HRN 549: Dayton Hamvention 2025 SATURDAY/SUNDAY Tour🔎

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YouTube Video

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.

Podcast Audio. Play here, or subscribe in your podcast app.

HRN 548: Dayton Hamvention 2025 FRIDAY Tour🔎

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YouTube Video

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. 🦆

HRN 545: How to Run🏃‍♀️a Hamfest

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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.

HRN 544: Narrow FM, Anyone?

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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.

Zoom in 1 minute to program start

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.

HRN 542: AAQ @ 60 📅

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January 11, 1965, Amateur Radio Station WN9NSO made its first, shaky 5 wpm CW… attempt… in the 40 meter Novice band.

60 years later, WN9NSO is now K4AAQ, our East Coast Host. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, as Gary talks about what ham radio was like for that Novice, 60 years ago. No repeaters. No digital (RTTY was it). No computers. Lots of AM.

Gary opened up the Zoom and was joined by Ron K9ID, a friend from the Chicago suburbs and then WN9RPD/WA9RPD, and a newer friend, Jerry KE4TTS. Join us for a trip down memory lane.

HRN 541: 🥊👴AAQ 🤜vs🤛 GPT🤖🥊

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Enough emoji in the title?

David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ discuss AI chat engines. Specifically, how Gary bullied chatGPT into correct answers about GMRS channel steps (for the record, it’s 12.5 kHz). Somebody in a Facebook group asked that question, and someone else got the answer from a confident chatGPT, but chat GPT got it wrong (they said 5 kHz). The challenge was ON, and Gary emerged victorious, with chatGPT backing down… a couple of times!

Moving on, David found a newsletter author/podcaster who experimented with AI voices (from NotebookLM) to generate a ‘podcast’ based on his most recent newsletter. The result was interesting. Then Gary found the same robot voices in a show discovering that they weren’t real!

We can retire at any time.

Finally, Gary challenged a discussion from the Ham Radio Crash Course on why repeaters are so quiet… lately. Gary’s point: it ain’t ‘lately’.


HRN 540: O Holy... Grail? 🏆

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This week, Jason Johnston KC5HWB of the Ham Radio 2.0 show was reacting to viewer comments that there were Too Many Digital (Voice) Modes. East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ has been preaching on that topic for years, and while his Q-Mobile does have radios for D-STAR, DMR and System Fusion… and so does his belt…. he wouldn’t mind having one rig to rule them all – a 21st Century ‘Multi-Mode’. That’s his Holy Grail 🏆

So Gary invited Jason on the show to talk about it, along with West Coast Host David Goldenberg W0DHG, who has a DMR radio but only uses it for FM 🤔

After thoroughly wringing out that topic (and David signing off to go back to work), they move on to talk about GMRS – how it’s now kind of a gateway to ham radio and a hobby radio service itself (albeit not really intended for that by the FCC).

HRN 537: Helene 🌀 Followup

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Ham Radio activity - ‘unofficial’ and ad hoc as it may be - continues in the mountains of western North Carolina. The Mt. Mitchell 145.19 repeater remains active every day. For this show, we talk to a ham who was deployed at a couple of locations last week. Steve McAtee N0JJO lives in the Charlotte NC area, and heard a call go out for hams to assist. He geared up and set out, and now that he’s back, he tells us his story.

We know that Hurricane Milton hit Florida last week, and undoubtedly there are ham radio stories to tell from that event. We’ll see if we can find some hams to tell there stories from Milton in the next few weeks (contact Gary at kn4aq@arvn.tv if you have one of those stories).

HRN 536: The Ad Hoc Helene 🌀 Nets

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Last week, HRN hosts David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ talked about some ad-hoc ham radio nets that spun up just after Tropical Storm Helene devastated a large area of North Carolina’s mountains, knocking out power, internet, phone and cell communications, flooding towns and destroying roads. The nets appeared to have no connection to any formal ham radio emcom organization. Initially they were passing lots of incoming Health & Welfare inquiries from hams or friends of hams on 40 meters (7232 kHz) and an ultra-wide coverage repeater on Mt. Mitchel (145.19 MHz). We speculated that messages like that probably couldn’t be delivered.We even streamed a few hours of the 40 meter net on our YouTube channel.

