Ham Radio Workbench Podcast

In this episode we meet famous YouTuber, Randy, K7AGE, and Hoodview ARC VP Josh, K7OSH, to talk about our Field Day experiences and what makes a good club Field Day event. Josh is the Field Day Chairman of the Hoodview ARC and organized a great FD event. Randy came up to join us for the FD weekend, did some operating and shot some great videos of the event.

The rest of the HRWB crew described their Field Day experiences from mobile to portable. We discuss what worked and what could be improved.

Hoodview ARC

Randy K7AGE YouTube channel

In this episode we bring back our good friend Dan Quigley, N7HQ, to talk about restoring older radio equipment. Should you return an old radio to it's original state or repurpose the chassis for a more modern project with the look and feel of a classic radio of the past? We explore various approaches to restoring radio equipment including tools, test equipment and process.

Dan is the director of strategic programs at Flex Radio and brings decades of professional engineering and ham radio experience to the discussion.

In this episode we meet Colin Vallance, KC8DHY, a professional network engineer who also manages the WiFi network at DefCon and other events. We talk with Colin about how to set up your network in the ham stack. We also have a round table discussion about our plans for Field Day 2024.

In this episode we meet Hamilton Carter, KD0FNR and his daughter, Hamie Carter, KO6BTY. This amazing father / daughter team have build and deployed multiple creative radio projects. One in particular, Project TouCans, puts a QRP transciever right at the dipole antenna feed point eliminating coax cables and communicates with the operator's station over Bluetooth.

Follow along on thier radio adventures on their blog page at https://copaseticflow.blogspot.com

Kirk Kleinschmidt, NT0Z, has a deep background in radio and communications having spent over 30 years writing about radio. Kirk is a former Assistant Managing Editor for QST by the ARRL, aughor of the book Stealth Amateur Radio and has been a regular columnist for Monitoring Times and Popular Communications. You can follow Kirk today in his regular columns appearing in the Spectrum Monitor electronic magazine. Kirk offers up his perspective on amateur radio in this episode.

This is a special edition featuring Mike Walker, VA3MW from Flex Radio, telling us all about the newly announced Flex 8400 / 8600 radios. Mike is at Hamvention 2024 and took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to tell us all about the new radios.

In this episode we have our good friend, Dr. Doug Millar, K6JEY, join us to talk about multi meters, what they do and buying recommendations. Every ham radio operator or DIY electronics fan needs a good multi meter. But should you spend $20 or $200 on a meter and what's the difference? Doug explains it all.

In this episode we meet Daniel Winn, WV1T, a very active portable ham radio opertor. Daniel was searching for a way to filter out strong local signals when operating in the field and he started building stub tuned filters with coaxial cable. This simple and cost effective approach is a great way to build notch filters that can significantly reduce unwanted interference from transmitters operating at the same location but in other HF bands. This is a great technique for Field Day and similar activities. Daniel holds an extra class amateur radio license and is a professional electrician.

In this episode we meet our good friend, Dr. Charles Powell, NK8O. Charles is medical doctor specializing in neonatal infant care. In addition to his professional accomplishments as a doctor, musician, and head of a medical non-profit organization, Charles is an avid portable radio operator and has logged many thousands of contacts from all over the US while participating in POTA and World Wide Flora and Fauna events and from exotic locations while living in Africa.

Charles is an inspiration to us on many levels and a great friend.

In this episode we meet Mark Herbert, G1LRO, designer of the Universal Radio Controller. We talk all about ham radio project building and Mark's journey of discovery as he envisioned the URC. Taking an idea, overcoming challenges and turning it into something that people can use and be inspired by.