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ICOM radios. Here we go, welcome to Amtopi, call
in, let's talk, Neil's your go - Hey, good evening
everyone. It's time for ham talk live. It's episode
number 224 the portable operations challenge
recorded live on Thursday August 20th 2020 I'm
your host Neil rap WB 9 VPG Thanks for tuning
in to another episode of ham talk live tonight.
We're joined by Frank Howell K4 FMH And we'll
take your calls live in a few minutes. Last week,
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The grass may be greener on the other side, but
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to ham talk live with Neil rap Welcome back to
ham talk live. We'd like to thank Scott and Jill
at tower electronics for sponsoring the show
tonight. They help bring you HamTalk Live each
and every week. You can visit them anytime at
PL -259 .com. They had a couple of HamFests there
that kind of snuck in, but they're back home
for a while. So give them a call or stop by their
website, PL -259 .com. My guest tonight is Frank
Howell. He's a professor emeritus from Mississippi
State University and an adjunct professor at
Emory University. He's been a shortwave listener,
a DXer and antenna builder since he was eight
years old. At age 20, he led the construction
of two radio stations, professional. broadcast
radio stations, served as the news director at
WXLX before attending graduate school and pursuing
a career as a college professor. Frank became
a ham at age 58, excuse me, in 2010. He lives
in Ridgeland, a northern suburb of Jackson, Mississippi,
and he is a part of the ICQ podcast, podcast
team, if I can talk. He's also been on the QSO
radio show on WTWW, where you also hear HamTalk
Live. and also on the W5 KUB round table. So
here's a little clip about the portable ops challenge
we're going to talk about tonight. I do like
operating my ham radio rig outdoors, but on contest
days, well, the super stations always seem to
win. So here's the deal. The steering committee
has taken a bulldozer to level the playing field
between the big guns and the little pistols.
in the Fox Mike Hotel portable ops challenge,
October 3rd and 4th, 2020. See foxmikehotel .com
and click the POC tab. Will you take the challenge?
All right. So will you take the challenge? That's
the question. Frank, welcome to Amtok Live. Neil
thank you for having me. Your podcast is one
of those that's in my podcast list and I listen
to each and every episode. I want to thank you
for everything you do. It's tough following Tad
the Sun God Cook. That was a great show. It was
everything I could do at the beginning of the
show. You know when I said last week here's what
you missed. You know if you missed the show it
was everything I could do not to put one of those
nicknames in there and say You know, Tad walking
on the Sun Cook, you know, that was fun. I enjoyed
it. In fact, I've got a package sitting right
here in front of me that's got Ted Cook's name
on it. I ordered more shirts so he could get
a t -shirt. So it's sitting right here, ready
to go in the mail to him. Good deal. It was a
lot of fun. Well, you're here and we'll have
some fun with this tonight. And, you know, you're
a former professional broad chaser, I mean broadcaster.
And so, you know, we're used to this radio thing,
so. let's talk that's that's what we do and uh...
you've got a new contest called the portable
operations challenge and it's a very unique setup
so tell us about the setup of this tells about
the contest and and what inspired you to do this
well of course portable operating inspired it
basically but i enjoy getting into uh... uh...
contest thank you so parties field day and things
like that And when I talk with other ham operators,
particularly those who operate portably, you
know, we'll talk about contests and they'll go,
yeah, I enjoy doing it. It's kind of thrilling
getting there in the chase, try to get into a
pile up, but you know, just never going to win.
The Superstation is always going to dominate.
And a little head hanging there. And I got to
thinking about, well, I taught a course for a
number of years on the sociology of sport. Published
research on the effects of being a high school
varsity athlete on the editorial board of the
Sociologist sport journal yada yada yada academic
stuff on sports. I got thinking about amateur
radio calls contesting a radio sport It's reflects
a lot of differences in radio gear He or she
has the best gear tends to win And I think we've
just sort of edged into that through sort of
a competitive nature. Not everybody can have
the Superstations say that K3LR, TMW has in Western
Pennsylvania, 12 transceivers, one for each man,
a rack of SDRs on PSK Reporter, feeding up where
the spots are to each station and so on and so
on. And there's nothing wrong with building a
Superstation. If you've got a few hundred thousand
dollars that you can do it, Why not? Nothing
wrong with that. But the thought occurred to
me, well, we have the same kind of sport difference
in other sports besides radio sport. Golf is
one of them. I'm a golfer. I enjoy playing. I'm
not very good. I've cursed a couple of times.
I'll admit that, but I've never thrown a club.
