Operator: Vinod Nair
Amateur radio station operating from Haugesund, Norway as LB9KJ, and from Bangalore, India as VU3ESV. HF DX on CW, SSB and the digital modes. SDR, CAT automation, and Kenwood / FlexRadio integration — open-sourced on GitHub.
LB9KJ is the Norwegian callsign of an amateur radio operator originally licensed in India as VU3ESV. The station operates from Haugesund on the south-west coast of Norway, with a second active station in Bangalore.
Operating interests are HF DX on CW, SSB and the digital modes (FT8 / FT4 / FT2), with a strong technical bent toward radio automation, SDR tooling and Kenwood / FlexRadio integration — most of which is open-sourced on GitHub.
QSLs are confirmed exclusively via Logbook of The World. No bureau, no paper.
QSL Policy. All confirmed QSOs are uploaded to LOTW shortly after each operating session. The preferred — and only — confirmation route is LOTW. Please do not send paper cards or bureau requests; they will not be answered.
Both LB9KJ (Norway) and VU3ESV (Bangalore) follow the same LOTW-only policy.
Open-source ham-radio tooling on GitHub. SDR clients, CAT control for Kenwood and FlexRadio, ESP32 firmware, and a LAN bridge for the Telepost LP-100A power meter — most of it driving the shacks at home.
WebSocket bridge for the Telepost LP-100A RF power meter. Streams live telemetry to multiple clients over LAN and forwards control verbs back to the meter — so the web UI, the Mac app, and shack automation can all share one meter.
Native macOS client for the LP-100A WebSocket Server. Reproduces the server's embedded web UI (Normal + Vector views, SETUP overlay, three control verbs) as a real Mac app.
C# implementation of the Expert Electronics TCI protocol — talks to FlexRadio / SunSDR. Building blocks for any .NET client that needs RX/TX control over TCI.
TCP server fronting the Kenwood TS-990 / TS-890 serial interface so any networked client can drive the radio. Decouples CAT from a single PC.
Node-RED flow that exposes the Kenwood CAT stream over TCP for downstream automation. Pairs with the ESP32 band decoder and the rest of the shack control stack.
ESP32 firmware that reads the live band from a Kenwood radio (via the Node-RED TCP server) and switches LPF relays accordingly. Drives the low-pass filter bank without a host PC in the loop.
Small C++ utility for ESP32 device provisioning. Surfaces the device's Wi-Fi MAC so it can be registered with the access point before the rest of the firmware comes up.
Linux-native SmartSDR client for FlexRadio (FLEX-6000 / 8600 series). Qt6 + C++20.
Personal fork of John Melton's pihpsdr — Raspberry Pi front-end for HPSDR / Hermes Lite radios. Tracks upstream while carrying local tweaks.
Build notes for compiling and running pihpsdr (with rnnoise, libspecbleach and wdsp) on Apple-Silicon Macs.
When not in Norway, the same operator is QRV from Bangalore, India as VU3ESV.
The Bangalore shack is built around a Kenwood TS-990S with the home-grown Node-RED / ESP32 automation stack listed in the Projects section above.
QSL policy is identical: LOTW only. Both callsigns log into the same upload pipeline, so confirmation appears in your LOTW account within a day or two of the QSO.
For sked requests, technical questions about the projects above, or remote-shack discussion, the QRZ contact form is the most reliable route. QSL via LOTW only.