The 3Y0J Bouvet DXpedition is over, a couple of weeks early. It was disappointing for all concerned - hams who wanted an All Time New One, the big-gun DXers who still needed the island to climb the higher rungs of the DXCC list, and probably most of all for the guys on… or near the island. Weather and rough seas prevented all but the most minimal operation, mostly cw and FT8 on 30 and 17 meters. Almost no SSB. The big disappointment for us, though, was the behavior of far too many hams on the ai...
Feb 15, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 465
No Sunday night show this weekend because 🏈 (only the ‘Big Game’ takes us off… usually we ignore football). But we have bits and pieces. And the weekend’s not over (it’s Saturday afternoon as I - Gary - type this, so who knows?). Hopefully this will tide you over until the next big show. But for now… I was on the phone with my original ham radio mentor from way back in the early 60’s. Back then he was Bob K9ZGT. Today he goes by his middle name, Winston (or Win), but to me he’ll always be Broke...
Feb 11, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 464
Bill Brown WB8ELK started launching near-space ham radio balloons in 1987. I think he can tell us more about this balloon from China than we’re getting from CNN. Joining Bill is Todd McKinney KN4TPG , a student in Atmospheric Science in Huntsville AL. Todd got interested in HAB (High Altitude Ballooning), and got his ham license so he could fly balloons with APRS and WSPR transmitters. Together they have insights on the Balloon from China that you won’t hear in the mainstream media. And then we ...
Feb 05, 2023•2 hr 42 min•Ep. 463
Our guest is Ria Jairam N2RJ, podcaster, YouTuber and Director of the ARRL Hudson Division. Ria’s kind of getting picked on at the ARRL (our words, not hers). She tells us about that trouble and a division in the ranks of the Board falling along lines of transparency vs secrecy. We’ve heard that before when a Board Code of Conduct tried to silence Directors who disagreed with policy passed by the board. Listen to Ria’s take. Ask your Director to explain what’s happening. That might be interestin...
Jan 30, 2023•2 hr 44 min•Ep. 462
From Quartzfest 2023 Dick Norton N6AA addresses the start of the ARRL and the Southwest Division
Jan 30, 2023
In Episode 461 , Glam Ham Natalie Gray NW6S revealed that she was one of the writers for the upcoming blockbuster video game Hogwarts Legacy . Gary K4AAQ jumped on the idea of introducing Ham Radio into the Harry Potter inspired project, because that’s what we always do. Later, Gary felt the need to hammer the point home by creating a scene we wish we’d seen in the movies, and we present it for your consideration (but probably not Natalie’s 🙄). Hogwarts Legacy , it turns out, won’t have any Har...
Jan 28, 2023•4 min
The Glam Ham, Natalie Gray NW6S from Tik Tok visits with Gary and David to talk about her short but very full time in Amateur Radio. Natalie became a ham during the past 3 years, and has already make over 275 videos on TIK TOK about Ham Radio.
Jan 25, 2023•1 hr 54 min•Ep. 461
Marshall Oldham KE6PCV join Jim, Gary and David to talk about AllStar.
Jan 23, 2023•2 hr 7 min•Ep. 460
The Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act (don’t call it ‘Parity Act 2.0) is about to be introduced in the new Congress. What is it? How did we get here? Where will it go and how will it get there? John Robert Stratton N5AUS and Fred Hopengarten K1VR were two members of the ARRL Legislative Advocacy Committee that drafted the bill from the ashes of the Parity Act , starting in 2019. They found a sponsor in Congressman Bill Johnson (R-OH), and worked with his staff to refine the language of th...
Jan 16, 2023•1 hr 46 min•Ep. 459
This is the PROMO for Sunday’s live episode 459. Gary’s clever title is (Almost) In the Zoom Where It Happened, ‘It’ is the Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act , the new iteration of legislation to require HOAs to permit Amateur Radio antennas. We reviewed the version of the Act that was introduced in December in our last episode . This time, our guests will be two of the hams who were on the ARRL committee that drafted the new bill. Tune in to the LIVE stream on Sunday, January 15, 2023 at...
Jan 14, 2023•39 min
Our fearless pundits review the verbiage of last years HR9670- Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act with the hopes that it’s going to be introduced this year (2023). This bill looks to be much more favorable to hams that want a small workable antenna… Audio starts at 3:45.
