WEBVTT 01:54.290 --> 01:56.190 Good morning, everyone. 01:56.470 --> 02:01.610 We're about to start a panel discussion on what makes a good ham radio operator. 02:02.230 --> 02:07.130 Subtitle also, what are the weird pieces of lingo we use? 02:07.130 --> 02:18.750 Ham operators seem to love, love, love using a lot of really random speech and text patterns that have historical reasons for being used but don't really make sense in a lot of context today. 02:19.490 --> 02:20.570 So let's just go around. 02:20.570 --> 02:22.610 I am Eric, A-I-0-J. 02:26.140 --> 02:28.760 I'm Justin, K-E-A-M-Y-F. 02:30.720 --> 02:32.960 I'm Grant, W-4-K-E-K. 02:32.960 --> 02:34.540 Sorry, I don't have the video yet. 02:35.520 --> 02:36.980 Good morning, good afternoon. 02:36.980 --> 02:43.140 I'm Richard, Victor Alpha Seven Original Gangster or November Three Romeo Tango Hotel. 02:45.940 --> 02:46.780 Great, great. 02:46.780 --> 02:55.880 So let's just, you know, start going around and, you know, sort of in a nutshell, you know, what do you think of when you think of like what's being a good ham radio operator? 02:56.320 --> 02:57.840 Rich, do you want to take it off? 02:58.620 --> 02:59.280 Sure. 03:00.320 --> 03:05.080 For me, I think I've been in this hobby 20 plus years now. 03:06.740 --> 03:15.520 I think it's an overarching understanding of being polite to other operators. 03:15.620 --> 03:26.010 Far too often, if you spend a lot of time on HF, very specific to frequency, you'll hear a lot of really, really inappropriate behavior by hams. 03:26.750 --> 03:34.180 Some of them have a lot of very expensive gear, pumping out a lot of very high power. 03:34.180 --> 03:36.900 They love talking, looking over people, screaming at you. 03:36.900 --> 03:43.340 You know what, just be polite and understand that you're talking to people literally all over the world. 03:43.340 --> 03:52.040 You're talking to people who may not be as skilled as you are, may not be as well resourced as you are. 03:52.460 --> 04:00.120 And understand that we are still, after being in this hobby for a long, a brotherhood, a sisterhood. 04:00.260 --> 04:05.560 And I think we need to spend a lot more time treating other hams like the brothers and sisters they are. 04:07.860 --> 04:09.420 Yeah, that's a great answer. 04:09.420 --> 04:19.920 One of the things that probably annoys me the most about bad, bad operation is just the assumed, oh, well, I've been in this for a while. 04:19.920 --> 04:22.400 I know a lot, or I've spent a lot of money, or it's even worse. 04:22.960 --> 04:27.020 So obviously, I'm the expert in everything I say is 100% right. 04:27.640 --> 04:29.640 And I mean, there's just a lot in this hobby. 04:29.640 --> 04:31.000 I mean, it changes every day. 04:31.000 --> 04:36.580 As we've seen in the talks this weekend, there's always new things to explore, there's always new things to learn. 04:37.180 --> 04:44.300 And just like I think a lot of hobbies, you get people that have been in it for a while and assume that they've learned everything and they're the master and everyone should listen to them. 04:44.300 --> 04:47.580 And obviously, that's not very welcoming to new hams for sure. 04:50.540 --> 04:51.900 Justin, do you want to chime in? 04:52.980 --> 04:59.420 Yeah, so one thing I would say is always kind of the term always out there for hammering is kind of the good practices. 04:59.760 --> 05:02.340 I'm kind of coming from the view of the newer ham. 05:02.340 --> 05:04.560 I'm still quite early, although I just got my extra. 05:04.560 --> 05:06.360 I've only been on the air since March. 05:06.900 --> 05:19.360 But one important thing that I always try to think of is think of those who are listening, who may not even be able to broadcast back because you'll have your people on shortwave listening, or especially in more local communications on repeaters. 05:19.440 --> 05:25.720 Many of them have something like echo link or broadcastify in place for your standard person can listen in. 05:25.720 --> 05:27.120 So you're setting that example. 