This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
by Tower Electronics. For connectors, cables,
and more, call 920 -435 -2973 or visit pl -259
.com. And by ICOM, heard it, worked it, logged
it. Visit www .icomamerica .com slash amateur
for more information about ICOM radios. Here
we go Welcome to Hamtok Live Calling Let's Talk
Neil's your guy Hamtok Live Here we go on Hamtok
Radio Good evening, everyone. It's time for Ham
Talk Live episode number 296. It's another Hamvention
preview. It's the last one because Hamvention
is coming up next week. It's Hamvention preview
kit building and shopping recorded on May 12.
2022. I'm your host, Neil Rapp, WB9VPG. Thanks
for tuning into this episode of HamTalk Live.
And in just a little bit, we'll be joined by
Joe Eisenberg, K0NEB, the kit building editor
at CQ Magazine. And he'll be telling us what
to look out for at Dayton and some opportunities
to do some kit building while you are there.
uh... last episode jay k g five l j z was here
to talk about the return of nasa on the air so
if you missed that show you can listen anytime
at ham talk live dot com or on your favorite
podcast app or on youtube and you can catch the
rebroadcast of ham talk live on saturdays on
w t w w shortwave that's five zero eight five
a m and it's usually about 3 .30 p .m. Eastern
Time. So I will be back with Joe right after
this word from Tower Electronics right here on
HamTalk Live. Hey honey, have you seen the PL
259s anywhere? No, I haven't. Come on kids, let's
go. There's just one place to go for all of your
connector needs. Tower electronics. A giant warehouse
of connectors and adapters for every occasion.
Thousands to choose from in every shape, size,
and color. And they have antennas, soldering
supplies, cables, meters, and more. Where do
you go if you want to buy a connector at a fraction
of retail cost? Tower electronics. And this weekend
only, take advantage of our special Special liquidation
sale. Buy nine solder -type PL -259s. Get the
tenth one for just one penny. They make great
Christmas presents. And what better way to say,
I love you, than with the gift of a PL -259.
TOWER ELECTRONICS! TOWER ELECTRONICS! TOWER ELECTRONICS!
I'm Scott, KB9AMM of TOWER ELECTRONICS. I like
the PL259 connectors so much, I bought the company.
TOWER ELECTRONICS, COMING TO A HAMFEST NEAR YOU,
OR ONLINE AT PL -259 .COM AND WE'RE ON THE YELLOW
PAGES UNDER AMATURE RADIO CONNECTORS. My, where
ever did you get that lovely PL259? TOWER ELECTRONICS,
PL -259 .COM or call 920 -435 -2973. Do we sell
PL259 connectors? All the information you need
for your trip to Dayton. It's Ham, Bench and
Preview here on HamTalk Live. Welcome back to
HamTalk Live. Tonight, Joe Eisenberg, K -Zero,
N -E -B, joins us on the Orlando Amateur Radio
Club and Hamcation Zoom line. Joe is from Lincoln,
Nebraska, is well known for his kit building
expertise. Joe is also well known for his picture
shows of Hamvention. So if you've been following
the Facebook group, the Dayton Hamvention Fanatics,
they do these countdowns of of all those picture
shows so those are pretty cool. He is the long
time kit building editor at CQ Magazine and often
makes his presentations and offers kit builds
at ham fest, conventions, and club meetings.
Joe is also known at Dayton at least for his
famous Dr. Seuss hat. So if you're at Dayton
make sure you are watching for the guy the Dr.
Seuss hat. Well Joe welcome back to the show
great to talk to you again and and we'll talk
a little bit about Dayton and talk a little bit
about some kids All right, Neil and it's always
a great time to be with you on ham talk live
well, I appreciate you your time tonight because
People that weren't listening before don't know
this but we just spent I don't know what an hour
Yeah, at least an hour. Yeah, at least an hour.
