Youth in Ham Radio Presentation at SLSRC Winterfest

UPDATED:

The livestream broke halfway through but I recovered the audio of the end and set it to the slide show. Enjoy!

Slides: Amateur Radio’s Next Generation by N0SSC.pdf

Audio only Enhanced Podcast version (hosted by The Phasing Line Podcast): http://phasinglinepodcast.com/phasing-line-bonus-amateur-radios-next-generation-by-n0ssc/

Continue reading “Youth in Ham Radio Presentation at SLSRC Winterfest”

Standing Desks for Ham Shacks? (and where I’ve been)

Update

I’ve been quiet lately. I went on an European 3-week vacation (Prague, Krakow, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris), which meant I got behind on work stuff, so I’ve been busy catching up.

I was on HamRadioNow in a Phasing Line/HRN mashup. Check that out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w31LUEjNgnU

The Phasing Line podcast is still moving along, now with a Patreon! Apparently, we did something that people enjoy, and I think we’ll keep doing that. We pre-recorded a lot of episodes over the break, but never got around to editing them, so beware some episodes may seem out of date. I hope you don’t find that to be a problem!

I’ll be speaking at the St Louis Suburban Radio Club (SLSRC) Winterfest hamfest on January 28 about YOTA and Youth Ham Radio. This is the first time I’m actually hosting a forum, so that’s pretty cool. I’ll be up against Bob Heil to put it in perspective! I’ll try to record my presentation and post it on my YouTube.

I’ll also be at the Orlando Hamcation February 10 through 12, with Aaron Boots AA0RN, who’s a rising W0EEE star. They’ll be having a collegiate forum at 3pm in Classroom 1. I don’t have anything to present, but I want to be there to represent the ARRL Collegiate Amateur Radio Initiative (CARI) and check out the 2nd biggest hamfest in the US. I’ll also try to record it. See http://www.hamcation.com/forums/ for more forum info.

That’s about as far as I’ve planned this year. I definitely cannot attend Hamvention (here’s why) but I’m looking at attending some other bigger hamfests (like Friedrichshafen, Pacificon, HamCom, NEAR-fest, anything else listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamfest) since Jesten earned me 110,000 Southwest Air and 125,000 American Air points (leftover after our Europe trip). With that said, if you want me to come talk about youth at your hamfest, let me know sooner than later, before I have to spend 110% of my time helping my fiancee plan our wedding (Oct 2018 baby!).

Finally, what I came here to write:

W6LG inspired me for this post. On November 2, 2016, he had a pulmonary embolism and heart attack, nearly killing him. He survived, and is back to making great videos on YouTube.

I’m 25, so you might not understand why I’m posting about this, but it’s surprisingly relevant. I’ve been an “official adult” for 2 years now, and I’ve noticed a few changes.

  1. I have little to no activity daily. I walk between 1000 and 5000 steps a day, measured by my iPhone/Pebble smartwatch
  2. My posture sucks
  3. I’m about thirty pounds overweight, and eating 1,500 cal/day for the last 6 months has made for some slow progress:
  4. My neck and back hurts

It’s obvious why these 4 things are happening. It’s because I’m sitting for 8 to 10 hours a day at a desk. So I stood up. Literally. I found some boxes to prop my monitors and keyboard up at properly ergonomic heights, and (aside from my feet hurting) things started just feeling better.

Then I got a newer, better chair and ditched the standing desk boxes. I’m quickly realizing standing is clearly helpful, because the same problems came up, even though my new chair was more ergonomic.

When I watched W6LG’s video, I immediately realized that I have never seen a ham radio station on a standing desk. Jim’s right – we hams spend a shitload of time sitting behind our radios, DXing and contesting, not giving a single thought to the clots slowly building up in our butts, the plaque building up around our hearts, and the atrophy of muscles that once made it so easy to climb a flight of stairs.

The easiest way to fight disease exacerbated by lack of activity is to stand up, stretch, and walk. Of course, if you’re able to stand, this works, but if you require a wheelchair or mobility scooter, follow your individual doctor’s advice on staying healthy.

Standing desks aren’t cheap, but milk crates and boxes did fine for me. Ikea also has several DIY-methods of making standing desks a thing for your station or workbench. And even if you don’t have a standing desk, set a timer to remind yourself to stretch. You can also use apps like Stand Up! for iOS or Randomly RemindMe for Android.

Additionally, the team at Consumers Advocate has poured hundreds of hours into researching different models of standing desks and converters, doing the hard work so you don’t have to. They reviewed and researched models for all budgets, and conveniently  put the maximum lifting capacity of each desk so you don’t overburden it with your SO2R FT-3000DX  station and 1.5kW linear amplifier should you want to lift that up while you stand!

Consumers Advocate Logo
Click me to review standing desks!

Do you have a standing desk at your hamshack? Send me your standing desk shack pics at sterling@n0ssc.com!

Celebrating the 95th Anniversary of the First Transatlantic Ham Radio Contact

Bear with me, this is a slightly opinionated, philosophical post.