05:27.120 --> 05:35.800 If they hear people talking about maybe things that might put them off from amateur radio, then it might kind of taint their view of it. 05:36.080 --> 05:39.660 And as well as making sure everyone else has their kind of time to talk. 05:39.820 --> 05:47.220 Because when it comes to amateur radio, you kind of got to control yourself, especially when there's a situation not like a network. 05:55.740 --> 06:01.400 Making sure you can come back to yourself, but allow other people to talk as well. 06:08.940 --> 06:11.020 It looks like we lost just for a minute. 06:11.040 --> 06:12.180 He's coming back. 06:13.300 --> 06:14.020 Possibly. 06:14.540 --> 06:16.900 One thing I'll say also while we wait for him to pop on is that... 06:59.570 --> 07:00.250 All right. 07:00.250 --> 07:00.490 All right. 07:00.490 --> 07:01.170 Sorry about that. 07:01.170 --> 07:05.270 The Discord decided to apparently restart and apply an update right now. 07:05.270 --> 07:06.270 So that's awesome. 07:06.290 --> 07:07.870 Yay, automatic updates. 07:08.190 --> 07:09.510 I think we're back on the air. 07:09.510 --> 07:10.530 Do you want to continue? 07:10.570 --> 07:12.550 Just Esther, who were you talking about, Rich? 07:15.350 --> 07:24.870 Yeah, what I was saying is that ham radio has really taken off as far as the different things you can do with ham radio just in the last five years alone. 07:25.050 --> 07:39.850 The abundance of much more affordable ham radio gear coupled with the proliferation of single computing has really opened up a ton of new things that hams can do. 07:39.850 --> 07:49.330 And I think what we have to be careful of as ham hams as we get older is to not get into the trap of the people before us who say, oh, that's not ham radio. 07:49.330 --> 07:50.610 No, that's ham radio. 07:50.610 --> 07:51.850 No, that's not ham radio. 07:52.130 --> 07:59.050 You know, how many times have you heard in the past 20 years of hams saying, well, if you don't know more, Sergeant, you're not a real ham. 08:02.970 --> 08:06.470 Or spark gap traders are the only real ham radio. 08:07.610 --> 08:08.430 No, no. 08:08.430 --> 08:10.870 The only way ham radio is going to survive is as a hobby. 08:10.950 --> 08:23.010 The only way ham radio is going to survive and bring more people into it is to embrace all these new things that are going to be only partially ham radio related, but do things like connect to the internet. 08:23.430 --> 08:25.770 That's the only way we're going to attract new people to this hobby. 08:25.770 --> 08:28.090 So just keep an open mind when you see something new. 08:28.090 --> 08:31.450 And the first thing in your mind is, well, that's not ham radio at all. 08:31.790 --> 08:33.630 Just take a second and think about it. 08:35.110 --> 08:38.470 Yeah, of course, I see a lot of that with all the internet radio and things like that. 08:38.470 --> 08:40.070 I'm like, well, it's not, it's not radio. 08:40.070 --> 08:40.450 It's not radio. 08:40.450 --> 08:44.350 I was like, well, I mean, it's all, you know, it's all fine. 08:44.350 --> 08:49.270 Either the hobby can expand and reach into new areas and stuff like that. 08:50.250 --> 08:52.810 Let's change topics a little bit. 08:52.930 --> 08:58.450 You know, what's probably the, maybe we'll go to you, Justin, as a newer ham. 08:58.630 --> 09:08.150 You know, what did you find the most confusing in terms of like, you know, ham lingo, as you know, you started getting the hobby and everyone's immediately assumed, you know, every piece of, you know, our lingo? 09:08.950 --> 09:09.590 Yeah, definitely. 09:09.590 --> 09:15.470 What I would say there is when I got into it, those cue codes, that's always where everyone likes to start off. 09:15.470 --> 09:17.870 You're saying everyone's like QSY, QSL. 09:18.210 --> 09:23.330 Those, of course, meaning if you're going to change frequency and acknowledging a receipt in that order. 09:23.970 --> 09:29.530 But one thing I would say is, once you start listening to them, it's very easy to pick up on it. 09:29.690 --> 09:37.630 Once you kind of hear what they're saying, and then you can either Google it real quickly, or you can kind of just think about what they're saying. 