June 21, 2017

HRN 330, EmComm Extra #12: Auxcomm... Explained

June 21, 2017/ Gary Pearce

What is Auxcom(m)?

Well, no surprise that a somewhat generic name (and ambiguous spelling) got applied to a few different concepts in auxiliary communications. HRN hosts David W0DHG and Gary KN4AQ wondered about it aloud in a few episodes.

That caught the attention of Steve Shroder KI0KY, an Assistant Emergency Coordinator for Colorado ARES Region 8. Steve explained it to us in an email, and we brought him on the show to explain it to you, assuming you were as confused as we were.

And since that only took a few minutes, we talked about how ARES, Emcomm and Auxcomm worked in his area, in the western mountains of Colorado.

Radio Rating: A! Woohoo. Gary hits a few web sites that might leave you in the dark (he tried to remember to say what they were). Here's the one you might really want to visit:

http://www.publicsafetytools.info/training/training_auxcomm_info.php

June 11, 2017

HRN (PhasingLine) 329: No morePOTA

June 11, 2017/ Gary Pearce

This is officially a PhasingLinePodcast, recorded in the SIB that we shared with Marty KC1CWF (the Chicken With Fries). So if you subscribe to their show, you've probably already heard this show. All we can add is the video.

Emily Saldana KB3VVE is (was) a self-described NPOTA addict. NPOTA is National Parks On The Air, the ARRL's year-long on-air celebration of the centennial of the USA National Parks system. It was a follow-up to the ARRL's own centennial celebration with W1AW stations operating from each state the previous year. While the W1AW event stations were limited to a select few in each state, NPOTA allowed for every ham who wanted to activate a national park to get out and create pile-ups.

Emily activated 53 parks, including the Statue of Liberty and several parks in the Washington DC area. That made her one of the top activators, as well as being one of the top chasers working as many parks as they could.

Emily documented her year with lots of pictures on her QRZ.com page. Gary stuck a bunch of them in the video.

And the Rapid Response activity that Gary fumbles to remember is actually the RaDAR Rapid Deployment of Amateur Radio group. They don't have a web site per se that we've been able to find. The link is a Google Group.

This talking-head show is another Radio Rating of A+. If you go look at Emily's pictures yourself.

June 10, 2017

HRN 328: Carl Laufer's RTL-SDR (from the 2017 Hamvention)

June 10, 2017/ Gary Pearce

Carl Laufer isn't a ham (yet), but he got caught up in the RTL-SDR craze in his home town, Auckland NZ, as he was completing his PHD. He began writing about them, and selling them, on his blog at www.RTL-SDR.com, and soon discovered that the little SDR receiver dongles could stand some improvement. So he designed ways to make them work better, and contracted a Chinese manufacturer to build them with his mods. That just about doubled the price, from $10 to about $20. Yeah, big deal.

TAPR invited Carl to come to the 2017 Dayton Hamvention to talk about them at both their Friday Forum (part of HamRadioNow Episode 324) and as the main speaker at the TAPR/AMSAT Banquet.

And we got him for a conversation with HamRadioNow's KN4AQ and PhasingLine's Chicken With Fries in the SIB back in Tent City.

Podcast listener's celebrate: this is another talking-head show with just a few graphics to spoil the perfect score. Makes you wonder why Gary even bothers with the cameras, doesn't it? Radio Rating: A+.

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