K3LOE: Tech on Ten

Amateur Radio’s ability to contribute to international goodwill is epitomized by the presence of an amateur station, 4U1UN, at United Nations’ Headquarters in New York. — Rick Palm, K1CE, The FCC Rulebook, 1993

Members of the 4UIUN station feel that their amateur radio efforts meet the principles of the founding countries of the UN. It embodies what the nations of the world expected of the UN when they founded it. — Carole Perry, WB2MGP, 73, May 1991

This June I completed an FT8 contact on the 10 meter band with 4U1UN, the amateur radio station operated by the United Nations Staff Recreation Council Amateur Radio Club (UNSRCARC). I was praying to the radio gods and jumping up and down as I saw the contact unfold on the computer screen and I shouted when the contact sequence was completed.

4U1UN is a difficult call sign to get in your log according to the DXCC Most Wanted List. This list is built from QSO (contact) data uploaded to Club Log, derived from the timestamps of an entity’s last contact. Generally, the rarer the country, the higher it will be on the list. 4U1UN is currently 99, making it the first station I’ve worked from Club Log’s top 100. For perspective, Antarctica is merely 202 on Club Log’s list!

The initialism DX comes from the abbreviation telegraphers used for “distant” and can be used to refer to distant amateur, television, shortwave, and broadcast stations — typically international stations. Some even reserve its use for intercontinental contacts.

DXCC refers to DX Century Club, a popular radio contact certification program offered by the ARRL. This “award” recognizes those hams who have contacted 100 of the entities on the DXCC list of 340. (Scare quotes because you pay for the honor.)

Most of the entities on the DXCC list will be familiar to you as countries. Like North Korea, which has stood atop the most wanted list for many years. Others, like Scarborough Reef, next on the list, are disputed territories. Alaska and Hawaii are their own entities because they are physically distant from the rest of their country. As far as radio wave propagation is concerned, they may as well be different countries.

While there are many difficult to visit islands on the list, one entity is difficult to log not because of its location, but because the entity consists of a single station in New York City: 4U1UN. Though located in the US, the UN building is operated via “separate administration” and was added to the DXCC list because it “exhibited sovereignty beyond that of a typical embassy" (Feb. 2010, QST, members only). It became a DXCC entity under rules which have since been changed.

Whether you can make a contact with the UN “entity” depends entirely on whether 4U1UN is on the air. During the 2010s, it was not. Before then? The historical record is tantalizing but thin.

That claim—the historical record of our most-wanted entity 4U1UN is wanting—is only possible to assert thanks to the recent and enormously valuable efforts of the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC), a free online library devoted to ham radio, shortwave listening, college radio, and early communications. At 160,000 items, it has major holdings that include the complete 43 year run of 73 Magazine/73 Amateur Radio Today, for instance. (Do you have any publications on their want list?)

I even found a fascinating (open?) letter written in 2018 about the struggle to revive the station that was shared in my own club’s newsletter, the RARS Exciter, in Raleigh, North Carolina. The history below draws heavily on sources I found in DLARC. I also searched the ARRL’s QST magazine archives. There is little there but what exists is mostly paywalled, unfortunately.

My research was far from exhaustive or scholarly, but this is not my first rodeo either (I am a former librarian and reporter). I think what I found (and didn’t find) between DLARC, QST, YouTube and other web sources indicates that the community around 4U1UN, and perhaps the UNSRCARC members in particular, should prioritize more research, storytelling, sharing about, and yes perhaps even marketing of their station. 4U1UN was once both a literal and symbolic beacon for the world: “For you, one U N.” Could it be again?

The rise and fall and rise of 4U1UN

Though there were predecessor stations, 4U1UN went on the air February 1978. The station was soon chugging along after almost getting decommissioned on its infamous first night. The station was reportedly “very active on 20 meters each week.” 4U1UN became one of the stations invited to be a member of the world’s first worldwide amateur radio beacon network, transmitting every 10 minutes at the top of the hour. Guest operators even worked eight stations on the Oscar 8 satellite during the 1978 CQ World Wide CW Contest. It was awarded DXCC status that same year. By February 1979, the station was mailing 3000 QSL cards a month if it could keep up.

And then they move into 30 years of inconsistent operation. Really, can you blame them? Radio-club-where-I-stay-at-work-longer is a hard sell.

