Everyday Ham Podcast: Amateur Radio Conversations
Welcome to the Everyday Ham Podcast, where three friends dive into the world of amateur (ham) radio with a casual, lighthearted twist. (Visit www.everydayham.com)
From discussing what we're working on, current events, and lessons learned to sharing our gripes and off-topic banter, we bring a mix of fun, relatable conversations and radio expertise.
Whether you’re a seasoned operator or new to the hobby, join us for engaging chats that celebrate the quirks, challenges, and joys of being on the air.
Everyday Ham Podcast: Amateur Radio Conversations
Ep. 21 – DIY Digipeater at Detroit's Historic Masonic Temple
Jay Aho (N8QYQ) came back to ham radio after 20 years away and, about a year later, had an APRS digipeater and a Winlink gateway running 210 feet up on the Detroit Masonic Temple. In this episode he tells James (K8JKU), Jim (N8JRD) and Rory (W8KNX) how it happened: a childhood friend who happens to manage the building, trustees who said yes to emergency communications, and a whole lot of learning along the way.
Jay explains why he picked a low-gain Diamond X30 and 30 watts instead of blasting the region, why the site runs as a WIDE1-1 fill-in digipeater to be additive to the network rather than competitive, and how it now shows 93 miles of coverage on aprs.fi. He gets into the build itself, a Raspberry Pi 4 running Dire Wolf for APRS and a hardened Windows mini PC for VARA FM Winlink, each feeding a Yaesu FTM-3100 at 30 watts, plus watchdogs, auto-boot after a power loss, remote access, LiFePO4 battery backup, and the surprisingly easy grounding story. He also introduces Detroit Never Goes Silent, a lobby exhibit where visitors scan a QR code and receive an email that traveled over radio, and talks about the effort to fund an ARPSC station at Detroit's Emergency Operations Center.
Before the interview, the crew covers Jason KN4AL's 1000th POTA activation, Activate All RI 2026, the new POTA website beta, building shack dashboards with Claude Code, and everything they've learned about the Icom IC-7110 since Tokyo Ham Fair.
Topics in this episode:
Icom IC-7110 specs, pricing and release speculation
Activate All RI 2026, September 11-13
The new POTA website beta at next.pota.app
Shack dashboards built with Claude Code
Jay N8QYQ's Detroit APRS digipeater and Winlink gateway
Diamond X30, WIDE1-1 fill-in and 93 miles of coverage
Raspberry Pi 4, Dire Wolf, VARA FM and a hardened Windows mini PC
Detroit Never Goes Silent and the Detroit EOC station
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Short show intro audio clip
Short outro audio clip
The Everyday Ham Podcast is hosted by James Mills (K8JKU), Jim Davis (N8JRD), and Rory Locke (W8KNX) – three friends who dive into the world of amateur radio with a casual, lighthearted twist.
Follow us at: Website: https://www.everydayham.com/
Welcome And What’s Ahead
SPEAKER_02Good evening, everybody. It is the Everyday Ham, and we are back to another long form podcast for you folks that enjoy these things. We're going to be talking for the next hour about all things ham radio. And we do have a special guest this evening, a Metro Detroit ham J N8QYQ. And really looking forward to that conversation. So stick around past our normal banter here because we have a really interesting conversation about Detroit, APRS, and gaining access and setting up a community service type situation. So really, really great conversation and looking forward to that. So, gentlemen, welcome to the show. I've got with me tonight, of course, James K8JKU and Rory, W8KNX. Of course, it's me, N8JRD, all in our normal shacks. And gentlemen, how is the week going? Let's go around and see what is up in our shacks tonight. Rory, you want to go
Shack Updates And Merch Thanks
SPEAKER_02first?
SPEAKER_00What is up in my shack? I'm waiting for my icon 5200. Those should be those should be dropping anytime.
SPEAKER_03And I do have any shipping notifications yet or not?
SPEAKER_00Negative. We we we I have my pre-order in and I am looking forward to the arrival of that. It'll probably come while I'm out of town over the Labor Day weekend, but we'll we'll we'll live on the edge and see what happens. But uh otherwise, nothing new in the shack. I it's been an incredibly busy period at work, which which it's good to be busy at work. That means the company's making money and things are stable, but that also means people are going crazy working far too many hours. So when you work far too many hours, there's not much time to play radio. But uh certainly want to take the opportunity tonight to uh shout out, of course, put a plug in for our merch store, everydayham.com slash merch. And I every time, so we all get an email every time someone buys from the merch store. And uh I look at that email and I'm always surprised that someone's spending money on us. So from the bottom of our hearts for sure, thank you for supporting the everyday ham. Thank you for being willing to carry around a mug with our logo on it or wear a big old hoodie with the logo. This logo, as a matter of fact. The pig. Um this big old pig on your shirt. We we appreciate it. Uh, certainly the most a couple most recent customers of our store, uh, two out of Michigan, Steve AE8 S T and Kyle A, both both thank you to you, and of course, someone all the way out from the West Coast, Sacramento, California, Steven KG6 P I C. Thank you guys all for purchasing. And again, if you want if you want to have a pig in your house, everyday ham, everyday ham.com slash merch, go ahead and take a look at our store, and uh certainly helps us out, keeps us uh keeps the train on the tracks here, so to speak.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, man, we just got our uh glitter pig stickers. I have one sporting on my microphone this evening if you're watching the video podcast, but it's just what you expect. If you remember as a child going into Kmart and putting a quarter in the machine, uh pushing it in and pulling out one of the stickers, you know, that was sandwiched in cardboard, and it was that that glittery sticker, it's just like that. So is that a story that relates? Do you guys remember those things?
SPEAKER_00No, the only thing when I went would go into Kmart as a kid, two things were on my mind. Wow. Where where is the cart for the blue light special so I can figure out how to turn on the flashing light? That was always number one. And number two, how to set off the alarm in the electronics section, playing with the word processor that's for sale. That that that was going to Kmart for me as a kid. So no Not the subs, not the sub sandwiches. Oh, Kmart ham. That's a whole story there, but that's I'm not gonna lie.
SPEAKER_03The chubby kid in me was spending my money on the candy and not the stickers.
SPEAKER_00Oh, Kmart ham. Before the Kmart's all switched over, the old version of the Kmart's before they had the little Caesars Pizza Stations in them, those were the true Kmart Kmart days.
SPEAKER_03Uh my kid.
SPEAKER_00I don't know where I don't know where we just veered, but uh it it took a hard left somewhere.
POTA Activations And Rhode Island Event
SPEAKER_03James, how about in your shack?
SPEAKER_02What's up this evening?
SPEAKER_03Uh not too much. I've been uh finding a little bit more time in my life to get back on the air and uh doing some POTA activations. Uh I got back up to Holly Recreation Area, which is probably my home park. Uh so it's feeling good getting back out there, trying some new things. So uh should be seeing me. So if you put me in your ham alert, I'd love to get you there because that makes my life a little bit easier when I go out and do activations. Uh with the bands being the way they are, all the help that we can get is helpful. Every bit helps. But uh I was out there for a little while. It was actually a lot of fun. Uh, had some people stop by, I took the uh Arial 51 antenna, which is an off-center fed uh dipole. Uh it gets put up on the spider beam mask. You know, it's big. Yeah, 40-footer, big stretched-out antenna, and people see that in the park and they they want to come up and talk to you, which is always pretty cool. Uh, people always like to ask about amateur radio, and then uh some people want to sit there and watch you activate, which is also interesting, but they come and they park right next to you.
SPEAKER_00That's my thing to do. When you when you've got this whole empty parking lot and some some jack wagon comes and parks right next to you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Now the part I don't understand is the people that just don't say anything. They sit there with their car running and the alternator going, which doesn't matter. That's good too, making all that noise.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. But uh also congratulations, I think. Upcoming for uh Jason, KN4AL, uh, a friend of the show and a friend of ours. Uh he's doing his 1000th POTA activation here this week. This week. And that man is a POTA machine. And uh congratulations, though. That's a that's a huge achievement. He he clearly loves his parks on the air, and he's it's well deserved.
SPEAKER_02I'm sure some of our listeners out there, and uh you know who you are if you're a POTA person, have got Jason in your log. Uh, and you may even have gotten some flowers from Jason at some point or the other. Jason loves to chat uh during his POTA activations, and we always appreciate that.
SPEAKER_03Well, my favorite story with Jason is we did a joint activation one time on the way to handvention, and uh I didn't activate Indiana at that point, so we we swung you know hard right and swung over there, and we're we're doing the past the mic, and I'm calling you know CQ parks on the air, and people would call in and be like, uh, where's Jason? Is Jason there? And I'd be like, Yeah, this is uh K J AQ, uh, I'll hand you over to Jason here, you know, and then they'd be like, Oh, hey, Jason, they have a conversation, Jason would hand it back to me. Uh, next person would call in, yeah, uh, where's Jason? So the whole activation basically turned into everyone want to talk to their friend Jason, which is uh just the type of character he is.
SPEAKER_00On the uh on the POTA front as well, I do want to put a plug-in for our friends out in Rhode Island. Uh, friend of the show, Rob N1 RWJ, we were trying to figure out how to get him on here to to plug it, but the schedules are tough and life is hard. But uh the weekend of uh uh September 11th through 13th, uh they're doing an activate all Rhode Island event. And all 61 parks in Rhode Island have a scheduled operator or operators during that period. And so if you're looking to work all of Rhode Island, uh you certainly have the opportunity to do so. Try and get all of the parks in Rhode Island in that weekend if you can. Um go to the website ripoda.org and take a look at that. I'm looking forward to working um working Rhode Island stations that weekend, and it's certainly you know, it's a small state, of course, so they're having some fun with it. It's it's uh why not get the whole thing on the air in one weekend?
SPEAKER_03So we look forward to amazing, amazing undertaking, and that'll be that'll be really cool to see.
SPEAKER_02Is it hit has any other uh state done this? I don't think I've ever heard of an event like this before.
SPEAKER_00I I I'm not aware of any. I could be wrong on that. This one, of course, caught my attention because of course our our friend Rob, their N1RWJ, but uh I I I don't know what state would have active in the Everyday Ham Discord for that plug. Yeah, I mean if you think about activate all of DC, which would be comparable, some of those parks aren't even always available seven days a week, so it would be very hard to do. Um I I I don't think so, but I I'm looking forward to I think I have a third of them in my log already. I took a look at that the other day. I'm I'm hoping to hoping to complete that. We'll see if that works or not. But uh certainly uh getting some awareness uh into amateur radio in Rhode Island and certainly some uh some fun trying to get all all the parks on the air.
SPEAKER_03And before I turn it over to Jim, uh one last plug also for parks on the air. If if you did were not following the official Parks on the Air Facebook page, they did release the beta uh new updated website front end, which is really cool. Uh great new refresh for the interface and all things parks on the air. Uh the web address is next, n ext.poda.app. Definitely work if you're uh if you're into parks on the air and you're pretty active, it's worth a go check it out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely some big improvements to the mapping tool. Um that's that was where I think they listened to uh POTA operators the most. Uh, I think one of the biggest calls there, there were people wanting to have a visual indicator of parks safe hunted and or activated, and that's that's native right there on the on the on the POTA website now.
SPEAKER_03So nice refresh on the uh spotting page too.
SPEAKER_00The spotting page is very cool. Another thing they they took from people that were were made these comments when you bring up the spotting page now. If it's a park you have not worked, you can sort the spotting page by that and have only parks that you have not worked at the top, and it puts a indicator there, believe it's orange over the park number if it's a new park to you. And uh a lot of people like working new parks, so it makes it easier to do that. I found myself spinning the dial on CW the other night working working new parks. Can you believe I'm already up to 300 parks hunted on CW? That's that's crazy. Well that's great.
SPEAKER_02I don't even know if I have that many in SSB.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's it it it goes quick, but uh it's all it's all good. So certainly some good things on the POTA front.
SPEAKER_02That's really cool. Jim, over to you. Well, I'm glad that you guys plugged the uh next.poda. app. Uh so it's funny, uh James, Rory, and myself have have kind of had pre-access to the app and we've seen it uh continue to develop here. And so uh I think we've been a little spoiled uh because we've had a little bit of uh early access to it uh through some of the connections that we have with, of course, the Everyday Ham and the local club here. But I agree with you guys completely. The map is just awesome. And being able to see what things you have done uh I think is going to continue to uh help POTA's growth, uh, have people uh get a little transparency into what what parks do I need? What parks have I got? Just further gamifies the experience, and it's a really fun way to uh understand how you're getting out on the radio. So just uh I love that you guys mentioned that. And uh I've seen a lot of positive feedback, which I know is rare sometimes on social media, in the POTA Facebook. Even on the Facebook. Yep.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna say, have you have you looked on Facebook? I'm sure we have some friends who have uh made their opinion known.
SPEAKER_03As a reminder, I normally do not recommend you look at the Facebook, but in this case, it's okay.
SPEAKER_02It's it's pretty positive. Well, gentlemen,
APRS Fixes And Antenna Review Tease
SPEAKER_02very good and welcome to the show tonight. I'm glad to get together again with you here. Uh, we had a uh a fun uh last month of August there. A couple videos dropped uh with uh that were outside of our normal format here. Uh a couple courtesy of uh the NHRD uh technician experience over here. So uh I definitely got involved uh farting around with my FTM 500, which I had been struggling with some APRS uh functionality on. So if you haven't checked that video out, I had a lot of fun doing it and it actually solved a real practical problem for me. I guarantee that I'm not the only person that's having uh that problem. Uh so if you are uh struggling with the built-in GPS on one of your Yesu mobile radios, whether it be a 400, a 500, or a 510, uh, there is a solution to that problem, and it actually isn't as difficult nor as expensive as you think to solve. So just a little plug there. I had a lot of fun doing that video, and it is already paying me dividends. Uh, we're gonna talk APRS tonight, and uh all three of us are a little bit nerdy when it comes to APRS. We have a uh internal board that we use to track where the hosts are at at all given points, and uh, and so it'll be fun to uh to have my car back on that map after a couple of months of uh being totally not visible. So I'm excited about that. The other thing I was going to say is, gentlemen, uh I have admittedly uh been doing a little less radio, but I do have an antenna queued up to talk about uh and hopefully uh share with you guys on the uh channel here this month as well. And Radiodity reached out to us last month. Uh they liked uh some of the things that they had seen and they offered to uh send us one of the Radiodity HF010, HF10 antennas. And if you're not familiar with the antenna, it's a really neat vertical antenna, not an expensive one by any means, uh, but it allows you to work from 80 meter all the way up to six meter uh in a little tiny bag. So we're gonna take a look at that, see if it's worth your time. Uh, I'm looking forward to breaking it out. I've had a whole bunch of comparable verticals, so I think that I have some uh experience here and we could kind of talk about what's good, what's bad, and uh what's uh right down the middle with it. Uh so looking forward to that.
SPEAKER_03It will be an honest review. And that is one thing that when Radio sent it, we let them know, and they do not have any uh preview of what we're gonna say or anything of that nature as well.
SPEAKER_00So I think anyone that sends anything to us knows they're gonna get it.
SPEAKER_03Just expect it.
SPEAKER_00The unfiltered everyday hammer.
