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. Hey good
evening everyone! It's time for HamTalk Live,
episode number 273. Parks on the air and the
mode of monthly updates recorded live on Thursday,
September 23rd, 2021. I'm your host, Neil Rapp,
WB9VPG. Thanks for tuning in to this episode
of HamTalk Live. Tonight we're joined by Vance
Martin, N3VEM. and we'll take your calls live
in just a few minutes. Last week Jocelyn Bro
KD8 VRX was here to talk about the Voice of America
Bethany Relay Station anniversary special event
that's coming up this weekend, so don't miss
that. I'll be operating on that some on Saturday
as well myself So if you missed the show you
can listen anytime ham talk live comm or on your
favorite podcast app or on YouTube and You can
always catch the rebroadcast of ham talk live
over on shortwave WTWW that's five zero eight
five on your am dial Saturday afternoons They
run that about 3 30 p .m. Eastern Time. So get
your POTA questions ready to go. If you're listening
to us live on Thursday night, you can give us
a call. We'll give you the phone number here
in just a moment so you can write it down and
have it ready. But we'll talk to Vance a little
bit first and kind of introduce everything. Uh,
but the phone number tonight, uh, we actually,
uh, just before the show, Marty and N1C who takes
care of our phone system, uh, Tried to reboot
everything and everything looked good and then
he found out the phone providers that undergoing
a denial of service attack at the moment so So
our usual phone number is not Functioning at
the moment, so we'll use the backup number tonight.
It's eight one two six three eight four two six
one again The phone number that we will be using
tonight to take your calls is 812 -638 -4261,
812 -Netham1. And so we'll do that in a little
bit. I'll let you know when it's time to call.
Of course, you can tweet us anytime. It's at
HamTalk Live over on Twitter, if you'd rather
type than talk. And then also, if you're on Spreaker,
on your PC, you can just type into the comments.
well. So I'll be back with Vance right after
this word from Tower Electronics right here on
HamTalk Live. Jerry, what's up man? I haven't
seen you at SunBucks in a while. I used to see
you every morning getting coffee. What's up?
Well, I can't afford SunBucks five days a week
anymore. I had to spend my money on PL 259s.
You know, those antenna projects I've been meaning
to do. I had to do them before my HOA finds out
I have antennas. That's too bad, Jerry. I miss
seeing you and catching up over coffee. You should
get your PL259s from Tower Electronics. They
have great stuff. Jerry, you're back. Oh, QRM
Heterodyne Frappuccino. That's a good choice.
How's it going? Did you get all those antennas
up before the HOA police showed up? Yeah, I got
them all done. Thanks for telling me about Tower
Electronics. Now I can have my coffee. I just
saved a bunch of money on my PL259s by switching
to Tower Electronics. Don't get caught without
PL259s. Visit Tower Electronics online at pl
-259 .com or at a ham fest near you. Or give
them a call at 920 -435 -2973. And be sure to
pick up some power poles, adapters, and cables
too. The grass may be greener on the other side,
but at least we don't have to mow it. You're
listening to Ham Talk Live with Neil Rapp. Welcome
back to HamTalk Live, thanks to Scott and Jill
over at Tower Electronics for sponsoring the
show as they do each and every Thursday night.
Coming up on our HamFest schedule, Belvedere,
Illinois is on the books for this weekend on
September 26th. Then they're off to Texas, Belton,
Texas, October 2nd. And then it's time for the
Florida tour again. So Crestview, Florida on
October 9th. But you can visit them from the
convenience of your own home at PL -259 .com.
Well welcome back to the show and tonight Vance
Martin in three VEM joins us on the Orlando amateur
radio club and hamcation hotline. Vance became
aware of ham radio as a teenager when he stumbled
onto some of his dad's old radio books but didn't
become a ham until 2014 passed the extra exam
in 15 and is Working on some CW. Spent a lot
of early years on the air from a mobile station,
but he's got a nice new shack at home. But still
does a lot of mobile and portable operation.
We've had him on the show before talking about
some Pota events. And so Vance is back with us
tonight to tell us about one of his latest Pota
projects. So Vance, welcome back to the show.
Yeah, Neil, thanks for having me back on. It's
been a while, but it's always fun to come on
and chat with you about Pouda stuff. Yeah, it
has been a while. I was looking back and I was
like, wow. Time has passed It's been a good while
since we you've been here. So Parks on the air
is continuing to grow and and so to keep up with
everything You've created a monthly update on
Pota happenings and and you sent me the first
one and and we actually Used some clips of it
over on amateur radio newsline to to provide
kind of a monthly Pota update over there on Newsline.