There are hints that even by 2000, the station was not often on the air. The DX Listening Digest from December 2000 reported, “UNITED NATIONS HQ. 4U1UN made a surprise appearance on the air Friday and Saturday…”

The 2014 obituary for 4U1UN founder and president emeritus Maximillian C. de Henseler, HB9RS said “The 4U1UN United Nations Headquarters Station was dismantled in 2010 due to the extensive renovation project on the Secretariat Building,..All antennas have been removed from the roof, and equipment has been packed away.” The DX community expected the station to return once the renovations were finished in 2013 (Nov. 2010, QST, members only). But the renovation did not include space for the amateur radio station.

This grew frustrating for the serious DXers who could not simply travel to the entity and activate it themselves. Some took advantage of the rarity by operating as a UN pirate station. In July 2018 when 4U1UN had risen to the 34th most wanted entity on the Club Log list, MM0NDX wrote at DX-World.net: “Is there much point to 4U1UN being a DXCC entity if the powers-that-be can’t even borrow or rent a room within the UN Building to operate a simple ham radio station?”

UN ARC President James Sarte, K2QI, responded with details that will sound familiar to anyone who has had to carry on after being de-prioritized by the new boss, while simultaneuously facing an increased workload. “The past 10 years has essentially been a one man show.” A post on their Facebook page said the main roadblocks were “not political, but administrative.”

The effort was eventually buoyed by Adrian Ciuperca KO8SCA, who commented, “Right from the start it was clear that getting the club active again could not be achieved by making a formal request at the UN or knowing someone that works at the UN.”

The station had risen to #30 on the most wanted list when it was eventually reactivated in 2020, a feat which earned the team a Yasme Foundation Excellence Award. On March 6, 2020, WSJT-X developer Joe Taylor, K1JT made the first-ever FT8 QSOs from the revived 4U1UN. Momentum was finally on the station’s side again.

Then, of course, 4U1UN — and the world — shut down again.

4U1UN Narratives

Here is a small sample of the individuals I have met in my research about the station.

Carole Perry, WB2MGP

Peace through communications should be a goal for us all. — Carole Perry, WB2MGP, 73, May 1991

Carole Perry’s “Hams with Class” column in the May 1991 issue of 73 is remarkable for several reasons. It doesn’t take long in this hobby to notice the dearth of women. This short article illustrates why we are poorer for it, as she accomplishes several things which were unique in my research.

She highlights the geographical diversity of the ARC membership, mentioning UN staff from Panama, Sri Lanka, and Poland.

No other account I’ve found mentions 4U1UN’s emergency communications activities; most focus on guest operations during contests. Perry cites specific frequencies on 20 meters used for post-disaster international nets and a Radio Readiness Group that had “participated in 11 disaster operations” since 1986.

Perry came to be known as the “kids’ elmer” for sparking “the imagination of almost nine-hundred Staten Island public school kids a year for almost 30 years in her ‘introduction’ to amateur radio” enrichment class.”

Among the handful of station visit narratives I found, hers is the only one that specifically mentions using the trip as an education opportunity for students and her fellow teachers. Are there others? Did classes ever visit the station, including ones from the UN’s own school (see picture below)?

Bernie McClenny, W3UR

Bernie McClenny, publisher of The Daily DX daily newsletter and CQ DX Hall of Fame, told a Charlotte Hamfest about his visit to the station with his daughter, which was also recounted in this Carolina DX Association April 2005 newsletter and the May 2004 issue of QST. It is a short, vivid account of the tribulations that are endured by a guest operator. McClenny seems to be typical of the people who visit…well-connected hams with easy geographical access to the station. This description also fits W2VU.

Rich Moseson, W2VU

Editor of CQ magazine, Rich Moseson gives us one of the more journalistic reports of a visit for a contest. For instance, we learn in his 2010 article about Mohamed Jendoubi, KA2RTD, who is mentioned in many other accounts but never profiled. In fact, Mohamed was President of the United Nations Staff Recreation Council Amateur Radio Club for 7 years, station manager for 13, and a member for 29 years at the time of the article’s writing. As Moseson says, “Mohamed provides the link to Max DeHenseler and the club’s long history.”

The article also introduces James Sarte in his new role as club president, taking the reins from KA2RTD.

Joe Aoki, JJ3PRT

Joe Aoki, JJ3PRT, and some other “JA DXers” give us what may be the only video on YouTube of the inside of the old station or its rooftop antenna farm. This was recorded September 5th and 6th, 1992 during the All Asian DX contest. According to the video description, the group had good luck on 40 meters, not so great on 75.

