HRN 520: Gonna Take a Break😴

/

For the next few weeks, East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ and West Coast Host David W0DHG have a bunch of family and other activities, so we’re goona take a break from the show. David may gin up some shows solo (Gary will be gone lots longer)… we’ll see. But sooner or later we’ll be back… tanned and rested (or dragged ot and exhausted).

And a quick poll: Is the shot with Gary and David in the same picture:

  • A: Creepy

  • B: Very Creepy

  • I don’t care what anyone says, Gary is a genius

See ya on the other side!

HRN 518: The Network Effect

/

The Network Effect is when you connect a network (IRLP, AllStar, Echolink, D-STAR, DMR, Fusion, etc) to a quiet, local repeater and turn on a busy nationwide or worldwide reflector, talk group, room, whatever. The repeater isn’t quiet anymore… but who’s talking. Nobody you know.

Also, Gary K4AAQ will be volunteering for a big, new (to him) event: the Assault on Mt. Mitchell. That’s a 100 mile bike ride from Spartanburg SC to the top of Mt. Mitchell in NC. With all the up and down (and the big UP at the end to the 6600’ summit), the riders will see a total of 11,000 of vertical climb.

And, we lost some hams this week. Bob Heil K9EID, of course, but also David W0DHG’s friend Gary Apgar NY6Y, and Gary’s friend and local hero Danny Hampton K4ITL. Danny was Dayton Hamvention’s Ham of the Year in 2009, and founder of a regional repeater network in the Carolinas, long before the Internet came along to make it easy.

HRN 516: Senate Signs On 📜

/

The Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act is now in the Senate as S.3690. That bill joins House Bill H.R.4006, with the goal of giving hams living in HOA neighborhoods some reasonable relief in being able to put up antennas.

Don’t place your orders yet 🤨. Most Congrerssional bills never become law, but if you recall your Civics class, you do need identical legislation to be passed in the House and Senate before they move on to the President for their signature. So we’re a big step closer 😀.

Then surprise guest Kyle AA0Z joins us for the first time in a while for some general discussion.

If anyone wants to hear a little (a lot) more from Gary K4AAQ, he’s started a new general-interest (or generally uninteresting) podcast with his brother Jay. Jay isn’t a ham, though he grew up with it blaring in the house from his brothers. Like Gary, Jay is a retired broadcaster, now finding refuge in the world of podcasting. It’s called the Jay and Gary Show, on YouTube and a podcast app near you.

Equal time for David W0DHG who continues to co-host the WaveTalkers show on YouTube.

HRN 515: A Rare Unboxing📦

/

One sure path to YouTube stardom is to do a lot of unboxings. That may be why we don’t do them very often. But this time, we do one.

East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ was getting jealous of all the YouTubers walking around hamfests with their phones mounted on fancy sticks, and using some kind of wireless mic gizmo to talk to people (and hear them) more than six inches from the phone. So he bought a set, and opened it up live on this show while West Coast Host David W0DHG looked on over Zoom.

Next… a demo. Then… a hamfest? Dayton? Stay tuned.

Here’s what he got:

HRN 514: 🌓 To the Moon, Alice 🌛 (Bang Zoom)

/

Trivia question #1: Who said that (To the Moon, Alice)?

Trivia question #2: What year did Gary K4AAQ say it was when he introduced this show?

We’re not answering those here. Watch (or listen to) the show.

In January, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) landed a ham radio station on the moon (along with some other stuff, we’re sure, but we have our priorities). Its one-watt transmitter sent some telemetry on 437.41 MHz, along with a cleverly embedded Morse code (not cw) signal, as received by these guys in the Netherlands, and partially decoded by this guy, with help from a few other very advanced hams (read the blog and comments). Best we can tell, it was just a little more advanced than OSCAR 1’s Hi Hi Hi back in 1961. But it still counts as the first freakin’ ham station on the moon. 🌜

The station has literally gone dark, as it slid into lunar night. 🌚 It’s not expected to survive, but we bet there’ll be some well equipped hams listening in a couple weeks, just to make sure.

How ‘well equipped’? Well, you need to make up about 40 dB of path loss, assuming you’ve got an excellent receiver. How do you do that? Big ass antenna. Nope… bigger.

Then Gary rambles on about the fate of HRN 506: How Can We Podcast With All This Light💡? That’s the show that nobody’s seen, because first YouTube, then Netflix, took it down until we fought to get it back up (and we won).

And finally, he talks about South Carolina’s unusual “First in the Nation” Presidential Primary, and the chat room confirms that what we’re doing here is very confusing. And once again what we thought would be a 10-minute show ran over an hour.