I enjoy it and I enjoy trying to get out there
and compete. And what happens in golf is that
a player's history, recent history, in how they've
scored, they've shot, on what difficulty of a
course that they've tended to play goes into
a handicap index. And so if you and I were playing,
Neil, and you're a scratch golfer, that means
you've got technically a handicap of zero. Par
for you is probably 72 holes, if that's the par
for the course. Well, let's just say I shoot
about an 82 or so or somewhere in there. Well,
then that means that I would get a stroke every
hole and I could shoot bogey one over par and
you could shoot par and we'd tie. So that's how
golf handicapped. So it occurred to me in working
with my portable ops team, you know, as you take
a break or after it's over, you start talking
about things. I thought, you know, what really
makes a difference? between a big contest station
and a portable ops station. Now bear in mind,
all contest stations are not alike, very far
from it. Not many people have a Tim Duffy type
station. Tom Roush down in Barnesville, Georgia
has an antenna field that most broadcasters would
die for. Probably eight or nine towers last time
I checked on Google Earth. And there are many,
many others. What can we do to try to level that
playing field to make it more about radio sport
than radio gear? Now that's the idea and we can
talk some more about that keep keep the questions
coming, but that's the basic idea where it came
from Well, i'm going to take exception with you
on on just one thing Okay. Now now when I went
to college, I was actually pre -med Yeah, and
so I I had to take a pe elective Yeah Actually
two I took bowling and the other one I took was
golf Yeah, and I told everybody that I was taking
golf because it was a required subject for my
major Right because I was pre -med now if you
had seen me on the golf course When I was taking
that class I Would be getting like five strokes
a hole so so there's no way There's no way I'd
be at scratch. No way. It was more divots than
anything else. Golf can be a very humbling sport.
Yes it can and it can really hurt your forearms
too. Especially when you hit the ground all the
time. But anyway, I like the idea of level in
the playing field, you know, because there are
times when, you know, that it's outmatched, you
know, and in sports, you know, that happens.
You know, that's why we have, you know, division
one, division two, division three in college,
you know, and even within those there are, you
know, people who are outmatched. And so I like
the idea of level in the playing field. So how
are you level in the playing field between a,
you know, a K3LR or a K9CT or, you know, how
are you level in the playing field between those?
Okay. First thing I want to do is to get a steering
committee comprised of some pretty good contesters.
as well as some really good portable ops, because,
Neil, I'm a sociologist and statistician, so
you think about the cultures around contesting,
and you go to contest university, you kind of
learn about the cultures, the beliefs, do it
this way, not that way. Here's what the real
inside baseball game is, this, that, and the
other. And you can go to contest university and
learn an awful lot about the... culture of Contesting
well portable ops have a different culture how
to put your equipment together to be light There's
different venues for that whether you're a soda
climber to kill climber and so on so on so I
put together a an amazing Steering committee
and it's on our website There are some what I'd
call blue -collar contesters like Bill Barnes
W3CB Mike Duke, K5XU, blind since birth in the
public broadcasting arena and a 50 -year ham.
Don Field, United Kingdom, editor of Practical
Wireless Magazine and president of the UKDX Foundation.
You know, Neil, I had to cut his resume so it
would... be somewhat in the ballpark for everybody
else. Don is an amazingly accomplished DXer and
contestor. DXpeditions and so on and so on. Tommy
Hozerakis, VK2IR in Australia. Tommy is a hoot.
He is extremely enthusiastic. He loves contesting.
He has a company. They're in telecommunications
and he's the president of the Hellenic amateur
radio association in Aussie land Eddie Layton
portable operator Eddie is best known for the
concept of radar rapid deployment of amateur
radio So he gets out in the bush. He actually
has a practice field Where he lives in the bush
to practice? rapid amateur radio deployment.
So Eddie Layton, who's in the Hall of Fame for
the South African Radio League, is one of the
leading portable ops around. Bill Lippert, AC0W,
he lives near Austin, he's a very active contester.
Stuart Thomas, KB1QHS, Stuart just wrote the
book on portable operations published by ARL.
Paula Ushin, who's up near Chicago, she's a very
active soda summit. She is what's called a mountain
goat, and no, that's not a sexist term, she happens
to be a very nice lady, but that is a goal you
reach in soda, mountain goat. Thomas Witherspoon,
who is one of the most prolific writers about
portable and QRP operations, has the website
qrpeer .com and swelling .com. operates portably
almost every day up in the mountains of North
Carolina. And finally, we have Dr. Scott Wright,
editor of the National Contesting Journal, a
physician at Mayo Clinic, and he's leading the
convalescent plasma effort there centered at
Mayo Clinic to try to help out with the COVID
-19. So I may have skipped a couple of members
of my portable ops team, Mike McKay in 5DU. and
Thomas Gandy in 5WDG. Thomas is the Can You Hear
Me Now guy for AT &T over several states. He
is the network engineer manager. His team here
in Ridgeland actually plans AT &T's network for
four states. If you want to site an antenna,
Thomas is your guy. He's got all the stuff there
in a computer didn't tell you where to put that
tower and of course our friend and yours Ed Durant
DD5 LP in Germany. He's a native of England Ed
has absolutely done a Tremendous amount of work.
I don't think we would be at launch this calendar
year if it were not for Ed Durant and Ed is I'm
not sure what his title in the solar world is.
I don't know if he is a sherpa or a mountain
goat, but he's up there. He's way up there. He's
also with Amateur Radio Newsline. The first thing
that I did was to put together a team who could
think about these matters in a very experienced
and educated way and let's blend these two cultures.
Because they're gonna look at things very differently.
Okay, so that was step one Step two we did something
that Neil I don't see much at all If you do,
please tell me because I've looked a little bit
Most contests will have what the scores are the
scores are calculated, but they don't tell you
why we're gonna count You know multiplier for
CW ops why well we want to promote CW Well, there's
nothing wrong with that at all, but there's no
kind of rationale. So one things did create a
theory of the contest. How's the contest organized?
So the theory then gave us some of the metrics.
Now, you've got portable ops and what we call
QTHers. I know QTH stands for location, but just
for a mnemonic, if you're a QTHer, if you're
operating in a permanent station, whether it's
your home, your second home, somebody else's
home, but you're in a fixed and permanent station.
A portable op in our definition is one that uses
no permanently installed amateur radio infrastructure
with the exception of AC or mains current. You
can be in a park and get, you know, courtesy
AC. We're good with that. So that's kind of our
working definition. We ran down the path of...
Can you do patio port? Oh yeah, I hooked up my
beam to my FTA -17 and worked in Europe. Well,
that kind of violates the spirit, right? But
how do you get at that? So we felt like the no
permanent thing. Alright, how do we calculate
scores? I work unique on the contest, okay, I've
got a contact. Well, we changed that. It's the
kilometers per watt that you use to work somebody.
Now, you can be in another continent, and I'm
using a kilowatt, and you can be in the next
town, and I'm using QRP. We'd have to do the
math with the numbers, but the QRP person just
might get a better KPW score there. You just
have to do the math. rather than having all the
power that the law allows. So kilowatts or kilometers
per watt is the basic score. Okay, now what we
did on the different modes, now what many contests
do is they say, okay, you can't put these together,
they're just different. Everybody will do FTA,
Bob's your uncle, they're gonna win. Why? It's
the difficulty of making the contact to us. So,
phone is the most difficult with everything else
being equal, conditions being exactly the same,
phone, whether it's sideband or AM, probably
not FM, but phone is the most challenging, followed
by CW. CW can get in there where phone can't,
but wow, digital and especially the Joe Taylor
variety, FT8 and FT4. You don't even have to
hear it with the human ear. It can be below the
noise level and still be recoverable So if you're
working digital you get a multiplier on that
KPW of one or nothing if you work in CW you get
A multiplier, I think it's of two and then for
phone I think it's three but I'll have to check
the table that Ed and I put together. But you
see the point is you get a multiplier on that
depending how difficult the mode is. Okay, well
that tends to level a little bit of playing field.
Okay, how do you deal with a tremendous number
of transmitters and operators and the little
one person, guy or gal? Okay, one transmitter.
How operating QRP? Well, let's just face it.
You can be there, Neil, and you can be chugging
along, little engine that could. You are calling
CQ. You are working every contact that comes
back to you, no matter where you're running.
Five watts, 100 watts, or 1 ,000 watts. But if
there's another person with just two stations,
and they're constantly at it, who's gonna do
better? In all likelihood the two transmitters
so we started out by saying you can have as many
transmitters as you want But we're gonna divide
your total score by the number of transmitters
you have so the K3LR can have 12 and Neil operating
with that five watt You knew ICOM 705 that you're
probably gonna talk about at some point You know,
there you go You know, you can use one, you can
use a dozen, but it's the per transmitter production.
That seems more about sport than about gear.
Okay, well, the steering committee said, all
right, let's be fair. Let's don't go crazy. So
for this first year, because we don't know, because
let's face it, two transmitters over one is a
jump. Well, it's three. that much better than
two and it's four and so on so there may be a
non -linear impact in the number of transmissions
you have. So we said, okay, let's do the first
year. Let's just restrict it to two transmitters.
You can have as many operators as you want. You
can run people in and out of there in 30 -minute
intervals so you got a fresh voice or a fresh
wrist if you're a CW op or whatever. You can
do all you want to. The more that you have in
the contest as operators, the more fun you're
going to have. That's a real virtue of field
day, I think. when you got a bunch of people
and they all get a chance to get their hand in.
That's up to the individual team. And so you're
only going to have two transmitters that are
operating concurrently. Now you can bring a dozen.
You may blow out a final, you may have one set
up for digital, one set up for CW, and one set
up for sideband, and all you do is have any two
of them operating at one time. Two concurrently
max, and if you got two, we'll divide by two.
Okay, wow, now does that make Neil operating
with that ICOM 705, how many watts does that
have now? Is that 10 watts on phone? I believe
it's 10 on phone, yeah. Yeah, okay, so Neil's
out there calling CQ with his new ICOM 705 out
in the wilderness just really working those stations.
And is that going to be equal to a K3LR, even
under the other conditions? Well, what we haven't
got... or the beam antennas with gain, or any
antennas with gain. You can take Bob Heil with
his wire beams and you get some gain. So it really
doesn't, and it also doesn't take into account
that you've got a nice environment to be in,
in your shack. You probably will have the use
of an amp if you want it, although I have an
amp for my portable tape. Not all alike. Having
a permanent tower with a directional gain producing
beam is still something we didn't were able to
get at. Now, you know, it's hard to get your
arms around that. You trust people. The other
one is this real mutual attractiveness for home
-based operators to work other home -based operators.
And then if you're kind of scavenging late in
the night, you might get a few of the lower power
stations that you passed over earlier. How do
we take that into account? Well, we have another
multiplier that I, being a statistician, and
this is a show about electronics, we call that
a tuning parameter. If you're a QTH station,
you get a multiplier of 1. If you're a portable
station, you get a multiplier of 1 .414. I'm
going to explain why it's that way in just a
second. Depending on the two people or two stations
working one another, if you're a QTH station,
you work another QTH station. Okay, it's a multiplier
of one, because that's the easiest. In all likelihood,
that's gonna be the easiest. If you're a QTH
station and you work a portable station, or a
portable station that works a QTH station, you
get a 1 .414, and I won't read all the rest of
the numbers. But if you're a portable to portable,
you get that one as a multiplier of two. And
yes, friends, the mathematicians who are listening
know what is the square root of 2. It is about
1 .41413562. So what we were doing is saying
this. How much do we need to still equalize the
portable station relative to the QTH station,
even after we've equalized power kilometers per
watt? Even if we've managed the number of transmitters,
okay, and even after we've kind of equalized
for the difficulty of the mode to make the contact,
well, we think a multiplier of two versus one.
That's a subjective judgment. But we started
out with... a portable to portable getting a
multiplier of four and Ed, DD5LP and I actually
ran some numbers. We made up some numbers from
he in Germany and I here in Mississippi and we
kind of used those multipliers to see how that
would work. I actually did the simulation where
I generated that log data and ran it through
that and let me tell you. the portable ops just
kicked the fannies of the QTH stations when it
was a multiplier of four. So we tamped that down,
Neil, and again, it's a guess, it's subjective,
it's a guess, but that multiplier of two for
a portable to portable in future years, We can
bring that down further if if it doesn't seem
like it's fair. So that's what we call the tuning
parameter You may not have that station tuned
in just right but in future years we can change
that multiplier and We might even increase the
number of transmitters. So in its sense, we've
got a theory and then we've got a metric for
scoring I will tell you one other thing that
I did being the statistician I am the only Contest
that I could find with public logs that reported
the distance of contacts. Now, I know you can
take the maiden heads and compute the maiden
head centroid to centroid distance, and I plan
to actually do some of that. I've actually pre
-computed all those, have them in a database,
and I'll do a little research on that in the
future. But I took the Stu Perry 160 -meter contest.
They've got the high power of the QRO, the low
power at the barefoot, and the QRP. And they
have the average distance of all the contacts
they worked in kilometers. Okay, so this is how
far you were getting out on the average. And
then they've got your best DX distance, the further
station that you worked. And for QRO, barefoot
and QRP, guess who tended to do better? This
is not a shocking test, Professor. I'm gonna
go with the big gun. Yes, the big gun showed
the big gun, and if you look at these, what are
called box and whisker plots to show a distribution,
you'll see that you've got some big guns that
didn't do quite as well as the barefoot or the
QRPR, but the medians are clearly in that rank
order, and the top ends, some of the big guns...
averaged about 13 ,000 miles. Now I don't know
how many contacts that one had. I will tell you,
but I'm just looking at this graph. And on the
best DX difference, the same thing happened.
The same thing happened. But I thought, okay,
well what if I take those distances and I divide
it by the power they were using, so I get a distance
per watt. Don't you need to go to a commercial
break so we can leave them hanging? I do. We
are running a little over and yes, we can do
our cliffhanger here. Right after this. So when
we come back, Frank will finish up about that
and we'll talk about some of the support that
he has and then we'll take your calls right after
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radios. 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. Right now, you could
be taking a de -expedition to North Korea and
work the pileup of the century. But instead,
you've decided to listen to HamTalk Live. We
thank you. And now, here's Neil Rapp with more
of the show. Welcome back to HamTalk Live. We're
on the air Thursday night at 9 p .m. Eastern
Time, right here at HamTalkLive .com. And thanks
to Icom America for sponsoring the show. Check
them out, IcomAmerica .com slash amateur. Make
sure you check out HamTalk Live on Facebook,
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here in just a moment or two if you have a question
for Frank. Give us a call at 859 -982 -7373 859
-982 -7373 or you can tweet us at HamTalk Live.
If you're listening to us on WTWW or on the podcast
edition, you won't be able to reach us live since
we're not live, we're recorded. So when we left,
last time when we left Batman, You were, uh,
you were talking about the final equalizer. So
let, let's, uh, finish that up. We're going to
talk a little bit about sponsors and then we'll,
we'll go to the phones. Yes, bad man. I've changed
the equalizers into batmobile. And as we were
saying last time, yep. Power power gets out there.
