Nominations for 2024 ARRL Section Managers have been made. All nominees listed ran unopposed and...

Release Date: June 29, 2024 Here is a summary of the news trending This Week...

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This is a 1-hour version of the weekly podcast for This Week in Amateur Radio....

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context: Kyle AA0Z invited me to a roundtable discussion on his youtube channel] this evening, and it stirred up some discord and stoked the ongoing controversy grinding old-school contesters’ gears since his W1DED interview, the K5ZD N6MJ KL9A contester panel followup, his reaction, and the 2024 hamvention contesting forum call-out by K1AR. I wrote this to try to help clear some murky air, and posted to the Ham Radio Crash Course discord #radiosport-contesting channel where the fun was taking place. To a regular reader, this might seem out of place, so sorry about that. I hope you can read through that, and gather some ideas and discourse on the subject of contest modernization i.e. RadioSport2.0.

also long time no see lol

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ok i got fired up and started typing and wrote a bunch so sorry, but #offmychest…

I wasn’t a big fan of the 1984ing on the stream bc i wanna hear out and debate the hot takes. During the stream I was typing that whole time with @QROdaddy (W4IPC) because he got quieted and I wanted to hear the discord (haha pun). I really don’t like echo chambers, and I really don’t like stuff that doesn’t take holistic perspectives from all points of view, so I think we, the radiosport2.0 community need to take some better care hearing it out. Whether it’s from current youth, young and old, seasoned or noob contesters, non-contesters, or QRZ lol. With that being said, here’s my dissertation on the whole radiosport thing that’s been bouncing in my head since 2011 (https://www.arrl.org/news/youth-hamradio-fun-what-is-radiosport-and-why-do-we-do-it) and opined since 2016 (https://n0ssc.com/posts/320-contest-modernization also rip cqcontest.net but today’s is https://contestonlinescore.com)

I think we want the same thing – we contesters all want to contest, and for there to be people to contest with well into the future. I think the ideas we’re tossing around formulates an inviting, fertile ground for new contesters just coming into ham radio and contesting for the first time. Out of this, I hope we discover and create novel in-roads for normies to get into the next level. Current young contesters may think it’s great right now, because it is, but you are a lucky few who had some kind of magical unmatched personal dedication, brilliant elmering, ham family, or just ADHD hyperfocus (it me) to get hooked for life. And i’m v proud of that. But without pushing for some kind of modern, mainstream aligned ideas, environments, activities, overlays, categories, and just straight up new stuff, radiosport will stagnate as the VAST BULK of contesters pass away, out leaving behind a fraction of today’s young contesters for tomorrow. That’s facts based on statistical projections based on numerous demographic surveys and data, and you can see it plainly in Craig’s K9CT interview. So as content creators, visionaries, and rabblerousers, we’re gonna go in hot and heavy, get complainy, and poke at the hornet’s nest to bring this to the light throughout the ham community to find people interested in making it a thing, only to see if it’s a thing. Might want to work on the delivery, but the point stands.

I also think we are miscommunicating the intent of radiosport2.0 becasuse of all the “reeeeee your killing my contests get off my lawnnnn nothing is wrong why do this nooo reeee” type comments . and I don’t disagree there might be some misinformation, or really just ignorance and misremembering on our (my lol) part. There’s also the weirdness of the K9CT folks, ARRL/CAC people, and log developers keeping their radio sport 2.0 plans close to their chest (compared to us who are baring it all and at least showing somebody is out there thinking “it would be cool if…”in hopes we can garner some grassroots perturbations in the community and do something cool for the sake of the fun of it, and maybe for the sake of the hobby). But imagine things like saving the contest committee 100 hours out of their thousands to check logs by, i dunno, posting every log submission and qsordr capture carte blanche to an academic database and letting the database wizards poke at it to see how close their solutions come to the traditional methods? Or giving those connected to the internet an opt-in option to cryptographically sign their QSOs that get posted to a blockchain ledger as a smart contract for realtime, verifiable adjudication (and figure it’s vulnerabilities to nefarious players? Or let there be a new button in their log’s score reporting menu that says “send to realtime ledger” or “report [entire QSO/band-mode/freq/rotator] data to blahblahblah db/server” for beta testers and early adopters to futz with while also not ruining or even remotely changing their experience as a contester doing a contest – they’ll still be valid (depending on what they’re opting in to send they might need to change to a different category e.g. CQWW Explorer), they’ll still submit a cabrillo, they’ll get a real score in whenever time, meanwhile 99% of people probably won’t notice that button until HRCC hosts a livestream of a radiosport tournament battle royale with your hosts Kyle AA0Z and Sterling N0SSC, backed up by your experts in the field N0AX and N6MJ – all enabled by that button, only just now realizing they too can get in on that action ALL THE WHILE on the air it just sounds like regular contesters contesting; just with more of them doing this goofy livestreamed tournament thing.

