HRN 516: Senate Signs On 📜

The Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act is now in the Senate as S.3690. That bill joins House Bill H.R.4006, with the goal of giving hams living in HOA neighborhoods some reasonable relief in being able to put up antennas.

Don’t place your orders yet 🤨. Most Congrerssional bills never become law, but if you recall your Civics class, you do need identical legislation to be passed in the House and Senate before they move on to the President for their signature. So we’re a big step closer 😀.

Then surprise guest Kyle AA0Z joins us for the first time in a while for some general discussion.

If anyone wants to hear a little (a lot) more from Gary K4AAQ, he’s started a new general-interest (or generally uninteresting) podcast with his brother Jay. Jay isn’t a ham, though he grew up with it blaring in the house from his brothers. Like Gary, Jay is a retired broadcaster, now finding refuge in the world of podcasting. It’s called the Jay and Gary Show, on YouTube and a podcast app near you.

Equal time for David W0DHG who continues to co-host the WaveTalkers show on YouTube.

Senate Signs On 📜

W0DHG, AA0Z, K4AAQ

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HRN 515: A Rare Unboxing📦

One sure path to YouTube stardom is to do a lot of unboxings. That may be why we don’t do them very often. But this time, we do one.

East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ was getting jealous of all the YouTubers walking around hamfests with their phones mounted on fancy sticks, and using some kind of wireless mic gizmo to talk to people (and hear them) more than six inches from the phone. So he bought a set, and opened it up live on this show while West Coast Host David W0DHG looked on over Zoom.

Next… a demo. Then… a hamfest? Dayton? Stay tuned.

Here’s what he got:

• Hollyland LARK Max

• DJI Osmo Mobile 6 Gimbal Stabilizer

A Rare Unboxing

W0DHG, K4AAQ

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HRN 514: 🌓 To the Moon, Alice 🌛 (Bang Zoom)

Trivia question #1: Who said that (To the Moon, Alice)?

Trivia question #2: What year did Gary K4AAQ say it was when he introduced this show?

We’re not answering those here. Watch (or listen to) the show.

In January, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) landed a ham radio station on the moon (along with some other stuff, we’re sure, but we have our priorities). Its one-watt transmitter sent some telemetry on 437.41 MHz, along with a cleverly embedded Morse code (not cw) signal, as received by these guys in the Netherlands, and partially decoded by this guy, with help from a few other very advanced hams (read the blog and comments). Best we can tell, it was just a little more advanced than OSCAR 1’s Hi Hi Hi back in 1961. But it still counts as the first freakin’ ham station on the moon. 🌜

The station has literally gone dark, as it slid into lunar night. 🌚 It’s not expected to survive, but we bet there’ll be some well equipped hams listening in a couple weeks, just to make sure.

How ‘well equipped’? Well, you need to make up about 40 dB of path loss, assuming you’ve got an excellent receiver. How do you do that? Big ass antenna. Nope… bigger.

Then Gary rambles on about the fate of HRN 506: How Can We Podcast With All This Light💡? That’s the show that nobody’s seen, because first YouTube, then Netflix, took it down until we fought to get it back up (and we won).

And finally, he talks about South Carolina’s unusual “First in the Nation” Presidential Primary, and the chat room confirms that what we’re doing here is very confusing. And once again what we thought would be a 10-minute show ran over an hour.

BTW, David W0DHG is out this week, teaching a First Aid class. We expect to be back next Sunday.

🌓 To the Moon, Alice 🌛 (Bang Zoom)

K4AAQ

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