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.

CORE logo
Next Meeting: August 4 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, August 4, 2026

Going Vertical: Signals from the Sky

Tom Graham WX8TOM

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.

Going Vertical: Signals from the Sky

Tom Graham WX8TOM

Last year's CodeMash balloon launch flew all the way to Alunda, Sweden. In this session, we'll explore the Raspberry Pi PICO and the high altitude balloons that carry it to near space at over 100,000 feet.

Tom will show how PICO boards and recycled radiosondes can be programmed to send telemetry that gets received and decoded by SDRs. The data from these flying devices is uploaded to the internet, which means you can follow and analyze balloon flights from anywhere—no special equipment required. He'll also show how Docker works as a portable compiler to build and run the tracking code.

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