E1644: Middle Tennessee Ham Co-op - UPGRADE Your Ham Radio Club!

Tonight I invite Jon and Tony onto the livestream to talk about their efforts with the Middle TN Ham Co-op, which is a group of Ham Radio Clubs that decided to start working together to promote Amateur Radio in their area. Bring your questions!

Checkout their website - https://hamcoop.com

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ham-radio-2-0--2042782/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Good evening, Ham Radio two point zero Sunday Night livestream. Guys,
I'm gonna get started here in just a minute. Thanks
for being here early. Should be a fun show tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
M all right.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
That shows seven o'clock in Texas and that is always
a good sign for a good time to do that,
right there, Good evening, Happy Sunday to everybody. And I
appreciate you guys being here, and we're gonna have a

(02:46):
fun show for you tonight. Something that something that I
learned about at the Huntsville Hamfest. And I'm gonna bring
on John and Tony here in just a minute. We're
gonna talk to They're gonna talk to us about a
Ham Radio club effort they're doing in Middle Tennessee, which
I thought was really fun. Something that I've actually that
has happened in North Texas before, but I'm not sure
if it's still active or not, so i might might

(03:08):
do a shout out to people in the North Texas area,
in the Terret County area here in a little bit.
Let me shout out first all the Ham Radio I'm
sorry all the YouTube channel members, folks in green text
in the chat, thank you for your support. W four WAG,
I see Ed AC three, I k and there, Jason Perez,
Tom W B seven O U, t Wayne W five

(03:32):
wn R. Let's see I see Jeff AA four BC
Cooley is in there. Good evening, Kooley. Good to have
you in the chat tonight. There's Ed again, Brian Hendricks,
thanks for being in there. I saw Prep Pam Paul
in there earlier, and uh Ham Radio Crusader was in
there twenty or thirty minutes before the show started. I

(03:52):
don't know if he's still hanging out or not, but
Kendall there you go. Thank you for thank you for
being here. Jak nine D another YouTube channel Ember, Thanks guys,
appreciate that. So what we're gonna do is go over here.
So those of you who have been following me for
some time, note that I started a subscription service for

(04:13):
mystery Boxes in May of this year. So three boxes
have gone out. It's every sixty days, so May, July
and September have gone out. A few orders have come
in since then. The official renewal will go next month
about just about a month from now, a little bit
less than a month from now and the first week
of November. And I've been working with some I actually

(04:35):
created a brand new email list. If you go to
hand Radio two dot com, forward slash email dash sign up,
you get my normal email list. If you're not subscribed
over there, please go subscribe to that. But I created
a brand new email list just for those people who
who were part of the subscription service, even those of
you who might have canceled, cause I am requesting and

(04:58):
I'm requesting feedback and I'm bouncing questions off of that group.
So if you didn't get a yeah, there you are, Freddie,
what's up, dude? So if you didn't get and if
you have a subscription to the Mystery Box service and
didn't get an invite, let me know, hit me up
in discord or something and I'll get you on that list.
But getting a lot of really good feedback from people saying, hey,
what about this? What about this? Because I've contacted over
a dozen companies off the top of my head, County

(05:24):
Colm vf Coms with the Faara Jay antennas in nine
sab tim his antennas. Of course, we've already done ed
Fong intendas. We'll probably do some more of those soon
ap quick con we've done those as well. Bio and
O batteries County Colm, I didn't say them, did I?
Who else? Red odo b Tech? Gosh, I've got a

(05:47):
list of them. I've got a spreadsheet of them, and
a lot of names in there right in the rain.
A lot of names in there you guys should recognize.
So it's gonna be fun to see how those play
out in future boxes. So thanks, thank you for the
support of the mystery boxes. Feedback is of course welcomed,
and I appreciate. If you go up here to categories
and click on mystery Boxes, you can see the three

(06:09):
subscriptions there. I'm actually working on maybe a fourth tier,
a higher, more expensive tier. It's got some even extra
stuff in it, but you know, one thing at a time.
I don't want to overburden myself right now. But that's
where the mystery boxes are. There's a few of a
few of these twenty five dollars one offs in here
as well right now too, So thank you, thank you
to those who support that. Again, after this live stream ends,

(06:31):
we're gonna go live on my unplug channel for the
next installment of the RV base Camp video podcast that
I started a few months ago. Didn't do one of
these last month because I was busy with the thirty
Days of Ham Radio in September. So the guys who
joined me on that, I asked them to wait a
month and they said, yeah, cool, and should have. I
think most everyone on tonight who usually joins us there,

(06:53):
So I'll share a link to that towards the end
of the live stream tonight as well. So, but that's
the unplug channel right there. I'll put that link in
the check and elks Excelsior level. I had named it
Ultra Level forty five, but I don't know. I haven't.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
I haven't.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
I'm not married to that. So whatever we'll, we'll, we'll
figure out something to call it. So all right, let's uh,
let's just let's stop me babbling. I don't like to
babble too much. We haven't and and Frank hadn't. Frank
hadn't joined us yet. I know he live streamed a
little bit ago, but he's not in the waiting room,
so I assume he's gonna be on here tonight, but
we'll see. Let's bring on Tony and John, guys. Good evening.

(07:33):
How are you guys tonight? Oh man, I'm hanging in there.
So I'm enjoying get back to live streaming on a
regular basis. Took the whole month of September off, which
was nice. It was nice because I've been live streaming
on Sunday night for like six years, six and a half,
and so it's nice to have a few nights off.
But I'm I'm glad to be back because this is fun.
I really enjoyed these live streams. So uh so, Tony

(07:55):
and John are part of the Middle Tennessee co Op,
which I'm going to get them to explain that to
what that is exactly here in a minute. Where's my screen? Oh,
they're just right there, and this is the website here,
Middle Tennessee co Op connecting communities through amateur radio, which
is always a fun thing. And then I just learned
about shortly before we went live that they have a

(08:17):
podcast that they've started. Let me move that down there
called Whiskey Whiskey Kilo. It is not w w K,
it's actually Whiskey Whiskey Kilo. So to me, that means
you get two kilos of whiskey. I don't know if
you guys are talking about you got it sounds like
a clubhouse thing.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
I don't know, but to have to show up and
find out. Right, Well, let's watch and find out.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Okay, good, I think we're on a couple of bottles
of whiskey if they watch it, so.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
Well, I mean, that's it wouldn't be the first time
that's happened on a M radio livestream. I guarantee it.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
So.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
But yeah, so I'll share the the link to that channel.
You guys can go check that out. You guys go.
Uh you do a live stream once a month, is
that correct?

