The 2017 Orlando HamCation was a great success, thanks only in part to perfect Florida weather, but mostly to the effort of the Orlando ARC volunteers, let by Chairman Peter Meijers AI4KM.
With a Dayton-like attendance of over 17,000, Peter takes a victory lap in this short conversation.
Craig Fugate KK4INZ was FEMA Administator for the entire Obama presidency. Now (for the moment, anyway) a private citizen... and ham... he's looking forward to attending his local radio club meeting.
But his interest and commitment to both Amateur Radio and EmComm continues. In this episode he talks with David and Gary about what hams will need to do in the future to remain a valuable public service asset in emergencies.
You may notice with apt irony that Gary's Internet service failed in the middle of the conversation (a flaky 'tap' in the Spectrum/Time Warner pedestal down the block). Gary switched to his phone's 'hot spot', which reached his preset data cap and shut the conversation down again. He persuaded Arvin to cough up the funds to buy a little more bandwidth from Google Fi.
The Women's March on Washington was a (pardon the expression) HUGE event the day after President Trump's inauguration. While it was politically charged, it was also an event that needed communications assistance to keep participants safe. The cell phone system worked, but it was so overloaded that even the usually reliable text messaging slowed to a crawl.
Our guests Arthur Feller W4ART and Christine Axsmith KC3CIF put together an ad-hoc group of about 30 hams, drawn partly from the group that provides communications for the Marine Corps Marathon each year. They tell us their fascinating story, including many real-world lessons for hams participating in any large-scale event.
Another mash-up of two podcasts! This time we join Jason Johnstion KC5HWB's HamRadio 2.0 show for a talkfest from the Orlando HamCation. We recorded more or less first thing Friday morning, then Gary headed out with Jason to shoot some interviews that will end up on Jason's show.
Our special guest and star attraction is HRO's Katie Allen WY7YL, marking her second appearance on HamRadioNow, and her first on HamRadio 2.0.
There's very little serious about this episode... just a lot of fun.
Last year the ARRL Board's Ethics Committee recommended removing incumbent SE Division Director Doug Rehman K4AC from the ballot for re-election, and the Board did that, leaving Rehman's opponent and previous Director Greg Sarratt W4OZK the only candidate running. With no further nominations at the end of the nomination period, the Board declared Sarratt elected.
The Board and the Ethics Committee didn't make public any reason for removing Rehman from the ballot, prompting an editorial from CQ Editor Rich Moseson W2VU for more transparency on the ARRL Board, a position that Rehman had been advocating during his reelection 'campaign.' Moseson didn't take sides in the election outcome, just the opaque nature of the decision.
At the Orlando HamCation, ARRL member Jim Schilling KG4JSZ had a booth asking ARRL SE Division members to sign a recall petition against Sarratt. Gary asked Jim to come to the SIB (Studio In a Booth) to talk about the issue.
Gary also asked ARRL officials at the HamCation to come discuss it. They declined, and recommended that we talk to ARRL Media and Public Relations Manager Sean Kutzko KX9X. Sean was not at the hamfest, so we'll contact him as soon as we can.
This story isn't over...
Links:
Over the coming weeks I will pull the curtain back on the ARRL Board and the bleak future the League faces unless there is serious reform—reform that will only happen if the membership pays attention to whether or not they are being served by their representatives. I'll be posting a number of motions to address issues with governance and ethics, motions that I will make at the January 2017 Board meeting if reelected.
Sometime in the nearish future, all radios will be SDR (software defined). SDR will cease to be a feature, and it will just be a given.
When will that be, and what will happen then?
Gary talks about that with FlexRadio's Tim Ellison W4TME, and Flex 'booth volunteer' and enthusiast Don Baughman K7MX.
How will manufacturers differentiate themselves, and what will they be throwing at consumers in the way of data and capabilities?
Yes, these guys are from Flex, so they've got a point of view, but they're pretty candid about this segment of the business... that's about to take over the whole business.
I didn't intend this to be a two-part episode but it worked out that way... There might even be a Part Three (or Two-And-A-Half) coming soon from a chance encounter in the parking lot...)
I've received a lot of requests to provide some details on my mobile installation. You've seen the radio stack, and some of the antennas in one show or another. But as I prepared to get on the road to head to the Orlando HamCation, I decided to start with a tour of the whole thing.
And I almost succeeded! Here's that "tour," but conspicuously missing will be the 'heart' of the installation - the mounting bracket from RAM MOUNTS. I fat-fingered the camera's record button, and ended up missing the footage where I described that. I'll fix that in Part TWO.
This part begins with that RAM MOUNT tour. Then I get on the road.
Turns out the RAV4 has two motors. One is under the hood. The other is just above my jaw ('motor-mouth,' if you didn't get it. There's quite a monologue here without a lot of operating until the end.)
In the parking lot of my hotel in Orlando, I ran into Phil Mc Elrath K5BBC. Phil had 5 antennas on his roof (same as me), but not as many scattered around the rest of his vehicle. So I was winning the mobile contest until he showed me his super-clean installation. Put me to shame.
Phil is also involved with the Emcomm-1 vehicle, a privately owned truck equipped (mostly with ICOM stuff) to be an Interop bridge - connecting any RF to any other RF, in the field, where it's needed. It's based in Florida. We talk about it some and I got some B-Roll video, but we'll go in depth later on Skype. David Goldenberg W0DHG will want to get his hooks into that episode, I'm sure.
