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 Amtopi Calling let's talk,
Neil's your guy Amtopi, here we go Hey, good
evening, everyone. It's time for HamTalk Live,
episode number 261. CW Kits, soldering services,
and who knows what else we'll talk about with
Joe Eisenberg, KZeroNEB. Recorded live on Thursday,
June 17th, 2021. I'm your host, Neil Rapp, WB9VPG.
Thanks for tuning in. To this episode of HamTalk
Live, tonight we're joined by Joe Eisenberg,
K0NEB, and we'll take your calls live in just
a few minutes. And don't forget next week, make
sure you have your last second field day questions
ready to go. Paul Bork, N1SFE, will be here.
He's the ARRL contest manager, and he will be
here to take all of those tricky little field
day questions that... just come up all of a sudden
right before field day starts. So take advantage
of that. Give us a call next week for your field
day Q &A. Last week we had Ward Silver in 0AX
here to talk about the new release of ham radio
for dummies. And if you missed that show, you
can listen anytime over at ham talk live dot
com or on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube,
or you can catch the rebroadcast over on WTWW.
That's 50 85 a .m. Saturday afternoons at about
3 30 p .m. Eastern time. So tonight we're talking
kits and soldering and specifically some CW kits,
although we do have some others. So get your
questions ready to go for Joe. If you're listening
to us live on Thursday night, you can give us
a call after the interview by calling this number.
And, and beware, this is not the usual number,
the phone system. Decided to conk out on us a
little bit ago. So We're going back with an old
phone number. It's 8 1 2 6 3 8 4 2 6 1 again
the phone number to call tonight is 8 1 2 6 3
8 4 2 6 1 And you can also tweet us. It's at
HamTalk Live on Twitter. If you're on Spreaker,
type into the chat and the comments there. And
those will pop up on the screen here. And I'll
be back with Joe right after this word from Tower
Electronics right here on HamTalk Live. Thanks
for choosing Tower Electronics. How may we help
you today? We have PL -259s, we have N -connectors,
we have SMA adapters, we have BNC adapters. What
can I show you today? Where's the tower? Well,
we don't actually have a tower with us, but we
have all kinds of things you can use with a tower.
We have power poles, antennas, soldering irons
and meters. Where's the tower? Ma 'am, that's
the name of our company. We can't haul towers
to all the ham -fests across the country that
we visit. But we have almost every connector
and adapter you would need to connect your antenna
that's on your tower. I don't think there's a
tower back there. I really don't. Tower Electronics.
Visit us at a Hanfist near you or call 920 -435
-2973 or see our whole catalog at PL -259 .com.
Sorry, one thing we don't have is a tower. Who
is the most dangerous person in the world? A
ham with some wire, a potato gun, and an idea.
Welcome back to Ham Talk Live. Tower electronics
will be... At some hamfests, yes, we've got some
hamfests out there. Monroe, Michigan, June 20th
and Oak Creek, Wisconsin, July 10th. But you
can visit them anytime at PL -259 .com. Joe Eisenberg,
KZeroNEB, is from Lincoln, Nebraska and is well
known for his kit building expertise. He joins
us on the Orlando Amateur Radio Club and Hamcation
line tonight. He is the longtime kit building
editor at CQ Magazine and often makes presentations
and offers kit builds at HamFest conventions
and club meetings. He started in amateur radio
at an early age. He's been licensed since 1969
and he's a YASME Excellence Award winner and
He has that Dr. Seuss hat that you may see him
with, but only at Dayton. So Joe, welcome back.
Well, thank you very much. And I tell you what,
when you're talking about HamFest starting up
again, my first one since the pandemic is...
the Lincoln Hamfest right here in Lincoln, Nebraska
at the Lancaster Event Center, which is less
than a mile from my house. And that is going
to be on Saturday the 19th, which is only a short
time away if we are listening live. And it's
going to be great to be at a Hamfest again. And
I'm also looking forward to seeing everybody
at every other Hamfest I can make, especially
Huntsville in August. Yeah, really looking forward
to that that's Probably going to be my first
one. I think there's One other one in August,
but I think it's after Huntsville. So I think
that's gonna be probably my first one back Of
Substantial size anyway, so that that'll be cool.
