This year I attended EuroBSDCon 2024 in Dublin. I always appreciate an excuse to head over to Ireland, and this seemed like a great chance to spend some time in Dublin and learn new things. Due to constraints on my time I didn’t go to the 2 day devsummit that precedes the conference, only the main event itself. The Event EuroBSDCon was attended by about 200-250 people, the hardcore of the BSD community! Attendees came from all over, I met Canadians, USAians, Germanians, Belgians and Irelandians amongst other nationalities! …

I do a lot in free software for ham radio, and Steve at Zero Retries encouraged me to take this email I sent him and translate it into something here. UK Packet Radio Network UKPRN is going nicely, with the Nottingham and South segment really quite impressively interconnected over RF - https://nodes.ukpacketradio.network/packet-network-map.html?rfonly=1 I’m excited to see the growth down there! We’re sorting out forwarding and routes in Aberdeen too, and working to grow the RF path to Inverness. …

GB7HIB GB7HIB is my permanent packet radio node, living at my house in the woods atop a hill near Aberdeen! Ofcom’s details for this station are held on ukrepeater It is accessible on 432.6250MHz, and is currently operating on legacy 1200bd. I am very excited to play with new, higher speed modes - The station was commissioned at and tested at 9600bd, and I am excited to play with new speeds as time, equipment and my userbase, allows! …

tj and I figured that to fit the 3 Moray coast hills we were interested in climbing, now that the restrictions are eased, an early start would be required! The longest walk should go first and the activation times on each hill would be limited. Predictably, we left at 1030, got a bit lost and I got too excited on the radio, so none of the self made rules were followed! …

Previously, I wrote about building a battery for my portable radio operations. This project has been a long and agonising one. Batteries are really difficult, and I spent a good chunk of June, July and August thinking about them. The Winning Design As I discussed in that last blog post, the architecture I settled upon was: I’ve learned quite a lot, made a large number of wrong assumptions and joined a lot of dots in my head as this has gone on. I’ve also made a large number of observations that will be helpful to other people interested in battery powered radio operation. …