Antennas to Adapters Unlocking the Secrets of OHIS with Mark Halibut

Whether you're a regular listener or first-time guest , we're excited to have you here and we appreciate your support and thanks for tuning in to tonight's show . So let's get into the show . I'm your host , eric call sign N1JUR , and I'm with my co-host .

We've been feverishly working on creating more merchandise for you guys to consume and I want to thank those who purchased from the store . Like Rich C , he picked up sweet Live Free in Ham camo hat . Again , thanks for Rich for supporting the show and definitely head on over there and check out our storefront .

And we're also designing a sticker pack , so keep an eye out for that in the future . And , as I said before , as always , thanks for supporting the show , as it helps every little bit . And we are in the month of March , so you know what that means .

Yep , it's the Live Free in Ham livestream , so make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell and we'll notify you when we go live . And so , since Todd's currently MIA and tied up running his net control duties , we are probably going to skip over our usual something a little extra .

Maybe , if he gets in here , we'll shoot back to that , but you know Todd will get a reprieve because I'm sure he hasn't caught up on his studying for this week , so he'll be able to use it .

So I've been playing around with a 3D printer , which has been a lot of fun , so taking the deep dive on Fusion 360 and my calipers and designing all the various knickknack brackets and support everything I need that I've been wanting to build and printing away .

So that's been a lot of fun and it's been a big learning curve but definitely making progress with that . So it's been fun , very cool Now .

I put up my FX4CR field video , which is mostly , you know , overlaid with music , because when you're doing digital in the field , there's not a whole lot of audio you can put with that .

Like , as long as you link the tablet via Bluetooth and then also link within the app , you'll have both transmit and receive audio , and as long as you have cell service , you can sync your clock very easily .

But if you don't , then you have to kind of play with it and watch the decodes until you get it so that it's close enough where you can make a contact .

I went on vacation and I said , hey , he's like , hey , you know , I'd love to borrow and try it . I'm like , all right , the only thing you do is you got to do a review on it . And so he just , you know , went to the expo . So awesome , awesome video review .

So , you know , head over to his channel , it's KF4TPY , and check that out if you're interested in seeing all that . And you know all of its glory , so cool with that . And so I have to ask you did sideband with it . Did you really like ? Was it good to sideband ?

The few park to parks that I tried to break through , you know like they just they weren't hearing me over everybody else , but otherwise you know like I mean I'm sure you could probably get a different microphone that would work with that radio , but my big hands and that little tiny microphone just didn't . It didn't like it . Same problem .

I've been doing this for about two years now , um , and I make and sell devices for amateur radio stuff , and I have to be that generic because I've got a wide variety of different things .

Okay , um , I've been trying to bang out a couple of little projects that I've been working on just to get them done and behind me , so that I've got nothing else to distract my ADHD mind . And let me concentrate on the next project that I'm working on , which is eggnogs .

And so this past week has been the first time that I've been able to um , really dedicate to eggnogs . Um , eggnogs is a kit that will help you build an egg beater , and then there's a new antenna , nominally for use with satnogs , which is where the name came from eggnogs . Uh , it was just too good of a pun to pass up . But basically it's a ?

Uh , it's a small circuit board , um , with the correct mounting holes for uh , for the different aerial loops , uh , and then you can solder in some uh specifically length coax phasing loops to the bottom . Um , this particular design had a common mode current choke on the board as well , but I don't know that .

Um , I haven't figured out yet whether the final product is going to have that or not . Anyway , it's going to be an entire ecosystem and I've got the plans of what I want it to be in my head . Now I just need to build it and make sure that it actually works and then , you know , start doing the other things .

But the important part is that I got rid of all of the other stuff off of my to do list and I've been able to concentrate on eggnogs , which has been finally really good , awesome .

Um , I suffer from the same affliction . I um , you wouldn't guess it from hearing me on podcasts but I don't like making small talk , uh , with people on the air . And so , if there are , like , the idea of going out on the air and striking up a conversation with nobody , somebody I don't know , is not all that exciting to me .

I like contests , I like doing things where you've got kind of a structured interchange . I like things like FT eight because , again , it's a structured interchange and you're not having to make a small talk with people , um , and those kinds of things . So , yeah , I'll , I'll operate FT eight just kind of randomly . I can do it from . I use a flex 6400 .

So the smart SDR software for my Mac and for my iOS phone . I can go on and just do FT eight right on the phone through the flex wherever I'm at . So you know I'll be sitting at the kitchen table just finished my breakfast . I got 15 minutes to kill .

Before the next thing happens , I'll get out my phone and bang out some FT eight contacts , but uh , and then I also uh monitor the local two meter call and two meter adventure . Frequency uh 146 , five two and five eight respectively . But there's almost no activity around here .

They're like , oh , this is better than the kind of just general five , two , and so , you know , it kind of sort of planted the seeds . But you know , I think once George finally gets his , uh , a full official you know product set built and and , uh , what is currently working on that , uh , you know , more people will start uh , getting some traction on it .

So it'll be looking forward to it for sure . Yeah , yeah , cool , all right .

Well , uh , since Todd is not here yet , I will , uh my last spot here and I'll say for my week , um , I was actually away last week , uh , I just uh headed out to , uh South Carolina , my son's uh college baseball player , so we went down there for , uh , you know , basically spring , uh , um baseball , and on the way , uh , my family , uh , my wife and

daughter specifically , um basically pulled my leg to make me go and activate a bunch of parks all the way down . So , you know , I I begrudgingly took out all my you know gear with me and and we slugged through Connecticut and Pennsylvania and and , uh , virginia and you know , just had a whole blast . It was .

It was fun to be able to just go out and activate and , uh , you know , have a , a video on my channel uh of it . So if you want to go check out the , that whole uh escapade , uh , you know , go check that out .