95 years ago today, Minton Cronkhite, 1BCG, and Paul Godley, 2ZE, shared the first recorded transatlantic communication between Connecticut and Scotland. It was a historical technological achievement that ham radio brought to the table that lead to today’s communication infrastructure.

It’s 2016, and we’re working all the national parks….so that’s pretty cool.

But what technological advancement have we made in the last decade? Is radio a solved problem? Maybe it is…

On /r/amateurradio a young twentysomething shared his views on hams who cling onto old, antiquated systems and methodologies in lieu of the lack modern software adaptations. It got over 350 comments from both sides – other twentysomethings like myself agreeing with a lot of it, and oldersomethings asking OP to take a breath and get over himself. The polarization was very interesting but it sort of worried me that a lot of people aren’t getting the message: the lack of modern in ham radio.

I took a quick stock of my friends in ham radio. I have very few friends in the older generation; only a handful of what I call classic hams – those who enjoy DXing, ragchewing, listening to the bands, contesting, hanging out on repeater nets and the like. My friends are much younger, and they’re doing way less of that stuff. Contesting still remains, but there aren’t as many actually talking on radios.

When was the last time I talked on a radio when I wasn’t contesting? Probably when I was working on a mesh antenna installation with SLSRC. Aside from driving, before then I can’t recall a time I just hopped on the radio to chat. I mainly get on the radio to contest.

Soooo…what are we millennials and younger doing?

We’re being hackers, engineers, leaders, developers, creators, and designers. We’re doing things like FaradayRF, HamSCI, Collegiate Amateur Radio and other STEM Initiatives, YOTA, Phasing Line Podcast, High Altitude Ballooning and education, we’re updating APRS and modernizing ham radio networks and modernizing contesting. These are all new and novel things to help usher in a new generation of radio amateurs.

We’ve been using ham radio ideas and methodologies for remote control, for tracking planes on ADS-B, for receiving weather satellite data, and for homebrew RADAR.

We’re not Bell Labs but we’re still doing some pretty cool stuff.

We’re also listening and watching WAAAAY more media. Ham Radio 360 + WorkBench, 100 Watts and A Wire, Ham Nation, Solder Smoke, and tens of thousands of YouTube channels. Can’t forget Last Man Standing.

And we’re also complaining on the internet, being entitled, whiny millennials. lol.

The main brunt of ham radio (1.0) is still, and for a long time will be repeaters, ragchewing, special events, and emcomm, and these things will always have their place.

But what are we doing to help move ham radio, and radio communications in general forward? What are we collective doing to make ourselves modern? What are we doing to continue the legacy of amateur radio?

So maybe radio is a solved problem, and there’s not much more we hams can do to advance the art and science of radio. I mean our next venue of research is in quantum communications, and I don’t see a whole lot of hams building quantum teleporters in their garage…

But that doesn’t spell the doom of ham radio, by any means.

Ham radio is still an incredible tool for teaching electronics, geography, engineering, and design. It’s a playground for development in other areas, like modern mesh networking, datalinks, remote control and the like. That’s in part what our spectrum is for: wireless experimentation. And that philosophy must be embraced by all radio amateurs. We cannot forget our history or else we shall have no future.

I propose a call to action to promote the technological advancement of the hobby and wireless communication.

I urge software developers to be more open to open source to develop a community of programmers. Ego and pride is hurting and slowing development. One can still sell a product for a profit and be open source. Closed source and proprietary information has no place in ham radio. There is the obvious exception with commercial entities – ICOM, Kenwood, Yaesu, etc – but if you’re building a balloon tracker, a ham radio logger, or an APRS widget, what in the world are you doing keeping it closed source? If you want to make a profit, sell complete units and kits, sell .EXEs and support, and sell ads, but try to keep your source code, schematics, and documentation open source so as to let growing developers and engineers contribute. There isn’t enough opportunity in ham radio as it is, and this is something we should be leading the electronics hobby by example. Join the /r/hamdevs community on reddit and help out!

We also need to standardize some platforms, like github, and try to fight at fragmentation. Some people will post their source on Git, others will post it on their grandmas self-hosted home server, and others all over the place. So again, check out /r/hamdevs.

I urge ARRL, IARU, and your local radio club to continue and grow whatever it is you respectively do in promoting the technological art of the hobby and continue to grow your support for youth and schools, whether it be donations of money or equipment, grants, or volunteering your time. I really want to see the higher-level organizations like IARU and the ARRL renew focus on fostering the next generation. ARRL is pushing ahead with Collegiate Amateur Radio Initiative (which at this time isn’t clear on what their action is other than saying stuff, which in itself has caused a surge in collegiate activity on the facebook page and Groupme chat), the ARRL Foundation, and continuing support of Education and Technology. They’re leading by example of what your local club should do too. Support your local college, school, hackerspace, even library – coordinate a high altitude balloon launch, a foxhunt, an ISS contact, a license class or go do something entirely different.