Everyday Ham Podcast: Amateur Radio Conversations
Welcome to the Everyday Ham Podcast, where three friends dive into the world of amateur (ham) radio with a casual, lighthearted twist. (Visit www.everydayham.com)
From discussing what we're working on, current events, and lessons learned to sharing our gripes and off-topic banter, we bring a mix of fun, relatable conversations and radio expertise.
Whether you’re a seasoned operator or new to the hobby, join us for engaging chats that celebrate the quirks, challenges, and joys of being on the air.
Everyday Ham Podcast: Amateur Radio Conversations
Are We Losing Ham Radio Spectrum? 70cm Band Under Threat
Title: Ham Radio Spectrum Defense & The End of NOAA APT Era
Is amateur radio spectrum under siege? James (K8JKU), Jim (N8JRD), and Rory (W8KNX) tackle the controversial FCC experimental license granted to AST SpaceMobile that threatens our 70cm amateur band.
This episode covers the growing concern over spectrum encroachment, what the ARRL is doing to defend our frequencies, and why every ham needs to contact their representatives. We also discuss Jim's hands-on experience with the Flex 6400 ATU and bid farewell to the legendary NOAA-15 and NOAA-19 satellites.
Topics: Spectrum defense, FCC policy, emergency communications, amateur radio advocacy, satellite operations, and the importance of congressional outreach for protecting our hobby.
Visit EverydayHam.com for show notes and join our Discord community!
Short show intro audio clip
Short outro audio clip
The Everyday Ham Podcast is hosted by James Mills (K8JKU), Jim Davis (N8JRD), and Rory Locke (W8KNX) – three friends who dive into the world of amateur radio with a casual, lighthearted twist.
Follow us at: Website: https://www.everydayham.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everydayhampodcast/
All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Everyday Ham Podcast. This is Episode 8. I'm James K-A-J-K-U, joined here by Rory W8KNX and Jim N8JRD. But before we get formally started, I just want to remind you. You can find our videos, information about our show, our audio podcast, at everydayhamcom, so all the information is located there. We'd really appreciate appreciate, if this is your first time joining us to remember to hit the like and subscribe button if you're watching on YouTube, if you're listening in the audio podcast, whatever your platform is. A five-star rating or leaving a comment greatly helps us. So if you like what you're hearing, just be sure to like and subscribe and rate. So with that we'll turn it over to you, rory, what has been going on in your daily ham life these last few weeks.
Speaker 2:I'll also mention, when you go over to our website, take a look for our link to our Discord server. It's a slow channel. It's all just getting to a start, but we have a cool little community that's already formed there and people are already talking about their projects and the things that are going on in their ham world and the three of us are in there, as well as our friend, shane KFAPWN, who is also helping with some of the everyday ham stuff that you guys don't get to see, and certainly pop in the Discord and join the conversation. It's certainly, like I said, it's a small crowd there, but it's growing and we're enjoying talking and getting to know each and every one of you that take the time to pop in there.
Speaker 3:We just had Rodney join us from Texas AE5TX, and so, thanks to him, we like to usually welcome one of our new members here on the pod, so it's fun to meet some new folks as they pop in and introduce themselves and also just kind of see what they're doing in ham radio. So yeah, sorry, roger, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no problem, it's certainly. Post your photos, post your questions. It's just a good forum for some conversation. So what's going on in my ham world? It's been a pretty quiet week in the shack at home, a little bit of poda the last couple of weeks. I did have a first run with my buddy pole dipole system and I think there's a video on my excursion out to Mayberry State Park that will be dropping for that soon.
Speaker 1:I think, maybe in a couple of weeks. 14th, officially Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, so that was a good one. Jim and I went out and met out at Mayberry over here in Northville Township and we had a good time. It's a fun video to watch. I enjoyed watching it back and certainly learned a couple things, and I look forward to everybody's feedback on that one of everything we did wrong with all of the things, because we were certainly fuddling around quite a bit.
Speaker 3:Let's be clear we demonstrated that we are everyday hams. Right, we do not know, know it all. Sometimes we get out in the field and things don't go the way we expect I.
Speaker 2:I have no problem with that, so that's fine in in the shack, otherwise not much. Tomorrow a couple of us are getting ready to go and help out our our local ham radio club and do a little bit of quick work on our repeater at the at the water tower here in south lion. We have to do some fixes to the cellular network and the Wi-Fi network that we piggyback off of for our all-star network access and the repeater controller and all that. Our club's chief engineer, steve N8AR, the smartest 80-something-year-old you'll ever meet, he'll be out there to help us and we hope to have Steve on the show here with us sometime in the near future.
Speaker 2:I really would like to hear his history, and he's always got a story. I bet that one would go three hours, but that's about all I have going on here. What about you, jim?
Speaker 3:Well, I agree with you completely. I will say that if that call sign rings a bell and you're listening out there, you're wondering why do I know N8AR? That's because he sells the kits for hams the.
Speaker 3:Sherry nodes, and so if you're into the Sherry or All-Star nodes, it's highly likely that you've been exposed to one of Steve's products, and he does develop those here in Michigan and it's a sort of family-run business. So if you are in that market we do encourage you to go check those things out. He's a man that stands behind a product and he will make sure that you get that thing set up and running. And I found out last time he has quite a guarantee when I talked to you guys last time as far as that's concerned, a couple of new things in the shack which I think that I thought were further out than they actually were Classic. When we came back from Hamvention I said, boy, I'd like to put a Flex in my shack at some point, and why. A man gets impatient and a man buys a Flex.
Speaker 1:Why wait?
Speaker 3:Why wait? Just like a Snickers, I had to grab it. The Flex arrived on QRZ and I did end up buying a 6400 ATU, which I call the sort of entry level flex at this point, given the prices have fallen to the point where folks can kind of dabble and not feel like perhaps they're overspending. Now I'm not going to say it's cheap right, it still costs $1,500 to get it shipped, but for a used HF radio that does 100 watts and has a built-in tuner, I think it's pretty close in line, and so I did put that in the shack here recently and I have been experimenting a little bit with it. And I will tell you, it's sitting right next to the 101 MP and we are doing a little bit of A-B testing between the two of them, and there are some interesting things that have come from having two really nice radios sitting next to one another. Right, as soon as I put this thing in the shack.
