NPR discusses Ham Radio

[W1RKW]

NPR discusses Ham Radio with interviews. You'll need Real Player.

http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2005/07/20050729_b_main.asp

[k4kyv]

Love the pre-WW2 homebrew AM transmitter with vintage D-104 shown in the photo on the webpage.  Interesting that they chose that photo as a visual image of ham radio and not a ricebox/linear/associated gadgets, or a HT on a belt.

[W1GFH]

Great program (about 48 mins.) and well worth listening to. Jack if you're reading this, here's the PBS documentary you were looking for (minus the pictures). But audio-only has many advantages IMO, like more in-depth intervews; something a video doco (limited to shorter "sound bites") can't do as well. Audio-only allows the featured hams to paint a full picture of various aspects of ham radio (the ham culture, the ham license and tests, emergency work, the fascination of the hobby, the future of the hobby, etc). As a recruiting tool, I think the interview-driven format is more low-key and believable than a narrator-driven "propaganda film" approach. "The Connection" with host Dick Gordon originates in Boston but is broadcast on NPR stations across the USA. Nice exposure for the hobby.

http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2005/07/20050729_b_main.asp

Long before you could boot up, log on and point and click your way around the globe, there was ham radio. Churning out an audio cocktail of beeps and whirs, chirps and static, the ham radio was a passport, of sorts, for a particular kind of technology-loving, wander-lusting, basement-dwelling Good Samaritan. Someone who knew and relished the difference between a picofarad and a millihenry. Someone who appreciated the random fortune of a favorable ionosphere and a continent-hopping connection. But there's no need to talk about ham radio in the past tense, because some two-and-a-half million hams world wide still consider 20 megahertz the preferred way to fly. You can keep your broadband. Ham radio. On a wing, and a bandwidth.

The NPR show also promotes a recent coffee-table book, "Hello World: A Life in Ham Radio," by Danny Gregory and Paul Sahre, that is being sold at large retail chains like Barnes and Noble. (The pre-WW2 xmtr and D-104 image is one of the photos from that book, and I think NPR chose it for the webpage because it looks COOL, not because it represents ham gear today).

So ham radio IS getting mainstream exposure - a lot more than most hams are aware of.  And I really like the content because it's both truthful and communicates the "magic" (i.e. coolness) of the hobby. I'm rather against any plan to give ham radio an "extreme makeover" and pimp it as something it isn't: i.e. a hip alternative to the internet and cellphones. Can you picture a TV commercial aimed at young people featuring Snoop Dogg operating Echolink with an HT, saying, "QRZizzle and fashizzle on the flip flop worldwide. Yo, peace out"?   Ugh.

Wonderful as it is, I don't think stuff like the NPR story and the coffee-table book will magically result in thousands more new hams or stem the general decline in numbers of hams. But that's OK, I believe ham radio will survive as a relatively small but extremely unique hobby with plenty of enthusiastic practitioners.

[W1UJR]

Gosh I hate Real Player, wish there was an alternative.

Anyone have any idea how I can save that show in a format to dub onto tape or CD?

Peace Out,
BRuce

[W1RKW]

Gosh I hate Real Player, wish there was an alternative.

Anyone have any idea how I can save that show in a format to dub onto tape or CD?

Peace Out,
BRuce

Just do analog audio out to a tape player from your PC.

[wa2zdy]

Listening to it now, sounds good.  I too hate Real Player - every time I go to use it, I need to "upgrade" it which takes ten minutes. PITA!

I'm glad the US hams aren't on 20MHz:

"But there's no need to talk about ham radio in the past tense, because some two-and-a-half million hams world wide still consider 20 megahertz the preferred way to fly. You can keep your broadband. Ham radio. On a wing, and a bandwidth."

Poor Riley would sure be busy, huh?

(Yeah, I know, I'm being picky.  Just had to mention it.)

Good PR for ham radio though, this is good.

[Jack-KA3ZLR-]

Great program (about 48 mins.) and well worth listening to. Jack if you're reading this, here's the PBS documentary you were looking for (minus the pictures). But audio-only has many advantages IMO, like more in-depth intervews; something a video doco (limited to shorter "sound bites") can't do as well. Audio-only allows the featured hams to paint a full picture of various aspects of ham radio (the ham culture, the ham license and tests, emergency work, the fascination of the hobby, the future of the hobby, etc). As a recruiting tool, I think the interview-driven format is more low-key and believable than a narrator-driven "propaganda film" approach. "The Connection" with host Dick Gordon originates in Boston but is broadcast on NPR stations across the USA. Nice exposure for the hobby.

http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2005/07/20050729_b_main.asp

Long before you could boot up, log on and point and click your way around the globe, there was ham radio. Churning out an audio cocktail of beeps and whirs, chirps and static, the ham radio was a passport, of sorts, for a particular kind of technology-loving, wander-lusting, basement-dwelling Good Samaritan. Someone who knew and relished the difference between a picofarad and a millihenry. Someone who appreciated the random fortune of a favorable ionosphere and a continent-hopping connection. But there's no need to talk about ham radio in the past tense, because some two-and-a-half million hams world wide still consider 20 megahertz the preferred way to fly. You can keep your broadband. Ham radio. On a wing, and a bandwidth.