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah? Right now, we're just doing the last Sunday of
every month. We're just trying to We've done two episodes
so far. It's uh, it's a work in progress.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
We'll say so good good, Okay, Well, let me get
the elephant in the room out of the way. Frank,
what's going on? Man? What is up?

Speaker 4 (09:18):
Ben just had an awesome live stream with l getting
to know her and it's going on in a channel,
and that's that's mostly it. Other than you know, I
could I could shut out some pint glasses.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Remind me. We will talk about that at the end.
Because I forgot last time. That's my that's my fault.
I forgot. I talked about my mystery boxes here a
minute ago. But yeah, well we'll talk about the pint
glasses at the end. Franks got some new pint glasses
on the same website where the mystery boxes are. So
but yeah, I want to give the floor to uh,
to John and and Tony and we'll go from there.
So Frank's gonna watch the chat for any questions and UH,

(09:55):
once again, we appreciate you guys being here. Okay, so
tell me exactly, tell us exactly what a ham co
op is. I already know this, but I want you
to tell it from my audience. So tell us what
a ham co op is. Tell us how you came
up with this idea, and how long you've been You
said you have six clubs involved, now I believe was
the number. Yeah, and how long have you been doing this?
So go ahead, the floor's yours, and.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
So our seventh club hopefully signed the first of the year.
And really this started at the beginning of twenty twenty five.
Tony and I both were elected president of the radio
clubs that we belonged to, and we actually belonged to
each other's clubs, which is kind of the whole point
behind the co op and we'll get into that. But

(10:37):
I was elected the president of the Sumner County Club
and then Tony was elected president of the Nashville Amateur
Radio Club. And it really kind of started for a
couple of reasons. When Tony's going to jump in here
and elaborate too, I'm sure, but I'll be honest with you,
some of it was just out of laziness. Well, okay,

(10:59):
we needed to have some more time to do Ham stuff,
and knew that trying to run Ham club and creating
content programs for our members was going to be somewhat
time consuming.

Speaker 5 (11:11):
And Tony and I.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
Being really good friends and talking probably daily multiple times
a day, we started talking about, all right, well, what
are we going to do.

Speaker 5 (11:18):
What's our programs going to look like for our club?

Speaker 3 (11:20):
What do we want our clubs to do, What do
we want our clubs our clubs to be, How do
we want to solve some issues that we may have
with with our club culture?

Speaker 2 (11:30):
And also and also just how to bolster the Ham
community in general, so getting more people involved, getting more
getting more resources to more people, and putting, uh, putting
the resources in front of a lot of people, so
you know, if if you were just a member of
Sunray County and no other club you might know, you
might not have any idea what's going on at the

(11:51):
Nashville Club or the Wilson County Club or any of
the other clubs that are members. So we uh. One
of the first things we did was get a calendar together,
and on that calendar we have every event, every net,
every meeting for all the clubs on there, and you
can take your mouse, hover over anything and it'll give

(12:12):
you all the information about it. If it's a net,
it'll give you the frequency, the pl tone, everything of
that nature. If it's an event, it'll give you the
address and things of that nature. Same thing with the
club meetings and everything. So it just puts a calendar
of everybody's stuff in Middle Tennessee in one spot. So
if you're a ham and you've got nothing going on

(12:33):
one day, you can pull that calendar up. And that
calendar is on our website. It's on the Nashville website,
the Summer County website, all the all the club members,
all the member clubs websites. It's on there, so anybody
can pull something up and find out what's going on
in and around Middle Tennessee.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
So one of the things too, Jason, was like, first
of all, we had some functions that we wanted to fill.
With Tony's talking about it's kind of some of the
by products behind how we got there. But one of
the functions that we were trying to accomplish was we
wanted to help share our resources with each other. First,
you know, if I had a presenter a good topic

(13:10):
and you know, I thought that, you know, maybe his
group might be interested, his club might be interested, we.

Speaker 5 (13:16):
Could share that topic.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
So then we kind of started thinking about, well, what
if we could do this with multiple clubs. You know,
if I live it's kind of funny I'm in the
Sumner County Club, but I actually live in Robertson County,
which is basically an adjoining county. And the idea was
is that, well, why can't we share resources, whether those

(13:40):
resources be presenters, topics, events, And then we started thinking
about it from a member standpoint. We had a lot
of you know, the Nashville metro area has a lot
of clubs and a lot of members that will travel,
you know, to those different counties to participate in events
or even club meetings. So then we started looking at

(14:01):
that and going, we should just try to form a
big kind of colomorate, a conglomerate or a co op
where we could share members, events, resources.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
And one of the one of the things I had
came up with, I had an event that was coming up.
John was doing his Sunday Night net and he does
it on the linked repeter system for Sunray County. But
it was a Nashville club event and I wasn't sure
because I didn't talk to him about it beforehand, of
whether I could say something about it. So that was
you know, it's like I wanted to make sure that

(14:36):
we could all share information, and you know, I wasn't
stepping on anybody's toes because I was talking about a
Nashville event on a Sunner County, you know, club repeater.
So it's kind of one of those things. And it's just,
like I said, just sharing the information and sharing resources,
and like John said, just laziness, because you know, it's
hard to feel it's only twelve meetings a year, but

(14:56):
it's hard to find somebody to get in there and
do a presentation for every every month. Then you know,
be have something that's interesting and everybody's you know, wants
to come and come out to the club and check out.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
So we kind of started looking at it from a
standpoint when when and we wrote an agreement which we
provide to all the clubs before they agree to participate.
And one of the things I did was is I
used you know, wonderful chet GBT to draft me up
a mutual late agreement, and I said, all right, now

(15:29):
take this agreement, and I want you to make it
to a more social event oriented agreement. So think about
a mutual late agreement between agencies and now take it
and go all right, these agencies are Ham clubs and
the events and things that are happening are Ham events there.
They're you know, social things. And the real reason why

(15:50):
we did it, aside from being lazy and wanting to
share content, was we wanted to break down the silos,
the walls between clubs that they have. You know, you
have the sad Ham people have bad experiences.

Speaker 5 (16:04):
You know, the whole thing with clubs.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
Yeah, so we wanted to create a social friendly environment
for clubs to share content and members and events and
resources with each other's clubs, purposely to make it easier
and more enjoyable for the hobby, but also the other most,
probably the most important part of it was we get

(16:28):
to know our neighbors. If there's a disaster. In the
Middle Tennessee area, we've been had a lot of tornadoes.
The tornado Alley has moved, you know, our way, it's
moved to the east, and we now have the ability
to know if something happens in Wilson County and it's
a bad event, we know who to talk to there.

