HamRadioNow

Aka The Monkeyman Trial

A very wide coverage, busy UHF repeater in the Charlotte NC metro area had been plagued all year by a pest. Drunk, profane, nonsensical and relentless. Ignoring him didn’t work, so they tracked him down. The repeater owners told him to stop many times. The FCC told him to stop… twice. He didn’t. But now identified, he got his ham license: KQ4GAD. But nothing changed. The repeater was still frequently subject to his profanity, sound effects and music, and streams of nonsense.

As time passed, the pest increasingly directed his rants and ramblings toward one ham, Brad O’Dell KK1LL. Brad was leading the team that hunted the pest down and revealed his identity. Ramblings became threats, so at the suggestion of former FCC Enforcement Counsel Riley Hollingsworth K4ZDH, Brad swore out a complaint in County Court, asking for a ‘No Contact’ order.

After managing to avoid the process server twice, resulting in continuances, the pest, Joshua Duffy KQ4GAD, faced off with Brad in court. Duffy never spoke… at least not in the hearing. As the hearing begain, his attorney immediately offered to accept a No Contact order for one year, provided that no evidence was presented and made part of the record. Brad agreed. It was over.

But our story isn’t. In this episode, we’ll talk with Brad and Ted Williams KE6QEY, President of the Charlotte Amateur Radio Club, owner of the repeater. We will hear some audio of Duffy swearing, threatening and rambling (and we’re not beeping anything out, so this episode has some explicit language). We’ll hear briefly from Duffy himself, outside the courtroom, in an interview he gave HRN’s Gary K4AAQ, who attended the hearing. And Brad and Ted will tell the whole story.

Oh… The Monkeyman Trial? That comes from the monkey-like sounds our pest was fond of making. You’ll hear one recording of that. So before the hams knew who he was, they called him ‘The Monkeyman’.

He was drunk. He was profane. He was worse than annoying. He wouldn't go away, plaguing a Charlotte area repeater for months. Then he got his ham license... and nothing changed. He was ordered off the repeater (many times). The control ops contacted the FCC - they wouldn't act. Nothing worked. Then he began targeting one individual ham for harassment, and that created an opening for a legal remedy outside the FCC.

Gary also previews a bill in the South Carolina Legislature that mirrors PRB-1, but would extend the protection to HOA residents.

East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ had volunteered to do radio at a local Christmas parade. As he was lacing up his sneakers, about to leave home, wife Cyndi KD4ACW called to dispatch him to the hospital where mom had been taken with chest pains. Gary had planned to do some video and interviews at the event for today’s show. Instead Gary and West Coast Host David W0DHG talk about how to weigh conflicting obligations to family and community (and Podcasting). (Mom didn’t have a heart issue, but it was still something serious. She’s OK now)

David also had comments on how his favorite event, the Baker to Vegas charity run, has decided to replace ham radio with communications from Verizon (while still urging them to volunteer for other jobs). There’s more to that story, and it’s not isolated to that event. The MS Society is using ham radio less for smaller, more urban walks. And in the Emcomm arena, Auxcom leaders have been saying that hams should be cross-trained for communication on other systems. That’s something to dig into on a future show.

Meanwhile, we noted that the new FCC rule dropping the data-rate restriction of ‘300 baud’ on the HF bands, replacing it with a 2.8 kHz bandwidth limit, has finally been published in the Federal Register, and will take effect on January 8, 2024. So not quite the Christmas present we expected, but Happy New Year!

And a FNPRM (Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) clock is ticking for comments on how to handle data rate/bandwidth of the VLF, VHF and UHF bands. That spectrum is not covered by the new HF data bandwidth rule.

Finally, no news on the Netflix Watch. HRN Episode 506, How Can We Podcast with All This Light?, is still dark on YouTube due to Netflix’s copyright complaint. Check Episode 506 for details, and listen to the audio version while the video is down.

HamRadioNow Episode 506 is still down on YouTube, by order of Netflix. We’ve filed a ‘dispute’ via YouTube. We’re waiting.

But not patiently. In this episode, David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ explain what’s happened. And that’s pretty much it… a short show.

We finally get to the real show based on the Netflix series All the Light We Cannot See. The show is a four-part mini-series about clandestine broadcasting during WWII. It’s set mostly in a small, coastal French town that is occupied by Germany, and is being bombarded by Allied planes coming across the Channel. A young woman named Marie has taken over broadcast duties from her uncle. Her broadcasts contain coded mssages helping the Allies make precision bombing runs. Marie is being hunted by Werner, a reluctant German radio operator, using DF equipment to pinpoint her location.

This being the main theme of the series, there is a lot of radio operation, and a lot of gear. Little of it is explained in detail, and what detail they show is usually somewhat wrong. That’s because this is media for the general public, and getting it right would be boring and take too long. So it’s the usual Hollywood license for any technical profession, whether it’s radio, medicine, law, etc. Details get in the way of storytelling.

