While some of us were busy arguing about whether prisoners should get ham licenses (spoiler: the internet thinks they will), the radio side of the timeline actually delivered a few gems worth stopping for.

Simulated pirates who never get the door kicked in

rtl-sdr.com put the spotlight on SimTX today — a multiplayer shortwave radio simulator where everyone shares one realistically modeled ether. The ionosphere is IRI-2020 with live ionosonde data mixed in, groundwave and noise follow ITU-R, and every path runs through a proper Watterson fading channel complete with Doppler and storms. You can transmit from a microphone, an audio file, or raw IQ out of GNU Radio, then listen with real software (SDR++, anything that speaks rtl_tcp) pointed at a local bridge. No license required, because nothing ever leaves the simulation. Perfect for practicing number stations, testing antenna ideas, or just seeing what 100 W on 4625 kHz actually does at noon versus midnight.

Original post: https://x.com/rtlsdrblog/status/2115637180689440772

Close-up of vintage radio meters and crystal indicator

Weather from orbit with a homemade QFH

H0b0_Radio has been pulling clean METEOR-M imagery with an RTL-SDR Blog V4, a DIY quadrifilar helix, and Satdump. The 27 and 28 October passes look properly sharp — classic proof that a bit of wire, some PVC, and a cheap dongle still get you pictures of Earth from space. Some things never get old.

Carryout dish, meet HRPT

Everett Hope took a Winegard Carryout portable dish, stuffed a Pi inside, and re-engineered it to receive HRPT weather satellite signals. His verdict: "Honestly works surprisingly well." The kind of cheerfully aggressive garage engineering that keeps the hobby interesting. What's the weirdest thing you've ever repurposed for radio?

Radio telescope silhouetted against the sky

Jeff Geerling versus WWVB

Jeff Geerling picked up a National Geographic radio-controlled watch and spent time watching the seconds race once it locked onto the signal. There's a tiny coil antenna inside. His natural next question: how close can he get to the actual WWVB antenna in Colorado before the thing burns out? Classic maker energy.

Post: https://x.com/geerlingguy/status/2115661626951274905

Concrete doors and balcony climbs

A short nostalgic hit about 1990s London pirate radio: operators concreted the studio door shut and climbed in over balconies just to keep the jungle records spinning when nobody legal would touch them. Raids never killed it. The internet eventually did. Some things stay romantic in memory precisely because they were slightly illegal and extremely determined.

If you have a free evening and no real radio handy, fire up SimTX and see what the simulated ionosphere does to your favorite song. If you already have a QFH or a dish on the roof, the METEOR and HRPT passes are still worth catching. Either way, the bands (real or simulated) are never completely quiet.