SPEAKER_02I'm looking forward to it. I'll tell you right out of the gate, right? I have limited expectations. A vertical is a vertical, right? And and so, and I'll probably say this at some point in the video too, but really I know what I'm getting to. A vertical is a known entity, right? And as we stretch our vertical, especially a base loaded vertical, down into those low bands like 80, we know that it's a compromised antenna to the point where maybe you don't need to bother with it unless it's a real important 80-meter Q so that you're trying to make locally, right? You may be able to hear it, but uh you're not creating a wave big enough uh to be emitted from that antenna. It's just not resident, right? And and a lot of that's getting burnt up as heat in your in your base loading. But anyway, you guys know the antenna theory behind it. It's a vertical antenna. We're gonna talk about it, uh, and it is very affordable. It is a very complete kit. I was really surprised when I pulled it out of the box. All the things that you need, I could literally buy buy a radio, buy that kit, and I could go out and uh uh uh activate a park, and that's cool, right? I don't need anything else. So we'll talk about it. On the topic of things in the shack, though, I'm
Building Shack Dashboards With AI
SPEAKER_02a little bit out there uh in the last couple of weeks. Uh James and and uh Rory and I have built digital signage for our shack, so that uh shows you just how nerdy this crew is. Uh 1080 by 1920. So yes, long way, not wide, but long way standing up 30-inch monitors on our wall, uh, where we keep track of all the cool stats about the Everyday Ham channel, who's chatting with us, uh, and of course the host tracker and other things. And so I said, I want to build an app like James has built. And so I finally broke and uh ordered my first month of Claude code. So I've been playing with Claude, and I will say uh that has been an absolute blast, to be honest with you. I know some of you out there are groaning, and if you already turned off the channel because you're done with AI, I understand completely. But uh I will tell you, uh, as a total non-coder, right? I uh I went to school I went to school. Uh I intended to get a CPS degree. I had a real poor experience uh the first semester uh writing that code in uh very low language, and so I tr I transitioned to uh a different uh degree. But uh I always I always wanted to build something and I think it's really neat what you can do with the uh the Claude Code tool. Uh the ability for a novice uh to basically speak natural language and get a functional product out the other end is really, really nifty, and I've had a lot of fun doing it. Now, I in my day-to-day, I do walk work in software, so I know a lot of the terminology. I do understand the the architecture behind it. So I do think that if you're if you have that type of background, you'll have more success with it early on. But it's a very learnable application. So if you're on the fence out there, if you were thinking, hey, I've heard a lot about AI, and I'd love to make a little applet of my own, or maybe even just make something simple that says, hey, what parks did you activate, right? It can duplicate functionality, it's a learning journey, and I've had a lot of fun on that journey the last week, uh, learning more about building cool stuff. And so yeah, that's I digress. Rory, you are playing with it.
SPEAKER_00It's my first my uh James has been doing these things for a while, but it's it's it's my first deep dive into playing with AI to do something like this. And now we might have to overlay some some or put in the chat somewhere some of our some of our dashboards, some of these products that we put on our our our our screens. And we have some common ones. There's a couple of them that we all we all run that keep an eye on the health of this channel, for example. But uh we each have some some unique ones as well. I I I built out one for uh as simple as a contest calendar, keeping track of upcoming contests, upcoming QSO parties. Um and I also I started building one out to take a look at uh available ADSB airplane aircraft overhead. I ran out of steam. Jim spent 48 hours straight working on his. So uh I think uh I think his product is working just fine. Mine mine is on the side. Um I did build out a POTA, a POTA one what parks are activated in Michigan. You know, that was a very easy one. I think I I think that one happened with a one prompt and I was happy with what the outlook was.
SPEAKER_02Shocking how much you get. Yep.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I didn't I didn't tweak that. It was a very, very simple thing. So it's it's been a good learning experience for me. Like I said, I've not played a whole lot with AI and and uh just didn't have an application for it, but it's it's been fun. So we'll have to we'll have to talk about that more sometime.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, James has had a lot of success with it. James, did you have any thoughts on that one?
SPEAKER_03No, I was gonna say I I've been a uh HTML coding nerd since you know high school. So I'm sure you had a MySpace page.
SPEAKER_00I said building out a GeoCities page. Who didn't build out a GeoCities page?
SPEAKER_03You guys would have been in my top ten on the MySpace Page. Was it top eight? Oh top eight. Wow. See, there you go. It's coming back.
SPEAKER_00What music? If we went to your MySpace page, what music would start blasting at us right away?
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's right. I don't even remember, by the way. There, there you go. I I really don't. But we'll we'll figure that out. Uh uh it's coming back, guys. We're gonna have a chance to reset here and start anew with our top eight as we go through it. I I do hear that's coming back.
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, i i i as always on the everyday ham. We go down some strange paths, but as always on the everyday ham.
SPEAKER_03Let us know what your song was on your MySpace page in the comments. No, get it, keep going.
SPEAKER_02I was just gonna say one of the things that I I bring up the AI as in the shack is is Rory gave a bunch of really practical little applications that you might uh try to experiment with. And honestly, it it really gave me perspective because what you're seeing right now is a whole glut of applications that are being developed rapidly, uh, being branded as you know, a full shack control tool, uh end-to-end or this or that. Yeah, uh, and then a massive price tag being applied to that product, and we're trying to you know sell it to uh our amateur community. And I'd encourage you to take a look at what your your problem is and architect your own solution. It does not cost much, and to be honest, the free tool doesn't need to allow you to get pretty far. Exactly. It will allow it allow you to get pretty far. Now, not every AI created tool that's out there is certainly a bad one, but I just wanted to give a little bit of uh sort of perspective on that. We're seeing a lot of that right now in the ham community and take the in your own hands. Yep, you can do it too. So go experiment with it. Uh, I've learned a ton, and what I really I'll say on my final thought here is as you're working with the the the coding engine, uh it's giving you reasoning behind its its decisions and it's speaking through what it's doing in the back end. And I've learned a ton just reading back the responses to the engineering of the code behind the scenes. What is what is happening, how are the loops working, what is it calling, how is it making those connections between things, how is it architecting the style sheets and all that? I mean, it's it's just crazy how much information it can give back if you're interested in learning it.
SPEAKER_03And that's really my favorite prompt is take a look at this and how would you improve it and then explain it to me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And I found myself a job. I found myself after a couple of uh do this type prompts actually pausing and saying, before we do this, tell me how you would you know develop this next phase of our project, right? And so we would we would talk about it a little bit before we actually put that into code. And what I found was we'd catch things that it may have done that I would not have chosen to do before we actually committed those to the code base that I was developing. And that actually was really useful. And then later on, when I needed to go back and say, like, tell me a little bit about what we did back a couple of prompts ago, it could go back and talk to me about those things. Very cool. Uh definitely worth the. I think I'm paying $17 a month for Claude Code right now. But if Jim is paying too much, you know it's worth something.
SPEAKER_03Hold on. We digress. Let's talk about other very exciting ham radio related topics
First Reactions To Icom IC-7110
SPEAKER_03here. Uh we had from a major manufacturer at the Tokyo ham fair a release of the, well, the announcement of the iPod IC 7110. That's correct. An unveiling. There you go, Rory. I keep saying FTS, the IC 7110. Yep. Uh I'm pretty excited about this radio. Uh I'm cautiously optimistic. I could be heard again. I'm gonna probably jump in the pool here and and buy one when they I I know uh Ham Radio Outlet is already taking reservations and some of the other major retailers are. Uh no release date set currently for this radio, no pricing set yet for this radio, but we do know a lot about it at this moment.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So of course it's the next generation to the the 706 7000 7100 series. It's the next logical radio in that family, and it looks like they've done an excellent job bringing all the things we like from the 7300 and the 7300 Mark II into a uh mobile portable format for sure. Uh so I look forward to seeing it I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say that I'm gonna get one or not gonna get one yet. I I I've decided to uh to not take claim on that but I look forward to seeing seeing how it is when someone gets one get my hands on one and decide if it's got a home in my shack or in my car somewhere.
SPEAKER_03Yeah and so what we learned too it's an HF 50 144 and 430 megahertz all mode radio. So a hundred watts mode yeah yeah 100 watts on uh HF and 50 and 50 watts on VHF UHF as well which is pretty exciting. Uh big beautiful touchscreen uh stereo or stereo uh a speaker in the headset itself it's a detachable uh head from the body of the radio uh has built-in FT8 operation presets which is uh I say a new one uh Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities built in CW code record uh decoder there we go and also remote functionality as Rory mentioned from lessons learned from the 7300 Mark II uh I and it looks it does look gorgeous the polish if if it wins on the polish effect and uh it it is a beautiful looking radio.
