Happy Sunday. Thanks for joining us. We're gonna get started here in just a minute. Y'all were watching Frank's stream. I think he's about to wrap it up, so we'll get started here in just a minute. Thanks guys for being here early. All right, I show seven o'clock in Texas and we're gonna hop right in here. So good evening to all. Thanks for joining me another Sunday back in the shack. I had to rebuild my whole computer this last week, so I'll talk about that in a minute.
It was kind of fun and scary at the same time, so but happy Sunday. Thanks for being here tonight. Shout out to the folks in green text in the chat YouTube channel members Dan Model, I hope I'm saying that right. I saw you in there first. I saw Tom in there KB eight d XN Paul the Southern m other Tom w B seven O U T cis as. I'm not sure what that is brooks kJ five f T T GF O Dale. Andy Colly's in there, of course.
Good evening or a happy late night for you, Andy, Kevin w V zero p O h j s V T l I K. I don't know YouTube changed all the names. So now instead of seeing your name, I see your your handle, which is your AT symbol after your channel YouTube channel. So it's something YouTube changed about how the chat feeds in. I'm hope they changed that back or give me a way to change that to where I can see your actual name instead of what your handle is. But that's where it is right now.
K H two x X k Q four F I P Jerry David p D five I T. He says hello from Ohio p D five I T. That's looks like a DX call sign. So, uh, there's Jody in there, v A five sar. Good evening, guys, thanks for being here tonight. So yeah, we're talking about winterfield Day, one of my favorite times, one of my favorite events through the year, because well I was on a call with it. You guys, remember Tom Oh gosh, I forget Tom's last
I forget his call sign right now. But he used to live stream every Tuesday night, I think it was, and he'd go for like three hours or whatnot, and he'd have a lot of different guests on there and covering a lot of good subjects. And the statement was made one time on his show that winterfield Day is better for testing your equipment because summerfield day the weather's
so nice and cheery and blah lah lah. And I'm like, obviously, you've never done summerfield Day in Texas because winterfield Day can be we might it might be eighty five degrees where we are, and it might be twenty five degrees where we are, and you never can really tell what it's going on. But winterfield Day is winterfield Day is a fun, fun event. Enjoyed it for the last several years, and I'm excited to talk about that tonight. So I'm still waiting on Frank to uh wind down his stream
and come to the chat. He's gonna be watching the chat for us, but we're just gonna hop into it here. And I've got Marvin and Mike, not that Mike but the other mic. How you guys doing the Seeker this evening.
We're good.
A lot of Mike's in him radio, but even in winterfield Day board, there's at least two of you, right, so.
There is so the only way I keep them straight is Michael and Mike, okay difference.
So that's and Michael spells his a little bit differently than most.
My mother and my mother got creative when.
It looks like it looks like it's almost like Dutch or German or something spelling of it. But I don't, I don't know.
Got your good questions goes, it's basically Mike with an elm and so okay, so it's m I C H A y L. No, it's my k which is very different. But yeah, I've only say like one other time in my life. So's it's interesting that it's good. Yeah, he's he's busy night working on other Winterfield dy stuff, so he couldn't make it.
In Okay, Well that's okay. I'm I'm happy you two were able to make it. I know you all have been doing a lot of work on the back end and uh talking about a lot of stuff and you guys are Frank is still yacking. Well that's that's fine. It's because he's Frank. It's okay, that's not a problem. He'll be here in a minute. It's fine. He's he's I like him here because he watches that. He does a really good job on watching the the chat for questions.
So but that's okay. We're just gonna hop right into it and start talking about winterfield Day not a big deal. So what's been on the what's been on the list agenda for whatnot? What's some what's been the big I know you guys were talking about some conversations you were having about on the Facebook group. So what's the what's the big hot topic this year? If any or maybe there's more than one, Micha.
I'll it you running with that first.
Sure, Yeah, so we this is actually something that came out of your live stream last year, Jason, so and I I give I give credit and or blame whichever he wants to take to gray Man Poe to ask him this question last year because he asked basically things like APRS meshtastic, can you make contacts with them for Winter field Day? And you absolutely can. They just have to be simplex one radio to another radio. Yeah, all those things right, same same way you do any other
Winter field Day contact. You just have to reconfigure. And so we put a little bourbon there about that, including win Link, and it has we need to workshop how we talk about it, because what it's done is we've got the win link objective, which doesn't is not a qso it's just send a win link email, receive one back. You get a multiplier because you can also make QSOs with wing Link, but you have to use peer to
peer mode. And so a lot of people are like, well, say one thing it counts for qso points another thing doesn't. What are you doing? So we've I fielded probably a dozen questions that same question a dozen times in the last couple of days. So happy to clear it up here for anyone who needs it. But the real thing is we want people to get creative with their with their ham radio equipment and making a contact on making a Ham radio Winterfield Day contact on Meshtastic gets after that,
or win link gets after that. That's what we want to see.
I think we ran a BBS on Meshtastic last year and we were at a totally different We were a totally new spot last year, and we checked on that spot again this year. And the cabin that we rented inside of a state park it's being renovated, so this it wasn't available at all for this month. I think, so we're going back to Galveston this year. But I know that we set up a BBS last year. I think we did actually make one Meshtastic contact that was not the group of us inside the cabin operating together
under the same club call. So that's that's a fun event because it's a fun thing to do because you don't think about it. But the nine hundred megahertz band is totally it's a shared band with multiple services, including Ham Radio. Ham Radio has privileges from nine o two to nine twenty seven I think it is. And so anything anywhere in there around the nine hundred and fifteen megahertz, right in the middle, which is where most of your mestastic stuff takes place, it's it's totally inside the Ham
radio band. So yeah, as long as we don't turn on m QTT, which I don't think anybody likes to do these days anyway, well we'll probably doing some of that as well.
Yeah, exactly. So's what I've talked to some some people who are better at meshtastic than me, and they've said, set your equipment to zero hops, you know, and remember our rule about it has to be someone who isn't operating Like you mentioned, you're not not someone who's operating at your site, and it has to that at rfs to make it outside your.
Site, gotcha, Okay, all right, well that might be a good It might be a good plan to set up like bring like a some sort of push up pull or tower or something and put a solar note up there a little bit higher, which is probably something we probably something we would do anyway, because there's actually I was so I was again, we're going we're gonna go back to Galveston Island State Park this year. We like
love operating winterfield Day from a potas spot. Double whammy, right, so you get to you get to turn in multiple logs for it. But but I was down there last month and actually saw some meshtastic uh you being used on the island, which I have. It's kind of rare to see down there. So and and UH made contacts with the two or three stations on one forty six five two Simplex as well. So hoping that we of course we want to do some HF and uh Rob the digital Rancher, he's gonna be down there with this
at least that's the plan right now. So I'm gonna get some satellite contacts that way. Uh, but I want to do some some FM simplex as well, So we're gonna try to do some uh extracurricular stuff like that, stuff that you do you may or may not typically see instead of just sitting on twenty meters the whole time.
Yeah, I mean that's one of those things where that's why we have a lot of those objectives out there where people can do more than just sit there on HF, especially if it's a little slow or something else is happening, as like go look at a satellite pass and and I mean, you know, set up another antenna during that
time or something that will certainly help as well. So and obviously by doing the completing those objectives or those objective number of multipliers we call them, oh amen's uh, you actually gain additional QS points because of it too at the same time, So it's really going to be for a benefit for people to go out and do that.
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, no, that's a that's a great plan. I think. Good. Okay, well I want to talk a little let's Frank just join, so let's let's get him in here real quick. But also I want to talk a little bit more about the about the setting, the would you call it for wind link to not to to not go over the gateway, but to do like a peer to peer setting. When I talk a little bit more about that. But Frank, Frank, what's going on? Man?
Hey man? We ran a little long all right, awesome social one of my biggest turnouts. Oh, it was so much fun. A lot of friends showed up. I know you're gonna be here because you're getting your stream ready and going. But Gigaparts put together a birthday bast shale. We centered around things you need and used during PODA and it was great. It was great. Yeah, and I'm going to be finishing up some last of my burden
on the street. It's always I am going to go into co host mode and be watching for any questions in the chat to ask live on the air.
That's what we want.
But yeah, man, I am.
A little sad though to say I won't be able to make it out to the Winter Field Day this go around because my mom decided to schedule the family crews together. Yeah. So, oh, I do have a question for y'all. If I do contacts on that's tasked it, Can I submit my logs as far as emergency preparedness?
Yeah, absolutely so we just we we we just talked about this and I'm happy to mention it again. So you have to, so all the contacts you you make are simplex, right, So so one node to another not routed through any hops or meshes. Sou said it to. You set your node and your q so partner sets their node to zero hops. That way, there's no way
it's getting outside of you two. You exchange the winterfield Day exchange and you know you're you're in amateur mode too, hopefully so you're not encrypted, because that's that's bigger than winterfield Day. That becomes an FCC thing, right, But yeah, there's absolutely a way you can configure that, and and we want to see people doing that.
Honestly, I was ready for you to say no, and then I was going to help make a thing about it. So you really turned it on the head here.
But yes, I've learned lands frame.
I know I'm usually a step ahead, but I'll side uh swiped on this one. But uh, I'll let y'all get back at it. I'll be just watching for any questions here in the chat, all right.
So that's yeah, So that's an interesting I didn't think about it that way, but that's an interesting point. So zero hops because the great that So I guess there's two way to look at it. I think I know where you're coming. I think I get where you're coming from, though, because that would be like using a simplex repeater or
just a repeater. That'd be using like a two meter repeater that's not connected to the internet, right, if you were going to do two or three hops away on meshtastic, which you know, we don't want to use repeaters in field day winterfield day, but it's all off grid because we're not going to connect to the internet mqtt. So in my mind, it's still simplex. But I guess if you're meshing and hopping more than one hop, then it's almost like repeater simplex. So yeah, I can see, I
can see the logic behind that. I get it. So I don't have any of my stuff turned down to zero hops, so I'm gonna be interested seeing what what that looks like. Uh but uh yeah, I uh, that's that's it. That's gonna be a it's gonna be a fun time to see what to what that does. So good. Uh But yeah, I mean I guess that's kind of the same thing behind the peer to peer win link thing.
Right, Yes, absolutely, So that is your your radio to another person's radio. And the the trick that I've I think people will appreciate is you because with win link, you you send an email and someone else gets it. You have to in your end your session and then re establish another session to get their reply whenever they
happen to reply. If you if you like so, if you and Frank want to do peer to peer win link, have an email in your in both your outboxes with that winter or field Day exchange mm hmm, so that when you connect with each other, both emails send at the same time. Done one uh peer to peer win link session, you get your your send and reply. So now you've met the winterfield Day UH objective multiplayer and you've just made a QSO on that band, a digital QSO on that band.
Interesting. I don't know that I've ever done. We did in there like a bulletin you can send in addition to what you're talking about, in addition to making QSO's via win Lincoln. They're like a like a a Winter field Day bulletin, like a like a news bulletin or something you can send or receive or something like that.
I think there's a bulletin board.
Robert Well that that was meantastic, Franks.
But so we have a bulletin, we have a we have a bulletin message that will be sending out right some stations.
So that's what we did last year. We received that bulletin message from you guys. But I don't remember doing any peer to peer stuff, so that's going to be an interesting thing to I don't know that I've ever used wind link that way. I know it can be, I've read about it, but I don't know that I've ever used wind link that way.
Yeah, I haven't either. Yeah.
The first time I did it was for winterfield Day twenty twenty five, and I was actively in communication with UH with the other guy on we actually coordinated over a j SA call, all right, and we would we'd basically be like, okay, this did. We'd go back to JSA call when it didn't work and figure out, oh my my configurations messed up. His configuration is messed up.
And so my best advice is try it before Winter field Day or it's going to be it's gonna it's gonna take about an hour of your day to figure out. Never done it.
Before, I I I imagine that's true.
Okay, Yeah, I mean that that's a that's a great you know last year, so it's it's kind of I'll give a personal story here and a little bit relevance to even last night was last year, I'd set my all my gear up, I tested everything. It was all working from the house, and I thought it was fine that I get out to the winner day sight and something I have no idea still do to this to this day. What it was was causing an issue. I couldn't make JS work last year at all. Couldn't couldn't
get like the computer connected to it or something. I don't remember exactly what it was the issue was, but I couldn't resolve it during Winterfield day time. But came home and everything was working fine again. So it's just, of course the way it goes. But even last night there was a big JAS event kind of over the weekend here, and I went to connect my laptop to it again of course I'm a Mac person, But nonetheless
it still works. I know it does, a lot of people do it and I've done it before, and I tried different data cables, but some reason my radio was keen just out of the blue, and it would then a few minutes later it would stop king and I literally have to unplug it sometimes to get it to
stop king. And I thought, what is going on? So I tried different data cable that tried a different computer, and I re downloaded from two point two to two point three software, and I thought, it's gotta be something that that's setting somewhere and within that I'm just going to delete it start over, and uh, ultimately, in the end,
it was something in the radio. I don't know it was a setting or what it was in the Icon seven o five, but uh, it was something in the radio that was causing that radio to key automatically from the computer. And so I was able to just go in and reset the seven o five back to the factory reset and it fixed it. But it's just one of those things like I would go through and check those things way ahead of time before Winter Field Day. That's not the time when you're trying to make contacts
that you have all these problems going wrong. So, I mean, I spent probably two hours last night screwing with it, like are you this is unbelievable? Like I shouldn't take this long to I mean, I've done JST with a computer before. It's not a big deal, but it was something. It was, but you didn't realize it was a problem in the radio because it was some setting and trying to figure out what that setting was. Good luck to you.
So that's why factory reset a lot of times. It is just a quick and easy solution, just kind of fixing it. So yeah, totally. Oh, oh gosh, yeah, that's uh, that's I think we've all been there before where you're fighting with something during the event and that you should have tested beforehand. But that is the thing there. But uh, okay, so you brought up j C call, which is great. So the question of FT eight comes up every year. I assume that nothing's changed on on the FT eight front this year.
Yeah, nothing's changed on the FT eight front. I think Mike and we mentioned this last uh winter field or a winter field day board meeting here were still going and uh, it was one of those things we kind of looks like we hit that on the front and several months ago and kind of wiped that out and nobody's really asked much about it since then. Mike can give us some more information on that if it is.
But yeah, we continue to you know, say it's not an income you know, messaging capable system, and uh, you know, we we prefer things like JSA or or riddy or something else. There's lots of other digital modes out there. You can run FT eight, three and sixty other four days of the year, you know, so you know, if you want to go overund FT and on field day, that's fine, but it's not gonna be smithed as part of the log obviously, so right right, Mike, anything else on that.
Hey, the way I phrase it is FT eight is not effective at passing emergency traffic. And I welcome people to convince me otherwise. And if someone convinces me that that I'm wrong, I will bring it to the board and we'll have a discussion. So just for everyone else.
I mean, you technically can couse, you can type anything in the field you want.
I mean, however, though, your fields will automatically change on the next contact, so you can't. You got to keep updating them.
Right, But if you're trying to make an emergency contact, all you need is one, so you know, send help to grid, you know, X, Y Z whatever and uh something like that. So I mean it's not designed for that. That obviously that's not designed for for that type of communication. Can you do it? Sure? In a roundabout way, yeah you could. You can do it, And and the character space is very limited. Like Riddy and JSA call, you
can type anything in there you want to. You have a whole conversation type of paragraph, but in FT eight you can't do that. But I mean, technically it's doable. But yeah, it's it's not really made for that.
