Author: N0SSC

Twenty-something year old amateur radio operator. I love everything about ham radio. Trying to learn CW and contest more, and doing my best to promote youth involvement and retention in this rapidly aging hobby.

Introducing Hamvention Online: A Proposal for Virtual Ham Radio Conventions

Hamvention is cancelled, but can’t we host it on the World Wide Web?

Hamvention 2020 is cancelled.

Or is it?

The year is 2020. Just about everybody owns a computer, a smartphone, and a broadband internet connection. A massive pandemic has shut down all social gatherings for the foreseeable future. All concerts, church congregations, marathons, festivals, St. Patricks Day, and ham radio conventions, shuttered.

What are we hams going to do?!

Hamvention Online

As much as I really do believe COVID-19 has presented radio amateurs with a glowing opportunity to do more stuff with ham radio (like learn CW, build some antennas, make more QSOs, monitor 146.52, etc), I do not think we have to suffer in total convention isolation now that most people have the ability to participate in an online symposium.

I ask the organizers of Hamvention, vendors, forum speakers, and all of it’s prospective attendees to work together to bring Hamvention online.

I know this idea won’t bring back the flea market, camaraderie, or the cheesecake on a stick, but I do think this is the best opportunity to bring the ham radio convention to the world wide web.

How to Run Hamvention Online

Hamvention Organizers

  • Set up a new website to capture visitors and relay them to their desired destinations.
  • Propose to forum hosts to bring their talk online via YouTube or Twitch. I suggest these two in lieu of Skype, WebEx, or Zoom because they’re free, and can support many tens of thousands of concurrent viewers, and can be interacted in real-time using chat.
    • Certain forums, primarily Q&A forums, might want to use Zoom over YT or Twitch, but this will require Hamvention to have a paid Business-level Zoom account so many hundreds of people are able to attend.
    • Brainstorm a method to attract interest and Q&A from hams who don’t/can’t/refuse to use YouTube/Twitch/etc.
  • Create and publish a schedule for presenter streams and premieres to go live.
  • Create a swap meet webpage to capture prospective flea-marketers
  • Communication and coordination with presenters and vendors

Forum Presenters

  • Purchase a decent webcam and microphone if you don’t already have one, or pre-record your talk on YouTube and use it’s “Premiere” feature to post it live at your scheduled time.
  • Have a volunteer monitor the chat to collect questions so the presenter doesn’t have to field them at the same time as his or her presentation.

Vendors

  • Create coupon codes and discounts for virtual attendees
  • Schedule gear announcements and coordinate with organizers
  • Create an all-day drop-in skype/zoom, or other chat system for attendees to come in to ask questions.

Convention Attendees

  • Get accounts on Youtube, Twitch, and/or Zoom, or whatever other medium being used by the online convention.
  • Submit questions prior and during the premier or stream of the presenter.
  • Create a schedule of presentations of which you want to view and interact live.

Just because we’re need to distance ourselves to flatten the load curve to our healthcare system doesn’t mean we can’t get our fix of listening and interacting with the movers and shakers in ham radio, which is one of Hamvention’s greatest contributions to the radio service. I think we can make it happen in just two months.

We can also bring this to the amateur radio airwaves. Those who cannot/will not attend a stream on the internet might be able to tune in to their local repeater for a simulcast of the stream, hosted by, say, the local radio club. Or perhaps tune into it via HF, hosted by any number of MASSIVE contest-grade stations that exist across the world. There’s a great opportunity here to make the best of a bad situation.

I was planning on writing a bit more of a proposal but since the news dropped sooner than I expected, I thought I ought to finish this sooner to ride the wave.

My next proposal – Online VE Testing – is coming soon.

Coronavirus’s Potential Impact on Amateur Radio

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a big deal. Even if you think, “oh, the flu is worse,” or, “oh, it’s not in my backyard,” it’s still a massive global health emergency. It’s killed over 4,000 and infected over 100,000 worldwide as of 11 March 2020.

Coronavirus is not your regular run-of-the-mill flu. It disproportionately affects those who are older and have pre-existing immune system deficiencies. According to WorldOMeters (which provides up-to-date statistical tallies based on Chinese records), the following is a chart of current mortality by age:

AGEDEATH RATE*
80+ years old 14.8%
70-79 years old 8.0%
60-69 years old 3.6%
50-59 years old 1.3%
40-49 years old 0.4%
30-39 years old 0.2%
20-29 years old 0.2%
10-19 years old 0.2%
0-9 years old no fatalities

*Death Rate = (number of deaths / number of cases) = probability of dying if infected by the virus (%). The percentages do not have to add up to 100%, as they do NOT represent share of deaths by age group.

