Welcome to the W3ICQ workbench
I still love building puzzles. It is just the medium that changed.
Today the pieces are single-board computers, radios, interfaces, software—and one persistent question: can this be made to work, and can the path be clear enough for someone else to follow?
Behind W3ICQ
Bob Shannon, W3ICQ, is a retired systems designer and technology executive. After a career spent programming, designing and leading large-scale systems, amateur radio became a new workbench for the same lifelong curiosity: understand the pieces, solve the problem, prove the result, and leave a path another person can follow.
QRZ holds the longer personal and station biography. W3ICQ.com is where the projects, guided installers, operating manuals, and lessons from the workbench live.
Read the complete W3ICQ story on QRZFeatured build
A ready-to-write Debian 13 appliance image that turns the inexpensive KickPi K2B V2 into a radioless ASL3 node with three dashboards, optional spoken weather alerts, and optional DMR through DVSwitch Mobile.
Confirm the hardware, architecture, operating system, kernel support, USB audio path, and network before changing a working configuration.
Registration, linking, COS, PTT, audio, telemetry, dashboards, Parrot, reboot persistence, and backup each earn their own checkpoint.
Preserve the reference system, record limitations, and produce a guided installer or restorable image another operator can trust.
How the work is shared
Working configurations preserved as technical baselines, with limitations recorded plainly.
Repeatable, checkpointed procedures that start with the board maker’s supported Linux image.
Beginner-friendly instructions for using, verifying, maintaining, and recovering each project.
Project inventory
The growing library preserves successful boards, repeatable installation methods, useful station accessories, and amateur-radio software.
From the workbench
Short Vimeo demonstrations cover the UNO Q controls, NanoPi appliance, Orange Pi builds, traffic LEDs, PTT switching, and the Lightning Logger–Call Catcher application.
Browse the videosShared freely
These projects are offered for amateur-radio experimentation and education. Review the instructions, understand the risks, and adapt each build to your own station.