Speaker 1:What a problem to have.
Speaker 3:Right, right, yeah, I'm living perhaps less everyday ham life here. I know, I know, sorry, there's a couple of good, nice radios. What I will say is, as soon as I bought it I made comment about it and I had a lot of folks that were hardcore Flex. Folks say no-transcript a few weeks with it. So far. I do appreciate some of the folks on the Flex Facebook, which I will give some credit here, who said, hey, brand new 6400, here's a few things you should know. Gave me some pointers on how to work the DSP to help me find a noise floor that's acceptable in this HOA ham environment that I operate in. So suffice it to say I think there's more coming on the Flex. But it's been really fun to have two of these radios sitting next to one another, really be able to kind of check them against one another and also perhaps make a somewhat believer out of Rory who said I don't know if I'm a Flex guy.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I'm a Flex fan. As always, jim was welcoming and opened his shack for me to come over and press all the buttons. Let's me sit in the big chair where you see him sitting there right now. All the virtual buttons Kick Bentley and Cash out of the room and let me play the radio, and I very much appreciate that, since Jim tends to have more new toys than I do in my everyday ham shack.
Speaker 2:If anyone remembers, I think we've spoken about the Flex and my big thing about the Flex has always been I need a radio, I need buttons, I need dials. Well, the Flex has its maestro control unit. That can be a thing Jim does not have, that I've never had my hands on one. Perhaps someday I will, maybe I won't, we'll see. But the Flex experience basically, I sat down completely blind, never having used the interface, sat down at Jim's chair there and just started using the radio. My big thing was I need a radio, I need dials, I need all the switches right in front of me in order to be comfortable with the radio. I was pleasantly surprised that, after maybe 10 or 15 minutes of fuddling around with the screen, what's it called the Smart SDR? Is that what it's?
Speaker 3:called Smart SDR is the application. The application.
Speaker 2:I was basically able to use it just like I would any other radio and I didn't hate it. Whether or not I would have a Flex in my shack it's very unlikely that I would have a Flex in this shack, but it opened my opinion to if I were to want to set up a remote station, which is something that I as, being an extremely controlled HOA in a condominium that is something I do have on the plan somewhere is potentially have a remote station somewhere. The Flex might find a spot in that. Again, I don't have enough time with it to say that for sure, but it did open up my eyes to understand. Maybe I don't hate this interface. Maybe it's not that bad of a radio to use. Jim was also kind enough to share the login credentials for the remote login to it and I think I've used it three times now, once that he knows about and twice that I don't think he knows about.
Speaker 1:One time was 2.30 in the morning and I wondered if I still have to get in there to try it out One time.
Speaker 2:I didn't know if I would start making noise in the house, but I figured it.
Speaker 1:Or go on 40 meters and start flipping the lights and faucets that are touched.
Speaker 2:I wondered if I would do, but I've logged in a handful of times, and the experience remotely was good too. It's the exact same experience as if you're sitting in front of it. A little bit of latency, that may or may not be my internet here or Jim's internet there, but certainly fully functional. So it's making me a believer. I look forward to following the Flex saga with Jim, and we'll see. You never know what will show up in the shack of mine.
Speaker 3:But you had the people that told you it's just another Windows box, it's not a real radio. And then you had the people that were obviously hardcore believers, that really thought it was a revolutionary product. So I think when you do deliver your review, I'll be willing to put some money out to do that test, just to find out whether or not it's going to change my mind. Because I have been pleasantly surprised in certain scenarios where I bought a product that I didn't think maybe I was going to love and it ended up being something that was one of my favorite things that I had bought in that particular class of product, right. So Flex is kind of in that band of space where I wasn't sure if I was going to be a believer or not.
Speaker 1:But I had to try it because it just had some unique functionality, especially, like Rory said, the remote capability, and we've talked about the Aurora being an attractive piece of hardware with the 500 watts and everything that goes with a Flex. So again, if this is the entry-level Flex, I'm curious.
Speaker 3:100%, yeah, this is it was at the price point now, right, perhaps the only thing cheaper that you'll find on the market is a used 6300. That would be very close in price. So around the $1,500 market appears is where these 6000 series flexes have landed, after the A Aurora announcement and B the 8000 series coming out. So it was a prime time to get my hands on it and have had a lot of fun with it. I will tell you that I have made a number of contacts on it. I've gotten great audio results, um, and feedback from folks that have heard me talking on it, so it clearly works. Right, it's a 100 watt rig that works and and I had no doubt, no doubts about it, right, flex has been around a long time, but I will tell you there are it. It is a very divisive uh sort of uh crew when it comes to flex, right?
Speaker 1:people that love it. They have a very polarizing yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3:Polarizing is exactly the right term. There's there are people that love it and there are people that just can't get over the idea of flex. They just don't love, they don't love it. And we had some of those folks in the club when I said, hey, I bought a Flex, I'm going to be testing it out, and there was some of that kind of feedback that I got, where they were like oh gosh okay.
Speaker 1:The only other brand that maybe has some polarization is Elecraft, but it's more of a. Everyone agrees it's a decent product or a really good product, but then the price point and the a la carte of the options. But Flex, they really drive a polarizing audience.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yep, so I will, I think, spend another month with it before we really develop some thoughts on it. I will tell you the one thing. Like I said, is if we're putting 101 MP and Flex on my desk today and I have to pick one, the 101 MP still wins.
Speaker 3:And it's because it can control the noise in a more effective way. For me and I'm not saying that's for everybody If you live out in the middle of Texas with nobody around you and no noise and you have a great antenna, flex probably does a hell of a job for you, right? So that's where I'm at, right now.
Speaker 1:So those that don't know, jim also will sell his children ie radios, for he'll swap them out and change in some. So what radio did you sell for the flex? Do you remember? So this?
Speaker 3:one was originally the. I built a desk riser and we we talked about this. I I kind of did a rebuild of the desk around the time that the 101 mp showed up and I built it with space for the flex, because I always figured that was going to land there eventually, right? So I had it all reserved for flex perfectly measured to fit the flex right next to the one I wanted.
Speaker 2:And it fits just like that too, it does. It's a glove, it's a perfect fit.
Speaker 3:But what I will tell you is I didn't actually move a major radio for this one. I kind of moved a bunch of little stuff. I moved a number of my handhelds which I had been sort of amassing You're real children though. Yes, yeah, you do love handhelds. So we've talked about, yeah, the love for HTs, but I've gone and I completely think, if Baofeng is where you need to start, get a Baofeng man. You've been refining your collection to your personal taste, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3:So I did end up getting rid of a lot of that less expensive stuff and I just said you know we're going to filter down the collection a little bit there. And it made space and it also added up a couple bucks that we could put the Flex on the desk and give it a real test.
Speaker 3:So that's what's new in the shack. I think we're going to talk more about Flex in a little while, but it's exciting to have one here and the nice thing is now you guys can get your paws on it whenever you want. 3 o'clock in the morning, perhaps. See if you can turn my faucet on and make a contact across the United States I'm probably.
Speaker 2:I know you have some travel coming up to where you're not going to be home and wanting to use it. You know I don't want to get in your way by logging into the thing while you're trying to use it, so that's one of the things. I've kind of not done it too often. But I know you've got some travel coming. I probably will spend a little bit more time with it, get to understand the interface a bit more and by the time we're ready to talk Flex for real, I might have a little bit more to say about it for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been really curious to try the remote software. I just haven't had a chance since you shared it, so I need to also get in there and do it, and maybe you know news to share we have officially booked our trip to Hamcation in Orlando this February, so while we're putting, we can also flex this evening yeah, that was an exciting time, rory. Rory was right, we should have been recording that for its own episode of us trying to book flights on spirit, uh, but that's uh maybe we're all true.
Speaker 2:We're all true, detroiters, we, we probably goes back for me anyway to the northwest days flying out of dtw. I am a very loyal customer and of course there's no reason to be loyal to an airline. We could go on and on about that. But Jim, over there in frugal land, budget land I don't know what land Got to leave room for flex spending.
Speaker 2:Jeez, and I guess that's why I don't have a flex is I don't fly Spirit. Well, we're flying Spirit to Orlando. We're doing it. The price was right. My price cost me $50 more than the other two, for reasons unknown, it kept kicking you out. It kept kicking me out the son of a bitch. I'll tell you we never had it was flight roulette.
Speaker 2:I wish we were recording it because there was probably a show. It was a side of my personality that these guys have not gotten to experience yet. Well, I'm very convinced they were doing it on purpose.
Speaker 1:It was like after 30 seconds or a random interval, you get kicked out and you have to go back to the very, very beginning. There's no save or you know you pass, go and collect $200. It's literally right back to the beginning and then you frantically try to book again. So if anyone with a spirit's listening, that's maybe something to look at.
Speaker 3:But that's a different story. Also, if anybody is planning on meeting us at a specific time on Friday, don't cross your fingers. Maybe do cross your fingers for us, because we are Flying Spirits, so we will be at.
Speaker 2:Orlando Hamcation when we show up, yeah, yeah, some point in the day If anyone's going to be down there and you want to catch us for a beer. I'm sure that can work out. We're looking forward to it. Beer or poda? I guess yeah, beer or poda. We will definitely be getting at least one poda activation to light up Florida on the map for all of us. I think I don't have a Florida activation.
Speaker 3:This will be my first Florida for poda.
Speaker 2:Okay cool. So that makes it for all of us. Yeah, certainly looking forward to it. I joke about the Spirit. It'll be. You know that Spirit Airlines, it'll be fine. You know it makes sense to go with a flight that's half the price of something else for a flight like that.
Speaker 1:For a two-hour flight to Florida. Right, right, it's going to be horrible when we get off in this warm weather in February versus the Michigan weather, you know what, though Feel bad for us.
Speaker 2:I've done a number of quickie February trips to Florida. It's such a great thing to do when you're in the dead of winter Michigan, to get out of here for just a minute and then you really only have a little bit of winter left.
Speaker 1:A real hamcation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:So maybe a couple of quick updates from my side before we move into one of our main topics. Special thanks, by the way, to Ray Novak, n9ja, who joined us for a special episode. I do apologize so I have good internet today, but when we were recording my internet was not the world's greatest. It failed to upload some of the audio tracks, so there are parts where it dumps the audio track. I apologize, that's not Ray's fault, that's my fault. Also, ray was live from an air show, so you do hear some jet noises, as you would expect to hear, but Ray gave us a lot of his time. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:About an hour and a half of personal stories with Ray who, for those who don't know Ray, he works for ICOM North America. Awesome dude, really friendly and, honestly, some of the best ham stories you could ever ever find. So if you're interested, the episode is up on YouTube. It's also posted on our audio podcast platform, so be sure to check that out. Other update I have relates to those that know. I'm one of the organizers for a Michigan POTA meetup that we do every year in June. So we will have our meetup June 6th at Hartwick Pines State Park in Michigan. So that's up near the Grayling. So for those watching on YouTube, let me get out my Michigan map hand.
Speaker 3:That's going to be awkward, but for those not in Michigan, it's shaped like a mitten.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's in the Get out my mitten here and it's about in the middle of the state, northern portion, near Houghton Lake. A lot of really beautiful areas. It's an old growth pine forest state park. It's beautiful, one of probably the best in the state, if not the country. So if you're interested in attending, mark your calendars. I think camping reservations will open November sometime it's about six months before, if I believe so.
Speaker 3:And this will be the third annual Michigan POTA meetup.
Speaker 1:Yep. So last year we had a lot of campers. We had about 80 plus attendees that showed up. Yeah, it was a great, great event, Really awesome to meet other POTA enthusiasts or just share your ham knowledge. So again, if you're in the area and you're interested, be sure to stop by and check it out.
Speaker 2:I'm looking forward to it. I don't have the. I've never been to that park for as many up north trips I've taken as a kid and as an adult I've never been in that park.
Speaker 1:Me neither. I've driven by it a thousand times. It also has a chapter too.
Speaker 3:It does. Indeed, as a person that went to Gaylord School System, it was a required field trip for the young kids to go to.