What do the Betamax and Hi8 tapes in your grandfather’s shoeboxes hold?

Dmitry Zhikharev, King of Bir Tawil, RA9USU

The problem with contest narratives, like the feature that ran in the April 2017 QST (ARRL members only article), is that contests aren’t that interesting to read about. Barring the requisite mention of the difficulty getting through UN security, this could have been a report about almost any contest.

Who would guess from this bland memo that the author would go on to claim leadership of Bir Tawil, “a pocket of unclaimed desert land between the borders of Egypt and Sudan. Measuring 1,290 sq km, it belongs to no country and has no registered population.” In light of this role, Zhikharev’s visit to 4U1UN becomes a fascinating step in a nation building experiment with radio at its center. He aims to shore up his claim on the territory by operating a station from the patch of desert. Callsign? 1U4UN.

What other international royals have touched a 4U1UN key?

Ferdy De Martin

In my one bit of original research for this article, I reached out to Ferdy De Martin, whose callsign HB9DSP is hidden on the front of this striking QSL card.

I will let Ferdy speak for himself. Below is an image of Ferdy’s email response to my inquiry about the card design, for which I was very grateful!

It turns out that Max’s own HB9 has always been and remains the home team for 4U1UN. HB9BOU is still the QSL card coordinator. I have just received my International Reply Coupons to attempt a QSL card exchange, if postal service to the US isn’t cancelled!

The fact that Max turned to Ferdy in his home club for design help indicates a scrappy and collaborative “maker” mindset that is 100% ham. Are there other examples of this from 4U1UN?

4U1UN can be a beacon again

We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of this immense universe that surrounds us and it is with humility and hope that we take this step. — Kurt Waldheim, Secretary General Of The UN, Message recorded for the The Golden Record, 1977

The German DX Foundation has 4U1UN at 54 down from a high of 26 in 2017. The UNSRCARC, KO8SCA, and K2QI clearly deserve a lot of respect and thanks for what they have accomplished in brining the entity back on the air.

But there was a time when people like Carl Sagan could have and enact an idea to strap a bunch of intergalactic messages etched in gold-plated grooves to the front of a couple hot rod intergalactic spacecraft—and the UN would be at the center of it all.

During that time—if you were having such ideas—you naturally thought that the United Nations was the international symbol of peace and goodwill which we might want to tell the aliens about. You would naturally think the best place to record greetings in all the world’s languages would be the UN. When you read Murmurs of Earth, the story of the creation of the Voyagers’ Golden Records, the UN looms large in the narrative. Yes, the UN provided some conveniences for its creation, but the Golden Record’s track list also reflects that the UN represented an ideal in action which was worth representation in the Golden Record project: humanity’s self portrait.

If we were to remake the Golden Record today — update the pulsar map, maybe debate whether the drawings get private parts again, send it the other direction — would the UN still hold the same hopeful significance?

I am just the kind of person who still thinks communicating and organizing globally to solve our problems is a worthwhile endeavor. Especially when so many of our institutions have failed us and so many are looking for a sliver of hope. 4U1UN could be a beacon again. More than a simple transaction between two hams, every QSO with 4U1UN emphasizes the benefits of international communication and collaboration.

But it would be nice to have more than just QSLs on Logbook of the World!

Their website has data hooks that are broken. The currently listed president appears to be an active POTA participant from his QRZ page (QRZ.com is the MySpace of ham radio), but I don’t find any mention of 4U1UN. The vice president hasn’t updated his QRZ page since 2016. Dx-world.net seems to have been used for occasional posts about 4U1UN news, but they also seem to also be writing over these updates. This COVID-19 lockdown update from K2QI is only available on the Wayback Machine. When first person operation accounts from actual club members can be found, they are sometimes brief or “soapbox” style narratives which only describe contest conditions.

Luckily, the overhead for a club like UNSRCARC to reach out beyond the bands is much lower with social media than it used to be in the amateur radio print world.

In particular, we invite:

• Secretary-General António Guterre to authorize paid communications specialists with high security clearances (to lower administrative barriers) to help with this storytelling effort. Learning amateur radio can be a professional development opportunity for them.
• The members of 4U1UN to join mastodon.radio and share their activities with the larger ham community. Mastodon.radio and the #HamRadio community offer an easy way to incubate a first rate public outreach program.