The NPR show also promotes a recent coffee-table book, "Hello World: A Life in Ham Radio," by Danny Gregory and Paul Sahre, that is being sold at large retail chains like Barnes and Noble. (The pre-WW2 xmtr and D-104 image is one of the photos from that book, and I think NPR chose it for the webpage because it looks COOL, not because it represents ham gear today).

So ham radio IS getting mainstream exposure - a lot more than most hams are aware of.  And I really like the content because it's both truthful and communicates the "magic" (i.e. coolness) of the hobby. I'm rather against any plan to give ham radio an "extreme makeover" and pimp it as something it isn't: i.e. a hip alternative to the internet and cellphones. Can you picture a TV commercial aimed at young people featuring Snoop Dogg operating Echolink with an HT, saying, "QRZizzle and fashizzle on the flip flop worldwide. Yo, peace out"?   Ugh.

Wonderful as it is, I don't think stuff like the NPR story and the coffee-table book will magically result in thousands more new hams or stem the general decline in numbers of hams. But that's OK, I believe ham radio will survive as a relatively small but extremely unique hobby with plenty of enthusiastic practitioners.

I Agree.

[W1UJR]

Warning - OLD BUZZARD RANT

You know the expression, "Everything old becomes new again."

One thing which I have noticed with many free time pursuits is that the serious practitioners always return to the roots of the sport.

Example, I was a very avid ocean kayaker when I first moved to Maine. The really serious in the sport left the latest and greatest fiberglass boats and asymmetrical plastic paddles and returned to native design boats and thin Greenland style wooden paddles. I was skeptical, but after some time I gave up my asymmetrical plastic paddle for a Greenland wooden paddle and never looked back. It was easier to paddle with and far more versatile.

I see this same trend in sailing, the resurgence of the wooden boat over fiberglass. A complete subculture and businesses have grown up around a technology, wooden boat building, which was once considered dead. Wooden boats have become the things of art, dreams and desires, and the commensurate work required for the upkeep just part of the wooden boat experience.

I love technology, but lately that was turned into a love/hate relationship. In my profession I deal computers 8 hours a day. Perhaps that is why I find something deeply refreshing about a computer and email free weekend. My cell phone, which failed a few weeks back, has yet to be replaced, and in fact I am in no hurry to do so.

I suspect that some of the real draw to the early days of ham radio, vacuum tubes and homebrew gear, has a great deal to do with this very observation. People crave the warm, tangible touch of an objects, the glow of a vacuum tube, the smell of hot dust as the tube warms up, the hum of the transformers, even the squeal of a heterodyne. I believe that people crave those very sensory experiences almost as much as the on-air contacts.

Lets think about it candidly, isn’t there something more personal, more honest about speaking to someone on the radio vs. Instant Messaging? It’s a more authentic experience, and with today’s digital world, the last thing people want to do in their free time is sit in front of the computer. They crave authentic human experiences with other real people. The challenge of making a radio, then establishing a contact with a far off person or land, the randomness of it all is so much more authentic then the certainly of email.

The longer I am into radio, the more I turn to the older and earlier days of the amateur service for my reading and operating materials. The 1960s-current hold little interest for this ham, the 1920s-1930s, the golden age of radio, is like a magnet for me.

I may offend some, and if so understand that this monologue is simply my own experience with the amateur service. With that said, here I go - HF today, with its high power riceboxes, DX spotting clusters, computer controlled transceivers, computer aimed and modeled antennas, skeds arranged via email, seems all too cold and impersonal. If a HF contact can be arranged with the ease of a telephone call, why bother? Why not simply use the phone? While I agree that technology can make our lives easier, if all challenge is removed, does that really serve us? Doesn’t really cheat us of the very experience we seek?

The magic of radio is what captured each and every one of our attention and drew us into the amateur service. If anything saves amateur radio, it will be that same allure. We can not compete with the internet, cell phones or IM for the younger folk’s time. But what we can show them, dare I say sell them, is the magic of radio. The warm glow of vacuum tube filaments, the purple flickering of 866 rectifiers under modulation, the wonderful gentleman operators and storytellers of our hobby. Those experiences, which can not be duplicated in a modern high tech digital world, will be the touchstone of our service.

