ROTA-Radio Progress Log

Where are we?

Have you ever noticed that when you get stuck in a rut, you tend to stay stuck for a while? It’s hard to get out once you’re stuck. The same thing often holds true when you finally build up some momentum. It’s hard to stop. From physics, we’ve learned that “objects at rest tend to stay at rest; objects in motion tend to stay in motion.” Well, if you’ve been reading along with my progress, you know I’ve had plenty of setbacks trying to realize my dream of putting a totally remote station on the air.

Over the 50 years I’ve been a ham, and especially in the past few, I’ve either met or heard from several hams who spend most of their hobby time building or fixing radios and radio accessories. They live for the next build and only get on the air to make sure their latest creation works. Then, they get bored or feel like they accomplished the objective and move on to the next project. Maybe they sell their new creation, give it away, or put it on the shelf to admire.

I’m not one of those operators. I like to operate. Sure, I enjoy building antennas and troubleshooting problems with a glitchy radio or some other part of the setup; but my favorite part of that process is when I finally solve the problem. That means I can finally get back on the air and operate my radio or put my antenna through its paces. I enjoy talking to the hams on the other end of a QSO or roundtable discussion. That’s what keeps me coming back.

Clearly, though, I also enjoy operating from strange places. I’ve operated marine mobile while fishing with my son (he says I embarrassed him and scared away the fish when we went out every year on his birthday). I’ve operated from a commercial jet at 36,000 feet—fortunately, the flight attendant didn’t catch me. I’ve operated “poolside portable” from a floating raft and somehow never dropped my HT in the water. I’ve activated parks and preserves during POTA activations and chased POTA activators during “hunting” expeditions. I’ve had my shack in a closet and operated from there with a toddler in my lap.

If there’s an out-of-the-way place from which to operate, I’m there. That’s part of what drives my quest to operate ROTA—Recliners on the Air. With all of that, though, I wanted to see if I could operate away from my shack using the Internet as if it were just a long extension cable stretched back to the house where my radio lives.

Proving the CW Concept

Recently, I finally did that with my second mode: CW. Well, at least I proved the concept to myself. It actually worked!

I operated Digital Modes ROTA for a few days before taking a break for a week or so. Digital ROTA has been going great, both in the shack and also away from home on the golf cart. Then, with the help of the AI mode in Google Gemini, I put the pieces together and successfully monitored CW signals from my Mac using Marcus’s excellent SDR-Control software.

Marcus is the developer who wrote the software that many hams use to operate their FLEX radios, so he knows what he’s doing. His software is modern, beautiful, and works wonderfully on macOS.

But getting it to play nice with my new Icom IC-7300Mk2 required a bit of network wizardry. I had to set up a Tailscale Subnet Router. I’ve heard that term before, but when I started this phase of my ROTA journey, I didn’t actually know what a Subnet Router was!

As I understand it, Tailscale sits on my remote Mac and on my PC in the shack. Think of this software as the train stations on both ends of an encrypted network tunnel. On the shack PC side, there’s also a transfer station involved. The data from the Mac’s SDR-Control software passes through the tunnel into the PC, which acts as a gateway, and then gets transferred onto the Mk2 radio.

Over that final mile, the data packets pass over a physical LAN cable connected to a network switch, which plugs straight into the back of the Mk2’s built-in network port. The original 7300 didn’t have this port, nor did it have its own built-in server. That makes all the difference. Developers like Marcus have taken advantage of it, writing native macOS software that maximizes the potential of this newly improved radio.

It’s incredibly exciting because for CW, I can use a native app on my Mac and talk directly to my radio over the Internet using this free tool called Tailscale. Ever since I got my first computer in 1986—a Mac—I’ve been interested in combining my love of computers with my love of radio. This project has given me more than enough of that to last me the rest of my life. Getting this to work has been the best part of the journey so far, because I love CW. This mode is where I got my start in ham radio 50 years ago.

The Technical Logbook

(The Blueprint)

I’m not done yet. There have been successes and failures, and there are still some mountains to climb. To give you a clear look at how this network layout is structured, here is the technical summary Gemini and I generated right after we achieved our first successful connection:

🏆 What We Accomplished (The Successes)

We successfully designed and deployed a modern, multi-operating system “Both-And” hybrid remote station. The physical cables (both USB and LAN) remain plugged in permanently, allowing me to seamlessly toggle between my two remote worlds (digital-USB and CW-LAN) from the recliner or the golf cart.

