10 ms·

Internet Archive Seeks Material for Library of Amateur Radio and Communications

265 points by savetz 4y ago

savetz 4y ago
Internet Archive has begun gathering content for the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC), which will be a massive online library of materials and collections related to amateur radio and early digital communications. The DLARC project is looking for contributors with troves of ham radio, amateur radio, and early digital communications related books, magazines, documents, catalogs, manuals, videos, software, personal archives, and other historical records collections, no matter how big or small. In addition to physical material to digitize, we are looking for podcasts, newsletters, video channels, and other digital content that can enrich the DLARC collections.
- altilunium 4y ago
  Onno W. Purbo hosted his own Amateur Radio personal wiki [1]. He's also uploaded his talks on Youtube [2]. [1] https://lms.onnocenter.or.id/wiki/index.php?search=Amatir&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go https://lms.onnocenter.or.id/wiki/index.php?search=Amatir&ti... [2] https://youtube.com/c/OnnoCenter https://youtube.com/c/OnnoCenter
- nidnogg 4y ago
  Does it have to be strictly historical radio content? I have a radio app I used to showcase some of my compositions but I'm not sure it'd qualify.
  - ale42 4y ago
    It should be related to amateur radio, so if it is about broadcast radio probably not.
- bretbernhoft 4y ago
  Outstanding context, thank you! This is a wonderful partnership to learn about. I hope that Internet Archive is successful here.
- curiousfab 4y ago
  This is a mammoth task but an important one. I wonder if there's a way to collaborate with existing collections of historical Amateur radio data, such as the famous "QSL Collection" from Vienna: https://www.dokufunk.org/index.php?lang=EN https://www.dokufunk.org/index.php?lang=EN I think they have more material than probably anyone else in the world, but much of it is "offline" (partly digitized but not web accessible). Another huge collection of historic QSL cards, bios of deceased radio amateurs and other stuff: http://hamgallery.com/ http://hamgallery.com/
- jimnotgym 4y ago
  > software Amatuer radio seems full of little software tools to do calculations that are closed source. I hope the authors can be encouraged to publish source, or it will die with them.
  - anilakar 4y ago
    Not just closed source but a completely black box, like the ROS and Pactor 4 digimodes. (To be fair, the latter is a commercial product so the blame is on ham radio operators, not the company who designed it.)
    - throw0101a 4y ago
      > Pactor 4 digimodes. I've always been curious as to how they "got away" with being proprietary: encryption isn't allowed on amateur bands, but given its black box nature, the codec (?) might as well be a cipher. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACTOR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACTOR Has anyone reverse engineered it? It is possible to create a third-party implementation, either in hardware or SDR? * https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/PACTOR_IV https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/PACTOR_IV
      - sidewndr46 4y ago
        At least in the US, the FCC largely ignores amateur radio and related services. Unless they start causing interference with other services. In general an amateur digital mode cannot have encryption (there are a few exceptions). A digital mode must have a published specification as well. PACTOR is not published to my knowledge. The ARRL petitioned for an increase to the symbol rate on the HF bands almost a decade ago. The FCC never formally did anything with it. It was a few years back, but at one point the FCC issued a 200+ kw license for a transmitter right at the top of the 20m band. Why? I have no clue. It isn't like the operator couldn't afford a commercial license. The FCC barely does anything about interference coming from equipment that affects amateurs. I've had substantially more luck contacting manufacturers and constructors directly. Just google "solaredge RFI" if you want more info about this. It took a commercial radio manufacturer years of professional lobbying to convince the FCC that the CB radio spectrum could in fact be with FM. The FCC is about 50 years behind on regulation for the CB radio. There is a huge amount of very valuable spectrum that could be used for citizen radio purposes