Thank you for choosing to download the Ham Radio two point zero audio podcast RIP. This is the audio taken out of a video or a live stream I did recently. You can catch all my videos on YouTube Ham Radio two point zero and catch us live every Sunday night at seven pm Central Standard Time for a different topic each week. Thank you for the support, and thank you for being a member of the community. Appreciate everyone being here early. Some good chat going on before for the
stream went live, so thank you for that. And I caught the last little bit of Frank's video. He's got rob on over there, and I guess they're talking about the fram too satellite that recently went up, and I don't know. I haven't really been keep up with that. I talked to those guys the Frame. I talked to amsat and the Aris guys briefly at Hamcasion in February, so I know what the FRAM two is. I know what they're doing with it. They're gonna do an SSTV
thing upcoming. I think if that hadn't passed yet, I don't remember. I don't remember if that's passed yet or I don't I remember. I don't remember what the dates on it are, but it should be a pretty cool effort for amateur radio and space amateur radio satellites. So if you are into that sort of thing, I would uh, I would suggest going and checking that out. Frank's got several videos on it and it's pretty cool to see what it's doing. I need to try to get some
SSTV stuff going here. I've got MMSSTV installed back here, some listening a couple of weeks ago, and SSTV is done. That's why. Okay, yeah, that's I knew they were doing an after action report, but I don't know. I haven't been. Like I said, I haven't been keeping up with it. Glenn, thank you for the super chat. Appreciate you being here tonight. Buddy. Let's see the ISS has SSTV. Now, yeah, that's gonna be a permanent thing. The ISS having SSTV is going to be a permanent thing, which I was I was
hearing about that as well. So good deal. Thanks guys for being here. Appreciate everyone's willingness to spend your Sunday night with me. So Frank, I assume he's going to join here in a minute, but until he gets here, see that, see that camera camera freaks out sometimes. These Sonys have really fast focusing. But man, I don't know, I don't know. I'm not convinced I like it better than my canon. I might be going back to canon soon,
we'll see. But okay, So first of all, I want to a couple of quick things, real fast before we get started here. I am working on. I say I'm working on. I'm leading the effort. I got a developer working for me and making some major updates to my website shop dot Hamradio two dot com or grape vineanmateur radio dot com. This is not finished yet. We're not finished with this yet, so let me make that a
bit smaller T shirts and whatnot. Got a new T shirt here, Hamfests twenty twenty five, Ham Kashonhamvention Huntsville and more right there that went live today. Frank's new T shirt is there as well, his Blackout Tank Radio T shirt. That's all there. But there you might see some you might see some hiccups. It might come down for a little bit overnight, it might go back up again. But there are updates being made to this site right now, and I'm putting some new stuff on here and I'm
redesigning it and restructuring it and whatnot. So check that out over there Great Vine Amature Radio dot com. That's where that is, and shite you guys following me over there. Also, the coffee site is up and running. As I've mentioned in the giveaways, ham Radio Overland dot Coffee is that you are o. These are monthly subscriptions that you can sign up for the Expedition Brew, Early Shift, Rare Grid, and a Texas Blend they've got over there, So those
are going right now as well. Wanted to mention that I've actually got a couple other flavors of coffee I'm working on too, because that seems to be a popular thing right now. And although I don't drink a lot of coffee myself, when the weather's hot and the weather's starting to get hot, I don't know. I kind of I drank some coffee last week, and I'm like, you know what, maybe I'll just start drinking coffee more often. Maybe we'll maybe we'll do a coffee see what kind
of coffee we're drinking on live streams that night. I don't know, but that is all out there, and I know that people were asking after the live stream last week, and this is something that I wanted to mention last week. But I had Brandon from BattleBox on last week. That was a very fun live stream. He's already We've traded a couple of emails since last week and he's he's already been like, dude, let me know when you want to do it again. I'm totally down. I mean, he's
really excited, which is cool. It was really cool. Looking forward to catching up with him next year in Orlando. But until then, we're gonna do some live we get we don't have anything planned right now. We're like, hey, yeah, let's do some more stuff together. Cool. We don't know what it's gonna be yet, but Ham Radio Happy Hour this coming Friday. I haven't done this in a couple of months, and I want to get back to it.
And we're gonna do one in Dayton on the couple days before Dayton next month in May, and then I'll probably do one around Memorial Day as well. So I wanted to get one in for April. So next Friday, Good Friday, two days before Easter. Ham Radio Happy Hour. I've I don't know who's gonna be. I've talked to a couple of people who are available, and hopefully Brandon from BattleBots we'll be able to join us on that.
He expressed interest in wanting to join us on the next Happy Hour, so hopefully that will happen there and we'll be able to talk to him a little bit more oft than that. So there's Frank and where is Hold on second, I gotta make sure zoom meeting there we go right here. Oh that's why that was like that. Okay, I just want to make sure that the size is correct on that. What's up, dude, Hold on a second. I've got you on the wrong I got you on the wrong speaker because we had that we had that
more expo thing the other night, so I turned on. Okay, now what is there? You go? There? It is there? You go? Yeah, Well that's going on.
Doing all right, man, doing all right. I had a great weekend. I kind of took the weekend off from ham Radio and relax. However, that being said, Friday morning, I did film the complete unpacking of my new SAT like kit and it is complete and working, fully functional. Unlike Jason's camera is freaking out.
I know it. Yeah, that's what I get for using a Sony. I got to go back to Cannon.
Well, isn't that your canon was having the battery issues?
Uh no, it was, well one of the well, I've got like four Cannon cameras, okay, so one of them was having a re it was rebooting itself for no reason, and that that's actually my newest one, sadly geez.
But so yeah, I'm looking at getting some new cameras. I'm still doing it cheap ish, a couple of new cameras around. And the mic and the mic is I'm trying to figure out what i want to do with the mic. I'm thinking a shotgun mic because I hate personally having a mic right here as you're talking, and and half my mouth is either covered or partially or it's just right there. So I was thinking about a shotgun mic and maybe something I can use when I am out in the field and double that that be
kind of cool. I don't know, but that's that's thoughts for later. I was talking about Satellite Kid, which I did just get done finishing showing on the live stream and the video coming up later this month, about breaking this down. It's working, Jason, It's worked good. Good, have contact yet.
