AmateurRadio.com

In HamRadioNow Episode 178 (Radio Games, embedded below), my partner Jeff AC4ZO and I banter about the concept of “rebranding” ham radio contests to make them more attractive to young people. My suggestion is to call them Radio Games, an allusion to Video Games, of course, which attract young people like crazy.

About this point in this article, I’d be disappointed if a few of you readers didn’t go nonlinear, considering this idea to be:

1. fully baked, and
2. the end of Amateur Radio as we know it

So if you actually watch the show, you realize that the idea isn’t even half-baked. It hasn’t even hit the oven. It’s fodder for a TV show conversation (makes a good radio show if you just want to listen to it) listen to it

And you’ll notice we wander around the point so much that you may think we’ll never actually make it. But we do. Then it’s off to other stuff. Some of you will like it, some of you will hate it, and that’s show biz.

But while the idea is far from mature, I’m serious about it in some fashion.

I think there’s little argument that we need to attract many more young people to ham radio, people in their teens, twenties and thirties. And I think what what attracted us old farts (I’m 65, and in a couple weeks I’ll hit my 50th year of hamming) isn’t attracting young people today. Not many, anyway. Something about ham radio has to change.

I don’t know what that is. Nobody knows for sure, or we’d be doing it (and once again leading us all to the End of Amateur Radio As We Know It). But for sure it’s not One Thing. It’ll be a lot of things, some little and some big.

One of those things might be figuring out how to make ham radio interesting to some of the people who love video games. They’re mostly young. Many have an interest in technology. And if we got just a small fraction of them, we’re still talking about thousands, maybe tens of thousands. Our contests are a starting point. Just changing the name to (or adding the name) Radio Games isn’t going to fool anyone. But it seems to me that integrating the elements of radio that we know – the vagaries of propagation, the competition for contacts, the reality of having to make something work with your own hardware and skill – to the aspects of video games that they know, might be an interesting mix.

For me, this is just fodder for my TV show and a column here on AmateurRadio.com. I’m sure not going to be the one doing it. I’m not a contester beyond making a few random contacts now and then, and I’m not a gamer. Which just may mean I don’t know what I’m talking about, and that wouldn’t be front page news, either.

But it is something to think about, maybe to talk about. First-class video games are multi-hundred-million dollar epics. The biggest probably involve more money than all of ham radio worldwide. They blow Hollywood out of the water. But a Ham Radio themed game doesn’t have to be the biggest and best. I guess I’d just hope that if someone develops one, it isn’t lame. But everybody’s a critic, and no matter how good it is, someone will call it lame. So I’m not going to worry about it.

Here’s the show. The most perceptive (or maybe just cynical) among you will recognize this column as just an excuse to get people to watch the show. You’d be right. And… sorry about the distorted audio. I did figure out what was happening.*

73, Gary KN4AQ

*What was happening to the audio? Google’s Chrome browser was grabbing the Windows Record Level setting and cranking it up so it could hear me say “OK Google” to initiate a voice search. That happened ever time I opened a tab with Google’s search page in it (and that’s where new tabs defaulted, so if it happened a lot). Later, I found a setting to turn “OK Google” off, but not one to tell Google to leave my audio alone, period. If I initiate a Google Hangout,  Google grabs it again. Grrr.

I’ve been busy lately producing video of each talk at the ARRL/TAPR 2014 Digital Communications Conference, held in Austin TX this year in early September. There will be a total of about 24 of them when I’m done, and eight are online now, along with a few peripheral videos like operating mobile (HF, VHF, D-STAR) on the long drive home, and setting up a portable station at the beach (where I spent most of my time producing video instead of relaxing). So far you’ll get an update on stuff from FlexRadio (including new APIs for SmartSDR, the software that runs their new 6000 series); a rant from Bruce Perens K6BP on patents for the AMBE vocoder used by D-STAR and DMR; a couple talks on Digital Amateur Television (we don’t have to, but you’ll probably want to); a demonstration of bringing up three SDR receivers (where the problems are generally getting the Windows software and drivers to work); and updates on SDR products from Ettus Research and NWDigitalRadio.

