HRN 436: Finally... a Real Show

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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.

This is the PROMO PROMO PROMO, which, as usual, is its own show.

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.

HRN 435: No Show COVID Show (Oh No!)

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Gary developed COVID just after returning from his Canadian vacation with Cyndi KD4ACW. Cyndi got it first, and is quarantining in Calgary. Gary slipped back to the States before developing symptoms and testing positive. 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’🤨.

HRN 434: Programming Strategies

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The Live Stream has shifted
to 7 PM Pacific, 10 PM Eastern Sunday,
0200Z (Monday, during US Daylight Saving Time)

So, I know it looks like we’re talking and doing the pre-show right from the beginning, but you don’t hear anything. Because Gary did it again and didn’t switch audio onto the stream. Until his friend KE4TTS called to tell him. At the 11:05 point. Zoom on in. Gary’s an idiot😤🤪

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?

We do ‘promos’ different. This one’s a 20 minute mini-show… longer than some shows do shows. And oops, Gary forgot to turn on audio for the first minute.

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 Gary and David did a 20 minute promo for this episode on Friday, so check that out, too.

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:

AUDIO FILE TROUBLE: Fixed!

No Show Promo Show (July 4, 2022)

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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.

It starts right up!

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.

HRN 433: YES, We're Doing a Post Field Day Show

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David was up almost all night. Could he do a show?

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Jim was on the road. Could he show up?

Starts right up, no delay 😀

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

HRN EXTRA - Field Day 2022 Live (Parts One and Two)

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Don’t get excited. We didn’t get out there with the full production crew and document Field Day like we might have in the past. This was just Gary K4AAQ in the East Coast Studio, hoping David might pop up on Zoom. David didn’t, so Gary just surfed YouTube for Field Day Live Streams. In Part ONE on Saturday, he found the ARRL streaming from W1AW. In Part TWO on Sunday, he found Kyle AA0Z doing a live stream from his home in MO (we’re told using a remote station) that he called the Please Copy Marathon. Eradicating ‘Please copy’ is a cause near and dear Gary, so he tuned in and began restreaming Kyle with his own commentary. Eventually, Kyle discovered the restream and the Matrix began to break.

No Audio podcast for this one.

LINKS:

HRN 432: Sean & Nancy & Jim's Excellent Adventures

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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.

The show begins 5:35 into the stream (or with the countdown timer showing 7:05)

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:

"COMMENTS TEST" (Parts One and Two)

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YouTube and Facebook have ‘comments’, and all the other ham radio shows have integrated them into the flow of the programs (or ‘disruption’ of the flow, as the case may be).

There’s power in the audience.

We’re late to the party. but today, Gary got the Wirecast technology working, and fired up the streams to test it. He thought maybe one or two people would come out of the woodwork (with ‘Notification’ of a live stream turned on). He was surprised.

There are two parts to the show - that was never supposed to be a show - because halfway through the ‘stream’ icon was RED instead of GREEN, and he clicked on it… and the streams stopped. So he quickly started things up again.

We had a great time with the audience. Thanks, you guys!

HRN 431: Grant... Wished (plus 'Biggest FCC Fine' and VHF Contest)

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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.

Bust past the countdown screen at 7:30

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 💘

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  • ARDC Survey

    • So, we didn’t give away where the ARDC grant money came from, did we? Well, it wasn’t a billionaire ham (are there any? (Elon, got your ham ticket? Why not? Bill? Jeff?). There was… is… a resource that ham radio received a few decades ago that we haven’t used much of. It’s gotten scarce, so it’s gotten valuable. We’re not talking spectrum. We’re talking IPv4 Internet addresses. And in this case, Use It or Lose It was more like Use It or Sell Some of What You Haven’t Used for a Bundle of Cash. The 44 Net. Ham Radio got millions of those addresses back when nobody thought the Internet would get that big, and the total number of addresses was over 4 Billion. Well, it did, and ‘the Internet’ ran out of new IPv4 addresses. They invented IPv6, which has enough addresses for every grain of sand on the beach (340 trillion trillion trillion). But the Internet is still based on IPv4, and not all devices can handle IPv6, so those ‘old’ addresses are valuable. And ARDC sold just some of their stash for millions 💰, which they’re giving to worthy causes in Amateur Radio.

    • But ARDC still has millions more of these IPv4 addressed, dedicated to Amateur Radio. and they’d really like to get more into use. Got an idea? Take the Survey. Let’em know.

HRN 430: Adventures in Scanning

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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.

You only have to zip in two minutes to get the pre-show. And that’s only because Gary forgot to switch on the audio when he started the streams, with a discussion about repeater directories already in progress.

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.

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HRN 429: Holiday Chat

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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.

We use up the whole ‘countdown’ and more off-screen, so zip down to the 12:33 spot on your timeline

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 Playlist on 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

We pick up after the Wirecast crash and carry on

HRN 428: GMRS for H.A.M.S.

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H.A.M.S. isn’t some new set of initials we invented. It’s just that I want you to read ‘hams’ the same way you read GMRS - one letter at a time. There’s no deeper meaning.

