Golden Tickets and Gatekeeping: Reimagining Ham Radio's Entry Path

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
so.

Speaker 3 (00:03):
I didn't hear how he died it was some kind of
motorized glider or somethingand it sounded like he crashed
into a pool.
Oh yeah, okay.
So, and then that guy fromCosby's show the Huxable Malcolm
, whatever.

(00:23):
He died today, 53 years old, 54.
Cosby show the Huxtable Malcolm, whatever.
He died today, 53 years old, 54.
Drowned.
You know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, the son.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, when you said Malcolm.
Yeah, because Huxtable wastheir last in the show.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah, His Malcolm Jamal Warner.
I think I always liked him.
But yeah, there's huxtable.
Huxtable was their lab.
Yeah, in the show.
Yeah, he's malcolm jamal warner.
I think I always liked him, hewas always good and everything I
saw him and but yeah, it'spretty crazy I mean not not to
play on like the the raciststereotype, but you know, black
guy drowning that's fine.
Yeah, that's I guess.

(01:03):
But yeah, the Cosmo MalcolmJamal dies at 54 in Costa Rica.
Huh, it's freaking crazy.
You know, I'm almost convincedlike I can't drown.
I don't know why I'm so relaxedin water.
I just can't imagine ithappening to me.
It'll probably be the way I go.

(01:24):
But, like in the Caribbean,it's so salty down there like I
can fall asleep on my back.
So if I ever feel like I'mtired, I just roll over and take
a nap.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Let the current carry you to the next island.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Well, you know, what I do is I bring some paracord, I
tie it around my thing and Ispike it into, I tie it off to
something a thing, and I justfloat out there because you will
, the current will take you outif the tide's going out, yeah,
so at least I stay somewhatclose to shore.
What's the topic tonight?

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Improving the VE stuff.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Oh yeah, cool, yeah, I got on.
Yes, I've been so busy.
Baseball is over.
I have one more.
I don't know if you want tocall it a charity game.
We're getting together with theminor league team and the major
league team and we're going tohave two of the eighth graders
ump it and we're going to do amixed squad and just kind of
finish off the baseball season,have a cookout afterwards.

(02:35):
So that's my last thing, butthat's not really real baseball.
So it's done.
I was going to.
I've got bronchchitis, so I'vebeen feeling like crap and I was
gonna put the antenna and theradio in today and I don't know,
I just got sidetracked doingshit around the house.

(02:56):
So I was off today and, um yeah, didn't even get to it the time
I had to get zach.
We had to go do something.
I had to take him I forget whatI had to do Took him up to
Manchester, came back by thetime we got back and then it was
shit to do around the house andI just never got to it.
So hopefully Friday I'm offagain.

(03:21):
It's all it's about.
I got court tomorrow for work.
It's gonna suck.
Hey, the did I tell you?
The director, this guy Rocha.
Jerry Rocha from the kids jailcomplete dipshit.

(03:43):
I basically told him in frontof our old director that he was
the dumbest.
Uh, the kid's jail pleat dip.
Shit.
Like this is me.
And I basically told him infront of our old director that
he was the dumbest ass I've evermet.
Like it to his face because mybuddy was sent to the hospital
with a huge gouge and he kind ofjoked about it and he was oh so
how's your night going?
And I fricking lost it on theguy and I said you're the least
qualified motherfucker to everbe here.

(04:04):
He said you have no idea whatyou're doing and you think it's
funny that my kid, my guy, is inthe hospital.
So anyway, last Friday he gotescorted out of the building by
the director and the deputydirector and they plastered
signs all over the building ifyou see Jerry Rocha on campus,

(04:25):
call the police immediately.
All right, I don't know what hedid, but it's not good.
So we'll see.
What did I walk into?
No, I was just saying that theguy that.
So this guy, he's a total.
He cheats on his wives.
He worked for Easter Seals.

(04:46):
They basically told him you'regetting fired or you can resign.
So he resigned and the dipshitstate hired him right after he
resigned and they put him in thedirector and he's just
destroyed the place.
Hence, while I was stuck atworking there overnight for two
years and it's still going on Ijust refused to do it.

(05:07):
He is probably being fired.
He was escorted off and afterhe left they put up signs.
If you see him on campus or onthe property, call the police
immediately.
Wow, yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:20):
Wow Takes a long time for shit to finally come to the
surface.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
I'm really hoping that they're supposed to do that
.
Harmony Montgomery case.
The retired judge in mass askedthe FBI to investigate it, and
they should, because peopleshould go to jail for what they
thought irresponsible and theycould have saved that kid if
they did their job and they paidout millions of dollars to the

(05:49):
mother.
But they sealed it and take noresponsibility and that pissed
the judge off.
So when she retired she made astatement and went to the FBI
and says based on what I know, Ithink you should investigate
this.
New Hampshire was criminallypartially responsible for

(06:10):
neglect and not protecting her.
Wow, that's insane, dude.
If that happens I would be sohappy Like that would just make
my day, because the one thingI've been saying that they're
all a bunch of losers and shouldbe in jail anyway would all be
going.
Hey.

Speaker 4 (06:29):
Always a good thing.
Anyway.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
So I've got bronchitis and I've been feeling
like shit.
So if I sound like shit or I'mquiet, just, that's probably why
Okay.
And.
I didn't get my antenna intotoday or my radio.

Speaker 4 (06:47):
Well you didn't you didn't show up either well, yeah
, no kidding, I was supposed tofriday.
I was supposed to do a wholebunch of stuff, and then work
got my way and then today it waslike a shit show of other stuff
, because ryan was like, oh,let's meet up, I need to get the
money for VE stuff, and I'mlike I've got an envelope, I'll

(07:07):
get it to you, you know, today,and today just turned into a
shit show.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
Well, I'm off Friday, so I'm going to do it Friday.
It's the only thing.
I'm going to plan to do, I hope, remind me and I should be okay
.

Speaker 4 (07:20):
I don't think, yeah, I mean I should, I'm gonna.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
I don't have any.
I got based one last uh charitygame.
We're putting the uh minors andthe majors having a mixed squad
unofficial game and uh, two ofthe eighth grade kids that
played last year are gonna umump for us.
They got licensed to be umpiresand um, then we're gonna do a
cook they don't know what thefuck they're doing.

Speaker 4 (07:42):
No, they don't A little unbiased.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
The game's going to be a mess for sure.
Hey, I met Kevin from theBobcats.
Yeah, I went to Zach and I wereup in Manchester and we were on
South Willow Street.
I'm like, hey, type in what'sthe address to the place and
it's right next to the airport.
So I went there.
I'm like this is it?

(08:09):
Like the place looks like ashithole.
It's like like it doesn't evenlook like it's open.
And then I got in there.
It was nice inside.
Yeah, I was pretty impressed.
But yeah, he was wicked cool.
He's like dude, he goes.
Yeah, you can come out anywherewhenever you want.
If it's uh, if there's no teamsin their practice and you know,
you just walk in and use it.
And if, uh, if it's closed oryou want to come earlier, he
goes.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
Uh, just give me a call, I'll give you a key and
you can come in whenever youwant yeah, cody, when he started
first doing that, he, uh, hegave cody a key and he was like,
oh, you know, when you're offseason, go in and, uh, you know,
use it.
And he took care of him,basically took care of him, yeah
and he said he goes, he goes,that can bring a friend or
whatever.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
so his best friend sam use it to go over there and
do some hitting and whatever,but yeah it was pretty cool.
He's a nice guy.
So yeah, he's a tall dude.
Huh, how tall is he.
Like 6'7".

Speaker 4 (08:59):
He's the same height as me, so I'm 6'5".

Speaker 3 (09:01):
All right, close enough.
I'm shrinking.
Yeah, well, we all are.
I went to the doctor and nowI'm like I was like 5'11 and
three quarters.
Now I'm like, barely, I thinkI'm like 5'10".
I mean, I keep losing an inch.
I'm like what does that mean?

Speaker 4 (09:19):
Like I'm going to be like 4'5 when I die.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
You'll be an Oompa Loompa.

Speaker 4 (09:27):
Yeah, big fat three-foot guy Dude look what I
found at the beer store.
Where the heck, what, where'dyou get Yingling?

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Wow, Well, I'm in fucking Illinois.
They sell it here.

Speaker 4 (09:37):
Well, yeah, but like you know, there's always some
caveat.
Like you know, like here's a myson's been trying to find uh
bush for like the longest time.
Like that's the biggest,hottest like thing.
And yeah, if you find casesdown there, let me know and I'll
send you a truckload of moneyto.
You know, ship them up this way.
But it's almost impossible tofind what is it, bush?

(09:57):
What bush apple?
It's basically just like cider.
It's like bush beer with alittle cider and he loves it.
I'm like this sucks.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
It's like the worst beer in the world I'll take a
look yeah, it's hard to find hey, um guy, that's the head umpire
, for I don't know if he'snashua or wherever we get our
umpires, for he actually taughtzach how to be an umpire to get
him so he could coach like thelittle kids, or umpire the

(10:28):
little kids.
He uh at the tournament.
I walk him by and he was at hiscar and I said hey, uh, thanks
for umping a good game.
I said I'm done and I looked athis license plate.
He's got a call sign.
I'm like, oh you, a ham, hegoes.
Yeah, I used to be the head ofskywarn.
I guess he's a meteorologistand uh, he goes.
I just got my technicianlicense but they told me I

(10:48):
should do it since skywarn.
I'm like oh really.
I said you should get back intoit.
So I told him.
I said, uh, I go.
We have a podcast called uhlive free and ham, I said you
should check it out.
I said we're out of bedford.
I said there's something youcould.
You could probably get yourselfinto and uh have some fun.
So he goes.
Yeah, he goes.
Things are slowing down for mea little bit.
He goes.
I might have some time.

(11:09):
So always plug in the club anduh, because I told him about the
club and that in the podcastvery cool.

Speaker 4 (11:18):
So hey, all good there.
Oh, hey, we got a couple folks.
Yeah, hey, russ, good to seeyou there in the chat and, uh,
thanks for hanging out with ustonight.
Hopefully, uh, you knowtonight's topic will, uh, you
know, spark a little interestthere.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
But now all right, listen.
You see in the chat how we'vegot the leaderboard yeah, that
well, I can't say what theYouTube what?

Speaker 3 (11:43):
do you mean the leaderboard?

Speaker 2 (11:46):
All right, you have to be on the YouTube feed.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (11:51):
Oh.
It's that new thing that yousee.
A little crown next to people'snames when they log on to your
live chat.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
How do I know what feed am I on?
It says live free and ham.
It says the grout.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Just click the link in the discord in the patreon
okay and go to that all right.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
Live free and ham studio.
That's what I'm supposed to beon no, no, no, go go to.

Speaker 4 (12:18):
Oh man, I'm bleeding.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Go to discord and uh, oh, oh discord, oh never.
Yeah, I'm not on Discord.

Speaker 4 (12:27):
Yeah, we know it's too complicated for me.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
Here.
I'll throw the link in theprivate chat.
Hey, I did.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
I showed up yesterday .
I'm like where are thesefreaking clowns Like I'm sitting
here waiting.
I'm like, wow, what wasyesterday?
You showed up yesterday, what?
Yeah, cause that's our normallyday to do this.

Speaker 4 (12:49):
So I showed up and I said I know, I hadn't looked at
it.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
I was like holy shit, I got some reading to do and it
finally said you were likegoing to be away.
So I was like sweet Cause.
I felt like worse, where arethese guys?
And then I'm like am I in thewrong one again?
Like what the hell is going on?

Speaker 4 (13:08):
Yeah, dude, I had to.
Uh, we had a family, uh, uh,you know my sister-in-law's to
do, so.
I knew I wasn't going to getback, and you know, with the
stupid, you know, torrentialrains or whatever slowed
everything up, so I didn't getout of there until like 11 30
last night.
So wouldn't happen.
So appreciate it.
So, uh, how water training, myfriend?

(13:29):
How's your pool jumpingexperience?

Speaker 2 (13:32):
it was, it was good, it was, uh, it was a little
reminiscent of, uh, early, earlyboot camp days when, uh, when I
did the combat water survival,but, oh, uh, yeah, very prepared
.
So, like I asked, right, I'mlike, what are we, what are we
supposed to wear?
Right, and I got no answer.

(13:53):
I'm like, well, all right, I'mgoing to wear what I normally
wear skydiving, and then I'lljust bring my bathing suit, a
towel and a change of clothesand, yeah, we got to do it a a
bathing suit.
So it was kind of nice.

Speaker 4 (14:05):
But you weren't the only one to do it in this.
You know the skydiving uniformthat's good yeah so did they
what?
They just throw you in the pooland you have to get out of a
parachute as quickly as you can.
Is that what that's alltraining's about?

Speaker 2 (14:20):
so, uh.
So what it was right is it wasit was three rounds of three
times going in the pool.
So the first round, theinstructor kept the parachute
out of the pool and so it'dstand at the edge of the pool

(14:42):
and basically, you know, imaginethat you're coming in for a
landing.
You're gonna land in fuckingwater, right?
So what do you do?
Um, and so you want to make sureyour helmet's open, the visor's
open, yeah, which, as soon asmy canopy opens, like the first

(15:03):
thing that I that I do, I, Iturn the canopy into the wind, I
, I open my helmet, I loosen mychest strap and then, like I'll
collapse, my slider, and youknow, just kind of get myself
ready for being at the canopy.
Yep, um, you know so.
So it's just going through themotions of those things.
So it's just going through themotions of those things.
And then, um, you know, like wewould, we would pretend that we

(15:28):
had the toggles and we wereflaring, um, and then you, yep,
you get in the, you get in thepool, and no, I mean, the pool
was only five foot six in thedeepest part.

Speaker 4 (15:41):
So, like I mean, I could.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
I could have, I could have, I could have, I didn't.
I didn't cheat, um, no, I Iwent, I went in and I kicked my
legs up so that I went fully inthe water and and then I treaded
water and then undid the cheststrap.
Now let me tell you, I'm doingthe chest strap as a bitch, like
normally.
Doing it in the water is evenmore of a bitch.

(16:05):
Yeah, um, but yeah, like, andand the, the.
The container system that we'reusing was like five sizes too
small for us.
That we're doing the watertraining.
So there's no, there's nokeeping the chest strap loose
and being able to slip it offyour shoulders, like you have to
, you have to physically undo it, um, but so, yeah, so you undo

(16:30):
it and then you, you swim downand you swim away and and kind
of swim out of, out of theharness, um, so we did that
three times.
And then, um, the, the secondround, and then the second round
.
They would just put theparachute over you as soon as
you were under the water.

(16:50):
So when you come up, you comeup and you're in it, but what
they want you to realize is thatyou can push it up and you can
still get air, you know.
So, even though, like, youcan't see and you can't really
hear what's going on because thecanopy is totally covering you,
you can get air, you can, youknow, relax under your chest

(17:15):
strap, get out Right, um, so wedid that three times.
And then the third round, asyou're, as you're trying to get
out from underneath the thecanopy and get the harness
undone, um, the instructorstarts like kind of working it
around you in a circle tosimulate, like you know, water

(17:36):
flow.
Yeah, and you do, like I, dude,I had for lines wrapped around
my legs and on my arms, I had aline that wrapped around my neck
and and so, yeah, like, but thewhole point of it is to
understand that this, this isgoing to happen and you have to

(17:58):
stay calm and just unfuckyourself, swim down and swim
away from it, and yeah, so itwas cool.

Speaker 4 (18:09):
Yeah, I was.
I was watching, I was like heonly did one jump.
I'm like he's got to do morethan that.
That's crazy.
He's really had one on, though,and I was like okay.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
Well, you clearly didn't read what I wrote then,
Cause I said you know, here's,here's the first one and the the
rest will come I look at.

Speaker 4 (18:27):
I'm a picture guy, you know.
I see photos like oh, I'llwatch a video.
Okay, 30 seconds.
Good, yeah, you got myattention.
I'm on the next thing squirrel.
Yeah, if I have to read, thenI'll, uh, you know, uh, stop and
then slow down and then figurestuff out.
So yeah, well yeah well, it wasit was nice.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Uh, one one of the guys that was doing the course
with us um set up his phone torecord you know.
So yeah, that's, that's how wewe got it yeah I was just like,
wow, do you have?

Speaker 4 (18:57):
like I was gonna.
My question was like, do youhave a lead in somehow?
Like they get let you bringyour camera in all the time?

Speaker 2 (19:01):
because I was like, man, he's got everything
recorded, that's good yeah, well, uh, so my canopy course, I I
got, I got my landing videos.
Well, I got seven out of theeight because, uh, the the
eighth landing, right, no, theseventh.
Um, one of the other people inthe course had an issue with his

(19:26):
parachute.
Maybe he had to cut it away,and so you know, obviously, like
everybody's kind of focused onhim, and so when I came in to
land, nobody was there to recordme.
Oh well, yeah.

Speaker 4 (19:44):
That's all right.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
That's all right yeah , good, good, seven out of eight
landings.
Uh, you know, and so I'll, whatI'll do is I'll, I'll edit it
so that it's, and you know, I'llhave to obviously do some type
of voiceover explaining it all.
But you know, I'll be like, allright.
So, landing number one, landingnumber one.
Landing number two Like I'm inmy head and I flared way too

(20:06):
high and I fucking almost ateshit.
You know, just going throughthe progression.

Speaker 4 (20:13):
Yeah, cool.
So on a sidebar I saw you postall of the new Nier songs.
Do you have a preference?
Because I know you got a coupleand have you posted them to me
directly?
I can't remember if you did ornot.
I thought you did I did.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
I I sent them to the group uh okay, that's why I
couldn't find them.

Speaker 4 (20:32):
I thought you usually post directly to me.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
I'll have to go back oh, I might have sent them
directly to you as well, but, um, yeah, the only two that I was
the, uh, the fraggle rock one,which I'm I'm working on, uh, an
animated video for, um, okay,yeah, dude, I've, I've been on a

(20:58):
I don't know, a creative kick.
I guess, like most, most ofthis week, uh, I spent working
on, uh, raspberry pi things andham dashboard things and, um, my
my song that I wrote, uh, youknow, about marital woes, um,

(21:19):
and creating a video for it,because I, I, you know you see
these, uh, these ai like bigfootvideos and shit, like they're
really good and I'm like there'sgot to be a way to to
capitalize on on this reallygood video, ai, where I can make
like a high quality video to gomy songs, um, yeah, so I was

(21:47):
working on that and I mean it'snot terrible, but I'm not 100
happy with it.

Speaker 4 (21:55):
So we'll see what's up with my audio?
I?
I get your boot to the glutes,but are you saying that it just
needs to be boosted, or is itjust too crappy for you?
I'm listening to myself andtrying to talk at the same time.
Can't do that, no possible.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
You sound all right to me.
I don't know, Maybe, uh, maybeI'm a little too punchy and
you're quieter quieter, lower.
Okay, Well, yeah you're quieter, quieter, lower, okay.

Speaker 4 (22:24):
Well yeah you're.
You're lower.
I usually get a lot louder whenI start to actually get into
the show, so otherwise I getoverpowering.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
I'll.
I'll turn myself down a littleMaybe that'll do better.

Speaker 4 (22:34):
Yeah, keep your volume.
I'm good there, I just need to.
I'm not that far close to themic, so, uh, yeah, when I move
in I'll get a little louder forsure.
All good, but appreciate thefeedback there for sure.
Um, yeah, um.
What was I going to say?
Oh, yeah, so which?

Speaker 2 (22:57):
one.
Did you want me to use the, thehard one, as the intro for this
Friday, saturday?
Um, no, I sent you the, not,not the one, the, the one that I
made for you that was a or waslike super heavy metal, but the
one that I posted, that was therock one yeah, that one right.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
Yeah, that's what I meant.
The anthem was it the anthem oranthem 3?

Speaker 2 (23:19):
7, I think number 7, version 7.

Speaker 4 (23:23):
Yeah, I got it now good, alright, I'll get that
incorporated.
I have to get more.
I think number seven, versionseven.
Yeah, I got it now Found it.
Good, all right, I'll get thatincorporated.
I have to get more clips andeverything together for that.
But all right.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, it's four and a half minutes long.

Speaker 4 (23:37):
Oh, okay, cool, That'll give us enough time.
Usually our other ones are likethree, two and a half.
Where did he go?
Looks like he's closing thedoors and I'm shipping you your.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
I was supposed to put that in the private chat.
That was the link to the songoh okay, not the song that I was
working to.
The song oh yeah, not the songthat I was working on the video
for.
But the the near song.

Speaker 4 (24:12):
That's fine, they'll get a sneak peek if they watch.
So, yeah, I'll have your boxout, probably tomorrow or
Wednesday, so I'll get it to youin a couple days.
At that point it should bepretty quick.
Matt gave me everything andthen there was some confusion
because I had told him to sendme another XL and there was like

(24:33):
three that were supposed tocome and he only shipped me two
and I was like, oh, I got one.
I'm like, didn't you get onefor Paul?
And he's like, yeah, I did.
And I'm like, well then, youmissed one.
And I'm like, well then, youmissed one.
And so yeah, just back andforth.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
All right.
Well, as long as you guysfigured it out.

Speaker 4 (24:50):
Yeah, I forgot I had this mug.
Oh my, Was that one of thoseSteins from Germany?

Speaker 3 (24:56):
German beer, stein, kind of.
It's from the Hopper house, butit's in Pittsburgh.
My cousin got married there andI went there with my other
cousins and we got hammereddrinking freaking beers like
that.
Oh yeah, I mean, dude, look atthe size of this thing weighs a
ton and these girls are like Igave them like in a hand my dad

(25:21):
brought like he went to germanyfor work and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (25:23):
He brought like a real original steins back with
the pewter tops and stuff likethat in like their own hand hewn
case and everyone's like thatbeautiful stuff.
I mean as a kid I neverappreciated them until like I
got older.
But yeah, he had like five ofthose glasses same thing.
I'm like my mom's like where amI gonna put these in?
Like they don't fit.

(25:43):
I'm like let's put them out onthe counter.
So well worth it.
Good stuff, uh uh, let's seeanything win.
Link for tonight let me checkuh, there is no review feedback.

