Geocities Called, They Want Their Ham Radio Website Back

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you take anything away from tonight's conversation
, let it be.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Women don't find you handsome.
They should at least find youhandy.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Next on Live Free and Ham.
Well, hello and welcome to theLive Free and Ham podcast.
This is our weekly show wherewe discuss ham radio topics in
New Hampshire, new England andbeyond, and so we're thrilled to
have you here.
Maybe this is your first timeas a listening, or maybe you're
a regular listener.
Either way, thanks again forjoining us tonight's episode,
and so, as we always like to do,let's get into the show.

(00:26):
I'm your host, eric, a callsign N1JUR, and I'm with my
co-hosts.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
And now that we're recording, it's Paul N1OJ.

Speaker 4 (00:36):
And I'm Todd solo general W1STJ.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Both keeping me on my toes, man All right.
Well, as we always say, beforewe get into a topic, we have a
few things we always like tocatch everybody up on.
As always, our storefront overat livefreeandhamcom forward
slash shop is always up andavailable 24-7 and has a ton of
our merch, and we are alwaysworking to add more stuff to
that store.
So make sure you keep an eyeout.

(01:08):
From time to time, as you know,we'll have some new shirts up
there and I think from a coupleother live streams, a few ideas
have been in the works, so Ithink we're going to have to get
those up there.
One comes to mind $20 is $20,but you know that that's in the
works there.
But you know you can alwayspick up our drams.
You know our live free and hamcustom whiskey glasses are
available.
They are still out there.
We have a few left, um and soif you haven't grabbed yours now

(01:31):
, maybe this might be the lasttime you hear this, maybe not.
You know we're hoping.
You know we want to get thosesold out so we can, uh, you know
, get those into the hands ofthose that want it and then, uh,
from there we'll come up withsomething new and creative.
And you know fun, you know.
So you know, once we get thosegone, you know we'll move on to
something new.
But, uh, you know, if youhaven't had a chance to pick one
up, they're still available.
Please definitely head over tothe store, pick one up for

(01:52):
yourself.
Uh, or a great uh whiskey orbourbon, or uh scotch lover.
Um, they will definitely enjoyit for sure.
And so, as always, as we justtalked about uh on, uh, our
non-recorded uh, you know back.
Uh, you know channels.
Uh, we gotta get him.
So you know we are back up, uh,in stock and available for a

(02:14):
pickup.
You know the warmer days arecoming and you know with that,
ham fests are out there, um, andso what better way to show
other hams how cool their hamrides are, with one of our
little hammies you know paul'sso delicately and wonderfully
displaying our little hamletthere, um, and it's one easy,
cool way to be able to kind ofleave your qsl card with other

(02:36):
guys and hams out there on theircars.
It comes with a simple littledisc there you can write your
call, sign in and you can dropuh anywhere on their car and
it's super visible.
Again, this is sort of like thejeep.
You know jeep communities, uh,ducks.
But hey, we're doing it for theham community, and what better
than to represent us as a ham?
Hey, it's simple and easy.
It sends a message.
So you can always head over togethamcom to find out more about

(02:59):
that.
And if you've picked up a bunchand you have distributed them
out there in the wild, send usphotos, send us details.
We'd love to share your storiesand some of the cool things
that you've been doing with them.
And so, in a usual style, youcan always send that over to
livefreeandham at gmailcom andwe'll be glad to add that into

(03:22):
our usual website there.
So, with that, that, as always,we love feedback, and so there's
always a couple of ways you canreach us.
Um, and, first and foremost,easiest way is you can use our
sms text uh message, uh method.
That's all in our show noteslinks there.
And if you ever have a questionor you want to share something
with us, or you know maybe, uh,you know we, we just want to

(03:45):
profess your love to us.
So, whatever it might be, youcan use a VR SMS link there and
we'll happily share it in thenext episode.
You can always leave us avoicemail and I have to say we
have a voicemail tonight, todd,so we'll get to that in a second
.
But we finally decided to openup the lines for you guys.
So now you can share yourdeepest thoughts, express your
devoted love for the show, andyou can do it all in the comfort

(04:07):
of your birthday suit and I'mgoing to put a asterisk caveat
there and explain later why that.
We have to stress the idea thatI was only kidding about the
birthday suit stuff, but we'llget into that in a second.
And the easiest way to getahold of us is the number to
call is nine seven in a second.
And the easiest way to get ahold of us is, uh, the number to

(04:29):
call is 978-233-1142.
Uh, the voicemail line isavailable 24 7.
So don't wait any longer.
We've got volunteers standingby to listen to your message and
then laugh and then maybe playit next week, and it was.
If you're one of the boringtypes, you can always reach out
to us via email atlivefreeandham at gmailcom, and
we always check the inbox there.
And, as we always get into, wealways do a live stream, but

(04:53):
every month we have no idea.
Usually when we do that, it'skind of like a surprise thing
and it's a usual extra bonusepisode that we throw in every
month within our regular podcastand hey, we do stuff that, uh,
we just kind of come up lastminute.
But the idea is just, you know,it's one more way, and the
easiest way to get in on or bein the know is to head over to

(05:14):
our youtube page, become asubscriber and smash that alarm
bell.
Let everybody know that when wego live, that uh, we ready to
go and having some fun and youcan come over and join us in the
chat and hang out with us.
And so, definitely, if youhaven't become a scriber and you
definitely haven't set thatalarm bell, you know what you're
waiting for.
Let's get that done and youknow you'll get notified when we

(05:36):
go live.
And you know, for our patreon'sfans, we've actually got some
good stuff coming about.
We had a few people actuallyask us if we would do, um, our
uncut, unfettered, um, you know,patreon video feed that we post
on our patreon for our paidpatreon members in a podcast
form.
So we heard your cries.

(05:58):
We have now converted it and soif you are a patreon paid
member now you can actually getour podcast, uncut, unfettered,
unedited, straight from thesource in its own personal
private feed.
So you can head over to ourPatreon page to learn more on
how to become a subscriber and,as Bob Coffway says, for just a

(06:18):
little donation of $3 a month,you can get a shit ton of stuff
from us.
I mean, the feed is just onemore thing, then we keep adding
to that daily, and so, you know,make sure you head over there,
check that stuff out, and youknow it's always fun, we, we
love our, our Patreon and, um,you know, uh, our Patreon paid
members and even those that arejust kind of tickling the, the
ivories there, they're just, youknow, not sure they want to

(06:50):
make the the jump.
Yet you know, what are youwaiting for?
There's definitely some coolstuff uh to be had, uh, by
becoming and supporting the show.
So let me clear the throat herewith that.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Uh, let's dive into our um first segment here.
Ladies and gentlemen, can Iplease have your attention?
I've just been handed an urgentand horrifying news story.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
We got some news.
Slow down, boog, let me handlethis.
We've got some news.
I've got bad news and bad news.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
I have reviewed ship's personnel Captain.
Congratulations, You've gotmail.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
All right Over to our mailbag man.

Speaker 4 (07:21):
So, uh, I am uh not on site and I don't think we had
any mail except for thevoicemail.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
We do have voicemail but no mail.
Yeah, you are correct in thatpart.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
So so, uh, I haven't uh had a chance to check the
mail room and he's uh, you know,live on location too as well.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
So, uh, those that are watching from the stream,
you know live on location too,as well, so, uh, those that are
watching from the stream.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
Yeah, I'm, uh.
I'm in, uh, southern Californiait was about 70 degrees for the
last couple of days and, uh,enjoying the good weather.
But I heard I'm flying backtomorrow and I heard, uh, we
might be getting some snow or atall.
I mean, I'm in shorts and at-shirt right now, barefoot.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Well, if we play the voicemail, you'll get a lot more
from that visual-wise, butwe'll get into that in a second.
Alright, well, without furtherado, I think I'll kick off the
voicemail here, and I think thevoicemail was from Mike N2MAK on
, I think, our last episode.
Yeah, our good buddy Mike here.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
So let's kick that one off here.
What's up, mike N2MAK?
So here's the deal.
I am in the shower listening tothe podcast and my wife walks
in and she's like, oh my gosh,these guys are still talking
about monitors.
They're dying.
And I'm like girl, I don't evenhave a station set up at home.
You have no idea what's instore.

(08:48):
So, anyway, I thought you'd geta little kick out of that
nugget of joy.
Keep up the good work, fellas.
I got to run to work Seventhree.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Okay, do you want to unpack this a little bit,
because I think we should.

Speaker 4 (09:06):
I just I don't want to say why he's listening to us
in the shower.
It's kind of a.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
That's the first thing, right, I'm like what do
you mean?

Speaker 3 (09:14):
I listen to podcasts when I'm in the shower.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Well, do you announce it when you call in and like
say you know you're helpingsupport them?

Speaker 3 (09:22):
He's calling us like in the shower I mean I, I don't,
I don't think the sean ryanshow has, uh has, a number for
me to call.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
So got it okay, the legit, legit point.
I I am.
I I guess I'm happy and excitedthat couples a two married
couple is listening to ustogether.
However, where they'relistening maybe could be a
better location, like the livingroom, the car, you know.

Speaker 4 (09:52):
He didn't say they were in the shower together.
He said that she came inprobably to say something to him
and he was listening to thepodcast.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
That's a lot of infirmity there, I think,
because it sounded like shecould have been brushing her
teeth or you know, for godforbid.
You know, mike, we needclarification, my friend, I
don't know, should we go deeperin this?
Do we have to?
Uh, you know, consult uh himdirectly and bring him on?
But anyway, it definitelysurprised me, my friends.
I, uh, I am happy, mike, andthank you again for sending

(10:24):
something in, and the voicemailwas awesome.
Uh, just, you know my brain istrying to.
We were on a good plane for awhile.
Now, my friend, and it's just, Ihave too much visuals and so
I'm gonna put that asterisk backin there that when I said in
your birthday suit to all of ourlisteners here, that was
metaphorical and, um, you know,not meant to be actual.

(10:47):
Like, you don't have to do that.
You could do it fully clothed,you could do it in your car ride
, you can do it at the bus stop,wherever, just don't do it
directly in your birthday suitor in a area that would require
you to be in your birthday suit.
That's just.
You know what I'm saying, justfor legal reasons because, we
are a family show my pants.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
You can ship your pants, your pants too.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
You're right.
I just shit my drawers, allright.
Well, with that, I'm going tohave to go scrub my brain out a
little bit there and, uh, we'lldive uh into our next uh segment
here, um which, thank god,there's not any uh you, not any
form of nudity or anything ofthat nature, but I don't

(11:28):
actually have anything for it,so I don't know if we'll just
roll into it either way.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
Doing good.
Doing good, that's good.
Doing good.
Doing good.

Speaker 4 (11:42):
Absolutely.
I do Good good, doing good Bob,doing real good, real good.
Right now my only outlet is myham radio, all right.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Well, this is our usual do good segment and I'm
sad to say that I don't haveanything to report.
I didn't see anything come inthe mailbox.
Paul, did you see anything onuh winlink at all?

Speaker 3 (12:01):
so we did get a message on winlink.
Uh, I'm I'm not 100 sure it's ado good, but it's a message we
are.
This person actually felt theneed to send two messages, so,
uh, so the first one is forthey're both from the same
person, but it's uh kilo charliethree z Zulu Lima X-Ray.

(12:23):
And he writes hey guys, prettynew ham here Was looking for ham
podcasts and was surprised tofind one hosted by Brian
McWilliams of the Lions ofLiberty show and Libertarian
Party former governor ChrisChristie and the occasional
guest Dave Legrica of the BustedOpen podcast.

(12:47):
I kid, of course.
Keep up the good work.
I enjoy the show.
It keeps me entertained when Ineed something in the background
.
73 KC3ZLX Angelo Wow.
Nice.
He gets to come on the on thepodcast right yeah, so he was,

(13:09):
he was, he wasn't finished, uh,so he had to send another one
and so he said a quick othershow comment.
Uh, I could be wrong as I knownothing about marketing, but I
do wonder if changing or addinga secondary show logo may add to
merchandise sales.
The new hampshire state logomay be limiting to those who

(13:32):
live outside the state signedand okay, so uh, yeah, much
appreciated, angelo for the uhthe win link.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
All right, well, live free and ham.
What would we substitute with alive free part?
As a representative, alwaysinterested, I'm curious.
I'm not against changing logos,we've had it for a bit.

Speaker 3 (13:59):
What doesn't he like about the logo, did he say?

Speaker 4 (14:00):
Nothing.
What doesn't he like about thelogo?

Speaker 3 (14:03):
Did he say he's saying that he thinks that
people who don't live aroundhere may not want to wear the
state of New Hampshire on theirhat or shirt?
Oh, I got it.
So while we were just doingthis, right Epiphany hit me.
What if we did like a Gadsdenflag and put live free and ham

(14:30):
at the bottom instead of youknow?

Speaker 1 (14:32):
don't tread on me.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
It says live free and ham.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
Try that.
That'd be interesting to kindof fool around with.
For sure I definitely don'twant to alienate people out.
I mean obviously we love ourstate here for you know many
reasons.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
But uh, we make one for angelo and uh, and then have
people vote on it and see whatthey think well we can bring him
on and he can bring his designswith them right, there's
nothing wrong with havingmultiple logos.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
More the mirror, yeah no, I mean it's it's somewhat
iconic.
It's kind of funny because like, uh, you know it's sort of like
the typical.
You know antenna tower icon isiconic.
But you know we definitely liketo reach out beyond our scope.
I don't think we can be theUnited States, live free and ham
kind of people, but you knowthat might be too broad of an

(15:20):
area for coverage.
But we'll definitely have to,you know, tinker with that and
see what we can come up with.
So I'm game for that.

Speaker 4 (15:27):
Well, we got to get Angelo on then and we can maybe
dive into his thoughts and hecan go into more detail about
what he think we should have andmaybe go for it.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yeah, he definitely earns a coveted spot in our
overachievers win link groupthere.
So we'll make sure, once we geta few more, we'll send out that
message and we'll do a specificshow with you guys.
That'd be awesome to have youall on and just have fun with it
, whatever it might be.
So cool, all right.

(15:59):
Well, those are cool.
Anything else in the win linkmailbox there, mr N1OG, are we
good?

Speaker 3 (16:05):
No, that was it Just the two from Angelo.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Awesome.
Well, thank you again, angeloand Mike.
As always, we appreciateeverybody who sends stuff in and
we encourage everybody to dothe same thing.
So whether you've got a do goodmessage or story that maybe
you're doing something in yourclub or in a group and you want
to share that with us, us we'dlove to hear it, just to kind of
spread you know, the ham lovethere around and let folks come

(16:29):
up with cool and creative waysthat they may be able to do some
fun stuff like that you'realready doing in your club.
I know an example like ofsomething like that was a you
know the go-kart challenge thatjust recently happened down kind
of in the Florida areas thatI've seen some videos from Tank
and a few others.
It would be really cool if youknow someone around here or even
just in your area you know haddone that you know and share

(16:50):
that story.
So cool, all right.
Texas, yeah right, you'recorrect.
I always think Florida, I don'tknow why.
My mistake, my apologies to myTexas brothers who I've
obviously hurt.
Anyway, all right.
So with that let's dive intoour next segment Segment.

(17:12):
And now a little somethingextra with Todd WNSTJ.

(17:32):
Love that, all right, well, asyou've heard it here I don't get
a break because I'm on vacation.
Dude, you went away to gocelebrate your brother's, like
you know you're partying outthere in California.

Speaker 4 (17:51):
If anything, you've got to suffer.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
Yeah, celebrate your brother's.
Like you know, you're partyingout there in california if
anything you gotta suffer.

Speaker 4 (17:55):
Yes, let me tell you, his brother-in-law, andrew,
makes these killer margaritas,right, have you had a few?
First I went, uh.
Last my sister-in-law was, twoyears ago, turned 50, so I came
out for that and he made it.
But he ran out.
He only made like one container.
So this year he came with threeand I said I'll have one or two
.
Yeah, I had 10 way to be anoverachiever and then the best

(18:16):
part, the best part of the wholething is my nephew who turns 21
in like three weeks.
He was drinking the margaritasand then he had to go to work
this morning like 7 30, and hewoke up freaking, throwing up
and it was bad.
It was like way to christen him.
We went to lunch and then wewent over to see him at his work

(18:37):
.
He, he has a part-time jobworking, uh, pumping gas for
boats and stuff at a kind of gasyeah.
So I go.
Hey, uh, you have any Tumsies?
Oh, I think we're all out.
I'm like, oh, because youneeded them this morning.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Hey, you want to go on a boat and rock back and
forth.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
Andrew who made the margaritas that I saw him this
afternoon I said, dude, he'sjust a rookie.
I'm like you know he can't hangwith us old guys that are used
to drinking your margaritas, butthey are phenomenal.
I don't know what he does tothem, but they are so damn good
and they go down smooth.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
So it was the first time I drank in a long time and
I actually had a good buzz goingNice.
Well, let's see if we can spinthat buzz into you know, helping
you study for your extra classlicense.
See how I segued there.
Well, as always, in eachepisode we pick three questions
from the extra class questionpool to test his knowledge,
hoping he gets his upgrade.
So if you always want to followalong, you can head over to
hamstudyorg.
It's an awesome resource tohelp you prepare for your test

(19:36):
and is always recommended bythree out of four ves.
So without any further delay, Igoing to hand it over to our
quiz master.
Take it away.
N1og.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
Keep clicking the wrong damn button.

Speaker 4 (19:51):
I know that feeling, I got a big screw to your mug
coming in my face.
I don't know.
I'm moving in, so I can read it.
I don't know what happenedeverything went blank see, it
wasn't meant to be today section10 is it's not showing no

(20:24):
filler.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
hold on, no problem, no, miller.
Hold on, no problem.
Technical difficulties for allof our podcast listeners.
There we go, sweet, all right,excellent.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
OBS.
What can you do, mm-hmm?
All right, Todd.
So question number one fromsub-element 10.
Oh yes, this is the lastsub-element before we start
doing all questions, yeah it'sgoing to be bad when we go to
all.

Speaker 4 (20:54):
No, it's going to be great.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
All right, we can hope.
Question number one what ismeant by 100% tie-off regarding
tower safety?
Is it A At least one lanyardattached to the tower at all
times.
B All tools secured to theclimber's harness.

(21:19):
C All circuit breakers feedingpower to the tower must be tied
closed with tape, cable or ties.
Or.
D All loose ropes and guidessecured to a fixed structure?

Speaker 4 (21:44):
All right, paul, I'm going to go with A.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
I believe it's A man.
I think they throw C in therejust to be jerks, but I'm going
to go D.
I think it's all loose ropes,not that I even remember this
question when I took my lecture.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
All right.
Well, Todd said A and A iscorrect.

Speaker 4 (22:16):
Yeah, because I picked all the loose rope ones
and I just took what I got, thatquestion first and I was like
that was the obvious one, right?

Speaker 3 (22:27):
but yeah, so 100% tie-off refers to a safety
protocol for workers climbingand working on towers or other
elevated structures.
It means that at all times,workers must be securely
attached to the tower orstructure with a safety harness
and lanyard.
This ensures continuousprotection against falls, as the

(22:51):
worker is always connected toan anchor point.
So there you go.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Sneaky.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
You're off to a great start.
Question number two.
Question number two when mustan rf exposure evaluation be
performed on an amateur stationoperating on 80 meters?
We're not talking about yourhemorrhoids.
When must an rf exposureevaluation be performed on 80

(23:22):
meters?
Is it a?
An evaluation must always beperformed on 80 meters.
Is it A?
An evaluation must always beperformed.
B, when the station's operatingmode is CW.
C when the output power fromthe transmitter is less than 100
watts.
Or.
D, when the ERp of the stationis less than 10 watts I'll just

(23:55):
go off all the cw guys.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
It's usually cw I'm gonna say uh yeah, I'm gonna go
a because the arl did that wholepush.
Yeah, I'm going to go A.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
Because the ARL did that whole push, so I missed.
What did Todd say?

Speaker 4 (24:14):
B, the ERP is D.
I lost it.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
D is incorrect.
Oh, killer, the correct answeris A.
An evaluation must always beperformed.
The FCC requires radiooperators to evaluate the
potential for RF exposure, toensure that their station

(24:42):
operate within the safety limitsset for electromagnetic
radiation, and always check myhow many of us here can raise
their hands and say they alwaysdo an rf exposure test.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah right when installing your antennas on your
trailer, did you perform an RFexposure test?

Speaker 3 (25:08):
I left the RF meter at home.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yes, exactly there we go.
What's an?
Rf meter.

Speaker 4 (25:14):
Well.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
Oh man, there are so many things there I could say.
But I would say, you know,there's a handy, dandy
calculator up on ARL's websitethat you can run and you
probably, more than likely, willpass without even having to do
an RF exposure one.
But all good.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
All right.
So, Todd, you're 50%.
So far, you know where we'regoing.
The third and final question ofthe evening To what should
lanyards be attached whileclimbing?
Is it A antenna mast, B towerlegs, C guy brackets or D tower

(26:03):
rungs?

Speaker 4 (26:15):
Towers have legs, all right, I'm going to go with D
again tower rungs.
Either that or C I'm going withD, I think it's C.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
I'd be really cool if you could figure out how to
attach it to a Tatenna mastbefore you put the tower up.
But whatever, I'd say guybrackets, why is that?
Like not, I'm going to go withthe tower legs B.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
Okay, todd said D and you're incorrect.
Incorrect.
The correct answer is B thetower legs.
Obviously, I need to study more.
Yeah so just remember whenclimbing a tower, always link to
legs.
When climbing a tower, alwayslink to legs.

(27:09):
This is just a basic safetything, but one that
inexperienced tower climber maynot think about.
The other options are poorchoices because the antenna mast
would be connected to the towerbut would not be securely
connected.
It's always best to connectyour safety harness to the most
secure thing available.
Guy brackets Again.

(27:30):
Anything that can come off thetower is less safe.

Speaker 4 (27:33):
The tower rungs, so look, even they say it's one
that many are guilty of, so alot of people probably use that.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
However, if a rung breaks, the tower will still
stand, but if you're connectedto that rung, guess what you're
not down, bye-bye hmm, look atthe laugh of them.

Speaker 4 (27:54):
Well, you know it's funny we had that, that um
question, because yesterday Iwas on my brother's boat and
there was a guy on a sailboat upon the mast running new lines
or whatever and he was way upthere like sitting in this
harness.
He was up there for like a goodtwo hours just baking in the
sun trying to do it.
I'm like that's going to suck.

(28:16):
And then I thought of like theantenna towers of someone going
up there and things not goingright and being you know, so
high up.
The guy was pretty high up onthe top of the sailboat, just
kind of hanging there in aharness, so I don't know what to
expect.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
To me, my biggest fear being on top of a tower
would be dropping a tool thathappens a lot.
Right, but I mean not for like,I'm not fearful for the people
down below.
It's the giant pain in the assto then climb all the way down
to get your tool and climb allthe way back up so here here's a

(28:55):
little tidbit that I learnedfrom w2re, because he's a big
antenna guy that installs, likeyou know, mega.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
You know antenna installations he has.
Every one of his tools have alittle loop with a rope on it
and so, even though it's tied tohis bag, he can literally
unclip or clip.
You know tools in and out soyou know, if you're clumsy like
myself and you catch it on thebag, you're not going to fling
your hammer.
You know, three quarters awayacross the, you know the state

(29:22):
well, todd, guess what's coming.
I only got one that's all right,I I actually I got two, so I
deserve it.
Thank you, I appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (29:35):
I miss that, either when I get them all wrong or all
right, is the only safe yeah,so far your, your averages,
whether live stream orprerecorded, probably somewhat
equal.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
I mean, you go on hot streaks for a little while and
then you're like the band.
Sometimes you're really hot andthen sometimes you just, you
know, in a CME or something.

Speaker 4 (30:01):
Yeah, all right so.
I got a long flight back so.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
So, wrapping this up, if you're on the journey of
studying for your technician,general or extra class license,
then hamstudyorg is an awesomeresource for getting your ticket
and, like we always say, ifyou've recently received your
license or upgrade, we want toknow, we'd like to recognize you
for all of your hard work andeffort and you can always email
us at live free and ham at gmailand we'll make sure we mention
but I know paul keeps his ear tothe rail there over in flag and

(30:26):
torch any new updates.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
Anybody else, get tested and pass I haven't seen
any, any, any new ones thatcaught my eye, okay no problems,
cool, all right.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
Well, like we said, it's out there.
You know, we want to know, wewant to help celebrate, we want
to celebrate with you.
So, uh, definitely, shoot us anemail, let us know, hit us up
on discord and we'll be glad torecognize you in our next
episode, all right, so with ourusual ham radio.
No, we forgot our jingle too.
We've got to make sure we gotto throw that in there.

(30:59):
So keep your finger on thatbutton.
So, in the usual format, let'sgo through the rotation here.
Paul, how is your ham radioweek bud?

Speaker 3 (31:12):
Well, I had a really fantastic radio week.
Actually, tuesday I went downto Connecticut and activated the
Bigelow Hollow State Forestwith Smoke Signals RF.
Mr Don Izzo, we had a greattime.
Then we went to Sturbridge Massfor lunch.

(31:38):
We had really really goodburgers, so that was great.
I've been playing around withdifferent antennas, uh, on the
on the rv.
Um, I I met the, the one otherham in the rv park today, um,
nice, cool.
You know, the guy's got, uh,guy's got a little mag loop on
uh on his, uh, his truck camper,and then, and then he's got

(32:01):
another camper that's next tohis truck camper, uh, and he's
got two verticals on that.
He's got a UHF, ehf and then anHF vertical.
So yeah, so we talked aboutthat stuff for a little bit.
I gave him a hammy and I waslike you got to have it and he
thought it was the coolest thingand he thanked me up and down.

(32:23):
So yeah, that was, uh, it's agreat, great ham radio week that
is very cool.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Nevertheless, uh, it's always good to see that
there's other hams in the thearea that you're working from.
Sorry about that.
And uh, you know, it'll beinteresting to see how you guys
can, you know, compete on, youknow, on each other's space
there for a little while.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
See who's going to come on top of each other yeah,
well, he, he 100 agreed with methat, uh, because of all the rfi
, like literally from inside therv park, fta is kind of your
only option hey, yeah, wow,you've come full circle.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
You started there.
Now you're back.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
I'm back on digital modes guys.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Paul's favorite first love.
He's just come back around.
It's like Windows.
You're a fat, comfy, chubbygirlfriend, right?
What do you know about it?
Nothing.
Exactly Nothing.
Well, very cool, awesome.
Well good to see the hammiesare out there in full force, and
you know we got to meet acouple of cool new hams there.

(33:28):
It's always good.
And so with that, todd, how'syour ham radio bud?

Speaker 4 (33:34):
Well, my ham radio has actually been pretty good,
so I got my screen, my newcomputer screen, and I love it.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
It fits perfectly your new monitor yes, yep, the
one mike's been dreaming aboutin the shower yeah and uh, I
didn't get the big one.

Speaker 4 (33:54):
I got like a, I think it's a 34, it might be a 38
inch, I forget, but anyway it's,it's curved, it's 4k and it
just kicks ass and I love it andI and I've actually been since
I put it up I've been doing alot more hunting because I leave
the Flex on and I just walk byand I see the waterfall and I
just have to stop just for asecond and then it turns into

(34:16):
half an hour or so.
So that's been kind of fun.
But I needed to get another armfor my vertical I mean not for
my other monitor monitor and Iwas going to put it to the left
side and I was going to have itvertical and unfortunately, the
way my desk is and it's like abuilt-in desk, I couldn't clamp
it on because there's no space,because the other ones are

(34:38):
behind a window, so there's aspace, so it didn't work on the
left side.
So now I have it on the rightside and I put it horizontal and
I love it Better than thevertical, I think, because it
just gives me like it justcontinues, almost like a half
circle.
So psyched about that.
So it's coming along and thefinal thing that I need to buy

(35:01):
is an arm that I saw online thatI'm probably going to buy.
It's for an iPad and it willfit because it's smaller on my
left side on my shelf and that'swhere I'm going to have my iPad
set up.
Why did you?

Speaker 1 (35:14):
put that up.
I don't know.
I think I was trying to say canI ask a stupid question?

Speaker 2 (35:17):
I didn't realize the backgrounds weren't synced
between the two cameras.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
I didn't realize the backgrounds weren't synced
between the two cameras.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
They were rotating through Nice.

Speaker 4 (35:32):
All right, well, anyway, so, so, yeah, so that's,
that's going along good.
I'm really really starting tofeel like my shack is coming
around, where I want to be inthere and get more on the radio,
and that was the goal.
And then yesterday I I was, I'mhere in Huntington beach, so my
brother lives about two milesfrom the beach, so we went to
Huntington Beach State Park andI tried to activate Well, I did

(35:53):
activate the park and it sucked.
I was there for two and a halfhours.
I got 12 contacts and I almostdidn't activate because my
brother had a birthday partyturned 50.
And he had to go pick up ourfriend from high school flying
in.
So I said he said you want meto just leave you here and come
pick you up when, after I gethim, like, could you, because I
was at like eight and I'm like Ican't leave here with eight yes

(36:17):
, you can no.
So I, I went through a, I triedto hunt a hundred parks.
There was a hundred on 20meters and I couldn't.
I couldn't hear.
I mean, I heard a few and Imaybe worked like one or two.
So, long story short, I finallygot up to 12 and then he texted
me.
He says hey, 15 minutes, I'llbe there.

(36:38):
So I packed up and I was justglad I got 12.
And I worked the same guy incalifornia who was on 10 meters,
and then I didn't hear anythingon 10 meters except for him,
and I switched to 20 meters andhe was the first guy.
So I so I worked him again.
He goes oh, you're moving bandstoo.
I'm like, yeah, I go, you havea problem?
Yeah, absolutely so.

(37:00):
In california it sucked.
Meanwhile Eric will probablytell you what his ham radio week
was like and he had much betterluck than I did.
And then the bummer of thewhole thing is where my brother
lives.
He's got solar panels, so Itried to set up in his backyard.
20 meters.
All I get is a buzzing sound.
So I was like I'm done withthat.
But 10 meters seemed to work.

(37:20):
And there was a 10-meter guy ata park in hawaii and I was like
all psyched and I ran, got mygear and as soon as I set up,
gone.
So I didn't get hawaii oralaska and I'm just kind of
bummed about that.
But there'll be another dayI'll have to come out here again
and try again but basically, uh, all you're gonna have to
amount to is 12 contacts okay, Ican set the building on fire.

(37:46):
That played through, I draggedall my gear out to accomplish.
You know, lug all the stuff3,000 miles across the country
to get 12 contacts.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
I'd call that dedication.
That's me at the beach doingyou know 20 watts, trying to
like get 10 contacts.
I refused to leave the beachbecause I was testing my fx4 cr.
I forgot how hard it is to workqrp.

Speaker 4 (38:11):
But yeah, we'll get into that in a second but anyway
, it was uh, it was a beautifulpark, great beach, uh, just it's
, it's nice down here, it's uh,but ham radio.
And then, of course, you know,today I looked on the app and I
saw everything was good.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
Where yesterday the app said yeah, it's all gonna
suck, so well, anyway, Iactivated another park you know,
I didn't have that one before,so it's all good yeah, so just
so you know, todd, just becausethe solar cycle has peaked
doesn't mean she's done beingangry at us.

(38:45):
Exactly, we've got more badstuff coming.

Speaker 4 (38:51):
Yeah, well, you know I'll tell you this.
I mean it was noon here, so itwas like what 3 o'clock on the
East Coast when I was activating.
It was around that time.
There's a lot more peopleactivating on the east coast
than there is on the west coast,because even when I went
through you know the list of theof the spots, everything was
out east.
So I don't know if that's justa fluke or whatever, but like I

(39:15):
figured there'd be washington,oregon, you know new mexico, big
, you know nevada, arizona, likethat kind of stuff, nothing.
There's one New Mexico I saw,and maybe one Texas, and then,
and then there's the onlystations that I could really get
well, whereas Oklahoma that'skind of like in the middle.

(39:35):
So that was it.
But, anyway, it's all good.
I activated a new park and keptmy streak alive and just took
me two and a half hours.
Why don't you tell us aboutyour hammer?

Speaker 1 (39:49):
we can don't rub it in okay, I'll try not to, but
you know I'll have to say it'sum, it's exactly the same
torture you went through outthere and I did.
I have to say I was like thereason why I knew you were
activating after I was givingyou crap via text message was as
you actually spot.
You showed up on the spottingpage and you were on 10 meters.
I was like damn it, why is heon 10 meters?

(40:10):
I'm sitting on 20 meters.
All he had to do was check thespotting page.
I've already been activatingfor like a half an hour at that
point he could have found.

Speaker 4 (40:16):
There was a hundred plus.
Like I didn't even show themall on my phone, it was like the
first 50.
You're not know my call, sign.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
It's not that hard, it's an n.
Just look, I was just like, soI text you.
I'm like I'm on 20 meters, getover here like what the heck?

Speaker 4 (40:31):
come on, let's make contact so and then I couldn't
just like swap over.
I had to readjust the antenna,so I figured yeah you had to
play with that.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
So, yeah, yeah.
So I did not hear you.
I was, you know, very trying tolisten to a lot of the signals
that were like five, four belowthat were just kind of like just
a little bit above a hair abovethe noise floor.
But you know the ones I did.
I was trying to pull up, I waslike N1JUR live free in hand.

Speaker 4 (41:01):
This is Whiskey One Sierra Trying to contact live
free in hand.
This is whiskey one trying tocontact live free in hand.
Anyone j you are, come on, ericscreaming your radio all you
want.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Don't hear you, ah, yeah, so I, uh, I did two
activations, one, uh, as Ialluded to uh.
I went to the beach, the wifeand I, the weekend before.
Uh wanted to go to get hervitamin d.
Of course it was a cloudy,overcast day, so she was just
there to hear the waves.
I guess I figured I'd bring myuh, you know, vertical uh.

(41:31):
But uh, I think I brought my 80meter mad dog, which I didn't
actually use, I just used thewhip on 20 uh.
But I set up uh on a beach withmy fx4 cr, finally took that
thing out to actually do a realactivation with it, learned that
some of the settings in thatradio are screwed up and people
are constantly saying all I keephearing is wah, wah, wah, wah,

(41:53):
wah.
And they're like I know I'mtalking to N1JUR and I'm like
I'm trying to figure out thesettings because I didn't have
the manual with me.
So I'm just trying to figureout function this blah, blah,
blah me.
So I'm just like trying tofigure out function this, blah,
blah, blah.
And so, after ironing thatstuff out and, uh, making
contacts, I I learned very uh,the hard way that those that do.
Qrp man, you guys have, uh, thepatience of saints, because I

(42:16):
am just like I so badly wantedmy 891 with me to be able to
just flip on the 100 watts andgo at it, because I knew it'd be
like I could be, like you know,sending a signal, rf out a wet
noodle and I'd still be makingcontacts and hearing people.
So, yeah, I I learned a toughlesson made.
Uh, actually, I was ready tothrow in the towel at eight and

(42:37):
it was only because, like mywife was still listening to her
book on tape, a book on a audiobook, I was like, all right,
right, I gotta, I can at leastget three more contacts at least
.
And so I got uh 11 or 12, Ithink, out of that, the
salisbury beach and and uh, yeah, that I concur, paul, that
little microphone is shit.
Like that thing needs to belike stomped on and crushed and

(42:58):
thrown away.
It's a little toy fisher pricetoy microphone.
It's so hard to to use have you?

Speaker 3 (43:04):
have you seen the third gen fx4cr?
I have not.
All right, let me tell you they.
They must have, like, taken allof our advice to heart because
the microphone is bigger.
Oh good, uh, it's still thesame plug, but it's a.
It's a, it's a full-sizemicrophone.
Um, there's a fan on the sidewith cooling vents right.

(43:29):
Um, there's a usbc connectionso that you can plug it into.
You know, whatever fucking youknow you want to plug it into um
, and they got.
They got rid of that shit powerconnector and made it all that
weird one yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
So what did they change it of that shit power
connector and made it a barrel?
Oh, that weird one.
Yeah, so what did they changeit to like a power pole?
No, it's a barrel jack.
Oh, interesting.
I don't know about the barrelone.
I don't know how many.
I mean, all my Bioannos arebarrel.
But yeah, I definitely like themicrophone idea.
I'm going to have to pick thatone up myself.

Speaker 4 (44:03):
Yeah, I definitely like the microphone idea.
I'm going to have to pick thatone up myself.
Speaking of batteries, mylittle, what is it?
A 10-amp battery.
The thing worked great.
I was like it's smaller,lighter, it's perfect now for,
and the thing was like it lastedat least two and a half hours.
And I forgot I mean talkingabout being a dumbass, I forgot

(44:24):
my battery tester that I made soI could see like to test it to
see how long if it would go outand freaking left it at home so.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
I yeah, the watt meter yeah.

Speaker 4 (44:34):
Yeah and I, so I didn't recharge it cause I knew
I wasn't going to do it anymore.
So when I get home I'll see howmuch was left.
But uh, I was calling, I wasusing the mic a lot, you know,
probably calling CQ every like15 seconds, so but yeah, that's
a nice.
That was a nice little radio, Imean battery.
It fits smaller, gives me moreroom in my pack, nice, and it's

(44:55):
lighter.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
So I won't dive into the super details, but I have
successfully in Todd's strugglesover thereifornia with his big
cma hovering over his head.
Um, I, I was the, the, therecipient of many, many contacts
and made some really cool ones,and the only two ones that I
think are really cool, uh, well,among many others, but the one
I really liked was ryan.
He hit me up at 45 000 feetaeronautical mobile, so I got
him locked in.
He came in five, six, five,seven and I was like the first.

(45:26):
My first comment to ryan wasdude, are you throwing 600 watts
over me or something like that,because you're really low?
I can hear you, but it's likeyou're just your beams, like
just firing way over my head.
And he's like no, no, no, no,I'm, I'm running here, aaron
arkham mole, and I'm like holycrap where.
And he's just like I was likesomewhere over the continental
us there.
And I'm like, okay, cool, thatsounds good to me, man.

(45:47):
So that was a good contact.
And I have to say, uh, I didn'trecord it, which I was pissed
at myself because camera batterydied.
I had the hillbilly ham radio uhclub finally made a contact.
So shannon, k1ly, I think, isher call and I'm sorry if I
butcheredered that and, justgoing from memory, shannon and
Shane and I mean I'm forgettingthe third person that they had

(46:11):
they they were out activatingand once Shannon came across,
she was just like oh yeah, I'vegot three other ops here.
And then we got the club call.
And I went club call and theywere like, yeah, we got the
hillbilly ham radio club call,we're gonna give you that too.
And I'm like, oh, dude man, Ireally wish I had my official
overalls.
Uh, you know, we're gonna haveto make sure.
Uh, you know, we're wearing allthose for when we have them on

(46:32):
our next episode, which is, uh,after this one.
Um, but, uh, yeah, it was goodto work them in the log.
Uh, they uh, she came in five,nine plus and she was like all
right, I'm ready to pass the mic.
And then she went dead and Iwent oh, bands die.
I'm like what happened?
Like I'm like I'm calling her,calling her, calling her.
And then I get one more call,you know, from the another guy,

(46:53):
and I'm like oh well, then I'lljust answer that.
And I'm calling them againsaying hey, you know, I know you
have two other ops, what'sgoing on and then, you know, I
just kind of went on with mybecause no one came back and
come to find out shannon um hadbumped the vfo and, you know,
bumped it up three kilohertz.
And so they all like tried tomake a contact with me, three
kilohertz up, which you knowphysically possible, possible,

(47:14):
but uh, they apologized later.
When they finally came back andsaid oh we, sorry, shannon
bumped the vfo, I said all right, we'll take the microphone away
from her, you know, make sure,make sure she's, you know, got
that VFO locked down and youknow she's under supervision.
So it was all good.

Speaker 3 (47:28):
Did you get Sean too, mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Yeah, sean was the one who had to report the error
that was made and who did it?
He was very kind enough to beable to, you know, basically
throw Shannon under the bus forher error.
So it was all good, it was goodto meet those guys and have a
conversation with them and so,yeah, they'll be on our next
episode, you know.
So stay tuned for that and getto hear more about their cool
club and and those guys overthere and you know the Carolinas

(47:54):
.
So, cool, all right.
Well, with that, we're going toget into something a little bit
interesting tonight, and so,you know, know, this may seem
familiar a little bit, but Ithink you know where we're
taking this.
Uh, run here we're.
We're talking a little bitabout clubs and kind of one of
the things that kind of inspiredme a little bit was, um, I was

(48:16):
kind of doing some investigation, uh, on some other topics and
issues and, and I know we'vetalked a little bit about clubs
in general and some of our otherprevious episodes and whatnot,
but I felt like we haven'treally done a good justice to
dive in deep to talk about clubsand you know, some of the
things that we feel that youknow could be improved, some of
those things that could bedefinitely worked on.

(48:38):
But one of the things I thatbrought me kind of this thing
was is I was having aconversation with a brand new
ham and you know he was not evenlooking at our club, he was
just in general havingconversation and I was just
asking him like hey, you knowwhere have you kind of plugged
in, what have you been doing,and you know what's been going
on.
And their first response waskind of like dude, I don't know
where to plug in.
And I went.

(49:07):
That's kind of odd because youfigure, you know, heck, you just
Google.
You know ham radio clubwebsites out there and you know
you should be able to find abunch of them.
And you know I've been seeingthings like ham fest, where you
know they do forums where likehow can you improve your club
website to be able to attractnew people and all of those
things that you know the ARL hasbeen pushing.
And so I figured you know heck,I'm going to go.
You know, go, take a couple ofminutes here.
And I opened up Aero's ClubFinder and I said let's pull up

(49:27):
a couple of random ones in NewHampshire or Vermont or wherever
.
And, man, I got disappointedfast.
I was like holy crap, what arewe doing wrong?
As hams, I feel like we aren'tdoing the thing that the one
communications vehicle that wecould better our clubs and
attract more people and getpeople into the hobby.

(49:49):
I look at them and I'm likeburying my hands in my face
thinking like what the crap isthis stuff that they're putting
out there?
Like it's not even relevant,it's not like even accurate,
it's, it's, it's old, it's youknow, it's what we were doing 25
years ago when it came to thelet's build a website kind of.
It was like GeoCities hauntingme all over again, which is

(50:11):
basically kind of the way I waslooking at it, and so I threw it
out to these guys and I said,hey, we should do a series and
talk about clubs.
And so tonight we're going to betalking about, like through the
eyes of a brand new ham orsomeone who's visiting you know,
or who is visiting your clubwebsite for the first time, and
so brief things here when we'regoing to talk about, obviously,

(50:33):
if some very good examples thatwe've all come across and we've
kind of you know, we're going todiscuss.
So we are dropping names tonightand and I say that primarily
not to be, you know, putting youout in the spotlight and, you
know, condemning you, but I'msaying it with the ideas of like
, hey, you have an opportunity.
And one thing pops to my mindis that ARL has been pushing

(50:55):
clubs like, promoting clubs andsaying how important clubs are
to their, you know, their overlifeblood and whatnot, and
everything that they've kind of,you know, missioned or
strategized to was, oh, youshould be improving your club
website.
You know, I went up just thearl finder, club finder, and
you'd think there would be atleast even five clubs that I

(51:16):
could find that were decentwebsites, that were, you know,
responsive and updated andcurrent, and you know everything
out there, and I was just likethis sucks, like I can't better
describe it well, I think whereyou went wrong right was that
you went to the arrl, okay, andyou you only wanted arrl.

(51:39):
Affiliated clubs true, but sohear me out why I thought that.
And so I feel like arls says,we are ambassadors to the hobby,
as in the clubs that supportare affiliated.
You think there would be aclearer like like I don't know
about you, but if I'm a business, a website is critical, like

(52:02):
restaurants have their own menusystems and all of those things
and they've improved and theyknow how critical it is.
You think club ham radio clubswho have people who are in the
it field and that type of stuffwould put a site together that
would be beneficial toattracting new people.
So, but anyway, that thatthat's my, that's where I'm
coming from, so anyway, well, soI searched.

Speaker 3 (52:30):
So, anyway, well, so I searched, I searched google, I
, I, I didn't, I didn't want tolimit myself to, uh, you know,
any clubs that were specificallyaffiliated to any of the vcs or
any of that.
Like I, I, I, I tried to belike, all right, well, so I got
my ticket in february of 21, andso I got my ticket in February
of 21.
And when I got my ticket, whatdid I do?
I searched through repeaterbook because I wanted to see

(52:52):
what was around me for localrepeaters, and I Google searched
what ham radio clubs are aroundme.
And so that's kind of where Iwent at this challenge with was
like let's, let's go back, yeah,let's go back to day one.
And okay, what did I do?
And I, I googled it.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
So, all right, I came out, I came up with three, and
so, before you get any details,I'm curious in your searches of
hand radio clubs around me, didarl pop up any of that list?
You recall, of course.
Okay, so you did.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
I mean they, I mean they.
They pay a lot of money inmarketing and they've, they've.
They're very well establishedin the googles, so yeah, I'm
very aware of that.
Yeah, okay, okay, just want tomake sure yeah, and and no I I,
I, I wasn't gonna, you know, gothrough them right now, but I

(53:46):
just wanted to say that I pickedthree at random and it's like a
good, better best, and you knowmy, so.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
So let's kind of maybe.
Uh, you know todd's back hereafter changing.
He shipped his pants um, um, no, no, no.

Speaker 4 (54:01):
It's getting a little chilly out of here.
I was in a short.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
What was it?
68 degrees.

Speaker 4 (54:08):
Probably like down at 60.
No, it was.
It was sun's going down, soit's not blaring on me anymore.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
I imagine it's like 34 now here.
But anyway, as Paul said in thebackground, pussy yeah.
Well, I was going to do this.

Speaker 4 (54:27):
I was going to sit in a hot tub and do this, but Well
that would have been reallyweird, totally would have been
weird.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
Might be attracting our wrong clientele for our
little small podcast here.

Speaker 4 (54:41):
It would have gone good with the shower voicemail
that definitely probably wouldhave been good with the shower
voicemail.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
So that would have.
That definitely probably wouldhave.
We would have been attracting avery interesting crowd, all
right.
So so you kind of rated in abest, best, worst, best, best
kind of, or you know, ratingsystem and so maybe help
understand.
So I'm curious to what, whatare those categories kind of
represent for you when you werelooking at those sites, like you
know?

Speaker 3 (55:11):
there must be some nuts and bolts to each of those,
to you know, kind of drop asite into that.
Yeah, so the the criteria thatI was looking at was um, you
know how, how does the websitelook right out?
the get-go right is is it?
Is it pretty?
Is all the information readilyavailable and are they currently
active?
Is the website stale and ithasn't been updated in 10 years,

(55:31):
or is there actually peopledoing things in the club and
it's an active website and it'sbeing updated on a regular basis
?
It ended up being that two ofthe three are new hampshire and
one is out of pennsylvania, andI mean it's completely

(55:52):
irrelevant the location, butyeah, um, yeah it.
It's just.
It's interesting to see howclubs present outwardly their
information where they're.
They're hoping that somebody'sgoing to find it useful, right?
I mean, that's the whole pointof a website.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Somebody's going to find the information useful and
continue to go and use yourwebsite okay, so I'll go into
some of my criteria and how Ibroke it down a little bit.
But so, todd, how did you kindof look at this and tackle it in
general?

Speaker 4 (56:25):
Well, I looked at, let's see, I looked at two sites
or two clubs that I know onewhich is basically a repeater
only site club, and I looked atone that was like almost like a
huge club, the Nashua what is it?

(56:47):
Amateur radio society area,radio area, right.
And then I looked, um, I lookedat one out here in uh,
california, and I just kind ofcompared and, um, there's a,
there's something missing withall of them, especially if
you're new and I think newerpeople who are looking to get

(57:10):
into the hobby, looking areprobably looking at more
websites than, say, someonewho's in the club and doesn't
look at the website every time,or you know, I think it's.
It's a lot of people that arebrand new, trying to get
information.
So what I?
And then I looked at ourwebsite and and how we've kind
of changed it a little bit.
But I even think there's stuffthat we could do better um with

(57:33):
attracting and making it more umattracted to new hams or new
people that are interested inbeing hams and and when you say
new website, you're talkingabout the grand state one right,
not our, not the live free andham site, because we're not
attracting new hams.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Um, the granite state, yeah,okay, our, our club, our clubs

(57:54):
website, compared to the otherones and and kind of that kind
of stuff looking at is I don'tknow anything about ham radio.
I want to get into ham radioand I I just put in a google
search and say ham radio clubsnear me and voila, okay, and
then so when I, when I came outhere, I did the same thing and I
found a.

(58:15):
It almost looks like it's thewebsite, the one that here is
almost identical to our club oneinteresting.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
I'm curious to see on that.
We'll bring those up in a bit.
So, um, we're going to put allthese links in the show notes
below so folks will have them asreference if you're interested
in seeing what we're talkingabout, if you don't watch the uh
video, uh version of this onour youtube channel.
But, um, so one of the criteriathat I kind of did, and I
tackled this in two ways,because I was like I, I have

(58:43):
some background, so I wanted tolook at just like a huge you
know swath of a bunch ofdifferent ham radio clubs in a
specific area.
So I kind of just on a any onegiven day, just opened links
after links after links off ofthe arrow website.
Because, like I said earlier, II feel like if we are as a club
, you, you know, you use ARL asa affiliated club, monkey or

(59:09):
rating, there's something theresort of like how you, you know,
when you're in your specifictrade association, you have
trade association, you knowlogos and things of that nature
to boost your you know, yourbrand with the idea that you
know you're professional in thatsense.
So I always treated those clubsthat affiliated themselves with
ARRL as a way to say okay, well, their standard must be higher.

(59:30):
So because ARRL standard saysthat if you're going to be an
affiliated club, you have tofollow these rules and these
guidelines and one of those ishaving a current, updated, you
know, useful website that youknow portrays ham radio and and
you know everything about yourclub.
So I tackled that you know fromthat and that I I suggest

(59:53):
nobody does that, because I justopened it by state and there
are states, like New York as anexample, that I did.
That's like eight or nine pagesand I literally spent almost a
whole entire day going throughevery website.
Now there were some veryglaring things that really
pissed me off, that I just I gotmad about which, and I'll get
into some of those details.
But then there were some stuff.

(01:00:14):
When I actually got to awebsite that did load and that
wasn't loading to facebook orqrz, which I don't know like,
why would you point your club toyour QRZ page and make that
your website, like?
It's not meant to be a clubwebsite.
You can't put all of yourcontent on one long form or more

(01:00:35):
.
So you know, hey, you don'teven have a website listed or
you don't have a working domainbecause you forgot to pay the
bill for whatever reason, andthe link is still showing on
your affiliated club profile.
So, casting those out, I feltlike a lot of the stuff I saw
was pure I don't know how bestto describe this but I felt very

(01:00:57):
disappointed because I felt,like I said earlier, that I took
a walk into the geocities partof my life and saw the crap that
was put out there and nobodylike wanted to fix it.
So it's almost like goingthrough the internet archive
versus actually going to like alegit website in my mind.
And then I took a few othersamples from other like big

(01:01:18):
clubs that I saw out there, thatI you know heard of, like like
uh el cara, which you see all ontheir youtube channels and you
know everywhere else as they'repromoted, because I wanted to
see what they were doing and howthey were handling it.
And then I just kind of smushedthem all together, the ones
that caught my eye.
I then looked through the lensthat we're talking about now.
It's just like okay, if I'm avisitor, can I find the 5Ws?

