2025-12-05 — Battery Backup Power Basics, Some Zero Retries Interesting Trends For 2026, Unofficial IETF draft - five nonillion IPv6 addresses to ham radio, MySat Kit, your first personal satellite
Battery Backup Power Basics: If you want to experiment, used AGM batteries are fine as you can get them cheaply: There are many emergency lights or USVs using them, where they must be replaced every three years. In our typical low-power installations you might get another 5 years of useful life out of them. In the end scrap metal dealers will pay you for these batteries.
But otherwise there is hardly any alternative to LFP batteries: Not that much more expensive than lead batteries, but you can use full capacity much more often and for a much longer times. My two 150 Ah LFP batteries show no degradation after 3.5 years of constant use and after nearly 1 MWh have gone through them. You can save money by building your LFP battery your self. See for example https://www.youtube.com/@WillProwse
In battery systems the best energy is energy you do not consume. Most ham radio software is not very power hungry. Therefore you can select the shack computer for low power consuption, e.g. a system with 12 V input and a N100 CPU. See for example https://www.dl4no.de/thema/compute0.htm . My complete station, consisting of IC-705, N100 computer, and WLAN accesspoint, consumes less than 0.5 kWh/day.
Depending on the sunshine situation at your location, solar installations can greatly extend your off-grid time. See for example https://www.dl4no.de/thema/configur.htm . My station ran nearly 24/7 completely off-grid from late FEB 25 to end of NOV.
For my rolling counterpose (1997 Ford Ranger) I'm using a dual battery isolator to power all the ham cruft from two LiFePo cells. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZN1N411)
"Function: The Voltage Sensitive Relay (VSR) ensures that the primary battery is always charged and ready to start the vehicle by cutting in at 13.3 volts and cutting out at 12.8 volts. When your engine is turned on and the starting battery is fully charged, the isolation will start charging the second (auxiliary) battery at the same time."
With appropriate fusing I bring it into the cab and then have an PowerPole breakout box that all the do-dads connect to. This has served me well for the last six months without issue. I've left the HF rig on in the truck for days and didn't come back to a dead battery, either of them.
Experimenting with IPv6 over amateur networks would be nice to have, but probably isn't a pressing concern. Most everyone I run into in the techie world really has no understanding of the clear advantages that come with native IPv6 deployments. In fact I've gotten into more than a few heated arguments over NAT and security (NAT IS NOT SECURITY!) and how dangerous it is to "expose your computer" to the internet(!) using real IP addresses. As long as you're behind a quality firewall and keep it updated you're going to be fine. Just don't click on that link in the email...
Anyway, I've been running dual stack since Comcast rolled out v6 back around 2015 or so. For the most part it is set and forget. But there's a whole back end going on with your gateway router and your ISP. The ISP assigns a prefix (subnet or subnets) that your router can delegate to your LAN. Comcast assigns a /60 prefix to most home service routers. This means you have 2⁶⁸ = 295,147,905,179,352,825,856 addresses available for devices in your house. Now as a practical matter you can divide them up into 16 different /64 subnets, each having 2⁶⁴ addresses available. These are mostly static, public and routable. This means you could in theory set up an entire LAN for your ham shack, or VoIP, or IoT devices, etc. and keep them away from other machines. If you're running a remote setup you eliminate one NAT traversal layer, fixing some of the issues that can crop up. It would be pretty easy to set up an AREDN tunnel on a VLAN segment and never have it touch your home LAN, and still have access to it via your router. And then there's firewall rules, and simplified VPN/SSH tunneling... all sorts of possibilities open up once you have native and mostly static IP addresses.
But you have to buy equipment, and figure out how to make it work. I bought a Ubiquiti network years ago (with the intention of setting up just what I described above... need to practice what I preach!). it was quite a bit more expensive than the consumer-orientated stuff, but far superior. These day's I'd probably go with MikroTik, as Ubiquiti is pushing their cloud controllers and chronically out of stock, but the idea is the same.
Eric - Your comments bolster my impression that IPv6 has been ready for effective use for (many) years now... but most techies lean on their decades of IPv4 knowledge and take advantage of legacy support for for IPv4, until they don't have it (like Starlink offering only meaningful support for IPv6, and "if you must..." support for IPv4 with CGNAT).
Ditto the advantages of MikroTik versus Ubiquiti; the latter is really only paying attention to enterprise markets. MikroTik has stayed true to their customer based of knowledgeable techies and flexible use cases - Prosumers, home labs, small businesses / consultants, and scaling up to ISPs and enterprises without sacrificing the other customer bases. I'm a fan of MikroTik since their inception and initial offers to the first Wireless ISPs.