I put together a new desktop computer for the
show to try to get rid of some of these audio
glitches, and we had audio glitches. So we spent
the last hour or so troubleshooting audio glitches,
but we finally, I think, got it all straightened
out. So hopefully the new gear here will make
an improvement to the show. Well, anyway, it's
almost date and time. I am scurrying around now
that the semester has ended. I am scurrying around
trying to make all of my preparations for the
booth space that Yoda is doing and we're doing
a collaboration with HamSci. uh... on some some
booth talk so we're trying to get all that stuff
ready to go and so you know as as ham vincente
comes closer we we gotta get prepared and uh...
you know you always do a great job of capturing
uh... all the happenings at ham vincente with
your your slide shows and everything but also
kinda want to talk a little bit about uh... what
to do for kit building. And first of all, I know
there's the four days in May. So tell us a little
bit about four days in May and how that kit building
goes right before Hamvention. Well, actually
it's on Friday Friday afternoon and Because the
FDIM seminars are all day on Thursday and they
move the kit building to Friday so that Rex who
does the kit build would have a chance to actually
sell some kits of his own in the Vendor night
which we have on Thursday night there at about
eight o 'clock And RECS kit this year is a CW
transmitter that's made out of I think it's TTL
type logic or something like that. I can't remember.
It's like four logic chips and somehow he makes
a CW signal out of it. And so that's what's going
to be the kit build. I'm not sure if I'll be
able to make that one. There will be a lot of
kits for sale especially at vendor night at Four
Days in May and of course in the flea market
and all over Hamvention you'll be able to find
some kits and there's some some real good ones
like Hobby PCB makes a really nice 50 watt amplifier
that goes from qrp power levels to 50 watts And
now they have a automatic antenna tuner module
that goes in there as well. So there's lots of
neat kits out there. Now, you know, we mentioned
the four days in May, that's a kit build. What
are you doing specifically? You have your kit
building forum, a session. What's going on with
you this year? Yeah, I have the kit building
forum. It's just me this year. And because the
guy that's usually with me is in charge of FDIM,
so he's going to be kind of tied up. But what
I'll be doing is the forum, which will be at
1145 on Friday morning. Yeah, we schedule it
so that I only go about an hour and I'll be mentioning
a lot of kits that will be available or things
you might want to look for in the flea market,
which is right nearby. We're in the 4H building,
which is forms room four, which is kind of over
by the grandstand. And so it is a little bit
of a walk over there, but it's air conditioned
and very comfortable in there. There's exhibitors
like EAE sales, which is basically right out
the front door, and they're probably the biggest
sales of soldering stations, soldering irons,
solder, desoldering tools, surface mount tools,
all the kind of stuff that you really want. Yeah,
that's very convenient, Joe, that you can go
shopping right after the forum. But I know you've
got some kits to talk about. But before we get
into those, what kinds of things should you be
looking for to do all that shopping? You've got
kits, but you've got supplies and all these other
things, accessories. What's on the shopping list
for the ham this year for kit building? Well,
if you're a beginner or an experienced kit builder,
you're going to want to look like at EAE sales
and a few other places for a good soldering station.
And you want one that has digital temperature
control, if you can get that, because that way
you can more precisely set the temperature. Now,
there are some good analog ones. There are some
wellers, and there is the... Edson loaner, which
is what I have and it is analog but it's very
precise about it. You want a temperature -controlled,
not just variable heat, but temperature -controlled
soldering station and you want to get yourself
some 6337 solder, rosin core, no clean is the
best. And there's all sorts of other things like
wire cutters and strippers, some really good
quality flush cutters. And you're not going to
spend more than $6 to $8 for a pair of flush
cutters and some needle nose pliers, screwdrivers
and things like that that you're going to want
to have when you're building a kit. Okay, so
some great stuff to look for while you're at
Hamvention. Now let's let's get into some of
these kits I know you've got a new one that you
were you're showing me before We started recording
here that that you're excited about so tell us
about the cricket okay, the cricket is the fourth
in a series that the four -state QRP group has
come out with the 20 meter cricket was asked
for because 20 meters is a good DX band for QRP
And this is no exception. It puts out about 8
tenths of a watt from a single 9 -volt battery
on it. There are no toroids to wind. They are
spiral -wound in the circuit board. This particular
one was redesigned by the developer, NM0S, teamed
up with NV5F. That's Virginia. And they came
up with the idea and she helped work out the
parameters to make this thing work on 20. And
I've gotten lots of reports on reverse beacon
network from this one. And it hears quite well.
