- Toilets on the Air at 39C3 (TOTA)
You might have heard of Parks on the Air (POTA), Summits on the Air, or maybe even Bunkers on the Air. Radio amateurs love combining the hobby with an excuse to go and visit somewhere. But what about Toilets on the Air? Yes. Toilets. Let me set the scene Picture this: around 16,000 people in Hamburg, Germany, all packed into a massive conference centre for the 39th Chaos Communication Congress (39C3), a four-day hacker conference running 27–30 December 2025. It’s the middle of winter. The venue is huge. There’s reinforced concrete everywhere. You can be walking for ages just trying … - TOG heading to Shannon for the IRTS AGM Weekend
We’re packing up a few projects and heading west for the IRTS AGM Weekend in Shannon on Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th April. This year’s 93rd AGM weekend is being hosted by the Limerick Clare Amateur Radio Club, and it looks like it will be a great weekend of radio, chats, workshops, technical talks, the rally, and of course, the AGM itself. On Sunday, TOG Hackerspace will have a table at the rally where we’ll be showing off some projects from the hackerspace, chatting about what we get up to, and catching up with radio friends from around the country. …Continue reading “TOG heading to Shannon for the IRTS AGM Weekend”
- POTA on Easter Monday from Ticknock
We’re heading out for another Parks on the Air activation on Easter Monday, 6 April. If you have not come across POTA before, it is all about bringing amateur radio into the great outdoors, setting up in a qualifying park, and making contacts from the field. We did a quieter test run on Bull Island recently and it went well, so this time we are opening it up to the wider TOG community and the public. You can see a few photos from the last outing here. We will meet at 10:30 am at the Ticknock café and then head … - DMR: A Learning JourneyThis article first appeared in Echo Ireland and was written by Jeffrey Roe. The following is less of a how-to and more of a journey of me learning about DMR and getting started. DMR, what is it? Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) is a digital radio standard for voice and data transmission in non-public radio networks. It’s different from the analogue radios some of you might be more familiar with. It doesn’t transmit using FM in the traditional sense, but uses a digital signal. DMR has a few tiers, and the technology originally targeted the commercial market (around 2012). It works …
- DMR Demonstration Evening
If you’ve been DMR-curious for a while (or you’ve a radio sitting there with a half-finished codeplug), this is a great chance to see a full setup done properly, step-by-step. On Tuesday, 24th March 2026, South Dublin Radio Club, in collaboration with TOG Hackerspace, will host a DMR Demonstration Evening at the club in Rathfarnham. What’s happening on the night Jeffrey Roe (EI7IRB) will give a practical demonstration covering: This session will suit: Want to contribute? Members who’d like to give a short demo or presentation on other parts of DMR are very welcome to get involved — different radios, … - TOG Hackerspace at the Phoenix ARC “Coolmine” Radio Rally 2026
Last year we packed up a few projects, a pile of flyers, and the usual “sure we’ll only be there an hour” optimism… and had a brilliant day out at the Phoenix Amateur Radio Club annual rally in Coolmine. Good news: it’s on again this year, and we’ll be back along representing TOG — EI0TOG — for a chat, a catch-up, and a bit of radio craic. Radio rallies are for everyone If you’ve never been to a radio rally, don’t let the name put you off. They’re not just for licensed amateurs or hardcore collectors — they’re for anyone …Continue reading “TOG Hackerspace at the Phoenix ARC “Coolmine” Radio Rally 2026”
- Back On Air: Repairing a Broken Encoder on a Yaesu FT-857A repair story from our own Ben EI9IUB. Today’s repair is on one of my radios – a Yaesu FT-857. While testing a new headset and tuning around the bands, the select knob twisted its last and came out of the front panel and into my hand: disaster! This encoder is vital to using the radio, so its breaking rendered it a paperweight. The radio itself has been out of production for a number of years now, but unlike most “consumer” devices, amateur radios have very good technical documentation available to end users. I dug up a PDF copy of …
Continue reading “Back On Air: Repairing a Broken Encoder on a Yaesu FT-857”
- More Philips Boombox Tinkering
Having recently fixed the Philips boombox CD player, we decided to review the battery compartment mod, done at least 20 years ago, and still working. The original idea was to fill the battery compartment with 8x rechargeable D cells and arrange that they would be constantly trickle-charged while the mains lead was plugged in. The battery compartment’s positive terminal was connected via a current-limiting resistor to the power supply section of the PCB. This trickle charges the cells at about 10mA. This is enough to charge them up over a few days, but not enough to cook them. Good quality … - A Christmas Miracle Repair, Bringing a 1970s Tape Recorder Back to Life
We got a message in the run-up to Christmas with a simple ask. Could we pull off a last-minute repair of a vintage tape recorder and save the day? When the request came from our long-time friend Claire Downey, the person who first introduced us to Repair Cafés over ten years ago, we knew we had to give it a proper go. The patient from a charity shop on the bench was an ITT Schaub-Lorenz SL54 Automatic, a Taiwanese-made radio cassette recorder from the mid 1970s, roughly 1974 to 1976. A proper bit of kit, and the kind of thing …Continue reading “A Christmas Miracle Repair, Bringing a 1970s Tape Recorder Back to Life”
- New “TogWeb” HF Antenna for EI0TOG
We have a shiny new addition to our amateur radio setup at Tog Hackerspace. A huge thanks to Niall Donohue EI6HIB, from our friends in South Dublin Radio Club, for the generous donation of a cobweb antenna. In true Tog fashion, it has already been renamed the “TogWeb”. Over the next few weeks we will be installing the TogWeb at the space and getting it tuned up for our HF station. The cobweb design gives us multi-band HF coverage in a compact footprint, which suits our city location nicely. Once it is up in the air, it will: If you …
The Dublin Hackerspace