(16:49):
We know who the players are, we know somewhat how
their systems work, and we could integrate easier with them
in the event of an area's emergency or something of
that matter. So the number one focus was a social thing,
but the big byproduct and advantage behind it is breaking
down those barriers and being able to understand who the

(17:11):
players are in our adjoining counties. So if there's an emergency,
we're all there for each other.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
It's good good. We had a thing like that in
North Texas. This was pre COVID, and I don't know
if they've done it again since then. It's possible they
have and I just missed it. But there are in
between Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas is an area that
we call mid Cities, which is where I'm out kind
of right next to kind of the cities surrounding DFW Airport,

(17:40):
which is about smacked down in the middle between Dallas
and Fort Worth, and about once a quarter we would
get together as a joint Tarrant I mean, I don't
think they I don't remember if they called it Tarrant
County because Johnson County and Wise County, and.

Speaker 4 (17:56):
I think it was just the joints club meeting.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Joint. It was a joint club meeting, and there was
probably eight or ten or twelve clubs that would show
up to that, yeah, every time, and it was just
a like a like they would give the mic to
each club president or you know, the president could delegate
it if they wanted to, and they'd just say, this
is what's going on in our club this month or
this quarter or whatever, you know, and they would just
kind of share information across the board and do stuff

(18:23):
like that. In fact, that was the first time. Now
my friend Randy wa zero D he announced he made
an announcement on the first one of those that I
ever went to, and he said he had announced the
ad expedition they have done to Costa Rica, a couple
of times, and I went up to him after that,
and I knew Randy. I know him much better now,

(18:44):
but I knew him. I'd met him back then, and
I was like, man, I would love to go to
Costa Rica. And now I've been like four times. So
but that was how I found out about that whole
Costa Rica the expedition was because he was there announcing
it to that big group of people, and and I've
I love, this is just a fantastic time to do that.
But I think that's a very good thing for clubs
in the area, you know, surrounding areas of one another,

(19:06):
to just keep the lines of communication. We're all about communicators,
communications and ham radio, but sometimes we suck at communications.
I also a fun thing to talk about.

Speaker 4 (19:17):
I also like they took it onto the next tier
there for emergency situations and creating their own interoperability communication plan. Yes,
that blew me out away. I was like, wait, what, Yeah,
that's that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
Absolutely yeah. So do you guys have you guys have
a couple of nets, you said, But are any of them,
like all of the all of the co op clubs
in one net? I mean, everybody presumably presumably most clubs
have their own net, right, Yeah, But and.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
That currently that's kind of where we're at is and
I think at some point we probably will.

Speaker 5 (19:55):
One of the things that we've been talking about.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
As a matter of fact, we just had our first
big event as a part of the co op yesterday
at a park here in my hometown of Greenbrier. It
was called the Middle Tennessee Ham co Op Picnic, and
it was very educationally centered. We had several sessions, classes,

(20:18):
we had tailgate stuff, we had a bunch of different
things kind of happening. But what we wanted to do
is try to get everyone together at least once a
year to get all the clubs in an environment where
we can kind of all kind of enjoy hanging out
and you know, do something, give something back to the

(20:39):
co op and each other's clubs.

Speaker 5 (20:41):
And this was what we did yesterday, and.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
It kind of opened up an opportunity for all of
the repeater trustees, the club officers to all start kind
of talking. And because of us getting together, we've determined that,
you know, after the first of the year, all the
trustees for all the repeater systems within our co op,
we're all going to get together and talk about what

(21:07):
that real emergency plan would be and what we would
need to do in order to get all of those
repeater systems linked together in the event of an emergency,
not permanently, but just in the event of an emergency. So,
you know, the Sumner County County system County, the Sumner
County system is a six node repeater system. I think

(21:31):
it's six sites or at least six different frequencies, and
we cover a good part of the Nashville metro area,
even though that we're just one single county and then
there's you know, a lot of the other All of
the other counties have a repeater of some sort, So
getting them all to kind of connect would would be

(21:52):
great in the event of you know, emergency, disaster or
some some problem.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, so I was going to talk about yesterday. So yesterday,
I think was a very resounding, uh great day. We
had a great participation. We raised some money for the
Historical Society through the food vendor, and I think a
lot of information was passed out and a lot of
people had a great time, and it was it was

(22:19):
a it was a good time, and uh, I didn't
really know what to expect going into it, and when
John and I first started talking about it, I was like,
you know, it might be four or five of us
that show up, and uh, I think we had probably
one hundred or so show up yesterday, So it was
a those are really good. And we had we had
representatives from all the different clubs, from all the clubs
in the co op, included and including some club, the

(22:42):
newest club that probably going to bring in in January.
We had some members from their club as well. So
it was it was a good It was a good day.
It was a very good day. I my presentation didn't
go so well, my satellite presentation. Uh yeah, I don't
know what happened, but we did not make any contacts.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
But that's okay, that's okay, Yeah, that happens sometimes, Yes
they do. So what does it take for a club
to join the co op?

Speaker 5 (23:09):
Then?

Speaker 3 (23:09):
Well, I think, you know, the first idea was when
when we started, we were just like Tony and I
really kind of just thought the co Op, or at least
I just thought, I don't know about Tony, but I
just thought it would be our our three counties. It
would be Davidson County, Robertson County and Sumner County and

(23:30):
they're like a cluster of three all together. And I
thought that's really kind of all it would be. And
we started talking about things and kind of work got out,
and Tony and I started to going to some other
club meetings, you know, we started going to Wilson County
and we started going to the Stones River Club meeting
and and it just ended up being there seemed to

(23:56):
be more interest, so we ended up adding a few
more clubs. And I didn't think I really didn't think
it would it would grow as fast as it has.
I really didn't want it to grow as fast as
it has, just because it's you know, it becomes a
whole other thing to manage and deal with.

Speaker 5 (24:17):
So we've got a good approach on it.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
We have.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
We have a communications liaison that's appointed by the club
president for each club, and they're responsible to update the
Google calendar. It's all that basically is, it's a Google
calendar and they have edit rights to add their information.
They follow the same platform and or it's just a
template of all the other events that are on the calendar.