It always has and probably always will. But in
the Sue Perry contest for 2019, I did this for
2018 as well. And it's about the same when you
take that distance. divided by the power the
QRP folks dominate now I know it's only 160 you
just one couple of years of a slice of data,
but it told me that yes the kilometers per watt
might be a pretty significant equalizer, because
what it focuses the operator to do is to be efficient
with power. And what's that thing, Neil, in the
amateur code that I think we probably took a
test on, and it says use only as much power as
you need to make the contact. So it'll be interesting.
It's something new. It's unique for sure. It
may flop. It may get popular, but that's part
of what makes it fun. Well, being a numbers person
like you, I, I like it. I like playing around
with the numbers and trying to find a balance
to equalize all of this out. And, and, um, you
know, there's always some trial and error. And
so, you know, I think you've got a really good
start on this and there might be some tweaks
down the road, but. But I think you've got an
excellent start on it. And it should be a unique
thing. Now, I want to talk a little bit about
some of the support. But how are you going to
get all of these numbers from people? What kind
of numbers are people going to be overwhelmed
by the logs that they're going to have to keep
to get all this data? You know Logging software
is like set the screwdrivers If you're like me,
you've got that old blue handle screwdriver You
may have inherited from your granddaddy and boy
that's your favorite philip screwdriver and you're
not changing for anything You know, there's some
hams who have who have those kinds of issues
about logging software But what we've done because
this is different because you need to have the
maidenhead grid square centroid to syndrome and
the software. You don't have to, but it's good
for you to do it. You got to have the maintenance.
We have a ham in Australia who publishes a piece
of logging software called VKCL. Its first name
is Mike. I'm just getting to know him, and he's
doing a custom version for us. Really what he's
doing is simply adding the PortableOps challenge
into the free VKCL software. So one of the ways
of handling that, Neil, is simply, and give us
about a week, we're testing that now. He's got
it done, but we're testing it. We want to make
sure there are not any glitches that we don't
know about yet. And so you can download that
software and keep your logs in VKCL. We had a
volunteer from the N1MM group say, hey, I'm going
to write a template for a user -defined contest,
a UDC and N1MM nomenclature. And Al is his first
name. I won't put him on the spot here, but he's
promised to get that. If he does, we'll put a
link to that or maybe have the UDC or something.
We'll have it there on the page. Now I did talk
to Scott Davis in 3FJP. Love his software. Have
a full blown license for all of it. And he said,
you know, I just can't put the time in right
now. You know, the field days change because
of COVID. and I just can't get one done. So he
said, maybe I can do it in the next cycle. So
we will not have N3FJP, but we will have a free
piece of software, VKCL, and we might have an
N1MM. So we have a Cabrilla format for any other
logging program, and as long as you have what
we require, and we defined that on the webpage
in the exchange, Neil. fairly standard, the maidenhead
grid squares, which is more common in VHF, UHF
than is in HF. But we need that for the distance
per watt. And you might change that power. So
you got to kind of keep up with that. So it's
doable in others. And we can take that Gerbillo
log and we'll do the computations, you know,
if need be. But I hope it won't be overwhelming.
We don't think it will. And we're trying to put
something out there that's free. uh... that will
work fine and mike who's the author of the case
you'll be joining our steering committee next
week and that he's gonna work with us on getting
the logs to make sure nobody doesn't put up a
comma or decimal point the wrong place so to
speak and we have to check those things i will
mention that that we've gotten uh... a lot of
support from multiple continents who are just
really excited about this. It's okay for me to
go into how we're endorsed. Yeah, so you've got
several radio societies around the world working
on this and in the National Contest Journal.
So let's talk a little bit about that and where
we're going to get to the calls. Dr. Scott Wright
has been a supporter for six months or so. I
don't want to call them sponsors because there's
nothing financial necessarily. All they're doing
is saying, hey, we think this is a good concept,
so we're giving an endorsement. Scott has done
that, and in the current issue of the National
Contesting Journal in his editorial, he actually
gives a shout out to us. And Scott's just a great
person. I know he's been on your show before,
and he's doing some great work. We also have
the United Kingdom DX Foundation, CDXC, as I
mentioned, Don Field, the editor of Practical
Wireless. And DX or Expedition or Extraordinaire
is the president of that. The South African Radio
League, they are, Dennis is just very exciting,
got an email from him a few days ago, he says,
let the games begin, we're ready. And in Australia,
what I like to call Aussieville, the Hellenic
Amateur Radio Association of Australia, HAROA.
uh... they are good to go and and tommy of a
rock us there who's their president he he said
he you know he's gonna abandon his q t h station
go portable eats he wants to try the s i hope
we get enough of the the uh... semi big guns
if not the big guns into it and where we are
giving away prize mfj has come in with a zygote
gene ninety which is kind of uh... the hearts
uh... uh... 10 watt, 20 watt, I guess it is,
rig that's very popular these days. And so they're
going to give that as a grand prize to the overall
winner. And we'll have somebody who actually
gets the best score and they'll get a plaque.