Mastodon.radio is part of a decentralized social media community focused on amateur radio. It is a lovely, inclusive-by-design, non-corporate space for hams and the ham-curious, where UNSRCARC could easily reach and inspire hams around the world in a welcoming, educational, social, and supportive environment.

To imagine what a focused UN ham radio outreach program might look like, consider the work that Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) is doing at https://mastodon.hams.social/@ARISS_Intl on another ham radio focused Mastodon instance.

If it seems like a heavy lift to do what ARISS does, you are not wrong. But allow me to offer an example of how the ham community is standing by to assist in this effort. I shared my first draft of this article with the administrator of the mastodon.radio community, Christopher M0YNG in Gloucester, with whom I had no previous QSLs. Christopher not only suggested some helpful revisions, but volunteered unbidden to personally help get the UNSRCARC established on the server (e.g., to advise on client software, setting up an account, verification links, etc.).

Now, a social media account or two is a lot different than strategic planning with a MARKETING budget, Mr. Secretary-General. I’m asking a lot of this radio club, and so they are going to need a bigger BUDGET to help solve some of your public perception issues, over a long period of time. That may mean funding unusual expenditures like a FlexRadio FLEX-8000 or an enterprise HootSuite license seat, I’m afraid! Just trust the hams, they know what they need! (For the concerned hams, this is a joke, I barely understand what a FLEX-8000 is. Don’t get lost in the trees.)

But you 4U1UN operators, we need something else from you. Reflecting on the difficult process of getting 4U1UN back on the air, KO8SCA said, “One day, when all is settled, we should tell our story.” Don’t wait too long, Adrian et al.

It’s time to salt the ARRL

[EDIT: Following some good questions and challenges on Reddit, I’ve updated the post throughout in a few places to make my arguments more clear and to address some specific objections. These changes are styled throughout the artile like this, in brackets.]

To catalog the recent troubles of the American Radio Relay League is beyond the scope of this article [EDIT: a few are detailed below]. But believe me, they’re troubled.

Before I was a ham, one of the only things I knew about amateur radio was that hams joined the ARRL. So when I became a ham, I naturally joined the ARRL. I mean, that logo, come on!

I’m a sucker for print, and as a new ham, if nothing else, I wanted a print subscription to the fabled QST magazine, in continuous publication for over 100 years. I signed up for a paper copy of On the Air, as well. That’s their magazine for new hams.

I started to see complaints and worse on social media about the ARRL. Two podcasts opened up my eyes. I urge all current and prospective ARRL members to listen to them.

The first is an interview with ARRL CEO David Minster, NA2AA on The DX Mentor Podcast. Minster gets a lot of softballs, but I’m just floored at how little he thinks of his membership and non-member hams. He goes to great lengths to misrepresent or dismiss the serious concerns being raised to him. According to some, the org is in a full blown death spiral but Minster takes no responsibility or accountability and presents no plans for addressing the very legitimate problems that have been brought to his attention. This is not a man who believes he needs to do something about ARRL’s growing irrelevance or the aging out of the hobby, it is a man who believes he can bully people into thinking he’s right.

Exhibit B is this ICQ podcast on the ARRL Ethics and Elections Committee’s actions during recent elections. I was stunned to learn about the shenanigans used to keep incredibly qualified hams off the ballot because they were perceived as a threat to Minster’s ARRL establishment.

I’m a member because I’m a new ham who wanted the full experience of being a new ham and I wanted to judge the ARRL for myself. Now, I am sad to say that I won’t be renewing my membership or joining again while Minster is CEO.

Many other hams think it’s a shame, too. A fair number seem to have not only given up on the League, but now actively discourage other hams from being members. It’s too far gone, they say.

There’s been plenty of analysis about ARRL problems. Some of it quite thorough and data-driven. But not many feasible solutions for salvaging it have been put on the table. (There is now a national alternative. Joining and helping to grow the National Amateur Radio Alliance is certainly one of the more productive things you could do).

“If you want to change the ARRL, you have to do it from the inside!” — The Elmer Class

I don’t have the personal pain of having shelled out for a life membership 20 years ago and watching my beloved club be betrayed by its leadership. I do not presume to tell those hams how to process, deal with, or resolve that sense of betrayal. But for the most part, the old-timers who have grown disillusioned with the ARRL are expressing their concern by simply not renewing their memberships. That’s fine. It sends a message of sorts. But it doesn’t change the balance of power. In the end, ‘just quitting’ will just lead to a less and less powerful organization, more and more controlled by Minster’s cronies, and less and less accountable to membership.