(24:42):
And we kind of encourage these clubs to help Cross
promote the events on the calendar. You know, my net
this evening is an informational net basically for our club,
and I have a whole probably a five to ten
minute section in my net where I read all of
the nets, all of the events that happen throughout the

(25:04):
course of the upcoming week. So you know, we talk
about the Bible net, this is what frequency it's on,
all that stuff, and then we talk about our areas
nets for all of the clubs give all the frequencies,
and we'd like to think that those other clubs within
the co op are doing the same for us, because
that's what we want to do. We want to help
promote the hobby and help promote their events and when

(25:29):
they need people to participate in an area's event, if
they're doing a parade or they're doing some community outreach
or support where you know, they're using their Areas group
to do that. We'd like to be able to rely
on our members of the co op to help staff
those events because, as you know, these clubs tend to
kind of ebb and flow, and it makes it easier

(25:53):
to have a larger pool of people to populate the
events and to have con tent and to have people
who are interested.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
I've seen I've noticed since we started the co op
that participation from other clubs, like outside of our club,
when we have an event, the participation from people outside
of our clubs went up skyrocketed. Whereas before we had
a pool of people to pool from and that was
about it, and now we get this pool is a

(26:24):
lot bigger to pool from. So like, for instance, this
weekend we have the Gravel Revival. It's a bike ride
that the Nashville Club does the communications for and we've
got several from each of the other clubs that are
that are coming in that probably, like I said, would
not have even known about this otherwise. So it's been
it's been very good in that aspect.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
And like the Gravel Revival is a great example. I
pitched that to our club on the net and in
our meeting last week as an opportunity to sharpen their
area skills, to sharpen their their tools to you know,
be able to have an opportunityy to you know, go
out and play a little bit of radio and and
give back a little bit to the community. And one

(27:07):
of the goals that I you know, was talking about
with our club this this month was you know, the
goal for next year is for our ARES group to
be able to support other areas.

Speaker 5 (27:17):
Groups next year. That's just more training opportunities. That's the
one big thing.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
If you're and I'm not a huge ARIS guy, I'm
more of an HF d X guy anyways, but I
support my club and I support the the ARIS effort
that our club has. And you know, these opportunities are
are what keeps people interested in the hobby. So if
we can give those opportunities to other people, then they

(27:45):
have the ability to learn more, develop their skills, more participate,
more enjoy the hobby more. So that's that's what it's about.
It's about sharing, sharing the hobby.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Absolute and if you get people to participate, they're gonna
enjoy it more and they're gonna you know, doing things
like this this event this weekend. Will you know, like
you said, sharpen your skills and you know, when you
if there is an emergency, you will know how to
program your radio and you know it won't be a last
second kind of thing. So I think it's I think
it's a win win for everybody.

Speaker 4 (28:18):
That's a major thing because a lot of people think, Oh,
I'm an emergency, I'm gonna use this radio, but you
need to know how to use it. Which using it
on the repeaters during the next excellent way to do it.
Know how to program it sometimes by the face play.
And the third thing that people don't think of it
develop the relationship with the guy on the other side
of the radio. Well, he will bring you some water

(28:38):
if you need water.

Speaker 5 (28:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Yeah, Well, there's a lot of things, a lot of
things people don't realize that we should do or have
to do. When we have an areas thing. You know,
you've you've got ICs, two O fives that need to
be filled out. You know, you have all those things
that you know are beneficial and will help people, you know,
with being able to filter into a disaster event and

(29:04):
be able to you know, figure out what what the
plan is and how to you know, be a benefit
and not be a you know, a burden.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah. Well, I really I really respect you guys for
what you're doing here. I think this is an awesome
effort and it sounds like it's working. It sounds like
there's a lot of interest from the clubs around you.
You said it was growing faster than you have anticipated
it too, so and you know, to add another club
here in a couple of months, it sounds like. So
it's just a great it's a great thing. I wish

(29:35):
more people would do that. Yeah, Tom in the chat,
he says, we have two clubs in Yuma and the
next club is sixty miles away. So it's probably not
possible to do everywhere, obviously if you don't have clubs
that are that close together. But there's clubs on top
of clubs here in the North Texas area, so something
like that up here would be a welcome change. And
again they've done something like that similar to that. It's

(29:58):
not like a.

Speaker 4 (30:00):
Interrupt But yeah, he died, like you.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
Said, But they do that that that meeting did. But
they do was it once a month or was it
once a quarter? They would on top of the meeting,
they would do a they would get on and do
a an EOC net where every EOC.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
Was a once a month thing. For yeah, every county
city inside Tarrent County.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
Was a county thing part of races.

Speaker 4 (30:28):
The Terror County Races group. Any EOC but participated. It
was a monthly net where they got on and they
hit every repeater listed Uh, and they went down the
list and hit every city, so that you know your
EOC can hit this repeater, that repeater, yeah, repeater.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
You can. You can see who you can hear and
who you can't hear, and you know what kind of
And I think they I think they did part of
it on Simplex if I'm not mistaken, and uh, a
little bit was, yes, yeah, and it was. But it's
good to know those things. It's good to know, well,
I'm at the EOC and I can hear all these
other eocs, and you know, if there's a net control
e O see, then you can you know who you

(31:05):
can relay to and from, and it's a it's a
good good thing to test that every now and then.

Speaker 4 (31:10):
Is Herst still doing their monthly Simplex net?

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Last I knew they were. I haven't checked into a
Hurst net a long time because it's at seven o'clock
or seventh Sunday nights, and I'm a little busy on
Sunday nights.

Speaker 4 (31:25):
But I can't tell. I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
I've thought about I've thought about trying to, like dude,
like say, let's just chill and listen to the radio.
Tonight and freaking uh do a check into the net
because they have an all Star system on that hearst
repeater and we could get on here, Frank and we
could say, okay, guys, connect to this all Star hub
and then we just totally destroy their all Star thinking

(31:50):
of me, like, what do you guys do? Who is this?
What's going on?

Speaker 3 (31:53):
So it's funny, funny you mentioned and one of the
things I've been talking about with Tony and we haven't
talked about it lately.

Speaker 5 (31:59):
Was was doing a net takeover.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
So yeah, like, you know, we all know when everyone's
nets are, and you know what we need to try
to do is we need to try to go all right,
you know, this month or this week, rather everyone from Nashville,
let's let's jump into Sumner's net or vice versa. Let's
let's get everyone on the Nashville net and let's get
their net numbers up, you know, really high. One week

(32:23):
net controller's head is gonna you know, so you know, the.

Speaker 5 (32:27):
Fun stuff like that. That's kind of like camaraderie.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
You have fun, you're you're there to support the other club,
and that's really what you know, that's part of what
we're trying to do and and I think the co
op is is something that's that's an important part I
think of what Tony and I are trying to do
at a bigger scale. You know, each of us are

(32:51):
trying to or we have been at least making some
cultural changes within our clubs. You know, clubs can get
stagnant and you get the same group of people that
end up as you know, officers, whether it be they
want to do it or there's no one else to
do it, or not.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
Even not even just officers, you get the same group
of people that show up member to participate in whatever
it is you got. You know, I got close to
one hundred members in my club and probably twenty five
to thirty is the core group that's always there for
every event.

Speaker 5 (33:26):
Yeah, and we have and every club has its own
core ate yep.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
And if you're trying to expand that core group and
bring other people in, that's that's a lot of it.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
So, you know, trying to change the the thought process,
the approach that the club officers and the way clubs
run as another real integral important part of what I
think has been a has been a problem for a
lot of clubs.

