Revolutionizing Radio Exams with Signal Stuff and HamStudy

This is our weekly show where we discuss ham radio topics in New Hampshire , new England and beyond , and we're thrilled to have you here , whether you're a regular listener tuning in for the first time , we always appreciate you and thanks again for joining us tonight . But so let's get into our usual here . Uh , I'm your host , eric call sign n1j .

You are , and I'm with my co-hosts it's all n1og and todd w1 stj and we have two special great guests tonight uh , richard and Ben from Signal Stuff . Go ahead and introduce yourself . Ben , you can start first and go ahead and introduce yourself .

On Our storefront over at livefreeandhamcom forward slash shop is always packed full of merch and other awesome cool things . We actually get a couple of purchases later . Earlier this week that kind of came through . We want to thank Derek Payne . He grabbed our limited run whiskey glass . And that kind of leads me into our next thing .

If you are a fan of Live Free and Ham , you know , and you've got to be a collector and a lover of the finer spirits . Well , we've got an exciting opportunity for you . You know , for a limited time only , you can grab a very , your very own limited whiskey brand Live Free and Ham branded . It's custom etched man .

I could talk today with our iconic logo , alright , so this is an exclusive piece that should elevate your collection . But you know , harry , once they're gone , they're gone . So you don't want to miss out on a fantastic chance to own an awesome , unique glass and be part of an elite group of folks that are a step above most of our regular listeners there .

So head over to our shop and always check that out and you can pick those up . But , like I said , when they're gone , they're gone , all right . Well , we always love feedback and you know that when we get feedback from you guys , we share it with everybody , and there are three ways . You can obviously get a hold of us , and we always like to share that .

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So with that , let's dive into our first segment real quick here ladies and gentlemen , can I please have your attention ?

Let's go , come on , start getting on your mobile phone , sending us emails , sending us reviews . You know you can hit us up . You can do it via voicemail Now you can do it via email . You can even use SMS text messaging . Come tell us how we're doing , let us know what's going on . Whether you like the show , just give us a review .

We're always looking forward to it . Yeah , sad to hear , but the show must go on as always . So we're going to continue on doing good , good , doing good you do .

So you know , however , I feel like and we share the same , uh , you know thoughts around here at the show that you know we allow all the negative voices to take . Uh , you know , front and center . So you know , and overshadow a lot of our you know enjoyment of the hobby . So no more , we've decided that they don't get a place here .

You know you can come here and be louder and share all the great stuff you're doing in the hobby . And so we say , hey , come , submit something to you know doing good episode , and we'll happily share it , whether it's with your club , with a group of guys and gals that are getting together .

And you can always do that , obviously , through all of our regular channels . But the easiest way is to do it over , go into livefreeandhamcom , forward , slash , do good . Fill in the form and we will happily share it and like it . Fill in the form and we will happily share it .

And , like we always say in every episode , if you are , you know , type a and you like to go above and beyond , we offer for the win link option and what that gives you .

Well , you send a win link email for do good episode to paul and he and I will or any of us will read it on our next episode and we'll invite you to come hang out with us in our next live stream .

So you know , if you want to be on and hang out with these guys when we do our next live stream , you know , send us a wind link email and we'll happily share it and we'll make sure we get you , uh , you know , into uh , that whole process there . So , just like our reviews man , nothing this week in the inbox .

However , we always have backups to our backups because we're ham radio operators , right ? So one one is none and two is one is the old motto there . So I have got a backup here and so with this one I'm going to kind of share the story real quick .

Again , it's close to a lot of us here because we're all part of the same club in the general area here in new england , but uh , you know , I'm going to share with you guys anyway , with the hopes of inspiring you and maybe you'll go out and do this stuff in your own places and home and other clubs .

So recently we had just gotten off of an opportunity where we wanted to try some winter hiking in our club . I preferably had a bucket list item that I wanted to get off and try some winter hiking and actually see if I could get up and do a soda .

And so I got a couple of the guys interested and we all kind of banded together and we decided that we're going to go hike Pac-Manadnock . And so , for those that might not know where that is , that's in Miller State Park in New Hampshire .

It's a very light trail , it's a smaller of the mountains in the general area , but it was still a , you know , an interesting hike .

Um , we had a bunch of guys that were , you know , all coming to cheer us on hanging out , um , and we all kind of met in the parking lot in the morning , you know , had our coffees , chit-chatted a little bit and before we broke off to cut the you know , hit the trailhead there . There's a couple other guys there that were , you know , doing ham radio .

They decided , hey , they weren't into the hiking mode , but you know what they were like . They were going to get together and they were going to do potas in the parking lots and hit a couple other pota parks in and around the area .

So the day , I have to say , once we finally got the top , you know , was jam-packed ham radio everywhere the , the rf was flowing . You know , we were contacts , we were talking mountains to mountains and then on top of it we had a very good friend of ours who was also a regular here at the show , tim KC1 and QDK .

He decided to do the 160 contest for CW and so he was at Mountain Menadonok , operating from the parking lot with his long wire and hanging out with a whole bunch of other people and just having an awesome day of ham radio , long wire and hanging out with a whole bunch of other people and just having an awesome day of ham radio .

And it was really cool to see and talk to people , you know , summit to summits , you know , everywhere and anywhere that just wanted to , you know , play ham radio . So I share those stories because I know , paul , I mean you can chime in with a little bit of you know input there . I mean , how was your experience with that ?

Now there's there's three of us that are actively making contacts between uhf , vhf and hf and a and a group of ladies came up and they wanted to join us in the little shelter and kind of just , you know , sit and have some , have some lunch and uh , they're like , what are you doing , talking about ham radio , and so , uh , one of the ladies happened to .

You know she was a an army veteran and when she was in the army her uh , her father uh , was a signal signal ear in the army and so she was very interested . So I gave her a little card so she could get to know a little bit more about ham radio , and I figure you know I mean anytime that we're out and we're having fun . Uh , that's , that's a .

But yeah , that was an awesome event and so hopefully that inspires you to maybe submit one of your stories , no matter how big or small , you know , no matter what it is , you know , share it with us , because we want to spread the , you know , the happiness of ham radio out there , just to say to folks . You know , hey , you can go out and do this stuff .

You know you don't have to be , you know , worried about whether people are telling you you're putting on tinfoil hats and talking to aliens , because we're all having fun , we're all practicing , we're all learning how to , you know , be great ham amateur radio operators .

Um , but I'm , you know we're building friendships and you know enjoying being in the outdoors , because you know ham radio is a thousand hobbies that was a hobbies of a thousand hobbies , I think is the , the , the model there . So you know , we all , we all cross over and different stuff there .

So , all right , well , with that , now we get into our real soup to nuts stuff here let's dive into . And now for something a little extra with Todd W1STJ . All right , yes , you've heard it here . This is where we help Todd study for his extra class license .

In each episode we pick three questions from the extra class question pool to test his knowledge , to hope he gets his upgrade , and he's doing great so far .

So if you'd like to follow along , you can always head over to hamstudyorg , which is a great resource to help you prepare for your test and is recommended by three out of four volunteer examiners , because the ARL was unavailable for comment once again at the time of our survey . So , without any further delay , I hand it over to our VE Quizmaster , paul .

Take it away , sir .

B to protect the gate from static damage . B to protect the substrate from excessive voltages . C to keep the gate voltage within specifications and prevent the device from overheating ? Or is it D to provide a voltage reference for the correct amount of reverse bias gate voltage ?

B a resistor connected to the positive or negative supply used to establish a voltage when the input or output is an open circuit . C a resistor in a keying circuit used to reduce key clicks . Or . D a resistor that ensures an oscillator frequency does not drift .

And again , if you recently received your license or you just recently got upgraded , you know , we want to know , so you can be recognized on our next episode . So send us an email at livefreeandham at gmailcom and we will surely mention you on our next episode . Alright , so , mailcom , and we will surely mention you on our next episode .