(26:04):
We do have a doing good, whichis good.
We haven't had one of those ina while, um, and then, yeah, no
emails, nothing else, so we'repretty quiet yeah no emails,
nothing else so we're prettyquiet.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
My link is loading.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
I got an idea for something we could do with the.
You guys can make more fun ofme, we could.
I went on the net tonight andall I hear is Kim saying oh,
I've just been studying for myextra, oh, I was doing a job and
studying for my extra, or doingmy like.
Every time I see it, that's allshe's doing.
I'm like a motherfucker.
She's gonna beat me.

(26:50):
So we should have her come onand just uh, have the.
Have us go head to head like a,like a contest.
Yeah, we could probably do thatjust like some fun, like if
she'd do it.

Speaker 4 (27:03):
I mean, I love kim, I think it'd be fun, you know
cool, yeah, we'll have to get uh, you hear that uh, paul, you'll
have to be.
Uh, I'll have to get youdressed up in a uh, you know, as
a show host of a game show,something extra with todd, and

(27:24):
have him and Kim go head to head.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
We can, we could do a jeopardy style and then, uh,
you know, we'll, we'll, we'llmix in a little.
Uh, whose line is it anyway?
And the points are irrelevant,the points don't matter.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
I think it.
I don't.
I hope she would want.
I didn't even.
I mean I didn't do it would.
I was thinking about it whenshe was on, so I put on the net
in a while.
So I checked in and said hi,that guy Mike, what the hell is
his name?
Is it N-U-G or something that's.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
I mean U-U-G, rob N-1 .
N-u-g, yeah.
N-u-r-g oh no.

Speaker 4 (28:04):
You're talking about Joe.
K-c-1u-r-g, yeah, n-u-r-g.
Oh no, you're talking about Joe.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
K-C-1-U-R-G.
K-c-1-u-r-g.
Yeah, joe, yeah, not even close, too close.
Yeah, he wanted me to say hi toyou guys Because I'm like, yeah
, I'm getting on the podcasttoday.

Speaker 4 (28:28):
Today's, not the um the 10 meter net is.
It was last monday.
It was last monday, yeah.
Yeah, email always goes out.
Next monday, though, is uhboard meeting.
Just get that on your calendarhopefully you want to be
baseball?
Yeah, I don't have baseballanymore okay, just said you were
an all-star dead kid gameThursday.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
It's like it's nothing, I don't have to do
anything.
I just got to show up, maybecook some burgers, cool you were
saying Paul we do have a winlink oh cool, all right, and
then only other sidebar.
What time is the?

Speaker 4 (28:59):
board meeting.
Good question probably yes.
After 730.
Ralph will send something outto us, probably late week, just
a reminder.
I'll remind you of your textyou stupid board members.
You can take my spot.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
You can take my spot if you want.

Speaker 4 (29:22):
He's got his own shit to do.
He's going to be our remote VEfrom halfway around the world.
There's Mike, all right.
Well, so you guys know TopicTonight, right, I didn't.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
Improving VA right I didn't okay well improving.

Speaker 4 (29:45):
Tonight is coming from you because your little
rant last week about how ve suckand I am so glad I can.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
I can bring topics to this podcast you guys need me
here.

Speaker 4 (29:59):
Just another reason why we have todd on I'm like I
was.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
I was like you know, they don't really need me on
this show.
I'm more of a pain in the ass.
I don't pay attention to whatthe topics are.
I'm really bad at making videosand posting them and returning
replies.
I'm going to try to get better.
It's going to be my six-monthNew Year resolution.
Like, really try to focus onDiscord, but it still gets

(30:25):
fucking crazy.
I I turn everything off, but Istill get things that say you
know 30 things.

Speaker 4 (30:33):
I'm like, yeah, it's, it's the always visual alert.
But you know, hey, you'realways going to be our you are
and and always will be.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
Give me a fucking chance.
So okay.

Speaker 4 (30:50):
So, yeah, the only two other things.
If you haven't caught up to allof the stuff that's been going
on, I asked Matt N3VAN if hewanted to be a mod and he
graciously accepted Russ, notRuss.
Ted graciously accepted.
Um, russ, not russ.
Um, uh, ted gracious.
Yeah, ted graciously accepted.
Dude, he's all over that.
He's, you know, been goingcrazy.

(31:10):
So there's a channel we've gotthat's private, uh, in the
discord, for our mods, um, andwhat's a?
mod, moderator, moderator.
They watch over the, you know,when we can't be there, they,
these guys, tend to be the onesthat are pretty, uh, you know,
active anyway, and so they'rethe ones always welcoming people
and stuff, and so, you know, Ifigured they would be good, you

(31:32):
know, and Ted's been all over it, which has been amazing, so
it's good to see him, you know,jumping in.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Gotta keep it moderated.

Speaker 4 (31:40):
Not separated, not separated.
Separated, not separated butanyway superb all right.
So, uh, anything else I gothere.
No, outside of that, uh, we'replugging away.
You got all the questions rightfor the 24 hour stuff, have you

(32:01):
gotten?

Speaker 3 (32:01):
yeah, I called I.
Yeah, I called that guy, uh,friday and he just didn't get
back to me so I forgot todaybecause I wasn't at work.
But I'll do it tomorrow.
If he doesn't answer, I'm gonnacall the, because I have his
like personal number.
So, all right, I'll call him.
If he doesn't answer, I'll callhim at work.
But he could be on vacation orsomething, I don't know it's not

(32:23):
like.

Speaker 4 (32:23):
I mean it's, it's good to have all that stuff now
than sort of later.
So yeah, the way.

Speaker 3 (32:28):
The way it basically works is we're going to be in
that big parking lot or in thatfield next to it, that that
picture of the map didn't reallygive that field justice, like
that field is pretty big, um,but we're in the parking lot.
It's nice and flat, you know.

Speaker 4 (32:45):
Bathrooms are right there is it a side entrance or
do you have to go in through themain part of the gate and then
have to go down towards thatarea?

Speaker 3 (32:53):
well, you, just you go in and the like the card
shack is well, no, the, the mainbuilding, like where you pay or
whatever, is straight up.
But if you make a left, youdrive down there and there's a
guard shack.
Now, if the gates are closed,you can actually take a, take a
right and get into the campsitesand then there's like a dirt

(33:14):
cut through to come back out.
You can go around it, um, butyeah, it's um, I mean, it's what
it was the last time I wasthere.
Um, I don't know, with all thisrenovation, what they changed
it.
But yeah, I think if you, if wejust prepare whatever you know,
I think you just would justdrive in and you know we can
call him and he'll tell us wherewhere it is or where we can go.

(33:35):
But we haven't had much rain,so I'm not worried about the
flooding, not either.
But when I called him the firsttime, he said the whole
freaking parking lot was open.
I was like no shit, yeah, Idon't think we'll have that.
It's a shallow lake, but youcould bring a kayak or go
fishing and stuff.

Speaker 4 (33:53):
Yeah, that's what I told everybody and stuff.
And then people have beensigning up already, locking in
spots, so I'm just starting toget the emails out to folks with
confirmations and payment linksand stuff like that.
So it's all happening.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
And we're getting a camper.

Speaker 4 (34:08):
You said yeah, that's on my to-do list.
Next is because you, I and Bobare splitting it three ways, so
I've got to find one for us andif Mike wants in on it and he
doesn't want to buy a tent, mike, this hit me up on the discord
direct.
Yeah, I don't know Anybody takeany spots from you yet.
Paul Offering, have you offeredanything out to anybody I know

(34:30):
like?

Speaker 3 (34:31):
Matt was.

Speaker 4 (34:31):
It's his house, dude it's like he has a very good
room for himself and WatsonWatson you got to sleep outside
tonight, and Watson can handlethat.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
I mean, I don't know.
So I know I know Chris Brookeris going to stay on the couch
down on Huntsville Thursday,friday, saturday, I think.
Thursday, friday, saturday,sunday, I don't know.
But I haven't talked to himabout the 24-hour photo.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
so yeah, hey, did you guys?
Do you guys see that thing?
I sent you with that, thatturbine, wind thing I saw it.

Speaker 4 (35:14):
I didn't get to read it.
Like I was telling paul, I onlywatch videos yeah well.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
So I looked at it and while it seems like a fairly
slick idea, I would rather juststick with solar and not try and
complicate things by trying toadd wind into the mix.
How often is wind a thing wherewe're like, oh I could just put

(35:42):
a turbine and charge my battery?

Speaker 3 (35:48):
Yeah thing where we're like, oh, I just put a
turbine charge my battery, like,yeah, I was, I mean it's, it's,
it's, I think it can be.
I think I read when I waswatching parts I've been so this
came out a couple years ago andI just thought it was kind of
cool because to me it justlooked like a fan, right.
But I was like, oh, you knowwind, those turbines, you know
they can produce a lot ofelectricity.
So this is like the secondversion.
So it's like now I think youcan actually hook it up and

(36:11):
charge it and use it with yoursolar panels so you can charge
more, even at night.
You can charge your batteries ifthe winds are going.
But I mean you have to havewind.
So, like I'm figuring like atthe beach or if you're doing a
soda at the top of the mountain,it's a little bit windier up
there.
I mean I mean we had some windtoday, but it'd be like on and
off, on and off, but yeah, itwouldn't work but if you know

(36:34):
it's, it's not like, it's notlike I I do.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
I do summits where I'm like, oh, you know, what I'm
gonna do is I'm gonna hike tothe summit and then I'm gonna
camp at the summit, my windturbine at the summit and charge
my shit, I'm just thinking,like I'm just sitting, like the
whole shit hits the fan end ofthe world, kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
We need electricity and charging wind is not the
solution but it can't hurtwater's the same way.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
It's just going to be near water to make it work yeah
, but water's a thousand timesmore reliable because as long as
you've got water flow, you'vegot current which can create
power, wind I've seen those too,If you're out in the plains,
you're going to have wind allthe time.

Speaker 4 (37:16):
That's where wind farms are the big thing.
But here in New Hampshireforget it it's not even windy in
the Cape, and the cape's gotthree or four big giant wind.

Speaker 3 (37:25):
uh, it's windy enough here every time I want to go.
If we want wind, I just gottago flying.
The wind comes, it'll be deadcalm.
I'm going out, look at no wind.
Like walk out of my house,completely calm, not a breeze in
the air.
I get there 30 mile an hourwinds.
I'm like what the fuck?
I don't know man, it juststarted windy.
I'm like, yeah, I came I justthought I just thought because

(37:49):
of thatI just thought it was kind of a
cool, cool idea because I wasI'm a big, I want one of those
wind turbines in my backyardjust to power my house.
It doesn't have to be the hugehow it?
Works I know right well, I betyou're one of those things,
because they say those thingsonly only need like one to two
mile an hour winds to spin thosehuge turbines.

(38:11):
They don't need much wind toproduce energy.

Speaker 4 (38:15):
I guess they're also expensive.
But yeah well, mini ones in myhouse.
We are not a self-generatingshow, yet we still work on
reliable street power yes,especially this past.
Uh, you know, support yourparks weekend.
It's all the windmills fault.
All right, cool, all right.

(38:39):
Well, let's uh get this thingrolling here.
So, uh, yeah, no hard we're.
You know how would you like torevamp the whole licensing VE
stuff?
So think around those terms andwhat you'd like to see.

Speaker 3 (38:50):
Just get rid of it.

Speaker 4 (38:53):
Save it for this show .

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Five, four, three, two, one.

Speaker 4 (38:59):
Oh, I'm not ready here.
Sorry, I'm so far down thescript.
All right, well, as he gave uspause here.
What if you had a golden ticketto revamp the ve licensing
system?
What would you do?
Well, we're going to talk aboutthat next.
On live free and ham hello andwelcome to live free and ham
podcast.
This is our weekly show wherewe discuss ham radio topics in

(39:20):
new hampshire, new england andbeyond, and we're thrilled to
have you guys here.
There's a lot of cool folks inthe chat there this evening and
we'll say hello to you guys in abit, but we talk about
everything ham radio topics inNew Hampshire, new England and
beyond.
So, as we said, we're glad tosee you guys all here and,
whether you're a regularlistener, I'm bouncing all over
my script again, man.

(39:40):
I got to renumber this damnthing again.
Man, I got to renumber thisdamn thing.
Hang on If you're tuning in thefirst time.
Thank you for joining thisepisode, guys.
As always, you know how thisshow goes.
So, as always, let's get in theshow.
I'm your host, eric callsignN1JUR, and I'm with my guys, who
do a better job than I do.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
It's Paul and 1OG.

Speaker 3 (40:02):
And Todd W1STJ Villa.
General Proud of it.

Speaker 4 (40:08):
All right.
Well, thank you guys andwelcome and thanks for bailing
me out when I need it.
As always, before we move on toour topic, we always have a few
things you'd like to catch upon and slow me down if I get too
fast.
But, as always, our store frontover on livefreeandhamcom
forward slash shop, you canalways head over there, check

(40:29):
out all of our merch, pick up apack of bacon hammies and you
know, like we said, we're alwaysadding new shirts and new stuff
.
So we've got is your ham radioshowing T-shirt, which is big
hit.
I actually wore that to a clubmeeting a couple of days ago.
I had three or four peoplegoing, hey, where'd you get that
shirt?
And I said, funny.
You asked that I know a greatplace and they haven't ordered
it yet.
But we'll have to keep pushingthem.

(40:50):
But yeah, things like that.
Or RF around and find out withour Marconi Marconi's t-shirt
Marconi, yeah, marconi, andwe're still working on Paul's.
I am, yeah, just like Paul wassaying earlier.
You get into that creative flowand then you just get too far
and you end up breaking it.
Then you have to back out of ita little bit.

(41:10):
So I'm in the back out phasebefore I really like just trash
it all.
I'm almost there.
It'll come out, so it's comingsoon.
I know, actually I'm trying toremember who posted in our
Discord Shoot who was sayingthat they were wearing the shirt
.
Was that?
Um, uh, they were wearing yoursomeday shirt or a sweatshirt.
Oh man, I can't remember who'sin the discord you remember?

(41:32):
Uh, I don't, uh, man anyway.
So someone was saying, whenthey're wearing their someday
paul's someday jump shirt and,lo and behold, he ended up
making a contact with parachutejesus.
There's a kind of a of a matchmade in heaven type thing.
But, yeah, it's good.
Folks, head over there, pick upsome stuff, especially as we get
into our 24-hour pod.

(41:52):
You can wear it proud and loudand hang out there when we do
our 24-hour live stream.
So head on over, check thatstuff out and, as always, you
can always come connect with ourcommunity.
We can do that in several ways.
Obviously, check out our livestream.
We do it once a month, um, ifyou haven't already subscribed
and ring that bell, then head onover and do that.
That way, you'll get notifiedwhen we do go live.

(42:13):
Um, and you can always reachout to us via the mess link uh
and or um.
So I'm following my scriptagain.
Or you can leave us a voicemailat 978-233-1142, and all those
links are always in our shownotes.
And if you always like tosupport our show and just like
all of our Patreons that are inthe chat this evening and that's

(42:34):
one of the perks is being aPatreon member is you get to
come participate in our livestreams or our private live
streams for our recordedepisodes week to week, and they
take us to a boatload of otherstuff like early access to our
show releases and cut and editedcontent and, as more and more
say, we always say are you onthe button or me?

(42:56):
You can try as little as threehours a month.
It's not a big expense.
All right?
Yes, and as Bob says, it is nota big expense and it helps
support our show and helps uscreate this great content that
you are listening to right now.
All right, so with that, wehave no mail, actually, no, we
have a win link, so we are goingto kick off the mailbag here.

(43:18):
Ladies and gentlemen, can Iplease have your attention?

Speaker 2 (43:22):
I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news
story everybody.

Speaker 4 (43:27):
We got some news.
Slow down, boog, let me handlethis.
We've got some news.
I've got bad news and bad news.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
I have reviewed ship's personnel captain.
Congratulations, you've gotmail on top today.

Speaker 4 (43:43):
There we go.
So, todd, we have nothing inthe mailbag this week for you,
but I know we got a win linkright we do have a win link.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
So, uh, kilo delta nine yankee sierra whiskey uh,
he's made, made good on hispromise from last week to uh
send us Two for two.
So subject is week of July 20th.
Hey guys, I'm typing this upwhile listening to the Live Free

(44:13):
and Ham podcast.
I started a new job and I'musing muscles that I haven't
used in years, so I'm a littlesore here Trying to get a video
done it doesn't say Trying toget a video done from the podo
with N1OG, but health is goodand the other stuff is getting

(44:37):
better.
Working on getting the extraclass and will be used many
different forms of studymaterials on top of using ham
study.
I was able to visit some hambuddies during this last weekend
.
I just need to remember to takea walk when I get frustrated.
Very good advice.

(44:58):
Yep, five percent um.
On another note, I made a tradefor a hotspot.
I traded a Pi 4 for the hotspot, so now time to find a DMR or a
C4 FM radio.
Yep, hopefully I will be onreflectors soon.
7-3 for now.
K9 YSW Chris.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
Awesome, chris, cool.
Well, thank you again forcontinuing on.
Uh, you know your path there tosending a one win link a week
and we appreciate it especiallythat you're sending it to us, or
at least n1og, not the rest ofus as a collective, but uh, yeah
he is sending it to you, butobviously you're not.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
You're not checking eventually.

Speaker 4 (45:41):
Well, it's gonna definitely bounce back, because
I think my account's uh inactiveat this point.
I can only imagine if, uh, youknow it's going to definitely
bounce back because I think myaccount's inactive at this point
.
I can only imagine if it's evenreceiving email.
But we'll have to open thatPandora's box someday in the
future.
Good on that, chris.
The hotspot stuff is always funto play around with, for sure,
I'd say, if your hotspot doesAll-Star, get on All-Star.

(46:02):
We got an All-Star node.
I'm working on a node for W1LFH, so that'll be coming soon and
we'll announce those down theroad.
But that's a little bit loweron my list, since 24-hour pod or
a few other things have kind oftaken focus of that.
We'll get that out soon and sowe'll be able to communicate one
more way with folks, and thatwould be kind of cool to do so.

(46:24):
All right, well, with that,then we actually have a doing
good here.
This is one we haven't had in awhile.
So you know, kick this off here.
Doing good, good, doing goodyou do, that's good, do good, do
good, you're doing good.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
Good, good.
Good.
Good, I'm doing good, bob,doing real good.
Right now, my only outlet is myham radio.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
Doing good Good.
Doing good you do, that's good.
I played it twice because Ilike it so much.
Damn loop, that's how long wehaven't played it.
When I loaded that.
We're like man, we haven't donethat in a long time.
So it's on automatic loop, allright.
Well, you know, for those thatmight not know what do good is,
we all aspire to do good in hamradio.

(47:10):
So whether you might beassisting in a disaster, proving
communication for a local roadrace, or hosting that POTA
meetup, we all love toparticipate in ham radio
activities.
So, however, you know, wesometimes hear negative voices
or we get overshadowed by thosenegative voices when we're
trying to enjoy our hobby, andso I raise my fist to say bring
on those good deeds, and this isa place that you can share

(47:33):
those stories with us.
So we've had a bunch in thepast, and so this week we've had
one that I wanted to share, andthis one's kind of near and
dear to my heart, and I don'tmean to put Parker on this, but
our club, you know, near anddear to my heart, and I don't
mean to put parker on this, uh,but our club, um, you know, the
grand state amateur radio grew,which all of us are members of.
Uh, we, uh, had donated to us akenwood, um, I think, 622 meter

(47:56):
mobile radio, brand new in thebox, never been touched, never
been breathed on, never beentaken out of the packaging.
Um, donated by.
You know, one of our clubmembers said here I don't want
this, I want to give it to theclub, let the club do something
with it.
And so, um, if you paidattention to our last episode
last week, uh, if you guys know,uh, chris, uh, whiskey eight,

(48:16):
um, see, uh, he, uh, his son, uh, basically got his uh,
technician ticket.
So we all rejoiced with himlast week, um, and I kind of got
the idea.
I'm like you know, hey, it'd bereally cool.
I know a kid who coulddefinitely use this, and it's
just going to sit in our coffersdoing nothing and collecting
dust until we figured out whatwe wanted to do.
So, you know, we, we talkedwith the, and so I packaged it

(48:42):
all up, shipped it on and posteda video on our Discord for our
club, and Chris loved it, or Ishould say Parker loved it.
He had the whole video open.
Parker, the only thing I'll haveto say is Amazon's ruined you
because apparently you can'topen a box that I've sealed very
well with tape, but you can ripthrough an Amazon box in a

(49:02):
matter of two seconds, butthat's beside the point.
Either way he got into the radio.
Chris informs us that he's beenadding several frequencies and
many repeaters to his radio, soit's always a great thing to see
that and I get my my lower subarea warmed up, you know, as you
know, we all say that we love,you know, seeing things like

(49:22):
that.
So, yeah, if you've got storieslike that or you have a great
Poder meetup that you've done inthe past especially as the
Sports Parks weekend happenedlast week and something really
cool came out of it submit yourstory.
Paul's got the link there inthe chat and we always have the
link in our website and in ourshow notes.
So head on over there andsubmit it to us and we'll make
sure we read it on our nextepisodes.

(49:42):
Cool With that, let's now getinto the hardcore of our show
here.
That, apparently, is the triedand true center support of
everything that we do aroundhere with Live Free and Ham.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
It is everyone's favorite segment.

Speaker 4 (50:07):
And now a little something extra with Todd W1STJ
Still a general.
Yes, he is still a general, allright.
Well, you know, we always saythis every week and we're going
to continue on with it.
You've heard it here.
This is where we help Toddstudy for his extra class

(50:29):
license.
So each episode we pick threequestions from that extra class
question pool and I feel like wekeep getting into the same
repetitive ones we've done overa year ago.
So you know, it is definitelystarting to come back up to the
top there, todd.
So hopefully the gray matter isabsorbing and we're retaining

(50:49):
it.
So in each episode we pick threequestions from that extra class
question pool, attest hisknowledge and hope he gets his
upgrade one day.
So follow along with us and youcan head over by that.
Go to hemstudyorg.
It's an awesome resource tohelp us prepare for your testing
and is recommended by four outof four volunteer examiners,
including myself.
So, without any further delay,I hand it over to our quiz

(51:10):
master, paul.
Please take it away.
I feel like eggs and ham.
I will not, sam, I am.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
All right, todd, question number one this evening
is a question that you've hadbefore, so you should get this
one right.
What is the voltaic effect?
Is it A the conversion ofvoltage to current when exposed
to light.
B the effect that causes aphotodiode to emit light when

(51:44):
voltage is applied.
C conversion of light toelectrical energy, or D the
effect that causes aphototransistor's beta to
decrease when exposed to light?

Speaker 4 (52:07):
And no, it's not the next episode of Transformers.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Oh, Todd, you're muted.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
Oh sorry, I said I remember the question, I'm just.
I think it's either A or B.
It's my two guests out of thefour.
I'm going to go with B.

Speaker 4 (52:42):
I would agree, my friend B sounds like a very good
, solid answer.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
Without even clicking it.
I'm going to tell you you'reboth wrong.

Speaker 4 (52:54):
Damn it.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
You're both wrong.
There you go, no it's C, it'sthe conversion of light to
electrical energy.
It's photovoltaic cells, man.
Come on solar panels.

Speaker 4 (53:09):
I don't use them.
That's why.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
So the photovoltaic effect is the creation of
voltage or electric current in amill upon exposure to light.
The standard photovoltaiceffect is directly related to
the photoelectric effect, thoughthey are different processes.
When the sunlight or any otherlight is incident upon a

(53:35):
material surface, the electronspresent in the valence band
absorb energy and, being excited, jump to the conduction band
and become free.
These highly excitednon-thermal electrons diffuse at
some reach of junction, wherethey are accelerated into a
different material by a built-inpotential.

(53:55):
This generates an electromotiveforce and thus some of the
light energy is converted intoelectric energy.

Speaker 4 (54:05):
I invented electric motor force.
It's amazing.

Speaker 3 (54:10):
It's the best thing in the world.
So, hey, Mike, did you get thatone, or were you as off as Eric
and I were?
I can set the building on fire.

Speaker 4 (54:24):
Okay, let's on fire.
Okay, let's try again, okay.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
Question number two is also a question you've had
before.
What did I say?

Speaker 4 (54:33):
I've had them all before, so you don't need to
keep repeating that.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
All right.
The question is is vestigialsideband modulation?
Oh, we had this week or theweek before.

Speaker 4 (54:50):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
Is it A?
Narrow band FM modulationachieved by filtering one
sideband from the audio beforefrequency modulating the carrier
.
B a type of modulation in whichone sideband is inverted.
C Amplitude modulation in whichone complete sideband and a

(55:17):
portion of the other aretransmitted.
Or D Spread spectrum modulationachieved by applying FM
modulation following singlesideband amplitude modulation.
A whole lot of modulation.

Speaker 4 (55:34):
Spread spectrum Ooh for some reason.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
For some reason, I think, I think it was the only
one with am in.
It was the hint.

Speaker 4 (55:55):
So I'm gonna go with c.
Yeah, uh, yeah, that's whatyou're going with.
Oh, hold on a second wait.
I should reread these questions.
No, it's AM.
It's got to be AM, becausethat's what I said.
I'm not denying what you justsaid All right.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Yes, c is the correct answer.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
Great job.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
So your explanation.
Ntsc signals are amplitudemodulated am signals but use a
technique called vestigialsideband modulation.
Vestigial sideband, vsbmodulation is amplitude
modulation in which one completesideband and a portion of the
other are transmitted.

(56:43):
The reason that NTSC TV usesvestigial modulation is to
conserve bandwidth.
Even using this technique, anNTSC signal is 6 MHz wide.
One advantage of usingvestigial sideband for standard
fast-scan TV transmissions isthat vestigial sideband reduces

(57:05):
bandwidth while allowing forsimple video detector circuitry.

Speaker 4 (57:10):
And so, uh your hint, vestigial means a small part or
portion of something larger uh,I think it'd be an editorial
change and we should followmike's comment of just give am a
chance, just give.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
AM a chance I think I made.
Maybe I made that up becausewhen I was studying for that, I
said it's the only one that hasAM in it.
These freaking trucks, this iswhat we're going to talk about.
I don't give two shits aboutthis.
Okay, this, this right here,does not help me in ham radio.
I will never use it and neitherwill 95% of all of us out there

(57:49):
will never use this crap andshould not be on the test
Complete.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Apparently, todd never looks at schematics.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Yeah, I don't.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
I just want to operate.

Speaker 3 (58:04):
To me that looks like they're too similar, Right.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
No, they're not, they're all different.

Speaker 3 (58:14):
Really they're all different.
The only one between two andthree is G1, G2, or G.
They're exactly the same.
Oh, and the arrow's going theother way, oh that makes a
difference four and five is isjust the arrow.
All right, go on.
What is this?

Speaker 2 (58:33):
let's hear the okay in figure e6-1, which is the
schematic symbol for an nchannel gate MOSFET.
Is it A number 4, b number 2, cnumber 6, or D number 5?

(58:57):
Let me know if you need me toscroll down yeah, scroll down a
little bit.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
So it's four, two, six or five dual gate oh man, I
can't remember if it's thereverse oh man okay.

(59:29):
Well, I'm just gonna guess allright, I'm gonna go with.

Speaker 4 (59:35):
I'm gonna go with five yeah, see, I'm gonna toss
up.
I can't remember if the uh uhfruit the other way.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
See, I'm gonna go yeah, here's my here's my point
an extra for years and years andyears I don't know years two
years.

Speaker 4 (59:54):
Thank you, not enough .
Like give whatever two twoyears.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
But you look at this if you saw that, you'd have to
go google it anyway.
So go on.
Very true, which is which iswhy we don't a.

Speaker 4 (01:00:05):
We're gonna go with a because I, you know, I can't
remember the direction of theemitters or the direction of the
.
The diode is left or right okay.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Well, todd said d, which is number five, which is
incorrect.
Eric said A, which is number 4,and A is correct.
Can you scroll up so I can seeit?
It's right there, number 4 no,I not the fucking number, the

(01:00:36):
design.
It's right there you couldn'tsee it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
No, I couldn't, I couldn't see oh and so no, I
couldn't, I couldn't see oh,four, I was looking at two.

Speaker 4 (01:00:49):
Four yeah so what did I say?
Five, five.
And the only thing that wouldchange, the only difference, was
the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:00:56):
So I I picked the wrong side again, fucking stupid
all right so this is stupid.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
To give an explanation, your fet schematic
symbols MOSFET Number three is aP-channel MOSFET.
Number four is the dual-gateN-channel.

(01:01:31):
Mosfet.
Number five is the dual-gateP-channel MOSFET.
And number six is an N-JFET.
So there you go, jfet there yougo.

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
It had to be 4 or 5, because it's gate 1, gate 2,
right or gate 2, gate 1?
.

Speaker 4 (01:01:52):
Yeah, no, definitely the dual gates.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
It was just the fucking arrow.
So why does the arrow go?

Speaker 4 (01:02:00):
Because that is where the electricity is being fed
into or where the um, I mightforget it the resistor, which is
that little error,representation, is impeding or,
you know, basically blocking.
So when it's facing out, theelectricity is flowing out, and

(01:02:20):
when it's facing in, theelectricity is flowing in.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
Got it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:24):
See, I looked at it as opposite as the yeah, no, but
that that's just a resistor, soa resistor like it was going
through and then spreading outinto the two gates that was my,
that was my rationale for forright like it comes in and it
spreads out to gate one and twogeez up who.
Yeah, mike, I don't know ifthat one.

(01:02:46):
We'll submit that as a requestthere for user submitted hints.
See if it flies.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
All right.
Well, at least Mike's honest,at least he's with me.
I don't have a clue.

Speaker 4 (01:03:01):
Is Mike an extra too, are you?
I think, mike's just still ageneral Mike are you an extra?
Throw us in the chat there,Mike.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
Cause if you are, then you know.
It just proves my point thatthat fricking chart doesn't mean
shit, nevermind.
Go on, move on, am.

Speaker 4 (01:03:16):
I done.
I got one.
Right.
He's an extra.
What'd you get?
I got two, so I get the music.
Todd got one.
Oh, he misses the music though.
Still gonna hear it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
Yes yes, yes.

Speaker 4 (01:03:37):
Emotional, damn it All right.
So whether you're on thejourney of studying for your
technician general or thatelusive extra class, Makes an
extra, proves my point In thatcase well, maybe we should have
him on with your extra.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
I'm just right.
It's a dumb question.
No one uses that.
It doesn't help you do hamradio unless you're into
designing shit, and that's notwhat I'm here for Ham radio how
many hams design shit?

Speaker 4 (01:04:05):
There are quite a few .
Ziggy was one.

Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
I wonder what the percentage is.
We should send out a poll toall hams, see how many?
There are.

Speaker 4 (01:04:13):
I bet you it's less than 20%.
You'll get your wish about thehate mail then I'm sure that's
why we're not the ham radioworkbench, exactly.
All right, we're wrap thisthing up here.
So, whether you're on a journeyto studying for that technician
, general or extra class andyou're, as a, you know, crazy
person like Mike and do all ofthem in three months, more power

(01:04:34):
to you.
But in that case, hamstudyorgis an awesome resource for
getting that ticket.
And if you've recently receivedyour license or upgraded, let
us know.
We like to recognize you on thenext episode for all your hard
work and effort, and you canemail us at livefreeandham at
gmailcom.
Make sure we mention you on thenext show.
I think we had what three fromour last testing session Two
technicians, three techniciansyeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Yeah, hang on, let me pull it up.
I got it right here.
I love it, okay.

(01:05:19):
So, yes, I love it.
New technician uh and johndatillo kilo charlie, one yankee
alpha victor, brand newtechnician very cool.

Speaker 4 (01:05:31):
Congratulations, guys , and, uh, welcome to the hobby.
All right, well, as we get intoour usual format here with the
ham radio, we could catch upover to you.
Uh, mr n10g, what's been goingon your ham radio week, my
friend?

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
well, um, I, um, I did a lot of linux fucking
hating this week, um, but I did.
I did finally work out, uh, atleast some of my uh, uh, uh.
What is it why?
Uh, wspd, um, you know problems?

(01:06:08):
Um, I'm still I'm I'm still notgetting um fusion to DMR
crossover to function correctly,um, but that's, that's a me
issue.
I don't know, we'll figure itout.
Um, I did finish iteration oneof of my skydiving ham dashboard

(01:06:34):
, um, and I, I did, I did shareit with a couple of people.
So, um, people that have anyinterest in understanding, uh,
you know the the weather andwebcam feed from the drop zone
here?
Um, let me know, send me anemail and I'll send you the file
so that you can run it on yourbrowser and you can see all the

(01:06:57):
things that I see.
Yeah, it was a lot of learning,a lot of banging my head
against the wall, a lot ofasking chat, gpt and Grok over
and over.
Hey, listen, Linux isn'tworking for me.
How do I do this?
Because this is what I'm tryingto do and getting frustrated
because AI doesn't rememberthings.

(01:07:18):
I'll start the conversationwith AI and I'll be like all
right, here's the file that I'mworking on.
I paste all the code and then Igo you know three hours later.
Okay, so you remember back whenI first sent.
No, it does not.
It doesn't remember.

(01:07:39):
So that's yeah.
Flaws in AI finding them allweek.

Speaker 4 (01:07:45):
Well.
So here's a little tip thatI've learned with the AI stuff
that I ran into the same similarstuff is that you notepad it.
What I've learned that's superstrength with AI is chaining.
So if you're going to likewhere, remember how they taught
us in school where this is howyou write a rough draft for your
first you know essay you'rewriting, and then you write a
second draft and then you do afinal and you have all of those

(01:08:07):
chains of stuff.
The same thing with AI is thatif you write it all out like,
hey, I want you to do A, b and Cand then at the same time, I
want you to add this threethings and I want you to add,
and then you just maintain that.
Then when you sit back in, youjust add your extra few more
commands at the bottom of it andit just spits out oh, like I
already know this because I havethis stored somewhere else, so

(01:08:28):
I'm not going to reiterate it toyou in detail, because you can
say don't give it to me indetail, just answer my questions
after this.
And this is what I'm referringto as content, and it remembers
it.
I like I can't tell you howmany times.
I'm like that has saved mybacon because I got frustrated.
I'm like done, I gotta do itmyself.
I'm done, this is a waste oftime.
Four hours fucking wasted I know, like, why am I telling a

(01:08:52):
computer what to do if it can'tremember what I told it 10
minutes ago?

Speaker 3 (01:08:56):
Yeah, it knew your answers.
It just was being a dick anddidn't want to tell you.

Speaker 4 (01:09:00):
Well, that's because you're using grok.
It was like it was trying totell you in, you know, early
1930s lingo.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
So the interesting uh grok is much more detail, um
you know, oriented in the in theanswers and get a lot more
explanatory in the answers,whereas chat GPT is just like
here it is.

Speaker 4 (01:09:24):
Yep, yeah, I'm more of a matter of fact guy.
I just want to know.

Speaker 3 (01:09:30):
I saw a thing on Kickstarter.
They've got this like littledog, it's like that big and it's
ai generated and it's like adog you train and it you bring
in it as like and it getssmarter and smarter and smarter.
I was like oh boy, here's thestart until it gets hacked.

Speaker 4 (01:09:51):
Then it's gonna tell you go, fuck you, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:52):
And then you're gonna tell hacked Then it's going to
tell you to go fuck you, yeah,and then you're going to tell
the dog sit.
It's going to be like fuckingtaking off on you, sorry.

Speaker 4 (01:09:58):
You want me to self-implode?
Sure, no problem.
Yeah, well, good to see you onthe dashboard.
I'm going to, I'm probably.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
you probably got like five people saying you're going
to create a video on it or no?
Your dashboards?
I mean, I I will.
The thing is, is um at the atthis point, right, iteration one
is 100 html based um, which is,in a way, it's a good thing,
because what I can do is I couldjust create different html

(01:10:29):
based pages with differentinformation sources.
But ultimately, what I'm tryingto do is I'm trying to build a
server that's hosted on my Pi,that has the API to pull all the
winds aloft information and theweather information from a

(01:10:49):
couple different sources, andthen where I'm getting hung up
is how it's presenting thatinformation to me.
It's not presenting it in a waythat looks nice, and so still
working on it.
But yeah, at least for nowiteration one is done and

(01:11:10):
successful, and it's just HTMLbased.

Speaker 4 (01:11:13):
That, based off of your comments, you were saying a
few weeks or a couple days agoin Discord, like how you were
going to like everything up in amatter of a couple of seconds.
I was like, dude, step away.
I've been there, I've beenthere, I know what it's like.
It's like tell it.
It's like, oh, come in, I'mjust giving you text.
Stop telling me my syntax wrong.
For the 55th time I'm typingthe same thing over and over
again.
Yeah, no, I get it.

(01:11:33):
I, yeah, I.
I love Lennox.
I've been, you know, I've beenin that space for a long, long
time and I don't tell anybody Iknow it well, because then you
know they're like can you helpme with this?
Like, no, I don't want to getinvolved with it.
It's a pain in the ass.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
Well, I think ultimately, I just I need to
create myself a little cheatsheet of uh, you know, like the
different commands, you knowlike grep and get, and you know
what all the different commandsdo, and ox said all of those,
you know a whole lot of uh,pseudo apt upgrade and pseudo

(01:12:10):
apt update yeah, well, so youfeel like you get tired of
typing pseudo everything.

Speaker 4 (01:12:15):
You're like, screw this, I'm just going in his
route and I'm logged in hisroute all the time and I'm just
gonna run straight his route allthe time and, yeah, I, I can't
tell you how many times uhsuvers and stuff like that.
Uh, you know, uh, pretty much.
Uh, you know, would always bethat way.
All my, all my developmentboxes were pretty much on that
same basis.
So, ronald, I'm logging hisroute, I don't care, I'll let

(01:12:37):
that go to voicemail anyway.
Cool, all right, good on that.
One man, I uh applaud youdiving in and taking that bull
by the horns because, uh, youknow, I, I, I decided to just
throw money at my problem andthat's why I have a big geocron
over there in the corner thattells me exactly and what I want
to.
Uh, you know, see on on paperand stuff.
Oh, uh, uh, my dad's callinghere.

(01:13:01):
Uh, call you back, um, anyway,so, yeah, so, uh, todd, yeah,
how's your hammering?
Week, my friend.
Thank you, oh, you're mutedagain.
Week, my friend.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:13:19):
You're muted again.
I'm trying to be respectful.
I keep because I got freakingbronchitis and I don't want to
screw up the podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:13:27):
We're used to the technical difficulties.
My dad called four times hereI'm going to jump to grab this.
Keep it going, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:13:34):
Listen, I haven't had a knock on wood.
We're, we're all good today.
I haven't had any technicalproblems.
I think I figured it all out,anyway, him, so um, got the FTM
five, 10 D, haven't installed ityet, gonna install it today

(01:13:55):
came up but I have been playingaround with it and I'm telling
you I like this radio a lot.
It has it seems to be much morecommon sense wise in the menu
setting for me than the othertwo I had.
Um, it just seems like I canfind this stuff a lot quicker,
even on the 300.
I mean, I love the 300.
I liked it better than the 400.

(01:14:16):
But this one has, it just seemsto be more it could just be me,
but more user-friendly, likeit's.
Where I need to get something,it just seems to be there.
When I click what button Ithink I need to click, it's just
there.
So it's been pretty cool, nice.
So I like it and I'm uh, I'mliking it more and more every

(01:14:39):
day I play around with it.
So did you figure?
out all your programming oh yeah, I've been programming it and
then I've been messing aroundwith it and trying to program
like, instead of using thecomputer, programming it on the
radio, like if you're oh, here'sa repeater to get on, I like to
know how to program the radio,not just by the computer, just

(01:15:02):
so I can know what I'm doing.
So that's what I'm talkingabout, where things seem to be a
lot quicker to get to, or morefor me just.
Oh, this is where I would haveput it anyway, so it's right
there you know the steps and so,yeah, so it's, it's been a,
it's a good little radio and I Ireally think this on the
headsets kind of be kind of cool, because ryan, um w1s and h,

(01:15:25):
was telling me that the soundactually reflects off the window
, so it sounds really goodbecause the speaker is kind of
pointing.
It's hard to tell.
I'm looking at it now, wasn'tit below the back side of the
head?
Yeah, so it kind of will comeup, hit your windshield and then
probably back off.
I don't know it.
I think it's gonna be cool.

(01:15:46):
So I am definitely um lookingforward to getting that in the,
in the that in the car andhaving more time to play with it
.
Good.

Speaker 4 (01:15:57):
So you figure out all your programming woes with all
your repeaters.

Speaker 3 (01:16:02):
Yeah, the only thing I haven't worked in on, and one
of the repeaters has, like I,got to put in two frequencies.
I haven't figured out how to dothat yet and there's nothing I
could find on YouTube.
I forget which one it is.

Speaker 4 (01:16:15):
Well, like it's got an odd off shift or something.
Yeah, it's weird Well it onlyit has to follow the five, 1.25
or whatever the shift is byselecting the dropdown.

Speaker 3 (01:16:26):
Yeah, I know you're asking me.
I don't have my notes in frontof me of which one it was, but
anyway, it's not a big, it's notone I use all the time.
But, um, but yeah, like thescanning is kind of cool that
you can.
It just seems to be a loteasier to to figure out what you
want to scan.
So like it's smart, like if Iput in, if I put in like all the

(01:16:47):
air bands, right, or like in mymain group, if I and maybe the
other one didn't I never eventried on the other one, but what
I can do is I can hit scan theair bands and it'll scan all the
air bands that are in my radio,right, or if I want you know,
you can scan vhf or you can justscan your memory.
The one thing I wish theseradios would do would be allow

(01:17:10):
you to add more than one memorybank, meaning have a memory,
like what you said, paul, theother day, that you said put the
, just put the sd card.
If you're going out of the cape, just add in all the cape ones
and delete your other ones ifthat's where you're going to be.
I wish there was like I couldput cape cod for when I go down
there on vacation and I couldjust hit that memory band and

(01:17:32):
have all the Cape Cod channelsand not have to take the disc.
You can only do one memory bandto and if you travel, the way
you get around those.

Speaker 4 (01:17:43):
it's like a memory card.
You don't need more than aneight gigabyte card.

Speaker 3 (01:17:46):
No, I know, but but I mean, come on, dude, with all
the technology you can't addlike 50 memory banks.

Speaker 4 (01:17:56):
It should be by bluetooth and you should be able
to just push it from an app.

Speaker 3 (01:17:57):
Yeah, I know what we talked about yesterday but
that's just one thing I mean,and none of them do that like.
You can't add like and you knowyou could just you know memory
group and then say memory group,cape cod memory group, local
memory group, you know whereveryou're going, north country
memory group, you know just to.
Because I travel sometimes Iget out of range everything and
I'm searching for like which isthe one I got yeah, yeah, I get

(01:18:21):
it.

Speaker 4 (01:18:21):
I mean, that's kind of like my you know similar
struggle.
It's like you know I want tohave like I don't have the the
five favorite memory sectionsthat your radio has, where you
can say these are the fivefavorite channels that I want to
monitor and if any one of themcome alive, go ahead and say
hello.
Like that doesn't happen on the300, which I wish.

Speaker 3 (01:18:37):
I had.
Yeah, so that's kind of cool.
So that's kind of like in thescanners, when you have, like,
the priority channel yeah,scanners I've had you could put
certain things as priority andit constantly checks that one
and if there's any activity itshoots right to that channel.
So I don't know how that'sgoing to work because I really
haven't been in the car and thatyou know, when I'm playing

(01:18:57):
around with this it's like lateat night and no one's on the
radio, so it's hard to tell.
That should be um interesting.
The other thing you can do is,um, you can quickly change the
memory channels by.
If I had the Cape Cod channelsas my example, I could just

(01:19:19):
click off the memory group andthen just add the memory group
and then that would become yournew memory group.
You know what I mean.
It's like you don't even needthe card to do it.

Speaker 4 (01:19:29):
I mean that used to be the old world where radios
used to have like multiplechannel banks.

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
Yeah Well, I like that because, like I said, if
you're traveling, especially ifyou were like a trucker or
something and you had a routefrom, like, say, maine through
to florida, it wouldn't be niceto have you know a bunch of
banks that he could, they couldput in as they go down I want to
have a freaking iphone or asmartphone that would hey, we've
come into a new area.

Speaker 4 (01:19:54):
Push these automatically to the phone.

Speaker 3 (01:19:56):
Be the radio.
But you know, all in all it'spretty cool.
I like it.
It's been good.
I'm glad I got it and I got agood deal on it the fact that I
sold my 400 and been playingwith this one in the shack, Glad
to spend your money.

Speaker 4 (01:20:13):
Sir, here is a check with my name on it.
Write down any number on thispiece of paper and I will pay it
.
All right, well.

Speaker 3 (01:20:21):
Here we go, money talk.

Speaker 4 (01:20:25):
Here comes the money, money, todd's money, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:30):
So, eric, what have you been up to?

Speaker 4 (01:20:32):
Anything in the yeah, so eric, uh, what you've been
up to anything in.
Uh, uh, ham radio, uh, wise, Ihave to say that, uh, I've been
playing around, um with a lotmore antennas at this point,
just primarily with my sundaymorning.
Uh, live streams have beenaround that this past week, but,
um, I didn't get out forspark's weekend at all, I didn't
even, which is kind of bad, butum, so, uh in.

(01:20:56):
Alternatively, I ended updeciding that I was going to get
my button gear and get mymobile all-star node set up in
the truck finally, so that's allmounted.
I ended up, uh, having to spendsome time, uh putting in a nut
search to get it all situated inthe back of the panel
temporarily.
Temporarily, it's it's kind ofphase one right now.
Um, I've ordered a custom mollypanel that's going to go in the

(01:21:17):
back there.
Uh, that will fit the back sideof this, so I'm going to
remount all of the gear to that.
But, um, yeah, it's fun, I justneed to.
I finally got it set up andit's working with my mobile
radio in the car.
It's still lonely, I mean,unless I'm on, like on America
Link or you know, some otherlarger all-star nodes and stuff

(01:21:38):
like that.
But it's fun to be able to justyou know, you know switch
between nodes and stuff likethat, all from customer vehicle
and it's running off a hotspotthat I've got full time in the
truck, so you know it's goodthere.
The only thing you know, Ihaven't gone for the full cycle
of the battery yet.
It's a 13 amp, no, it's a 10amp hour bio, no, or nine, I

(01:22:00):
think it's nine.
And so I haven't gotten to theend of it where it's like you
know, because I've got the WestMountain Radio, epic Powergate
and so I get battery feed fromthe main vehicle, from the
vehicle mains battery to run thesystem, and then when that gets
cut and the vehicle is off, thebackup battery, which is that

(01:22:20):
nine amp hour, runs all the time.
So the all-star node just stayson 24 seven and the West
mountain feeds or charges thatbattery at the same time.
So I haven't, it hasn't gottento its end of its lifespan, so
I'm knock on wood, hopefully itwill still continue to just, you
know, stay happy and staycharged and and both uh, you
know systems will work well.
So, yeah, once I get that panelin, I'll play a little bit more.

(01:22:43):
I gotta call frank to see whyour club repeater's not on
all-star any longer apparentlymust have fell off.
So in some test I wasn't ableto uh make contact.
But uh, yeah, it's been fun, sothat's.
That's kind of been my littlepet project our club repeater
was on all-star.
I thought it wasn't it was onlisten, only so it was.
We were receiving the throughfrank's all-star node a feed of

(01:23:07):
the repeaters um output, but not, uh, you weren't able to
transmit on it.
Got it so.

Speaker 2 (01:23:15):
No, all right, I got to ask a really dumb question
because I don't know anythingabout all, or I haven't, I
haven't taken the time to lookinto it at all.
Sure, but is that like a radiomode specific?
Like you know, c4 FM is YASUonly.
You know, dmr is dmr, only it'sanalog.

Speaker 4 (01:23:35):
You need a special radio no, as long as you've got
a pi with um running all-star onit, um, and it's got a hat on a
dv mm, dvm hat that does twometer 440, whatever it is analog
um, you know the softwareinterfaces with it and it then
becomes the rf link out to theall-star community, like dmr,

(01:23:57):
you connect other, you know dm,you connect to other all-star
nodes.
Or you know larger, you knowgroups, like uh, um, america
link and that type of stuff, andyou know it's all controlled
via like the, the interface, solike, where you probably do
everything from the webinterface, the you know, to the
the pi star.
It's the same thing withall-star.
The only difference is is thatyou don't have a digital, you

(01:24:18):
don't need a digital radio.
You use it and to it and so youknow where.
All that's all I mean.
The only you only see a 4fm Ihave is my uh 3d, 3d, yeah, 3dr,
but I don't ever talk f.
You know c4 fm off of it.
So it's always analog.
So, yeah, that just sits thereand runs.
And and I've had chris uh, youknow uh, the, our kid in the kid

(01:24:40):
in the club, um, you met him,todd chris uh, on wednesday last
week.
He, he's a big uh all-star usertoo.
He loves doing that, so I chatwith him time and a bunch of
other people.
But yeah, I'd love to be ableto do it more, because then I
don't have to like listen to myrepeater, like our local club
repeater, because we can justtie it in as an all-star node

(01:25:00):
and then, you know, I can justadd more.
So I've got Jason's cloud, youknow HR, two O's all-star, you
know hub and a bunch of othersthat I turn on and off when I
want to hear other traffic.
When you know the bands arequiet, all right, nice, and it's
a lot easier to tune andconfigure, which that's one

(01:25:22):
thing I like about a lot.
So, all right, well, there yougo, um with that, we're gonna
kind of get into our topictonight.
You know, as as Todd's been,you know, at the bit there
chomping hard, you know aboutthis, I figured it would be one
of those moments that I'd bepoking the bee's nest and we

(01:25:43):
were chitchatting offline aboutthat.
But you know, if you listen tolast week's episode, you know
you might have heard the littlebit of the deep conversation we
had we'll say spiritedconversation about you know how
VEs and the whole VE team andeverything about the testing
process, it's just all a bigcluster of fuck and you know

(01:26:05):
everything in between and we'reall kind of just chit-chatting
about that.
But it got me thinking.
I'm like because I have alwaysheard growing up as a kid and
primarily because you know Itook testing, when testing was
like you go to a classroom andyou take a physical paper test
and fill in you know the grading, you know sheets and then
everybody manually grades them,the.

(01:26:25):
The process was always like ohwell, you know you had in order
to be able to get to like beinga real ham was to learn morse
code, and that was always likethe rite of passage.
If you got past morse code thenyou were, you know, basically
welcomed in with full arms.
But if you were a no-codetechnician, it was like, oh well
, you were just, you're stuck onthe repeaters, you go hang over
there and you're, you know,second class citizens sort of
kind of, and it was always kindof like that thing is like, you

(01:26:47):
know, growing up was like, oh,you're no-code technician, oh
well, I'm a general, I'm anadvanced extra or I'm an extra
myself, and it was always like Iwant to be there, but the code
was always in my way.
And it got me thinking.
It's like we always set a barfor people a lot of times of
like, well, if they're just ageneral, then they can't be

(01:27:10):
great ham radio operators orthey're extras, but they're
morons because they just, youknow, they read the test or they
studied the questions, kind ofthing, and and so it got me
thinking it's like with that,like we do, like if if someone
came to us, you know tonight,and said, hey, I have given you
a golden ticket, you can rewritethe whole entire VE licensing.

(01:27:30):
You know structure, entire velicensing.
You know structure.
What would you want to do withit?
And and set it up and and thesky's the limit.
And so, like I posed this toour discord tonight, uh, to our
patreon folks and said, hey, youknow what would you want to
throw in?
So those guys in the chat, youknow, ben, feel free to throw in
a few things here and there,but I'm going to throw out to
these guys.
So you know we're going to getto you, todd, because I you're
already, you're already, youknow.

(01:27:51):
You know I can hear the, thegruff like on fire conversation.
I got thrown over to our VE guybecause you know he's, he's
more level-headed in this sense.

Speaker 3 (01:27:59):
And I just want to say one thing that you said
there are people out there thatcan take tests and be in pass
and think they know everything.
And I know some in ham radiothat they've been around forever
and they're extras and theythink they know it all, but
they're complete shit when itcomes to operating.

(01:28:20):
I'm just saying you don't haveto be a you don't have to pass a
test to be good at your job,right, and if your job is
operating on a ham radio andthat's what you got into ham
radio about there's a lot ofstuff on the extra test that

(01:28:40):
does not have anything to dowith operating and, okay, you
might pass that test.
But does it mean you can go outand do poda?
Because I think I can hang withthe best of any extra in the
world when it comes to doingpoda or dealing with a pile up.
It's my thing, I love it and Ithink I'm pretty good at it, and
I didn't get any test, and nove or no ham radio test taught
me how to do it.
I learned my experience, sothat's my rant so so you've

(01:29:05):
heard it here, guys.

Speaker 4 (01:29:05):
You heard todd's rant , you know, in essence, I we
want to hear the level-headedpaul which is very weird saying
coming from the grouch, beinglevel-headed at all.

Speaker 3 (01:29:13):
But I know he's going to be like I'd be the grouch
today.

Speaker 4 (01:29:16):
You can wear the grouch hat.
If you want to, I should be thegrouch I'm sure he'll pass it
on, but he might go off too.
You never know.
This is kind of one of thosethings.
It's like I'm going to just letthe handle loose here.
Over to you, Paul.
What in this whole VE scheme ofthings do you feel like could
be improved?

Speaker 2 (01:29:39):
Or what would you do if you had that whole golden
ticket?
So I mean, Christ, there's alot, there's a lot, Pick one.
It's a very big open-endedquestion here.
But I just to Todd's point.
Yes, you have to pass the test,but when you pass the test you
get the license.
And the license is not alicense saying that you know

(01:30:02):
everything because you pass thetest.
It's a license to learn, and Iknow many, many VEs that
reiterate that very, very often.
It is a license to learn.

Speaker 4 (01:30:17):
It's almost like the tagline.
It depends in ham radio.
It's almost coming to level.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
Okay, but the thing is, if you're truly in this
hobby for the right reasons, youare never going to stop
learning.
Agreed 100%, you're never goingto, never gonna be that why do
you need I?
Have a phd in fucking.
You know engineering and I knoweverything that there is,

(01:30:43):
though, about ham radio.
You're never gonna get there?

Speaker 3 (01:30:47):
no, and I listen, I agree with you on that, except
this is my you have to pass atest.
For what purpose, besides, youpass the test Because 90% of the
people that I hang out withcouldn't pass the test if you
gave it to them.

(01:31:08):
Who are an extra or even ageneral.
I don't think I'd pass thegeneral test if you just gave it
to me.
But I've learned more in hamradio about what I'm interested
in.
Way before I got my general, Ididn't know shit about ham radio
.
Even when I got my general, Ididn't know shit.
And the whole testing part wasI had to pass the test to be

(01:31:30):
able to do what I wanted to do.
And there's stuff in thetechnician class that to me was
a lot of BS.
Like, for an example, they tellyou call CQ when you want to
talk to a station, but they failto tell you that that's not
doing a fucking repeater.
So you look like a fuck idiotand it's because some fucking
dipshit said call CQ.

(01:31:52):
That's the rule.
Not exactly, it's not the rule,it is what you think it is.
It's what you want to do to getsomeone on HF if you're trying
to get people to call you.
But if you're on a repeater,you don't call CQ, you just call
out your call sign.
Why isn't that on thetechnician test?
Because that would be reallyhelpful.

(01:32:12):
Because I felt like a fuckingasshole and I blamed the fucking
ve arl testing people and said,well, the technician tests
supposed to call cq.
And the guys on the repeaterwere like don't listen to those
fucking guys, no one does that.

Speaker 2 (01:32:28):
this is how you do it , okay rant number two all right
, I'm gonna be throwing theseout there like prove me wrong
I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonnaput it to you in, uh, in in a,
in a having relation here.
Okay, so I just went through acourse where I learned the the

(01:32:53):
basics of skydiving.
Okay, so we'll call, we'll callmy class a license, the
technician's license, right?
And so I got my technician'slicense in skydiving.
We'll say now, what that doesis that gives me the ability to
go put on a friggin' rig, get ina plane and jump out and learn.

(01:33:18):
Every single time there's thepossibility that I could do
something terribly fucking wrong, no different than with ham
radio.
You get your technician'slicense.
You don't know everything Likeyou just know the basics.
You know, you know enough thatyou can start playing in that

(01:33:41):
space and learning anddeveloping the experience that
makes you a better operator.

Speaker 3 (01:33:49):
So, and so, as you go up, what do I get?
What can't I learn now as ageneral that I can't learn, that
I have to have my extra to beable to learn above and beyond
what I could learn as a general.
The only thing you get is thebands.

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
There's nothing different, I could do everything
that extra can do that's notentirely true.

Speaker 2 (01:34:12):
You can't.
You can't build your own.
You can't build your ownexperimental freaking radios and
shit why not?

Speaker 3 (01:34:19):
why couldn't I people do?

Speaker 2 (01:34:22):
it has something to do with the license class right,
but it doesn't mean I can't doit.

Speaker 3 (01:34:29):
so someone says you can't do this because you don't
have this license class.
But if I was smart enough whichI'm not to do it I could do it
right.
You can't tell me I don't needthe extra class to say for
someone to say I can do it, itmeans let's do it right.

Speaker 2 (01:34:45):
So to me the extra class license in today's day and
age right is.
It's a license to be able tolearn and experiment with new
things okay right.
So each level gives you alittle bit more privileges of
what you can play with and howyou can play with it, and what
you can change in your radio andwhat you can't change in your

(01:35:09):
radio and it's and it's based onexperience and knowledge.
You have to prove by passingthe test that you at least
understand the basics level.
There's nothing basic about theextra test no, which is why it's
the extra and it's hard to getright, I understand that, but

(01:35:30):
you said I could change my radio.

Speaker 3 (01:35:32):
What?
What can an extra do that ageneral can't do to their radio?
They?

Speaker 2 (01:35:36):
can't use it.

Speaker 3 (01:35:37):
I can do anything but but what can it?
You said, a general can changetheir radio, or an extra.
What can they change on theirradio?

Speaker 4 (01:35:46):
Well, okay, so look at it like this way.
So like you go to a, you're amember of a golf club, oh, there
are different levels of members.
A member of a golf club, oh,there are different levels of
members.
Uh, membership in a golf clubEverybody gets to play 18 holes
in a golf club at the basiclevel of membership.
But if you want to join youknow uh, you know uh a group or
a club or something internal tothat organization, you get more

(01:36:08):
privileges.

Speaker 3 (01:36:09):
Let's go back to rant one.

Speaker 4 (01:36:11):
Okay, I can't go backwards.

Speaker 3 (01:36:14):
Well, I'm just just gonna tell you.
Here's back to rant one.
We've got dipshits out therethat are extras, that are
fucking stupid and can't do hamrated I'm just telling you I'm
also shitty golfers, but theystill pay for it.
They pass the test.
They can prove that they canpass test, but they fucking suck
as an operator.
Annoying shitty shouldn't be onthe air without a special test.

Speaker 4 (01:36:38):
I don't disagree with any of this.

Speaker 3 (01:36:40):
So this is your opportunity right now.

Speaker 4 (01:36:42):
What would you do to?
This process.
If you had something.

Speaker 3 (01:36:46):
Paul was talking about his process, so I want to
hear what Paul says before weget into it.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 (01:36:51):
We're all on the same page here, guy.
We are going to change themessed up system.
So, Paul, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:36:58):
Well, all right, so let's clarify Todd's question,
because he's got a validquestion right, like what extra
privileges do you gain?
All right, so as a general, youget access to most HF bands,
with some significant portionsrestricted.
Ok, full privileges on 10meters, 12, 15, 17, 20 and 40.

(01:37:19):
40 is restricted.
And then you get the sameprivileges as an extra above 30
megahertz Right, so it's yourVHF UHF and higher.
So it's your VHF UHF and higher.
As an extra, you get access tothe entire amateur HF spectrum,

(01:37:41):
including the portions that arereserved for extras.
You also get, because of FCDrules part 97, allow all
licensed amateurs to experimentwith radio design equipment,
modify equipment and build theirown, and so these rights to
build, modify, test andexperiment with your RF gear are
available at different licenselevels.
Who monitors that?

(01:38:03):
Who monitors that?
We do.
Nobody monitors any of the shitthat we do.

Speaker 3 (01:38:10):
It's all us If I took a radio and I wanted to and
that was my thing, which is'snot but if it was and I wanted
to modify it, who's the policegoing to say you can't do that
because you're not an extra?

Speaker 2 (01:38:23):
No, what it is right.
Okay, so, todd, you take a CBand you open it up and you
expand it so that it goes from 4watts to 100.
All right, you've now watts to100.
Yeah Right.
Which is illegal.
Now, you've now violated Part97.
Right, right, but an extracan't do that either.
Right, but so is anybody goingto hurt you about it?

(01:38:44):
Probably not.
But the rules are there for areason because it's a process.
You get the foundation levelsas a technician and you learn
all of that foundation and thenyou get your general and you
learn more and you build uponthe foundation that you you've,
you've learned, and then you getyour extra and you build

(01:39:07):
further and you can, you canfurther expand your knowledge
and what you're able toexperiment with.
All right and so like, like Iwas trying to relate with
skydiving, right, it's just it'syou're learning and you're you
have to start at the bottom andlearn the basics before you can
do, you know, like, I'm notgoing to jump out of a plane and

(01:39:29):
go head down and try and freefly because I haven't learned
that shit yet I am all.

Speaker 3 (01:39:35):
I agree with you.
100.
My problem is there's a lot ofshit on these tests that is
completely outdated and useless.
That people aren't you and itdoesn't help them become better
ham radio operators.
It just it's stuff that's inthere that no one's going to use
ever again.
And if I wanted to learn againand if I wanted to learn about
that right, if I wanted to learnabout charts and I can go and

(01:40:00):
do it myself and Google it or godownload, get a book or read up
on it or YouTube it.

Speaker 2 (01:40:06):
So your problem is with the question pool.
Yeah, that has an easy solution.
All you got to do is submityour changes to the question
pool when the question pool isbeing changed.

Speaker 3 (01:40:17):
Well, right, but I would get rid of 90% of the
questions.

Speaker 4 (01:40:21):
Let me answer that question for you a little bit.
The way I was, the way Iunderstood, you know, that whole
process was that every littlelevel you go to, the idea is,
when it comes to those questionsthat they're asking you, they
may seem silly at the time butin essence they're in essence
exposing you to something thatyou may run into when you're

(01:40:42):
actually doing said activity inthe hobby, meaning Smith charts.
If you're building an antenna,one key ingredient to
understanding how the antennaworks is that Smith chart.
Now, mind you, you have to be astrong engineer and have a good
sense of you know how toantenna.
One key ingredient tounderstanding how the professor
that antenna works is that smithchart.
Now, mind you, you have to be astrong engineer and have a good
sense of you know how to readthat thing.

Speaker 3 (01:40:59):
But in essence, that chart, that crazy chart, can
tell you exactly how theperformance that of the antenna
you built did so taking the test, studying for the test on with
the antenna questions right, hasdone absolutely nothing for me
to understand it because, numberone, it's written by engineers
and it's all too technical andit's not my background.

(01:41:19):
Now, when the guy, when thoseguys that come to our club and
they talk about how the antennaswork and they show visuals, and
this is how I learn, they showvisuals and they explain it and
they show the experiments, likewith the flashlight, and stuff
that thing into my head and I'mlike, oh yeah, that makes sense.
Now can I do I understand howit works?

(01:41:41):
Absolutely.
Do I understand read fuckingSmith chart?
Absolutely not.
Could I probably take what Iknow and figure out how to get
an antenna to work or at leastkind of work?
Probably, and if I didn't know,I could ask, as you said, paul
chat gpt would probably give meall the answers.
In a simple term, the stuffthat's on the test and the study

(01:42:05):
and it's like, it's like almostlike learning another language,
especially if you don't have abackground in radio or
engineering.
Like I would challenge you,know, any one of these engineer
VE types to say, okay, here'sthis fricking huge book on
juvenile law, go for it.
Study this.
Here are your three tests.

(01:42:26):
See how hard it is, becausewhen you get to the end stuff
it's not going to make sense.
Because it doesn't make sense.

Speaker 4 (01:42:32):
Okay, so understood, and stuff it's not going to make
sense because it doesn't makesense.
Okay, so understood.
I don't think we all disagreewith the fact that the, the exam
pool that's available to ustoday does need a bit of an
overhaul or a change to be ableto adapt to where we are in some
sense.
But to get back to paul, whatone thing in your mind like
would you, would you want to?

(01:42:52):
You know, maybe it's a start tosomething that would expand or
be able to grow upon that you'dlike to see in that whole
process.
For, you know, licensing as aham.

Speaker 2 (01:43:03):
So, um, I think, I think that the, the technician
in general, uh, levels are greatand um, I I think that the
extra should be.
Levels are great and I I thinkthat the extra should be harder
to get.
Okay.
Really Because, listen, this ismy, this is my, my feedback here

(01:43:26):
, right, but I think thatbecause it is the highest
license class that we can holdand it gives us the most amount
of privileges and the mostamount of of what we can play
with, that there should be maybea little bit more involved so
that it's a little bit easier tounderstand.

(01:43:48):
Well, what the fuck is a Smithchart?
How does the Smith chart work?
Why do I need it?
Why do I want it?
Why do I need it?
Why do I want it?
Why do I need to understand it?

Speaker 3 (01:43:55):
I agree with you on that.
There's nothing in any of thestudy of what a smith chart is
on any of the tests just says onthis smith chart, what does the
outer band stand for?

Speaker 2 (01:44:06):
what are the outer rings, the reactance arcs, and
what does that mean?
Right and so, yes, so you canmemorize 100.
You can memorize the, thequestion and the answer.
Um, I just think that to tocreate better, extra class ham
radio operators right, and ithas nothing to do with your
ability to to operate, but thereshould be just more, some more

(01:44:30):
schooling involved, where youknow, in order to, to be able to
take the test, you have to showthat you know you, you took a
course in basic electricalengineering or something you
know what I mean or not, thatyou need a degree for it, but
just something that gives you abetter understanding of what it
is that you're testing for.

Speaker 3 (01:44:50):
Well, what about, like with kids, with, like
driver's ed?
Right, you got to take driver'sed to learn how to drive,
understand the basics, which Ithink is smart.
Maybe having the extra exam,general test, like you have to
take, like a course, meaning thetechnician, maybe it's an hour,
two hour course before you cantake the test and then you can,

(01:45:12):
then you, you know, you take it,you study.
How about, like the general,you make it like a half day and
then like the, or a day, andthen, like the extra, you do
like the long weekend where youcrank it out and really get into
the details of stuff.
But the other problem that Ithink we have is anyone can
memorize questions and I thinkthis day and age and I'm as
guilty as it is I'm justmemorizing questions and answers

(01:45:34):
.

Speaker 4 (01:45:34):
Oh, that's okay, I did that same thing.

Speaker 3 (01:45:37):
Oh right, and to me that's not the idea of, that's
not the.
I don't think, like the peoplecame up with ham radio and said
we're going to have testing,that was in their mind Like hey,
we'll make it so people justanswer questions, can memorize
questions, and then they canlearn, because there's really no
purpose in that.
Anyone could memorize questions.
They put the time into it.

(01:45:57):
You read that test over andover again, those questions over
and over.
You're eventually going to getit right.

Speaker 4 (01:46:02):
Well, but keep in mind with this, like over the
least at least the past 10 years, probably more, and I don't
know exactly a time frame whenthe question pool started to
becoming available on theinternet.
It was probably sometime in thelate 80s, early 90s, when you
know that stuff started gettingout there.
I remember very much the onlytime I, when I had to study for
my technician, was a bookpurchased and that book had some

(01:46:25):
questions in them, but itwasn't a complete question pool
and so they weren't giving outthat full test.
So you would go in like youwould normally take a test, like
you were in high school, andyou hopefully maybe get some of
those questions you studied andsome of them could be like
totally off base right.

Speaker 3 (01:46:41):
And why is that?
Why does the testing pool givethem out to these?

Speaker 4 (01:46:47):
Because what they found was is that when they were
being gatekeepers, the stuff,the hobby, was starting to
basically diminish becausepeople were were not like I'm
not going to take this testbecause I shouldn't have to be
in, you know, an EE major to beable to take this, to be able to
have fun in the hobby, when allI want to do is like
communicate and, you know, dothings and play along with

(01:47:09):
electronics, which was majorityof those people.
But you know what ended uphappening?
And I had friends growing uplike kids, teenagers, like that.
They just had no interestbecause it was like, oh, dude,
like I'm not going to spendhours studying for an exam I
have seen before in my life andthen suffer you know the
humiliation that oh, you didn'tpass.
You know, because that was atough thing.
Like like I.

(01:47:29):
Like I remember the first timeI took my test I was like up
late night night like in my bed,going, fuck, if I don't pass
this, like I'm going to be anembarrassment because, like I've
been a whole entire four weeksdoing this exam.

Speaker 3 (01:47:42):
I'm afraid to take a test.

Speaker 2 (01:47:48):
If I take it, I'm afraid to take a test if I take
it, I'm going to fail and youguys are going to rag me for the
rest of my life with anattitude like that.
I know right let's go back

Speaker 3 (01:47:54):
to.
I guess this is, I mean, numberone.
I have always.
I have like I've never beendiagnosed, but I'm pretty sure
with my experience now workingwith the education world and
what I do for work I think I wasI have some kind of learning
disability, not that I, I justdon't learn.
The right tests have never beengood for me.

(01:48:14):
For some reason I can neverpass tests ever.
But if you ask me questions, I'mlike I'm like great at it, like
barely got through college, butI got like a three, eight in
graduate school.
Like how the hell do you dothat?
Like my father, he made fun ofme.
He's like I go, dad, guess what?
I got into grad school.
He goes where BU, and he justlaughed at me.

(01:48:35):
He goes yeah, we'll see if thathappens.
He goes don't you have to getlike a 3.0?
Like you were barely pullinglike two, twos and I at the
state school, let's say college,right.
And then I went to plymouthwhich was, like you know, even
for me plymouth was prettyfreaking easy and but when I got
to grad school number one I wasreally interested in it and it

(01:48:57):
wasn't as much test, but it wasmore of showing that you can do
the level of work with thatdegree right.
Okay, our test in ham radio doesnothing to show what people can
do, and I wish they did thatonly only for me, as with my

(01:49:18):
experiences, like getting on therepeater, like you take this
test, you get your license andyou're scared shitless because
you've never been on the fuckingradio.
I was scared, I was so nervous,taking deep breaths to get on,
to call out on a repeater, andthen I call CQ because that's
what the stupid test said to doand I made fun of, which doesn't

(01:49:41):
help.
Look, I got tough skin.
I don't care, but that's a hugeflaw in the technician's thing.
And at the time I don't care,but, but that was, that's a huge
flaw in the technicians thing.
And if I and at the time Ididn't know you guys, I knew no
one in ham radio, no, it wasjust me.
And that stupid test and thatpiece of paper that said I can
now get on the radio, comegeneral.

(01:50:01):
I mean you were with me, eric.
I was a nightmare.
I was were with me, eric.
I was a nightmare.
I was did no idea what to say.
I was getting things mixed upright.
Nothing in the general testprepares you to get on the air
and work stations and and andunderstand the protocol.

Speaker 4 (01:50:21):
There's nothing don't disagree, don't?

Speaker 3 (01:50:23):
there's nothing in any of these exams that will
ever give you the hands-onexperience or test your
knowledge for that piece whichgoes back to rant one with the
fucking idiots that have theirextras, that are complete idiots
on the air, and that is just tome it's not right and that
needs to be changed, and Ireally think okay, so let's,

(01:50:44):
let's look at it this way holdon real quick hold on on, just
because I want to get back tohis skydiving thing.
If Paul's skydiving classeswere only take this test and
pass it and go jump out of anairplane a lot more dead people,
exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:51:01):
So but he that's where I see, like his, his
testing stuff is important.
Like for him to go through eachof those tests and get
successfully, completion of eachof those steps is important for
his safety and the peoplearound him and everything else.
Ham radio, like when they takethe test.
Like there are a lot of peoplethat get their technician and
then they go away and they neveruse it again.

(01:51:22):
It's not going to do any harmto me whatsoever because it's
they just got it.

Speaker 3 (01:51:26):
You know an exam license that says they have the
capabilities to use the radiowhen I gotta listen to fucking
dipshit extras screwingeverything up and ruining my ham
radio fund.
Yeah, that's, that'sthreatening to me well, yeah,
okay fine, that's a different Iwill.

Speaker 2 (01:51:40):
I will say that on my on my skydiving a license exam,
there was the majority of thequestions.
I just needed to memorize thefucking answers to them.
I, literally I I took practicetests, just like ham radio.
I took practice tests so that Icould drill into my brain okay,

(01:52:02):
uh, what's the visibility needto be above clouds?
What's the visibility need tobe above clouds?
What's the visibility need tobe under clouds?
What's the distance got to bebetween clouds and other people?
And you know, I mean, there's alot where it's just, it's just
rules, it's you know, at whataltitude are you required to

(01:52:23):
have oxygen in the plane?
Well, anything above 15,000.
Why do I know that?
Because I fucking memorized it.
You know, like, is that reallyrelevant to me?
Is that 100% pertinent to me?
No, 90% of the time I'm notgoing to that fucking altitude,
like.
But I needed to know it for thefucking tech.

(01:52:43):
And so all I'm saying to you,todd, is that there are times
where you have to accept thatthe test is the entry barrier so
that you can play with thethings you want to play with.
And sometimes you just have tolearn the fucking answers to the
question.

Speaker 4 (01:53:04):
So is ham radio like.
It sounds like based off of theexisting structure that's been
built.
It's obviously flawed, has someissues, the content's not
always updated.
It's not relevant per se towhere we are today, but like do
we feel like it's the bar shouldbe lowered to the point like
where, like GMRS and FRS folks,like all you have to do is go

(01:53:26):
get 30 bucks the FCC and you'rea licensed gmrs user?

Speaker 3 (01:53:30):
no, like, do you want people like that and that's
where I I I believe we have tohave something to separate
freaking, the dipshits like thecb years or gmr who are just
going to swear and destroy thehobby.
But on the other hand, I reallythink it should be the testing
should be more, there should bea hands-on portion of it.

(01:53:51):
You should, you should have toshow competence that you can get
on the radio and do a net orget on the radio and have a
conversation and call out yourcall sign.
You know when you need to callit Because, dude, I've listened
on HF Like if I'm doingsomething, I'll put on like HF

(01:54:11):
station, I'll listen to dudestalk for an hour, not one time.
The call sign comes out, notonce and again.
Maybe they just forget or theyget in the zone or they just
don't care.
But to me you know if I want tojump in on the conversation and
want to know, you know.
If I want to jump in on theconversation and want to know,
you know, know if I want to knowwhat I mean, it's nice to know
a call sign so you could say hey, uh, n1jr, this is W1STJ.

(01:54:31):
I just wanted to chime in onsomething you know and then you
would say that, instead of justlike calling out my call W1STJ,
w1stj because that's the wayassholes do it.
But now we'll at leastacknowledge that they've been
listening and they know who youare.
But if you don't call out yourcall sign and if you go on the

(01:54:51):
extra bands and listen, thoseguys don't call out their call
signs a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:54:59):
They don't.
Yeah, I agree, I'm not, that's.
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:55:01):
Well, I'm just saying it's like so do they have that
special privilege that they can.
They don't have to do itanymore because they're extras.

Speaker 4 (01:55:09):
No, so yes, there is a limit that we have to abide by
a law, like paul said.
You know, he has a skydivingrules and laws that he has to
follow in order to be safearound the people he is and not
be a dipshit.
So people are like don't, don'tjump with paul, because he's a
freak tick, you know, and hewears uh weird presidential
masks when he jumps out of theplane and says we're gonna go
steal or we rob a bank after weland.

(01:55:29):
You know, whatever be the case,sorry, a bad, uh, it's a great
movie parallel there.
But so so here's an.
It's like okay, so we don'tfeel like we have to lower the
bar to just like throw yourmoney at it and get it
registered.
There is some level of testing,do we like?
One of the things I wasthinking of that I think is
vitally missing and maybe youguys would agree to this.

(01:55:50):
It's like I, I think we thinkthat the, the number of levels
of, say, licenses, is too much.
Should we be down to two?

Speaker 2 (01:56:03):
no, I mean, if anything, I'd bring it up to
four.

Speaker 4 (01:56:06):
You go back to four.
Wow, why?
Yeah, like what do you?
What do you think you gain?
If you like, did the, if webrought back advanced, say, like
that middle one before extrawell.

Speaker 2 (01:56:17):
So, like all right to to todd's point as well, right,
um, you know, maybe we make itso that in order to get your
extra, you also have to pass anoperating test.
So, in addition to knowing thequestions to the answers, you

(01:56:39):
also have to be tested on yourproficiency with using the radio
.

Speaker 4 (01:56:46):
Okay, efficiency with using the radio.
Okay.
So here, this is where this,this falls short for me when you
say something like that.
Because where, if we look atthe overall large swath of ham
radio operator, especially new,those that get them for
different reasons, whatever bethe case, when they get their
technician may never get on theair or may use it per se for a

(01:57:07):
purpose of you know, makingcommunications with a family or
whatever like, just for thatspecific focus.

Speaker 3 (01:57:13):
I think technician is different.

Speaker 4 (01:57:16):
Well, but no like, but so like.
So where I'm trying to get atis like I feel and I'm going to
kind of amplify what you guyshave been saying is like there
is a huge gap where no one isphysically being taught the date
, like, the functional stuff,the, the hands-on, how do you
use radios, how to communicate,how to do all of those
components.
I think what, as if we were tochange this and toss it on its

(01:57:38):
ear.
I think the technician testshould be boiled down to less
technical but more with thepurposes that it's, leading them
towards the next component oftheir technician license, which
is club members.
And we have a boatload of clubsout there that, as every
technician comes in, for sixmonths you get paired up with a
mentor and that mentor's job isto do exactly that Teach you how

(01:58:02):
to get on the air, teach youhow to use your radio, talk and
answer questions.
So you become less concernedand, you know, afraid to do
things like call CQ or makethose mistakes or whatever,
because you have someone forthat six months who just says,
hey, I've talked with thisperson, I've helped them through
, I've signed off on it andthat's really all it should be.
It shouldn't be anythingcomplex.

(01:58:23):
That and that person's helpedthem out.
Because I think one thing thatwe lose out in this hobby, that
I constantly hear all the timeand it pisses me off, is that we
have all these older people inthe club that have all of this
great electronics knowledge, allof this hands-on stuff, because
that's what they did, becausethey built their own radios and
they did all of that stuff, whenyou know, we're just all
appliance operators.
That's all going to get lostwhen they get done.
And we're not going to get lostwhen they get done and we're

(01:58:45):
not going to like, I mean, whatare we going to pass on to them?
How to you know, press buttonson a radio?
I mean, my niece, who's 11years old, can do that with her
iPad, you know.
So it's like, what are we doingin that whole process?
And I think that's wheresomething should be, you know,
vitally instituted for that.
It's like new technicians shouldhave a mentor along the way,
and it doesn't have to be apressing concern, but for six

(01:59:07):
months they should be like hey,we're going to help you onboard,
we're going to help you becomepart of the ham radio community,
and it would be the job of thementor to be able to make sure
that you know they've done theirdue diligence to get you
prepared to play radio.
Because you know, if you're notlike me, a type A, willing to
stick his foot in his stupidthings when I'm not supposed to
say stupid things and be able to, you know, try and feel things

(01:59:29):
out that you know most peoplejust shy away.
I mean, paul, you've, you'vetalked to Christine, remember
like she was like I don't wantto get on the radio.
And you were like, just followthe script.
And it's like, because we hadmentored her and helped her to
get on HF, she, you know we'renot freaking 7300, I don't know
if they're using the radio nowthese days.

Speaker 3 (01:59:50):
But, like you know, that's the the ultimate end goal
.
I think, well, why not?
I mean, why not?
Um, why?
Why block the bands or blocksome bands or not?
Let people like my thought is,if you're a tech, if you're
studying for the technicianclass, right, sure, you get like
I don't know some kind ofeither, some kind of weird call
sign or something, but youshould be allowed to maybe get

(02:00:10):
on nets just to try it, just toget on the radio, get used to it
, and when you get on, whateveryour thing is that people would
know that you're not licensed asa technician, but you're
learning, you're studying thetest, and then at least you get
some of that experience.
Right.
Same thing with general whenyou're a technician.
If least you get some of thatexperience.
Right.
Same thing with general whenyou're a technician.

(02:00:31):
If you get a technician band infreaking May, june, july and
you can only go on 10 meters,right, you're not going to hear
anyone.
So why not give them parts of 20meters or even 40 meters to be
able to say you know, wnstj, sg,meaning, studying for general
and right, and be able to get it, be able to get on and at least

(02:00:56):
practice, learn, and then thehams that are generals or extras
, that are used to being onthere, are able to give feedback
, help, suggestions, instead ofme getting on for the scared
shitless because I knew no oneto get on the thing and then
make an ass of myself becausethe fucking test told me to call
cq, when you don't do that onrepeaters, which is really bugs

(02:01:21):
me, because I'm like the fuckingtest told me to say that.
Right, but but that's what Imean.
But that would be, I think, abetter way, because then it's
giving people some of theexperience and then it's going
to even encourage them more tokind of want to grow and get on,
to get the more of the bands.
But blocking them off the bandsthat work to me is is asinine

(02:01:51):
work to me is it is asinine.

Speaker 2 (02:01:52):
well, all right.
So, um, what you're suggestingwould be massively fucking like
a huge over overbearing thing toundertake for for whoever is
going to organize that fuckingprogram.
But getting back to kind ofwhat er was saying, right and
and and this is where I don'tknow who dropped the ball in
this, this particular aspect,but we didn't get Elmer's, at

(02:02:15):
least I didn't, Right and like I, well, like and and I reached
out.

Speaker 4 (02:02:24):
But yeah, I had an Elmer in my life, but anyway,
yeah, go on.

Speaker 2 (02:02:27):
Yeah, but so I I mean , that's a little different.
But like when, like when I gotmy technician um, I tested in
concord and so I had exposure tothe club up in concord.
They had all my information didanybody ever reach out to me
and say, hey, we want to helpyou and make sure that you
understand what the fuck you'redoing?
No, no, no.

(02:02:48):
And then, and then I got on, Istarted getting on repeaters and
you know, yeah, I made the samemistake that todd made right
where, like, yeah, I called cqbecause I was looking to fucking
talk to somebody, and that'swhat you do, like I don't, I
don't care that somebody wasupset because I called cq on the
repeater and they think thatthat's something you shouldn't

(02:03:08):
do.
No, that is what you should dowhen you are looking to make
contact with someone, and I'mlooking to make contact with
someone, so I wasn't doinganything wrong.
So anybody that wants to tell atechnician that they shouldn't
call cq on a repeater, they'rethe ones.
That's fucking wrong that theyshouldn't call CQ on a repeater,
they're the ones.
That's fucking wrong.
Okay, because it is perfectlyacceptable to call CQ whenever

(02:03:31):
you're looking to make a fuckingcontact, regardless of what
mode you're trying to do that on.
I can use my fucking Hamshackhotline, get into the East Coast
Reflector and go hey, cq, cq.
This is N108, I'm looking tomake contact with somebody who's
out there that wants to talk tome right now, and if somebody
wants to get upset about it,they can fuck right off, because

(02:03:52):
I'm doing the right thing andI'm looking for somebody to talk
to.
Okay, now, somewhere along thelines, we drop the ball.
The generation above hasdropped the ball and they're not
fucking Elmering.
The generation above hasdropped the ball and they're not
fucking Elmering.
They're not taking people andsaying, yes, we are going to

(02:04:19):
invest in you because we wantyou to be a good operator, and
so now we've been trying to dothat, but we've got no basis to
Elmer on right Because we didn'thave that.
So I think that the biggestthing that is missing in the,
the whole V process, is that VEsfrom the session should be like

(02:04:39):
assigned to people.

Speaker 4 (02:04:42):
And that's and that's just part of the process.

Speaker 2 (02:04:44):
That's a good idea.

Speaker 4 (02:04:46):
Well.
So I would expound on that alittle bit.
I'd say the VE's job becausethey already do a good chunk of
it in getting people indefinitely should be a handoff
more than they should be theresponsible ones to getting.
They should be like hey, I knowwhere the clubs are, I know the
people.
The club's job should be wherethat should step in, Because

(02:05:11):
that's kind of what I think with, like our club.
It's like when you hand offthose technicians, I spend time
reaching out to them and keepreaching out to them to let them
know hey, we're just out hereif you have questions, you know,
or you want to come join us, orthis is the latest thing going
on, just to kind of let themknow that we're there and not be
a pain.
But yeah, that that, I think,is where clubs have fallen short
.
They've They've gotten soisolated and islands that once a
new technician comes in,they're just as scared to be on

(02:05:32):
the radio, but they're just morescared to get into a club.
I mean, that's even worse.

Speaker 3 (02:05:36):
Let me ask you this.
I mean we have to getpermission to use N1QC right For
what?
For any?

Speaker 2 (02:05:44):
Yeah, if you're going to use the club call, you've
got to get permission from theclub trustee.

Speaker 3 (02:05:47):
Right, that's correct , Right, Right.
So what I think I mean this issomething maybe clubs could get
into is like, let's say, I was atechnician, I'm studying for my
general, but I've never been,it wasn't field day and I
haven't.
You know, POTA just got startedwhen I came in, Like it wasn't

(02:06:10):
like a huge thing.
If I didn't know Eric, Iwouldn't even probably know what
POTA well, I probably wouldhave because eventually.
But Eric introduced me to POTA,told me what it was about, and
then I got my general and didPOTA right.
Wouldn't it be cool to be ableto take like a technician and go
to a park me and a technicianand teach them hands-on work

(02:06:31):
using the club call sign not mycall sign using the club call
sign and teach them how to dooperations in live, real time
and then, if they get, you cando that with your own call sign.

Speaker 4 (02:06:46):
Yeah, you don't need the club call sign.

Speaker 3 (02:06:48):
Yeah, I understand, but I think being a club call
sign gives them more.
I don't know, it doesn't be acloud.

Speaker 2 (02:06:57):
Like nobody gives a shit, whether it's a club call
or whether it's a personal call.
Like you're, you're the controloperator and so you, you can
100% take any technician and say, hey, let me show you, come sit
down with me, let's go to apark, let's do this 100%, and we
need to do that more.

Speaker 3 (02:07:18):
Well, right, and that's what I'm saying.
But why don't?
Why don't clubs do that?
Why don't clubs get people inand say, hey, these are all
right.
So here's an example, and I'mgoing to go back to my flying
club and you guys can, because Ihaven't talked about it.
But in the flying club we havepeople that are instructors,
right, that volunteer to beinstructors and show that they

(02:07:42):
know how to freaking fly themodel airplanes and can get out
of a crash.
And you know, and again, thefirst time you instruct you're
as nervous as you're doing onyour first solo flight because
you're like, oh shit, it goeswrong, it's all on me.
But then it just becomesnatural to you and you just can
do it.
And once you learn how to do it, it's like you don't forget how
to do it.
It's kind of like riding a bike.

(02:08:03):
You know I haven't ridden abike in fucking five years, but
I know I can get on a bike andpedal away right.
Same thing with ham radio.
So if we had clubs that had,okay, here are, these are five
members of the club that wouldlove to could take you out.
We don't have to do podo, wecan come to my house, we can set
up at the, you know, in thefield, whatever, and you can

(02:08:28):
start doing hearing it, but havesomeone there.
That would be a benefit and itwould have been a benefit for me
not knowing one person in hamradio.
When I got my technician Ididn't know who to ask hold on a
sec.

Speaker 4 (02:08:38):
Let me jump in there for a second.
And when I was growing up andeven in my early 2021, there was
always a thing in the mentor'sworld that you know every so
POTA wasn't ever a thing.
When I got my technician it wasyou had to have a shack and you
had the shack and the tower andall the wire antennas and you

(02:08:59):
had everything there, and so youalways brought that new ham to
your shack or you always invitedthem over to your shack.
It's not like that for us now.
I mean, we are all like aportable world.
We don't have time to establishthis elite shack for people to
come over and revel in all thatit's glory, so we can show them
more about the world of hamradio.

(02:09:20):
I think, like you said, todd,poda is the place I think we're
behind the eight ball a littlebit in terms of the ham radio
community to help use that as alever to get more people
interested in the hobby.
And I think it's a charge to allof us POTA guys out there who
activate.
Why aren't you grabbing a newtechnician that you just bumped

(02:09:40):
into at a ham fest or whateverand encouraging them to come out
and be serious about it, likegive them your digits, tell them
that you know hey, and, andhound them to get them
interested to come out and dopoda if they've never done poda
it.
It's as much as ourresponsibility to be a mentor in
that area for the that purpose,to keep them furthering in the
hobby, to learn more, to getback to all of that stuff that

(02:10:02):
we were saying that furthersthem to want to get to their
general I.
I mean, like you know, todd,field day was the place and
growing up, field day was theplace that you got on the HF
bands and you learned how toplay radio and you got like a
chance to talk to someonehalfway around the world.
I mean, you talked toPennsylvania, but it was still
the same thing.

Speaker 3 (02:10:19):
But listen, that's 24 hours out of 365.

Speaker 4 (02:10:24):
But that used to be the way it was.
So, like the older guys that wehave in our clubs these days,
don't know anything more, exceptthat's when you do it.
And in the other 364 days ofthe year, just meet them for
coffee and talk about you know,your doctor's visits and
everything else.
Don't mention more radio.
Don't talk about that stuff.
Wait till field day rollsaround, because that's the

(02:10:44):
excitement my hemorrhoids areflaring so I mean that is like
so.
So let's kind of back up thetrain to the testing piece,
because we could talk about thewhole lack of, you know,
mentorship, which is, I think, agreat topic to talk about
sometime in the future.
Um, so in the testing stuff,like what like piece, like, do

(02:11:04):
we, like paul mentioned,obviously we should add more one
level.
I don't know how important thatmight be, it might actually
like.
I know folks that never gotpast um advanced because they
figured that they weren'tgetting anything more benefit by
going to extra, but so theystayed advanced, and so I don't

(02:11:26):
know if adding more levels, butI think one of those things that
might be beneficial, at leastin my mind, the way I viewed it,
is like we should have reallytwo levels and this let me hear
me out on this one.
This is why I say the bands arealready very limited to what we
have and we right now, as acommunity of hamry operators,
don't use them to our avail.

(02:11:46):
One of the things that I thinkthat we probably could and
continue to invest in is if weonly had two license classes,
where you know there was the,the extra level, or, like I know
, um rsgb has two level classes.
They have the foundation andthey have another one above that
.
The other one above that givesthem more power and gives them a

(02:12:08):
little bit more frequency space.
But after they get to thatsecond level, that's it.
They're done like, and thenthat becomes, you know,
basically the, the place whereeverybody just says, hey, I'm
just going to test for the twotests and I'm going to get my
next level up and I'll get morepower, like I think that the,
the technician band, is sourly,you know, short-sighted, and

(02:12:30):
just giving them 10 meters andsay, hey, hey, guess what, seven
months out of the year, 10meters is going to be shit for
you, so sorry, you're not goingto be able to get a chance to
experience hf.
You know, move them up into the, the general band, and give
them a small portion of like 20meters didn't?

Speaker 3 (02:12:44):
I say that already.
I agree, and so that's what I'msaying.

Speaker 4 (02:12:45):
It's just reiterating that piece is like give them a
small portion of like 20 metersor something like that.
Didn't I say that already?
I agree, and so that's what I'msaying.
It's just reiterating thatpiece is like give them more of
those spaces that they can playin those without having to like
have to jump to the next hoop,because what ends up happening
is you have all of these hamradio YouTubers.
Go, just get past that.

(02:13:07):
Give them a foundationalquestion pool that helps them
understand stuff, concepts, butthen get into some practicality
stuff and focus more.
You know, involving clubs andall the other people you know as
a community of ham radiooperators, helping other ham
radio operators become betterham.
That sounds like a slogan orsomething like that.
I don't know it's weird yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:13:28):
I mean don't get me wrong.
I think I mean the tests Ithink are important and I think
that it should get harder andharder because again, you don't
want every Tom, dick and Jane tobe able to pay a fee and then
just be able to get on becauseit would destroy the thing.
Low bars.

(02:13:55):
What I'm saying is my experienceis the technician class, for
for me was actually really hardbecause I knew nothing.
I mean when I tell you, I meanI knew green was ground and that
was it.
You know, I I'd never had anyschooling technique.
I mean, so, reading all thisstuff from the first time, I
mean it took me forever tofreaking figure it out because
at the time I don't believe youcould look out, you had to
google the answers.
It wasn't part of the app likeit is now.
Um, so it was just hard tounderstand and learn.

(02:14:20):
I think it's important to to totake tests, but I also think
that some of the questions onthere have are so obsolete, like
I mean the guy.
So when I was studying for myextra I forget what the guy's
name is, but it was I got theaudio book and he goes into that
.
I even forget what section is.

(02:14:41):
And this guy is like he's a.
He's written books on how toteach people all the answers to
the test, but it wasn't like oh,the question here is C and
let's move on.
I mean he goes into like awhole chapter of why and there
were a bunch of questions.
He says this question.
No idea why it's on this dumbexam.
You will never use this unlessyou're getting your PhD in

(02:15:04):
physics, engineering, nuclear,blah, blah, blah and he goes
completely useless waste of ourtime.
So I'm just going to tell youthis is the answer.

Speaker 4 (02:15:13):
Yeah, that tends to be the problem.

Speaker 3 (02:15:14):
Now, if that is a question like that on the thing
where a guy that is like a PhDin ham radio, right, like this
guy, knows his shit inside andout, knows every aspect, that
has written many books, why isthat test, why is that question
on the test and why is it on forover and over and over again?

(02:15:36):
So you're telling me that thepeople that changed the test or
whatever don't look at thatquestion or the questions and
say this 2025 is obsolete,obsolete.
Yes, it's part of ham radio.
It was more important back inthe day, but you're asking me
questions about fucking crystalsin radios, fucking waste of my

(02:15:56):
time you don't need them anymorethey're not used anymore.
I, paul, can answer the ve stuffhe's got, I mean but that's
what I'm saying is like I wouldrather have more questions that
pertain to ham radio in thecurrent century than not
questions that pertained 50years ago, 30 years ago, 20

(02:16:17):
years ago, because that doesn'thelp me.
In ham radio, you know, it'sgreat to understand the six and
stuff and get it, but to go intosuch details on things that no
one uses, unless your thing inham radio is I'm going to go re,
go get antique.

(02:16:38):
I should be able to just dothat, and if I don't know the
answer, I'll learn it, becauseI'll have to study and find the
answer.

Speaker 4 (02:16:53):
Well, but let me answer that real quick for you.
The reason why it's in place isbecause, from an FCC standpoint
, they want to be able to havesomething to go back on when you
start to build transmitters,because you're allowed to, as a
ham radio operator, build yourown transmitter and run it at a
full legal limit and build it,however, the way you damn well

(02:17:14):
please, because your licensegives you the response, you know
the capabilities to do that andthe fcc doesn't care.
But the fcc is going to care isif you're you know you build a
spurious emissions trend andit's bleeding all over the bands
and you know you're screwingover.
You know broadcast andeverybody else like that.
Yeah, now they have a you knowleg to stand on.
That's really all that's inplace for that, for the

(02:17:35):
understanding of that.

Speaker 3 (02:17:37):
And I get it, but does that really does that?
Is that there's that questionright?
It's not the question on how tooperate on any of the tests.
I think we should back up.

Speaker 4 (02:17:51):
Let's back up the train here.
Like, yeah, the problem reallyis for me is that the exam pool
is out there.
People have said screw this, Idon't want to have to read a
book, I don't want to have to goto a class, I'm just going to
study the questions and get whatI need to get out of it.
Paul, skydiving that's theprocess.
That should really be the wayham radio is.

(02:18:13):
There should be, like you wantto become a technician, here is
a like.
Just as many VE testingsessions we have on you know ham
exam tools.
There should be as many testingweekends of people doing, hey,
learn how to get your technicianclass and do exactly the same
thing Paul did for his skydivingcapabilities to go through each

(02:18:34):
of the portions to understandthe stuff, the material and have
the hands-on experience as wellin conjunction with it.
That should be the same waytechnicians was.
Because when I took mytechnician test, I had a class
that went literally three monthsand they explained everything
in the book and we had hands onstuff and I had to get in my.
My parents had to drive me downto the local church to, you

(02:18:55):
know, be there for two hourswhile they explained how to be a
technician and give me all thehands on stuff.

Speaker 3 (02:18:59):
So that's not there.
Don't you think that was betterthan just having people
memorize questions?
I mean, look at Russ.
Russ puts in the chat and Ilove this.
Todd just doesn't want to knowwhat a double gate answers with
my, you're absolutely fuckingright, I don't give a shit about
that.
I will never use that in my hamRaider career ever.
And to me that kind of questionis if I need to know that if

(02:19:24):
that's what I get into, then I'mgoing to really teach myself
how to do that.
I shouldn't have to know thatto become an extra to operate on
the extra bands, because,honestly, I wasn't even going to
do the extra test because I sawno partial, because POTA is
rarely on the extra bands andthe only thing that that's about

(02:19:44):
the extra bands that I've seenis that when the bands are
packed in the general sectionyou can get a little quieter and
maybe get a, a free frequency,but that most extras like like
tim, our old kc1 qdk I don'tknow what his new, I forget what
his new call white man onehorse.
Yeah, white man one horse.
That's a good way to remember.

(02:20:07):
I can't remember the letters,but I can remember that.
So white man, one horse, he'sbeen an extra.
What Still?
I think maybe he has, but hegoes, I haven't even gone on the
extra band.

Speaker 4 (02:20:18):
yet he has.
He's been in a few of them,yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:20:33):
But when he first started when he had it for a
week or two's, like I haven'tgone in there yet, which is
great.
I mean, okay, you know that'syour choice, but why do I need
to know what?
Uh, you do what?
Uh?
A double gate and transform,why does?

Speaker 4 (02:20:38):
why knowing that answer should be part of the
code when you want to get on the.

Speaker 3 (02:20:40):
You know conversations on uh, you know
the extra portion on a and noneof this crap on the test is ever
talked about on any of thestations on HF that I've ever
heard of Okay it you.

Speaker 4 (02:20:55):
It is not today.
I I coming from where I was 20years ago.
It has definitely changed.
The top of the, theconversations not about like hey
, I built my, like mytransmitter.
But I have club folks that Italk to on other repeaters that
are diehard electronics folksand once you get them talking on

(02:21:16):
a repeater they'll go on forhours about how they built this
circuit and I'm like I don'tunderstand what the hell they're
talking about.

Speaker 3 (02:21:24):
But, Eric, forget the guys that have been extras for
freaking 50 years.
What about the new people, theyounger generation?
Do you really think that you'regoing to get a kid who's 16, 17
years old?
Who's going to see thatquestion and be like what the f-
?
I would?

Speaker 4 (02:21:42):
never say don't put it past you because you're a
young kid.

Speaker 3 (02:21:44):
I'm not saying you wouldn't get any, but I'd say
90% percent of them are likewhat the hell do?

Speaker 4 (02:21:48):
I need to know this for uh, paul, you got something
you want to say.
I'm gonna give you an exampleof where I would be.
Uh, not the case that questionso all right, listen, I think.

Speaker 2 (02:22:02):
I think that the exam process is fine.
There has to be a barrier toentry for each level.
I don't disagree, sure.
Okay, I've been thinking aboutit as this conversation has gone
on, and maybe instead of havinga fourth level, instead we add

(02:22:23):
two additional tests.
So the technician test is thetechnician test, but then, in
order to get your general, youhave to pass a practical and the
exam.
To get the extra, you have topass a practical and the exam.
I also wanted to put this outthere, todd how many people do

(02:22:46):
you think let's go under 60,right, 60 and under Take enough
time out of their day to takenote of questions that they
don't think should be on theexam pool anymore?
Actually email the people thatrun the question pools and say,

(02:23:11):
hey, listen, I think that thisquestion is irrelevant in
today's day and age and shouldbe removed Probably 1%.
I would venture to guess lessthan 1%, right, right.

Speaker 3 (02:23:20):
But as VPs shouldn't.

Speaker 2 (02:23:22):
Whose fault is it, then, that the question pool
remains the same, because thesame fucking grumpy old fucks
keep working on it every time itneeds to be renewed.
Right, it's on the youngerfucking people that are so
self-centered.
They can't take the time out oftheir fucking day to email and

(02:23:42):
say, hey, listen, I'm studyingfor my extra.
And this question, thisquestion, this question and this
question are fucking irrelevantand should be removed.
It's not all on people that arerunning the show, it's on the
giant pool of ham radiooperators that are lazy fucks

(02:24:03):
and won't take the time out oftheir day to say, hey, listen,
this shit is outdated and itjust needs to be fucking updated
.

Speaker 3 (02:24:10):
Okay, but here's the problem the guys that are 60,
whatever year, whatever you'resaying, they're not looking at
the exam questions.
They're not looking and they'renot going through the exam.

Speaker 2 (02:24:22):
Are you not looking at the question pool?
Have you been looking at thequestion pool for the last
couple of years?
Well, no, you've got questionsthat you think are fucking
irrelevant.

Speaker 3 (02:24:34):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:24:35):
Oh, trust me, I'm going.

Speaker 1 (02:24:36):
I just put the email in the fucking private chat for
you and I put it in the fuckingregular chat.
Feel free to take note of allthose questions and email them.

Speaker 2 (02:24:43):
Feel free to take note of all those questions and
email them, and then you will beone step further to helping get
those questions out of thefucking question pool Right?
It's one thing to bitch aboutit, but like you got to actually
do something.
If you want change, you have todo something.

Speaker 3 (02:25:02):
But let me ask you this, paul, and honestly, let me
ask you this the people who arerunning the thing, are they
that fucking naive to know thatsome of these questions are
obsolete, or do they just keepit in there because it's been in
there?

Speaker 4 (02:25:27):
five years.
So every five years they gothrough cycle.
So I guarantee they are like.
They did definitely push outsome for the extra class when
they released that one and thegeneral pool has changed a bit.
I bet you, if you go back tothe general pool now, you
probably find questions that youmight have remembered that
aren't even in there any longer,like that aren't relevant, like
riddy and and similar, likeother things, like um 31 or what
you know along those lines.
Yeah, yeah, pactor, yeah, allof those.

Speaker 3 (02:25:50):
It's still on the fucking extra exam.

Speaker 2 (02:25:54):
There's still relevant modes, it's just people
don't use it as as frequently,right?
And that's where you know, likeif people aren't speaking up
and saying something right, ifpeople aren't speaking up and
saying something right, thenthings aren't going to change.

Speaker 3 (02:26:09):
So let me ask you when you do the studying on the
app I don't know, paul, ifyou've looked at the app or
whatever, but in the app itgives you, you know like it says
this question, it says questionthree.
You know whatever it's got,like that code, like each
section, and then it haswhatever how many questions
there are.
Is that the master list ofquestions, like when you show me

(02:26:31):
a thing?
So so if I go in there and sayquestion you know B three,
number 30 say is what it is,they're going to know be able to
look up that question, likeit's the same anywhere.
So so what I'm going to do asI'm studying this test, if there
is a question on there that Ithink has absolutely nothing to,

(02:26:52):
I'm going to write it down andwhen I get my I will say I just
got my extra.
These are the questions I thinkshould be changed or removed
from the thing, and some of themI'll say why, and other ones
I'll just say because you don'teven have to wait for your extra
dude.

Speaker 4 (02:27:07):
Just email them, because I'll put the email
address in there and just sendit off to him as you run into
them.
Because here's the catch isthat everybody who's studying
for their next level isn'tthinking like, hey, how can I
improve this process.
They're thinking like I want toget my next level and move on.
You know, I know you've beenstudying a long time.

Speaker 3 (02:27:27):
But this is what I think I mean.
I know it's all volunteer, asyou know, every like.
Look at, for me, baseball forthe last fucking years has been
all volunteer, right, I don'tget paid a dime and I'm still on
the baseball, so trying to makeit better, working,
communicating with people anddoing it.
Why aren't the guys that arecoming up with the crowd, why
aren't they talking to people intheir clubs who might've just

(02:27:50):
gotten their exam.

Speaker 4 (02:27:51):
Not not everybody is as outgoing as you and I and I
know that's a problem, that thatis a problem.

Speaker 3 (02:27:58):
And if you're going to be in charge of a question
pool, you should be jumping outthere, no he's already gone to
two more and meeting and gettinggetting feedback, and I agree
with Paul, we should be doingthe same thing.
But it's also, if you're goingto take on that role as a, I'm
going to do the question pool.
I'm volunteering for this.
You should be able to, youshould have to do it and you

(02:28:21):
should take it a step before andmake it your responsibility.
This was ours, but make make um, make it their responsibility
to go to go out and ask a.
Hey, even you know shit, I getfucking people calling me after
every little thing I do thesedays.
Why aren't there like oh you,they must have a list.

(02:28:43):
Send out an email to your emailaddress, right, send out a text
message.
Hey, got a.
You know, saw you just passedyour congratulations, wanted to
know some feedback.
Do you have time to talk orwhatever?
Right?
Or could you send us something?
You never get any of that right.
It's just kind of like you comedown on me like it's my job.

(02:29:06):
Well, I'm not the one creatingthe test.
They're creating the test.
They should be doing just asmuch as I'm doing, if not more,
and doing a call and reachingout.
Hey, how a satisfactory survey,hey what'd you think?
what'd you think of the extra,extra exam?

Speaker 4 (02:29:23):
well, it was really.
You can't fire all thevolunteers, my friend.
No, I'm not trying to fuck.
Last week you were ready tofire the whole entire VE staff.

Speaker 3 (02:29:32):
You give out the wrong fucking test.
You're a fucking idiot.
You should be fired.
I'm sorry, that's just dumb.

Speaker 4 (02:29:37):
When you come, up with the fucking stupid old
questions from 20 years ago.
You should be fired too.

Speaker 3 (02:29:40):
No, but why aren't they?
I mean look, aren't they?
I mean look at.
In this day and age, technologyis so things are so easy to get
done.
Like it doesn't, you can getthings out there.

Speaker 4 (02:29:51):
Yes and no, yes and no.
Technology makes thingsfreaking easier for sure.
The challenge that you run intois the fact that, depending on
your audience that you work with, whether or not they're
technically savvy or they'retechnically adverse If they're
technically adverse, it's hardto do anything, but in the ham
radio world.

Speaker 3 (02:30:07):
Everyone has their own thing right.
Like Eric, you do computersright.
I don't you know if I have.
If I want to know aboutmicrowave shit and microwave
radio, I'm not coming to you,I'm going to Tom right.

Speaker 4 (02:30:22):
I'm sorry, I'm sad.
I know a lot about microwave.
I know a lot about microwave.
I know about microwave.
I invented microwave.
Microwave is the best.

Speaker 3 (02:30:29):
You know what I mean.
Like you go to the people thatthat have the expertise and
that's the thing, but do youdisagree with me?

Speaker 4 (02:30:38):
on that.
I don't disagree there, butthat's the other problem is like
we have a lot of patientexperts in our club and in our
midst and in clubs in general.
The problem is is a lot of themdon't know how to be able to
plug in and do something to beeffective in the hobby.
A lot of them are in placeslike we have a group of folks
that are younger than us.

(02:30:58):
We're a little older, but OK,so maybe Paul's like a little
bit younger than us.
I mean, he's kind of in thatgenre that I talk about and I'm
not going to get into this toodeep.
But there's a group of hamsthat everyone else says oh,
you're going to get to the youth, you got to bring the youth in
the hobby.
Yeah, you do, but by the timeyou bring the youth in the hobby
, you're not going to help thehobby because they're going to
reach their twenties.

(02:31:19):
And I want to get into hamradio again because I remember
it was.
That's.
The problem is like we're notusing the 35 year olds, those
people that are in our club andin our midst that have time and
resources and money, to get themmore involved and engaged,
because they're the ones thatare going to solve the problems
and the issues, that, or developan app that says let's do

(02:31:46):
everything online instead ofpaper-based, and you know all of
that kind of stuff.
So, yeah, it takes time.
It just you know it's a slowmoving process.
I think we could definitely getinto a whole conversation and I
want to talk about the clubstuff and all that mentoring
stuff, because it's a very mucha topic that's near and dear to
my heart and I'm sure you guysare passionate about it too.
Um, but like any other thingsin the ve world that you'd want

(02:32:11):
to change, I mean, obviously thetesting pool is a concern.
Anything more that you knowthat comes to mind, that you
think it either simplify it,either make the bar you know
level, or just you know likedon't know Anything else come to
mind.

Speaker 3 (02:32:25):
I just I really think that there should be either a
section or on operating, atleast for the technician and the
general.
I think by the time you'regoing for your extra you're
probably operating and it's notas important, but I think for
the general test, becausethere's nothing in there except

(02:32:48):
calling CQ and there's nothingreally.
There's nothing that talksabout pileups, there's nothing.
And you know, I got into hamradio by accident cause I needed
to do it for the FPV.
Well, I, I chose to follow thelaw and and do it, and it was
COVID and I had nothing betterto do because I was stuck in my
house and I got to take a wholetest because the FCC and this is

(02:33:13):
more against the governmentsays you to use these bands to
do your video feed, you have tohave your technician license.
There's one question on thetechnician ban that talks about
that, just one, and it was likewhen do you not have to verbally
communicate?

