Welcome

Hello, my name is Mark (W5TSU). I became a hame in Feburary of 2007 as KD5AMB (tech). I now have a general class license. (Working on my Extra. :-)

I enjoy electronics and amature radio. This website, is my way of keeping notes and sharing with others. If you want to ask questions you can email me at ‘mark@w5tsu.net’.

My primary intrests are Software Defined Radio (SDR) and antennas. I’m an open source software eveloper. I’ve worked on Xastir. You can see the projects I work with at my GithUb page.

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Seven Months, One Little Radio

In February 2026 I bought a Hermes-Lite 2 from MakerFabs, along with Jim Ahlstrom’s N2ADR filter board and IO board. I wrote a blog post about it and said the community support was thin. I hoped my notes would help someone, maybe even me.

I didn’t expect those notes to turn into seven months of writing software.

Spring: taking ownership

It started small. In April I forked MI0BOT’s Hermes-Lite 2 build of Thetis and spent a day making GitHub Actions build it. The installer had to come out of CI rather than off somebody’s desk. Getting there took four commits, each fixing whatever the last one broke: a WiX version pin, a toolset mismatch (v145 vs v143), and an installer project the runner didn’t know how to build.

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Hermes Lite 2

The Hermes-Lite 2 (HL2) is a low-cost, open source HF SDR transceiver. This is a truly fantastic radio it competing head to head with the Flex radio. The whole project – hardware and software – is fully open source, led by Steve Haynal (KF7O). Although this radio has been around for years the community support is poor. My hope is this post will help document what I’ve found for my own use and maybe help others.

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YouTutbe - Thetis & RMNoise

Yes, I’ve started a YouTube channel.

My first post is about RMNoise, an AI filter, used to remove noise from SSB voice or CW radio signals. Noramly, audio is connected into and outo of a physical radio. I’m using Thetis radio software connected to a Hermes-Lite 2+. To connect Thetis to RMNoise I’m using Voice Meter Potato to create virtual audio cables to “wire” these together.

Thetis’s Input is connected to my microphone (Focusite). Thetis Output goes to CABLE-B’s Input. You should Enable VAC 1.

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Arrow Loop Antenna

I’m going to create a delta loop antena made from arrow shafts. I believe this should be good match from 40 to the 10 meeter band. This will include 3D printed parts for antenna mounts and for a matching coil.

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