And I’m not a “*real*” contester. I don’t put up high scores on 3830 because I cannot do a 24/36/48 hr contest. I go to N0AX/W0ECC/W0EEE, sit down for 2 hours, do my 200-300Q/hr rate, let the pile die, and give up for a while with a beer and a chat with the other’s on the bench, and come back at 4am when the grey line is approaching to listen to the world turn from 160m and 10m because that shit is cool. I don’t even have HF at home, and I don’t have the time to set up remote stations and be a basement dweller for a whole weekend. And I have gone a loooong time since I had my butt in a chair for more than a few hours that wasn’t at my day job. But I’ve worked at least 2 or 3 big contests every year since I was 15 years old, I’ve won plaques and paper as a sad teenage G5RV owner in nowhere Missouri, i’ve played in sweeps every year except one (not under my own callsign typically – usually under N0AX, W0ECC, and W0EEE), I drop in at random field day sites and fire through 100 QSOs in half an hour and disappear, and I had elmers like N0AX, Ed K0KL (SK), K0ZT (SK) K0ZH and the WA0FYA Zerobeaters ARC, W0EEE alumni, and K3LR and the Contest University crew who let me in free for like 3 years straight because I was the only one without gray hair. I really love contesting – it’s my favorite part of ham radio. And now as a 32 year old geezer, I do want something I can do in my tidbits of free time, that is just a bit different than a CWT or WWSAC, that isn’t just a 2 hour stint on a major contest – i want to be competitive and be ranked and scored with a pool of other contesters. I want team deathmatch, CTF, in-game perks/power-ups/items, and matchmaking lobbies. I think there’s an untapped reserve of potential new hams that would also be into that kind of radiosport. I don’t want the existing contests or methodologies to die or change, but as they stand now – as they have forever ago and forever on — are excellent grounds for trying out these new ideas unbeknownst to guys like VP5M with barely enough bandwidth for the cluster [thanks connor], the off-grid pacific islanders, africans, antarctic researchers, nordic polar bears all who make CQWW/WPX & IARUHF so much fun, or folks who just don’t do the internet and log with paper. Coexistance is a requirement, and so is the longevity of our hobby.

Tldr I want to play ham radio when I’m retired (25-30 years from now lol) so I have some ideas.

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a few edits were made for profanity, clarification, correction to K0ZH’s call.

thanks W4IPC and KG5XR for inspo and AA0Z for sticking his neck out to get these ideas on the cutting room floor

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Release Date: May 25, 2024 Here is a summary of the news trending This Week...

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This is a 1-hour version of the weekly podcast for This Week in Amateur Radio....

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A Stroudsburg teens’ passion for radio

[Stroudsburg, Monroe County, PA (WBRE/WYOU)] In this week’s Here’s to You Kid segment, 28/22 News met a young ham radio operator. It’s not only his hobby, what he does also involves helping save lives.

14-year-old Samuel Thrall, W3GZ,  is a member of the Eastern Pennsylvania Amateur Radio Association (EPARA.) He passed three levels of the FCC Amateur Radio Licensing exam and now helps at the Monroe County Public Safety Center.

What interested him in ham radio in the first place is simple. “The scientific aspect of it is very interesting because it’s a technology we use on a daily basis. Our phones are all powered by radio just with computers built into them,” Samuel explained.

…read more and watch the video

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As a ham radio operator, Lacy, of Middleburgh, had interesting perspective on Boston Marathon

[Middleburgh, MA] There are an estimated half a million spectators along the Boston Marathon course in any given year. If you’ve run the race, you know what a half-million voices stretched over 26.2 miles of Massachusetts roads sound like.

Of the over 9,000 volunteers that work Boston, over 300 serve as the voice of the marathon in their own way, but also serve as the eyes and ears. For the last two years, Matt Lacy of Middleburgh has been one of them. On Monday, he took up his assigned station at Mile 11 as one of the amateur (ham) radio operators who play an important role from start to finish by providing a communication network that supplements the other public safety personnel and resources vital to this massive enterprise.

