East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ presented a forum on Digital Voice for VHF/UHF 2023 at the Charlotte Hamfest in March. Gary ‘inherited’ the forum from Roland Kraatz W9HPX, who became a Silent Key the previous December. Gary put in too many hours making ‘too many PowerPoint slides’ to just do a one-hour forum, so he recorded this Special Edition for HamRadioNow.

This version clocks in at about 90 minutes. Gary had to cut a lot of the slides he worked so hard to create to bring his talk down to an hour, so he put some of them back in for this version. Then, just for those of you with limited time, he took a digital axe to the whole thing and chopped it down to 15 minutes. It isn’t pretty, but the essential elements are there. Maybe.

We’re also presenting Gary’s original 2008 documentary Digital Voice for Amateur Radio, which includes his investigation of D-STAR and P-25, and the original DV mode for HF. Somehow all that is squeezed into less time than his slide show.

Audio podcast listeners are being treated only to the 90 minute slide show. If you want to see the truncated version, or the documentary, here’s the link to the web site: https://www.hamradionow.tv/episodes/2023/3/15/hrn-special-digital-voice-2023-vhfuhf-edition

The FCC has been MIA for some time in ham radio. RMs (Requests for Rulemaking) and a couple of NPRMs (Notices of Proposed Rulemaking) have been dormant for up to 10 years! We look at some of the important ones, and some that are important only to the guy who proposed them.

If you want to make comments on any RM or NPRM, review any of the proceedings (read the comments), or file one yourself (please don’t), this is the place: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/search-filings

East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ is working on a slide deck for a hamfest talk next weekend (Charlotte Hamfest - see him live at 9 am Saturday, March 12). The topic is Digital Voice - VHF/UHF edition. Gary’s still working on the slides. He’s in the 70s. A good PowerPoint talk has maybe 30 slides, tops, say the experts. Do we have a problem? What do they know?

West Coast Host David W0DHG is the audience as Gary rehearses the talk. At the one hour point,
Gary was in the 60s. So close? We’ll watch the playback to see how it paces. David tried hard not to fall asleep.

A decibel is 1/10 of a Bel. By rights, this should be 1/10 of a show, but it’s at least 1/3. So bonus.

Well, at least we didn’t resort to an Ask Me Anything 🙄. Instead, Jim NO1PC and David W0DHG scraped Gary K4AAQ’s Facebook feed for Elmer questions that he answered in his usual “here’s how to build a clock” complexity. Or not! The dB answer was an attempt to simplify, to explain decibels without any math. Almost no math. Because Gary doesn’t know the math. He does it all by remembering 3 dB and 10 dB. Everything else slides between those two markers.

Then there’s a dual band antenna mystery to solve, some background on just how unique your call sign is, and a review of tone decode. All with a low grade fever.

Welcome to Ham Nation Now*

Even here in 2023, most ARRL Directors are not noted for frequent appearances in the ‘independent’ ham media. Mike Ritz W7VO, however, got swept onto YouTube as he addressed a radio club to discuss the January ARRL Board meeting, and the special meeting dealing with Ria Jairam N2RJ’s book issue. Mike found Ria ‘guilty as charged’. Ria joins us to review Mike’s video and dispute much of what he said.

Then we move on to review some other items of interest from the Board meeting: Field Day rules; more HQ oversight of Section Managers; steps to deal with the statistic that only 25% of newly licensed Amateur Radio operators will utilize their licenses on a regular basis; promoting operation on 10 and 6 meters; and the ghost of Code of Conduct.

And just as we crossed the 2-hour mark. the Internet crashed at Gary’s studio - no Zoom guests, no live stream (‘emergency maintenance at Comporium Cable’s fiber system). So we were done!

*Ham Nation Now? Well, that’s what Mike Ritz W7VO kept calling us. Maybe we need to say our name more often.

LINKS:

Here’s the video with Mike Ritz W7VO: https://youtu.be/A8fDCx-dzcc

The 3Y0J Bouvet DXpedition is over, a couple of weeks early. It was disappointing for all concerned - hams who wanted an All Time New One, the big-gun DXers who still needed the island to climb the higher rungs of the DXCC list, and probably most of all for the guys on… or near the island. Weather and rough seas prevented all but the most minimal operation, mostly cw and FT8 on 30 and 17 meters. Almost no SSB.

The big disappointment for us, though, was the behavior of far too many hams on the air and on the DX spotting web sites. Jamming, bootlegging and DIY ham police (and plenty of rookie operating errors) made the operation sound bad on the air. And on the clusters, lots of mostly anonymous comments that ran from snide to mean. Hmm. Aren’t we better than that?

Yeah, there was a lot of money involved. That’s nothing compared to the risk the crew took to get on the island at all. Maybe if your HRN hosts were more committed DXers, we’d feel your pain. We’re not. It’s not that big a deal for us. But we’re thinking it probably shouldn’t be for you. Be disappointed. Don’t be an ass about it.

Here’s our ‘airing of grievances’.

No Sunday night show this weekend because 🏈 (only the ‘Big Game’ takes us off… usually we ignore football). But we have bits and pieces. And the weekend’s not over (it’s Saturday afternoon as I - Gary - type this, so who knows?). Hopefully this will tide you over until the next big show.

But for now… I was on the phone with my original ham radio mentor from way back in the early 60’s. Back then he was Bob K9ZGT. Today he goes by his middle name, Winston (or Win), but to me he’ll always be Broken Old Bottles Bob. We talk about our early days a bit and what he’s been through. One of the chat room comments was ‘He’s an interesting guy’ - and so he is.

Then I booted up the studio, hoping Kyle could find some bandwidth down in Orlando (his phone is struggling) for a live shot. Hasn’t happened yet. We’ll be back if he can do it. Meanwhile, David popped up while working on his ARES group’s emcom trailer, so we get a quick tour. It’s pretty visual, but it’s on the podcast feed, too.

Bill Brown WB8ELK started launching near-space ham radio balloons in 1987. I think he can tell us more about this balloon from China than we’re getting from CNN. Joining Bill is Todd McKinney KN4TPG, a student in Atmospheric Science in Huntsville AL. Todd got interested in HAB (High Altitude Ballooning), and got his ham license so he could fly balloons with APRS and WSPR transmitters. Together they have insights on the Balloon from China that you won’t hear in the mainstream media. And then we talk about what’s happening on the balloon front in ham radio.

LINKS:

Bill’s website: WB8ELK.com

Bill’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@WB8ELK

Our guest is Ria Jairam N2RJ, podcaster, YouTuber and Director of the ARRL Hudson Division. Ria’s kind of getting picked on at the ARRL (our words, not hers). She tells us about that trouble and a division in the ranks of the Board falling along lines of transparency vs secrecy. We’ve heard that before when a Board Code of Conduct tried to silence Directors who disagreed with policy passed by the board. Listen to Ria’s take. Ask your Director to explain what’s happening. That might be interesting.