This episode wraps up our TOUR of the 2025 Hamvention®, but not our coverage. Gary still has a hard drive full of interviews to edit, and those will come out over the next few weeks. And maybe a live show with David W0DHG ? This episode includes both Saturday and Sunday, and just a little more pork chop. There are a few fun callbacks, to one of Gary K4AAQ ’s Ham Nation episodes and his pre- HamRadioNow video on programming D-Star radios, and Riley Hollingsworth K4ZDH ’s One Big Knob presentation...
May 30, 2025•32 min
The Dayton Hamvention® is open all day Friday and Saturday, and a half-day on Sunday. East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ returned for the first time since 2017, and found it a bit more crowded. He expected to see other YouTuber media everywhere, but not so much... he did find some of them all in a pack in the flea market. But the star of the show? No, not the equipment (the other guys cover that in depth). It was a pork chop . You have to try it. And he found a ' HamRadioNow Audio Simulato r'. We don't ...
May 25, 2025•28 min•Ep. 548
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ made it back to Dayton for the first time since 2017. Has much changed? Can he even remember (not really). This is a quick look at the tail end of Thursday, setup-day, before the fest opens Friday morning.
May 25, 2025•9 min•Ep. 547
Richard "Dick" Norton N6AA , ARRL Southwestern Division Director, talks about the state of the ARRL at the Orange (CA) Section Convention .
May 25, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 546
The biggest hamfests are growing - Dayton, Orlando, Huntsville. Many smaller hamfests are struggling, or have closed down. Some clubs have had trouble finding a chair person and staff to put on shows that have been around for decades. Facilities are only getting more expensive, while attendence and income are falling. The ' RARSfest ' - coming April 5 and hosted by the Raleigh (NC) Amateur Radio Society - is hanging in there, maybe even growing a little. It has a robust flea market, and good arr...
Mar 18, 2025•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 545
The Western Washington Amateur Relay Association has adopted a plan to migrate all repeaters in their area to 'Narrow FM' over the next 10 years. The idea is to increase the number of repeater channels (and the number of repeaters). The plan could nearly double the number of available repeater channels. It's mostly simple. For users, it's probably a menu setting in their radios, but OLDER radios won't have that option. For repeater owners, it may be as simple as a menu setting for more modern UH...
Feb 16, 2025•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 544
Our guest is Jim Masarra N2EST , cartoonist, animator, graphic designer. You've seen his work in QST (including some covers), and other ham books and publications. On the cusp of resirement, we talk about his career in and out of ham radio, and how the ARRL seems to have lost its sense of humor. Have him design a QSL card for you! : https://hamtoons.net
Feb 08, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 543
January 11, 1965, Amateur Radio Station WN9NSO made its first, shaky 5 wpm CW… attempt… in the 40 meter Novice band. 60 years later, WN9NSO is now K4AAQ , our East Coast Host. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, as Gary talks about what ham radio was like for that Novice, 60 years ago. No repeaters. No digital (RTTY was it). No computers. Lots of AM. Gary opened up the Zoom and was joined by Ron K9ID , a friend from the Chicago suburbs and then WN9RPD/WA9RPD, and a newer fr...
Jan 11, 2025•2 hr 17 min•Ep. 542
David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ discuss AI chat engines. Specifically, how Gary bullied chatGPT into correct answers about GMRS channel steps (for the record, it’s 12.5 kHz). Somebody in a Facebook group asked that question, and someone else got the answer from a confident chatGPT, but chat GPT got it wrong (they said 5 kHz). The challenge was ON , and Gary emerged victorious, with chatGPT backing down… a couple of times! Moving on, David found a newsletter author/podcaster who experimented with AI v...
Dec 24, 2024•59 min•Ep. 541
This week, Jason Johnston KC5HW B of the Ham Radio 2.0 show was reacting to viewer comments that there were Too Many Digital (Voice) Mode s. East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ has been preaching on that topic for years, and while his Q-Mobile does have radios for D-STAR, DMR and System Fusion… and so does his belt…. he wouldn’t mind having one rig to rule them all – a 21st Century ‘Multi-Mode’. That’s his Holy Grail 🏆 So Gary invited Jason on the show to talk about it, along with West Coast Host David ...
