HamRadioNow

East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ is working on a slide deck for a hamfest talk next weekend (Charlotte Hamfest - see him live at 9 am Saturday, March 12). The topic is Digital Voice - VHF/UHF edition. Gary’s still working on the slides. He’s in the 70s. A good PowerPoint talk has maybe 30 slides, tops, say the experts. Do we have a problem? What do they know?

West Coast Host David W0DHG is the audience as Gary rehearses the talk. At the o...

A decibel is 1/10 of a Bel. By rights, this should be 1/10 of a show, but it’s at least 1/3. So bonus.

Well, at least we didn’t resort to an Ask Me Anything 🙄. Instead, Jim NO1PC and David W0DHG scraped Gary K4AAQ’s Facebook feed for Elmer questions that he answered in his usual “here’s how to build a clock” complexity. Or not! The dB answer was an attempt to simplify, to explain decibels without any math. Almost no math. ...

Welcome to Ham Nation Now*

Even here in 2023, most ARRL Directors are not noted for frequent appearances in the ‘independent’ ham media. Mike Ritz W7VO, however, got swept onto YouTube as he addressed a radio club to discuss the January ARRL Board meeting, and the special meeting dealing with Ria Jairam N2RJ’s book issue. Mike found Ria ‘guilty as charged’. Ria joins us to review Mike’s video and dispute much of what he said.

Then we...

The 3Y0J Bouvet DXpedition is over, a couple of weeks early. It was disappointing for all concerned - hams who wanted an All Time New One, the big-gun DXers who still needed the island to climb the higher rungs of the DXCC list, and probably most of all for the guys on… or near the island. Weather and rough seas prevented all but the most minimal operation, mostly cw and FT8 on 30 and 17 meters. Almost no SSB.

The big disappointmen...

No Sunday night show this weekend because 🏈 (only the ‘Big Game’ takes us off… usually we ignore football). But we have bits and pieces. And the weekend’s not over (it’s Saturday afternoon as I - Gary - type this, so who knows?). Hopefully this will tide you over until the next big show.

But for now… I was on the phone with my original ham radio mentor from way back in the early 60’s. Back then he was Bob K9ZGT. Today he goe...

Bill Brown WB8ELK started launching near-space ham radio balloons in 1987. I think he can tell us more about this balloon from China than we’re getting from CNN. Joining Bill is Todd McKinney KN4TPG, a student in Atmospheric Science in Huntsville AL. Todd got interested in HAB (High Altitude Ballooning), and got his ham license so he could fly balloons with APRS and WSPR transmitters. Together they have insights on the Balloon from...

Our guest is Ria Jairam N2RJ, podcaster, YouTuber and Director of the ARRL Hudson Division. Ria’s kind of getting picked on at the ARRL (our words, not hers). She tells us about that trouble and a division in the ranks of the Board falling along lines of transparency vs secrecy. We’ve heard that before when a Board Code of Conduct tried to silence Directors who disagreed with policy passed by the board. Listen to Ria’s take. Ask yo...

In Episode 461, Glam Ham Natalie Gray NW6S revealed that she was one of the writers for the upcoming blockbuster video game Hogwarts Legacy. Gary K4AAQ jumped on the idea of introducing Ham Radio into the Harry Potter inspired project, because that’s what we always do.

Later, Gary felt the need to hammer the point home by creating a scene we wish we’d seen in the movies, and we present it for your consideration (but probably not Na...

The Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act (don’t call it ‘Parity Act 2.0) is about to be introduced in the new Congress. What is it? How did we get here? Where will it go and how will it get there?

John Robert Stratton N5AUS and Fred Hopengarten K1VR were two members of the ARRL Legislative Advocacy Committee that drafted the bill from the ashes of the Parity Act, starting in 2019. They found a sponsor in Congressman Bill Johnso...

This is the PROMO for Sunday’s live episode 459. Gary’s clever title is (Almost) In the Zoom Where It Happened, ‘It’ is the Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act, the new iteration of legislation to require HOAs to permit Amateur Radio antennas. We reviewed the version of the Act that was introduced in December in our last episode. This time, our guests will be two of the hams who were on the ARRL committee that drafted the new ...

This is just a Promo(re), but it’s here in the feed by itself because the show hasn’t been scheduled yet… and this gets the audio podcast out there, too.

There’s a new Bill in Congress: H.R.9670, the Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act. We’ve been told “Don’t call it the Parity Act 2.0 because branding. But yeah, it kinda is.

If you want all the background, listen to the ProMore. Then do the homework, which is watching an old e...

This is one of those titles that we never talked about. It wasn’t designed to describe any of the show content. Gary had been to three Christmas parties in two days, and just wasn’t feeling it, so…

The rest of the show was just a bunch of stuff thrown together at the last minute, but if we didn’t admit that, you’d never know. So this was a meticulously crafted and executed example of ham radio media at its finest. That’s our story a...

The DXpedition crew that attempted an operation on Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic back in 2018 reached the island, only to be thwarted by bad weather and a failed engine. They limped back to port in South Africa. Bob Allphin K4UEE told their story in this video.

A new team, with hams from Norway and around the globe, planned to try again. They contracted The Braveheart - a ship that had transported many DXpeditions to difficult...

A slightly clickbait title? Could be. But HRN East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ is on a bit of a crusade to answer questions found in ham radio (and GMRS) oriented Facebook groups and Reddit subs. He’s more than a little disappointed by the quality of many of the responses to basic questions. On this show, he and NorCal host Jim NO1PC review a few classics.

Before that, though, the guys review 5 Great Reasons to Get Your Ham Radio License ...