Now the Atlantic Amateur Radio Association is
actually sponsoring a plaque. and we've got some
members of the board. Now we're gonna have some
stuff that's gonna go on and I'll talk about
that later if it's appropriate or if it comes
up. And we've got some other intrigue that will
go along. So the October 3rd and 4th this year,
before we get to that, let me just say one of
the toughest things our steering committee had
to do, Neil, is... We wanted to go back to the
Mayan calendar because we figured the only way
you'd get enough weekends for the number of contests
that hams like to have is to go back to the Mayan
calendar. But since we thought people would really
get confused, talk about confusing on the logs
and numbers, now that would confuse them. So
it's tough. So when we look at the weekend that
we have, the third and fourth, the weekend before
you've got CQ Worldwide Ready and the main QSO
party. The weekend after, the 10th and 11th,
we got the QRP. ARCI contest, there's a Russian
RITI, there's a 1010 International. There are
four, count them four, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania,
South Dakota State QSO Parties, there's an Oceana
DX, which is huge, and then there's the FIST
-CW. So we chose one. Now, unfortunately, the
California QSO Party is also the third and fourth,
and there's a German telegraphy contest. There's
RITI OPS, there's Oceana Phone, and then there's
another FIST. You know, our steering committee
just had a hard time, and we hate that it's there
on the same weekend, but we encourage people
that we have an eight -hour window that you choose
when you want to work. It's got to be a solid
block. You can't just wait for the weather to
change, I mean, propagation to change, and decide
to operate again. So you pick your eight -hour
block, and over that... 48 hours you work it
now that gives our brothers and sisters across
the pond in Africa in Australia and China or
Japan wherever that gives them an equal shot
at propagation you pick your eight hours over
over that 48 hours And if you're not doing it,
give a shout out and work some of those California
kilowatts. They're going to be doing it all weekend.
You're only going to spend eight hours with the
Portable Ops Challenge, so we want to just give
a shout out to them. We're sorry. Some of them
are kind of upset, as I understand it, about
us doing that. We're not trying to write them
in anybody's parade. It's just darn difficult
to find a weekend. that you don't have some contest.
And bear in mind, Neal, while you and I are here
in the States, this is not a US -only contest.
The NCJ is just one of four groups who promote
DXing and contesting, who embrace this idea and
say, let's give this a shot. We're going to talk
about you. We're going to hope it works. And
it's an international thing. And so it's going
to have, have an opportunity for people to work
some DX entities that maybe they don't often
get a chance to. So anyway, I know all too well,
believe me, trying to schedule things and not
interfere with something else is, is an impossible
task. So we had the Mississippi custom party,
Missouri, Missouri, you know, Missouri, MO, Mississippi,
MS. They moved to our long standing date and
we didn't get upset about it. We just said, look
people, welcome to the bands. MO is different
from MS. We'll work each other. Use your phonetics.
So people who aren't from. Around here, you know,
we'll know who we're talking about and it worked
out fine that we're not as large as the California
Q Q support I think they had some 900 logs but
the Pennsylvania one the week after was is I
don't know They had maybe 600 logs or something
according to bill bar. So as you said, it's just
not easy And as Kermit said, it's not easy being
green. Yes, exactly. It is not. Well, we are
actually already overtime, so we're going to
move along here. We want to take calls at 859
-982 -7373. We'll see if we can get one or two
in here real quick and we'll check. But we also
have a very long distance phone call. from Ed
Durant, DD5LP. So we're gonna play Ed's phone
call here. It's like three in the morning, so
we'll forgive him for sending that ahead of time.
But here it is. Hi Neil. Hi Frank. Thanks Neil
for giving Frank some time to publicise the new
Portable Operations Challenge. A contest I call
the Thinkers Contest because you've got to decide
when you're going to take the 8 hour block within
the 48 hours depending on propagation and other
factors. You've got to decide what power you
want to use. You've got to decide lots of things
about which mode is a better option for you based
on the handicapping. Whether you go portable
or operate from your home station. So there's
a lot of work beforehand to do and then some
good contesting for eight hours in what is going
to be an international contest. What I'd like
to prompt Frank to cover perhaps is contests
within contests. On the ICQ recording, we heard
that Frank's contesting group decided between
themselves to enter the POC and compete against
each other. And in a similar way, the ICQ podcast
presenters are doing the same. There's no need
for any registration, but how about the ARN?
joining in as well, Neil, what do you think?
From Ed, DD5LP. Well, you know, the Newsline
crew's been in on several of these, and Christian
KZRSTH has, you know, the Fallout and the TuneUp,
and we've done some of those, and so, yeah, maybe
we can do Newsline, but Frank, you want to address
Ed's call here? Ed is the Energizer Bunny. I
love him. He says what he thinks. I respect and
appreciate that and we get along just so very,
very well. And he's also on the ICQ podcast as
a presenter as well. Andrew got a great idea.
