17 April 2025

Tinkering with Ham Radio Projects at Home

Intro

One thing my time off reminded me of is just how rewarding ham radio projects at home can be. During my time on Wake—aside from reconnecting with the wonderful community we’re part of—I also rediscovered the simple joy of tinkering. Like most hobbies, you can get by with basic gear and still have plenty of fun, or you can go all-in and spend top dollar on the fancy stuff that (hopefully) makes the hobby more enjoyable—or at least a little less frustrating.

These days, I lean heavily toward the “less is more” camp. My home station is modest—ham radio is more of a “sometimes” thing in this season of life. Maybe someday I’ll set up a real antenna and relocate my shack from the unheated garage to somewhere a bit more civilized. Perhaps. Someday. Back to the tinkering.

DIY Ham Radio Antennas and Tinkering Projects at Home

While on Wake, I enjoyed making wire dipole antennas to access bands I don’t typically spend a lot of time on—ten and twelve meters in particular have been a ton of fun. Thanks to the current solar cycle, those higher bands have been especially productive, probably netting the most contacts for me.

I’ve made a few antennas from scrap wire and whatever I could dig up for a center support. Getting realistic (and often surprisingly decent) signal reports using those homebrewed antennas or improvised repairs makes those QSOs that much sweeter. Check out this dipole antenna calculator on the SOTAmaps site—great for building single or multi-band, linked dipoles

As I previously posted in QSL card reflections, once home, I tackled the mountain of QSL cards waiting for me—over 280 of them. I’m sure my mail carrier thinks I’m running some kind of international pyramid scheme. A few envelopes even required signatures—a testament to how much some hams value confirming that contact with KH9.

But I didn’t dive right in. First, we rented a modern log cabin outside of Bozeman, Montana, for the kids’ spring break. Rustic, charming, peaceful, with views of snow-capped mountains—and a hot tub to boot. Unfortunately, the jet lag from a red-eye flight left me foggy for most of our four-day stay. Even so, just being with my family (and the dogs) after months apart was pure joy.

Raspberry Pi Ham Radio Projects at Home

Once the QSL pile was vanquished, I turned to some home projects—including a few from the “honey-do” list. Please quote me now: I vow to never change a kitchen sink by myself again. But hey, it looks great now.

Next up: Raspberry Pi projects.

At work, we use a couple Raspberry Pis for network automation (and, let’s be honest, tinkering), so I figured I’d rope my 13-year-old son into building a few Pi-based setups at home. The bait? A RetroPie gaming console to play old-school video games on. I did mention this was for my son and not me, right? It took some trial and error (and a crash course in basic Linux for both of us), but we got it working.

The next Pi project was more ambitious: setting up a “Ham-Pi” to remotely control my Icom IC-7300 from Wake Island. I knew it’d be a steep learning curve. Although I didn’t finish it before heading back, I did get a browser-based interface working on my home network. It could change frequency and mode and stream audio from the radio to my laptop. I even wired up a Pi Relay Board to key the radio via the rear auxiliary plug. Unfortunately, I ran out of time before configuring the transmit function. So… to be continued.

One more: I set up a third Pi as a Pi-hole for the home network to block ads and tracking from the usual suspect websites. Easiest Pi project of the bunch—and totally worth it if you haven’t tried it yet.

Do you have a favorite ham radio project at home? Share it in the comments!

73! Allen ~ KH7AL