But , um , outside of that , I just gotten back and uh looking to try to just keep my head above water with work , and I've got a few other projects that I uh got to tackle . Specifically , I finally got my SD replacement SD card for my clear node for my all star set up for the truck .

Um , my uh existing clear node uh configuration card uh basically disintegrated itself and , um , it didn't really get a chance to finish putting the buck boost converter in and uh , the step down , you know um circuitry for being able to power the , the pie and and get it all set up . So it's , uh , you know , running off its own battery setup .

So that that's coming soon , but I'm just still in the infancy stages with getting that built and put together . So looking forward to kind of having a all star back in the truck . Uh , when I can't uh , you know , be near the local repeater , you know that I usually talk to and and stay on and participate on so .

And all of a sudden , um , you know , things started to act up and , um , you know , my audio from my 300 would just literally cease to exist . I could see myself on the display key up . Long story short , um , I had a spare 300 that I was using for it's going to be used for satellite work uh , through that in the truck and things started working .

So I figured it was a cold solder joint or something in the radio . So it went off to Yezoo about a two weeks ago . Um , so , hopefully , get that back and that'll become the satellite rig and , uh , the 300 trucks back and working fine . So none of my voltage issues were just me thinking they were voltage issues and it turned out to be just a radio issue .

So that that knock on wood is all good and back and running . So happy with that .

Yeah , you know , we've had some , we've had some wind , but the cord that was , uh , holding the antenna to the tree , the paracord it looks like something chewed it and it's just like ripped . And now the antenna is kind of stuck up there but it's drooping and there's no way to get it unless I take it down .

So I texted Eric and I'm going to need his gun again , but it should be a quick fix . It's still up in the air and I did test it and it still works . I'm still making uh , still making contacts . It just needs to get a little taught and get back up there where it needs to be . Uh , besides that , I'd just been really busy . Work's been crazy .

Uh , I was hoping to get a pot in last week , but that didn't fall into the card , so I wasn't able to do that and um , yeah , that's about it . So here I am uh glad to be here and uh , sorry I was late , but I had net duties .

In each of our episodes , we pick three questions from the extra class question pool to test his knowledge , hoping he gets closer to getting towards his upgrade . Um , if you'd like to follow along with us , you can always head over to ham studyorg , which is always a great resource . Uh , help you prepare for your test .

And it's recommended by three out of four volunteer examiners because the ADA was unavailable for common to the time of survey . Uh , without any further delay , I'll hand it over the V quiz master . Take it away , paul .

D propagation away from the great circle bearing between two stations .

We want to recognize you on the next episode for all the hard-working effort , and you can always do that by emailing us at liffreahanmailcom and we'll make sure to mention you on the next show . And so with that , you know , let's dive into our topic for tonight with Mark from Halibut and go ahead , ryan .

Well , I occasionally worked , but then you know , the kids run around the background and needed headphones . Yep , then he had a second radio and then he start getting more and more complex with the shack and it's like , how do you integrate that ? Yeah , and there were a few products .

You know one , one or two work better than others , but it was on our club discord . A fellow Club member texted me . He's like hey , take a look at this , this looks like the secret sauce to the shack renovation .

And so I started looking to the OHIS standard and sure enough , it's spot-on , you know , just agnostic between radios and allows you to make those connections . You know the way you want . However you want it , however creative you want to be and you know we're happy to have you here and part of you know the podcast is talked about your product .

So we're curious to hear about the evolution and how it's been going and where you look Looking forward in the future with the products .

Other corporations can build and and integrate into their products Radio manufacturers . I want them to be able to adopt it directly into their products as well . So that is a non-commercial standards advocacy Task that I do . Then I take the standards advocacy hot hat off and I put on my commercial run a business hat . And how about ?

Electronics happens to be the first company that is taking this OHIS standard and building devices to it . So these can be Working against each other , because on the standards advocacy side I will help people build things that compete with with the commercial side . Right , and I am always very clear and upfront . Standards advocacy comes first . I want adoption .

If we can get adoption of the standard in the community , in the Industry , in the marketplace , then you know a rising tide , all boats that whole thing right . If we get adoption of this standard , even if I get priced out of that particular market .

I will be ecstatic that I am no longer able to sell my overpriced stuff because somebody else has made it better and cheaper , because they're not just a one-person business . Right , standards advocacy comes before commercial stuff . I Just happen to be the only one doing the commercial stuff right now , so that's a distinction I want to make .

So I'm happy , let's the . The first stuff you were talking about is the standards advocacy . So let's go talk about what the standard is and what it does , what it accomplishes and why people want it in their shack , and . And then we'll talk about the devices and kind of generic terms . And then we can talk about my products that implement to those things .

But I kind of want to make a clear delineation between those two . Okay , so what is open head headset , interconnect standard ? Well , let's look at each of those word . Open Meaning it is free , like speech , right , live free or ham radio .

So this seems like it would be right up y'all's alley right it is a open standard that anyone can use without royalties , without you know paying anyone or licensing it or anything right . It is an open standard , submitted for everyone to use . Open headset . Headset meaning I kind of don't like the fact that I used headset , but I can't think of anything better .

Headset as in defining all of the interfaces between the user and the radio generally . That's a microphone for transmit audio , headphones for receive audio and a PTT . And then people are actually Proposing an extension to the standard for Morse code paddles , and so we may be trying to add that into the standard too .

Interconnect Meaning I want to be able to connect any headset to any radio without having to have a Adapter between them that is unique to the pairing of that headset and that radio .

That's really what I'm trying to do is , right now you can get an adapter for this headset that goes to this radio , and if you want to connect that headset to a different radio , you need a different adapter , and it's not just an adapter for the devices but an adapter for the pairing of those devices . Right , and that that's kind of a pain in the butt .