So let's talk about these updates a little bit
and we'll talk some just plain old POTA as well.
But tell us about the decision to start producing
this POTA update each month. Yeah, well a lot
of it stemmed from the fact that really we've
just gotten wildly more popular than we ever
expected to be. As the National Parks event on
the air was winding down in 2016, a bunch of
people really liked the program. Jason Johnston
got POTA, as we know it now, kind of rolling
as that was wrapping up. and early on when we
would talk, he'd be like, yeah, if we have like
a couple hundred people that are interested in
continuing to do this park operation stuff, you
know, we'll do it with a small group and we'll
have fun. And in the last almost timed, along
with all the pandemic stuff, the growth of POTA
has exploded. We basically went from, you know,
averaging, you know, 10 to 15 ,000 QSOs a month.
for POTA to just now in the most recent July
and August, we're in the, you know, right around
the 200 ,000 contacts a month getting made. Holy
cow. POTA contacts. Yeah, the growth, if we were
a for -profit business, we would be like dancing
on the tables and throwing streamers around.
But we're not. We're just some guys having fun
with radios. So we thought, hey, there's a lot
of the YouTube channels and podcasts, people
out there talking about Poodle already, which
is awesome. So we don't have to like ... Try
on purpose to spread the word anymore, but we
thought hey it might be still it might still
be nice if there was Kind of like an official
statement from podo once in a while basically
saying hey here's some news that that you all
might find interesting so It worked out great
because you know I've got a family with small
kids You know as we were getting started at the
beginning of the show you saw the youngest one
was hanging out here with me for a little bit
when we were getting getting rolling and So I
don't have time to do like my own YouTube channel
and all that kind of stuff to talk specifically
about POTA. But I can certainly record once a
month a three -minute video in two -minute segments
and then just kind of make it available to the
ham radio media community and say, hey, here's
some official POTA news if you guys want to use
it. So that's really where it started from. It
was something that fit into my schedule to basically
record a short blurb each month that all of you
guys can kind of pick up and use on the podcasts
and channels and August was the first one we
did and I have some stuff actually pre -recorded
for the next couple months because it's easy
to sit down and pre -record like little one minute
intros, a whole bunch in a row. So that's kind
of where it came from and what we're doing. So
I'm really looking forward to it because it's...
Making the little video clips and stuff is fun
to do, but letting all of you do the heavy lift
of actually having channels and publishing it,
I'm more than happy to let all of you guys handle
that kind of stuff. Yeah, it can be very, very
daunting, and I can tell you the last few months...
with all the changes at home here with moving
and new job and all that kind of thing. My time
that I spend on this show is dwindling quickly
and it can be overwhelming so I appreciate you
coming up with this because You know, especially
I you know, I forwarded this immediately to my
editor over it at Newsline and She's like really
a monthly poda update. Oh my gosh This will you
know, this will make our lives so much easier
instead of trying to track down all this stuff
all the time and and it's something that we can
just plug and play and and so it was It was a
very warm welcome when I forwarded your email
about these updates and so we'll try to sneak
some stuff in here as well, but how do people
get a hold of these updates and how do they hear
these things? Yeah, so for just average person,
if you just want to hear the updates, just I'd
say just tune in to your favorite YouTube channel,
podcast, and quite a few of them are picking
it up and going to be playing it. The folks that
everybody knows is kind of like the ham radio
YouTubers bunch. Quite a few of them are playing
it, so if you follow those YouTube channels,
obviously Karen had a really pleasant email exchange
with Karen back and forth about you know, just
making sure she was on the list so that amateur
radio news line could pick the pieces out of
it that work for them So so really just you know,
make sure you follow along with your your favorite
ham radio media outlets and if you happen to
have a podcast YouTube channel blog, you know,
if you if you talk about ham radio news Just
just shoot me an email and it's it's a pretty
easy email. I'm n3vem at parks on the air comm
And if you just shoot me an email and say, hey,
yeah, I'd like to get on the mailing list, what
I do because I'm not in the business of production
and publishing. Once a month, I drop the video
file and an audio only file in a Google Drive
and send it out to the mailing list and say,
you know, here it is, folks, and take it and
use it as you please on your channels. So that's
really kind of the way I'm distributing it. All
right, well, let's do a little live version of
this and I don't want to just just play the thing
here since you're here tonight So what is the
latest news about Pota? I think I heard something
about you just added a whole slew of parks Yeah,