Well Let's talk about some new kits. You've always
got new kits on the horizon and You've got some
that are CW based, so we'll talk about those.
And then maybe a little FTA and some Arduino
stuff. So we've got an assortment here. So first
off, what do you have in the CW world there,
Joe? All right, Neil. One of them, you can get
this in single bands, anything from 80 to I think
17 meters. and maybe 15 meters also. It's from
QRP Labs. They're known for their QCX series
of transceivers, and they have a QCX Mini. And
this thing is barely bigger than a deck of cards.
It's got a, if you buy it with the case, and
I highly recommend that, it has a very rugged,
very strong case, and it is completely digitally
synthesized. Now this kit, like a few other kits
I've talked about in the past, is a hybrid kit.
Now what that means is there's a whole bunch
of surface mount parts that are already mounted
on the board, so you don't have to do any surface
mount parts. And because of that, there are not
very many resistors and capacitors and stuff
that you have to put on the board, mostly electrolytics
and things like that. So you're only going to
be doing the through -hole parts, but you definitely
have to wind those toroids. that go on there.
And it's got some interesting inputs and outputs.
It's got a PTT line. Now what that is, it's not
to key it. It's so that it can key an amplifier.
This CW transceiver, mine is on 40 meters. The
PTT jack will key an amplifier. And there is
an amplifier kit out there that puts out about
45 or 50 watts. It's got a cat Jack and what
that is is you can use that as a serial interface
and hook that to your computer through serial
port and It complies I think with the Kenwood
cat standard So you can use logging programs
and things like that with this little pocket
-sized CW transceiver It has a paddle input that
can also handle a straight key and it has a headset
jack and it runs on 12 volts The neat thing about
it is it has the two line LCD display that we're
seeing very commonly now in a lot of kits. And
the lower line of it is a CW decoder. So you
can decode what you're getting. Now you can also
set up messages and stuff. So it'll do contest,
CQ messages, it's got RIT, it's got keyer control,
all sorts of things. and two VFOs and you can
switch the VFOs back and forth and you can command
those things to happen through the catport. It's
very interesting and not very expensive. I think
it was around $100 for the kit including shipping
and you got to be really careful putting this
together because it's in tight quarters. Like
I said a lot of stuff is surface mount in here.
So you really, really got to be careful. But
I wouldn't recommend it, obviously, for a first
-time kit builder. But it's got things like pieces
of circuit board that you break off from other
pieces of it. But if you follow the instructions
precisely, you're going to get yourself a nice,
performing, handheld, basically size CW transceiver.
And it puts out, I think mine was putting out
about 4 .7 watts. That's pretty close to the
5 watts that they talk about. And it's kind of
fun to get it tuned in and watch it copying the
CW while you're going along. That's pretty cool.
You just take it with you. And so I like it.
I have the full size QCX that I'm going to put
together more as a whisper beacon. but it's also
a CW transceiver as well. And so actually you
can make this one into a whisper beacon as well.
So there's all sorts of nifty things that it
does. And for the money, the bang for the buck
on this little QCX Mini is hard to be beat with
all the features they cram into it. So everybody
said, you know, during the pandemic kits are
going to kind of become hard to come by and some
of them are because not because of the innovators
that are designing them but because some of the
parts are getting much harder to get especially
through hole parts and a lot of ICs including
surface mount ICs so let's see let's talk about
the next CW transceiver now this is a brand new
one that just hit the market on the 7th. And
I was fortunate enough to get one a couple of
days before. What this is, is it's the Pentech
TR25. And this is a two -band, five -watt CW
transceiver. Now when I say five watts, it gets
more than that. I'm getting about five and a
half watts out on 20 and almost 10 on 40 if I
turn the power supply voltage up to 14 and it
does allow that I think it allows it to a little
over 14 volts to come in But it is dual band
which means that you just flip a switch on the
front panel and it changes from 20 to 40 Like
the other kit I just mentioned It has a synthesizer
in it as well, and it is an encoder, so you don't
have a tuning capacitor. It is digitally synthesized,
so it's going to be very, very stable. But it
has no menus, okay? The QCX has a lot of menus
and different functions. In fact, the QCX uses
a built -in signal generator to do the alignment,
which is really, really fascinating. I never
had a kit that did that. The Pentek does not.