As long as you're not near a high power broadcast
station, you'd be all right. And the straight
key is part of the kit. It goes right on the
main circuit board. And all in all, a real fun
little kit to play with. The lower band ones,
which are on 30, 40, and 80 meters, put out about
a solid watt. So the efficiency isn't quite as
much on 20. But 0 .8 watts is plenty of signal
when you're talking about QRP. And it comes with
material to make a socket. So you can interchange
crystals and put them on different frequencies
within the CW part of 20 meters. There's another
kit that is coming out. And by the way, the designer
of that kit is also NM0S, David Kripe. He is
the chairman of FDIM this year and this is a
dummy load kit which is good for working with
kits like the cricket when you're first testing
it out. The unique thing about this kit is that
it's all surface mount resistors and then there's
four LEDs which are conventional and then a conventional
diode and a disc capacitor and a BNC connector.
Now before you get Upset about surface mount
parts and by the way, this is a dummy load and
it shows How much power the first LED that lights
up says a half a watt then there's a 1 watt 2
watt and 5 watt LED To give you a rough idea
how much power you're putting out from that little
QRP kit a Lot of people get really nervous when
they see that it's got surface mount parts But
these chip resistors are bigger than eighth watt
Regular through hole resistors, so they're they're
plenty big and actually relatively easy to install
now when I did this one I did it to document
two different methods of doing surface mount
and so the five resistors across the front by
the Diodes I did by putting a tiny dab of solder
on one of the two pads on each one and then I
took a tweezers and I brought that resistor right
up to that one soldered pad and just heat it
up slightly use the tweezers to make it nice
and neat and straight and then let the soldering
iron off let it cool and now you have one side
soldered and then I soldered the other side and
then I can go back to the first pad in case there's
too much or too little solder and I can clean
that up The other ten I did all at once with
the heat and solder paste method Where you squirt
a syringe of solder paste onto the pads and it
looks awful when you do it I mean it looks pretty
sloppy and you think well, this is not going
to work, but it does and so the magic happens
when you put a heat tool and what you're going
to use it's not the same thing as a paint stripper
gun because that'll blow the surface mount parts
into the next county but these parts are actually
pretty big so they don't seem to want to move
as much and the pace does help kind of keep them
relatively straight but you're never ever going
to get them exactly straight when you lay them
down with the tweezers. And they're not hard
to do, so working with the tweezers is no more
difficult than working with a needle nose or
anything else that we do with kit building. And
so you have the solder paste squirted on and
kind of near each of these pads, and you say,
well, that's just too much. The paste is sloppy
and all over the place. And I'm writing about
that in an upcoming issue of CQ. And what I do
is I take this heat tool that's used for melting
like wax, ink and stuff for scrapbooking and
you can get those at Michael's or Hobby Lobby.
And it costs about $20 for the tool. And so you
heat it up and the very first thing that happens
is this gray paste gets glossy. then after a
while it'll start bubbling up and suddenly that
glossy appearance kind of disappears and it gets
silvery and it looks like solder but yet it spreads
out and you think oh it's gonna make a mess and
then after a while it contracts and it gels right
to that pad and the magic happens and that magic
is when it contracts on both sides and that Surface
mount part these resistors will suddenly straighten
themselves out and that's because of the surface
tension of the solder and flux mix and Then you'll
see it all nice and shiny and you just work the
heat tool down the row of these Resistors and
because the adjacent ones are starting to get
heated up from where you're working It goes pretty
quick after a while then when you finally got
the last one you simply lift the tool away and
you'll see yeah there's flux kind of all over
but the solder looks real nice and the little
chip resistors are nice and straight all by themselves
and then what I do is I take some 91 % alcohol
you get the bottles like at Walmart for a couple
of bucks and a shop cloth or something and I
put the alcohol on it and then I wipe it clean
and that lifts up all the flux from this, from
the solder paste and then you have all of the
surface mount parts done. Once they're done,
I put in the four LEDs and they all go the same
direction. Then I put in the diode, the capacitor
and then last but not least, the BNC connector.
