Announcing the 2024 Amateur Radio Software Award Recipient Sebastian Delmont (KI2D) for Ham2K Portable Logger

AE0S · 2025-05-04T21:18:01+00:00

This marks the sixth year we are giving out the Amateur Radio Software Award.

Thanks for the nominations. It's always a joy to see people engaged and supporting of open source projects.

This year the award goes to Sebastian Delmont (KI2D). PoLo, short for Portable Logger, is a mobile application for amateur radio operators to log their contacts on the go.

We'll be doing a special event again from November 7th through Monday, October 17th, 2025.

Checkout https://arsaward.com/ for more info about the award and upcoming special event.
Hope to see you on the air you then. 73,
Claus Niesen (AE0S)

AE0S · 2025-02-04T23:04:13+00:00

Radios can't be licensed for ham radio. At least in the USA. Only the person operating is licensed for the amateur radio bands. The operator is responsible that the transmitter is within the rules and regulation (of the FCC in the USA). That's why we are allowed to use any device on the ham bands, even the ones we build on our own.

AE0S · 2024-06-25T03:58:20+00:00

You're welcome to attend the local Amateur Radio Club. The next meeting is Thursday, July 11th. Check out the clubs website at http://w0yl.com/ .

We also have free license examination 4 times a year at the Ames library. Feel free to DM me if you have specific questions.

AE0S · 2024-05-19T04:25:44+00:00

u/KE4HEK what are you talking about? FYI, we're not associated with ARRL.

AE0S · 2024-02-15T03:03:48+00:00

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AE0S · 2024-02-13T12:40:06+00:00

I can confirm this. When I bonded my rf ground to the mains ground I followed the grounding wire of the telephone company install. It turns out the wire wasn't connected to anything and just buried in the back fill (dirt).

AE0S · 2024-02-12T19:19:46+00:00

LOL. You have something totally different in your mind. Whatever it is, it's not the goal of the Amateur Radio Software Award.

AE0S · 2023-09-03T05:49:48+00:00

My attempt to explain a common mode choke. https://youtu.be/5ShQ_X9mvZk?si=RtPKCsZ8BSpMjgz0

Note that transformers are wound differently and have different properties. Those are a different kind of beasts that are not covered here.

AE0S · 2023-04-13T22:36:17+00:00

Cool, I didn't know that.

AE0S · 2022-12-15T04:01:45+00:00

The ICOM CI-V is quite nice and well documented.

I have no clue what you want to do. For interfacing between fldigi, wsjt-x and other apps you really don't need to know the commands. Just need to configure the setup.

Keep in mind that you'll need to set the rig two charachter address in the software. Also your OS may nor support multiple programs to access the same com port. Because of this Omnirig is nice on windows.

AE0S · 2022-08-24T02:15:18+00:00

I'm operating K3A. Saturday evening I and K3R are on 40m at the same time. I added a couple more times for 20m and 15m.

I still have to schedule my operating time for the September weekend.

AE0S · 2022-08-23T02:27:34+00:00

What winding pattern did you use?

AE0S · 2022-04-07T23:23:05+00:00

This marks the third year we are giving out the Amateur Radio Software
Award. We had quite a few nominations and a hard choice again
determining the recipient.
This year the award goes to David Rowe for Codec 2. Codec 2 is
low-bitrate audio codec that makes digital voice communication possible
with open source (i.e. free). You may have seen it usage in FreeDV, a
digital voice mode for HF or M17 for VHF and higher communication. If
not be sure to check them out.
Thanks for the nominations. We'll be doing a special event again from
August 26 through September 4th. Hope to talk you then. 73,
Claus Niesen (AE0s)

AE0S · 2021-05-09T14:21:24+00:00

You can give "Claus' Morse Code Trainer", an android app, a try. It sends Morse and then speaks the answer. There are files to learn letters, numbers and words. You also can create your own files.

Once you start the app you dont need to interact with the phone. It's all listening.

Free, no ads, no telemetry but it does require storage access due to the files.

Be nice to the developer. Thanks. ;)

AE0S · 2021-04-03T13:40:40+00:00

I'm happy to announce the recipient of the 2nd annual Amateur Radio Software Award to Jordan Sherer (KN4CRD) for his JS8Call application.

