For the February 2026 meeting, Jef N5JEF will be talking about a couple of emerging, frontier technologies that will have wide applicability to our future, and a playground, sandbox, or experimental lab for hands-on exploration. These include Spread Spectrum (particularly LoRa) as an effective RF physical layer, and Mesh Network routing, which is an evolving framework for communication that is off-grid, decentralized, resilient, and low-power.

Why are these interesting?

Spread Spectrum modulation makes communication in our increasingly noisy RF environment more reliable, and Mesh Routing extends that communication capability far beyond the direct point-to-point radio horizon. Between the two we can expect longer communication range, with increased reliability.

In his day job, Jef is a senior analyst with the County of Placer Radio Services Group, focused on mission critical public safety and environmental utilities radio systems. The group develops and supports systems including the P25 trunking system for regional law enforcement and public service agencies. Before that, he was a technical and field service manager for over twenty years in scientific instruments for laboratory, industrial, and semiconductor metrology. He is also into emergency management, search and rescue, and personal preparedness, and is, he says, “a total science and technology nerd.”

For January 2026, we will have Scott Read KM6RFB presenting on “Voice Radio Procedures”.  At the core of it, its purpose is to provide a standardized way of passing speech and data traffic as securely as possible consistent with accuracy, speed and the needs of command and control.  But to get the points across, Scott will be enlisting the help of others to demonstrate the stuff that goes right, and wrong, when we communicate.  How many of these malpractices do you recognize?

From Greg KO6TH and Jim WA8MPA, we hope you had a great Holiday season, and best wishes for 2026.  Just remember to spell the year right… 73!