But good, well, well still good.
I need I need time. I tried to do it, but it was just the timings for the satellite passes didn't work out. And okay, this is how I'm gonna say this, all right, say it. This weekend I played nerd. My my nerd card came out. I went to the Scarborough fayir of the Renaissance Festival.
However, told me to double down on this.
I had my HT. I had my HT on side too.
And did you make content with anyone.
In the parking line? And a couple of times we were resting. However, one time I was sitting in the bookshop and it was quiet, and people were looking at books and I'm trying to be quiet and I hear I forgot the call signed KG. It's like no way, and I pulled it out. I was like, KG five h Jay, what's going on? I'm overheat the Resaissance Vestival. I'm dressed up in garb and talking on a radio. I don't think you're getting nerdier than this. The female
repellent is very active right now. What's up man?
No doubt, no doubt.
He was also there at the festival and broke away from his family to want to go to the car and play radio for a bit, and we had a find you. So when I was inside h and at that book, out of all the places, the places that everyone's waking, be quiet and read, and I'm there yelling at the radio being me.
Yeah, perfect, there you go, there you go. Good. Well, I'm glad you had five.
I guess I should have wrote down the contact and submitted my name for your right simplex.
Yeah. So I got this, So I say, in a second ago, I know that people were talking about I kind of got distracted. I know that people were talking about the repeater challenge. So March is the last month of the Repeater Challenge, and I didn't announce the winner last weekend. So I have a winner, and it is k E E O d Y Chris. If we look over here, he says, he titled his email to me
Repeater Challenge list. I put in some work, and he had quite a few things, almost every day going down here two meter for forty all of these no contacts that day. That's okay, A net that he had forty two check ins he was a part of. And he got on three twenty three and activated Spruce Knob with two eight five on a machine and spoke with some guys that I talk in great. Well, I activated Spruce No, okay, I guess not PODA. You can't activate PODA on a repeater.
But you got You went to Spruce Nob in West Virginia and got on the repeater. So that's good as it is a repeater challenge, so that's great. So Chris k E once again k E eight od y repeater Challenge for March of twenty twenty five, and that's probably gonna do it. That's I think I'm gonna shut the repeater challenge down simply because I would like to keep it going. And oh, yeah he's in that there is k E eight od y Ham Dad there he is
right there. Yeah, congrats, dude. I'd like to keep the repeater challenge going, but I can't do it and the HF giveaways that I'm doing at the same time because of financial reasons. So maybe we'll spin that up back up again later maybe I don't know, but we'll see. We'll see what happens with that. But that's it. Yeah, So where I got a couple of emails this week saying is it still going for April And the answer is no, No, I'm not going to do it for
April again. I might do it a little bit later on, but I don't. I haven't decided a hundred percent on that yet. So thank you to everybody who participated. Still go out and kee up your repeaters every day. You don't have to worry about winning a radio for me or anybody else. But still go out and kee up your repeaters every day. What's sad trying to trying to do that.
Some of the most active repeaters around, but recently they've just been going quiet. I've been getting on and listening to the radio more and more in the mornings and it's just where are y'all? Where did they? Right?
Yeah, I had a good conversation with someone on the roster and two meter repeater the other day coming back from the hunting Lees. I tried. I tried the the w f ARC repeater out there that Rob monitors and I. But I think it was during the day when he was probably at his office, so I'm assuming that he wasn't monitoring from his office. But I try to key up that repeater every time I drive north. But but I did have a good conversation on the Roster repeater, which is a very far reaching repeater.
Oh, I kind of want to blame COVID on this one. COVID did open up a lot of doors some amateur radio, but I think it's killed the commute drivetime talking groups. Yes, yeah, And that's what I want to blame on COVID, because before COVID there was healthy talk groups on amateur radio repeaters in the Dallas area. There were a number of them, like always guys going And since then, I'm like, where are you?
Yeah, I missed the fun ed AC three I k ask is the missus celebrating on Tuesday now that busy season is over?
Lol.
Actually that's a common misconception. That's a common misconception because she is a corporate CPA, and corporations don't have the April fifteenth deadline. She doesn't do personal taxes, so the April fifteenth deadline for her job is basically a romant. She does our taxes and she does my business taxes, and that's always that sometimes can be a challenge, but her job has nothing to do with April fifteenth at all. Plus, she doesn't really do tax work. She does light kind
of exchange work. She does a specialty thing, and their busy season is actually January and February, so she's passed that busy season. But but yeah, the April fifteenth deadline
doesn't really mean anything to her. So but she gets asked that question every year, So are you are you gonna take a break or She's like, now, my busy season two months ago, but it'll start up again in like April or like or there's the quarterly right, yeah, the quarterly quarterly stuff for corporations and all that kind of stuff. But whatever, but that is that's what I said. Well, I saw him in the chat. What do you say?
He said, I got my Tank Radio shirt and it looks great. Oh good, okay, And what he's talking about is the Tank radio shirt right there way yeah, uh out over at great fine Averagur Radio.
I showed that, Uh did you look? Did you catch the redesign on my website? I showed that before you jumped on?
Uh no, yeah, yeah, oh oh it's not done yet.
It's not done yet. It's currently I I actually hired to Shopify editor and I'm paying her to do I told her what I wanted and she's made some changes and I really like the changes she's made. And uh, and it's it's it's a work in progress, so it might go down for a few hours tonight or or tomorrow sometime. But it's been, it's been. There's been some major updates to it, but it's not done yet. So we're gonna be with that.
Beautiful as long as they ordered the blackout Teacher, So take radio. I'm happy right right.