yeah, I can I can actually buzz through and give
you the put on my my deep radio announcer voice
announcer voice and Yeah, yeah, I can buzz through
so So yeah, the exciting announcement is that
we just added over a thousand parks to the Parks
on the Air system, which it took surprisingly
long to get a thousand parks added. So for the
last several months, we've had a group of volunteers
basically collecting requests from people in
their state for parks that they think they should
be added. Those volunteers combed through those
requests to make sure that they were valid parks,
that they fit the criteria for POTA. And each
state had one person who put together those lists
in their parks. They went to another volunteer,
John, who consolidated all of those lists into
a big file. And then myself and a couple of the
other database admin have the job of basically
Running the scripts and doing the inserts to
get all that stuff in into the system. So yeah,
there's there's a thousand new parks in in the
system for the US and and then over the next
Number of months and and even probably year or
more We're going to be doing the same effort
with a lot of a lot of DX entities So so now
we're starting to really comb through and and
get some DX entities added also And then the
other thing that we shared during this update
was that we formalized a POTA support desk. So
because of that wild growth I talked about at
the beginning, we've now got 15 ,000 users, which
essentially 15 ,000 users was too many people
for just like me and Jason to answer support
tickets by ourselves. So we have a small contingent
of volunteers that now make up the POTA support
desk. essentially a volunteer for every day of
the week. So whenever you send a ticket in to
help at parksontheair .com, you'll get a response
usually within 24 hours, but no worse than 48.
And if it's a real complicated request, the response
might be, hey, we've got to escalate this to
level two. But if you have a fairly standard
question, you'll get a response pretty quick.
So those were kind of our big news items for
this month. If you ever call into tech support,
you're used to that. Okay, can you just escalate
me to level two? Yes, I've unplugged it and plugged
it back in. I'll give you the POTA secret. Don't
tell anybody. Level two technical support is
basically Vance on the weekends. So during the
week, everybody else tries their best to answer
the questions and then anything that they can't
figure out, they punt to me to figure out on
the weekend. Well, I always, you know, every
time I call in about something, it's like, yes,
I've already rebooted. I've already done this.
I've already done that. I've already done. Oh,
okay. Well, you know, can you just skip, skip
me to level two and they don't, but. Well, that's
that's some cool stuff and I don't know why and
and I don't know why I'm mentioning this but
I just My my brain went back to my hometown growing
up and and I'm and I'm like There was there was
a part just down the street. It was called Lester
Square and it was one square block And and that
was it So would Leicester Square count as a POTA?
Could you register that? Well, it would depend
on the criteria. So I'd have to look it up to
see if it is a park in the system or not. But
essentially what makes a POTA park eligible to
be part of POTA is essentially if it's owned
or managed by a state entity or higher. So if
it's like a state or federal entity that owns
and manages it, then it's eligible to be a podo
park. So if it's like a county park or a city
park, those generally aren't in the system. And
then, you know, state parks and things are, and
that's really if no reason other than just to,
to keep the numbers reasonable, because once
you go below the state level park and you start
hitting like city and county parks, the numbers
of parks in the U .S. is just astronomical to
manage. You just answered my question. A city
park that's one square block, which was probably
the other place that I hung out besides home,
that's not going to cut it because you're going
to have millions. What we found, especially since
we went through and did this big push and got
these 1 ,000 plus parks in, essentially that
was all what we kind of considered clean up.
When we first set up the parks in the system,
an even smaller group of people kind of took
their best shot at making sure we had all the
state parks and federal parks listed, but there
was obviously quite a few that we were missing.
And yeah, that became like the big chore was
combing through all the stuff because a lot of
people said, well, hey, there's this park near
me that I think is state owned. And so then there
was a lot of homework to figure out, hey, is
this actually a state park? Is it a county park?
And there's a lot of time on the phone with state.
departments of natural resources and city and
county parks and rec department saying like,
Hey, do you own this park? Does the state own
that park? So yeah, it was, it was quite a chore.
Oh, I imagine it would be so, but at least a
lot of states anyway, have those indexed on a
webpage. So you could, you can get those, but
I'm sure there's a lot of phone backup needed
there for, for some that. got overlooked or or
they just don't do a good job of of listing those
on their on their website. So cool stuff. Well,
there we go. The trip back to the mental trip
back to Leicester Square in Vincennes, Indiana.