09:37.630 --> 09:41.370 So if they say QSY and they see a frequency, they're probably switching over there. 09:41.470 --> 09:50.930 And as well, there's kind of your other terms that people might say, especially if you're a technician coming in and you're on a repeater, a lot of people might take a bite or break. 09:50.930 --> 09:57.350 That just means that they are letting the repeater reset because many of them have those talkout timers. 09:57.670 --> 10:00.530 That's one thing I kind of was curious what they're meaning there. 10:00.530 --> 10:04.230 And then I kind of realized they're just letting that repeater reset. 10:06.510 --> 10:14.630 Yeah, I think that's also some great, good operating tips, too, on repeaters and more or less on 2Meter and VHF and up. 10:14.630 --> 10:19.550 But if you're using a repeater, you definitely do not want to call CQ to look for contacts. 10:19.730 --> 10:20.810 It's sort of common. 10:20.810 --> 10:23.650 It's a weird thing, but we just don't do that, right? 10:23.650 --> 10:28.250 Instead, we say, oh, hey, this is K3K monitoring this repeater. 10:28.250 --> 10:37.550 And more than often, it'll come back and talk to you, but it's just not sort of accepted to just go on to the repeater and say, hey, K3K calling CQ on this repeater. 10:37.570 --> 10:42.910 And I don't really exactly know why we chose to do that, but that is just what we do, right? 10:43.530 --> 10:45.290 And there are a lot of just sort of gotchas. 10:45.290 --> 10:49.810 And I think it's important as experienced TAMs, if that happens, it's fine. 10:49.910 --> 10:52.650 I say, oh, hey, by the way, you should probably not call CQ. 10:52.650 --> 11:00.010 You should call monitoring instead of being like, hey, that's not how you do it or just being a jerk about it, which unfortunately, you can see a lot. 11:00.730 --> 11:00.970 Yeah. 11:00.970 --> 11:02.290 And I'll add on to that. 11:02.330 --> 11:09.330 One thing, Dave Kessler, K-E-0-O-G, he's one of the bigger YouTubers, ham radio YouTubers. 11:09.670 --> 11:11.010 Even he covered that topic. 11:11.010 --> 11:20.270 And on a repeater, sometimes calling CQ might be good for like a last resort because most likely if you do it, you will get that ham that tells you not to do it. 11:20.390 --> 11:25.750 But if you haven't made a contact and it's your first time on the air, then you just made your first contact. 11:26.730 --> 11:30.210 Although it might be for someone who's telling you not to call CQ. 11:30.310 --> 11:34.950 I guess technically a contact is still a contact and that's how you can get a conversation going. 11:35.330 --> 11:39.230 And he's actually been one of the people who wrote the book on ham radio. 11:39.230 --> 11:44.490 He's one of the licensed or the authors for the license manuals for the ARRL. 11:48.000 --> 11:49.620 Yeah, very, very cool. 11:50.520 --> 11:52.120 And Saito, is your audio working? 11:52.120 --> 11:52.940 Do you want to jump in? 11:53.500 --> 12:00.720 Yeah, I did want to say, I believe it comes to the fact when you're calling CQ, you're on a frequency , you're not sure who's listening. 12:00.720 --> 12:03.760 Meanwhile, on the repeater, you can assume there's people listening on that frequency. 12:03.760 --> 12:08.320 So I feel like that's why you would call CQ on listening frequency versus on a repeater. 12:11.100 --> 12:12.480 Yeah, that's a great point. 12:15.730 --> 12:20.310 Yeah, I think probably the most sort of frustrating thing, like the cue codes, you know , they make sense. 12:20.310 --> 12:33.250 I mean, a lot of the sort of terminology that's used in ham radio originates from, you know, Morse code CW usage, you know, where, you know, you're trying to literally save time and save the amount of time as you're tapping your finger, of course, back in the day. 12:34.490 --> 12:37.390 You know, so I mean, I think there's a good reason for all those abbreviations. 12:37.390 --> 12:42.290 And of course, it's, you know, now in our modern tech society, I think there's still value in that. 12:42.650 --> 12:50.410 But one of the ones that really my personal pet peeve is when people type hi hi instead of ha ha, which in Morse code is much, much quicker. 