BTW, David W0DHG is out this week, teaching a First Aid class. We expect to be back next Sunday.

HRN 513: 🤹‍♂️Walk-ski Talk-ski ⛷

/

Gary K4AAQ just got back from a week of skiing 🤹‍♀️ with Cyndi KD4ACW out in Park City UT. David W0DHG has been busy, so not much show prep (good thing we’re not trying to make money off this show🤑). But Gary had a little radio operation (and one near-catastrophy) to talk about from his trip, including a short video of the radio-laden suitcase that got flagged at TSA. And David had some Winter Field Day adventures to relate. So another shortish show.

Earlier that day, Gary did a ‘sync-test’, looking to see what might have gone wrong with a couple of previous shows that had serious lip-sync issues. Not quite a ProMore, and interesting only to… probably nobody, but we won’t speak for you. Anyway, the lip-sync looked fine, both in the test and this show. Gary says he didn’t ‘fix’ anything, but maybe he didn’t ‘break’ anything either.

And we play a bit of a rockabilly song that features Ham Radio from a group called the Royal Hounds. The song is Tune In Tokyo.

HRN 512: Field(day) of Frost⛄

/

Winter Field Day, the last full weekend in January. ❄⛄🏂🎿

Field Day - the summer version - is the most popular event on the ham radio calendar. The winter version isn’t even close, but it is a thing. And many hams are passionate about it. Our guest Marvin Turner W0MET, King of Winter Field Day (so dubbed by host Gary K4AAQ) tells us all about it.

The weather is kind of an upside-down, of course. While summer Field Day is more or less pleasant in the northern US and Canada, it’s hot and muggy in the southeast, and just hot in the west. Late January can be serious winter in the north, and more temperate as you head south, though ‘summer-like’ may be reserved for Florida.

Winter Field Day isn’t just the winter version of it’s summer event. Some rules are the same, but many are different. For one thing, ‘Winter’ Field Day is worldwide (with half the world actually being ‘summer’, but who’s counting). And it may be a bit more emcomm focused. Marvin tells us all about it.


HRN 511: Leave the Plot Behind

/

For a short while, the ham radio world was abuzz with comments on a shot at the very end of the Netflix movie Leave the World Behind, about a NYC couple who rent a house on Long Island for a weekend getaway. The world quickly goes to hell, though they only get vague signs of it as TV, cable, internet and cell phone service goes out. Then weird things start happening around them. SPOILER ALERT At the very end of the movie, there’s a bunker with an elaborate ham station, receiving a digital message about cities being under attack and elevated radiation, advising anyone receiving the message to take shelter. The movie got fairly favorable critic reviews, but terrible audience reviews.

Gary K4AAQ and Cyndi KD4ACW were among the ‘terrible review’ contingent. David W0DHG hadn’t finished the movie yet, but after hearing Gary’s review, he was eager to see how bad it really was. Oh, and Gary plays a few clips to demonstrate what was so bad, and to show that ham station. Also… no Netflix takedown (so far).

But first… David and Gary look at an NBC TODAY Show clip of an Erie PA area high school ham club (actually an Advanced Technology Group) completing an ARISS contact. All ARISS contacts are special events, particularly for the groups and schools involved. What made this contact unusual is that 1) the students did all the work, and 2) it made Network level news. They also made the local news, and they have their own YouTube Channel with their own play-by-play of the event, and other group activities.

Here’s the link to our ARISS Playlist, including that 1992 SAREX contact.

HRN 510: It's a Christmas Miracle 🎄🎅

/

A small Christmas Miracle (and really kind of pre-Christmas).

Netflix released their copyright©claim on HamRadioNow Episode 506: How Can We Podcast With All This Light💡? Just in time for nobody to see it (it’s up to 33 views as I type this).

So David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ celebrate the win🎉🥂. David is short-time, so later, Gary goes into mind-numbing detail about how he filed disputes with YouTube that got Netflix to relent.

But first, they review the reaction to Episode 509: Repeater Pest Gets No-Contact Order from the Judge, which provoked strong and odd comments both on QRZ.com and Reddit.

Audio listeners are in for a ‘trreat’ at the very end.

HRN 509: Repeater Pest Gets No-Contact Order from the Judge

/

Aka The Monkeyman Trial

WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE

A very wide coverage, busy UHF repeater in the Charlotte NC metro area had been plagued all year by a pest. Drunk, profane, nonsensical and relentless. Ignoring him didn’t work, so they tracked him down. The repeater owners told him to stop many times. He didn’t. The FCC told him to stop… twice. He didn’t. But now identified, he got his ham license: KQ4GAD. But nothing changed. The repeater was still frequently subject to his profanity, sound effects and music, and streams of nonsense.