(01:01:39):
Can I find information on theirclub?
When I find information ontheir club, am I not getting you
know?
Am I getting directed to, youknow, their membership page in
order to be able to find moreinformation about their club or
what their activities are doingand that type of stuff.
So that's kind of where I camefrom.
So I'm choking to death here.
So who wants to kind of take itfirst?
I guess we can start with someexamples, so like, if everyone's

(01:02:03):
got a bad one that they've seen, let's kind of tear into it a
little bit.
We'll bring it up in the sharescreen here and my gosh, hold on
a sec here.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
I'm gonna mute myself , all right well, I think, since
todd brought up the the narswebsite nashua area radio
society, like we, definitely we.
We got to take a look at thatbecause that website I I've used
it, I've been a member of thatclub, um, and so I have my own

(01:02:33):
thoughts on it.
So but I'm curious to see whatyou guys think all right, well,
let's bring it up here.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
Uh, let me go grab it .
So you got it.
Or you want to share?
To share it.
I got it here.

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
So I'm going to go like at this as thinking as
being someone brand new to hamradio, looking to get involved,
either someone that just gottheir technician license or is
studying for their technicianExactly.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
So that's a viewpoint .
That's my viewpoint of how I'mI'm looking at and then we can
talk a little bit more, like,okay, what other?
Like, because I think it'svalid too as, like us being hams
for a while in the hobby, like,would we consider this a good
website because we have someexperience in the hobby?
Does it help, you know, and youknow, meet that you know group

(01:03:24):
of people as well as just thenew ham?
Because you can develop awebsite that's just solely for
the new ham and then totallyignore everybody else that, like
you know, normally is as partof the club or, you know, has
been in the ham radio hobby aswell, but definitely from the
first viewpoint of, like,looking at as a, as a brand new,
you know, visitor, you newvisitor to the hobby in general.

(01:03:45):
So I got it up and so, for thosethat are on the podcast, there
we are looking at the NationalAmateur Radio Society website
with their ex-president at thetop banner in full bloom, but
let's dive in here.
So, paul, go ahead, give meyour thoughts on this and and uh

(01:04:07):
, you know, since, uh, you wereuh first to mention this, so
we'll go through a little bithere what do you think about it
overall?

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
all right well, so when I first got licensed, this
was one of the first websitesthat I went to.
I signed up, I became a memberand it's not a very good website
, if you ask me right One.

(01:04:36):
Right from the front page youcan tell that the website is all
about Fred.
Like, fred is at the top of thepage, fred is the club.
Like, everything they do is allabout Fred.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
But if you didn't know that, if you were in brand
new ham and you didn't know Fredas a club president, would you
think it was still focused onthat one individual?

Speaker 3 (01:05:02):
No, of course not you .
You would think, oh think, oh,look look at this.
You know they're putting uptowers and they're doing stuff
with kids and they've gotmeetings, and you know, and and
very a double rl, centric,focused um the, the forums, um
it's kind of like the qrz forums, if you ask me Hot dumpster

(01:05:24):
fire.
Yeah, so every now and againthere's a gem in there.
Somebody's selling somethingfor a really good deal, but 90%
of the time it's just sad oldhams bitching about sad old ham
things.

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
Yep, okay, I agree with the forums.

Speaker 3 (01:05:43):
Yeah, and I mean, like, why do they still have
their COVID-19 policy?
I know that I was surprisedthat.
You know what I mean.
Like I just I don't.
I don't understand the, theinformation that they have and
it's it's very like a double RLwebsite, kind of reminiscent, if

(01:06:09):
, if you will, and I hate theARRL website- I agree, I guess
I'll just leave it at that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
Totally fine and I think it's kind of a little
showy because it sounds likeit's very much a sales and a
product kind of driven site.
Like, hey, this is what we'reoffering to you.
You know kind of deals and thisis how popular we kind of are
with some of their like I don'tknow about you, you know kind of
deals and this is how popularwe kind of are with some of
their like, I don't know aboutyou, but like I don't care that
they have 340 registered usersin their forum, like that that's
not like, oh my gosh, I'm goingto go be active in that.

(01:06:39):
You know that's like I've gotdiscord for that and in this day
and age that's where I go forall of my stuff, and so you know
, and that has its own kind ofenvironment.
But the one thing I think from avisitor standpoint brand new it
doesn't make me feel like I canfind my like I don't have any

(01:07:01):
idea prior to the hobby aboutanything, except that I got my
license and I was told to get aradio where like, like our
activities or learn more aboutham radio, like I guess it kind
of leads me there, but inessence they still throw a lot
at me.
It's like do I do?
Should I do bootcamp?
Should I do radio expositions?
Or what about Morse code?

(01:07:21):
Like where do I start?
Like no one's telling me whereto you know get into it.
It's just like here'severything, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
So well, but it's, it's here's, here's the classes
that we offer, that you can payfor and and you can sign up for
okay, I guess you can see that,but the title kind of deceives
me a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
Like I don't think learning about amateur radio.
It's not telling me that.
You know, hey, these are thingsthat they run.
Although you get into it likementoring forum, like okay, this
is sad.
If your mentoring forum hasn'tbeen updated in two years, get
rid of it.
It means that nobody'smentoring anybody at that point.
You know, come on, you'reshooting yourself in the foot
automatically, like the lasttime five years ago it was

(01:08:06):
updated like there's okay, somaybe five days ago somebody
updated a pi server, but I don'tthink anybody responded.
So yeah it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
That's kind of yeah, kind of sad.
What is the?
What is the common last namethat you see on that?

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
yeah, yeah, I know, I see, yeah, all the the started
by, started by, started by.
Yeah, you kind of it kind ofsadly, if you're smart and
you're looking like that, youknow through this of like, oh,
are there many peoplecommunicating?
Yeah, no, not a whole lot.

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
But not even the start started by.
Look at the last post Fred.
Yeah right, Fred, Fred, Fred,Fred, Fred, Fred, Fred, Fred.
Then you got to wonder who thisFred is, Yep, and it's like oh
okay, so you get two people thatare really primarily posting on
this forum and they haven'tposted anything in two years.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
Yep, Okay.
So, Todd, what do you got for?
You know, because you obviouslystudied this a little bit more
in detail.

Speaker 4 (01:09:03):
Yeah, so you know I picked this one because when I
was a new ham, you know Isearched like clubs.
Now, to be fair, I knew aboutour club prior to anything
because I was listening to thenightly net at 7 pm on my

(01:09:23):
handheld.
So I was listening to it everynight at 7 pm and I learned how
it went and you know.
So I heard the same people onand stuff.
But what I looked for okay, nowon my ham radio I gotta look
for some clubs and stuff.
I found this one, obviously,and I joined because I didn't
know any.
You know, I didn't know, like,do I just join all these clubs?

(01:09:46):
I joined a whole bunch of themjust because I figured if I was
going to join them, you know,the more I joined, maybe the
more I'd learn.
And I found this website to belike just a swarm of
overwhelming information whichwas great, like if you're more
savvy of a ham and you'relooking for good articles or

(01:10:08):
presentations and you wanted tosearch, I mean, it's a great
website for that but it didn'tgive me the feel of a club where
, you know, I just felt like Iwas just another, you know, like
a number in like a hugeuniversity where I was just a
kid sitting in the classroom,you know, like one more payee,

(01:10:28):
and it didn't seem.
It didn't seem like I was goingto get, um, a bunch of guys
that I was going to hang outwith and do ham radio with, and
and you know, our club issmaller, obviously, but we have
a good group of guys and I'vemet a lot of people there and
you know, it's it just was, itjust seemed overwhelming and it
really didn't help with a newham, and this is with all of

(01:10:52):
them.
I think is like I was lookingfor a place like, hey, you're a
new ham, uh, you want to talk tosomeone you know, contact
so-and-so, or whatever you knowlooking for, uh, you know, uh,
an elmer, you know, this is howyou can find an elmer, or stuff
like that.
And and it was just, it had alot of information, but it felt

(01:11:13):
more like it.
This was like an organization,like a company that was just
spewing out ham radioinformation.
It didn't feel like a club.
Maybe it's, maybe it's notconsidered a club, maybe because
they call it the Nashville arearadio society.
So maybe it's not supposed tobe like a club that I was
looking for.
But I was looking for, you know,a bunch of local guys to hang

(01:11:35):
out with and learn ham radiofrom and participate and and
grow with the hobby and I didn'tfeel like I was at this one and
looking at the website now it'sjust even now it's overwhelming
, like I think someone brand newdoesn't know anything about it.
This is gonna.
This is overwhelming, like thearl site, overwhelming like I
think someone brand new doesn'tknow anything about it.
This is gonna.
This is overwhelming, like thearl site, overwhelming like you

(01:11:55):
get it.
You're like whoa, like look atall this crap.
Yeah, so I would always I wouldwish that they would have like
a new to ham radio and have avery simpler page with some new
ham radio, new hams kind oflinks to get them to answer the
basic questions that they'reprobably going to look at.

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
Okay, so just clicking on their website and
just to kind of give people alittle frame of reference on
this site.
If you're not familiar with thearea, you may have heard of
N1FD.
They've got a lot of accoladestowards their club in terms of,
you know, awards and you know,towards their club in terms of,
you know, uh, awards and youknow what they do in terms of
being involved in the hobby andparticipating in events like

(01:12:37):
field day and so forth and so on.
I think I agree 100 like thesite itself overall.
Overall is a little dated butin comparison to some other
sites I have seen from otherclubs, this one is probably
better than I think what I'veseen with other club sites that
have.

(01:12:58):
You know, they coded it all inHTML.
They have links on their sitethat says, hey, we open these
pictures in a bigger, in aseparate window, because we want
to be careful that we don'tslow your, uh, you know, your,
your, we know people are stillup on dial up and I'm like who
the hell is in dial up in newhampshire?
I mean, you'd have to be out inthe sticks of like on the

(01:13:18):
border of canada to like, maybenot have dial up, um, but I
think it has phone lines.
I know right, you can't evenget a copper line these days.
So their layout, I think, forthe for I'd agree.
Hello, aol, you've got mail.
See, okay, so Paul still hasdial-up.

(01:13:45):
He's been waiting a long time toplay that audio file.
So I agree 100.
There is not really a clearlike plan to attract a brand new
ham to say, here, follow thiswhat I call wizard, or follow
this breadcrumb trail so we canwalk you through the process of.

(01:14:05):
You know, here are a couplethings you want to try once you
got your license.
Now they do have a page herethat sort of describes, you know
, and it's at the top of theirpipes is learning about amateur
radio, and I don't think they doa lot of great a detail in
getting in here.
To get you to the next step, youknow, I mean obviously they

(01:14:26):
direct you back to their forums,which we all know.
We saw the forums.
They're behind and outdated.
Um, they bring you in atraining section but like, dude,
you just got your ticket, getthem involved, like, start them
playing with radios first,before you say, hey, go get your
general.
I mean like that's like silly.
Um, but you know, I I wonder ifthey have a tech night program

(01:14:48):
which I was curious to see.
But what's their latest?
Yeah, they don't have liketheir tech night, I don't know.
They actually have somethingthat's dated the 25th, although
this is kind of sad.
Their tech night top meetingsthey're listing stuff they did
over a year ago, like I don'tcare, I don't want to see what
they did a year ago.
I want to see, like the nextsix months, like ahead, so I can
plan.

(01:15:09):
Um, so yeah, I think it lacksthere.
Um, oh boy.
So yeah, they've obviously donesome analysis.
So, although I find it's,they're, they're heavy laden in
what we call search engineoptimization, because they're
getting their name out andthey're letting google crawl
their pages, because they'readhering to all of the cool uh
stuff you can do when you wantto get your site listed better
in organic searches.
But they're I don't thinkthey're adhering to all of the

(01:15:30):
cool stuff you can do when youwant to get your site listed
better in organic searches, butI don't think they're doing
exactly what you guys havedescribed, which is how are we
attracting a new ham to our cluband, more so, how are we
attracting them to the hobby andwhat they can get involved in?
So it lacks in that.

Speaker 4 (01:15:46):
And especially if you're going to go for the
younger generation, like ifwe're trying to get kids
involved or, you know, youngeradults, this is kind of like you
know it is what it is.
I guess I don't find this.
I found it helpful when Ineeded to do and I had a
question.

(01:16:06):
I couldn't find the answer.
There was a lot of places tofind answers.
Right, it was like a referencepage.
So I looked at this website andI bookmarked it when I became a
ham as like under ham references, because it's really what I
feel it is.
It's just a, a website that'sjust got tons of ham radio
information.

(01:16:26):
It didn't feel like a clubatmosphere and when I say club
atmosphere I mean to me a clubis, you know, a group of people
that does ham radio and hangsout and, you know, promotes the
hobby and helps each other.
And I think this one is a lotof like well, you can pay for
this and you can pay for that,and it almost felt like it was

(01:16:48):
like a business and you know yougot to first join the club and
then you gotta pay for this andif you want to take this test or
we have the boot camp and umwell, do you?

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
I think they kind of do that right here.
I mean, the first thing you seewhen you hit the site on every
page is the member login.
It's like be a member firstbefore you get inside.

Speaker 4 (01:17:09):
You know it's like right and look, I was a member
for my first year and I I wentthrough the whole site and the
site had a lot of goodinformation but I didn't feel
like going to a club meeting oreven when it was on zoom, like I
just felt, like it was.
It wasn't personal, it wasorganizational, like I felt like

(01:17:31):
I was at a ham radio conferenceand I was, you know, at work
and say, oh, you're gonna go tothis training and this is where
you're at.
You know where our club is morepersonal.
You know we hang out, we drinksome coffee, we shoot the shit
and you know we go through ourbusiness and then we listen to a
speaker and you know, I don'tknow it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
Just it wasn't what I was looking for as a for a club
when I, when I first joined, soyou got anything more you want
to add there, paul, to this?

Speaker 3 (01:18:03):
Only, only that.
You know things are veryoutdated.
You know, I forget which tab Iwas on.
I think it was like learn,learn learn about us or
something, and their.
Their most recent field dayvideo was 2018.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
Yeah, I saw that, that was.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
I was like, really I mean you haven't done a field
day video since 2018.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):
I know they've been on the air.
I've seen field day stats for2024 and they were definitely in
the top 10.
So, yeah, kind of kind ofdefinitely sad there.
So, yeah, it definitely islacking.

Speaker 4 (01:18:37):
And you know who?
Maybe they don't have a website, you know, manager, yeah, yeah,
that is working on it, you know, maybe it's just like they put
stuff up and you know theyforget up there and they're you

(01:18:57):
know they might post.

Speaker 1 (01:18:58):
They might be focusing on one section, but not
someone that's like updating it.
You know, with the times, okay,maybe, so the web manager as
well.
Exactly right, he can't do it.
Well, he's no longer director,so now he has a little bit more
free time on his hand, so anyway, that was a dig yeah, it was a
dig anyway he's no longerdirector of what?

Speaker 4 (01:19:12):
The section New.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
England?
Oh, he's not, no K1KI took over.
Oh, I didn't know that.

Speaker 4 (01:19:20):
I'm not into it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:24):
Did you vote?
Anyway, that's another story.
That was the last thing I didbefore I let my membership lapse
with the AWRL.

Speaker 4 (01:19:29):
When was the vote?
Was it last year?

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
Yeah, it was right after I mentioned.

Speaker 4 (01:19:36):
Yeah, I never look at the results.
I bet.

Speaker 1 (01:19:39):
Okay so if we were going to rate this.
Every site we're going to lookat, we're going to rate this so
one out of five, one beingreally poor, five being the best
.
How would you rate this overall?

Speaker 4 (01:19:53):
Well, it's hard to tell.
I mean, rate it for what?
For information gathering?

Speaker 1 (01:19:58):
Well, no, from the viewpoint as a visitor, do you
feel like, yeah, overall, likeso, if you went to the site as a
visitor, like we've described,what would you rate this overall
?
Would you feel like you've lefteverything you know?
You got to the site, you gotall the information you might
need to pursue to the next step,or do you feel like you were
left lacking something or youjust got more lost because we

(01:20:19):
did touch upon some of thatstuff?
How would you rate that Middleof the road, one or five, I'm
going to give it a 2.5.

Speaker 3 (01:20:35):
That's for posterity's reason, I'm gonna
give it a 2.5, okay, and, andthat's for for posterity's
reason, I'm just gonna.
I'm gonna make a list of all ofour ratings and and what the
website is.
So, okay, all right, cool, so Igive it a 2.5 all right.

Speaker 1 (01:20:45):
What do you say, todd ?

Speaker 4 (01:20:47):
I think, being a new ham, if that's the perspective
I'm coming out with, I'd give ita two.
Okay, I think, being a moreseasoned ham looking for more
intensive information, I'd giveit a three.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
So are we breaking out in those two categories?
Do you want to do that, Paul?