I figured you would be. All right. The matter at hand that we're gonna do tonight, I'm going to start. I'm going to start this build tonight. And Freddie Mack and I were on Zoom two days this week putting together a brand new all Star node that I'm gonna use in the truck mobile, and we had some trouble with it and ended up taking us two or three or four hours to put everything together. And I made the comment when time I was like, thank god, we're
not on a live stream. He's like, man, that's no doubt, man, because we'd struggle with a couple of things. That's just the nature of live streaming. But tonight, I'm going to start this build. This is called a dx FT eight and I haven't seen ed in the chat tonight, but ed into XDD shout out to him. He told me about this kit when we were at Hamsai last month and he's like, have you seen this kit? And he I don't know how old or new it is. I
think it's fairly new. But it is a kit that you put together for this and apparently there's two versions of it. And I got the seven band. There's a five band and a seven band. And after doing a little bit of digging and sending a couple of messages in the group's there are no build instructions specifically for the seven band, but there are for the band. So
that's what we're gonna follow tonight. And you have to and it's only like forty bucks for this kit, okay, So if you I will share this link in the chat, you guys can go join this groups dot io if you want to and you can learn more about it. And I don't want to share this guy's You got to email a guy and he'll send you a PayPal link and that's how you buy the kit. And uh, his his name is Uh. You guys might recognize this guy.
Keys Talent kb K five b c q K five B c Q Keys K E E S. He's the one who is in charge of putting the kits together and taking the payment and shipping them out. They're they're also they're designed by uh Bar W B two C B A and Charles W five B A A. But for some reason Keys is the uh He's the guy who takes all the orders and ships them to He's actually in Texas, believe it or not, so but that is.
But that's what we're building. And I always thought it'd be cool to have a kit that you have a little QRP radio you can throw in your pack when you when you uh, you know, may travel on an airplane. Can't take a big intenna with you take you know, get a pac TENA, get a small QRP radio like this. And if you do FT alright, if you do c W great, But if you don't, this might be a great thing for you because it'll it's just ft eight
only ed no no six meters. So the five band kit, let me see, I've got a let me find my temp, let me find my screen here. So the five band kit is let's see ten, twelve, fifteen, seventeen, and twenty. I think and then the the that's the I've got a few pages here. So here's the uh here's a picture of the board from the five band kit and it is uh no, I'm sorry, this is the seven band yet this is the seven band kit board. So this incorporates ten, twelve, fifteen, seventeen, twenty thirty and.
Five forty one. Do you head again?
I have the seven This is the one that I have. This is the one that I have right here.
That's a good spread.
Right exactly. Yeah, you know, thirty meters is great because it's CW only, but you can do digital, so you can do FT eight on thirty meters all day long if you want to, and thirty seventeen or twelve or work bands. So if you get out there and get you want to do some activating or operating during the contest weekend and you don't want to play the contest, you can get on seventeen or thirty meter FT eight and you can still do some stuff. So I believe the five band I had a there's a there's a
there's a picture in here somewhere. There's a a lot of information in here, which is good. It's almost it's almost information overload. But I'm pretty sure that in a good way, in a good way, I'm pretty sure it does. Again, you know what, I don't even know. I think it's like between two and five. It's a QRP radio.
It's not a B can mean anything under ten.
Correct, Yeah, yeah, that's true, but but it'll uh I mean QRP. Actually, the definition of QRP means turn your power down or are you running low power. It's actually not a number. I don't like it when people say, well, if it's over five, it's not qr Yes, it is. If it's less than, if it's fourteen hundred and ninety nine watts or less than, it's QRP technically. So I mean, that's that's the T shirt I read at Dayton. Now I really really want to make one of those myselves
because it's true. But yeah, QRP just means low powers. There's not actually a number assigned to it in the In the strictest definition of the Q code.
It says no, it is a milli watt radio.
It might be a million. I haven't read through all the files here. It might be a million watt radio. I don't remember. There's a lot the stuff that I read didn't have a power output, and I don't really care because FT eight is a low noise mode. It's not a low power mode. You want to run five hundred thousand wats on FT eight, you can certainly do that, there's nothing wrong with it. Just don't burn up your transformer.
But it's a low noise mode, so it's easier to operate on low power than say sideband is so anyway, but I'm pretty sure that the five band kit, which you can still get as well, just does not include thirty and forty meters. I think it's ten, twelve, fifteen, seventeen, and twenty. Now, in my typical in my typical way I do things here, I ordered this. I ordered two of these kits. I have a second one. I have a second one, and you have to order the kit
and then you have to order this this board. Well no, with the instruction. Yeah, you have to order this board from mau either Mauser or Digike called this this STM thirty two board with the with the Ethernet port on it and whatnot. And I've ordered this board, but I don't have this board yet, so we can't complete the build tonight. But I knew a screen on it also,
uh yeah, yeah, this is yeah, this is the screen. Yeah, this is the screen board here that you will see because you can see right here that running right there. That's what it looks like when it's uh all done and up and running and whatnot. And in typical fashion the way that I do things, I ordered these, I got him in, paid for him, got him in. I was like, okay, I'm gonna put these together, and uh
only seven band of shipping, thanks Jerry. I didn't know that, but okay, But as soon as I got these two boards in, they announced a new version. So he's got a new version that he's taking he's taking orders for. I haven't started a ship yet that will have its own life Po four battery and BMS built in it, so you'll be able to just plug it in the wall. It will charge the battery, stop charging when it's uh when it's done. And then so it's got its own
battery charger and BMS in. And so I ordered one of those. Key sent out an email and he's like, hey, got this new one Lippo four battery. I don't know how big of a battery. I assume it's pretty small LIVEPO four battery with a BMS. I don't I think the price the price on this board was like forty bucks. And I said, yeah, go ahead and send me one of those when you're done with it. When you, I said, he goes, he goes, reply back to this email. Let me know if you want to be put on the list.
So I did, and I said, put me on the list. And uh, I don't have any further information on that right now, but but that is what is going on with that. So I want to turn my camera on over there, and here is the kit I'm gonna I don't want to solder it on this thing. So here's the kit. Here's the board that we have here, and and it comes with this stuff. Here comes with the comes with this. No, there's not that much to it, really.
I suspect that that's just a pain in the butt.
Yeah, these these are a pain. This actually comes as one piece. It's a forty pin uh whatever you call it, the riser pin card or whatever you call this thing. And you break it off into like four pieces, a six piece, two eight pieces, and a ten piece, and this got these little notches in here. It's just easy kind of Actually this one was broken when I got it. I'm like, wait a minute, that's already broken. So I hope that's right. The second one that I got, I
told you about two of them. The second one I got is a whole piece that that's the full forty pins. So I hope this broke the right place. I don't know.
