HamRadioNow: Recent Episodes
HamRadioNow
HamRadioNow is a general discussion show about the world of Amateur Radio. We’re US based, so US centric, but we cast an eye around the world now and then.
This episode wraps up our TOUR of the 2025 Hamvention®, but not our coverage. Gary still has a hard drive full of interviews to edit, and those will come out over the next few weeks. And maybe a live show with David W0DHG?
This episode includes both Saturday and Sunday, and just a little more pork chop. There are a few fun callbacks, to one of Gary K4AAQ’s Ham Nation episodes and his pre-HamRadioNow video on programming D-Star radios, and Riley Hollingsworth K4ZDH’s One Big Knob presentation at the 2007 Dayton Hamvention.
The Dayton Hamvention® is open all day Friday and Saturday, and a half-day on Sunday. East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ returned for the first time since 2017, and found it a bit more crowded. He expected to see other YouTuber media everywhere, but not so much... he did find some of them all in a pack in the flea market. But the star of the show? No, not the equipment (the other guys cover that in depth). It was a pork chop. You have to try it. And he found a 'HamRadioNow Audio Simulator'. We don't call it that in the episode, but you'll know it when you hear it. 🦆
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ made it back to Dayton for the first time since 2017. Has much changed? Can he even remember (not really). This is a quick look at the tail end of Thursday, setup-day, before the fest opens Friday morning.
Richard "Dick" Norton N6AA, ARRL Southwestern Division Director, talks about the state of the ARRL at the Orange (CA) Section Convention.
The biggest hamfests are growing - Dayton, Orlando, Huntsville. Many smaller hamfests are struggling, or have closed down. Some clubs have had trouble finding a chair person and staff to put on shows that have been around for decades. Facilities are only getting more expensive, while attendence and income are falling.
The 'RARSfest' - coming April 5 and hosted by the Raleigh (NC) Amateur Radio Society - is hanging in there, maybe even growing a little. It has a robust flea market, and good array of commerecial vendors, and even attracts one of the big ham radio stores, plus a variety of activities. It's been a while since any major manufacturer had come to show their wares at any but the biggest shows.
RARSfest Chair Nancy Torborg KB2TNR joins host Gary K4AAQ to talk about how she picked up the event when RARS was struggling to find a new chair, and what she's done to keep the show going. (David W0DHG was working for this mid-week recording session).
And this being Gary’s ‘old home’ hamfest, we’ve done some shows from there before. Here’s one.
The Western Washington Amateur Relay Association has adopted a plan to migrate all repeaters in their area to'Narrow FM' over the next 10 years.
The idea is to increase the number of repeater channels (and the number of repeaters). The plan could nearly double the number of available repeater channels. It's mostly simple. For users, it's probably a menu setting in their radios, but OLDER radios won't have that option. For repeater owners, it may be as simple as a menu setting for more modern UHF repeaters. On two meters, it's likely also a small frequency adjustment, and trimming up a duplexer, but if the repeater is really old, it might be replacement time.
Members of the WWARA Narrowband Study Committee are here to talk about it. We welcome WWARA Chair Scott Honaker N7SS. Kenny Richards KU7M, and Steve VanWambeck N9VW, They join show hosts David W0DHG, Gary K4AAQ and the return of Jim NO1PC for the discussion.
Our guest is Jim Masarra N2EST, cartoonist, animator, graphic designer. You've seen his work in QST (including some covers), and other ham books and publications. On the cusp of resirement, we talk about his career in and out of ham radio, and how the ARRL seems to have lost its sense of humor.
Have him design a QSL card for you!: https://hamtoons.net
January 11, 1965, Amateur Radio Station WN9NSO made its first, shaky 5 wpm CW… attempt… in the 40 meter Novice band.
60 years later, WN9NSO is now K4AAQ, our East Coast Host. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, as Gary talks about what ham radio was like for that Novice, 60 years ago. No repeaters. No digital (RTTY was it). No computers. Lots of AM.
Gary opened up the Zoom and was joined by Ron K9ID, a friend from the Chicago suburbs and then WN9RPD/WA9RPD, and a newer friend, Jerry KE4TTS. Join us for a trip down memory lane.
David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ discuss AI chat engines. Specifically, how Gary bullied chatGPT into correct answers about GMRS channel steps (for the record, it’s 12.5 kHz). Somebody in a Facebook group asked that question, and someone else got the answer from a confident chatGPT, but chat GPT got it wrong (they said 5 kHz). The challenge was ON, and Gary emerged victorious, with chatGPT backing down… a couple of times!
Moving on, David found a newsletter author/podcasterwho experimented with AI voices (from NotebookLM) to generate a ‘podcast’ based on his most recent newsletter. Theresult was interesting. Then Gary found the same robot voicesin a show discovering that they weren’t real!
We can retire at any time.
Finally, Gary challenged a discussion from the Ham Radio Crash Courseon why repeaters are so quiet… lately. Gary’s point: it ain’t ‘lately’.
This week, Jason Johnston KC5HWB of the Ham Radio 2.0 show was reacting to viewer comments that there were Too Many Digital (Voice) Modes. East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ has been preaching on that topic for years, and while his Q-Mobile does have radios for D-STAR, DMR and System Fusion… and so does his belt…. he wouldn’t mind having one rig to rule them all – a 21st Century ‘Multi-Mode’. That’s his Holy Grail 🏆
So Gary invited Jason on the show to talk about it, along with West Coast Host David Goldenberg W0DHG, who has a DMR radio but only uses it for FM 🤔
After thoroughly wringing out that topic (and David signing off to go back to work), they move on to talk about GMRS - how it’s now kind of a gateway to ham radio and a hobby radio service itself (albeit not really intended for that by the FCC).
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ goes solo, with a timewaster of an episode. He’s just repurposing some of his many Facebook Group and Reddit responses to newbie ham and GMRS questions. After he gets done talking about his bike helmet.
To show, or not to show… that is the question.
Are we running out of gas for HRN, or just a temporary lull. Hard to tell. This is Gary’s solo thoughts on the topic, but we’ll have a conversation about it soon.
Also, how to keep ham radio from turning into Fox News.
Ham Radio activity - ‘unofficial’ and ad hoc as it may be - continues in the mountains of western North Carolina. The Mt. Mitchell 145.19 repeater remains active every day. For this show, we talk to a ham who was deployed at a couple of locations last week. Steve McAtee N0JJO lives in the Charlotte NC area, and heard a call go out for hams to assist. He geared up and set out, and now that he’s back, he tells us his story.
We know that Hurricane Milton hit Florida last week, and undoubtedly there are ham radio stories to tell from that event. We’ll see if we can find some hams to tell there stories from Milton in the next few weeks (contact Gary at kn4aq@arvn.tv if you have one of those stories).
Last week, HRN hosts David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ talked about some ad-hoc ham radio nets that spun up just after Tropical Storm Helene devastated a large area of North Carolina’s mountains, knocking out power, internet, phone and cell communications, flooding towns and destroying roads. The nets appeared to have no connection to any formal ham radio emcom organization. Initially they were passing lots of incoming Health & Welfare inquiries from hams or friends of hams on 40 meters (7232 kHz) and an ultra-wide coverage repeater on Mt. Mitchel (145.19 MHz). We speculated that messages like that probably couldn’t be delivered.We even streamed a few hours of the 40 meter net on our YouTube channel.
On this show we get the background. Dan Gitro K2DMG became the Net Control station on the Mt. Mitchel repeater for days on end, and he joins us to talk about how it got started and what it became as the days went by.
Hurricane Helene 🌀 left a lot of destruction in its wake, especially in western North Carolina. Power, phone and internet were down over a wide area. So, ham radio stepped into the gap, right?
Sort of. HamRadioNow send requests for participation in our Sunday live show to statewide ARES officers in Northern Florida, Georgia, South and North Caroliona, with narry a peep in response.
Instead, we monitored some ad-hoc nets that sprung up on 40 meters and on a wide coverage 2 Meter repeater in the NC Mountains, carring mostly inbound welfare requests that mostly couldn’t be delivered because… well, who was going to deliver them? These nets had no local infrastructure or a cadre of hams who might be able to pick their way around roads closed by flooding and debris to find the people who relatives so desperately were trying to reach. But yet the nets persisted, hour after hour.
We did listen to a 75 Meter NC traffic net that actually passed an outbound message - the way it should be, except for how long it takes to send this kind of traffic by voice. So David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ discuss the efficiency of sending this traffic as data… which they admit may well be going on, but who could tell? Another problem.
Gary’s griping may not be popular – there’s much back-patting and self-contratulating over this activity. And it may have actually gotten a few messages through… hard to tell. This, while any more official activity took place in shadows.
Sort of. HamRadioNow send requests for participation in our Sunday live show to statewide ARES officers in Northern Florida, Georgia, South and North Caroliona, with narry a peep in response.
Instead, we monitored some ad-hoc nets that sprung up on 40 meters and on a wide coverage 2 Meter repeater in the NC Mountains, carring mostly inbound welfare requests that mostly couldn’t be delivered because… well, who was going to deliver them? These nets had no local infrastructure or a cadre of hams who might be able to pick their way around roads closed by flooding and debris to find the people who relatives so desperately were trying to reach. But yet they persisted, hour after hour.
We did listen to a 75 Meter NC traffic net that actually passed an outbound message - the way it should be, except for how long it takes to send this kind of traffic by voice. So David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ discuss the efficiency of sending this traffic as data… which they admit may well be going on, but who could tell? Another problem.
Gary’s griping may not be popular – there’s much back-patting and self-contratulating over this activity. And it may have actually gotten a few messages through… hard to tell. This, while any more official activity took place in shadows.
Last January, a repeater group in Harrisburg PA had some special guests at their monthly club lunch – a half dozen representatives from the FCC, and a couple of ARRL officials stopped by to talk about ham radio and GMRS, and answer questions from the assembled club members. Just your average club luncheon.
Fortunately, the whole thing was recorded and ended up on YouTube. However, it was nearly two hours long, and some of it was kind of rambling (we’re looking at you, K4AAQ). So, we cut it down to just the essense, about 30 minutes worth. We still recommend watching the whole thing – there are some stories and anecdotes that we cut out that are pretty entertaining. Maybe this edited version will whet your appitite for more.
David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ banter about a big FCC-ARRL 'luncheon' last January, alterntives to saying 'Zero' in call signs, and GMRS linking.
Ham Radio Comm, in search of any Emergencies that might need our help. Well, West Coast Host David W0DHG and East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ (BRAT? maybe…) don’t hit on that theme too hard, but it is a good question. Where’s the Em?
Anyway, David spend last weekend doing some COMM at the Angeles Crest Ultra Marathon, and even though he failed to document it up to Gary’s standards, he did describe it pretty well.
Gary mentions this ARRL news story on Hurricane Debby that really inspired the episode title. Yet another review of an event where all we did was stand by to stand by.
Then David found a news story about an LA area ham who got help via the PAPA linked repeater system when he fell and couldn’t get up (cue the TV commercial). It was recorded, and we play it back with our usual on-point commentary.
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ goes solo for this show, noting that he needs another HT like he needs another hole in his head. But, Prime Day and pressure from peers got him to part with a bit under $25 for the Quansheng UV-K5.
Note that this review does NOT get into any of the aftermarket firmware options, and that seems to be what is getting everybody excited. That is a hot mess of options and confusion, and so maybe someday.
On the heels of Hurricane Beryl, Bob Inderbitzen NQ1R, ARRL Director of Marketing and Innovation was interviewed by The Weather Channel about ham radio. It was a great shot in national media, which means that East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ needed to take it apart to see how it could have been better, while West Coast Host David W0DHG pulled Gary back to reality.
Well, back in his younger days, Gary was no novice in the PR world, and he’s got some legacy video to prove it:
Gary's Field Day Interview (Studio): https://youtu.be/vkH21ERvp7I?si=8JP1U...
Gary's Katrina Interview: https://youtu.be/yC0u42MnMdM?si=USDdI...
Gary's Field Day Interview (Field - we didn't play this one in the episode): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyTcy1hFYQY.
As (barely a) Hurricane Beryl approaches landfall on the Texas coast, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ welcomes ARRL South Texas Section Emergency Coordinator Jeff Walter KE5FGA to the show to talk about Amateur Radio emcomm in his area.
It may have been the longest DAY of the year, but it was still a long NIGHT for K4AAQ
Gary edited a little home movie of this year’s Field Day operation. Then a look at some of the media from this year. Finally some thoughts on the GMRS linking controversy.
