HRN 288: Amodeo Unplugged

Last Man Standing is a hit, prime-time TV sitcom on ABC starring Tim Allen as Mike Baxter, a husband and father of three girls, employee of Outdoor Man (an outdoor-everything store like Carbellas or Bass Pro Shop) and ham radio operator KA0XTT. Ham Radio appears in the background of every show, with a fully functional shack in Mike's Outdoor Man office. Two episodes have put ham radio right in the spotlight as a major part of the story.*

Last Man Standing co-Executive Producer John Amodeo NN6JA has often told the story of how ham radio came to be part of this TV show. If you missed it on other ham media, he'll repeat it here, but then go into far greater depth about how ham radio does and doesn't fit into it, ham radio in general media (and why most shows get it 'wrong'), John's personal history (he thought he was going into the ski industry), and a little on ham radio's own new media.

John says that he appreciates HamRadioNow for our long-form programs. He'll really like this one, not (just) because he's on it, but because it's over 2½ hours of in-depth one-on-one with KN4AQ.

*We've reviewed Last Man Standing episodes twice before when they aired those episodes that put ham radio front and center. Here are links to the YouTube videos (sorry, not available as audio just now):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoXFUgQK8qI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfzS-SjS_k8

Because this is an extra-long show, we remind you that it's a good candidate for our audio podcast version  - that's just the audio lifted straight off the video and presented as a classic  podcast on your favorite app. Or just download or listen to it right here.

HRN 287: The TAPR TICC - from the 2016 DCC

TAPR's John Ackermann N8UR details this little Arduino based device - he calls it a stopwatch - that will measure time to the trillionths of a second. Why does anyone need that, when, according to Star Trek, it's possible to give verbal start-stop commands controlling spacecraft going faster than light? Aaaaand... Go! But we digress. 

This is a fully assembled device, not a kit (Gary will make that mistake in the intro).

HRN 286: Contact Sport

Author Jim George (JK George) N3BB talked to Gary about his (relatively) new book Contact Sport at the 2016 Dayton Hamvention®. The book takes you deep into the world of the participants of the 2014 WRTC (World RadioSport Team Championship), perhaps the most elite contest in Amateur Radio. Jim was embedded with one of the teams, but got lots of additional detail through interviews (and spies?). As a former WRTC competitor and referee, he knew what to look for. And as a writer, he knew how to tell the story.

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