12:50.650 --> 12:52.410 I hate that so much. 12:52.410 --> 12:55.590 Yeah, in Morse code is much quicker to type an I than it is an A. 12:55.590 --> 12:56.670 Totally understandable. 12:56.670 --> 13:00.030 On a keyboard, it is literally the same word count. 13:02.450 --> 13:05.890 Yeah, oh man, it just annoys me to no end. 13:05.890 --> 13:07.230 It's like, just just stop. 13:07.230 --> 13:09.550 You don't, you don't look any more important. 13:09.550 --> 13:11.170 I don't know what it, you know. 13:14.330 --> 13:18.510 Now, what's some other sort of weird lingo that people might not be familiar with? 13:27.270 --> 13:28.050 Struggling to think. 13:28.050 --> 13:33.910 I do think there's some terms that are, you know, not misintentioned, but probably outdated. 13:34.250 --> 13:43.650 You know, XYL was sort of a three letter code that, you know, historically has meant, you know, young lady, as in, like, typically the ham operator's spouse. 13:43.730 --> 13:48.670 And I don't think there's ill intention in it, but it's just a little outdated today, you know. 13:48.670 --> 13:52.090 And I personally just kind of cringe a little when I hear that. 13:52.690 --> 13:53.630 So Mr. 13:53.630 --> 13:54.830 Radar had a question. 13:54.830 --> 13:58.230 What's the what's internet lingo-gations on the air? 13:58.230 --> 13:59.690 LOL or BRB? 13:59.690 --> 14:00.650 Look, you know what? 14:00.970 --> 14:04.630 This is my opinion, and I'm sure everybody has a different opinion. 14:05.130 --> 14:14.110 But I don't hate it at all, because it's become part of general language now. 14:14.110 --> 14:17.350 And you see everywhere, not just on the internet anymore. 14:17.590 --> 14:24.810 There are definitely going to be some older old hams who hate it because it's new. 14:25.090 --> 14:26.310 But you know what? 14:26.370 --> 14:28.130 Language over time. 14:29.510 --> 14:31.030 I don't have any problems. 14:31.030 --> 14:41.070 Anybody say LOL or BRB or things like that in ham radio, because it's, it's, it's, it's extended in real life now. 14:41.070 --> 14:42.090 So go for it. 14:42.090 --> 14:47.730 The more and more you use regular language, which in ham radio, the more realized it'll become. 14:47.730 --> 14:50.590 If someone gives you grief over things like that, you know what? 14:50.590 --> 14:53.210 It's probably not even worth your time to engage with them. 14:53.210 --> 14:55.670 Just keep being you. 14:56.010 --> 15:07.110 Don't, don't let some ham who's been doing, doing this for years, and the skin there, that they're old, away from, from, from bullying you. 15:07.110 --> 15:10.410 Because you see a lot of that in radio, especially with some of the older people. 15:10.410 --> 15:14.730 They do behave like bullies, because they've been stuck in there for such a long time. 15:17.270 --> 15:21.390 And I hope is that other, and say, you know what? 15:21.510 --> 15:23.670 Time changed, either. 15:24.850 --> 15:29.430 I want to see more hams interject into conversations like that, saying, look, you know what? 15:29.670 --> 15:32.870 It's time for you to just, you know, lighten up a little bit. 15:32.870 --> 15:34.950 We could use a little bit more of this hobby. 15:36.030 --> 15:37.230 Yeah, I think it's a fair point. 15:37.230 --> 15:42.130 It's a bit of a, I think almost a loaded question, because that is very much more of a societal question, right? 15:42.130 --> 15:49.610 Some people are okay using things like LOL and BRB just in person, or, you know, even, you know, a video conference chat. 15:49.730 --> 15:51.970 And some people are like, no, that's not proper English. 15:51.970 --> 15:53.530 And I don't think that's ever going to be solved. 15:53.530 --> 15:55.770 That's probably not hobby unique. 