So I've had people trying and give me the argument that well, it's for medical reasons and this that, and I'm blind or something, and it's like, but there's all these other alternative modes as well, go figure it out, right, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's just because it's literally shooting fish in a burrel. And two it's easy to set up and do so it takes a little little effort at work, and that's why they want to do it. And it's like, I'm sorry, it's not that's not the way it's going to work.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, and JSA, it is a very fun mode once you get it up and going.
So it is. It is left. But I had a guy at QSO with a guy last night. I'm here in Massachusetts right now. I spend some time with my wife, and then the guy was in Kansas last night running three What's on a QMX radio and we had nice I don't know, probably half our qso back and forth just via js A call through conversation. It was a lot of fun.
So what banned? Yeah that late at night. I assume it's forty So yeah, good, that's that's what. That's pretty cool. I got one of those, one of those qmxes right here that.
Oh yeah, so that's why he was using three whats Yeah, yeah, that's he was a great signaling to me too.
Good. That's the way to do it right there. The I was tinkering around. This has been several months ago. I was tinking around with js E and the Windows version is it was Windows was throwing and y'all were talking about Windows ten and Windows eleven. Was that on your stream, Frank or was that before we went live? I can't remember now that was.
On my stream. We were talking about a little just performance and how.
That's right, that's right work. So I keep getting prompted. So I built a whole new computer this week because I got back from Galveston, brought my computer in booted it up, and it came up and it says, or well, I started, I logged in and was doing everything fine. I started recording a video and it froze on me and it blue screened, which it's never done. It's never
done WU before. And I still I still maintained that if you've got a Windows box that's blue screen this is twenty twenty six now, right, And I've been saying this for about two well actually been saying this is twenty twenty. If you've got a Windows box that's blue screening on you, you've got a hardware problem. Ninety eight percent chance you've got a hardware problem somewhere.
It's not.
Windows is pretty sold.
It's mostly it's a driver utilizing.
Maybe well today, maybe I've never I've never had a driver blue screen. I mean, device manager says the driver's not working. But okay, but you know, I've never had a driver booty.
I've seen drivers is the most common blue screen issue.
Okay, Well, mine was a motherboard. Mine blue screened on me, and when I rebooted it, it wouldn't post anything on the on the on the screen, so I I thought it was the video car. I was like, okay, I went back and looked, this was like two weeks ago, right, well, a week and a half ago. I went back and looked, I built this machine in twenty nineteen, and I'm like, it was seven years ago. I'm like, I'm thinking it's three years old or something like that. In the back
of my head, I'm like seven years ago. I'm like, damn, I need to upgrade this thing. It still works, but it or it did until that point anyway. So I got a whole new video card, spent like four hundred dollars on a video card because that's important if you're live streaming and it but it ended up being the motherboard. So I got a new motherboard and CPU and U and a new video card, and I use my existing memory.
I've got thirty two gigs of memory in it, and I thought I had no I'm sorry, I've got sixty four gigs of memory. I thought I had thirty two, and I took it out and I'm like, oh, I must have added thirty two at some point in the past, because because I've got sixty four now so uh and now so now it's up and running just fine. But I was tinkering with jsa call, like and it's it's it's I reloaded Windows. Well, I didn't reload Windows ten because I just put the same hard drive back in
and let it do its update thing. But it kept prompting me Windows eleven. I'm like, no, no, I don't want that. No, no, no, and uh but I tried to download jsaight call a while back, and it kept giving me these aras saying this, this file is full of viruses. It's not authorized, it's unlisted, it's on this and I'm like, shut up, Windows Defender, I don't care. But I could not get it installed. So I went over to my Linux box, and of course it works fine.
So so I'm gonna have to figure out if if I can get it to work in Windows or if I just take my one of my one of my several Linux boxes that I'm actually in the middle of trying to put together like a cyber deck type thing to run it all off the internet. But it has JS eight and aprs and all this this stuff in it. So it's one of the one of the many projects I'm working on right now. But all of that to say, I've had some comments on your Windows eleven theory there, Frank, And I think you're right.
It's Windows eleven is incorporated a lot of AI stuff. Yeah, from what I heard here say, because I haven't really seen it, and we'll really try to look into it, a lot of AI that they enabled patches so that you click serces and other things. It's constantly running your background that's eating up memory when you're not trying to utilize that functionality yet. And and and I think the incorporation of AI. And I know we're getting way off topic here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all right, we'll get back.
It's a detriment too when the running the operating system because that should be a secondary process and not the primary process of running your computer.
And the last thing I'll say about this is my I bought a new laptop about a year ago. It was a refurbished Panasonic tough Book. I love the tough I've got a tough pad. I got a tough book now and it's great. But it came with Windows eleven. And guess what, it blew screens a lot too. Yeah, so you could be right about the driver saying when it comes to Windows eleven. Franc on Windows ten I don't think that's a thing. I think it's more hardware.
But another I saw, which I do believe, over thirty percent of the new Windows eleven code is AI generated. And I've seen what AI generated code it can do, and it's doing, and it's absolutely C plus plus one on one code and it's not maintaining. Yeah, it's bad. It's bad.
You know what?
You know what.
Me and Mike's answer for this says Dune, Well, I'm sorry, KAMRD Mike.
Go, oh yeah yeah, get a Mac. Yeah yeah, Well, if everything.
Worked, definitely thinking about going to Linux.
If everything worked on Yeah, if everything worked on everything, I would have switched to Linux years ago, years now. OBS, which i'm running OBS right here works great on Linux. I could totally up chain upgrade my box here to Linux and it works great. The problem is my el Gato four port HDMI.
Capture card, so I.
Plug four cameras in HDMI capture to spit them out. That is not support. There's no drivers for that for Linux at all. And that's the one thing and keeping me from changing this box over the Linux.
Do we want to go to some questions to get us back on top of it.
Here yeah, give me, give me, give me a second, give me second, because one more thing is as far as the Mac thing goes. When link Express doesn't work on Mac and I know you've got radio mail, I think I think it's called radio radio mail or pat Yeah, and pat Win Link you have on on Linux too, and on Raspberry Pie. Uh, but they are way stripped down from what win link Express, which is an old, old program, but they're way stripped down from what win
link Express does. So once they finally get win link Express updated or and other programs like that, I think Mac and Linux will be a little bit more viable. But I would totally go to Linux route if you re up to me.
Yeah, I did real quick on this. I did try and put crossover into my computer and get win link Express to work. I cannot make it work on an M for Max, so U Yeah, if somebody out there knows something about it and wants to help me, hey, I'll take it. But I have not figured out how to do it at this point. So too many hours I of a scroll anymore.
Right, You're You're not the first person I've heard say that, So all right, all right, Frank, good call. Yeah, I was just looking at you replying to those questions in there. So let's let's go there.
I have two questions from Kilo Hotel six Whiskey, India and also Tim are asking about can you self spot or have a spot using PODA when you're at a park during the winter field day event?
The yes, but and I know that's everyone's favorite answer.
Hey it is, so are in our rules.
We say you can spot yourself and others as long as it's VIA, as long as the amateur RF that you're using the spot leaves your site. So for instance, you can you know, you can spot using wind link and aprs in some cases. And again those those are not QSO's you're making. So we're not worried about simplex, We're not worried about staying off the internet. But that signal has to be on an amateur band and it has to leave your three hundred meters circle.
So let me just do a one level deeper than if someone spots you on the potus site.
Not using r F.
But I'm just still calling seek you PoTA field Day or actually just seek you Phil Day. And I happen to be at a PoTA site and someone spots me on the site. Is that still okay because I didn't do it over our if someone else did it on my behalf and I didn't tell them to do it.
