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ICOM radios. Good evening, everyone. It's time
for HamTalk Live. It's episode number 166, Equinox,
a science fiction book with Ham Radio recorded
live on Thursday, May 23rd, 2019. I'm your host,
Neil Rapp, WB9VPG. Thanks for tuning in to this
episode of HamTalk Live. Tonight we're joined
by author DM Barrett. In for ECW and we'll take
your calls live in just a few minutes. Last week
we were live in Dayton, bringing you the last
minute details about Hamvention and, uh, hope
you've recovered. It's taken a couple of days
to get everything back in place and caught up
on all the email and. and all that kind of thing,
but finally starting to recover from Hamvention.
So I hope you were able to enjoy it. And if you
couldn't go, I hope you were able to at least
enjoy some of the media that were there over
Hamvention weekend. And if you missed the show,
you can listen anytime at HamTalkLive .com or
on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube. And
of course, we're rebroadcast. on WTWW 5085 a
.m. Saturday evenings at about 630 p .m. Eastern
Time so you can check that out. One thing coming
up I want to remind you 100 watts in a wire or
as we called it last week 100 wires in a what?
tune up activity. It's going to be field day
before too long and tune up is kind of check
out your antennas get some reports and and just
get on the air and there are some prizes involved
and some other things so that's June 7th through
9th. So that's coming up so if you're interested
in running the tune up with the 100 watts and
a wire folks. June 7th through 9th is when that
will take place. We'll talk more about that here
in the next couple of weeks as that gets closer.
So tonight, Dennis Barrett, Dr. Dennis Barrett
in for ECW is with us. We'll talk about his new
book, so get your questions ready to go and we'll
give you the phone number for that. If you're
listening to us live on Thursday night, You can
give us a call later on in the show after we
do the interview and that phone number to call
is 812 -650 -9556 tonight again 812 -650 -9556
is the phone number to call or you can type to
us on Twitter. We'll check at HamTalk Live on
Twitter as the night goes on. And if you're on
Spreaker, you can type to us on there as well.
And if you're listening to the podcast or the
rebroadcast over on WTWW, we're not going to
be there because it's Thursday night now. And,
um, you'll be hearing this at a different time.
So I'll be back with Dennis right after this
word from icon America right here on ham talk
live. Create your own band opening. ICOM's newest
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watch and 100 watts max power on 2 meters, 75
watts max on 70 centimeters, and 10 watts max
on 1 .2 gigahertz. Pack your bags because the
Dayton Hamvention is coming up from May 17th
to 19th at the Green County Fairgrounds and Expo
Center. You can see the latest and greatest ICOM
gear and meet hams from all over the world. Visit
www .icomamerica .com slash amateur for more
information on ICOM radios. Ham talk live now
with 30 % less calories and no trans fat. Well,
thanks to ICOM for bringing you HamTalk Live.
It was good to hang out with them at Hamvention
this past weekend. Obviously that's not coming
up this weekend anymore, but it's good to hang
out with them and be at the ICOM booth there
for a while. And they were showing off all kinds
of good things and giving away some stuff too.
My goodness. So hope you had a chance to check
that out. But if you haven't, go over to icomamerica
.com slash amateur and you can see all their
new goodies. Well, tonight with us is Dennis
Barrett, PhD, a retired engineering and management
consultant that resides in Land O 'Lakes, Florida.
He's the author of the science fiction book Equinox
that has taken amateur and shortwave radio into
the cultural mainstream and its version of a
limited alien invasion storyline. And it's, uh,
the book is available on Kindle, Amazon and Barnes
and Noble. So Dennis, good evening. Welcome to
HamTalk Live. Well, thank you, Neil. I'm excited
about being here and I appreciate the invitation
and, uh, look forward to, you know, having a
discussion with you. Yeah, well, let's talk a
little bit about the idea for how this book came
about equinox How did you get the idea to write
this? Well, the the book is based on two source
materials one is a Revelation chapter 9 is primarily
9 1 through about 11 where the book speaks about
an actual locust invasion of five months and
how it will happen and what its effect will be.
It doesn't say how it ends up, but apparently
it ends up favorably. And then there's a Cherokee
rattlesnake prophecy of the 1800s, early 1800s,
which speaks to two constellations being at war,
two groups in two constellations being at war.
Could very well just be an astrological situation.