From a slightly more detached perspective, it seems like the ARRL still sits on a LOT of useful (if not exactly super functional) infrastructure that should be in the hands of competent hams and workers rather than people who are going to run it into the ground. So, I’d like to propose a strategy for saving the ARRL: Let’s salt it.

What is salting? It’s the one occupation I wish someone had really taken the time to explain to me in high school. So, if you are in high school, please allow me the pleasure: Don’t stress too much about finding a job you love. You can always do meaningful work as a salt. Then you will love the brothers and sisters with whom you labor and struggle.

“Salting” is a union organizing tactic whereby you take a job in order to organize the workers there. Salting has a wonderful history and the practice has also seen recent success at places like Starbucks and Amazon.

Are you a labor organizer? Want to learn about amateur radio while you work? Bookmark their employment page, they’re hiring! Spread the word! https://www.arrl.org/employment-opportunities

The potential for worker & ham community alliance is an unusual tactical advantage

Based on the above DX Mentor interview, Minster appears to be immune to membership pressure alone. Besides, the ARRL may be too far gone to try to re-capture by the limited democratic means available to its membership, given how corrupt the last elections were. A couple challengers during this round of Director elections seem to be taking the “I’ll keep my head down and do ham stuff and not get distracted by the politics” approach, which is also not good enough. We need Directors who are openly willing to challenge Minster and crew. So when all else fails, unionize.

What does unionization have to do with making the ARRL better for its members? [EDIT: There is one overarching dynamic that aligns the membership and the ARRL employees : without a happy membership, the org will die. Workers, who have a natural interest in keeping and improving their jobs, will want to make the membership happy, which will be way more fun for them than making Minster happy. Even the membership fee will be mitigated by this relationship in a unionized ARRL. The workers are no dummies. They know how much the members howled at a higher membership fee without automailed QST. Because THEY do the hard work, they will know where to find the savings necessary to make the ARRL fiscally stable and will explain to us in very clear terms what kind of membership fee is needed to make it sustainable.]

Won’t it make membership more expensive if the workers are asking for raises? Possibly, sure. But isn’t serving you worth a living wage? How much did you spend on radio equipment this year, hmmmm? A unionized ARRL will help ensure that the membership fee is worth it.

Imagine an ARRL where the League’s employees are empowered to say:

• “Minster’s an idiot and he just got a unanimous vote of No Confidence from the workers. We’re not lifting a finger until the Board replaces him.”
• “We don’t need to print and store our own books and merch. Let’s move those resources to member services. [EDIT: And re-train Matt and his supervisor to take one of our six current open positions, obviously. Nobody wants to do warehouse forever. Our union helps provide growth opportunities.”
• “The hobby is dying so we’re going to stop putting old white men on the cover of our magazines.”
• “The ARRL is no longer a leader in defense of the spectrum. We’re going to make it so.”
• [EDIT: Members areunhappy and leaving at the rate of 1000 per month. We won’t have jobs in a year unless you stop the bleeding. We demand an independent committee of membership draft new elections bylaws to be ratified by vote of the membership. If you don’t? A strike for you!]

The situation has a particular set of characteristics which make this a unique salting opportunity, more likely to succeed than your average unionization effort.

• The ARRL is a membership organization. If it has no members, it doesn’t work. A unionized ARRL will have a natural interest in better serving its members. Happy membership = happy bosses + more union maneuverability.
• Given that many in the US have a passing knowledge of the history of the ARRL, and that the brand symbolizes many positive characteristics of a United States from times gone by, the unionization effort will catch among the larger public. “A venerable American institution is being run into the ground by out of touch elites? Where’s the picket line?!” Organizing the ARRL will intrigue the general public, hungry for new ways to feel like they can make a positive impact on the world.
• There are many well-respected hams with social media platforms in the community who feel deeply betrayed by the ARRL. They will be highly motivated to support a union drive at the ARRL. Community support makes organizing a union a whole lot easier.
• Connecticut is seemingly home to some savvy and gritty organizers. Being in a state with a culture of fighting union members (compared to my own North Carolina, say) will be helpful in garnering local and state-wide support.
• [EDIT: Having a small staff and more volunteers than employees is a good thing. A volunteer pool provides additional pressure on the ARRL Board and helps carry out the solidarity strikes. A small number of employees makes it easier to get all of them on the same page for a direct action.]
• To succeed, the union would have to get the ARRL membership on their side and they would do that by working with the membership to implement its desired program. It would be easier for them to get “membership” related wins first before pursuing raises.

[EDIT: An objection raised to my arguments has been that unions negotiate about a narrow set of interests: “unions negotiate over employee-management relations, not over organization-membership relations.” Yes, but that’s over-simplifying it. Union negotiations, particularly public and nonprofit unions, often have provisions to provide benefits to third parties who receive the benefits of the workers. For example, see Red State Revolt by Eric Blanc. Teacher unions and parents formed alliances in 2018 that got improvements in teacher working conditions, even in Republican states. Teacher working conditions are student learning conditions. Similarly, ARRL worker conditions are ARRL membership conditions.]

[EDIT: Another objection is, “I like the ARRL just fine like it is!” Yes, but even if you like it how it is, it likely won’t be around much longer unless serious and immediate changes are made to bring members back. A membership org with that many tentacles can’t survive very long without members. https://k4fmh.com/2025/01/31/they-went-down-down-down-and-the-flames-are-higher-but-its-not-too-late/]

[EDIT: “Objection! The ARRL may not be great but only the ARRL can save our spectrum! Don’t rock the boat, you have to get elected the hard way if you want to change things. No ARRL = no ham radio.” Several orgs do a better job at advocacy than the ARRL already. A recent application and comment docket illustrates the appoint. “The application, from AST & Science, LLC (AST), requests unprecedented authorization to 430–440 MHz for a constellation totaling 248 satellites to communicate with five ground stations using up to five channels with up to 256 kHz bandwidth.” In short, AST wants more space junk and wants more amateur bandwidth to do it in. The idea that I and many other hams and many other advocacy organizations didn’t comment forcefully on FCC Docket 25–201, without the ARRL’s guidance… well, that’s just uninformed. Docket 25–201 got the fifth most public comments out of any FCC docket in the last year — more than Delete, Delete, Delete — and yeah, one of those was mine. You can literally look at all the comments and see how many different people and orgs besides the ARRL wrote epic takedowns of AST. If you want to read a really masterful public comment, take a look at the RSGB’s comment. THAT is how you put the FCC in their place. The ARRL didn’t even follow the FCC’s directions for their Delete, Delete, Delete docket comment earlier this year—and it was an Australian ham who brought that fact to my attention. Steve Stroh N8GNJ even recently drafted the Zero Retries Guide to Submitting Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Comments and Reply Comments…at my suggestion?! Repeating the myth that only the ARRL can do advocacy or pressure the FCC only helps entrench the ARRL’s lackluster status quo.]

[EDIT: Yes, salting and unionizing the ARRL is an absolute long shot. We have few alternatives and outside the box solutions must be on the table.]

Did this article happen to make it to a company employee? Here’s your first step: https://workerorganizing.org

No, I won’t be renewing my membership any time soon. But I will be agitating and educating and I hope you will, too. 😎

Keep your nose to the finals

I work with NC State University faculty, staff, and students who do “community engagement” or research and education in partnership with community members off campus. Last week I arranged a tour for a committee I’m on of, among other places, the Historic Yates Mill County Park in southwestern Wake County. NC State owns the mill building and Wake County runs the park.

Our host, Park Manager and historic preservationist Matt Fryar, told us that the idiom “nose to the grindstone” came from millers who needed to check the temperature of the millstones and flour to make sure the works didn’t get combustably warm. They kept their nostrils near the granite to detect the smell of smoking flour.

The same week I got a gristmill tour from Matt, I put a new, preassembled QRP Labs QMX+ 160–6m multi-mode transceiver on the air. The kinds of heat issues millers deal with were on my mind since I had already blown up a different QRP Labs product, a high-band QRP Labs QDX digimode transceiver.

I foolishly connected a 13.8V power supply to it, releasing the smoke from a couple of the BS170 TO-92 MOSFET output power transistors (a.k.a. “finals”) and a 74ACT08 surface mounted device (SMD) chip. The QDX sits on my metaphorical “bench” now, awaiting repair and future activation as a dedicated ultralight portable rig.

Not wanting to repeat my previous error, I’m taking lots of measurements and precautions with the QMX+ power supply. As it says in the manual, when designer Hans Summers(G0UPL) specifies 12 volts, he means 12 volts! A precaution includes putting my nose to the transistors…or at least my finger!