Speaker 5 (33:54):
In this hobby.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
So you know, we've we've taken a different approach. We've
we've done some things differently on a on.

Speaker 5 (34:01):
A club level.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
We've we've tried to, you know, listen to feedback from
our members.

Speaker 5 (34:09):
And one of the.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
Things that we we really try to not do is
say no.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (34:15):
It's very easy for.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
Club members to or club officers for that matter, to
say no, you know, and it could be something simple as, oh, hey,
I want to do a talk on you know, all star,
I want to you know, I want to have a
presentation on this, or I want to learn about that.
And you know, I consider myself and I don't know
if you've you've noticed or not, but I'm my email

(34:39):
signature for my club email.

Speaker 5 (34:41):
I say that I'm a a.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
Facilitator. I'm a club facilitator. I'm not I am the president,
but I am the club facilitator. And my goal is
to facilitate people, give them the ability to teach a
class on a subject that they're passionate about.

Speaker 5 (35:01):
They don't have to know everything about it.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
And that's one of the things I learned from John.
So there's a lot of things that I know a
little bit about, very little that I know a lot about.
And he convinced me that I, could, you know, teach
a class on something as long as I knew something
about it, could you know, get in there with another
group of people, like minded people and just run with it.
And I've done a couple of classes for him, and yeah,

(35:24):
it was definitely not subject matters that I was an
expert on, but I had a little bit of information.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
But you learned more, right, you learn more about trying
to do it, And that's part of it, you know,
not only you know, if I'm facilitating Tony to be
a speaker for a particular subject, first of all, I'm
getting all of the people in the club the opportunity
to learn about that, but I'm also motivating Tony to
learn that as well, and then he becomes a subject

(35:51):
matter expert, or at least he sharpens his skills.

Speaker 5 (35:54):
A bit in that particular subject.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
So, you know, if you take that entire approach and
you apply it to the hobby itself and how clubs work,
that goes a long way. And it has in my opinion,
and of course I'm biased because I'm the president, but
in my opinion, it's really re energized to our club.
You know, it's gotten younger people more involved in doing things.

(36:20):
The older members of the club. It's gotten them re energized,
it keeps them engaged. It gives them opportunities to share
their knowledge and help share the hobby. So I think
that's a real important part.

Speaker 5 (36:33):
And I've seen it.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
I've seen it happen with clubs where you know, you
can tell they're dying and if you don't have that
dynamic between those older people and younger people, and you
don't have those First of all, the older people have
to have the right mindset. They have to be willing
to let the younger people do their turn.

Speaker 5 (36:56):
Right. These we've got people.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
We've got our trustee has been in our club since
it was formed in nineteen seventy two.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
Uh huh.

Speaker 5 (37:03):
One of the only original members.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
There's a few of them left, but he's one of
the only original members that's still very active. And you know,
by us doing what we're doing and with.

Speaker 5 (37:13):
Him having the the the ability to kind of accept that,
you know, this is this is what needs to happen.
This is a good thing for the club.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
The you know, the want to grow the club and
continue it and see it happen.

Speaker 5 (37:33):
It helps foster that.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
That dynamic between the younger members and the and the
older members, and that keeps things moving and it keeps
people coming back.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
And one of the things, one of the things that
John implemented this year in Summer County was special interest groups.
So anytime anybody brought up any type whether win link
or APRS or whatever, CW whatever, you know, he will
set up a special interest group and we will do
zoom calls and or actually it's zoom calls.

Speaker 5 (38:04):
It's workspace, Google work Workspace.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
Google Workspace, and people can get in there and work
together and work out our issues and learn with each other.
And it's, like I said, it's one of those things
where nobody's an expert. So we all come in there
with just a little bit of information and combine it together.
And then by the time we're done, you know, some
of these go on for two or three weeks. Some
of them just go on for a couple of days,
and then everybody's got you know, a little bit better knowledge,

(38:29):
and if it's if it's something that more people want,
we just continue it. It just continues on. So that's
something that I think was really good, a really good
thing that he implemented this year in Summer County and
it's it's it's been very, very very good thing.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
Our club meetings basically consist of our business meeting, which
I try to do as quick as possible, but I
do try to keep it very professional, keep track of everything.

Speaker 5 (38:52):
We did.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
Get our five O one C three this year, I
change bylaws, do all that stuff. I did all that
under my watch this year.

Speaker 5 (38:59):
It was a big, a big lift the beginning of
the year.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
I got lucky the former president got all that done
for me, so.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
We were able to get all that stuff done. So
we want to make sure our business meeting is good
and taken care of.

Speaker 5 (39:13):
But we try to get that done.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
And then what we try to do is do a
thirty minute program, okay, and what that really means is
a fifteen minute presentation just to see if there's interest
in a topic. So win link or a PRS or
mesh Tastic or whatever, right, we do a quick fifteen
minute presentation and sometimes it's videos and we rely on

(39:37):
you guys on YouTube to do these great videos and
we'll throw a couple of those out there and then
see if there's interest. And then after we watch the
video and we discuss it and ask some questions. We go,
all right, who's interested in a special interest group? And
we go, all right, if you're interested, we're going to
set up a time. We'll do a Google Meet every

(39:57):
day for the next you know, three days or two
days a week for the next you know, four weeks.
And everyone gets on Google Workspace, which is great, and
they can be at home in front of their you know, computer,
at their radio, being able to do things hands on
and participate in a in a live you know, video chat,

(40:20):
and if there's an issue, they can share their screen,
we can look at settings, we can talk about things.
And this was all something that came to us from
a club member who is a transplant from New York
who came to our club and he used to do
this with his club up in New York. And it
was like, it's huge.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
And the way I do is John's meeting is the
second Thursday of the month, so when he when he
has something good, I just transposed that into my meeting
on the third Thursday. Yeah. Yeah, I use him as
the guinea pig if you will. Yeah, people show interest,
then I'm like, okay, maybe I can start up some
interests over here on that.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
So we we've done some things on a smaller local level.
Tony's been great about trying to keep his club active.
He's Tony's got a great uh you know, he is
so lucky that he's he's coming to be the president
of the oldest amateur radio club in the state of Tennessee,
which is obviously Nashville Amateur Radio Club. And they were

(41:15):
very lucky to have They have their own house that
the city lets them use.

Speaker 5 (41:21):
The county actually right, it's county.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
It's the Parks Department, Parks the city Parks Apartment.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
So they give them a house. And they have this
three bedroom house with a garage walk out kind of
basement garage, and they have all their stuff in there.
They've got rooms set up for different they've got an
HF room, they've got a UHF VHF, and they have
their own meeting space. And Tony one of his goals

(41:47):
was to make sure that they could try to get
more people involved in utilizing the clubhouse.