I would encourage not writing off HF radio as irrelevant to "NewTechHams". As an IT professional myself, and knowing several others, we find the ability to establish ad hoc national/International voice/data communications very fascinating. Indeed, when you look at how popular operations such as Parks on the Air are, or modes such as FT8, I would posit there is much renewed interest in utilizing HF - perhaps moreso than VHF/UHF.
Where a distinction needs to be made, I think, is that what we do not find interesting is using HF (or any amateur radio frequency, for that matter) as our primary social networking platform. We have social media platforms that accomplish that much better. Therefore, social nets (such as marathon ones on HF) hold very little interest to us. But the ability to communicate targeted voice and data locally and nationally through our own infrastructure (and often with low power)? Absolutely.
Collin - We're in violent agreement about the UTILITY of HF, especially when modern data modes are considered. But it's my experience that extolling the virtues of HF, even POTA / SOTA / Field Day activities are a non-starter in initial conversations with folks that have no familiarity with Amateur Radio. But after they are interested in radio technology, and then Amateur Radio... yes, HF is an interesting, useful, and relevant capability.
I've been a NewTechHam (NTH?) for the last 30 years. I'm just now starting to play with HF and have found it fascinating. I'm not doing POTA or contests or anything like that, I just like going out somewhere (QTH is QRM AF) and see who I can reach with whatever antenna I come up with that day. Or maybe I just like to fly my nerd flag in public.
That IPv6 allocation proposal is pretty wild when you think about it. Five nonillion addresses sounds absurd until you realize we've been making do with 44/8 for decades and it's actually worked out. The timing might be perfect too with Starlink and other satellite services starting to hand out native IPv6 by default. Makes sense to get ahead of this before every ham needs to NAT their way through some janky tunnel just to do peer-to-peer stuff.
Well, that number is kind of an exaggeration. The lower 64 bits of the address are the minimum subnet in IPv6. So that 4400::/16 would only be 281,474,976,710,656 subnets, so each ham could get a nice /48 block with 65,536 subnets each and still not noticeably impact the allocation.
New Packet Radio: In the meantime I received a unit from Localino - they re here in Germany. If you search for documentation: https://wiki.oarc.uk/packet:new-packet_radio_3_0. I have not done anything with it, but I could not find the documentation without Loaclino's help, i.e. Steffen, DO5DSH.
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Battery Backup Power Basics: If you want to experiment, used AGM batteries are fine as you can get them cheaply: There are many emergency lights or USVs using them, where they must be replaced every three years. In our typical low-power installations you might get another 5 years of useful life out of them. In the end scrap metal dealers will pay you for these batteries.
But otherwise there is hardly any alternative to LFP batteries: Not that much more expensive than lead batteries, but you can use full capacity much more often and for a much longer times. My two 150 Ah LFP batteries show no degradation after 3.5 years of constant use and after nearly 1 MWh have gone through them. You can save money by building your LFP battery your self. See for example https://www.youtube.com/@WillProwse
In battery systems the best energy is energy you do not consume. Most ham radio software is not very power hungry. Therefore you can select the shack computer for low power consuption, e.g. a system with 12 V input and a N100 CPU. See for example https://www.dl4no.de/thema/compute0.htm . My complete station, consisting of IC-705, N100 computer, and WLAN accesspoint, consumes less than 0.5 kWh/day.
Depending on the sunshine situation at your location, solar installations can greatly extend your off-grid time. See for example https://www.dl4no.de/thema/configur.htm . My station ran nearly 24/7 completely off-grid from late FEB 25 to end of NOV.
Alexander - Thanks for relating your hands-on experience with Amateur Radio battery backup.
For my rolling counterpose (1997 Ford Ranger) I'm using a dual battery isolator to power all the ham cruft from two LiFePo cells. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZN1N411)
"Function: The Voltage Sensitive Relay (VSR) ensures that the primary battery is always charged and ready to start the vehicle by cutting in at 13.3 volts and cutting out at 12.8 volts. When your engine is turned on and the starting battery is fully charged, the isolation will start charging the second (auxiliary) battery at the same time."
With appropriate fusing I bring it into the cab and then have an PowerPole breakout box that all the do-dads connect to. This has served me well for the last six months without issue. I've left the HF rig on in the truck for days and didn't come back to a dead battery, either of them.
Experimenting with IPv6 over amateur networks would be nice to have, but probably isn't a pressing concern. Most everyone I run into in the techie world really has no understanding of the clear advantages that come with native IPv6 deployments. In fact I've gotten into more than a few heated arguments over NAT and security (NAT IS NOT SECURITY!) and how dangerous it is to "expose your computer" to the internet(!) using real IP addresses. As long as you're behind a quality firewall and keep it updated you're going to be fine. Just don't click on that link in the email...