Jeff Dahn KB3ZUK, President of W3HAC, the HacDC Amateur Radio Club, is our guest. Jeff helped with communications for the National Park Service during the Presidential Inauguration and the protest Women's March in January. He was invited because of his extensive participation in the ARRL's National Parks On The Air program last year. Jeff activated most of the parks in the Washington DC area.
In this episode, he'll talk about the NPOTA activity, then his work during President Trump's inauguration.
Meanwhile, Jeff's club, the W3HAC HacDC ARC, provided communications for the Women's March on Washington the next day (while Jeff was still at the NPS comm center). We hope to have that story on HamRadioNow in a couple of weeks (the Orlando HamCation is getting in the way).
Hosts: Gary Pearce KN4AQ, David Goldenberg W0DHC
HamRadioNow's newish co-host David Goldenberg W0DHG wears many hats. One of them is Scoutmaster for Troop 22 in Woodland Hills, CA, where he introduces his Scouts to Amateur Radio, among many other life skills.
Scouting is one of the most effective connections between Amateur Radio and young people. In this episode, David and Gary KN4AQ explore that connection with Jim Wilson K5ND. Jim also wears many hats with the Boy Scouts. He's Chairman of the National Radio Scouting Committee; National Jamboree on the Air Organizer; a member of the World JOTA-JOTI Team; and President of the K2BSA Amateur Radio Association.
(Gary made it to Cub Scout Webelo).
Jim has appeared in two previous episodes:
Brennan Price N4QX is the former Chief Technology Officer for the ARRL (now with the EchoStar satellite company). He spent the past few years mostly in the international arena – the ITU and the World Radio Conferences – helping Amateur Radio acquire new spectrum and defending the spectrum we have now.
Here he gives the 2016 ARRL & TAPR Digital Communications Conference 'keynote' talk at the Saturday banquet. He'll address the new technologies and millimeter wave spectrum that will be so important to Amateur Radio's Future.
Brennan has appeared on three previous HamRadioNow programs:
Do we really need to add in Depth to the title? After all, this is HamRadioNow.
Be that as it may, David and Gary talk at length with Jim Piper N6MED. Jim is the Liaison to Amateur Radio with the Volunteer Disaster Health Services of the American Red Cross, Gold Country Division (that's the territory roughly around Sacramento, CA). They learn what the Red Cross' mission is, and how Amateur Radio can help.
All of the Emcomm related episodes are gathered together on a Playlist on the HamRadioNow YouTube Channel.
John Ronan EI7IG travels from Ireland to present a talk on using APRS to track vehicles and bikes on a big bike race.
John also gave a talk at the 2014 DCC in Seattle on using D-STAR's 1200 MHz 'high-speed' data for public service in HamRadioNow Episode 121.
The dream: (Gary's dream, anyway) – a VHF/UHF digital voice radio that handles all the DV modes.
The bridge: Servers and reflectors that transcode from one mode to the other, so D-STAR users can talk to Fusion users can talk to DMR users....
Wireless Holding's Uli Altvater AGØX is building both the radio (the DV4mobile) and the bridge.
Uli also appeared in HamRadioNow Episode 263, Learn More about DV4
Sterling Coffey N0SSC and Marty Sullaway KC1CWF from the Phasing Line Podcast join HamRadioNow's David Goldenberg W0DHG and Gary Pearce KN4AQ for an Epic Episode Mashup.
Do they talk about anything significant? Solve all of Ham Radio's problems? Advance the Radio Art? Or just goof around for nearly two hours?
What do you think?
Those knuckleheads are on http://PhasingLinePodcast.com
Mark Griffith KDØQYN's goal for this project was to design and build a super-simple, ultra-portable system for using Amateur Radio to send and receive email in disaster situations when all else fails... without carrying in a wheelbarrow full of equipment and wires and taking a "two days" to set it all up.
The result: PiGate, a tiny Raspberry Pi-based Winlink gateway.
IPv6 is the brand new addressing scheme for the Internet that will solve all the problems of running out of addresses that IPv4 will run into... um... yesterday. It will provide enough unique addresses to assign one to approximately every molecule of matter on the planet, or at least all the Internet of Things things that Scotty Cowling listed in HRN 289. And by brand new of course we mean 20 years old. And in Internet years, that's old.
We learn all this from Bryan Fields W9CR at the 2016 ARRL & TAPR DCC in St. Petersburg FL. Bryan was a local host for this DCC. He's made presentations the 2015 and 2016 Hamvention® TAPR forums.
And as Bryan explains, this topic affects Amateur Radio in a couple of ways. One is the HamWAN project, a wide-coverage, high-speed data network on 5 GHz. Bryan runs the system in Tampa, and it uses IPv6 addressing. The other is that ham radio has one of the few remaining large blocks of unused IPv4 addresses. And they're worth some money (real money).
Links:
2015 TAPR Forum (HRN 207) https://youtu.be/eAzkSP2nt0M
2016 TAPR Forum (HRN 254) https://youtu.be/IFcESjoWSP8
2013 DCC HamWAN Seattle (HRN 128) https://youtu.be/Vhj9bS8n9jM
The always entertaining Scotty Cowling WA2DFI has been working on a tiny corner of the Internet of Things, so he goes into that corner in detail at the 2016 ARRL & TAPR DCC. His little corner expands to fill the available space.
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.
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).