Speaker 3 (01:21:08):
How about we just make it a 2.5?
Okay.
All right, there we go.
That works.
I want to explain my Paul.
How about we just make it a 2.5?
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:21:11):
That works, I want to explainmy rationale behind it.
Okay, all right, I'm going toshoot for three.
And the reason why I shoot forthree is because I remember when
I came back into this hobby andthis website hasn't changed
since then much when I came inabout four or five years ago
after taking a 20-year hiatus,the first place I went to

(01:21:32):
outside of my old StompingGrounds Club website was this
one and my first impressions wasyeah, it's a lot of information
.
It felt like it was a headlinenewspaper kind of driven site.
Everything was all a headline,everything was all kind of
capture your eyeball attention.

(01:21:52):
The content in here, like youknow, like we have mentioned,
like forums and that type ofstuff.
I'm not going to participate inthose forums because I have
other places to do that and youknow I find it's redundant these
days to have your own forum onthe website.
You just don't need to anylonger.
It's like kind of just uh, it'sit.
You know it is what it is, it'sjust like, it's like it's like.

Speaker 3 (01:22:13):
Why does every ham tuber need their own discord
server?

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
true, that's getting to that point, right exactly
forms the new discord now.

Speaker 4 (01:22:22):
Like isn't that taking over forums?

Speaker 1 (01:22:25):
it is and and so it's .
It's funny because it's like Ithink the iteration to that was
forms used to be the place to be, and then facebook and that
stuff came around and everyone'slike, oh, let's go to facebook
groups and keep it all onprivate, and then those became
dumpster fires and then discordslowly making its way back into,
uh, you know, kind of the the.

(01:22:46):
You know the foreground there.
So they don't have one.
It doesn't look like they do.
I don't know why they have apinterest link, like why would I
want to post stuff from n1fd onpinterest?
But hey, you know I can.
Actually I'm curious.
I like, if I click on twitter,like do they have any posts on
there at all?
I can't log in here.
Except, oh, you suck damn x.

Speaker 4 (01:23:07):
We'll let you get in there unless you're logged on I
will say this club has um as anew ham.
I thought that um, I watchedone time um 13 colonies.
They they filmed it or theyyoutubed it live or certain

(01:23:29):
people who were working.
You know, the one of thecolonies was live and being a
new ham.
I know it sounds crazy, butjust sitting there watching them
work a pile up, watching themmanage it, like I found it
fascinating and I'm like I'mnever going to be able to do
that, never, but that's thefunny thing.

Speaker 1 (01:23:47):
You mentioned that like they don't even have their
like if they have a YouTube pagelike why aren't they linking to
it?

Speaker 3 (01:23:56):
like everybody's got a youtube page, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):
Hold on, eric you want twitter info?

Speaker 3 (01:23:59):
yeah okay so it's a lot of latest they're following
10 people and they have 88followers, and their last post
was august 8th, 23, 23.

Speaker 1 (01:24:10):
So they are they are not dating Nope, which is sad,
yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:24:15):
So, um, and I did watch um and listened live to a
um astronaut communication withthe space station.
Uh, so I could hear only theastronauts, and I guess it was
linked through fred station tobelgium or american school, I

(01:24:37):
think, in over in europe, butdon't ask me how they did it.
But as the space station wascoming over, I could hear it on
my radio at home, like in myshack.
So that was kind of cool, um,and they also had it going live
on youtube or some video.
I forget what it was.

Speaker 1 (01:24:53):
Maybe it wasn't even youtube, maybe it was just on
the website well, but even then,they don't have any of that
referenced in their website atall, like I don't see any of
like the school activity youknow stuff here or any of their
colonies.
This is a.
This one pisses me off the most.
This is a clickable link thathad the title february 29th well
, what year is it?
And the only way you click onit is you see that the post is

(01:25:15):
in 2020.
That's like so, like misleading.
It's like hey, we're doing aboat camp.
It was five years ago.
You missed it.
Sorry, it was great.
You know, come on, clean up thecontent.
That's just you know.
That's just you know.
In my mind number one yeah getrid like yeah, if you're
featured articles, they shouldbe representing stuff you posted
in the last six months at least, not like years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:25:40):
Well, their last thing on Pinterest was over a
year ago their Facebook.
Now, I hate the book of faces.
I refuse to use it.
It is, but their last post wasJanuary 27th and if you scroll
through, it's Fred and Anita.
It's Fred and Anita, it's Fred.

(01:26:03):
It's Fred, it's Fred.
Did you get that?
It's Fred.

Speaker 1 (01:26:08):
More Fred Again, that's However you stand with.
Fred is fine, but in essence,he is not the only person in the
club, and that's I think whatwe're trying to stress here is
that if you want to representyour club, you put pictures of
your club members and peoplethat are participating in there
and less of the leadership team.
If anything, it shouldn't bethe leadership team doing

(01:26:29):
everything.

Speaker 3 (01:26:30):
Especially, not just one person.

Speaker 1 (01:26:33):
Very much so, and not , you know, not just, like I
said, just the only theexecutive board or leadership
team.
All right, well, so let's, sowe don't kill too long here.
So who's got another site?
We want to take a look at.
Todd, you want to throw a?

Speaker 4 (01:26:45):
link in there or give me.
Yeah, so all right, I got tofigure out how to do this link
thing.
Hold.
Yeah, so all right, I got tofigure out how to do this link
thing.
Hold on a second, all right.
So the Interstate RepeaterSociety?
All right, you guys are goingto laugh at me.
How do I show you the link?

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
Just do show screen and then hit present at the
bottom and then just find thepage Present and then go find
share screen.
And find the tab you want toopen up by under window.

Speaker 3 (01:27:28):
So you're looking at 85webpageorg.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
Yep, oh shit, yeah.
So you're looking at 85 webpage org.
Yeah, oh shit, am I still withyou.

Speaker 4 (01:27:42):
Yeah, you haven't dropped us.
I'm a lost you crap.
All right, hold on, I can pullit up if you want.
Yeah, why don't you just pullit?
Yeah, I'm not.
I'm not good with this stuff,that's right it's not easy to do
remote there, Todd.

Speaker 1 (01:27:55):
Okay, so the K1 IRS website.

Speaker 4 (01:28:00):
All right, there you go.
I just got to get all this crap.
That comes All right.
So this club is.
It's a.
Really I like this club a lot.
There's a repeater in dairywhich is off 93, which is one of
our major highways in newhampshire for those of you
aren't from new hampshire andit's got a pretty good footprint
and um, they basically theydon't have club meetings.

(01:28:25):
Uh, it is basically people thatjust talk on a repeater, um,
and and they're pretty active,they're on the repeater.
The repeater is pretty active,you know, during the day,
mornings, even in the afternoons, and um, especially on the
evening, commutes and um, I Ialways liked the, I've always
liked the club.
But this club isn't like a clubthat would.

(01:28:49):
I joined it just because I usetheir repeater and I talked to
some of the guys, um, andthey're all super welcoming,
like good bunch of guys, um,always um there.
They sometimes like, if you'restuck in traffic or they're out
and about, a lot of the guys uh,drive around the, the area for
work, um, they'll give you a.
Traffic reports, snow reports,that kind of stuff which is kind

(01:29:10):
, kind of cool, which is kind ofthe thing I thought ham radio
was all about, but it it's not aclub for if you're brand new,
it's like you don't really knowthat they're not like.
It's not a club for like sothey don't traditionally meet
they.
They're repeater focused yeah,yeah and and the money goes to
the repeater and and, which Ithink is great.

(01:29:31):
They invest in the repeater andstuff and you know they do.
I think they do like onemeeting like via zoom or
something a year or something,it wasn't, I can't remember what
it was, but anyway, um, butit's, it wasn't a good, it
didn't.
It didn't make it like a placeyou could go meet with people
like.
I think the meetings for clubsare important because,

(01:29:53):
especially if you're new, it'skind of nice to go and meet
people in person and talk tothem and put a face to the voice
maybe and get that.
So again, I like this club.
It's just not your traditionalham radio club in the sense of
oh, I'm a new ham and I want to,I want to join and learn about

(01:30:14):
ham radio and do stuff.
It's more about this is ourrepeater and we fund this
repeater and we use it all thetime, kind of club.

Speaker 1 (01:30:22):
And that that format's fine.
If you are like Todd said, youuse a free user repeater system
a lot and you want to helpsupport that, you use a free
user repeater system a lot andyou want to help support that.
That's really all this club youknow.
Focus, uh, and charter is about.
Is you know the repeater systemand all the repeaters that they
have under their watch?

Speaker 4 (01:30:38):
Yeah, and like I've, I worked uh, a one W who's a
major user of the repeater andis very involved with with this
club.
I, uh, I worked him from theAmerican airlines terminal at
Logan, you know from my car,like inside the terminal waiting
to pick up my parents, and uh,so it's, it's got a good

(01:30:59):
repeater and they, they, theytalk a lot about it.
Um, so, when you're on the netor when they they do a net once
a month, I think, once a week, Ithink on Wednesdays, they used
to do it, but they'll talk.
That's where they basicallyhave their meeting information.
So they'll there'll be a netand they'll talk about what's
going on with the repeater, ifit's going to be off, what needs
to be fixed, and it's veryinformal, but uh, it's pretty

(01:31:22):
cool.
And again, anyone can.
You don't have to be a memberto join the the net or or be on
the repeater.
But I, I always feel like ifyou're on that repeater, you
know on a regular basis youshould join or at least see if
that you could help fund ordonate money to to help maintain
it is.
That's just my personal feelingand that's kind of what this

(01:31:44):
club is like.
Like, hey, if you're going tobe on this repeater and hang out
with us and talk to us all thetime you know, we'd appreciate.
Like you know, I don't knowwhat is it like 35 bucks or
something for their club.
It used to be like 25, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:31:56):
So I got one question here for you, Todd.
So in our previous testing foryour extra, where do you clamp
in this picture your harness to?

Speaker 4 (01:32:04):
On the leg, on the.
What is it?
The legs?

Speaker 1 (01:32:06):
On the legs, there we go.
On the legs, there we go.
Just wanted to bring that upthere anyway, Not the rungs, not
the rungs, or the guy guy, guyarms.
I got it Like.

Speaker 4 (01:32:21):
I said this is, this is like.
There are sites like that arelike that, that are just, and
you know, and they, you knowthey might get together like on
a whim and say, hey, we're goingto go meet up for breakfast
here.

Speaker 1 (01:32:34):
Loosely fitted repeater club yeah.
All right, so go ahead.
Paul, what's your take on this?
You know much about this, orwhat's your feelings on what
you're looking at?

Speaker 3 (01:32:48):
Well.
So I think we've discussed thisbefore when we've talked about
clubs.
This was also one of the firstclubs that I joined when I first
got my license.
Um, but yeah, just like Toddsaid, I mean it's it's not
really um a true club, you know?
Yeah, it's not.
It's it's to support therepeater and and I was happy to

(01:33:09):
do that because I was using therepeater on a regular basis um,
I stopped using the repeater, soI stopped paying yeah, that's a
good reason.

Speaker 1 (01:33:18):
Why not to?
Yeah, so you don't use theservices, why pay for them?
Right?
Otherwise you become one ofthose people that just have 700
and subscriptions every month,yeah, okay.
So I think, from a visitorstandpoint, knowing and again,
the site is well laid out in mymind I think it's very clear

(01:33:38):
that they are a repeater society.
It's in their name, it's statedout there pretty clearly, so
I'm not confused as a visitor.
The rules and conduct andeverything is all well laid out,
I think, which is good, because, in essence, as a person who
might be using these machines,this is pertinent information
that I'd want to know or be ableto get my hands on, and they do

(01:34:02):
a very good job about beingable to be reachable.
If I wanted to reach out to anyone of these people which,
although I don't know about you,but I don't click on links to
people's email addresses andthen send an email to them
saying Hi, I'm so-and-so, andstart that whole thing, it's not
done these days, because mostpeople just end up in spam or
ignored or whatever, and so it'sgood to see that I at least

(01:34:25):
know who those officers are.
If I get names and call signs.
You know, know who thoseofficers are.
If I get names and call signsum the wall of fame, I guess if
you're trying to um, you know,promote your members as a way to
say, hey, you know, we havepeople donating and giving back.
I don't know how current thisstuff is, so it kind of makes me
feel like oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:34:46):
So these guys like Dave, um, Patrick, Chris, these
guys, yeah, these guys are, like, they're always on the
repeaters, Like I've.
I've talked to them, you knowtons of time.

Speaker 1 (01:35:06):
So it's consistent.

Speaker 4 (01:35:08):
Okay, yeah, so, and, like I said, they're the guys
that are are really like youknow, they use it the most and
they're the ones who are likebasically making this and
they've made great decisions.
Like they upgraded like oneyear when I first started.
Like the second year, I think,they upgraded to a commercial
grade antenna and you know whichwas, which was cool, you know,
because it even made it evenbetter and farther.

(01:35:29):
But you know, a lot of theseguys spend the time to clean it
out, work on it, fix it so anddonate some of their own money
if they need something to get itdone.
So I mean, I think that's allright.

Speaker 1 (01:35:39):
You know the extra, you know you throw somebody to
get some recognition on doingthat yeah, I definitely think
it's a good you know use of, uh,the idea that they gave you
information about what theyoffer, and I love the fact that
they actually did some a decentjob in outlining everything
about echo link.
So if you, your brand new hamlike what the hell is echo link?

(01:36:00):
Well, now you have a little bitof an explanation, you know how
to go about, you knowinstalling it, that kind of
stuff.
It might be a little need to beupdated here and there because
I'm sure echo links probably alittle bit more updated.
Maybe, um, you know, a videomight be more useful that they
could probably link to.
That would have given somebodysomething to follow.
But uh, it's definitely.
Oh, they even went throughsystem setup.
So I think they did a decentjob helping a new ham get on

(01:36:24):
echo link and start to playaround with it, which is, I
think, a good resource for sure,you know, for someone who wants
to play, you know, with thattype of technology, and both on
the repeaters too as well.
So, yeah, overall, I think youknow even the payment and a
membership side of stuff is notobtrusive.
It's, you know, just kind ofthere and useful so you can get

(01:36:47):
to it if you want to help startcontributing.
It's not like in your face oflike, hey, in order to get any
of this information, you got tobe a member first.
It's like, yeah, you know, hereyou can come help support us.

Speaker 4 (01:36:56):
Yeah, and this, this club doesn't.
They don't force you to get outLike you could be on that
repeater, I guess, all day long,and they're not going to bug
you to pay up or whatever youknow I think it's with.
I think most of us, like in theham radio community, find that
if you're using the repeater youknow you want to support it
because you want it to keeprunning.
And obviously these things costmoney and it's not cheap

(01:37:18):
running a computer.
So you feel not obligated butyou feel like it's the right
thing to do.
Know it's unless you were nearthis computer.
This isn't kind of the club ora website that I would say oh,
you really want to go to theinterstate repeater society and
you'll get all the oh.
Everything you're looking foris there, because you're not,

(01:37:38):
you're just gonna be.

Speaker 1 (01:37:39):
But it's clear, yeah, it's clear enough that you know
that it's not gonna be like aradio club, although I I'm gonna
have to slap these guys on thewrist.
What the frick with the shopsswap shop like.
Come on, you've already shotyourself in the foot by saying
we're looking for a volunteer tosupport this page, you know,
and we want to list items here.

Speaker 3 (01:37:57):
It's like just don't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:59):
It it used to be managed okay but, and if it
isn't, then just get rid of ityeah, no, it was, it was a.

Speaker 3 (01:38:08):
It was a good resource a couple years.

Speaker 1 (01:38:09):
okay, so they must have moved it somewhere else in
order to be able to manage it,you know, like through Facebook
or something to that effect.
But yeah, here's the thing thatI find in being in the web
world If the page does not havecurrent content on it, that's
static in nature and is kind oflike evergreen, and it dictates
that it needs to be updated orsomeone needs to maintain it and

(01:38:32):
you don't have someone justhide it, get rid of it.
Like don't put it on the site,because people are going to
click on that link.
Google's going to crawl thatcrap and think, oh, swap shop.
When you type something in thesearch engine, they're going to
go to this page and be like I'mdisappointed, like why did you
put that there?
Just take it down.
You know, it's like that comingsoon thing that we used to see
with GeoCities all the time,with a little you know warning,
flashing lights coming soon.

Speaker 4 (01:38:53):
Coming soon.

Speaker 1 (01:38:54):
There we go.
Yeah, exactly.
So yeah, just don't do it.
And then you know people won'tdock you because you don't have
more content on your site, youknow.
So okay, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:39:03):
So rating Good.

Speaker 1 (01:39:05):
Yeah, let's keep go.
Yeah, this could be our Shaqroast show for four hours.
I don't think we need to.

Speaker 4 (01:39:14):
So, Eric, I put in the California club that I
looked up when I was out here.

Speaker 1 (01:39:18):
We'll go to that in a bit, okay, but yeah, so let's
rate this one, so go ahead andrate it.
You go first, Todd, since youbrought it to the table.

Speaker 4 (01:39:36):
For the kind of being it's basically basically fun,
the repeater kind of club, youknow, I would say it's pretty
simple, it's very honest aboutwhat it does and who it is and,
um, you know, so I'd say forthat kind of club I'd say like,
yeah, probably like a four, butas a someone new, you know,
brand new, like oh, I want tolearn about ham radio and meet
people and stuff, I'd give itlike a one.

