Hi, I’m Dean.

Amateur radio operator (VK4DSB) and IT security professional based in Bellmere, QLD. I spend my time tinkering where my three main interests overlap — radio, security, and AI.

• 📻 RadioLicensed as VK4DSB in QG62. Active on FT8, APRS, and SSTV with a Xiegu X6100, and currently deploying solar-powered Meshtastic relay nodes around northern Brisbane.
• 🛡️ Technology & SecurityMy day job is digital forensics, incident response, and threat intelligence. Off the clock I build open-source DFIR and threat-intel tooling.
• 🤖 AILocal and cloud LLMs run through nearly everything I make — RAG pipelines, natural-language tooling, and offline inference over radio. The aim is useful, not flashy.

• 25 Sep 2026

  • radio
  • ft8

  Will it Antenna - FT8 With a Patio Roof

  Will it antenna? I clipped my Xiegu X6100 onto random metal around the house to see what the built-in ATU could tune, running FT8 from my Lenovo tablet with FT8AF. The fence could hear the world, but the patio roof got me a contact into New Zealand.
• 12 Sep 2026

  • ai

  I let an AI deploy my platform 128 times

  Reaper has seven optional components, which means 128 possible deployments. I had only ever tested a handful of them. So I clean-installed every single one, which took 33 hours and turned up three real bugs, one of which meant Windows couldn't deploy at all.
• 9 Jul 2026

  • radio
  • meshtastic

  The Phoenixing of SunBird

  My solar Meshtastic node SunBird was slowly losing its battery due to poor sun exposure. Here's how I rebuilt it with a gutted Bunnings solar floodlight for a bigger battery, bigger panel, and a new home on the hill.

Train Int ↗Live QR train locations and service alerts on a single map.Fuel Int ↗Live QLD fuel prices at nearby stations, sortable by type and distance.ClearPath — RF Line of Sight Planner ↗Interactive map for planning RF line-of-sight paths between locations.HF Range Planner ↗Estimate HF coverage and band reach for a given location and conditions.