15:56.090 --> 16:01.270 But I tend to agree with Rich's, you know, comments like, yeah, it's totally fine. 16:01.270 --> 16:06.430 I mean, it's all about your audience and their comfort level and your comfort level with them, you know. 16:06.650 --> 16:19.010 Certainly, if you're on a repeater, and it's a bunch of people, you know, I think it's, you know, the level of comfort of in conversation in general is much different than if you're just, you know, making conversation with, 2000 miles away. 16:19.210 --> 16:33.430 I would, the only thing I'd add to that is I would definitely caution about that if you're doing anything, long distance, also known as DX, another piece of lingo there, distance, just because, you know, if English is not their primary language, sometimes, 16:33.430 --> 16:37.310 you know, those acronyms and things like that can be confusing, you know, if they're not used to that. 16:37.310 --> 16:39.110 So that's my point. 16:39.110 --> 16:41.430 Oh, new challengers appeared. 16:41.630 --> 16:43.190 Well, welcome, Baloo. 16:45.010 --> 16:46.810 I don't know if we have audio from you yet. 16:50.120 --> 16:55.260 We do have a question in chat about if there's a trick to memorizing cue codes. 16:55.500 --> 16:58.520 Yeah, I don't think there's, you know, any real trick. 16:58.660 --> 17:02.600 There's really probably only a handful that get used a lot. 17:02.600 --> 17:08.300 I mean, if you go online, you find like list of cue codes or ham radio cue codes, you'll see like, I don't know, like 20, 30 of them. 17:08.760 --> 17:18.120 But there's probably only like, I don't know, five or six that get used commonly, you know, like, you know, in some only really in like contests and stuff. 17:18.120 --> 17:25.040 Like, you generally don't hear QRZ being called a lot and except if like you're working a pile up or something like that in a contest. 17:25.800 --> 17:35.560 QTH is probably the one I hear the most, which is me shorthand for location, you know, it'd be, you know, if you're in the old CB days, it'd be, you know, what's your 20? 17:35.560 --> 17:42.980 I don't do that on the handbands, by the way, that will definitely anger people using any of the CB lingo. 17:43.040 --> 17:50.100 So I would not I recommend not using any 10 codes, you know, no 10 for a good buddy or anything like that, or that'll definitely rile up the old hams. 17:51.660 --> 18:02.660 Yeah, I'll add on to that, especially how you said not using 10 codes, especially once you get into the more, I guess you could say, emergency comms with stuff like Skywarn. 18:02.780 --> 18:14.100 If you're in a spotter group, and they're taking check-ins for spotters, it's pretty important, especially in those scenarios, to make sure you're using the kind of set and stone phonetics. 18:14.100 --> 18:19.040 Everyone kind of has their funner version of phonetics that they'll usually have for their call sign. 18:19.040 --> 18:22.100 I actually don't have one for, I haven't thought of one for me yet. 18:22.260 --> 18:33.020 But in those more serious scenarios, it's much more important to kind of listen to what the net control station is saying, and follow their instructions, because they're expecting to hear what they have asked for. 18:33.020 --> 18:43.120 If they can get more check-ins from spotters, right when a condition might change to yellow, then it allows for more efficient communications. 18:43.280 --> 18:48.440 And that's where it's more important to make sure you're following those good practices, like proper phonetics. 18:50.380 --> 18:51.300 Yeah, definitely. 18:51.300 --> 18:57.560 I think more important than memorizing any cue codes or anything like that, yeah, knowing the NATO alphabet is way more useful. 18:57.560 --> 19:04.980 And yeah, I do expand on that in any sort of, you know, more formal net, which is just a fancy word for on-air meeting. 19:05.580 --> 19:08.120 Yeah, definitely short and to the point is better. 19:08.120 --> 19:16.720 You know, a lot of times people try to ramble on, if it is like a spotter net, you know, that's like, they just need the information, and they want to get out and go on, you know, do their job, right? 19:16.720 --> 19:30.560 So, now, obviously, if it's a, you know, weekly club meeting on air, and it's just sort of more of a, you know, weird, or just a normal sort of conversation, also in ham parlance called a rag-chew, which is a term I personally don't like. 19:30.560 --> 19:35.340 But, you know, rag-chew just means to have a casual conversation. 