Links to the News Stories and stuff:
Our Field Day Playlist
Tell Josh to 'Approve' of us
Hey, it really was Escambria, not Escanaba. I blame my reading glasses:
WLOX TV story
KPLC TV story
Lakawana News 16 story
WAKA TV story
Reddit GMRS thread
Our guest, Dr. Johnathan Kramer, ESQ, is a lawyer dealing in ‘dirt’ - no, not Stormy Daniels. Real Estate. We’ll learn about his career and a bit about putting up antennas in HOA territory.
We had some technical trouble with the live stream this time… and with the local recording. Between the two, we recovered most of the show, with a few minutes missing in the middle. You won’t even know… but it might be a little confusing for those who watched live on YouTube, or came to the YouTube channel late, but before we replaced the video (it takes hours to do that. Now you know.
For the past 10 days, ARRL’s Logbook of the World and online courses have been down. Something slowed down QST production (the print version) for a day or two. But the website and email forwarding service are working.
What’s happening? ARRL is only saying that “a serious incident involving access to our network and systems” has occurred. Is it a fire in the engine room? Malware? Ransomware? Somebody didn’t pay the ISP? All those and more are filling the information vacuum. So are we 🙄😕
Meanwhile, we opened up the Zoom to viewers, and one - Dave VE3KM from… yes, Bastard, Ontario, clicked the button. Turns out that Dave is an avid VHF/UHF ham, among other things (actually, pretty well rounded in ham radio overall). So before we get started speculating (and Gary whining) about the ARRL infogap, Dave gives us a lesson in Aurora propagation. Yes, when a big dose of plasma from the sun 🌞 shuts down HF, VHF goes wild.
Do we solve the ARRL’s data issue, or even provide some useful insight? Nope. Nobody has. But we… maybe just Gary… feels better.
Episode 524 - New England Correspondent Marty NN1C takes us to the Hamvention, holds out in the pouring rain to see the rush of equally drowned hamfesters pour (too literally) through the entry gate at 9 AM, and then waits out ICOM’s BIG REVEAL of… circuit boards😕, with East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ anchoring from Fort Mill. West Coast Host David W0DHG got up early to join in.
Episode 525 - Gary K4AAQ goes solo, checking the feeds, and reviewing HamRadioNow (and ARVN)’s extensive catalog of Hamvention videos, going back to 2007. Find it all in this YouTube Playlist.
Gary K4AAQ is back from vacation, and we’re back on the air. A (relatively) short show - David W0DHG had some stuff to do, so just an hour. We do the usual ramble around a few topics. Gary shows his broken (and extracted) tooth (so be glad this is just audio) and a home movie from Hawaii to wrap things up.
In theory, we’re on hiatus until May, but we had a few minutes to chat about the Hollywood Hills, David’s Emcomm deployment (no hams were harmed in that deployment), and a bit of eclipse.
Gary's Q-Mobile - now 17 years old and 230,000 miles long, is running fine. But the ICOM 7000 HF rig developed a hiccup on 40 meters. Put a little RF to the Tarheel 200 antenna, and it shut down. He finally gets around to fixing it.
David W0DHG told him how in a previous episode. Gary K4AAQ had to do it the hard way.
https://HamRadioNow.tv
For the next few weeks, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ and West Coast Host David W0DHG have a bunch of family and other activities, so we’re goona take a break from the show. David may gin up some shows solo (Gary will be gone lots longer)… we’ll see. But sooner or later we’ll be back… tanned and rested (or dragged ot and exhausted).
See ya on the other side!
Can the creating of a simple show jingle (using AI) drive the theme of the whole show?
Sure, why not. Also, a visit to the Charlotte Hamfest for a few minutes.
Also, can you guess the age of the average ARRL member? Stay tuned to find out!
The Network Effect is when you connect a network (IRLP, AllStar, Echolink, D-STAR, DMR, Fusion, etc) to a quiet, local repeater and turn on a busy nationwide or worldwide reflector, talk group, room, whatever. The repeater isn’t quiet anymore… but who’s talking. Nobody you know.
Also, Gary K4AAQ will be volunteering for a big, new (to him) event: the Assault on Mt. Mitchell. That’s a 100 mile bike ride from Spartanburg SC to the top of Mt. Mitchell in NC. With all the up and down (and the big UP at the end to the 6600’ summit), the riders will see a total of 11,000 of vertical climb.
And, we lost some hams this week. Bob Heil K9EID, of course, but also David W0DHG’s friend Gary Apgar NY6Y, and Gary’s friend and local hero Danny Hampton K4ITL. Danny was Dayton Hamvention’s Ham of the Year in 2009, and founder of a regional repeater network in the Carolinas, long before the Internet came along to make it easy.
Gary K4AAQ has that new phone/camera gimble and wireless podcast mics. So he’s got to go to a hamfest. It’s been a while. No SIB (Studio In a Booth). Maybe they’ll let him sit in on the YouTuber’s Forum?
Then he and David W0DHG yammer about other stuff.
The Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act is now in the Senate as S.3690. That bill joins House Bill H.R.4006, with the goal of giving hams living in HOA neighborhoods some reasonable relief in being able to put up antennas.
Don’t place your orders yet 🤨. Most Congrerssional bills never become law, but if you recall your Civics class, you do need identical legislation to be passed in the House and Senate before they move on to the President for their signature. So we’re a big step closer 😀.
Then surprise guest Kyle AA0Z joins us for the first time in a while for some general discussion.
If anyone wants to hear a little (a lot) more from Gary K4AAQ, he’s started a new general-interest (or generally uninteresting) podcast with his brother Jay. Jay isn’t a ham, though he grew up with it blaring in the house from his brothers. Like Gary, Jay is a retired broadcaster, now finding refuge in the world of podcasting. It’s called the Jay and Gary Show, on YouTube and a podcast app near you.
Equal time for David W0DHG who continues to co-host the WaveTalkersshow on YouTube.
One sure path to YouTube stardom is to do a lot of unboxings. That may be why we don’t do them very often. But this time, we do one.
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ was getting jealous of all the YouTubers walking around hamfests with their phones mounted on fancy sticks, and using some kind of wireless mic gizmo to talk to people (and hear them) more than six inches from the phone. So he bought a set, and opened it up live on this show while West Coast Host David W0DHG looked on over Zoom.
Next… a demo. Then… a hamfest? Dayton? Stay tuned.
Here’s what he got:
- Hollyland LARK Max
- DJI Osmo Mobile 6 Gimbal Stabilizer
Trivia question #1: Who said that (To the Moon, Alice)?
Trivia question #2: What year did Gary K4AAQ say it was when he introduced this show?
We’re not answering those here. Watch (or listen to) the show.
In January, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) landed a ham radio station on the moon (along with some other stuff, we’re sure, but we have our priorities). Its one-watt transmitter sent some telemetry on 437.41 MHz, along with a cleverly embedded Morse code (not cw) signal, as received by these guys in the Netherlands, and partially decoded by this guy, with help from a few other very advanced hams (read the blog and comments). Best we can tell, it was just a little more advanced than OSCAR 1’s Hi Hi Hi back in 1961. But it still counts as the first freakin’ ham station on the moon. 🌜
The station has literally gone dark, as it slid into lunar night. 🌚 It’s not expected to survive, but we bet there’ll be some well equipped hams listening in a couple weeks, just to make sure.
How ‘well equipped’? Well, you need to make up about 40 dB of path loss, assuming you’ve got an excellent receiver. How do you do that? Big ass antenna. Nope… bigger.
Then Gary rambles on about the fate of HRN 506: How Can We Podcast With All This Light💡?That’s the show that nobody’s seen, because first YouTube, then Netflix, took it down until we fought to get it back up (and we won).
And finally, he talks about South Carolina’s unusual “First in the Nation” Presidential Primary, and the chat room confirms that what we’re doing here is very confusing. And once again what we thought would be a 10-minute show ran over an hour.
BTW, David W0DHG is out this week, teaching a First Aid class. We expect to be back next Sunday.
Gary K4AAQ just got back from a week of skiing 🤹♀️ with Cyndi KD4ACW out in Park City UT. David W0DHG has been busy, so not much show prep (good thing we’re not trying to make money off this show🤑). But Gary had a little radio operation (and one near-catastrophy) to talk about from his trip, including a short video of the radio-laden suitcase that got flagged at TSA. And David had some Winter Field Day adventures to relate. So another shortish show.
Earlier that day, Gary did a ‘sync-test’, looking to see what might have gone wrong with a couple of previous shows that had serious lip-sync issues. Not quite a ProMore, and interesting only to… probably nobody, but we won’t speak for you. Anyway, the lip-sync looked fine, both in the test and this show. Gary says he didn’t ‘fix’ anything, but maybe he didn’t ‘break’ anything either.
And we play a bit of a rockabilly song that features Ham Radio from a group called the Royal Hounds. The song is Tune In Tokyo.
Winter Field Day, the last full weekend in January.
Field Day - the summer version - is the most popular event on the ham radio calendar. The winter version isn’t even close, but it is a thing. And many hams are passionate about it. Our guest Marvin Turner W0MET, King of Winter Field Day (so dubbed by host Gary K4AAQ) tells us all about it.
The weather is kind of an upside-down, of course. While summer Field Day is more or less pleasant in the northern US and Canada, it’s hot and muggy in the southeast, and just hot in the west. Late January can be serious winter iun the north, and more temperate as you head south, though ‘summer-like’ may be reserved for Florida.
Winter Field Day isn’t just the winter version of it’s summer event. Some rules are the same, but many are different. For one thing, ‘Winter’ Field Day is worldwide (with half the world actually being ‘summer’, but who’s counting). And it may be a bit more emcomm focused. Marvin tells us all about it.
For a short while, the ham radio world was abuzz with comments on a shot at the very end of the Netflix movie Laave the World Behind, about a NYC couple who rent a house on Long Island for a weekend getaway. The world quickly goes to hell, though they only get vague signs of it as TV, cable, internet and cell phone service goes out. Then weird things start happening around them. SPOILER ALERT At the very end of the movie, there’s a bunker with an elaborate ham station, receiving a digital message about cities being under attack and elevated radiation, advising anyone receiving the message to take shelter. The movie got fairly favorable critic reviews, but terrible audience reviews.
Gary K4AAQ and Cyndi KD4ACW were among the ‘terrible review’ contingent. David W0DHG hadn’t finished the movie yet, but after hearing Gary’s review, he was eager to see how bad it really was. Oh, and Gary plays a few clips to demonstrate what was so bad, and to show that ham station. Also… no Netflix take down (so far).
But first… David and Gary look at an NBC TODAY Show clip of an Erie PA area high school ham club (actually an Advanced Technology Group) complete an ARISS contact. All ARISS contacts are special events, particularly to the groups and schools involved. What made this contact unusual is that 1) the students did all the work, and 2) it made Network level news. They also made the local news, and they have their own YouTube Channel with their own play-by-play of the event, and other group activities.
Here’s the link to our ARISS Playlist, including that 1992 SAREX contact.
A small Christmas Miracle (and really kind of pre-Christmas).
Netflix released their copyright©claim on HamRadioNow Episode 506: How Can We Podcast With All This Light💡?Just in time for nobody to see it (it’s up to 33 views as I type this).
So David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ celebrate the win🎉🥂. David is short-time, so later, Gary goes into mind-numbing detail about how he filed disputes with YouTube that got Netflix to relent.
But first, they review the reaction to Episode 509: Repeater Pest Gets No-Contact Order from the Judge, which provoked strong and odd comments both on QRZ.com and Reddit.
Audio listeners are in for a ‘trreat’ at the very end.
Aka The Monkeyman Trial
A very wide coverage, busy UHF repeater in the Charlotte NC metro area had been plagued all year by a pest. Drunk, profane, nonsensical and relentless. Ignoring him didn’t work, so they tracked him down. The repeater owners told him to stop many times. The FCC told him to stop… twice. He didn’t. But now identified, he got his ham license: KQ4GAD. But nothing changed. The repeater was still frequently subject to his profanity, sound effects and music, and streams of nonsense.
As time passed, the pest increasingly directed his rants and ramblings toward one ham, Brad O’Dell KK1LL. Brad was leading the team that hunted the pest down and revealed his identity. Ramblings became threats, so at the suggestion of former FCC Enforcement Counsel Riley Hollingsworth K4ZDH, Brad swore out a complaint in County Court, asking for a ‘No Contact’ order.
After managing to avoid the process server twice, resulting in continuances, the pest, Joshua Duffy KQ4GAD, faced off with Brad in court. Duffy never spoke… at least not in the hearing. As the hearing begain, his attorney immediately offered to accept a No Contact order for one year, provided that no evidence was presented and made part of the record. Brad agreed. It was over.
But our story isn’t. In this episode, we’ll talk with Brad and Ted Williams KE6QEY, President of the Charlotte Amateur Radio Club, owner of the repeater. We will hear some audio of Duffy swearing, threatening and rambling (and we’re not beeping anything out, so this episode has some explicit language). We’ll hear briefly from Duffy himself, outside the courtroom, in an interview he gave HRN’s Gary K4AAQ, who attended the hearing. And Brad and Ted will tell the whole story.
Oh… The Monkeyman Trial? That comes from the monkey-like sounds our pest was fond of making. You’ll hear one recording of that. So before the hams knew who he was, they called him ‘The Monkeyman’.
He was drunk. He was profane. He was worse than annoying. He wouldn't go away, plaguing a Charlotte area repeater for months. Then he got his ham license... and nothing changed. He was ordered off the repeater (many times). The control ops contacted the FCC - they wouldn't act. Nothing worked. Then he began targeting one individual ham for harassment, and that created an opening for a legal remedy outside the FCC.
Gary also previews a bill in the South Carolina Legislature that mirrors PRB-1, but would extend the protection to HOA residents.
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ had volunteered to do radio at a local Christmas parade. As he was lacing up his sneakers, about to leave home, wife Cyndi KD4ACW called to dispatch him to the hospital where mom had been taken with chest pains. Gary had planned to do some video and interviews at the event for today’s show. Instead Gary and West Coast Host David W0DHG talk about how to weigh conflicting obligations to family and community (and Podcasting). (Mom didn’t have a heart issue, but it was still something serious. She’s OK now)
David also had comments on how his favorite event, the Baker to Vegas charity run, has decided to replace ham radio with communications from Verizon (while still urging them to volunteer for other jobs). There’s more to that story, and it’s not isolated to that event. The MS Society is using ham radio less for smaller, more urban walks. And in the Emcomm arena, Auxcom leaders have been saying that hams should be cross-trained for communication on other systems. That’s something to dig into on a future show.
Meanwhile, we noted that the new FCC rule dropping the data-rate restriction of ‘300 baud’ on the HF bands, replacing it with a 2.8 kHz bandwidth limit, has finally been published in the Federal Register, and will take effect on January 8, 2024. So not quite the Christmas present we expected, but Happy New Year!
And a FNPRM(Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) clock is ticking for comments on how to handle data rate/bandwidth of the VLF, VHF and UHF bands. That spectrum is not covered by the new HF data bandwidth rule.
Finally, no news on the Netflix Watch. HRN Episode 506, How Can We Podcast with All This Light?, is still dark on YouTube due to Netflix’s copyright complaint. Check Episode 506 for details, and listen to the audio version while the video is down.
HamRadioNow Episode 506is still down on YouTube, by order of Netflix. We’ve filed a ‘dispute’ via YouTube. We’re waiting.
But not patiently. In this episode, David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ explain what’s happened. And that’s pretty much it… a short show.
We finally get to the real show based on the Netflix series All the Light We Cannot See. The show is a four-part mini-series about clandestine broadcasting during WWII. It’s set mostly in a small, coastal French town that is occupied by Germany, and is being bombarded by Allied planes coming across the Channel. A young woman named Marie has taken over broadcast duties from her uncle. Her broadcasts contain coded mssages helping the Allies make precision bombing runs. Marie is being hunted by Werner, a reluctant German radio operator, using DF equipment to pinpoint her location.
This being the main theme of the series, there is a lot of radio operation, and a lot of gear. Little of it is explained in detail, and what detail they show is usually somewhat wrong. That’s because this is media for the general public, and getting it right would be boring and take too long. So it’s the usual Hollywood license for any technical profession, whether it’s radio, medicine, law, etc. Details get in the way of storytelling.
Our goal is to highlignt the radio operating, and note the errors, while appreciating that a program has this much radio (and radio people) at all. So we pulled about 17 minutes of footage from the series, play it and comment on it.
Or at least we tried. YouTube had a different idea. Halfway through the show, they start blacking out the video and audio, with a title saying they detected copyright material. When Gary comes back on screen, the video resumes, but the YouTube bot isn’t very precise with its timing. Eventually, YouTube just takes the stream down, noting a copyright violation.
But they give us a chance to appeal. Gary takes it immediately, and to his surprise, within minutes he gets email from YouTube saying they AGREE with his appeal and restore the program.
But the program they restore is the one with big segments blocked out, and ending early, where they terminated the live stream. Thanks for nothing!
Gary recorded the episode locally, and uploaded it to our YouTube channel, thinking A) they won’t file a copyright claim on this one, because they already agreed that it was Fair Use, and B) Don’t believe that for a second.
Yep, the upload was not only flagged but fully blocked, worldwide. Gary filed a dispute… we’ll see if this one is handled with the speed that Netflix responded to Episode 504. They filed a copyright claim there, too, based on us showing their trailer. Gary filed a dispute, and Netflix relented in less than 24 hours.
LINKS:
Helge LA6NCA’s original demonstration of the DF equipment (in Norwegian, with English subtitles)
First… I’m giving everything a new number - episodes, promos… if I far… sneeze, I’m giving it an episode number.
So, we had planned to do the episode that we Promo(re)d last Sunday sometime during the week. Well, we couldn’t. It’ll be on this coming Sunday, December 3 at 3pm Pacific, 6 pm Eastern, 2200Z. We’ll be reviewing and picking apart the radio mistakes in the Netflix series All the Light We Cannot See.
So what are we doing here in 505? (Besides piling up episode numbers?) Mostly celebrating that I was able to win another Fair Use battle. We played the trailer to the show last Sunday. Netflix filed a Copyright claim and demonetized it (even though we don’t monetize). That didn’t affect anyone’s ability to watch the show, but there’s a principle involved. I disputed the claim based on Fair Use. Netflix caved… er, agreed in les than 24 hours, a new speed record.
We kept this show fairly short. No such promises for Sunday. -Gary K4AAQ
This episode is a PROMO for an upcoming HRN show. This one comes with homework:
We like watching shows that have ham radio in them. Sometimes it’s just for the show, and sometimes it’s to pick at how much they got wrong 😒. Netflix has a new, four-episode limited series titled All the Light We Cannot See, based on a novel by the same name. It looks like it should be one of those ‘based on a true story’ stories, but it’s not. But it does have a lot of radio in it. Not ham radio specifically, and ham radio isn’t mentioned – it’s more of an amalgam of ham radio and DIY shortware broadcasting, with a bit of spy-radio in the mix.
Your homwork is to watch the four-episode series on Netflix, and we’ll do a ‘book club’ episode to discuss it. Gary K4AAQ is pulling some clips of the radio-specific parts to get a YouTube takedown (which he will fight and win on Fair Use grounds). If you don’t have Netflix, well, sorry, there is no free trial (we speculated there was in this Promo, but there isn’t). They have a $7/month plan that you can sign up for, then cancel, so the show would cost you $7 (you can watch everything else on Netflix for that month, or course). The $7 plan is their ‘ad supported’ level, so you’ll see some commercials.
If you don’t watch the series, you’ll still enjoy this promo and the upcoming episode – you’ll just have a little less context.
And we’re not sure when we’ll produce this show. Could be Monday or Tuesday… stay tuned and click the Subscribe button on YouTube (and the Notifications bell). Audio listeneres… it’ll just show up in your feed when we’ve done it.
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ played radio (and Pavement Police) at a local Christmas parade on Saturday with the Cabarrus Amateur Radio Society, and made a little movie of it.
Before that, West Coast Host David W0DHG was playing hooky from the show, out doing a POTA event with his WaveTalkersco-host Chris W6AH. They were live on 17 meters, and after we announced the frequency, a few members of our live audience jumped on 17 and worked them!
The FCC jumped the gun on releasing the Report and Order on RM-11708, replacing the old “300 Baud” data limit on the Amateur Radio HF bands with a bandwidth limit of 2.8 kHz instead.
They told us it would be part of their November 15 meeting, aired live on YouTube. Instead, they sent notice of the approval in a press release two days early, on November 13. So YAY, it’s approved with no drama. But we kinda wanted to hear them talk about us a little.
Oh, well… the new rules take effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, and that hasn’t happened as of ‘press time’ (12 noon, November 15). If you go there, search for WT Docket No. 16-239.
LINKS:
The final Report and Order PDF
Gary’s marked up version (probably the same as the official version)
Not really that much going on. But David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ haven’t chatted in a while, so they did.
LINKS:
— The RATPAC Gift Suggestion show (with Gary’s Ham’s Night Before Christmas)
— USA 1939 movie about Ham Radio
Happy Episode 500, everybody!
And now back to work.
The FCC is about to release a Report and Order abolishing the antiquated 300 ‘baud’ limit on data rates on the HF bands, replacing it with a 2.8 kHz bandwidth cap instead . The draft R&O was released last week, and Gary K4AAQ picks it apart. It should be finalized at the Commission meeting on November 15, 10:30 am Eastern, with video available live (and on Memorex for later).
In the last half of the episode, Gary opens up the Discord and chats with Jeff N4POD, and a brief visit with David W0DHG
LINKS:
— Gary’s annotated PDF of the R&O
— FCC November 15 Meeting Annoucement, Video Link
— ARRL’s 2005 Regulation by Bandwidth petition to the FCC (pdf)
Quote from the petition: The simplest means of streamlining the Commission’s rules, while at the same time providing maximum flexibility for the incorporation of new digital communications looking forward to the next decade, and to protect ongoing Amateur communications, is to provide for band segmentation by bandwidth rather than by emission mode in the Part 97 Rules. (emphasis added)
DXer and video producer Bob Allphin K4UEE released the K1N Navssa DXpedition documentary on DVD in 2015, a few months after the highly successful DXpedition itself. HamRadioNow’s Gary K4AAQ did the editing and voiceover for the production. DVD sales were good enough, but now it’s time to release the program to the world on YouTube, free to watch for everyone. Yep, that’s the link, right here.
In this episode, Bob and Gary chat about the show, and about some of the DXpeditions Bob has been on, particularly the Bouvet Island attempt he led that had to abort, and the subsequent attempt that was only partially successful. And Bob announces that he’ll be offering a clearance sale of his remaining DVDs - 3 for the price of 1 - coming soon to his web site.
Before that, though, NorCal Host Jim NO1PC gives us a short tour of this weekend’s Pacificon hamfest, which was reduced in size some from the recent past.
Links:
K4UEE’s website
James Brooks documentary collection on Vimeo
ClubLog’s Most Wanted DX Entity list
Gary’s Genius Plan for 60 Meters gets filed with the FCC. He reads it to you.
And Gary K4AAQ notices that ICOM has added FM to their 3rd Generation D-STAR Repeaters. He thought he saw that they were doing a D-Fuzion thing, with DV/Analog IN, Analog OUT, but no… as he reads it live, he discovered that it was an either/or thing… DV or FM, but no Fuzion. So close.
LINKS:
File your comments here, on the ECFS site
Review everybody else’s comments here, also on the ECFS site
HamRadioNow’s YouTube Playlist of our previous shows on 60 meters (way more than you think)
FCC NPRM with Gary’s Notes (pdf)
Gary’s Genius Plan CHART (pdf)
Gary’s Comments (with the USa fixed)
The Chicago Marathon ran last weekend. It’s one of the Big Six marathongs worldwide, and uses ham radio extensively for communications in support of the medical crews.
Rob Orr K9RST is the ham radio coordinator, and he’s one of our guests on this week’s show. And this time (because we’ve done this before, back in 2017), he’s joined by Jeff van Buren KD9IPG. Together they fill in hosts Jim NO1PC and Gary K4AAQ (with a cameo from David W0DHG) on this year’s events and updates.
LINKS:
Ham Radio Chicago
HamRadioNow 374: Marathon Man (2017)
Last spring, the FCC issued an ORDER and NPRM covering a lot of stuff that originated with the 2015 World Radio Conference (WRC 2015). Um… checking our calendar, we see that it’s 2023 and ¾. But who’s counting?
For hams, we care mostly about the part concerning 60 meters. And apparently not all that many of us care about that, but we’re pressing on anyway.
Back at the WRC, they officially approved a band plan for worldwide Secondary status for ham radio on a 15 kHz wide band between 5351.5 – 5366.5 MHz. With an effective power level of 9 Watts. Ugh.
In this NPRM, the FCC is asking if that’s what they should do. Or if they should thumb their nose at the world (as many other countries have done… especially Canada) and keep the existing 5 ‘channels’ and 100 Watt (EIRP) power level. Or some combination of the above.
That NPRM was issued last April. We’ve been waiting for ‘publication in the Federal Register’ to make it official, and begin the 60-day comment period. And waiting. And waiting. That shoe finally dropped on September 30. But even though the NPRM promised 60 days, the FCC says you have until October 30 to file comments. We did the math. That’s 30 days. We can handle that, but it is curious.
Meanwhile, it’s our chance to review East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ’s Genius Plan for 60 Meters once again (because we’ ve done like two shows about that just this year). And this is the first time West Coast Host David W0DHG gets to weigh in. David thinks it’s too complicated. You decide… and file your comments by October 30.
LINKS:
— File your comments here, on the ECFS site
— Review everybody else’s comments here, also on the ECFS site
— HamRadioNow’s YouTube Playlist of our previous shows on 60 meters (way more than you think)
— FCC NPRM with Gary’s Notes (pdf)
Gary’s Genius Plan CHART (pdf)
On the ‘Big Show’ we’ll talk about the 60 Meter NPRM from the FCC, but this is the ProMore, with East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ talking about his experience investigating and documenting BPL in the early aughts. Cameo appearances by David W0DHG and Marty NN1C (Marty apparently butt-texted the show group, so Gary called him on the phone).
Back in 2014, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ did a HamRadioNow show titled System Confusion, with a look at Yaesu’s new C4FM mobile and handheld radios that he had just reviewed for QST. In that show, Gary and some friends from the Charlotte Digital Radio Group did a comparison of DV modes using handheld radios on D-STAR, DMR, P25, and those new C4FM Fusion handheld radio. The episode is our most-watched HamRadioNow show, with nearly 48,000 views (one TAPR DCC show in our catelog has more views). And although the show was a fair look at all the radios, the title alone seems to have cememted Gary’s place on Yaesu’s black list.
Fast-forward to 2023, and Gary has finally added some Fusion radios to his arsonal of mobile, base and handheld radios, with a pair of FTM300s (mobile, base), and an FT5D handheld. In this episode, he reviews the FT5D, with help from hosts David W0DHG and Jim NO1PC, neither of whom see themselves signing on to System Fusion anytime soon.
The fun begins with a look at the Yaesu FT5D Facebook Group, where Gary posted what he considered to be some innocent questions about his new radio (search the group for ‘Gary Pearce’ to find his posts). That led to some snarky replies from a few members of the group, and the ‘discovery’ that he was that Gary Pearce, of System Confusion fame. You be the judge.
And bottom line: Gary likes the radio just fine (and the FTM300s). There are a few things he’d do different, and a thing or two he considers a bug or an oversight in design, but no dealbreakers. And at this point he doesn’t expect Yaesu to take any of his suggestions into consideration because… well, he’s the Confusion guy. And damn proud of it!
One show… two episide entries.
Gary K4AAQ did a long ‘Promo’ for HRN 495 ConFuzin’ After All These Years that was really a slide show of the vacation he just took to Utah and a Rocky Mountaineer train ride. Our web host, Squarespace, only lets us put one audio file in an episode, and we want to publish this one separately, so… two Episode entries for one… OK, we did say it was Confuzin’. All the way around.
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ here (the 👑 of HAM)…
You can operate public service effectively with a single mobile radio (I recommend a dual-band, dual-display radio, though), and probably a dual-band HT. So that's why I have 5 mobile radios and a scanner, and 10 or so handhelds, all programmed and ready to go. Obsessive. Borderline compulsive.
This episode is a mini-doc of my prep and some operation during my big annual Public Service event, BikeMS New Bern. I was just going to shoot a few snippits on my phone (Goole Pixel 6 Pro). I ended up with lots more than I expected - enough to make a show! And look 👀 it’s less than 30 minutes long!
It’s fun to see Ham Radio bantered about in the halls of Congress. At the end of a 3-hour hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on Communications and Technology last June, Arizona Congresswoman (and friend of Ham Radio) Debbie Lesko ‘grilled’ FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel about the status of the proposal to replace the long-obsolete rules on HF data rates in Amateur Radio with something more modern… perhaps a 2.8 kHz bandwidth limit, and anything you can stuff into it. When’s that gonna happen, Jessica?
Rosenworcel acknowledged the need, but noted that the FCC’s inquiry, back in 2017, is now ‘stale’. This seems to imply a renewed proposal (NPRM?), another round of comments, and finally maybe some action? In other words, don’t hold your breath.
Anyway, we’ve got the clip from the end of the meeting. Again, fun to hear us mentioned.
This show is a solo anchor effort by East Coast Host Gary Pearce K4AAQ. David W0DHG and Jim NO1PC had family obligations. So after taking care of business, Gary brought in the HRN Discord Server’s Studio 73… an audio/video room for our viewers to come chat.
LINKS:
Gary also noted that he’d never really seen ARRL CEO David Minster talk, so he included this interview on W1DED’s YouTube channel.
Here’s the link to the YouTube video of that House Committee hearing. It should take you right to the end, with Lesko and Rosenworcel.
Credit to Ham Radio Crash Course for bringing this clip to our attention. See Josh’s analysis.
HOA Antenna Bill update? On the RATPAC YouTube channel, with Fred Hopengarten K1VR & John Stratton N5AUS .
Use GovTrack to keep up with the bill.
As Hurricane Idalia worked it’s way across the Southeast, HamRadioNow East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ (on the edge of the outer rain bands near Charlotte NC) talked to two of his South Carolina neighbors about Emcomm operations. John Gendron NJ4Z is the South Carolina Section Manager, and Gordon Mooneyhan W4EGM is the SC Public Information Officer.
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ had a guest spot on his friend Martin Brossman KI4CFS’s YouTube show, talking about GMRS for HAMS. Here’s how Martin described the show:
Relating GMRS to FRS and Amateur Radio.
Thanks to Gary Pearce for joining me today to discuss GMRS for Ham Radio operators and people considering getting into it. Gary's website Ham Radio Now TV https://www.hamradionow.tv/ and YouTube channel / hamradionow
The list of GMRS frequencies https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
For people in the NC area, the GMRS Facebook group is https://www.facebook.com/groups/60762...
The GRMS resources site mentioned is https://mygmrs.com/ https://mygmrs.com/repeaters
FCC regulations https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-d...
The frequencies and power levels of the GMRS channels https://www.rightchannelradios.com/bl...
The GMRS radio I show in the video https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?p...
Check out my NC Ham Radio Group on Facebook North Carolina Amateur Radio Operators https://www.facebook.com/groups/86393...
The MEWE group for NC Ham Radio https://mewe.com/group/5fad98dc9cd239...
Our Group.io listserve https://groups.io/g/NCAmateurRadioOpe...
My Ham Radio Website HTTP://KI4CFS.com and FB page https://www.facebook.com/KI4CFS/ - Martin Brossman - KI4CFS
My Facebook feed reminded me that 6 years ago, I was headed out to Wyoming to view my first ever Total Eclipse, along with Jeff AC4ZO (SK) and Bobbie KD4ZVW (Cyndi KD4ACW took her dad, Mac W4PVT (SK) down to the Columbia SC area, also along the path, but 'iffy' for clear WX. We all got lucky with clear skies).
Later that month, we did a show to review the experience - HRN 343 "Totaled". So as David W0DHG battens down the hatches in preparation for Tropical Storm Hilary in Los Angeles, we did a short intro, and then we present a rerun of that show from 2017. Cyndi and I are planning (and have reservations) for the next Total, in April 2024. - Gary K4AAQ
Gary just rambles a bit letting you know we’re on summer vacation. Back next week… or anytime.
Gary K4AAQ begins reviewing the ARRL comments on RM 11953, the request to modify the HF side of Part 90 (commercial radio regs) to allow high power, wider bandwidth data to be used for “High Frequency Trading” on the various stock exchanges. The ARRL says this has a clear potential to create significant interference in the ham radio bands and for other HF users.
After a bit, Ria N2RJjoins the show and, well, makes it more interesting. David W0DHG and Jim NO1PC have the week off. So we modify the name of the channel to Ria’s HamRadioNow Shack just for this episode.
The ARRL has increased dues… no surprise considering inflation. The shocker is that they also divorced the printed magazine from basic dues, and made it a fairly expensive add-on. We review the changes.
Gary K4AAQ has a short slide show of his trip to DC (not much ham radio in it). And in the post-show, Jim NO1PC explains that he is the ‘mystery’ Redditor who created a HamRadioNow sub-Reddit. Meanwhile, David W0DHG tries not to melt in his non-air-conditioned studio, as he waits for winter.
David W0DHG anchored this episode from his un-air conditioned West Coast Studio during an LA heat wave. Gary K4AAQ was in Witless Protection in an undisclosed location somewhere near Washington DC (with a cameo from Cyndi KD4ACW). Jim NO1PC wasn’t complaining, but we kept the show short, anyway.
Junie N1DUC, along with her feathered flock of friends, is the ball of energy behind a new YouTube channel Ham and Quackers. Junie has only been a ham for a few years, but she’s dedicating the channel to helping even newer hams learn about the hobby and get comfortable on the air.
Meet Junie and Mochi🦆 in this episode… then go watch their show!
It started with Wouxun, one of the first brands of inexpensive Chinese radios to hit the VHF/UHF FM ham radio market in the US and around the world. We pronounced it like we saw it: Whax-on. Until somebody checked and learned it was more like ‘Ocean’, sort of.
Some of the brands that followed seemed more anglicized: Baofeng… we came close. BAY-oh-fang. Gary K4AAQ favored BO-fung. Then recently, his YouTube surfaced an eight-year-old video with a guy pronouncing many of the Chinese names, including TYT. Watch… listen… there will be a quiz. It will probably be on the final (or the next update of the Tech question pool).
Then we all take a trip through Troubleshooting-land in a segment Gary called “The Trouble With Shooting”. Jim NO1PC and David W0DHG help Gary second and third-guess the problem with an antique Kenwood TH-F6 radio that refuses to accept manual programming on just one of its 400 memory channels… or did it? It’s misdirection and confirmation bias run amok. It could happen to you.
Finally, Jim tells us where he’s been lo these past few weeks, on vacation in a silver hot dog.
And next week, we have a guest lined up: A new YouTuber and relatively new ham, Junie N1DUC has a thing for our web-footed friends, so duck and cover (probably the show title) and check out https://www.hamandquackers.com/
And c’mon and join our Discord: http://discord.gg/FDP3JnyDun
West Coast Host David W0DHG and East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ (K4AQQ?) didn’t have a show planned, and were going to just log in and say ‘hi’ for a minute. 2 hours later…
It’s all over but the endless shows reviewing what we did: Field Day 2023 is in the can.
Here’s our endless show.
It’s a Bill! HR 4006 is the official House Bill that contains the Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act (wait… does that mean we’re all Preppers now?).
This is the bill that… if it makes it all the way into law… will give hams in HOA neighborhoods substantial relief from HOA rules prohibiting or severely limiting outdoor antennas. But it’s a long way between now and law.
Without much other official action, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ spent some time comparing the current bill with its predecessor from last December, and found only one minor revision in one paragraph that didn’t seem to change the meaning. Then, because we’ve all forgotten what was in the Bill, he reviewed the high points. About halfway through, West Coast Host David W0DHG got home from his Father’s Day dinner and joined the party. They immediately went off topic for a while, then finished the review, and conducted a random bull session.
BTW, no Promo, so you didn’t miss it.
9 Years ago, Gary K4AAQ and Jeff AC4ZO (SK) did a HamRadioNow episode titled My Stupid Plan for 60 Meters. That was 12 years after we got those 5 ‘channels’ on 60, and the ARRL was noodling about a plan hatched at the 2015 World Radio Conference to create an actual band at 60. Turns out Gary’s plan really was stupid, but the show was a lot of fun.