I’d like to be able to run the transceiver as a WSPR beacon sometimes, but the WSPR protocol has a transmission with a 111 second duration. Or, as Summers says in the manual:

WSPR transmissions operate a continuous 100% key-down duty-cycle for almost 2 minutes. You should check carefully whether the BS170’s get too hot during this period. WSPR is much more demanding on the PA transistors.

So I took the top off the QMX+ and ran WSPR for several hours at a transmit rate of 30%, twice or more my normal transmission percentage. I touched the heat sink (a washer) on top of the BS170s to see how hard they were working. That is, I put my nose (thumb) to the grindstone (finals) of the transceiver.

There was very little warmth on the washer heatsink at the end of the transmissions and after two hours of transmitting every six to eight minutes. I’m now feeling more confident about running the QMX+ as a standalone beacon while I’m away at work.

As a new ham, I think about whether to invest in trinkets like an infrared laser thermometer to do this kind of measurement more precisely. Though there may be a time and place for more precise thermal management, perhaps putting my nose to the grindstone is adequate for now.

The new Pope and the ignoring of intentional interference on KC4WDI

Nets and conversations on repeaters in the Wake County, NC vicinity are getting trolled by someone. I wasn’t completely sure until last Friday.

“Nuisance jammer” may not be quite the right term—that seems to imply the use of hardware to interfere with or alter signals—but I’m going with jammer because it’s fun to type. This guy has an overdriven signal but is just trying to be annoying and make fun of Republicans.

The jammer pretends to be a MAGA caricature, interrupting conversations to say things like “Hey do yall love Trump as much as I do?” and “It’s a great day for Trump!” I’ve caught this sporadically on different repeaters over the last month. I wasn’t certain at first whether the person was a troublemaker or just excited, or if I even heard what I thought I heard. Because people weren’t acknowledging the jammer at all.

Friday morning, as I scanned the repeater presets on the way to work, I landed on a conversation about the new Pope on 444.1 MHz KC4WDI Raleigh. A strangely detailed conversation about Pope trivia was being interrupted every so often by the jammer: “Are yall gonna sell some Trump hats today?”

The other stations continued talking about the number of languages the Pope spoke and one of them explained the word polyglot and even spelled it out loud.

This went on for a few minutes until I got to the parking deck and turned off the radio. The jammer was never acknowledged or discussed by the other two stations. It was quite something to hear.

As seems to be the norm in this magic-making hobby, a synchronicity almost immediately occurred. Flipping through a thrift store book of QST articles I got to reach the free shipping threshold, I came across the following. I realized then that ignoring the jammer was likely a premeditated tactic.

A transcript of the scanned image from BotNHC follows:

When You’re the Victim of Intentional Interference

The question of why one ham intentionally interferes with another would make a fascinating study topic for psychologists. The answer usually involves anger of some sort-either anger at you personally, or anger at the world in general. Amateur Radio is the ideal medium for those who want to act on their frustrations with little fear of suffering the consequences. A ham who wouldn’t dare insult you to your face has no problem anonymously garbling your transmissions!

This type of ham gains pleasure from his actions only when you acknowledge them. He craves attention and your angry response gives him exactly what he needs. The trick is to do everything possib!e to ignore him. Try to continue your conversation as best you can, working around his interruptions without comment If the interference is so bad that you cannot continue, move to another frequency.

I know it’s difficult to hold your tongue in the face of such rude behavior. By ignoring his antics, however, you’ll rob him of the pleasure he seeks. Eventually, he’ll become bored and move on. That’s the worst punishment you can inflict!-WB8IMY

Having now heard this occur, it seems like solid advice. But I do like the extra twist of diving into papal minutiae. How do we add that to the protocol?

I’m not happy about the amount of pro-Trump rhetoric I hear on the local VHF/UHF repeaters, but this is not a good—or even amusing, really—tactic for fighting fascism. I am hopeful we can get more kinds of voices on the air, having nets built around mutual aid and movements and organizing and neighborhoods. As we do, we need to be mindful that anything that is not the status quo will be noticed immediately. We may ourselves encounter bad actors who seek to impede new and different approaches. We would do well to consider that possibility before we encounter it.

Solar Cycle 25, QSL

I got into ham radio with the idea that I wanted to be useful in an emergency. What I happily discovered is that there’s a lot of fun to be had on the way to that goal.