And here’s data from N8RMA’s State of the Hobby Survey, showing the makeup of age among amateur radio licensees (given it’s inherent biases, it’s the best data we hams have publicly that I am aware of):

AgePercentage of Hams (2019)
65 and older 35.18%
55-64 years old 30.45%
45-54 years old 16.19%
35-44 years old 10.33%
25-34 years old 4.78%
15-24 years old 2.75%
Under 15 0.32%

I see an issue here. About 70% of (surveyed) hams are over age 50, and the death rate probability for people over 50 infected with Coronavirus averages to be 7.9%, and that’s just considering age. Risks are also high for males, people with cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabeties, and cancer. That means if COVID-19 were to infect everyone, ham radio might – quite literally – face an existential crisis. So we’ve got to keep the spread to a minimum.

Cancellations

As such, some amateur radio meetings have been canceled. As of posting (11 March), the HamSCI Workshop and the Visalia DX conference has been canceled. Numerous smaller local and regional hamfests have also been canceled for the months of March and April.

Hamvention has not yet canceled. Being later in May, it’s still too early to tell if COVID-19 will have an impact vs. other events like NAB, SXSW, Cochella, among other large events that have also been canceled but are in April.

I still plan to attend but seeing that the WHO has classified COVID-19 as a pandemic, and Ohio has a few cases, I wholly suspect we’ll hear something from Hamvention organizers very soon.

Update: The ARRL has an exhaustive list of all ham radio event cancellations here: http://www.arrl.org/news/visalia-international-dx-convention-other-events-cancelled-due-to-coronavirus-worries and here: http://www.arrl.org/canceledHamfests.php

Supply Chain Impacts

All of Asia took a massive hit, and so for the coming months one can imagine that it will take it’s toll on the global electronics supply chain. I haven’t heard of any big ham radio gear rumors, but surely this will squash any if there were for at least the next few months.

I don’t mean to be alarmist, but also I kind of do. The WHO is sounding the alarm loud and clear, so now is the time to put precautionary measures into effect.

Things you can do to avoid Coronavirus (and getting sick in general):

  1. Wash your hands, like this, and DO NOT skimp out on soap or wash for less than 20 seconds.
  2. Don’t touch your face or frequently touched surfaces unnecessarily.
  3. Use hand sanitizer (>60% Alcohol) when soap and water is not available.
  4. Cough and sneeze into your arm in a downward facing direction away from people or common areas/surfaces.
  5. Avoid air travel and public transit.
  6. Avoid large gatherings of people.
  7. If you do have to go out around many people, wear a mask in public. Contrary to CDC guidance, masks prevent respiratory infection. If you do happen to have an N95 mask lying around in your wood shop, it might help block aerosolized spit particles from entering your lungs directly, which is how a majority of infectious respiratory disease is transmitted.
  8. Have at least 2 months of water and non-perishable food stored in a safe place at home.
  9. Stay informed with CDC information.
  10. Consider postponing your big Disney vacation or cruise in the next few months.
  11. If you’re older, consider self-quarantine, like telling your kids and grandkids to not visit for a while and avoid stores and other establishments during peak-hours.
  12. Share this information with friends.

Finally, if you’re sick, for goodness sake, stay home. People not staying home when they have flu-like symptoms is the reason why this disease is spreading so easily. Call your local health department for guidance and testing if needed.

Things you should not do:

  1. Use essential oils, colloidal silver, or anything marketed as a “cure” without any scientific basis as a means of preventing disease.
  2. Hoard masks, GermX, toilet paper, and disinfectant wipes (or sell them at ungodly prices)
  3. Vote in an administration that inadequately prepares for pandemics and fires the entire U.S. Pandemic Response Team created during the Ebola outbreak.
  4. Panic sell all of your stock. This is a good time to buy!
  5. Panic in general.

90 Day CW Challenge: Week Two Update

After the 90-day CW challenge was brought forth by on reddit, I too decided to really knuckle down and learn the code. My progress after 14 days has been pretty good!

After the reddit 90-day CW challenge was brought forth by /u/cadr, I too decided to really knuckle down and learn the code. I’ve been “learning” it for almost 10 years, and I’ve been in a handful of contests, worked a handful of DX, and even won a QLF competition at an ARRL convention. But now I have been absolutely dying to do more portable and POTA-style operations, and bust through my local QRM at home using something other than FT8.

To do this, I would start LCWO.net from scratch at 20WPM character speed and 5WPM effective speed (Farnsworth timing), learn the characters, and progress onto words and call signs, then QSOs. To keep me motivated and to kill a few birds with one stone, I decided to live stream every session on my YouTube channel and Twitch.tv. I also wanted to re-invigorate my YouTube channel and break into Twitch with ham radio stuff, so this was the perfect opportunity to do that. Plus I get a few viewers every night that either learn along with me or provide me hints and tips. I’m really thankful there are people out there crazy enough to watch me! I also want to have a record of progression so I can tell the next guy exactly what I did and how I did it (in the case that this whole thing is actually successful).  And you never know who you might meet – one of my viewers being the same guy who started the $4,000 matching program for the YOTA-Americas Camp in Cincinnati this year! I had no idea until he emailed me with encouragement, and to share his own progress buckling down to get more proficient, signing off with his call sign. Small world!!!

