Everything Ham Radio Podcast

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Everything Ham Radio Podcast! In this episode we are going to be talking about Awards. Amateur Radio Relay League Awards DXCC     The first award that we are going to be talking about is the DXCC award. This award is probably one of the hardest to get with the exception of the Five Band DXCC award. With this award you have to make 100 confirmed contacts with 100 different countries. For this award you can use 70 cm, 2m, 6m, 10m, 12m, 15m, 17m, 20m, 30m, 40m, 80m and 160m! At the time of this post, you can not use 60m. Mixed DXCC – This award is the easier one of this award because you can use any band, except 60 meters, and any mode. Phone DXCC – This award requires 100 contacts on voice mode on any of the bands above. CW DXCC – This award requires 100 contacts on CW on any of the bands above Digital DXCC – This award requires 100 contacts using any digital mode on any of the bands above Satellite DXCC – This awards requires 100 contacts using only satellites

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Everything Ham Radio Podcast! In this episode we are going to continue with our HF series by talking about Special Event Stations. What Is A Special Event Station? A special event station is basically the amateur radio version of an anniversary party. A lot of times, this is something like the anniversary of forming your club, or a certain battle in a war or even the anniversary of a major disaster. At the time of this episode, there are 130 special event stations registered with the ARRL until the end of 2016. Typically a special event will have a special call sign as well. You can apply for a special 1X1 call sign and be granted one for a short-term. These call signs are typically only good for about a month. Sometimes clubs will have a special vanity call sign for the event instead of a 1X1. On the short Wikipedia article for what a special event station was, they mentioned this: The National World War One Museum,at the Liberty Memorial, in Kansas City, Missouri, fo

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Everything Ham Radio Podcast! In this episode we are going to be continuing our series on HF by talking about Summits On The Air(SOTA). What is Summits On The Air(SOTA)? SOTA is an awards program for amateur radio that was started in Great Britain back in 2002 and has since gone world-wide. It is a program that is designed to encourage amateur radio operators to operate from a temporary location on top of a mountain.The operation must be done from a location that can not be reached in a motorized vehicle and can not be powered by commercial power. There are three types of people who are eligible for this award. Activators – Activators are those that will go to the summit and set up a temporary station and make contacts Chasers – Chasers are those that are at home or vehicle or others that make contact with those operators that have "activated" a summit. Short Wave Listeners – Are non-amateur radio operators that are able to hear a QSO exchange between two amateur radio

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Everything Ham Radio Podcast! In this episode we are going to continue our series dealing with things to do on HF with National Parks On The Air(NPOTA).   The NPOTA is a year-long event that is celebrating the National Parks systems Centennial. As an amateur radio operator you can either activate a national park or make contact with someone who has activated a national park or both. ' NPOTA Activators Guide – This guide has a lot of information in it about "activating" a national park, how to work with the park rangers, bonuses that you can get and much more. NPOTA for NPS Staff – This is a tri-fold flyer that you can print to give to the National Park staff in order to help you explain what you plan on doing in the park, if they have never heard of amateur radio. If the staff is "on the fence" about letting you set up in the park, this flyer could put them over to the yes column NPOTA/SOTA Map – This is a map of all the eligible National Parks and Summits that

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Everything Ham Radio Podcast! Last week we started off this series covering several topics dealing with HF. If you missed last week's episode, click here to go back and listen to it. In today's episode we are going to be talking about DXing. What is DXing? According to Wikipedia: DXing is the hobby of receiving and identifying distant radio or television signals, or making two-way radio contact with distant stations in amateur radio, citizens' band radio or other two-way radio communications.    DXing is a fun way to get on the air and talk to people in places that you may have never thought you would. You don't need any special equipment, you don't have to really know what you are doing. As long as you have an HF radio, an antenna that will work on whatever frequency you are going to be talking on and your license says that you can talk on that frequency, the only thing you need to know how to do, is turn on your radio and tune it to a frequency you can use