Speaker 1:Hartwick Pines. So Jim has lived Hartwick Pines.
Speaker 3:I actually joined the school system too late so I didn't go, but my brother did go on the requisite Hartwick Pines field trip. It's a really cool park, though, and it will be an excellent spot to camp. Middle Michigan at that time will likely be nice and temperate, so it should be a really good outing. So looking forward to it, James, and thanks for all the stuff that you guys are doing on that to get it set up.
Speaker 1:So if you're looking for more information on it, it's michiganpodameetupcom. Hopefully by the time this episode posts, the website will be updated to reflect the information for Hartwick Pines. If not, just give it a little bit of time, it'll be up there in the next couple days, absolutely so. With that, why don't we go into our first main topic? So we want to put this in some context. The focus of this is really around our spectrum defense and, as hams are we worried about some of the news we're hearing related to frequency allocation and also maybe the intrusion on our frequencies from corporate entities. So the first piece we get, just to give a little bit of background. Recently the FCC granted an experimental license to a Texas-based company called AST SpaceMobile. For those that aren't familiar, they are another company similar to SpaceX that does low Earth orbit satellites that you kind of see around. Internet is a common frequency use, but also this one is actually used for cellular connectivity. So if you don't know, also SpaceX has now a license agreement with T-Mobile, so when your cell phone is out of coverage you can connect to a satellite and use satellite phone calls on your normal device. So SpaceMobile has a contract with AT&T and Verizon, so two major players in the US market, and the license for AST, spacemobile directly, is on top of the 70 centimeter spectrum. So it is in an area where it definitely could interfere, especially if you're not in the US where the 70 centimeter spectrum is a lot smaller.
Speaker 1:A lot of the European countries are protesting the FCC and granting this experimental license because they are concerned that it will have harmful interference with HAMS on those bands or on that band, I should say Also the application. So you see ARL posting and other European entities and hams giving feedback to the FCC and obviously they're really concerned that they feel the application is very vague and they're concerned again about the harmful interference that it can cause. So the FCC has assigned a temporary call sign to Whiskey, papa 2 X-Ray, romeo X-Ray and that expires July 1st 2027, and that is held by that SpaceMobile AST. Now the other bit of news we've seen so again looking at the context of our spectrum defense is the FCC's ability to spectrum auctions. That expired some time ago up until recently when a new law was signed by President Trump on July 4th restoring the commission's ability to have auction authority. So the only thing that the FCC has said that they're looking to auction off. At this point is unused what's called AWS3 microwave band, which is some already allocated to FUG. However, you are worried now that the FCC has granted this temporary license to SpaceMobile.
Speaker 1:This administration is obviously very pro-business. That's currently in the office. Are we concerned that our ham spectrum is under attack? Do we see that there is? Do we feel that we have the right people, let's say the ARL for example, in place to sort of help defend that spectrum?
Speaker 3:And I kind of open it up to the group here yeah, so it looks like AWS 3, which is the initial thing that they're targeting for sale, is 1.6, well, 1.7 gigahertz to essentially 2.2 gigahertz of of band space and there's about three sections of that that appear to be a part of this.
Speaker 3:So, very interesting, and obviously not many of us are set up with microwave capability or a small, I would say, gigahertz capability. I won't call it microwave, but we're not set up with that capability here as hams. But as we talk about this more right, it's the slippery slope theory which always comes up was, if you start someplace where you're not set up with that capability here as hams. But as we talk about this more right, it's the slippery slope theory which always comes up which, if you start someplace where you're not going to draw much attention and you establish yourself as able to do a thing, do you then allow that person then to feel empowered to do that person, that organization, to then feel empowered to make decisions that then do become more and more detrimental or affect larger groups of folks like hams? Right, and and the, the space that we're talking about right now is 430 to 440 megahertz, which would be part of the ast space mobile temporary testing license, if I understand this correctly, right, james?
Speaker 3:so so what we have here is is is a small slice of our ham space and already a small part of a band right. We have in the United States 430 to basically 450 megahertz. We technically have 420 to 450, right, right. We have to observe the additional rules from the 420 to 430 megahertz part of that rules from the 420 to 430 megahertz, part of that.
Speaker 2:So you can look at that and say there's not a lot of space they want. But for those of us that are affected by Line A, which takes out 420 to 430, there's parts of the United States that have 420 to 430 at their disposal. They can use it just like we do everywhere else. But those of us up here in Michigan and along the Northern border, line a, we we don't get four 20 to four 30. So now they want.
Speaker 2:You know there's the potential of losing four 30 to four 40 or having having to share it nicely perhaps, depending how you word it. Well, what's goes on in that? Four, four 30 to four 40. People might say, oh, that's not a big deal. All our repeater outputs are between 440 and 450. Well, there's a lot of stuff going on in the 430s. There's a lot of satellite activity in the 430s. People who run sideband do it in the 430s. Most of us that are running hotspots in our house for DSTAR, AllSTAR, MMDVM are in the 430s. So there's a lot going on in the 430s. Even though it may not seem like a big use, it's something that would affect us all in some way, if if they chose to share that in a way, that's not great for ham radio no, and I do have concern too, because we didn't even mention this yet.
Speaker 1:There was a few months ago also discussion with the FCC about auctioning off some bandwidth or frequency spectrum for the fast day trader. So they use radio wave communication to broadcast from city to city to basically to do more real time or more expedient day trading or stock trading exchanges, and that was also being very considered, and they have a lot of money to throw against that in terms of lobbying as well. I'm also sharing on the screen, for those that are watching, the ARL filed comments to protect the 70 centimeter amateur band. You can obviously go up there in the ARLorg and you can find and read this whole article as well if you're interested in learning a little bit more.
Speaker 3:I think that, again, James asked the question right out of the gate, which is to say, us as amateurs. Right, who is lobbying for the interest of the amateur? And first and foremost it's us that are licensed. Right, we do need to be actively commenting, sending responses to the FCC when there are open opportunities for comment, and we need to speak for ourselves. But James asked a fair question, which is to say, are we getting enough from our largest lobby, which is the ARRL?
