The Network Effect is when you connect a network (IRLP, AllStar, Echolink, D-STAR, DMR, Fusion, etc) to a quiet, local repeater and turn on a busy nationwide or worldwide reflector, talk group, room, whatever. The repeater isn’t quiet anymore… but who’s talking. Nobody you know. Also, Gary K4AAQ will be volunteering for a big, new (to him) event: the Assault on Mt. Mitchell. That’s a 100 mile bike ride from Spartanburg SC to the top of Mt. Mitchell in NC. With all the up and down (and the big UP...
Mar 04, 2024•56 min•Ep. 518
Gary K4AAQ has that new phone/camera gimble and wireless podcast mics. So he’s got to go to a hamfest. It’s been a while. No SIB (Studio In a Booth). Maybe they’ll let him sit in on the YouTuber’s Forum? Then he and David W0DHG yammer about other stuff.
Feb 26, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 517
The Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act is now in the Senate as S.3690. That bill joins House Bill H.R.4006, with the goal of giving hams living in HOA neighborhoods some reasonable relief in being able to put up antennas. Don’t place your orders yet 🤨. Most Congrerssional bills never become law, but if you recall your Civics class, you do need identical legislation to be passed in the House and Senate before they move on to the President for their signature. So we’re a big step closer 😀....
Feb 19, 2024•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 516
One sure path to YouTube stardom is to do a lot of unboxings. That may be why we don’t do them very often. But this time, we do one. East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ was getting jealous of all the YouTubers walking around hamfests with their phones mounted on fancy sticks, and using some kind of wireless mic gizmo to talk to people (and hear them) more than six inches from the phone. So he bought a set, and opened it up live on this show while West Coast Host David W0DHG looked on over Zoom. Next… a d...
Feb 11, 2024•31 min•Ep. 515
Trivia question #1: Who said that ( To the Moon, Alice) ? Trivia question #2: What year did Gary K4AAQ say it was when he introduced this show? We’re not answering those here. Watch (or listen to) the show. In January, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) landed a ham radio station on the moon (along with some other stuff, we’re sure, but we have our priorities). Its one-watt transmitter sent some telemetry on 437.41 MHz, along with a cleverly embedded Morse code (not cw) signal, as rec...
Feb 04, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 514
Gary K4AAQ just got back from a week of skiing 🤹♀️ with Cyndi KD4ACW out in Park City UT. David W0DHG has been busy, so not much show prep (good thing we’re not trying to make money off this show🤑). But Gary had a little radio operation (and one near-catastrophy ) to talk about from his trip, including a short video of the radio-laden suitcase that got flagged at TSA. And David had some Winter Field Day adventures to relate. So another short ish show. Earlier that day, Gary did a ‘sync-test ’...
Jan 29, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 513
Winter Field Day , the last full weekend in January. Field Day - the summer version - is the most popular event on the ham radio calendar. The winter version isn’t even close, but it is a thing. And many hams are passionate about it. Our guest Marvin Turner W0MET , King of Winter Field Day (so dubbed by host Gary K4AAQ ) tells us all about it. The weather is kind of an upside-down, of course. While summer Field Day is more or less pleasant in the northern US and Canada, it’s hot and muggy in the...
Jan 15, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 512
For a short while, the ham radio world was abuzz with comments on a shot at the very end of the Netflix movie Laave the World Behind , about a NYC couple who rent a house on Long Island for a weekend getaway. The world quickly goes to hell, though they only get vague signs of it as TV, cable, internet and cell phone service goes out. Then weird things start happening around them. SPOILER ALERT At the very end of the movie, there’s a bunker with an elaborate ham station , receiving a digital mess...
Jan 08, 2024•1 hr 41 min•Ep. 511
A small Christmas Miracle (and really kind of pre-Christmas). Netflix released their copyright©claim on HamRadioNow Episode 506: How Can We Podcast With All This Light💡? Just in time for nobody to see it (it’s up to 33 views as I type this). So David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ celebrate the win🎉🥂. David is short-time, so later, Gary goes into mind-numbing detail about how he filed disputes with YouTube that got Netflix to relent. But first, they review the reaction to Episode 509: Repeater Pest Get...
Dec 25, 2023•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 510
Aka The Monkeyman Trial A very wide coverage, busy UHF repeater in the Charlotte NC metro area had been plagued all year by a pest. Drunk, profane, nonsensical and relentless. Ignoring him didn’t work, so they tracked him down. The repeater owners told him to stop many times. The FCC told him to stop… twice. He didn’t. But now identified, he got his ham license: KQ4GAD . But nothing changed. The repeater was still frequently subject to his profanity, sound effects and music, and streams of nonse...