Well, it’s 2023, and we’re back… our Episode 477: 60 for 60 detailed the current state of RM-11785, the FCC’s dithering proposal for maybe a little 15 kHz wide band (with a 9 Watt power limit 😮), but maybe not. That proposal was supposed to be out for 60 days of public comments after it was published on the Federal Register web site… where it has yet to appear, best we can tell. However, the place where you make comments, the ECFS (Electronic Comment Filing System) is still accepting comments left over from the first round of RM-11785, back in 2017. Gary filed his Express comments – his Genius Plan – and one other person also filed comments.
That ‘one other person’ turned out to be Janis Carson AB2RA, a 77 year old YL from upstate New York. Janis was first licensed in 1959, and while she is into boat anchors (aka ‘new equipment from when she was first licensed’), she is also right up to date on today’s technology, and everything in between. And she keeps current with the FCC, too, often filing comments on RMs and NPRMs.
With both David W0DHG and Jim NO1PC bowing out for other activities, Gary and Janis spend a couple of quality hours talking about the 60 meter proposals, and lots of other stuff.
LINKS:
HRN’s 60 meter Playlist
We’ve done a few shows about 60 meters over the years.
Comments that Janis has filed on other current topics:
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/105030620228022/1
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/10430521230708/1
The FCC’s ECFS page for RM-11785, with old comments from 2017, the new NPRM, and Janis’ and Gary’s current comments.
Fame!
There’s a Facebook group called Shit Two Way Installs. It’s a private group, so you’ll have to ask to join if you want to see it. But somebody - anonymously - immortalized Gary K4AAQ’s Q-Mobile in what is described as a group dedicated to “those memorable two way radio installs that leave us shaking our head.” As well they should. Eat your little hearts out (and BTW, Gary is a member of the group).
Before that, though, Gary, David W0DHG and Jim NO1PC have some Field Day tips, and then we check out some video of storm damage on the Santiago Peak site of a huge number of commercial… and a few amateur… repeaters and radio systems in the mountains east of Orange County, CA.
Did we promise to review the status of RM-11785 (the 60 meter NPRM)? Well, we’re going to hold that until next week when Gary’s comments should show up. Officially, it doesn’t look like it’s been published in the Federal Register, so apparently the 60 day clock for comments hasn’t started. But you can still file a comment? Not sure how that’s working.
Back in the day, 11 meter CB was a gateway to ham radio. The real Novice license existed back then, but it offered limited privileges (phone only on 2 meters), and required Morse code (5 wpm). So for many, their first taste of radio operating happened on the 23 CB channels (later expanded to 40 channels). That was Gary K4AAQ’s route. Ask ‘who got their start in CB’ at any ham club and you’ll find a lot of hands raised. But not David W0DHG’s or Jim NO1PC’s. Their route is more pure 👼. 10-4, good buddy.
Today, GMRS – the ‘anyone can play’ radio service using FM and repeaters in the 462-467 MHz spectrum – is beginning to boom. Maybe it was the reduction in license fee from $70 to $35 last year. Maybe it’s promotion on a bunch of YouTube channels. Maybe it’s a bunch of new equipment - mostly Chinese - from some of the same sources feeding ham radio with inexpensive radios.
It’s probably all of those things. The bar to entry into GMRS is the $35 fee for a license; the ability to navigate the FCC web site (a major complaint on some GMRS Facebook groups); and gaining enough knowledge to actually obtain and operate those radios effectively (also a common topic on the Facebook groups). One license covers an extended family.
Is GMRS a ‘hobby’ radio service? The rules don’t make that statement, but they do permit just about any kind of legal conversation among licensees (and with unlicensed FRS radio users). In some areas, conversations on GMRS repeaters are indistinguishable from ham radio conversations, except for the call signs.
All it would take to make GMRS the ‘New Novice’ license is pointing people with a potential interest in radio communications… but not enough interest to get a Tech license… to GMRS. And maybe help them with the first radio thing. They get their feet wet, see if they like it, then bump up against the limits of GMRS (only FM on only 8 repeater channels) and maybe itch for more. Hello, ham radio!
But before we get to that, Gary tortures Kyle AA0Z by holding a bottle of Kyle’s favorite soda (pop), Sun Drop Cherry-Lemon. There are oceans of the stuff at Gary’s local food store, but not a drop within a 3 hour drive of Kyle’s house. To compensate, he has White Castle, and Gary is 90 minutes from the nearest Krystal (a kissing cousin of White Castle). Anyway, Gary eventually does a taste-test, comparing Sun Drop (the Cherry-Lemon version) to another born-in-the-south favorite, Cheerwine (no alcohol, despite the name). Conclusion? Watch and see (did you really think we were going to spoil that one for you here?).
A few quick notes on H.R.3241 - Amateur Radio Communications Improvement Act, recently reintroduced in Congress, and RM 11785 (60 meter band NPRM) which is now getting comments.
And then we round things out by taking a look at Gary’s new Yaesu FTM-300 DR, a dual-band (dual-receive) Fusion radio. It’s not the new FTM-500, but it’s fairly recent, and much cheaper. Gary gets his first taste of operating the C4FM digital voice mode.
LINKS:
We’re now on Spotify
FEMA tweets MOU with ARRL
H.R.3241 - Amateur Radio Communications Improvement Act
RM 11785 (60 meter band NPRM) is now getting comments
OK, snide-boy… yes, it was Dayton Hamvention weekend. And while our principle hosts didn’t go (and neither did any of the main hosts on Ham Nation, we notice), our Midwest Correspondent Kyle AA0Z stopped by the show to tell us what we missed.
Then Jim NO1PC showed off his Sand Crab antenna trailer, and we all took the ARRL Member Survey on a likely dues increase.
The FCC is finally about to act on the long-pending issues on 60 meters. In 2015, the WRC issued a set of allocations, giving hams a teeny-tiny 15 kHz wide ‘band’ and only 9 watts ERP. But in the US, the FCC made no changes to our 5 discrete ‘channels’ and 100-watt ERP power limit.
Now the FCC is about to act… by asking, once again, what we want. They are more or less proposing following the WRC’s allocation, but before they do that, they want more comments from hams. Should they make that change? Should they keep (or also keep the 5 channels). Should they adopt the 9-Watt power limit? What about modes? So many questions.
You get to comment on all that, starting any day now (if it hasn’t started already). You have 60 days, followed by a 30 day reply-comment windows. Then… someday… the FCC will adopt new rules.
LINKS:
HamRadioNow’s YouTube Playlist of our previous shows on 60 meters
There's a 90% Eclipse coming for the western US on October 14 this year, and a total Eclipse for the Midwest and Northeast on April 8, 2024.
During the total Eclipse in 2017, hundreds of thousands of people flooded rural areas across the country in the relatively narrow ribbon of 'totality' (115 miles, but everyone wanted to be at the center line). They came over the course of hours or even days, but they all left at once when the show was over (and nobody cared about the next 90 minutes of the waning eclipse after they'd seen totality). All that created gridlock on the highways, and overload on the cell system.
The same is expected on April 8 next year, when a total eclipse moves from Texas through the Midwest and on to New England. And that presents an opportunity for hams to lend a hand with communications, if they're organized and prepared. Our guest is JM Rowe N5XFW, Arkansas Section Emergency Coordinator (among many other Emcomm titles). He's working on getting his state's hams ready, and coordinating with neighboring states as well.
Two of them, in fact. A Partial this year, and a Total in 2024.
A good eclipse can draw a huge mass of people into a fairly small band of territory, with the potential for overloaded roads and communications facilities. That’s an opportunity for hams to help out… if we’re prepared. Some areas were prepared in 2017, the last total eclipse that went coast-to-coast. We’ll learn about that, and plans for this and next year on our Sunday live show. Tune in!
Our sarcastic take on the Ask Me Anything shows when there’s nothing to talk about. Gary K4AAQ leads off this Sunday morning show after combing Reddit and finding yet another ham asking about calling CQ on… well, in this case, it’s simplex on FM on 2 meters and 70 cm. Seems somebody got on his case about it. Ring any bells? HamRadioNow 315 comes to mind (Do NOT Call CQ on Repeaters). So, yeah, repeaters, but the points are valid for simplex FM, too.
About this point, David W0DHG logged in and we review the responses. Gary was hoping somebody would have linked to his iconic show. Nobody had, until a chat-room viewer took care of it (thanks, chat-room!).
Then Jim NO1PC joined the Zoom, and discovered a broken connection in his audio system (remember the ‘mungy’ audio Gary complained about in the last show?). He fixed it on the fly.
Then David had to get ready for his WaveTalkersshow, and we wrapped up.
Gary, Jim and David discuss repairs to to the Q-Mobile and Ham Radio News of the week….
It was going to be The David and Gary Show because we didn’t have prep, so we didn’t have a topic or theme (not that all of the shows actually stick to a topic or theme). And just before showtime, somebody smacked into a power pole down the block from the West Coast Studio, and David was left in the dark. And that’s the last we’ve heard from him (at least as I’m typing this).
But the show must go on, so Gary (me) managed to vamp for about 45 minutes before wrapping things up and sending everyone to Ria’s Ham Shack to brush up on getting their General license.
Oh, and I figured out how to invite people to our Discord: https://discord.gg/wZNBfEmB (link expires on March 26, so hurry).
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ presented a forum on Digital Voice for VHF/UHF 2023 at the Charlotte Hamfestin March. Gary ‘inherited’ the forum from Roland Kraatz W9HPX, who became a Silent Key the previous December. Gary put in too many hours making ‘too many PowerPoint slides’ to just do a one-hour forum, so he recorded this Special Edition for HamRadioNow.
This version clocks in at about 90 minutes. Gary had to cut a lot of the slides he worked so hard to create to bring his talk down to an hour, so he put some of them back in for this version. Then, just for those of you with limited time, he took a digital axe to the whole thing and chopped it down to 15 minutes. It isn’t pretty, but the essential elements are there. Maybe.
We’re also presenting Gary’s original 2008 documentary Digital Voice for Amateur Radio, which includes his investigation of D-STAR and P-25, and the original DV mode for HF. Somehow all that is squeezed into less time than his slide show.
Audio podcast listeners are being treated only to the 90 minute slide show. If you want to see the truncated version, or the documentary, here’s the link to the web site: https://www.hamradionow.tv/episodes/2023/3/15/hrn-special-digital-voice-2023-vhfuhf-edition
The FCC has been MIA for some time in ham radio. RMs (Requests for Rulemaking) and a couple of NPRMs (Notices of Proposed Rulemaking) have been dormant for up to 10 years! We look at some of the important ones, and some that are important only to the guy who proposed them.
If you want to make comments on any RM or NPRM, review any of the proceedings (read the comments), or file one yourself (please don’t), this is the place: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/search-filings
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ is working on a slide deck for a hamfest talk next weekend (Charlotte Hamfest - see him live at 9 am Saturday, March 12). The topic is Digital Voice - VHF/UHF edition. Gary’s still working on the slides. He’s in the 70s. A good PowerPoint talk has maybe 30 slides, tops, say the experts. Do we have a problem? What do they know?
West Coast Host David W0DHG is the audience as Gary rehearses the talk. At the one hour point,
Gary was in the 60s. So close? We’ll watch the playback to see how it paces. David tried hard not to fall asleep.
A decibel is 1/10 of a Bel. By rights, this should be 1/10 of a show, but it’s at least 1/3. So bonus.
Well, at least we didn’t resort to an Ask Me Anything 🙄. Instead, Jim NO1PC and David W0DHG scraped Gary K4AAQ’s Facebook feed for Elmer questions that he answered in his usual “here’s how to build a clock” complexity. Or not! The dB answer was an attempt to simplify, to explain decibels without any math. Almost no math. Because Gary doesn’t know the math. He does it all by remembering 3 dB and 10 dB. Everything else slides between those two markers.
Then there’s a dual band antenna mystery to solve, some background on just how unique your call sign is, and a review of tone decode. All with a low grade fever.
Welcome to Ham Nation Now*
Even here in 2023, most ARRL Directors are not noted for frequent appearances in the ‘independent’ ham media. Mike Ritz W7VO, however, got swept onto YouTube as he addressed a radio club to discuss the January ARRL Board meeting, and the special meeting dealing with Ria Jairam N2RJ’s book issue. Mike found Ria ‘guilty as charged’. Ria joins us to review Mike’s video and dispute much of what he said.