Dec 20, 2024•1 hr 47 min•Ep. 540
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ goes solo, with a timewaster of an episode. He’s just repurposing some of his many Facebook Group and Reddit responses to newbie ham and GMRS questions. After he gets done talking about his bike helmet.
Nov 27, 2024•2 hr•Ep. 539
To show, or not to show… that is the question. Are we running out of gas for HRN, or just a temporary lull. Hard to tell. This is Gary’s solo thoughts on the topic, but we’ll have a conversation about it soon. Also, how to keep ham radio from turning into Fox News.
Nov 10, 2024•19 min
Ham Radio activity - ‘unofficial’ and ad hoc as it may be - continues in the mountains of western North Carolina. The Mt. Mitchell 145.19 repeater remains active every day. For this show, we talk to a ham who was deployed at a couple of locations last week. Steve McAtee N0JJO lives in the Charlotte NC area, and heard a call go out for hams to assist. He geared up and set out, and now that he’s back, he tells us his story. We know that Hurricane Milton hit Florida last week, and undoubtedly there...
Oct 13, 2024•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 537
Last week, HRN hosts David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ talked about some ad-hoc ham radio nets that spun up just after Tropical Storm Helene devastated a large area of North Carolina’s mountains, knocking out power, internet, phone and cell communications, flooding towns and destroying roads. The nets appeared to have no connection to any formal ham radio emcom organization. Initially they were passing lots of incoming Health & Welfare inquiries from hams or friends of hams on 40 meters (7232 kHz) ...
Oct 07, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 536
Hurricane Helene 🌀 left a lot of destruction in its wake, especially in western North Carolina. Power, phone and internet were down over a wide area. So, ham radio stepped into the gap, right? Sort of. HamRadioNow send requests for participation in our Sunday live show to statewide ARES officers in Northern Florida, Georgia, South and North Caroliona, with narry a peep in response. Instead, we monitored some ad-hoc net s that sprung up on 40 meters and on a wide coverage 2 Meter repeater in the...
Sep 29, 2024•55 min•Ep. 535
Last January, a repeater group in Harrisburg PA had some special guests at their monthly club lunch – a half dozen representatives from the FCC, and a couple of ARRL officials stopped by to talk about ham radio and GMRS, and answer questions from the assembled club members. Just your average club luncheon. Fortunately, the whole thing was recorded and ended up on YouTube . However, it was nearly two hours long, and some of it was kind of rambling (we’re looking at you, K4AAQ). So, we cut it down...
Sep 16, 2024•33 min•Ep. 534
David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ banter about a big FCC-ARRL 'luncheon ' last January, alterntives to saying 'Zero' in call signs, and GMRS linking.
Sep 15, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 533
Ham Radio Comm, in search of any Emergencies that might need our help. Well, West Coast Host David W0DHG and East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ (BRAT? maybe…) don’t hit on that theme too hard, but it is a good question. Where’s the Em? Anyway, David spend last weekend doing some COMM at the Angeles Crest Ultra Marathon , and even though he failed to document it up to Gary’s standards, he did describe it pretty well. Gary mentions this ARRL news story on Hurricane Debby that really inspired the episode t...
Aug 11, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 532
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ goes solo for this show, noting that he needs another HT like he needs another hole in his head. But, Prime Day and pressure from peers got him to part with a bit under $25 for the Quansheng UV-K5 . Note that this review does NOT get into any of the aftermarket firmware options, and that seems to be what is getting everybody excited. That is a hot mess of options and confusion, and so maybe someday.
Jul 30, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 531
On the heels of Hurricane Beryl, Bob Inderbitzen NQ1R , ARRL Director of Marketing and Innovation was interviewed by The Weather Channel about ham radio. It was a great shot in national media, which means that East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ needed to take it apart to see how it could have been better, while West Coast Host David W0DHG pulled Gary back to reality. Well, back in his younger days, Gary was no novice in the PR world, and he’s got some legacy video to prove it: Gary's Field Day Interview...