Speaker 5 (41:53):
You know, you got new.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Members before I was before I was a president, it
was literally open about three hours a month, just before
the club meeting and then after the club meeting. So
one of the things I've tried to do is kind
of take his special interest stuff and open up the
clubhouse on weekends and Saturdays and have people come in.
We've had We've had the boy Scouts come in and
help them with with their merit badge. We've had contests

(42:18):
weekend where we had brought people in, let them get
on the radio, you know, people that aren't licensed at all.
Let them get on the radio and try it out
and try to get you know, get them hooked on it.
And then people that are just technicians come in and
be able to get on HF. So we've we've I've
done that, not as much as I would like. Unfortunately
my schedule doesn't permit it all the time, but as
much as I can. I have at least opened it

(42:39):
up a few more times throughout the year and got
some more people in there and more participation.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
Good.

Speaker 5 (42:48):
I just saw a comment in the chat. I don't
know if Tony if you're watching the chat or not,
but someone said, ask John about his bucket.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah, yeah, Beaky said that.

Speaker 4 (42:58):
I kind of hip that one because bigger it was
an inside jet.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
I thought it was. Yeah, it sounds like an inside thing.
Go ahead if you want to talk about that, John,
go ahead.

Speaker 5 (43:07):
Oh Man. So you know, one of the things that
we wanted to.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
Do for our club was we had a special interest
group for battery boxes. Okay, people wanted to build battery boxes.
And I was like, all right, that's a great idea.
And so Tony and I were good friends. We talk
all the time. We're you know, Tony's got like five
battery boxes that he's built. He's got some crazy stuff.
He's got the one that's so big you can't even
lift it. You got to roll it around.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
And we were talking to three thousand inmurders. I can
pretty much have the house on it if need be awesome.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
So Tony actually came up with the idea. Tony came
up with the idea instead of using a box, to
use a bucket, a five gallon bucket.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
HM.

Speaker 3 (43:51):
So I built a five gallon bucket a battery bucket,
and uh, I think it works great. I can fit
one hundred and half hour mini you know LiPo battery
in it, and I can put in you know, I've
got a distribution block, and I've got you know, solar
charger and all the stuff that you would need, switches, meter,

(44:13):
all that stuff.

Speaker 5 (44:14):
And the guys give.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
Me a hard time about my bucket, and it's out
of jealousy.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
It sounds like it, and they haunds like it's jealous.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
They say some other things about my bucket, and I'm
not going to say what it is because.

Speaker 4 (44:27):
But you know what appropriate No what you take the
lid of that bucket, put a nice two inch pad
foam on top, and then you know, glue it down.
Battery bucket becomes your seat.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
That's right, that's right for your station.

Speaker 4 (44:43):
So I think that's genius.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
And it's during the winter it could warm up and
keep your butt right.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
Yeah, that's the story of the bucket for they continually
give me a hard time about this bucket. That was
actually Tony's idea.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Which I think is great. It was my idea and
he's the one who gets all the crap over it.

Speaker 4 (45:04):
I have a plan. I have a plan that's similar
to that. I might tell you all after the street.
I'm not gonna say it on the air because I
want him do a video out of it.

Speaker 5 (45:14):
Yeah, the five gallon bucket works good.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
Good to know. Yeah, I've got all the parts to
build one out of a Pelican. Nothing, it's not a Pelican,
but it's like the Harbor freight case. Like Mike Cadamerdie,
he's got a bunch of them that he builds out
of those cases. And I've got all the parts to
do one. I just got to sit down and do
it one day in your spare time, in my spare time. Yeah, yeah,
I know that feeling. I know that feeling. I say

(45:39):
that though I say that I don't have any spare time.
And I really actually sat down about six months ago
and did the math on my days, and I came
up with about forty five hours a week that I
had nothing going on. And I'm not really sure what
I'm doing in that time.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
For you, I'm definitely not getting forty five hours worth
of stuff done in a week. I can assure you of.

Speaker 4 (45:56):
That, right, is that what you're sitting at the office
for forty hours we're supposed to be working.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
Unfortunately, I don't get to set at an office. My
office is mobile, so I drive. I drive for FedEx,
so I ride around Nashville all day in traffic.

Speaker 4 (46:10):
So you no what I knew A FedEx driver that
put a mag mountain top of that truck every day
he went in.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Yeah, I have I have a I have a twenty
meter hamstick on there and a two.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Yes, yeah, there's a guy that I think he's still
out there. He drives FedEx around this area and he's
on All Star a lot, so it's possible. Yeah, well great,
this is uh, like I said in a minute ago,
this is a this is an excellent effort. I think
that you guys have done in a fantastic job putting

(46:42):
this together. If you go to hamco op dot com.
That's the website that I'm looking at right now that
you're seeing on the screen, and yes, it does like
ham cooop man.

Speaker 4 (46:52):
Yeah, maybe you answered this already. Is this only a
Middle Tennessee thing or are you looking to kind of
take what you're doing here and create a framework that
any large area can adopt.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
Well, I mean it's not like we're trying to keep
it from people. I mean, yeah, I mean, we'd love
to see people do this.

Speaker 5 (47:10):
So there's other organizations.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
As a matter of fact, within Tennessee we have there's
an organization called the Tennessee Amateur Radio Association, and they're
actually a statewide organization and it's similar to what we
do with the co OP, except it's a little bit different.
It's a little bit higher level. They have testing service,
they provide training resources, they can provide speakers, and they

(47:34):
can provide a club for people who aren't in a club.
And they're a great organization Tennessee Amateur Radio Association. And
the co Op is just like I said, it was
mainly started from a kind of a social side of things,
with the hopes to break down those barriers and allow
us to communicate in the case of an emergency. And
it's kind of grown a little bit obviously, like I've said,

(47:57):
but you know, I think I think doing clusters of
kind of you know, co ops like this within areas
like you know, our our areas, you know, basically get
the Nashville metro area, and you know, if it makes sense,
that's what it should be, you know what I mean.

(48:19):
We you know, it's a very rural area where I'm at,
just my county's borders to Kentucky and and you know,
we're tobacco country out here, and uh, you know.

Speaker 5 (48:31):
We try to.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
Provide opportunities for our members to do HAMD things in
all of the counties. You know, if they want to
do something, there's always something on the calendar. And that's
what's great. You know, could this be done everywhere?

Speaker 5 (48:46):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (48:47):
I mean absolutely. I think I encourage people to to
take an initiative and do it in your own area.
I mean, because the the at the end of the day,
it's all about helping everybody out, helping out rather hands
getting Hams involved, you know, getting new Hams involved, getting
getting old Hams back involved, and making this hobby thrives.

