rz01.org

Seriously.

Even though it probably doesn’t interest anyone and serves no practical purpose, I’ve now also hosted rz01.org on the Tor network.

Before I upgraded my LEO SAT station, I was only able to work satellite passes with a certain elevation.

Until now, I had mounted my 70cm and 2m Yagis on the wall of the house extension using a telescoping mast.

I’ve always wanted to write a simple, custom CLI application that would let me log amateur radio contacts quickly and easily.

I've been using MM9SQL's OscarWatch for some time now, but now that version 1.0.0 has been released, it's time to write about it.

Since my JS8Call station runs 24/7, but I can't always keep an eye on it, I wrote a small Python script that notifies me of incoming messages (directed text and messages) via Pushover.

I’ve always wanted to build a retro system to go alongside my regular PC, but used systems are getting more and more expensive.

Here's a quick update on my QMX+ based Remote Digital Mode Station which I now use to provide a 24/7 running JS8 station.

I recently fell in love with the Micro Editor and switched to it from Vim after more than 25 years.

Ok, this is not really a 100% hand-crafted website but new articles and some other parts are now.

As a longtime UNIX/Linux/BSD enthusiast, I also greatly appreciate the motto “Do one thing well” from the UNIX philosophy.

Over the past few months, things have somehow worked out so that I mainly operate in FM/SSB via satellite and only work digital modes on shortwave.

First of all, I want to explain how I ended up with a wristwatch in the first place.

For various reasons, I have decided to move as many services and subscriptions as possible from non-EU countries to the EU or to switch to European service providers.

Last year, I set myself the goal of achieving the ARRL DXCC Challenge award.

As I described in a previous post, I started my IT career first as a software developer and then as a system administrator.

I initially wanted to write about how IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is my new old social media platform, but I'm not sure if that's even correct given the definition of social media on Wikipedia: [...]

For those who know me, it's no secret that I'm a fan of the Dell Wyse 5070.

I thought long and hard about whether I should switch from Hugo to another static site generator.

Introduction Shortly before I graduated from high school in 1999, my principal at the time took me aside to tell me that all my diploma would be of use for is to wipe my butt with it.

Working amateur radio LEO satellites reliably depends on good sources for which satellites are active and how to work them.

Introduction My kids, who are still quite young, often ask questions about space and astronomy.

On Sunday, October 12, 2025, I accidentally fulfilled a dream.

I recently upgraded my satellite ground station from eggbeaters to cross yagis.

I have recently purchased a CSN Technologies S.A.T. which is “a self contained antenna rotator and radio controller” which “natively controls Icom radios, Yaesu rotators and can interface with PSTRotator.”

The CSN Technologies S.A.T. is “a self contained antenna rotator and radio controller” which “natively controls Icom radios, Yaesu rotators and can interface with PSTRotator.

After having lots of fun experimenting with eggbeaters, I decided to invest some serious money and make a huge upgrade to my LEO ground station.

satpasses is a simple Python script that pulls satellite information on your favorite SATs from N2YO.com via their API to build an even simpler static HTML page listing all satellite passes over a user definable location for the next n days.

I have already experimented with 70cm/2m eggbeater antennas before with the goal to build a LEO SAT ground station.

I have recently posted a lot about M17, and you may be wondering what it is all about, why I am so excited about it, and how you can get involved.

Well you can!

Until now, CC1200 Hat users had to operate their M17 digital data/voice hotspot using the rpi-interface software on the command line, for example.

I assume that word has already gotten around in the ham radio community that several digital voice projects have decided to remove support for M17 from their code relatively simultaneously.

UPDATE: The script was now updated to include Jim N1ADJ’s m17-gateway One of the ways to get QRV in the M17 digital voice mode is to use a hotspot.

Now that I’ve built the M17 Nokia 3310 replacement board and also modded a Baofeng DM 1701 for M17, it was time to build the CC1200 Raspberry Pi hat.

My very first computer back then was a Commodore C64, then I switched to the Amiga 500 and later to the PC.

After I’ve finished building the M17 Nokia 3310 replacement board I also wanted to become more active on the M17 voice reflectors.

!!!

Introduction This post describes how to automatically deploy your Hugo project hosted on Github to any (shared) webhost as soon as you push changes to the underlying github repository.

I’ve been typing on computer keyboards for 35 years now, mostly on ISO QWERTZ keyboards because that’s what’s standard here in Germany and it was pretty much the only keyboard available when I started tinkering with computers.

Exactly one year ago I decided to concentrate more on the QSOs itself instead of collecting QSLs to achieve certain awards.

I recently noticed that the buttons on my Logitech MX Ergo trackball kept causing problems.

My main HF antenna, a 13m long vertical paired with a CG-3000 automatic antenna tuner, does a decent job on 160m to 12m but it really isn’t doing great on 10.

I think I’ve tried pretty much every amateur radio logbook software (including one for the Commodore C64) and I’m probably still not at the end of my search.

In an age where information is easily available on the internet, it’s hard to imagine a time when gamers actually had to figure out everything by themselves or by sharing with (offline) friends.

Inspired by M0AWS’s blog post “Easy Multi Band Vertical Antenna for HF”, I’ve converted my 40m quarter wave vertical into a 13m long random wire antenna which is tunable for 160m up to 10m.

Following my own new rule to only buy used computer gear whenever possible, I’ve decided to upgrade my shack by finally adding a dedicated shack PC and monitors.

With social media there is undoubtedly the potential for addiction to likes.

After the successful setup of my new cheap low-power Proxmox server, I had multiple web applications listening on a diversity of combinations of IP addresses and high ports (e.g. https://192.168.1.100:8000).