Now you have a 50 ohm dummy load and you can
check it by taking a Ohm meter from the center
to the outside of the BNC and it comes out exactly
51 ohms so that's how you put one of these things
together and For me, of course, I'm a little
more experienced. It took me more time to photograph
it under different stages than it did to assemble
it. But it's really an easy kit and it's probably
the best introduction to surface mount that you
could have because these are the largest surface
mount parts they make. And they go together real
nicely and it's easy to do. You can use any of
the methods. Just dab the solder and stick it
to it. Kind of a thing and then solder the other
pad method that works fine. It looks just as
nice and neat so That's that kit there are other
kits coming down the pike for four states and
We'll be making announcements on those as they
come available The other kit that I put together
this year One of them is in fact one that's in
progress right now. I'm not done with is the
SW40 Plus and this is from Midway Electronics
and he is reproducing the kits from K1SWL, Small
Wonder Labs and when Small Wonder Labs quit making
the RockMites and the SW series kits, the RockMites
went to REX, W1REX and the SW series kits went
to Midway Electronics. And so I'm putting it
together and he kind of hews faithfully to the
original circuit and only made minor changes
to accommodate parts that are not available anymore.
And so I'm about halfway done with that kit.
And so I've written about that in the magazine
and I'll be finishing that one up shortly. And
finally, There's one called the Pentek TR35 and
it's a four band CW transceiver and it has variable
receive bandwidth, CW narrow and CW wide, and
then you can go into the SSB mode. It also has
RIT, and the newer version has a way of activating
a memory keyer within the thing, and it is all
digitally synthesized with an OLED display, and
there's no real menus. It's all knobs and switches.
It's got a volume control, RF gain control, TX
power output and a key or speed control mode
switch It's got a dial lock You can change the
steps by pushing down on the tuning knob. It
is an encoder type synthesizer and I Activated
this doing my first soda expedition and that
was in conjunction with the uh, forced AQRP annual
convention in Branson, Missouri in early April.
So we'll go into that a little bit more if you're
interested. And, uh, it was quite an adventure.
I now have a great appreciation for what the
people do when they activate these mountains.
Oh, I imagine. Yeah. We'll, uh, we'll definitely
talk about that and some more kits and, and I
like the, the, uh, You know the solder magic
thing, you know ever every radio is is just a
big Magic box, right? So that's the magic in
the in the kit Yes, especially when you're just
heating up a pace and it's solders it for you.
It's just yeah That's cool. All right. Well,
we'll talk about The soda bit and we'll talk
about some more kits when we come back with Joe
right after this word from ICOM America right
here on Amtok Live! Be a field day leader with
ICOM. Field day is ham radio's most popular event
and it's just around the corner. On June 26th
and 27th, more than 40 ,000 North American hams
come together to operate remotely, connect with
nature, connect with friends. With a powerful
and high quality ICOM base station, easily cut
through the pileups to get that contesting edge.
Our popular IC 705 portable, IC 7300 and IC 7600
X10 SDR transceivers are the clear choice for
DXers and contesters across the globe. The IC
-705 is the perfect transceiver for hams who
enjoy both the great indoors and outdoors on
field day. It's the perfect contesting companion.
The space station provides features and functionality
at the tip of your fingers in a portable package
covering HF 6 meters, 2 meters, and 70 centimeters
and weighs in at just under 2 pounds. It has
a 4 .3 inch color touchscreen with live band
scope and waterfall, 5 watts with a battery,
10 watts with a power supply. sideband, CW, AM,
FM, and full D -star functions, Bluetooth, wireless
LAN, micro SD card slot, micro USB connector,
integrated GPS, and the speaker mic comes standard.
New accessories are now available, the MBF705
desktop stand and the AH705 optional automatic
antenna tuner that covers 1 .8 megahertz to 50
megahertz bands with a 30 meter or longer wire
antenna. The IC7300 is a high -performance innovative
HF transceiver with a compact design that will
far exceed your expectations. This innovative
HF transceiver digitizes RF before various receiver
stages, reducing the generated inherent noise
in different IF stages. This is the radio that
changed the way entry -level HF is designed.
With RF direct sampling, 15 discrete bandpass
filters, the large color touchscreen spectrum
scope and SD card slot. The real HF fun starts
here. The IC7610 is the SDR every ham wants.
This high performance SDR has the ability to
pick out faint signals in the presence of stronger
adjacent ones. The IC7610 by ICOM is a direct
sampling software -defined radio that's changed
the world's definition of an SDR transceiver.
It has 110 dB RMDR, dual digicel, independent
dual receivers, and an RF direct sampling system.
Visit icomamerica .com slash amateur for more
information on ICOM radios. Well, goodbye, Mr.
