Ham Radio Innovations and the Call for Change

This is our weekly show where we discuss ham radio topics in New Hampshire , new England and beyond , and so we are thrilled to have you hang out here with us , whether you're a regular listener or maybe you're tuning in for the first time and if you are , we thank you for joining us for this episode , and we hope you won't have to wash your ears out with

soap after this one . So with that , let's get into the show . I'm your host , eric callsign , and one J you are , and I'm with my co-hosts , and I'm with my co-hosts . It's Paul .

As always , head over to our storefront at livefreeandhamcom , forward slash , stop and you can pick up any one of our a bit of new merchandise that we get out .

We got a whole winter kind of series going on , um , and those uh few folks just recently picked up tim c again , in case you want qdk , our uh , you know uh first , uh , uh , you know true fan to Live Free and Ham .

He picked up a Live Free and Ham classic beanie that Paul is wearing on this stream and again we thank you , tim , for picking one up , as always , and appreciate your support in the show . And we also have Anthony Woodward . He picked up a three-pack of our hammies . Now , those that don't know , we have our lovely hammies .

If you head over to Get Hammed , you can check out more on these little guys and what the whole purpose is . But if you are a Jeep fan and you know Jeepers love the ducks well , it's sort of similar but it's way cooler .

If you're a ham radio operator and you want to show some love to a bunch of other hams that have their antennas on their vehicles , you can now easily leave them a little token to say , hey , I see your cool 15 antennas on the top of your vehicle .

I may not know what everyone does , but ultimately it's a cool and uh , I recognize you , uh , mr Ham radio operator , sir , so you know you can always head over to get ham to pick those up . Uh , they're available . And uh , you know , spread the ham radio love .

So with that did I tell you we all love feedback here at Live Free and Ham , we got a couple of ways you can contact us . You can always reach out via SMS and that link is in the show notes of every show that we have .

And if you click that link you can always leave us a text message and make sure you leave your call sign for those a few that actually have left us . They forgot to leave us a text message and make sure you leave your call sign for those A few that actually have left us . They'd forgot the left .

They leave their name and we only know the last four digits of their phone number , so not too helpful there , but either way , we appreciate the feedback and that's one way you can always reach out to us . The other way is we now have a voicemail number . You can finally realize that our lines are fully open and available 24 , seven , seven days a week .

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If you definitely want to come be on the in squad there , so all right . Well , if you've been diving into here , I mean my gosh , my scripts all over the map today I have no idea what's going on here . So let's oh , no , actually now I know why I put this in there . This is a special thing because this is kind of threw me a curve here .

Well , you know , if you always have been paying attention and this is not so much a part of our regular stuff here , but you know you've been paying attention you know that our ham radio is the hobby of a thousand hobbies and everything that we do encompasses and interweaves itself into other cooler hobbies .

So , as you all know , one of our great hosts here , paul N10G , has taken a significant step by pursuing a skydiving license . So he's going for his Class A significant step by pursuing a skydiving license .

So he's going for his class A and so , as many of you are aware , you know we might've been alluding to how it'd be really cool we should get a you know GoFundMe going and you know how , and and so forth and so on . And we've had a couple of listeners reach out to us and go hey , how can I help support , you know , that effort ?

Because we know that once Paul gets his class A , two things are going to happen . One , we're going to be have a hell of a lot more radio contacts from , you know , aeronautical uh mobile there . And two , you know one of us I don't know who will be might actually go tandem with them someday .

I did not say who or why or when , but you know one of us might . We'll see how it goes . But uh , you know we , we would be so lucky if one of our you know we would be so lucky if one of our you know tried and true live free and ham hosts finally become class A certified , and he's already jumping now because his video camera is disappearing .

There we go , so you can head over now and we'll make sure it's in the show notes of every show going forward . Is that , you know link there and you can always go over there and support Paul If you want to help him out , get his Class A license .

The GoFundMe link is in our description below and it will be on our website as well so you can go check that out . So share the love if you want to be part of that and get Paul in the friendly skies quickly and so we can start getting some really good video footage there . That's how you can help support him there .

We appreciate everybody that's shown you can help support them there and we appreciate everybody that's shown the support so far and we thank you , guys , as always . Alright , so now we get into our regular segments and horrifying news story . Everybody we got some news . Slow down , boog , let me handle this . We've got some news . I've got bad news and bad news .

Todd loves doing this segment . I love hearing todd do this segment . So you know , come on .

You must love the show , we , we . We've heard people talk about a live free and ham . So you know , come , come , tell us how you really feel , just introduce yourself , come , hang out . You know whatever you know . So Todd actually has something to share with us , because we want to hear your stories and Todd wants to share it . So simple as that .

Can I be any more nicer and polite ? Can I be any more nicer and polite ?

I'm beginning to , like you know , looking for the single and the release eventually soon . So you know he's produced something for us over here at Live Free and Ham for our jingle . So take it away , mr N1OG .

It's all technical difficulties all around the house . All right , well , with that , we'll dive back into our doing good . All like to aspire to do good in ham radio . So whether you're assisting during a disaster , providing communications for that local road race that you see every year , or hosting a pod , you know , we , we .

So we're just going to raise our fists at this point and say bring on the good deeds , my friend . No more Will we allow the , the bad actors , the bad voices , to take over our fun , especially in the ham radio . And so the way you can do that now is you can share a story with us over here at live free and ham .