And then standard I wanted to be a defined standard that anyone can implement . You know , with the documentation , that being there clear enough that you can actually Build something useful and Interoperable that's the word I was talking about . Interoperable , that's the word I was looking for . That , you know , devices from different manufacturers can interoperate .

So that you're not locked into any one particular manufacturer of hardware . So it is . Ohis is a standard that defines a physical and electrical interface between a headset and a radio . It includes the definition for the microphone signal what does that look like Electrically ? The headphone signal ? Or the receive audio what does that look like Electrically ?

Your PTT what does that look like Electrically ? What are all the cables ? What are all the connectors ? How do you design a system that you know kind of maximizes the capabilities and functionality there ?

And and then the idea being , ideally , headset manufacturers would implement OHIS directly and you wouldn't need an adapter , you'd just have an OHIS plug hanging out of your headphones and radio manufacturers would implement OHIS directly and you would have an OHIS socket on your radio and I can just take my headset and plug it into the socket .

Getting the existing manufacturers to adopt a new standard is going to be a very long road . I fully acknowledge that . So in the meantime , we have to build adapters . So how are these adapters any better than the other adapters that I was just talking about ? Well , take that one adapter that connects this headset to this radio and pull it into two parts .

All right , so now I have an adapter for my headset that is unique just to that headset and doesn't care what radio it's connected to , and it converts whatever that headset is to an OHIS standard port in the middle and Then , similarly on the radio .

I have an adapter that's on the radio , that is unique to that radio only doesn't care what headset is plugged into it and is unique to that radio , converts whatever that radio is to the standard in the middle Right that radio adapter stays with that radio , that headset adapter stays with that headset and they never leave Right , they are tied together .

And if you do this on all of your radios and all of your headsets , you now have this standard in the middle that allows you to connect any headset , no matter what it was on this side , because the adapter has converted it to a standard on this side . Right and same with the radios .

Doesn't matter what's on this side , because the adapter has converted it to a standard on this side . And so now I've got all of these standard interfaces and you can plug any headset into any radio . I Love it , it's great . So that's the idea .

So , yes , ooh , icon Ken , would they'll all do the have that port and Everything would be so kind of like you know a standard , like if you had like a USB port , like that's what it is .

But because it's all the same electrical standard , it's easy to go from Anderson power pole to that six pin rectangular Not quite mull X connector on the back of HF radios or that two pin t-shaped blade plug that's used on Mobile rigs , right , you know , whatever the power connector is on the radio , it's easy to convert Whatever your battery system is , because

Electrically they're the same same . With RF 50 ohm coax , right , it may be a BNC connector or an SO 239 or a type n or an SMA , but those are easy to adapt back and forth because it's the same electrical standard , right ? So the real important part with OHIS is getting that electrical standard Defined and adopted .

Once you have that , I also have defined physical standards . But it's a lot easier to Choose a different physical standard and make adapters to go back and forth between them , because at that point it's just wires .

You don't have any active circuitry to convert from an electric microphone down to a dynamic , or To go from speaker level to headphone level , or whatever the changes are that need to be made . So , yeah , that answer your question .

Do you find like , has any been any company been receptive to , like you know this kind of standard there at all ? Initially , is your kind of yeah out there ?

The worst response I've gotten is people that are Skeptical that you'll ever be able to get the entire industry to agree on a standard . I'd be lying if I didn't think they were right , but I'm gonna try it anyway . So I have spoken with three , or I've tried to speak with three manufacturers . I have spoken with two of them .

I need to get the other two , and I'm I am calling the , the , the big manufacturers Yesu , icon , kenwood , and I'm including flex and Ella craft in that list . So those five manufacturers are the ones that I'm really trying to reach out to .

I have spoken directly with tech leads on two of them and they have both said if you get the Rest of the manufacturers to agree to the standard , then we will adopt this in a heartbeat . We think this is a good idea . This absolutely should happen , but we won't be the only one to try and adopt the standard yeah right , and I think that's fair , honestly .

And so what my task has been and I haven't done it yet because I've been swamped with other things but my goal is to get those five manufacturers Yesu , icon , kenwood , ella , craft and flex on a call or on an email thread or in the same place , and Probably with the AWRL .

I'm thinking if there's something I can use them for , it would be this this seems like a good thing for the AWRL to get involved in , and get them all in a room and say here's the standard that I'm proposing .

These are my rationale for making all of the decisions I did and see if they are willing to say , yes , we're not gonna go change our existing manufacturing line , but the next time we design a new radio , we will add this to it , like that . That is kind of the the most I can ask for .

I guess , yeah , there's some way you can help , prompt and make it easier for them to make that integration now , because electrically it's gonna depend on whatever is on the inside of their radio .

So one of the other two use electorate as well , and I can't remember which one it is . But you know they already are expecting electorate on the front panel , but the other ones are expecting dynamics . So they are the ones who are going to know how to do that .

Now I can give them the circuits that I use to convert from one to the other If they want that sort of thing , but I'm sure their engineers are able to do that just as well . And then the physical connection is an RJ45 socket , a shield in RJ45 . And so there's nothing there that I need to help them design , right .

Yeah , they already know how to deal with RJ45s .

Or in my head I think of , like the mountain bike industry , they went through decades of change and hardware upgrades and everything , and it wasn't until a lot of the riders really started saying , hey , we want , you know , hydraulic disc brakes and we want this type of gear train . Did the manufacturers start listening to the customers ?

Yeah , and I think , if you know you keep down this path of promoting it and talking about it and getting more and more people interested in it and having the customers asking and begging the manufacturers . You know , coming from a different angle , grassroots , hopefully , you know , you'll get some traction .

