Ham Radio Now

All the chatter about Amateur Radio and the Eclipse (coming August 21 to a sky near you, if you're in the USA...) has been about propagation. What effect will the eclipse have on the bands?

But major HRN fan Mark Cartwright noted that one county in Idaho had declared Eclipse Day to be a State of Emergency. 

Think about it. The path of totality is about 70 miles wide, stretching from the Pacific Northwest to the Atlantic in South Carolina. Most of it is in very rural territory, and a few small to medium size cities are right in the middle. Millions of people are expected to flock to that zone. In any given county, it could be tens to hundreds of thousands, depending on expected viewing conditions.

It turns out that emergency management in most areas have been preparing for months. The State of Emergency may (or may not) be a bit too much, but at a minimum, EM is expecting gridlock on most major arteries in the zone. So are astronomers who have experienced total eclipses before.

While an eclipse isn't a 'natural disaster', and won't wipe out communications (maybe a little on HF), that many people in rural territory will certainly overload the cell system.

Does Amateur Radio have a role? And are ARES groups stepping up to fill it?

This show began as an off-line Skype discussion between hosts Gary KN4AQ and David W0DHG. At some point, David said 'this ought to be a show', and Gary pushed the Facebook Live button. 

We'll probably do another show after we've rounded up a few ECs, etc. in the zone to talk to about what they're planning.

Gary shows some maps of the path of totality. You can see it here:

http://www.eclipse2017.org/xavier_redirect.htm

But mostly it's a discussion. So an accidental Radio Rating of A.

Toward the end of the show, they go off-topic, and Gary discusses the 'Future of HRN'. Spoiler alert: Gary says that view counts and downloads do not justify doing the show. Only the level of fan contributions make it worth doing (and that's at the 'just barely' level).  So while this 'show-not a show' rambles and ambles a bit (typical, really), you might want to stick around to the end.

Early this morning, Tropical Storm Emily spun up in the Gulf of Mexico, aimed at Tampa FL and a path across the state in just a few hours.

It wasn't expected to do more than rain a lot. But ya gotta be prepared, right? Just in case?

So we talked to Darrell David KT4WX, the ARRL Section Manager for West Central Florida. And he told us. The short answer is "Stand By". The longer answer is... this show. 

This is talking heads. Darrell isn't even on video - he's on the phone. You'll miss a few web sites and radar of the rain (see the episode picture, available on some of these fine podcast apps). And you'll miss Gary trying to reorient a couple of cameras that he was too rushed to reset from the Fix It! Volume 2 show, so that's fun. But we're pleased to bestow a Radio Rating of A. 

Back in HRN 335: Fix It! with AC4ZO Jeff and Gary reviewed a fix of Gary's Icom 7000's optical encoder, and then looked briefly at a new (maybe) problem that surfaced — a hollow 'ping' and ringing in the transmit audio. And in that episode, we noted that swap and replace is one of the most effective (speed, if not cost) troubleshooting techniques. 

So that's just what we did. Gary borrowed another 7000 and played with all the settings that made (or mitigated) that tin-can sound.

What happened? Or rather and you won't believe what happened next! 

You will quickly notice that this episode audio is entirely SSB. Awesome, right? And really, this is barely an episode. But corporate policy is to put an episode number on everything. Gary sneezes, it's an episode. That's how we keep ahead of Ham Nation.

RADIO RATING? Well, the video shows the radio display and menus a lot. Maybe not critical for understanding what Gary's doing (he describes them most of the time). But enough to pull the RadioRating down to B-.

Marty (Chicken With Fries) is back from camp, and having been deprived of all technology for weeks (a Luddite camp requirement), he's itching to record an episode of The Phasing Line Podcast. His partner in crime, Sterling Coffey N0SSC, isn't available (apparently), so he turns to old, reliable KN4AQ (emphasis on old). 

So this is a Phasing Line show, not a HamRadioNow show. And maybe it gets a little rambling (even for us! And strike the 'maybe'. Really, it falls apart). We're joined toward the end by HRN's David Goldenberg W0DHG and Ham Talk Live's Neil Rapp WB9VPG, and, um, that really doesn't help with the focus. 

But hey, content is content, and some of you may have a low entertainment threshold, so here it is. And given Marty's track record with co-produced shows not ending up on TPLP, this may be the only place you hear it.

Now the Phasing Line Podcast is an audio show. So as it appears here on the HRN channel, that seems to require an automatic Radio Rating of A+. I mean, there shouldn't even be any pictures. But there are, because it went through the ARVN Studios and onto Facebook Live. The only really worthwhile pictures are from Marty's Field Day site. At least we're aware that you won't be seeing them unless you go to the video on HRN. Marty may put some on the PL web site. Which, BTW, is http://phasinglinepodcast.com

This was not supposed to be an Episode.