Right, Yeah, that's that's completely out of your control. And we understand that. Uh yeah. If someone's now someone's participating actively in Winter field Day and they do that, I mean, we're not the we're not the winterfield Day Police. We're not gonna scrub you. We're not gonna scrub your lug. But do keep that in mind if you are, if you and someone else are both actively working each other on from potas sites, don't don't go and spot each
other on the page. I will give you. I give you a hack that I've and I've tried this, so everyone who says it's against the rules, well then you can. You can be mad at me for it, but so you can. You can schedule your activations. If you're doing CW or digital, you schedule your activations on the PoTA website and the and you get automatically spotted. Your your RBN spots will go straight to the PODA spotting page
right now. Now, you can schedule that activation ahead of Winter field Day, and then you have you have not sent anything except amateur RF to create those spots. What I will tell you though, as I did this for CW CW PODA hunters did not listen to my CW winterfield Day c CQ, and they were given me five nine nine state five nine nine state, and they did not have the Winter field Day exchange. So I made probably out of ten contacts, maybe three of them weren't
busted because most of them didn't. So so be careful. It sounds it sounds like a slick hack until you do it and then you find out no one actually has the exchange information. Oh yeah, okay, and that becomes that becomes a problem. But technically that's technically correct, which is the best kind of correct you you can do that.
So that answer also applies to any other spotting application or website out there. We're Radio League and other things. Don't spot yourself unless there's a way to do it via r F on the amateur radio bands exactly.
And I always throw that that amateur RF thing in there, because when I said, when we used to say r F, people would be like, well, my cell phone is our F and and they're right. So we make sure we're it's amateur r F.
Yeah, but your cell phone r F can't. It's you have to go.
Through the amateur radio r F.
You have to go through a repeat. You can't. You can't. Exactly if I could call your cell phone directly without going through the cell phone tower, then I think that should count, but you can't do that.
Now we're we're really getting technical, no, I know.
And if you are happened to be streaming your field day event, your frequency should not pop up in the stream. Is that correct?
Yeah, that sounds a whole lot like spotting yourself over the internet. I think that's they could be easily interpreted that way.
Okay, Yeah, just just trying to clear all those out. And I think I did I have a question.
Come up on this, like on another stream the other day where someone said, Hey, I was, you know, streaming during winterfield Day and obviously the frequency my radio was available whatever, and you know, you know, people were seeing that whatever, and it was like, you're you're not technically you know, trying to you know, spot yourself doing that. But I mean it is visible, but you know, unless you have a way to maybe block out your frequency on your radio. But you know, again, We're not the
winterfield Day place. Wh're I got to come after you for it? But we know there's a lot of people who out there are making content and sharing those Winter field Day messages and so I mean, it's just.
I can show your freak.
Let's see.
You can block it out. You cannot share that window, not share your screen. You just say hey, I'm running field Day and this is what we're doing, and walk around and help promote the event, but just don't advertise what frequency you're on. Other than that, you're golden Talking about modes free DV Is that a valid mode? Come from Dawn and five SKT.
Yeah, it absolutely is. It is a phone mode though it is a it's a digital codec, but it's it's voice, so we categorize it as phone. Apparently they've updated their codec recently and it's much better in noise. I plan on trying it out for for winterfield Day.
Awesome.
Mhm. There's one. I'm not playing it yet. I'm very interested in.
But they had a demo of it at a local hand fest to hear a couple of years ago and it looked really cool. But I haven't actually done it myself either.
Apparently it's gotten there in the last six months, and yeah, they just recently, uh did a another update to it that's probably gotten even a little bit better. So I've seen one or two people on YouTube talking about it, and I think Amshak TV has an upcoming episode we're gonna be talk about a little bit more and doing some demos that would good. Yeah. Cool.
So one last question here on mess task taking it again. This is from don Do you have to enter your message using simplex on this tastic on the device? Or is bluetooth to device acceptable?
Yeah? So so you can. You can bluetooth to the device. That's totally fine. I mean that's essentially to me, that's the same as I don't know, if you had a bluetooth microphone on your on your radio, Okay, that that kind of stuff is totally fine.
Yeah, you can. You can bluetooth. You can bluetooth remote control like an Icy seven oh five from a computer or laptop. So yeah, yeah, that makes sense, that makes sense.
All right, that's kind of all I have for now, So Jason, I turned it back to you.
All right, y gray Man PoTA. They were talking about you earlier. Tim, I don't know if you heard that or not, I don't know if you were in there, but something about you bringing up a topic last year that they have implemented now. So I forget what it was because I'm trying to read and listen at the same time. But Mike, what was that that you said about? Yeah question last year?
He asked about using meshtastic wind link and everything for a q SO points, And there's there's now a statement in the rules that it's basically explains, yeah, you can. You can do APRS, fantastic win link, all those sort of normally networked things. Arden if you wanted to, you just have to bring him down to one radio to another, just like you'd be making any other contact.
Right, good clarifies it there, Okay, sweet, Well, let's let's take a look at Charles's uh oh, you said you might have a screenshare also, like if you want to do that. I was just going to show the website.
I was going to say, I wanted to kind of bring up that, you know, winterfield Days just literally it's it's a week and a half from this coming weekend and it's January twenty fourth and twenty fifth, So I mean we got basically this weekend, all of next week and then there'll be that falling weekend. So it's it's right around the corner. It's you know, definitely within two weeks of us here and you know we're all looking
forward to it. We're still wrapping up a few things, but like the Winterfield Day Bolton that should be produced to tonight or tomorrow. Yet it's out the door hopefully, so but you know, we're still doing the you know, it'll start at we look at my notes here real quick, so it starts at four pm, I'm sorry, eleven am Eastern on Saturday and ends at four fifty nine pm
on Sunday. So still doing that thirty hour timeframe as we did last year as well, so give people on these coasts a little bit more time during the day, especially if they're gonna be operating in a park that you know, a lot of parks we found that closed out East, they closed like four pm and during the day, and you know, at that time initially was Winterfield Day was starting at two pm Eastern, and so it gave them very little time to operate in a park if
they're going to go out and do that. And so we opened up that window a little bit longer during the day on Saturday, which makes it starting a little early for those maybe people over on the West coast at seven am. But that's still good.
Yeah, no, that yeah, yeah, that's that's good. Okay good.
I don't know what we got for sites Racher, Dad and I've been on this site specifically to see a little farther down, scroll up a little bit more was to say six hund and ten raichter. Now, so yeah, we've had about one hundred raster in the last probably too.
So yeah, yeah, okay, so I don't think we've registered, have we But we're waiting on we're waiting on a Robert I gotta I think Digital Rancher still in the chat. I got to get with you and sign some paperwork. I think we're waiting on our call sign. So we we we took over a club that was expired and we're trying to get the call sign back active again. All nice, so be kind of a kind of looking forward to that. But okay, so you got.
Let's let's talk about the people going on real quick before we go to the store. Uh so we want people to go out into the winterfield day site and race to their site, and you can do that right from that purple button the very top of the page there, and you know, you know, race you your location. And the reason being is you may have a new technician or somebody else nearby that you know, maybe doesn't belong to a club or something. They want to go visit
a winterfield Day site. They want to go check it out, they want to see what it is. Maybe they're new to amateur radio, and it gives them a good opportunity to find something that may nearby that you know, lets them come by and visit and maybe even operate the radio for a little bit. And even myself, it's like one of those things that if I know there's a site nearby that where I'm living or where i'm at is, I'll go visit them and say hey, I know when a field a price from here, you know, just say
hi and whatever. It's always fun to do that too, but it kind of gives people again an opportunity to go visit something nearby to them, and it's kind of cool to see, you know, how many stations are out there actually people are race sting four Winner field Day we had like twelve or thirteen hundred last year, so we had a lot of ways to go. We had a lot of sites, Richard, and so we're really down. But I think we'll see that never really start to jump in the next two weeks here, and we hope
that it will. But yeah, if you haven't gone out Richard yet, it's pretty simple. You need an email address, your name, your call sign, what category you're clever, yourself are going to be operating. You can choose whether it's a public a public or private site, and then all you do is have your latitude and longitude and you know kind of give the location of where you're going
to be and you can find that. We give instructions there how to do that from Google and it's a really simple thing how to go doing that, and there's some information there are more questions if you need If you have problems, let us know. We'll be glad to help out. We've had a little bit of problem with you get at getting the confirmation email. Mike. Is that up and working now? It keeps going back and forth, so.