All right , so with that , I only have one thing I need to add . Let that one stick in your head for a while , all right . So with our usual format , uh , we always like to ask our guests first , so we'll start with Richard . What's been going on your ham radio week , sir ?

So at least the volunteer part of the well semi-volunteer anyway complicated but ran kind of led a team of 10 people who are acting as net control , coordinating the communications on non ham radio frequencies .

And it's a fun opportunity to train people who are very much not experienced with emergency communication type , you know , supporting an event , communications and see why the the things that we teach as far as best practices and stuff are actually best practices , because people forget and it causes problems . It's like every time .

You're like see it and that's why we do that , and that's why we do that and the rest of my team's just not oh yeah , that makes sense , so that was fun nice now .

But this has been a crazy week because on signal stuffcom we just did our Black Friday sale last weekend and so we had roughly this uh had just over 800 orders , which is about half as many as we have in a normal month , over the course of three days and , uh , this is coming out of just . We had some , some issues with manufacturing .

We had to discard about 600 antennas , so our inventory levels got low and we were just struggling to get them back up . We were just almost back to the our normal levels and then we got into the sale .

So I spent the first half of the week , uh , super gluing tips onto radios , so you know , so that we could uh you know , because that's the easiest part of the task to parallelize or onto antennas so we could get those shipped as quickly as possible so so you heard it here .

I did all of that with one and a half hands , wow .

He's the reason that I got into ham radio and he's the reason I'm still in ham radio . Honestly , we can talk more about that later .

But yeah , antenna , that sale was kind of crazy and we spent the first couple of days just super gluing and putting in tips and trying to get those things out to people so there's his workstation over there , oh yeah , that computer's where I sit , although you put him in the corner not even

I was volunteering in other aspects .

Um , so it was , um , it was a an interesting bit . Uh , you know , getting the amp over onto the toolbox behind me open it all up and carefully opening that hole up to put a bulkhead connector through there , but I'm so glad that . I did it because the received signal strength is so much better now . It's so much more improved .

And then , yeah , we went on our hike and successfully activated the summit . So now I've got two summits successfully activated plus 21 contacts for the park . It was a good week .

Oh , I recorded it .

So I have a video that I'm going to work and then I did find out that my youngest son is quite the um video editor and he video made a video of my wife working at um one of of her sleep in heavenly peace , where they make beds for underprivileged kids , and she goes to this barn and she , she preps the bed , so they get made , and then she goes and

smooths them out , make sure and get some all the pieces together , and then they do a shipping and they bring it to the house and they build it . So she filmed herself doing it and he was able to make like a little short clip of it speeding up . He put music to it and everything , and it was actually really good , wow .

So I think I might employ my youngest to be my video editor , at least to help me out with it , especially if I get behind and see how he does . That sounds kind of familiar . Why are you laughing ? I think it's a brilliant idea .

And then the other one is final cut pro , and I've been watching videos and of course , they're not helping me because there's good things on each of them , yep . So I gotta pick one . So maybe I'll go with da vinci , but final cut pro seems like it can do more stuff true or no ?

We had a little bit of ice and snow and I have my dipole up there and it survived . I noticed that if I got a lot of ice on , I just get on the radio and start transmitting . It seems to melt pretty quick . So I look out the window and I said , oh , there's a lot of ice in there , I've got to go play ham radio for a little bit .

So yeah , so I did a little bit of that . I did upload a little bit . Uh , so yeah , so I did a little bit of that . I did upload . I had a whole bunch of logs that I had forgotten to upload onto my um from the summer , really all my poda logs . I just totally spaced and uploading them onto my main log .

It's taking a little longer than I thought because I gotta get a picture , because I think there's going to be a lot of shack roast or whatever .

But yeah , we're going to be winding down the end of the year and so we've been seeing a lot of folks post some shack photos in our Discord there , and so we thought , well , hey , what better than you know let's sit down as ham radio operators and overanalyze their shacks and say you know what our personal opinions are of them , and you know we'll maybe award

one . We'll have to figure that one out a little bit . We haven't flushed that whole deal out there yet , but that's coming soon .

The funny part was I analyzed it , went through the pack several times , making sure I had it all organized , and we get up the top . I took the radio out , put it on the bench , didn't even take it out of the bag , didn't do anything , didn't touch my gear . We used Paul's 891 . We used Keith's 705 . Both great radios and whatnot .

But my little FX4CR that I was all prepared to set up the antenna with and use and whatnot , but my little FX4CR that I was all prepared to set up the antenna with and use and whatnot , just didn't touch it . It's the way it is .

So I figured why not do that at the soda you know event that we're gonna go do , and didn't take it out of the bag and we used you know paul's reliance uh and bed there , and yeah , but I realized I had a second actual working reliance and bed . So , yeah , it would have been not a big deal either way . But hey , you learned something too , man .

You figured out what 11-07 in the 891 menu stands for .

Why is this radio that auto sets itself into upper sideband , for the bands that require upper sideband want to be in lower sideband . But yeah , after watching the same video , literally I was like four seconds behind on the video that he was watching . That was four seconds ahead .

So I so I was like hearing and I'm like I got to fast forward , he fast forward , and so we were playing this game . You know , try to see who could get the answer first . So he ended up finally finding it . So I was like hey , we just gave this random YouTuber a whole bunch of extra views .

I did , uh , maybe , a park a long , long time ago on five two and didn't have really good success at it . But yeah , it was really fun to be able to , you know , actually take my HT out and use it . I don't know about you guys , but I don't . My HTs collect dust in the corner a lot of times .

They're more trophies than they are actually usable a lot of times . So it was good to take it out and play with it .

So we were talking about , uh , crossband repeat , because I said , you know , I'd probably be able to get on the net more if , uh , I could crossband repeat my radio and use my hd . And I was asking to go how far will that work ? Because I never had done crossband repeat . So I was thinking it would just work around the house .

Maybe my part like , oh , you could go probably like a mile or two . I'm like , seriously . So now I'm like , all right , I'm all into this .

So I'm gonna hopefully uh , set up my crossband repeat and wherever I'm at , if I'm around the neighborhood or if I'm out for a walk , walking a dog or whatever I can have my HD with me and still join the net and I don't have to be actually in the shack . So we're going to be working on that this week too .

Awesome , cool , I'll get some of my HTs in use .

So again I want to thank , obviously , richard Ben , you guys for coming on . We're super appreciative of you guys . Out of your busy schedule Come , hang out with us and talk , obviously ham radio , but more so signal stuff and ham study . You know you guys , I guess , are kind of , you know , pioneers a little bit in the ham radio world .

I know when I first started and I've been a ham way back when I took a hiatus and came back in just right before COVID and everyone was talking signal stuff , you got to get signal stuff . You got to get signal stuff and everyone I go to , everyone I've talked to , and I know everyone here has at least some signal stuff equipment .

So we love your antennas and the stuff you've been putting together . But more so , you know , we've also been the beneficiaries of some really cool stuff that you guys have been pioneering . So you know , let's kind of you know , start there a little bit .

You know , maybe , richard , you can kind of start there and you know , explain , you know how you maybe you know , give us a little bit of your background for those folks that might not know you personally and don't know your ham story .

My father , who is now ac7bm , used to be wb7 esh , was licensed in 1976 and he upgraded to amateur extra just after I passed my technician license , which was about 25 years ago , and so I relatively quickly upgrade well over the next few years upgraded to general and then Amateur Extra , using methods that many people in the community might criticize me for ,

because I wouldn't say that I learned things very well . I'm more just memorized , if that's the correct term .

When you literally skim the question pool for 45 minutes before taking and passing the general exam because you have exactly three hours left to take the test before you will have to retake your code exam again and you might say that that was like the first thing that got me started down the line of thinking about thinking that eventually led to creating HamStudy .

