Month: February 2018

Ham Radio Dominating Groups.io…Good!

Groups.io is the internet’s replacement to Yahoo Groups, and it’s been a long time coming. Ham radio is notorious for having a Yahoo Group for just about every contest, radio, antenna, CW paddle, and footswitch, but as a user and admin it’s a pain to manage and it’s reputation tarnished due to Yahoo’s major cybersecurity problems (e.g. they leaked users’ data like a sieve and the groups always got a metric butt-ton of spam).

I was looking through some of the public groups on Groups.io, and I noticed there is a ludicrous number of ham radio groups on there already! Out of almost 100,000 groups, 10 out of the top 40 are ham radio groups! I joined a whole bunch, and now my email is exploding…oops.

Softrock40 is in 4th place with 8,496 members on Groups.io, behind IBM, an Equine health research interest group(?), and a New England Jewish community (not including the groups.io update list, which is a default subscription). Not bad!

Not bad. Props to Callum (DXCommander on Youtube) for egging everyone to migrate. Hopefully this blogette will persuade your group to get there too! (looking at you, anyone running a GNU Python Powered Mailman Bulletin Board Mailing list coughAMSAT-BBcoughcoughAPRS-SIGcough)

So Long Cale, and Thanks for All The Fish

I am a little sad, a little happy to hear about the conclusion of the Ham Radio 360 podcast hosted by Cale Nelson, K4CDN.

The End of the Beginning…

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!👋👍

It’s Happening! Millennials in Amateur Radio!

http://www.newschannel6now.com/story/37520668/wf-amateur-radio-society-looks-to-add-millennial

I can’t help but hope my wildly debated article is starting to make its motions through the amateur radio community. Conceitedness aside, it’s really awesome to see a club make a very public stride into lowering the age of their radio club.

Is your radio club a bit gray on top? Consider forming a youth interests committee, and marketing your club to younger people (and don’t forget their parents!) by hosting easy and free activities throughout the year, creating scholarship funds, giving presentations for schools and libraries, publishing your field day site and GOTA (and other on-the-air activity) information in highly public areas and social media outlets.