Right now I'm the only one who's manufacturing these adapters . So , to put the commercial hat on , I sell a couple of products , one called the HHI radio pro . Hhi stand for halibut headset interconnect , so it is the halibut , the halibut electronics product line , that implements the OHS standard . Ryan is holding up the radio pro right now .

So that is a product that I have designed that you can connect to your radio using whatever sockets and ports the radio has , and then it also passes them through to the other side of the radio , of the radio pro , so that you can still keep your microphone connected .

Even though you have to connect my adapter into the microphone port on your radio , you can still connect your microphone to the front of the radio pro and when you're not using OHIS , your standard mic , the stock mic will still work , excuse me , so you're not losing any functionality on your radios .

You just put this box in between your microphone and the radio and your headphone , your speaker and the radio , anyway , so the you know the radio pro is an adapter that you can use . But I'm the only one who's making those and selling them , to the best of my knowledge .

So I know what the sales numbers are and they're not fantastic , and I am so a little bit of behind the scenes here . I've been doing hell about electronics for two and a quarter years right now and I have not pulled any money out of the business .

I've been living off of savings for two and a half years , and part of that is because the first year I was designing a product that didn't go to market for reasons I won't bore you with right now , and then the second year I was designing a product that did go to market but didn't sell , which is the radio pro and the user pro , and I think the problem

is that the prices are too high . I don't think people the large number of people want to buy these things at $225 apiece , but that is the price . I need to be able to sell them out to be able to make a reasonable profit .

They just have been you know kind of creating , like I said , all those adapters to make things all work and it's just been a clue to them for a long time . So it does take a little bit time for adoption and I don't hope , and you know , we can spread the word for folks out there .

And you know , if there is out there that you know your clubs think you can use it , you know , make sure you get mark on it . You know he'll be in the show notes and you know , so make sure you get him involved and start spreading the word because it's a great you know great great standard and a great product too . Yeah thank you .

So somebody is going to be going home with a contesting console or radio pro and a two radio , two user pros , which is kind of ideal for a contesting station or a DX station where you've got two users that are trying to use the radio at the same time . You know one as who's operating and the other one who is logging right .

That kind of thing right it's really . I designed this for my local field day club is really what it boils down to the contesting console , which is not technically OHIS because it's not an adapter but it uses OHIS .

It is a device that goes between the user and the radio , right , and so you connect two headsets to it and then one radio to it and the two users on the headsets have an intercom between them so they can hear each other through their microphones and then they can both hear the radio as well .

And each user has their own independent mixer so they can adjust the volumes of the radio and the other person's microphone , their own microphone , and then what I call the ambient microphone , which is just a little mems mic that's in the device itself so you can hear what's going on around you in physical space .

And so each user has that little four channel mixer that they can control what's in their own ears and anyway . So the point is that you plug two different headsets into it and one different radio into or one radio into it To build that device without OHIS . Now those two headset ports need all the configurability and complexity of that user adapter , right ?

Is the microphone a dynamic or an electorate ? Is it stereo or mono ? Is it contact closure to ground or completing the microphone line ? You know all the different things that make connecting a headset difficult . You need all of that complexity .

Similarly , connecting to the radio I need is it a GX16 , which are the eight pin round connections , or is it an RJ45 , or is it a separate microphone and headphone plug ? You know all of that complexity would need to be integrated into this device . But with OHIS I have a standard interface to design .

I know exactly what the microphone signal looks like , needs to look like . I know exactly what the receive audio signal needs to look like because it's standard , and then you connect that standard cable into your radio adapter and that converts whatever to the radio and same with the headsets .

So when I say that I'm I would be ecstatic if other people could price me out of the market on adapters . I say that because these devices that go in the middle are what I actually want to build Like .

That is the halibut electronics product that I think I bring special sauce to the contestant console , and then another one that I'm going to be designing soon , called the station console , where the contestant console is two users , one radio . The station console is one user for radios .

Oh , wow , yeah Right , and so you can mix all of the receive audio into your headphones . Your microphone gets split and sent to all of the radios and then you've got a little four position switch to tell which radio gets your PTT . Oh well , so that's the station console .

Again , much easier to build when I have a standard interface between the user and the radio . Much more difficult to build when that port needs to be configurable for any type of radio .

And you know , one of the things that I like , I like tinkering with things and with my current Go box , it's just a very basic setup with four you rack , rack in it 7300 tuner , and you know it's a single user box and I would love to part of the tinkering and playing with your OHIS is getting that contestation , the two user pros and all integrating into

the box . Yep , now it's tricky because ideally it'd be nice if it was in like a one you rack space and I could just slide it in there and then plug the user pros in front .

And you know the , the , I call it the , the Feng Shui is just , you know , really nice , but the , I think version one of having it , and I've seen it and I've been meaning to ask you or email you for the 3D file to print out the bracket that holds the pro and the contestation in one , and I think that's going to be a real slick setup and I'm sure you

have it somewhere there in your workshop .

So the box that the user pro or the I'm sorry that the radio pro comes in and the is the same box that the contesting console comes in . But the radio pro has all of the connectors on the side panels and the contesting console has it on the big flat surface on top .

I don't actually have one in the case right now , but this is the circuit board , that is the contesting console , and so you can see like all of the different potentiometers here for the different mixing mixer ports . But you can see how it comes out the flat surface , not just the connectors on the side here .

And so he built this kind of H shaped bracket or designed it and 3D printed it where you can slide the radio pro in the bottom and all of its ports are exposed on the side , and then you would slide the contesting console on the top .

So it's you know it's flat faces exposed and then you just have these cute little short interconnect cables that go from power down into both of them and then from the radio port into the radio adapter . It's just , it was brilliant . I loved the way he designed that bracket . So I think that is that the bracket , that kind of the blue H .

