Zero Retries 0115
2023-09-08 - My Dad’s NOT ALLOWED to push this button!, One Year Update on DLARC, Amateur Radio GEO Payload for the Americas - Update 2023-08, 5 GHz 10 watt Power Amplifier
Zero Retries is an independent newsletter promoting technological innovation in Amateur Radio, and Amateur Radio as (literally) a license to experiment with and learn about radio technology. Now in its third year of publication, with 900+ subscribers.
About Zero Retries
Steve Stroh N8GNJ, Editor
Jack Stroh, Late Night Assistant Editor Emeritus
In this issue:
One Year Update on Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC)
Web version of this issue - https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0115
Request To Send
Editorial by Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Wedding Update
The wedding of our daughter Merideth Stroh KK7BKI and Max Pepper on 2023-09-03 was wonderful! One of the better quotes from a guest is that it was the most “Portlandish” wedding they’ve ever attended, and that was a goal of Merideth and Max. The most fun of the evening was that the newlyweds were completely surprised with a helicopter departure from the wedding venue, and a brief aerial tour of downtown Portland before landing and limo transport to their honeymoon hotel.
Hardware Modems - How Far We’ve Come
I have a search running on eBay for all things Packet Radio, and recently a MFJ 2400 bps adapter board came up. This was an add-on board for MFJ TNCs (that were based on the TAPR TNC-2 design) that added a 2400 bps modem. It’s a big board, almost as big as the TNC’s board and it struck me (for the nth time) how far we’ve come that this sort of hardware is no longer needed now that we have fast and powerful processors that can keep up with fast ADCs (Analog to Digital Converters) and DACs (Digital to Analog Converters). 2400 bps never caught on in Amateur Radio Packet Radio, mostly because the modest increase in speed (never quite 2x 1200 bps) didn’t really justify the extra cost of the add-on board, and thus, there weren’t many 2400 bps stations to communicate with.
Zero Retries Podcast Isn’t Dead / Forgotten
Producing the few test editions of the Zero Retries Podcast was fun and interesting and I do intend to resume creating podcasts. But it has been a busy Summer, and I have too much respect for Zero Retries readers to just “throw together” an ad-hoc stream of consciousness and call it a podcast. A podcast (that I consider worth listening to and will be reasonably proud of) takes a surprising amount of time to produce, especially distilling an issue of Zero Retries down to a few… and the right… talking points. When I have time to do that, it’s a fun process, and seems to be well received.
Since my last update on podcasts, I’ve determined that Substack isn’t capable of subdividing an email newsletter like Zero Retries beyond “Paid Subscribers” or “All Subscribers”. Thus my previous plan to create a Podcast-only newsletter out of the existing Zero Retries subscribers isn’t viable. (I’m not going to divide my efforts and create an entirely new newsletter in Substack.)
When I do resume Zero Retries podcasts, I will create them as before, but unlike before, I will not send out a podcast email to all Zero Retries subscribers. I’ll just note that there is a new podcast available at <link>” in a regular issue of Zero Retries. I think that balances the interests of those who do like the podcast with those that didn’t sign up to be “spammed” with a podcast.
Following YouTube Channels via RSS
I just became aware of a neat trick to more easily keep up with interesting YouTube channels instead of relying on the YouTube algorithm. Just add the YouTube channel’s URL into your RSS feed reader and then new videos will show up as a new item in your RSS feeds. I’ve now done so for the Amateur Radio YouTube channels I follow and I’m now seeing a lot more Amateur Radio content than I was previously aware of, and I’ll see it a lot faster. In my main YouTube feed (Home), the more obscure Amateur Radio YouTube channels were apparently getting crowded out by the more popular YouTube channels and thus I was never seeing the more obscure Amateur Radio content unless I browsed each subscribed channel.
In my RSS feed reader, I prepend each YouTube feed with “YT “ so that all the YouTube videos are grouped together. I’m unlikely to watch any more hours of YouTube video - there’s only so many hours in the day for passive media consumption.
Two (Apparent) Passings (?)
Digital Communications Conference (DCC) - As previously discussed in Zero Retries, it’s conspicuous that it’s now mid-September and there hasn’t been any mention of DCC 2023 on the TAPR website. Thus it’s hard to conclude anything other than the DCC, under TAPR’s stewardship, is no more.
CQ Magazine - Another conspicuous silence is that CQ Magazine’s electronic edition has published reliably on the first of each month. I’m currently a subscriber to the electronic edition and as of publication day, it’s now the eighth day of the month and still no September CQ posted, and no status update on their website, where the posted current issue is August, 2023.
C’mon folks… just call it, publicly, so everyone can move on instead of wondering.
My Dad’s NOT ALLOWED to push this button!
By Steve Stroh N8GNJ
This video is an amusing take on the quest of an adult son and mature father to become licensed Amateur Radio Operators together. Both are highly technical; Jeff Geerling (now KF0MYB) is a Software Engineer and YouTube creator with 541k subscribers and nearly 400 well-produced videos. Jeff’s Dad, Joe Geerling (now KF0MYJ) is a Radio Station Broadcast Engineer.