19:35.400 --> 19:37.300 It's another term you'll see. 19:39.300 --> 19:52.120 It's always great when you see a ham on the radio going like, okay, this is tangerine, tomato, pineapple, Z, H-I. 19:52.260 --> 19:54.640 Yeah, M as in Mancy jumps to mind. 19:54.960 --> 19:56.500 Learn the phonetic alphabet. 19:59.680 --> 20:02.020 Oh, here's a good question in the chat. 20:02.020 --> 20:07.020 Do you guys have any stories of people actively trolling the ham spectrum? 20:08.520 --> 20:09.800 I have one. 20:10.600 --> 20:11.920 How do I? 20:13.640 --> 20:14.480 Yeah, go ahead. 20:16.780 --> 20:17.680 Yeah, I know. 20:17.680 --> 20:25.500 I was once looking at SCR of 20 Meter Band, and I hear a station in the data portion speaking. 20:25.500 --> 20:35.460 So, it's like, I go there and some Russian station, I recorded, some of my friend recorded it, but it was like this weird Russian saying thing, bunch of stuff, bunch of stuff. 20:35.620 --> 20:39.500 And a bunch of Russians later got on and tried to speak over this person. 20:39.500 --> 20:42.940 So, it was pretty interesting seeing that happen. 20:50.520 --> 21:18.300 About 15, 18 years ago, yes, there was a guy who was not licensed and initially put up a big vertical, much like the one you have in the background of your room there, in downtown Toronto, and was broadcasting on FRS1 at 100 watts, and would bank at the entire city in FRS1 traffic where ham and hams would just take over FRS1. 21:18.300 --> 21:22.260 And eventually, he moved over to 46.552 and did the same thing there. 21:22.260 --> 21:27.480 But he would go back and forth, he would just stomp over anybody else he'd hear talking. 21:27.660 --> 21:45.080 And I'm not saying I was involved, but a few hams after months of this got tired of it, triangulated his position, and may have stuck a piece staple into his coax one night at two in the morning, climbing his tower. 21:45.860 --> 21:47.440 That's just what I heard. 21:47.440 --> 21:53.060 And I do know that he came back the next day and fried his face, so he never ever did again. 21:54.420 --> 22:00.480 I'm not sure, it might be ruining the reputation of the friendly Canadian there, but you know. 22:01.160 --> 22:03.080 That's just a story I heard. 22:04.080 --> 22:11.840 Yeah, I mean, I think there are some... if you look online, there are definitely some well-known people that have caused interference in the ham bans. 22:12.520 --> 22:20.020 Some guy, I think out of New York or something, had a 1.5 kilowatt amp and a Yagi, and would just routinely trash over the bans. 22:20.580 --> 22:23.740 You know, the high-profile ones like that, the FCC in the U.S. 22:23.740 --> 22:27.480 does go after them, and they will issue you very, very large fines. 22:27.780 --> 22:29.040 They don't mess around. 22:29.040 --> 22:34.320 If you've pissed off enough people, the government's getting involved. 22:34.740 --> 22:37.000 Yeah, it usually doesn't end well. 22:37.000 --> 22:40.120 And most of the time, they're not even hams, but sometimes they are. 22:42.120 --> 22:43.740 That's a great point, Eric. 22:43.960 --> 22:49.180 Go online and search for FCC Interference Action Ham Radio or Hampshire Radio. 22:49.180 --> 22:58.800 Just read some of the recaps that the FCC published, some of the behaving hams and some things they've done. 22:58.800 --> 23:04.240 And you'll just read crazy stories about some of the stuff these people have done, including some pretty crazy fines. 23:04.240 --> 23:08.900 I've seen fines, $20,000, $30,000 type fines, confiscation of it. 23:08.900 --> 23:16.940 So like you said, if you piss off enough people for enough time, the FCC will come looking. 23:16.940 --> 23:17.880 It's the same thing in Canada. 23:17.880 --> 23:24.740 History Canada will eventually come and find you if you cause enough mischief out there on the airwaves. 23:25.280 --> 23:30.240 Yeah, I don't know if I'd want the Royal Canadian Mounted Police coming at me asking for my radio. 23:30.240 --> 23:31.240 It seems like it'd be bad. 23:32.280 --> 23:39.820 On the other side of malicious intent, there's a lot of people, including businesses, that are just ignorant. 23:39.960 --> 23:40.880 They have no idea. 23:40.880 --> 23:43.000 They buy this bow thing, they turn it on. 23:43.100 --> 23:46.360 Hey, housekeeping gets a radio, front desk gets a radio. 