Yeah yeah , I shared that with my mailing list , groupsio . Search for hell of an electronics . It's in there . Cool , yeah , that was cool . I liked that bracket a lot .

So basically you can take the screws out of the device , put this on the back of the panel and then put the screws in from the front of the panel and shut up and take my money . Take my money , so it works great for the radio pros .

It does not work for the Contesting Console because the controls on the Contesting Console were on the flat surface right there , they would not be facing out of the of the one you I'm just thinking , like 90 degree angle connector style .

I might be able to fit four pots and two RJ 45s on the front panel and make that work . I'd have to look at that .

So that's actually , if I'm , if I'm likely to build a contest and console designed to go in the rack , that is likely the way I'll do it , because I think I'm going to do the same thing with the station console , honestly .

You can actually still see the web page it's stuffhalibutcom and you can see the shirts that we used to sell and things like that . I there's part of me that has been tempted to try and revive Halibut stuff and add some of that to my portfolio , but it hasn't happened yet .

So the things that you really want when you do an FM satellite is you want a full duplex capable radio . I want to be able to transmit on two meters and receive on 440 or vice versa at the same time . Right , Mobile rigs can do this , no problem . They used to make HTs that could do this , but there are none that are made anymore .

There's one , Jaigu , I think , that can do it , but the receiver sensitivity it gets completely blown out when it's transmitting . So it will let you receive and transmit at the same time , but the receive sensitivity is not good for satellites when you're doing full duplex operation . So it's effectively useless in this context .

But you know Ken would stop selling the D72 . The D74 didn't have full duplex and we were really hoping that the D75 was gonna have full duplex , but it doesn't . What's that ? What's that ? What's that what's ?

And if I've got a microcontroller in there , there is a lot of stuff we can do with that . So I added a GPS , and if you know what time it is and you have internal storage which it did to store the TLE data for the satellites TLE stands for three line elements or two line elements .

Basically it's all the numbers that describe the orbit of a given satellite , and so if you have these numbers and you know what time it is , you can work out exactly where a given satellite is in the sky , and so the GPS tells you what time it is .

The GPS also tells you where you are , and if you know where you are and where the satellite is , you can easily calculate the azimuth and elevation , and so I can display the azimuth and elevation on the screen . I can also calculate the relative velocities between the satellite and the user on the ground and when the satellite is coming up over the horizon .

It's coming towards you fast enough , at least at UHF , to shift the frequency by about 15 kilohertz up . So as it's coming toward you , your receive frequency is about 15 kilohertz higher than what it's transmitting , and similarly you need to transmit below , where it's expecting to receive you .

So you're gonna be receiving 15 kilohertz high on UHF , but you need to transmit about five kilohertz low , on two meters , or reverse those , depending on which bird it is and which is the uplink and which is the downlink . So you have to deal with this Doppler shift of these frequencies .

And right now the way a lot of people do that is they'll program five channels into their radio , four or five channels , and they'll do like a plus 15 kilohertz , a plus 10 kilohertz , a plus five kilohertz , zero minus five , minus 10 , minus 15 .

And you've just got these channels in a row and you just kind of slowly turn the channel knob as the satellite moves overhead . But it's very manual , and so you've got your hand on the tuning knob , turning these channels as it's going .

You have your other hand on the PTT button , you have your third hand holding the antenna and the fourth hand holding the microphone . Right , you're running out of hands here .

And then the other thing it did is it recorded the pass audio , both the uplink , your microphone , and the downlink , the receive audio as separate channels in a WAV file . So it would record the audio of the pass locally into a digital file , but with each channel separate , so you can listen to each one individually separately .

And all of this is basically an appliance for operating FM satellites , right ? The only thing that you need to do is PTT and hold the antenna in the right place , and I even had some product ideas for how to help with that .

But once you have the Asmuthin elevation , there is a serial port on the device that would squirt out the Asmuthin elevation data on the serial port and you can connect that to something else , like either a two-axis rotor and you can use it to actually point the antenna automatically for you , or the one that I was really excited about was I was gonna make a

display with a magnetometer so it knows where north is , and an accelerometer so it knows where down is , and then it would get Asmuthin elevation data from the radio and it could calculate the differences .

So if the satellite is there but you're pointing there , it would be able to say like , move up , and it would just give you like this little targeting crosshair and your goal would be to point the antenna such that the red dot stays in the middle of the circle Right and then , as the bird moves through the sky , it will help you target which way to point

the antenna .

It's about one inch by two inches by like less than a quarter of an inch tall and it is an HT in a module . You give it power , microphone audio , and then it'll give out receive audio and then a serial port to configure the thing and out the other side you've got an antenna connection .

Wow , and it does all of the RF , all of the FM modulation , all of the pre-emphasis and de-emphasis audio filtering , dtmf encoding and decoding , all of that I'm sorry , not DTMF , ctcss , all the PL tone encoding and decoding . It does all of that built into the module . The problem that I ran into is the VHF modules worked flawlessly .

I could transmit and receive on those no problem . The UHF modules they received just fine . But as soon as I configured them to try and transmit into a filter , it started having problems . It was unstable . The output power would fluctuate dramatically . It looked like it was oscillating , but I could never find an oscillating spur on a spectrum analyzer .

I don't have good spectrum analyzers . My best analyzer goes up to 900 megahertz or 600 , anyway , not high , not high enough to find harmonics or oscillations or anything like that . But in all other ways it was performing , behaving like it was oscillating , and you have to filter the signal if you're gonna do full duplex .

It is impossible to just say , oh , I'm just gonna send this on , bypass the filter and transmit without it . A it's gonna be just as crappy as the Baufang reputation is , because that's what it is . It's a Baufang basically on a little module and if you don't filter it it's gonna be just as crummy as their reputation . But also it won't .