Then we move on to review some other items of interest from the Board meeting: Field Day rules; more HQ oversight of Section Managers; steps to deal with the statistic that only 25% of newly licensed Amateur Radio operators will utilize their licenses on a regular basis; promoting operation on 10 and 6 meters; and the ghost of Code of Conduct.
And just as we crossed the 2-hour mark. the Internet crashed at Gary’s studio - no Zoom guests, no live stream (‘emergency maintenance at Comporium Cable’s fiber system). So we were done!
*Ham Nation Now? Well, that’s what Mike Ritz W7VO kept calling us. Maybe we need to say our name more often.
LINKS:
Here’s the video with Mike Ritz W7VO: https://youtu.be/A8fDCx-dzcc
The 3Y0J Bouvet DXpedition is over, a couple of weeks early. It was disappointing for all concerned - hams who wanted an All Time New One, the big-gun DXers who still needed the island to climb the higher rungs of the DXCC list, and probably most of all for the guys on… or near the island. Weather and rough seas prevented all but the most minimal operation, mostly cw and FT8 on 30 and 17 meters. Almost no SSB.
The big disappointment for us, though, was the behavior of far too many hams on the air and on the DX spotting web sites. Jamming, bootlegging and DIY ham police (and plenty of rookie operating errors) made the operation sound bad on the air. And on the clusters, lots of mostly anonymous comments that ran from snide to mean. Hmm. Aren’t we better than that?
Yeah, there was a lot of money involved. That’s nothing compared to the risk the crew took to get on the island at all. Maybe if your HRN hosts were more committed DXers, we’d feel your pain. We’re not. It’s not that big a deal for us. But we’re thinking it probably shouldn’t be for you. Be disappointed. Don’t be an ass about it.
Here’s our ‘airing of grievances’.
No Sunday night show this weekend because 🏈 (only the ‘Big Game’ takes us off… usually we ignore football). But we have bits and pieces. And the weekend’s not over (it’s Saturday afternoon as I - Gary - type this, so who knows?). Hopefully this will tide you over until the next big show.
But for now… I was on the phone with my original ham radio mentor from way back in the early 60’s. Back then he was Bob K9ZGT. Today he goes by his middle name, Winston (or Win), but to me he’ll always be Broken Old Bottles Bob. We talk about our early days a bit and what he’s been through. One of the chat room comments was ‘He’s an interesting guy’ - and so he is.
Then I booted up the studio, hoping Kyle could find some bandwidth down in Orlando (his phone is struggling) for a live shot. Hasn’t happened yet. We’ll be back if he can do it. Meanwhile, David popped up while working on his ARES group’s emcom trailer, so we get a quick tour. It’s pretty visual, but it’s on the podcast feed, too.
Bill Brown WB8ELK started launching near-space ham radio balloons in 1987. I think he can tell us more about this balloon from China than we’re getting from CNN. Joining Bill is Todd McKinney KN4TPG, a student in Atmospheric Science in Huntsville AL. Todd got interested in HAB (High Altitude Ballooning), and got his ham license so he could fly balloons with APRS and WSPR transmitters. Together they have insights on the Balloon from China that you won’t hear in the mainstream media. And then we talk about what’s happening on the balloon front in ham radio.
LINKS:
Bill’s website: WB8ELK.com
Bill’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@WB8ELK
Our guest is Ria Jairam N2RJ, podcaster, YouTuber and Director of the ARRL Hudson Division. Ria’s kind of getting picked on at the ARRL (our words, not hers). She tells us about that trouble and a division in the ranks of the Board falling along lines of transparency vs secrecy. We’ve heard that before when a Board Code of Conduct tried to silence Directors who disagreed with policy passed by the board. Listen to Ria’s take. Ask your Director to explain what’s happening. That might be interesting.
From Quartzfest 2023 Dick Norton N6AA addresses the start of the ARRL and the Southwest Division
In Episode 461, Glam Ham Natalie Gray NW6S revealed that she was one of the writers for the upcoming blockbuster video game Hogwarts Legacy. Gary K4AAQ jumped on the idea of introducing Ham Radio into the Harry Potter inspired project, because that’s what we always do.
Later, Gary felt the need to hammer the point home by creating a scene we wish we’d seen in the movies, and we present it for your consideration (but probably not Natalie’s 🙄).
Hogwarts Legacy, it turns out, won’t have any Harry Potter or Lord Voldemort in it anyway. Or BaoFeng radios. The game is set in the late 1800’s. So it could have some Spark Gap. Maybe Marconi can turn out to be a Wizard.
Our little play is audio only because we don’t have a movie set. And it’s ‘vertical’ because we produced it for our new TIK TOK channel. Yep, we have one of those now. What else might go there? Who knows.
The Glam Ham, Natalie Gray NW6S from Tik Tok visits with Gary and David to talk about her short but very full time in Amateur Radio. Natalie became a ham during the past 3 years, and has already make over 275 videos on TIK TOK about Ham Radio.
The Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act (don’t call it ‘Parity Act 2.0) is about to be introduced in the new Congress. What is it? How did we get here? Where will it go and how will it get there?
John Robert Stratton N5AUS and Fred Hopengarten K1VR were two members of the ARRL Legislative Advocacy Committee that drafted the bill from the ashes of the Parity Act, starting in 2019. They found a sponsor in Congressman Bill Johnson (R-OH), and worked with his staff to refine the language of the Bill (it didn’t need much). It was introduced at the end of the previous Congress just last December so the Committee could start rounding up co-sponsors. Sometime soon after the new Congress gets itself organized, the Bill will be reintroduced. And then begins the process that any Bill faces to work its way though Subcommittees, the full Committee (House Energy and Commerce), the House, and then the Senate. We have two years to get it done. The clock is ticking.
At some point soon, the League will start asking you to contact your Representatives, and maybe donate some cash to offset the lobbying expenses. That’s coming up, but not yet. We’ll be back. Watch this space.
This is the PROMO for Sunday’s live episode 459. Gary’s clever title is (Almost) In the Zoom Where It Happened, ‘It’ is the Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act, the new iteration of legislation to require HOAs to permit Amateur Radio antennas. We reviewed the version of the Act that was introduced in December in our last episode. This time, our guests will be two of the hams who were on the ARRL committee that drafted the new bill.
Tune in to the LIVE stream on Sunday, January 15, 2023 at 7 pm Pacific, 10 pm Eastern, 0300Z (Monday morning). Or watch the replay later.
Our fearless pundits review the verbiage of last years HR9670- Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act with the hopes that it’s going to be introduced this year (2023). This bill looks to be much more favorable to hams that want a small workable antenna… Audio starts at 3:45.
This is just a Promo(re), but it’s here in the feed by itself because the show hasn’t been scheduled yet… and this gets the audio podcast out there, too.
There’s a new Bill in Congress: H.R.9670, the Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act. We’ve been told “Don’t call it the Parity Act 2.0 because branding. But yeah, it kinda is.
If you want all the background, listen to the ProMore. Then do the homework, which is watching an old episode of HamRadioNow: HRN 342: It Ain't Parity Until We Say It's Parity. Taking notes is optional. Yes, this will be on the ‘final’.
Our guest is Karin Thompson KD4DXX, owner and General Manager of RT Systems Inc., the radio programming people. We only spent about 2½ hours talking to Karin, then the post-show with David and Marty. So one, we were making up for no show last week. And two, most of your favorite shows are doing reruns or ‘best ofs’ or ‘Year in Reviews’. Here we are with enough show to keep you entertained all week.
This is one of those titles that we never talked about. It wasn’t designed to describe any of the show content. Gary had been to three Christmas parties in two days, and just wasn’t feeling it, so…
The rest of the show was just a bunch of stuff thrown together at the last minute, but if we didn’t admit that, you’d never know. So this was a meticulously crafted and executed example of ham radio media at its finest. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.
LINKS:
ChatGPT. Give’er a spin (if you can get in)
Montana PBS Documentary: HAM
KR7Q’s ‘Behind the Scenes’
N4POD’s HamRadioRejects channel
K1N Navassa DVD
K1N Trailer (yes, Gary’s voice)
A Ham’s Night Before Christmas
GlamHam TikTok
The DXpedition crew that attempted an operation on Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic back in 2018 reached the island, only to be thwarted by bad weather and a failed engine. They limped back to port in South Africa. Bob Allphin K4UEE told their story in this video.
A new team, with hams from Norway and around the globe, planned to try again. They contracted The Braveheart - a ship that had transported many DXpeditions to difficult locations (but wasn’t available to the 2018 crew). Then, the Braveheart was sold, and the DXpedition was cancelled.
And then it wasn’t. They found a new ship… a sailboat ???… to get them there (and back). Hmmm. ‘Sailboat’ and ‘Antarctic’ don’t seem to go together, do they? Well, the MARAMA isn’t your ‘catch the rays while lying on deck’ type of sailboat. It leads expeditions to the frozen south Atlantic all the time.
The re-started 3Y0J crew leaves to Bouvet in January 2023, with operation stretching into February. And we have crew member Adrian Ciuperca KO8SCA on the show tonight to fill us in.
A slightly clickbait title? Could be. But HRN East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ is on a bit of a crusade to answer questions found in ham radio (and GMRS) oriented Facebook groups and Reddit subs. He’s more than a little disappointed by the quality of many of the responses to basic questions. On this show, he and NorCal host Jim NO1PC review a few classics.
Before that, though, the guys review 5 Great Reasons to Get Your Ham Radio License - an article in an RV blog introducing Amateur Radio to the author’s following. ‘Intro to Amateur Radio’ is always an interesting subject.
File this show under ‘David and Gary Phone It In 📞☎’. We should change the title to ‘ShowLESS’
OK, we did a 90 minute ProMORE (that’s a Promo that runs MORE than 30 minutes) on Saturday, and we were kinda out of gas for this one. Then David had a plumbing emergency, and Gary had to get up early to drive to Raleigh (playing with the ICOM 5100 all the way).
Well, we did talk about some stuff, if halfheartedly, for almost an hour. Enough to list some links:
LINKS
The QRZ.com/GigaParts/RT Systems ‘Jumpstart’ program is extended, sort of
https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/the-qrz-jumpstart-program-gave-away-2000-radios-and-were-not-done-yet.836918/
Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications Surpasses 25,000 Items
https://blog.archive.org/2022/11/16/digital-library-of-amateur-radio-communications-surpasses-25000-items/
https://archive.org/details/dlarc
https://archive.org/details/hamradionow?tab=about
As we’ve recently discovered (thanks to viewer ‘Cornbread’ in the YouTube chat), our ‘promos’ aren’t really ‘promos’ at all. They are ProMOREs. Because they are longer than most other shows… there’s more. Now the proMORE for HRN 451 was over three hours. That’s gonna be hard to duplicate. But despite David W0DHG’s prediction/request/protest at this beginning to this proMORE (and he kinda always tries that), we went over 90 minutes. And instead of tacking it onto the regular 452 episode, we’re giving it its own spot in the feed.
This is for Hardcore HRN fans only.
And we still don’t know what the Sunday show will be about. Apparently we don’t have to.
The ICOM ID-5100 was first released in 2015, 7 years ago. It’s still ICOM’s top-of-the-line dual-band D-STAR mobile rig. East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ just bought one to replace his 14-year-old ICOM IC-2820 (also a dual-band, D-STAR mobile), which was having trouble decoding D-STAR signals.
In this episode, Gary shows how he had to revamp his Q-Mobile’s control panel to fit the oversize control head of the 5100, then goes remote all the way to the garage (below the Studio in the Bonus Room) to demonstrate a few features (and issues) with the New Rig.
And so you may have noticed that this episode is only an hour and 15 minutes long. Are we welching on you guys? Not really! Earlier in the day, David and Gary did a 3-hour ‘PROMORE’ (a ‘promore’, apparently, is a new word invented to describe our extended promos that are often full-length shows themselves). You’ll find the Promore on YouTube and in the audio feed, just in case you need more… PROmore.
It was time to do a promo for HRN 451, to be titled New Rig… Who Dis?. David W0DHG was driving home (LA) from San Francisco. Gary K4AAQ anchored from the Studio in the Bonus Room Above the Garage on the North Side of Fort Mill (SC), in the Shadow of Charlotte, at the Foot of Mt. Belzoni.
A little over three hours later, then were done… apparently only because David arrived home.
David was in SF to visit one of his daughters. While they were attending an event, David’s rental car (good gas mileage offset rental price) was broken into, and his backpack with a PC and his AnyTone HT (in the trunk, not on the seat, so the thief was onto that trick) were stolen. And a window was broken. So much for savings. Likely his 2007 Toyota FJ, bristling with antennae, would not have been so assaulted.