We are giving you the floor , the podium , to be able to share your first ham radio experience you might've had with a total stranger , while you're maybe activating a park , or maybe you were teaching a student or a family member or your neighbor about the coolness of ham radio , or you got to demonstrate to a new technician the thrills of HF at the next winter

field day or summer field day , whatever . So we want to hear about it . You know , take pen to paper , you know , send us an email . There are many ways to do that . And so what we're going to do is we're going to demonstrate to you that we actually have folks that are sharing stories .

So our , our fan base , our true dedicated fan base , has once again come to our rescue . Carlos , once again , man , he is an overachiever . He's brought another , you know , good doing good uh episode .

So , carlos , those that might know him over , uh , at life , at terminal velocity , if you haven't subscribed to his channel , you need to head over there and check him out , um , and become a subscriber .

But he comes in clutch this week , uh , with this one , and and I am thoroughly impressed with it , he says the Fort Wayne Allen country clubs , county clubs , not country clubs , because we're not talking golf here , we're talking about ham radio . The Fort Wayne Allen county clubs , ham radio clubs , have one common newsletter .

They get together , they slice up everybody's club entries and then it's sent out monthly to all of the membership base across all of the the clubs and this way the respective club members know about what the other clubs are doing and when , and it makes collaboration way easier , which is an awesome idea that I think alone a lot of clubs can learn how to be

able to support each other and realize that not one club has a corner of the market . All of us do ham radio guys . Nobody does anything special . We might do it something a little differently , but , dude , we're all part of the bigger organization is ham radio .

So I applaud these guys for putting together an awesome you know group uh count uh , club newsletter effort uh , because we all know newsletters are a tough to do , especially if you're a newsletter person . Every month I try to find content to keep it fun and interesting , but these guys are doing it the right way and so we applaud them .

We appreciate you , carlos , for sharing that idea and hopefully maybe it invigorates you to kind of take that to your clubs and the clubs around your area to try it out . So with that , as he says , you know , both ideas need to spread , and he was talking about his idea from our last episode , um and uh .

You can go back to that and replay and check that out . But ultimately he says , you know , to spread across our hobby . He says he wants less salty eight , 80 meter ass hattery . That is a quote . Less salty , 80 meter ass hattery that is a quote . That is his quote .

None of this information is directly related by Live Free and Ham and is owned by the respective owners . We'll put that little tagline at the bottom and so more should be working together to grow the hobby and I agree 120% there , carlos , and again thanks for sharing such an awesome , do good episode and we appreciate you know contributing .

So with that , I'm good with that . How about you guys ?

Sure , okay , excellent , all right , well , with that I am , you know , gonna tie this one up with a bow . Um , so how can you share your uh do good with us ? Well , there are obviously three easy ways . You can always head over , leave us a voicemail at 9 , 7 , 8 , 2 , 3 , 3 , 1 , 1 , 4 , 2 .

And I would have him play that jingle one more time , but I think we have a three hour episode , but you know I was still awesome jingle , so it's a good way to remember the number . You can always head over to live free and hamcom forward slash , do good , all one word . There's a nice easy form there .

You can fill it in and we'll be happy to read it on the next episode . Or if you're one of those type a dedicated folks and we have a few in our midst that have submitted in the past um , and we thank you guys again for doing that but you can be a win link , be a win man . Well , I guess the beer is talking tonight via win link hf .

Send us an email and do we have one ? No , we don't have one , do we ? Okay ? All right , cool , yeah , so you can send paul and only Paul Hear me , paul and only Paul N1OG is his call sign A WinLink email with your Do Good episode and that secures you a spot at any one of our future livestream episodes . So we will reach out to you . Coordinate that .

If you want to come on , we'd love to have you on and it's just a way of saying thank you for taking the effort to use technology like WinLink and Ham Radio and show us how it's done . So with that , thank you again for everybody who's contributed to the Do Good episode . We appreciate this and it's a fun little episode .

We love all doing within Live Free and Ham and we're going to continue to do it because we want to show the good stuff that happens in Ham Radio . None of this ass-hattery . So now we are into our next episode and with great joy I get to . And now a little something extra with todd w1stj .

All right , for those that are on our podcast episode , you obviously don't get to see all of the time the sweat , the tears , the blood , everything in between , the you know other samples that have been donated to creating the new banner for Todd with the new submission of photos .

Now I have to throw a little asterisk caveat , because he sent me a photo way back but it was crap because I couldn't . Every time I tried to edit out the background , I had a bitch of a time because it would chop off its head every time . So I had to have him resend me a video .

But he came through and clutch and sent me one uh video , another photo , and therefore we have got a new photo , uh , for Todd's uh . So a little something extra . So if you want to check that out , you can always head over to our YouTube channel and check it out . That on this episode .

So with that , as we always know yep , you've heard it here this is where we help Todd study for his extra class license . Each episode we pick three questions from the extra class pool to test his knowledge and hope he gets his upgrade . Please I hope soon . All right , so if that we'd like you to follow along , you can always head over to hamstudyorg .

It's a great resource to help you prepare your test . It is recommended by three out of four volunteer examiners , because the AARL was not available for comment , but we'll get into that . We'll tell you why . The what . The four-letter word that we refuse to talk about , though , shall not be named Without any further ado .

C to prevent arcing across the input power switch or relay contacts . C to allow the filter capacitors to charge gradually , or D to compensate for variations of the incoming line voltage ?

If we were to put the full voltage on the capacitor all at once , it might fail literally let the smoke out or at least result in a decrease of the capacitor's useful life .

C FIR filters can delay all frequency components of the signal by the same amount . Is it D ? All of these choices are correct . Ooh .

So without feedback , the effect of any input signal cannot persist longer than the fixed delay of the filter , so input samples are treated equally . A stupid test hint . A finite value is a fixed amount , so you should pick the answer with the word amount in it .