He probably got a little bit misconstrued, something
I said. My podcast team is not competing within
ourselves. We're going to operate as one team.
However, the steering committee My podcast, my
podcast, my portable ops team is paying for a
sponsoring a steering committee championship
just for the steering committee. Whoever gets
the best score for the steering committee log,
we'll, we'll give them a nice plaque. The pod
ICQ podcast is talking about at edge behest having
a little you know, game within a game there.
And so I hope Amateur Radio Newsline will consider
doing that. I think it will give, you know, a
lot of options for people to either get outdoors
and if it's cold or, you know, it could be snowing,
you know, in Canada and places like that by October
3rd and 4th. So we'll give you a lot of options.
I think it's a great idea. Well, we'll see if
we can make that happen and Let's see here. We
have a call on the line and I also have a Comment
on here, but let's go ahead and take the call.
Good evening. Welcome to ham talk live Good evening,
Neil. It's Jocelyn KDA VRX and good evening Frank.
Hey, good evening, Justin. Thank you for calling
I saw the color ID, but I wanted to keep the
suspense, Jocelyn. No worries. No, I saw the
announcement of the contest, and I'm really looking
forward to it. I have a KX2, and it's really
fun to take around. Very light, very portable.
But as Frank mentioned, on many contest weekends,
nobody's looking for you. Contacts are easy to
make. Unless you're booming in somewhere, nobody's
gonna really try to dig the QRP guys out. I think
this turns the table around and I certainly welcome
it. It's a different idea and I certainly hope
that everybody tries it, either from their QTH
or even portable, but I think it's a great idea.
Frank, thank you for putting that together. Well,
it's a team effort and we've got a great steering
committee, as I've said, but Jocelyn, let me
underscore your point. Thomas Witherspoon loves
his KX2. I've got a little Zygoo X5105, but I
got my eyes on a KX. Number two, the first comment
with my Portable Ops team as we were eating fried
catfish at a local restaurant after the Mississippi
Q -Sum party was this. How did we make it pay
to operate portable? And I think you just expressed
it. So that was the first idea, Jocelyn, that
I took down, pinned to paper. How do we make
it pay? And you said it. They're going to be
chasing you if you're operating portable. Yeah,
because, I mean, I've done a couple of parks
on the air with the QRP and, you know, it's pretty
good. But some station that may not hear you
that's running a lot more power is just going
to take over the frequency and you're kind of
tossed to the side. And if you're just in a pile
up, like I said, unless you've got a really good
set up, you may be able to break through the
pile up. But, you know, otherwise you're just
kind of it's frustrating sometimes, to be honest.
But those are running all that power. They aren't
going to get much for that power because, you
know, as you've already recognized that distance
for each watt turned the drive down to your amp.
I don't know if you remember Doc Hollywood, the
old movie. Get off the interstate, Doc Hollywood.
Turn down the drive, Doc Hollywood, because it's
costing you. So that five watt rig, you've got
Jocelyn. It hopefully will be the powerhouse
that you might not get as many contacts, but
they're going to be worth a lot more. Yeah, exactly.
So anyway, I know the show is running a little
long and I just want to chime in and say thank
you for for the different idea on contesting
and trying to level the playing field. I think
it's that's fantastic. So thank you very much.
Thank you so much. Thank you to all your team.
Thank you, Jocelyn, for the call. We'll see you
soon. All right. Take care, Neil. Bye -bye. Bye,
Frank. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. All right. Troy Simpson,
WE9KVR, wants to know, have you ever thought
about doing a midweek contest? Now Troy and I...
We were into the school club roundup because
we're both school teachers and we have our school
clubs that do this. And so we're in this Monday
through Friday thing, which, you know, I know
it's not a contest. Well, yeah, it's kind of
like field day. It's not a contest, but there's
a score. So the kids are going to make it a contest.
So have you thought about the midweek thing?
Yes, we did. In fact, we thought about midweek
to try to avoid, quite frankly, the congestion
on weekends. We also thought about letting it
run throughout the year, kind of like the parks
on the air thing. Running through the year was
such an overhead to manage. The team didn't have
it, certainly right now. We haven't ruled anything
out, Neil. But the midweek thing, here's what
you run into. Those that are employed and working.
Perhaps that's one of the small venues of being
a teacher and teaching ham radio is you get to
play radio on your job, maybe. After school.
I hear you. I hear you. You cut out a lot of
people at work. We wrestled with that, and yes,
we thought of it. I don't want to never say never,
but let's see how this first year goes. And it
might be that that we could have. I'm not promising
anything. It's up to the committee. Might be.