So so everyone's asking, is the bill complete? No, we're about to do it live.
No, we're about to We're about to do We're about to start this build live.
And we're going to see if this is a weekend or a live stream milled.
Right, Yeah, totally. So these are the risers here. You put the the the board I'm a build now, you put it on the bottom. You put the second board from Mauser or digit key on top on the in the middle, and then you put this little guy on top. Here. This is the This is the bottom bottom piece of it. So it comes with all this stuff. It comes with the case and whatnot, and the riser's in it, and uh, a little battery port for a CR I think it's a CR twenty thirty two, and then you know power
cable that kind of thing. So this is not a hard build at all, and and I looked at it and like, oh, even I can do that. So this is why I chose it.
So so that battery is just for the sea moss, and it's not correct power.
That's correct, Yes, it is correct. Yeah, yep, that is correct. So uh yeah, I'm gonna turn this thing back on manual focus. I don't like the ways doing that, so okay, not tonight, but eventually. So so this is where we're gonna start tonight, and uh, I will get as soon as I get there again, I've ordered these, uh these mouser boards over here, and uh, I guess they take I don't know. It says can ship immediately, but I haven't gotten mine yet. Actually it might be at the
mailbox waiting for me. I don't know yet. But these are about fifty seven fifty so all in, all in you're gonna look look about it, about one hundred bucks to build that, all the stuff that can tasting but not. Yeah. Yeah, so pretty cool, kit, I think, And later John gotta get horizontal Long Day tomorrow seventy three. That's it. I like that.
The other comment I love this is this ahead nuest episode. No wait, he's following the instructions nevermind.
Ah, yes, yeah, so m hmm, so that's what we're gonna do tonight. These are cool. These these uh oh, where'd.
You get that?
County, Calm County. I've got this one. I've got a I've got an orange one, all Right'm sorry. I've got a green one and a gray one. These are really cool plastic. Uh what does that say? You find her inactive?
Yeah? Inactive push anything?
Okay, So yeah, well that's something else I did, so okay, so chalk this up to a boneheaded move. I took that camera to ham Side to record the Hamsie conference and it had my battery eliminator in it, and I'm like, oh, I got to keep that, and I put it somewhere. I lost it. So it's running on battery power right now because I lost my battery eliminator I was gonna see. Yeah, so I woulder another and I forgot that I had
lost that, so I order another one today. Of course it won't be here till tomorrow, so I've got to deal with the battery on this thing all night tonight. But oh well that's just how it is, all right, So real quick, real quick, you guys know that I turned fifty last year, right, yeah, there we go, all right? I uh, all right, So we're gonna uh, Frank, it's uh, you are in charge of the chat. I'm gonna start in on this and see what kind of bumbling we can get through here. And I've got I'm gonna pull
up these build instructions here. I forget where that which tab did I have that?
On?
There? It is right there?
Okay, good? So where that? Where did that gets it?
So here's the here's the first page here? So and again this is the five band version, because I emailed and I said, do you have build instructions for the seven band version? And uh? And somebody replied back and they gave me this link right here with all of this stuff down here, a lot of pictures, a lot of images, some PDF files, some how to's and whatnot, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And someone said, ah, yeah, did you find the step by step? And I'm like, no,
I didn't, where's the step by step? Well, the step by step instructions are actually for the five band, but I think it's pretty darn similar. And then key and then uh and then what's his name? The guy barb. He replied. He's like, he's like, man, I'm sorry, I've just gotten he's busy. It's cool. It's not a you know, this is an open source project, you know. Uh. He's like, I haven't gotten a seven band instructure put together. I'm sorry for that. And I'm like, no, don't worry about it.
It's uh, I think I can get to it with this. I think he's working on that either way, though, So we're gonna see how we can do with this tonight.
And Chris, we did talk about the price point all total with the secondary board that you need for the LCD screen plus the additional board, you're looking around eight hundred dollars.
Yeah, about one hundred bucks for everything something like that. So this board here, well, this kit with all the stuff that I just showed you is about forty bucks before shipping, and I think it's like five bucks for shipping or something, and then uh, the and then the the mouser board's like fifty seven bucks something like that.
So let's let's get to it.
Yeah, okay, let's get to it. Uh. Let's see all right, So the first thing in this shot right here is to let me turn that on switch and switch. That's better. So I wish they wouldn't have used this red text on top of this green here because it's hard to read sometimes. But this says there's a switch over here. There's the T two six thirteen transformer here, the SMA connector down at the bottom, and then another connector over
here and another switch there. Oh, power switch there. So there's two switches which you're right here, and then the U This is the barrel connector and this is the SMA connector right there. So we're gonna so we're gonna start on that and see how far we get. So I'm sorry, Yeah, this is the SMA connector. I gotta remember which screen I'm on. Switches and a barrel connector. Bought a battery clip that on the bottom side. There we go. Okay, oh you Frank?
All right? Uh the linked link for this again?
Did you get that? I put it in there? Did you see it?
You did it a while ago, and I did I wasn't quietly paid attention to your posts.
That's okay, okay, So I'm gonna put it in again. I'm gonna put a link to the groups dot io and you can save that there. Frank, d x F T eight, dot groups, dot io, and that's where you get you can get all the information about who to email, how to order it, and that kind of thing.
I saved it off, okay, tip maintenance also, yes, a good safety thoughe. When you're done today, Jason, please don't forget to turn off your sawdery irons.
That's a good idea.
Frank.
I'm not saying who, but someone on the stream left it off for a week.
Well you know what I mean to each his own.
I guess I walked in the room. I'm like, what what smells like? Bernie?
Ah?
Whoops, I gotta get some higher powered glasses.
I think I gotta stand back from it.
Okay, once you're done, your camera just went no signal?
Oh hold on, okay, can it is that? Dep No? You know what. It's got a power saving feature that I turned off. But I don't think that power saving future works on battery power. So okay, tell me if that does that again.
We're good. We're good.