Dec 18, 2023•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 509
He was drunk. He was profane. He was worse than annoying. He wouldn't go away, plaguing a Charlotte area repeater for months. Then he got his ham license ... and nothing changed. He was ordered off the repeater (many times). The control ops contacted the FCC - they wouldn't act. Nothing worked. Then he began targeting one individual ham for harassment, and that created an opening for a legal remedy outside the FCC. Gary also previews a bill in the South Carolina Legislature that mirrors PRB-1 , ...
Dec 16, 2023•30 min•Ep. 509
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ had volunteered to do radio at a local Christmas parade. As he was lacing up his sneakers, about to leave home, wife Cyndi KD4ACW called to dispatch him to the hospital where mom had been taken with chest pains. Gary had planned to do some video and interviews at the event for today’s show. Instead Gary and West Coast Host David W0DHG talk about how to weigh conflicting obligations to family and community (and Podcasting). (Mom didn’t have a heart issue, but it was sti...
Dec 10, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 508
HamRadioNow Episode 506 is still down on YouTube, by order of Netflix. We’ve filed a ‘dispute’ via YouTube. We’re waiting. But not patiently. In this episode, David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ explain what’s happened. And that’s pretty much it… a short show.
Dec 06, 2023•25 min•Ep. 507
We finally get to the real show based on the Netflix series All the Light We Cannot See . The show is a four-part mini-series about clandestine broadcasting during WWII. It’s set mostly in a small, coastal French town that is occupied by Germany, and is being bombarded by Allied planes coming across the Channel. A young woman named Marie has taken over broadcast duties from her uncle. Her broadcasts contain coded mssages helping the Allies make precision bombing runs. Marie is being hunted by We...
Dec 04, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 506
First… I’m giving everything a new number - episodes, promos… if I far… sneeze, I’m giving it an episode number. So, we had planned to do the episode that we Promo(re)d last Sunday sometime during the week. Well, we couldn’t. It’ll be on this coming Sunday, December 3 at 3pm Pacific, 6 pm Eastern, 2200Z. We’ll be reviewing and picking apart the radio mistakes in the Netflix series All the Light We Cannot See . So what are we doing here in 505? (Besides piling up episode numbers?) Mostly celebrat...
Dec 01, 2023•33 min•Ep. 505
This episode is a PROMO for an upcoming HRN show. This one comes with homework: We like watching shows that have ham radio in them. Sometimes it’s just for the show, and sometimes it’s to pick at how much they got wrong 😒. Netflix has a new, four-episode limited series titled All the Light We Cannot See , based on a novel by the same name. It looks like it should be one of those ‘based on a true story’ stories, but it’s not. But it does have a lot of radio in it. Not ham radio specifically, and...
Nov 26, 2023•49 min•Ep. 454
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ played radio (and Pavement Police) at a local Christmas parade on Saturday with the Cabarrus Amateur Radio Society , and made a little movie of it. Before that, West Coast Host David W0DHG was playing hooky from the show, out doing a POTA event with his WaveTalkers co-host Chris W6AH . They were live on 17 meters, and after we announced the frequency, a few members of our live audience jumped on 17 and worked them!...
Nov 20, 2023•56 min•Ep. 503
The FCC jumped the gun on releasing the Report and Order on RM-11708, replacing the old “300 Baud” data limit on the Amateur Radio HF bands with a bandwidth limit of 2.8 kHz instead. They told us it would be part of their November 15 meeting, aired live on YouTube. Instead, they sent notice of the approval in a press release two days early, on November 13. So YAY, it’s approved with no drama. But we kinda wanted to hear them talk about us a little. Oh, well… the new rules take effect 30 days aft...
Nov 15, 2023•11 min•Ep. 502
Not really that much going on. But David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ haven’t chatted in a while, so they did. LINKS: — The RATPAC Gift Suggestion show (with Gary’s Ham’s Night Before Christmas ) — USA 1939 movie about Ham Radio
Nov 13, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 501
Happy Episode 500 , everybody! And now back to work. The FCC is about to release a Report and Order abolishing the antiquated 300 ‘baud’ limit on data rates on the HF bands, replacing it with a 2.8 kHz bandwidth cap instead . The draft R&O was released last week, and Gary K4AAQ picks it apart. It should be finalized at the Commission meeting on November 15, 10:30 am Eastern, with video available live (and on Memorex for later). In the last half of the episode, Gary opens up the Discord and c...