So hey , what does that tell you ?

So if you're on the journey of studying your technician , general or extra class license , like todd , in that case handstudyorg is an awesome resource for getting your ticket , and if you haven't checked out the episode , you can always head over to our back catalog and check out that episode that we had with Signal Stuff and Richard and Ben .

Those guys were great and it was a fun episode to have them on and talk about all of the great products that they are doing over there , which I have actually some good news to report that I finally bought a stupid signal stick .

Like I've been a ham for more than four years , but four years at least , you know , from after COVID and I didn't have a signal stick at all . I felt like very out of it . Yeah , I know , sad isn't it ? I finally got one . I don't know , dude , I just didn't . You know I knew of them and I knew them well , but I just didn't .

I finally went over there and clicked the button .

But you know , I bought the antenna and that bnc connector , so now I just need to convert the rest of my radio so that bnc style I well , I didn't get the bnc connector .

In that case I was okay with it . I'll buy definitely a lot more in terms of antennas and stuff . So , uh , that's definitely coming your way , richard , and we appreciate you and everything you guys do over at signal stuff . So , you know , go over there and support those guys . They do an awesome job .

They help the ham radio community both with uh , ham ham tools and uh , sorry , exam tools , not ham tools and a handbook now .

So , if you actually haven't paid attention , handbook is a great now online resource that they're putting out , that they're playing around with , which is a great um addendum , or in addition to , I should say , uh , of all of the whys of you know when the exam questions kick out .

So , like , if you want to learn more about certain like the FM discriminators , he'll go into a very plain English and probably tell you exactly everything you need to know . So you have a better , clearer understanding . So you know great , great resources that those guys are creating .

So we appreciate them and thank uh , you know them for doing all the cool stuff that they do . So and lastly , you know if you've received your license or you've upgraded , and I know there's a bunch of you know we've been privy . You know , this week we just had a VE session at our club and we had what ? Five guys upgrade ? Yeah , five , six , six total .

He's like , but it's gonna be probably like three , four weeks before I get a call sign . That's painful , like yeah so so he was like I really want to test for my general , he's like , but can I bring me a copy of your cse , your certificate of successful completion ?

Uh , and I will apply the credit and then we will submit all of your paperwork electronically . And so it's probably going to hit the FCC before it's tech .

Let us know you got your upgrade , let us know you became a technician and you knew the hammer , your hobby , and we will celebrate with you and we'll give you a five seconds of fame here to be able to let everyone know who you are and your call sign and you know , tell you , you know , hey , we celebrate with you and we love uh , you know that you're

coming into the hobby and you know we want to help , support you as any way we can . Um , so , and we'll make sure we submit that on our next show . So , with that , all right , let's get into the usual stuff , as always , guys . So with our usual format , let me ask you what's's been going on in your ham-ready week , paul ?

Good , um , let's see what else . Uh , I I got a whole bunch of of projects and things going on , uh , ham radio related that are in the works . I I just gotta , I just gotta kick myself in the ass and start actually getting some things done .

But uh , you know otherwise , I guess you know it was , it was a , it was a good ham radio week and uh , glad to be here on the podcast .

You know not that Todd and I don't hang out already , but you know it would have been very lonely and you'd have to hang out with the rest of my family .

I believe it was Tim KC1 , qdk , our buddy there who decided to stand up and start singing Happy Birthday . Then this family next to us started singing and everyone .

And then , like we all showed up and then I forgot , like , so I went through and Like I just assume he would be there anyway . So I'm like , oh shit . So I , I text him . While you were saying goodbye to him , I said , hey , I totally forgot to tell you . But we're going to the , we're going to the brewery . Do you want to ? Can you meet us there ?

And he's like oh yeah , I'll be there . So it was good , it was , it was pretty cool . It was good , it was pretty cool , it was good to see everyone . I think Eric was a little surprised when people just started walking in .

If you stuck out to the very end you'd realize me huffing and puffing and the other guys were like miles ahead of me . Um , you know , I mentioned I was going to turn 50 . So , yeah , I , it's kind of funny , Cause like I didn't expect any , you know , kind of like pre , you know kind of anything to go on throughout the day and whatever .

And I knew my wife was going to have something planned at the brewery , but I didn't . I think it was going to kind of be more intimate with the family . But I remember like months ago that just kind of you know , it really only got set off when you said you know , hey , what are you doing after ? And I said , oh , I'm just going out with family .

And you were like that , was it done ? Like you didn't pursue any further , like you know deeper into the conversation of like oh , you when you go to a brewery , like you just kind of like cut it off and you were like , okay , back on the next conversation .

And then , you know , this knucklehead to my left here or right , depending on which way you're looking at texts me a happy birthday on Discord . And then he's like oh , what are you doing ? I said , oh , probably going to a brewery with the family . He's like oh , that's great and that's it . And I'm like what the fuck's going on ?

Both of these guys I know better . They would be like oh , dude , you know , my wife's like we got to get cold , we got to get out of the house . You know like , and I'm like all right , well , that's , that's , that's really . Either I'm going to see my family show up or , you know , there's going to be something more than that .

And I got my family to show up on top of that .

And so it was just really cool , as it was kind of funny because , like , literally walked by the front of the window at the brewery and my favorite brewery if anybody's ever in the New Hampshire area , you know head over to uh , to spy glass brewery , phenomenal beers , awesome place , great food , the whole nine yards . If you're looking for an awesome brewery .

