Scotty Cowling WA2DFI from HPSDR and TAPR; Jared Boone AF7SO from ShareBrained Technology and Great Scott Gadgets (HackRF); and Steve Hicks N5AC from FlexRadio Systems team up to make this engaging presentation from their points on the SDR 'spectrum.' As you'll see, the room was SRO (crowded and hot).
Bob Bruninga WB4APR invented APRS. He's had plenty of help, but it's still his show. While most of us use it to show where we are on a map, there are so many more aspects to it that Bob can't fit them all into a single forum. So this is kind of a 'greatest hits,' including my personal favorite: APRS isn't a vehicle tracking system!
At the beginning of the forum, Bob asks the audience if anyone "made a Voice Alert contact on the way here?" I hadn't really gotten the camera rolling, so I missed the first few words. And I've got a huge cold, so I don't feel like sitting in front of the camera or mic for an introduction, so BAM, the episode begins!
Bob has three guests, and you'll find them at the times listed below (audio or video):
26:30 Don Arnold W6GPS introduces the new Kenwood D-STAR HT, along with some of the Japanese Kenwood design team, and AVMap updates.
36:30 is a quick shot with Byon Garrabrant N6BG with a couple of new products from Byonics.
42:50 Bryan Hoyer K7UDR from NW Digital Radio reviews their stuff (and the UDXR still isn't out, but the web site says "Q2..."}
Here's all two hours of the forum, and a handy timing guide to find the speaker you want to hear:
1:10 Steve Bible N7HPR Intro/Welcome/DCC Announcement
15:00 Kai Siwiak KE4PT, QEX Editor
18:45 SatNOGS: Corey Shields KB9JHU
42:00 HamWAN: Bryan Fields W9CR
1:14:00 SDR Disrupt: Chris Testa KD2BMH
1:34:50 HackRF Update: Mike Ossmann AD0NR
All of the TAPR video from HamRadioNow since 2011 is available on this YouTube Playlist. The 2007/2008 video is being added to this Playlist.
This time Gary set up the tripod and camera before he loaded up the car, so it got priority positioning to shoot the 500 mile road trip from home near Raleigh NC to the Dayton Hamvention. And he's using the headset mic... no more lavalier mic draped from the bill of a baseball cap. This leads off a slew of forums, interviews and specials coming as fast as Gary can edit them.
This episode began as Audio Only. Gary and wife Cyndi KD4ACW recorded it while traveling about 200 MPH EuroStar high speed train between Paris and London. Once home, Gary added pictures from the 15 hours of footage he shot with the camera glued to his hand.
Gary considers usurping the 100 Watts and a Wire show name because nobody on the show runs 100 watts and a wire anymore. But he tempers his hostile takeover because co-host Katie Allen WY7YL has taken a new job, and it look like she won't be able to participate in the show (but Katie, you didn't even say good-bye!). Gary's HF rig can't even muster 100 watts anymore, so he settles for 85.. and he's legit on the wire thing.
Next he reviews the new HamRadioNow.tv web site (with a real URL!), some news stories he won't be covering because of 1) Time; 2) Inefficiency; and 3) a vacation. He'll see you at Dayton (and probably squeeze in a show or three before that).
Finally, the Missouri House has passed it's version of the Amateur Radio Parity Act. It's in a Senate committee. Gary's got the audio of the House 'debate' that's kinda odd (but all's well that ends well?).
Is NTS, the National Traffic System, stuck hopelessly in the past, or is it leading the charge into the future? In this conversation with North Carolina Section Traffic Manager Dave Roy W4DNA, we find the answer is somewhere in the middle. Most traffic is still passed (laboriously) by voice or CW, but some... mostly in the middle of the system where messages transit from one region to another... flows quickly by HF digital systems (RMS Express, Pactor 3).
Gary challenges Dave about whether hams do what we claim we can: send health and welfare messages on behalf of people in disaster areas who are cut off with friends and relatives unable to reach them. And he asks if the system could really handle thousands of messages flooding in at once in a mass disaster if hams actually succeeded in originating them.
This episode was recorded at the RARSfest- the Raleigh NC Hamfest on April 2, 2016. The opening celebrates the event of the 250th episode with a couple of unsolicited testimonials from fans who approached Gary as he wandered the aisles taking pictures.
As of April, 2016, when the old HamRadioNow web site was decommissioned and this new one was built, we had 250 Episodes 'in the can' (that's film-speak for 'done'). And that really represented over 300 programs, because many Episodes had multiple parts. Many of those 'parts' were an hour or more themselves.
There's probably no way we'll redo separate web pages for all those old episodes. We're thinking maybe some pointers to evergreens, to 'best of's' or other 'must-see' for hams finding the show for the first time. But fully indexing all the old content for easy reference is just beyond our means.
THIS web format allows Blogs. And for new programs, we're thinking maybe a blog entry is the best way to almost automatically update the site. It also allows you to make comments on each episode, and have them in one coherent place. Maybe this will work! We'll begin with the new one, Episode 250, and see how it goes.
For Episodes 1-249, we'll point you to the real source of all our media: www.YouTube.com/HamRadioNow.
But one more thing…
I need to make Apple Podcasts happy by putting some audio here. So let’s go back the start. This is the audio from Episode 1, back in February, 2012.