So you around next Friday for the happy hour, Frank, uh.
This coming happy hour for Thanksgiving.
Weekend Thanksgivings in November. This is Easter.
Oh yeah, easter.
I know what you mean, but it's a live stream, so I gotta tease you.
Right perfect, Yes, I'll be here, okay, and and I'm looking forward to it, and I'll probably be on my patio or deck.
You know what. It's possible then I will string the camera out there and do that same thing.
It's possible.
You know what that This is a good solder joint if I do say so myself. So so everything else I do tonight that screws up. I'm gonna be like, hey, I put the switch in right, so we'll see, all right?
Was there only two soldering joints? You did? There? You did?
There was five pins?
Five got five pins perfect.
Five pins, three little pins in the middle, and then two two larger kind of slat pins on the on the side there. So okay, let's uh, we're gonna go back here. And this says a T to six thirteen dash one transformer and I I don't know what that is. Oh you know what? Okay, so that is already on here. That's something I noticed. So this is something either different about the seven band or maybe they just started putting it on here. I don't know. This little guy right
here that I'm pointing to this little white transformer. It's on these instructions it says to it to solder that on. But this is already on here, So we're gonna we're we're we can skip that part and then the uh, the SMA connect out. The SMA connector here has three pins on the top and two pins on the bottom. And you can see right there, if you can see it, there's three little slats there and two slats there, so you have to solder it on both sides of the board. So that is that's gonna happen.
Next.
What's the frequency? Happy Halloween by the way, way.
Oh they got you there, Frank m.
Is the frequency in use?
Okay, Ed says, you need a circuit board holder for you. I'm on one hand, I don't like the holders. On the other hand, I want to holder.
I have one. The helping hands I have one, and I find isn't that now I'm not an expert. Okay, I'm not an expert, and some of you guys who are more adept at this might not agree. But I find it to be a little bit more challenging to use than just sitting on the table. See this, this this pad that I have down here, I don't care if I get stuff on it, so I don't. I don't find them to be all that beneficial. If you guys disagree with that, let me know in the chat.
Kevin, Happy New Year's to you.
You get happy New Year's now?
Huh that's good. Okay, put some more on that one right there.
I actually got an email from some Chinese company wanting to send me a set of helping hams. Can you make a video on this? And I'm like, eh, I could use it in the video.
Now it looks like we're doing the INTENTA port.
Yes, this is the SMA port. That's correct. Okay, all right, that's on there.
Paul does not like the extra hands.
Prep Pam, Paul, yep, yeah, okay. So next is that's not there? Okay? This is switch up top? And what is that on this on the middle there? Oh, that's that thing. Okay, So if you look at okay, so what this picture here is showing me is that there's another switch that goes right here, and there's what they're calling a DC barrel connector, which is this guy right here. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna change this camera, Frank.
Yep, and your other one just went.
Okay, camera issues glory, Okay, I tell you what, Frank, you take it for a minute. I'm gonna change this camera.
While Jason's changed the camera. I'm just gonna be hanging out with y'all. Many hat holidays to whatever one is happening in this particular moment in time. Yeah, but more expos also coming up, Jason, and I'm looking forward to that. I'm gonna be packing coming up this week. I got to do my tent and I'm making some beans. They're not going to be too outrageous. Toss me a link or show me where these helping hands are bulletholders are.
Toss it to me on the discord and I'll get it out there because I'm kind of looking into some of these. I want to get back into doing kids and sometimes holding stuff down in the right place is really annoying. And I've tried the board clips and other stuff that it just getting it to hold it right is takes more time than just trying to finaggling it with just holding it on the table or with a pen or something.
You're talking about helping hands there.
Yeah, helping hands or some of the clips that I that came with some of the son and irons, like getting it right takes more time for the instead of like you're just doing putting a pen behind it, and just.
I agree, I agree. I just I just put a pin, a writing pin underneath that to kind of hold it up there for a second. And I find that, because now I've got all this space, I don't have to turn around it like that.
I want to see what what options are out there, So maybe there is a nicer one, maybe a newer one.
Possibly. Yeah. Yeah, the one I got is just from Amazon. It's nothing special. It worked, I mean it worked for what it is. It works. It's just I find that it's you know, it's it's like an extra step you have to do. And I was like, oh, you know, just get rid of it and you don't have to fool with it anymore.
Okay, Like I'm feeling like I'm watching a holiday from the holiday and.
Ah, okay. So there's the DC connector right there, and I'll put another the other switch in. So this switch here says uh, let's see RF power select. So this is the switch. So this is the power select switch. Here high and low. I guess this switch here is the power the power off and on of the transceiver, so it's got two. Yeah, I should know if this single poll single three. I should know that, but I took my hand radio test thirty years ago and I
don't remember. It's a two way switch. It's either left or right.
So let's see.
It's Josh Man. Welcome to the stream, he says, just got back from camping, Josh Hanrito crash course.
Oh it's I didn't see him in there. M up, dude, So I saw you on twelve meter or no, I'm sorry, twenty meter fight last night.
Ooh that's fun.
Yeah, it was before before his stream started too.
We were talking in the chat earlier. Some people are saying FT's not fun and it's just you pushing a button, and I kind of agree with them. On the other hand, it has its place, you know, when I'm out there in one activating a park, I find it more fun to do voice. When you're running FTA. You just click a button and wait a minute and then yay, I got a contact. However, if you're looking to do some DX, you know FT eight is where it's that, especially on
twenty meters. There's a lot of DX on there that it's hard to pull those voice contacts out. And then one of the place for me I really enjoyed is well, we're just sitting around at camp at night, smoking a cigar and relaxing and just click a button and we're still doing ham radio.
So I find that FT eight is fun in two different ways. Number One, Yeah, if you go out, so I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about Poda here for more than anything else. Okay, So on Poda. I go out and I activate Poda and I get on sideband, and I do you know, fifteen hundred hundred fifty contacts whatever, and unless I'm just trying to get activated and leave. But if I'm going to camp overnight like we did in Big Ben National Park last week, I find that, you know, I get tired of talking and I'm like, eh,
but I want more contacts. So I get on FT eight and I start making FT eight. I also like the fact that you go into your potologue on PoTA Dot app and you can see more activity than just sideband, so you could see sideband, digital and CW so you can see all of that and it'll do you know. I like doing different modes that way. So that's my own personal preference. You guys, If you don't like that,
that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that. But that's that's what that's kind of what I like about it.