So our help desk is fully functional. It okay, yeah, you can you can send an email able to helped desk at winterfield Day dot com. You will you will get a personalized response from from me or someone else on the team and uh and we will not close that ticket until you confirm that you're answer your question is answered.
No. But I'm saying when they go to Racher for their Winter field Day site, is that there are they still in those confirmation emails if they do?
Yeah, I'm sorry yeah, so uh, I I don't know if if Andrew is fixed to that yet and so basically what I've been doing. Yeah, and so basically anyone who luckily I mentioned the helped desk, anyone who doesn't get that registration email or has to change anything, you can reach out to our help desk and well we because we can just log into the website and change it. But it is, it is a problem we're working through right now.
Where where where's the help desk link from here?
Any of the If you go on the main page, there's a little envelope at the very top that will take you to uh to there, Okay, you can hit you can hit contact us on that gotcha that will also direct that will do a direct email to us. And there's one other place I think towards the bottom. That will also allow you to go connect to us as well, so several different locations there there we go, there's the blip right there right.
There, Okay, yep, yeah. And also from the top of because every time we are every time we're on an interview and someone on the channel and talk about a new discord server, there's a link to their discord server right here, which you've clicked O. This is what it looks like right here. I've been on this discord server for a long time. So if you guys are interested in discord, winterfield Day has an actual discord six hundred and thirty two members one hundred and sixty four online
right now. But you just get that from going to this discord symbol at the very top.
That's a very active discord with a lot of good information on there. We share a lot of information out that Winter field Day Bolton schedule will be coming out via like Facebook, all of our social media. It will be come out on the discord channel when that comes out very soon here, so that will give you the schedule and the and the different bands that the winner field Day message and modes that the Winter field Day Message Bolton will be uh broadcasted on so we're certainly
looking forward to that. Yeah.
Good, Those those are where our best conversations happened. We had a really long form discussion about should we include repeater contacts and future iterations Winterfield Day in our discord and there's a my my views on it had have changed a couple of times because of the input of our folks on discord.
Oh okay, and that's something that's good to hear. That's one thing good to know also is that you know, based on input that we get through Discord, based on on the saltbox comments that you get when you submit your log, and all those different things are always taken into account, and we look at each and every one of those messages and consider them and and and you know, look at changes from making it better and improved each
and every year. So we we do welcome those messages and things do change based on that, so you know, we you know, it's good that people are probabing the type of input and and you know we we do listen and we do receive.
Those so.
Good.
Okay.
Yeah, it is a very active Discord server. I pop in there every now and then, so it's it's good to have something like that. It's kind of like a direct contact to the people in charge and are talking about the rules and nuances and all that kind of good stuff. So it's a good place to be and.
This and you started to pull up our story man and go as well.
Yeah. Yeah, so, uh, in fact, I started a mystery box service, you know. I I should have thought about this last month or something. I started a mystery box subscription service earlier last year, and uh, my box is renewed every sixty days, and so they just renewed like five days ago for January. I should have hit you guys up and put some Winter field Day stuff in the box that was going to go out this month, but I didn't think about it. So yeah, maybe extra
week we have some swag. We'll definitely can that'd be great. That'd be great.
I've been thinking about side free little boxes. You look like a really good distory boxes to come through things.
So I'm trying. Yeah, I'm trying to do it. Take a lot of feedback from people on the list, and I've contacted probably two dozen different vendors and most of them want to work with me. So that's it's I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.
What is on the mystery box, the most insane item that you put in there for someone.
I haven't really put anything quite insane in there yet. I haven't. Yeah, I haven't really put anything kind of crazy in there yet.
I've been trying to make it too or no.
There. This is a subscription service, so all the boxes are the same. There's no surprise boxes. I've done surprise boxes like that in the past, but that's not what this. Yeah, no, not a flex frank so to me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So but you know Antenna's uh can actors several different Antennas actually VHF U h f HF Antennas had a biowino battery in the one last month. So yeah, some good stuff. Yeah yeah, probably start to do some mestastic stuff for too long.
In winterfield Day store, which is really neat for us. This year, we've got a brand new we call it image or our logo for winterfield Day and we put on those shirts and our apparel there and so those a bear here, Yeah, well not just the bear. Not sure you know, to show your screen, bring up the store.
Hold on a second.
So in our store we have a key shirt that has the shop here right, yeah, the shop yep. So that has our new image on it for twenty twenty six.
And oh yeah, he's sitting at a park bench table.
With instead of being a year and he's actually sitting a partner this bart park bench operating you know, winter field Day. So that was our image this year. Pretty simple, pretty easy.
I'm sorry, I'm not even showing that screen. I'm my apologies. Okay, here here's what we're talking about. Sorry, guys, I'm looking at it over here and I was like, oh, it's on the wrong one. Yeah, he's talking about this right here.
So it's a really cool image I think overall. And so we'll change this year for a year after year going forward. And so this is our first year doing T shirts. But you know, you can get these in different colors. You can see their white, black, you know, ye, gray, blue, pink red, And so I picked those shirts up and actually a couple people are going, well, you know, minus the tag on them, you know, they're actually pretty decent shirts. And I picked the one up and I think they
are really nice shirts this year. So I'm really impressed by it. And it turned out really well overall, so I end up going and getting one myself and whatnot. But the we've had a lot of orders come through, which I've been very impressed with. A lot of people are going through and picking up a lot of the Winter field Day swag that we have in the store. But next year it will be our twentieth year for
Winter field Day. It started two thousand and seven, we'll go into twenty twenty seven, so we'll have a very special image just for twenty twenty seven next year that people are going to want to go out and do, and it will be very different from there what this one is here. So these are you know, shirts and all the other swag that you get within the store is really truly supporting our organization. We don't have any
other major sponsors. It is completely one hundred percent donor funded and we you know, are just getting a few dollars from each of these items to help with our costs that we have for you know, hosting a website and doing things like that that we have to have and paying for our we have you know, monthly Zoom meetings and stuff that go on, so we have to pay for a Zoom license and those things just happen,
but it's part of doing business. So we do have some back end costs that we have to cover, and you know, this helps cover some of those things. And a lot of people are making donations too. You know, we had a donation earlier today for fifty bucks to
come in. I thought that was cool. But you know, if we put if you get give us the hundred dollars and more, you actually put your name down on the bottom as kind of a club or individual sponsor as the hundred dollars comes comes in for those, and you'll find them on our front page there as well of our winterfield Day site under no Nations but I'm
sorry at the very bottom of the page. But anyway, on our home page, but on the homepage, but in the store itself there is you can see there's beanies and cups and mugs and sweatshirts and long sleeved T shirts. We even have the diet cut stickers and so we have a lot of other things as well that you can certainly go out and look at and getting.
I like that garded flag there first. Well, second one, I have a tank radio flag that I put out when we're camping.
When you don't leave it right, Yeah, your screen went black.
I don't know what happened there there it is. That's an awesome flag, man. Yeah, put that out there when you're a potally.
Right. So a lot of people are buying them. It's been very popular item for sure. And one of the things that we had people say, hey, can we get a flag of some sorry, So I decided to go with the garden flag and also do like the other type of flag you can put up on a mask. That's one of the other items there. Yeah, and so yeah, it's been very popular items to get. So it's been really.
Cool the mass as well.
I don't know is that one on here?
Yeah? Go back, just one it should be.
M I'm trying to click on back, hold on second. Yeah, I'm having trouble with my there it.
Is Windows eleven. We'll just say Windows eleven.
Well I'm not on Windows eleven. I'm on Windows ten.