with type accepted equipment very cheaply. But the FCC does not allow it. The FCC approved DFS for Wi-Fi, but didn't actually specify what the equipment was supposed to do when it must mitigate interference. All the equipment I've seen just switches the AP to the first 5 ghz channel and leaves it there. Forever. Likewise the FCC approved a new 5 ghz band for WiFi and similar services and puts power limits on emissions, as they should. But none of the chosen channels have a power limit of something very low like 0dbmw or similar. I have neighbors who find it fit to run an AP on every single available channel in the WiFi spectrum. I would just like one I can use in my house comfortably without getting interference. If we're going to have all this spectrum, why not take one channel and put a very low power limit on it? That way residential customers could use it in their house knowing they aren't receiving interference or generating it. The FCC regulation is almost always lagging behind reality for spectrum they aren't paid for. Cellular and stuff gets all the attention, since that is where the money is. The transition to ATSC from NTSC for broadcast television would be a good example. That happened quickly and without endless debate as to the merit of it.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  I have been loving this site for old radio/electronics magazines: https://worldradiohistory.com/ https://worldradiohistory.com/ I would assume archive.org would just ask permission to hoover (mirror) it.
  - Johnythree 4y ago
    > I have been loving this site for old radio/electronics magazines: And many hundreds of books.
- bityard 4y ago
  They are in luck, then, because hams are famous for never throwing anything out, ask me how I know.
biggieshellz 4y ago
Do QSL cards count?
- savetz 4y ago
  YES. -Kay
  - n42 4y ago
    I don’t know how common it is for hams to collect these but my father has thousands, so I’ll try to get him to send what he has your way
    - RF_Savage 4y ago
      Extremely common. Before internet the physical cards ware the proof that you had had that contact. They ware needed for awards in in many countries to even advance from your license class upwards. In Finland one had to have 300 confirmed (paper QSL card received) contacts with morse code before you could even attempt the tests for higher license classes that allowed voice and data. Thankfully now abolished, along with the mandatory morse code requirement.
cratermoon 4y ago
How about these, not mine personally, but one's I'm aware of. - http://c2.com/morse/ http://c2.com/morse/ - http://c2.com/~ward/morse/ http://c2.com/~ward/morse/ - History of W9YB http://c2.com/w4/yb/ http://c2.com/w4/yb/ (Purdue Amateur Radio Club)
thrdbndndn 4y ago
Probably totally digress, but I wish IA can organize their digital library slightly better. One day I was checking some manga books by ISBN on IA just out of curiosity. And for some reason, it put the ISBNs for all the volumes of a manga into one single entry (https://archive.org/details/isbn_1919979003907 https://archive.org/details/isbn_1919979003907, check "ISBN" metadata section) and unsurprisingly, the actual content is only one volume, vol.43 (not even vol.1!). I have a feeling other volumes may exist somewhere there, but there is no way to search for them. This isn't a one-off occurrence either, it reflects my experience for trying to find specific item there well, especially for non-English books.
- textfiles 4y ago
  On a given day I'm moving tens of thousands of items around to make them easier to find. I'm sure I'll get to your section sooner or later.
  - throwaway742 4y ago
    Thank you for your service.
    - textfiles 4y ago
      Every day is a joy.
  - jrajav 4y ago
    Are you involved with IA? I'm actually really interested in what your day to day looks like, could you share more?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Wingy 4y ago
      textfiles is Jason Scott[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Scott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Scott
resters 4y ago
There are millions of "reflector" messages that contain a tremendous amount of knowledge. I hope the project manages to archive those as well.
zeckalpha 4y ago
I have a shelf full of books (already got rid of all my QSTs I can access digitally) I will be able to get rid of soon!
wrayjustin 4y ago
I didn't see this mentioned, but is there an interest for record transmissions?
muppetman 4y ago