I enjoyed at night, like you said, when I get tired of talking, or I'm around the campsite of campfire having fun with everyone, and I still want to play radio, but I don't want to be off by myself to saying c Q, c Q and c Q, right. I enjoyment out of that.
Agreed, all right. So here's something I was. I was kind of tinkering with this a little bit before the stream, just kind of make sure I'm not gonna screw something up. So right here on the left of this picture is where you are. Now, this is the bottom side of the board, which you can see right right here, and right here where the circle is is where you put the battery holder. And then these are where you put.
The uh these fourteen pins.
Yeah, the fourteen pin thing?
Now, what's way to put the fourteen pin?
I don't think that woe that one does not matter, but the battery does matter because it's marked on the board positive and negative. So this is the negative side. This is the positive side. And you have so you have to look on the battery and the battery is marked positive on this end right here. So it matters which way you put this hold. So it needs to go that way, not the other way, because to line up positive to positive obviously. So and this is a
really tight fit. I was trying to get the pins turned a little bit or just kind of bent a little bit before the stream storted, but does are really there? It is okay, nice, So it just barely fits in there, but then it holds itself. So I'm just gonna turn over and solder it because it's gonna be easy while.
You're doing that. Ken Simpson said he did his first PoTA activation today fourteen contacts and learned a lot good excellent. Congratulations on your first activation and being successful on your first activation. Sometimes it doesn't happen on your first one, and you will always learn to keep seconds of everything on doing charge of it.
That's the truth of it right there.
Oh, thank y'all. I see a bunch of links here in discord with helping hands. Let me get those loaded.
All right?
We got that it's good there. Now this one here this uh so if we go down here, so it says to put these uh one right here down at this part right here, it says one six pin, two eight pens, and one ten pin are Dueno style male headers cut from a forty pin mail header. That's what it says right there. And I'm always like, okay, which side goes where? I don't know. But if you look at this picture right here, it shows that the long pin and the the header itself, the black part of
the header go on the bottom right here. So that's what that that's what that's showing me. So I'm gonna solder mine on. I've got this one broken down. This one here, that's the right number. And then yeah, I'm not sure. I think I might have gotten there's enough for that one there. Oh no, that should be okay, okay, one two three, four, five, six seven eight on that one, two three seven eight, on that one that was nine, I think yeah, it was one too many.
M one too many. Oh that means you got to pull one and put No.
I think that there they gave me more than I need. I believe I counted, So I think I'm okay.
Don welcome to the chat. Okay, what's the frequency? Says So we finally got the Alaska firmed contact and worked all bands, all states and all fifty states on each band. Wownda nice, I assume that's PODA because we're talking about PODA, were talking that. That is awesome. Don smoke signals r F. Welcome to the chat, he says. Next, thanks skimming. You can do FT eight during the holidays, and I laugh.
I'm like FT eight and also this is correct. I probably will be on the band's Friday, not Friday Saturday, because that's when we're doing our family get together and I'm gonna go hide where they start talking politics politics.
That's a good day. Yeah, start family starts talking politics, go to FT eight.
Oh you know, my stepdad is an amateur radio. He has his life and a radio. Yes, so when they start doing that, I'm like, okay, and I sneak off and turn on the radio in his office and start working.
There's nothing wrong with that. He's the one who wy don't you plug his morse monkey? Real quick, Frank?
Right, is that still on your shop?
It's on there somewhere, but I couldn't tell you where it is. Right now because everything's been moved around.
Okay, okay, it'll.
Be it'll be under like radios or kit. I might have a kit section.
I don't know yet, but that would be the perfect transition for something else I'm looking. I'm looking categories antennas, bug out kits, solar shirts, monkey, monkey, monkey, bam. Here it is. This is my stepdad's Morse Monkey, a kit that you can put together for one hundred dollars to learn amateur or I'm sorry CWW. I was about to call amateur CW.
Well, well it is. It is amateur CW. That's true.
Yep, yep. There's a great kit to help you learn CW skills and there's several different modes and practices to strengthen your skills. And plus it is a fun kit to put together. And I've done it and it's fun. It is fun.
It's a good kit.
Then, since we're over here, these is magnetic helping hands sets like this, and what's the other one? Uh, I'm gonna come back to this one. I find it's harder and it takes more time to get these stupid clamps clamp correctly tightened up to hold the thing that you can solderate the magnifying glass. Okay, I kind of do like the magnifying glass. That does help. However, I think this is what Josh was showing on his stream. This is the circa board holder. I think that's pretty cool.
That does show some promise I've got. I've got that it is if you're doing an act like this, circuit board right here would probably be that's probably a good thing to be using right now. I didn't. I just didn't feel like using it because again, it's it's really a preference of what you want to do. Do you want to do if you find it more helpful to use that than use it. If not, then don't you know.
But most of these I've used various types of them, and it just takes longer to get that clip hold correctly at that right position so you can solder it. Then it's really worth I wish, I wish, I want them because getting it right place right is such a pain in the butt. These were much more easier to use. There was another one that had was it the one camera again I just closed.
I got you Okay.
This one my friend has and it seemed to be a little easier because you can move the wire around and it holds in position, which is nice. So the other ones you had to unbolt, bolt, clamp down over here, plamp down. Then when you release it, they move. Yeah, they move, literally they move when you let go.
Come on now, yeah, yeah, it's a little bit crooked.
But this one is much nicer that you don't have all the bolts to for all the joints to lock it in place. Yeah yeah, maybe maybe, but it's not in the budget yet. However, the the circuit board, I'm going to consider that because I really do enjoy kits. I got another kit in the mail and I'm going to be putting it together later this month. It is in a ten kit. Good Okay, I am really enjoyed. I really enjoyed doing those a tent kuts. Now I'm
almost with Mike. Where I've got my I have so many in feds and other antennas, like I need another bag or box to put these in.