It'll start interfering with the two meter side if you're not putting a high pass filter on it . So you have to filter it to be able to do the full duplex operation . And I was never able to get that resolved . I've had , I've paid RF engineers to look at it .

I've talked about it on the podcast on my users group , tried to find people who can help me figure this out . I got a local friend who has much better equipment than I do and I've been over spent many nights over at his house on to his test equipment trying to figure out what was going on .

And then when I noticed that other products that use that same module if you bought the VHF version , it would come with a low pass filter . If you bought the UHF version , they bypassed the low pass filter . So that tells me that these other products ran into the same problem I did and were not able to fix it either .

So this was not just something that I was doing wrong , that this was something systemic with those modules . So that's when I decided I was gonna put SOAR on hold and go work on other things .

They're four pins plus the ground heat sink on the back , and it is two powers , a VCC power and a grid bias power , and then RF in , rf out , and it's 50 ohms in , 50 ohms out , and then ground is on the heat sink itself and these things are rock solid . Like these are fantastic RF power amplifiers . The ones that I bought are good for I think .

They claimed eight watts output , which , after you run it through the filter , is likely to give me at least five watts , maybe even a little bit more . Five was kind of my target and so my goal . The first goal is to take the SA868 or 818 that I've been using , but instead of running it into a filter , run it into a pad .

You can see all the big resistors there . So those resistors make a 50 ohm load , or those two there do , and then those are in series and those are the other load . So anyway , this makes an attenuator that brings the half a watt that's coming out of this on low power down to the roughly 20 milliwatts that the Mitsubishi module needs as an input .

But because that is a purely resistive load , the SA868 will operate just fine , because when I ran those modules into a dummy load with no filtering , they worked great . You put it into an antenna with no filtering , it works great . It's when you add that filter that it becomes a problem .

So on this board , the first thing it sees well , besides the relay , is the attenuator , which looks like a resistive load , and then I'll take that and send that into the module and then module output through another relay and then up through that filter . So this was that filter . I was talking about that .

If you connected that filter directly to the output of that module , bad things happened . But by attenuating it first . I'm trying to do this backwards attenuating it first , then running it through a different power amplifier , then running it through the filter . This should be much cleaner , awesome .

And so this is a development board that I laid out to test this theory . If I can make this work , then SOAR is probably back on the table . Woo , and my eventual goal is actually to replace the SA868 with the chip that's inside the SA868 . It's called an AT Alpha Tango 1842 , 1842 , 1846 . One of those .

What's wrong is with the filtering that people put after it or the inexpensive RF amplifiers that are causing all kinds of problems . So by using a good RF amp , I'm hoping that I can make a module that will be higher power and higher quality , higher performance and stability as the ones that you can get on eBay right now .

There's these type of antennas called Eggbeaters , which they look like that because it looks like a whisk , but it is a full wave loop , and another full wave loop mounted 90 degrees physically , 90 degrees apart from each other , but also 90 degrees electrically apart from each other .

So you put a quarter wave loop of a feed line between the feed points of each of these loops here , and that will delay it by 90 degrees , which is a quarter wavelength . And if you do that , the hard part with doing that is the when you put 250 ohm antennas .

See , this doesn't make sense to me , because when you put 250 ohm antennas in parallel which is basically what you're doing that should be a 25 ohm load , but every document I say , I see , calls it a 100 ohm load . Oh , double it . I don't think they're in series , they're in parallel , so I'm not sure what magic is going on there .

The point is , though , that the loop that you use for the phasing needs to be 100 ohms . Okay , I don't fully understand why , and so you can either use 100 ohm coax , which isn't very common . There is a 92 ohm coax called RG62 . For any of us old computer nerds who ever did Novel Networking back in the 80s , you might remember ArcNet . Arcnet uses RG62 .

So if you've got a spool of that laying around somewhere , then you can make egg beater antennas . But there's also a way you can do it by making two runs of 50 ohm coax and you use that as a shielded twin lead feed line and you have to like solder the shields together at either end but keep them disconnected from other things .

It's a weird wiring diagram and so- .

I don't know a lot of the details , but so .

I'm trying to design that circuit board inside that will make it easier for you to connect you know a feed line to a connector and then have all of the phasing loops in the right place and then with the stainless steel hardware that goes through the PVC cap , of course , the PVC cap , those holes need to be in very specific locations and I have a CNC mill .

So I have bought a bunch of caps that I'm going to be milling with those holes and those very specific locations that will be included in the kit . So the goal is that the kit has all of the parts that are hard to come by , like the specifically milled cap , the stainless steel hardware , the circuit boards and the phasing loops .

But then the customer is responsible for getting the stuff that you can get at any hardware store . So this is two inch PVC as the mast . So the mast is just two inch PVC sticking down . You get that at your local hardware store . Whatever materials you want to use for the area loops , this is Romex .

This is 14 gauge Romex that I pulled out and that works great for 440 . I needed to go to the 10 gauge Romex that was left over from building my shop to do the two meter loops , because the two meter loops are , you know , three times the diameter of this thing . They're very big and floppy and whatnot , so I needed the larger gauge wire for that .

But the kit itself will be frequency independent . The board doesn't care what frequency it is .

The only frequency dependent parts are the loops which you're providing and the length of the coax on these phasing loops on the inside and I'm going to give you a long , enough length that you can cut either two meters or 440 or anywhere in between , or whatever Right .

Sorry , yeah , that's okay anyway . So Bias power will flip the relay and put the LNA in loop and then when you drop bias power , it'll take the LNA out of loop and bypass it and allow you to transmit . Hmm so bias power on for receive , bias power off for transmit . That was the goal and I tried to put it on here and it was just too tight .

