HRN 355: All Your Modems Are Belong To Us - 2017 DCC

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Brady O'Brien KC9TPA is a young ham who has been working with David Rowe VK5DGR, the creator of the open source CODEC2 low bitrate voice codec. In this TAPR talk he talks modem tech in SDR (a generalized way of saying that Gary doesn't understand it well enough to describe it).

He concludes by talking about the on-channel TDMA repeater project that David Rowe is working on using a VHF version of FreeDV and CODEC2.  http://www.rowetel.com/

Oh, and that title? It refers to an iconic line in a old video game, and Brady's rip-off probably should be All Your Modem Are Belong To Us. Look it up. And check out the last 15 seconds of this show.

Radio Rating: B-. Brady has a few graphs showing signal performance of various modems, but he gives a good verbal conclusion of them. Most of the rest of his slides are 'headline' text for the topics he's discussion.

 

HRN 354: Lightning Talks from the 2017 DCC

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What do you do when a DCC presenter can't make it to the conference?

Invite the audience to jump in. That's what happened on Friday afternoon. Steve Bible N7HPR solicited 5-minute "Lightning Talks" and the audience stepped up.

00:00 Our fundraising pitch comes first, then...

3:57 Kurt Kiesow KF6QNC "Autonomous Wave-Powered Ocean-Going HF Station"

9:55 Sterling Coffey N0SSC "Faraday Open Source Digital Radio"

15:37 Bill Engelke AB4EJ "DWatcher: D-STAR / DX Monitor App"

21:10 Dr. Brandon Wiley KF5WVW "Emergency Data Exchange Network"

25:38 Ward Silver N0AX "Need for a Sessionless, High-Rate, Interference Tolerant Mode for Competitive Use"

31:28 Tom Holmes N8ZM "The DARA Thursday Night Group"

The impromptu Lighntning Talks were a great success. Expect a somewhat less surprising reprise in 2018.

Radio Rating: Four of the talks came complete with Powerpoint slides (who brings slides to a conference when they're not scheduled to present a talk?). Those get a Radio Rating of C+. Sterling only had a web site, but it was useful (and Steve Bible commented on how good it was), so we'll give him a B-. Ward Silver was the only one without graphics. so that gives him an A. Remember, the Radio Rating doesn't measure how good a talk was, just how good it is as 'audio-only'. And your mileage may vary.

HRN 353, EmComm Extra #16: Orbiting SATERN

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SATERN's been busy. Well, so have all the EmComm services, but SATERN's in our spotlight for this episode. We're talking to Salvation Army National SATERN Liaison Bill Feist WB8BZH (pronounced "Feest" or "Feast").

Like most Amateur Radio EmComm groups, SATERN (Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network), is going digital... slowly. We'll find out about that and lots more in this patented HamRadioNow In-Depth conversation. Bill reviews activity for the Eclipse, and back-to-back-to-back hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.

And as nice as the Skype video is, this is another radio show. All talking heads (and a little web you can look up yourself), so a Radio Rating of A.

http://satern.org