I remember my first tube receiver, the venerable BC-348P. It was given to me by my cousin Joe. With its black crackle finish and strange glowing vacuum tubes, it looked wonderful on that big wooden desk next to my Radio Shack DX-150B, in fact it looked real. The DX-150 was a plaything compared to the BC-348. I wondered where the 348 had been, where it had traveled. Had it flow to Europe on a B-17 before landing on my desk? Who had spun its pretty knobs, stared at the glow of the dial and strained to copy CW? The 348 never played when I owned it, it just would not work. I now know that it most likely had a bad capacitor, but back then where was a 12 year old in the country to take a 30 year old radio for repairs?

Time went on, my attention turned to girls and cars and my parents put the 348 in the barn when I left for college, the barn with the leaky roof. Some 15 years later, when the ham radio spark ignited, I sought out that 348, now just a corroded and damaged carcass.

My point is that real, authentic experiences do not leave us quickly. Instead they light a slow burning fuse that lasts our entire life. Remember your first homerun in Little League, or your first touchdown in football. Those moments are indelibly imprinted on our minds for the rest of our life. So it is with radio, and I hope future generations will have the same privilege, experience and joy that I have discovered in the amateur service.

Long live the wireless!

.

[W1GFH]

recognize and identify the elements of Ham Radio that are unique to Ham Radio and emphasize them!

I like what Bear said above, in another topic. Emphasize what makes ham radio unique. Meaning, it's a mistake to play down CW and HF and make ham radio sound more like wireless internet voIP. Although perhaps it is inevitable that the hobby will become inextricably linked to computers, i.e. you won't be able to "do" ham radio without the help of digital microprocessors, yet I really find that technology completely unromantic and unmagical.

I have a nightmare. It goes something like this: one day I turn on my Hammarlund or Hallicrafters recvrs, tune across the bands, and hear only the buzzsaw sound of digital datastreams. There is no more AM, fading in and out on gentle waves of QSB, crackling with atmospheric static. There are no more watery-sounding CW signals drifting in from over the Pole.  There is no more duck-quacking SSB, for that matter. I tune up and down every band, but all I can hear are databursts intended to be decoded into perfect, error-corrected CD-quality audio by the superfast microprocessors and exotic software built into the latest wireless PC's.

If that happens, I agree with Bruce that there will be a backlash of sorts, many people will go "back to the roots" simply for the tactile enjoyment the original "classic" version of the hobby provided. Wooden boats, tube stereo gear, analog dial mechanical wristwatches -- the roots always come back.

[Bill, KD0HG]

Gosh I hate Real Player, wish there was an alternative.

Anyone have any idea how I can save that show in a format to dub onto tape or CD?

Peace Out,
BRuce

You're not the only one, Bruce.

Because of that, there is a solution...It's called Real Alternative.

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm

73

-Bill

[wa1knx]

Bruce,
      your a hopeless romantic,, as I!!!.  I'm not so adverse to rice boxes,
as to the decline of the hobby in lieu of the internet.  My neighbor, a
mechanic, scoffed at my ugly bug catcher - that he helped me install :)
until he saw I talked to Germany from his driveway!! - 20mtrs.
      no house power, no BPR, no DSL, no dialup, no dish. Me to DL  land directly via our radios!!!  I love it better with my glowing pubes on the lower bands, but making the trip on our own, is the real radio magic that draws me to the hobby!

73 deano!

[W1UJR]

Gosh I hate Real Player, wish there was an alternative.

Anyone have any idea how I can save that show in a format to dub onto tape or CD?

Peace Out,
BRuce

You're not the only one, Bruce.

Because of that, there is a solution...It's called Real Alternative.

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm

73



-Bill

Found it, downloaded it, and it worked great!
I highly suggest Real Alternative, works like a charm.

Many thanks Bill.

The RealPlayer "Free" edition costs me more in time with the useless downloads and commericals. I would never do business with a company which has such low ethics.

-Bruce

[W1GFH]

I love it better with my glowing pubes on the lower bands

Don't you mean "tubes"?  :shock:

[wa1knx]

hee,
      in biblical terms, I love my glowing pubes all the way down to my
gals burning bush !. .

[W1DAN]

Hi All:

This show is a couple of years old...a repeat show created by WBUR in Boston. It is not an NPR show.

http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2005/07/20050729_b_main.asp

Somewhere buried I have a CD that I made directly off the air, and edited out the "commercial" breaks

At dayton a couple of years ago, I talked with the author and had him sign the books. I bought a copy of the book (excellent graphics and good approach with some technical errors) for each of my 4 brothers and made a copy of the CD. This allows un-initiated people to get the idea of ham radio.

I also brought it to Field day.

73
Dan
W1DAN