That's a great , great place to go . But on top of that , a couple of people walk by that front window and I'm like wait a minute . And then , you know , at that point , you know Tim show .

I see Tim miles away because he's still wearing the G Sarah like beanie hat that he had on that morning , you know pressed , and I'm like , oh , there's Tim and his wife . And then Ryan shows up and then Todd shows it .

You know , the whole crew starts coming in and and I dude , I , you know I was blessed , I was totally excited to have all you guys here and I appreciate you both coming to hang out . Ryan as well .

Ryan definitely brought his wife along and you know we , we had a lot of good beers , a lot of good conversation , you know , talked a lot of ham radio and I thank you guys both for coming to hang out . It definitely uh , warmed , uh , you know my heart and I , you know , I , you know , consider you guys both as great , true friends .

So thank you again for coming to hang out with my 50th did you ?

Yep , right , well , the thread came out , so he's got it safety pinned . That's him and Kim , his wife is like I've been trying to get him to throw those things away forever . So then that Friday was our club meeting and sure enough he had himself like now , don't forget these gloves , tim , I go . They may not make it back out of here .

If you leave them here , the chair might just toss them .

I'm like I get it , tim , but maybe I think maybe next year for Christmas or his birthday I'm going to get him a new pair of fingerless gloves with the mitt .

I don't know about you guys , but our club is freaking taken off . We literally had five new members show up and all five are like I got to be part of this club and they're like you know , literally it was like a fire sale .

It was more like a black Friday sale for membership , because everybody's like at my doorstep , like during middle of the club break , all want to fill out the form , all need to get , like , membership . Today I'm like , dude , no rush . It's like you know you're a club member , it's not a big deal , you know we'll get there .

They're all super excited to do stuff . So you know it's really cool to see some of that .

I said he's , oh , I'm going to join it again so maybe we'll get a new member out of him . But he told us I mean by the time this airs , hopefully those fires will be long gone and in recovery . But there is a , a website and I checked it out .

It's called firecagov and it has all the updated , latest information on all the fires in california , past and present and current . So but he said he was in , like he was in North Hollywood . He says he was surrounded by fire . He goes . It's pretty unbelievable .

You know , and , uh , there's plenty of resources and you know places you can donate and help out there .

So you know , make sure you reach out to those folks and those entities , you know agencies to , to be able to help the rebuild process , because it's going to be a long road and once they finally they got good challenges of it under control , but they're still working on it .

So you know we'll definitely , you know , give our prayers and thoughts with them and , you know , definitely help out if you can and have that you know those resources .

That sucks .

You know , it's just crazy the amount of money we we throw out to the rest of the world and we don't even take care of our own kind of uh well , you heard it here , it's todd newman for president 2028 it's our good segment . Here I'm starting a new party . It's called the common sense party .

Go fund me , common sense , we're gonna solve our first problem here before before we get you running for candidacy , we've got to get Paul out of a plane and in the air and getting his Class A because If you make me president , I will let Paul jump out of Air Force One .

You ever see that one ? Oh man , it's escaping me at the moment . I'm going to have to watch it now . I think , it's called Arcade Adam Sandler .

Man , my brain is on fog here . Let me grab .

They send a time capsule out into space and it has all of the arcade games that we played as kids in the 80s . They send all of the arcade games out there . Aliens come back to Earth to try to attack us , but they're attacking us using the eight bit versions of the games .

So if you haven't caught that episode , head back to that episode , because I I say when we left that we got pretty hardcore in terms of talking about the ARL .

I mean , they got Paul fired up , it got me a little fired up and I know Todd was in that same boat , so it kind of got me thinking I'm like it got me a little fired up and I know Todd was in that same boat , so it kind of got me thinking I'm like , dude , maybe we need to have a little discussion about the ARRL .

We need to just be open and honest . But more so , let's not just bash them . Let's think about , like , okay , how can we phrase this ? That if tomorrow , all of a sudden , mitzner decides to step down and give one of us three total control over the ARRL , what the heck would you do to make ARL better ? And you know there's a lot of avenues and things .

But you know I'm curious what ? What are your top three things as candidacy CEO ? Uh , you know , grand poobah of ARL , and , and so we're going to phrase it that way , and and with that , you know we're going to extend this conversation . You know we'll throw in our , our discord there . We're going to have a topic .

We want to hear what the hell you would change in your arl if it was your arl , um , and we want to know and you know again , we're not . You know you can remain anonymous , you cannot be anonymous . I don't care whatever . But in essence , you know , bottom line is arl doesn't listen to us . If they do .

Well , you know , maybe they might glean something new from that , but I , you know , hey , I probably , todd , I don't know . You are a paying member , are you an ARO active member or no ?

So the question on the table is you are now official ARL CEO , commander in chief . What do you want to do ? Where do you want to go ? So Paul's raised his finger in a polite way .

Because people , people get greedy and people they want to get paid a six-figure salary for doing a 40-hour a week job . And I get it right . We all want to live a nice , super comfortable life .

But come on , if you're running a non-profit , you should be taking a lower salary so that there is more money to put into the programs , things like the teachers and the kids and getting more into scouting and ham radio , like , why isn't the ARRL putting a ton of money into their marketing and , and you know , whatever , for these youth programs ?

Because the youth is the future . Right , it's , it's , it's not , it's not . Let me line my fricking pockets and let me get rich off of all the exorbitant fricking membership fees . No , let's take the money that we've got and figure it out so that we're putting more money into our programs .