(01:39:56):
But it's not what that club'sabout.
So I think overall I give itlike a three, just as a all
around kind of website, just toknow, gives you enough
information about the repeater,who they are and what they do.

Speaker 1 (01:40:08):
I'd give it, I'd throw a four at them, and you
know from my standing vantagepoint I won't dig them hard on
the shop, shop stuff.
I would just say, if you'relistening, get rid of the page,
save yourself some headache, um,but everything else is good.
I'm impressed with the factthat I was able to find
information.
So that four is you know, youclearly define who you are, you
don't go outside those boundsand you do a really good job

(01:40:30):
keeping it updated.

Speaker 3 (01:40:31):
So, yeah, four is for me for that one so, uh, I I I
docked him a little bit.
I gave him a 3.5, because youlove those points five.
Well, you know, I mean it'sit's slightly better than middle
of the road, but I mean it's,it's good content for what it is
.

Speaker 1 (01:40:49):
Yep, okay, cool, and guys, nice job on being
responsive.
So like, when I open this up onan iPhone or a smartphone or a
tablet, it actually looks thesame way as it is a full screen.
So good job on that.
Okay, all right.
So let me throw one here in therink.
So this one's on my bad list.
So this one is Acara and theyare out of Vermont.

(01:41:10):
So this one is Acara and theyare out of Vermont.
And so this is in my masssearches for all of the Vermont
clubs, this one I was mostdisappointed with, you know,
primarily because they look likethey're in a good.
You know, they have a verylarge club by the looks of what
I could find outside of them,but their website did zero in
terms of helping me feel like Icould be part of their club.

(01:41:30):
So I'll dive in here a littlebit.
And so this is, uh, addisoncounty amateur radio club in
vermont, um, and their site, um,sadly falls into hey, I like to
code in html.
Do you want to code with me?
Because it is.
If you dive into the background, you'll find that it's all

(01:41:51):
hand-coded or using a, like oneof those tools that um, you know
, says hey, if you design in avisual editor, we'll include all
of our syntax in the in thebackground that says you know,
hey, this was made by so-and-soor you know application.
So it very much makes me sadbecause if I shrink this down to
a mobile version, which is whatwe're looking at now, if you're

(01:42:13):
watching on the live stream,you can't read it.
It's like you're you're doingthe finger swap and it's like
you're doing uh tinder all overagain.
So it's like, yeah, I'm sadabout that because, like I don't
know why you're designing orhand coding html pages these
days when you could spend alittle money or not even find a
free site like squarespace andbuild a website around it and it
will look way better.

(01:42:34):
But, um, yeah, the content onthis site is is very outdated.
Now I can't quite tell, becauseif I'm, you know, a new ham
coming into this, whether or notthey actually meet or they do
anything current, if they'restill meeting, um, you know, and
it just really disappoints mebecause it's like I go through

(01:42:57):
here and it a lot of the stuffis written like someone wrote it
10, 20 years ago and doesn'tgive me any sense of like hey,
are they alive?
Like do you know, is there.
This is an active club, um, andit really just like.
The ones things that reallypissed me off the most is their
calendar.
So if I click on their calendarit doesn't even open, like

(01:43:17):
there's no place for me to golike.
Or actually, when it finallydoes, I think when I finally got
it to load, it was loading ongoogle calendar and it had
nothing listed in it, so it'slike they don't have any of
their events in there.
It's like, why, like, why havea link to a calendar if you're
not doing anything?
It's not even a love for me, so, but this is where I felt that
I was frustrated the most.
So here we go.

(01:43:38):
They shot themselves in thefoot.
Photo gallery links open in aseparate window Because photos
can be such bandwidth hogs.
We're hoping this will ease theload time on dial-up
connections.
What the hell, dial-upconnections?

Speaker 4 (01:43:54):
Come on Well dude, it is Vermont.
It is Vermont, you know.
Maybe True, there's still adial-up out there.

Speaker 1 (01:44:00):
But that's not the worst part.
It's that they don't even havephotos that were like in the 20,
like the last field day thatthey did was in 07.
And I think they had one photolike if I, you can't see the,
the window open in here, but, um, the, the photos themselves
don't even load fast.
I don't know where they'reloading them from, but, like in
this day and age, put them ongoogle photos or put them into

(01:44:22):
like all of those tools that weall use that can display images
and video fast and and not, uh,you know, drag your site down,
but I uh the only other piece inhere that Go ahead.

Speaker 4 (01:44:34):
I wonder if they just like when websites were popular
, like now you have social mediaand apps that you get on.
What do you call it?
Instagram and all that kind ofstuff.
Maybe they did this a while agoand they just kind of forgot
about it and it's just kind ofthere.

Speaker 1 (01:44:53):
So I can't zoom this, but they had somebody design it
and they left their phonenumber in there.
So I'm going to call thesepeople and tell them they suck
at building websites and theyneed to find another career
because but they might've doneit like in 2007.
Yeah, they did.
That's the last time this pagewas updated, when they hand
coded it.

Speaker 4 (01:45:12):
Okay, well, that 2007 .
Yeah, they did.
That's the last time this pagewas updated, when they hand
coded it.

Speaker 1 (01:45:15):
Okay, well, that's what they did in 2007, so maybe
they don't really rely on thewebsite you know, I don't know,
but if I was a business and I'mputting my contact information
in there I would be sure to makesure that they spend some money
to upgrade their website.
Yeah, you know, at least everythree or four years to uh
something a little bit morecurrent.
But yeah, I don't know.
So what's your, paul?
We'll go with you.
What's your take on looking atwhat we're looking at now?

(01:45:36):
I mean, where do you sit withit?

Speaker 3 (01:45:38):
I mean, it's just straight garbage.
Uh, I think I think the only,the only, the only thing that
they're probably trying to getpeople to do is on their home
page at the very top right-handside there was a Facebook link.

Speaker 1 (01:45:53):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:45:53):
So yeah, I I would assume that that's that's their
thing, right?
Is they're just runningeverything through the book of
faces and they don't reallyupdate their website, or do
anything.

Speaker 1 (01:46:04):
You're dead right on that one.
By the looks of it, they looklike everything's out of their
Facebook page, which from you,paul, and my standpoint.
I'm not on Facebook anymore,and so that alienates me at this
point.
I'm not going because I can'tget to Facebook, I mean only by
luck of clicking on it.
I was able to, but yeah, that'sdisappointing.

Speaker 3 (01:46:25):
I give it a one.

Speaker 4 (01:46:27):
So real quick.
Where do you?
Is there anywhere like does itsay I can't read it?
Does it say anywhere like tojoin?
Like?
Become a member of me.

Speaker 1 (01:46:35):
Nope, although if I scroll down here I get a.
Are you new to ham radio?
So they barely did anything.
Let me zoom in here a littlebit, if I can, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:46:44):
I made the screen.

Speaker 1 (01:46:46):
Okay, so there we go.
So if we go here, here we gotnew to ham radio that's like the
only click link.
So I click on it and it bringsme in a nutshell, and then it
goes text after text after text.

Speaker 4 (01:46:56):
So there's nothing, photos, nothing more than if I
wanted to join this club.
Where do I go?

Speaker 1 (01:47:02):
that's a good question.
I don't know double rl hellobrochure.
Jesus, holy shit, probablywicked I can't see where the
link goes because we're sharingwindows in the way.
But uh, yeah, the ham quick.
What is ham quick?
If I open that, it's probably adead link.
Yep, you can buy this domain,though you know that.
That that's just.
That's insane, like if you, ifyou can't update your website

(01:47:25):
and get rid of broken links,then you're really just.
You know you have nobody doingit, okay.
So q links online classesWhere's this one go?
Ham radio oh my gosh.
This one's even worse.
It's yellow and probablyhandwritten.
Enroll, I bet you, if we clickon enroll.
Yeah, this is sad.

(01:47:46):
It's sad.

Speaker 3 (01:47:47):
Yep, that's a one.

Speaker 1 (01:47:50):
Yep, I'm going to do a .5 in general, but yeah 5.

Speaker 4 (01:47:56):
I'll give it a 1 too why so this is really sad.

Speaker 1 (01:48:02):
This is their explanation of special interests
.
Special interests are nichegroups.
In ACARA has many new members,emergency applications and they
list phone.
Well, duh, cw, digital, hf, vhf.
I wonder if they digital.
They even lift FT8, do they?
Has many new members, emergencycommunications and they list
phone.
Well, duh, cw, digital, hf, vhf.
Oh, I wonder if they digitalthey even lift ft8.
Do they anything in here in ft8?
Probably not.
Yeah, they just gave it a very,very keyboard to keyboard
communication, so it's probablyjsa call and you know, uh, all

(01:48:25):
of the other modes that werepacket yeah not all not all
digital modes are keyboard tokeyboard.
Yeah, that is true, that is true.
Yeah, they don't really helpthemselves at all.
I mean, it's sad becausethere's not really many.
Like, the calendar page is justnot going to open up, no matter
how much I do.
Yeah, that's a bummer, but yeah, so even if I tried to contact

(01:48:47):
them, how would I contact them?
Use our web form to request acall and it opens up in a
separate box, which the form isvery basic.
Yeah, that's a bummer, it'sjust.
It's really sad, it's.
It did not make me feel like Icould want to join them or find
them, like they didn't want tobe.
Found is basically what it.

(01:49:08):
Okay.
So you got my 5.
What did you rate it, todd?
I gave it a 1.
Paul, you gave it a 1?
Yep, what else you got, paul?

Speaker 3 (01:49:26):
so let's start with the worst, since we're doing bad
sites here so.
Merrimack Valley, ara.

Speaker 1 (01:49:35):
Yep, I already opened these guys up to yep, okay, oh,
this is on your worst side, allright.
Yeah, in comparison to what wejust looked at, well, all right
this is a step up I didn't gospecifically looking for
terrible stuff, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:49:56):
I just I wanted to see like, all right, what do I
get as a new ham, what isoffered near me?
And I just I don't know.
I was really disappointed.
It's very plain, you know,text-driven like oh, here's our

(01:50:17):
mission and this is what we doas our mission statement, and
we're an IRS-approved 501c3.
Oh, and follow us on Facebook.
Make a donation.

Speaker 1 (01:50:28):
You do know that these guys are all in our club,
right?

Speaker 3 (01:50:31):
Yeah, but you know what?
They can be members of gsrara,and and that still doesn't make
this website any where's that?

Speaker 4 (01:50:42):
where's this club out of?

Speaker 1 (01:50:44):
this is uh j taft's club.
Remember uh, where, uh, theywere starting one for
specifically that they wanted tofocus um with the ardent stuff
and they were kind of expandingand he just started this club up
from that.
So their DVD network is theirbig thing.
They're doing all of thatArdent stuff, so okay.

Speaker 3 (01:51:09):
So I don't know, as a new ham, I don't know If I
clicked on this website and Iwas like, oh, let me find some
information on a local clubthat's going to have something
for me.
This just isn't it, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:51:26):
I think All right Interesting.
So what do you think, Todd,looking at this site?

Speaker 4 (01:51:34):
Kind of blah.
Okay, it doesn't really standout to me.
You know, like, boom, like Iwant to.
I mean, it's all right, itwouldn't make me like if I
pulled this up, I'd probablyjust move past it.
You know, like, just becauseit's just heavy text yep, okay,

(01:51:54):
yeah, like I wouldn't, it didn'tcatch my eye as something that,
and maybe that's not what thisclub is about.
I mean, I don't know anythingreally much about them, but yeah
well, but that's the wholepoint of the website.

Speaker 3 (01:52:04):
Is the website supposed to tell you about the
club?

Speaker 1 (01:52:07):
well, right, yeah yeah, so you, these two guys,
yeah, yeah.
So my take on it is they arevery focused in their nature now
.
So let me step back.
So, as a as a brand new visitor, it is definitely bleak of any

(01:52:27):
like you know media content thatwould make me like, oh hey,
they're really like active andyou know there's good visuals
and they tell a story well, andyou know, it gets me to like
want to go deeper into their.
Your information.
Um, I, I find that theirinformation is current.
I can definitely say that byjust tooling through here
already.
Um, you know, all of it seemsto be updated and, um, you know,

(01:52:52):
current.
Uh, so, like, actually, I wasjust looking at club info and
they had some presentations thatwere posted, uh, just well,
this one's 2022, but there was afew that I was just seeing that
was, uh, recently.
Oh, their new section had a,you know, it was posted just
this month.
So you know they are keeping itcurrent, although it was a
little harder for me to findstuff and it's just really like

(01:53:15):
kind of it's not well packaged.
I guess for someone, if Iwanted to join this club, if I
didn't see them at a ham fest,which is where they kind of, you
know, seem to set up shop andand attract new members.
That I would feel kind of like.
You know, it's just a slaptogether kind of thing and, you

(01:53:35):
know, hopefully someone will getsomething out of it.

Speaker 4 (01:53:38):
I guess, what is?
What is the club offer thatthat would make me want to join?
Like, what do I get?
Out of it.
What are the dues?
Twenty bucks, twenty bucks ayear by the looking at it.
So what do I get for my 20bucks?

Speaker 1 (01:53:53):
So what I can gather from here, they're they're
developing and they got a hugegrant from what I understand,
but it's not listed here, sothey're not even like making it
known.
They got a huge ARL grant thatallowed them to build this whole
Arden network up and down.
It's like all of this, so thisis all their locations that
they're building out That'll bemicrowave nodes and stuff like
that.
But like out that'll bemicrowave nodes and stuff like

(01:54:16):
that.
But like they don't do a goodjob explaining that, like you
think that they would be likehey, this is something important
to us, this is what we do as aclub.
So let's make it very clear tosomeone who would want to join
that this is what we do yeah Imean as as an extra class
operator, like I haven't doneanything with freaking microwave
.

Speaker 3 (01:54:34):
Yep, like microwave is.
It's one of those things that I, every time I ever look at
microwave, the the cost farsupersedes the the value to me,
and so it's like you, you're,you're not, you're not offering
me anything as a new person towant to join your club and be

(01:54:54):
involved.

Speaker 1 (01:54:56):
And here's the sad part.
It's like you have you postedall of their presentations first
and then you posted the videosafter.
Like people are going to wantto watch the videos more than
they're going to want to look atthe presentation.
Like I could care, like I'monly going to go get the other
details from the video if thepresentations are linked in it
and I wanted to to look at themlater.
But I don't want thepresentations first.

(01:55:17):
It's kind of weird.
But like, if we actually likeI'm curious, do they link us to?
Like this take me, yeah, thistakes me right to youtube.
They can embed that.
Come on.
Like that's sad.

Speaker 3 (01:55:27):
Like you should just keep them on your site and I
don't know, but if I, if Iclicked on that video and that
was the first thing that I saw,was that weird guy gone.

Speaker 1 (01:55:37):
Exactly right.
There's no, there's no clarityin it.
So, yeah, cleaning that up Ithink would help and go pretty
long in terms of, but like, eventhen, like there's no what I'll
call a breadcrumb trail.
Like you guys were saying, ifI'm a new visitor, there's just
a lot of information beingthrown at me, but nothing makes
sense out of it yeah, right, soI I give it a 1.5 wow, okay,

(01:56:00):
that's a little tough on that.
One, all right, what do you say,paul?
Uh, todd, sorry, I give it atwo.
Okay, I, I I'm sitting at a 3.5, and the reason why I'm sitting
at 3.5 is that all theinformation is there and it's in
one line, in one order, and allI have to do is just kind of go
across to find what I'm lookingfor.

(01:56:21):
So there's no sub menus inthere, so I don't have to worry
about getting lost, like when Igo to N1FD, where it's just like
link after link after linkafter link and they're all
buried.
I can pretty much navigate thispretty well.
One they are so responsive,meaning that they I can actually
load this on a mobile devicewith no problem and see
everything I'm supposed to see.
So kudos for them to berelevant and up to date.
They they get dinged a littlebit because they don't really

(01:56:44):
like use a lot of like mediatype content, so photos and
things that you know would helptell their story, uh, better, um
, and so I'll throw a three atthem, you know, because I think
they have definitely room togrow and improving.
You know what they have here,but it's not as bad and as
cluttered as I think, saysomething like N1FD or other

(01:57:06):
sites that just you know throwup all over you, you know, with
all their content.
So, okay, all right.
So, ara, that was yours, paul,right?
Yep, okay, what do you got,todd, I put in yeah, that W6TRW.

Speaker 4 (01:57:25):
All right, I'll grab that here.
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:57:33):
Okay, okay so I I like this site, but I can't find
any place to join we don't wantyou to be part of this club,
but we want to see how cool weare you know it was like all
right.

Speaker 4 (01:57:52):
You know it wasn't too over it, but it's.
You know, good looking.
You know basic site or whatever, but I just don't know where to
join.
Yeah you're right wow I movedout here um and I wanted to join
this club.
Like I don't know where to joinit literally there's.

Speaker 1 (01:58:11):
No, I haven't found a link yet where I can sign up to
be a member.
Wow, that that's a big, that'sa big faux pas.
Yeah, wow, holy crap.
It's like no, we don't want youto be a member, but look how
cool we are.
Yeah, holy moly.
Okay, wow, and they are prettybusy.
I mean, they've got a couple ofrepeaters like this club.

