Author Archive

YouTubers Hamfest 2020 is in the Books!

We had an incredible time with this new venture and I personally think it turned out really well. We’ve already begun talks about making this an annual event, although we won’t be doing it again in May. Likely we will plan something for this Fall or Winter.

The “first annual” YouTubers Hamfest playlist is below. This includes all episodes from every channel that participated. A special thanks to all the moderators of the audience who followed the streams around YouTube that day. Also a HUGE thank you to all of the vendors and presenters who were in one of the streams – we’re hoping to have an even larger line-up for next time!

YouTubers Hamfest Starts TOMORROW! May 23rd

Check the website below for links to the Largest, Online LIVESTREAM Hamfest ever attempted. All of the channels participating in this event are incredibly excited about pulling this off.

Join us at 18:00EDT for a Happy Hour Livestream with all of the YouTubers and lots of guests in the Live Chat.

A HUGE thanks to all of the Brands who will be guest speakers during the event, either Saturday or Sunday morning. Those include:
FlexRadio
AREDN
Ham Radio Deluxe
ARRL
YOTA
State Of the Hobby Survey with N8RMA
SDR Play
Packtenna
Bioenno Batteries
DX Commander
ICOM
Heil Sound
QuirkyQRP
MFJ
Chameleon Antennas
SteppIR
HobbyPCB
Gigaparts
Bridgecom Systems
Ham Radio Outlet
Yaesu

https://youtubershamfest.com

 

YouTubers Hamfest on May 16th, 2020!

This is going to be the first-ever, largest-ever, YouTube collaborative effort to support ALL Amateur Radio Vendors, personnel, promoters, subscribers and sustainers during the would-be weekend of Hamvention 2020.  Join us as we interview and promote all of the great people who make our hobby the best on Earth!  8am EST on Saturday May 16th – this is going to be a BLAST!

 

ARRL CEO Is Out! YouTubers Bunch #10

A while back, several other Ham Radio YouTubers and myself started these collaboration videos and the feedback we have received on them has been very positive.  Thanks to all in the Ham Community who support our efforts.

In this 10th episode of our Collaboration efforts, we talk about the most reent CEO of the ARRL, Howard Michel, WB2ITX, and how his term was so short-lived.  I hope you enjoy the episode, feel free to comment below.

HR2.0 – ARRL West Gulf Division Candidate Interviews 9/28/2019

I had the privilege of recording an interview meeting between the two candidates running for ARRL West Gulf Division Director, in Houston this past weekend.  We were able to livestream the event on Facebook, but the YouTube livestreaming ports were blocked at the meeting location.  However, I did also record the meeting to disk and was able to clean-up the audio a bit, and now the raw video footage has been posted to my YouTube channel.

For those in Texas and Oklahoma who are interested in your ARRL Leadership, please see the video below.  The session is 2-hours long, but some good questions were asked and answered, and I think both candidates gave a good idea of their vision for leadership inside of the League for the West Gulf Division.

Here are the website links for the candidates also:

N5AUS’ Election Page: https://votewestgulf.org
W5MJ’s Election Page: https://www.qrz.com/db/w5mj

 

Pearl Harbor Tribute from the USS Batfish – WW2SUB

This year, on December 7th for Pearl Harbor Day, I was flattered to be invited to the USS Batfish in Muskogee, OK for their annual “Pearl Harbor Tribute” Event.  The Muskogee War Memorial Park has a permanent Ham Radio Club that meets regularly at the location, and operates HF from their radio room, also from inside of the submarine itself.  For Pearl Harbor Day, they planned something special.

Several students from various areas attended the event and were able to operate the HF bands on both 20- and 40-meters.  Several classrooms in the area were also on-the-air for demonstration of HF propagation, Ham Radio operating practice and education.  The video below shows a special event with some of that operation.

Also recorded was Message Traffic from inside the USS Batfish using the callsign WW2OK, honoring the life of CPO James Booe, the Band Master aboard the USS Oklahoma killed on Dec 7th, 1941 during a Disabled American Veterans Naming Facility (in his honor) in Florida.  This was a special request from the group in Florida that honored us with the request.

We heard MANY MANY schools on the air discussing history with other ships that took the time to activate on this date.  Our youngest military licensed student sent a Traffic Message to Florida.  Each QSO with a student was unique and hopefully memorable.  From my listening vantage point, those QSOs between ships and school students were priceless and worth the effort by all those involved.

Dec 7th is a date that you can catch a ride on a boat or a ship and amateur radio is the ticket, and those ships always slow down to welcome students aboard.
From the entire team in Muskogee, Oklahoma, operating as WW2OK and WW2SUB, Best Wishes, 73 and Good DX!!!

 

Evaluating 9 of the Best Single Board Computers for Modern SDR Systems

This past August I had the privilege of attending and video-recording the TAPR Digital Communications Conference in Albuquerque, NM.  For several years past, this conference was recorded by Gary Pearce from HamRadioNow, but Gary has since retired from making Ham Radio videos (the series was handed off to David Goldenberg, W0DHG, who is doing a great job with new episodes).  In lieu of this fact, I spoke with Gary and with Steven Bible, the administrator of the DCC, and was permitted to take up the mantle of recording all of the forums and putting them on YouTube.

With this first forum, Scotty Cowling, WA2DFI, presents his findings for 9 of the best Single Board computers for modern SDR systems.  Among these boards are, of course, the Raspberry Pi, but several others are also discussed.  I thought this information was valuable and useful to those of us who want to do Amateur Radio projects.  This applies not only to SDR Receivers and Transceivers, but also for dozens of other projects in our hobby.

As Scotty states in the video, lots of time and research was put into this presentation because the information he gathered isn’t readily available in one place.  He spent quite a bit of time digging for the information about SBCs to present in this forum.

I hope that you enjoy watching this forum as much as I did.

 


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  • Matt W1MST, Managing Editor