There's a lot of things in that that's relevant
to this. So one day I decided I would come up
with a storyline. I did not intend to write a
book. I intended to write a narrative that could
be turned into a television show. And that's
what brought me to this. The Ham radio part was,
I think, necessary to the storyline because you've
got a group of resistance people that's founded
at a shortwave station. shortwave and, um, amateur
radio seemed like logical tools in this, um,
resistance movement. Okay. Well, yeah, let's
talk a little bit about how ham radio ties into
this storyline. Well, it's, it's patterned after
the station, you have your, uh, show broadcast
on, on Saturday afternoons, WTWW. Those folks
are amateur radio operators. who are at a shortwave
station. I spent time there, and they have a
radio station there, and being a worldwide radio
station on the international shortwave, they
pick up on the situation in Florida, the disaster
that's taking place there, and they get on the
radio, which was an ICOM 7800, by the way. I
guess that's the... the brand of choice of the
resistance. They talk to some hams in Florida
and see what's happening. They begin to report
what they've got. There's pretty much a shutdown
of the national media and everything because
of the nature of the disaster, the blast. And
one of the guys becomes a... an actor of sorts,
he becomes the colonel, the leader of the resistance,
just to kind of talk about, ultimately becomes
the real colonel that leads the fight. So that
was the genesis of it. Ham radio was used throughout
the book. It's not a CQ magazine article. If
you want that, Rich puts out a real good magazine.
Yes, he does. I'm pitching for Rich, but if you're
expecting to go in and find 50 % about Ham Radio
and 50 % about the plotline, it's not there.
But what it does, I think, is people who are
interested in sci -fi, religious fiction. Alien
invasion fiction, science fiction generally,
post -apocalyptic fiction. It puts ham radio
and shortwave in a very positive light, and it
shows, hey, if things really get bad, here's
what you can count on. Shortwave radio to keep
you informed, and ham radio to keep the people
that are on the ground informed, especially when
nothing else is available. I think when people
say it blends science fiction with amateur radio,
I think that's a good term. It is blended. But
it is not exclusive ham radio. It's not one of
the books you can buy from ARRL. Uh, with the
schematics in it, it tells you how to build things.
It doesn't tell you how to build the icon. I
see 7 ,800. So now you're not going to, it's
not going to tell you how to build one, but it
will take some good radio and they use it in
a tight. So you've kind of blended it in and
it makes me think of some of the things I do
and some of the conversations we have on this
show about, um, bringing new people into ham
radio and bringing young people especially into
ham radio because that's that's pretty much what
I do is You know, you may not get everybody licensed
you may not get Everybody being a ham radio operator,
but if they're aware of ham radio and what it
does You know, sometimes those people like, you
know end up on homeowners association boards
Yeah, you are exactly right, Neil. One of the
things about the book, Equinox, is it's selling
to a non -Ham audience. I'm looking at the numbers
and where they're coming from. The first two
weeks, the book was number one in Germany, an
English book that was number one in Germany,
number two in the UK, number three in the US.
number three in Canada, number five in Australia.
And it stayed there kind of like a camel with
a lot of humps. It goes up and down. But it's
touching a genre that is not populated by a lot
of ham operators. And as I look at the people
that are ham operators that are buying the book
or downloading the book, It's a lot of people
that obviously don't read a lot of e -books and
may not read a lot of books generally. Now, I'm
not being critical because I prefer to read a
non -fiction book over a fiction book most of
the time. But I think it is getting to a lot
of people who are not in the avocation. They're
not in the hobby. But they do find out that it
is important and necessary at times. Well, let's
talk a little bit about how the book's doing
and how people can get a hold of it. You had
it out here for just really a short time and
it's really kind of taken off. Neil, we've been
out about six weeks and it's done great. Just
a couple of weeks ago, it dropped a little bit
for the last few days. It's still in the top
25, 20, 25 books in the genre. But it sold, my
wife told me this morning, a little over 7 ,000
copies. 98 % of those are the e -book version,
and the rest is the paperback version. There
are 800 ,000 to a million current e -books on
Amazon. And it's disputed as to whether it's
800 ,000, 900 ,000, a million. Look before the
show we were 64 ,000 of all ebooks that they
sell and that puts us in the top 8 % Now the
no when I got to number three in the genre Excuse
me number four in the genre and I was at number
three The book that that was having the hardest
time to overcome was a book written in 1995 by
two gentlemen Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, the
book's called Left Behind. There's been a movie,
an older movie, and then there was a reboot of
that movie in 2014. So in order to get on up
on the charts in the religious fiction, religious
science fiction, I've got to get past those guys
and that's gonna be a... There's a lot of fans
of that left behind series. Oh, it's great. It's
really good. I watched the movie a few weeks
ago, the rebooted movie. One thing I wanted to
talk just a little more about is about criticisms.