Jan 10, 2023•2 hr 30 min•Ep. 458
This is just a Promo(re), but it’s here in the feed by itself because the show hasn’t been scheduled yet… and this gets the audio podcast out there, too. There’s a new Bill in Congress: H.R.9670, the Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act . We’ve been told “Don’t call it the Parity Act 2.0 because branding. But yeah, it kinda is. If you want all the background, listen to the ProMore. Then do the homework, which is watching an old episode of HamRadioNow: HRN 342: It Ain't Parity Until We Say It...
Dec 31, 2022•35 min
Our guest is Karin Thompson KD4DXX, owner and General Manager of RT Systems Inc. , the radio programming people. We only spent about 2½ hours talking to Karin, then the post-show with David and Marty. So one, we were making up for no show last week. And two, most of your favorite shows are doing reruns or ‘best ofs’ or ‘Year in Reviews’. Here we are with enough show to keep you entertained all week.
Dec 26, 2022•3 hr 24 min•Ep. 457
This is one of those titles that we never talked about. It wasn’t designed to describe any of the show content. Gary had been to three Christmas parties in two days, and just wasn’t feeling it, so… The rest of the show was just a bunch of stuff thrown together at the last minute, but if we didn’t admit that, you’d never know. So this was a meticulously crafted and executed example of ham radio media at its finest. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it. LINKS: ChatGPT. Give’er a spin (if you ...
Dec 12, 2022•2 hr 15 min
The DXpedition crew that attempted an operation on Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic back in 2018 reached the island, only to be thwarted by bad weather and a failed engine. They limped back to port in South Africa. Bob Allphin K4UEE told their story in this video . A new team, with hams from Norway and around the globe, planned to try again. They contracted The Braveheart - a ship that had transported many DXpeditions to difficult locations (but wasn’t available to the 2018 crew). Then, the B...
Dec 05, 2022•2 hr 28 min•Ep. 454
A slightly clickbait title? Could be. But HRN East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ is on a bit of a crusade to answer questions found in ham radio (and GMRS) oriented Facebook groups and Reddit subs. He’s more than a little disappointed by the quality of many of the responses to basic questions. On this show, he and NorCal host Jim NO1PC review a few classics. Before that, though, the guys review 5 Great Reasons to Get Your Ham Radio License - an article in an RV blog introducing Amateur Radio to the auth...
Nov 28, 2022•2 hr 28 min•Ep. 453
File this show under ‘David and Gary Phone It In 📞☎’. We should change the title to ‘ShowLESS’ OK, we did a 90 minute ProMORE (that’s a Promo that runs MORE than 30 minutes) on Saturday, and we were kinda out of gas for this one. Then David had a plumbing emergency, and Gary had to get up early to drive to Raleigh (playing with the ICOM 5100 all the way). Well, we did talk about some stuff, if halfheartedly, for almost an hour. Enough to list some links: LINKS The QRZ.com/GigaParts/RT Systems ‘...
Nov 21, 2022•58 min•Ep. 452
As we’ve recently discovered (thanks to viewer ‘Cornbread’ in the YouTube chat), our ‘promos’ aren’t really ‘promos’ at all. They are ProMOREs . Because they are longer than most other shows… there’s more . Now the proMORE for HRN 451 was over three hours. That’s gonna be hard to duplicate. But despite David W0DHG’s prediction/request/protest at this beginning to this proMORE (and he kinda always tries that), we went over 90 minutes. And instead of tacking it onto the regular 452 episode, we’re ...
Nov 19, 2022•1 hr 39 min
The ICOM ID-5100 was first released in 2015, 7 years ago. It’s still ICOM’s top-of-the-line dual-band D-STAR mobile rig. East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ just bought one to replace his 14-year-old ICOM IC-2820 (also a dual-band, D-STAR mobile), which was having trouble decoding D-STAR signals. In this episode, Gary shows how he had to revamp his Q-Mobile’s control panel to fit the oversize control head of the 5100, then goes remote all the way to the garage (below the Studio in the Bonus Room) to demo...
Nov 14, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 451
It was time to do a promo for HRN 451, to be titled New Rig… Who Dis? . David W0DHG was driving home (LA) from San Francisco. Gary K4AAQ anchored from the Studio in the Bonus Room Above the Garage on the North Side of Fort Mill (SC), in the Shadow of Charlotte, at the Foot of Mt. Belzoni. A little over three hours later , then were done… apparently only because David arrived home. David was in SF to visit one of his daughters. While they were attending an event, David’s rental car (good gas mile...