On this show we get the background. Dan Gitro K2DMG became the Net Control station on the Mt. Mitchel repeater for days on end, and he joins us to talk about how it got started and what it became as the days went by.

HRN 535: HEL(L)ENE 🌀

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Hurricane Helene 🌀 left a lot of destruction in its wake, especially in western North Carolina. Power, phone and internet were down over a wide area. So, ham radio stepped into the gap, right?

Sort of. HamRadioNow send requests for participation in our Sunday live show to statewide ARES officers in Northern Florida, Georgia, South and North Caroliona, with narry a peep in response.

Instead, we monitored some ad-hoc nets that sprung up on 40 meters and on a wide coverage 2 Meter repeater in the NC Mountains, carring mostly inbound welfare requests that mostly couldn’t be delivered because… well, who was going to deliver them? These nets had no local infrastructure or a cadre of hams who might be able to pick their way around roads closed by flooding and debris to find the people who relatives so desperately were trying to reach. But yet the nets persisted, hour after hour.

We did listen to a 75 Meter NC traffic net that actually passed an outbound message - the way it should be, except for how long it takes to send this kind of traffic by voice. So David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ discuss the efficiency of sending this traffic as data… which they admit may well be going on, but who could tell? Another problem.

Gary’s griping may not be popular – there’s much back-patting and self-contratulating over this activity. And it may have actually gotten a few messages through… hard to tell. This, while any more official activity took place in shadows.

HRN 534: 21 Repeater Group FCC-ARRL Luncheon CONDENSED

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Last January, a repeater group in Harrisburg PA had some special guests at their monthly club lunch – a half dozen representatives from the FCC, and a couple of ARRL officials stopped by to talk about ham radio and GMRS, and answer questions from the assembled club members. Just your average club luncheon.

Fortunately, the whole thing was recorded and ended up on YouTube. However, it was nearly two hours long, and some of it was kind of rambling (we’re looking at you, K4AAQ). So, we cut it down to just the essense, about 30 minutes worth. We still recommend watching the whole thing – there are some stories and anecdotes that we cut out that are pretty entertaining. Maybe this edited version will whet your appitite for more.

HRN 532: We Got Comm.... You Got Em? 🌀

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Ham Radio Comm, in search of any Emergencies that might need our help. Well, West Coast Host David W0DHG and East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ (BRAT? maybe…) don’t hit on that theme too hard, but it is a good question. Where’s the Em?

Anyway, David spend last weekend doing some COMM at the Angeles Crest Ultra Marathon, and even though he failed to document it up to Gary’s standards, he did describe it pretty well.

Gary mentions this ARRL news story on Hurricane Debby that really inspired the episode title. Yet another review of an event where all we did was stand by to stand by.

Then David found a news story about an LA area ham who got help via the PAPA linked repeater system when he fell and couldn’t get up (cue the TV commercial). It was recorded, and we play it back with our usual on-point commentary.

HRN 531: Quansheng My Thirst for a New Handheld Radio

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East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ goes solo for this show, noting that he needs another HT like he needs another hole in his head. But, Prime Day and pressure from peers got him to part with a bit under $25 for the Quansheng UV-K5. Note that this review does NOT get into any of the aftermarket firmware options, and that seems to be what is getting everybody excited. That is a hot mess of options and confusion, and so maybe someday.

HRN 530: Let's Talk About the Weather🌧(Channel)📺

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The show starts at about 6:42

On the heels of Hurricane Beryl, Bob Inderbitzen NQ1R, ARRL Director of Marketing and Innovation was interviewed by The Weather Channel about ham radio. It was a great shot in national media, which means that East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ needed to take it apart to see how it could have been better, while West Coast Host David W0DHG pulled Gary back to reality.

Well, back in his younger days, Gary was no novice in the PR world, and he’s got some legacy video to prove it: