Being on the road a great deal I have always wanted a way to access my home station to keep in touch with friends via the radio. As many of my ham radio pals do not or cannot use Echolink or other VOIP programs I thought that it would be great to "jack into" my radio via the Internet. That way my home station would be just a few mouse clicks away!

There are several fine radio control programs that provide these capabilities, they however can require a lot of trial and error. You must have a decent grasp of networking and how to get around firewalls, virus checkers, IP addresses, etc. I simply do not have the time to get it all right and I am always forgetting to write down some important parameter.

I have been a long time subscriber to the service called "I'm In Touch". This service in a nutshell allows you to work on your home desktop just like you are there, even if it is a bit slow at times. You are presented with a screen that is your home desktop, providing the same functionality. There are many services that provide this easy remote access; GoToMyPC, LogMeIn are a some of the more popular services. You can also "Roll Your Own" VPN, but I like to keep things as simple and bulletproof as possible, hence my easy setup. Keep in mind that High Speed access is a requirement on both sides.

I had great success in 2005 using "I'm In Touch" to run MixW and made many PSK31 QSO's while in Oklahoma City. It was so much fun to come home from class and relax behind the laptop and chat over the keyboard via PSK. I once worked a fellow who was in reality only about 5 miles away, but working the station through the Internet, it was a real QSO with my station in Alaska 2500 miles away!

PSK is alot of fun but how to get on SSB? It would be so much fun to check into the Alaskan 75M nets, chat with buddies, and maybe work a little DX from time to time

Enter Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD)...An outstanding FREEWARE program from Simon Brown (HB9DRV) that allows full control of your radio via the computer. All I do is log into my home desktop and run HRD. Ham Radio Deluxe gives me full control of the radio from my remote location. My Icom IC-756Pro works wonderfully with this setup.

For the audio paths to and from I use the freeware program Skype. To start set up 2 accounts, Skype is free as of this writing. One on your home computer, call it ("CallSign"Home) and one on the remote computer ("CallSign"Remote). Set the home account to Auto Answer. From your remote setup, dial up your home call and if your audio is routed through your sound card correctly you should hear your radio. To transmit push the TX key on HRD in your remote control screen and you should be transmitting.

Making sure this works is best done while at home and in close proximity to both the radio and computers. I first tested this setup with my laptop right next to my radio and host computer...all is well. Next step is to move upstairs and try it from the kitchen table...that worked OK. Now onward. I know if it will work locally through my WIFI Net it should work anywhere.

Update: The system works really well with few bugs. Most of the problems I have had mostly can be attributed to lagging connections. I recently spent two weeks in Oklahoma City and was able to check into several Alaskan nets on 80M with no problems with my notebook computer.

(This PAGE is in BETA version 0.002 and I will be cleaning it up over time. I am not a technical writer, which is obvious, I will soon have screen shots etc to help folks along. Please feel free to send me an email anytime.)