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
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?...
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Quickly 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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Winter Field Day 2025
NOARC (North Ottawa ARC) and the MI RATS (MI Radio Amateurs Technological Society) participated with great enthusiasm in this year’s Winter Field Day. The days leading up to the event were bitter cold, with a snap that made it’s way from the arctic down to New Orleans which saw multiple...
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Kenwood TS-2000 with Digirig & Flrig: A Simple How-To Guide
A comprehensive guide to setting up your Kenwood TS-2000 and a Digirig for CAT control and digital mode operations...
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Running a Full Windows Packet and Vara Station on Linux
Getting a full packet station up and running on Linux is frankly terrible. It involves setting up a lot of very powerful, but complicated software that all but seasoned Linux experts would struggle with. To make matters worse, because the Linux sound system has changed so much in a relatively...
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Vara Software TNC With Wine On Linux
Here’s a tutorial to get Vara FM or HF up and running as easily as possible on Linux. Other guides have you installing dlls by hand, or using Winetricks. None of this is necessary any longer, and as a matter of fact, often doesn’t work with newer versions of Wine...
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Adding Vara FM To An Existing Software Packet Station
Follow this guide AFTER following Packet Radio Basics with Software TNC. Vara is a WAY faster way to upload and download data from a Winlink or packet node. Created by EA5HVK, Vara comes in a number of varieties. The type we’ll be working with today is the FM version, which...
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