On behalf of thousands of listeners, thank you Cale. Your podcast was a huge inspiration to all of us hams to keep inspired to learn more about amateur radio. There’s never been a podcast quite like it, and I think many will follow suit. It inspired me to start my own podcast (though I wish I could put the effort into it that Cale put into HR360!) and it was great to be a guest and a part of the community.
All 99 HamRadio360 episodes will continue to be hosted at http://hamradio360.com. I encourage you to take a listen through them all; it’s really quite the journey! The spinoffs, Workbench and Field Radio are continuing.
73 Cale and Best of Luck to your other 6ARN productions. Looks like you’ve got a lot on your plate!👋👍
Two thousand downloads what what what holy crap! I never would have imagined…that’s awesome! Thank you all for listening! 😀
Since this seems like it’s a pretty cool thing, we’ve decided to keep doing it and have released another episode. Marty and I ramble on about sweepstakes, contesting, operating massive stations, YOTA, college ham radio, etc. Et Cetera is kinda the main theme of this podcast…
Marty did most of the editing and I tried to spend less time mastering it than the last one, which took me about 8 hours straight to get all the levels and EQ just right. This time, didn’t do any of that. And it still sounds pretty alright! Adobe Audition is so much better than Audacity at quickly editing, trimming, and mastering audio, all collaboratively, plus I’m still technically a student so $20/month is killer for Creative Cloud! #iamashill
I’m super pumped at the next few episodes – we already have a few guests lined up and some exciting news in the world of ham radio’s next generation.
So somewhere towards the end of this ep is a massive plug to give us money, and we both feel like we have to explain ourselves a lot because it’s like, the second episode and we’re already begging for your change. Well. Stuff’s not free. 🙁 But we think we provide value to you that is worth not only your download but your (voluntary) dollar. That said, we’ll never make this a for-profit pay-to-play show, and we’ll also refrain from extensive adverts and ridiculously long and annoying solicitations. We’ve got better things to talk about!
We’ve set up a Patreon account for listeners to contribute to the show so we can keep it up. Patreon is basically a fancy facade for Paypal, that lets us host rewards for your contributions. Marty has some t-shirts that need giving away!
Click the logo to go to the Phasing Line Patreon.
Web hosting, Libsyn, email accounts, online storage, and Adobe Creative Cloud (we use Adobe Audition to collaboratively edit, and it saves us a whole heck of a lot more time than using Audacity) all told cost us about $50 a month. We’ve got a goal of only $30 a month. If we can’t recoup the costs, that would suck. The show will go on, but we’ll have to be creative in how we do stuff since we’re pulling all the nice things out for Phasing Line, but it would ultimately limit the growth of the show. 🙁
So, with 2000 downloads, we feel that at least a few of you would be willing to throw us a few coins. 🙂
Speaking of coin, if you prefer bitcoin: 1LCmJSb3CSdJSxEFdghRpSCC59gJq5HD5u
Disclaimer: We will be thoroughly open, honest and genuinely transparent regarding any contributions made to the show. All contributions will be read out on the show unless you wish to remain anonymous.
Our first episode of The Phasing Line Podcast was a hit. People really seem to love the new style – at least maybe our target demographic does (younger people, sub age 40, who are already a little experienced in ham radio). I’m excited for episode 2 – if we can find the time to record. I want to shoot for a biweekly release date but Marty and I have tumultuous schedules, so that is TBD. I do want to say we are planning an interview with a rising ham, so that will be exciting!
The big takeaway from the first episode was to avoid interruptions, so that will be fixed. Marty and I both think faster than we can speak too, and the fast-paced topic jumping with tons of tangents can be decisive – some like it, some don’t. We’ll be fine tuning the podcast as it goes on.
But it was such a success that it sparked interest in an old podcast I co-hosted, the Youth in Amateur Radio Podcast (YARP). 18-year old Jacob Keogh KDØNVX has taken the lead and re-branded it to The Noisy Key (jealous of that name) which will probably be a round-table similar to ICQ podcast, perhaps a bit more focused on a single or few topics, unlike the unfiltered consciousness which is The Phasing Line. All of which is to be determined as they work bringing the first episode.
Sweepstakes at WØEEE
WØEEE had another clean sweep during the ARRL SSB Sweepstakes. I came down to help educate and train new guys on HF contesting, spending a lot of time on a whiteboard.
Here’s an album. Click on the photos to make them bigger:
W0EEE Squad
Working on raising a 40m dipole on the tower
Owen enjoying the view from the EE roof
The 80m windom 20ft off the ground made for a brilliant NVIS antenna. W0EEE’s tower in the background.
There was only one operating station, but eight people…so they put their own station on the air!
N0SSC and AA0RN posing mid-contest
Tons of people hanging out and chatting ham radio
AA0RN intently running a pileup
Kyle and AA0RN co-op
Gaving logging with N0SSC operating.
Robert playing with a HackRF glued to a laptop.
Crash course on dipole impedance, SWR, and patterns
The infamous voice of W0EEE in the FF-800 now hanging on the wall, replaced by a Raspberry Pi
The W0EEE station during Sweepstakes
All that mattered (aside from getting the sweep) was that everyone had a ton of fun. It was really great how many people showed up, showed interest, logged, and got on the air. We made 227 QSOs in all 83 sections, so we didn’t really shoot for high numbers, and our antenna system got us down, but it was still a lot of fun. I also got to work Marty twice, lol!
We had to break out the amp for the last two sections of the sweep – PAC (pacific, aka Hawaii) and AK (Alaska). They were working huge pileups since they came on very late in the contest. But, we didn’t have an interface with the FT-897…so I had to do it manually, without ALC. Luckily the SB-220 has a soft-key relay that lets you use a simple switch to key the amp instead of 120V – that would have fried everything!
Thanks for reading! I will follow up this with a post detailing some ideas for college clubs to increase activity, and some ideas for contest coordinators to make contests better for school clubs and younger people as well.