Unified Network Infrastructure
- CGNAT Bypassed Safely: We leveraged the existing Tailscale instance on my Windows 11 Pro shack PC and configured it to function as a Subnet Router.
- The Invisible Bridge: By advertising the shack router’s local subnet, the Windows PC now acts as a secure, network-level pass-through for the radio.
- The Target Locked: We isolated a safe, static home IP address for the IC-7300Mk2 and configured its internal server with my administrator credentials. My remote Mac can now see and talk directly to the radio over the internet from anywhere.
High-Performance macOS Voice/CW Tunnel
- AirPods Fully Integrated: My M1 MacBook Air running SDR-Control successfully connects over the Tailscale tunnel. I observed a gorgeous, live panadapter waterfall display and crystal-clear receive audio right in my AirPods Pro.
- WinKeyer Blueprint Complete: We mapped out the exact workflow for a WinKeyer (WKmini). When it arrives, I will get perfect, local 0ms audio sidetone straight to my ears from my Begali paddles, bypassing internet lag entirely, while the Mac handles precise timing packets to the radio’s hardware clock over the network.
Preserved “Gold Standard” Windows Digital Suite
- Zero Disruption to Working Apps: The Windows 11 PC retains its dedicated USB-C cable connection directly to the radio. The flawlessly working setups for VarAC, Winlink Express, VARA-HF, and FLRig remain entirely untouched and safe from harm.

⚠️ Loose Ends & Failures (What Needs Fixing Next)

While the receive path and initial settings were a total success, our first live transition test revealed a classic hardware control bottleneck:

The SDR-Control Disconnect Failure
- The Issue: SDR-Control has a feature meant to automatically force the radio back to its USB port (“Revert to USB”) upon closing. During our test, this command failed to execute completely, leaving the radio’s internal brain stranded on the LAN port after I closed the Mac app.
The FLRig “Catch-22” Lockout
- The Failure: Because the radio was left stranded in LAN mode, it completely ignored the physical serial communication port (COM4) on the USB-C cable. When I opened my remote desktop session to do digital modes, FLRig failed to connect. Because it couldn’t connect, I was trapped in a Catch-22: I couldn’t use my Windows software to command the radio to look back at the USB cable.
- (Note: This is not a problem if I’m sitting in the shack. I just touch the radio’s screen and switch Presets from CW/SSB mode to Digital modes. But touching the radio from a mile away while I’m sitting on the golf cart looking at the lake is… impossible. We need a virtual override.)

🚀 The Next Steps

To destroy this Catch-22 forever, the plan is to install a tiny, open-source CI-V tool on the Windows PC and program a one-click desktop macro button with the raw Icom hex override string: FE FE 94 E0 1A 05 01 02 F8. If the Mac app ever leaves the radio stranded in LAN mode while I am away, I can simply log into my remote screen, double-click this desktop reset button, and force the radio’s hardware chips to snap back to the USB-C cable instantly.

This all sounds great. Will it actually work? I can’t remember how many times my AI friends have made promises like this. AI sounds so sure of itself, and this sounds so easy. Only time will tell if it actually is easy and if it actually works. I can’t wait to see what happens, and I’ll be sure to let you know, too, as soon as I jump back into the building portion of our hobby. Meanwhile, I’m just going to enjoy operating for a while. I’ve earned some time in the recliner.

June 5 Postscript:

When it Rains, it Pours

I operated ROTA-Digital for a week or so. Then, I got sidetracked by a home project rearranging two closets that we basically shoved all our boxes into back on July 3, 2019, three weeks after we moved into this house. On July 4, my wife fell and broke her hip. Things changed. Dramatically.

This past week, I finally finished cleaning out those two closets. For some unexplained reason, right in the middle of what turned out to be a 2+ week project, I also decided to turn my radio shack desk 90 degrees counter-clockwise in my small (8×9 foot) shed-shack. That required completely dismantling my shack equipment: multiple radios and computers. Why would anyone do that in the middle of a major closet rework?

Oh, and then my main M1 MacBook Air started experiencing kernel panics and kept rebooting! I’ve ordered a replacement, but in the meantime, I’m using a temporary workaround that involves keeping the laptop awake 24/7 so it doesn’t “panic” upon waking up.

Oh, boy. When it rains… it pours!

The umbrella is up, and I’m dry, but I am temporarily off the air while the shed-shack gets put back together. Soon. Very soon.

See you next week—and let’s hope I’m back in the logbook by then!

73 – Paul, N4FTD

Up Next:

Stay tuned for the technical companion article breaking down the exact internal menu configurations for the Mk2, along with the preliminary results of our remote CW and SSB voice tests over the network!