Speaker 3:At this point, I don't think that anybody would argue any differently when it comes to amateur radio, and it's good to see that they put a comment in on this. But we were wondering you know, maybe comment below if you're listening here what are your thoughts? Right, what else should the ARL be doing and what should we be trying to do so that we don't lose what little band space is left for us here on the 70 centimeter segment, right, and I think that's really important when we look at this. Rory, the line C thing didn't even I'm sorry, the line A thing didn't even pop into my head.
Speaker 3:And I'm in Michigan, but it didn't even pop into my head until you said it. And it's even more interesting now to me because we already don't have access to those 10 megahertz. So you cut another 10 out because it might be used for this very likely, very widely deployed commercial solution. And that starts to make me wonder, right, if with enough money it can be bought, and that door, if it's open already with the AWS 3.0 space or whatever there. Is that where we're headed?
Speaker 2:I don't know, it's very I use the line I think the ARRL needs. I mean they're good at we were kind of talking about this earlier in our show prep. The ARRL seems to be doing well with writing comments and placing comments and writing these articles that we see, but are they really actually going and banging on the doors and getting political with this? And again, we're not wanting to take this down a political path because that's just not the way we want to go, but we certainly want to advocate for ourselves and advocate for the spectrum that we all use. And it's that same thing Once you give it away, like you guys said moments ago, once you give it away or you start slipping a few pennies, a few megahertz out the door to do this or that.
Speaker 2:Once it's gone, you don't get it back.
Speaker 1:My biggest fear, too, is we put a lot of pressure on the ARL to go do something, but I do really feel it's a David versus Goliath situation a little bit as well. 100%, I mean. You look at these companies that have this big revenue AT&T, Verizon. I mean ARL is a volunteer nonprofit organization. We all have our opinions on the ARL, but their money is still limited. I really do, Jim, hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 1:I think HAMS, regardless of your ARL affiliation or opinions, really is the best tool to use and I think, yeah, call the FCC or write letters and submit to their applications or their requests for feedback, but also call your senators, call your congressmen, congresswomen, and also give the feedback there. You know, emails, phone calls, whatever it can be. I think radio does play an important role in things like emergency communication, technical development, training. It's a good proving ground for a lot of development in terms of developing your technical expertise or testing new things or learning how to experiment, and it's you know, there's a lot of benefits that we need to protect in this hobby and I think that is one of the paths that I worry. Even if you put the ITU, the Great Britain Amateur Radio Society, the ARL together, it's still small compared to some of that lobbying power that those other entities have, and that's really my real concern.
Speaker 3:You nailed it on the head, james. It is 100% when it boils down to it funds to make a thing happen, right, and we all know that with enough money most things can be made to happen. And that's what is going to be essentially. The ham's uphill battle in this particular argument is to say at what point are we not able to demonstrate with funds that we are interested?
Speaker 3:But, simply put, this is part of the amateur radio hobby and there are many other intangible things that come from the amateur radio hobby that I think a lot of folks benefit from. Right, it's not just amateurs that benefit from this. And let's zoom out a little bit here. Right Over the weekend, as amateurs, we were out checking the storm sirens here in our county to make sure that they were functional, and we were using our amateur privileges to make sure that we could check in with the net control and let the emergency services folks know whether or not those things were functioning. And those are the types of things that I don't think folks understand happen as a sidebar to us in the hobby. Right, we are using our privileges to help many facets of everyday operation around your town probably.
Speaker 1:And a lot of the feedback there will be. So what? Just pick up your cell phone and use that. And I look at it from two avenues right. One, if some of these sirens are in remote locations for a good reason, so self-service isn't always possible, especially if we look at some of the rural Michigan areas. And two, if it really is a real emergency, and I know a lot of hams have their opinion on is ham radio a real emergency prepper situation or useful in an emergency situation, whatever? But if it is a real emergency situation it's a good test. The amateur radio will always get out. You pick up the mic, you hit the button, it will go as long as you got power.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it goes someplace. So it really is a good practice as well for all of us, if there's an emergency situation, to provide support and practice communication also on a temporary basis. So I think also the argument of we'll just pick up the cell phone and call, sure, I mean some users have used. Echo Link also to call in to the net as well. But you're right, it's one tool in the toolkit.
Speaker 3:That's one tool in your toolkit and I think that a well-prepared prepper has numerous redundancies. When we talk about this and in communication, we have redundancies. In our food stores, we have redundancies.
Speaker 1:In our ability to generate heat and cover ourselves, to protect ourselves from the elements.
Speaker 3:We have redundancies right, and so when I look at that it is simple to say well, your cell phone is working now, but what if it isn't right, which happens Periodically. There are outages had a Starlink outage last week and folks had said, well, shoot, what am I bothering with? What am I bothering with any other method? I'll just get Starlink and I'll have internet wherever I go right? Well, that was true, and they did actually have very impressive service level agreements and all that in place, but it failed and it went down completely for a fairly significant part of a day. So I mean, it's very interesting to me that when we look at this right, let's keep in mind that there are some big benefits that we have here and things that we offer as hams, and I don't think we should sell ourselves short. That's basically the simple part of it.
Speaker 2:I think the value that comes behind the people that are amateur radio operators, that because we're allowed this very healthy spectrum that we can use for for a lot of different causes, different frequencies, for different needs, but the value you get by allotting that spectrum to people okay, sure, you could pick up a phone and call the County and let them know the siren worked or didn't work.
Speaker 2:But when you're allowing the spectrum you suddenly get, you know, in the United States 747,000 people that are licensed amateur radio operators that are likely going to be willing to go and help their community, help with a siren test, help with things as simple as a point of distribution. You might get these people who are able to, you know, using their. That might not be a radio-based event, but you're going to get these people that are community-minded because of ham radio that are willing to help. And when you get volunteers like that, it becomes a value multiplier to all of our public services. There you go. It's very important. It's almost not just a spectrum thing you could talk about that too but it's giving a group of people who have a lot of goodwill a place to practice their hobby and do all the things that come with it, including public service.
Speaker 1:Not to mention ham radio is fun and I don't want to lose spectrum because I enjoy having it and I wanted to use for my hobby. So I'm going to be a little selfish there as well.
