HRN 357, EmComm Extra 17: Shake & Bake

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They've got a sense of humor out in Earthquake County. Gallows humor to the rest of us, maybe, but they call the statewide preparedness drill The Great California Shake Out.

Ham Radio is right in there, of course, and HRN host David Goldenberg W0DHG, an EC in the Los Angeles area, took us to the middle of it, live. Until he got called away to go do some actual communicating.

A few hours later, safe and sound in the ARVN West Coast Bureau (aka David's garage), he recaps the event and reviews lessons learned (like 'Don't try to do a TV show when you're supposed to be paying attention to the radio...').

Radio Rating: B-. The video is a little rough and not all that important, though David does show the Comm trailer and the surrounding area. What you'll miss most are David and the other ops ducking and covering as the klaxons go off initiating the actual event. That's sort of what you see in the bottom of the poster. for this episode (assuming you see that). On the other hand, the audio is kind of rough, too, with a lot of competing voices hitting Davies microphone.

HRN 356: Bruce Perens K6BP "State of Digital Voice" 2017 DCC

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Bruce Perens K6BP at the 2017 ARRL/TAPR DCC.

Do we really need to say any more? 

OK, Bruce's main point is one he's been making for several years: The major manufacturers have been screwing up Digital Voice with mediocre implementation and their incompatible walled gardens. And we're slowly getting closer to VHF+SDR radios that can do better.

He is especially critical of Yaesu, but actually compliments Kenwood for introducing a radio that's compatible with at least one other line of radios (ICOM/D-STAR).

Radio Rating: A. All but one of Bruce's slides are text, and he reads them verbatim, and then adds more ad-lib comments. The one slide that's not text is a picture of an old telephone modem with acoustic coupler.

this is what bruce's t-shirt says

Oh, and that picture? Well, that's Bruce ranting, as he is wont to do. Then it started looking like he's yawning. Which neither he nor the audience were doing during his talk. Just wanted to clear that up.

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.