Hello everybody and welcome back to Everything Ham Radio. Whether you are reading this on my blog as a blog post, or listening to it on my podcast, I hope you enjoy it. This episode/post is going to be a starting point of our general topic for this quarter, High Frequency(HF). We have talked quite a bit about things that you do on VHF and UHF and have touched on a couple of things about HF, but this quarter we are going to dive deeper into HF. We are going to be talking about DXing, Contesting, Awards, Special Event Stations, SOTA, NPOTA, and eventually about mid-June talk about Field Day, Emergency Power and Portable Setups. There is so much to do in this hobby, it amazes me every time I start to research a topic for the week, just what I'm about to learn. Things that even though I have been a Ham now for over 20 years, I have never done for one reason or another. Maybe one day soon, I can get back on HF, if I ever get my station at home put back up. As you know if you have been following my blog for a coupl

The National Traffic System (NTS) is a structure that allows for rapid movement of traffic from origin to destination and training amateur operators to handle written traffic and participate in directed nets.   The national traffic system works from the local to national and back to local levels. As an example, let's say that I want to send a message to my friend Cale with the FoTime Podcast. My message would start with my local area net. From there, an operator would in turn check in to the NTX Section net and pass the traffic. An operator in the NTX section net would then check in on the Fifth Region net and pass the message onto someone else. They would take the message and check into the Central Area net and pass the message again. At this point the message would be passed from the Central Area net to the Eastern Area net via the designated TCC, or Transcontinental Corps, operators. From there the Eastern Area operator to pass it down to the Fourth Region net, then someone else would pass it to the S

In this episode we talk about Nets Kinds of Nets Formal or Direct Net – This type of net is used in any large disaster or event, typically used in public service events like Parades, Races, Walk-a-thons, etc. This type of net is controlled by normally one person, the net control. Anyone that is participating in the net must ask permission before they talk on the net. Informal or Indirect Net – This type of net is used as a standby type net. A lot of times this type of net is used as an early Skywarn net. the bad weather hasn't made it to your county yet but you still want spotters to be aware of whats going on, and maybe even moving towards where they normally spot from. This type of net has a net control, but you don't have to ask permission to talk to someone. They are there in case the net needs to change gears into a formal net and still keep some kind of log as to whats going on. There are nets on pretty much any frequency or band. The major difference between HF and VHF/UHF nets are that HF nets are m

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Everything Ham Radio Podcast. This will be episode 11! In today's episode we are going to be concluding our Emergency Preparedness mini-series by talking about something that I touched on in the last episode, Go-Packs! So what exactly is a Go Pack? Well, there isn't a standard or generic answer to this question. Some would answer this question very simply, other would have a very complex answer. I put out a question to all of yall in the last episode. The question was, "What's in your go pack?" I got a few responses back from yall and will be sharing some of them a little later in the post. I've told yall before that I have been a ham now for over 20 years now(wow!), and at one point in time(before I started this blog), I thought that I was pretty up-to-date on things that happen in the community or new things that come out or whatever. The more that I work on this blog and now podcast, the more that I learn, that I don't know as much as I thought I di

In this episode we continue our emergency preparedness series. Last week we talked about different types of training that you should learn in order to prepare yourself for if or when you are ever involved in a major incident, today we are going to talk about things that you should do. We also talk about the Davie/Cooper City Amateur Radio Club in the Amateur Radio Club Spotlight a little later on. Show notes and further reading for this episode can be found at http://www.everythinghamradio.com/podcast/10/ Know Your Equipment Probably one of the most important, if not the most important, things that you need to do is have your equipment ready and know how to use it. I have seen many times where someone that was on a scene of an incident that didn't know how to use their radio, or change the frequencies or tones. I have seen many times where people will get a new radio and someone in the club they are in will program it will several frequencies and all they will do is just turn the knob from one channel to the

Hello everybody and welcome back to Everything Ham Radio! In this episode we are talking about the  Automatic Packet Reporting System or APRS for short. Last week we talked about Packet. APRS is alike in some ways, but different in others. While you can not talk keyboard-to-keyboard on APRS, you can send short message. You can even send a short email using APRS, which we will talk about a little later. HISTORY Over the years since APRS came about, I have heard different stories about how it came into being. One video that I watched that someone put on at a ham radio convention somewhere, was very adamant that the P in APRS stands for and also has stood for Packet, not Position like he heard a lot of people saying. When I first learned about APRS, I was always told that the P stood for Position, and to me it made a lot of sense that that is what it stood for because the general purpose of it that I saw, or maybe the commonly used purpose of it, was for "asset tracking". By assets I mean things like, storm

Hey everybody and welcome back to the Everything Hamradio Podcast. This episode we talked about Project 25, the Mecklenburg Amateur Radio Society and some news about changes in the ARRL leadership and the massive snow storm in the northeast US. Below you will find the show notes for this episode. Project 25 Amateur Radio Club Spotlight Mecklenburg Amateur Radio Society  History Organized on March 25, 1949, started with 13 charter members, 12 hams 1 non ham, all SK as of 4/6/2013 Lots of club activities Public service, Parades, races, Skywarn, Charlotte Hamfest, Daily nets VE Testing – Quarterly scheduled testing Monthly Newsletters Contests  Repeaters 145.230 PL 118.8 – On Spencer Mountain, 1574′ above sea level 145.290 PL 118.8 – Uptown Charlotte, 1333′ above sea level 146.940 PL 118.8 – Orr Rd, NE Charlotte, 908′ above sea level – Main Repeater 224.400 PL 118.8 – Orr Rd, NE Charlotte, 908′ above sea level 444.600 PL 118.8 – Mecklenburg, Unk height Packet Radio 9 operational nodes includ

Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of the Everything Hamradio Podcast. This is episode 3 and today we are talking about the Yaesu System Fusion system. First off, what is Yaesu System Fusion? It is a Digital Communications System that works on both digital and analog voice communications It has automatic mode selection between Digital Voice, Digital Data, Digital Voice and Data and Analog FM It uses a narrower bandwidth at just 12.5 kHz Digital Voice Communications Clearer and crisper audio It is about the same range as Analog FM, but rather than gradually getting more noisy until you just noise, you are either there or you are not with digital It uses the full 12.5 kHz bandwidth Digital Only Can send and receive pictures, text message or files Uses a full 9600 baud to transfer data It uses the full 12.5 kHz bandwidth Voice and Digital Bandwidth is split between voice and data, 7.25 kHz each Voice audio not as clear, but still as good as Analog Group Monitor Function Up to 24 stations can be

Hello everybody and welcome to the first "normal" episode of the Everything Hamradio Podcast. In this episode we are talking about DStar DStar Some of the questions that we talk about in this episode are: What is DStar? What are the differences between Digital and Analog Pros Quality of Audio Other information beside just your voice being transmitted. You Call sign, location and possible other things go out every time you transmit as well. Can download all the repeaters in the US and put into your radio. Radio can find repeaters that are close to you Repeaters often connected to the internet Cons From the outside looking in, DStar seems to have a steep learning curve Analog radios can not talk on DStar repeaters DStar can easily cover a large area because you can link together multiple repeaters in the area over the internet or if installed over a 1.2 or 2.4 GHz link. Original cost of radios were high but has recently come down and is nearly in line with other radios. We talk about the different ra

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Everything Ham Radio Podcast! This is Episode #9, we have past the infamous 7th episode that is the normal stumbling step for podcast and we are one away from double digits! Over the past 8 episodes, we have been talking about all things digital, but this week are going to change gears and start a short series about emergency communications. In part one of this series, this episode, we will be talking about Emergency Training, in part two, Emergency Preparedness and in the last episode in this series we will be talking about Go-packs. Training is probably the most important part about emergency communications. Many years ago, I had heard that when a disaster happens, everything goes out the window. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Things appear to be extremely chaotic at the beginning of a disaster, and in some instances it is, especially if the people that are on the scene at first, decide not to use the NIMS system from the get go. Being a dispatcher now for n