It was just supposed to be a quick test on Facebook Live, checking out the work I'd done in Wirecast to be able to add titles to the video 'live' as I'm recording the show, rather than later in 'post production' (editing). We're tending to do most shows on Facebook Live as we record them, so we needed a title upgrade.

But I'm a wind-up toy. Put me in front of a mic and camera, and I perform. The 'test' ran over 20 minutes, and one of the clever viewers on Facebook said it should be a show. So it is. 

The title of this show, Episode Name, came from the 'generic' title I'd built as a placeholder so I could just fill in the title of whatever episode I'd be doing. I was planning ahead... just not for this to be a real episode. And it's still open to debate over whether or not it is a real episode. But at least the placeholder had the 'correct' episode number (336), if not a real date. And if you do see the picture in your app, look carefully and you'll notice that there is no drop shadow around the 'Episode Name' title. Wirecast's title maker keeps unclicking the shadow button. Eventually it seems to stick. 

Now the key word here is video. Except for the picture that some of you see in your podcast app, the titles don't mean squat to you audio listeners. But I don't want you to feel left out. And in an earlier show I wrote that an episode would get a Radio Rating of F only if there was no sound at all. And I am talking here. And there are even a few sound effects. So this is a solid Radio Rating of D.

Scared you there with that bold F, didn't I?

- Gary KN4AQ

Co-co-hosts David Goldenberg W0DHG and Jeff Wittich AC4ZO join Gary to talk about troubleshooting techniques, centered on a problem Gary had with his ICOM 7000 mobile HF/VHF/UHF transceiver. And toward the end, David recounts an ARES drill that dovetailed with a real activation.

Radio Rating? Well, this is a studio show, with Gary's new 3-way split-screen. But Gary set up a working radio in front of Jeff, and took a bunch of still pictures detailing the repair, and you kind of need to see them to really understand what they're talking about. The pictures are on the HamRadioNow web site, so maybe that'll help.

But that's maybe 30% of the show, leaving you 70% that you'll get fine by audio. Still, we'd feel a little dishonest with a Radio Rating grater than C. Not even C+. We'd like to, but we gotta sleep tonight. 

Gary joined NC Section Manager Karl Bowman W4CHX for a tour of 10 Field Day operations in western North Carolina. In between the site visits, they operated as 1C mobile. 

This show is basically a video documentary... a television show. So how much can you get from just the audio? Well, maybe more than you (we?) think. Theater of the mind? We were going to ding this show with a really low Radio Rating because of how long it too to edit the video, but after listening to a lot of it, you know, it's not such a bad radio show. So the Radio Rating is B-. Couldn't see our way clear to a solid B.

Sam Reynolds KM4WDK is The HamKid.

The what now? Who says?

Well, he does, based on producing a couple of episodes of his new YouTube show The HamKid, being a ham, and being... well, a kid. Sam is 13, but he was licensed almost a year ago, when he was 12.

We'll talk about how he got into ham radio and YouTubing (is that technically podcasting?), scouting and stuff. And Gary will demo a side-by-side comparison of his PR-40 that a much cheaper Audio Technica mic, the ATR-2100 that all the podcasters are flocking to (at least those who don't have $350 to spend on a Heil mic). 

As a Skype show, there's not a lot to see besides our smiling faces. Radio Rating: A.

SNARS is the Sierra Nevada Amateur Radio Society, and literally yesterday (as I type this) their President, Tony Marcin W7XM, invited us to speak via Skype at their next meeting. Well, the next meeting was today, and while Tony was really thinking about some future date, this meeting happened to be open, so David and I jumped on it.

Of course we recorded it, and put it on Facebook live, and here it is! 

I present a lot of my history leading up to creating ARVN and then HamRadioNow, and David describes how he got involved in the program. Then I talk a little about the 'new media' landscape, and we take a few questions from the audience.

We've done the 'origin' story before, but hell, Spider-Man has done what... three of them? Maybe I cover something new. In any case, it's 99% talking heads, so the Radio Rating is 'A'.

And thanks for inviting us, SNARS!

Links:

• Introduction to Amateur Radio (1999)
• HRN 199: Standing Up for Standing Waves
• Episode 134: ARDF (Fox Hunting) 
• ARVN.tv 2007 Dayton Hamvention Tour
• Lots more early ARVN video on the KN4AQ YouTube channel
• Episode 79 (Part 1): The Last BIG Field Day 
• Episode 79 (Part 2): Last BIG Field Day BONUS Interviews