Keep its head right there?
Yeah, the whole flag.
Yeah, yeah, oh I like that. I like that.
I like that too. That's good.
Are you selling those also at when you're out at various events and cash or.
Yeah, you guys going to you're gonna have a table at Ham Cash.
We don't I'm not probably not able to get through this year or so I don't really have any we don't have any other board members that are really available to go, so we don't really have another option for somebody to go. But yeah, you can find an official merchandise that there winter Field that bring it fight up me And like I said, it's been really quality gear guys.
So it's been really really more impressive than I thought it would be, except that's gonna try to be a little cheap, but like the shirts and stuff have been really really nice and we've had a lot of good compments on it. A lot of people have liked them as well, which is really cool. So I hope that people who will consider going out and doing that. And again it's a small purchase towards the small part of the purchase, like I'm talking about, like three to four bucks kind of
goes back towards the Winterfield Day organization. The rest is actually going for the products and shipping and et cetera. So but you know, we're making a few dollars, but we're not getting rich off by any means.
So keep the servers up right, that's right.
Keep we you know, obviously all the logs, everything that we do, we have a server. You know, got to be able to pay for that type of stuff along the way, so you know, sure exactly a w S doesn't ship free.
Yeah, yeah, there's a There doesn't seem to be a way to go back to the main page from the shot once you're in the print.
I think it No, I think it actually takes you to the yeah, stoy and like you, I think you're stuck in there.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're kind of stuck in that you get to type it in again. So all right, well good, well, I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be into fun time. I always have fun at winterfield Day and uh we it's it's fun getting together with friends for field Day and winterfield Day. And I like winterfield Day when the when the weather's not too crazy and I think we're supposed to have good weather this this year or so, I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah, definitely. This is other couple of really quick things. We have a couple go ahead. I'll call it notable changes. We've got a few objectives we added for the year, one of them being alternative power. And then pay attention to, like like if you're indoors, you know, having your your lap top and h back requirements. If you go and read our rules on our page, you'll see those things kind of change a little bit. But as long as you're you're lighting an HVAC for an indoor setting is
on a commercial power, you're fine. I think you have to actually click into the rules. That's that.
Yeah, that's where that's where I'm at right now.
As rules, Well, no, scrub the page and scroll up a little bit.
That's the top of their age.
Scroll down then I'm sorry right there where it says I would read, but it's a download the papble of the winterfield Day Rules by clicking here, and so these are that that's just kind of a call. First page you were seeing was actually just a summary where this actually takes you into more of the winterfield Day packet and everything's explained a little bit more in depth and detail,
and so you'll see where the information is there. But uh, yeah, we've got those quick objective change for that, and then we also had an additional twelve band objective was added, and so you know, I think something another challenge for people to be to look at. So your total point multiplier this year is up to thirty three points, so there's quite a bit there that you could have an option to really go through and look at increasing your q cell points overall.
I'm curious what did you change about the HVAC. Do you allow a commercial HVAC system or does it have to be on Yeah, likes.
And HVAC are no longer required to be on emergency power or alternative power. But all of your laptops, even if they're logging only are.
And that does and if you're running a logging server that a one computer is just set up as the logger that you're not logging at a station, is that okay to be on commercial or does that.
Also have to be on be on back backup power? Okay? Everything, Yeah, everything.
Involved with the logging, whether it's you know, like you've done that too, where of a Wi Fi router that ties all the logging servers to logging states into the server that should be on emergency power as well.
Okay, so everything involved in logging, the server, the Wi Fi and all the computers of the emergency power. And then then then then you can sit inside a nice warm building that has power.
What we did last year, Oh man, it.
Works that we didn't excuse me. Summer field Day also like that sitting inside a building because Texas is brutal with the extremes.
It's a sports rare for sure. I'm during I'm sure during the summer. The other thing is, uh, you know, just people note as we do ask for everyone to play on an equal level playing field being a hundred watts, and we still continue to go down that road as well and keeping everything the same. So whether you're home, indoors, mobile, outdoors, that you know, your your your your peaking blow of power is a hundred watts.
So is there a radius like summerfield to day you have to be within a thousand feet of all the other stations.
That's exactly. You have three hundred meters or one thousand feet. Yep, We're exactly the same as Summer Field Day in that regards.
So I can't log the contacts. I do want a boat for our club, that's correct.
Ah, you have a boat you're going to bring down the Gallaston.
Frank, No, I'll be I'll be on a boat.
You on on your on the cruise ship.
Okay, yes, So the other thing is, though, I think we change this, Miket and maybe correct me if I'm wrong. But so, if you operate in a park on Saturday and you wanted to go operate a different park on Sunday, your location can change for Winter field Day. You don't have to remain inside that same thousand foot circle.
Whoa you were saying, Frank, Yeah, so as your your three hundred meters circle moves with you.
Okay, so yeah you can.
You can't actually run Winter field Day. I guess that'd be maritime.
Mogul, But no, I was going was with the k K five tr station. They're going to be running, and I can't do it from a separate location.
Okay, So I did. Okay, that's that is what I thought.
You answer the question correct.
Yeah, But in case some people are wondering, you can't move your location during the summerfield Day or during winterfield Day. But uh, you know, it does have to remain within the same section. So if you're in South Texas, you're gonna remain in South Texas. If you're in North Florida, or remain in North Florida, you can't go to you know, uh, Louisiana. After that or something, you know what I mean. So as long as you remain the same section, you're you're
fine and long. And here's the other thing A lot of people ask questions about Sometimes there are actually two things. So if you had two stations set up indoors, one person was outdoors in a tent, and then other person was maybe out in an r V, and you're at some camping site or some other building side of some sort, and some person want to be outdoors and the other person was, you know, in an RV. So you can have mobile and you can have outdoors, and you'd have
technically have indoors all at the same location. Right, So uh, take the station with the majority of those and apply it. Uh so they're all four, it would be like four indoor stations working together. Uh so you kind of make that glomber avoid it is. So a lot of people ask questions about that. And then the other thing would be that if you're working, you know, and you have
to change for some reason, I don't know what. Let's say you're you're in Minnesota and uh, you're working outdoors and the weather got to be really bad and you had to go indoors somehow, don't don't change your class and category from one indoors or one outdoors to one indoors. You're gonna keep it still one in outdoors the whole time. And we you know those things happen and change and that you know, it goes. It is what it is.
But you know that way, it's gonna screw up your log for everybody else, and it's gonna, you know, it's gonna mess it up for whoever else is kind of did you along the rest of it because you're gonna you're gonna submit it for it one indoors and it's like, well you're really one outdoors about half of it. So if you're one indoors and just stay one indoors, if you're one outdoors, to stay one outdoors, you know, or
whatever your number classic category has. But what route even though it might right change right, keep it.
The same, Yeah, don't change it once you start, keep with it.
Yep.
So I know a lot of people like to run mobile in their car. So as long as their group or club is all within the vehicle or a thousand foot radius of each other, they could run down the freeway and just be calling CQ on the freeway as there changing parks. So they start at park A, activate park A and then the whole group packs up and as their group going down the road, several them was still a calling CQ because they can operate in their vehicle that is also allowed.
Yeah, we'll call it caravan mobile.
Caravan mobile, yes, oh, spawn something new, a little bit, a little bit, a little bit of technically technical.
I mean, I know they stretching out.
There's people out there that do mobile within the vehicle and as they're down the freeway.
Is there a mobile designation, Jason, we need there is a mobile. Yeah, there's indoor, outdoor, home and mobile, right, yes, okay, yeah.
And I don't recall the answer to this mic. So, I like, sometimes we have truckers and there's somebody who's running an HS running mobile and they could literally go from uh, you know, Louisiana to you know, uh you know Florida and Georgia and change sections. Do you remember how we were handling that or what we I can't remember what the discussion around that's been.
