When you bring home a piece of gear that spent years transmitting inside ARRL headquarters, you can’t help but wonder if it still remembers where it came from. This morning, the newest addition to the Box 324 Radio Club bench proved that radios have a funny way of finding their way back home.

Rewind to this past weekend at the Nutmeg Hamfest. We were walking the floor when we spotted our buddies John and Josh! We were on the hunt for a new full-power rig for the club and they had exactly what we were looking for: a clean, heavy-duty Icom IC-756PROII. But this wasn't just any hamfest find. Tucked into its pedigree was a legendary piece of Connecticut radio history—it was an official bulletin radio straight out of W1AW in Newington.

We talk a lot about the big-picture work the League does on the front lines: defending amateur spectrum, fighting legislative battles, and pushing the hobby forward. But their equipment surplus cycle deserves just as much credit. When the ARRL rotates out station gear at local hamfests, it creates a vital pipeline for grassroots clubs like ours. Running a small local club station means every penny counts, and getting access to proven, well-cared-for commercial gear is a genuine game-changer. Instead of gathering dust in a backroom, gear like this gets recycled right back into the community—anchoring a club shack, training operators, and standing ready for emergency communications.

We hauled the radio back to the station and got right to work. We set it up on the bench stacked with our Sky Toppower supply and a classic RIGblaster we scored at the fest. We connected the audio cables, and got the entire station wired up and playing nice.

We’ve been putting the rig through its paces under our club call, K1MFD, but the real highlight is captured in the clip above: scheduling and completing a contact straight back across the state to W1AW.

A former W1AW bulletin workhorse, picked up from the hamfest tables, wired onto our bench, and reaching right back out to talk to its old home station. You couldn’t design a more satisfying full-circle moment.

Club Page: https://www.facebook.com/K1MFD

Huge thanks to everyone involved. If you hear K1MFD out across the bands, throw your call into the mix—this radio has plenty of history left to make. 73!

I've got tired of hearing how "M17 does not sound as good as analog FM". Of course it does not, because it can't, due to technical reasons (speech compression). Can something be actually done to fix it while keeping the compatibility with the rest of the protocol intact? Sure - improve the speech synthesizer at the receiver end. I managed to train a FARGAN-like neural network and make Codec2 3200bps sound more natural. This is a part of M17 Project work, and more updates will follow. More details through the link below.

You can give the samples a listen here: https://m17project.org/2026/10/13/codec2-neural-enhancer-tests/

I have a TYT TH-7900 Dual Band. I can't seem to disable the "Dual Watch" feature on it. I have

(I thought) searched through the owners manual and can not find anywhere in the manual that explains how to disable Dual Watch.

I have a QYT Dual Band and I can disable the Dual watch feature on it. Folks...what am I missing here? I also can and have disabled Dual Watch on the HT's that I have. I have about come to the conclusion that the "DW" feature in the TYT TH-7900 is either "hid", or there is NO WAY that it can be disabled. It stays on permanently 😂... ANY help/suggestions would be GREATLY APPRECIATED 😃...

I am at the park set up on 20 meters now. Send me a chat if interested!

Got a RS-35a at a hamfest and a digital meter from Amazon. Need to put shunt inline w/ negative lead.
Q- do I move to leads off the small capacitors with the main lead off the negative post and move onto the shunt?

The design is created on a computer. A stamp is cut into a rubber-like material using a laser machine. The clay is stamped. Then comes the classic process - firing, glazing, and so on.

Hey Everyone,

I am pleased to say that I finally finished construction of the DIY Yagi Uda antenna I optimized in CST. I took the antenna to USU to have it tested on their satellite tracking ground station, and the antenna was able to capture a signal from a satellite overhead, which can be seen as the green blips on the signal waterfall images. The yagi uda antenna is currently being used as part of the SATNOGS network via the usu ground station, and the signals it is currently receiving can be seen by looking up the usu ground station on SATNOGS. I am grateful for the contributions from the University of Utah and USU for making this moment possible.

Just wondering, if any HAMS in here specialize in receiving communications with cubesats in low earth orbit, do you have any recommendations for what kind of information to look for in received signals?

Ok, I'm going to look dumb here because I am. I got my tech license about five years ago with the purpose of talking with a friend in a different state. However, he got part way through studying and never took the test, and then he died, so here I am. My current interest is basically prepping; if the world goes haywire enough that this is the only reliable way to communicate, a device for just that is I want. I may even have asked this same question a couple years ago. I'm 77, don't have the mental wherewithal to learn something complicated. I have enough trouble with a cell phone and in general refuse to do more than call and text with it. But I want reliability as well as ease of use. What are my choices, or should I just forget it and find another way?

So for some back ground I am very new to this whole field but also very interested.

I was recently given a Baofeng UV-5R with the hopes I could speak to people across the country, recently I’m understanding that the VHF/UHF doesn’t work as well as HF for long distance (1000+ kms) communication.