Also on the way back, I was invited to stop by the North Carolina Mountain State Fair, where several clubs got together to stage a major ham radio demonstration tent. I’ll include that video here. For the rest, stop by HamRadioNow.tv and scroll down the list. I’ve added a link to a YouTube Playlist that has all the DCC videos I’ve done over the past several years.

Dig a little farther back for Episode 161, a supplement to my QST review of Yaesu’s FTM-400 and FT1DR System Fusion C4FM digital voice VHF/UHF radios.

73, Gary KN4AQ

ARISS to the MAX… a four part series

Have you ever participated in an ARISS contact? While they are common today (more than 30 so far this year, sometimes several in a single day), for any single school, club or ham, they are pretty rare. A Once-In-A-Lifetime experience is the phrase that keeps coming up.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been part of four of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences. So when the latest came up and I decided to do a HamRadioNow program about it, I wanted to do more than the typical video of the contact (plus maybe a quick interview and news story). I’m not deeply involved in ARISS, but I’ve learned a few things that don’t get discussed much. I wanted to get that story out, told by the people who lived it. My “Senior Executive Producer” Cliff Broughton W4FT and I drove down to Dixon Elementary School on April 21 to shoot the contact (giving it the full HamRadioNow three-camera video and top-notch audio treatment), and we grabbed a few quick interviews along with the rest of the media. That’s all in Part One.

And then we went back a week later to have a “panel discussion” with Betty Bigney, the STEM teacher who pulled it all together; Joey and Aubrey, two of Betty’s students who got to ask the questions; Frank Divinie W4UOR, President of the Onslow Amateur Radio Club and leader of the team of hams who made the contact happen; and Suzie Ulbrich and Janice Hopkins KJ4JPE, both Public Information Officers (Suzie for the Onslow County School System, and Janice for the ARRL NC Section covering coastal North Carolina). We got into this thing a lot deeper than you’ll hear in just about any video or news story about an ARISS contact. That’s Part Two and Three.

In Part Four, I dusted off some video from my vault that’s over 20 years old, and has never seen the light of YouTube. Before there was a Space Station (and ARISS), there was SAREX, the Shuttle Amateur Radio EXperiment that flew on many of the Space Shuttle flights. Like ARISS, there were some random contacts between astronauts on the Shuttle and hams on Earth, but the project was mostly for scheduled contacts with schools. The first was in late 1990, and they remained rare for several years. The one I was part of (as PIO for the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society) in 1992 may have been just the fifth SAREX contact ever (the list I saw on the ARRL web site doesn’t claim to be complete). I was a video editor for a small production company, so I assembled a volunteer crew to shoot the event (on VHS and Hi-8 video), and edited two videos using what’s now considered stone-age tools at my company. The first video is our “dry run” rehearsal, and the second covers the actual contact. That is, it covers the failed contact on day one, and the successful contact on day two.

So what did I learn?

For NASA, ARISS is very much a PR event. It’s not only a PR event – they do want to encourage STEM education and give schools and students a hand-on experience that will spur interest in space science. But they also want to get the word out. NASA doesn’t get a lot of publicity outside of disasters, scandals and funding issues. And while ARISS won’t bring them national headlines, it usually generates some great local publicity on TV, in the papers, and now online. There is a lot of competition for an ARISS contact, and a successful application hinges on being able to involve a lot more than one class of students. A whole school, and preferably a whole school system, needs to be engaged. And the school and the hams are encouraged to seek as much media attention as they can get.

So it’s a show, and NASA wants the show to go off well. Local hams are always involved, but ARISS provides mentors and sometimes equipment, so the local hams don’t have to reinvent the process every time. There are a lot of practice runs, for the hams and the students, including some full “dress rehearsals” with a ham simulating the astronaut as the students ask their questions over the air. You’ll see a little of that in Part One, and you’ll see the full (one and only) rehearsal from our 1992 event in Part Four.

Most ARISS events today involve about 10 to 20 students. They are usually selected by submitting the questions they’d like to ask, and perhaps by other criterion that’s not really specified (a reward for good scholarship?). Back in 1992, we didn’t have a good handle on the overhead pass time (in my voice-over, I speculated that the contact would last maybe 4 minutes – they are usually more like 10 minutes). So we selected only four students, and only one of those was chosen by a teacher. One was a ham already, and two were the children of hams in the club. Back then, SAREX was more ham-driven. The hams applied for the contact, and found a school to ride along. In Onslow County, teacher Betty Bigney applied (and was turned down twice before she was finally accepted… involvement and publicity were the key) and then she went hunting the local hams.