Speaker 3:Well, the 430 to 440 megahertz is not a repeater space generally, right, that's more of a space where a lot of experimentation happens, a lot of interesting employment of ham radio technology happens for the purposes of trying new things right, If you have an MMDVM node on your desk, you're probably running it somewhere in that spectrum. Right, If you have a Sherry node on your desk, you're probably running it there. If you're experimenting with low power point-to-point network things for the purposes of monitoring, like temperatures or any number of things, right, You're probably using a part of your spectrum space there for that type of thing. Be using a part of your spectrum space there for that type of thing. So it's an experimental space and we need to keep that in mind.
Speaker 3:And one thing that really I think, as you guys were talking more, it made me think right, it's easy to simplify something when we're arguing well, business has this much upside right, and it's a very big number. It's a big number that we can't none of us can fathom because we're not AT&T or whomever else is going to benefit from it. But the easy thing to say is well, without that big number, these guys are just sending CW and contesting and rag-chewing, and it's easy to make this anti-argument that the amateur space is not important because right, because right and I think that that is where, if you're asking me, what can the ARL do more of, it's to highlight, emphasize those things that do show value to non-hams. Right, Absolutely Show that value to non-hams in a better way than when I read through this particular comment. This comment, it talks about semantics of the words and whether or not this is a precedented move, and that's fine. That's part of that comment.
Speaker 1:But in this comment there needs to be other expanding thoughts that argue that it isn't just the money, right, there are other things that we gain by having these folks with access to this space which, regardless of the reason ARL should always be doing that, I feel Always be on the horn, basically trumpeting the value of ham radio regardless of the situation.
Speaker 3:But it's like I said. It's easy to say like well, it's just contesting and it's just a rag.
Speaker 1:They're just talking to people in Miami.
Speaker 3:Oversimplifications are it's really easy to bundle that all up and say, well, that's just ham radio, right, and that we know, because we're exposed to it every day and see the breadth of the hobby, what it can do. But folks outside of it don't understand that. And I think that that's perhaps where I would argue. The ARL perhaps has more responsibility there to make those non-hams more aware, and that might be something that we could say we would like to see more of.
Speaker 1:I think they're trying Well, and that the hobby is alive and well. I really do believe the hobby is alive and well because you do get the people If I try to explain to people at work, well, what do you do? Hey, I'm radio. And at first people were like wait, that's still a thing that people do in this world and they would laugh at me like you're a nerd. But now what's funny is, well, you are a nerd.
Speaker 1:But funny now is people come to me and tell me stories about, like, oh, I was talking to my neighbor and they thought they had a ghost. Actually it's kind of why it's funny about the Rory logging into your flex in the middle of the night. They thought they had a ghost because they moved into a new condo and their faucets and their lights kept going on at like three in the morning. And it turns out they went down and talked to their neighbor about how their house is haunted, no-transcript technical development and other skill sets as well I want to say one last thing, and then I think rory's got a thought here, because I can see it on his face yeah, we keep cutting rory off.
Speaker 3:We're sorry, bud or if you listen to the ham radio news line, which happens, uh, once a week, right, and there's a couple of interesting articles, right. They talked to tsunamis this week and how folks were ready if a tsunami were to hit so that they could be first responders, that type of thing. That's not what I'm thinking about, but what we did here was this past field day and I know we were critical of field day for some reasons perhaps was one of the most well attended ever. I think it was the most well attended ever was one of the most well-attended ever. I think it was the most well-attended ever. So it should go to show you right there that there are folks that are operating in the hobby and it is not dying by any means. We have new hams joining this club here in South Lyon every week. We have new hams that we hear on the air that we're shepherding along as technicians. There is a serious interest right now and that's why this podcast started right.
Speaker 2:Generally speaking, all three of us are basically new hams again.
Speaker 1:We're reborn absolutely yeah, I'm actually a first time I'm literally the new ham here so there you go.
Speaker 3:That's my argument. Rory, go ahead, take this one away a couple things.
Speaker 2:yes, I, I think you're. You're right there what you just said about the club, our club, our local club, and the trends and clubs in the area. There seems to be more new hams joining and getting involved now than I recall from my earlier time being active in the hobby. I don't recall seeing the interest that we see on a monthly basis from new people. I mean, we hear from people on our repeater and in our club on a monthly basis that we've not heard the month before. And you know you might say, oh, that's just one person here, one person there. You happen to get two in this month. But you know, after 12 months go by, that's 12 people or 20 people that suddenly are very interested in the hobby and then suddenly it spreads from there. Their families are interested, their wives are noticing the antennas.
Speaker 1:on top of things, my kids don't make fun of me.
Speaker 2:Well, you'll have that all the time, but that's fine. But I think someone did make a good comment about the ARRL. They'll abdicate to a certain point, but we do need to abdicate for ourselves. And I think some people kind of don't understand that writing Congress and calling Congress, calling your representative, calling your senator, people say, oh, that phone call just goes into a circular file, or that letter just goes into a circular file. That's not true and I'll tell a story.
Speaker 2:As I've told before, as I've mentioned on here and elsewhere, I'm a member of Civil Air Patrol. Civil Air Patrol gets money from Congress every year and every year CAP members get all dressed up in our weird Civil Air Patrol uniforms and we go knock on the doors of our senators and congresspeople and remind them why they should continue helping to fund Civil Air Patrol patrol. Well, what happens with that is they start seeing these people all the time. Every year come through, every February, they come through through DC. Then magically, their staff and their people suddenly remember. They may not know what CAP is, they see these weird people show up, but they know something about it and it has their attention.
Speaker 2:So I think we can all work collectively to help keep amateur radio and the spectrum on the minds of our congresspeople and send a letter, make a phone call. Like I said, you might feel like it goes into a circular file, but I'll tell you my experience with CAP on the Hill. It's surprising how much they remember, even if they just had one random phone call or one random conversation with someone in an elevator about the organization. That same goes for ham radio. So don't give up. Definitely, certainly, advocate for yourself, advocate for all of us. Make a phone call and write a letter.
Speaker 1:I was going to end this with. So do we collectively feel we're well defended? Or, you know, should we be doing more?