Nov 14, 2022•3 hr 17 min
25 Miles comes from a fairly frequent Facebook inquiry from non-hams (usually) wondering how they might be able to communicate over X distance with some kind of radio technology when ‘All Else Fails’ - no cell phones, no Internet, no nothing (maybe sat phones… we didn’t think of that). The answer changes as you fill in the X with different distances, and 25 miles is sort of the limit with non-ham equipment (say, GMRS or CB), even with a decent (but not super-high or elaborate) antennas. Yes, the...
Nov 07, 2022•2 hr 17 min•Ep. 450
It’s just us - Jim NO1PC, David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ for the Halloween Eve show. So, Extreme Elmering? We talk about that, after checking out Kyle AA0Z’s recent Trivia show , and a story in the LA Times about hams in Taiwan maybe preparing for a showdown with China. And a reminder that when we do a ‘Promo’ show, it’s not just to tell you we have a ‘real’ show coming up. We usually do a whole ‘nother show. 30 minutes… or more. This week is defiantly in the more category. So if this nearly 2½ hour...
Oct 31, 2022•2 hr 27 min•Ep. 449
Here’s the Ham Radio Live show with HRN’s Gary K4AAQ as a guest. A lot of early history of Gary’s production and streaming. https://youtu.be/tzt7zQQcQ-A
Oct 24, 2022•1 hr 10 min
Our guest is Larry Devoe K7HN . Larry hosts the Ham Radio Live show on YouTube, and produces a live show almost every day. This episode includes the ‘Promo’ that Jim and Gary recorded on Saturday. And keep an eye out for the Ham Radio Live show in the HRN podcast feed that Larry did with Gary as his guest.
Oct 24, 2022•4 hr 28 min•Ep. 448
Don’t look it up… you won’t find it. Host Gary K4AAQ and his friend Jeff AC4ZO (SK) made it up during some previous HamRadioNow show. * QBC? means (according to them) “Are we in the middle of a Boring Conversation ”?. And QBC (no question mark) means “We are in the middle of a boring conversation. Terminate immediately”. BUT… that’s not what we talked about this week. We got a last minute guest: Kay Savetz K6KJN is the Program Manager, Special Collections at the Internet Archive, home of the Way...
Oct 17, 2022•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 447
With nowhere particularly to go, we spent most of the show talking about an article in Field & Stream about the ‘Best Ham Radio’. Yes, Field & Stream.
Oct 10, 2022•4 hr 6 min•Ep. 446
We made up this title when the tropical storm remnants of Hurricane Ian were predicted to pass directly over the East Coast Studio (in the Shadow of Charlotte, at the foot of Mt. Belzoni). The track moved about 100 miles east and flooded Raleigh, instead. But of course, the serious devastation was in Cuba, Florida and coastal South Carolina. We have our usual gang of hosts, Jim NO1PC, David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ . And we’re joined by Christine Duez K4KJN , SEC for the West Central Florida Section...
Oct 03, 2022•1 hr 50 min•Ep. 445
What is the BEST! HAM Band of 2022? Just because that is a silly, unanswerable question that pokes fun at all the ham (and general media) BEST! lists that provide ample fodder for many, many (many) shows, that doesn’t mean we don’t give it a shot. And by the time we’re done, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ unilaterally announces a winner! Along the way, Gary, NorCal Host Jim NO1PC and West Coast Host David W0DHG are joined on the Zoom line by two live viewers: William K4ARX, and Kent N6WT. And the fu...
Sep 26, 2022•2 hr 12 min•Ep. 444
Another busy weekend… David W0DHG was up on Missile Mountain doing an Interop Drill, while Gary K4AAQ was helping with the video from the 2022 ARRL/TAPR DCC , in his hometown this year. David and Jim get into the weeds on Emcom in CA
Sep 19, 2022•2 hr 15 min•Ep. 443
Over the weekend, Gary K4AAQ played Ham Radio really hard with BikeMS in North Carolina. He checks in with a slide show from his hotel room while David W0DHG anchors from the West Coast Studio. Then Jim NO1PC reviews the issues with some of the USB cables needed for programming radios (and why some of those cables don’t work ).
Sep 11, 2022•1 hr 51 min•Ep. 442