I've got my carten that I took to the to the park when we were down there in Galveston last month, and I strung the wire out and I measured it. It's that, Uh what's the one? What's the uh? It's the nine to one in random wire. So they said, I think it's like forty one feet is the main element in like a seven or eleven foot I don't remember, uh, counterpoise. So I measured all that out and put all that together and it's ready to go. I didn't get a
chance to actually use it. But when I get when I get back out to that park, I'm gonna use that.
I just thought of something. I was going to clean up this window. Uh not discord, where's zoom? Get away zoom? If this board had a secondary component so when you flip it over, because you're soldering on the top side, right, and when you flip it over, the component component will fall out on the on the circuit board holder. If it had like a helping hand or something that you can turn over and just say and then holds the thing up, the capasitor up, the something whatever you're soldering
up so you don't have to hold it. Oh, that'd be pretty cool, all.
Right, No, I agreed, Yeah, no, and it and it would work that way. It worked, just find that way. Yeah, so we'll see. But uh uh again, I've I've got one. I just I just opted not to use it today for whatever reason. So let's see put two off of that one.
Two, Jeff, when you clamp hearts, be careful where you are clamping them. If they clamp is actually part of the solder or clamp, it will keep up.
And it's true. Ye yep, that is a good point.
Also, Don says, tape will do it. Yep. That I'm clicking on these the highlight. I'm like, but it's not my strength.
Oh yeah, no, it's okay. Sorry.
Uh, that's why you bend the wire. Yeah, you could do that too, but bending the wire to hold in the place. But depending on what you're doing. Like these forty pins that Jason Soldery, there's no wire to bend. They're all straight wire.
Correct. It's not wire, really, it's just pins.
No, a pin is a wire is cut shortly.
Technically, it's not stranded wire though.
Mm hmm. Painter's tape raph says, yep, that's a good idea.
Yeah, you know, I've actually used that before. I've used painters tape before. It is good idea.
I don't know why my discord's not discording the sound to people sending me messages.
I don't know.
That's a little annoying. I'm about to reinstall this whole computer and just go fresh again, maybe upgraded all the way to eight or eleven. I mean, there's a couple of things that I find annoying. Chrome is acting up. I just yeah, thinking about starting fresh. Yeah, yep, ten dollars super chat from don N five s KT says nice soldering job. And that's a compliment coming from coming.
From don that's really good. Thank you done. Yeah. I don't think it's all that not. I mean it's it's it's in there, it hasn't fallen out, so you know that's good.
Well, if it's more, then he'll give you money for the right and disoldery stuff.
Right, yeah, exactly exactly. So okay, all right, here we go. So okay, so the next one is uh okay, So this is the disco what they call the disco board, uh, the audio interface board, which is the part that you get from digitke or mauser. They said they didn't give a link for mauser, but they did for digitke and has the Ethernet port on it right there. So this is the board that goes next, and then it tells you how to assemble the disco board and r F board,
and this is the r F board here. You know this is an r F board because it has the SMA port, it has our F coming out of it. So and then it shows you how to assemble it there kind of like that goes through. That step.
Is those additional things that you put on there are the no.
In fact, it says the first step to do on this disco board is cut thirty millimeters one and a quarter inch along three different colored flexible cables. Solder those cables to the audio out connector IQ and ground pins for the RF board. So basically, just take some cable
of your own and soldered on there. He's got yellow, black and blue on his right here, So you have to do that and then it kind of looks like that when it's done, or well, then you solder it to the other board when it's done, I guess, And it says sm on the bottom of it. There. That's where is that? See I don't even see that on here. I'm not sure where that is. I'm have to figure that out. Oh, that's probably this little guy right here. It came with this guy. So there's a couple other
pieces I haven't soldered on yet. These are all parts of that or so anyway, Yeah, it tells you how to do that and put all that together and there, and then it shows you kind of kind of like like it'll kind of look like that without the top on it. And then once you put the top or well the boughty technically that's the bottom there, and then that's what it looks like with the SD card, antenna connector all that kind of good stuff, bless you. So that's about as far as I can get on this tonight.
All right, I've got the two switches on it. I've got the audio out cable here or the power out rather oh god, yeah, SMA connector and the four the four pin connectors down here.
Nice.
I've got to wait and get that that other board that's.
In So a weekend project probably.
Probably, you know, and I might do another live stream just you know, got another live stream to spin up this point in time. I've got like I've got so next week is Easter. I'm probably not gonna live stream when we're gonna again, we're gonna hammer it a happy hour on Friday. So you guys who have been on my happy Hour in the past, if you are welcome to join us again. And I was gonna send an email about that today and I just ran outs.
I am, yep, you have a soft focus.
Yeah, okay, hold on, yeah, I changed it to manual focus on purpose.
When you're doing the hand nomics. Gave you a super chat. It may be Thanksgiving, but I hope it doesn't smell like bird chicken tonight.
Right right, totally thank you for the super chat, but yeah it's Yeah, so happy Hour next weekend. I'm not gonna live stream on Easter. I'm gon take the night off and then the but that following weekend is the more Expo, so I might try to spin up something on Monday before the More Expo and the group of us can get together and talk about the More Expo. Or heck, I might just do a live stream from the More Expo Wednesday night. We might just do that instead.
But yeah, so next Sunday is WrestleMania.
Hear and says, hey, there you go, Sunday Sunday Sunday.
Awesome. But uh but yeah, so h so that's where that is. Yeah, no live stream next Sunday, that's correct, But I am going to live stream from the More Expo and I'll probably do it on my overland channel, but I'll send an email out or a text message out to you guys, so y'all can join us over there if that interests you.
It's gonna be fun.
If that interests you. Yeah, so I should My focus should be better now, No, you're good, okay, good?
Yeah they were talking about earlier. It looks like it when you were sitting the manual focus and focused on the mic that puts you in the soft photos.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They judge Judy focus right totally.
Yeah hmm, but.
That's about it.
Planning on meeting you, Yeah, so so chat. I will put links to all this in the description below. You guys can go check that out if you want to pick up one of these pretty pretty nominally priced, pretty reasonably priced kit And it doesn't look like he's going to be that that difficult to put to.