SPEAKER_02I'm excited about this radio. I I think if if you're listening to this podcast it would be shocking if you did hadn't already heard it. Of course we posted our reaction video live from Tokyo as it was uh being unveiled over on the island but uh it certainly was uh a radio that got well talked about uh in the 24 and 48 hours following and I'm sure uh much to ICOM's delight uh there was no surprise that uh it was a buzz uh among the community but uh for me uh IC 7110 hit all of the high points I I think that they're showing us a radio that uh has a lot of uh real uh bullet points that folks actually want and I am looking forward to uh understanding the HF performance of the radio uh I have no doubt that VHF and UHF will work uh uh at 50 watts that's awesome but uh what we really found with FTX1 was we were let down when it came to HF receive performance and HF transmit performance in challenging situations. So 7110 has a lot to prove for me. I am gun shy at this point because I did buy an FTX1 as we all know right out of the gate and uh it went back uh as a result of some poor experiences that I had. I expect that ICOM is going to uh likely uh hold this radio until it's ready to rock um but uh we'll find out more and you spoke to not knowing a release date or a price we of course speculated a little bit on price this one is going to be a very expensive radio likely $2,000 or more dollars I think are encompassing all of our estimations here but uh the other thing that is very interesting is it's out from under glass. People are interfacing with the firmware the menus they're pushing the buttons uh and that does mean we are on a short timeline to a release whether it be at the end of 2026 and this is all speculation put a star on it if it's end of 2026 or Dayton 2027 I won't be surprised by either of those my guess was summer of 2027 but I'm cautiously hopeful right I'm thinking Dayton at the latest would be my would be my wager. I'm tending to agree with Rory now uh I'm thinking Dayton is actually a very real possibility would be an excellent time for this to launch if we don't gather the Christmas ham bucks. If it's that far along and we can get FCC approval and get them imported I'm sure they'd be happy uh to take your holiday money but uh if not Dayton is the next logic at this point they would have my holiday money uh I would be I'd be very a couple weeks off to play with a new radio right yeah and I and I think one thing too I I've seen some of the satellite people looking at it um and can it do that?
SPEAKER_03It doesn't really seem to be uh VHF UHF dual receive it looks like it's HF VHF and HFUHF. Uh so for the sat guys out there I I'm sorry this may not be the one for you.
SPEAKER_02Uh and then of course it in its wait marketing materials big on D Star but pause on that because interestingly and I'll give credit where credit is due I was listening uh to Josh's podcast there uh on Saturday evening uh after all of his travel Josh Ham Radio Crash course uh in ICOM UK seems to have confirmed that this thing is indeed full duplex and if that is the truth uh it would certainly fill a very interesting gap for folks that did want to operate satellite plus HF. So we d I don't know if we're we're confident yet that that answer is correct, but there was an ICOM UK post that seemed to indicate that it may indeed be full duplex. So we'll find out and and and if uh ICOM happens to listen to our little podcast they've certainly chimed in on other videos and they want to set the record straight feel free to post down below we'll certainly pin that comment uh so that everybody can what we've seen from ICOM is they I I I'm assuming that might be something that they could do in software if the hardware's capable of doing it.
SPEAKER_03Uh ICOM is typically a a company that will release updates in firmware software if it's if it's possible. So maybe and no APRS either um so that's also at least listed in the reference materials so that's also kind of a bummer in in terms of functionality.
Jay N8QYQ Returns To Radio
SPEAKER_02FT I'm sorry IC 7110 uh it's gonna be exciting I'm looking forward to it guys uh so all right good evening uh to Jay Jay Aho N A QYQ a local area amateur radio operator that I met very randomly on the air on the ride back from Detroit one afternoon. So uh we're gonna talk to Jay this evening about a very interesting project that he was working on and it just so happens that uh as he was coming back from I believe was it Belle Isle uh that I was chatting with you uh that evening on yeah I lived near Belle Isle as a matter of fact so okay yeah yeah so I caught Jay on uh the Detroit repeater the 330 down there in Detroit I believe it is and uh we had a chat about his Mesh core experience and Mesh Task but uh we got to talking about APRS and his big project that he's been working on we're gonna spend some time talking about that today but Jay has been working on uh fleshing out an APRS digipeter uh in downtown Detroit and if you are familiar at all with APRS having digipeders in positional areas uh that help cover the network uh in a place that has a whole is very important and so uh what Jay is doing is uh certainly God's work as far as uh radio is concerned and uh the really neat thing about it is Jay picked an awesome site to do it. So there's a little history behind the site down in Detroit. And so we're gonna talk all about APRS, talk about this project with Jay. So Jay, welcome to the show and I'd love you to just give us a little background on how you just got into amateur radio. We always ask this question on the uh Everyday ham.
SPEAKER_01Well thankfully uh I have my high school ex-girlfriend's dad to thank for that brothers uncles cousins nephews yeah something to that effect right I'm pretty sure the way that this worked was the day I met him I thought I would I would be uh you know get on his good side I heard that he was a ham radio operator and the day I met him I mean I honest to God I think I was at the front door and I was like hi my name's Jay I've always been an interested in ham radio and he's like cool here's the book start reading and that was the secret keyword to any ham. That was it. He's like cool you want to date my daughter read this and I was like all right you got it man I'm like I'm down so uh so one of the nicest most giving guys on the planet and uh and so he also lent me a couple of ICOM HTS and uh and so while you know studying and listening I then um uh took my test down I think uh this is in the 1900s y'all so this is a while ago uh but uh so I was a teenager I might have been 16 17 years old and I remember driving down to a uh uh a ham fest maybe an Adrian if I'm remembering correctly and uh you know somewhere right around 1990 ish and uh took my test there if I remember correctly I can't remember if I failed the novice once and then took it again and then passed the tech or whatever the deal was but this was in the relatively early days of the no code tech license. Okay and um so got licensed and uh from his kindness of sharing the HTS with me, getting me started eventually adding mobile radio and whatever. But uh eventually life progressed and uh um life, family, career, kids, all of it sort of took precedence and I was out of the hobby for the better part of 20 years. Oh gosh and uh so I just got relicensed two Januaries ago uh got my technician risk renewed uh and then immediately uh started working on the general passed the general I think in February or March of that year and uh once I did that I applied for my old call sign under the vanity call sign which was cool and that I was still available and I was proud of the N8 call and the fact that I got it as a teenager. So yeah uh but uh yeah so relatively new general at this point but you know having worked 97 countries in the last year and uh it's been an amazing experience.
SPEAKER_02Wow so Jay I'm wondering if you were licensed around the same time Rory and I were the first time the the way that you were describing it sounds very similar time.
SPEAKER_00It would have had to have been sooner if he still had to do the the the novice and technician two element thing for uh for No Code tech because I I tried that once when I was on the younger side and failed it I couldn't couldn't pass the novice half so as silly as that sounds I tried that once and didn't didn't try again I didn't pass until it was a single test for for tech.
SPEAKER_02Well that's cool I I was curious on that and the other cool thing that I think uh to pull out of that is you went back and got your old call sign which I for one I can't believe it was still there and two that's super cool so N8 QYQ now that wasn't a vanity call sign back then of course that was just your your assigned call but you went back and grabbed it. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah and and Jay what brought you back into the hobby a little bit I it was it was always probably a little bit passion burning in the back of your mind but what was that fire that finally got relit well truth be told so I'm I'm extraordinarily fortunate by you know the day job I'm a technology director for a retailer and we had a major deployment going on and it was an incredible amount of work and uh and so honest to God I was uh going into the office early I was there late driving home thinking about work going to trying to go to sleep thinking about work sleeping poorly thinking about work rolling out of bed thinking about I got to get to work and I was like oh my God I need a hobby yeah and uh and I told my wife I said you know what I think I'm gonna uh get back into radio and uh the poor lady should have waved me off then she should have like drive me or something I don't even know what but uh uh but it was I needed a distraction from thinking about nothing but work and uh and so I couldn't be happier that I that I got back into it because now in preaching to the choir there are so many aspects of digital and so many different modes I have more discretionary income than I did when I was a teenager in the 1900s. Of course it makes it sometimes a little more fun. Yeah and uh so between this and the site it's funny like I got relicensed what a year and a half ago and I had one $30 Bao Fang HT. Oh yeah and please God don't let my wife hear this podcast but between the radios at home the mobile radio uh the radios down at the Masonic the various HTS etc I got to about 13 and stopped counting.
SPEAKER_02Oh man well that'll happen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah so anyway but I love it. I'm absolutely thrilled and then I started to get more involved in um Wayne County Amateur Radio Public Service Corps great group of volunteers doing some great things and uh and one of the things being a resident I my wife and I have lived here in the city since 1995 and uh as I mentioned over near Belle Isle. And so uh one of the things that I did was asked uh our emergency coordinator like, you know, what are we doing in the city in particular? And uh
Detroit MCOM Plans And The Masonic
SPEAKER_01we're very active with the hospitals and emergency kits at the hospitals but we didn't have an active direct relationship at the emergency operations center here in the city. So that has been an extraordinary passion in the in over the past four, five, six months or so unbelievably great group of people there at the city and they're passionate about getting ham radio established specifically ARPSC established as a formal MCOM partner there. And we're in the process now of building a station at the EOC and uh so partway through the licensing process with the FCC on that one.