As time passed, the pest increasingly directed his rants and ramblings toward one ham, Brad O’Dell KK1LL. Brad was leading the team that hunted the pest down and revealed his identity. Ramblings became threats, so at the suggestion of former FCC Enforcement Counsel Riley Hollingsworth K4ZDH, Brad swore out a complaint in NC Superior Court, asking for a ‘No Contact’ order.

After managing to avoid the process server twice, resulting in continuances, the pest, Joshua Duffy KQ4GAD, faced off with Brad in court. Duffy never spoke… at least not in the hearing. As the hearing begain, his attorney immediately offered to accept a No Contact order for one year, provided that no evidence was presented and made part of the record. Brad agreed. It was over.

But our story isn’t. In this episode, we’ll talk with Brad and Ted Williams KE6QEY, President of the Charlotte Amateur Radio Club, owner of the repeater. We will hear some audio of Duffy swearing, threatening and rambling (and we’re not beeping anything out, so this episode has some explicit language). We’ll hear briefly from Duffy himself in an interview he gave HRN’s Gary K4AAQ outside of court, where he describes what he did and why. And Brad and Ted will tell the whole story.

Oh… The Monkeyman Trial? That comes from the monkey-like sounds our pest was fond of making. You’ll hear one recording of that. So before the hams knew who he was, they called him ‘The Monkeyman’.

HRN 509 PROMOre: Repeater Pest Gets No-Contact Order

/

He was drunk. He was profane. He was worse than annoying. He wouldn't go away, plaguing a Charlotte area repeater for months. Then he got his ham license... and nothing changed. He was ordered off the repeater (many times). The control ops contacted the FCC - they wouldn't act. Nothing worked. Then he began targeting one individual ham for harassment, and that created an opening for a legal remedy outside the FCC.

Gary also previews a bill in the South Carolina Legislature that mirrors PRB-1, but would extend the protection to HOA residents.

HRN 508: Family v Service (v Podcast)

/

East Coast Host Gary K4AAQ had volunteered to do radio at a local Christmas parade. As he was lacing up his sneakers, about to leave home, wife Cyndi KD4ACW called to dispatch him to the hospital where mom had been taken with chest pains. Gary had planned to do some video and interviews at the event for today’s show. Instead Gary and West Coast Host David W0DHG talk about how to weigh conflicting obligations to family and community (and Podcasting). (Mom didn’t have a heart issue, but it was still something serious. She’s OK now)

Gary did it again 😒 10 minutes and 30 seconds with NO AUDIO. It was all pre-show banter, but he is chagrined. Again.

David also had comments on how his favorite event, the Baker to Vegas charity run, has decided to replace ham radio with communications from Verizon (while still urging them to volunteer for other jobs). There’s more to that story, and it’s not isolated to that event. The MS Society is using ham radio less for smaller, more urban walks. And in the Emcomm arena, Auxcom leaders have been saying that hams should be cross-trained for communication on other systems. That’s something to dig into on a future show.

Meanwhile, we noted that the new FCC rule dropping the data-rate restriction of ‘300 baud’ on the HF bands, replacing it with a 2.8 kHz bandwidth limit, has finally been published in the Federal Register, and will take effect on January 8, 2024. So not quite the Christmas present we expected, but Happy New Year!

And a FNPRM (Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) clock is ticking for comments on how to handle data rate/bandwidth of the VLF, VHF and UHF bands. That spectrum is not covered by the new HF data bandwidth rule.

Finally, no news on the Netflix Watch. HRN Episode 506, How Can We Podcast with All This Light?, is still dark due to Netflix’s copyright complaint. Check Episodes 506 and 507 for details, and listen to the audio version while the video is down.

HRN 507: All the POD You Cannot See🏴

/

HamRadioNow Episode 506 is still down on YouTube, by order of Netflix. We’ve filed a ‘dispute’ via YouTube. We’re waiting.

But not patiently. In this episode, David W0DHG and Gary K4AAQ explain what’s happened. And that’s pretty much it… a short show.

[UPDATE] Episode 506 is UNBLOCKED! It’s a longer story, but multiple disputes were filed, triggering a 48 hour timer to unblock the video while Netflix mulls the disputes.

HRN 506: How Can We Podcast With All This Light💡?

/

We finally get to the real show based on the Netflix series All the Light We Cannot See. The show is a four-part mini-series about clandestine broadcasting during WWII. It’s set mostly in a small, coastal French town that is occupied by Germany, and is being bombarded by Allied planes coming across the Channel. A young woman named Marie has taken over broadcast duties from her uncle. Her broadcasts contain coded mssages helping the Allies make precision bombing runs. Marie is being hunted by Werner, a reluctant German radio operator, using DF equipment to pinpoint her location.