In 1992, we didn’t have a clue what the contact would be like. Each student was armed with two or three questions. When they used them up, they (and their parents) had to ad-lib. If you watch many ARISS contact videos, you’ll see some unique and unusual questions, but you’ll see many are variations of the same theme (medical emergencies and hygiene see to be popular topics).

In Part Two, I asked Aubrey and Joey what they studied in preparation for the contact. “We practiced the questions” was their ready answer. Betty Bigney supplied some more detail – they learned about the space station, orbits, etc. But “we practiced the questions” was a big deal. NASA wants the show to go well!

And it goes maybe a little too well. These days, the contact itself is very regimented. Students line up, and walk (or run) up to the mic to ask their quick question. As the astronaut is giving his quick answer, the next student is rushing up to the mic. The orbit dictates that there’s no time for a leisurely conversation, and involving a lot of students means no follow-up question or any real dialog. In fact, the astronaut has the list of questions in advance, so he or she can come up with quick replies.

All the students remember their question (it’s been drilled), but none of the students I asked had a clear memory of the answer they received. In this case, much of the reason was because Koichi’s voice was piped to the audience over the PA system, and the students on stage couldn’t hear him very well. Now I’m not saying that the students are just props in this play, but with all the attention to the performance, a little of that can creep in. Future ARISS contact participants might want to keep an eye on that.

I know that the discussion programs are a lot to digest. I’m pretty sure most of you will enjoy the contact (Part One), and the old SAREX contact (Part Four). I’d really like you to hear the kids at the top of Part Two. We hams don’t get to hear much about how we’re perceived by “the public,” especially the young public. You’ll hear some of that in this show.

73, Gary KN4AQ

I just put HamRadioNow episode 143 on-line. It’s mostly a conversation I had yesterday with… Joe Ham. OK, really Joe Hamm KC1BAQ. Joe’s sort of a new ham, sort of a young ham. He’s 35, and a boomerang, having been licensed in college, but letting it go when it didn’t really ignite a spark.

So now he’s back. He’s a EE, so what attracted this young engineer back to ham radio? And what will keep him?

Digital Solves All Your Problems? OK, I admit, that’s pure click-bait. In this episode I talk with Bruce Perens K6BP. Some of you may recognize that name, and maybe not have even known Bruce is a ham. Out there in the real world, Bruce is known for being one of the founders of the Open Source Software movement, and he remains an evangelist for the idea. Here in Ham Radio, he’s turned that focus to things like CODEC2, FreeDV, and the HT of the Future (put some mental reverb on that as you read it).

What we’re talking about begins with the ARRL’s FCC petition to update our rules regarding digital modes to get rid of the reference to Symbol Rate, and replace it with a simple 2.8 kHz bandwidth limit (on HF) into which you may stuff anything that’s legal… BUT, they retain the cw/data – Phone/Image distinction. I just spent a few quality minutes on Wikipedia trying (again) to understand symbol rate, and I don’t get it. But I do get bandwidth.

Our discussion progresses to more on CODEC2 (a free, open-source CODEC for high-quality, low bit-rate voice transmission), FreeDV (a free, open-source program for using CODEC2 on digital voice) and that HT (HT HT HT).

But it’s that 2.8 kHz bandwidth idea that’s got a lot of ham’s undies in a knot. The worry, as I understand it, is that with an “anything goes” 2.8 kHz digital policy, digital will proliferate across the bands, causing interference to analog modes (SSB, CW). And the analog ops won’t be able to tap the digital ops on their RF shoulder and say sri, OM, QRM, pse QSY, tnx. WinLink2000, a fairly wideband and often automated digital mail system, is frequently the focus of their displeasure, as it can tromp on a cw QSO without recognizing what it’s doing (if I understand the argument correctly, and I don’t claim that this is either a complete and correct analysis of the issue).

In the program, Bruce and I recognize the potential problem. We might not think it’s likely to be as serious as some hams think it is, and we don’t have a solution, other than to note that QRM is a fact of life. But it is something worth discussing, and I’d like to have that discussion soon on another episode of HamRadioNow. I’ve got a few suggestions on guests to talk to about it, but I’m open to more (be quick).

