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I’m not a real fan of Las Vegas, but DEF CON is held in Las Vegas, so if I wanted to teach a one-day Tech class there, I just had to go. It was a fun, but tiring trip.

Getting there

I kinda made my travel arrangements last minute because the Ham Radio Village (HRV) folks weren’t sure that they were going to be able to secure a room for the class. That being the case, the only flight I was able to get was a late afternoon (4:50 pm) flight from Detroit. Same with the return. Instead of an early morning flight, I had to opt for the 1:15 pm flight, meaning that I wouldn’t get back to Detroit until after 8:00 pm. I managed to keep myself busy—there’s always something to do—but Wednesday and Sunday were mostly wasted.

I flew on Spirit. Enough said, I guess. It was packed. It was cheap, though, and the flight was direct to and from Detroit.

The flight out was fine. We even arrived about a half hour early. The return flight, however, was a real mess. We pushed back from the gate about 15 minutes late, but then, we sat on the tarmac for another hour and 45 minutes. I never did get a good explanation for what was happening. We arrived in Detroit an hour and a half late.

What a circus!

I stayed at Circus Circus because that’s what came up on booking.com as being close to the convention center. It was definitely close, but I really should have looked around some more. Circus Circus was built in the early 1960s, and it’s really showing its age. My room was clean enough, but the furniture was kind of banged up, there were spots where the wallpaper was peeling from the walls, and the air conditioner was very loud. Ugh.

There are many hotels around the convention center, and I think that if I shopped around more, I could have found a place with better rooms and a lower price. I took notes, and when I go back next year, I’ll be looking into those places as well.

Que rico!

Like everything in Las Vegas, the food is expensive. I lucked out, though, and found a place that was affordable, close to the Las Vegas Convention Center and my hotel, and delicious: Tacos El Gordo on Las Vegas Blvd.

The tacos at Tacos El Gorda are the real deal. They advertise that the tacos are made Tijuna style, and you’d be hard pressed to find better tacos there. They’re made with handmade corn tortillas and homemade guacamole and salsas that are made from scratch daily.

When you enter Tacos El Gorda, you get into one of six lines, depending on the type of taco you want. On my first visit, I opted for the pork (adobada) tacos. In some places, they call this type of of taco a taco al pastor. The meat is sliced from a rotating spit, much like gyros is made, directly onto a tortilla. It really was excellent and only cost $4.12 per taco.

My second visit I decided to get a little more adventurous. I got into the line featuring organ meats, and after waiting in line for about a half hour, I ordered one taco de suadero (beef brisket—not so adventurous), one taco de cabeza (beef head—a little more adventurous), and one taco de buche (pork stomach—really adventurous). I liked the suadero and cabeza, but the buche not so much.

I’’m not really a gambler, but…

I’m not really a gambler, and in 2022 and 2023, I didn’t gamble a single cent. Many years ago, though, I bought some blackjack books and learned some basic strategy. So, this year, when I found a couple of blackjack machines in the Circus Circus casino that would accept $1 bets, I decided to give it a go.

Friday night, I fed a $20 bill into the machine and started playing. This machine was a little complicated in that it had a lot of side bets that you could make, such as whether you were dealt a pair or dealt 19+. I lost three of these sucker bets at a buck a pop before I figured that out.

Once I got that straight, I started playing plain old blackjack using the basic strategy. Using this strategy, your odds about 50-50, and that’s about how it played out. I pretty much broke even over the next half hour. Right at the end, I had a bit of a lucky streak, and when my total hit $20.80, I cashed out.

I say “cashed out,” but what the machine does is print out a ticket that you then have to take to a cashier to actually get cash. I thought that I might play a little again, so I just pocketed the ticket.

Saturday night, I did indeed decide to give it another go. There were only two machines that were working when I got to the casino, so I wandered around for a bit, visiting the circus stage and watching the hotel visitors try their luck at games on the midway. When I got back to the machines, one guy was just getting up, so I took his seat.

At first, I had a run of bad luck, and my total dropped to $15.30. But then, I got on a little bit of a roll, and built my total up to around $20 again. At that point, I played even with the machine for about 10-15 minutes. After a lucky streak bumped my total up to $25.50, I hit the cash out button again, and took the ticket to the cashier to collect my winnings.

My biggest class yet

The class went pretty well. Because we were only allowed to have 100 people in the room, HRV limited the pre-registration to 75. Despite the late start in publicizing the class, it filled up quickly. After getting all the pre-registered people in, they started accepting walk-ins, and we ended up with a class size of 90, making it the biggest class I’ve ever taught!

Since it was a bigger room than the one I taught in at HOPE, the setting wasn’t quite as intimate. The students had questions, but not as many as the HOPE class. Perhaps the size of the room had something to do with that. I’m not sure.

Unfortunately, we only had the room for seven hours, meaning that the students couldn’t test right away. Instead, they would have to take the test at DEF CON itself.

As a results, I’m not sure how many of the 90 students eventually passed the test. I know that over the course of the next couple of days I ran into several students who had passed the test. My guess is that a very high percentage did pass.

Mind-boggled

DEF CON is a truly amazing event. It’s a “hacking” conference, but the definition of hacking is about as broad as it can be. There were special interest groups, or “villages,” for a wide range of activities including hardware hacking, voting, lock picking (physical security), embedded systems, Internet of Things, and many more. And not only were there a couple of speaker tracks designed to appeal broadly, each village had their own series of talks. The enormity of it all just boggles my mind.

On Friday, I checked in at the Ham Radio Village and dropped off some of my No Nonsense business cards. I offered to help out, but they seemed to be all set, so I wandered off to experience the conference. I had a fun day attending talks, including a talk on open-source hardware for conference badges. I’ll be writing more about this later.

On Saturday, I updated my Ham Radio for Hackers slides and spoke on the topic in the Ham Radio Village. Like at HOPE, I had a really good turnout, and it was standing room only.

Immediately after, I went to hear a talk by Cory Doctorow in the main room, where he talked about the “enshittification” of the internet. If you haven’t’ heard this talk or read his articles about the subject, you should.

After that, I dropped in to the Women in Security and Privacy Village to make a “friendship bracelet” for my wife. I had been wracking my brain for something to bring home for her, and I knew the moment that I saw the program description that this was the right thing. Basically, the bracelets are simply a number of beads strung together on an elastic band. There were some letter beads, too, so I was able to spell out “SILVIA.” My wife loved it because as you can see, she spells her name a little differently than most Sylvias, and has always lamented the lack of things she could buy with her name on it. I scored a lot of points with Silvia when I got home, pulled it out of my bag, and slipped it on her wrist.

HRV Meetups?

After my talk on Saturday, a guy in his 30s (I’m guessing here) came up to me to talk about his experience with amateur radio. He had recently gone to a local amateur radio club meeting and was not received very warmly at all. He was so put off by the experience that he wasn’t sure whether to bother getting his license. Does that sound familiar?

I tried to explain that ham radio was a big hobby, and he unfortunately had just found the wrong crowd. I went on to say that not all hams were like that and encouraged him to get his ticket. Yesterday, I received an email from him that he had indeed passed the Tech test, and with the help of my study guide, also passed the General. That made me extremely happy.

Of course, he still needs to find his people. As I sympathized with him, it occurred to me that we need to create a way for hams like him to find other hams like him. I’m thinking of something along the lines of the 2600 meetups that used to happen around the country before Covid. Maybe we could even piggyback on existing 2600 meetups. I’ll be blogging about this soon, so if you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Thanks to ARDC!

Thanks again to ARDC for funding this trip. The more I teach these classes, the more I’m convinced that we need to continue to reach out to this community. We need more people like the folks that attend DEF CON in amateur radio.

Here are a trio of recent announcements from the ARRL:

LOTW back online

On July 1, the ARRL returned Logbook of The World (LoTW) to service!  They noted that during a brief LOTW opening 6600 logs were uploaded, but not processed until they were sure that the system was  functioning properly.

They also ask that you not call ARRL Headquarters to report issues you are having with LoTW. Instead,  contact support at LoTW-help@arrl.org.

