Ham radio hotspots
Adventures with WPSD
Being licensed for just over two years, I'm at that point where you poke other things in the hobby. Being that I come from an IT background that can often translate to things that involve a computer. For example, I have setup FT8 software and configured it for use with my Yaesu FT-710. I'm fascinated with how far you can get a 20W or less signal to go through some coax and speaker wire up a fiberglass pole.
A colleague at work started to meet with some folks that are playing around with various ham radio digital modes and they got talking about ham radio hotspots. There are two options out there in the OSS world for this:
I originally installed Pi-Star on an old Raspberry Pi Zero W that I had. While it worked well, the Pi Zero really was taxed to run Pi-Star. I decided to throw some compute at it and purchase a Pi 3b to give some more compute (I'd like to thank the AI companies for making that purchase even more expensive) to run Pi-Star.
I quickly realized though that WPSD is the better choice for me. It is actively maintained. It has a very good interface. And you can bridge between my Yaesu FT-5d running Fusion through WPSD and out via DMR. This is seriously cool no? So for weeks now I have been on GB-CQ-UK-C4FM on Fusion or TG 302 on the TGIF DMR group chatting with folks in Europe all with my hotspot and my FT-5d.
Digital modes are a lot of fun and another way to chat with folks all around the world on a cheaper handheld...