About

What CORE is all about

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.

We're deliberately not a traditional radio club. There are no bylaws, no officers, no dues, and no attendance requirements. There's no membership to speak of—you're part of CORE by participating in person, online, or on the air. A lot of our folks are active in traditional radio clubs as well which is great. We're just filling a different niche: more casual, broader in scope, and more accessible to the maker, developer, and engineering crowds.

In practice, CORE is a monthly meetup with a talk, a Discord server that's active between meetups, a few frequencies and mesh networks we hang out on, and a GitHub organization where talk materials and projects live. If you're curious about radio and don't know where to start, CORE is meant for you.

Topics & Interests

If it involves radio, it belongs here

CORE has a fairly broad focus. If it involves radio signals, antennas, spectrum, protocols, or hardware—then we like to talk about it. Here's some of the topics our members are into:

• Amateur Radio HF, VHF, UHF, digital modes, licensing
• GMRS General Mobile Radio Service, repeaters, family comms
• Mesh Networks Meshtastic & MeshCore, LoRa, HaLow, Reticulum, off-grid networks
• SDR Software defined radio, RTL-SDR, HackRF, WebSDRs
• Shortwave Shortwave broadcasts, world band radio, numbers stations
• Scanners Public safety, trunked systems, P25
• Aviation ATC listening, ADS-B, ACARS, VHF airband
• Packet Radio APRS, VARA, Winlink, digital messaging
• Electronics Antennas, hardware projects, microcontrollers
• Anything Else If it's radio or radio-adjacent, bring it up

Community Guidelines

Three rules. That's it.

We want CORE to be a place where anyone can show up, ask questions, and feel welcome. Our rules are simple:

• Rule 1 Don't be a jerk.
• Rule 2 Don't do anything that makes us add a new rule.
• Rule 3 If you're not sure if rule 2 will be invoked, see rule 1.