Carlson, and beware of the Dayton Poisoner. Oh,
yeah. You're talking ham radio, baby. You're
listening to Ham Talk Live with Neil Rapp. Welcome
back to HamTalk Live. Be sure to check us out
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And we'll
get back to Joe here in just a little bit. But
I do want to announce that HamTalk Live will
be live next Thursday night, which is May 19th.
And we will have the Hamvention weather forecast
a traffic report an interview with some of the
Dayton Hamvention folks And that will be live
on Thursday night live from Dayton, Ohio I'm
guessing we're probably going to be a little
bit late like 9 30 or 10 o 'clock, but we will
be on the air live So make sure you tune in to
that But before we get back to Joe, it's time
for, of course, the Joke of the Week. Now it's
time for the HamTalk Live Ham Radio Joke of the
Week, the part of the show where Rick tells us
a ham radio joke. The HamTalk Live Ham Radio
Joke of the Week is brought to you by QRM Labs.
Now here's Rick Garrett in 9GSU with today's
HamTalk Live Joke of the Week. It's no secret
that ham radio isn't an inexpensive hobby So
I needed to take a part -time job to support
my habit and they had an opening I took a job
as a security guard at the cell phone store.
I am literally guardian of the galaxy This has
been the ham talk live ham radio joke of the
week with Rick Garrett in nine GSU Tune in again
next week for another joke from Rick Joe Eisenberg
k0neb the kit building editor from CQ magazine
and contributor to ham nation by the way Is with
us again tonight to talk about some some kit
building stuff and and you were just mentioning
You know your first soda activation at the Four
Days in May convention out in Branson, Missouri.
So talk a little bit about your experience with
the Summits on the Air. Well actually it was
Ozarkon from the four state QRP group and I went
along with Gary W0MNA and his wife Martha. W0ERI
and they are working on their mountain goat award
and that is for activating so many summits and
they get different points for difficulty and
things like that. We did two summits, one was
in Arkansas and it was kind of near Bentonville
about 10 miles from there and it overlooked Beaver
Lake. And it was a tough climb. You just drive
up and pull into a parking lot and string your
wires in the trees. And it had just a tremendous
view of the lake. And they were using a Yesu
897. And so you don't have to go QRP on these
things, but you'll see in a minute why it helps.
They were running only about 50 watts and they
were using a BioNL. battery pack and they were
on sideband it wasn't you know all on CW and
he and his wife made several contacts and then
they handed it to me and I made several contacts
so people got credit again for working somebody
else on the same peak and it's it's just a quick
hello gotcha kind of a thing. Even the signal
report is not really necessary, but we do take
that. And we publish out our peak number, which
tells them where the summit is, both on the air
as well as on a soda watch, kind of a spotting
network. And so people are watching that spotting
network to see when the activator says, hey,
I'm here. And so they did that. And then they
handed it over to me. And I made several contacts,
including, I think, as far away as France from
the mountain. And then... They decided to treat
me to the exact opposite of the easy one. We
went to Pilot Knob Mountain in Missouri, which
is kind of southwest of Branson and mostly west.
And it's about a quarter of a mile hike up. And
so you park your car basically on the shoulder
of the road off on a dirt path. Then you walk
up and it is publicly accessible The closest
restroom is the porta pot at the street and there's
a sign saying that this is a conservation area
and you go up and Going up there. It was kind
of a rocky trail and the rocks were somewhat
loose in places So you had to be careful. You
didn't twist your ankle or anything on the way
up it will take your breath away not just because
of the stress of going up but you're also going
up in altitude and you get to the top and we
couldn't see anything there's no view because
it's a forest but that forest means guess what
we have trees and so we strung up a wire antenna
again and this time I also worked from the 897,
but then I plugged in the Pentek TR35 and made
a few CW contacts. And what was even more fun
was looking on my phone at the RBN, the Reverse
Beacon Network, and seeing reports from both
coasts with very good signals. And so I was real
happy with that and knowing that the about five
or six watts that that radio was putting out
on 20 was doing quite well. And I was running
that off of a bio N .O. pack as well. Now, when,
of course, when you're hiking that far, instead
of only hiking a short distance from your vehicle,
what you bring is got to be pretty light. So
you pretty well. take just the bare minimum of
what you need to do this. And so I just had a
little bag that had my radio and the key and
headset and so forth. And I discovered quickly
that they were using Bose noise canceling headsets.