SPEAKER_02So very cool. So I want to say something is Jay was down in Detroit living there before it was hipster cool or otherwise a generally accepted practice.
SPEAKER_001995 was pretty early Jay so it's cool that uh you've been down there that long for one uh that is really nice to hear uh and two uh doing a bunch of uh uh community work down there with it right uh this this um this project that we're gonna talk about uh the ARS uh ARPSC can't get it out uh and and all that other stuff I mean it it's a great uh it's a great thing to give back to the community and I think that amateur radio has a lot of those tendrils into it uh and Detroit has uh has a want for that a need for it even so Rory I you hit maybe I had something on the on the Detroit uh well I I'm I'm thrilled to hear that the the MCOM and the ARPSC stuff is is being re-revigorized reinvigorated being brought back at the city level there um that's that's great i i I stepped away because of time commitments but for many many years I was involved with ARPSC in Oakland County and uh it was it was a very you know very important thing we worked through the the blackout of 2003 providing support countywide for for hospitals and other county services and you know that was a that was a very important proof of why ARPSC and what's left of racies and and MCOM as a whole is is important. So I'm I'm thrilled to hear that it's it's coming back in the city because I know that it was a thing at one time but uh as as people moved moved west and and came out this way as as uh as Jim alluded to 95 you you moved in around the time most of my family was was was heading west out of the city out this way. The last few people in in my family that lived lived in Detroit left between 95 and 98 somewhere in that range. So so you uh certainly got the got the front row seat to the to a little bit of a little bit of a bumpy road I'm sure living in in the city and then uh and then seeing it come back as as we've seen these last last decade or so.
SPEAKER_01It's interesting because the city has gone through uh just a continual um rebirth and growth in so many good ways and uh and yeah it was an interesting perspective starting in 1995 um definitely didn't have the the the same kind of food scene craft beer scene whatever you want right entertainment scene all of it yeah right all of it it was uh it it's not that it wasn't existent it was just different right it was uh uh it it looked different and it didn't have the same density that it does now um and we got to a point where uh the the crime rate in the central business district of Detroit got to a lower uh level than traverse city and so cool you know it's just so many good things going on here in the city and so it's so interesting to have been um have been given the opportunity to do what we did at the Masonic an extraordinarily historic building in the city uh celebrating its hundredth year this year and uh just the amazing history of the building and including its place in Detroit radio innovation uh so a lot of people aren't uh many people are aware that the first commercial radio broadcast started here in Detroit with uh what we know today is WJR and uh but also the Detroit police department was the first police department to use radio to dispatch their cars. Oh now as you can imagine the receivers were huge and so were the antennas and they could only receive so they could only listen. But Detroit was the first police department. I think Cleveland and others like to pretend that they were the first but they missed it by we all know the truth. About a year and a half. And uh and then so over that history the building itself has hosted other broadcast facilities and things like that. So really a neat rich history both there at the building and here in the city.
SPEAKER_03Can you maybe for people that don't know or not from Detroit can you explain the Masonic Temple? Because all of us are always so proud of it that we have that type of building and the resources that it is but just to people that are outside the community how how would you describe it and what it is and what it what it is now and what was it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well it was created as a Masonic temple not to be confused with the church but like as the uh you know kind of the fraternal uh order um and it is a uh gigantic gothic architecture uh extraordinarily beautiful building yeah um and hilariously like inside the elevator uh you know it's got one through seven but one in in fact it's like one one mezzanine two two mezzanine three whatever so it's about 15 16 stories high it's 210 feet above ground level and uh 500 000 square feet of all kinds of like meeting spaces uh sacred ritual spaces for the various Masonic orders that are there uh plus some of the things that those of us in the red regular public might be aware of like the uh the 5,000 seat theater or uh the crystal ballroom things like that that are used for more public events. And correct me if I'm wrong it was I opened in the 1920s as well I believe Rory or Jay you'd probably know for sure 1926 yeah hey not bad yep yeah and they're a big claim well not the one claim to fame but one cool thing about the building is uh um apparently George Washington was a Mason and uh his he's got a uh he had a Mason's trowel that was used to set the cornerstone of the Capitol building in Washington DC and the same Mason's trowel was used to set the cornerstone at the Masonic Temple.
SPEAKER_02That's really nice that's cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah um so great place I I highly encourage uh go to I think it's the Masonic dot com or dot org. I'm gonna have to double check on that one but if you search put it down in the in the comments there. Yeah uh but take a look um funny enough their website doesn't have a an extraordinary amount of pictures and so you'll find a lot of great pictures on like Detroit history archives and things like that. But uh and I'm I'm happy to share the the presentation deck as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah and growing up it was always such a I'm sorry Jeff growing up too is always such a cool concert venue. Like they have big bands and acts that go there and as a teenager it was it was cool to go down to Detroit and see a concert and the Masonic was always one of the best locations. So it's such a vibrant space and it always has been in the community. Yeah that's exactly go ahead.
SPEAKER_01It's great it's great and uh you know now the the the community is just a beautiful space it's adjacent right from uh Cass Park uh just directly adjacent from uh Castec high school where my youngest graduated and uh loves to brag about that and uh so yeah it's a it's a neat place and it did afford us a neat opportunity for what we did and uh and so you know it was a it we were lucky to be a part of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah that whole that that whole stretch of of Cass Avenue right there has has come a long way too um I went to Wayne State so and that would have been in the early um two mid 2005 six seven range somewhere in there not quite a direct path after high school but that's a story for another time um so I was down there you know while Cass was still kind of in between it was it was better than better than for example my dad might have remembered it but but not even as as nice and good as as it is now so I'd go up and down cast I'd see the the the temple there of course and that was even before Little Caesars Arena was built which is kitty corner from from there as well so it's it's just a fascinating area that whole that whole section and then you mentioned Chaos Tech when the the new school was being built that that brought in all sorts of of new flavor to the area too a whole it's just nice to see all the all the positive stuff and then the history of buildings such as the Masonic's still there.
SPEAKER_02Yep. So you'll get a little Detroit history in tonight's podcast because we can go on forever about this. Well and we jumped right into it and I love this uh the Masonic Temple is actually the site of Jay's new radio installation and that's what we uh brought him in to chat about tonight. And so operatively it's a 210 foot tall building I believe I heard that correctly is that right Jay it is. And that certainly affords us an excellent platform to place an amateur radio antenna and so up at the very top of the Masonic and you're gonna have to tell us how you gained access in in in some general format. You don't have to say everything but uh how you got access to this because it is a killer spot to put an amateur radio antenna for VHF which of course is what APRS uses. And for anybody that's listening out there, of course APRS is the automatic packet reporting system uh generally around here operates on VHF on the 144 uh dot 390 uh megahertz area and uh it's a 1200 baud uh digital signal uh frequency shift keying uh that you uh use to uh broadcast
Filling Detroit’s APRS Coverage Gap
SPEAKER_02all sorts of information whether it be uh location packets whether it be uh text messages whether it be weather telemetry or other types of information short messages uh that can go out over the network digitally and be repeated across a a very broad area and so it kind of Uh stands in for a traditional text message where you're, of course, reliant on a network like a cell network or uh an email. Uh, but Jay has uh helped expand that network here in Detroit. And and Jay, I'll tell you one of the big reasons that I got interested in APRS is when I re-entered the hobby two years ago, uh, down here in South Lion, I couldn't hit any APRS repeaters from my house, you know. And and so what I said was, how how do I get these packets to show up on the map, right? I'm I was sending, broadcasting these packets out, but nothing was happening. And certainly folks around me, if they were listening, could have heard them, but uh without any sort of way, uh an eye gate uh to get on the internet, uh, they they don't uh have as much use as they could have. And so I put one on the air out here in South Lion, a very small one. It sits on top of my house and it has a much, much smaller footprint than what Jay has done. But uh tell us, you know, how did how did you get mo motivated here to to put this thing up on the Masonic? And so tell us how the project was born.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, honest to God, I can't remember how I first heard about APRS in particular, but I got interested. This is probably around February of this year, and uh, I'm lucky enough to have a FTM 500 in the car, which has APRS native, and so got it all configured. I'm not kidding you, it's laughable that I'm the guy who built an APRS, you know, high-sight digipeter in Detroit because it took me two weeks to figure out how to even get my radio to beacon. Right. And I was on nets with guys trying to figure out my configuration and whatever. Oh my gosh. Uh, pro tip uh the radio is smart enough to sense a carrier and it's not gonna transmit over somebody. And so if you have your volume all the way down and your squelch all the way open, it's gonna think there's a carrier and it's not gonna ever beacon. And it took me two and a half weeks and some buried comments in a Facebook group to figure that out. And once I finally did, it was like a spark. It was like, oh my God, it it worked, right? Yep. And uh I remember I was literally parked out on uh uh the the south end of Belle Isle, okay uh looking out over Windsor and uh downtown Detroit and whatever, got it to Beacon, got to see it on APRS.fi. It was like, oh, this is cool. I have no idea what I'm gonna do with this, but like the fact that it worked was just you know, it was a huge light bulb, right? Um it was and it was like magic, but the the challenge then became the coverage. And so we have some really great um so Jim talked about a digipeter and he made mention of an eye gate. So a digipeter, it's a repeater for these beacons, right? So it hears it from your radio traffic and it rebroadcasts it out just like a repeater does our FM voice traffic and gives us an extended range. The difference with an iGate is that it takes that beacon and injects it into the internet out to sites like aprs.fi, and you can see in in within 10 seconds, you can see uh what's beaconing, where people are at, et cetera, where different assets are, whatever the telemetry is being sent, et cetera. So um we have a really good Digipeter in downtown Windsor, um, a great uh Digipeter eye gate out in Mount Clemens, uh, some decent like mid-height ones out in the Livonia area, Novae, uh, and a little bit same downriver, but this corridor from downtown Detroit through my office out in Lavonia, this I-96 corridor is just a total dead zone.