So if anybody knows where Leicester Square is,
you're you're you're very special because assign
them 10 extra Internet points. Yes. Yeah, we'll
give you we'll get all heck. We'll give you 100
extra points. If you if you know where Lester
Square is because it's just a tiny little park,
but but spend a lot of time there So, all right.
Well Before we take a break here do just want
to be clear. I Last night I sent out a picture
on social media to promote our poda theme for
tonight and The photo wasn't Vance. So if anybody
thinks that was Vance, that wasn't Vance. I was
just looking for a fun photo you use about POTA
and I found one with Shane, K5QBF. He was doing
a POTA activation and as I said earlier in the
show, the time that I spend on this show has
dwindled a lot. And so I was in a hurry and I
didn't... look and see oh, that's a thumbnail
from a YouTube video and I didn't get permission
from everybody so we got it all worked out last
night, so thanks to to ham radio DX for letting
me keep the photo up and And I talked to Shane
some last night. It was good to meet him and
talk to him and Got permission from him as well
to do that. So my apologies for not doing my
due diligence there as I normally do so and and
my apologies to you if if if you know if that
caused an issue of you know people thinking that
you were Shane or Shane were you or However,
that went yeah. Yeah, I yeah no no no harm on
my end. I'm actually a I'm a hard one to find
pictures of on the internet. So it's only within
the last few months when I started doing a little
bit of PR stuff on some of the YouTube channels
for Pota that was actually the first time my
face appeared on the internet. So I'm a hard
one to find a picture of. Up until like two weeks
ago, my face was not on the internet anywhere.
So I made it to almost 40 before my face showed
up on the internet. So that's gotta be some kind
of record. Yeah, I guess so well Shane had one
he's like this is Vance and I'm like, uh, yeah
But but thanks thanks to Shane and he has a YouTube
channel and you can Hear about this story and
actually the picture he was telling me about
the picture. He said that activation was just
a miserable really difficult Activation to do
right in the middle of a solar storm and So if
you want to hear more about that you can check
out Shane's YouTube channel It's called this
side of the radio and you can hear about that
one and many more. So check that out. Again,
that's Shane K5QBF and then from Australia, it's
the Ham Radio DX YouTube channel there too. So
check them out as well. And I know you all have
been on their shows before too. So check them
out. Well, it's time to take a break. So I'll
be back with Vance right after this word from
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Join the conversation. Give us a call at 859
-982 -7373. Again, the number to call is 859
-982 -7373. Or, if you'd rather type than talk,
tweet us at HamTalk Live. Now, here's Neil Rapp
with more HamTalk Live. Welcome back to HamTalk
Live. We're on the air every Thursday night at
9 p .m. Eastern Time, right here at HamTalkLive
.com. Be sure to check us out on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram. And thanks to iCom America for
sponsoring the show. Be sure you check them out
at iComAmerica .com slash amateur. And again,
the phone lines, the phone provider is... in
a denial of service attack. You never know. That's
the beauty of live radio. You never know what's
going to happen. So, the usual number isn't working
at the moment, so we'll use our backup line.
It's 812 -638 -4261. Again, don't call the 7373
number because it's not going to work tonight.
It's 812 -638 -4261. You can give us a call right
now actually. We can do that. First, we are going
to tune in to the N9GSU 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, N9GSU with today's
HamTalk Live Joke of the Week. I decided to jump
on the bandwagon and make my shack and everything
in my house completely paperless. Everything
was fine until I had to go to the bathroom. This
has been the Ham Talk Live Ham Radio Joke of
the Week with Rick Garrett in 9GSU. Tune in again
next week for another joke from Rick. Oh my goodness
he doesn't ever stop. Well, thank you, Rick,
for that one. We'll look forward to another one
next week. But right now it's time for your phone
calls. So if you have a question for Vance, give
us a call. Again, it's 812 -638 -4261. If you
would like to join in or you can tweet us, it's
at HamTalk Live. And if you're listening to us
on WTWW or on the podcast edition, you won't
be able to call us because we're doing this live
here. So let's see. If I punch the buttons correctly,
we have a caller on the line. So let's go to
the phone line. Just good evening. Welcome to
HamTalk Live. I think I saw a pop -up that looked
like a phone number dropped out. So it might've
lost them. Okay. Let's see here. Let's try it
again. Merge call. Hello. Welcome to ham talk
live. Hello. Hmm. Okay. Well, I don't know what's
going on there, but I was probably Facebook pranking
me. I was fighting with Facebook. So again, the
number 812 -638 -4261 is the number to call.