Jul 14, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 530
As (barely a) Hurricane Beryl approaches landfall on the Texas coast, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ welcomes ARRL South Texas Section Emergency Coordinator Jeff Walter KE5FGA to the show to talk about Amateur Radio emcomm in his area.
Jul 07, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 529
It may have been the longest DAY of the year, but it was still a long NIGHT for K4AAQ Gary edited a little home movie of this year’s Field Day operation. Then a look at some of the media from this year. Finally some thoughts on the GMRS linking controversy. Links to the News Stories and stuff: Our Field Day Playlist Tell Josh to ' Approve' of u s Hey, it really was Escambria , not Escanaba. I blame my reading glasses: WLOX TV story KPLC TV story Lakawana News 16 story WAKA TV story Reddit GMRS t...
Jun 24, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 528
Our guest, Dr. Johnathan Kramer, ESQ , is a lawyer dealing in ‘dirt’ - no, not Stormy Daniels. Real Estate. We’ll learn about his career and a bit about putting up antennas in HOA territory. We had some technical trouble with the live stream this time… and with the local recording. Between the two, we recovered most of the show, with a few minutes missing in the middle. You won’t even know… but it might be a little confusing for those who watched live on YouTube, or came to the YouTube channel l...
Jun 10, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 527
For the past 10 days, ARRL’s Logbook of the World and online courses have been down. Something slowed down QST production (the print version) for a day or two. But the website and email forwarding service are working. What’s happening? ARRL is only saying that “a serious incident involving access to our network and systems” has occurred. Is it a fire in the engine room? Malware? Ransomware? Somebody didn’t pay the ISP? All those and more are filling the information vacuum. So are we 🙄😕 Meanwhi...
May 27, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 526
Episode 524 - New England Correspondent Marty NN1C takes us to the Hamvention, holds out in the pouring rain to see the rush of equally drowned hamfesters pour (too literally) through the entry gate at 9 AM, and then waits out ICOM’s BIG REVEA L of… circuit boards 😕, with East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ anchoring from Fort Mill. West Coast Host David W0DHG got up early to join in. Episode 525 - Gary K4AAQ goes solo, checking the feeds, and reviewing HamRadioNow (and ARVN )’s extensive catalog of Ham...
May 17, 2024•Ep. 524
Gary K4AAQ is back from vacation, and we’re back on the air. A (relatively) short show - David W0DHG had some stuff to do, so just an hour. We do the usual ramble around a few topics. Gary shows his broken (and extracted) tooth (so be glad this is just audio) and a home movie from Hawaii to wrap things up.
May 13, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 523
In theory, we’re on hiatus until May, but we had a few minutes to chat about the Hollywood Hills, David’s Emcomm deployment (no hams were harmed in that deployment), and a bit of eclipse.
Apr 14, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 522
Gary's Q-Mobile - now 17 years old and 230,000 miles long, is running fine. But the ICOM 7000 HF rig developed a hiccup on 40 meters. Put a little RF to the Tarheel 200 antenna, and it shut down. He finally gets around to fixing it. David W0DHG told him how in a previous episode. Gary K4AAQ had to do it the hard way. https://HamRadioNow.tv
Apr 06, 2024•26 min•Ep. 521
For the next few weeks, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ and West Coast Host David W0DHG have a bunch of family and other activities, so we’re goona take a break from the show. David may gin up some shows solo (Gary will be gone lots longer)… we’ll see. But sooner or later we’ll be back… tanned and rested (or dragged ot and exhausted). See ya on the other side!
Mar 17, 2024•47 min•Ep. 520
Can the creating of a simple show jingle (using AI) drive the theme of the whole show? Sure, why not. Also, a visit to the Charlotte Hamfest for a few minutes. Also, can you guess the age of the average ARRL member? Stay tuned to find out!
Mar 11, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 519