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_01And so my goal was to close that donut hole of coverage. And uh, and as luck would have it, to answer your question from earlier, um my childhood best friend who we used to do stupid stuff together uh when we were kids, now we just do stupid stuff together as adults. Okay, I like it. He happens to be the general manager of the Masonic. And he shared with the trustees the benefit for emergency communication, community support, et cetera. And the building trustees were just so very generous to be like, we're in. Like, this is cool. That's great. Uh, glad to do it. And so um, like I can't say enough to you know thank them for their generosity because it is an incredible site.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it it's a it's a contribution to the entire ham community, not only here in the metro, but also uh over into Canada, uh, where we border right along there. Because, like you said, it does fill a massive uh hole uh that existed in this uh this packet network uh that uh certainly uh it's awesome to see. And and I have been shocked. Now, uh you can use APRS Phi, of course, to see uh your packets on the internet uh very easily on the map. Uh I use uh APRS direct track a lot because that'll let you aggregate all of the packets from a uh an IGate or a Digipeter, and it'll tell you what coverage uh that particular machine has. And so I I was very curious when I talked to Jay. He said, hey, I got one up on the Masonic at 210 feet, how big his coverage swath was. And it is shockingly large, Jay. It is awesome to see just how effective uh gaining access to the top of this site has been for you. And to be very honest, it is extremely encouraging to hear folks open-minded enough that maybe don't understand anything about amateur radio, or perhaps some of the benefits uh outside of the emergency part, uh saying yes uh to uh installing something like that and then being educated on it as it gets installed. That is really encouraging to hear. Uh, and uh I it just makes me really optimistic about downtown.
SPEAKER_03And I don't think people realize how big the city of Detroit is. So when Jay's talking about this donut of coverage that has a uh blind spot, it's a big blind spot. So it is very impressive on how much it's covering.
SPEAKER_00Well, the the advantage of the topography of the area as well, with with Detroit kind of the whole metro Detroit area kind of being this donut up and around the the city of Detroit, which is kind of lower, you you get that whole everyone else is higher, so you're getting into there for the most part. And we see that a lot with the the fixed two-meter 440 repeaters down there, whether it be the the GM machine on the RenSun or the the 533 on top of the DTE building. Old people call that the Edison repeater still. Um, you know, any of those that are down there, it's kind of the same phenomenon. Um, you know, it's it's uh that 200 feet right there in that spot of Detroit. I had to go out to Rochester after work one day last week, and I was I was I noticed my uh APRS uh beacons were getting into that one along the way, so that was that was good to see.
unknownThat's awesome.
SPEAKER_01I uh the APRS.fi site will uh allow you to measure that as well, and at least as of today, 93 miles is what it's showing the coverage as. Wow, this is not a giant high gain antenna. Uh this is a diamond X30. So, like kind of the lowest end uh in terms of gain um intentionally, because if we have users on HTS down at street level downtown, I don't want to overshoot them, right? Yep, and uh it missed that. So we intentionally used the X30 for that. Little bit different on the Winlink side, but uh but the X30 and the other thing that we didn't want to do is create disruption for these other regional digipeders. We wanted to like be additive to the network, but not competitive. You want to be friends. We want to be friends, yeah, right, exactly. And so if you can get your signal into a wide one fill-in digipeter, most of the time it'll reach one of these other sites like Mount Clemens or or where what have you, and it'll get it into the network and get digipeded again. And so I didn't need to create packet storms of stuff. And so even though we're at 200 feet above ground level, it's intentionally set as a wide one fill-in digipeter. So I don't digipete uh other wide one digipeded traffic already because somebody else is gonna catch it.
SPEAKER_02Sure. Okay, yeah. That's that's really important. And and there are a whole lot of considerations when setting one up. And I had gone back and forth on this when I was out here, and I should probably recheck mine now because there is more coverage out my direction uh than when I set it up uh even a year and a half ago. But uh it is really important uh what you said
Digipeater Build And Winlink Add-On
SPEAKER_02there. Um, if you listened to the uh stories about mesh tasks traffic two Daytons ago, they had a packet storm where essentially many repeaters repeating packets endlessly until the whole network crashed, right? Uh the same thing kind of stands true in a different scale uh with APRS, right? And we don't see uh as much of that because I don't think there's quite as as many people operating APRS in a in a confined environment, but I am very encouraged. In the last six to twelve months here in Detroit, I see more and more amateurs operating with APRS, whether it's just be broadcasting a uh home packet, you know, marking their QTH or uh using it in their vehicle to say, hey, this is where I am, or sending uh APRS Thursday messages. And if you're not familiar with APRS Thursday, that's always fun because it does introduce a little load to the uh the network on Thursday for 12 to 24 hours, depending on how long it runs, right? So uh really neat to see. And I am actually really, I think that you said something really cool there too. So if you're an equipment nerd, Jay picked an antenna there that has a wide lobe, right? Because he wanted it to come down to the ground more rapidly than something with a very narrow but long distance uh gain antenna. And so if you look at the X30, it's a much wider lobe. And I made that same calculated decision when I was setting up mine out here and went with the the Comet GP3 uh as my as my option because I wanted it to be something that was a little more hyperlocal. And if you look at the X300, which I think you're gonna talk about with the Win Link, maybe, maybe I'm wrong. You'll you'll tell me. Uh it's a much narrower pattern, but it it goes much further because there's there is far more gain.
SPEAKER_03So really interesting. And I'm curious, Jay. So you you have the antenna, you got the site. How did you go about now selecting the equipment that you're gonna build this repeater with?
SPEAKER_01Well, that was some of the learning. And uh, you know, I I tell anybody who listens, like, I didn't build this because I'm an extra expert. I I built it because I'm a student, and I was interested in it and I wanted to learn more. And without a doubt, right from the start, it was a ton of learning. Call it whatever you want, vibe coding or whatever. Like me and Chat GPT were good friends, and uh, and so lots of back and forth. But I started with a Raspberry Pi, and uh, and you can run uh you know direwolf on a Raspberry Pi and uh do pretty much everything you need to do for APRS all in one little hundred dollar bundle. And uh, and without a doubt, like that worked incredibly well. Now the thing is though, is early on as I was working on this, I got the bright idea of like, hey, look, I already got access, and uh, you know, I'm uh volunteer with a crew of humans who are interested in emergency communication. And we would love to have the ability to deploy somebody with nothing more than an HT and a notebook computer and be able to let them do WinLink emails. And so I started to build out uh a Vara FM WinLink node as well. And so the site now has both. And uh, but the thing I ran into very quickly, I was like, I was a number of days into trying to make this work, only to realize that the Vara FM software only works on Windows. And so I had to separate those two into two different node devices. And so now there's a Raspberry Pi 4, which drives everything APRS, and then a solid state mini PC that runs Windows. That god knows I learned a lot about how to harden Windows so that I don't have to climb a 200-foot building every time I gotta push the frickin' reset button.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah. That might be the hardest part of this whole project if I'm being.