Speaker 4 (02:33:31):
Well, no, you can't say that, because there could be
three variations of that samequestion, like the pool is huge,
it's like 600 plus questions.
I'm sure you're probably likewhen I took the technician thing
.

Speaker 3 (02:33:43):
I grew every question and I'm telling you when I took
it, there was only one questionthat referred to the drone or
the FPV operation of the videofeed.

Speaker 4 (02:33:55):
Didn't we have.
Who did we have on Signal Stuff?
Is it Rob?
What's his name?
Oh my gosh, I'm blanking, we'reall blanking at this pointard
thank you, yes and and, uh, benand both.
both of those guys had said tous that there's no way you'll

(02:34:16):
see every question in thequestion pool, for whatever
level you're at, because youwould literally have to like the
, the, the, the statistics thathe came up with a lot of like
whack, that like we were like,yeah, you'll never see that
question more than one time inyour whole entire pool, maybe
twice if you're lucky.

Speaker 2 (02:34:32):
There are 650 questions in the extra question
pool Right.
I know 650.

Speaker 4 (02:34:40):
Right and how many times have we seen the photo of
a question already?

Speaker 3 (02:34:44):
Well, because look at the reason you see that is, if
you get the way, the test on theapp is right, is it?
It keeps going back to it, sothen you remember it and then,
if you'll go a couple more, sendit back to you, focusing to
keep trying to get you to memory.
It's not just random.

Speaker 2 (02:35:01):
And you still can't remember what a full photo will
take.
I got it now.
It's a fucking solar panel.

Speaker 3 (02:35:06):
Solar panel.

Speaker 4 (02:35:08):
Don't worry, I'll never get that one wrong again.
And I'll be honest with you.

Speaker 3 (02:35:12):
Listen, I know you, but there's been times when I've
been studying and we've done aquestion on here and I've gotten
it wrong and you've made somefucking stupid comment or made
fun of me or something.
And I freaking remember it andI'm like, oh yeah, that's when
Paul was being a dick.
Boom, got that one right.
We're here for you, See.

Speaker 2 (02:35:30):
I'm helping.

Speaker 3 (02:35:31):
You are, you really are, so it does help.
But again, I just think, likemy experience in ham radio,
being someone that knew nothingabout ham radio, taking these
tests, the technician test, Iwish it had more on getting on
the air, because that's whattechnicians are there to do

(02:35:52):
they're there to get their firsttaste of ham radio I think, the
test is important but I thinkthe pieces that we talked about,
where clubs are doing ashit-ass job of not doing
everything that we justdiscussed is where the gap is to
solving that problem.
Yeah, but there should be moreoperating questions.

Speaker 4 (02:36:14):
There should be more.
There should be literally aclass that says hey, after
you've gotten your technicianlicense, come to this for a day
and you take them out and do apoda.
Or you take them to set up aradio in a park and you go out
and show them how to play withthe Jeff radio and you show them
how to play with their vh, youhelp them program stuff.
You do all of those things thatyou should be doing as a ham
radio club to help that hambecome a ham and do more shit in

(02:36:35):
general.
Now I'm going to put a rantbutton on mine.

Speaker 3 (02:36:38):
Yeah go ahead you get one.

Speaker 4 (02:36:40):
I'm working on it.
So the one thing that I thinkwould be beneficial and helpful
and might be an incentive isthat stupid fee that they pay to
all the clubs to test for 15bucks.
100% of that fuck should go tothe club directly.
For all the work.
There's nothing.
I think the VE session does anymore than with all the

(02:37:03):
electronic money?

Speaker 3 (02:37:05):
Who collects that money?

Speaker 4 (02:37:06):
The club collects it.
Who do you give it to?
It goes to Ryan right now.

Speaker 3 (02:37:12):
No, no, no.

Speaker 4 (02:37:14):
Part of it goes to the VEC.

Speaker 3 (02:37:16):
Which is run by ARRL.
It depends.

Speaker 2 (02:37:22):
We're an ARRL VEC club.
We do our testing through theARRL.
But you've also got W5YI,you've got GLARG, you've got
KVAC.
There's a whole bunch of VECs.
We're only ARRL because that'swhat our club chose to be.

Speaker 4 (02:37:45):
But is the fee still the same?

Speaker 2 (02:37:49):
It varies, so like because I think I think they're
$10 instead of $15.

Speaker 3 (02:38:04):
What does the ARRL get from the fee?
What do they do to have to toearn that fee?

Speaker 2 (02:38:15):
they process all the paperwork to the fcc all right.

Speaker 3 (02:38:19):
So what you went before and what we've talked
about in club stuff is likeeverything is like easy to do
online, right, like guys havemade.
So why do we need the ARL orany organization?
Why can't we just VEs, justprocess it to the FCC like
anyone else or have the computerdo it?

Speaker 2 (02:38:41):
Well, so yes, in theory right, if we could
simplify the process to whereeach VE team did it online,
right?
Everybody's moving to digitalnow, right?
So you move away from paper,you do it online and you submit

(02:39:01):
your paperwork directly to theFCC.
That would cut out themiddleman of the VEC.
Yep, right, regardless of whichVEC it is.
But then you've got, you know,a bazillion VE teams that would
be submitting all theirpaperwork and if there's issues
like the FCC has got to thendeal with the individual VEC.

(02:39:25):
The V teams, right.
Where taxes go, the V teams,right.

Speaker 4 (02:39:27):
Where taxes go, make them pay for it.
Another story.

Speaker 2 (02:39:31):
But but so yeah, but I mean, hear me out right Like,
uh, there there is justificationfor the VEC to exist as, like
that is the, the hub, the, the,the, the contact ball between
the FCC, so that if there is aproblem then the VEC can contact

(02:39:53):
the VE team and then they cansort it out, because the FCC,
they're not going to be botheredfucking dealing with that.

Speaker 4 (02:40:02):
No, and I don't disagree, and if the electronic
process was 100% transparent andjust as like we move money back
and forth in banks and all thatstuff and nobody does it.

Speaker 3 (02:40:12):
Who could be?
How do you become the VEC?

Speaker 2 (02:40:18):
You've got to be big enough to apply to the FCC to be
one.

Speaker 3 (02:40:22):
What does big enough mean?

Speaker 2 (02:40:24):
I don't know.
I mean like some of them aren'thuge, you know, like some of
them aren't huge you know, likeI mean, could we do it?

Speaker 3 (02:40:30):
Could Liffrey and Hamm do it?

Speaker 2 (02:40:33):
I mean you'd have to look into it, but I don't think
you'd want that fucking headache.

Speaker 3 (02:40:36):
No, I don't, but I'm just saying is like again, to me
it's just having a middleman inthere and there's a way to you
know like you run our club's VEsright, like you're the head guy
, correct?

Speaker 2 (02:40:54):
I'm the liaison, so I'm the person.
If Maria at the ARRL right,she's the VEC contact, If she
has an issue with any of ourpaperwork, she's going to reach
out to me directly and then it'son me to make sure that I
square it away.

Speaker 3 (02:41:15):
So you being the VE head guy, why couldn't you just
be her and send it to the FCC?
That's what he was saying.
A VEC Right?
But that's what I'm saying.
He's doing everything, and thenit goes to someone else to
check it and if she doesn't likeit, she sends it back to you.
Well, what happens if someonehas an issue with her?

(02:41:37):
Her thing.

Speaker 4 (02:41:39):
For the likelihood it's not going to be anything
except like a grammaticalspelling error or some things
not properly or some addressesdon't match up or something
weird right, but wouldn't thatall be done on the computer
program most of it?

Speaker 3 (02:41:51):
yeah, I mean shit.
You type in your password, youforget to capitalize, that
passwords don't match, you know.
I mean it's pretty andeverything's pretty much
automated anyway these days.
So what I'm saying is you mightbe able to get rid of that and
you could just have the, theexam test, the ve's be the vec
meaning our ve group is our vecand send it, and then you would

(02:42:15):
still yeah, right, and, and soit's nice, in theory, to think
that way.

Speaker 2 (02:42:20):
Okay, but I'm telling you, like, if, if the fcc had
to deal with a a thousand, right, we'll go on the low end.
And they had to deal with athousand, right, we'll go on the
low end.
They had to deal with athousand different VE teams.
Okay, out of all of thethousands of testing sessions
that those thousand VE teams do,right, right, inevitably have

(02:42:52):
probably at least 10 percentwhere the the person, instead of
actually verifying that theirfucking information is correct
when we ask them to verify, theyleft out a letter in their
fucking email.
Okay, now, I'm bringing thisparticular situation up because
I've dealt with it Right At theVE session.
When the person checks in, Ihave them verify that their FRN

(02:43:12):
is correct, that their name isthe correct spelling and it's
the correct format, that theiraddress is correct and that
their email is correct.
Okay, they verify it at thestart of the session.
Then, when the session isconcluded, they verify it again
before they digitally sign theirpaperwork.
Okay, now, when I submit it,that's it, it's fucking gone.

(02:43:38):
Okay, but I've had numeroussituations where the the test
taker, did something dumb andthey left a letter out, or they
transposed a letter in theiremail.
And so then they didn't get theemail from the FCC saying yes,
congratulations, you passed,please pay your $35.
And then they're wondering whydidn't they get the email?

(02:44:01):
And so then I'm looking into itand I'm going well, is this
your email?
Oh no, my email's wrong.
Can you please fix it?
Well, no, at this point I can'tfix it, because now it's up to
the fcc and it's in the fccfucking database.
Wrong because you didn't checkit the two times that I fucking
asked you to check it all.

(02:44:23):
Right now you multiply thatover a thousand e-teams.
Yeah, like, look at the fuckingaggravation then on the ve team
side and then on the fcc side.
Like having that middleman isimportant and it's and it's and
it's helpful.
Because then when I have anissue where I've submitted

(02:44:44):
something and I go, hey, maria,this guy was a fucking dumbass
and even though I asked him tocheck his email twice, he still
fucked it up.
No, he was a general.
Going for his extra.

Speaker 4 (02:44:59):
OK, so we got on track as to where I was getting
with the fees.
So two things need to happenwith the fees.
So two things need to happen.
One, I understand the value ofthat middleman person, but that
middleman person should be paidto and and and basically the
wages, salary and services thatthe person provides should be
taken out of the arl budget andthere shouldn't be that fee,

(02:45:20):
that we take that fee.
What I was trying to gettowards was I would love to see
that be tagged to the newtechnician that money is a
starter money that a club canuse to either get a kid at a
radio, you know, get themmaterials, buy something in the
sense that they're, you know,pouring into the ham to get them
he or she started.
Because how many times do youguys know that you've run into a

(02:45:43):
ham and they're like I got mytechnician.
They're like well, do you havea radio?

Speaker 2 (02:45:47):
no, you know, like those things, like are hard the
ve team didn't do a good jobbecause they're programmed there
are, I give I give handouts,right, yeah, I give handouts of
that, but you know, I think Ithink it's a 20 or 25 radio like
.

(02:46:07):
Or, you know, get yourself afucking kwan chang or a balfang
or fucking whatever, like I mean, handhelds are cheap enough,
like there's no excuse that.
You know, clubs can't fuckinghave a bunch of handhelds on
hand to dole out to newtechnicians I don't agree, but
uh, no, I don.

Speaker 4 (02:46:25):
No, I don't disagree, I do agree.
All being said, I think thatthat fee itself would be better
used to be able to poursomething into the actual
technician instead of just belike, you know, having one more
thing Because that's, you know,it can be a stickler for some
clubs.
You know not to say that ourswould be the case, but would be
like.
You know not to say that ourswould be the case but would be

(02:46:47):
like you know, hey, I don't wantto buy five more.
Like we all of a sudden goteight new technicians.
I don't want to spend $160 onbuying eight Quan Changs for,
you know, these eight newtechnicians.
You know not only another time,but you know being able to say,
hey, now you have a leg becauseARL dangles that stupid carrot
incentive.
Like, hey, you're going torenew your ARL membership, well,
we'll give your club five bucksback if they renew and they

(02:47:08):
send in their check and blah,blah.
It's like it's so many steps toget that five bucks.
It's like, dude, just give mefive bucks and put it in the
coffers.

Speaker 3 (02:47:17):
But going back to what Paul said, like having that
middleman right Now, let's saywe didn't have that middleman
and some dude said, dude, Ididn't get the email.
And you're like, well, whatemail comes on and you and you
look and you say, oh well, Iasked you fucking five times and
you didn't do it right, so toobad.
Now, your job now is, it's outof my hands, it's with the fcc.

(02:47:37):
Good luck, sir.
And if you have to wait fucking20 hours or 20 years for the
government to get their shitthat was on him because he
didn't follow directions againwhy you have to do it anyway.
You're just giving it toanother person who then is
giving it to the FCC.
So you don't need them, atleast in my theory.

(02:47:58):
And again, I don't do this.
So you know more than I do andI would trust what you said.
But wouldn't it have been nicefor you to say to guys say hey,
sir.
But wouldn't it have been nicefor you to say to guys say hey,
sir, I asked you five times toverify your email.
You told me this was your email.
This is what we had.
You gave me the wrong email.
It's now at the FCC.
It's out of my control For youto fix this.

(02:48:18):
You need to contact the FCC atthis email and talk to them.
Why do you need someone fromthe ARL to do that?
And you're not going to have athousand people, you're going to
have the people that you tested, right.
So I don't know, that's just mythought on it, but I also think

(02:48:40):
you know.
I see, the other side to thestory is like you're just doing
the test and you don't want tobe dealing with all that kind of
intensive bs stuff.
But technically you are, and Ijust think that when you start
getting more and more peopleinvolved which is, I mean, one
extra person's not a bad idea.
But again, like eric said, ifwe didn't have to deal with the

(02:49:00):
arl political bullshit, youcould take the money, you could
make it and send it and just runour club and put the money
towards a training thing, andthen we could.
It would benefit the clubinstead.
The arl gets money and in myopinion, they don't give a shit
about their members for whatthey did before.
So why are we giving them money?
And we could take the moneyback into the clubs that take

(02:49:23):
the time, have a ve team off tothe thing and then give it back
to them.

Speaker 2 (02:49:28):
So here's, here's my suggestion for you.
Then if, if you are that setagainst the ARRL which I don't
fault you for it because I'm nota fan Okay, then you get the
club to no longer be testingthrough the ARRL and pick any of
the other fucking VECs andwe'll switch and we'll test

(02:49:51):
through them.
I'm accredited with Glarg, I'maccredited with W5YI, accredited
with KVEC and I'm accreditedwith the ARRL.
So I can run test sessions forany of those VECs.

Speaker 3 (02:50:06):
So what are those other agency or groups Like?
What are they?
I don't know what they are.

Speaker 4 (02:50:13):
Well, let's, yeah, I think it's well worth the time
to have Paul's like deepknowledge on VE stuff, because I
think we could go for hours injust that whole structure?

Speaker 3 (02:50:21):
Well, I mean, is Glark like an ARRL or is it?
Yeah, it's just anotherorganization.

Speaker 2 (02:50:25):
Yeah, it's the Greater Los Angeles Area Radio
Group, that's what it stands for.

Speaker 4 (02:50:30):
They're a clearinghouse for VE testing.
Basically is what it is.
Yes, same thing with ARRL.
That's all they are is aclearinghouse.

Speaker 2 (02:50:48):
But so to your point though, todd, right where you
were saying like, yeah, I couldhave easily the individual that
fucked up their email hey, youfucked up your email, that's on
you, you fucking deal with it.
But that's not me right, it'snot Because of my position.
I have the contacts to makethat communication where I can
get a result a lot faster thanthat one individual waiting in a

(02:51:10):
fucking mile-long queue ofpeople trying to get their shit
fixed with the fcc because theyfucked it up so does the woman
that works at the aro.

Speaker 3 (02:51:21):
does she have a direct contact to the fcc?
Someone there?
I would imagine so.

Speaker 2 (02:51:28):
So, with the one individual in mind, right and
I'm using him because it was agiant pain in my fucking ass,
but he left a letter out of hisemail.
One was missing out of hisemail.
So, obviously like nothingfucking worked.
But so I reached out to Mariaand I said hey, from this test

(02:51:56):
session, this person with thisFRN, they, they left a letter
out of their email.
This is their correct email.
Can you please correct it andresubmit it to the FCC?
And it was.
It was done within a day,whereas if he was dealing with
the FCC all on his own right,without having me, without

(02:52:16):
having Maria yeah Right, hewould never get it.

Speaker 3 (02:52:19):
It would take forever .

Speaker 2 (02:52:20):
No, and he would have gotten frustrated and he would
have said fuck this, I don'tneed my fucking license anyway.
That.

Speaker 3 (02:52:25):
Right.
Well, this is one of the thingsthat kind of goes less on the
ARL but on the government.
You have to have an FRN numberwhich is connected to your
fucking email.
So why didn't their system pickit up and say, ah, this email
is wrong.

Speaker 2 (02:52:40):
Because they assume that whatever information that
you're submitting with a licenseupgrade is the correct
information, and so they updateit.
Because that's you.
You fill out the 605.

Speaker 3 (02:52:53):
Yeah right, and whatever information is on five,
that is the information thatgets submitted but you also have
that 605 has your frn number,which is in the fcc's database
with your information, yourcorrect information, your email,
your phone number, your addressand when you correct for that
matter.
But yeah, but when you move orwhatever, you're supposed to

(02:53:16):
update all that crap.
Right, supposed to right.
So if the guy like for me myemail tr, new right and I just
put T Newman, you would thinkthat when it got submitted they
would cross-reference it withthe answer.

Speaker 2 (02:53:33):
This doesn't match, no they'd go oh, todd got a new
email, so we're going to put itin exactly as he submitted it.

Speaker 4 (02:53:42):
Right, because how are they going to know?

Speaker 3 (02:53:50):
They aren't, they just won't.
Well, well, I know, but tosolve the problem is you just
say your frn is your email.
Oh, I don't.
You have that email.
Well, you should update.
That'd be a nightmare that'd bea nightmare I would not want
that.
Well, what's the point ofputting the frr, the frn number,
in there then?

Speaker 4 (02:54:03):
because you got to remember, we're a licensed
service in the fcc database andeverything's got to remember
we're a licensed service in theFCC database and everything's
got a unique, you know serialnumber associated to the account
that that person in thebusiness world.
So you know, I don't want myemail as my FRN number, I'd
rather just have it tied becauseif I ever change my email
address I, you know, god forbidI try to readjust my FRN number.

(02:54:24):
I mean that's why you know alot of these readjust my frn
number.

Speaker 3 (02:54:26):
I mean that's why you know a lot of these sites have
gotten away from like havingyour email as your account login
because they just said, youknow, create a unique, you know
username, all right, well, no, I, I get, I mean I, I I mean I
can hear, I understand, likehaving, I just think like it
makes sense that you have, ifMaria has like a contact person

(02:54:47):
at the FCC that she can getanswers to quickly, like in my
company, like I have a contactperson for HR or for payroll,
like there's a ton of people inpayroll, I have one person that
I can call and she gets whateverneeds to get done.
Right, I get it.

Speaker 4 (02:55:04):
HR is good for that.
They can get things done.
Yeah, done, right, I get it, sothat's good for that they can
get things done.
Yeah, that's a whole nothertopic I know right, we'll leave
that one right there.

Speaker 3 (02:55:16):
But yeah, I mean I.
I I mean I don't, I, I mean Ithink that it's all I think,
having the arl do it.
My thing is, is I what myfrustration is?
And I don't know what theothers do too, but if there's a
way, you know club members thataren't even hams yet.
We've had some guys at our clubthat aren't.

(02:55:59):
They join our club because theywant to be hams and they
haven't tested yet tested yet.

Speaker 2 (02:56:11):
So no, for the record , there's no rule that says that
we can't take our portion, thatwe, that we keep and and buy,
fucking you know, 10 quan changsto fucking give to new tax, you
know, at the end of a session Idon't disagree with that, but I
think the money that we keepright.

Speaker 4 (02:56:25):
How much money do we?

Speaker 2 (02:56:26):
keep.
So we get to keep seven out ofthe 15.

Speaker 3 (02:56:31):
All right.
So how much money do you thinkour club?

Speaker 2 (02:56:39):
makes a year by keeping seven bucks.

Speaker 3 (02:56:42):
Like how many people?

Speaker 2 (02:56:44):
do we test a year.
So the way that things arecurrently, we're about a break
even with our Zoom cost.
That's about where we're at Nowwith what I want to do.
I want to do more remotetesting.
Then we can have more frequenttesting sessions.
We can increase that coffer sothat we can do cool things with

(02:57:09):
that.
You know, the the only thingthat the ARRL or any of the VCs
want to know that the VEs aredoing with the money that they
keep is that it's it's helpingwith their testing sessions,
right, sessions, right.

(02:57:32):
And so if, if our club decideswe want to, we want to give, uh,
you know, a, an ht to everyfucking new tech that comes in
and, and and tests with us,everyone's gonna come to us it's
like I'm gonna get a free radiojust to test
with them but you know the theclub has to make that addition
because, like, we're onlygetting seven dollars and you
can't get a Quan Chang for $7.
So you know, the club's goingto have to make the difference,

(02:57:53):
right?
But all I'm saying is, it's notout of the realm of possibility
, right?
That we could justify.
Okay, no, we're keeping thatmoney because we're giving out
HTs, or we're keeping that moneyto pay for our Zoom.

Speaker 3 (02:58:10):
You're only giving out HTs.
We're keeping that money.
You know we're paying for ourzoom.

Speaker 4 (02:58:12):
You're only giving out HT's to text.
It's not like you go get yourextra.
Here's a Quan shang right.
Extras aren't gonna care forthat no I understand.

Speaker 3 (02:58:15):
But so again, you'd have to look at, you know, the
data to say, okay, how manytechnicians which is probably
the most right, I would assumeright.
And then how many extras, howmany many generals?
And do we break even with theZoom costs or whatever, without
the tax and buying Balfour?

Speaker 4 (02:58:37):
All good questions and all good answers in our
executive board meeting which isheld next Monday evening.

Speaker 3 (02:58:44):
Paul.