(49:08):
That's what it's about. So, I mean I travel around
to a lot of the club meetings I spend oddly enough.
I don't know what the deal is, but every Thursday
in and around Middle Tennessee, that's what all the club
meetings are. Why they're all on Thursdays beyond me but
Robertson and it's the first Thursday, and Summoner's the second to.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
The third.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
I think Wilson County is the only one that's on Saturday.
Stones River is on on Thursdays. So they're all on
Thursdays for some reason. So I spend all my Thursdays
traversing around and talking to people and trying to get
more people involved.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
You know, made a comment about you know miles, you
know sixty miles away. Well, you know, to be honest
with you, sixty miles for us isn't that much when
it comes to ham stuff. You know, any opportunity to
get out of the house and do.

Speaker 5 (49:56):
Some ham stuff.

Speaker 3 (49:58):
It's probably the reason why my house suffers from ham neglect.
And you know, any opportunity we can to get out
and do those things. I wouldn't let sixty miles be
the limiting factor. I think if you looked at what
you know, a repeater could cover. You know, if you
if you've obviously topography has a lot to do with it,

(50:20):
but you know, groups of you know, five or six
counties or.

Speaker 5 (50:24):
Two or three countants, even any association.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
That you can have with the adjoining counties is a
benefit for you from an emergency standpoint.

Speaker 5 (50:35):
And again, hand.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
People, especially repeater people, can be very territorial. And that's
really what this is about.

Speaker 5 (50:43):
It.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
It's about saying, hey, there is no territories. We're all collaborating,
we're all friends, we all want to help, we're all
here for the same reason. So I think that you know,
one of the things that I would do is if
you have a if you're in a club right now
and you have a neighboring club that you guys kind
of feel like it's the Jets and the Sharks, you know,

(51:06):
that's the first club you need to reach out to
and go, hey, let's share our events, let's cross promote
our events.

Speaker 5 (51:14):
Those those club.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
Officers need to get together and have lunch and talk
about what they're doing. Because I share things with Tony
that I hope helps his club, and he shares things
with me that help my club, And that's the other
part of it.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
It breaks down the barrier. It breaks down barriers, you know.
You people have bad experiences with clubs. I had a
bad experience with one of the clubs. It's actually in
the co Op now and I won't get into it,
but it was, you know, a couple of years ago,
and for a couple of years I had nothing to
do with that club whatsoever because of one bad experience
with one bad person. And I finally was like, you
know what, that's not It's not worth letting that one

(51:49):
person run it. So I went back to that club
and started going, and now they're a member of the
co Op and I have a really good time going
to that club and it's it's great, and it's it's
that helped me write down that mental block of my own.
Just like you know, I'm not letting this one bad experience,
you know, run this for me. I'm going to go
out there. There's more people than just that one person

(52:11):
in that club.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
Oh yeah, totally so.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
And I hope that helps everybody. You know, if you've
had a bad experience with the club, you know, give
them another chance. You know, people change, leadership changes, you know,
so it's it's gonna be different. It might not be
the same as it was the last time you checked
it out. So you know, go give it a chance,
you know, check it out, see what's going on. If
you don't like it, you know, move on. But you know,

(52:34):
I think everybody should at least give give every everybody
a chance.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
Brian, thank you for the super chat. He says he
did a pot of presentation for the william Countency Williamson
County Aris Club and he's interested in doing one for
you guys, So I guess reach out to them on
the Hamcop website. Is that good enough?

Speaker 2 (52:54):
Guys?

Speaker 5 (52:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (52:55):
Or just you can email me at W four J
D M at Summoner Radio dot org and we'll coordinate
and we get you on the schedule on all the
clubs if you want.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
So.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Yeah, sweet, definitely, definitely, definitely, Frank, do we have any
questions that we haven't touched on yet.

Speaker 4 (53:16):
No, not, It's been kind of light in the chat tonight. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Yeah, a lot of discussion about people in their own clubs.
But yeah, yeah, no, that's that's a good battery.

Speaker 4 (53:26):
Box tips and what to use for harsh shells.

Speaker 5 (53:30):
Good litter cat litter buckets.

Speaker 4 (53:33):
I love the idea of just the five gallon bucket
from home Depot.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
I think that's a great idea. I love it.

Speaker 2 (53:40):
I updated that that idea and it's not in here.
But uh, I've got a five gallon square bucket, so
you actually have the flat sides on all four sides.
You still have the five gallons, still can fit everything
in there that you need to fit in there, but
you have the flat sides to be able to mount
everything too, and it makes it a little bit easier
to mount.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
Yeah, I've got everything mounted on the top of the
bucket for the most part. I've got a couple of
little small LEDs on the sides because I've built. I
built it mainly also to take camping, so I could
use it for a power bank for my seatpat machine
because I'm a fat guys while he sleeps, so I
need to have something that.

Speaker 4 (54:17):
I cannot sleep without it. So I took the you
can google whatever brand it is, twelve old adapter, cut
off the stupid car end and put power poles straight
into your battery system. That's right, That's that's what I
do with mine.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
Made a video out of it, And of course I
waited till John had built his box before I came
up with the plan with the square box, so I'll
let him, yeah, testud.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
Of course, of course. Well, guys, thank you very much
for your time tonight. This is excellent information. I hope
to see more clubs doing this in the future, and
I really, I really hope that you guys get that
seventh club in there in January and more more clubs
can U jumping the bandwagon? How far away is Murphy's

(55:03):
borrow from you, guys, because you should hit up KM
forty c K.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Yeah that stones and Jason's actually doing a presentation for
me this Thursday night. Good at at our club meeting
for a p r s. I'll of course, yeah, I
know the advice is surprised about it. It's gonna be Yeah,
it's a huge surprise. Ask ask him to do one
about Windows operating systems next. See what he says about that. Yes,
I'm actually he was at the He was at the

(55:28):
co Op picnic yesterday and I was telling him about
a Windows computer that I was trying to to uh
convert over to Lennox and told him that I was
cussing him because I couldn't get it to work. So
I'm actually gonna bring it to him on Thursday and
pawn it off on him. I told him I could
either if you get it to work, or toss in
the trash. I didn't really care.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
I was there. You go, that's good.

Speaker 5 (55:48):
I want I just want to say one thing before
we kind of wrapt ahead.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
Sure, go ahead.

Speaker 5 (55:52):
You know the hobby.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
We only have so much time on this earth. Obviously,
we spent time doing our hobbies, things that we enjoy.
If you're a club guy and you want to be
in a club and you don't like the club you're in,
do something about it, get involved, try to make the
change that you want to see.