We think the ARRL is taking a baby step with this proposal, in that it retains what we think is an artificial distinction between bits that make text, and bits that make image and voice. But last time the ARRL tried anything like this, about 10 years ago with their “Regulation by Bandwidth” proposal (a far more sweeping plan that would have divided the bands into segments that permitted stuffing whatever fit into 200 Hz, 500 Hz, and 3 kHz bandwidths), a large part of the membership got very unhappy. They still are.

So expect the topic to come up in the near future, and periodically for a while, because this won’t have a quick fix. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to hold back progress on future modes because they may cause some trouble with our current modes.

73, Gary KN4AQ
HamRadioNow.tv

Last night I uploaded HamRadioNow Episode 138. I’m calling it MotoTRBOStar because it’s about a newly announced handheld radio that will claim some firsts: it’s the first “dual-digital” mode radio (D-STAR; and MOTOTRBO, or generically DMR – Digital Mobile Radio); and it’s the first non-ICOM off-the-shelf radio to do D-STAR.* The episode is an interview with the CEO of Connect Systems, Inc., Jerry Wanger (rhymes with Ranger). CSI (isn’t that a TV show?) has been selling analog, trunked and DMR digital handheld radios in the commercial service. Recently, Jerry learned that a lot of hams have latched onto his radios for use on the ham-band MOTOTRBO repeaters. The radios are quite inexpensive, and apparently pretty high quality.

Jerry had a novice license long ago, but never mastered the code to upgrade. Side note: back in the 60’s, a Novice license ran one year and couldn’t be renewed.  And Novices had voice privileges on only one band: two meters. So Novices who spent too much time on two-meter AM (there was almost no FM then) and didn’t get their code speed up to 13 wpm for a General could get a Tech, but then they were confined to VHF/UHF. Again, repeaters were just barely getting started and were mostly unknown, so Techs were in a kind of Purgatory. But it was a way to keep licensed. Evidently Jerry didn’t choose that route. But he’s about to get re-licensed now.

So Jerry appreciates ham radio, and decided to make a model radio (CS700) that was more “ham-friendly,” with features like DTMF and the ability to program frequencies and parameters directly from the keypad. Then he decided to add D-STAR. That model, the CS7000, is planned for Fall release. He’ll be at Dayton to show it off.

Jerry does the software and designs the hardware specs himself, and has the radios manufactured in China. As he says, he can buy the finished radios cheaper than he can buy the parts.

So that’s all in the interview. Now I’ll wax a bit philosophical on the topic.

I’ve been a ham since 1965, WN9NSO, in the Chicago suburbs. And while I did play on two meter AM with a Heathkit Twoer (to the displeasure of my mentors, who warned sternly about neglecting the code), I also spent enough time in the 40 and 15 meter Novice cw bands to wick the speed up and pass my General after just a few months. And while I have almost always had a presence on HF, I’ve felt more at home on VHF/UHF. I was introduced to FM almost immediately. I had a Motorola 30D base station in my shack, and 80D mobile in my Dad’s car by 1967 (these were ancient, all-tube radios. The 80D even had a Dynamotor to power the transmitter). There were only two or three repeaters on the air in Chicago at the time. I was too young (and never an engineer) to be much of a leader at the time, but I watched the FM boom from a front row seat.

Fast forward to the early 2000’s. I’m editor of the SERA Repeater Journal, the magazine published by the SouthEastern Repeater Association, the group that does frequency coordination for 8 states. I come across a reference to D-STAR, and while I didn’t think much about it at the time, I did ponder a digital future in my column. But D-STAR wasn’t one of those flights of fancy that came and went. With ICOM behind it, D-STAR grew beyond it’s original 1200 MHz system as ICOM added radios for 144 and 440 MHz. Meanwhile, I had moved from editing the magazine to producing ham radio video on DVD as ARVN:Amateur Radio//Video News. I bought ICOM’s first D-STAR dual-band mobile, the ID-800, and handheld, the IC-91, and soon after produced a documentary titled Digital Voice for Amateur Radio. The DVD also featured a segment on HF digital voice, and a little on APCO-25, another VHF/UHF digital mode being adapted from Public Safety radio to Amateur Radio. I’ve written a few articles and reviews in QST on D-STAR and ICOM radios. I’m not the foremost authority on it by any means – I consider myself a journalist (with a side of pundit these days), not an expert – but I’ve learned a lot. And ham radio doesn’t have many pure journalists. Everybody’s involved.