As far as I'm concerned the IA can stick this up their arse. They REFUSE to acknowlege my request to have a personal website that they've managed to archive removed. It's a person blog that I want online so I can give the URL to family and friends, but I keep it out of Google etc with robots.txt. But once during an upgrade of the backend software I stuffed up the robots.txt and they crawled it until I fixed it up. Will they reply to my emails? They will not. I'm so frustrated, they just IGNORE emails. Don't support these clowns.
- 199X 4y ago
  I suggest you publishing something againts their political agenda, and they will remove and censor it asap
- giantrobot 4y ago
  You picked the dumbest possible method to share something privately with family and friends but it's the Internet Archive's issue to fix? A robots.txt provides zero protection for a public website.
  - muppetman 4y ago
    I didn't say it was private. It's obviously public, I give you the URL and you can pull it up. I'm not stupid enough to think that robots.txt means no one can read it! There's some RBAC control so that you need to be logged in etc if I publish anything I wish to remain private. Most _reputable_ organisiations will respect robots.txt and not crawl your site, nor cache/archive your data if you request it. What I want is the decision that someone's going to archive/store my website somewhere else to be MY decision, not theirs.
- poijt 4y ago
- mdp2021 4y ago
  > they just ignore I have hints that they may be understaffed. If you had a little spare time, you could lend a hand to their legendary effort, and maybe contribute in fixing a few things such as your issue.
EamonnMR 4y ago
http://www.ominous-valve.com/shortwve.html http://www.ominous-valve.com/shortwve.html Some quality stuff there.
- Johnythree 4y ago
  Sadly, the .RA files are missing from that site. However you can download the broken file, (eg "lpl.ra") open it with a text editor, and extract the URL (eg http://home.att.net/~philys.la/lpl.ra http://home.att.net/~philys.la/lpl.ra) And put that into the Internet Archive.
amatecha 4y ago
Ahh, this is great. I was already seriously impressed by the amount of amateur radio content on the Internet Archive. I'm happily surprised to see some solicitation for even more content! Passing this along to my relevant communities/clubs/etc. (also just emailed one possible place to archive :))
Gigachad 4y ago
The IA has really lost its reputation as an archive by choosing to remove content down for political purposes. They see themselves as publishers rather than an archive.
- NavinF 4y ago
  What did they remove?
  - violan 4y ago
    Evidence of unsavoury and most likely illegal behavior of a man with powerful friends in the tech industry. If you know the right people with the right political views, even the IA will capitulate.
- cormorant 4y ago
  I attempted to google to guess what you meant. I found: (1) they recently removed KiwiFarms; (2) in 2020, they began labeling certain pages with "fact checks"; (3) they remove content by request of the site owner or by copyright complaint. Of those, (2) seems the most political, but it's not removing content. Was there something else you had in mind?
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    (1) is egregious if the goal is an archive of the internet. An archive should have everything of what is being archived, legalese notwithstanding: The good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, everything. E v e r y t h i n g . If it doesn't have everything, it's not an archive.
    - detaro 4y ago
      of course "not visible in the wayback machine" doesn't mean "they don't have it".
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Removing kiwi farms was a bad decision. The copyright and site owner did not request it and the content was not illegal. So the IA is picking content to delist based on their own feelings rather than simply archiving.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
once-in-a-while 4y ago
mostertoaster 4y ago
It would be awesome if one day we go back and hear all these small town and college radio stations and the types of shows in them. Woukd be a cool time capsule.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
Oh nice effort. I certainly have some stuff to contribute.
PM_me_your_math 4y ago
Might be difficult to beat the ARRL's library in terms of depth.
- ricktdotorg 4y ago
  a collab between IA and the ARRL would be ideal! but i feel the two institutions may not see eye to eye.