Speaker 5 (56:10):
Happen in your club.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
I kind of took that. Jason. You did a video
I believe it was at the beginning of twenty twenty
four where you said, if you didn't like what was
going on the repeaters, if you didn't nobody was on
the repeaters, stop complaining about it and go out there
and throw a TRN call sign. I did it every
day for the entire year of twenty twenty four. I
threw my call sign out there on at least three
different repeaters every day, at least twice a day, on
my way to work and on my way home, and

(56:34):
sometimes I got responses. There were times that I, you know, crickets,
but I was done complaining and I took your advice
and I just threw my call sign out there, and
I met a lot of I met a lot of
new people like that. And then John finally got tired
of hearing me at my voice, and so he started
answering me every day.

Speaker 5 (56:50):
So I help that for him. I'm sorry for him.
He sounded very lonely.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
That's good.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
I love it.

Speaker 4 (56:56):
I love it. I might agree with that whole heartily.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
Well, this was, like I said, this was a great presentation.
I'm glad you guys stopped me in Huntsville and I
wanted to come on. I think this is excellent information
to be shared.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
Well, we appreciate it very much, Jason.

Speaker 3 (57:12):
We've already gotten I've gotten a bunch of emails and
comments today about how how much everyone really liked the
event that we did yesterday. Our hand co op picnic
good and I want to want to be the I
just want to tell you I haven't committed that we're
going to do it again, hm, but I think that
we probably will. And I want to extend an invitation

(57:32):
to you to come out and anticipate. Can't forget tank
extended invitation to you guys to come out and participate.
We've learned a lot of lessons in how it went yesterday. No,
we're going to do things a little bit differently, but
the whole point behind it is a very educational kind

(57:53):
of a you know, centered piece, and and we're hoping
we're hoping to do it again and we'll just see
what what the co op says, what what the clubs
want to do.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
How many people did you have yesterday?

Speaker 3 (58:09):
I think we probably had anywhere between seventy five and
one hundred probably, And I think that's a real good turnout.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
It's a good turnout for the first time you've done it, especially,
so yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Because when we first started talking about it, we weren't
sure if there'd be more than ten people show up,
and that was that we're going to be involved putting
it together and doing the presentation.

Speaker 5 (58:27):
I just don't know.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
We had no we had no expectations whatsoever.

Speaker 4 (58:31):
So yeah, UK, Mike says, you need tank spans.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Yeah, thanks, spins are great. Thanks, Spians are great.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
Yeah, we'd love to come out for that. If you
guys do it again, that'd be great event. We can
work it out calendar wise and whatnot that that'd be.
That'd be awesome to do that.

Speaker 4 (58:47):
You have my email dropped it in our private tech.

Speaker 3 (58:50):
And the weather here this time of year is absolutely gorgeous.
We had that We had really great weather and it
was a little warm in the middle of the afternoon,
but it's just started to cool down and our fall
is finally getting here, and so it worked out great
for us.

Speaker 5 (59:05):
We were very fortunate. I had a lot of great
people that showed up.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
Yep. Good And I don't want to thank everybody that
did show up. Yes, we appreciated a lot, and people
stayed and helped after the fact and cleaning up and
everything like that, and it was it was a really
good all around event. And it was it was a
lot more than I expected. And I'm thankful that everybody
showed up and helped out.

Speaker 5 (59:25):
Yeah, I'm just totally.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
Thanks to all our sponsors as well. We had a
bunch of sponsors with free gifts and giveaways and everything
like that, and that was it was really good.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
We had a donor that gave us a brand new
HOA flag pole antenna I had about one thousand dollars value.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (59:43):
And he also had an MFJ external tuner that also
had about one thousand dollars value.

Speaker 3 (59:48):
So our grand prize was that package. Oh no, one
lucky winner got that. And then we had a custom
bowie knife that was probably about a three hundred dollars knife.
Yeah you did not let me know of our members,
made by one of our members. And then the third
place was a custom uh fishing rod.

Speaker 4 (01:00:11):
Give give that guy my email address because we'll talk
right take radio custom knife.

Speaker 5 (01:00:18):
So we had all.

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
Commission giveaways and and uh little stuff big stuff. We
had gift cerficates, uh did you, Ricky. So we had
a lot of great concerts and we've got pictures of
the event. We're going to pull it, put everything together
and and get it on our website so people can
see what the event's about.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
So good.

Speaker 5 (01:00:40):
But thank you guys for having us really the opportunity.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, this was great information. I'm glad that
you guys took the time out to stop me in
Huntsville and come on tonight. So thank you very much
for for the insight. This is good info.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
So yep, you bet all right, Frank, you want to
talk about your I need to tell everybody about the yes, sir,
RB live stream that we're coming up.

Speaker 4 (01:01:03):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
So we're gonna we're gonna come up to where is this.
We're gonna go over here to my unplug channel here
and I'm gonna about fifteen minutes from now, we're gonna
spin that up and uh go live for the next
next video podcast for RV based camp. But go ahead, Frank,
I'll put it up here on the website for you.

Speaker 4 (01:01:21):
Yeah, yep. At the right now, the next pre ordered
Tank Radio limited time option is live right now is
being sold over on Jason's Great finamatur Radio site. It
is the tank pike glass. Look at that timing. Is
a sixteen ounce pint glass with the amazing Tank Radio

(01:01:43):
logo and it has a green botta because yeah, why not.
This is a limited time order item. If you want
your Tank Radio pint glass, go ahead and pre order
it now, because once the pre orders are taken down
later this month, you're not gonna be up on the
side again. So go ahead order yours today. And also

(01:02:03):
it really helps me tank Radio doing all the awesome
amazing stuff I do, and all the supporting the traveling
I do for the channel, getting out to the conventions
and maybe be able to head head out y'all's way
to win a bowie knife.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
There you go, right, it's a lot of fun, true, true.

Speaker 4 (01:02:23):
I'm gonna drop that link in the chat right now. Yeah,
go ahead, but please, if you want to pint glass,
get yours order pre ordered, because we need to get
that number up a little bit more so I can't.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Wait to get your Your buddy Mike came along and
ordered like four of them the other day.

Speaker 4 (01:02:40):
I figured as must be. I talked to him for
a bit he's like, oh those are live, and it's like,
oh yeah, yeah, he's amazing and awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Yeah, he's great. All right, guys, seventy three to all,
thanks for joining us, uh, Tony and John especially thanks
to you guys once again, and we'll see you guys.
You guys head over to the r V channel. We're
gonna go live over there with the with the usual
crew and give us about fifteen minutes and we'll be
live over there. So seventy three all and have a
good night.

Speaker 5 (01:03:09):
Seventy three thanks

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
Mm hm