Yeah. The challenge there is your your exchange can't change so and and the problem is if you so from our perspective, if you send us a log has a hundred contacts, and it all says, uh, one mobile Alabama. We don't have a problem with that. But if you're saying one mobile Alabama and you're now in Missouri because you're a trucker, you're you're it's it's really between you and the people you're making contact with at that point. But we I don't have a problem with it.
Oh gotcha. That makes sense. Still the best to keep it the same as whatever you begin with. Just stick with that through the whole plans.
Yep. I mean it's really tough if your mobile like that. Yeah. Again, mobile can be trailer, r V car, uh yeah, plane boat, you know, if it moves. Actually, here's the here's one from the question. The other day, we were going to be in a rail car. It's okay, that's cool. Is that inside a museum? I was like, uh no, it's outside. I was like, okay, Uh does it move? Yeah? They picked up and moved it from one location in this in this rail area to another lot last year as
it was on wheels. Yep. It's not fixedly fixture, it's not screwed down or like disabled. Nope, it can be picked up moved. It's like it's mobile then, so you're gonna be like four indoor or for mobile then as a station.
So the big stipulation is it has to become mobile during the event. So if you're if you're double wide, takes more than thirty hours to become mobile? Should I say that? Yeah?
And probably a question you got right, it is.
It sounds like a joke, but it's like, well, my my double white has wheels. Sure, but if you can, if you can contact a rig and get it on wheels and get it mobile within thirty eight hours, then we can have that conversation.
I'm like, well, planning on talking a little bit about log submissions.
Sure, yeah, So we we accept cabrillo and ADIF and we so I have we have an ad F standard that we have published on our socials. It didn't make get into our rules. So if you're only contact with us is to the website, we don't have it there. But we do have the cabrillo example in our rules. So if you're doing a cabrilla submission, if it looks different than what you see in our rule packet, reach out to us. Let us help you fix it. Where you try to submit it and if you're in any
of our socials, the eight IF example is there. But if you're using N one mm in three FJP World Radio League, we're partners with World Radio League. They're great stuff for US. HAM two K, Polo Sebastian at Ham two k's is a great partner of ours. All of those We have worked with them to make sure all of those spit out a correct cabrillo and ADIF.
Good.
I want to make sure I note this on air and everybody knows this. You can thank mister Mike Kelley himself directly for reaching out to all those vendors and also doing all the testing to make sure those cabrillo and ADF formats are exactly correct. Mike has put a ton of work behind the scenes on this to make sure those are giving us the correct information. And I just want to give a big shout out to Mike
for all that work. He's really done in great job with this this year and make sure those are a call compliant with our with with the exports, and it's making it easier for our back end for all those log submissions to happen. So yeah, congratulations and a great job to Mike for all that.
So yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
The biggest burden was installing software that I always like the joke that some logging software still has a Windows three to one design language in it. Yeah, but but it's it's but they those those developers also are more than happy to update, but they have to hear from us.
Good. I think we used Winner Radio World Radio League last year. I think that's what we use.
No, we tried, tried it, but not all of us had the right serial to link it together.
I think that, Well, you don't have to. It's all online. It's all online, so yeah.
Yeah, to log in, so you just have to use Jason hamreydo two point zero is the user name of password to log in, and uh, then you know everybody logs in this different computer using his using name of password, right, and then everybody lugs into that as long as Yeah, well, I guess if you're using a Mac, you can use it offline. If you're using it h with if you don't have a Mac, then you have to use it online and you have to have internet access to be
able to do that at this point. So, uh, their beta is supposedly going to be out before winter Field Day for doing an actual offline program, a logging program. But there again, it's going to be in a beta version. It won't be complete and completely trusted yet at that point.
So they've been working on that for a long time.
Yes they have.
Yeah, but I think mentioned World Radio League. Is that a supportive platform?
Yes, is Yeah, that's what he was just talking about.
So the cool thing about World Radio League for Tim, the world thing about cool butt World World Rate League is they actually have kind of their online leader board and you can see everybody who's logged in and participating and who's got the most contacts, and where everybody's at and and their in their stats, uh during during the event, and so uh they had over how did people participate
last year? The last time I checked it, probably a little over a week ago, they had ninety eight people signed up and enrolled for for their World Radio League leaderboard, and uh, I'm sure there's even more richter now for it. So it's an absolute free service to use, and uh, they've been very good about all this, and they're they're promoting it heavily for us as well, which is cool.
I'm pretty sure I created a k N five T r log in for World Radio League last year when we were in Dangerfield State Park.
I'm pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure we've got that, so I'll i'll look into.
Like they could go yeah, well, I mean they've gone to the point where they're even integrating in one mm and N three e f jps into their software, so they're willing to play with others and they're doing a great job at it.
They've they integrated w s j t X a long time ago, so you can yes, auto log with SO and qr Z yep, yep, yeah, all right, I like I like log They're one of my favorite logging softwares.
Right now, Uh gray Man, the slow man Tim here is asking how can you log fantastic contacts?
Yeah?
Yeah, so you'd essentially pick any so our logger, our log processor, doesn't care what the specific mode is. It's it's all going to get funneled into digital CW or phone. So get your logger of choice listed is. You can listen to PSK thirty one. It's a it's a digital contact PSK thirty one thirty three centimeters exchange your exchange, their exchange, your call, their call.
Good to go, good.
Cool and can you use f R S ANDRS.
Tim is just Tim is just a jackass. I told you because he was drunk.
So yeah, I'm go drunk and go home. Go drunk your home.
Yeah.
I'm a huge fan of of the of the Part ninety five services and I love them. I have MERS radios I use because no one else uses it, so I can be on MERS and you can use external intennas. I have a MERS radio in my car. My wife has a Mersey radio and her car we just merves back to Yeah, we go back and forth on on road trips because no one else is using it except Walmart.
Yeah, and that's right, the Walmart parking lot. And you mess with him.
I've done that. I mean no, I have not done that.
Yeah, yeah I have. That's good.
They get all bent out of shape.
It's hilarious. Yes, yes, indeed on the website here if.
I can take a second and talk about the Flag and t Society, because that's a that's an interesting So the Flag and Torch Society is is a military affiliated amateur radio club that essentially, so I'm in the army and uh so we get we get stationed wherever the army, you know, the services direct us to go wherever they tell us to go every three years, and so making a lot lasting connections with the Ham Radio Club is
a challenge. And some guys but, well, why don't we make a distributed online amateur radio club for current and former military members. And then that came the Flag and Toward Society, and and they reached out to us as the Winter Field Day Board and said, hey, look, we we necessarily exist as a distributed club. We can't get together and do one winter field Day. Is there some way we can work out a deal. And it took the board a couple of months of working with them
and making sure we did it right. And essentially they the Flag and Torch Society has a SPAL, a one time special exception to run up to ten stations at once, only one per FCC call area, and they have to use so it's it's K two fts slash zero through slash nine. They have to be outdoor or austere indoor and we get basically what w f t A gets final say on you know, did you did you do
it right? They even they already have a Internet linked in three f JP server setup to where they're going to avoid dupes across the country and we might I don't know if this is going to happen. There might be a guy in a member in South Korea operating as WOW. So nope. Yeah, So that's really exciting that these guys came to us UH with the with the challenge and and he said, all right, and there might be UH in any club who has a similar situation. It's going to be pretty pretty rare to find that.
But if there's another club that serves the public in that necessarily distributed way, can we can talk to them about that.
There's a number of distributed clubs out there, and if this goes well, I can see a way for those clubs to get on the air using that call sign. Their a call sign.
The so the the ham Raided Adventures Club, Whiskey Eco Ford, Delta x Ray they did that one year for the Support You Park's weekend, the July Support Parks Weekend, which is their plack weekend that they I don't know if they still do the Plack weekend or not, but they
used to, and that's what they did. They did Whiskey Echo for Delta x Ray, Slash zero, Slash one, Slash two, so I don't think they don't think they have all the call areas covered, but they had five or six of them covered at least, So that was I've seen something like that happen, not with field Day winterfield Day obviously, but an effort like that happened in the past, and I think that's a really fun thing to do. So I hope it works out for a K two fts to see to open it up.