Speaker 4 (01:58:32):
When I was looking through this website looked like
something I'd be interested in.
Like I liked I, I liked thewebsite, I liked all the stuff
that they're doing and you knowit was cool.
But again I'm like, okay, Iwant to join, like where?

Speaker 1 (01:58:45):
and they're pretty relevant with all of their
content and club presentations.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
But like, yeah, dude, youliterally hit the nail on the
head you, you can't join thisclub.
Sorry guys, it's not possible.

Speaker 4 (01:59:02):
Wow, yeah, so that's the big fall of this website,
and this club is like I don'tknow where to join.
Oh, where'd you find that?
No, this is joined for fieldday, yeah, so yeah, I was like
okay, I can join the 2016 fieldday.

Speaker 1 (01:59:19):
I'm going to see if I can find their membership using
their search.
Seven results Happy New Year.
Don't forget to renew yourmembership.
Okay, so there was a post on it.
2023, though.
Oh yeah, so this is old.
So even if I clicked on it, whoknows where it would take me?

Speaker 4 (01:59:33):
Wow, that's a bummer so that that's that was my I.
I thought the club from notknowing anyone or knowing about
this club, it looked like a coolclub, looked like something I'd
be interested in kind of.
You know sees, they're activeand they're doing stuff, and it
had updated, relevantinformation and stuff that I
could read in detail and stuffand they had like, ah, you know,

(01:59:55):
cool stuff going on.
I just I was like all right, Iwant to join.
Like and that's what I think wasmy point in the beginning is
like these are a lot of clubs.
Like I really think thereshould be like a uh, if you're
interested in joining our cluband then have something very
basic but have the questionsthat someone brand new just got

(02:00:19):
their ticket or is studying toget their ticket could go to and
then get the basic informationthat got into all the details,
but explain simple stuff likehey, if you want to, you need to
, you have a question for us,we'd love to help you out.
You know, click this link andleave a note or something.
I mean whatever, and it shouldbe something that is easy to

(02:00:42):
find this, this webmaster?

Speaker 1 (02:00:44):
oh, this is uh, adam k6 ar carries club.
Oh no, he was a guest speaker.
Okay, but so here's my problem.
Like the, the webmaster justmust have learned about news
headlines, because he has notlimited the page to like it
continues to go.
Like why am I going to keepsearching articles across the
whole entire website, likethat's just silly, like on the

(02:01:06):
front page of all things?
Instead of getting me to likego somewhere or link to
something else that would leadyou to a membership per se, I'm
just scrolling through all ofthe stuff that they've done.
Like it, yeah it, it's nothelpful.
Like, wow, they've got a couple.

Speaker 4 (02:01:20):
Okay, not I get it.
I think that this is a clubthat, um, I think would be cool
if I lived out here to join andget involved with, because it
seems like they're pretty activeand they do a bunch of
different things, not justfocused on one thing, and the
current too.
Yeah, yeah, but again, I Idon't know how to join it yeah,
you can't, you literally can't.

Speaker 1 (02:01:42):
Although they are behind, it's funny, like their
club presentation and field dayinformation's up to date, but
they don't have anything foranything past 2019 for photos.
Like, did they was it a secretsociety that they can't take
photos of it?

Speaker 4 (02:01:54):
like, come on guys see, and you know, eric, I think
with this is, I think it whatit is is the websites get?
You know, they get busy and andthey don't, they probably don't
have like a person where theironly job is to manage the
website and update it and moveit.
You know, I'm guessing thatthey set this website out and
maybe back in, say 2019.

Speaker 1 (02:02:14):
There was someone that was taking pictures and
posting and then maybe that guymoved and you know, I don't know
true, but again it's not so perse a responsibility of one
person because, like our club'sa perfect example, we have like
three or four people that arephotographers.
They have hobbies ofphotographers and they love to
take pictures, but you know youhave to ask them sometimes to be

(02:02:37):
able to do that yeah okay soanyway, I like for this one.

Speaker 4 (02:02:41):
I, you know I would have given it a, I would have
given it a high ranking, but forme that I can't join and I
don't know where to join, I'dgive it like a 3.5.

Speaker 1 (02:02:54):
Okay, what.

Speaker 3 (02:02:58):
What say you, Paul?
I give it a three.
It seems like they're updatingit and keeping it at least
relevant, but you've got todeduct points for not being able
to join.

Speaker 1 (02:03:12):
Well, I'm lucky even looking at their newsletter, and
I don't even see a.
How do you join in here?
Like?
This is their newsletter andthis is their latest newsletter
too.
So this is february'snewsletter, which is pretty cool
.

Speaker 4 (02:03:22):
I mean, this is pretty impressive, but there's
no freaking link in here maybeit's a closed club and you know
it's like uh, you know, you gotto know somebody.
Yeah, it's like a yacht club,like you have to, you have to be
.
You got to know somebody.
Yeah, it's like a yacht club,you have to be sponsored, you
got to be on the waiting list.
Yeah, it's like you're Hell'sAngels and you got to be a

(02:03:45):
prospect first.

Speaker 1 (02:03:47):
No, they have a website manager and a designer,
so they have two positions oftwo people that are in the club,
that are actively listed here.

Speaker 4 (02:03:54):
Wow, and they missed the fact that no one can
register well, listen, ifsomeone is part of this club and
you're watching this orlistening to this, you know.
Reach out to us and uh, orreach out to your webmaster, or
let us know how you join yourclub, because we're just curious
.

Speaker 1 (02:04:13):
Wait a minute.
All who must be current companyemployees.
This may be a company.
What is this?
Who's employees?
Nobody's employees.
That's weird.
Let's see what the About Uspage is.
Maybe this might be acompany-started club, like how
BAE and those guys had ham radioclubs.

Speaker 3 (02:04:33):
I just noticed.
In the banner at the top rightit says W6TRW Amateur Radio Club
.
Home of the W6TRW Amateur RadioClub.

Speaker 4 (02:04:46):
Yeah, that's weird.

Speaker 1 (02:04:48):
Yeah, they're saying it twice, it's like no, we are
the home, but we are W6TRW.
Yeah, that's a little bit of afaux pas there.

Speaker 3 (02:04:58):
All right, what were your ratings?
Again, I gave them a three.

Speaker 4 (02:05:03):
Three.

Speaker 1 (02:05:04):
Eric, yeah, this one's a tough one, based solely
on the fact that I'm a visitorand I can't register or I can't
reach out to anybody, like eventhe contact page.
Like I just was going thereearlier, there was a way to okay
, yeah, there's no like.
Okay, so there's one emailaddress here, but there's not
like even a form I can fill into like request some more

(02:05:26):
information.
Oh no, oh, so here we are,there we go.
So they are part of a business.
Yeah, so that's why.
So it may be that you can't bea club member, but you can be a
club member through sponsorshipof someone who is an employee of
Northrop Grumman, kind of thing.
Like you know how, like youwant to be part of a credit

(02:05:48):
union, you have to be a memberof another company, kind of
thing.

Speaker 3 (02:05:52):
Yeah, it'd be like if hee had their own amateur,
exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:05:56):
yeah yeah, or, like I'm thinking, mit does this sort
of for their own club.
So yeah, that that totallymakes sense.
Okay, so that's probably why.
So, knowing that, I would bump,but it's not stated clearly
here.
So I have a visitor, I'mconfused already.
So, oh man, this one's a toughone, like I would say.
I would give them a four forthe purposes that they're all

(02:06:17):
like up to date, their current,their content's good, they've
got some clear, delineatedinformation that I can get my
hands on, but it's not clear howdo I become a member?
Okay, so, but you were saying,but so what?

Speaker 3 (02:06:32):
oh, so yeah, we're gonna give them a four.

Speaker 1 (02:06:34):
But yeah, we're gonna do 3.25.
How about that?
I'm gonna, I'm gonna ding thema quarter of a point, because I
think you know it's not clearthat this should be 7.5.

Speaker 4 (02:06:44):
Yeah, true, right, yeah.
Yeah, I'm not gonna quarterpoint, so 375 yeah I'm gonna
okay yeah, I didn't, I didn'tknow.
I mean, if they had mentionedthat, like in the beginning, you
know easy to find, I I would.
Yeah, I'm gonna stick with the3.5.

Speaker 1 (02:07:03):
So can you join this club or you have to be a member
of I I, I guess, based off ofwhat I'm seeing, it sounds like
you have to be a sponsoredmember from someone who is part
of northrop grumman to get inthere, because I'm sure they
probably use office facilitiesand stuff like that to where
they meet and and everythinglike that.

(02:07:24):
So, yeah, all right.
All right.
So what did you rate it, paul?
Uh, I gave it a three great.
Okay.
Wow, you went whole numbersthis time all right all right.
So, uh, that was todd's right,okay, so let me throw mine in
here.
This one is another club invermont.
This one's a crappy site, um,and then I'll do my last one as

(02:07:48):
a good site that I thought.
So this is, uh, the centralvermont amateur radio club.
I think they had a good start,like.
I felt like they all went tothose clubs that, uh, you know,
or the ham fest, that say, hey,how do you make your club that
much better?
And, lo and behold, they got abunch of cool information to
figure out how to make theirsite better.

(02:08:09):
They started and then they gotbored or they had ADHD and they
couldn't quite finish theprocess.
So they, they started to do agood design and I feel like they
went overboard with a lot ofthe uh clip art and photos that
were probably off of free sitesbecause, uh, yeah, looking at

(02:08:29):
this ai generated image, itlooks very weird, um, but the
things like that I don't like isthat they, they aren't up to
date.
And I know this is an activeclub because I talked to a few
guys, uh, that we know, um, andI'm forgetting his name at the
moment it's escaping my mind um,he, he participates in the

(02:08:50):
northeast ham radio, uh, everyonce in a while, um, and he's
from vermont.
This is one of those clubs, buthe there's not much here for
information, except that theyown a repeater or two repeaters
uh a uh vermont uh vt radio.
is that not a chris?
So why am I forgetting his name?

(02:09:11):
Yeah, you've seen him in thediscord for Northeast radio, so
this was the other guy fromVermont.
Exactly yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
Exactly yeah, not a yeah, uh K,I one P K.
I one yeah, one P yeah.
So this is, it's justdisappointing.
Like what's worked all Vermont.
Like I feel like the ADHDkicked in and they decided that,

(02:09:33):
hey, I got busy to go dosomething else, and so they
started to explain this, butlike it doesn't tell me.
Like, is this something I wantto participate in?
Is this something I shouldn'tyou know?
Like is it something I have topay for?
You know it lacks a lot Likethe about talks about they have
a club leadership, they have ameeting location, but there's no

(02:09:55):
way for me to get to it,there's no way for me to join,
because, again, this is anothersite, like you were saying, todd
, with your site that you knowthere's no way to pay, there's
no way to go in here, and youknow pay via paypal or whatever.
Um, so, yeah, it just feels likeit was.
They had a good attempt togetting together, all getting

(02:10:18):
excited about, hey, we're goingto build this great website, and
then they got too far into itand they just got bored with it
and they just said, ah, it'sfine, whatever, just leave it as
is, and and so, yeah, they,they failed kind of, in that
sense at least on my you knowstance, and so, yeah, that's
where I kind of sit with this.
I don't know where you guys youknow looking at it now.

Speaker 3 (02:10:39):
Just looking at what you're showing us.
Um, you know it's not current,not up to date.
It's not easy to get theinformation.

Speaker 1 (02:10:47):
I give it a 2.5 that's the person I was looking
for, paul.
Paul is a one issue.
Yeah, I don't know about youguys, but linking to your
private Google groups as apublic group is kind of not a
good thing.
This is like advertising all ofour email out on Google for
people to search Anything thatgets sent via the club.

(02:11:10):
It's like, oh, okay, they gotto do cleanup apparently, and so
you could just kind of get anidea of sort of how it's running
.
But it's just, yeah, this issomething you don't want to air
as your club as a way for peopleto get to know you, because it
never turns out good.
So, yeah, I mean they got tworepeaters which, oh, we were

(02:11:31):
talking about Chris.
He must be linked to hisrepeater.
So, yeah, chris, this repeater,if you're listening.
This club, the Central Vermont Idon't know if you're a part of
it or a member.
Yeah, the website needs a lotof help.
It's lacking, todd, anythingyou want to throw in here?
No, I'm good.
Okay, let's hit the ratings.

(02:11:52):
Ratings 2.5 1 for me.
1 on the fact that too much,too heavy, adhd laden.
They just got too heavy,alright, okay.
So do you have any sites, paul,that's you like or that it's a

(02:12:16):
little bit better than poor.

Speaker 3 (02:12:19):
All right.
So I picked three right, andone was shit.
The other two I thought werereally good, one better than the
other.
But so, w3oiorg, that was whatI picked as my middle of the
road.
It's the Lehigh Valley AmateurRadio Club in Pennsylvania.

(02:12:42):
From the start it's a nice,clean looking website.
You get a general membershipmeeting free for right at the
top.
Download our newsletter, becomea member button.
Get to general membershipmeeting three, four, right at
the top.
Download our newsletter rightat the top.

Speaker 1 (02:12:55):
You know yeah, become a member button.

Speaker 3 (02:12:58):
Oh yeah, I like that right like like I mean right
from the home page isn't verylong, but like it's it's very
clean, yes, and all theinformation is there yep, this
is well good laid out like hey,we do these areas.

Speaker 1 (02:13:17):
Click on it if you want to find out more.
But, like you know, create abreadcrumb trail.
Interesting, I like this a lot.
Man, stop putting this littleterrestrial data on a website.
There's sites and apps that youcan people download.
That's just a waste of spacenow.
Okay, all right, interesting,so they.
We've got a club informationhere, so they have a boat.

(02:13:39):
Good description.
Although they covered over agood picture of the photo, you
can't tell what these guys aredoing, although they put the
description on top of it andit's 1978.
Come on, they got to have atleast a little bit more newer
photos of people in their events.

Speaker 4 (02:13:55):
Well, maybe that's when they were founded.

Speaker 1 (02:14:00):
True, okay.
So this is, they are heavilyAries-focused, which not bad.
At least they're up front withthat.
I find that clubs that aren'tlike you know, that are heavily
focused and then don't tellpeople that they are, you know,
can beiving for folks that mightnot like aries per se.
Um, yeah, decent, okay, um,this gives me.

(02:14:21):
It doesn't tell us much interms of how.
Oh, okay, you have to emailthis person, although they
pointed to the amateur radiolicense.
So, yeah, okay, I mean the thelicense testing piece.
Not bad, I mean it's, it'spretty clear, you can follow it,

(02:14:42):
but I feel like it's, you know,it does lack a little bit in
terms of really trying to getpeople to understand what that
really looks like.

Speaker 3 (02:14:49):
Um, yeah, well, I mean obviously, uh, you know, on
the VE side of things they'restill doing the old paper in
person.

Speaker 1 (02:14:57):
Yeah, that one.
Okay, I like the membershippage, but I don't like the fact
that they've got it listed as2023.
Don't put a date in there, justleave the year out.
It would have been much easierfor the fact that.
You know, I would have feltthat this page would have been
great if it didn't have, uh, the2023 dues listed there, um,

(02:15:18):
because it's not 2023.

Speaker 3 (02:15:20):
But let's take me to oh they got a nice, decent form
you can fill out and, uh, youknow that's not bad yeah, so for
the uh, for the lehigh valleyamateur radio Radio Club,
looking at it as a brand new hamcoming into it with everything
being kind of current and veryeasy to find the information and

(02:15:44):
easily understandable, andpresented well.
I gave it a four.

Speaker 2 (02:15:49):
Yeah, yeah, so I'm going to rate it as a four.

Speaker 1 (02:15:53):
Yeah, I think, although I'm a little confused
by some of the links here.
But if I go through, yeah, ok.
So, although this stuff is notbad in terms of explaining what
you get, it's confusing as well,because you have this
membership form but you don'tknow what to do with it.

(02:16:13):
And then, if I go to themembership page, it doesn't
really tell me much about whatother stuff the members get as a
member to the club, except forthe fact that I assumed that the
membership forum was likethere's a member login at the
very, very top.

Speaker 3 (02:16:32):
Oh yeah, you get access to more.

Speaker 4 (02:16:33):
I assumed that you had to be a member login at the
very, very top.
Oh, yeah, yeah, so you getaccess to more.
Yeah, I assumed that you had tobe a member and I think what I
like about this is it's it'svery simple, not too much
information, but enoughinformation, and then you know
if we were members and we loggedin, there's probably a lot more
you know.
For the members that gets intothe more detailed stuff.

(02:16:55):
So I guess you know my word isfor for websites for clubs.
I like to be clean, precise andeasy to navigate and, like I
said, if you join you want toput all that extra stuff in
there for for the members tohave access to.
Great, but I think for someonenew looking to get in it can be
overwhelming.

Speaker 1 (02:17:14):
So I uh.

Speaker 4 (02:17:16):
I like this one.