SPEAKER_01Gosh, so that's the those are the two, you know, pieces of software or the hardware that that runs each node in particular.
SPEAKER_02So, Jay, now are those connected to a network at the Masonic Temple, or are you using a cellular modem then to get everything online?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so temporarily used a cellular hotspot just because I was anxious to get it on and get it tested and whatever. Um, but uh this is one part uh for anybody who gets to see any of the upcoming presentations at uh at the radio clubs, you'll get to see some of these pictures. Yep. And I I call it Beauty and the Beast, man, because this is one of Detroit's most extraordinarily beautiful buildings.
SPEAKER_02It is.
SPEAKER_01But I had to crawl through a hundred years of industrial dust in the back of it to like wire network through and get to where I needed to go.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And uh so I've got pictures of all of that, which is great. And uh hilariously, at one point, I'm trying to run network cable down from the radio room down to the closest network switch. And I'm sure I got this right. I got more than enough length of Ethernet and whatever, and I'm going down this uh this chase that a little scary because like 100 years ago, all they did is just this opening in the floor and they put pipes and whatever through it. And it's like you can look down that thing and be like, that's exciting. So here I am running this stuff down. And finally, after 45 minutes of banging my head against the wall, I went to my buddy uh and I was like, look, here's a really stupid question. Is there some magic floor in between seven and six that I don't know about? And he's like, Yeah, actually there is. Oh and so between like 6M and 7 is another floor called the fan room. And this is where all the heavy duty industrial air handlers are and stuff. And he was like, You gotta be kidding me. Oh man. So that was that was a lot of fun, you know, it was good learning too. But ultimately now we we hardwire into the Masonics uh high-speed network, and it's great, it's been rock solid.
SPEAKER_02It it's it's kind of cool, by the way, to see places in these historic buildings that no one else has seen, probably for years or ever will have the chance to see. So I actually am a little bit jealous because that's just neat, right? Yeah, learning a little bit about that building. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_00There's a big part of me jealous with what you're describing. I I there a younger version of me would would explore places I shouldn't go way too much, and and um that that would be one of them. If if you could go find these mysterious floors and mysterious things, I'm I'm certainly I'm certainly jealous. That's quite the experience just to execute the mission there for sure.
SPEAKER_01So uh just building on that a little bit, so you got these two devices, Raspberry Pi, relatively stable, um solid state, mini PC. Uh if anybody needs the cliff notes, man, there's a whole bunch of stuff that I did to it to number one, um give it a bit of a watchdog. So it watches to make sure that the key pieces of software are running constantly, that the memory doesn't, you know, go up and peg the processor or the memory, et cetera. And it checks that every three minutes. And if it doesn't see what it wants to see, it'll give it two more tries. And if it doesn't see what it wants, it'll reboot the system on its own. And when it comes back up, it auto loads all the software and brings it up and starts that watchdog process again. And uh, and of course it logs all of that. But then the other thing that I uh realize is like, what if the power goes out? And then the power comes back. You know, these these stupid little devices have this physical push button on the computer to turn it on. It's like, come on, you're killing me here. Well, thankfully, there's a configuration in the BIOS that you can set so that when it sees power, it'll boot. And so it's like, man, the stuff I learned about Windows is amazing.
SPEAKER_03So I learned that feature the hard way one time as well. I I'm really into building digital signage. It's it's a nerd hobby, you know. So it's you do nerd things. And uh I always hated that because I'm like, oh, I gotta go unplug it or plug it back in all the time and do all those things. And then I Googled it. I'm like, oh, I should if that I would have known this years ago. Yeah, so many Windows problems would have been solved.
SPEAKER_02So, Jay, you've talked about the PCs, but I'm betting the folks out there are wondering how much power does the Masonic broadcast from that height to cover what it covers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So those each are attached to a uh uh Yesu FT3165. So it's a two-meter Yezu 65 watt radio that I set intentionally at mid-power, so like 30 watts.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01Uh, I don't need any more power than that because I don't want to overdrive the region in a way that like if I can't hear the signal coming to me, why why bother, you know, blasting past it, right? Yep. And so, yeah, 30 watts on each radio, and it's worked pretty flawlessly.
SPEAKER_03Do you have any remote control capability of either the computers or the radio itself?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so you know, kind of a nice side benefit of having a Windows machine up there in the radio room is I run Google Remote Desktop. And so I can remote desktop right onto the Windows machine, and then I uh will SSH over to the Raspberry Pi if I ever. But honest to God, the Raspberry Pi is so stable, I never have to touch the thing, it just works forever. And uh, and so like I look at the direwolf uh logs coming through and whatever, it just makes me feel good to look at it every once in a while. Sure. But I really don't need to do much on it. Every once in a while, it is nice uh with WinLink, with the software that I'm running, there's some tuning involved in audio cards and uh, you know, like signal to noise ratios and whatever. So it's nice to be able to see that side of the interface and see signal strength and uh ratios and whatever to sort of tune it up. So, but you know, Google remote desktop, man, that thing was a lifesaver. Like no VPN required and whatever. I'm really pretty pleased with it, with one exception. You asked me earlier about network. Yes. I went and bought one of these uh cheap uh Wi-Fi hotspot devices that you pay by the drink kind of a deal. Yeah, and I put it up there. Well, little did I know, Google Remote Desktop basically runs a 30 frame per second video fee all the time.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I don't care if I'm not even on the on the like if I like turn off my monitor and walk away for the night, if I got that window open, it's just full streaming video.
SPEAKER_02Streaming data.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_01I ate a gig of traffic in a day and a half. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03You're gonna get a surprise bill.
SPEAKER_01I was like, come on, man, there's no way that this yeah, that's exactly what happened.
SPEAKER_02So that was a learning it sounds like it was a prepaid device, so James, you had a gig and it was gone, and then it was time to re-up that so he could keep uh connecting. Yeah. A couple of things here, and if you're out there in listener land, uh Dire Wolf, of course, a software TNC that is extremely popular with the amateur community. It is uh it has a quite a few capabilities. I in fact run direwolf on top of my APRS IS32 layer here in my shack for my repeater. Uh, and so I I've found uh Dire Wolf to be an excellent piece of software, and I agree with you, uh amazingly stable compared to most things that you're used to working with. So uh it's really neat to kind of hear the implementation. And it realistically, when I when I hear all the things that you had to do, it is a it's a homebrew, it's a homebrew application that you built from the ground up, uh, and then learned as you go, and that's really cool to hear.
SPEAKER_01It it really at every point there were interesting challenges, right? How do you take consumer grade devices like Raspberry Pis, Windows machines? The radios themselves I wasn't as worried about, but the thing is, is up at the up at the height in the radio room, uh it is it's not conditioned space. Yeah, it's enclosed space, but it's not conditioned. And so we can get temperature swings from you know 95, 100 degrees up there to zero Fahrenheit. Uh, and so I haven't I haven't been through the the depths of the cold yet. Uh, but I use a uh a great enclosure that I found for relatively inexpensive uh with an integrated fan and those kinds of things. So everything uh got built into this enclosure. Everything inside the enclosure I do 100% DC. So uh I feed it with um, you know, so commercial power to a commercial uninterruptible power supply from there to a um 50
Power, Grounding, And Remote Reliability
SPEAKER_01amp hour life po battery backed up with a power gate and a Yezu uh traditional power supply for radio. So you've got like two layers of battery protection and uh keeping that AC clean before it lands at all of the radios. Now, the only challenge with that, anybody who's played around with a a Raspberry Pi or a Windows machine or whatever, you can't drive it off of a 13.8 volts car battery. So uh step down transformers to get it to the right voltage and things like that. So uh so that was once again interesting learning. It made sense, but it wasn't something I was actively doing a lot of. Uh, but then like lightning suppression and grounding when you're up 200 feet in the air with metal sticks stuck up into the clouds and uh you know, stuff like that was a lot of fun too.