And if it works out, can they connect tail into other distributed clubs right exactly?
And they have to be so it can't just be an online club, because I mean, I have an online club just just because I wanted one. But it's got to be they serve they serve a purpose that you cannot serve the other way.
Okay, it's a bit interesting, and we'll see see if it works out this time and if y'all can adapt it to something else later.
Yeah, we're certainly certainly looking forward to it. I think it's going to be a great adventure with them, and it'd be interesting to see how many people can get in touch with them, specifically for each of their different call zones that they have going. So you know, kind of there's almost a special vestation in some ways within the Winter Field Day not really directly related to us, but they're just operating as another station. But it might be fun to see how many of those you can contact.
So so now you know they're out there and you're aware of it, that might be something to do. You know, it's something we're you know, right now, we're running our nineteenth year, and I think it's one of those things that winterfield Day has come a long ways in those nineteen years. For sure. It's really no longer just a niche, small event as part of amateur radio. It's it's really become a very well known, established event that people look
forward to every year. I mean within I swear within a week of Summer Field Day happening, people are always
emailing and saying, hey, what are your rules? When we posted for next year, you know, so it happens almost an editableloid, and you know, it's one of those things that we've really got a good repertoire going right now, and it's been you know, we've continued to see growth in the number of contacts, the number of people being involved each and every year, and we really hope that this will be a good year for us as well, and that we'll see even greater growth in next year,
being our twentieth year and expecting a lot of cool changes. Objectives to change, you know, some things that you know, maybe do some slow scan television putting. You know, maybe you know we've talked about you, and maybe find a way to have somebody named the Bear. We might look at doing something, you know, we might look at doing something like a special event station for winter field Day
for a twentieth year. I mean, there's all kinds of things that we're kind of consindering and thinking about and running with and we're really looking forward to that. So it's really a funny event. It's a great time. If you haven't done Winterfield Day before, I really urge people to get out there and certainly try it, or go on our website, look for that club near you, go visit it and really just have a lot of fun with it. That's that's our most important thing is and
really make it about challenging yourself as well. I mean, we all know that cold weather batteries do not endure as long. You may not endure as long depending on where you're at. You know, Dallas and Texas, one place in northern Minnesota or in northern Pennsylvania might be a whole.
Nother story for its story.
Yeah, different stories. So you know, it's like how long can your batteries and everything last out there? How long can you go? And that really makes a difference too. So you know, if you're hitting really cold weather, blizzard conditions or something, you know, can your antennas withhold and with stand up? You know what's going on weatherwise, So
you can really create a lot of challenges. And if you haven't learned something like wind link or doing JSA call again, you another challenge for yourself to really go out and figure those things out and really learn something new for twenty twenty six and you know taking part in some of those challenges. So that's that's the other thing that we really encourage is, you know, just besides having fun, is being able to learn and challenge yourself for something new.
Here talking about something new and challenging. Are you all allowing slow scan images as a mode?
We do allow it if you didn't exchange. It is a digital mode and you certainly can use slow scan television if you want to exchange. Make another contact with somebody else do Winter Field Day for sure. If things go well and I'm doing okay and I've got depending on which station I'm at, I may send out a couple myself just for giggles and fun.
But mode.
And so it may not be a Winter field Day official this year, but you certainly, you know, certainly send that as if you want to make the exchanges that way for sure.
With the well actually yeah, before the well, actually, folks come out in the in the comments. We we know so scan TV is actually an analog mode, and we know it's an image mode, but we have three categories and it fits best digital.
Yeah, yeah, what's up my glasses here?
Right, I've got quick. I don't know why, but people do love challenging us on those things like that.
Yeah, and I thrive. I thrive on that, So so bring it.
I've got it.
I've got a quick I've got a quick screen share if that's okay, it's yea goes back to the Flag and towards Society. So this was.
All right, Yes, that's awesome.
So so this was from the This was from the president of the Flag in Towards Society. He sent me a couple of these and he basically told told the AI to just keep making the bear more yoked, over and over again. And so then we get then we get to that, oh gosh, and these were probably these may or may not become official Winter field Day things, but I wanted to share it because they were so amazing.
You must do that over slow scan.
Right, yeah, I image.
So I had not seen those myself yet, so it's funny.
So, uh so next year is twenty So the twenty first year, we need to get a sponsorship from like a Buffalo trace or y Weller, and he needs to have some whiskey in his hand. That needs to be the thing for his twenty first and that cigar. So yeah, well you could buy cigars at eighteen technically, but.
Twenty one now, is it really?
Yes?
It blew my mind. I have a nephew and just started smoking. He's like, I'm twenty one, I can smoke. I'm like, couldn't you do that? Aighte? And he goes no, I'm like, oh.
We could do depends on it's it. Yeah, it's all state driven. Tobacco laws are usually stay driven. So okay, guys, we've been going for an hour and fifteen minutes and we're starting to lose a little bit of audience here. It's I appreciate everyone hanging with us who's been with this so far. It's been a really fun talk and looking forward to the event itself. So uh, Marvin and Mike, thanks for your time tonight. Uh any last parting words or anything like that.
Just thanks, yeah, thank thanks to everyone who participates, and and thanks to everyone who brings challenging questions to us. I mean, I think we spent a lot of the the stream kind of on the edge cases and in the weeds, and that's that's great. I think when you if you go to the website and read the rules, you'll find it's not nearly as complicated as as we we've made it. But but yeah, but definitely reach out to us. I think we're I really think we're one
of the most responsive like like organizers. I almost said the bad word, I almost said contest one of the most responsive event organizers.
Yeah, out there, But yeah, I did see that email just came in from u K five l K. I was watching ham Radio two point oes tonight with a problem regarding the website. So yeah, well we'll get back to you on your ticket on that and get that response put out there for sure for the Crossroads Ham Radio Club. So thanks for watching and uh and we'll get your ticket response to and looked at it for
sure and get that dealt with for you. So thank you for reaching out so awesome good But yeah, just uh, Jason, I just I want to say, yeah, just thanks for bringing us on and watching and letting us be part of this stream and sharing about winter Field Day and and you know, getting not a lot of new things this year. A lot of new things pop up next year for sure, but this should be another good year. Go out and rich to your site. We are a five o'h one C three organization. You can donate to
us as well. It's like I had a donation come in through the live stream here as well a few minutes ago on our web page. So I appreciate those donations. Again, it kind of help support us in the vac end. Even if you don't go out to our shop store, there is an option that you can do those little five bucks or you know, you can do a hire bucks and we'll give you a sponsorship on the web page as well. But thank you for all those that do help support us and that do participate in Winter
Field Day. We look forward to hearing you and working you this year on the air, and we'll see you in two weeks.
So absolutely, yeah, yeah, I appreciate y'all's time tonight. It's always a fun discussion and it's a really great event. If you've never done Winterfield Day before, go out and do it. You'll have a lot of fun with it, I do, I believe indeed, yep, all right, well we will Frank, did you have anything.
Coming up on the channel? We are talking about antennas. I'm looking forward to get this video series kicking off. I'm gonna be talking about types of antennas and their U cases so that you can choose the right intenna for whatever deployment that you are going to go for it. So I'm looking forward to get that shot and edited down for Monday's release. Not this Monday, but next awesome.
Okay, Well, thanks to everybody. Once again, I appreciate the time. If you're watching on Team Replay, put a comment in the put a comment the video, let me know what you thought about it. But yeah, any questions here, hit up their discord from the icon on the top right corner of the website the easiest way to get hold of them, and it's a very active group. So seventy three to all and we'll catch you next time.
Thank you to gigaparts, you're awesome.
Yeah, thank you the gigaparts. Later guys yet Att