We have another interesting presentation lined up for our April 7th meeting. Don Fraser WA9WWS will show us how an inexpensive Raspberry Pi based node supporting either or both protocols, EchoLink and IRLP, can enable Hammin Sams members to remotely access the Hammin Sams net. This way, members could participate in their Hammin Sams net activities while out of town.

Greg Cook, you will remember, described Raspberry Pi configurations at our meeting last month. You can locate reference material about that presentation in the Technical Interest category on this site (see sidebar at right).

This time he focuses on a need that Hammin Sams members have expressed on net. Applicability is not limited to Hammin Sams nets, though, making this a must attend event for anyone curious about practical use of these protocols or about Raspberry Pi applications.

See you there!

Trove of Vintage Ham Radio Photos, QSL Cards

The grandson of Thomas “Tom” Russell Gentry, W5RG (SK), has developed a website that is certain to be of interest to vintage radio enthusiasts. Don Retzlaff, who is not a ham, said his grandfather was among the earliest Amateur Radio operators, getting his license in the early 1920s — at one point identifying as NU5RG — and remaining active until he died in 1979. The W5RG call sign has since been reissued.

Tom Gentry, W5RG (SK), at his station in an undated photo.

“He collected QSL cards from other amateur operators all through his life,” Retzlaff said of his grandfather. “In recent years I became interested in those cards and my grandfather’s hobby.”

With the help of his father Donald Retzlaff, W5MIY, Retzlaff located all of the QSLs — some 5700 in all — as well as other memorabilia documenting his grandfather’s ham radio activities and his time in the Army Air Corps shortly after World War I. He painstakingly scanned both sides of each card along with dozens of photos of now-vintage stations — many with operators — that his grandfather had collected and posted them all on a website dedicated to his grandfather and his life as an Amateur Radio operator.

Among other features, the site offers an opportunity to leave comments. “This has definitely been a labor of love,” said Retzlaff, who retired this year as a Principal Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at the University of North Texas.

— Thanks to The ARRL Letter for March 6, 2014