SPEAKER_03Did the temple give you guidance on grounding? Because I'm assuming they have a grounding system put in and they said, Here, let me come help you, and you can tap in here to the ground system.
SPEAKER_01Honestly, I went in there, I'm not kidding you, James. I went in with a hundred feet of uh of six gauge heavy duty braided copper. Yeah, ready to have to go find my way down to whatever. And like, if this is the wall in the radio room, there's a spiral staircase right next to me that goes up to the antennas and down one more floor. The building engineer is like, Oh, you need ground? No problem. That's grounded right there. And uh so four feet across and right into a really solid connection of uh of one of the railings or whatever. He's like, that's building ground for you right there. It's like perfect. You're my hero.
SPEAKER_02That's perfect. So Jay has a a site set up and it's called Detroit Never Goes Silent. And it's a sort of uh supporting exhibit that shows folks that don't know what amateur radio operators do or what this technology does, a little bit about what it can do. And Jay, I will tell you uh a couple of days ago, I visited uh in sort of prep for this conversation, and I sent myself an email from the WinLink Gate Gateway atop Masonic Temple, and it came from you. And inside it, uh, there was a whole bunch of cool history about the the project and some some cool information. Now, there's a couple of different emails you could select in the workflow, and I love what you did there. So tell us a little bit about that. And if you're comfortable, you can share the address, of course, so folks can try it out themselves.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So uh I was mentioning off the air, I you know, had the chance to listen to the the podcast around field day. And I loved the attitude of being present to the community and teaching and being available to answer questions and spark an interest, right? And so uh one of the other extraordinarily generous things that the Masonic is doing is allowing us to put in the main lobby a sign that attracts people to this as an exhibit. And uh in the name just came from uh uh a little bit of drawing from Detroit's early history with radio innovation, all the way through what the Masonic is empowering today for all of these sorts of things. And so when somebody comes up to this, they'll be able to scan a QR code and it'll take them on their phone to the website, and it gives them a little bit of uh just a touch of history, uh a little bit of an understanding of what uh Winlink is and how even though you might not have internet access or cell phone coverage or whatever, over radio waves, we can beam an email out and deliver it via the internet to wherever you need it to go. And so it's uh it's intended to be experiential so that somebody who's like, I don't know what this is, but this looks kind of interesting. Let me let me take a look. Uh, and so they go through it and it teaches them a little bit about it, but then they get to try it themselves. And what we do is we say, look, put in your email address and pick what you're interested in. Do you want to learn more about the history of the Masonic building? Do you want to know about upcoming shows at the building? Uh, do you want to learn more about ham radio or emergency communications or the Detroit cert team? Uh, all of these sorts of things. Uh, you know, how do I get licensed as a ham radio operator? Um so you go through and you just pick which ones you're interested in, one or five of them,
Detroit Never Goes Silent Exhibit
SPEAKER_01and uh, and then that gets fed to us. And then uh we go in normally within 24 hours, and through WinLink, we send whatever message that they're interested in. We send it out over the air through the WinLink node and obviously delivered to their email address via the internet, but they get to sort of experience like getting a message that used radio waves to come to me. Like, how is that?
SPEAKER_00I need to log into I need to log into my WinLink. I forgot I went in there and I had one send to my my WinLink address. So I have to I have to bring up my WinLink and see if it arrived my WinLink radio to radio.
SPEAKER_03So, Jay, I have a question for you too. So if someone with all the volunteer work you're doing and the community you know activism, let's say, if someone wanted to support, uh is there a way that they can get in contact with you, or do you have a buy me a coffee or anything of that nature to sort of keep this project alive?
SPEAKER_01Uh you know what? I don't. Um not yet, and I probably should. Uh the one thing that we are working to determine funding for is uh, you know, I'm I mentioned the Detroit CERT community and uh in the Detroit uh Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Great community of people there who are right now really passionate about getting really connected with ham radio operators, specifically through ARPSC, and uh the kind of relationship and the and the levels of redundancy that that can create and the added benefit that it brings to a really active Detroit cert community that today is constantly training new members and those sorts of things. Uh so Ham Radio being a formal partner there is uh is something that we're working through right now. We just got the uh uh the club station license approved by the FCC. Uh we're literally waiting on our vanity call sign to get a cool call sign that looks a little more Detroit-centric right now. Very cool. And uh so that's in process. We're of course impatiently waiting for that. Um, but the reality is that right now, at the federal level, there has been so much cuts to the funding for all kinds of things, including, sadly, emergency communications and MCOM, all of those sorts of things have been drastically cut. Um, and uh, and so there is no easy path to funding at that level. So we're trying to figure out what to do right now in terms of how to fund that. Uh, we've had some, you know, very generous conversations with organizations that are uh supportive of MCOM, et cetera, and just trying to work through now how do we raise money for that? Because, you know, to build what we want to build at the Detroit Emergency Operations Center, it's you know, at least single-digit thousands, uh about six thousand dollars for what we want to build. And if we built our daydream setup with uh, you know, remote go kit and everything else, it's about $11,000. So that's what we're trying to, you know, determine how to do funding for right now. In terms of what we what I built at the Masonic, it's uh, you know, very much labor of love passion project. I'm lucky to have been able to do it. And so uh, you know, if you if you meet me at a at a at a radio club uh presentation or something and want to buy me a free coffee, I'm I'm down for that. So there we go.
SPEAKER_02We'll we'll get you a beer if you come out. So I will say Jay is uh going to be out at the South Lion Area Amateur Radio Club here within the week or so, uh, and uh he will be speaking to the same project. So if you are in the local metro and you listen to this, it'll be dropping Thursday the 3rd of September. Uh come on out. Uh we'd love to have you. South Lion Area Amateur Radio Club is open to the public, and uh we would certainly love to have you out if you have more interest in Jay's project here. Jay, I want to personally thank you for taking uh a whole lot of time out of your evening to come and talk to us on the Everyday Ham. Uh it it was absolutely awesome to meet you on the air, hear some uh sort of same or like uh interests uh and be able to bring you on here
Funding Reality And Closing Thoughts
SPEAKER_02and talk about such an awesome project. I I I would have had no idea uh that that that it was you that set that up down there, but it's really, really cool to see. And and I love the passion for uh the community and Detroit and of course emergency management, which you said of course remains underfunded in many places and is so important uh when all else fails.
SPEAKER_03So I really I really appreciate Jay too. When people always ask, well, Tam Radio, what what do you do with your license? And you always try to tell them some stories that help the community or or really give back. And uh I'm really appreciative that you found a way to be that story, so to speak, uh both for everyday you know APRS and WinLink, but also with the emergency of support and it being used also for emergencies. So kudos to you and and thank you, Jay, as well. I I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00Well, I need to uh truly my honor I can can I'm sorry, I'm talking over you. I need to see if I can get your your winlink node from here. I I gotta play with that and see if I can hit it for you.
SPEAKER_03You've given Rory a hobby now to an action. Well, now you know what?
SPEAKER_01We've got uh I know we've had users from uh from Livonia and uh you know uh we had uh as a matter of fact, the Sun Parlor Amateur Radio Club in Leamington, Ontario, uh used it so that they could pile on some field day points for uh sending some messages out uh via Winlink. And uh so I will be, as a matter of fact, uh a week from tonight on the 8th at SunParlor, uh there in Leamington, um South Lion on September 13th, Launch Cruise on October 7th, the Ford Motor Company Amateur Radio Club on October 8th, and the Livonia on October 26th. And uh, and I'm forgetting one now. Oh, Hazel Park. I forget the exact date in November. It might be the 11th. Um and so uh yeah, but between being lucky enough to be interviewed on the Everyday Ham podcast and having six clubs wanting me to come out and share, I'm I'm ham radio famous. And uh, you know, I'm feeling pretty well. Well deserved.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well deserved, Jay.
SPEAKER_02Thanks, Jay. I appreciate you joining us tonight. Uh any last words, any last thoughts? It looks like Jay will be on tour around the metro area. So if you are listening to us in the greater metro Detroit, there are many opportunities uh to maybe get his autograph, buy him a beer, uh, and send a win link email on uh his behalf there. Um but uh I really appreciate you coming on tonight. It's a great project and uh really excited uh to have it here in Detroit. 73 for now, Jay.
SPEAKER_017 3. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, 73, everyone. 7 3.