In fact, there are no menus on this. Instead,
it's got five knobs on the front panel. One is
obviously the tuning dial, which is actually
an encoder. And then you have a keyer pot, which
adjusts your paddle speed. It has a TX power
control so you can turn it down to about zilch
and all the way up to maximum RF output. It has
an RF gain control for receive and of course
a volume control. And somebody says well they
all got to have a volume control. Well the RockMites
don't have volume controls. There's a lot of
kits that don't have it. This one does. There
are three LEDs. One of them blinks when the battery
voltage goes down below a certain level. I have
mine set to just below 9 volts. There's a blue
signal LED that blinks while you're sending CW
and it blinks when it's receiving signals to
give you an idea how strong the signals are coming
in. And it has an RIT warning light that lets
you know if you're in the RIT mode. What's interesting
about this is that it has two input jacks. It
has a jack for a straight key and a separate
one for paddles. And the neat part about that
is, as opposed to the QCX where you're going
through menus, you can just use either one. You
can plug your straight key in and have a paddle
plugged in and just interchange if you want.
The display is pretty small. It's about an inch
wide and about a half inch tall. That sounds
pretty small, and it really is, but it is an
OLED screen. That's organic LED. It's not color,
but it does look kind of a bluish green, and
it shows you your frequency, and there's a cursor
under the number for the step size that you're
tuning. Very, very, very low current draw and
very, very easy to read. So, kind of a nifty
little thing. Of course, it has a headset jack
and the BNC connector for the RF and the input
is a standard coaxial power plug. But the Pentek
TR25, it's obviously bigger than the QCX, but
it's very, very rugged. and has great receiver
performance. Now, once again, it's a hybrid kit.
That means that you have all the surface mount
parts already mounted for you and all you got
to do is mount the other parts. Now it's on two
different circuit boards and they kind of sandwich
together. and on one of the boards there's also
some trimmer capacitors but guess what you don't
have to tune those because the manufacturer has
a pin cushion and I don't know if you know what
a pin cushion is but it's a special test bed
where they attach the circuit board to it and
it has contacts that push up underneath and it
goes to a test jig and then you just perform
the alignment there, and now everything on that
board is aligned and ready to go for the rest
of the components. Now this one, the QCX, I think,
had four toroids. This one has six toroids, including
one transformer. The good thing is that the transformer,
the two wires, the red and the green, that are
twisted together are already twisted for you.
But there's a lot more to this kit than just
what it does once it's put together. The assembly
of it is really, really nifty. And I've never
had a kit do this. But they give you three strips
that are clear plastic strips that have parts
in little pouches that are heat sealed in order
that you're going to be using them. So instead
of sorting out the parts and I lecture a lot
as you know about sorting parts But this one
I take the scissors and I cut open a pouch and
I put in the parts according to the steps and
the instructions so Kind of like when I do the
stage by stage kits and when you finished one
stage you can leave your parts sealed up in the
container you sorted them in. Well, this you
don't have to sort it. You can put the strips
back in the cardboard box that came in because
the parts aren't going to leak out unless you
cut open that pouch. So it's really nifty and
it's labeled the upper board, the lower board,
and the final assembly parts. And so it's really,
really slick. Like I said, the parts are already
sorted for you, already checked, everything.