No, it doesn’t take three hours to tell that story, so clearly there’s more. Probably about 45 minutes of real entertainment, sadly embedded in 3+ hours of ‘show’.
Oh, and ‘PROMORE’? That may have been a typo in the chat, or it may have been deliberate. Anyway, it’s a new way to label our extended ‘promo’ videos.
WARNING!! A Zoom issue caused David’s end of the call to echo everything Gary said. Gary - hearing his own voice which he loves - was good with that. Gary’s wife Cyndi KD4ACW, said it was ‘very annoying’. This Website agrees with Cyndi. Listen at your own risk 👂🔈🔉🔊. It clears up toward the end, but only so you can hear what you should have been hearing all along, if only they had hung up on Zoom and reconnected.
25 Miles comes from a fairly frequent Facebook inquiry from non-hams (usually) wondering how they might be able to communicate over X distance with some kind of radio technology when ‘All Else Fails’ - no cell phones, no Internet, no nothing (maybe sat phones… we didn’t think of that). The answer changes as you fill in the X with different distances, and 25 miles is sort of the limit with non-ham equipment (say, GMRS or CB), even with a decent (but not super-high or elaborate) antennas. Yes, the devil is in the many details. We discuss various distances (but forget about sat phones… it just doesn’t come up.
Then we talk about Ribbit, a new ‘technology’ for generating a text-based data signal on a smart phone that can be sent over a variety of medium - radio, VoIP - with ‘acoustic coupling’ - just holding the phone up to the mic and hitting ‘send’. It’s early days, and the technique may be a solution in search of a problem, but sometimes it works. They have a YouTube Video demonstrating the technology.,
Note that we had some trouble with our YouTube stream (again), and I’ve uploaded the recording to YouTube to avoid the buffering. Instead, you get a too-long discussion about the problem. Feel free to fast-forward (like you don’t do that already).
It’s just us - Jim NO1PC, David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ for the Halloween Eve show. So, Extreme Elmering? We talk about that, after checking out Kyle AA0Z’s recent Trivia show, and a story in the LA Times about hams in Taiwan maybe preparing for a showdown with China.
And a reminder that when we do a ‘Promo’ show, it’s not just to tell you we have a ‘real’ show coming up. We usually do a whole ‘nother show. 30 minutes… or more. This week is defiantly in the more category. So if this nearly 2½ hour episode isn’t enough, to watch the Promo.
Here’s the Ham Radio Live show with HRN’s Gary K4AAQ as a guest. A lot of early history of Gary’s production and streaming.
https://youtu.be/tzt7zQQcQ-A
Our guest is Larry Devoe K7HN. Larry hosts the Ham Radio Liveshow on YouTube, and produces a live show almost every day.
This episode includes the ‘Promo’ that Jim and Gary recorded on Saturday. And keep an eye out for the Ham Radio Live show in the HRN podcast feed that Larry did with Gary as his guest.
Don’t look it up… you won’t find it. Host Gary K4AAQ and his friend Jeff AC4ZO (SK) made it up during some previous HamRadioNow show. QBC?* means (according to them) “Are we in the middle of a Boring Conversation”?. And QBC** (no question mark) means “We are in the middle of a boring conversation. Terminate immediately”.
BUT… that’s not what we talked about this week. We got a last minute guest: Kay Savetz K6KJN is the Program Manager, Special Collections at the Internet Archive, home of the Wayback Machine that has been collecting old websites since about the dawn of time.
Kay is charged with collecting pretty much any media about Amateur Radio that he can get people to send. With a loose definition of ‘media’. For example, if you have an old log book from your Novice days (like Gary does), Kay wants it.
If you have something to contribute, drop Kay a line at: kay@archive.org
LINKS:
Internet Archive Amateur Radio Collection (in progress)
Kay says this is just the early presentation of the vast material he’s been curating.
With nowhere particularly to go, we spent most of the show talking about an article in Field & Streamabout the ‘Best Ham Radio’. Yes, Field & Stream.
We made up this title when the tropical storm remnants of Hurricane Ian were predicted to pass directly over the East Coast Studio (in the Shadow of Charlotte, at the foot of Mt. Belzoni). The track moved about 100 miles east and flooded Raleigh, instead. But of course, the serious devastation was in Cuba, Florida and coastal South Carolina.
We have our usual gang of hosts, Jim NO1PC, David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ. And we’re joined by Christine Duez K4KJN, SEC for the West Central Florida Section, and Gordon Mooneyhan W4EGM, Public Information Coordinator for the South Carolina Section. Both were on the edge of the path that Ian took through Florida and South Carolina.
What is the BEST! HAM Band of 2022?
Just because that is a silly, unanswerable question that pokes fun at all the ham (and general media) BEST! lists that provide ample fodder for many, many (many) shows, that doesn’t mean we don’t give it a shot. And by the time we’re done, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ unilaterally announces a winner!
Along the way, Gary, NorCal Host Jim NO1PC and West Coast Host David W0DHG are joined on the Zoom line by two live viewers: William K4ARX, and Kent N6WT. And the fun is in the journey, not the destination. We talk about a lot of stuff, some of it even useful.
Another busy weekend…
David W0DHG was up on Missile Mountain doing an Interop Drill, while Gary K4AAQ was helping with the video from the 2022 ARRL/TAPR DCC, in his hometown this year. David and Jim get into the weeds on Emcom in CA
Over the weekend, Gary K4AAQ played Ham Radio really hard with BikeMS in North Carolina. He checks in with a slide show from his hotel room while David W0DHG anchors from the West Coast Studio. Then Jim NO1PC reviews the issues with some of the USB cables needed for programming radios (and why some of those cables don’t work).
Two shows on the QRZ.com/GigaParts radio giveaway?
Yep. Well, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ messed up a few things while trying to do the ‘no manual’ test of the radio. So now, post RTFM, he clears some things up. It’s a radio review like only HamRadioNow can do.
On board are West Coast Host David W0DHG and NorCal Host Jim NO1PC.
Also, a our previous episode on ‘It’s Not CW’ got pretty well raked over by comments on QRZ.com, so we rake back. Easy to do when you own the show.
And we ruminate on the need and potential future of a radio like the Icom 905.
QRZ.com and GigaParts are giving away this dual-band handheld to new hams until Halloween 2022. is it ‘free and worth it’, or is it a decent radio? We check it out.
NOTE: There is some intermittent audio breakup in this recording. We refer to it based on chat-room reports, and find that it was recorded, not just online.
This week’s lineup: Kyle AA0Z, David W0DHG, Gary K4AAQ. So yeah, we let Gary do his CLICKBAIT rant, where he also thinks it should be Morse’s code - that’s with an apostrophe s. We expect all hams to start using that.
Kyle gave a Huntsville Hamfest wrap-up, we talked about the new ICOM IC-905 VHF to 10 GHz radio and that was more or less it (less, because we spent a long time talking about nothing in particular after that.
AUDIO AUDIENCE NOTE: there’s a lot of visual stuff here. Or at least we think there is. It’s the kind of thing you may or may not be able to make up in your head as you listen.
And there will be a show Sunday night. A ‘real’ show? Well, that’s yet to be determined. But this one went on long enough that we figured we should put it on the stream by itself and not tag it to the Sunday show.
========
Another ‘not an episode’?
Well, we have a good reason for this one (but don’t we always?)
This time, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ just got the new-to-us Wirecast computer up and running, and it was time to wring it out. Good news: it worked. Bad news: the Wirecast program doesn’t seem to use the second CPU. So it’s not helping as much as we expected. We’re looking into it.
Meanwhile, in this ‘not an episode’, West Coast Host David W0DHG is in New York City, where his daughter is competing in a Crossword Puzzle competition. David is a declared ‘non-combatant’, though he has a clear favorite in the event.
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ has been furiously… ok, intermittently… working on transitioning to the new Wirecast computer. He’s not quite done, but that left no time (he was willing to spend) on preparing for this show. So he and West Coast Host David W0DHG chatted for about 10 minutes and called it a night.
If you believe that, you’ve never watched this show before. On Saturday, the day before the Sunday live show, they did a Promo that lasted almost an hour. Those boys can talk. The question is: can you listen. We’ll see.
This audio file has the show… then the pre-show… then the Promo show. More for your money
HRN West Coast Host David Goldenberg W0DHG spend last weekend as the Comm guy for one of the Stages of the Angeles Crest 100 mile Endurance Run. We get the slide show.
Before that, though, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ analyzes our theme music, which sounds suspiciously like someone sending CQ (badly) on a piano. Then it’s “YouTube Takedown Testing” with snippets from a variety of media that also sound as though they were based on Morse Code. Including… and one you hear it you’ll never unhear it… the Mission Impossible theme.
We are joined by our Midwest Correspondent Kyle Kreig AA0Z to round out the team.
LINKS
We have a Discord, thanks to Jeff N4POD
https://discord.gg/FDP3JnyDun
Not sure exactly what we’ll do with it, but maybe that’s up to you!
There’s the stuff that will take us down from Facebook and YouTube:
Old BBC News Themes
NPR themes
NPR music composer BJ Leiderman riffing on the themes
UK Vintage Radio forum
The Dit Dit Song - Tommy Steele
Slim Gaillard - Communication
Pearls Before Swine - (Oh Dear) Miss Morse (NSFW if the boss can copy cw)
Episode 178: Radio Games - HamRadioNow
Ham Radio Live!
Gary will Guest on Sept. 3, 12 noon Pacific
https://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-hiring-for-high-frequency-direction-finding-center
New ARRL Lab/HQ station
https://youtu.be/68BJxGHg74Y
Sometimes a quick promo becomes a show.
Who am I kidding. Most of the time, what was intended to be a quick promo becomes a show.
We’re not saying it’s a good show. Just a long show. It’s just Kyle AA0Z and Gary K4AAQ. And the YouTube and Facebook versions come in two parts because Windows Update. No, we didn’t get an ‘update’ in the middle of the show. An update scrambled the Windows audio settings, and of course Gary didn’t notice. Finally a viewer commented. Fixing it required a total restart.
The audio file is ‘fixed’. The video is… what it is.
So we move to 10pm Eastern/7pm Pacific… do one show… then do a bunch of ‘No Show/Not a Show’ shows off schedule for one reason or another. Tonight we finally get back on schedule, and David and Jim aren’t available. Jim is still galivanting around the US, and David is sleeping after a big public service event kept him up all weekend.
So filling in, we roped in Jason Johnston KC5HWB from Ham Radio 2.0, and our ‘Midwest Correspondent’ Kyle Kreig AA0Z, on his phone from Spokane, WA where he was attending a DX conference. I’ll call it a ‘general conversation’. We got started extra early because Jason had limited time, and he ended up staying for almost 90 minutes anyway!
After Jason and Kyle excused themselves, I played some video showing my extensive ham operating on our recent trip to Canada for our Rocky Mountaineer adventure. I’m kidding - I barely got on the air at all. But I did some.
If you want to see video of the vacation in general, I’m posting what I call ‘raw video’ (really slightly edited) of each day’s activity on my ‘vacation video’ YouTube channel: https://YouTube.com/GaryPearce. You’ll find a Rocky Mountaineer playlist, along with playlists of other, similar ‘barely edited’ videos from other trips.
Gary developed COVID just after returning from his Canadian vacation with Cyndi KD4ACW. He felt good enough to do a quick ‘no show’ show early Sunday, not knowing how he might feel by Sunday night’s regular time slot. David was available, and a drop-in from ‘East Coast Correspondent’ Marty NN1C rounded out the crew. Marty’s not to happy about being demoted from ‘host’ to ‘correspondent’🤨.
It only takes David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ 37 minutes to tell you that we’re not doing a show this Sunday. Because Gary (and Cyndi KD4ACW) are heading out to Vancouver BC for a train trip through the Rockies. So we talk (but don’t do a show) about programming Gary’s DMR HT for the trip.
The Live Stream has shifted
to 7 PM Pacific, 10 PM Eastern Sunday,
0200Z (Monday, during US Daylight Saving Time) (not that you podcast listeners care, but maybe it opened up a window to watching the live show on YouTube or Facebook)
How do you program your VHF/UHF radios? Totally by hand? Using software? Either way, do you have a plan? A strategy? Or do you just chunk channels in there willy-nilly?