23:47.060 --> 23:53.580 We've had a local hotel, they were using, they were tromping on our repeater for two or three months. 23:53.580 --> 23:56.820 And we didn't realize it because we have a tone. 23:56.820 --> 24:01.180 But once you go in reverse, it's like, hey, these guys are on our input frequency. 24:01.180 --> 24:05.720 So us as a group, we were like, hey, we didn't get mad. 24:05.720 --> 24:08.160 We were wanting to educate these people. 24:08.160 --> 24:12.560 So the whole club finally found out who it was. 24:12.640 --> 24:19.280 And club president went down and talked to him and said, hey, we understand you got some new radios. 24:20.340 --> 24:23.640 You are interfering with our communications. 24:24.560 --> 24:28.280 I will help you program your radios so you're not breaking law. 24:28.280 --> 24:34.040 And I think that is a great example of positive ham culture. 24:35.820 --> 24:41.980 Yeah, how many times have you had people going absolutely hog-miled over people doing something like that. 24:41.980 --> 24:47.420 And instead, just be calm, be gracious, just walk them through what they're doing. 24:47.420 --> 24:49.300 Because all these people want to talk. 24:49.300 --> 24:53.400 They don't know anything else, but other than the fact they just want to communicate with each other. 24:53.540 --> 24:57.540 So you would use the time, use your knowledge, use your experience to be nice to other people. 24:59.020 --> 25:00.140 New friends. 25:00.140 --> 25:08.440 And you never know, you know, like a hotel, if you could come back six months later and say, hey, do you think maybe we could put an antenna on the roof there for something? 25:08.500 --> 25:14.040 Yeah, they may say, it's easier to make friends than it is to make enemies. 25:14.040 --> 25:21.980 So why not just use your knowledge and try and help some people understand what they're doing and why they do it differently. 25:24.220 --> 25:25.020 Definitely. 25:27.800 --> 25:39.900 Yeah, and it's definitely complicated, I think, by the fact that they're... I mean, the FCC has actually gone after some companies for marketing radios as like, yep, you don't need a license, just bubble pack radio, open this up and transmit. 25:39.900 --> 25:42.580 And the radios are not actually designed for that. 25:42.580 --> 25:49.100 And they were operating in bands that needed licensing, whether it's business band or, you know, on handbands, things like that. 25:49.100 --> 25:52.600 So, you know, the government has gone after those as well, which is good. 25:52.780 --> 25:54.460 But it certainly doesn't help, right? 25:54.460 --> 25:55.560 And just complicates it. 25:55.560 --> 26:01.820 And, you know, people, you know, just, you know, novices who don't have a lot of experience with Zoom, oh, well, the more power, the better, right? 26:01.920 --> 26:02.900 That's all that matters, right? 26:02.900 --> 26:06.460 I just need the most powerful radio, I'll put as much power in the air as I can. 26:06.840 --> 26:08.620 And really, that's not the solution. 26:08.620 --> 26:14.660 I mean, you know, as you start to learn more, like adding power is probably like the least effective amount of thing you can do. 26:14.660 --> 26:23.550 It's much more about improving your antenna system and, you know, reducing noise, all that, that stuff far more effective than just like dumping more power into the problem. 26:24.170 --> 26:26.530 And so you do catch a lot of interference and stuff like that. 26:26.530 --> 26:31.710 And you can certainly catch, you know, electronics these days have a lot of noisy components. 26:31.710 --> 26:41.150 So, you know, if you're in a dense area, it's it can be very common, you know, to have like, oh, you're in something your neighbors , you know, if they still have a plasma TV, yeah, that's gonna be cause lots of interference. 26:41.150 --> 26:43.430 So it's good to be friendly about that sort of stuff. 26:43.430 --> 26:54.250 And not just immediately go and put up 200 foot tower without, you know, talking to your neighbors first, just because the first thing they're going to do is say, oh, well, this is causing problems, and I don't want to help you now. 26:54.250 --> 26:54.730 Right. 