One hundred dollar is not that bad?
No, No, I don't think so at all.
So good fun mm hmm. Good Paul Prepp pant Paul says, got my new truck, bed, tent and hangars fan.
So he's getting ready good good, getting ready good good.
Hanging out with Paul I don't think he's hung out with us at night. He's gonna be in.
He was it. He was at winterfield Day. He yeah, yeah, yeah, he was at winterfield Day.
I think he miss the first night of drinking. That's always the big yeah.
Don I have seen the z bit X. Yes, I have the nest bit X version two over there. I think he has the version three out now, that's the one that he that he came up with last year. I have seen the z bit X and honestly, it's probably one of those things that I'll probably just be forced to buy at ham benchon on four days in May. This is coming next month, because I'll see it and I'll be like, oh, that's cool, I'm just gonna buy that. So and I think Josh built the QMX last night,
which they announced a single side band. He's been talking about that for like a year and a half. The single sideman is supposed to be added to that that transceiver at some point, and I was I did not watch Josh's live stream last night it was out, but I saw his notification come across my stream and it says single sideban on the QMX, let's build one. So I assume that went. I hope that went well for him last night. But yeah, so I and I have a QMX kit and it's a lot more complicated than
this one is. I just put it that way. One of these days, I might try to build it.
I don't know.
I'm kind of I kind of jealous of Mike because he just got them to build his, and it took him an extra few months and then they send it to him built, so he's already gone out and used it. But oh well, that's just how it is.
Mike built one.
No, he bought one and had them build it.
Oh yeah, cheater. Yeah, but that's what you get for those Matt guys.
Uh yeah, Mike's good at building kids. He just didn't build that one for whatever reason. And I have the kid and I've never built it, so I don't know. But whatever. It was a VOD premiere and it went well at least I think, okay, good.
Yeah. I don't want to build stuff live. I'm very slow building. I don't know why.
Well, see, and that's why I said up front. I was like, we're not going to finish this tonight. So it's just it's not going to be finished, which is okay. I mean, I didn't have all the pieces to finish it anyway, but but I wanted to, you know, at least start it. And I'll probably when I get that second board, and we'll probably do another live stream and
start putting stuff together. I do have a live stream plan for the week after, yeah, two weeks from tonight, which will also be I have a high hand radio livestream, but it will also be our next RV chat live stream as well. So we're gonna do that that night. But sometime in sometime in May, we'll probably finish this one up. So you want to laugh, okay.
I was looking over the comments and I did a short on the gigab This is the name of the video. First look at the gigaparts PODA thirty thirty mass mad, Yeah, the gigabarts PoTA thirty thirty mass okay. And then one of the comms what's this for? And a guy underneath it hand radio communications, I guess, But who does that? A guy underneath that? Geez? This whole time I was thinking it was a fishing rod.
Ha. Yeah, I have mindset up like a fishing rod. At Galveston that time I was there and it was bent way over.
Yeah, it was like it says it's in the title, but show you shorts are not. No one's looking at the names.
No, they're just wiping. That's true. It's very true. Cool. Well, what a you got coming up? Frank?
Coming up? Not this Monday, but next Monday. I'm gonna be talking about the armor link. I'm gonna lock. I said that wrong, armor lock yazu f T eight d x ten mm hm f T ten d lah I'm not like mathing right anyways, yaz f t d x ten cage. I've installed it and I took it to a park and I utilized it and I threw it in the bag and the full thoughts and reviewers are gonna come out on that. It's it's awesome. I love it.
Uh.
Then I'm going to be doing a build and talking about my new new masts or satellite pack. Right.
Good.
So that's that's all coming up on the channel and I'm thinking and they're tugh. I just wrapped up this monthly farm to launch and got all that done. The live stream, I just finished talking about the winners and kind of looking back and how we tried to get all the images, and Robert came on and shared the
images he was able to download. His working from home was able to let him get out more and to capture the images than me because I do team right, Hey, but it works sometimes it works out like that.
Sure.
Also going on in the average or ARIS amateur radio ISS currently to April sixteenth, there is also new slow scan. It was just being transmitted from the International Space.
Station until the sixteenth.
Until the sixteenth on what band? On twenty meters or from ISS two meters?
Yeah, oh, on two meters okay.
Yeah, these there are two meters four forty. I think it's they're on their two meter down link whatever their DOWNLAK frequency is. Okay, it's transmitting. So when the ISS is overhead, listen for it.
I was, uh, when we were at Big Ben last week, I was tuning up and down the twenty meter band. There was some loud signals on fourteen two thirty for SSTV, Yeah, but I didn't I didn't stop, and I was like, Okay, I know what that is. I'll may come back to it later, but I was trying to find some post contacts.
So if you're just like tuning around, you know, pull up your phone and go to that Robot thirty six app and just lay it on the speaker. That's what there.
Well you remember when we did that at Ray Roberts. Yeah yeah, I was like, oh damn coming through. Great, Yeah, right there, Just.
Sit there and throw it on top of the speaker. Wait for the images go. You don't have to have a computer.
Right right true. Okay, guys, thanks for joining us tonight. Oh yeah, I did work n A Yo on a big bit. He was on sideband Believe or not nice came back to me on on at Big Ben and I got him in the log book, so that was fun. But yes, uh so thanks for joining tonight. We will do a follow up on this later as soon as I get the other pieces in and doesn't look like it's that complicated put together. In fact, I think programming and firmware download may be the most complicated part. So
we'll see. Uh there's there's a little bit of information on that, but I've I've not read too deep into that yet, so we'll see what happens with that. But that's uh, that's where we are on that. So seventy three guys, thanks for being in the chat. To thank you for all the great comments and the super chats,
and we will definitely catch you guys this week. The put the Ham Radio Happy Hour on your calendar eight pm Central Time, which is going to be zero one hundred UTC on Saturday this coming weekend, zero one hundred UTC Saturday morning.
What's this for the UTC times, Texas time, Texas
Time, Well, just people watch us from other places as well, So but seventy three guys, you' all have a good evening and we'll catch you next time.