Oct 30, 2023•2 hr 41 min•Ep. 500
DXer and video producer Bob Allphin K4UEE released the K1N Navssa DXpedition documentary on DVD in 2015, a few months after the highly successful DXpedition itself. HamRadioNow’s Gary K4AAQ did the editing and voiceover for the production. DVD sales were good enough, but now it’s time to release the program to the world on YouTube, free to watch for everyone. Yep, that’s the link, right here. In this episode, Bob and Gary chat about the show, and about some of the DXpeditions Bob has been on, pa...
Oct 23, 2023•1 hr 46 min•Ep. 499
Gary’s Genius Plan for 60 Meters gets filed with the FCC. He reads it to you. And Gary K4AAQ notices that ICOM has added FM to their 3rd Generation D-STAR Repeaters. He thought he saw that they were doing a D-Fuzion thing, with DV/Analog IN, Analog OUT, but no… as he reads it live, he discovered that it was an either/or thing… DV or FM, but no Fuzion. So close. LINKS: File your comments here, on the ECFS site Review everybody else’s comments here, also on the ECFS site HamRadioNow’s YouTube Play...
Oct 17, 2023•49 min•Ep. 498
The Chicago Marathon ran last weekend. It’s one of the Big Six marathongs worldwide, and uses ham radio extensively for communications in support of the medical crews. Rob Orr K9RST is the ham radio coordinator, and he’s one of our guests on this week’s show. And this time (because we’ve done this before, back in 2017), he’s joined by Jeff van Buren KD9IPG . Together they fill in hosts Jim NO1PC and Gary K4AAQ (with a cameo from David W0DHG ) on this year’s events and updates. LINKS: Ham Radio C...
Oct 16, 2023•Ep. 497
Last spring, the FCC issued an ORDER and NPRM covering a lot of stuff that originated with the 2015 World Radio Conference (WRC 2015). Um… checking our calendar, we see that it’s 2023 and ¾. But who’s counting? For hams, we care mostly about the part concerning 60 meters. And apparently not all that many of us care about that, but we’re pressing on anyway. Back at the WRC, they officially approved a band plan for worldwide Secondary status for ham radio on a 15 kHz wide band between 5351.5 – 536...
Oct 09, 2023•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 496
On the ‘Big Show’ we’ll talk about the 60 Meter NPRM from the FCC, but this is the ProMore, with East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ talking about his experience investigating and documenting BPL in the early aughts. Cameo appearances by David W0DHG and Marty NN1C (Marty apparently butt-texted the show group, so Gary called him on the phone).
Oct 08, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Back in 2014, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ did a HamRadioNow show titled System Confusion , with a look at Yaesu’s new C4FM mobile and handheld radios that he had just reviewed for QST . In that show, Gary and some friends from the Charlotte Digital Radio Group did a comparison of DV modes using handheld radios on D-STAR, DMR, P25, and those new C4FM Fusion handheld radio. The episode is our most-watched HamRadioNow show, with nearly 48,000 views (one TAPR DCC show in our catelog has more views). ...
Oct 02, 2023•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 495
One show… two episide entries. Gary K4AAQ did a long ‘Promo’ for HRN 495 ConFuzin’ After All These Years that was really a slide show of the vacation he just took to Utah and a Rocky Mountaineer train ride. Our web host, Squarespace, only lets us put one audio file in an episode, and we want to publish this one separately, so… two Episode entries for one… OK, we did say it was Confuzin’. All the way around.
Sep 30, 2023•1 hr 46 min•Ep. 495
Sep 24, 2023
East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ here (the 👑 of HAM)… You can operate public service effectively with a single mobile radio (I recommend a dual-band, dual-display radio, though), and probably a dual-band HT. So that's why I have 5 mobile radios and a scanner, and 10 or so handhelds, all programmed and ready to go. Obsessive. Borderline compulsive. This episode is a mini-doc of my prep and some operation during my big annual Public Service event, BikeMS New Bern . I was just going to shoot a few snipp...
Sep 13, 2023•36 min•Ep. 493
It’s fun to see Ham Radio bantered about in the halls of Congress. At the end of a 3-hour hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee ’s subcommittee on Communications and Technology last June, Arizona Congresswoman (and friend of Ham Radio) Debbie Lesko ‘grilled’ FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel about the status of the proposal to replace the long-obsolete rules on HF data rates in Amateur Radio with something more modern… perhaps a 2.8 kHz bandwidth limit, and anything you can stuff into i...
Sep 04, 2023•2 hr 28 min•Ep. 492