Speaker 4 (02:58:45):
I got you there, buddy, I'll throw that question
out there so here's the onething that I think that we have
not done well with the whole.
Like piece of ham radio.
Like ham radio is awesomebecause we can go anywhere in
any place a lot of times, butlike there's no standards.
So let me shoot back to paul'slike skydiving piece.
There's the standards that paulhad to memorize or know or

(02:59:06):
understand in the skydivingrealm of things that everybody
was taught.
So nobody like has a differentvariation of how they heard it,
they just know it's always thesame.
I feel like a lot of hammer.
You know operators and theycome in the hobby.
We as a club or clubs ingeneral, don't have a standards
guide that says this is what you, everybody talks the same
language, initially everytechnician or new people in the

(02:59:29):
hobby or people returning to thehobby, to give them that
foundation.
And I think there's a missbecause we don't do that,
because we always go oh, itdepends, and I get the fact that
it depends, happens a lot.
But at the same time there'salso some absolutes like hey,
you know, when you talk on theradio, this, this is how you
want to, you know, this is howwe suggest.
You say certain things and youknow this is the normal.

(02:59:51):
NATO fanatics, exactly Right,perfect, and so like all of
those things, just giving themthe lingo, giving them the
nomenclature and the stuff thatwe have learned because we've
gone all the school of hardknocks ourselves, that that
needs to be culminated into astandards guide, and you know
whether it's a book or not.
It's what clubs introduce andtrain their technicians in.

(03:00:14):
So, yeah, all your newtechnicians come in.
They should all be, you know,given this, and it should all be
encouraged, and then ourmentors can help reinforce that
and you know, so forth and so on.
So you just build this likesystem that feeds better
technique.
You should get rid of less andless stupid extras and dumb you
know shit, you know generals andall of that other stuff,

(03:00:36):
because they're not like beingjerks back because people told
them, oh, you shouldn't do itthat way and you know, basically
made them feel that'll never,work and yeah, yeah, right,
exactly, they made them feelless than you know.
instead of like saying, you know, basically made them feel
better.
Yeah, right, exactly, they madethem feel less than you know.
Instead of like saying, youknow, hey, try this and see how
it goes.
You know kind of you know touchand go, but yeah, interesting
stuff.

(03:00:56):
I didn't think we would go down.
We did, but I didn't, you know,really have a clear shot of
where the end point was going tobe.
And thank you again for moretopics for the future.

Speaker 3 (03:01:07):
Well, listen, just for the record, I'm not against
the testing system, not sayingyou are, and I've been.
I need to, really, now that Ihopefully I'm going to be able
to have, I'm going to be able tobuckle down and get this thing
out of the way, because it justmakes me pissed off now that I
even have to take the test afterthis one.
But anyway, I makes me pissedoff now that I gotta even now

(03:01:29):
take the test after this one.
But anyway, I I think it isimportant to have tests.
I don't think you can not havea test, because then you don't
want any non-serious peoplegetting on the bands and
screwing it up, because there'salready enough of them on there
and I don't know.

Speaker 4 (03:01:51):
For what it's worth.
I understand we all sympathizewith you because we all went
through it.
We all know that's like I'llnever use this, but we just bit
our tongue and moved on.

Speaker 3 (03:02:00):
And see to me it's like life's too short to put
shit on there that you're nevergoing to use.
Like what's the point to putshit on there that you're never
going to use?
Like what's the point?
Like, if I decide that I wantto build radios and stuff, I
don't need the test, to pass atest to say, okay, now you're
allowed to do this.
If I really wanted to build myown radio, I'm going to do my

(03:02:21):
own research and study it andlearn it myself and have
references and books andwhatever I need to do it.
I don't need to memorize that.
And that's the problem.
The thing with these tests isit's like if you ask anyone,
just memorize it, go throughstudy and memorize it, because
that's the way everyone that Iknow is doing it.

Speaker 4 (03:02:40):
You've got to remember the ideology of
test-taking in general at leastfor the VE, stuff has not
changed in 100 years becausethat's what they decided when
they decided that, hey,everybody needed to have a
license to be in ham radio,Because it used to be that
anybody could do it wheneverthey wanted and people were
killing them with theirtransmitters because they were
crossing wires and overloadingthem and causing some major

(03:03:03):
damage.

Speaker 2 (03:03:03):
Dealing with some serious high voltage.

Speaker 4 (03:03:06):
Yeah.
And they said, ok, we need tocreate a standard.
And so that is basically whatthe whole test structure at
least the way I look at it hascome from, with the idea that,
yeah, it hasn't evolved to thesestandards.

Speaker 3 (03:03:18):
Could you get rid of those questions?
And let me take the test andsay extra with an asterisk will
not build a fucking.

Speaker 4 (03:03:24):
You can be general for the rest of your life with
an asterisk will not build afuck will not build the rest of
your life will not build every10 years.

Speaker 3 (03:03:30):
Well, not the fucking radio to blow himself up.

Speaker 4 (03:03:31):
You know you can check back in with the extra
crushing chest pool every fiveyears when it cycles through,
because your license will renewevery 10 years.
So you know you have to do ittwice.
But you know you might find aquestion pool you like.

Speaker 2 (03:03:41):
You never know so I just I just want to throw this
out there, right, um in in, inrelation to you know todd's
point about getting questionsthat you think are completely
irrelevant.
Now I I tried to learn thematerial and understand it

(03:04:02):
before I said, fuck this, I'mjust going to learn the
questions and learn the answers,okay.
But there did come a pointwhere I was like, okay, these
math formulas are, I'm nevergoing to need to fucking learn
these, right?
And then I built my firstantenna and I was trying to

(03:04:22):
figure out well, how long do Ineed to make my fucking
radiating element?
Guess what, right?
Right, you have to know.
Okay, I'm going to take thefrequency and I'm going to
divide it by 300.
For metric, I'm going to divideit by 468 or 469.

Speaker 3 (03:04:44):
But you really don't, because there's an app for that
.
Yeah, there is, there's an app.
If I want to know, I knowbecause, paul, you want to know
how it works.

Speaker 4 (03:04:55):
Todd is a Gen Z.

Speaker 3 (03:04:58):
I don't want to know, how to get to the answer.
I want to know what is theanswer for the question that I
have.
And to do that it's as simpleas getting on the freaking phone
and going oh, antenna app, boop, boop, boop.

Speaker 2 (03:05:11):
Type in what you want and voila and out of the three
of us, I'm the only one that istechnically a millennial.
And and fucking todd like dude,get out of your fucking
millennial shell, right, like Iknow you're not actually a
millennial, but get out of yourfucking millennial shell and
understand that, while you maynot understand the stuff you're

(03:05:36):
learning and you may notunderstand the need for it in
this moment, down the road asyou learn and as you grow in the
hobby because you're nevergoing to stop learning shit,
right, the stuff is going tocome back up.

Speaker 3 (03:05:56):
And my point is, when that comes up, that's the time
you can look up what the formulais to be able to have to do
those math questions.
Because look at Paul, noteveryone, 24-hour pono.

Speaker 4 (03:06:08):
We're just going to talk all electronics around Todd
and tell him to figure out whatapp he needs to pull up Listen
what I'm telling you is.

Speaker 3 (03:06:16):
and the other problem is is anything that I've read
and again, I am a very I am notgood in math, I am not good in
science or any of that stuff.
Even, paul, when you've gonethrough some of these questions
and you've read the questionsback to me, like the reason why
you're just like what the Icould tell you're reading this.

(03:06:38):
Like what the fuck is this allmean?
And, and that's what I'm saying, if you have to write something
that that a normal you know, ifyou have to write something
that a normal IQ person did notunderstand, then to me it needs
to be simplified and put innormal people's terms and

(03:06:58):
understanding Some of thoseexplanations I go through.
I read the questions.
I have no idea what it is.
I hit the question mark bar andI'm like what the fuck are they
talking about?
Like I, it's like readingChinese.
You haven't learned it yet.
But I haven't even learned.
I don't even know some of thethings they're talking about in
there.
Cause you haven't learned ityet.

Speaker 4 (03:07:20):
So, so let.
Let let's put a concreteexample here.

Speaker 1 (03:07:22):
There's no test that tells you how to get to that the
question is what is theinternal length of an 80 meter
antenna?

Speaker 3 (03:07:32):
There's not one question that tells you how to
do that, until you go to thatquestion and see the answer.

Speaker 4 (03:07:37):
Agreed.
Here's an example Paul foolingaround with Lennox.
He didn't take any testing, hedidn't go to any schooling, he
didn't get his license to learnLennox.
He's bashed his headconsistently over and over on
the wall trying to understand alanguage that makes very little
sense in terms of why tools likeawk and sed and you know using,

(03:07:59):
you know VI versus Emacs, likethose things, are like Greek to
him.
And until he started playingwith them and understanding them
, that's when the eye-openingexperience kind of comes into
play.

Speaker 3 (03:08:10):
It's the same thing with the tennis.
He didn't take a test.
If there was questions onLennox on the test, he'd be like
why the fuck do I need to knowthis?
Because he's choosing to get toknow that, because he wants to
use it for whatever he might bedoing, because I'm building a
hotspot for my radio Right.
But hotspots right, Paul,Hotspots are the new thing in

(03:08:35):
here.
Everyone's learning hotspots.
How many questions in the extra?

Speaker 2 (03:08:38):
There are questions.

Speaker 3 (03:08:40):
Really, which one there are questions.

Speaker 4 (03:08:42):
I saw new ones.

Speaker 3 (03:08:44):
That tell you how to work Linux.

Speaker 2 (03:08:48):
No, they ask you about hotspnox.
No, they ask you about hotspots.
They ask you about hot spotsand and how they function, and
but you want to know the basicsof it.

Speaker 3 (03:08:55):
Right, the basics.

Speaker 2 (03:08:56):
But you you're getting because you're going to
start somewhere and and the inch, the, the barrier to entry is
passing the fucking exam, sothat you can then further your
knowledge.
Okay, but you don't needotherwise any Joe shit the
fucking rag man would be likewell, I'm a fucking extra and I
could do extra things and andhave no understanding of any of

(03:09:20):
the basics.

Speaker 3 (03:09:21):
Right, but you don't need a test to take to learn how
to do a hotspot.
You could do a hotspot, even ifyou want to.

Speaker 2 (03:09:27):
I took and I passed the test so that I could
continue to learn and I couldcontinue my journey in learning
the, the, the next evolution ofthe process, right but if you
weren't, you're not going to seehot spot on a technician exam.
You're not going to see Smithchart shit on a technician exam,
because you, you have to gothrough the fucking process,

(03:09:51):
right.

Speaker 3 (03:09:51):
But what I'm saying is hotspots, though, paul.
A lot of people use hotspotsfor a lot of different things.
It's not just ham radio.
You don't need a fucking testor anything.
If I, if some kid, if Zach mykid wants to learn about
hotspots, test or anything.
If I, if some kid, if Zach mykid wants to learn about
hotspots, he's going on theinternet, he's getting some
information, watching a coupleof YouTube and he's going to

(03:10:12):
learn what hotspots are aboutand learn the whole thing.
He didn't need a test to say,well, you need to be
introduction, and that's whatI'm saying.
The new world that we're in, ifsomeone wants to learn something
, it's at your fingertips.
When I was a kid, I wanted tolearn something.
It's at your fingertips.
When I was a kid, I wanted tolearn something.
I got to look it up in a book.
When I was in college, I had tolook up articles.
They had this thing calledpsych d where you had to go in,

(03:10:35):
and when I got the, it used tobe like a we had to know the
dewey decimal system.

Speaker 2 (03:10:40):
Well right, which is completely irrelevant now.

Speaker 3 (03:10:42):
Yeah right, thank you right but when I was in college
you had to go to the library,you had to find the fricking
disc, shove it in, pull thearticle.
Now it's all online, right, soit's super easy.
My point is searching throughmicrofiche.
Yeah, I know Like kids thesedays have no idea.
It's so easy now.

Speaker 4 (03:11:02):
I don't have an 80 meter frequency for this one.

Speaker 3 (03:11:05):
But what I'm saying is why?
Why does some of the stuff onthe test have to be that
complicated on something that isnot?

Speaker 4 (03:11:17):
relevant to newer hands.
It goes back to what Paul wassaying earlier, where the two
other prior tests are built offof what's in the extra test.
So, like I'm looking at the subelements, the intention alone,
they referenced in the firstcouple of questions stuff that I
know I took on the general andthe technician side.
In terms of general, like howdo you deal with antennas,

(03:11:38):
what's uh, you know radiationresistance, what's gain, what's
beam width?
Those things were on technicianand general tests.
But then they get farther downthe line.
It's like, oh well, now how doyou deal with Yaggies?
How do you deal with reflectorsand feed point impedance?

Speaker 2 (03:11:52):
And how do you calculate what your gain is?

Speaker 4 (03:11:55):
Yeah, so those things are important tools, yeah, but
those aren't the questions.

Speaker 3 (03:12:01):
Those aren't the questions that I don't disagree
with.
There are questions and Paul,as I crack down, I'm going to be
jotting them down and I'm goingto send them to you, and the
thing there are questions onthere, like Paul wants them.

Speaker 2 (03:12:15):
Because I want to prove to him that, listen, I
don't understand MOSFETs either.
I mean, I understand what itdoes, right, but why?
And that's about it.

Speaker 3 (03:12:27):
But that question.
I was in the right ballpark.
I got the fucking stupidtriangle the wrong way to me.

Speaker 2 (03:12:32):
That is fucking useless for for anything, not
why I was in the right someday,because someday you may try to
repair your radio and you maypull up the wiring schematic for
it and you would look and youwould see that symbol and go, oh
, that symbol looks familiar.

(03:12:52):
I know I've seen it before, Idon't quite remember what it is,
but now I can look it upbecause I have some basic
fundamental knowledge, because Isaw it in the fucking test
here's the thing that's that'smy problem Real quick.

Speaker 3 (03:13:06):
That's my problem with the test that that question
.
I was in the ballpark, which Iam on most of them, cause I
understand the basics of it.
One tiny little triangle makesthe difference of right and
wrong.
Right, there are so manyquestions.
There's one question.
I forget what it is.
It's one fucking worddifference and to me that's just

(03:13:29):
a fucking trick, like have theright question, have a.
Three other fucking bullshitquestions have nothing to do
with it, and if the guy knowswhat he's talking or he's in the
ballpark, he knows, yeah, it'sthis.
My problem is I get down tolike is it this one or this one?
Was it reactance or resistance?
Uh, which one was it?

Speaker 4 (03:13:46):
uh, they're kind of, I mean, it's a, it's like really
, understood and yes, those aretrick questions and, I think,
based off of what they're doinglike, so I just posted a link in
in the chat.
This is and I'm glad you didactually it's a really good
because they actually have pdfsin here and doc files that you
can look at.
That they said hey, we'veadjusted these questions, we've

(03:14:09):
removed these questions and thisis what's going to go into the
next series of questions of thenext pool.

Speaker 2 (03:14:14):
So they are like they are talking about things that
are relevant to the hobby, likeamateur satellites, orbital, how
they deal with orbitalmechanics and how to deal with
frequencies and modes related tothose when, when these updates
get put out, I get an email andit says hey, if you have
generated tests, get rid of them, because the question pool has

(03:14:39):
changed, and so now you need togenerate new exams.
And so then I generate newexams.

Speaker 4 (03:14:45):
Yeah, because they answer a lot of the questions
you've run into.
Todd was like why do I needthis diagram?
Where's this coming from?
And they have noted that.
Yeah, these things need tochange because they're not
relevant to what we're doingtoday and for the next five
years, but they work of yourtime window, so a lot can change
in technology in five years.
Ham radio how many fricking.

Speaker 2 (03:15:04):
I have m17, you have p25, you have dmr, you have all
of those digital modes and thenwho knows what else someone else
is brewing in the backgroundbut if somebody isn't taking the
time to email them and say, hey, listen, I ran across this
question and this question isn'tright or it's not clear, or
whatever the fucking problem is,then they're not going to know.

(03:15:26):
You know it's.
It's no different than like Iwas.
I was taking a fucking my classa practice test, and no matter
how many times I took the test,there's one question, every
single answer, it would tell me.
And so I then got in touch withcarlos, who emailed the fucking

(03:15:50):
people that run the show, and itgot fixed.
But had I not said anything?
Right, there was, there wasother people that were here that
were also having the samefucking difficulty with that one
question.
But had I not taken the time tosay, hey, this question is

(03:16:11):
wrong and it's telling me thatI'm wrong, it wouldn't have ever
gotten fixed or it would havetaken a lot longer to get it
fixed.
And so it's on us to make surethat we take the time to stop
being a self centered fuckingpiece of shit and go hey, this
is fucked up, please fix it.

Speaker 4 (03:16:31):
Well so how many people do that though, so zero,
but so here's a piece oftechnology.
Well, I don't, I know you don't.
There's two people right nowthat I know that's a good.

Speaker 3 (03:16:41):
I mean, what's the?
I mean I honestly, I'll behonest with you.
I didn't even know I could doit.
Could call it in.

Speaker 4 (03:16:49):
So this is what I'm trying to get at the National
Conference for VoluntaryExaminers.
This is a board, this is agroup, this is a committee and
an organization.
They're just as responsible asARL or any of the other
organizations to communicate totheir constituents, to their
people to say, hey, we're outhere.
Communicate to theirconstituents, to their people to
say, hey, we're out here.

(03:17:09):
We you know how many peoplereally know that they even exist
and you know, are relevant anddoing something actively, unless
someone brings up a concern oryou know a rant or whatever, and
then they point them to thispage.
It's good information.
I don't think that they handleinformation gathering Well, like
there should be like a form upthere it says, hey, have you
gotten to a question in a pool?
Click this button and it allowsyou to go up and send them that

(03:17:31):
question and your feedback ofwhy you have an issue with it so
they have something to workfrom.
But they don't have that ontheir website.
They have an email like Paulposted, which is fine.

Speaker 3 (03:17:40):
It's just one more step, but I hate email as much
as anybody else, guys, even forthe app like ham studyorg or
what's the other one.
Um, why don't they?
I mean, that would be right,but that would be nice, you said
they do.

Speaker 4 (03:17:53):
They take suggestions and they take the community
feedback to some of the answersand they culminate all that is
it on the?

Speaker 3 (03:18:00):
is it on the app?
To say is it, but I don't.
Where is it on the app?

Speaker 4 (03:18:04):
because I there is a feedback section in the where
you start to add comments orwhatever.
Those are community submittedanswers or study relevant study
questions.
You can also submit thatquestion or add more to it and
it gets reviewed.
But I know Richard said thatthey share a lot of this
information within NCVC.

Speaker 3 (03:18:24):
All right, so I go to extra.
Where does it say I don't seeit what are you looking for?
Oh, the button well, oh yeah,so helping feedback on that.
So for me that means, like I it, my app's not working.

Speaker 4 (03:18:46):
Okay, well, I mean it's like.

Speaker 3 (03:18:49):
Todd hold on a sec but typically that kind of would
be like oh, what do you thinkof the app?
Or help my my, I can't log intomy app, or whatever.
Whatever I mean, you know whatI mean?
I didn't know that that waswhere you can, Yep is where you
can leave a review.

Speaker 4 (03:19:05):
But again a lot of people don't spend the extra
time when they run into theseproblems to see if there's a way
to solve it.
That's the next step.
It's like nobody has a.
This is the problem that I'veheard several times and I do
with my kids all the time.
They don't have a standard setof troubleshooting skills that
they can apply to anything inlife.
That's a problem, no matter howsimple.
That's a problem Like.
No matter how simple.
It's like how do you program amicrowave?

(03:19:26):
Well, I don't know.
Yeah, go to the internet.
You need to find learn.
But you know, don't just standthere and expect it to magically
appear in your brain Like AI isgoing to tell you which.
I think that's where we'regoing, but you know, hey, that's
another story for another time.
So we're we're, we're, we're atthe yeah, exactly, we're at the
three hour mark here and gottendeep and wide.

(03:19:47):
I mean we're ham radio, youknow crash course slash, ham
radio workbench territory.
So let's wrap this up.
But good stuff, guys.
I mean I'm I love the fact thatwe get deep and passionate
about this crap, because that'swhat I like to get into
sometimes.
But yeah, if you you know youwant to continue this
conversation, you can alwayshead over to our discord and

(03:20:07):
pick it up there, because we'dlove to hear you.
You know what things would youlike to change in the VE testing
process?
That could, you know, improvethe whole process.
No-transcript, paul's beensaying, and everybody in Todd as

(03:20:36):
well, that you know, hey, itstarts with you.
So if you want some change tohappen, it's got to start
somewhere.
So you know, be be the smallchange.
But, as always, we appreciateall you guys.
Thanks again for joining andhanging out in the Live Free and
Ham community.
As everyone says here over andover again, we always enjoy this
.
I love the support and thankyou guys every time to come hang

(03:20:57):
out with us, whether you're aPatreon member, first-time
subscriber, and, as always, ifyou want to connect with us
always head over to our Discordthat link is in all of our
description, show notes and onour website and join in on the
conversation.
Let us know what's going on.
Check out all the cool stuff.
We've been having an insulat ofpeople showing up.
We've been super excited to bepart of the community and we're
loving it and we're just, youknow, eating it up and, you know

(03:21:18):
, getting more people interested.
So come over, join theconversation and say hello and,
as always, please subscribe toour YouTube channels and our
podcast.
If you haven't been in one ofyour podcast players because of
live free and ham, we are outthere on all the pod players and
, as always, we'd love to hearfrom you guys.
Let us know what's going on,what's your thoughts, please.
If you've heard thisconversation, you're getting

(03:21:39):
fired up.
Stop this at the moment.
Dial the number 978-233-1142.
Leave us a voicemail, share itand we'll share it on our next
episode and we'll just keep thisconversation going because I
really think you know we want tohear from you guys.
We want to hear the.
You know the, the, the thoughtsof what you guys think that
we're talking about.
Are we off base?
Are we close?
You know where are we in thisother and we want to hear from

(03:22:03):
you guys.
So, as always, if you want tohelp support our show, patreon
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(03:22:24):
contact information and reachout to the hosts.
And, as always, thanks againfor listening and from all of us
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