Great ideas from Ham Radio Outside the Box subscribers

1. QRV: An interesting iOS/Mac app for hams from Adam K2CAT who writes:

I developed QRV to be the ham app that I always wanted. There are a lot of great tools for amateur operators: QRZ, HamQSL solar conditions, PSKReporter, and more; they just were scattered and some are not mobile friendly. My goal was to consolidate everything into a single app for Apple users.

Some of the highlight features are: live spots of your grid, callsign lookup with QRZ integration for QSO info, band plans for the US, CA, and UK (more coming in 2026), lots of reference pages and calculators. My favorite calculator for POTA ops: how long will your battery last when out in the field, and what size solar panel do you need to break even?

I do have to charge for the live spots feature, but users get a significant grace period to see if it provides them real value. After emailing with the owner of PSKReporter to get some help, I decided that the most responsible path was to run my own server that ingested spots as they came in, then filter and serve the spots to my users. This greatly reduces the load on PSKReporter and ensures that I’m acting as a good community member.

Screenshots:

Unfortunately, here in the Ham Radio Outside the Box shack, Linux and Android are the operating systems in use so I haven’t been able to test Adam’s app myself. If you would like to try it out – remember Adam offers a “significant grace period” – you can download it from the Apple Store. If you do download and install it please consider leaving a comment with your thoughts down below.

2. Bruce AA1AR’s clever idea for vertical antenna radials.

A lot of attention has been given to using Faraday cloth for a ground plane recently. Either one big sheet underneath an antenna, or a set of strips forming a cross shape replacing wire radials. When Bruce wrote to Ham Radio Outside the Box to suggest an innovative alternative I was immediately interested. Bruce suggested using copper mesh – a product created for keeping rodents out from where they are not wanted. The mesh comes on a roll, 5-inches wide by 30 feet long. It can be purchased from Amazon and is very inexpensive. Note that this is NOT an affiliate link and Ham Radio Outside the Box does not endorse, or benefit from, any purchase made through this link.

Bruce tells me he has successfully used copper mesh with his own antenna; he suggests a length of 8.5 feet is sufficient to give a nice, low SWR on 20m. He mentioned that the product rolls out nicely either on the ground, or even on snow, and dries quickly.

In the past I have tried aluminum duct tape for building radials. It works, but the glue side of the tape I used is non-conductive so attempting to create, for example, crossed radials requires some other means of interconnecting the sections. And, of course, it cannot be soldered with regular leaded or lead-free solder.

A 5-inch wide copper mesh radial might even provide better bandwidth than a thin wire which complements its potential benefits. As Bruce suggested, it could also be used for raised radials – like those in a POTA PERformer. How about even using it as the radiating element too? It could be hung from a support pole – maybe not too stealthy, but the bandwidth improvement might be worth it.

I will be adding this product to my next Amazon order and – when our infernal wild winter weather gives us a break (in about another 3 months) – I might get a chance to check it out. If you try copper mesh radials before I get a chance to do so maybe consider leaving your impressions as a comment here.

My sincere thanks go to Adam K2CAT and Bruce AA1AR for sharing these ideas with Ham Radio Outside the Box. This is not a commercial blog; these ideas are shared with our visitors and subscribers as a service to fellow amateur radio operators. If you find these products useful tell Adam and Bruce all about your experiences. You can also leave your reactions as a comment below this post.

Please note that comments posted on this blog are PUBLIC. If you prefer to make private, confidential comments please use email instead. My email is good on QRZ.com.

VK2AAF commented on Bruce’s coper mesh idea: Any highly conductive ground plane will improve the radiation from your antenna. VSWR is not indicative of radiation resistance. On HF, 5-8 wire radials will behave similarly to a full circular mesh ground plane of similar size. You can confirm this by modelling with EZNEC or MMANA-GAL. https://rsgb.org/main/blog/publications/books-extra/2025/04/09/introduction-to-antenna-modelling/

An invitation to share

If you have any interesting ideas or have made a new software or hardware product you would like to share please email me the details, or send a sample for review here on the blog. My contact details are on QRZ.com. Ham Radio Outside the Box has a growing list of direct subscribers and selected posts are reproduced in many countries so a review here may reach a lot of amateur radio operators who may be interested in your product.

Thank you and welcome new subscribers

A big thank you to all the new subscribers to Ham Radio Outside the Box over the holiday period. As I have repeatedly stated in the past, this is not a commercial blog. This is my hobby, not a business. Any links provided are NOT affiliate links. Motivation for the effort that goes into these posts is the knowledge that other hams – all around the world – find the content interesting and hopefully will join in the conversation by leaving comments.

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