HRN 360: A New Generation of Ham Radio - Ward Silver N0AX at the 2017 DC

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Whatever ham radio rut you're stuck in — ragchewing on 75, DX on 20, the daily commute on a repeater — it's good to listen to Ward Silver N0AX to break out for a while and look... in this case, forward across the horizon and think about what ham radio - and hams - will look like in a decade or three.

This is the least technical talk of the conference. It led off the Saturday morning sessions, and provided a good foundation for the purpose behind the more technical talks to follow.

Radio Rating: A+. Ward has slides, but they're mostly text 'headlines' that he expands on. Ward is an excellent public speaker, and you won't miss a thing without video.

This is a follow-on talk from Ward's 2015 keynote at the DCC Banquet in 2015, released online in February 2016 as HamRadioNow Episode 242: Ham Radio... Now What?. 

HRN 359, EmComm Extra #18: Force of Two

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Can you tell the complete story of ham radio in the recovery effort on Puerto Rico following hurricanes Irma and Maria in two and a half hours? 

Well... no. OK, you probably could if you spend a couple months producing a highly edited documentary. Maybe somebody's going to do that. But right now you can listen to our guests, Jeremy Dougherty NS0S and Michael Smith N5TGL recount their experiences. They each spent almost three weeks on the island, mostly in the field (in separate locations), mostly with just one other ham, in areas that had zero communications with San Juan or the rest of the world until they arrived. 

This is not the story you'll hear on Ham Nation, and probably not the one you'll read in QST. If there was a plan, it was barely a plan. And it fell apart immediately. There was a lack of leadership and coordination, and little understanding of what the hams would face once they left San Juan. Both Jeremy and Michael were frustrated, yet they carried on with the mission, improvising both their interaction with local authorities and the technology they had to work with. In some cases they had to battle bureaucracy to get the job done.

We probed Jeremy and Michael for details, and we got a lot. Jeremy in particular has a bitter story of his final experiences. That begins at an hour and fifty minutes in, so if you can't listen to the whole program, skip down to that. And note that there are two sides (at least) to that story, and we're only presenting Jeremy's side here. HamRadioNow is open to presenting the counterpoint, or maybe you'll hear that on another show.

Here's the link to Jeremy's Extreme EmComm document.

Radio Rating: A. This is a talking-head show. We'll look at Puerto Rico on Google Maps some, and if you're not familiar with the island, it'll help to look at the map a bit.

Michael took a lot of pictures – some of the general island devastation, and some of the amateur radio activity. You can look at them here on his Flickr feed.

Another deployed ham, Wey Walker K8EAB, posted a 35-minute video on YouTube showing both the area of the island he headed to, and amateur radio there and in San Juan. It's very much an 'amateur' video, but it will add to your understanding of what hams did there.

HRN 358: Tim Shepard KD1KY 'Thoughts on Regulation' 2017 DCC

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Tim Shepard KD1KY will give you a different perspective on why the radio spectrum needs regulation... or doesn't. Tim rounded out the Friday sessions at the 2017 ARRL/TAPR DCC in St. Louis.

Radio Rating: B+. Tim's slides have a few charts, but mostly text, and he does a good job reviewing them.