In tonight’s show, hosts Gary K4AAQ, David W0DHG and Midwest Correspondent Kyle AA0Z reveal their elaborate plans for programming their radios, and the software they use.
So there’s that, but so much more. Starting with the Hammy awards.
And finally, thanks to Jason Johnston KC4HWB from Ham Radio 2.0 for giving us the lead-in at the end of his show.
LINKS:
RT Systems
Chirp
Raleigh ARS Field Day 1990
Ham Talk for that amazing show intro
Hammy Awards 2020
We’re not doing a show on Sunday, July 3rd, because holiday. But we can’t leave you high and dry. High is up to you. Dry we can help with a little. David and Gary popped online to do a five-minute quickie, and almost an hour later, they were done.
Among other things, they discussed moving the show to a different time/day. There’s a poll on the HRN Facebook Group, asking when you the audience would like to see the show live. The results will ‘influence’ our choice.
Of less significance, Gary has a new green-screen background. He’s saying goodbye to the old Cary studio (just a memory, and also a picture), and he made a composite of the stuff lining the new studio. See if you can spot the discontinuity errors.
Have a good holiday and we’ll see you next week.
David was up almost all night. Could he do a show?
Jim was on the road. Could he show up?
And Gary had spent a live stream earlier in the day insulting Kyle AA0Z while restreaming* Kyle’s Field Day live stream, then had the audacity to invite Kyle to come on the show. Would he show up?
The answers to these important questions will be revealed as you watch or listen to this week’s thrilling episode.
see the previous entry in the HamRadioNow.tv web site for the two HRN Field Day live streams - links below. Sorry, audio listeners - the Field Day Live Stream* (Parts One and Two) are only on video (YouTube and Facebook). We recommend Part Two.
LINKS
Kyle AA0Z’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/KyleAA0Z
Kyle’s Please Copy Marathon (where Gary shows up at the end, as seen from Kyle’s stream): https://youtu.be/1tmwXtytUTs
HRN’s Field Day Live Stream, Part One (on YouTube): https://youtu.be/bk6x8M1LlYM
HRN’s Field Day Live Stream, Part Two (also on YouTube) where Gary restreams Kyle, and Kyle discovers it at the end and restreams Gary’s restream, thus breaking the Internet and fracturing the Matrix: https://youtu.be/q9XCbQxWhiA
Sean Kutzko KX9X and Nancy Livingston N9NCY are about to embark on a vacation from their home in central Illinois to Glacier National Park in Montana. The point of the trip is hiking and camping, but because Sean is Sean (and Nancy seems enthusiastic about it), there will be hamming. Mostly on Satellites from ‘rare’ grid squares, and some six meters. And they came by to talk about the trip.
If that seems ambitious, our own Jim Aspenwall NO1PC will hit the road starting Field Day weekend for a month-long, coast-to-coast vacation. That’s a family-visit oriented thing, but it will also include lots of hamming and Parks On The Air. Follow Jim’s progress on APRS.
We give a few random Field Day tips (and point you to Ria N1RJ’s show for ‘Your comprehensive guide’.
And finally, Gary relates how he techno-shamed local hams because he’s a 😈 bad ham 😈
LINKS:
Sean KX9X links:
https://www.wildwestrove.com/
YouTube Satellite Operating Tips playlist on DX Engineering
Working the Ham Satellites - PDF Slideshow
DX Engineering On All Bands blog
Listen to Sean’s first ever ISS contact
This is a jam packed show.
First, we talk with John Hays K7VE. John is Outreach Manager with the Amateur Radio Digital Communications Foundation. For the past three years, this group has made grants totaling millions of dollars to Amateur Radio groups and projects… and they’re just getting started. Find out where they got the money and how they give it away (maybe to your club?). John also talks about the state and future of Digital communications in Amateur Radio.
Next, we take up the case of Jason Frawley WA7CQ. The FCC has proposed fining Jason a record $34,000 for interfering with government communications involving a forest fire near his Idaho hometown (and a tower where he has communications equipment) last summer. But this is not an allegation of jamming, a false emergency call or misdirection of emergency personnel. Jason says he had a good reason to use the Forest Service frequency to alert the firefighters about something he knew… something the FCC did not detail in their Notice of Apparent Liability that proposes the fine. There are lots of question marks that will hopefully be filled in over the coming months. We have a spirited discussion.
Finally, this was the June VHF Contest weekend. Gary drove the Q-mobile up to a ‘high spot’ in his neighborhood and made a few contacts on two-meter SSB and FM, and then six-meter SSB. He made a little movie out of the experience. And Gary’s wife Cyndi KD4ACW makes a return appearance to the show because the VHF Contest has special significance to her and Gary’s relationship. Yes… VHF ‘Roving’ was their first date 💘
Host Gary K4AAQ caught what he describes as the Holy Grail of scanning – a beginning-to-end major (for his little burg) police manhunt, from initial call to final resolution. He says that almost never happens.
And it only took an hour and a quarter to begin that segment of the show. David W0DHG (or, as Gary incorrectly typed in David’s title: WDHG) and Jim NO1PC had plenty of other stuff to talk about first.
Yes, once again it’s a totally wasted… we mean thoroughly engaging, entertaining and occasionally useful two hours of banter from your favorite YouTube/Podcast media hams.
LINKS:
Lizzo’s Music Video (cued to the Kenwood shot)
Reddit thread about the Lizzo video
RadioReference.com
It’s Sunday night of the Memorial Day weekend. David W0DHG, Marty NN1C and Gary K4AAQ have nothing better to do, but no show topic is planned. We were gonna skip the week due to the holiday, but here we were. So we started the streams, pushed record, and away we went. Gary’s Wirecast program crashed in the middle of recording, hence the two parts on YouTube and Facebook. The audio version is edited together as one piece (enjoy the sound effect). (Side note: Gary originally titled the re-start After the Crash, and it started getting way more views than the initial recording. Who knows why, but Gary figured that maybe that title was a bit of clickbait, so he changed them to Part 1 and Part 2. Integrity is a bitch.
Marty caught COVID at the Hamvention®. He said it was rough for a few days, but he was feeling a lot better as of the show. But still testing positive. We talked about getting ready for Field Day. Gary pitched the HamRadioNow Field Day Playliston YouTube, especially The Last BIG Field Day documentary that pretty much started things off for ARVN and HamRadioNow. And there are lots of other videos from ARVN, HRN and ‘KN4AQ’ to get you in the mood for Field Day. And as David had to bail for family time on the left coast, Marty and Gary somehow started talking about television production.
LINKS
HamRadioNow Field Day Playliston YouTube
The Last BIG Field Day
So, GMRS - General Mobile Radio Service - is a thing. It’s becoming a big thing, or so it seems. And at least around Gary’s area (Charlotte NC), a lot of hams also have GMRS licenses. And with the fee dropped from $70 to $35, likely a lot more will (GMRS users are happy about $35, while many hams are grousing about it).
And it turns out that your hosts already had GMRS licenses. David is WROT234. Jim is WQWB533. Gary is WRPG652. Those call signs just trip off the tongue, don’t they.
Well, we explain a lot about what GMRS is. We even have a few viewers join us on Zoom. That worked, so we’ll be doing more of it. Watch for Zoom links in the YouTube and Facebook announcements, and be a star.
Links:
Wikipedia’s GMRS article
FCC’s GMRS page
MyGMRS web page
RepeaterBook’s GMRS area
NotaRubicon YouTube Channel
David, Jim and Gary ramble about the upcoming Dayton Hamvention (they won't be there) and the planned PopUp videos from our field reporter, Marty NN1C, who will be live on the scene! We get a surprise visit from Ham Radio 2.0's Jason Johnston KC5HWB
10.2 years ago, HamRadioNow evolved out of ARVN//AmateurRadioVideoNews’s DVD production business with a series of programs recorded during a visit to the Orlando HamCation in February, 2012. So we’re a couple months late… hence the ‘point tooth’ appendage to the big Ten Years. Well, we were kinda off the air that month, and we forgot all about it for the most recent two episodes (apparently it wasn’t that big a deal). But watching the 7th Anniversary Episode of HamRadio 2.0 reminded us. So Congratulations, Jason KC5HWB and congratulations, us! (BTW, Jason has been producing ham radio shows full time for the past two years. Awesome!).
Gary remembers: I wasn’t the first ham to think of the show name HamRadioNow. Ten years ago, when I went looking into that name, I found out that the domain HamRadioNow.com was already owned… but not in use… by Tom Loughney AJ4XM. Tom’s early career was as a broadcast engineer, and he had hopes and dreams of making shows under the HamRadioNow banner. But they weren’t coming together when I asked him about the URL. It was about to expire, and he let it go, so I got it. Thanks, Tom - I hope we’ve done you proud. Note that we’ve promoted ourselves as HamRadioNow.TV, but it would have been awkward to have a different ‘dot com’ out there. I’m glad we have both.
As part of the ‘celebration’, we’re giving away one of Gary’s old (and beloved) handhelds, an ICOM W2A. This model was manufactured in the early 1990s. It’s a dual-band, dual-display radio that can receive on both a VHF and a UHF channel at the same time (take THAT, Anytone 878 and most Baofengs). It holds 30 VHF and 30 UHF memory channels, and it’s the first ICOM dual-band, dual-display radio in a ‘smaller than a brick’ form factor. And as of a recent check of used equipment, it has almost zero monetary value. It comes with the drop-in charger, but needs a new battery. Then it should be good to go! It did work when we tested it before the show, but it offered ‘as is’ with no warranty or expectation that it will be anything more than a curious paperweight.
Enter to win? This giveaway is open to licensed hams only, and the radio will be shipped only to a US postal address. If you quality, enter by leaving the comment “I want it” on either this episode’s YouTube page or Facebook Group post. Make sure your name and call sign are obvious in your comment. We’ll choose a winner at random from qualified entries after Friday, May 13, 2022, and reply with ‘It’s You'!’ as a reply to your comment. You then reply by email to kn4aq@arvn.tv, and we’ll get your shipping address. Then we’ll tie the package to the back of a nearby turtle and send it on its way.
Meanwhile, back on our episode… Last week we noted that a MARS/Amateur Radio Interoperability Test would be happening during the week. Gary tuned in from his Q-Mobile, and later (thanks to a tip from host David W0DHG) on some WebSDR receivers. The operation demonstrated 60 meter propagation, both daytime and night, as the MARS stations (using ‘tactical’ call signs like Delta X-Ray) requested some real-time information from hams in specific locations around the US. We played some video of our observation while Army MARS Chief Paul English WD8DBY / AAA6B told us what we were watching. It was fun listening, and probably even more fun for the hams who participated.
We also welcomed back Marty Sullaway NN1C (formerly KC1CWF or 🐔with🍟). Marty is now a young adult with an apartment, a job and a car payment. Then Marty and NorCal host Jim Aspinwall NO1PC started getting all technical on us about stuff David and Gary didn’t understand, but we let them banter a while before we shut things down.
Norm Goodkin K6YXH visits with David W0DHG and talks about getting up and running to do remote testing for Amateur Radio Licenses. Norm mentioned that there were a lot of other players involved, but this is a good review of what they went through to get up and running. We discuss security concerns and how it works.
Ward Silver N0AX joins Jim Aspinwall NO1PC and David W0DHG for the first of the ElmerCast Series. We talk about GROUNDING!
Jim Aspinwall NO1PC (of the Amateur Radio Elmers Facebook Community) joins me to talk about Elmering (mentoring) and our joint ffort to bring new content to the Amateur Radio Community!
Mike Ritz W7VO joins David to talk about his race to become the division director in the Northwestern Division.
This weeks guest Richard Bateman KD7BBC owner of HamStudy.org talks about the HamStudy product, a newly released set of mobile applications, and signalstuff.com if you are interested Richard gave me a discount code for the products from signalstuff.com: hamradionow (all lower case- good until 5/31/2018)
In February 2012, Gary KN4AQ (now K4AAQ) took some video cameras and mics down to Orlando to document the 2nd largest hamfest in the US. The footage made Episode 1, and then a bunch of shorter shows that all got wedged in Episode 2.. You can still find them on YouTube.
So why might you be hearing this episode now? We made some changes in the web site and podcast hosting, moving the audio over to our SquareSpace web site. Getting things connected back to Apple, Google and other ‘RSS’ distributors is tricky. They needed audio in the 1st ‘blog’ post that makes up our episode pages. So this is that audio. Enjoy the blast from the past.