26:54.910 --> 27:00.410 So, you know, and now you just just as be as friendly as possible, I think is super important. 27:03.290 --> 27:05.350 Adding more power is a great way to blow things up. 27:05.350 --> 27:06.350 Yes, yes. 27:07.790 --> 27:11.850 There's a question about looking for resources for getting into DMR. 27:11.850 --> 27:13.730 I'm definitely not the person to answer that. 27:13.730 --> 27:20.530 I guess I can. 27:21.210 --> 27:31.550 DMR is one of those things that might be really hard to understand without just being able to go back and forth and ask your questions. 27:31.550 --> 27:37.870 I would join up with a group, the wireless village discord, the ham radio village discord. 27:38.690 --> 27:40.330 Very helpful folks. 27:40.330 --> 27:41.950 They'll help you get online. 27:43.070 --> 27:49.190 There's some quick basics you'll need to know, such as getting a hotspot, getting a radio. 27:50.010 --> 28:01.370 But after that, there's just a lot of little things that could take you days to understand when you could just chat with somebody for 30 minutes and have a working system. 28:01.370 --> 28:08.610 So I definitely definitely suggest going to a community and getting some help other than that. 28:08.610 --> 28:21.250 If you can't, YouTube is a great resource because just reading documentation, sometimes you don't get the things you need to know, such as a receive list. 28:21.470 --> 28:27.230 If you don't add a receive list, you might be able to talk out fine, but you won't be able to hear anybody. 28:27.230 --> 28:30.250 And a lot of documentation I've read doesn't even mention it. 28:30.250 --> 28:37.470 So it's great to get those little tidbits of information that could make or break your system from somebody that knows. 28:39.750 --> 28:43.290 It's amazing how far it has come even in the last couple of years. 28:43.290 --> 28:50.510 I had a couple of workshops I did a few years ago around monitoring systems, like trunk systems and DMR systems, things like that. 28:50.550 --> 29:03.370 And now, those little pie pie zero, because you can buy 75 bucks, and then you can buy the AnyTone DMR radio is under $200 now. 29:03.650 --> 29:05.390 Surplus Motorola. 29:05.510 --> 29:06.650 Yeah, there you go. 29:06.650 --> 29:07.370 There's one right there. 29:07.370 --> 29:09.230 And I think that's what's not like $150. 29:09.230 --> 29:11.150 It's not very expensive. 29:12.190 --> 29:17.390 It's really simple to get these things on the air and get started with. 29:17.390 --> 29:25.130 And I'm, for one, really excited to see all this digital stuff really take off because it's the next radio. 29:25.410 --> 29:34.890 And as neat as it is to say, you know, do more code and stuff, this is far more useful, far more practical today. 29:37.470 --> 29:42.950 Kind of on a little side note there, kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier. 29:43.930 --> 29:50.690 I said on the club net a couple weeks ago, hey, I have a new DMR repeater. 29:50.890 --> 29:57.550 Those with DMR radios who would like to know more about DMR, come on, get on the repeater, talk with us. 29:57.890 --> 30:03.230 We had a few less ignorant hams. 30:03.230 --> 30:03.890 I don't know. 30:03.890 --> 30:05.510 I'll just keep using the word ignorant. 30:05.510 --> 30:07.690 That brings me back to that South Park episode. 30:09.810 --> 30:13.630 We've had ham say no, club, don't listen to this guy. 30:13.630 --> 30:15.570 You do not want to get into digital radio. 30:15.570 --> 30:17.290 Digital radio is not where you want to be. 30:17.290 --> 30:18.770 It's not real radio. 30:19.150 --> 30:22.610 And it's just... that very deeply frustrated me. 30:22.610 --> 30:23.890 I just let it go. 30:23.890 --> 30:28.590 But there's definitely some pushback from the older ham community. 30:30.130 --> 30:30.430 Yeah. 30:30.430 --> 30:33.830 And I mean, I think there is maybe a couple of reasons for that. 30:33.830 --> 30:39.110 You know, it definitely is the bar of entry is much higher, especially, I think, with, you know, DMR.