It didn't work out so what . I've done instead is I have removed the amp from the antenna board . The antenna is now entirely passive , but I have put the amp on an optional board that will hang beneath the antenna board . So Again , you can't . It's not focusing . There's a little symbol here that says egg knobs , egg knobs up you know egg knobs this way .

And then here it says T-nogs goes down . I'll explain what T-nogs is in a little bit . But all of the LNA and the in the bypass hardware is on this board . This board is is sized to fit inside a two inch PVC .

So you'll have a little vertical connector , a male connector , coming out here that will connect directly to the female connector on the board on the inside . With these it's going to be SMA . The , the board inside here will take either an SMA or a BNC , so you could choose whichever one you prefer for your feed line .

But if you're going to be using amp-nogs Then it's SMA and SMA and you can literally just attach this directly there and it will hang down immediately beneath the antenna in the middle of the feed line .

And the advantage to having your LNA as close as you can to your antenna is that you get the best signal to noise ratio that way , because as your cable attenuates it , you just end up getting more amp , more atmospheric noise in the LNA . So you really want this as close to the antenna as you can get it .

If you don't need that , if you've got a short feed line or something like that , then you can do without amp-nogs and just run straight , run eggnogs straight into your 9700 . But if you've got any length of feed line , you know , 10 , 20 feet or more You'd probably benefit from amp-nogs .

And then Down in the shack is what I'm calling T-nogs , because apparently I'm a sucker for a drink pun . Do I have a T-nogs here ? I do , so this is TEA nogs Anyway . So the goal behind T-nogs is you give it power . I've got Anderson power poles or USB-C or you know whatever power source you want . But you can also hook up a PTT .

So , for example , my flex radio has a GPIO output that it will , you know , close a contact whenever it's about to key up the radio . And so if you send that into this port here when you key up , when this thing gets a key up signal , it will remove power . It will remove power from the RF line . So this is a bias T injector , right ?

So you give it Anderson power pole here and it injects bias voltage onto the coax , but it has that PTT switching on . It is the whole goal . So it will . If you don't have a radio that will automatically turn off the bias voltage when you press PTT , then you would need T-nogs to be able to inject that power and turn it off on a PTT .

Okay , the 9700 will actually do that , so you can order , you could build amp-nogs without T-nogs and the 9700 will drive that directly , directly . Correctly , came out weird , awesome , yeah . But for radios that don't do that , t-nogs will get you hooked up .

I've got Three or four of these different boards that are wired up differently , trying to figure out which one is optimal . And then , of course , I would also love to be able to build this but keep the common mode current choke on it , and that that adds a whole nother complexity that I haven't even talked about here , but anyway .

So once I figure out which of these is best , then I can go forward with releasing Eggnogs as a fully passive egg beater antenna project . That is very close . The next thing I would design would be ampnogs and T-nogs , probably together , because honestly , I need T-nogs to be able to use ampnogs .

But ampnogs I could probably release earlier because you know it's just something that goes inside the PVC . I would probably put a piece of heat shrink around this , but it doesn't need a big , expensive , snazzy case . Right , you want it to be small and lightweight so it could be inside the the PVC at the antenna .

T-nogs needs to work on a bench or in a rack or something like that . So T-nogs would need to have a pretty case wrapped around it , and I haven't even begun thinking about that yet . But so , anyway , I want Eggnogs out in the next month or two . T-nogs and ampnogs will probably be several months after that . Okay , now that's exciting .

Um sure Are any of you familiar with the M17 project ? Yep , yes , okay . So I'm friends with the M17 guys and I actually Did some early work on the standards document . I have some code in the M17 code base . I'm very excited . The base 40 call sign encoding mechanism is my code . I'm very proud of it .

Anyway , um , I Was chatting with them about module 17 , which is a device that goes between a radio and a user to take the user's audio , encode it Using M17 and then transmit it out a digital radio in M17 . So it's only doing the baseband stuff . It doesn't actually have an RF module in it but it generates the data that can be sent out an RF module .

And I was chatting with them and actually one of the one of the folks who was working on it Was asking me about OHIS , and so we chatted in a meeting and I convinced them to put OHIS on module 17 . So module 17 was the first project , the first open source project , to use OHIS .

And while I was chatting with them they're like all right , are there any open source hardware for these things , or is it only your commercial stuff ? And I said , well , the standard is open , but there's no open source implementation .

I see now that this might be pretty bad and so I designed an open source OHIS adapter that anyone can use and remix and , you know , do whatever they want .

With this particular design , it has the three 3.5 millimeters the same plugs as the user pro and it's still got the OHIS RG45 on the other side , but it's not as configurable and it doesn't have all of the same features that I put in the user pro .

It has everything you need to be a user adapter , but the the user pro also has a VU meter built into it so you can see the blinking LEDs which helps you adjust the , the mic level and some things like that .

But this can be configured either for a normal headphone and microphone or as a CTIA , which is the 4-pin TRRS headset adapter , headset connectors where you've got both microphone and headphone on the same same connector . So it can be configured for either of those and it also can be configured for either dynamic or electric microphones .

So , it has a dynamic , a Pre-amplifier that is powered from the bias voltage that you send down the wire for an electorate . But we'll take a dynamic dynamic microphone in and amplify it up to electorate level , which is what the standard is for OHIS , anyway , and so I sell these as a kit .

There's already at least one guy who has been making his own OHIS user adapter kits using the design and GitHub . This design is open and freely available for anyone to use . It's on the OHIS GitHub Stuff . There I can give you a URL to put in the show notes . I appreciate it .

Yep , and but if you , you know , and so if you want to get your own boards fabbed and you want to source all the parts and put it together , by all means please do . If you have any questions , you want to remix it ? You want to submit some code , pull requests into the design ? I'm all ears . This is , this is standards advocacy . Hat on like .