And we'll take your questions here. Or again,
you can always tweet us. It's at HamTalk Live.
Or if you're listening to some speaker, you can...
type into the comments and we'll get that here
and we'll take your questions. So let's see,
on the Twitter thing, we've got your guest is
a darn handsome guy, but that was from Vant,
so yeah, I don't know. Well, he must be a very
flattering gentleman. Yeah, must be, must be.
Well, let's, let's talk about some other, uh,
Pota activations that, that, you know, you've
been involved with in getting going. Some of
the, some of the bigger ones, uh, that have been
going on. Um, let's just talk a little, little
Pota directly tonight here. Yeah, there's been,
um, well with how popular, um, you know, Pota
has gotten, there's been, you know, you can,
you can pretty much any. time of day or night,
day of the week, you can almost always find a
Pota station on the air now. And so one of the
things I had actually looked at in August is,
for the month ending August, I was like, oh,
I wonder if there's any specific parks out there
that are super popular. And so I did some number
crunching in the database with some of the stuff
we use in the backend. and the park that popped
up that actually got activated the most in the
month of August was, and I'm gonna butcher the
name of it, but I'm gonna do my best, is Monsanto
State Park. And I thought, ah, I gotta Google
this park, see why so many people went to this
park in August. And I looked and all of the activations
happened like... right around a couple day window,
and then I looked more and I'm like, ah, I know
what's going on. It just happened to be the park
that is closest to where they do the Huntsville
Ham Fest. So Montesano State Park got an influx
of ham radio operators during Huntsville, and
there was, I don't know, a couple dozen different
operators went out to that park over the course
of the weekend and activated it while it was
there. And as far as parks go, that's a really
cool park. So one of the things I'll probably
start doing during the updates is kind of sharing
a Park of the Month. And that park has some really
cool cabins that were built in the 1930s as part
of the Civilian Conservation Corps. So yeah,
I'd say go ahead and... Google Montesano State
Park near Huntsville, and it looks like that'd
be a fun place to go and rent a cabin and play
Pota. The cabins sit right on a ridge line, and
it looks like the ideal place to have a very
laid -back Pota activation. All right. Well,
that sounds cool. All right. Well, we're going
to try the phone lines again here. We merged
the call back in again. So let's, oh, and it
just said, oh. Left again. All right. And recalling
again. So let's see here. Okay. Joined. All right.
Here we go. Before it drops. Welcome to ham talk
live. So much for that idea. All right. Well,
RJ is listening tonight. W Y seven AA. And, uh,
he writes it on Twitter and says, if I'm working
as a special event station, like a W seven Y
as he did, or, or the WW zero WW V, uh, and he
is at a POTA site, can he turn a POTA turn in
a POTA log under my call sign as an activation,
or does the special event call sign need to have
a POTA account? So there you go, Vance. It's
tier two. That is very much a tier two question.
So that's a good one. And this is something that
a lot of folks ask about. So the easiest way
for me to explain it is if you think about it
first this way, that Parks on the Air, we give
credit to you as a person. not actually your
call sign. We refer to people by their call signs
on leaderboards and things like that, but it's
actually the person that we give credit to. And
one of the cool things about POTA is that if
there's a club activation, both the club and
the individual operator can get credit for the
same contact. It's one of the ways we encourage
club activation. So if a bunch of people want
to go out with their club, the club gets credit
for a club activation, but then the individual
operators get credit for the contacts that they
make. So the easiest way to think of it is, is
the special event call sign being run by a club,
i .e. are there multiple operators that would
be submitting for POTA credit? So if the event
is being run by a club, the club would put that
special event call sign in their profile, and
then the club would upload the log and all of
the operators would have their credit trickle
through accordingly. If it's just you and you
get a special event call sign for yourself, then
you would put the special event call sign under
your profile with the start and end dates for
when you had the call sign registered and then
you just upload like normal. So that's, I think,
the easiest way to answer that and explain it.
All right, very good. Well, thank you, RJ, for
listening and thank you for Sending in the question
and if you have a question send it in on Twitter
at ham talk live or On speaker type it into the
comments or you can try the phone line at eight
one two six three eight four two six one that's
eight one two net ham one And we'll see if we
can get it to work, but it's a little crazy on
the phones tonight, so my apologies. Alright,
well... Let's talk a little bit. We've got just
a few minutes left here. Let's talk about some
tips for if you decide that you're going to go
activate a park for the first time, what are
some things that you should do to prepare for
doing that first activation of one of these parks?