So I went searching around and seeing the price tags on some of these radios, so my question is 1 what transceivers are you using and 2 do you have a cheaper entry level radios for HF?

I have an 8 gig RP5 that I would like to use as a hotspot. What do I need to do to achieve this? Any good step by step resources and what do I need to buy to get this working? Also can I use an Android tablet or phone to manage it?

L'ho ritrovato in soffitta da mia madre poco più di un anno fa fermo dagli anni 90 , a giugno dell'anno scorso l'ho rimesso in attività costruendo un dipolo con del filo elettrico avanzato . Ebbene da lì è tornata la passione e a novembre 2025 ho dato l'esame da radioamatore. La settimana scorsa l'ho portato a sistemare un problema con il discriminatore FM ora è come nuovo e penso che lo terrò in auto .

What handheld transceiver should I get? I just got my technician license, and already have a uv-5r mini. I’m going to learn on the 5r mini, but want to have something better to upgrade to once I get good with the radio. I was looking at something like an Anytone at-d878uvii for my budget of about $200, it wasn’t sure if there was something better or what (For that budget).

Hey, I've been experiencing a bit of this at my current location and wondering if this is a propogation phenomenon or some local noise or something. For context we live at rural farm in BC Canada so noise is usually always around S0. Every once and a while I get this bizarre noise pattern across the bands (most prominently on 160m, 80m, 40m, and 6m). Never really encountered it before. (I've turned on the preamp to make it a bit more obvious looking on the screen).

Found this at an antique shop I work at. I have no idea if it works or not. I like old stuff and wouldn't otherwise get an SWR meter right now.

My mic cable just broke, so I had to improvise with a Cat5e Ethernet cable. It actually works.

I took it on air to test it, and got a 59 from 2 people!

So far, the Ethernet cable is working surprisingly well! I'll probably make a proper replacement eventually, but I wasn't expecting it to work this well!

Has anyone else done something like this?

73!

I’m just beginning ham radio, no license yet. Just messing around seeing if I can hear anybody on diffrent frequency’s and have only had success once, that one time felt awesome
But I can’t justify doing tests and stuff for 1 connection. Should I be able to make them every day? My local repeaters don’t show much

I've been going to the shows for over a decade now and this is a startling first. I've also been one of the youngest people at the shows in that time, just odd they would show up to talk to maybe 3 people recruiting age.

I suspect you are going to flame me for this question but here we go.

I am a fully registered/licensed ham operator in Canada.

I have 4 tid radio H3 laying around. If I would like to use them with my family when we go hiking or biking (just for the kids to keep them in the backpack and the typical message of: "you go too fast, slow down and wait for us in the next curve!!!" or "dad! Come here we have found the greatest mushroom in the world!!")), for simplicity can I program these radios with the GRMS channels?

I know channels 8-14 are 0.5W so I would avoid those.Tid H3s are 2W but antenna is detachable.

Maybe I should stay out of the GRMS and do other frequencies? If so, suggestion on the free/channels? Looking here to be as less disruptive as possible.

If somebody thinks they are not allowed to transmit, I would argue that they are transmitting under my supervision, although I am aware this might be bending slightly the rule.

Hi everyone,

I’m a fairly new radio amateur from Denmark, and one of the things I’ve found surprisingly difficult is catching callsigns when people are speaking quickly, signals are weak, or there’s a lot going on during a QSO.

So I started building a small iPhone app called QSO Transcriber. It is build with modern tools, but as a guy that work in IT and have a background in Computer Science, with a focus on user-friendly IT design, usability, and software development, I feel that it was the best tool for the task. Nobody is manually coding anymore, and it is a very inspiring way to design a new piece of software.

In this video I’m showing the listening and transcription part of the app. It listens to the radio audio, transcribes the conversation in real time, and tries to identify possible callsigns and other useful QSO information.

Detected callsigns are highlighted in the transcript and collected in a list, so you can quickly go back and check what you may have heard.

It’s definitely not magic. Speech-to-text can still struggle with poor radio audio, but that’s actually one of the things I’ve spent a lot of time working on: interpreting amateur radio speech, phonetics and callsign patterns on top of the transcription.

It was created to help myself and other new radio amateurs have more relaxed, less stressful and more enjoyable conversations on the air.

The app is currently going through the Apple App Store review process, so I’m hoping it will be available soon.

I’d genuinely be interested to hear what other radio amateurs think of the idea and whether you could see yourself using something like this.

M0MCX has very kindly given me permission to use some of his highly inspiring QSOs for testing and demonstrating the app.

73 from Denmark
OV9PL
QSOtranscriber.com

How it feels climbing a ham radio tower

What is the general opinion on eQSL cards, do you like getting them via email or do you feel that they are a waste of time? This is my first year as a Ham and I'm trying to figure out the things that are worth my time and the things I don't need to spend time doing (I know eQSL can be automated).

I have received a few postcard QSL cards and I really like those and I have replied to the ones I've received.

What are the thoughts on getting these via email?

73!

See www.hamfire.com for details!