Speaker 2:I guess, Write a phone, make a phone call, a letter, that's, that's what I say so simple, simple no, yeah, that's, that's my that's my answer. Um, are we? Are we? No, it, just like you guys said, it's going to be terribly hard to go up against big ma bell. It's not called that anymore, but you know what I mean. Go it's. It's going to be hard for us to go against at&t lots of deep coffers right people with money and more money.
Speaker 1:Behind it we're picking on at&t, but there's a lot of organizations yeah I love this is just an example sweet spectrum.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just an example, right this one though I think the international community and I was trying to find the list of countries, a lot of the other countries. We mentioned the different amateur radio groups, but there was a whole list of countries that are already responding to this worldwide and it is getting some attention that way too. So it's not just a.
Speaker 2:Thing in the United States. It's not just an FCC or ARRL thing, it's definitely throughout Europe. I believe a lot of the similar organizations there are starting to respond and we'll see. It's going to be interesting to see.
Speaker 3:So I guess the one more thing I want to say on this topic right is I'm all for progress, right, and I'm also for competition, which I believe right now Starlink is fairly uncontested as far as its reach and also the capability of it to do certain things, notwithstanding, of course, failing for whatever period of time.
Speaker 3:But obviously this company here has a similar idea and competition is good, right, and we do want to see folks continue to explore space Right, and do things with satellites and do interesting things with satellites that benefit us here locally on Earth, whatever you want to say. So just because we're against the idea of using 430 to 440 megahertz does not mean we're against AST in any means. I think that what we're suggesting is do it a different way or figure a way that can play harmoniously with the space that we are using for other things. So the argument here it's easy to find what we call a bad guy in this situation. I don't think that there is necessarily a bad guy, unless we're talking about perhaps vilifying the FCC for potentially selling the space. But I'm kidding a little bit there.
Speaker 2:But what I'm saying is let's not blame-.
Speaker 1:I feel there's a little bit of a bad guy. Okay, but let's not blame the folks that are trying to innovate here.
Speaker 3:That's, I think. The last thing that I'd like to mention is true let's, let's keep innovating, because if we don't, uh, then we're just going to keep buying the same products, rebranded over and over again uh, the prices are going to keep going up and there's not going to be anything new and fun for us to play with. So let's, uh, let's encourage innovation, but do it in a way that doesn't encroach on the very limited band space that us, as amateurs, have already.
Speaker 1:I think you said it well right there and I think to maybe keep this good time train going here. Jim, you had one other topic you wanted to touch on briefly which was related to NOAA satellites, I believe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, while we're talking satellites, it is a bit of a sad day, and I mentioned this, I believe, on almost our first podcast, which was to say how did you get back into amateur radio? And when I was a fledgling new ham again here about a year and a half ago in January, I had bought a RTL-SDR and I had plugged it into my computer and I said, well, what do I do now? Right, what do I listen to? And I found a couple of really interesting articles that said, why don't you do automatic picture capture or APT capture, right? And I thought, well, that's pretty cool, capturing pictures from satellites, awesome. And so I did, and it really stuck with me. It's something that I did quite a bit. I built a number of different homebrew antennas for it. I built tiny dipoles, two feet opposing at 120 degrees, and I stuck it out my window and then I turned it to try to find the best orientation to the horizon. And, all that being said, it was a really cool way to kind of get it back into radio, right, how do I build an antenna? How do I tune it to a specific frequency so that I can maximize my ability to capture and hear these satellites that fly overhead a number of times a day, right, polar satellites, poes satellites is what they were. So NOAA-15 was launched in 1998. Noaa-19 was launched in 2009.
Speaker 3:These satellites have been in the air for 20 plus years going on now, and we just got word in July that they are being decommissioned.
Speaker 3:Sadly and it shouldn't necessarily come as too much of a shock, because in June we got word that NOAA 18 was going to be decommissioned. But we kind of expected, I think maybe us being optimistic about APT as having a longer future than it ended up having was NOAA 18 had already suffered quite a few onboard failures of its equipment, right, and so it was on life support when they decommissioned it. And when we looked at 15 and 19, one being older than 18, and also one being a little younger we said, well, those ones are still running. Well, there were a number of things that were still operating very nicely and we were still getting cool images from those, and so we thought, oh, they might have some time. But we found out that those were also being scheduled for their end of life, and so NOAA did announce that in August. Mid-august, here we will see the final transmissions from those satellites, and it really does end an era Really soon.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was announced in July mid-July. It does end an era Really soon. Yeah, yeah, it was announced in July mid-July and we are finding out now that the decommissioning of both of those satellites will happen August 12th for the 15 and August 19th for 19,. Which is kind of fitting for 19. But it really is an end of the era for what is a very, very easy to capture and impressive image from space Didn't take a whole lot of equipment. It didn't take an advanced antenna. You could build all of it with two by fours wire and a $30 SDR that you got on Amazon and you could show somebody and be like I captured this from space by myself.
Speaker 2:I never realized it was that easy until I saw what you were doing with it way back there at the beginning. And the coolest thing was right.
Speaker 3:When you captured those images, it was as the bird was coming over your position. It wasn't that you were capturing a cached image that was taken and then sent down. That was a real-time scanned image as it was flying across the horizon, and so it really was one of the coolest things that I've done yet with radio. I can say it even to this day. I built a QFH antenna for it, which is a it looks like an egg beater. Essentially, if you haven't seen those antennas, they're really cool looking. I put that on my roof because I got so interested in it in getting better captures of the satellites as they tumble through space. Right, the radio waves are polarized differently and you build a special antenna to get those pictures.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, it's a bummer to see and I don't know what to say, much more than to be surprised that this equipment, which still appeared to be quite functional, is going to be decommissioned. Now I've heard some pretty good arguments that say, at some point or another, cost to run these outweighs their benefits for the folks that are using them. Right, and we do have a number of new digital satellites that are doing these things better, are providing more detailed pictures, but they require significantly more high end receiving stations. So for us as amateurs, for those folks that might have been interested in dipping their toe and learning a little bit about it, it is a little bit sad to see 19 and 15 seeing their end of life in the middle of this august.
Speaker 1:So I will tell you, if you've never done it and you have one of these things. Cheers to 19 and 15 as they boldly go, or Noah satellites go.
