Ham Radio Now

They've got a sense of humor out in Earthquake County. Gallows humor to the rest of us, maybe, but they call the statewide preparedness drill The Great California Shake Out.

Ham Radio is right in there, of course, and HRN host David Goldenberg W0DHG, an EC in the Los Angeles area, took us to the middle of it, live. Until he got called away to go do some actual communicating.

A few hours later, safe and sound in the ARVN West Coast Bureau (aka David's garage), he recaps the event and reviews lessons learned (like 'Don't try to do a TV show when you're supposed to be paying attention to the radio...').

Radio Rating: B-. The video is a little rough and not all that important, though David does show the Comm trailer and the surrounding area. What you'll miss most are David and the other ops ducking and covering as the klaxons go off initiating the actual event. That's sort of what you see in the bottom of the poster for this episode (assuming you see that). On the other hand, the audio is kind of rough, too, with a lot of competing voices hitting Davies microphone.

Bruce Perens K6BP at the 2017 ARRL/TAPR DCC.

Do we really need to say any more? 

OK, Bruce's main point is one he's been making for several years: The major manufacturers have been screwing up Digital Voice with mediocre implementation and their incompatible walled gardens. And we're slowly getting closer to VHF+SDR radios that can do better.

He is especially critical of Yaesu, but actually compliments Kenwood for introducing a radio that is actually compatible with at least one other line of radios (ICOM/D-STAR).

Radio Rating: A. All but one of Bruce's slides are text, and he reads them verbatim, and then adds more ad-lib comments. The one slide that's not text is a picture of an old telephone modem with acoustic coupler.

Brady O'Brien KC9TPA is a young ham who has been working with David Rowe VK5DGR, the creator of the open source CODEC2 low bitrate voice codec. In this TAPR talk he talks modem tech in SDR (a generalized way of saying that Gary doesn't understand it well enough to describe it).

He concludes by talking about the on-channel TDMA repeater project that David Rowe is working on using a VHF version of FreeDV and CODEC2.

Oh, and that title? It refers to an iconic line in a old video game, and Brady's rip-off probably should be All Your Modem Are Belong To Us. Look it up. And check out the last 15 seconds of this show.

Radio Rating: B-. Brady has a few graphs showing signal performance of various modems, but he gives a good verbal conclusion of them. Most of the rest of his slides are 'headline' text for the topics he's discussion.

http://www.rowetel.com/

SATERN's been busy. Well, so have all the EmComm services, but SATERN's in our spotlight for this episode. We're talking to Salvation Army National SATERN Liaison Bill Feist WB8BZH (pronounced "Feest" or "Feast").

Like most Amateur Radio EmComm groups, SATERN (Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network), is going digital... slowly. We'll find out about that and lots more in this patented HamRadioNow In-Depth conversation. Bill reviews activity for the Eclipse, and back-to-back-to-back hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.

And as nice as the Skype video is, this is another radio show. All talking heads (and a little web you can look up yourself), so a Radio Rating of A.

http://satern.org

Before the DCC sessions get started, TAPR President Steve Bible N7HPR spends a few minutes welcoming everyone to this year's conference, giving the lay of the land (bathrooms, lunch) and introducing the people who help put on the event.

Listening to this session gives you a little more of the "DCC Experience." If you consider attending in person one year, you'll have a better idea of what to expect.

 For us, it's a chance to pitch our fundraising. The DCC videos are expensive to produce, and we pay for it with viewer (listener?) contributions. Here's how to 'click the pig' on audio: https://www.hamradionow.tv/contribute/

There will be 16 individual talks, each appearing as a HamRadioNow episode. We'll also have the Banquet talk from Saturday night, and the Sunday Seminar, a 'deep dive' into a single topic that takes four hours on Sunday morning. That usually appears as a three or four-part episode. 

That's about 20 episodes! It takes time to edit each talk. We usually produce two or three a week, and the fall holidays slow things down. It will take until December... maybe January, to get them all done.

Radio Rating? Always a problem with forums that are heavy on PowerPoint slides. Sometimes the slides are mostly text, and the presenter reads them and elaborates on the points. Sometimes there are pictures, graphs, formulas - stuff that doesn't translate well to speech. We don't want to have to analyze them that closely and carefully calculate the grade. Our cop-out is to give them all a Radio Rating of C. If we do remember well, we'll fine-tune the grade. This episode has some slides, but you don't miss much, so this one is upgraded to a B.

I really wanted to call this something obscure, like The Wet Diamond Noise Blanker (you'll see why), but I restrained myself.

FlexRadio's Steve Hicks N5AC gives an illuminating talk on how SDR technology lets you detect signals that are 'below the noise level' - and how you might not even know what 'the noise level' really is.

From the ARRL & TAPR 2017 Digital Communications Conference, Sept. 15-17, St. Louis, MO.

Chris Petersen K9EQ digs into the capabilities and possibilities of Yaesu's System Fusion.

From the ARRL & TAPR 2017 Digital Communications Conference, Sept. 15-17, St. Louis, MO.

David Bern W2LNX and his local club (the Montgomery MD ARC) cover all the bases in making new hams, with the help of the Laurel VEC.

From the ARRL & TAPR 2017 Digital Communications Conference, Sept. 15-17, St. Louis, MO.