The Station
Amateur radio is the original decentralized network — no towers to pay, no accounts to lock you out. This station does three jobs: it feeds the national APRS network as a round-the-clock gateway, it's becoming a local crossband repeater so a handheld can reach a distant machine, and — the fun part — it bridges radio messages straight into a group chat and back. Newest on the bench: a solar MeshCore LoRa repeater for the farm tower.
The Hardware
Yaesu FTM-2980 APRS
A 2 m FM mobile dedicated full-time to the APRS gateway on 144.39 MHz — the always-on ears of the station.
Yaesu FTM-310DR BOT / REPEATER
C4FM/FM dual-band mobile, crossband-repeat capable — reserved for the local crossband repeater and the coming voice-command bot.
ZimaBoard + Direwolf
A fanless x86 board runs Direwolf, a software TNC decoding 1200-baud packet on 144.39 MHz — receiving, digipeating, and gating APRS between the air and the internet.
DigiRig interface
A compact sound-card + PTT link between the FTM-310DR and the ZimaBoard — the wiring for the voice bot and data modes to come.
On the Road
Two mobile rigs ride along — both with built-in APRS and GPS, so they beacon their position as they move (which is how the farm knows a truck is heading home) and let me send APRS or work the repeater from anywhere.
Yaesu FTM-400 F-250
C4FM dual-band with a color touchscreen, built-in APRS TNC and GPS — the work-truck rig.
Yaesu FTM-500 SANTA FE
The newer dual-band C4FM mobile, built-in APRS and GPS — the daily-driver rig.
What We're Doing
APRS Gateway & Digipeater LIVE
A 24/7 node in the worldwide APRS network — decoding local packets, repeating them for stations that can't reach far, and feeding them to the internet backbone.
APRS ↔ Discord Bridge LIVE
Radio text messages land in a group chat; typed replies go back out over the air — to one operator or to everyone. Delivery-confirmed. Detailed below.
Local Crossband Repeater IN PROGRESS
Linking a low-power handheld up to a distant repeater (the W4CAT machine in La Vergne) by relaying 70 cm ↔ 2 m through the home station. Radio in hand, programming underway.
Voice-Command Bot ROADMAP
Talk to the station over the air — ask for weather, homelab status, or the day's duck fact — and hear a spoken answer. Speech-to-text and text-to-speech, entirely self-hosted.
MeshCore Tower Repeater IN PROGRESS
A solar LoRa mesh repeater for the 55 ft farm tower — MeshCore firmware (not Meshtastic; they don't interoperate) on a RAK10721 kit, 910.525 MHz preset. Companion node (SenseCAP T1000-E) is flashed and in hand; the tower kit is on the order sheet.
Direwolf RF Activity LIVE
What the software TNC is hearing on 144.39 MHz right now — packets, digipeats and gated traffic, straight from the ZimaBoard.
ADS-B Air Traffic LIVE
Ham-adjacent: a PiAware receiver tracks aircraft overhead, and a geofence alerts the house when something interesting is inbound.
New: FTDX10 → POTA kit — sell/buy analysis
The FT-991A on the tower already covers HF at home, so the barely-used FTDX10 gets sold (planning figure ~$1,100) and turned into a portable Parks-on-the-Air kit. Three kits priced out: Budget (Xiegu G90, ~$773, ≈$330 back in pocket), Popular (Yaesu FT-891 + Chelegance MC-750, ~$1,336, ≈$240 to add), and Premium (Icom IC-705, ~$2,070) — with what each gains and gives up.
📻 The analysis page
Resale range, three complete kits with dealer links, net-cash line per kit, and the order of operations.
⭐ The pick
FT-891 + MC-750: keeps 100 W, three-minute setup in any park, and the FTDX10 sale covers about 85 % of it.
New: MeshCore Repeater — the purchase page
The full build is priced out two ways on one page: the ready-made RAK10721 kit route (about $504 with lightning arrestor, antenna and cabling), and a DIY AliExpress route (roughly $164 midpoint) using a RAK/XIAO board, 18650 cells and your own waterproof box. Prices on the AliExpress tab are ranges — the site can't be machine-checked.
📋 Order sheet — kit build
Every part with a link and a running total. Hold on the GPS module until slot A is confirmed.
📦 DIY — AliExpress list
The budget build: board, radio, solar, cells and enclosure, with a 2–4 week shipping note.
Feature: Radio Meets Chat
APRS can send text messages, but typing on a radio keypad is miserable. The phone is great at typing; the radio is great at reaching people off-grid. This bridge — a small program on the ZimaBoard, tapping the packet stream read-only — lets each do what it's good at. There are two ways to put words on the air, and APRS handles them differently.
Reaching one operator — directed & confirmed
You type a bare callsign in chat. The bridge figures out which of that person's radios is actually on the air, sends it over the internet to a gateway near them, and waits for their radio's automatic acknowledgment — retrying until it lands.
1:1 · Directed message
Bare callsign in, delivery confirmation out.
No ack? It retries on a decaying schedule (~5 tries over ~13 min, the APRS convention) then reports plainly that it may not have reached them. You always know.
Reaching everyone — the bulletin
A bulletin is APRS's broadcast: addressed to a bulletin line instead of a person, it appears on every listening station's board. No acknowledgment — you can't collect a receipt from "everyone" — so it's sent once and seen widely.
1:∞ · Bulletin
One message, no addressee, no ack.
When someone calls you
Inbound is the mirror — and it fans out to wherever you'll notice, plus a bit of good manners:
Built entirely on gear already on the network — no cloud services, no monthly fees. Python on a ZimaBoard, Direwolf, APRS-IS, and Discord, wired together.