All you do is, I just took a scissors and I would
just cut each one open as I go, put the parts
on my work surface and put that set of parts
on the board and then I go to the next. So Neil,
that is the CW kits. Yeah, sounds like some some
cool stuff at any time I hear Joe Eisenberg say
I've never had a kit do this before It kind of
kind of grabs your interest I'm glad I like to
see these kind of innovations by the kit makers
and and John he does a really really good job
on these and I sent it to him for him to look
at and test to make sure I did everything correctly
and of course it was good with flying colors
and I really think that this one is probably
easier than the QCX to put together but I also
would not call this a beginner's kit. This would
be more for an intermediate kit builder who's
already wound toroids and worked with boards
that have surface mount parts on them but you
don't have to solder them but you got to work
around them because once again if you drip a
little drip of solder on one of those ICs it's
got like 10 10 strips right next to the parts
you're working on you can have problems so I
would say this would be more for the intermediate
kit builder but for somebody who's going to take
it out on field day It has a four pole crystal
filter that's centered on seven Hertz the correction
700 Hertz and Is 300 Hertz wide and very very
selective Well, there you go some cool stuff
Well, we've got a couple more kits. I think we're
gonna hold those until after the break here but
another thing that we want to talk about tonight
is is soldering surfaces. Now the reason this
comes up and as this does often happen on HamTalk
Live, I run into something and I say, hey Joe,
what do you think about this? And this was one
of those things that just happened to come up.
And so I thought like, okay, well let's ask Joe
on the show. About this one because we're getting
ready for this this big kit build at Yoda camp
here in a few weeks And and all of a sudden everybody
kind of looked around and goes what tables are
we going to use for this and I'm like I Don't
know I thought there were tables so We want we
want to get some some surfaces for these beginning
kit builders to use for soldering so I started
looking at these silicone mat things and, you
know, laminate and all these different things.
And then I said, you know, let's just ask Joe.
So, Joe. All right. I'm going to give you the
the inexpensive and very effective solution.
Now, there's two of them that I use quite often.
And I have to put this caution, and that is,
in the retail environment we are in right now,
that sometimes these things are not available
for one reason or another. I used to be able
to say, oh yeah, you can go to the store, they
always have these things. Well, as we know now,
you can go to the store and things that you always
thought would be there aren't there. But we'll
hope that these are. Two places I go, one is
Walmart. and they sell under their Mainstays
brand. They have a set of three different sizes
of cookie sheet that are all bundled together
and it's six bucks. And you can't beat it. good
-sized cookie sheets and they're not coated.
They don't have that non -stick coating or anything,
but they're reasonably heavy enough metal that
it's going to protect your surface. So if you've
got like those fold -out plastic tables like
you get at Sam's Club or Costco, it's going to
protect that surface. So all those hot solder
blobs and things like that are going to end up
in that tray as well as most of your clippings
and stuff like that. And because they have a
lip around them, the parts aren't going to roll
off the table. So if it's a small enough kit,
like we were talking about something pretty simple,
you can actually just sort your parts along the
back edge of the cookie sheet. That works now
if you want to get even less expensive I have
a dollar tree about six blocks from me and they
sell a cookie sheet that has a lip around it
for of course a dollar and so those work just
as well and They're pretty close to the size
of the Walmart ones. So look in the cooking area
the kitchen area of dollar tree and you will
find those cookie sheets. Now I'm not talking
about the aluminum foil molded things that you
see. These are regular reusable cookie sheets
and they work quite well and the Walmart ones
three for six bucks you can't beat it. All right
well I'm going to borrow to grab one and take
it up to the museum and see what everybody thinks
but I think we may get some of those. Costco
tables you were talking about too. But we'll
see how that all plays out. But that's a great
way to go. Now, while we're on the topic here
real quickly, I looked at these silicone mats
on Amazon and some of those things. Obviously,
the cookie sheets, the cheapest way to go. If
you're looking for something better, what do
you suggest? What I would suggest is combining
the two and that is I take those silicon mats
which are magnetic and most of the cookie sheets
are made of a material if it's not aluminum it
will stick to it and so quite often I will take
the silicone soldering mat and lay it inside
a cookie sheet so you get the best of both worlds.
There you go, well that may be a good good way
to go to you so Well, those are some some ideas
for for soldering surfaces, and we've got a couple
of more kits We're going to talk about here in
just a little bit, but we're going to Take our
break right now and open up the phone lines at
eight one two six three eight four two six one
again That's a different phone number than usual.