I want this to be adopted and used by everyone who wants , who is at all interested in this . I also sell it as a kit on my webpage . You know , if you don't want to bother with all of the sourcing of parts and everything and you would rather just throw . I think it's $29 . I can't be like 35 okay .

So if you want to just throw 35 bucks at it and have it show up in your in your mailbox a few days later , then we can do that as well . I should probably mention that I should do a quantity discount on these for like clubs Right , because this would be a great club build project .

If you decide that your club is going to adopt OHIS , maybe make the club pay for the radio pros for all the radios in your club shack , and then the individual club members can buy and build their own user pro for their own headset . I like that idea .

So I don't have one an easy grabbing reach . Do I have a Reach , do I ? I got this Pulled this out before coming here .

Um , uh , turn it 90 degrees , so the pots are at the bottom , the trim pots are . Nope , that was 180 the other way . There you go , perfect , all right , so that is up and down on that thing . So you'll notice that there are a bunch of columns and a bunch of rows . The rows correspond to a pin on all of the connectors , right ?

So the top two rows are the , the center conductor and shield of the RCA . Then the next four rows are tip ring one , ring two , sleeve of the 3.5 millimeter microphone connector . Then the next eight are pins one through eight of the RJ 45 .

The next eight are pins one through eight of the GX 16 , which is that eight pin round microphone connector that is common on HF radios . And then the four down at the bottom are tip ring one , ring two and sleeve of the headphone or speaker , depending on what your radio has . A connector , me , right ?

So each row is a pin on the connectors and then each column is a signal like mic plus mic ground , or headphone left , headphone right , headphone ground , ptt or whatever , and so you can literally apply any signal to any pin by dropping a solder blob at the intersection of that row and column .

And the way you do solder blobs in manufacturing is by dropping a zero-ohm resistor on the pick-and-place machine , so the pick-and-place machine knows how to drop you know 0603 components on the board in specific locations and so you can use it , literally a zero-ohm resistor , which is just a jumper right , and so the pick-and-place machine can drop these jumpers in the

right places , which is how I was able to configure them , pre-configure them for different radios , so it looked like the one that you had was yes , you did . I see that correctly , correct , yes , so yes , you mobile or yes , you HF . Okay , because those are different boards , unfortunately .

So that has a pre configuration to be able to work with yes mobile rigs , which their RJ 45 is unfortunately different than the RJ 45s in use on the Yesu HF rigs , which is why I needed two different boards for a yesu mobile and yesu HF , because the RJ 45 pinouts are different .

But you're literally just drop a blob in the place to connect that pin to that signal and if you want to change the configuration , you remove the blobs that are no longer relevant or remove the 0603 resistors . You don't have to save them . They can go off into your carpet and never to be found again . That's fine .

Yep , so I don't mind giving people surface mount things and saying you have to . You know , do something with the surface mount because you don't have to save it . But then you just drop a little solder blob in there instead and that connects that pin to that signal . Okay awesome , and then I'm sorry . The same thing is in the user pro as well .

It's just a much smaller field smaller right . Fewer signals and fewer pins available .

So it's gonna be somewhat hard to convince people to buy their adapter for one weekend , so you can't get away with that . But you have to make sure that everyone's headset , whether it's electric or dynamic , is the same pinout .

Okay , right , like the most common one I would expect would be CTIA , because if people are gonna buy their own headsets , you can get PC gaming headsets from Amazon for 20 to $40 for a reasonable , inexpensive one .

And then you know like the super expensive ones are $200 , right , whereas you cannot get a high all pro set for $200 , right , that's gonna be $600 . Or you know Ford of $600 and radio sport is gonna be $600 , right . So the really high-end headsets for amateur radio are super expensive .

That's why I expect CTIA , the PC gaming headset standard , to be the most commonly used one because they're so inexpensive .

From the outside you see the red circuit board then like a black 3d printed , vertical than this circuit board and maybe another one underneath it , you know , so that you don't have all of these gaping holes on the side . But I haven't gotten around to designing that right , very cool .

What , what kind of the freeways for folks to be able to get in touch with you if they want you to learn more about obviously your products and the company , or more just the OHIS , ohis standard , or just you know , want to reach out to you directly .

It's linked to from OHIS org . If you're interested in my commercial products the things that we talked about today , and I have a few others that we haven't talked about Go to electronics dot . Halibutcom is the web page for that . I also have a URL shortener , so if you went to Halley dot fish , it'll go to the same place Hali dot fish .

Anyway , electronics dot halibutcom . If you want to reach out to me directly , you can send me an email market halibutcom . I am on mastodon as at smitty at halibutcom . Sense of pattern forming here . I also have a YouTube channel , which is at smitty halibut . That's pretty much it . Oh , the ham radio workbench .

So , you know , I applaud you for pushing forward that needle , forward to you make OH , ohis , you know , come to the foreground there and you know we'll do everything we can as a , you know , livery ham crew to kind of spread the word and get people more aware of it , because I think you know it'll solve a lot of my headaches as a field day coordinator when

trying to Get several field day sites set up and you know a bunch of different people all happy and able to , you know , have fun with the field day , but Cool , all right . Well , so with that , as I said , thank you for joining the free and ham podcast community .

Yeah , remember , if you haven't subscribed you , you know I have to ask what you've been doing . But you know there are several ways you can connect with the show . You can always head over to our shop at liveryhamcom Forward slash shop and pick up some merch . Or if you're an Apple podcast listener .

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Links they're all conveniently located in our show notes and website , and , for all the stuff that we talked about tonight on tonight show , all those links will also be in our show notes too as well , so you can always look there for any of the things that we talked about , and if you want to reach any of our show hosts , you can always head over to

livefreeandhamcom and Reach us out there . And so , as always , thanks again for listening for all of us at live free and ham 73 73 ASMR .