Speaker 1 (02:17:21):
All right, yeah, I'm kind of with you definitely on
the, the flow of things.
It's uh definitely, it's clean,it's crisp, it adds, it answers
all of the five W's for me, solike, even if I can't figure out
what the details are of amembership, I have a way at
least to start that processgoing.
I feel like you know if theymaybe could leverage a little

(02:17:42):
bit more about like, hey, areyou new to the hobby and how can
you?
You know, this is some of thethings you can do within our
club per se.
That would be nice to be ableto, like have at least a piece
of that, but that it's not supercritical.
I feel to uh, you know,basically having uh there, um,
yeah, the only thing is is likeI would like to see a little bit
more more, you know, visualmedia, like videos and stuff

(02:18:06):
that you do with the club.
So like, if I go into oh no,actually club information, I
wouldn't have put that.
Oh, they do.
Whoa, oh boy, they have anythingrecent for field day.
Wow, okay, not bad.
So they've got photos that goup to 2018.
So I would assume maybe theyhave fewer ones.

(02:18:26):
They did a trailer work party,so it looks like they're pretty
active.
It just did nothing.
I would have reversed the order.
I wouldn't have put field day1969 as the first option as
photos that I want to look at.
Um, it's kind of a littlebackwards.
And then they do have anewsletter, but it's wow, that's

(02:18:46):
a lot of links there.
I don't know if I'd what do Iget out of it?
No, it's just a pdf file.
Yeah, newsletters, man, they'rea lot of work, like I.
I give people the credit tokeep them going.
They're a lot of work.
I give people the credit tokeep them going, but they're a
lot of work.

Speaker 4 (02:18:59):
I did them for years with the flying club, my RC
flying club.

Speaker 1 (02:19:06):
This is pretty long.
Yeah, this club definitely, Ithink, checks all the boxes.
I'm going to go with 4.5 withthem only because it looks very
clean, I can find information.
I can see it.
I, I would like to see it maybepresented a little bit better,
but you know, that's just a, youknow that's just an opinion
preference on my side of stuff.
So, yeah, definitely, that's uh, awesome, okay, all right.

(02:19:31):
Uh, so that was paul's site,right?
No, no, yeah, I'm sorry, okay,so I've got for my one site and
I know this is kind of yeah, I'mgonna put it out here anyway,
like I, I they are.
They are a site that I feel isvery much kind of toe-to-toe in

(02:19:51):
terms of publicity and being avery popular site and club and
well-known, like n1fd is.
But I feel, at least looking attheir website, uh, they, uh,
they did it right in terms oftheir design, at least in my
book of kind of how I would seethis as a way for a new visitor

(02:20:12):
to come into the site.
So this is lake cumberland andwe've seen all of their youtube
channel and they've got a hugesocial media presence and stuff.
But uh, their site for me was,um, very clean, very well laid
out, very much like the lastsite we looked at, um and being
able to find information likejoining the club, you

(02:20:32):
applications link.
They even have a QR code youcan quick scan type of stuff.
They did it well in explainingthat type of stuff and then
getting into my gosh my throat'sdry here, sorry about that.
Clearly defining who they areis very helpful because it tells
their story so you can learnabout them.

(02:20:52):
You've got some media thatdrives that point home, that
point home.
You know if you want to findout their mission, you can see
how they're involved in certainthings and you know they're very
clean about that.
But I love the fact thatthey've got you know their media
and you know you know you.
When you go to their YouTubechannel, you're seeing all of
their videos.
I just killed that video butyeah, they, they, they.

(02:21:14):
I just killed that video, butyeah, they do a lot of videos
around their club and they get alot of their club members
involved in it and for me that'sa lot of work and a lot of
effort and it takes a lot of mantime and people time to be able
to put it together, but they doit well with the purposes of
trying to generate more peopleto get involved in stuff, and so

(02:21:34):
they do a lot of very cleanpages on what they do and how
they do it and why they do it,and that's what I like about it
a lot, because it's justinformation that you can get at
your fingertips fast.

Speaker 3 (02:21:48):
Yeah, I like this.

Speaker 1 (02:21:52):
Yeah, I like it too.
They've done even.
This is their newsletter, Ithink.
No, this is just news.
I guess I don't know what thisis related to, but it seems
pretty much, like you know, justa general welcome, but overall,
like you know, monthlyactivities they don't have a

(02:22:13):
dead calendar that's updatedmonthly.

Speaker 3 (02:22:15):
That's marked up.
A dead calendar that's updatedmonthly.
That's marked up.
It looks like it's updatedmonthly.

Speaker 1 (02:22:20):
And they have a calendar that actually looks
pretty busy.
This is impressive, yeah.
I mean they list everything,like all their nets, that
they're doing when they dorepeater work.
Yeah, so it's pretty.
It's pretty on the ball, and soyou can actually email people

(02:22:40):
if you want to get moreinformation on certain things
and activities that are goingaround.
So, yeah, well, really good jobfor keeping on top of that
stuff.
I'm actually curious to see howfar they're ahead.
Yeah, wow, they planned it outfor the entire year, so
literally I'm already in Apriland they've already got stuff on
the calendar.
So good for them.
That's a good job.

Speaker 3 (02:23:00):
I'll give that a five yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:23:03):
I'm with you on that.
One.
Five is definitely well laidout.
You know how to get to wherethey are and what they do, and
it's all good use of stuff.
Okay, what do you say, todd?
I'm giving in a 4.5.
Wow, okay, what's keeping youfrom going to five?

Speaker 4 (02:23:23):
Uh, you know, I I guess I could go to a five, but
it's hard for me to give like aperfect score.
I.
I like the way it's set up.
I like it's easy.
I like it's easy.
Again, it's clean.
I'll give it a 4.75 because Iprobably won't give a 5 out.
I'll move it up Cool.
All right.

Speaker 1 (02:23:43):
Well done, yeah, so I think, because we can go very
long with this one, I think,from a standpoint of websites in
general and let's kind ofsummarize this a little bit- but
do we want to go over any ofthe numbers there?

Speaker 3 (02:24:08):
you know, are we just holding?
Those on for posterior purposes.
Um well, so all right.
So, uh, the the one.
Um then, then you got.
The central vermont arc comesin second to last place, uh nars
uh, next one up, okay.

(02:24:29):
Um, then k1 irs RepeaterSociety.
Yep, yeah, oh sorry, mvra isbelow K1IRS, and then you get
W3OI and Elkara at the top there.

Speaker 1 (02:24:50):
Yeah, interesting.
So I think I would say, if wecould give anybody a bit of
advice, maybe let's shape it inthat way when you, when you're
in your club and so say likeyou're part of a club and you
know your website sucks ass, youknow if you don't, you don't
even want to use it Exactly.
Yeah, when it gets to that leveland you're like I don't want to

(02:25:11):
look at it because it justmakes me sick to my stomach kind
of feeling, to that level andyou're like I don't want to look
at it because it just makes mesick to my stomach kind of
feeling, then I think what canwe give that person?
A bit of advice to doing it?
Or maybe you're the other sideof the coin.
You're already part of thisclub, you know the website sucks
but you don't know where to goand how to make it better or
what you should do to make itbetter.
What can we give someone toleave positively on this?

(02:25:35):
Because, again, we're notbashing sites.
We just we want to giveopportunities for folks to be
able to build something betterfor the hobby.

Speaker 4 (02:25:42):
So let me go first, paul, or you want to go?
No, go ahead, so with me.
I think it's clean, easy tonavigate with the basic
information.
If you want to get more indepth and stuff, you know, have
that maybe for the after you doa members login places where you
can join If you want to join,to have that link readily

(02:26:03):
available so you don't have togo searching for it.
And, like I said, like just keepit clean and simple.
You know it doesn't have to belike overwhelming because, again
, coming from the perspective ofsomeone brand new, you don't
know a lot about ham radio andyou don't want to get like just
bombarded with tons of technicalstuff and definitions and this

(02:26:25):
and that.
But you know pictures of someactivities.
You know visuals are good, butnot an overloaded, not like I
wouldn't put.
Like you know, you know 2024field day, I wouldn't put.
Like you know you know 2024field day and have a thousand
pictures there.
You know just a couple ofpictures.
Give the, give the, give theviewer an experience of like
okay, this is generally kind ofwhat it's like.

(02:26:46):
And then, like I said, if youwere a member and you want to
see all the pictures from 2024field day, like.
Have that like in thebackground somewhere where you
could you know as a member oranyone, but the main screen
should be very simple and cleanand I think you'll get more
people and it'll, it'll, it'llinsane.

(02:27:06):
And if you want to see more,you can dive into it in in more
depth.
Or if you throw it all outthere in the beginning, to me
it'll just overwhelm me and I'llprobably move on Okay cool, all
right, what do you say Paul?

Speaker 3 (02:27:21):
So you know, just kind of building on what Todd
said, right, but like, take intoaccount that you want to have a
dual purpose website.
You want your website to have avery clean front face so that
it attracts new people and itmakes it very clear as to what
you're offering to anybody thatwants to first prospectively

(02:27:46):
become a member and then, andthen you can, you can build in.
You know all of the extra addedin-depth stuff in the back end,
uh, for you know people who aremembers and and and that stuff.
But, um, the, the, the thingthat I was really thinking here
is, like, you just keep itsimple, stupid, right, like,

(02:28:11):
just make it make it simple,simple, simple, simple and just
say, hey, look, we're, we'reactive, we're doing things, this
is what we're doing.
Come join us at this event.
That event, you know, um,especially if you're, if you're
doing anything with, uh, youknow, the testing, make it clear

(02:28:32):
, be like, hey, you know this,hey, this is the regular
sessions that we offer.
Then we also add insupplemental sessions here and
there.
And when you become a licensedTAM and you test through us,
we'll welcome you in for yourfirst year.
Little things like that, right,but just kind of step back from

(02:28:58):
from the I'm an experienced hamand I I want to.
I want to put everything outthere to what?
What do I really want somebodythat's brand new to see and and
then just make it clean and easyto follow.

Speaker 1 (02:29:15):
Yep, okay.
I would say you got somethingyou want to throw in there.
Todd no no, I'd say kind of allthe stuff.
You guys checked all the boxeskind of for me and I think just
to kind of summarize or boil itinto some stuff simple design,
like we all talked about If youstay away from trying to use
tools that you have to spendtime to learn, like go find Wix,

(02:29:38):
go find Squarespace, go findthose sites and build your site
from there, because all that isis a simple, easy way that you
can give control to somebody toput content in there.
They don't have to know HTML,they don't have to be a
webmaster to be able to run yourwebsite.
Make it simple.
Second thing is tell your story.
I can't tell you how many timeswe've been to every site.

(02:29:59):
So far, I mean, the only toptwo ones told their story well
and made it easy.
You understood what they didand who they were and why they
do it and what they're involvedin.
So if you're not doing that,then you're really doing
yourself an injustice becauseyou're really confusing just
somebody new that might be inyour local town that has no idea
what you really do or why youdo it.

(02:30:20):
Um, the big thing for me islike know thyself, like don't,
don't try to put up there thathas nothing to do with you.
Don't put the, you know the thesolar index, as a way to say,
oh, this is cool, it's contentthat makes things updated.
Just that's just useless.
Like you know, eye candy thatno longer really applies because
, guess what, I'm not going toyour club website to figure out
what the sfi index is.

(02:30:41):
I'm going to pull my mobile appup and pull it up there where I
don't have to worry about it.
You know, and you know, likepaul said, if you've got, if
you've got, a ve presence, makeit known.
Like, get people, like you know, excited about the fact that
you doEs and that you're testingand you're bringing new hams in
the hobby.
And then the stuff we've seen,like your call to actions.
Your membership pages should belike this is why you want to be

(02:31:03):
a member to our club, beinvolved in it.
Explain it very clearly tosomeone who doesn't know what a
ham radio club member it meansto be, and give them a way to be
able to find their breadcrumbtrail to get to become a member.
And then, you know, welcomethem in with open arms.
Um, and then the only otherthing is stay away from being
unless your club is specific,like an example.

(02:31:25):
We talked about that repeatersociety.
As long as you're clear and whoyou are, then don't try to be
muddying the waters.
If your club is really arepeater club and not like a
traditional ham radio gatheringclub, don't make it look like
it's both when it's really not.
Like just don't mess up thewaters is the kind of thing with
that.
So you know, overall, you knowwe cited a few examples and

(02:31:48):
there's a crap ton.
Like I said earlier, I wentthrough that whole entire state
of Vermont and I cried, Ilaughed, I like shake my head.
It was worse than watching theNotebook over and over again.
I think clubs, if they have thepeople in their club or their

(02:32:09):
midst that might be able to havesome of those skills, have some
of those skills the leadershipneeds to get their heads out of
their butts or out of the sandand start recruiting these folks
to help produce better, bettermouthpieces for their clubs and
I guarantee you'll start to seestuff like that, you know, grow.
And you know it's funny as I,as one of the stories that I
hear a lot from at least ourclub that we share is that

(02:32:31):
people love our club because oursite helps them kind of
naturally move into wanting tojoin us, because they're like,
oh, holy crap, they didsomething cool like a tech night
.
I want to be part of that.
They're doing meshtastic that'snot even ham radio specific per
se and you know kind of thingslike that.
So, yeah, overall, stop tryingto code in HTML.

(02:32:54):
That day is long come and gone.
You don't have to be awebmaster any longer, you just
have to maintain content.
And here's another tip that Iwas talking with a few of the
guys that were doing websitesbecause they always complain oh,
I have to write content.
I'm like guys, we have chat,gpt and AI tools out there these
days.
You can go to those tools, typein the criteria.
I mean, heck, paul createsphenomenal thumbnails for his

(02:33:17):
YouTube channel with very littleeffort of being able to spit
something out of an AI tool tosay, hey, create me this
wonderful image of Paul with asix-pack and muscular arms
holding a crossbow and bonesabove his head on Castle
Grayskull and it will producethat.
I write a lot of our blog postsfor our club website using the

(02:33:38):
AI tools.
I just throw in a couple ofthings in there and say this is
the way I want it.
And it spits something out.
You don't have to write thatstuff anymore.
Use those tools and you'll bethe superhero for your club
because, like everyone's like,oh wow, eric's a great
editorialist and a writer, I'mlike no, I'm the shittiest
writer you could ever think of,and I, you know, can barely
sometimes even spell the wordthe correctly.
So, you know, it's kind of oneof those things that they use

(02:34:00):
the tools that are out there.
It'll make your job way easierand, you know, your website will
look a hell of a lot better too.
You won't have to createsomething new.
And, yeah, those that are onARL's affiliated page and you
don't have a freaking website,take it down.
I don't want to see you upthere.
I don't want to see you as anaffiliated club.
You're doing nothing for thehobby.
If you're, you know, sayingyou're an affiliate or a club

(02:34:22):
and you don't have a website oryou'll link to your qrz page,
that's the death of you.
Like, that's just sad.
Like, oh, let me go to your qrzpage because I made a contact
with your club.
Call, anyway, sorry, I'll getoff my soapbox now.
So with that, you guys want tothrow anything in there, or did
I, you know, put the last nailin the coffin?

Speaker 4 (02:34:40):
Even with the last nail in the coffin, we're good.

Speaker 1 (02:34:42):
Okay, so, yeah.
So with this guys we are kindof got two more episodes and so
we're super excited to talkabout next week episode.
We've got a couple of reallycool folks coming on.
We made a loot I alluded tothem earlier when I made contact
with them and what's my hamradio week?
So, you know, stay tuned forthat.
We're excited to have them comeon and tell us a little bit

(02:35:03):
about their ham radio club.
They just started brand new andso they're doing some really
cool stuff and I think it's areally good example of you know
kind of how you can shape yourclub or be part of shaping your
club into a different you knowlight and get them more involved
.
So stay tuned for that.
But, as always, you know, hey,you can always reach out to us
and many different ways, uh, andagain, like uh, I always say

(02:35:23):
you can head over to our discordserver and join the
conversation over there, andwe'll open that up, uh as well
in our show notes.
So, hey, if you've got someclub websites that you want to
share with us, maybe that wemissed, um, that are good
examples of you know, uh,showing themselves and
demonstrating the hobby.
Well, we want to hear aboutthem and share with others, and
maybe we can help you guys getbetter with yours.
So if you want us to do alittle bit more analysis, hey,
we're happy to throw our twocents in and explain what we,

(02:35:46):
why we think your website sucks.
Um, we should write a bookabout it, but anyway, uh, that's
something we'll, we'll be happyto do and I'm sure the rest of
the community will be able tosupport you.
So, with that, you know, makesure you subscribe to our
YouTube channel and ding thatbell, because if you don't,
you'll make Paul a sad, sad ham.
So, you know, don't make himcome after you.
He gets grouchy.
When he gets grouchy, it's fun,exactly.

(02:36:10):
And so, as always, you canalways reach out to us via SMS
link, and that's located in allof our show notes, and you can
always, like Mike from hisshower.
Leave us a nice, wonderfulvoicemail at 978-233-1142.
We'd love to hear from you and,if you want, you can always
come over and support us throughPatreon.
Like I said, if you want to getthe uncut podcast episodes,

(02:36:32):
those will be posted soon, aswell as all the video links and
everything else like that in thebackground and a bunch of other
cool stuff that goes out to allof our paid members, or you can
buy us a beer and finally youcan head over to
livefreeandhamcom, which is agreat website, much better than
a lot of the other clubhousewebsites that we've seen tonight
, and we should probably giveourselves a rating on that one,
I'd say at least 3.5 or above.

(02:36:53):
You know, if you guys giveanything less, I'm going to come
over to you guys and we'll havesome words, but no, I'm just
kidding.
Uh, anyway, all right.
So with that, thanks again forlistening, and from all of us at
livery and ham seven, three,three.

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