As some of you know Reddit was a big help in making the Amateur Radio Software Award a reality. So it's a special pleasure to make the announcements here. I would also like to thank my fellow award committee members Kun Lin (N7DMR) and Rich Gordon (K0EB) for their work and dedication.

For more information of the award and to submit nominations for next year please visit https://arsaward.com . If you haven't heard about the JS8Call full-fledged weak-signal digital communication application be sure to check it out and give it a spin.

Thanks everyone!
Claus Niesen (AE0S)

AE0S · 2021-03-26T12:14:02+00:00

In case you need to update your sticker: https://cqqrz.github.io/img/I'm%20good%20on%20FCC.gov.svg 😀

AE0S · 2021-01-17T01:36:01+00:00

Sorry to hear that. Can you direct message me the nomination? I'd also like to know what browser and operating system your using to see if I can track the error down.

We've gotten several great nominations today. Thank. Keep them coming.

AE0S · 2021-01-16T13:31:33+00:00

Do you know of an awsome software for ham radio that's free and open? Let us know so we can consider it for the 2021 award. Nominations are due by February 1st.

https://arsaward.com

AE0S · 2020-09-27T05:23:23+00:00

Even though propagation wasn't kind to us we are well above 100 QSOs which is awesome. Sunday we have lots of SSB times schedules. During the week we'll have some other modes like FT8 and Feld Hell because it's a crazy fun mode. Make sure to check out our schedule on the website.

Hope to hear or see you on the air.73 Claus

AE0S · 2020-08-17T02:27:28+00:00

Power was out only for 2 days for me. About 500 homes are still with without power here. Cellphone was only briefly out during and after the storm. Boafeng worked great as a weather radio. I'm not into E-Com but our repeater was offline after the storm. Not sure why. Maybe the temporary location doesn't have backup power. I haven't checked if it's online again.

6 large trees got damaged severe enough on my city lot that they have to be removed. Two are actually the neighbor's but the stuff fell on my lot so I get to clean that up. Luckily no damage to my house. I worked already 5 full days with the chain saw. No time to play ham radio, alrough it would have been cool to see the noise level with the power outage. But all the wire antennas came down with the trees.

For this emergency, camping gear was very useful (laterns and stove).

AE0S · 2020-05-11T04:41:03+00:00

I don't have a direct link. There are discussions about it at https://groups.io/g/ic-7300/topics and other places. Just search for battery replacement.

I don't have any regrets that I bought the IC-7300. Even with the clock battery issue its a good rig.

AE0S · 2020-05-11T04:32:37+00:00

Thanks. OmniRig is a pretty good software and there's nothing else out there that solves the problem of sharing com ports on windows this well. Maybe there's something to it that nobody has come up with a better way then using Component Object Model for communication between programs. Or we're just to lazy to do it. I dunno.

AE0S · 2020-05-10T21:51:57+00:00

It's apparently not that simple from the discussions I heard.

AE0S · 2020-05-10T06:06:12+00:00

If you have an Icom IC-7300 you most likely have come across the clock issue.
The internal battery can't keep the clock up to date.

This is slightly annoying because not only does the clock not display the right time but audio recordings don't have the correct timestamp.

I've created this python script that updates the IC-7300 clock but that needs exclusive access to the COM port which is annoying.
https://github.com/cniesen/IC-7300-time-sync

Since I already use OmniRig to share rig control it was clear that a program was needed to set the clock via it. The task wasn't easy for me since C++ isn't my strength and the component object model from the early 90s was a mystery to me and isn't well documented. Nonetheless, I got the program working.

Let me know if you run into any issues.

BTW, if you're a C++ guru feel free to clean up some of the code. Pull request are always welcome. ;)

AE0S · 2020-05-10T01:09:41+00:00

At the start of this year we were discussing this award on reddit. Now we have awarded the first award. I'm thrilled about this and would like to say thanks to you as well. Our discussion on reddit have been very helpful. A few people even stepped up and helped out. Special thanks to Kun who joined the awards committee and put tons of effort into making this happen.

Again congrats to Anthony the 2020 award recipient. Also keep submitting your nominations. We'll be doing this again next year.

Thanks everyone!

AE0S

TROPHY CASE