They conclude the announcement with, “We appreciate your patience as we worked through the challenges keeping LoTW from returning to service. We know the importance of LoTW to our members, and to the tens of thousands of LoTW users who are not ARRL members.”

Personally, I think that they did a pretty good job with getting LOTW back online. It was definitely a difficult task.

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ARRL Foundation Club Grant Program July 25

The ARRL Foundation Club Grant Program—funded by Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC)—is an opportunity for clubs to apply for grants up to $25,000 to fund projects in areas that will motivate and develop active radio amateurs, with an emphasis given to projects that are of a “transformational” nature.

The application period is NOW OPEN and runs through Friday July 26, 2024 at 4:00PM Eastern Time. Clubs across the country are encouraged to apply, even if your club is not an ARRL Affiliated Club or not a 501(c)(3) organization—all are welcome to apply. Grant recipients will be required to share progress reports and updates with ARRL.

It seems like the ARRL should have made this announcement a lot sooner to give clubs a better shot at meeting the deadline, but perhaps those clubs who have been working on big projects have been working on their proposals all along.  We’ll see.

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ARRL developing performance analysis program for NTS

Amateur Radio Daily reports that:

The National Traffic System (NTS) will soon be evaluated with new tools to help improve system performance. The ARRL is developing a web-based Performance Analysis Tool (PAT) to ultimately improve speed and accuracy of the traffic system. Additional training materials will also be developed to improve NTS performance. Once the new tools are complete, the ARRL will hold a test exercise to measure their effectiveness.

Source: July 2024 ARRL NTS Letter

I don’t know about this one. Maybe I just haven’t kept up with what’s happening with NTS lately, though.

At Dayton this year, I learned that ARDC’s Technology Director had left the foundation. Now, my former employer is in the market for someone to replace him. You can find all the details on the ARDC website.

This is a challenging position. The web page reads:

ARDC seeks an experienced Technology Department Manager to join our team and lead all technology efforts. These include, but are not limited to, overseeing the following department initiatives and personnel management:

• Activities of 44Net, and IPv4 address space allocated to amateur radio;
• Open-source software development projects; and
• General internal IT system administration, including streamlining existing systems and helpdesk.

In addition to having solid management experience in a technical field, this person must also be an excellent communicator – able to write policy, wrangle volunteers, and manage open-source technology development that includes staff, volunteers, and contractors. The ideal candidate will have demonstrated the ability to effectively communicate with executive-level management on a regular basis. It is expected you will prepare management reports and complex technical documents that are well written, appropriately and effectively organized, accurate, and comprehensive, meeting all professional standards.

The page also notes:

Experience and history with amateur radio and the Internet is required. Many of the people we work with, projects we take on, and communities we make grants to are rooted in amateur radio, and our particular realm of focus intersects heavily with the information technology and hacker communities. Applicants without an active amateur radio license will not be considered.

Experience working with nonprofits and/or open-source technology projects is required. There are nuances of working in nonprofit and community-driven environments, including participation in open-source technology projects, that can only be learned through experience – such as collaborative decision-making and best practices in engaging with open-source development. Experience in one or both of these areas is required for this role; applicants without such experience will not be considered.

Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) is a unique organization in the world of amateur radio. ARDC is organized as a foundation with two main roles: management of 44Net and a grants program. The foundation has assets a bit over $100M and funds grants roughly at the $5M level each year. (These are very rough numbers. For the specifics, take a look at the audited financial statements.)

I started out serving on the Grants Advisory Committee and told my ARDC story here:

What’s This ARDC Grant Thing?

I am honored to be asked to join the ARDC Board of Directors and I look forward to serving in that volunteer role. See the ARDC announcement here:

Bob Witte, K0NR, joins ARDC’s Board of Directors

I am new to the Board but have worked with them as a member of the Grants Advisory Committee. I can tell you that they are a great bunch of people, all motivated to do the best for amateur radio and digital communications. ARDC also has a small paid staff that makes things happen on a daily basis, all great folks to work with.

If you have feedback or suggestions for ARDC, my door (and inbox ) is always open. If you want to apply for a grant, working directly with the ARDC staff is best. The grant process is described well here.

73 Bob K0NR

The post Joining the ARDC Board appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.