That's our old phone number from way back when,
812 -638 -4261. That's the number we'll be taking
calls on, so we'll open that up and come back
with Joe right after this word from ICOM America
right here on HamTalk Live. It's that time of
year again. Field Day is from June 26th to 27th
and ICOM has the base station of your dreams
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for accessories for soda activations a day in
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to view accessories and free software available
for download. And you can check all that out
at icomamerica .com slash amateur. You can find
more information on all of ICOM's radios there
against icomamerica .com slash amateur. 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. You're listening to Ham Talk
Live, the number one podcast amongst the podcasts
with the words Ham, Talk, and Live in the title.
Here's your host, Neil Rapp. Welcome back to
Ham Talk Live, thanks to iCom America for sponsoring
the show. Be sure you check them out at IcomAmerica
.com slash amateur and check out HamTalk Live
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and at HamTalkLive
.com every Thursday night at 9 p .m. Eastern
Time. All right, well, before we get back to
Joe and take your questions, we have a couple
of things. First of all, that phone number Andy
gave is not the phone number to call tonight.
The phone number to call tonight is 8 1... 812
-638 -4261 if you want to call in. Of course
you can still tweet us at HamTalk Live and if
you're on Spreaker type in the comments. But
again the phone number for tonight is 812 -638
-4261. We had some technical difficulties with
the other number and so we'll get that back.
uh... in service real soon but uh... that's how
you reach us and then also before we uh... go
back to joe we have our weekly segment the in
nine g s u ham radio 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. I'll be the first
to admit not everyone gets my sense of humor.
I tried to send a buddy a joke over slow scan
TV, but it wasn't well received. 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, that Rick
in his slow scan. All right, well it's time for
your calls now. So again, if you have a question
for Joe, give us a call at 812 -638 -4261 or
tweet us at HamTalk Live or type in the comments
on Spreaker. And if you're listening to us on
WTWW or on the podcast edition of the show, you
won't be able to reach us since we're doing this
live on Thursday night. Couple of things have
come in, so let's do those first and then we'll
get to a couple of these other kits that we're
looking at that aren't CW. So if I would hit
the right button. Jacob Lindsey, and I forgot
his call, it's KE7 something, I think, or KF7.
Anyway, friendly reminder to all the HamTalk
Live listeners that if you bought one of those
Xtronic soldering irons, that Joe talks about
and those are also on Amazon. You can register
your limited warranty on the Xtronic website.
And Jacob says his Xtronic got his Morisino 32
together in no time, so thanks for the suggestion,
Joe. Well, thank you. Yeah, the more Sereno is
a is a fun kit and there's really only 11 parts
that you solder But there's a lot of pins on
some of those parts But an excellent kit and
also a hybrid kit and it also has an OLED display.
So That's kind of a theme lately is these new
displays that don't draw as much and give you
a lot of flexibility That's a great kit well,
thanks Jacob for writing in and And yeah, Joe,
we've talked about this Xtronic soldering iron.
I think every time you're on the show. But again,
you know, last Saturday was with some volunteers
up at the Voice of America Museum for working
on Yoda camp. And we put together 30 of those
things that Xtronic just donated to the cause.
And we put all 30 of them together. All 30 of
them worked. All 30 of them were in great shape.
except for for the one that we forgot to take
the the cap off the the tip when we turned it
on and And yeah, we got the smell of burnt plastic,
but but it cleaned up real nice. So we got it
taken care of but But yeah, we're like Wayne.
Hmm. Hmm. I smell something. It's like oops But
they work great and you know digital readout
temperature control and it was a good thing.
So check out Xtronic USA. Yeah, and actually
those come from here in Lincoln, Nebraska. Yeah,
so you've got the hometown connection with Joe
K0NEB there on those Xtronics. Okay, let's see
what else we have here. Jill, KD8QGA says if
you get blinded with your cookie sheet, take
it on the lamp or light lamp, go spray paint
it in flat black. It's a heck of a lot easier
to put kids together without getting blinded.
So that's Jill's tip on the on the cookie sheet.