After that , I ended up writing a little PHP script to parse the question pool and convert it into an XML format , which I then made a little style sheet that could just display all of the questions in the next readable format , because I don't know if you've ever read the raw question pool document that they actually publish . It's published at ncvecorg .

The question pool is not maintained by the FCC or by ARRL .

It is maintained by the NCVC and the question pool committee though there are representatives from ARRL that are involved and that document is just a Word document and trying to read just the correct answer is really difficult because you have to read it and it's got like the , the question ID and then which answer .

It is in parentheses , and then you have to look at the answer and read that . So it's kind of a bit of mental gymnastics to try to do that efficiently and I was very short on time the first time .

I attempted this , as as you may have heard , and so that got me thinking and I made this thing that just displayed everything in a well nice as maybe overstating it a little bit I wasn't very good at web design at the time but a readable page that just had the question , the answers and the correct answer highlighted , and that was the first study tool that I

ever built . I used that to get my extra . I did have to study for more than 45 minutes . For that one , it was probably about three and a half hours . See , todd , what's your problem ? I did have to study for more than 45 minutes . For that one , it was probably about three and a half hours .

But I'm not as well versed in some of the technical aspects as there , as some others may be , which is sometimes a limitation and often doesn't really matter , to be honest , as some others may be , which is sometimes a limitation and often doesn't really matter , to be honest , but anyway . So that kind of got me thinking .

The way that we often study is not very efficient , and especially when I started all of this , this has changed somewhat and I won't make any claims as to whether that's a result of my actions or not , because it's impossible to be sure . But at the time the only thing that anybody did for studying was let's just take practice exams over and over again .

And taking practice exams for studying I mean it's effective , it does work . It's somewhat akin to choosing what you're going to study from your math textbook by setting it up and throwing darts . Whichever paragraph your darts hits , you're like , okay , let's look at that . Great . Now let's start over again .

We've actually done statistical analysis and I have the numbers right in front of me , but Ben and I have both run this test and on the extra exam , if I remember right , if you just on average , actually maybe I have this .

No matter how much I studied the material for the exam , stuff code just went right through my ear and out the other end and never made any sense to me . So I applaud you for three hours testing that short , but then you know being able to master the code . You do cw a lot , or no ?

So I got my no code tech and then I passed my code just the five words a minute code . But they had by this point , dropped the requirement and you only had to pass five words a minute to get all the way up to amateur extra .

I don't remember exactly when that happened , but it has to have been I think it was after I got my technician , because when I passed my technician I had to pass the novice and the technician license license exams . And then I passed the code .

And then , 11 months later , because you can , only it's you have 12 months after you pass that you can use that , after which you will have to take it again as 11 months later when , sort of in a panic , I realized , oh crap , I don't want to do that again , and I got my general . And so then , when they drop the code requirement , general .

And so then , when they dropped the code requirement entirely would have had to be sometime in 2006 or 2007 , I think , because , as I recall , I was in Russia from the end of 2005 to to late 2007 . And so , and and the code requirement was there when I left and it was not when I got back , and that's the only reason I remember that time range .

Where each simulation was it generated random practice tests , didn't care if you got the answer right or wrong , just generated random practice tests until you had seen every question a single time On average . The technician pool , just in order to see every question once . Anybody want to make a guess ? How many times do you need to see ?

How many random practice tests do you need to see just to see every question a single time ?

But the minimum out of 50,000 times using a cryptographically secure random number generator , just the standard operating system one . The minimum number of times that we ever saw was 42 . And the maximum we saw was 194 .

Um , and the general is even worse , as you might expect that , with the average . Well , let's just go with the most common . The mode is 77 , uh , on the general pool . So anywhere from 46 was the minimum to 205 is the maximum . And on the extra , 46 was the minimum to 205 is the maximum . And on the extra , the most common was 78 .

Whoa , with a max of 237 and a minimum of 48 . So if you're talking about using just straight practice exams as a study tool . You're gonna be spending a lot of time , and I'm a software engineer and I have been for a very , very long time .

I'm not saying I was always very good one , because when I was seven I didn't know much , but I had already decided at that point . I was a weird kid , let me tell you . I always look to solve problems with software , and I was like you know what ? There's open question pools .

There's no reason we can't do this better than this , and so I set out to start trying to improve things .

First thing I did is I just made another practice test site and then , honestly , it may have been even partly just it's like well , you need to do something better than just what everybody is doing , because it's like it seems like there's a dozen different random practice test sites out there , and there's even more now , and so I started trying to figure out how

to do it better .

For a while , I experimented with what I called smart exams , which was where , when it went to choose questions , it would always make sure to choose questions that you hadn't seen if it could , which does mean that if you take 14 practice exams , you will see everything , which seemed like a really good method until when we were using this on one of my

father-in-law's classes and I mentioned that I eventually married the daughter of the man who I took all four of my exams from no , I have lots of connections to ham radio , anyway .

So he does these one-day ham classes and has for 15 years something like that , and so I started out testing I would test the new iterations of the software with his class , and there was one time that I was there to see how everybody was using it , see how it did , and when I realized that there was a lady there who was absolutely just on the edge of

tears because she had taken 10 exams and she was not getting any better , like no progress , 10 different exams , it's like's like well , yeah , you still haven't repeated a single question . Of course it's not any better , but that is psychologically harsh , you know abuse you hard , yeah , yeah , and that's where I

And it actually does bear a lot of resemblance to spaced repetition , but it's actually specifically designed to balance between what you might call emotional damage and boredom . So as you get things wrong , it's going to make things a little easier .

As you get them right , it's going to make them a little bit harder , because studies have shown that when you're trying to learn something , when you're studying , you need to stay engaged , and you only stay engaged if you're not bored and you only stay engaged if you're not frustrated .

You have to find that middle ground between those two points , and so our study mode is actually , you know , kind of came about on that . But what a lot of people don't realize , especially over the last four years as our exam tools have become more prominent , is that exam tools actually came before ham study did .

I think a lot of people think that we built exam tools because ham study was already pretty popular , and it was actually exactly the opposite . I initially built exam tools for our , for my father-in-law in B7B's test sessions so we could do all of the paperwork more efficiently . We've had until everything kind of changed with COVID our test session .

Our testing group was one of the most active in the nation . Group was one of the most active in the nation . It was the number one most active W5YIVEC group in the nation with anywhere from 50 to 150 applicants most months , which is a lot . And we usually had anywhere from five to eight volunteer examiners doing it .

But the trouble with anything like that and I've tried doing a lot of statistical analysis from the various types of data that I have to see if we can . You know even things like how can we find a more efficient path for studying or like things . That is , statistically , if you study these questions , going to help more things like that .

I think the problem is that there's too much that we don't know about any given applicant because I only know the data of when they started studying . I don't know what they knew before that point . I once actually tried pulling somebody's test .

I pulled an aggregated test history from thousands of users or their study history of everything that they had seen , like how many times they'd seen each question , and I even just tried to say can we do a statistic and say , okay , if you've seen it 10 times , and this is how many times you got it right , or at least , or even this is how many times like

you got it right , then wrong , then right . You know the pattern of how you did . Can I find any kind of a statistical correlation ? Time like you got it right , then wrong , then right . You know the pattern of how you did .

Can I find any kind of a statistical correlation between how much you need to have seen it and whether or not you get the question right the next time you've seen it ? And I could not find any statistically significant correlation there .

I even tried using a deep neural network and training an artificial intelligence a very simple one , but I tried training an artificial intelligence to try to predict just whether you would answer a question right or not based on the rest of your history .

With the question pool Now it's possible knowing more about it now than I did then , and I could possibly do a text embedding and try to give it some more context on the questions , things like that . Maybe there's more that could be determined .

But what I've essentially figured out with all of that is that it's basically a bad idea to try to draw that kind of conclusion just because everybody's individual history and background knowledge , which we can't know anything about , is different enough that it's better to start with the assumption that they know nothing and then learn quickly based on what they give us

.