This is the CENSORED version.

This being the main theme of the series, there is a lot of radio operation, and a lot of gear. Little of it is explained in detail, and what detail they show is usually somewhat wrong. That’s because this is media for the general public, and getting it right would be boring and take too long. So it’s the usual Hollywood license for any technical profession, whether it’s radio, medicine, law, etc. Details get in the way of storytelling.

Our goal is to highlignt the radio operating, and note the errors, while appreciating that a program has this much radio (and radio people) at all. So we pulled about 17 minutes of footage from the series, play it and comment on it.

This will be the full version, if Netflix unblocks it

Or at least we tried.

YouTube had a different idea. Halfway through the show, they start blacking out the video and audio, with a title saying they detected copyright material. When Gary comes back on screen, the video resumes, but the YouTube bot isn’t very precise with its timing. Eventually, YouTube just takes the stream down, noting a copyright violation.

But they give us a chance to appeal. Gary takes it immediately, and to his surprise, within minutes he gets email from YouTube saying they AGREE with his appeal and restore the program.

But the program they restore is the one with big segments blocked out, and ending early, where they terminated the live stream. Thanks for nothing!

Gary recorded the episode locally, and uploaded it to our YouTube channel, thinking A) they won’t file a copyright claim on this one, because they already agreed that it was Fair Use, and B) Don’t believe that for a second.

Yep, the upload was not only flagged but fully blocked, worldwide. Gary filed a dispute… we’ll see if this one is handled with the speed that Netflix responded to Episode 504. They filed a copyright claim there, too, based on us showing their trailer. Gary filed a dispute, and Netflix relented in less than 24 hours.

[UPDATE] Nope… a few days later, and it’s still down. And for good measure, they also blocked the Live, Censored version that YouTube had restored😒. For more, move on to Episode 507: All The POD We Cannot See

[UPDATE #2] The show is unblocked! Gary had to file a few more disputes, and that triggered a 48 hour timer to allow the program to air, even if Netfilx hadn’t responsed to the dispute yet (they haven’t, as of 12/16/2023). That timer ran out today, and the show is visible again.

LINKS:

HRN 505: Podcasting at the Speed of Light💡

/

First… I’m giving everything a new number - episodes, promos… if I far… sneeze, I’m giving it an episode number.

So, we had planned to do the episode that we Promo(re)d last Sunday sometime during the week. Well, we couldn’t. It’ll be on this coming Sunday, December 3 at 3pm Pacific, 6 pm Eastern, 2200Z. We’ll be reviewing and picking apart the radio mistakes in the Netflix series All the Light We Cannot See.

So what are we doing here in 505? (Besides piling up episode numbers?) Mostly celebrating that I was able to win another Fair Use battle. We played the trailer to the show last Sunday. Netflix filed a Copyright claim and demonetized it (even though we don’t monetize). That didn’t affect anyone’s ability to watch the show, but there’s a principle involved. I disputed the claim based on Fair Use. Netflix caved… er, agreed in les than 24 hours, a new speed record.

We kept this show fairly short. No such promises for Sunday. -Gary K4AAQ

HRN 504 PROMO: How Can We See With All This Light💡 PROMO

/

This episode is a PROMO for an upcoming HRN show. This one comes with homework:

We like watching shows that have ham radio in them. Sometimes it’s just for the show, and sometimes it’s to pick at how much they got wrong 😒. Netflix has a new, four-episode limited series titled All the Light We Cannot See, based on a novel by the same name. It looks like it should be one of those ‘based on a true story’ stories, but it’s not. But it does have a lot of radio in it. Not ham radio specifically, and ham radio isn’t mentioned – it’s more of an amalgam of ham radio and DIY shortware broadcasting, with a bit of spy-radio in the mix.

Your homwork is to watch the four-episode series on Netflix, and we’ll do a ‘book club’ episode to discuss it. Gary K4AAQ is pulling some clips of the radio-specific parts to get a YouTube takedown (which he will fight and win on Fair Use grounds). If you don’t have Netflix, well, sorry, there is no free trial (we speculated there was in this Promo, but there isn’t). They have a $7/month plan that you can sign up for, then cancel, so the show would cost you $7 (you can watch everything else on Netflix for that month, or course). The $7 plan is their ‘ad supported’ level, so you’ll see some commercials.

And we’re not sure when we’ll produce this show. Could be Monday or Tuesday… stay tuned and click the Subscribe button on YouTube (and the Notifications bell). Audio listeneres… it’ll just show up in your feed when we’ve done it.

David reacts to gary’s show title