Kay discussed his ramping up DLARC activities, such adding Wireless Institute of Australia’s Amateur Radio Magazine, from its start in 1933 through 2012 – https://archive.org/details/wia_amateur_radio?sort=date

Another significant addition to DLARC, which will require some help to fully annotate with metadata is the archives donated by Hank Magnuski KA6M – https://archive.org/details/dlarc?tab=collection&query=col_number%3A3990&sort=-addeddate

Hank’s archives include correspondence about the creation of Amateur Radio Packet Radio – the beginnings of the AX.25 protocol. Hank is also known for creating the first Amateur Radio Packet Radio digipeater – http://pprs.org and being the person to request the 44 Class A address space that was the basis of what is now Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) – https://www.ardc.net/about/faq/ and see How did ARDC get started?

Steve and Kay discussed Kay’s work in unearthing many documents about Alohanet – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALOHAnet. Thanks to some interesting mentions on obscure email lists, Kay has found a lot of material on this first combination of packet networking and radio that predates much of the Internet. None of the material Kay has been finding has ever been online previously.

The video version of this episode is at: https://youtu.be/h6__7kv8zjk

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (a project of the Internet Archive): https://archive.org/details/dlarc

Zero Retries Newsletter: https://www.zeroretries.org

Amateur Radio Digital Communications: https://www.ardc.net

GNU Radio Conference 2025: https://events.gnuradio.org/event/26/

Zero Retries Digital Conference 2025: https://www.zeroretries.org/p/conference

IP400 Network Project: https://adrcs.org/adrcs/ip400-network-project/

Hamvention: https://hamvention.org

The big news of this episode is that Internet Archive received a second grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) to enable DLARC to continue for an additional two years. There is already a queue of scanning work to be done, and digital material to be added. Steve observed that “all the infrastructure, systems, and relationships” are in place to make even more progress with this second grant.

Kay discussed the addition of 32 Amateur Radio Callbooks to the Callbook section, bringing the total to nearly 150. These books, dating back to the 19th century, provide valuable information on Amateur Radio callsigns, addresses, and names. Kay also shared their discovery of old floppy disks containing software and meeting minutes from the Northwest Amateur Packet Radio Association (NAPRA).

Of interest to Steve, Kay mentioned packet radio software WA7MBL MailBox V2.04. It’s an DOS work-alike of the W0RLI MailBox software (which originated on CP/M systems, and was later ported to DOS). There’s PBBS – Packet Bulletin Board System published by the Wake Digital Communications Group in 1985. And, meeting minutes from the Northwest Amateur Packet Radio Association for 1990-1991. If NARPA seems familiar, maybe it’s because they published a newsletter called Zero Retries.

NAPRA’s Zero Retries newsletter was the origin of Steve’s use of Zero Retries, since NAPRA is long defunct. Steve’s looking forward to looking over those additional issues of Zero Retries (he contributed a number of paper copies).

This episode encompasses Zero Retries issues 0193 thru 0198.

Steve discusses he and his wife Tina (KD7WSF) attendance at HamSCI 2025 conference in Newark, NJ in March.

In addition to publishing Zero Retries every Friday, Steve has stayed busy in the past month or so replying to FCC Requests for Comments. Steve discussed his new perspective that Software Defined Radio is THE Imperative for US Amateur Radio. He also discussed his “deja vu – flashback” from two decades ago when a black box data radio was first discussed by his advanced packet radio co-conspirators in the Seattle area.

Steve and Tina are now volunteers for the GNU Radio Conference (GRCon) which will be held in Everett, WA this year from September 8-12. In addition to GRCon 2025, Tina and Steve have decided to start their own Zero Retries Digital Conference (ZRDC) to be held on Saturday, September 13, 2025 at the same venue as GRCon. The two conferences are independent of each other.

Steve is also deeply involved in the development of the IP400 Network Project, and he discusses IP400 a bit. There will be a major announcement regarding IP400 in Zero Retries 0200, which will publish on May 2, 2025.

Steve is looking forward to attending Hamvention 2025 in Xenia, OH on May 16-18. Because of his Editorship of Zero Retries, Steve has been granted media access so will be able to interview vendors before the conference on Thursday May 15th for stories in Zero Retries.

Listen for some exciting “reveals” of both new additions to DLARC now that DLARC acquisition and archiving is ramping back up, and stories from Hamvention in the next episode of Store & Forward.

The video version of this episode is at: https://youtu.be/4usXx128IME

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (a project of the Internet Archive): https://archive.org/details/dlarc

Zero Retries Newsletter: https://www.zeroretries.org

DLARC (and Kay personally) got some nice accolades (along with the Internet Archive in general) on Ham Radio Workbench podcast episode 229 by the hosts and the ARDC personnel who were guests on that episode. https://www.hamradioworkbench.com/podcast/hrwb-229-all-about-44-net-and-the-ardc

Kay discussed the current project of DLARC is to archive YouTube videos and other media of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – https://archive.org/details/fcc-videos. As with every change of US presidential administration and corresponding emphasis in US government agencies, priorities are changing at the FCC, and some media may be removed. In addition to the FCC YouTube videos, DLARC is also archiving the FCC Daily Digest.

Steve reported that Zero Retries now has 2500+ email subscribers, and Substack recently declared him a “Substack bestseller” because Zero Retries now has more than 100 paid subscribers.

Steve talked about Wi-Fi Sensing Array (ZR 0190) demonstration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXwDrcd1t-E that really shows how directional antennas, attenuation, reflections, etc. While that wasn’t the primary intent of the demo, it was really impressive.