So we actually originally , we originally created exam tools just for administering the exams and then it was like , well , I've got a tool for administering the exams , maybe we'll make one for studying the exams , and it kind of grew from there . So , you know , we have it's interesting all of my business cards and everything .

At this point , anytime I make marketing materials , especially like for a show , I have to put three different brands on it , because otherwise it's incomplete . That really complicates graphics design , I'll tell you .

In fact , if you look at , uh , at our shirts I don't know how well you can see them , probably not especially in mine on Ben shirt you can see that there's two logos on the one side , yeah , and then the green logo on the other side , yeah , even our shirts we have three logos on it , because signal stuff is kind of the umbrella that we've we've set up ,

but exam tools is its own thing . That has , that does a lot of good .

That is in many ways unrelated to either two and so , as ham study , so it's it's been an interesting balancing act over the years of , because all three of these things have their own unique and kind of fascinating history , but they all grew together well let's give you a little breather there we'll

And then in ninth grade we kind of got over that and became friends and that was about the time that he was studying to get his ignition license . And so , richard , I like to say that he was nagging me to get my own license ever since then because we would .

So we were part of a group of four guys who would help out the librarians at the school , run the bell system , run the computer labs and so forth . We've always been very tech savvy , tech interested , and we'd be in these computer labs and he would be talking about the stuff that he's studying .

He'd be showing us his books and saying , hey , you can borrow this book , and really trying to evangelize the hobby that he's already told you how he was connected to and I was like , okay , maybe , just I didn't really have any interest the other two got licensed . So I felt a lot of pressure because they all three did and I they have any interest .

The other two are licensed , so I felt a lot of pressure because they all three did and I'm the last . You know , the black sheep of the group didn't work until eventually it was 2010 , so , um , I was almost 30 years old , so I've known him for 30 years .

I was almost 30 years old when I finally did get licensed and that was using ham study for studying and I'd known him .

You know , having known him for such a long time , I , when I talk to people about how I work with Richard now , I like to describe what's happened to him as kind of he kind of accidentally built himself three side businesses , because he's already shared with you how the ham study and exam tools just kind of materialized out of his own desire to make his life ,

or his um not at the time , father in time father-in-law's life , simpler . And then a little bit about signal stuff , which richard can go into more later .

They used to be part of a local explorer post group and they would make these antennas for fundraisers , essentially , and then the group dissolved but people still wanted the antennas and he's like , well , okay , I still know how to make these antennas so I can I can make and sell .

Okay , I still know how to make these antennas so I can make and sell these things . So the demand was always there . So he didn't set out to sit to . I'm going to build an antenna business and sell antennas so that I can keep doing these other things . That just kind of happened because he was in the right place at the right time .

We've worked together at least three different companies , um , and also consulting gigs on the side before like it's been more like four , four , maybe even five . Then there was a time that we also did a little consulting thing with another friend .

So if you count that one and there's probably five , so we've worked together a and so when he'd be working on something , he'd be talking about it and that would inevitably turn into well , what kind of help can I provide ? And so I would help him with some things here and there , but never really full time or as an ongoing thing .

It would be a little bit here , a little bit there , but always kind of part of it . When I eventually got my license back in 2010, . I haven't really done a lot with it . I feel sometimes like I'm the ham poster . I don't really like I've got a license . I even got my general earlier this year but I really I don't do a lot with it .

What I have done , what I have enjoyed and what I found that is the kind of thing that probably would be the thing to get me more involved in is volunteering and net control .

The first experience that I really had with ham radio was helping to run communications at a local half marathon that goes down the Canyon , and so we've got to have we've got ham radio operators at different parts , we have to have a repeater up in the where it forks off and it's kind of this elaborate thing where you've got net control at the bottom and you've

got somebody else at this junction point doing the repeaters . And that was a lot of fun . I'd never really had an experience there . And he's like hey , come do this . I'd been talking , he'd talked to me about it for years because he's been doing this thing ever since I can remember .

So there's a few different races that Richard and he'd constantly talk about it and say , hey , can you come help ? Hey , can you come help ? Hey , you should do this . Eventually I said okay , and I had a really good time , was it okay ? Exactly , that's really what it was like . Maybe this will get him off of my back . Didn't , didn't work .

You're still on my back , but that I really enjoyed and then later on , when I eventually started running myself , that was the first half marathon that I wanted to do because I felt this connection to the community , just because of what I'd done there .

And when I think about the things that I like doing with ham radio it's those kinds of things , it's community events , it's things related to runs or groups or fitness or things like that . So like poda and soda , those sound rather interesting to me because I like to go and be out on the trails and so great .

Well , maybe if I take a radio with me I can turn that into something . We'll see , but that's kind of my story with Ham Radio .

We both do all the things , but typically , if we're talking about efficiency , we're going more of the front end pieces . I also do the back end pieces . We both do all the things , but typically , if we're talking about efficiency , we're going to put me on some kind of a user-facing problem and Richard on some kind of data and algorithm problem .

So we really complement each other a lot in that regard . I also try and push him on things that he doesn't really like to do , like marketing or design work Coming on podcasts Coming on podcast .

So it really is just kind of keeping richard on track of all the things , keeping um , keeping focused on the things that are not just the the day-to-day minute um very detailed things that he enjoys but are still good and important and valuable ben is a much better project manager than I am .

I mean , I think we've got a page somewhere , a Google Doc that I wrote up when Ben first , you know , started working you somewhere , a Google doc that I wrote up when Ben first started working , started actually working with me , of like . Here's all of the initiatives that we're currently working on and it's like a page and a half long .

And those are all things that have at least been started and are not completed . And so Ben's been kind of some of the time it's I'm just keeping all you know , putting all the little fires out and keeping you know maintenance and making sure everything stays running . I mean we've got a Kubernetes cluster of servers that we run .

We've got , you know , the three websites , all of the shipping , all of the manufacturing , managing , all of the logistics of making sure that we get . Speaking of which , I have 40 kilograms of nightnol that was misdelivered that I need to go pick up tonight . Anyway , all of that stuff that I'm keeping track of .

So some of the time it's just I need to keep doing these things . So all of the stuff keeps going . Ben , here's our next priority . Please go make progress on that . Yeah , I think it's .

Right , because there there are other companies that have tried to do something similar to what you guys are doing , with nowhere near the success , and I think it's because they lack the skills and abilities that you guys have and the ability to work together and really be a really good team . I use all of your products .

I love exam tools and I think exam tools is the greatest thing since sliced bread , so I was very shocked to hear you say that that was what came first . You know like I went . I went through um in february of 21 is when I got my technician and so you know the end of 2020 .

I was doing the ham radio prep , um and , and I I didn't fully learn the material , it just didn't sink and so when I found HAM , Study , I was like oh well , this makes sense , because now it's tracking my proficiency with these questions and it's giving me the questions that I get wrong and it's coming back and going through them , and then the way that you've

got it set up is just fantastic , yeah oh thanks but it works well for you .

User submitted explanations like we were looking at earlier , going through the extra questions . It's kind of destroying it . It's not a coherent . Let's walk you through and teach you everything . So one project that we've been working on recently that hasn't got , hasn't ?

We haven't really pushed it much , we haven't told a lot of people about it , but we did mention it in some of our recent blog posts around the Black Friday sale . But we have started looking into doing some content , some actual instructional materials .

Currently we have just one and I don't know if I'm going to take that further on ours or if we're just going to partner with some other people . We already do have something in the works and hopefully we'll be doing some works and hopefully we'll be doing some some future integrations , especially with the mobile app .

But right now , if you go to him , bookorg ha m b o o korg you'll find the first version of the ham study technician class handbook , which has been a really interesting project that I accidentally made a couple weeks over the course of a couple weeks , a month or two ago , when I should have been working on something else because I decided to start an

experiment that I really didn't think would work . And it worked way better than I expected it to , and just so I just sort of kept running with it until I actually had it turned into something usable . Very cool , no . I actually wrote this , okay , go ahead I actually wrote this using AI chat tools .

