Zero Retries 0174
2024-10-18 — 2200 Zero Retries Email Subscribers!, A Difference of Perspective, Getting it Incomplete Sometimes, NinoTNC and JNOS - fixed, working '100 percent' now, SDRplay nRSP-ST Networked Receiver
Zero Retries is an independent newsletter promoting technological innovation that is occurring in Amateur Radio, and Amateur Radio as (literally) a license to experiment with and learn about radio technology. Radios are computers - with antennas! Now in its fourth year of publication, with 2100+ 2200+ email subscribers.
About Zero Retries
Steve Stroh N8GNJ, Editor
Jack Stroh, Late Night Assistant Editor Emeritus
In this issue:
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Web version of this issue - https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0174
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Commentary by Editor Steve Stroh N8GNJ
2200 Zero Retries Email Subscribers!
From various mentions of Zero Retries in the past few weeks, the email subscriber count ticked up again to another “century” milestone, to 2200. I’m gratified to have so many subscribers. “2200” is actually a fuzzy metric as it doesn’t include readers that follow Zero Retries via RSS, or following Zero Retries (me) on Mastodon or Bluesky, the two social media platforms that I currently post notifications of new issues of Zero Retries on. But, admittedly, it’s cool to see the slow rise in email subscriber count.
For those newest subscribers, I recommend checking out the Zero Retries About page which describes the origin story of Zero Retries and some of the eclectic terminology I used here in Zero Retries.
Paid Subscribers Update
My thanks to Prefers to Remain Anonymous 14 for renewing as a Founding Member Annual Subscriber to Zero Retries this past week!
Founding members are listed in every issue of Zero Retries!
My thanks to Prefers to Remain Anonymous 15 for renewing as an Annual Paid Subscriber to Zero Retries this past week!
Financial support from Zero Retries readers is a significant vote of support for the continued publication of Zero Retries.
Pacificon 2024!
Pacificon 2024 in San Ramon, California, USA on 2024-10-18 thru 20 is this weekend! Tina KD7WSF and I are attending Pacificon 2024 (which makes it “major” to us).
My presentation at Pacificon 2024 - Tracking Technological Innovation in Amateur Radio will be on Saturday 2024-10-19 from 16:00 - 16:50 in Contra Costa Salon 2. Otherwise I’ll be attending the several other Zero Retries Interesting presentations (which consume every Forum slot on Saturday - I’ll be busy taking notes), and cruising the vendor area to talk to the Zero Retries Interesting vendors such as ARDC, AREDN, Bay Area Mesh, Connect Systems (the CS7000 M17 portable radio), Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC), Digital Amateur Television, Halibut Electronics, and MMDVM.
See the Zero Retries Guide to Zero Retries Interesting Events for additional events.
Have a great weekend, all of you co-conspirators in Zero Retries Interesting Amateur Radio activities, especially all you fellow attendees of Pacificon this weekend! I look forward to talking to a lot of folks and meeting some folks who I’ve only known virtually.
Steve N8GNJ
A Difference of Perspective
By Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Several Zero Retries readers have pushed back on my interpretation of ARRL CEO David Minster NA2AA’s “Second Century” column in the 2024-08 issue of QST, “The Ecosystem of Becoming a Ham” in Zero Retries 0173 - ARRL’s Dismissive Arrogance re: Technician Class Amateur Radio Operators.
As a current ARRL member, I felt I have standing to present my interpretation of that editorial. Others reading the same editorial didn’t come away with the same perspective. Fair enough!
I’m not saying I’m right on my perspective and everyone else is wrong. I’m just presenting my perspective in public, and those who disagree should (obviously) feel equally empowered to present their perspective in public. And some have expressed their difference of opinion from mine in the comments section of Zero Retries 0173, for which I’m grateful.
As I’ve explained in Zero Retries over the past three plus years, there are a lot of new folks coming into Amateur Radio from non-traditional routes, and their expectations and goals in Amateur Radio are often very different from “traditional” Amateur Radio. Thus, perhaps I’m a bit too defensive on behalf of these new “only Technician” Amateur Radio licensees because of the all-too-pervasive attitude among many / most older Amateur Radio Operators that operating only on VHF / UHF “isn’t real Amateur Radio”. Yes, really, I have heard the VHF / UHF “isn’t real Amateur Radio” over, and over, and over, often said “kind of in jest… just kidding”. Charitably, even if stated in jest, that attitude is parochial, condescending, dismissive, demeaning, and generally just wrong. Technician Amateur Radio Operators are Amateur Radio Operators. So, stop with the “real Amateur Radio” remarks… please - just stop doing that.
As I said in the comments of Zero Retries 0173 (a new record - 35+!), there was additional context that went into my interpretation of NA2AA’s intent in that editorial, most of which weren’t “hard fact” and thus I didn’t feel that I should mention those “fuzzy” contexts.
But one “fuzzy context” that, in hindsight, I should have mentioned is my impression that ARRL’s / NA2AA’s perspective of what constitutes an active new Amateur Radio licensee, it seems to me, is contextual to participation in ARRL activities. If a new licensee doesn’t get involved with ARRL… from the ARRL’s perspective, they’re “inactive”. But I’ll posit that a lot of those new licensees that ARRL considers “inactive” simply have a different perspective for getting their Amateur Radio license, and engage in activities other than what ARRL posits as “active”.
To try to keep this discussion focused on the Zero Retries perspective, let me offer one example. I’ve talked to a number of new Amateur Radio licensees that obtained their Amateur Radio license solely to be able to work with, use, experiment, and help build Amateur Radio microwave networks1. Other than involvement with microwave networking, they have little interest in other aspects of Amateur Radio; not HF, not talking on repeaters, not attending Amateur Radio club meetings, not browsing through QST magazine and looking at the glossy advertisements of HF radios costing thousands of dollars… and especially not becoming members of ARRL. Thus, it seems to me that such new licensees would appear, from the ARRL’s perspective, to be “inactive”. Yet, they’re not - they’re just interested in different aspects of Amateur Radio beyond what ARRL recognizes as “active”. I suspect that the new licensees that Dan Romanchik KB6NU describes in his seminal article Back to the future: Are hackers the future of amateur radio? would similarly be categorized by ARRL as “inactive”.
With that, I think I’ve said as much as I feel justified to say regarding ARRL and its future, and I’m returning Zero Retries back to the more technical, interesting, aspects of technological innovation in Amateur Radio.
Getting it Incomplete Sometimes
By Steve Stroh N8GNJ
A long time Zero Retries reader suggested that I explain my enthusiasm in Zero Retries 0173 - Audio Recording in ka9q-web for ka9q-radio (and the new [to me] development of ka9q-web.
Similarly, I got some details wrong in a reference to emergency notification systems, which justifies a bit more explanation.
re: ka9q-web
I’ve been fawning over ka9q-radio so often in ZR that I thought it would be familiar to most long time readers by now. But point taken that I shouldn’t assume, and the reader was correct that unless one knew about ka9q-radio, the little context I provided wouldn’t necessarily make a connection to understand the significance of ka9q-web.
This video by Phil Karn KA9Q is a good primer about ka9q-radio:
