Central Ohio
Radio Enthusiasts

Central Ohio Radio Enthusiasts—CORE—is an informal community for anyone enthusiastic or curious about radio—whether you're new to radio and want to learn or you've been tinkering for years and want to share. Ham radio operators, GMRS users, Meshtastic fans, software-defined radio nerds, makers, and technical and non-technical folks are all welcome. No experience required or expected.

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Next Meeting: September 1 Join the Discord Server Sign up for the mailing list

Meetings

Hang out, learn, and share

We get together the first Tuesday of every month. Doors open at 6 PM and talks start at 6:30. The location may vary, but we're normally at CGI in Westerville. Bring nothing but yourself and some curiosity—and a project or gadget if you've got one.

Next Meeting

Tuesday, September 1, 2026

D-STAR: Digital Voice, Data, and Callsign Routing

Mark Noble KE8BZW/WQWJ432

Time 6:00–9:00 PM
Venue CGI, 570 Polaris Pkwy, Suite 200, Westerville, Ohio 43082
Finding Us Second floor, at the end of the hallway

Meetings are casual gatherings where you can listen to a talk, see and share projects, and chat with other radio curious folks. Maybe you'll even want to give a talk yourself! And, of course, a trip to the pub afterwards is always on the table.

D-STAR: Digital Voice, Data, and Callsign Routing

Mark Noble KE8BZW/WQWJ432

D-STAR—Digital Smart Technologies for Amateur Radio—is an open digital voice and data standard developed by the Japan Amateur Radio League. Rather than putting your voice on the air as analog FM, it sends a digital bitstream with a low-speed data channel riding alongside it, and it routes contacts by callsign instead of by frequency. Call another operator by their callsign and the network figures out which repeater to deliver you to.

Mark will introduce D-STAR from the ground up: what it is, where it came from, and how it compares to analog FM and to the other digital modes you'll run into on the air. He'll cover what it takes to get started—a radio, a registration, and either a repeater in range or a hotspot of your own—along with what the internet-linked reflectors make possible once you're on.

Get Involved

Plenty of ways to connect

Discord is the heart of CORE. That's where we coordinate meetups, share projects, ask questions, and get to know each other between first Tuesdays. If you want to reach out directly—to give a talk, help organize, or just ask something—message the admins there.

You can also connect on the air. We call out on 147.555 MHz simplex, we've got a Meshtastic channel you can scan your way onto, and we run a Reticulum gateway at rns.core.radio that you can reach over the Internet. Or you can set up a Reticulum node over LoRa.

Like to code? We're on GitHub as well. The code and materials from past talks, whatever projects people are collaborating on, and this website are all available there.

Prefer email? You can get meeting announcements in your inbox. Sign up for the mailing list. We won't spam you and you can unsubscribe at any time. And, you can email us directly at hello@core.radio.

Discord On the air GitHub Join the mailing list hello@core.radio