So you're saying , destroy the good old boy mentality , bring it down to pretty much the beginnings of a nonprofit in terms , in terms of , you know , there's no true executive board that's pulling a large bank roll and , and you know , all of that money is being refunded into more programs that are , you know , focused on youth and and , just in general , you know ,

growing the hobby in the younger generation yeah , well , I mean , if you think just , uh , what was there ?

So , todd , you've now been appointed CEO . You're now official ARL Grand Poobah . What's your first order of business ? What do you want to abolish and wipe clean the slate ?

I don't even know that , but my guess is they probably do , since it's the way most organizations run . A couple of things I would think . I just kind of thought about it .

You know , when we talked about you know what we're going to do tonight , I was thinking like you know , why not make it , um , either have a board of hams that can oversee and have the president , or whoever the leadership , be accountable to .

But I also thought that maybe make it into a co-op , so it's not like just a nonprofit but it's just owned by its members . So kind of like EMS , I think . Is it EMS that does that ? Rei , rei , rei does that ? And also , you know , I think it would be kind of cool to be like , okay , well , this is our , you know , hamry is our thing and this is our .

You know what do you call it ? Club or whatever that we all own Organization , Our organization , we own and we have a lot of input into it . The other thing I think their website is a little overbearing , like let's get with like more modernized some of that stuff . Make it user-friendly , get an app , you know .

So it's not like you know , because most kids don't go to websites anymore , they go to apps and on their phone and stuff . So those are just some of the things you know . I always look at these big agencies that oversee .

I think they're like the number one purpose in my mind is like they lobby to keep ham radio running and keeping the bands and stuff , and for that I think that's good . I just I'm not involved that much with the ARL so I don't know exactly what they do .

So I don't want to criticize them for not doing stuff that I don't know , but I also don't see a lot . Um , I know that they have the books . I would you know when they do give out free gifts to get memberships . I think it would be probably better to give out a digital book or even a paper book of something that would be useful .

I mean , coffee cups are kind of I got enough coffee cups , I would like an antenna book would be great . Or study for your extra book or anything . I mean that to me would be more useful and maybe get more people on or even give out a . You know , if you're a new member , give them out a , like Quan Shang or Bao Feng or something .

I'm serious , I mean , what are you working with Ralph directly ? No , I'm just saying , like you know , like I really wanted to get one of those cheap radios so I could go buy one of those , you know , one of the antennas , but I thought I had one , a nice heavy box , and it ended up being like a tool set .

I thought , oh , it's got to be the radio , but I didn't get one . But yeah , I don't know . I mean , I think it's . You know they do do it , they do have . You know they do do what they do have . You know they sponsor field day and stuff , which is great . But I think the members should also have more of a say , because I know there's field day .

There's been a lot of questions about how it's , the rules and what works and stuff , and it's like it seems like , you know , we elect the people to do it . But is it really a fair election ? Because it's like it's almost given who's going to get it like , who advertises the most . Who knows the most people you know .

I guess that's the way with any election , but I think maybe if you had the members owned the agency , then you might be able to get a little bit more , and if you had a board you'd have some accountability and it wouldn't be the same people and I also have term limits on the people who are in those high positions .

I don't think you should be a vice president or president for 20 years .

Technology apps giving members more we'll say whether it's a Quan Cheng for you , quan Cheng for him , quan Cheng for her , all of that stuff it sounds like I would do like a pick , like here , join us and pick one of these things you know , all equal .

Like and it's their book , right , like it's their , it's the ARL book . So I'm sure that's something that could be and it would be more beneficial , especially for new hams who are like me , who need to learn this stuff , and it would just be good to have the resource . So just a thought .

That bothers me Because I think if it was a and that's where I got this idea like if it was a co-op and we all owned it , then we wouldn't lose our members or we wouldn't want to lose our members and they were willing to lose members , and I don't think that's right .

But in a co-op I know I'm part of the REI co-op and I get a lot of benefits from them when I go buy stuff , whether camping gear , whatever be the outdoor kind of stuff , and they offer a lot more for trading values and stuff like that , so that that trade off of what I'm paying for makes total sense in that relationship and you know all of that stuff .

So , yeah , cool , okay , I buy into that . So , yeah , all right . Well , you ready , ready to drop a few on you Lay it on ? Okay , all right . Well , first and foremost , I agree a hundred percent . I don't think wiping , I don't think burning the , you know the , the , the whole village initially going in , is the right way to do it .

I think definitely kind of spending time with each board member and the executive team to determine really what does your value bring to this organization and then decide whether or not we need to prune down the size of that organization , because I fully don't know , and I'll be first to admit that , like Todd , I don't know really what the board does or what .

What who consists of the board , but I hear a lot of like things . A lot of times people like all the board . They make stupid rules Like I guess there's a new rule out there that people are like trying to bring light to , that they're trying to build the good old boys club with a ARL .

So those that are currently in position today now have stringent , more tighter , ridiculous rules to be able to try to get into either volunteer positions or executive positions or area positions within the organization , nevertheless , above and beyond the board . So there's a lot of those shenanigans which , first and foremost for me , just need to get squashed .

So that would be . The biggest thing is is eliminating a lot of that bureaucracy to simplify the organization as a whole . Transparency , thousand percent , I don't . I don't care . You pay into this organization . You should know where all our budgets go . You should know where we spend money technology-wise . If we spend any money technology-wise .

Do we pay our volunteers anything ? Do they get any benefits for volunteering ? Because there are people that volunteer in ARL all the time , but do they get credit ? What value do they get back outside of being a volunteer ? Know what , what , what value do they get back outside of being a volunteer in the organization ?

