A couple months ago Wojciech Kaczmarski SP5WWP announced the LinHT project. These mad lads buy a Retevis C62 radio and replace all the circuit boards inside with their own. They aim to create an open-source hardware, Linux based, SDR handheld transceiver. Their first boot of the OS happened on August 18.

Last week, Wojciech, Andreas OE3ANC, and Vlastimil OK5VAS hit a major milestone: the radio now works as a complete M17 transceiver.

A few days later, Vlastimil submitted a PR for the first iteration of Revision B of the circuit boards, which includes:

• a 5W amplifier
• new audio codec
• a redesigned power system which can charge from USB-C with simultaneous operation of the radio

Rev B is not yet ready for manufacturing, but I'll be following closely and can't wait to buy one.

Because the market for batteries to charge phones and laptops is so much larger than the market for batteries we 12V output, all the innovation in batteries is happening on batteries that have USB-C Power Delivery output. There are many vendors and lots of products with different characteristics. If you want to use these batteries with amateur radio gear that takes 12V, or that requires an unusual voltage (my UV-5R battery charger wants 10V input), you have to:

• buy this cable from Adafruit which asks the USB-C device for 12V
• connect it to a small buck converter or boost converter to get the voltage that you want
• live with the losses and heat of the buck/boost converter

Now there is another option, the PocketPD. This small device allows you to choose the voltage you want, and it requests that voltage from the connected USB-C power source. You need a modern USB-C power source that supports the Programmable Power Supply mode from USB PD 3.0 and later. As you would expect, there are many USB-C power sources that comply with this standard.

Instead of bucking or boosting the voltage from USB-C, this device just asks the USB-C for exactly the voltage that you want. Very clever.

The Citrus Belt Amateur Radio Club in San Bernardino, CA organizes an annual Route 66 On The Air Special Event. This year's event started on Sep 6 and runs through Sep 14. A bunch of clubs are operating stations along the route, from Santa Monica to Chicago, using special event call signs. There are several mobile operators, including one in a small plan who will be flying over the route. The club website has all the details, including lists of participating clubs and cities, schedules, frequencies, a log sheet, and the criteria and procedure to request a certificate or decal for participation in the event.

Zero Retries is an independent newsletter promoting technological innovation in and adjacent to Amateur Radio. Published by Steve and Tina Stroh, it's the weekly newsletter to read if you are what Steve calls a NewTechHam. NewTechHams wanna build handheld SDRs that can do DSTAR, AllStar, or any other digital mode with just a software update. NewTechHams are as comfortable with a Raspberry Pi as they are with a 2m HT. NewTechHams want to design repeaters that use digital timeslicing so a repeater doesn't need a big duplexer or multiple frequencies. If any of this sounds interesting to you, you should be subscribed to this free email newsletter.

Surrey Amateur Radio Communications, in Surrey, B.C., Canada, publishes a bi-monthly (that's every other month, not twice per month) periodical which I just discovered. It's free, and it's outstanding. Get new issues at https://ve7sar.blogspot.com/.

I have a KSC-25LS charging cradle for my Kenwood TH-D75 handheld. This charging cradle comes with an AC/DC power supply which provides 12V to the cradle. I wanted the option to power the charging cradle directly from any 12V DC power source connected via Powerpoles.

Antenna design is a game of tradeoffs. There is no such thing as an inexpensive, portable, lightweight, small, all band, high gain, omnidirectional antenna. The good news is that for any given use case, there is probably an antenna design that works pretty well. The antennas that come with most handhelds are inexpensive, small, and portable, but have terrible performance. Their low gain is especially worrisome on a handheld which typically has only 5W of power. I found an antenna that's portable, small, with 7dB of gain, and it's great for use on handhelds: Ed Fong's DBJ-2.

I pre-ordered a Kenwood TH-D75 as soon as the distributors started taking pre-orders. I've had my Kenwood TH-D75 for a week now, and have had a chance to use if for quite a few hours. This is an expensive radio, I paid $750 for mine. Why would anyone pay this much money for any handheld radio? And is this one worth the money? You can buy a Baofeng UV-5R for less than $20, and it includes a charging cradle, which the Kenwood does not. The Baofeng will transmit and receive on the 2m and 70cm amateur radio bands, receive nearly anything with FM modulation, and with a little tweaking, can transmit on GMRS and MURS frequencies. What could the TH-D75 have that makes it worth almost 40 times the price?

For the last couple of months, I've been working to gather data on all the repeaters in the Intermountain Intertie. I wanted to make a nicer looking presentation of this linked repeater system than the other ones that I've seen. I also wanted to add some other useful artifacts like a Google Map showing the locations and links of all the repeaters, and a CSV file that you can download into CHIRP and then program into your radio. I also want this data to always be current and up to date.

Today I added three new Arizona repeaters to my Intermountain Intertie page. Thanks to the Arizona Repeater Association for their work to link these repeaters to the Intertie. Large portions of Northern and Central Arizona, including the Phoenix metropolitan area now are covered by repeaters linked to the Intertie.

There is more work to be done: each repeater will eventually have it's own page with pictures, a description, and history of that repeater site.

I got tired of updating WordPress, so I built a new static website using Jekyll. I think it looks better than the old one, it's faster, and I dumped Google Analytics so there is no tracking or cookies. Even the fonts are served locally.

Maybe this will inspire me to write here more often.