Zip in almost the whole 5 minutes of the countdown for about 3 seconds of pre-show as the counter elapses, and we lose control

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:

HRN Dayton Hamvention® PopUps

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Gary K4AAQ, David W0DHG and Jim NO1PC are all at home, warm and dry. Marty NN1C is our intrepid reporter on the scene at the Dayton Hamvention®! We’ll just Pop Up with a report from Marty, anchored by Gary, David and Jim back in their studios (well, David and Jim a little later, cuz ‘west coast time’).

Keep an eye on our YouTube Channel or Facebook Group, or drop in their later for a replay.

Gary, David and Jim warmed things up on Thursday night with a ramble, and got a surprise guest: Jason Johnston KC5HWB from HamRadio 2.0.

HRN 427: Our Ten Point Tooth Anniversary, and MARS Interop

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You only have to zoom in 1:46 to get to the active pre-show video📺

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.


HRN 426: Squelch

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What can you say about squelch? This should take about 5 minutes, tops.

What? it’s almost 3 hours? 😱 Well, we do go deep, and we goof around some. But yeah, we even cut some stuff out to just end the show and get to dinner.

The show begins at 13:35, with about 54 seconds left on the countdown

Before we dug into Squelch, we talked about this week’s MARS/Amateur Radio Interop activity, scheduled for Monday night through Saturday afternoon. It’s all on 60 meters, channel 1 (5330.5 kHz) with a nightly 10 PM nationwide broadcast (and some check-in stuff), and Noon Local Time ‘net’, Tuesday thru Saturday (so 4 regional ‘nets’. As I type this on Tuesday afternoon, we’ve had one ‘broadcast’ and one ‘net’. I’ll have some video and we’ll talk more on the next episode.

Then, it’s ‘all Squelch, all the time’. You might wish we had squelched ourselves a little earlier, but you do have playback control. Use it!

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HRN 425: AnyTone AT-D878UVII Plus - 2nd Look

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Slide in about 5 minutes to skip the silent ‘testing’ period

The AnyTone AT-D878UVII Plus and the 578 mobile version are often cited as the ‘Best DMR radios in Amateur Radio. DMR - Digital Mobile Radio - in ham radio has progressed from the strictly commercial radios that were first brought into the amateur service to several lines and models designed to be ‘real’ ham radios, with features and operation more like the Icom, Kenwood, Yaesu and Alinco radios that we’ve been using for decades.

But how close did they come? Are they ‘real’ ham radios? And what is a ‘real’ ham radio, anyway?

Over the course of a swift 🙄 two hours, David W0DHG, Jim NO1PC and returning host Gary K4AAQ (yes, a slightly new call sign) review the pros and cons and make some comparisons.

The bottom line: let’s just say they do not agree.

Jeff Wittich AC4ZO... SK

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Jeff Wittich AC4ZO helped out on a lot of HamRadioNow episodes, enough to nearly be a co-host. He came with me to Dayton and Orlando several times. The first time, in 2007, he was the Dayton Virgin back when we were making shows on DVD.. While I think he enjoyed it, it was never his favorite thing to do. He did it because I asked him to. I asked him to because he was very good at it. He was very good at just about anything he tried to do.

Except… staying alive.

In the fall of 2020, Jeff was diagnosed with brain cancer. It was bad - Grade 4 Glioblastoma - incurable, with an average prognosis of about 2 years. He underwent surgery and radiation therapy to remove as much of the cancer as possible, but there was no way to remove all of it. As 2021 progressed, Jeff held his own for a while, but his strength was limited. He couldn’t work. In June, he was able to go with us to visit the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a dream trip. Shortly after that, though, his doctor discovered new cancer in his lungs and lymphatic system. Brain cancer usually doesn’t spread like that. It was a mystery, but worse, it robbed him of what might have been another year of life. Jeff passed away on August 2nd, 2021.

If you watch the videos, it will be obvious that Jeff was more than my video partner. He’d been my best friend since we met in the mid-90s, just after he got his ham license. He was a brilliant, mostly self-taught engineer, and he was always happy to help or share his knowledge, especially with new hams. We had a lot of fun together, and very few hard times.

We lost a good one. - Gary K4AAQ

HRN 415: FCC Reallocation Proposal 3/5GHz

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Andre Hansen K6AH, David Erickson KB5UGF and Jim Aspinwall NO1PC join David W0DHG to discuss the SPECTRUM DEFENSE and proposed changes to the 3GHz and 5GHz bands. These changes will affect current ARDEN networks across the nation. Below are links referenced in the show. Please remember before you response, make sure it's professional and to the point. And please reach out to your served agencies and representatives.

CALL TO ACTION: https://www.arednmesh.org/content/call-action-defense-part-97-allocations

TEMPLATE COMMENT LINK: https://www.arednmesh.org/content/templates-submit-comments-3-ghz-fcc-docket-19-348

ARDEN ARTICLE: https://www.arednmesh.org/content/qst-june-2017MJARS Links: https://www.mjars.org/save-3-3-3-5ghz