So you know , simplifying and improving that process way and you know this is a big thing closer to my heart my wife's a teacher , I don't care . Like the biggest budget should be TI , I don't care . Ti should be the budget that 90% of all of our funds for the club go into to be able to support good game , all of the activities that they're doing .

So that just keeps getting better and better and better every year because they're reaching out to an audience and a people group that a lot of clubs that are older can't do . They struggle doing . We all know that the gap between younger kids and 60 and 70 old retirement folks , that's a hard gap to bridge .

There's not a lot of ways to connect those folks and it's tough to be able to get them to be able to connect with one another . It can be done but it's a longer road or , as Josh says , a longer road to hoe , however you look at that . So that would be a big thing pouring into TI . I would say I am tired of ARL's paper-based book production system .

That needs to go . They need to turn that thing on its ear and turn it into a technology machine . And what I mean by that is that any of their books their antenna books , their beginners books , their grounding books , any of those books should be interactive .

Those should be including videos , those should be including materials that when I , as a person , go in and buy them , I'm getting a digital version that I can access anytime , um and use , but I'm paying into it by my ARL membership and then , when I don't have an ARL membership , I don't have access to those materials , which you know . That's most way .

Electronic book providers , you know , provide their systems , but they should be seeking out two things . One and this was really pisses me off the most they want total control of their content . Those days are long gone . I don't , like you can't find a book provider today that struggles to try to own their content 110% . I mean it's ridiculous .

They're better off collaborating . They're better off interacting , they're better off building systems and , and you know , partnerships with other YouTubers , other people that are subject matter experts in their area , and not saying , hey , we're going to own the content 110% and you just get a cut of it , we'll pay you for it . It should be .

This is a collaboration you keep pouring into , you keep adding to it , you keep building upon it . But all of that content should be in a digital format .

And if you wanted to buy the book and you still are those people like you know , paul , that wants the magazine , that type of stuff If you want to buy that , you know fine , then you that can be included in your excuse me , your membership .

But from a direct book production , you know kind of um , you know copyright house , you know that that that just needs to go away .

The fact that ARL gets to pick and choose who they get to have involved in this process kind of sucks , because there are a lot of YouTubers that alone create awesome content and that is way better and more current and more easier to access than ARL's book that comes out once a year that's the size of an encyclopedia Britannica and costs the amount of the .

You know what it costs to build the Titanic in 1920 or whenever the Titanic was built . I mean it's kind of ridiculous , like I . I know there are hams out there that are probably yelling at me going . You know I love to have my arrow antenna books on my shelves . I'm like dude your shelves are falling off your wall .

How many times did you access that book that you couldn't do it online ?

I definitely don't want ARL specific books piling up in my shack because my shack is not . I mean , you've seen my shack ? I mean go to the shack roast , watch the videos . You've seen all of our shacks ? I mean we uh , where are the books in those shacks ? They're off to the right , they're hiding , they're they're not .

You know , they're taking up other critical areas that we need to put like monitors and stuff .

They've got all the books and they're like oh yeah , we're getting rid of books , it's all on computers and stuff . So it's one of the things that I think that sometimes our hobby has a lot of older generation people in it , meaning back in the day when books and everything was that .

But we're getting newer generation people and things have changed and technology is changing and I think if you don't stay up with that , then you fall apart .

You're going to be behind times , right , and , like I said , I don't even , like I said , I don't know who the leadership is or how old they are , how long they've been hams , but right , I think you need to have a , you need to have younger people in there to kind of bring up the , the , the newest things , because if not , you're just gonna fade and die ,

and I don't . I . I still also just want to keep putting this I don't think there should be an employee room only where they get all the best equipment .

Build a platform that is able to grow and expand as the demand needs . So , whether or not you know and again I don't know when was the turn of the time where we weren't required by the FCC to keep logs ? Do you remember what that date is ? I don't know . It was way beyond our time probably .

I don't mandatorily have to keep logs anymore , so I shouldn't have to mandatorily give a blood and semen sample to ARRL to basically say , hey , this is who I am , send me my four-digit PIN so I can become a certified LOTW user and then have to do that every three years . That's a pain in the ass .

Lotw should be simple , better than QRZ , better clarity in terms of confirming contacts .

He told me the some a lot of insider stuff for lotw and lotw is ultimately built so far in the 70s 80s that they have never spent any time or budgets or even concern to improving it or thinking about that . It's going to fall off the planet .

It's running on like a ridiculous old system because they can't upgrade the software , because the software is no longer made , so they are just nursing this thing together with band-aids , grit and spit to be able to make state . Yeah , exactly , I mean that's like the mentality and like they . They have one or two people that know that system well and guess what ?

When they age out and become old and God forbid become silent keys , who the hell is going to support that platform ? They're always going to be like let's just set it on fire and forget it .

Liv Free and Ham has the logbook , open source logbook of the world , the real logbook of the world logbook of the universe .

I haven't even looked at it long ago , I just send them all the QRZ and their updates .

It's like what the hell Like ? Why does it matter ? I do profiles . This is not the 1970s , where everybody has a shack and that's all they have . I mean everyone's mobile . I mean , come on , but think like , think 21st century here , Anyway

And then if you can figure out how to compile the contacts that are relevant to get confirmed for that specific award , well , you have to pay for the credits in order for that . To count yep and no , if I pay my fucking membership , I should get that as a free service , like I shouldn't have to pay to also get my awards .

It's not like oh , congratulations , you just worked . All states 20 bucks please and we'll give you your . That's wrong . If you earn an award , you shouldn't pay for it .

If he doesn't like it , I'll take the job for half , or fucking even a seventh , whatever I mean , it's just , it's ridiculous , and that's where you know . Then you've got the balls to tell everyone oh , you're going to double the dues .