D-STAR was met by hams with sharply divided reaction (and more than a few yawns). A few embraced it immediately (best thing ever). A few more were rigidly opposed (End Of Amateur Radio As We Know It). Most, if they were even aware of it in the early years, were more wait-and-see. Not gonna sink a lot of money into a radio that might not go anywhere. All the D-STAR radios were good Analog radios, too, but they were a few hundred bucks more expensive, so while the radio wouldn’t be useless, it would have been a costly experiment.

Turns out D-STAR has hung around and grown fairly quickly. It’s in most major and medium metro areas, and even some rural areas, of the US and many countries around the world. But there’s still plenty of territory that has had analog FM for decades but no D-STAR at all yet. Any long road trip will quickly bear that out. You’ll drive a long way between “islands” of D-STAR coverage. It’s very much like FM was in 1970 – available mostly in the larger cities. I remember being excited when driving toward Denver way back then. A mountainside repeater on 146.94 broke my squelch about 100 miles out after hours and hours of radio silence.

D-STAR proponents, and even us “objective journalists” (OK, I’m not objective on this) point out how much technology is going digital (TV, cell phones, a fair amount of two-way business and Public Safety radio) while hams have barely moved the needle, except for the all-text modes. Yeah, we led the way with Packet Radio in the 80’s (a few did, anyway… not most of us). But for a group that likes to talk more than anything else, our voices have remained mostly analog, right up to today. Digital has some advantages (signal to noise, voice+data, and spectrum efficiency), but they haven’t been compelling enough yet to get wholesale adoption. Except for D-STAR, they mostly haven’t been built-in to radios. And on HF especially, we don’t know how we’d use them for some of the core activities like contests and DX.

As we gaze outside of our pasture to that real world that’s growing increasingly digital, there’s another issue to note. Digital doesn’t stand still very long. Upgrades happen fast, and sometimes older stuff becomes obsolete – even unusable – pretty quickly. Analog TV made it about 60 years. Vinyl records a little longer. CDs aren’t dead, but sales went to nearly zilch, after about 20 years. On the Internet, where software and apps can be easily upgraded or replaced, we’re talking a few years or even months. Remember “RealTV”? And you know that 70″ 1080p High-Def TV you just got. Obsloete. Here comes 4k. Then 8k. Broadcast TV stations are going nuts trying to figure out to squeeze that into their “Advanced” television system. **

I’m about to edit my next HamRadioNow that I recorded yesterday with Bruce Perens K6BP. Bruce is a serious open-source guy, so he never had a great love for D-STAR. Bear that in mind when he declares it obsolete. Objectively, things in ham radio move slower. Whenever there’s fixed hardware involved, upgrades can’t happen that fast – it costs too much. But D-STAR is 15 years old, and better technology is available. Yaesu claims their new C4FM “System Fusion” is “better.” Bruce disputes that, and I don’t have the background to determine it for myself. But I can say that if Yaesu is correct now, what can they say in 5 years (0r 5 months) when the next something better comes along?

Bruce is involved in a couple of projects. For HF, there’s FreeDV, and for VHF/UHF, it’s the “HT of the Future.” Both are based on the open-source CODEC2, which is still very much under development, and always will be, at least for the foreseeable future. Today, FreeDV is a sound-card mode that you can run much like PSK-31. Tomorrow, you might punch it up on the mode switch (Flex will probably be the first radio to have that option). FreeDV – and probably a lot of new modes – will be upgradable by downloading software. I won’t say it will never be obsolete, but it’s the kind of thing that will move us from being slow-moving dinosaurs tied to our fixed-technology hardware, into a more nimble future where we are not walled off from each other by incompatible modes. All this stuff is coming up in HamRadioNow Episode 139, as soon as I can stop typing here and get back to editing it (maybe tomorrow or Monday).