265 points by savetz 4y ago

Internet Archive has begun gathering content for the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC), which will be a massive online library of materials and collections related to amateur radio and early digital communications. The DLARC project is looking for contributors with troves of ham radio, amateur radio, and early digital communications related books, magazines, documents, catalogs, manuals, videos, software, personal archives, and other historical records collections, no matter how big or small. In addition to physical material to digitize, we are looking for podcasts, newsletters, video channels, and other digital content that can enrich the DLARC collections.

altilunium 4y ago
Onno W. Purbo hosted his own Amateur Radio personal wiki [1]. He's also uploaded his talks on Youtube [2]. [1] https://lms.onnocenter.or.id/wiki/index.php?search=Amatir&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go https://lms.onnocenter.or.id/wiki/index.php?search=Amatir&ti... [2] https://youtube.com/c/OnnoCenter https://youtube.com/c/OnnoCenter
nidnogg 4y ago
Does it have to be strictly historical radio content? I have a radio app I used to showcase some of my compositions but I'm not sure it'd qualify.
- ale42 4y ago
  It should be related to amateur radio, so if it is about broadcast radio probably not.
bretbernhoft 4y ago
Outstanding context, thank you! This is a wonderful partnership to learn about. I hope that Internet Archive is successful here.
curiousfab 4y ago
This is a mammoth task but an important one. I wonder if there's a way to collaborate with existing collections of historical Amateur radio data, such as the famous "QSL Collection" from Vienna: https://www.dokufunk.org/index.php?lang=EN https://www.dokufunk.org/index.php?lang=EN I think they have more material than probably anyone else in the world, but much of it is "offline" (partly digitized but not web accessible). Another huge collection of historic QSL cards, bios of deceased radio amateurs and other stuff: http://hamgallery.com/ http://hamgallery.com/
jimnotgym 4y ago
> software Amatuer radio seems full of little software tools to do calculations that are closed source. I hope the authors can be encouraged to publish source, or it will die with them.
- anilakar 4y ago
  Not just closed source but a completely black box, like the ROS and Pactor 4 digimodes. (To be fair, the latter is a commercial product so the blame is on ham radio operators, not the company who designed it.)
  - throw0101a 4y ago
    > Pactor 4 digimodes. I've always been curious as to how they "got away" with being proprietary: encryption isn't allowed on amateur bands, but given its black box nature, the codec (?) might as well be a cipher. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACTOR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACTOR Has anyone reverse engineered it? It is possible to create a third-party implementation, either in hardware or SDR? * https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/PACTOR_IV https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/PACTOR_IV
    - sidewndr46 4y ago
      At least in the US, the FCC largely ignores amateur radio and related services. Unless they start causing interference with other services. In general an amateur digital mode cannot have encryption (there are a few exceptions). A digital mode must have a published specification as well. PACTOR is not published to my knowledge. The ARRL petitioned for an increase to the symbol rate on the HF bands almost a decade ago. The FCC never formally did anything with it. It was a few years back, but at one point the FCC issued a 200+ kw license for a transmitter right at the top of the 20m band. Why? I have no clue. It isn't like the operator couldn't afford a commercial license. The FCC barely does anything about interference coming from equipment that affects amateurs. I've had substantially more luck contacting manufacturers and constructors directly. Just google "solaredge RFI" if you want more info about this. It took a commercial radio manufacturer years of professional lobbying to convince the FCC that the CB radio spectrum could in fact be with FM. The FCC is about 50 years behind on regulation for the CB radio. There is a huge amount of very valuable spectrum that could be used for citizen radio purposes with type accepted equipment very cheaply. But the FCC does not allow it. The FCC approved DFS for Wi-Fi, but didn't actually specify what the equipment was supposed to do when it must mitigate interference. All the equipment I've seen just switches the AP to the first 5 ghz channel and leaves it there. Forever. Likewise the FCC approved a new 5 ghz band for WiFi and similar services and puts power limits on emissions, as they should. But none of the chosen channels have a power limit of something very low like 0dbmw or similar. I have neighbors who find it fit to run an AP on every single available channel in the WiFi spectrum. I would just like one I can use in my house comfortably without getting interference. If we're going to have all this spectrum, why not take one channel and put a very low power limit on it? That way residential customers could use it in their house knowing they aren't receiving interference or generating it. The FCC regulation is almost always lagging behind reality for spectrum they aren't paid for. Cellular and stuff gets all the attention, since that is where the money is. The transition to ATSC from NTSC for broadcast television would be a good example. That happened quickly and without endless debate as to the merit of it.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
I have been loving this site for old radio/electronics magazines: https://worldradiohistory.com/ https://worldradiohistory.com/ I would assume archive.org would just ask permission to hoover (mirror) it.
- Johnythree 4y ago
  > I have been loving this site for old radio/electronics magazines: And many hundreds of books.
bityard 4y ago
They are in luck, then, because hams are famous for never throwing anything out, ask me how I know.

biggieshellz 4y ago

Do QSL cards count?

savetz 4y ago
YES. -Kay
- n42 4y ago
  I don’t know how common it is for hams to collect these but my father has thousands, so I’ll try to get him to send what he has your way
  - RF_Savage 4y ago
    Extremely common. Before internet the physical cards ware the proof that you had had that contact. They ware needed for awards in in many countries to even advance from your license class upwards. In Finland one had to have 300 confirmed (paper QSL card received) contacts with morse code before you could even attempt the tests for higher license classes that allowed voice and data. Thankfully now abolished, along with the mandatory morse code requirement.

cratermoon 4y ago

How about these, not mine personally, but one's I'm aware of. - http://c2.com/morse/ http://c2.com/morse/ - http://c2.com/~ward/morse/ http://c2.com/~ward/morse/ - History of W9YB http://c2.com/w4/yb/ http://c2.com/w4/yb/ (Purdue Amateur Radio Club)

thrdbndndn 4y ago

Probably totally digress, but I wish IA can organize their digital library slightly better. One day I was checking some manga books by ISBN on IA just out of curiosity. And for some reason, it put the ISBNs for all the volumes of a manga into one single entry (https://archive.org/details/isbn_1919979003907 https://archive.org/details/isbn_1919979003907, check "ISBN" metadata section) and unsurprisingly, the actual content is only one volume, vol.43 (not even vol.1!). I have a feeling other volumes may exist somewhere there, but there is no way to search for them. This isn't a one-off occurrence either, it reflects my experience for trying to find specific item there well, especially for non-English books.

