Amiga Amateur Radio User Group (ARUG)

The original group was founded in the USA, probably by Kathy Wehr (WB3KRN), with the UK branch started by Bob, G3LMH, in May 1988. It wasn't long before similar groups were being established in Germany, Italy, Australia, and elsewhere - a genuinely international community united by two shared passions. One of the group's most important aims was ensuring that information related to amateur radio applications for the Amiga was rapidly disseminated, achieved through the exchange of newsletters and PD disks, and through on-air contacts including dedicated Amiga nets. That's a pleasingly amateur radio way of doing things - sorting out the software over the airwaves.

The disk content reflected the membership's interests closely. The series covered communications software and drivers (including support for the PK232 multimode controller, popular with packet radio operators), satellite tracking programs, Morse code utilities, contact logbook applications, and general comms utilities. The later disks took the form of a fuller magazine-style compilation, with news, reviews, utilities, documents, newsletters, and more - all accessible via a dedicated program selector. There was also an international flavour to the content: at least one disk included documentation blending Italian and English, reflecting contributions from the wider European membership.

In the UK, Bob, G3LMH, edited the group's newsletter, Amigan Airwaves, through the late 1980s and into the 1990s. The UK disk series, catalogued as AARUG UK, ran to at least 87 numbered disks, a substantial output for a specialist group. The archive collection on archive.org is credited to G4DCV, whose callsign appears consistently across the preserved disk images. The series begins in October 1989, though the US group had already produced a handful of disks before the UK branch got its own series underway. Precise dates for the full run are not well documented in surviving sources.

Curators note: the AARUG UK series is not currently online in this archive, but we have the material and will add it in a future database update.