And then you're going to say , oh , by the way , you worked really hard and got your thing , but now you have to pay for your thing . Meanwhile this guy's sitting around with $784,000 a year to do what ? What does he exactly do ? He's got a shitty website . The logbook of the world sucks ass . I mean it's like you're failing at everything you're doing .

What are you doing ? That's been good .

Any of like ARL probably could have avoided 100 percent or not 100 percent probably a good percentage avoided their ransomware attack if their technology was up to date . They are so far behind from what I understand . Talking with the guy who used to be their previous .

Like all the top executives make the same amount it's like 156 000 , including bezos or whatever , and then at the end of the year they make all their money based on how well the company did and they get the stock options and all that kind of stuff . And they do make tons and tons of money right , Millions a year but their base salary is this .

Most base salaries aren't that high . You know , maybe they have some , but this is a nonprofit ham radio association nonprofit ham radio association . You have that much money and you get hacked and then you don't give , you give up stupid mugs instead of educational stuff .

You have a shitty website that's outdated and you have a logbook of the world that that is so outdated and , like you said , the technology and all these guys get to keep their jobs . I mean , honestly , if you work for a private company and you made that kind of money and you got hacked like that , someone's going down for it .

Did anyone lose their jobs for the hack ?

It also needs to be more streamlined in being able to adapt to the times and not be a slow-moving ship , and more so it needs to be able to have , like , if anything , those salaries , that money that we're producing in the club 80% of it should be in the lobbying aspect to be able to get into Congress , start playing those games , because we don't have any

control except being able to throw money and people and resources at that , to be able to keep our spectrum intact and alive and well and continue to help us grow the spectrum .

Because as things start to get better and more improved and technology gets better you know , five gigahertz , seven gigahertz , 10 gigahertz all of those bands are going to become more popular . Right now they're kind of , you know , the fringe and they're they're fringe bands .

Not a lot of us have the time , the power , the , the capabilities to be able to set up large satellite dishes and be able to make point-to-point schedule contacts and stuff , but you know the arl should be still defending those bands . You know , heck , like I heard that the 220 band that we gave to UPS , ups doesn't use it anymore .

Why can't we get that slice back ? What the fuck Like ? When did that happen ? When did we decide that UPS was okay to be able to take a 220 segment of the 220 band away from us ? And you know , so like it's those things like constantly . You know being aware of those and those .

That's where the ARL should be , like spending in my all of their time and effort on top of education . And you know , streamlining their digital process and and being lean . But that's , I think , the biggest thing lean , do the do the presidents of like the areas make ?

I heard they get stipends for , like , being able for travel and you know all of those expenditures and stuff like that , so they don't take anything out of their own pocket . But , um , those for the , the overall process . They aren't getting paid to be able to be volunteers for , you know , his area , pro presidents and that type of stuff .

That's all you know .

Dude , like when you call and the person answered the phone , like you're talking to somebody that's making a normal salary , right . A sales associate 37 000 . Technical editor 95 000 . Member services 40 000 . Uh . Assistant manager 54 000 . Customer service representative 53 000 a year . Network engineer 102 000 a year . All .

So , yeah , I mean , that's why I said my number one thing right , day one , somebody else taking over the ARRL , they got to massively cut the operation expenses Because if you take your operating budget and you cut it , well then that frees up all that , that , that income , that revenue , income that you don't want to be profit that you can funnel into your

fricking programs .

But if a CEO is making that much money and then he's going out and begging us and we've got to raise money , and then they don't care about losing members , and then you find out that asshole makes $758,000 a year , kiss my ass , $785,000 . Or $785,000 . No-transcript . Kiss my ass , dude .

Seriously , I'm not joining now just because of that alone , because that's outrageous .

But you know it's not a difficult process because I've kind of gone through it . And so , yes , we as a club or any club for that matter , if you've got a club and you need to get funds , you can put a request in for that and they'll , you know , more than likely honor it because they want to be able to give back and that's how they do it .

But again , let me put the caveat that I understand that that money is what ARDC is funneled into ARL , for ARL to be able to then give away to the clubs . So it's not technically their money , it's technically ARDC's grant to them to be able to give to ARL and they do that twice a year .

Let's not put the address out there to cause this large uproar of protests on the ARRL CEO front lawn . Can you imagine , man ? That would be the demise of the LFH . It's like the ham protest . It would be like a few of those hams that decided to take a stand and , lo and behold , they are no longer hams any longer .

Okay , so if we get to 1,000 subs on our YouTube channel right now we're at like what , 380 , I think , as we look at it , probably somewhere around there If we get to 1,000 subs and we'll throw this challenge out to you and this is the only time you're going to hear it If we get to a thousand subs , we will do everything in our power to work on trying

to get Mitzner to come on our live stream , or not even live , even on just a podcast .

stance .

You know , I will continue to kind of support them , just with just only on two premises one being ti , because I believe that what you know good game is doing there , he can't do without arl's help , because arl is a big powerhouse and they can get , you know , they can direct the traffic to where they need to and they've done a decent job with him and giving

him the reins to do what he needs to do . But two , so I need somebody to lobby for us in , you know , government entities , and if ARL is even doing that a little bit , then okay , my $40 or $60 or whatever it is is , you know , a small drop in the bucket .

But yeah , okay , yeah , so it , dude I , I , you know , I'm not disagreeing with anything you guys said I totally , fully , a hundred percent , believe it's no longer needed . I think a lot of hams have been in disgust and in the same boat as you guys , feeling that you know , this is what . What's this organization do ?

