Welcome to MIRATS!
Welcome to the Michigan Radio Amateurs Technological Society! Our callsign is WE8CHZ. We are an FCC-registered amateur radio club.
While we focus on Michigan residents, anyone can join us. We enjoy exploring radio tech, using it in real-life ways, and diving into other parts of the radio hobby—whatever sounds fun.
We are an online club, so we don’t have a physical meeting spot. Most of our chats happen on Discord, but you can also reach us on Facebook.
Our members often hang out on the IRA Linked Repeater System (w8ira.org), the W8BCI repeater in Lansing (w8bci.org), and others like West Michigan Connect on Wires-X.
Recent Posts from the Shack
Connect to an AllStar Node Using DroidStar For Great Audio Quality
Traditionally, for those who travel but would love to get into their regular local repeaters, two technologies were the default. First was the IRLP or Internet Radio Linking Project, which required very specific hardware and was focused on repeater-to-repeater internet linking instead of the end-user. Echolink was developed to bridge...
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Intro to Meshtastic at the University of Michigan
Ed W8EMV, RATS voting member, recently gave a presentation to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor ARC about Meshtastic. It contains a ton of useful information for those just getting started. Perhaps the best part is that you don’t need a radio license to get started! Here’s Ed’s presentation...
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Yaesu FT-710 Audio Setup and Troubleshooting with PipeWire on Linux
Why It Doesn’t Work The Yaesu FT-710 HF transceiver contains a non-standard and possibly emulated CM-108 USB audio interface that allows working digital modes without any need for an external sound card. Simply plug the USB into your PC of choice and start going. Unfortunately, on Linux, some required parameters...
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Create a Beautiful Parks On The Air (POTA) Activations Map
Of all the great mapping tools available on the Parks On The Air website (pota.app), this one is sorely missing. We’ll show you how to create a map of your activated POTA parks, which is great for showing off your activations to your other radio buddies. It also helps you...
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Setting Up Tailscale to Use With Amateur Radio Apps
Let’s start first with what Tailscale is. Tailscale is a VPN for your devices giving you access to them even while you are not on your home network to use them directly. There are some things you can do with this system to better help you with amateur radio. In...
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Repeater Program Dead — Is Fusion on the Way Out?
With Yaesu making business moves that could affect YSF repeater systems, are we done drinking the Fusion Kool-Aid?...
Read MoreQuickly Boost Your AllStarLink 3 Node with EchoLink
Setting up EchoLink on your AllStarLink node is quick and easy...
Read MoreEasily Power Up Your AllStarLink3 with a DVSwitch Bridge
Here is a rundown on how to install DVSwitch on your AllStarLink3 node...
Read MoreDroidstar App Direct Allstar Connection
Unless you’re very adept at looking through linux-style logs to figure out why something failed, it’s darn near impossible to figure out how to make Droidstar work properly as an IAX client into Allstar. Let’s make it easy: Place the following line into your Droidstar app under the Hosts tab:...
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