Hi, I’m Andy and this site is mainly about my interests in ham radio, the linux operating system and computers. I bought my first desktop computer around 30 years ago, second hand, and I seem to remember that it had an 80286 processor running at something like 12 Mhz. It came with Microsoft Windows 3.0 and whatever version of MSDOS was around at the time.
At around the same time I passed my radio amateur exams (RAE). That meant that I could hook up my speedy computer up to a Terminal Node Controller (TNC), With that and a VHF radio, I could use the amateur radio packet network. There was quite a lot of activity about at the time and it was a great way of passing messages to other hams.
There still seems to be some packet radio activity in the UK in the form of APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System). https://ukpacketradio.network/ is another interesting website for those with an interest.
I eventually updated my computer with a 486 DX2/66 which was a fabulous machine. It was marketed as a multimedia computer and it was ideal for my needs.
A poor location for Ham Radio
These days I live in a very poor location for ham radio, well as far as VHF and UHF are concerned. The reason for that is that I’m on low ground and surrounded by hills. Under flat conditions, it’s far from ideal.
We are lucky enough to have a DMR (Digital Mobile Radio) repeater and I can access it with a handheld. It’s just not really my cup of tea. There are, of course, other things to listen out for.
One aspect of radio that I have tried is FT8. It’s a digital weak signal mode that tends to be used on HF and 50 MHz. That said, I’ve also seen it used on the higher frequencies. It was designed by Joe Taylor, K1JT and Steve Franke, K9AN. The software is available from https://wsjt.sourceforge.io/
My own FT8 activity was just on receive with an SDR (Software designed radio) and a long piece of wire but it worked extremely well. Check out https://pskreporter.info/pskmap.html to see who’s using it.
If, like me, you’re no in a position to put up HF aerials, you may be interested to know that you can listen to radio hams via the internet. A popular website in the UK is the Hack Green HF WebSDR.
Linux as an alternative to Windows
I’ve been experimenting with linux for quite a while and I’m trying to decide whether to use it in place of Windows. My current machine is an Intel i3 with 12 Mb of RAM and it runs beautifully. It’s almost 10 years old and came with Windows 10 home. Support for it ended last year but I enrolled for Extended Security Updates. The finishes on the 13th of October (2026). This has now been extended to 2027.
I did have a hard drive (SSD) failure a couple of years ago but that’s about all.. SSDs sure have shot up in price!
I can’t install Windows 11 on here and don’t really want to spend out on a new computer. So, it looks like Linux may be the way forward for me. There are a few Windows programs that I use such as Irfanview and Paint.net so I’ll have to search for alternatives.
I’ve been experimenting with live versions of Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora in the main although have also looked at CachyOS, AntiX, MX and Zorin. They all seem to be fabulous distros so I need to make my mind up.
I will write an article with my findings.