Now I know that what I want to do for fun is become a wizard of wave weather and a magician of electromagnetic maximums. I aspire to be a civically engaged citizen of Solar Cycle 25. Specifically, I want to work the hell out of 10 meters while I can. My goal: get global as a Technician for less than $300.

About four months after getting my license, I’m happy to report that I smashed the goal. Here’s the golden QSL with V31DL in Belize, my first international station to confirm a QSO on Logbook of the World. Not counting the laptop, I used about $230 worth of equipment.

We’re still pretty close to the peak of activity for this cycle and trying to figure out if we’ll get a double peak. This period of increased solar radiation is good for making international contacts on frequencies in the 10 meter band, but many years of Technician cohorts get little immediate access to the worldwide capabilities of 10 meters. It is simply not available very much during solar cycle minimums. The ephemeral nature of our sun’s strange 11 year electromagnetic activity cycle is wonderful to learn about and use, but it also withholds. During this rare opportunity, I wanted to test the accessibility of the hobby and also some of the conventional wisdom that side-eyes the lowly Technician license.

Not long after my vanity callsign got approved, I started looking for a 10 meter RadioShack mobile transceiver to keep my Forrest M. Mims III books from high school warm on the shelf.

The Elmer Class will tell you that the United States’ Technician license is but a stepping stone to General. The prevailing wisdom is that the “cheap” way to get global is with a used shack-in-the-box for 600 dollars, where you learn on 10 meters but quickly get licensed to work the bands less troubled by the ionosphere’s F2 layer.

That is not bad advice but the decision is more complicated when one has a few years of Solar Cycle 25 action in front of them. I am studying for my General license but at a very relaxed pace. I simply have no need for it at the moment. It’s more fun to learn what I need to learn to do what I want to do, which does not include being tested.

For now, I want to roll around in the solar cycle peak without a thought in my head about 40 meters.

I want to direct my attention unequivocally to understanding solar weather, 10 meter antennas, and tricky radio wave propagation conditions.

I want to know what it feels like to be frustrated when 10 meters starts to close and happy thinking about how I reeled in DX countries all day as a new ham.

I want to make contact with those like me, those with an eye for the path less traveled.

Does this represent a viable way into international HF communication for Technicians in the time left during this cycle? Does it represent a real opportunity to have fun while saving money or will 10 meter Techs outgrow their rigs even before the sunspots disappear? Will the FCC delete, delete, delete the Technician license? Topics for future posts…

For now, I am happy to report that I achieved my goal of getting worldwide on 10 meters for less than $300. I’m also happy to report I’ve been able to secure some flexibility in the budget to experiment with and report on multiple low-cost options, for the benefit of the readers, of course. More to come later about being a Tech on 10, including reports on using the QDX and QMX+ from QRP Labs.

The ARRL won’t save the waves. Write your own public comment for In Re: Delete, Delete, Delete

Comments Due: Friday, April 11, 2025

All comments must reference GN Docket №25–133.

File the comment online: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs

Sign a petition to safeguard current allocation

The FCC is looking to make the spectrum better for business by deleting regulations with their “In Re: Delete, Delete, Delete” docket.

We seek comment on deregulatory initiatives that would facilitate and encourage American firms’ investment in modernizing their networks, developing infrastructure, and offering innovative and advanced capabilities.

This will almost certainly not end well for the average amateur radio operator unless we demand that deregulation benefit the public interest and not just corporate interests.

Context: https://www.zeroretries.org/i/157918236/breaking-news-from-fcc-in-re-delete-delete-delete

I don’t think we have a choice to sit this one out. We’re either going to proactively get engaged on this or we will get run over. Sitting it out and hoping other services or companies don’t notice this moment to go after Amateur Radio, in my opinion, isn’t an option.

Text of the announcement: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-25-219A1.txt

Please organize with a club if you can to increase the authority of your comment.

Writing a “public comment” is not the same or as simple as writing an email to your congressperson. It needs to advance an evidence-based argument. How to write a public comment: https://publiccommentproject.org/how-to

“Submissions should identify with as much detail and specificity as possible the rule or rules that the commenting party believes should be repealed (or modified)” so you have to get down into the subparts, sections, and levels to identify the rules you’re talking about. Here’s how to understand the structure of the Code of Federal Regulations.

In DC? Looking to do more? Organize an IRL, in the streets protest: 
45 L Street NE
Washington, DC 20554