this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
22 points (95.8% liked)

Selfhosted

48336 readers
1144 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] starkzarn@infosec.pub 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Love to hear things like that! When I first got licensed the solar cycle was utter trash. We're past the peak now, but band conditions are still pretty good generally. A few watts and a wire will still get you somewhere with CW and some other forward error corrected modes (like FT8). I have a lot of fun with the digital stuff like AREDN, but it's definitely a different ball game and the old school SSB-based radio still has its place in my heart.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

When I first got licensed the solar cycle was utter trash

Wow...memories come flooding back.

The ionosphere depletion really made an impression on me as a young man. In conjunction with my ham radio, I used to point a telescope at the sun that had a special lens on it to keep you from burning a hole in your head. Then I would turn the eyepiece 180 deg, put a regular lens in and point it onto a white piece of cardboard. You could watch the solar flares and track them across the sun as very dark shadowy spots on the cardboard. When there weren't a lot of solar flare activity, signals went farther on the bounce. In my memory it was probably the last time that we as a global community banded together to solve the issue of ionosphere depletion because of aerosols.

Many many nights of QSL CQ! CQ!. I still have a trunk full of old QSL cards. Do they still do that now days?

[–] starkzarn@infosec.pub 1 points 6 days ago

Yes! Qsl cards are very much still alive and well. Some traditions will never die. The special event stations are fun to get cards from.

Super cool anecdote on the telescope thing, I've never heard of that.

I hope you get back on the radio, it's a great hobby. It's a nice stress relief outlet for me these days too.