Radiocraft brings amateur radio to Minecraft. You talk through the radios with your real voice using Simple Voice Chat, which must be installed on the server and your client.

Radios hear each other only on the same frequency and band, and how far they reach depends on the antenna, the band, the time of day and the sun.

Two families of radio:

• VHF (2 m band, 144-148 MHz): handhelds and base stations. Short range, line of sight, no static. Easy to start with.
• HF (80, 40, 20 and 10 m): long range by bouncing off the sky ("skip"), but they need a real antenna, power and some care.

Every licensed operator has a call sign. Use /callsign to see or set yours. Digital modes and repeaters send it so others know who they heard.

New here? Read Your First Station.

• Craft a pair of VHF handhelds: set both to the same frequency and talk.
• Then build a base station with a J-pole on coax, and power to run it.
• When you want the world, an HF radio and a dipole.

• The solar panels touch each other and the charge controller at the end of the row: no wire between them.
• Wire runs from the controller to the large battery, and on to the radio.
• Coax runs from the radio to the J-pole. Any length works.

Panels only charge by day under open sky. Switch the radio on once the battery has some charge.

Every radio is built around a quartz crystal cut for its band (80, 40, 20, 10 m or VHF). You find them while digging sand, about one block in eighty, mostly poor ones. Encase one in iron before using it.

Crystals come in three qualities:

• Pure makes a Premium radio: a touch less static.
• Good makes the plain radio.
• Poor makes a Cheap radio that slowly drifts off frequency, and that can go up in smoke spectacularly if you abuse it.

Swap a radio's crystal by crafting the radio with an encased crystal of another quality.

Most of the station is made from a handful of parts: wire, insulation (from kelp, leather or slime), coaxial core, ferrite cores, the HF circuit board, radio speaker, microphone element and hand microphone.