Speaker 2:Are you going? To try and get one last capture.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say. You have a couple more opportunities here to grab some captures, and if you haven't done it, it doesn't take much. If you're a ham, you probably have enough stuff on your desk to get a picture from these guys. They are so easy to capture that you could be standing in an open field with an ht and if you tune it to the right channel, you can hear these things uh flying overhead when they pass. So it is, it's very cool. It is very sad to see these go and I I was a bum bummed out by it. Apt is a really neat technology. It also it doesn't sound as annoying as SSTV to my ear, as far as it goes.
Speaker 2:Where are they? That's one thing I've never known. Where are they at frequency-wise?
Speaker 3:They're around 137 megahertz, the ones that we would capture for APT. So those are going to be really really easy to get with a fairly small antenna right. You don't need a big antenna, you don't also need a very advanced antenna and you didn't need to have it pointed directly at the thing the whole way. It just they were very flexible. So that is what I think is a little bit of a bummer, an end of an era Near and dear to my heart.
Speaker 3:Sad to see this kind of end of the chapter, but I figured it's worth announcing and saying out loud if you're not aware, go check them out. It is a really cool technology and what I expect I'll be able to do is I have a lot of recordings from them that folks are saying you should upload those so that other folks can recreate the experience or at least see how it worked, right For the purposes of not losing that stuff to time. You have recordings of the audio.
Speaker 2:Is that what?
Speaker 3:you mean oh, that's cool, yeah, that is cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely Keep an eye on those. I mean, that's or keep a what's the word? Am I saying? Keep a lock on those.
Speaker 3:Archive Archive there we go.
Speaker 1:They've been offloaded to the cold storage the words were not coming there.
Speaker 2:I've used, done it. I'm sure I have very minimal receive capability here but, even if I get a bad copy, I'll be glad that I tried it.
Speaker 1:We should have a brief NOAA party. Go out to a park. Do some POTA capture.
Speaker 3:One last image Didn't take much man. I built at least three different antennas probably four or five total in my pursuit of NOAA, and the QFH was the kind of final one. It was the first antenna I put on my roof before I got back into HAM, so it was a huge build project. I burned the hell out of my hand because I brazed pipe for the first time and I had all these templates built in the shop and it turned out actually to work fairly well for this particular application. So yeah, it's a really cool thing, and if you haven't done it, I encourage you to at least go read up on it a little bit. But not all is lost. Satdump is a program that makes it even easier than ever to go out and capture some of these new images from the more advanced digital satellites. So check out SatDump, if you haven't checked that out already.
Speaker 1:Is that an app software?
Speaker 3:Yep. It's a software application that you can download and it will, basically it'll automatically get all the passes for those satellites.
Speaker 1:That can give you that information.
Speaker 3:It'll tell you where you need to tune and then you basically set up the physical infrastructure to get those things tuning. Some of them are more difficult than the APT stuff, but there are some. I've captured some images from the digital stuff and they are. It is amazingly sharp, the stuff that you can get from those birds.
Speaker 1:I'm going to share my screen really quick, jim, while we're here looking at this, or at least I'll attempt to share my screen here while we're looking at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to pull it up, but if you want to share, that would be good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm kind of curious on if this is the right app. Since we're here looking at it, let me go back. I just Googled SatDump.
Speaker 3:Yep, that's the one. That's the one yeah, satdump, it is a essentially it's a broad applicable. It's a broadly applicable satellite capture software that will also help you track the satellites and then decode the things that you're hearing from them.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool.
Speaker 3:So it offers kind of a number of things all packaged into one. And if you're trying to put all those things together individually, right, when is the pass happening? How do I decode the sounds that I'm hearing or the thing that I'm hearing from it, the digital stream, and then where do I point my antenna or any number of things? Right, this software pulls it all together for you and it works well. Interesting software pulls it all together for you and it works well. My late APT capture stuff from the NOAA satellites was through SatDump.
Speaker 1:And, for those listening, it's wwwsatdumporg, and that will take you to the SatDump website.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's completely new to me. I'm going to give that a look, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty cool to go check out.
Speaker 3:So we'll pour our final one out for the NOAA satellites. They are just really, really cool and they had a number of applications in practice that were far beyond what we're talking about here on the Everyday Ham podcast. So if you're even interested in passing space or satellite stuff, go out. Check out just the technology that they packed into these things. They were full of sensor packages. They helped with search and rescue in many ways, so they had deployed these things for a number of different applications that were far beyond, I think, their original design intentions when NOAA sent these things up. So really the end of the apt era here and we'll see what comes next and what the community rallies around as the next big satellite capture thing.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Well, I feel like we've spent this whole episode of get off my spectrum lawn and my old technology is going away here, so we're true hams, guys, we're true hams.
Speaker 2:One thing I forgot to mention at the beginning that I was thinking about for a future episode, as everyone's well aware, the FTX One. We gave our opinions on that. It's been out there quite a bit of time at this point and I've seen some stuff online where people have had some good luck with it. So we're looking for someone who's willing to come on and sit with us for 15 minutes or so, maybe even 20 if we're feeling good vibes from you. But just a short interview. We're curious at this point. It's been out a while. We've not had a chance for us to have our hands on it, especially with any of the updates or the firmware or even any of the hardware updates. So if any of our friends or listeners out there have an FTX One, where are you at with it now? We'll like to to set up a little 15 20 minute chit chat with you just to see how that radio is doing for you safe to say.
Speaker 3:We want somebody that has had it out in the field and has operated it effectively and is actually satisfied with its performance, so we're not looking for. Hey, I just pulled it out of the box and it sure looks cool, because we did that too, and there's a video of me doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, we're looking for someone If you actually have made it work for you, someone who's had a good experience with it. I'm very curious to talk to someone who's a couple months in and having a good time with it. So, everydayhampodcastgmailcom, or leave a comment below or join our Discord and we'll get in touch with you and set that up.
Speaker 1:Yep. So with that, a quick reminder as well. Uh, everydayhamcom, be sure to like and subscribe and leave us a rating, and with that, 73 everyone thanks for uh, episode 8 is in the can here good to hear you guys tonight.
Speaker 3:Bye.