And because there was a high wind, especially
up there, it was noisy using earbuds, but the
noise -canceling headsets are wonderful, so I'm
going to dedicate one to portable HFUs. But summits
on the air, as like parks on the air, kind of
work similar, except that summits only require
four contacts to be a valid activation, while
parks requires 10. And parks you can operate
from your vehicle, while summits you cannot.
You can't have anything on or near the vehicle.
You have to hike away from it. And the drive
up one, yeah, we still walked away from the vehicle,
but we weren't climbing. And so the neat part
about it is that it puts your kit radios and
your regular radios to the test. He used a small
piece of like six inch piece of PVC pipe with
a screw eye and some fishing shot or whatever
in it and he would sling that into a tree and
would fall down and pull the string and then
he'd just tie the end insulator to that and that
ties things up and I think once we used a 40
-20 dipole and The other one we used a multiband
and fed and either works really good and they're
only using RG 174 for the feed line. The loss
isn't as great as you think on the lower HF bands
like 40 and 20 that we mostly use and it sure
saves a lot of weight going up and down that
hill. So you know when you're doing it where
you got to hike up the mountain. That was a difficult
one. And they told me, they said, well, they
picked those so that I would get both experiences.
And we certainly did. And I got some pictures,
and those are in the June issue of CQ Magazine.
You can see me sitting there on a camp stool
operating the Pentek TR35. And it worked wonderful
for this. So, I hope to do that again at some
point. The closest summit to me is about 400
miles from where I live because I'm in southeastern
Nebraska where it's pretty well flat. The people
in Colorado, they do the 14k mountains and things
like that and other states have a lot of them.
We do not in Nebraska, so I have to take advantage
of times when I'm in those kind of areas to do
that. Probably the closest thing you have to
a summit in Nebraska is the press box at the
University of Nebraska Stadium. That's probably
your summit. Yeah, that or the top of the state
capitol. Unfortunately, they don't count, but
it's very interesting and you learn a lot like
you can get dehydrated real easily up there and
you've got to just be prepared to do some hiking.
and lighten up your load but make sure you have
spares of certain things so that when you make
your way all the way up there that if something
fails you can still find a way to get back on
the air and make it all worthwhile and the chasers
are out there they're looking for those activators
and you don't want to go oh my gosh I forgot
that RF adapter Yep, exactly because it's a long
way back long ways back to the car and So I have
different like go boxes and stuff the TR 35 was
in its own box and I have earbuds and I have
the power cord adapters and I have antenna adapters
and things like that. So whatever they throw
at me, I can plug into and away I go. But Soda
is a challenge, especially the ones that you
got to hike up. The drive -ups are pretty pleasant.
Some are drive and hike. Where you drive up and
then you got to hike up a hundred yards or something
but it does vary each one is different and It's
just a lot of fun to use the soda watch app which
you can get for Android or iOS or go to the soda
watch webpage and you can see when people activate
and then you get on there and and work them make
sure you log them and and everybody gets credit,
because the activators get credit for how many
they make and where they're at and so forth,
as does the chasers that are sitting there waiting
to catch soda operators, and it's just a lot
of fun. Well, sounds like you had a great time
there and got to try out something new, so that's
always cool. Well, Joe, before we go, we said
we were going to talk a little bit more about
kits and everything with Hamvention coming up
here soon. And I didn't mention the Hamvention
countdown to the slideshows. So you got a plan
for this year's slideshow? Yes, I do. In the
past couple of years, I would do two slideshows.
each kind of with a different theme and a different
song. This time I'm using a medley of three songs
that have been already mixed and edited together
to make a one long slideshow. So it's going to
take me a while longer before I release it because
of how long it takes to put all that together.
The soundtrack is done and actually the first
minute and 40 seconds is already done as well.
And what it is, is I'm going to kind of depict
in the first minute and a half the pandemic and
one of the things that I did during the pandemic.
And it'll show things like people getting vaccinated
and I made clear face shields for our first responders
here. I made over 300 of those on the 3D printer.
And that was a 24 -7 project for about three
months. And so I wanted to kind of show that
and then kind of fade into the normal Hamvention
show, which is another song. Now, the first song,
I'm using Enya's Only Time. And then I go to
Hall and Oates, you make my dreams come true,
which is so appropriate for coming back to Hamvention.