Steve will be attending the HamSCI 2025 conference https://hamsci.org/hamsci2025 in Newark, New Jersey on Friday March 14, and Saturday March 15:

This year’s theme, “HamSCI’s Big Year,” celebrates the community’s achievements, including the Festivals of Eclipse Ionospheric Science (FOEIS) during the 2023 annular and 2024 total solar eclipses. The workshop features nearly 50 poster and oral presentations, four HamSCI tutorials, and a keynote address by ARRL’s Bob Inderbitzen (NQ1R) at the HamSCI Banquet on Friday March 14th.

The video version of this episode is at: https://youtu.be/jLnpy3yQJHE

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (a project of the Internet Archive): https://archive.org/details/dlarc

Zero Retries Newsletter: https://www.zeroretries.org

Not mentioned on this podcast, but Kay recently did a presentation to RATPAC titled DLARC – The Free Online Ham Radio Library which is a great overview of the wide range of Amateur Radio (and other) material available in DLARC.

Kay discussed some interesting and specialized Amateur Radio newsletters recently added to DLARC including:

Amateur Television in Central Ohio (ATCO) – https://archive.org/details/atco-newsletter

425 DX News – https://archive.org/details/425-dx-news

What’s notable is that it has been published every Saturday since beginning publication… in 1991! (As a fellow newsletter publisher, Steve admired that level of dedication!)

DX World Weekly Bulletin – https://archive.org/details/dx-world

… and this historical magazine:

The Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review – https://archive.org/details/pub_the-telegraphic-journal-and-electrical-review

Steve said he was pretty sure he had seen a collection of this magazine just yesterday as he was picking up some magazines at the Bellingham (Washington) Spark Museum of Electrical Invention – https://www.sparkmuseum.org.

Steve discussed a bit of the backstory of his fiction story in Zero Retries 0183 – https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0183 – Paying it Forward in Amateur Radio about a conversation between Jennifer, a young techie Amateur Radio Operator and Jada, a young woman in her teens about Jennifer’s Amateur Radio activities.

Steve then discussed a few of the items mentioned in Zero Retries 0184 – https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0184:

zBitx portable HF radio – 5 watts, Software Defined Radio, for $149 – https://www.hfsignals.com/index.php/zbitx/

SignalSDR Pro – Software Defined Transceiver with 2 TX and 2 RX for $900 – https://www.crowdsupply.com/signalens/signalsdr-pro

KV4P-HT (Kit Available from Halibut Electronics) – Open source project of a “strap on VHF radio” for Android phones – https://electronics.halibut.com/product/kv4p-ht-v2/

Steve went on to discuss the recent unveiling of NVIDIA’s Project Digits which is a “1 petaflop desktop computer” and the potential for him to “talk to his desktop AI” (that would be running on a Project Digits computer) to develop a fantasized future radio system. This combination would be the equivalent of having a full time software engineer writing GNU Radio code, and Steve just uses the output of the AI in GNU Radio, tries it out, notes what works and doesn’t work, inputs that back into the AI.

Kay said that he would love to “browse” various digital modes automatically, and Steve said that we’re close to that, including:

DragonOS – https://sourceforge.net/p/dragonos-focal/wiki/OriginStory/

KiwiSDR – https://kiwisdr.nz/blogs/news/about-kiwisdr-radios

Signal Identification Wiki – https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/Signal_Identification_Guide

Radios are computers – with antennas! We keep having more and more (cheap) computing power to throw at radio communications!

As an example of how abundant computer power can make a difference in (Amateur Radio) radio technology, Steve discussed the innovation of “bit flip testing and correction” that John Langner WB2OSZ implemented in Dire Wolf Software TNC – https://github.com/wb2osz/direwolf. See this presentation by WB2OSZ – https://archive.org/details/direwolf-software-tnc.

Kay joked:

If you can flip one bit and figure out what the packet is based from the CRC. Why transmit the packet at all? Just transmit the CRC and figure out what the packet should have been?

Steve said “we’re close to that”, but couldn’t recall the details during the podcast of what a Zero Retries reader mentioned in a comment that was a similar capability to what Key described.

Post-podcast:

In the comments of Zero Retries 0179, https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0179/comments, Louis Mamakos WA3YMH said:

Just a thought on multicast file distribution systems. There is a class of algorithms called erasure codes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasure_code) that take some chunk of data, run a transformation on it to break it up into blocks (the total size somewhat more than original.) Then a receiver need only receive K out of N blocks that were produced by the encoding algorithm to compute the original data. This sort of thing is used at small scale with Reed-Soloman coding and at large scale for storing files. Professionally, we used a product like this which would ingest files, generate blocks that were then stored at multiple geographically dispersed locations. By tuning K and N, you would get disaster recovery and the system overall in managing all the metadata was very scalable.

The application for amateur radio beacons and the like is to just transmit blocks and the receiver can start receiving them at any time and eventually reconstruct the original object. Some research reveals some commercial work for such a thing to be deployed on unidirectional broadcast satellite links where a reverse channel to ask for “fills” wasn’t available. Missing a block means you don’t have to wait for that one block to be retransmitted to you much later; you might still reconstruct the object sooner.

There appear to be some open-source libraries to do this encoding and decoding computation and that would then need a UI and data transport interface wrapped around it. This sounds like a great opportunity to combine ham radio and thesis work for the right person 🙂

Kay was prescient! 🙂

Kay concluded the podcast by saying that DLARC added 1.1M pages of material in 2024!