Yeah, very good. Yeah, that or like I said, use
the silicon mats that are black or gray or blue.
Let's see here. I do have a few items to talk
about. One is a 3D printed CW key that I've been
using a lot when I'm testing these kits. And
this was first brought to my attention by Ria
into RJ. And she printed the first one up for
me and gave me the Thingiverse number for it.
And I assembled it at home. And I was amazed
that this is a really nice little kit. And nice
little key that you can put together and it's
great for a group building project Just pre print
all of the the parts obviously because it takes
a long time to 3d print but I discovered that
to make a hundred of these things I can get all
the screws and the washer and stuff for it For
about I think it was like $25 to do a hundred
of these things. So They're very inexpensive
to put together. That's like a quarter each in
terms of the the hardware except for I still
need to find a spring source and I did find some
audio cables for like 30 -something cents each
and what I do on those is I cut it in half so
you now have two plugs two wires and So now you
can do two keys on one cable so That makes it
down to about 18 cents per unit for the cost
of the cable with the plug already on it. So
a neat, very, very low -cost project that is
a group kit build item. Now we're going to go
the other direction. We're going to go to a kit
that's a lot more complex. You're not going to
get it done in an afternoon. You're going to
spend maybe a couple of afternoons putting this
together. It's called the FT8 phaser. and it
was designed by K1SWL and the case was designed
by AA0ZZ who always has a hand also in some of
the cases of the four state QRP kits along with
David Kripe and M0S. Now this is put out by Midnight
Design Solutions and they are at www .midnightdesignsolutions
.com and the FT -8 phaser is also digitally synthesized
but it only has two buttons in front. One says
FT -8 and the other one says Alt and the Alt
is an alternate frequency. You can have it program
like I do for FT -4 frequency. Some people run
PSK -31 or Olivia or any of the other sound card
modes. you can run with this kit. Once again
it puts out about 5 watts key down of single
sideband so you can run any of the sound card
modes. Once it's all together, it's a nifty looking
little box and makes a great demo for portable
or things like that. A great emergency communicator
as well. A very solid case that's made out of
printed circuit board material. The case does
cost extra. I would not build this kit without
that case because it's beautiful and makes it
a lot more functional. The last one I'm going
to talk about is available both in kit form pre
-made but the thing that they both have in common
is you can mess with the programming if you know
anything about programming in Arduino. I knew
nothing about doing that and I'm sorry to our
friend Glenn in Mississippi who teaches that
and has been trying to get me to do it well now
I'm just starting to do it and I got to mess
with the code of this thing to get rid of some
of the headaches that it had like it tuned backwards
and so I discovered where in the program I could
change that and now it tunes the right way and
now it boots up on my favorite radio station
every time I turn it on now it receives everything
from longwave all the way up through the FM broadcast
band and the FM band it not only is stereo but
it displays the RDS information, which is your
station ID, song title, and so forth. And guess
what it uses for a display? We have a theme here.
We've talked about two other kits, the Morcerino
32 and the TR 25. Well, this one also has that
same one inch by half inch OLED screen. So these
are up and coming. These are becoming very popular
because of their low current draw and they're
very easy to read. And it has that kind of screen
in it. And so it comes with a little whip antenna.
Obviously, that's not going to be really good
on short waves. So you can hook it to an outside
antenna. Same thing goes with FM broadcast. And
there's a switch on the back that's FM or AMSSB.
And all that is is it changes the input filtering
and stuff in the preamp. for a receive from the
HF to the VHF circuit. And it has a USB mini.
Newer ones, some of them have the micro or have
the C type connector. This one still has the
mini. You can plug a stereo headphone into the
back. But like I said, what's fun is you can
redefine the band edges and the default frequencies
on each band and you can change the tuning steps.