We have two. We have one on the weekends like
this. We may have another one sometime, maybe
in the early spring, uh, you know, during the,
during the week or something, but that's a great
idea. And I'm making a note of it to come back
to. And I think we've got some, some bandwidth
here to do a variety of things, but that's a
great thought. All right. Well, that's a. Good
comment, Troy. Thank you for that. And he mentions
WB9Z down the road, so yeah, another big station
there. And thanks to John, W4USF, and Chris,
AA4CB, for being online tonight as well. catching
up here on some of the comments and Troy mentions
the eight -hour block helps with with you know
the people who are working makes it a little
more fine you know it makes it easier for that
to happen although you still have they get they
get to plan your choice with the gray line they
get to play with the gray line too so yeah so
lot as Ed said lots to think about when when
the field is is fairly level so every box I think
it'll be a great experiment every boxer will
tell you if you're boxing someone who has a left
hook you want to wait till they use it and then
you hit them with a right cross it's as much
or more about strategy than it is about bronze
so it's radio sport over radio gear Now, how
are you going to, we've already talked about
statistics and everything. How are you going
to evaluate this after it's over and see if you're
going to make the tweaks or is that another show?
Well, it could be another show. What we'll do
is like a lot of things is because I don't know
the answer, but what we will do is the steering
committee. and the log vetting committee, particularly,
because they'll see all the nuances in the logs.
And what I plan to do is put all these on maps
on the foxmikehotel .com POC webpage. You'll
start seeing some of the results and maps, and
we're going to analyze this to see, you know,
kind of what we can make out of the log data.
And the steering committee hadn't determined
this, but we're likely to make them public. So
we're going to really analyze this, maybe more
than some and not as much as some others perhaps,
but we'll look at it and we'll look at the timing
when we offer it. This was our best shot this
year, but we'll look at it and we want to make
it better. And if we do have something as Jocelyn
and quite a number of other people have said,
You got a good idea. Well, okay. Let's see how
we can implement it and maybe implement it better.
We'll get some feedback from contestants. You
know, they're going to tell you, you should have
done this instead of that. And we'll probably
say, you know, you're right. We learned for 2020.
We're going to make these changes. So we'll broadcast
that out to our website. And if you, if you just
can't get a good, uh, uh, speaker, Neil, I'll
come back and tell you about that. Well, you
said you listen to the podcast. I'm glad that
we found another one of the six that do. Well,
I do and I enjoy it. It's only lists that I listen
to every episode. When I take trips and stuff,
my iPhone is doing double time because I'm listening
to podcasts. You have a great show. I enjoy it
very much. all right frank we're gonna finish
things up here but uh... let's do just a quick
rundown of where to find out about this in the
dates and just the the the quick synopsis here
of what's going on and then we're gonna say seven
three okay if you like pina coladas it walks
in the rain now i have to say that i had that
Because of copyrights, I had to cut off the promo
at the beginning and he had this beautiful promo
and it's on his website. You can go to foxmicotel
.com and play it, but it was, if you like pina
coladas and walking in the rain and that was
before the part that I had, you know. playing
here, so yeah, that's where that's coming from.
Unless you'd rather do that, go to FoxMikeHotel
.com and click on the POC tab and you'll go to
the Portable Operations Challenge. We've got
several pages and as I told particularly myself,
You know, I don't have a good -looking picture
of you, Frank, but I do have one that looks just
like you. And you'll see members of our steering
committee and their backgrounds. You'll see I've
tried to put together both portable operators
of various kinds and statures, as well as a very,
very good contest, some of the best. And so we
put those together there. The rules, we've got
a rules document at the top of that rules page.
You can click on it and get a PDF. and we've
got a couple of minor little uh... existencies
that i'll be changing probably tomorrow and we've
had some good feedback there box my co -tel dot
com click on the p o c and come see us and we'd
love to have you all right there we go well frank
thank thank you so much for being on the show
And next time you talk to Ed, give him a hard
time for me. And I've been trying to get him
to help me with my Welsh, because last night
I found out about this town that's in Wales that
has a name that's like 54 letters long or something.
And so I'm trying to learn how to pronounce it.
And so Ed's like, oh yeah, I had to do that in
McCrammer school. And there's a page and I'm
from Georgia. So that really means something
positive I love it. So thank you for having me
Neil All right. Thank you Frank for being here
on the show and that is a wrap for this episode
of HamTalk Live thanks to my guest Frank Howell
K4FMH and everybody out there in cyberspace for
listening and calling in and typing in and come
back next Thursday night 9 p .m. Eastern Time
at HamTalkLive .com and over on HamTalkLive .com
you can see all of our upcoming guests and also
we've got a new load of t -shirts in so if you'd
like to order one You can do that. Go to HamTalkLive
.com, click on the Show Schedule and Shirts link.
I know that's kind of odd, but that's because
I can't put it on the same website. So click
on the link there and that'll take you to the
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you like the show, leave us a review. That helps
others find us faster. So for now, this is Neil
Rapp, WB9VPG, saying 7 -3. 7 -5 and may the good
DX be yours.