Anyway at only “10 minutes per session” I thought that there’s no way I couldn’t find time in my busy schedule for 10 minutes. Turns out, I found 30 (which is about how long I stream for since I have some discussion and viewer comments). I don’t even know what I was doing before but before setting my foot…or fist down, I must have thought that time was important. Its proof positive that you DO have time to learn CW.

So last night was the first break I took from CW in 14 days. I was sick last night and immediately went to bed after getting home from my 9-5. In that time I’ve made 104 one-minute long practice attempts, getting up to lesson 26, which includes the letters (in order of learning): K M U R E S N A P T L W I . J Z = F O Y , V G 5 / Q 9 and still to go: 2 H 3 8 B ? 4 7 C 1 D 6 0 X

Statistics over my whole CW learning experience. Notice I can bust out a lot of letters in one go, often separated by up to 10 struggle-riffic attempts.

I have been practicing every night at 7pm, give or take, and streaming my practice sessions to YouTube and Twitch.tv. I have learned a lot from my viewers, and they’ve been sending me many great suggestions such as:

  • Start learning words and QSOs! Learning gibberish might be detrimental.
    • I found that LCWO has a setting that lets you use only letters learned so far, but I tried that and really didn’t get the hang of it; I had to repeat words like 4 or 5 times to catch enough characters to fill in the blanks.
  • I am starting to agree (more on that below).
  • If you want to work on sending on PC, try CWCom. You can use a mouse, keyboard, or real CW key via serial, and you can also chat with other people on it. And the CW sounds good! (I tried and then closed the program in embarrassment after not being able to copy a single character from a real person…I’m just not there yet)
    • Yes the website is designed poorly and the software was made for Win NT but trust me, it works. Iambic works perfect and sounds amazing; straight key works too but the key-clicks can get kind of annoying.
  • Change the speeds up and down, don’t just sit at 20wpm, 5wpm effective.
    • I did notice some improvement at slower and faster character speeds; in fact I’m quite surprised that even at 40wpm I still make out most of the characters, but I still have a long “processing” time.
  • Do CWAcademy!
    • I know about the program but I didn’t for a few reasons – first I wanted to learn the characters on my own at first using tried and true methods, and second, I wanted to do it NOW! The waitlist for CWAcademy means it wouldn’t start for at least a few months. I am definitely going to join in once I’ve got a solid copy on letters and words in LCWO.

Some things I’ve noticed:

  • I’ve almost always passed the first attempt each day, with accuracy slowly dwindling over the course of the session
  • F, L, and Y are the 3 toughest characters for me, by far
  • iOS has like no good CW learning apps, nowhere near the level of IZ2UUF’s. Morse Toad is alright for character training, but the vast majority of iOS CW apps are just Text-To-CW translators, without any verification or training system.
  • I turn into a CW pickle after about 7 or 8 attempts, at which point I can’t do better than 20% errors
  • LCWO teaches the comma (,) character (- – . . – -) but nobody actually uses that on the air. I wish I could remove characters from the standard lessons.
  • I don’t actually know why the characters are taught in this order (vs. G4FON for example)
  • Any attempt at CW with a real human or pretend QSO shuts my brain off completely. Even trying to decode a bulletin is impossible. I still need the 0.5s-1s of processing time between characters except for the word TEST, 599, my callsign, my name, or 73.
  • I can still send well (I got proficient with sending by the time I was 17), far higher than my receive speed, but ONLY if I’m reading text. If I’m just sending from brain, I go just about as fast as I can receive with that extra space in between characters.

With those two last bullet points, I’m starting to believe that Farnsworth timing is really killing my future progress into higher speeds. I was thinking that a better way might be to learn CW in groups of a few letters at a time at full rate, increasing the numbers of characters per group until words can be formed. After all, that’s how language works. Those thoughts were vindicated when I read the exact same thing on another reddit thread. I’m starting to believe this tried-and-true method isn’t so true any more.

Additionally, I’m doubting that the gibberish random-letter method might not be the best either, but the only evidence I have is anecdotal. Shouldn’t I be learning real words, call signs, and prosigns and other QSO elements if that’s what I’m working towards?

So now I’m curious what your thoughts on different methods to learn characters and Farnsworth timing are, or any other words of advice at this stage.

Thank you all for your encouragement so far!