Defaults and it has front panel control of those
things as well But you can set the defaults and
stuff in the program as you load the Arduino
it is available with the case or with the case
as a kit and As a kit all the surface mount parts
are already done for you once again And all you're
going to do is a handful of through hole parts
like the push buttons and things like that So
in kit form this thing sells for about $38 and
Prebuilt anywhere from 75 or 80 up to about $100
depending on the case and things like that So,
how do you find this? Well, you're going to look
up Si 4732 or Si 4735 That is the number of the
IC chip. That's the heart and soul of this thing
It has an Arduino Nano in it and I discovered
that the Nano is a Chinese clone and If you boot
into it with the normal bootloader, it will not
accept it But if you tell it that you're using
the old bootloader And most of your Arduino program
software has that option. You tell it it's the
old bootlegger, old bootloader, it works. Bootlegger,
yeah. It works. Yeah, the bootloader, the old
bootloader works perfectly. And so it's a clone
nano in there, but it programs the same way.
And it's slick. I have had a ball with this darn
little receiver and you can just set it on the
table and on field day and let people listen
to what you're doing and things like that. The
bootlegger is another episode of HamTalk Live.
Oh yes. But I'll tell you what, it's a very small
radio. It has what amounts to a cell phone battery
in it, so it recharges from the USB. A slick
little radio, very low cost. And RDS, because
I'm a fan of RDS and a lot of people have no
idea what RDS is, but that it decodes the RDS.
I'm impressed. Yeah, and this time of the year
when you have band openings like Sporadic E -Skip
in the FM broadcast band or TROPO, it's great
because you can see what you're listening to
before they ever give an ID. Yep, that's that's
the cool thing about it. So all all great stuff
Joe and Let's see if we let me check the messages
here and see if we have any more And let's give
a last call for phone calls at 8 1 2 6 3 8 4
2 6 1 If you have a question or comment now is
the time as we're just about done. We're actually
already a little over but just a minute or so
so uh... give us a call eight one two six three
four two six one uh... don't see any more messages
other than then chris uh... a four cb thank you
for listening and and uh... uh... bonnie and
and jill are are in here talking about uh...
figuring out things to do while they're in huntsville
so i i know You know, hamfests are on the way
back. I know the one that they're planning in
Bloomington where I used to live that which that
still seems odd to say that I used to live there.
They were going to have everybody show their
vaccination card to get in. So, you know, there's
a lot of different ways to do it. But these these
hamfests are coming back, Joe. Yeah, and I really
look forward to it. I knew that when the things
started winding down there would be a kind of
a gap between Nothing at all and going full bore
My schedule kind of fill up again later this
summer Also, by the way that that key I was talking
about earlier that you can make a cheap kid out
of it If you have a 3d printer look for on Thingiverse
Thingiverse .com For an item number 3 1 6 7 3
4 3 that's item number 3 1 6 7 3 4 3 and that's
this I think they call that the thing number
And you can download those files, take them to
the library or your schools or whatever. They
have a 3D printer and print the parts. There
you go. So we've got the paddles and all kinds
of good stuff. So Joe, I thank you once again
for coming on the show and telling us about all
this cool new stuff and we'll do it again soon.
Yes. And I look forward to seeing you in Huntsville.
Absolutely look really looking forward to To
getting out on the road for a while. So that'll
be that'll be a good time All right. Well, that
is a wrap for this week's episode of ham talk
live. Thanks to my guest Joe Eisenberg case here
when he be and everybody out there in cyberspace
for listening and typing in tonight and uh...
i invite you back next thursday night nine p
m eastern time again it's the annual field day
q and a show uh... where we take your last minute
questions about field day and ARRL contest manager
paul bork in one s f e will be here to answer
those so if you have a last second question about
field day here's your chance to get that rule
clarified. That's on June 24th, right here on
HamTalk Live. And for a list of all of our upcoming
guests, visit hamtalklive .com. And if you like
the show, please leave us a review. This is Neil
Rapp, WB9VPG, saying for now, 73, 75, and may
the good DX be yours. Well you came right back
to my secure call The readability five and strength
nine You never once mentioned your weather at
all And I didn't mention mine We talked and talked
for hours and hours I completely forgot you're
a ham I don't know your power or the height of
your tower But frankly I don't give a damn So
73's, to you and your family I'll be seeing you
further down the line