It's a very loaded question, but there are some
real high level things that I definitely always
like to share with folks. Really the first thing
is, if you're new to HF and things like that,
do some hunting first, because Pota has gotten
big enough that when you go out in the park you
will get a pile up. So just be prepared to have
a pile up coming at you. uh, is, is the first
thing. And then, and then the second thing is,
um, really around preparation. So we've put some
super cool features on the poda .app website,
but we do remind people that, Hey, that's, you
know, those, that's really just a rough guideline.
Like the pins that show where maps are as rough
guidelines and things like that. So once you've
identified a park that you're going to go act,
go activate, we do always recommend, Hey, go
look up that park online and find that. State's
website where they talk about their rules for
parks and things like that And just make sure
that you know where the boundaries of the park
are so, you know that you're set up within the
park Make sure you know the rules for the park
and and that can be There's a lot of gotchas.
So like in Pennsylvania we can activate we have
state game lands that are parks, but you're not
allowed to use those parks for anything other
than hunting during hunting season. So there's
rules like that just to be aware of. So look
up the rules for your local parks before you
go. And then the second piece of that is usually
gear. A lot of people will say, hey, what's the
best gear to have? And my standard answer is
whatever gear you own is the best gear to have.
So the advantage of being the DX and going out
in the park is you don't have to have a perfect
gear situation because you're not trying to break
the pile up. The pile up is coming to you. So
as long as you can get a radio powered up and
get some kind of antenna and maybe a tuner plugged
into it, you're going to be in good shape for
getting an activation underway. So those are
really the biggest tips. took that one layer
deeper. The next thing that I often like to do
when I activate a park is I'll take a quick peek,
and I don't do anything fancy. I'll just do a
quick peek on Google Maps, but I'll pick the
topographic layer so that I can see where the
hills and stuff are in the park, just to make
sure that I'm not going and setting up in the
bottom of a river valley or something. If there's
a spot in the park that's the high ground, that's
usually what I try to shoot for. for, you know,
kind of, kind of beginner tips. That's, that's
really the, the best, the best place to start.
Um, we do have at poda .app, there's a community
resources section and we do have some pretty
detailed like activator and hunter guides that,
you know, you, you can spend, you know, an hour
or two kind of reading through and cleaning some
tips and tricks from those things also. Yeah,
it pays to check out some of that stuff because
I can tell you this summer we we had the the
Yoda camp and we had Some ARDF going on and and
we were like, okay Well, you know the the Voice
of America Museum has their section of the old
Voice of America property But surrounding it
is a county park and then to one side of it is
actually city property. And so we were like,
okay, well, you know, we'll expand it out into
the park. And it's like the county park had totally
different rules. And we finally ended up just
Saying no, we're going to keep it on the museum
grounds and not go into the Parks on either side
and and it looks like it's just one great big
park, you know But it actually is divided up.
So There can be some kind of strange things like
that. So always a good idea to check that out
Well Vance, thank you so much for coming on the
show and answering our questions here tonight
And we look forward to hearing some of those
updates on some media outlets like Amateur Radio
Newsline and some of the others. We look forward
to getting some of that information and congratulations
on all the success of the program because that's
some astronomically exponential growth there
and so you're to be commended. Yeah, yeah, thanks.
Yeah, we're just thrilled that there's other
people out there that wanted to do it just as
much as the small group of us that kind of got
it started and up and running. Yeah, it's always
cool when you get that participation. So we appreciate
that and any final comments here before we go?
No, just the bit of advice that my five -year
-old likes to give every time he hears me talking
about Pota. And that's any time is Pota time.
And Pota loves you no matter what you believe
and who you love and where you're from. So come
join us and have fun along with us as we play
in the parks. All right. Very good advice. All
right, well, thank you so much. That is a wrap
for this week's edition of HamTalk Live. Thanks
to my guest, Vance Martin, N3VEM and everyone
out there in cyberspace for listening and calling
in, typing in. I invite you back next Thursday
night, 9 p .m. Eastern Time. And to check out
the upcoming guests, just go to HamTalkLive .com.
And if you like the show, please leave us a review.
That's all we ask of you. So for now, this is
Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, saying 7 -3, 7 -5, and may
the good DX be yours. No one's mentioned your
weather at all And I didn't mention mine