It was not mostly chat , gpt is mostly some other ones but basically I started with a layout and then I had it start doing the writing and you know you have to really monitor . It came up with really interesting , very plausible sounding total BS , but top of it and you know , made manual edits and stuff .

I was actually surprised at how well I was able to first come up with kind of a rough draft of the book , then go back through looking at the questions to add the missing information , and I feel like it's actually come together pretty well , as my goal has been to create something that could and it's a free resource it's actually an open source book .

We'll have something more integrated with software at a future time , which will probably be something that you'll have to pay for . I try to always have something where we need to support ourselves and support our software . If it's not self-supporting , we can't keep it going .

But I also want to make sure that there's at least some version that is accessible regardless of your means in life , because I'm trying to build the hobby , not just build my pocketbook Although if I can do both at the same time , I'm not going to complain , so we're trying to .

There's a lot of resources out there , but especially most of the free ones currently are more based around just the questions , which is great if you already have enough background , but if you don't know anything , if you're really a beginner , need something that's more coherent and more based on going over materials that then also links back to the questions .

So you , you , so you can be quizzed on it .

One of the most effective ways of learning is to be taught something and then quizzed on what you were just taught , and I feel that that's the most effective way to use the question pool for studying is to combine those two , which is one reason in the current version of the HAM study app that you can actually organize everything by one of , I think , four or

five different books , including ARL books , gordon , west Ham Radio School . We've got no Nonsense Guides on there now Fast .

There's a club in the area that does a weekend crash course and they do testing at the end . She was using Ham Study to supplement that testing in between while they were going through that stuff and she's like oh , that makes more sense now .

And so I think you know , obviously and one of the things we kind of did in our episode was and you obviously witnessed it was that a lot of our listeners like well , hey , why don't you read the ? You know the background , the , the , the contributed content , that kind of says you know , this is why the answer is this .

And once we started reading , they were like says you know , this is why the answer is this . And once we started reading that , we're like , oh well , you know , that's just starting to reinforce a lot of that stuff . And we've seen a lot of feedback from that , from folks saying , oh yeah , I like that part because I get to learn something .

But if you're just learning , to start with my theory at least and it's hard for me to you know , I'm too far into it to be able to say this from my own experience , but based on what I'm seeing from other people learning is that it seems like this is going to . This is something that will help more when people are getting started .

So check out handbookorg and send me some feedback . If anybody has any , I'd love to see it used as a resource for you guys . The web version will always be free . I'll probably eventually sell at least like an e-book version and or a PDF version things to try to support the projects ongoing .

You have the . If you don't know , you can get an explanation of , of or why you got it wrong right there . You don't have to go anywhere , you click it , pop , pops up . But I love the way you can organize it and study whatever section you want .

So how I've done it is I did one , studied it till I got like 80 , 90% , then I'd study two , and then I'd go to one , two , then I'd study , then I'd study one , two , make sure I was staying up at that 80 . Then I'd go to three and so forth . Five was a tough one . That's a . That's a tough section .

I've been on it for a while , yeah , but um and again I'm like someone like , like eric's daughter , I I don't know anything from . You know , when I took my technician , I knew green was ground and that was it . I had no idea what and I was . I was going through the quad , like what are they talking about ? Like this is insane .

Like I I've never even heard it . It was like learning Chinese . I was like I don't even know what this is . I'd go to these barn meetups and meet with the guys and they'd all be . My wife would be like so how was the barn ? I'm like I don't know . They , uh , the guys were talking a bunch of stuff .

I had no idea what they're talking about , but they , I've gotten into the hobby and start learning . Now I can actually join into some of the conversations .

But what your app has done is I started off , before I even started my extra , I just took the test just to see what I'd be at , you know , ground level , and then I've been doing this and then I think I got like the four and I took the test again and , like you know , I didn't do too much better .

I mean , I knew a couple more questions than I did , maybe the first one , but I only had four out of the what . 10 , 11 , how many said 10 of them . So yeah , so I mean I wasn't even halfway done but , like you said , it keeps you engaged and I look at studying . I've always been a bad test taker , I don't know why .

I'm more of like I have to do something to learn it , like you can tell me until you're blue in the like I need to actually physically do it and then I'll be able to understand and learn it . So I look at like studying for my extra is like going to the gym . It's like you hate going to the gym . It's you need a lot of motivation to get there .

But once you get there , you feel good and you want to . You know , and you finish out your workout or whatever . It's kind of like that . It's like I gotta get on it . So but I'm like , oh , I'll just do it later . I'll do it .

You know you keep putting it off , but then once I get on it , I get stuck on it and I can't let it go because it's almost like a game to me . Like , oh , I gotta get this question again . Oh , I gotta get this one right . How can ? And it shows you now , like , how many you've gotten wrong . I'm like , why do I keep getting this one wrong ?

But it's , it's a smart app because it'll know like it'll keep throwing the ones I get . You'll see that one more until you start getting it right and it's really been helpful . And then I think you know what we do with this . Something Extra is we try to do it for fun and stuff .

But I'll go back to studying and I'm like oh yeah , that was one of the ones I got wrong on the thing and I'll remember it . So I mean kudos to you guys . I mean the app for me has been a lifesaver . I never thought I'd get past technician until I met Eric and I never thought I'd even think about studying for extra .

And honestly , I'm actually learning some of this stuff . I'm starting to understand some of it not all of it , but some of it and at least I have a general knowledge now of of what I'm actually doing . And I think it really comes down to your app and the way it's set up and , um , I couldn't be happier with it . I tell everyone you know all new hams .

I said , listen , you gotta go , you gotta go to ham study . I'm like , I'm telling you like , if anyone can , if I can get you know passing questions on an extra exam , anyone can . So you should definitely try it out and you know , I'm hoping to get my extra sooner than later .

Like I said , five put me in a stump and I just started six , so we'll see . But now when I go back . So I studied so much on five , I forgot to go back to do one through four , study them all .

So I was a little bit shady , a little bit shady , but I , you know , I did it for a couple of days and got caught back up to it , but it works really well and it's uh , it definitely keeps you engaged At least it keeps me engaged , like once I get on it , I find myself on it longer and longer , um , and then I take a break and you know I've talked

about it . Like I have these trainings we have to do every year at work , and I've been doing my job for my 22nd year , so I've been through it 20 times already . So I just sit there with my phone and for two and a half hours , three hours , I'm just studying , I'm going through your app like it's no tomorrow .

So he'd study T1 until he got about 80% on the aptitude and then he , instead of changing it to T2 , he would add T2 .

And so it's going to initially just ask you the T2 ones , but if , if it gets to where anything it sees anything as being anyway , it can pick things still from T1 once you've seen the T2 things enough , where it figures that you know them as well or better than the other ones and it needs to go find a harder question .

And so that way it kind of builds in some review as you get to the end of getting closer to getting that next section up to an 80% aptitude or so . Just a thought . Instead of changing and then adding them back in . If you just add the new ones , you'll still actually walk you through and do that progression kind of automatically .

I didn't know it worked that way but , like I said , it's been working for me and it's it's . Uh , I'm surprised that I I see these questions and I know the answers .

I mean and you guys have probably seen it like even on from the beginning when we started doing this to now like I'm getting more and more right than I used to get more wrong if I'd get any right . But now it's like I actually know them and then I've yes , I've seen them so many times . I haven't even read the .

You know , if I get it wrong like more than once , I gotta , I gotta go read and say why the hell am I ? Maybe this will help me understand it better . So it it doesn't . It's not just memorization , the , the , the program , also allows you to learn while you're trying to work the questions and pass the test . So , all in all .

I'm a big fan , I support you guys a hundred percent and I passed the word around especially to new guys that I want to upgrade . I said you got to go with this and everyone will have like , oh , I use this , I use that . I'm like I'm telling you , ham , study , it's all you need and you'll be . You should be good to go .

So we'll see how that goes , but I'm going to try it your way and see what happens , see if I stay more refreshed on the older versions .

And what your app does is it knows that I'm getting those confused and it starts pushing those things at me until I get it down . I mean literally like I'll do it , and it'll start throwing it at me Like every other question . It'll pop up again until I start getting consistent with and it's really helped me , you know Get the concept down .

The four impossible answers are so similar that I have literally had at least a dozen people email me telling me similar , that I have literally had at least a dozen people email me telling me that the question is wrong because all the answers are the same , or at least because two of the answers are the same and it's because you know there's like there's two

different words . You know one , there's one that changes in the first question in the first half , one that changes in the second half , and two of the answers have and , and each you know .

So each two there's , like the first two it's a , the second to this one and , and the second one is is a and B and the second , and then they alternate on the other ones , or something like that , and so people will notice one of the changes but not the other one , and then they'll think , you know , they'll look at the other ones and think that they're the

same and it is . It's kind of hilarious , especially because some of these people are emailing me , expecting me to be able to change it . I don't have any control over what's in the question pool .

So I kind of want to segue here a little bit because I know we haven't really touched a little bit on exam tools and you had said exam tools was way before kind of ham study kind of came on the scene .

How did you guys like when did it like take I mean , obviously you're doing it locally for your , your family and and your , your father-in-law and stuff like that and all that process when did it like did covid be the marker point that took off for exam tools ? Or ? And and well , like how did you adjust to that ?

I mean , because you guys did phenomenal in my view because like all of a sudden I'm hearing oh yeah , exam tools is the thing to go to . You got to do exam tools , exam tools , exam tools . Like everyone's like don't go anywhere else , go exam tools . And then why not ?

You know , uh , talking with paul he's our ve guy , uh , for you know our local area and he's like exam tools , I'm like fine , exam tools , let's go to exam tools . And once he showed us the process I was like dude , why are we , why are our current bees doing this paper process ? I just want to slap him upside the head .

So he showed him the light , but anyway .

So Ben and I have both worked in the past and I'm still working there part-time for a company called GradeCam which builds software used by educators . It's kind of a bubble sheet type of a thing where you can print out the bubble sheet and grade it with a webcam , and that's one of the .

I added support for that in exam tools in I wanna say , probably 2018 , 2016 , sometime a while ago at this point , the idea being that a lot of people were really resistant to the idea of doing computerized testing and tablets weren't as ubiquitous then , and so we don't have the money for laptops and stuff .

So it's like , okay , well , fine , you don't have to do that , you can just use this and you can still get all these benefits .

You can have totally unique exams , we can collect statistics on on how people are doing , and I had all of that and I I went to Hamvention in 2018 and 2019 and walked around and tried to talk to people and tried to get people interested and there , uh , there were I think three or four other test sessions who started using it and there were a few Laurel

sessions who were using just the grade camp stuff . Um , but that's I mean there was there might've been a dozen test sessions all told that we're using exam tools when COVID . Thousands of test sessions all told that we're using exam tools when COVID hit in 2020 and everything sort of went nuts .

And I try to stay active in enough different social media groups and stuff . I don't really do Instagram and stuff because I'm not really a visual person . I don't take photos , I don't do video . I'm just really bad at those things . These are some of the things that Ben's working on actually . Thank you , ben , or he that Ben's working on actually .

Thank you , ben , or he's working on , working on , but he has to go . Go on my list , if not us .

But I am on Reddit and I'm in a bunch of Discord channels and I try to at least be available so that people can talk to me and so that I can get some feedback and I'll pop on and try to get some , you know , kind of crowdsource ideas when I'm looking for things to change .

So I had enough of a presence that when people started going nuts about , hey , we've got to find a way to do a remote exams , it didn't take long for me to get dragged into that group . I was not really enthusiastic , to be honest . I was like I just don't . I mean , I , to be honest , I didn't think it was going to last as long as it did .

I was like you know what , it'll be a month or two , everything will open up again . We don't need to solve this problem right now . But I also knew more about it than most people did , because I had been talking to VECs and W5YI , had been very supportive and I had contact with the board members on Glarg and had not at that point , talked to ARRL much .

But I knew enough about it that I was aware that there were no laws that would keep us from doing remote exams .

I knew what the requirements were and so , as I kind of got dragged in thinking and screaming , it didn't take me long to realize that a lot of the things that people were focusing on , a lot of the things people were focusing on , were not the things that were actually the problem .

In fact , most of the things that they were most concerned about were things that I had solved in my software already , like 10 years ago . It was like , guys , no , we can do that , that's not a problem . We need to figure out these , this paperwork stuff . We need to figure out the process . How do we do this to make sure that people aren't cheating ?

How do we know how big of a problem are all of these other things ? And so we , we did some brainstorming and at some point I don't remember when we started on Remember it's like campfire or some project management tool . I don't remember it's like Campfire or some project management tool .

That's something like Campfire or something that I'd seen before , but I hadn't used much and I haven't used since . I don't remember what it's called and then at some point , I moved it over to a Discord server , which is where it's ended up being , and I sort of accidentally took over the control of the group .

I never intended to do that , it just sort of happened I'm not even sure when exactly , to be honest . And so then , on March 26th 2020 , I gave what is , as far as I can tell , the first fully remote exam in the United States , just using exam tools , as it had been , and Zoom , and then we used we did all the paperwork using Adobe Sign .

Those were the biggest problems at the time is that I had the system that could do all these things . It could do the testing , it could generate the paperwork , it could collect things , but it couldn't print CSCEs because , up till that point , none of the VECs would let me do it .

It didn't have support for digital signatures , partly again because none of the VECs were willing to allow it at the time and I had written it all to be used in person .

And so , when you did the passwords , there was just one password for a session that was assigned by the team lead at the beginning of the session , and then everybody , all the VEs , would know what that was and they would just go in and when they started , you know , started and stopped exams and stuff . They would have to do it on the applicant's computer .

Well , now that we're doing remote , that meant we had to use Zoom to take over the computer in order to do that , which added a whole bunch of work .

And if you look in the right places , you'll see that era referred to as tier one , because that was kind of like the tier one of what we're doing is this and this works and we can do things and we can make this . We can . We can , we can get administering exams , but it's not ideal .

And so as soon as we had that going , then I started going just crazy hours because I was still I still had a full-time job at this point before I dropped part-time at grade cam and I was working nights and weekends .

And and did I mention that my youngest daughter was born in February of 2020 , my poor wife , who has been licensed longer than I have , so at least she understands , but , yes , anyway . So the but the main thing was I had to build a new interface and that's when I built basically the whole interface when you sign into exam tools .

All of that had to be rebuilt during this portion because it needed to be built with an emphasis on remote control so you can allow people in and remotely , uh , start and stop and you know , grade exams and such and digital signatures , so that all of that could be done in band with all of that and so .

But you know , so the core of the system was already there . The ability to generate there , the ability to generate the exams , the ability to grade the exams and just the whole structure already existed . But we did have to get to overhaul it to make it more efficient for actually doing remote exams .

Once people saw that and they wanted to do remote exams , that was the easiest tool available and so they would use that for remote exams . Then they started looking at it and realizing , oh hey , well , when we go back and do paper exams , that was the easiest tool available and so they would use that for remote exams .

Then they started looking at it and realizing , oh hey , well , when we go back and do paper exams , this is so much easier for that as well .

So now people are finally starting to use it for the thing that I built it to do almost a decade earlier but nobody was interested in , because until they see a reason , until they see something that's compelling enough to change what they're doing . You know it's human nature . Ain't nobody got time for that . You know I need to .

You know why should I change uh ? But there have been a lot of really interesting benefits .

I think one of the most underappreciated ones especially for uh to people who are not are hesitant about changing and trying out exam tools is just , if you've noticed , the last couple of question pool changes have been a little bit more comprehensive than in previous years before that , and that is at least in part because for the last couple , the question pool

committee has come to me and said hey , can we get the statistics ? And I've given them anonymized statistics for every question in the question pool that says this is how many times it was seen , this is how many times each of the distractors was chosen , and then you can see how many times it was answered correctly , how many times it was answered incorrectly .

You can look for statistical anomalies which things are .

There's this whole system where we had to go and interact with the FCC to look up things based off of the FRM and then populate it into this PDF . And that was when we were first figuring out how to build PDFs ourselves , and that was years ago and that was probably more like the 10 years ago that he was talking about .

You know the process of you know three , four hours of scanning and all the other garbage that goes with it .

Um , coupled with that also , I know , paul , you made mention when we were going through that whole evaluation and move towards that as our own club , that you guys have kind of coupled or partnered with ARL in that process or like so kind of touch on that a little bit , like so , is that going to become the default tool or is it going to just be like

what's that kind of look like ?

It's a huge entity and there are people at ARRL who , I think , are very excited about exam tools , who really like it and would really like to see it used , especially because it saves them a lot of time . If it's used properly , they've set it up so that they can import .

The files that are exported for submitting it to the ARRL include everything that they need to import it directly into their system so they don't have to retype everything when you mail the documents in . They have to have people actually go through and type everything into their system , which opens up the possibility of typos . It takes longer .

I mean , even if they're fast , it's still going to take longer than if they're just importing a file .

At the same time , arrl is very , as an entity , is very aware of the fact that they've been around since the dawn of time or maybe a few years before that around since the dawn of time or maybe a few years before that , and the rest of us near mortals , may disappear one day and the tools may not be available after that Uh , and so I have had a couple

of conversations along those lines with uh , some of the people at ARL who I think are maybe less enthusiastic about it , and mentioned the possibility of partnering with them more directly and making sure that there's some provisions in place so that if we do shut down unexpectedly , we can at least give them a way to keep the system running or maybe hand it over

to them or something like that .

So I've at least left the door open for for figuring some of that out , but especially with their uh , their issue with the data breach earlier this year , which was a whole nightmare from everything I can hear , and they weren't allowed to say anything about it , and I think they haven't had time to come back to any of that , and so I don't have anything

definite . But there definitely seems to be a lot of interest there and there's definitely interest on our part .

One of the things that we're still working on finalizing overall is that it's in everybody's best interest if the system is at least to some extent self-supporting and figuring out how that happens , where ideally there's just some small portion of the exam fees can come back into the system in order to help , support and pay for everything to make sure that that the

system is not entirely supported by antenna sales , although that's you know largely what's happening right now .

Right now that's purely on a voluntary basis for most sessions , although there are a few VECs I think I can say it's Glar , anchorage and W5YI have all actually set up something somewhat formal with me to make sure that there's some kind of contribution coming back to help support that .

So that's , we've been kind of slowly moving in that direction , but my priority has been more in making , in enabling things and making sure that we're able to move forward with kind of the understanding that everybody wants to make sure that this system is able to continue and I'm not trying to gouge anyone , and so things are going to .

We'll be able to figure things out as far as a more efficient way of doing that . You're not looking to be the next .

It's a free platform available to clubs and and bees in general to be able to use as well as . But most of your even HAM study in some realm maybe touch upon that and then what helps support that system and we can then direct into signal stuff , because I think that's something we definitely want to touch on before we kind of close out .

If that contribution is by helping to update the documentation which is hosted on GitHub and is open source and could use some help , that would be great . If your contribution is by doing extra aggressive testing , that's fine .

If you're actually collecting testing fees and there are fees available and you can send a buck or two per applicant or something , that would be fantastic . That helps a lot and a lot of teams are doing that just voluntarily sending it's usually anywhere from 50 cents to $2 per applicant is kind of the range that I'm saying .

And and I do absolutely encourage that because , like I said , having the system to be getting the system to where it's self supporting is in everybody's best interest the more that's happening , the better we're able to support and continue to improve things and add features and add the things that people are requesting long term .

But currently , both that and HamStudy even though HamStudy does have the mobile app the mobile app does not make nearly enough money to support Ben or my salaries , I mean , especially if you were to look at what we'd be making at a different company .

I mean , I essentially took a pay cut when I dropped to half time to spend the other half of my time working here , but the fact that I can even do it is a testament to how signal stuff is doing , which continues to absolutely blow my mind every day , honestly .

I mean , we started out doing this thing as a fundraiser , making these out of my garage , and we have sold , if I remember correctly , over I think I think we're over 23,000 signal sticks so far this year , which is insane .

I mean , what are and where they came from , and and that I didn't set out to build an antenna company , and so we're just we've just been trying to continually improve that , but I have also been trying to continually improve that .

But I have also been trying not to spend more time than we have to there Although most of Ben's in my time over the last probably three months . At this point , once we got the mobile app , we switched gears fully to the new signal stuff website because the old one was getting really , really bad .

It was a WordPress site and it was getting to where it was so bad we were having five or six people per day would email me saying hey , I went to try to check out and I couldn't visit it timed out because it was getting that slow .

So this whole new website it's it's fairly custom , it's built on an e-commerce kind of a headless e-commerce back end with a bunch of custom plugins . But I think those new sites turned out really really nicely . In fact , you got there , go ahead and go to products real quick at the top .

And you can see , you can select your radio brand hey , you know , this is the radio I have and then search and it'll filter it down to show you exactly what you've got . And this is flexible enough that I can do some of that .

It wasn't intuitive enough . So this is just like night and day , you know , awesome to be able to just find exactly what you need to get .

Uh , I want to change this so that when you do that , it'll actually take you to a page for the ft3dr , which maybe even has photos about it if we have any and has maybe somewhat of a like a wizard saying okay , what are you trying to do , unless you choose the options and I'll put together a little package for you .

You guys started in antennas from a previous club effort but you've obviously expanded quite more . And is there any anything you guys want to showcase a little bit ? Or you got stuff , future plans you might want to share with us ?

And so we were seeing enough people that were wanting to do you know , the BNC adapters , and so I said , well , do you have any of those ? They do Great . So I started ordering those . And then we decided to turn everything black . Do you have any of those ? They do great . So I started ordering those . And then we decided to turn everything black .

And then I realized that , hey , it would be really neat if we put this little rubber thing around on the on the sma male adapter , and so we added that . And then we figured out that on some radios the sma female to bmc female adapters wouldn't fit down in because it was too narrow . So I had them narrow it by a half a millimeter and I've ended up .

It's gotten to the point where every connector , every adapter that we have has been slightly customized , if not completely made up from existing ones that they actually had , like our SMAF to SMAF and SMA male to SMA male adapters are entirely custom . Nobody else has exactly that adapter , although I've seen some other similar customizations .

The BNC male adapters are entirely custom . Nobody else has exactly that adapter , although I've seen some other similar customizations the BNC male adapters are . I haven't seen anything like them anywhere else . They're the same , the same direction exists , but not in as compact or as sleek looking of an effect as what we've got .

Our most recent , though , that we just released well , with the Black Friday sale , so a week and a half ago are the . We call it the signal strand system , because that makes it 37% cooler than if we just called them counterpoises . I measured .

But what the most interesting bit about it is finding a way to make it easy to connect to , and so I had these connectors custom made . Um had to iterate on it a little bit . I don't know if you can see it any better on there or , uh , I've , I've got some here too , but yeah , those are probably better pictures than what I can do .

And so it just has this little ring that goes down over and then that nut that locks in , and other than that , it's just a standard adapter . It's obviously a little taller to make room for the threads , but makes it really easy to just add a counterpoise , or a signal strand , as we call them , by just popping it on there .