Ya know… I’ve never operated FreeDV or it’s predecessors (FDMDV, WinDRM) that I featured in Digital Voice for Amateur Radio. I don’t have a computer sitting next to my HF rig… at least not yet. All my computers are busy doing something else. But I’ll find one soon, and give it a try.

73, Gary KN4AQ

* Devices like the DVDongle are cool, but they’re not standalone radios. There are a few modules that you can use to turn an analog radio into a D-STAR radio using its 9600 packet port, but that’s not off-the-shelf. The NW Digital radio might lay claim to being the first non-ICOM commercial D-STAR capable radio if it reaches production before the CS-7000 does, and right now it’s a race. But while it will do D-STAR’s DV voice mode, it’s really designed as a multi-mode platform for medium-speed data, using D-STAR’s DD mode and many others. It will have exciting uses, but it’s not your grab-and-go handheld or mobile radio.

** My career has been in the audio/video production business, mostly making commercials. I quickly learned a lesson: never stick a label on anything that calls it “new.” And never call anything “final.” OK, sort of two lessons.

The “new” lesson came from a reel of alignment videotape that we used at a TV station I worked for. You had to run that through the old 2″ “Quad” videotape machines to align the heads before making a recording, so the reel got used several times a day. It started life as a 5-minute piece of tape, but every time you used it, you’d then rewind it and thread a piece of blank tape for recording onto the machine. That rewind was high-speed, and if you didn’t catch it fast enough, the end of the tape would flap like crazy, and get frayed. You had to cut the frayed piece off lest it get caught in the high-speed spinning video heads next time, clogging the hell out of them and maybe ruining a head assembly that cost tens of thousands of dollars to replace. The boss would be very angry.

When I started working at the station, that alignment reel had about 45 seconds of tape left on it, having had a half-inch of frayed end cut off many, many times. And the flange was grimey from all the hands that had loaded it on the machines over the years. But there beneath the grime, just barely readable in faded Sharpie, were the words that some engineer wrote just after he took that reel out of the box for the first time: Alignment Tape. 5 min. NEW.

Hi, AmateurRadio.com subscribers!

I’m Gary Pearce KN4AQ, and I produce videos for and about Amateur Radio at www.HamRadioNow.tv. I’ve just released Episode 137, with a pair of DXpedition talks from the Charlotte Hamfest: the 2013 Wake Atoll K9W operation, and last month’s FT5ZM Amsterdam Island mega-DXpedition. Maybe you worked these guys? Check out what’s behind the signals you heard.

Episode 136 (embedded above) is a talk I had with CQ Editor Rich Moseson W2VU on what’s happening up there. If you’re a CQ subscriber, you know it isn’t good. Print editions have been late, with the December issue being the last one most of us have received (January is “in the mail”). CQ-VHF, Popular Communications and WorldRadioOnline are being discontinued, with some of their content being absorbed in an expanded ONLINE ONLY section of the main CQ magazine called CQ-Plus. CQ will still be a print magazine, but only the online version will have the CQ-Plus content. These were painful but necessary steps to keep CQ afloat financially.

HamRadioNow is a tv show with sort of an identity crisis. Sometimes we’re a talk show, with interviews either on Skype or at hamfests. Sometimes we’re a “documentary unit” with field-produced programs about almost anything in ham radio. And sometimes we shoot forums and seminars, like the two DXpedition talks in Episode 137, and all of last years TAPR Digital Communications Conference.

We’re really a shoestring operation – just me and a few friends helping out. But even shoestrings cost money, so you’ll see me begging for contributions from viewers who like the show. Watch first, and if you like it, send a few bucks. In those 137 episodes are really about 170 programs (some of the episodes have two or more full-length programs that just seemed to go together). The programs are hosted on YouTube (www.Youtube.com/HamRadioNow) and Blip.tv (www.blip.tv/HamRadioNow). Blip used to port us to iTunes, but they just stopped, so we’re looking for a new route there. Until then, downloads are only by whatever software you can jeep to lift stuff from YouTube (against their wishes, but it’s fine with me). Our official web site is:

http://HamRadioNow.tv

We’ve been doing this for just over two years, so that’s more than one show a week. More to come, and we’ll try to announce each new one here on AmateurRadio.com.

73, Gary KN4AQ