This site has been quiet for a year. That changes now.

What I’ve Been Building

The last several months have been deep in the GoBox build — a portable emergency communications station built around the Icom IC-2820H, packaged in a Nanuk 920 case with a Windows mini-PC running Winlink, VARA-FM, and supporting digital modes.

What makes this build different from most GoBox write-ups is the documentation discipline. Every component, every design decision, and every test has a requirement behind it — REQ-xx identifiers, TEST-xx test plans, and a Requirements Traceability Matrix linking them. Systems engineering methodology applied to amateur radio hardware. The kind of rigor I’d apply to a satellite ground station, applied to an ARES deployment kit.

The GoBox is designed to support two distinct operational profiles:

  • Tactical (Jefferson County ARES R1D6) — rapid deployment, DMR, storm spotting
  • Logistical (Bellevue Communications Support) — sustained 72-hour operations, Winlink message handling, fire support

Both from the same box. REQ-OPS-003: rapid mode transition between profiles.

The AI Partnership Angle

The GoBox is also the primary worked example in a book I’m writing — the AI Partnership Handbook, targeting McGraw-Hill.

The thesis isn’t about AI generating code. It’s about AI as a thinking partner on hard engineering problems. The leverage isn’t in automating the obvious — it’s in asking the question that used to get left unanswered because the cost of exploring it was too high.

These sessions are both the laboratory and the source material. I’ll be posting excerpts and case studies here as the book develops.

What’s Coming on This Site

  • GoBox build log — physical integration, test results, lessons learned
  • ARES field reports from Jeffco R1D6 and BCS operations
  • LoRa-APRS technical notes (I sponsor CA2RXU’s firmware on GitHub)
  • AI Partnership Handbook excerpts and methodology notes
  • 10GHz mountain scatter operations from the Colorado Front Range

If you’re an ARES operator, a systems engineer, or someone trying to figure out how to actually work with AI on technical problems — this site is for you.

73 de WA4OSH