Someone in Japan noticed their callsign was busy making DX contacts on 20-meter FT8 while they were still getting ready. The impersonator vanished the moment the real station called it. Classic digital-mode mischief, and a reminder that callsign spotting apps exist for a reason.

Ham radio antenna array against the sky

Japanese operator JP1SMR posted about it (and the English-speaking community quickly amplified the heads-up). Replies suggested setting a Ham Alert on your own callsign so you get pinged if it appears somewhere unexpected. In the world of automated digital modes, identity is mostly a string of characters until someone bothers to check.

Meanwhile, the RTL-SDR crowd got a practical new tool: rxx_lora, a lightweight command-line LoRa receiver that works with RTL-SDR and SDRplay sticks and does not require GNU Radio. Written by SO5DZ in the spirit of the classic rtl_fm, it dumps decoded packets as JSONL and includes a Python helper that can decrypt Meshtastic traffic with the usual keys. Fast, sensitive, and refreshingly un-bloated.

Classic radio antenna

On the free-radio side, one listener caught a shortwave pirate that calmly identified itself as “federally compliant radio.” The HF Underground thread linked in the post is the usual mix of amusement and mild disbelief. Pirates have always had a flair for theater; claiming compliance is a new genre.

Low-power operators continue to prove that watts are optional. One station worked New York to Iowa on 500 mW with a 34.5-foot Alpha whip during a QRP SSB net. Another operator casually noted 3000-mile FT8 contacts on 100 mW. The old “life’s too short for QRP” line keeps losing arguments to people who actually try it.

An Oxford shortwave listener posted solid copies of Reach Beyond Australia, Voice of Korea and others using a cheap MLite-880 receiver and a £35 indoor magnetic loop. No backyard tower required, just a loop that fits inside and a receiver that does not cost a used car.

ARISS SSTV from the ISS was also being copied; one Japanese station shared received images from Expedition 75 Series 34 with a ground-plane antenna. The space station’s amateur payload continues to be one of the more reliable ways to pull a picture out of the sky without a giant dish.

Looking ahead, FOSDEM 2027 will have an amateur-radio devroom talk arguing that satellite links are no longer the exclusive preserve of agencies once you have commodity SDR hardware and free software. Anyone can now capture, dissect, and understand what LEO constellations and geostationary payloads are transmitting. The barrier is mostly curiosity and a dongle.

Check the original posts for the full context (especially the callsign alert and the rxx_lora GitHub), try a Ham Alert on your own call if you run FT8, and if you have an RTL-SDR lying around, the new LoRa tool is worth a quick compile. 73 and stay off the other guy’s callsign.

Links of note: