DIY Antennas, QRP, SDR & Ham Radio Projects from VU3DXR
Ashhar Farhan has officially unveiled the zBitx v2, a significant leap forward for the compact SDR transceiver. With upgraded hardware including a passive FET mixer and a game-changing Wi-Fi-based front-panel connection, the v2 fixes legacy bugs while paving the way for custom user interfaces.
Tired of lost packets and weak signals in your ADS-B setup? STREAM1090 introduces a paradigm shift in demodulation, moving away from fragile preamble detection to a robust, CRC-validated bit-streaming approach that extracts more data from the noise.
The Khanfar Spectrum Analyzer project has quietly grown into one of the more capable free SDR software suites available for Windows. This post walks through the full tool collection — from the flagship analyzer to CFAR-based signal detection and multi-SDR direction finding
Welcome to Radio Waves Weekly — Issue #013! TX9W went on the air from the Marquesas this weekend — pile-ups are open and 15m conditions are co-operating. Yesterday, April 18, marked World Amateur Radio Day, observed every year on the anniversary of the IARU’s founding in Paris. The Pebble HF is the most talked-about QRP kit of the spring. BrowSDR turns any browser into a full SDR receiver. A homebrew FRI-Match tuner, a proven four-band half-loop, and a live DX-cluster display on a ₹800 ESP32 board round out this week’s ten.
While Meshtastic has long dominated the LoRa scene, MeshCore has emerged as a serious contender for structured, infrastructure-based communication. Here is how they stack up for the modern ham.
Analog FM is hitting its limits. Enter DRM+, the open-standard digital revolution that brings CD-quality audio, multimedia data, and emergency alerts to the 88–108 MHz band. Explore the technology and global adoption of 2026.
Imagine a digital network where every radio node talks to others, passing messages automatically without the internet. That’s Meshcore. This post explains how ham operators can use cheap LoRa boards to build resilient, local data links for texting and telemetry.
The amateur radio landscape is shifting rapidly with the rise of the “FT” digital modes. While FT8 remains the king of weak signals, the faster FT4 and the experimental FT2 are challenging its dominance. This guide breaks down the technical differences, performance trade-offs, and best use cases for each mode to help you master the HF bands.
Welcome to Issue #012 of Radio Waves Weekly! This week the JIDX CW contest is running right now — one of the best chances all year to fill your log with Japanese prefectures. Sporadic E season is knocking at the door, the 10-metre band is wide open, and MeshCore is quietly becoming the off-grid mesh network that actually works at scale.
Meshtastic is an open-source LoRa mesh networking platform that lets ham radio operators build off-grid text messaging and GPS tracking networks with no infrastructure. Whether you are an experimenter, an emergency communications volunteer, or simply curious about where digital modes are heading, this guide covers everything you need to know to get started with Meshtastic ham radio.