And then at the end, it fades into staying alive
by the Bee Gees, which I picked because obviously
we're staying alive. We're getting through this
pandemic and we're getting to see each other
again. So if you're listening to this podcast,
and you see me in that hat and with that big
camera with me, I'm going to want a picture of
you in a disco pose. Now think of Saturday Night
Fever and John Travolta. That's kind of what
I want. So by yourself or as a couple or whatever
or as a group of friends. I'm gonna want people
in disco poses for the last part of the slideshow
because it's just gonna be a lot of fun and you're
gonna get to see a whole lot of people in that
last segment of the slideshow and So the whole
thing I'm hoping comes in at about seven to eight
minutes long. It can be as long as mine To see
how many people we get posing but I'm guessing
seven and a half to eight at the most Which is
about the same as my slideshows when I do two
of them. So It's it's quite a project I've never
done a medley like this for a ham -vention slideshow
and I'm really looking forward to it and getting
lots of smiles and disco poses all put together
and I just hope that everybody remembers that
and comes up to me and says are you ready for
the pose and I'll say you bet and I will aim
and shoot and I do have a new camera this year
by the way and so we're hopeful that the improvement
in photos that people have already seen in the
magazine will translate to the slideshow as well.
Alright, so if you see a guy walking around and
the Dr. Seuss at that's what you do. You do your
disco pose and get your picture possibly in the
next big slideshow. So take a look around for
some kits and of course our friends at Tower
Electronics will have a lot of the parts and
cables and accessories that you need to do all
that. Yes, definitely. In fact, they're my primary
source for plugs, jacks, connectors, and especially
adapters that we need. Things like BNC to SO
-239 and things like that and SMA and so forth
for all these kits. Tower electronics is my go
-to. Well, so make sure you stop by and see them.
And we have breaking news here. Let me play the
breaking news music. Because I just found out
today for sure that Hammy the ham talk live mascot
will be present At Hamvention this year to get
your picture taken with Hammy. Oh That's great.
I'll get some pictures. We'll have to get Hammy
to do a disco pose. There we go. That'll work.
So yeah Sounds like it's gonna be around noon
on Friday and Saturday, so You can look for the
big pink pig walking around in the HamTalk Live
shirt and get your picture taken with Hammy and
say hello. And we're going to give away some
t -shirts and some stuff. So just got that verified
this afternoon. So there we go. Hammy will be
there too. So you've got your kits, you've got
your kit building workshop, you've got Joe taking
disco pictures and what more could you ask for?
Well, I'll tell you what. The theme is the reunion.
And when I thought of staying alive, I also thought
of my 50th high school reunion is coming up.
And a lot of people tell me their high school
reunions, what do they do? They play disco music.
Yeah, that's right. And so I thought, well, this
is really reunion music, and this is going to
be a lot of fun. So only time you make my dreams
come true and staying alive is going to be the
slideshows this year. Well, can't wait to see
them, Joe. And I can't wait to see you. Just
about a week and a half here, we'll be headed
to Dayton. I've got a little shorter drive than
you do, but we'll see you there, I'm sure. Yeah,
I'm guessing, yeah, I have. It's about 12 hours.
Yeah, I think the hour and a half I have beats,
you know. I think we'll see you there, but that'll
be good. Well, it'll be great to see you, and
thanks for coming on the show and telling us
about these kits and your soda stuff and all
that. And we'll see you then. You bet. And once
again, I want to thank Gary and Martha, WZeroMNA
and WZeroERI for taking me along on the wonderful
adventure. All right. Well, thank you for doing
that as well. And that's a wrap for this edition
of HamTalk Live. Thanks to my guest, Joe Eisenberg,
KZeroNEB, and everybody out there in cyberspace
for listening. And come back next time and we
will do the live show the night before Hamvention
on Thursday night. Tune in live. We'll be back
live again for that. So tune in. Just watch the
post on Twitter immediately and some of the other
social media platforms. So be sure to check that
out Thursday evening. And for all of our upcoming
guests, just go to HamTalkLive .com and you can
see all that information. So for now, this is
Neil Rapp, a WeBe9 VPG, saying 73, 75, and may
the good DX be yours. I'll be seeing you further
down the law.