It's just a slow moving ship that's doing absolutely nothing for the hobby . Um , although their claims that they , they say that they're making you know , inroads to , I still think that you know they , uh , from a technologist perspective , I think they are 10 years behind and so slow .

Um , and I've heard , you know personal firsthand stories from folks that were inside the organization that , like this is just a big clusterfuck and it needs to be , you know , burned to the ground and rebuilt and done right , because it's just been volunteers , of volunteer stuff , of volunteer stuff , and nothing's been really done well , so that you know it can stand

the test of time and have longevity and improve and be able to scale for the demand and need . And so , yeah , it kind of sucks that this is where ARRL is today , but I think we kind of all knew that it's not new news .

We all know that ARRL is a big dumpster fire sometimes , and very much old regime and old leadership that just doesn't want to make the change , wow , so all right . Well , how do we wrap this thing up .

I don't think we can go anywhere , except the fact that any last one tidbit or thing you want to shed some light on that we haven't talked about , that might want to bring to attention , we add our piece at this point .

So if you got that person working talking to the people , talking to people like us who are the members , and you've got a CEO that makes almost a million dollars a year , that money , some of his money , should be going down to those customer service reps so they can at least have a salary that they can live on Right .

There shouldn't be anyone in this organization that doesn't have money . It's a hobby .

But I can't , because I assume he's just taking all that home .

There's a lot there about how you know different conversation for this , that the other thing and uh , I I actually I sent , I sent todd a link because one of in in the in the forum conversation about .

Once I said the qrz and the ama I'm gonna hold off , it might crash my system yeah , no , but it's the , you know the , the mobile aeronautical , whatever , fucking there with the rc planes .

Yeah , um , you know , like I said , non-profits have this problem where I get it like you can't show a profit , and so if you don't have a program that you can push that money into , then well it just gets built into operating expense , right , because you got to use that money .

Well , I'm sorry , but there there should be somebody that is saying hey , you know what , instead of boosting the fricking operating expenses again this year , why don't we cut the operating expenses and put more into the teacher's association , put more into scouting , put more into , you know , getting youth involved in radio , because , like I said , that's the future ,

that's where your focus needs to be . Your point yep , I agree with that way you will our small little podcast that we are .

I know exactly how people think about a . You know , when you mentioned the words ARL or you start talking about , you know , clubs or whatever , when it comes to , like , giving your money , you know the folks in the Northeast want to be able to get value out of what that and I don't think ARL currently is doing that . I mean obviously from these guys .

And you know what I've thrown in here . We all kind of are on the same page . So you know what's your thoughts . You head over to our discord . Check out the show link . We'll have this posted there . You know , let us know what you think about the area , what , what's your firsthand experience , if you have anything .

You know , if you've got any insider baseball stuff , you know , feel free to share it . You know , but ultimately , you know this is just a polite conversation of a . You know refined , you know intentional movement to be able to get the ARL to change their attitude and their mentality .

You know what's his , what's his , where does he think that's okay ? And then why did he think he needed to raise the dues and why did he care about losing members ? Because eventually what'll happen is , you know , people will just stop joining and then he won't have a . And I'm not saying the ARL , it's a , it's a .

It's an organization that has so much potential . But if you get greedy idiots running it and you're not doing , you're not moving along with the times .

And like you're not like I'm with Paul like throw the money into the education and getting kids involved with it and making ham radio a known again , and not just be sitting back and buying flex radios for your volunteers . I mean it's great that they're doing that , but I mean seriously like give me a break , yep .

No , they've got a big bankroll . Yeah Well , not from this guy anymore . I'm sorry .

We're thinking about like what , what's our legacy ? Who's going to be carrying that legacy forward and then who's going to be supporting us in the larger you , you know global landscape .

So you know , arrow , if you're not listening now rewind , listen to what's going on here and start making some change , you know , and make the effort , because I think it's going to pay off in the long run and you're going to see that you're going to create a legacy for yourself instead of a name that's like oh man , he collected a hundred thousand dollars , you

know , or two 750,000 , $85,000 in salary versus , like , what he actually did to make the arrow better . So , all right , well , I won't say any last words because I think we got everything out there . I appreciate you guys .

You know , talking , talking on this heated topic , because it was one of those things that I felt was pretty passionate , like last episode , and we needed to definitely put some attention . But now that Paul brought up the whole club thing , you know , now I'm like that , that , that , that , that that that hits a little note for me .

So we're going to have to talk about that next episode because I , you know , I've been watching those videos , I've been paying attention , thinking , you know , you know , I don't fully buy into what you're doing , but at the same time , you know , I still think , you know , we should improve . But anyway , with that , you know , so let's kind of wrap this up .

So , as always , again , thanks again for joining live free and ham , you know , we appreciate all of those folks that are part of the community there and help support us , both through donations , through our swag , through just listening to the episode and being subscribers on our YouTube channel .

We truly appreciate everyone and we thank everybody for being part of the show and we say , you know , we're looking forward to a 2025 year and some awesome stuff going on . So we hope that you're going to be along for the ride and , you know , we hope to hear from you more .

And so , if you want to connect with us , you can always head over to our Discord server and , again , that link is in our website , so you can just head over to livefreeandhamcom and click the link at the bottom of the site there and join our Discord . Hang out with us , be part of this conversation .

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But we , we want to see paul get his class a license because freaking a I you know one of us might actually have the balls to want to tandem jump with him . I won't say who , but I keep mentioning , you know it might be me , but anyway , um , you know , you know we want to see paul get his license there because we want to do a lot more .

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