Taking MORSE along to HAM RADIO 2026, Europe's biggest Amateur Radio festival!

Thought I'd lead with an exciting announcement - MORSE has been selected to feature in the Tiny Teams showcase this week! It's very nice to be considered by the Yogscast Team and in celebration, I'll be hosting a stream of MORSE on the launch day of the showcase, Thursday at 10pm UK time with my various telegraphs, showcasing the different modes and answering questions about the hobby and the project.

The game itself will be 20% off from the 6-13th of August. It'd be great for you to join me for a rag chew Thursday.

Steam post image Tune in this week to see a variety of projects made by miniscule teams!

HAM RADIO Friedrichshafen - 2026

Now onto Friedrichshafen, or specifically HAM RADIO 2026! It's roughly a month since I attended the event, as mentioned in my last post with the string of events that followed it's taken till now to catch up (for anyone awaiting a follow up from the event via email thank you for your patience).

Steam post image The beautiful Lake Constance at sunset.

Friedrichshafen is a beautiful German city overlooking Lake Constance and home to a number of Zeppelin hangars. Whilst some are still in operation, most of them have been turned into conference halls, several of which hosted HAM RADIO 2026, packed with over 10,000 attendees and representatives from across the world. It was honestly such an incredible event, it's the biggest Amateur Radio event I've attended and was a privilege to be invited by Matthias, the educational lead for DARC.

Steam post image Outside the venue was swelteringly hot, hit 40 degrees that week!

DARC is the national amateur radio organising body for Germany. Within their area MORSE was set up within the 50 Ohm zone, dedicated to lots of exciting and interesting ways of engaging new audiences with amateur radio and named after the German tool for learning the hobby.

Steam post image MORSE was busy for the majority of the event, lots of folks were hyped for the project.

I was a bit nervous going into the event given the scale of the conference, not speaking German and given the historical context of the game (set in the First World War), but the German team were incredibly welcoming and excited to have MORSE in their area. They went out of their way to make sure we had everything needed and we were taken care of. The MORSE booth was busy the entire event, we had a good range of newcomers all the way through to die-hard telegraphists.

Here are some of my highlights from attending HAM RADIO 2026.

Steam post image To give thanks, I gifted the DARC team a Teaspoon Telegraph, which they were very happy with.

Completing my telegraph collection

Steam post image A (somewhat grainy) demonstration of my semi-auto telegraph in action with MORSE.

One of the things I was particularly excited to get my hands on was a Semi-Automatic key! I was determined to get one by the time I left the event and the destination to do that was the flea market, a vast Zeppelin hall filled with equipment and scrap being feverishly sold. I managed to source a Hi-Mound BKK 100, admittedly the one I was sold was in pretty rough shape (which I managed to haggle down the seller on), but the core mechanism works and I've since used it to operate MORSE.

For a very brief summary of how the Semi-Auto key works, it was a predecessor to Iambic Key which has manual entry for dashes but an "Automatic" means of sending dots by twanging a piece of metal with a pendulum on the end of it. This vibrates and makes contact to complete the circuit and send dots at absurdly fast speeds, even the lowest setting was a challenge to grasp. You can watch this video which explains how the Semi-Auto key works and demonstrates the same model of Hi-Mound.

I have wanted to integrate this key type into the game, but didn't want to do so without understanding how it felt to use. What was particularly interesting to discover is because it's just using a mono-jack, the Semi Auto works with the Straight key configuration in-game. Given that revelation, it seems to make sense that the focus for integrating the key in game will be a simulated mode for people who don't have access to one of these exceedingly rare keys.

Steam post image The HAM RADIO flea market was vast with so much cool stuff to buy.

An unexpected but appreciated encounter!

An unlikely coincidence was meeting Adam Zimmel (W0ZML), from South Dakota. He's a representative from the ARDC (Amateur Radio Digital Communications), a charitable foundation dedicated to enriching ham radio through grants. He's also the president of his local radio club. For the sharp eyed among you, you'll recognise that Adam hails from the same state as Magnus, the teenager who designed a homebrew installation of MORSE for his local museum.

