Understanding Basic Electronics
The Long Island CW Club has turned into much more than a place for hams to learn Morse Code. It really is an online amateur radio club. Their Zoom rooms host talks on a wide variety of topics, and their mailing list has become a forum for less experienced hams to seek out the advice of those who, shall we say, have been in the hobby for a while.
A recent thread, Understanding Basic Electronics, caught my eye. It has a number or resources to help the new ham learn electronics. Of those, there’s one I really like, How Transistors Work – A Simple Explanation. It has explanations for how both bipolar junction transistors and field-effect transistors (FETs) work.
Chatter uses LoRa to send encrypted texts
Chatter is an amusing little device that uses LoRa to send encrypted text messages. I’ve often thought that a device like this, but operating on the amateur radio bands, would be a killer app for amateur radio.
This particular device is kind of expensive at $132. Not only that, it comes as a kit that you have to put together yourself. Both those being the case, I don’t see this becoming a big seller. It is amusing, though.
I haven’t checked in with the Ham Messenger developer lately, so I don’t know how that project is going. For folks with a license, though, I’d still recommend that that is the way to go. Of course, since Ham Messenger uses amateur radio frequencies, the messages can’t be encrypted. It seems a bit silly that you can encrypt using an unlicensed service, while you can’t with amateur radio, but them’s the rules.
From Southgate ARC:
Talks from the Ham Radio Village at DEF CON 29 released
The amateur radio talks given in the Ham Radio Village at last year’s DEF CON 29 event are now available on YouTube. The talks include:
- An Introduction to RF Test Equipment by Kurtis Kopf K6GG
- Amateur Radio Mesh Networking by Tyler Gardner KI7ODK
- Spectrum Coordination for Amateur Radio by Bryan Fields W9CR
- Getting started with low power/long distance comms (QRP) by Eric Escobar W6WD
- How to Contact the ISS with a $30 Radio by Gregg Horton K6XSS
Watch the talks on the DEFCON YouTube channel.