This one that picture , is actually one that somebody from the ham radio crash course discord server volunteered to me and said hey , I picked one of these up . I had those adapters at the ham con Zion ham radio convention in St George over the summer . That would have been the day before I managed to injure my shoulder .

See , everything comes back to that these days . But yeah , so we've had some people do some testing , but they seem to work pretty well . I'm not going to say that you always need a counterpoise , but it can be nice when you just want to get everything you can out of the antenna .

That changes it from a quarter wave monopole into a half wave dipole , which makes it a much more efficient , more reliable antenna .

And so when I put them on sale , I probably saw them almost at cost , but I have the ability to make these . And so when I come across an adapter that it seems like is really needed but doesn't exist , I've tried to find a way to create it .

And then we have a few others that , like the PL259 and SO239 ones , I don't think are necessarily any better than what anyone else has , but it's just nice for people to be able to get something in the same place . So just kind of a question of it , doesn't ?

It's not any harder for me to start carrying some of this stuff , so I'm just adding on and doing what I can to have what my customers need .

Anybody wants , who wants to use that for any purpose is welcome to do so , and if you find something you can either uh , I believe , I believe it's available for public comment If you can make a comment on the spreadsheet saying , hey , add this or hey , this takes this adapter if there's one that we don't know or you can just email orders at SignalStuff ,

support at SignalStuff , richard at SignalStuff , almost any of those email address . If it seems like an email address that ought to go to me , it probably will go to me . I'm really hard to reach that way , but literally , if we add something to that spreadsheet , it will show up on the website within about 10 minutes .

Well , system will just automatic , automatically catch that change and rebuild and deploy the new site .

I'm sure , and you know we'd love to have you back on again . Obviously , if you've got anything , you're more than welcome to come hang out with us anytime . You're definitely welcome , both you and Ben , you know .

I assume probably Ben will be more available than you , richard , but that's totally fine , ben , come hang out , pass on whatever he's going to pass on , but you're more welcome to share .

We love the fact that we've got folks like yourselves just really pushing that envelope and making the hobby that much easier , which makes it way easier for us . Yeah , totally the fact that you decided to sit down and write an application . I do software development , but I hate having to write software a lot of times .

So I'm glad there are folks like you and ben out there who are doing that stuff for us . So keep it going and you guys throw in the question or two or we're up to stuff a little bit no , I I use your antenna on my ht .

You know that's what we recommend and you know I'm using it every day and I'll send you an email . I'm going to try your way and see if that helps and I'll let you know how it goes .

And hopefully , the next time you guys come on here , I'll be an extra Instead of still a general , say extra baby Someday you can do it , yeah , but thanks for coming on 37 right . Yeah , we really appreciate you guys coming on . It's great to hear all that . You had a lot of awesome information how it all started .

I think that's important for people to hear , and this podcast is really just about , you know , keeping people informed and getting them involved with ham radio and keeping the hobby going . So we appreciate it , yeah .

The reason that the signal stuff site even exists is because it helps to make it possible for us to continue to make those other resources available for people for free . Ham study yeah , while there is a paid mobile app , the website is there and it's completely free . Handbook is completely free . Exam tools can be used completely free .

All these tools that we're making . Our goal is not to become rich money grabbers . It's to make tools that make it possible for people to get into and to enjoy the hobby , and the single six , the signal stuff site , all of that is just the way that helps to make that possible . So thanks for giving us the opportunity to come on and talk about that .

Watching how the local club was doing it , I couldn't wait to get things switched over . Um , so I I thank you for all the hard work that you guys are doing , because you just made my life so much easier to take over as the a-double-r-l-v-e-c liaison that's the goal .

I'll wait till Friday and then Saturday morning you'll probably see my order you know I , I have only one thing that I just love .

It's it's got to be amplified , man , but it's it's exact testament to uh , what you guys are doing and we appreciate all the stuff you guys are doing and you know we'll continue to support you . And you know , uh , if you got anything going on like in the future , um , and actually before that , let's kind of like wrap this up a little bit .

So you know , how can folks , if they you know , if they're , if maybe say they're a ve in their own club and they've been doing paper for a while and they haven't quite figured out how to get into exam tools , how can you know they reach out to uh , both you and ben and and richard ?

You know what's the best way for them to reach out , in that sense to be able to get more information or talk to you guys .

Now , keep in mind that that is all written by volunteers and so not all of us are meant to be technical writers . It's maybe not as simple as it could be , but if you kind of follow the links and are willing to wade through a little bit , everything you need to know for any level of usage of the software is on there .

And then there's also links there to get on the amateur radio volunteer examiner discord server , which is where you'll find the largest gathering that I'm aware of of exam tools users .

And though we welcome people whether they use exam tools or not , but one thing that I'm always very aware of , especially with exam tools , if something goes wrong and you need need help and I'm not around , that needs to not become an emergency and disaster for your team , and so there are other . The role in Discord is called experience support .

There are people who are experienced support , who have admin access and exam tools that they can get in and help troubleshoot issues , and there's other people who know how to use the system .

So it's really better to find other users of the system and to get information from and to ask questions and such from them rather than coming to us directly , which serves two purposes . One is it keeps us from becoming the bottleneck for things getting done . It also frees us up to improve the software further rather than spending all of our time evangelizing .

Any final things you want to add to it or a way people can reach out to you if they got questions ?

I , we didn't build it , but it's been built up around this and it supports um each other , and I think that that really is the best way to get help is to go to the community , because it's a very strong , very helpful community .

We appreciate it . I learned a lot . I'm super excited to be a part of more of what you guys are doing and supporting you here , like we've always been doing . It just makes it that much better . Uh , when you know we we do our little , small little segments with uh , todd , and once that's finally done and whatnot , but we'll still continue to profess .

Uh , you know , ham , study there and exam tools and especially signal stuff . And uh , you know I've already got my shopping cart there , so I've got a couple of radios I have to get done , um , and so that you know again , thank you guys for everybody listening to ham . Uh , live free and ham .

We always appreciate all you guys , um , and we appreciate all the support that you guys , you know , do for us and , uh , for all of our folks like ham studies . So keep it up and continue to support the ham radio hobby .

And so you know again , if you haven't had a chance to pick up our uh live free and ham whiskey , bourbon glasses , don't wait any longer , because there's only a limited supply out there , unlike signal stuff , because they have antennas galore and they're glue until the cows come home and , and even way beyond that .

So you know , keep plugging away , um , but you know we only have a limited order of those whiskey drams . So you know , make sure you head over to our storefront , pick those up , and once they're gone , they're gone , um .

And so you know we forgot to mention but you know we've mentioned in previous episodes we've got our uh hammies project that we've started for a little while . So if you go over to gethamcom , uh , you can pick up your little hammies , um , and you know , show your love , love , similar to kind of how the Jeepers have their ducks . Well , we've got hammies .

So now if you see a guy or gal with antennas on their trucks , you can hit them up with the little hammies there , put your call sign in there and tell them you got hammed , and just to show some love in the ham radio hobby . So you know , check that out more if you want to learn more about that .

And if you want to learn more about that , um , and if you always want to connect with us , you can head over to our discord server . Again , that is a great place to hang out . We always , uh , love to talk about the shows and , like we had mentioned , um , you know , in our earlier in the show .

You know we obviously are doing a live stream with our shack roast , so hopefully you got a chance to put those in there .

We've been , uh , you know , promoting that a lot , um , and you know you can always head over our youtube channel , catch all the awesome content over there and use our sms and email and our phone number at 978-233-1142 in the bottom if you're watching this on our youtube channel and please help continue to support the show , either you through our buy some beer

links or our patreons . As always , you can always head over to livefreeandhamcom to learn more about the show , check out the latest swag and find out all the information about our hosts and info there . And again , as always , thanks again for listening from all of us at live free and ham seven three .