By strange coincidence they're from the same town and Adam works with said museum, so has seen the MORSE unit in person! It was so wonderful listening to him talk about what an impact MORSE has had locally and their ongoing efforts to bring MORSE and Amateur Radio to local schools and museums. Here's how the project recently made an impact at a local event (pictured below):"We did [MORSE] at this thing called Discover Aviation Day where kids k-12 age kids come to learn about aviation. It was a big hit and the game was under almost constant play. It even got a younger boy and his dad interested (they should be at the next club meeting tomorrow to learn more)"

I sent Adam back with an original print of the Teaspoon Telegraph to give to Magnus as thanks for his ongoing efforts.

Adam's local club SEARC showing MORSE with other amateur radio activities back in South Dakota.

Meeting clubs from around the world!

Marco the rep from Monaco Radio Club TM06RMC was particularly enthusiastic about MORSE!

After my positive experiences working with the RSGB and DARC (and especially hearing the good MORSE did locally in South Dakota), I had a keen interest in meeting ham radio clubs and organisations from across Europe. Thankfully a lot of those reps also had a keen interest in MORSE! I had chance to talk to representatives from Italy, Monaco, Japan, Sweden and many more and it was honestly so lovely getting to learn about national and regional variances of the hobby.

To give an example, each of the exhibition booths tended to have some kind of interesting activity to bring attendees to their booth and the Italian representatives from A.R.I Portogruaro did not disappoint; They had a key to give the MORSE booth a run for it's money: A giant wooden telegraph key that you had to operate with your foot!

Me flabbergasted by the the giant Italian straight key

Bo's advanced homebrew adapter

I was so chuffed to get to try Bo's adapter and his recently purchased tiny homebrew sideswiper.

It's always a treat when I meet enthusiasts that have built their own homebrew setups for operating MORSE, and Bo's contribution was no exception! He'd taken my modded mouse Morse adapter one step further and got a reliable Iambic key adapter working, including integrating a slick mini socket connector. His solution was particularly fun to use with the sideswiper he'd just bought from the flea market, a tiny telegraph unit made from Friedrich (DK6QI), fashioned from a Siemens Relay. You can see Bo's (and Friedrich's!) handiwork below.

An up close view of Friedrich's tiny sideswiper key and Bo's mouse USB adaptor.

Telegraphist Contesters trying MORSE!

Both Megan and John gave very helpful, granular feedback for refining Iambic controls further.

With such a large gathering and the World Radiosport Team Championship just a couple of weeks away, there was naturally going to be a presence of some of the fastest telegraphists in the world at HAM RADIO! It had always been a goal of mine to get seasoned telegraphists to try the game, so it was a treat to see Megan (EI5LA) and John (G4IRN), both avid contesters give MORSE a go. In both cases, they unsurprisingly wanted the ability to operate faster and were very generous with their insight on how to improve the responsiveness and precision of Iambic. I'll hopefully get to catch them again at UK Hamfest to see if it's up to speed then!

Megan giving MORSE a whirl with my Iambic Key.

Maybel and Alexander

Maybel had a lot of fun practicing in the calibration mode improving her Words Per Minute.

One of the sweetest highlights from the event that came in the closing moments of the last day were a family who expressed interest in MORSE, Belgium amateur radio operator Alexander (ON8JA) and his daughter Maybel. She played for almost an hour on the various modes, even when her hands got sore. Afterwards, her and Alexander went around the flea market to get her an Iambic Telegraph, a USB key adapter and returned to buy a copy of the game! We tested that the whole setup worked on her dad's computer and sent her off with a big smile on her face. Very sweet to help Maybel follow in her fathers footsteps into Amateur Radio.

Alexander with the full setup for his daughter to use, double checked for functionality!

All in all it was an incredible time, there's still so much that I didn't have chance to cover (as this article is already huge) but hopefully gives a taster of what a joyful weekend it was. A massive thanks again to the DARC team for pulling everything together and for encouraging us to come along. Many thanks to my partner, who helped with running the booth, marketing and documenting the event, as well as keeping me fed and watered (and cool in the sweltering heat). I'm certainly keen for us to return to next year's event, but in the meantime...

MORSE @ National Hamfest 2026

Finally, I wanted to announce that MORSE will be attending UK National Hamfest again this September! Very excited to be invited again by the Radio Society of Great Britain, looking forward to showcasing the released game with its training modes that went down so well in Europe. You can read about my experience last year here.

That's all for now, thanks for reading through all this and look forward to chatting to some of you on Thursday.

73, Alex