Anyway, I've been running dual stack since Comcast rolled out v6 back around 2015 or so. For the most part it is set and forget. But there's a whole back end going on with your gateway router and your ISP. The ISP assigns a prefix (subnet or subnets) that your router can delegate to your LAN. Comcast assigns a /60 prefix to most home service routers. This means you have 2⁶⁸ = 295,147,905,179,352,825,856 addresses available for devices in your house. Now as a practical matter you can divide them up into 16 different /64 subnets, each having 2⁶⁴ addresses available. These are mostly static, public and routable. This means you could in theory set up an entire LAN for your ham shack, or VoIP, or IoT devices, etc. and keep them away from other machines. If you're running a remote setup you eliminate one NAT traversal layer, fixing some of the issues that can crop up. It would be pretty easy to set up an AREDN tunnel on a VLAN segment and never have it touch your home LAN, and still have access to it via your router. And then there's firewall rules, and simplified VPN/SSH tunneling... all sorts of possibilities open up once you have native and mostly static IP addresses.
But you have to buy equipment, and figure out how to make it work. I bought a Ubiquiti network years ago (with the intention of setting up just what I described above... need to practice what I preach!). it was quite a bit more expensive than the consumer-orientated stuff, but far superior. These day's I'd probably go with MikroTik, as Ubiquiti is pushing their cloud controllers and chronically out of stock, but the idea is the same.
Eric - Your comments bolster my impression that IPv6 has been ready for effective use for (many) years now... but most techies lean on their decades of IPv4 knowledge and take advantage of legacy support for for IPv4, until they don't have it (like Starlink offering only meaningful support for IPv6, and "if you must..." support for IPv4 with CGNAT).
Ditto the advantages of MikroTik versus Ubiquiti; the latter is really only paying attention to enterprise markets. MikroTik has stayed true to their customer based of knowledgeable techies and flexible use cases - Prosumers, home labs, small businesses / consultants, and scaling up to ISPs and enterprises without sacrificing the other customer bases. I'm a fan of MikroTik since their inception and initial offers to the first Wireless ISPs.
I would encourage not writing off HF radio as irrelevant to "NewTechHams". As an IT professional myself, and knowing several others, we find the ability to establish ad hoc national/International voice/data communications very fascinating. Indeed, when you look at how popular operations such as Parks on the Air are, or modes such as FT8, I would posit there is much renewed interest in utilizing HF - perhaps moreso than VHF/UHF.
Where a distinction needs to be made, I think, is that what we do not find interesting is using HF (or any amateur radio frequency, for that matter) as our primary social networking platform. We have social media platforms that accomplish that much better. Therefore, social nets (such as marathon ones on HF) hold very little interest to us. But the ability to communicate targeted voice and data locally and nationally through our own infrastructure (and often with low power)? Absolutely.
Collin - We're in violent agreement about the UTILITY of HF, especially when modern data modes are considered. But it's my experience that extolling the virtues of HF, even POTA / SOTA / Field Day activities are a non-starter in initial conversations with folks that have no familiarity with Amateur Radio. But after they are interested in radio technology, and then Amateur Radio... yes, HF is an interesting, useful, and relevant capability.
I've been a NewTechHam (NTH?) for the last 30 years. I'm just now starting to play with HF and have found it fascinating. I'm not doing POTA or contests or anything like that, I just like going out somewhere (QTH is QRM AF) and see who I can reach with whatever antenna I come up with that day. Or maybe I just like to fly my nerd flag in public.
That IPv6 allocation proposal is pretty wild when you think about it. Five nonillion addresses sounds absurd until you realize we've been making do with 44/8 for decades and it's actually worked out. The timing might be perfect too with Starlink and other satellite services starting to hand out native IPv6 by default. Makes sense to get ahead of this before every ham needs to NAT their way through some janky tunnel just to do peer-to-peer stuff.
Thanks for offering your perspective!
Well, that number is kind of an exaggeration. The lower 64 bits of the address are the minimum subnet in IPv6. So that 4400::/16 would only be 281,474,976,710,656 subnets, so each ham could get a nice /48 block with 65,536 subnets each and still not noticeably impact the allocation.
IPv6 is wonderful.
Steve, I suspect that our YouTube™ subscription lists would almost be a 90% match.
Joe - Yeah, I really have to get the Zero Retries YouTube channel going and start sharing out the Zero Retries Interesting videos.
New Packet Radio: In the meantime I received a unit from Localino - they re here in Germany. If you search for documentation: https://wiki.oarc.uk/packet:new-packet_radio_3_0. I have not done anything with it, but I could not find the documentation without Loaclino's help, i.e. Steffen, DO5DSH.