textfiles 4y ago
On a given day I'm moving tens of thousands of items around to make them easier to find. I'm sure I'll get to your section sooner or later.
- throwaway742 4y ago
  Thank you for your service.
  - textfiles 4y ago
    Every day is a joy.
- jrajav 4y ago
  Are you involved with IA? I'm actually really interested in what your day to day looks like, could you share more?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Wingy 4y ago
    textfiles is Jason Scott[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Scott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Scott

resters 4y ago

There are millions of "reflector" messages that contain a tremendous amount of knowledge. I hope the project manages to archive those as well.

zeckalpha 4y ago

I have a shelf full of books (already got rid of all my QSTs I can access digitally) I will be able to get rid of soon!

wrayjustin 4y ago

I didn't see this mentioned, but is there an interest for record transmissions?

muppetman 4y ago

As far as I'm concerned the IA can stick this up their arse. They REFUSE to acknowlege my request to have a personal website that they've managed to archive removed. It's a person blog that I want online so I can give the URL to family and friends, but I keep it out of Google etc with robots.txt. But once during an upgrade of the backend software I stuffed up the robots.txt and they crawled it until I fixed it up. Will they reply to my emails? They will not. I'm so frustrated, they just IGNORE emails. Don't support these clowns.

199X 4y ago
I suggest you publishing something againts their political agenda, and they will remove and censor it asap
giantrobot 4y ago
You picked the dumbest possible method to share something privately with family and friends but it's the Internet Archive's issue to fix? A robots.txt provides zero protection for a public website.
- muppetman 4y ago
  I didn't say it was private. It's obviously public, I give you the URL and you can pull it up. I'm not stupid enough to think that robots.txt means no one can read it! There's some RBAC control so that you need to be logged in etc if I publish anything I wish to remain private. Most _reputable_ organisiations will respect robots.txt and not crawl your site, nor cache/archive your data if you request it. What I want is the decision that someone's going to archive/store my website somewhere else to be MY decision, not theirs.
poijt 4y ago
mdp2021 4y ago
> they just ignore I have hints that they may be understaffed. If you had a little spare time, you could lend a hand to their legendary effort, and maybe contribute in fixing a few things such as your issue.

EamonnMR 4y ago

http://www.ominous-valve.com/shortwve.html http://www.ominous-valve.com/shortwve.html Some quality stuff there.

Johnythree 4y ago
Sadly, the .RA files are missing from that site. However you can download the broken file, (eg "lpl.ra") open it with a text editor, and extract the URL (eg http://home.att.net/~philys.la/lpl.ra http://home.att.net/~philys.la/lpl.ra) And put that into the Internet Archive.

amatecha 4y ago

Ahh, this is great. I was already seriously impressed by the amount of amateur radio content on the Internet Archive. I'm happily surprised to see some solicitation for even more content! Passing this along to my relevant communities/clubs/etc. (also just emailed one possible place to archive :))

Gigachad 4y ago

The IA has really lost its reputation as an archive by choosing to remove content down for political purposes. They see themselves as publishers rather than an archive.

NavinF 4y ago
What did they remove?
- violan 4y ago
  Evidence of unsavoury and most likely illegal behavior of a man with powerful friends in the tech industry. If you know the right people with the right political views, even the IA will capitulate.
cormorant 4y ago
I attempted to google to guess what you meant. I found: (1) they recently removed KiwiFarms; (2) in 2020, they began labeling certain pages with "fact checks"; (3) they remove content by request of the site owner or by copyright complaint. Of those, (2) seems the most political, but it's not removing content. Was there something else you had in mind?
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  (1) is egregious if the goal is an archive of the internet. An archive should have everything of what is being archived, legalese notwithstanding: The good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, everything. E v e r y t h i n g . If it doesn't have everything, it's not an archive.
  - detaro 4y ago
    of course "not visible in the wayback machine" doesn't mean "they don't have it".
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Removing kiwi farms was a bad decision. The copyright and site owner did not request it and the content was not illegal. So the IA is picking content to delist based on their own feelings rather than simply archiving.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

once-in-a-while 4y ago

mostertoaster 4y ago

It would be awesome if one day we go back and hear all these small town and college radio stations and the types of shows in them. Woukd be a cool time capsule.

GekkePrutser 4y ago

Oh nice effort. I certainly have some stuff to contribute.

PM_me_your_math 4y ago

Might be difficult to beat the ARRL's library in terms of depth.

ricktdotorg 4y ago
a collab between IA and the ARRL would be ideal! but i feel the two institutions may not see eye to eye.