When you walk in the main gate at the Hamvention, the first exhibit you encounter is an outdoor collection of vehicles outfitted to the gills with ham radio. The banner says 'EmComm Vehicle Display', and some of the vehicles are truely that, sponsored by organizations dedicated to emergency response.

Others have diffeent purposes: contests, rovers, or just the ability to escape a poor home QTH and get to a better operating location, and they are personal projects.

In this episode we'll meet some of the hams responsible for these impressive rolling ham shacks, and take a look at what they've built.

About this episode
Last May, the HamRadioNow Mobile Production Unit (that's Gary K4AAQ, a handheld camera and a couple of wireless mics) shot some TOURS at the Hamvention, which the HRN Editorial Unit (also Gary K4AAQ, using DaVinci Resolve on a 13 year-old Windows PC) promptly edited and posted. The MPU also shot a bunch of interviews at the 'fest, which have been languishing on the editor's hard drive ever since, while life went on. Now, somehow, Gary found a few spare minutes to slap one of those segments together.

There are a bunch more. Apparently Gary could use some encouragement 👏 to spend time slaving over that hot editing computer. Perhaps you can make some comments. Or just tell him to burn the drives🔥 and forget the whole thing 😒. Either way.

Last July, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ/WRPG652 posted a QLog Entry about a GMRS ‘Travel Channel’. after repeatedly answering the question “Is there one” on GMRS Facebook and Reddit forums. He linked to that essay when encountering the question several more times, and even got a few ‘good answer’ responses 😀. So we made it a show, because why not?

He invited GMRS users on Reddit and Facebook to join the show. Nobody bit, so Gary and West Coast Host David W0DHG/WROT234 rambled around and then went through Gary’s essay to exhausively overanalyze the subject. As we do.

Oh, what’s a ‘Travel Channel’. For details, watch the show and/or read the essay, but briefly, it would be one of the GMRS channels that everyone agrees to monitor when they’re out on the highway, so if one of them transmitts (simplex) looking for a contact, others in range will hear them and respond if they’re interested in a chat while motoring along🚗.

And… spoiler alert ⚠🚨… Gary says “There isn’t one, but there could be” and suggests GMRS channel 20 (462.675) — not channel 19 — and explains why.

HRN Hosts David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ had just finished recording an episode of the show about how Everybody Wants a Handneld (and why they shouldn’t), and they tried hard to keep it on topic and fairly concise (and almost succeeded). But the pent-up ramble had to explode someplace, and that place was here, recorded immediately afterward.

It ended up mostly being about David leaving his ARES affiliation to concentrate on volunteering with ‘real’ emcomm. Gary did talk about some of the stuff that’s kept him from producing more HamRadioNow. There could have been more, but David had other stuff to do, so we leave it for next time. Stay Tuned🎙

In both Ham Radio and GMRS, there's no doubt, almost everyone starts out with a handheld radio. After making basically the same points about that - over and over - while answering questions in multiple Facebook and Reddit forums, HamRadioNow East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ/WRPG652 wrote an essay in his QLog blog on the HRN website. Now he can just link to the essay and go on with his day😉 (that has actually worked, and he’s had a few positive responses. Go figure).

And now it's a podcast episode. Even better, because West Coast Host David W0DHG adds his experience on the topic. And we tried very hard to stick to the subject and not ramble.

This episode wraps up our TOUR of the 2025 Hamvention®, but not our coverage. Gary still has a hard drive full of interviews to edit, and those will come out over the next few weeks. And maybe a live show with David W0DHG?

This episode includes both Saturday and Sunday, and just a little more pork chop. There are a few fun callbacks, to one of Gary K4AAQ’s Ham Nation episodes and his pre-HamRadioNow video on programming D-Star radios, and Riley Hollingsworth K4ZDH’s One Big Knob presentation at the 2007 Dayton Hamvention.

The Dayton Hamvention® is open all day Friday and Saturday, and a half-day on Sunday. East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ returned for the first time since 2017, and found it a bit more crowded. He expected to see other YouTuber media everywhere, but not so much... he did find some of them all in a pack in the flea market. But the star of the show? No, not the equipment (the other guys cover that in depth). It was a pork chop. You have to try it. And he found a 'HamRadioNow Audio Simulator'. We don't call it that in the episode, but you'll know it when you hear it. 🦆

East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ made it back to Dayton for the first time since 2017. Has much changed? Can he even remember (not really). This is a quick look at the tail end of Thursday, setup-day, before the fest opens Friday morning.

Richard "Dick" Norton N6AA, ARRL Southwestern Division Director, talks about the state of the ARRL at the Orange (CA) Section Convention.

The biggest hamfests are growing - Dayton, Orlando, Huntsville. Many smaller hamfests are struggling, or have closed down. Some clubs have had trouble finding a chair person and staff to put on shows that have been around for decades. Facilities are only getting more expensive, while attendence and income are falling.

The 'RARSfest' - coming April 5 and hosted by the Raleigh (NC) Amateur Radio Society - is hanging in there, maybe even growing a little. It has a robust flea market, and good array of commerecial vendors, and even attracts one of the big ham radio stores, plus a variety of activities. It's been a while since any major manufacturer had come to show their wares at any but the biggest shows.

RARSfest Chair Nancy Torborg KB2TNR joins host Gary K4AAQ to talk about how she picked up the event when RARS was struggling to find a new chair, and what she's done to keep the show going. (David W0DHG was working for this mid-week recording session).

And this being Gary’s ‘old home’ hamfest, we’ve done some shows from there before. Here’s one.

The Western Washington Amateur Relay Association has adopted a plan to migrate all repeaters in their area to'Narrow FM' over the next 10 years.

The idea is to increase the number of repeater channels (and the number of repeaters). The plan could nearly double the number of available repeater channels. It's mostly simple. For users, it's probably a menu setting in their radios, but OLDER radios won't have that option. For repeater owners, it may be as simple as a menu setting for more modern UHF repeaters. On two meters, it's likely also a small frequency adjustment, and trimming up a duplexer, but if the repeater is really old, it might be replacement time.

Members of the WWARA Narrowband Study Committee are here to talk about it. We welcome WWARA Chair Scott Honaker N7SS. Kenny Richards KU7M, and Steve VanWambeck N9VW, They join show hosts David W0DHG, Gary K4AAQ and the return of Jim NO1PC for the discussion.