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Everything Ham Radio Podcast. In the last episode we talked about Computers in your Shack. In this episode we are going to talk about another aspect of this topic, but we are going to be talking about the types of computers that have been dubbed Small Computers. By Small Computers, I am talking about things like a Raspberry Pi, an Aurdino and a Beagle Bone. Before we actually dive into these three, I first should point out that each of these can be setup to use as a computer in your shack or in your emergency Go Kit or SOTA operating setup. If you have a small 7" screen, a "small computer" and a wireless keyboard and mouse, you can use this for logging, or what have you while you are operating. This could be a cheap way of getting you a computer in your shack. Raspberry Pi First off, what exactly is a Raspberry PI? According to the Raspberry Pi website, when asked what a Raspberry Pi is, their answer was The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Everything Ham Radio Podcast! In today's episode we are going to be talking about different types of computers and their uses in your shack. In the world that we live in now, our lives are so intertwined with technology that it would only make sense that the amateur community would use computers in their shacks. Years ago, the hobby was more of just ragchew, two or more people talking, type hobby. Now, when I say that I mean it in the utmost respect, because those people that were talking, more than likely built their radios themselves instead of buying them from some dealer like we do now. So with the commercially available radios, comes more people into the hobby and different ideas and things to do. More people also means, more people working on projects that they then share with the rest of us. With the advent of computers, people found uses for them in the shack and now is an integral part of the setup of pretty much everyone's shack. Computer Uses In The Shack Log

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Everything Ham Radio Podcast! In this episode we are going to talk about Radio Direction Finding or the more fun term, Fox Hunting. Fox hunting is the fun to do in your spare time thing that we as amateur radio operators use to train our skills in the event that we have to use those skills to track a downed airplane or harmful interference. In Radio Direction Finding or RDF for short, there are many tools that you can use to increase your chances on finding what you are looking for. You can use a directional antenna, an attenuator, or even just your body to help you determine where the signal is coming from. Antennas Yagi Antennas For a yagi antenna you need a minimum of three elements. The driven element, the reflector and one or more directors. The direction of the directors is going to be the direction the signal is directed towards or being received the best from. Yagi antennas can be made from a bunch of different materials – things like aluminum or copper tubi

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Everything Ham Radio Podcast! In this episode we are going to Youth In Amateur Radio. In today's episode we have a special guest, for both the main topic of the episode but also during the Amateur Radio Club Spotlight. We talk with Douglas Maggs, KK4UHK, who is the student president of the Harvard Wireless Club. Links mentioned in this Episode: ETH006 – APRS Hamradio 360 Podcast MIT Radio Society Echolink KD2GTM – Vlog 9: Sexism in Amateur Radio?   More Than Safe Blog   My wife has started her very own blog describing our journey through the foster care system and things that happen to us and how we dealt with the situation. Some things may just be foster care related but some of the stuff can be used as just general parenting. If you are a parent or are interested in learning a little bit about the foster care system, please check out her blog at MoreThanSafe.com. If you like what you see, subscribe to her email list to get notifications on when she

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Everything Ham Radio Podcast! Over the past few episode, I have noticed something that I thought was pretty much dead. The last couple Amateur Radio Club Spotlights that I have done, I have noticed that they have an active packet radio network with their club. It really surprised me because when I got my license back in about 1995, packet radio was pretty big and there were things like Rosenet, Texnet and several other networks that had a big span to them. People had packet bulletin boards, and keyboard to keyboard chatting was fairly common. Suddenly, things just started dying, it seemed. Systems we not being maintained and going offline and the systems that I used quite a while just stopped working. Maybe it was just here locally that it died, I don't know. Then with APRS getting more and more popular, people were finding other uses for their TNC's and the BBS's and the digipeaters were being used for APRS. Since I have done the last couple episodes, it makes me wonde