Our goal is to highlignt the radio operating, and note the errors, while appreciating that a program has this much radio (and radio people) at all. So we pulled about 17 minutes of footage from the series, play it and comment on it.

Or at least we tried. YouTube had a different idea. Halfway through the show, they start blacking out the video and audio, with a title saying they detected copyright material. When Gary comes back on screen, the video resumes, but the YouTube bot isn’t very precise with its timing. Eventually, YouTube just takes the stream down, noting a copyright violation.

But they give us a chance to appeal. Gary takes it immediately, and to his surprise, within minutes he gets email from YouTube saying they AGREE with his appeal and restore the program.

But the program they restore is the one with big segments blocked out, and ending early, where they terminated the live stream. Thanks for nothing!

Gary recorded the episode locally, and uploaded it to our YouTube channel, thinking A) they won’t file a copyright claim on this one, because they already agreed that it was Fair Use, and B) Don’t believe that for a second.

Yep, the upload was not only flagged but fully blocked, worldwide. Gary filed a dispute… we’ll see if this one is handled with the speed that Netflix responded to Episode 504. They filed a copyright claim there, too, based on us showing their trailer. Gary filed a dispute, and Netflix relented in less than 24 hours.

LINKS:

Helge LA6NCA’s original demonstration of the DF equipment (in Norwegian, with English subtitles)

First… I’m giving everything a new number - episodes, promos… if I far… sneeze, I’m giving it an episode number.

So, we had planned to do the episode that we Promo(re)d last Sunday sometime during the week. Well, we couldn’t. It’ll be on this coming Sunday, December 3 at 3pm Pacific, 6 pm Eastern, 2200Z. We’ll be reviewing and picking apart the radio mistakes in the Netflix series All the Light We Cannot See.

So what are we doing here in 505? (Besides piling up episode numbers?) Mostly celebrating that I was able to win another Fair Use battle. We played the trailer to the show last Sunday. Netflix filed a Copyright claim and demonetized it (even though we don’t monetize). That didn’t affect anyone’s ability to watch the show, but there’s a principle involved. I disputed the claim based on Fair Use. Netflix caved… er, agreed in les than 24 hours, a new speed record.

We kept this show fairly short. No such promises for Sunday. -Gary K4AAQ

This episode is a PROMO for an upcoming HRN show. This one comes with homework:

We like watching shows that have ham radio in them. Sometimes it’s just for the show, and sometimes it’s to pick at how much they got wrong 😒. Netflix has a new, four-episode limited series titled All the Light We Cannot See, based on a novel by the same name. It looks like it should be one of those ‘based on a true story’ stories, but it’s not. But it does have a lot of radio in it. Not ham radio specifically, and ham radio isn’t mentioned – it’s more of an amalgam of ham radio and DIY shortware broadcasting, with a bit of spy-radio in the mix.

Your homwork is to watch the four-episode series on Netflix, and we’ll do a ‘book club’ episode to discuss it. Gary K4AAQ is pulling some clips of the radio-specific parts to get a YouTube takedown (which he will fight and win on Fair Use grounds). If you don’t have Netflix, well, sorry, there is no free trial (we speculated there was in this Promo, but there isn’t). They have a $7/month plan that you can sign up for, then cancel, so the show would cost you $7 (you can watch everything else on Netflix for that month, or course). The $7 plan is their ‘ad supported’ level, so you’ll see some commercials.

If you don’t watch the series, you’ll still enjoy this promo and the upcoming episode – you’ll just have a little less context.

And we’re not sure when we’ll produce this show. Could be Monday or Tuesday… stay tuned and click the Subscribe button on YouTube (and the Notifications bell). Audio listeneres… it’ll just show up in your feed when we’ve done it.

East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ played radio (and Pavement Police) at a local Christmas parade on Saturday with the Cabarrus Amateur Radio Society, and made a little movie of it.

Before that, West Coast Host David W0DHG was playing hooky from the show, out doing a POTA event with his WaveTalkers co-host Chris W6AH. They were live on 17 meters, and after we announced the frequency, a few members of our live audience jumped on 17 and worked them!

The FCC jumped the gun on releasing the Report and Order on RM-11708, replacing the old “300 Baud” data limit on the Amateur Radio HF bands with a bandwidth limit of 2.8 kHz instead.

They told us it would be part of their November 15 meeting, aired live on YouTube. Instead, they sent notice of the approval in a press release two days early, on November 13. So YAY, it’s approved with no drama. But we kinda wanted to hear them talk about us a little.

Oh, well… the new rules take effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, and that hasn’t happened as of ‘press time’ (12 noon, November 15). If you go there, search for WT Docket No. 16-239.

LINKS:

The final Report and Order PDF

Gary’s marked up version (probably the same as the official version)

Not really that much going on. But David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ haven’t chatted in a while, so they did.

LINKS:

— The RATPAC Gift Suggestion show (with Gary’s Ham’s Night Before Christmas)

— USA 1939 movie about Ham Radio