“For the ham radio folks, it’s the premiere public service event, the chance for us to get the experience doing one of these events, having to report to whatever levels we need to, working within the confines of whatever section of the course we’re on,” Lacy said on Wednesday.

…read more

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TAG students launch solar-powered balloon

[Iowa Falls, IA] Riverbend Middle School TAG (Talented and Gifted) students launched a solar-powered balloon on April 5 from the school, after a presentation and help from amateur ham radio operator Jim Emmert of Pella. The balloon named PENS-p22 traveled across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, the Atlantic Ocean, Morocco, Algeria the Mediterranean Sea, Italy, and the Adriatic Sea.

“I am constantly on the lookout for guest speakers, fascinating projects or unique things that we could learn about,” TAG teacher Amanda Fjeld said. “I value exposing students to new topics and projects of any kind. I am constantly brainstorming ideas and often ask others for engaging project ideas. My friend Jen, who is from Pella, told me about Jim’s Solar Balloon program, so I reached out to him. I was especially excited because I lack knowledge in the world of solar technology and weather patterns but want to expose students to more science-related opportunities.”

Emmert is a retired teacher who lives in Pella and travels to different schools teaching students about amateur radio, earth science, balloons, and GPS technology. He also launches Pico balloons and gives predictions and tracking to the students.

“Our students spent about three hours on the morning of April 5 learning and launching the balloon,” Fjeld said. “It was one of the few times I have had all of the students in TAG in 6th, 7th and 8th grade come together on one project, so it was encouraging to see them interact and work together.”

…read more

Strong storms and reports of at least 60 tornadoes have wreaked havoc in the Central...

I built a prototype APRS beacon, dubbed Thor Hammer (big), to test back-packable APRS 2m beacon concepts.

The post BOB, the battery operated “beacon” for APRS appeared first on Ham Radio . Magnum Experimentum.

While that was curing,  I put the antenna together from the pieces I had and luckily everything seemed to go together OK, but it is a pretty simple antenna structurally.  We'll see if I got all the connections right once its on the mast. I'm not sure of a better way to test it beforehand.

Sunday, I decided, would be the day of no return; I would cut a hole in the wall of the house.  I'm sure we've all been there, trying to decide exactly how we'd go about getting coax into our homes.  I decided this time I'd "do it right."  I got a really nice aluminum NEMA enclosure on eBay for a song and I was very surprised to see it when it got in, it was way bigger than expected!  Yes, there were measurements but you don't know what 12" really looks like until you see it in person.
First thing I did was find the studs in the wall beside my operating desk.  I picked a spot in between and slightly higher than where the outlets sit, hoping to miss any wiring.  My stud finder has a wire detection mode and I didn't see any indications so I just dove in head first and cut the 2" hole through the drywall straight away.  Then the radiant barrier.  Then I saw that I was going to have a problem.

If you don't know, many of the homes in Texas are built with brick exteriors.  I don't know about in the past, but these newer homes are actually built with a brick facade. That is to say that there is an air gap between the outside of the structure and the inside of the brick, and the brick merely floats out on its own, cosmetically.  What this means practically, is that the wall from interior to exterior face, is nearly 8 inches thick!  Naturally my 2" masonry hole saw was not going to be long enough, by about the thickness of a brick.  I had to figure out where I was inside and translate that to the outside, so I could drill from there.  It took a bit of trial and error trying to break through from the inside with a very long screw driver until I figured out a way to get pretty close by measuring from my window frame to my hole.  I could see I was drilling into a T intersection in the brick about 27" from the window, so all I had to do was find that area, poke a hole from outside to see and sure enough, I hit it dead on center.


All was not as well as it could have been though.  The hole saw I bought was not really doing much good with my standard rotary drill so I quickly gave up on that idea and went the brute force direction: drill a bunch of small holes and chisel away until you have a hole big enough to fit the 1.5" PVC pipe.  This made quick (and quiet) work of the job and I was through the brick in no time.  I quickly drilled out the holes for the mounting screws for the NEMA box and bam, I was pretty much done with that.  A little expanding foam stuff and some caulk was all I needed to finish up the job.




I'll have to add a little paint to the opening on the inside and you won't even notice the hole probably. I'll also have to fashion a piece of foam that'll plug the hole up nicely.  I'm ready to get back on HF though, I can tell you that!