And there are some valid criticisms about this
book. One of the things that, that people found
out is when you download this book I It's set
by Kindle to play on a cell phone on a Kindle
on a computer screen on a tablet an iPad It goes
up as a PDF which locks the format Nothing can
change when they get it and put it in the downloadable
format You'll get aberrant spacing in some of
the words. You'll get extra line occasionally.
It's very distracting. It's not my editing. It
has nothing to do with me. It's just the way
it is. They've discussed this on QRZ thread,
and people explain this, but I want to get it
out there that it's a... It's not a romance novel
that you set on the beach and read while you
rest and this is one you need to Spend a little
time with and that's that's terrible if I could
do something about that formatting I Would but
if you read it and you like what you're getting
Order the paperback. I know it's more expensive,
but it is formatted perfectly So there is there's
a criticism about that that that's justified
There's some other criticism. Some people don't
really care for the storyline. One guy said that
it wasn't ham radio enough, that he liked to
read things like articles in CQ magazine. So
Rich Moserson may should go out and pull 20 articles
and do like a Sports Illustrated edition and
call it the best of CQ or something. He was right,
you know, I Mean saying what he said, it is not
a technical ham radio manual But some of the
but if you want to know about the book you say,
okay this guy's touting his book Go on qr's they
they've got an article on a thread There's about
40 comments on it And I think that Neil that
would give you a good idea if you hadn't had
a chance to read the book or thinking about reading
it or spending any money. They would give you
a good idea about how it is and what people like
and how they perceive it. And I live and die
about what they say, because they're people that
are hamps and they put their call signs out there.
They're identifiable online. They're not trolls
causing problems. But I'm real happy with everything
right now. But as you know, if you're doing anything
creative in ham radio, you better have thick
skin. because only mommy and daddy don't patch
you on the head and on the back. You don't get
some criticism if you, if you do anything, but,
but sit at home and hunker down. Now you can
talk. Cause I thought, well, I was just thinking,
you know, if they want a ham radio story, um,
you know, that's about ham radio, uh, and fiction,
then it's time to pull out the old, uh, CQ ghost
ship and, and, uh, Death Valley QTH and, and,
and, and killed by QRM, but there's a, there's
a, there's this place for, you know, for this
and working ham radio into normal. Mainstream.
Well, I shouldn't say normal because it's sci
-fi and I'm a sci -fi fan, but, but working it
into the mainstream so that it doesn't seem like
it's just some bunch of weirdos out there that
get on on AM with their big tube radios. You
know, it's, it's. It's not that way. And so it's
good to get some of that in the mainstream. Again,
not everybody is going to get into ham radio,
but if they have an awareness of it, that can
be very helpful. That was my whole by including
ham radio and shortwave into the storyline. Shortwave,
for example, is not a big deal in most of the
United States. They're either going to go with
satellite radio or terrestrial radio. But in
the rest of the world, shortwave is a big deal.
The Texan radio company out of China builds 30
,000 shortwave sets a day for different people
that market brands, different brands. So there's
a lot of people out there listening to Short
Way. Apparently there's a lot of people reading
the SWLing magazine or newsletter that comes
out of North Carolina because they mentioned
the thing and I think about half of the ham radio
clubs in the country tagged their article and
put it on their web pages. Short way, even though
we as hams may not recognize it as being real
important, it's really important in the rest
of the world. So just because, you know, we don't
use it just like the public doesn't all have
radio license, you can still appreciate the value
and the importance of the hobby and the technology.
Absolutely. Well, I'll tell you what Dennis we're
gonna take a break here and then we're gonna
come back and We'll see if we have some phone
calls and some tweets. So if you have a question
Give us a call at eight one two six five zero
nine five five six or you can tweet us at ham
talk live and I'll be back with Dennis right
after this word from tower electronics right
here on ham talk live Thank you for a lovely
dinner. Aren't you going to ask me in to solder
some PL 259s? Well, I do have some from Tower
Electronics. How can I refuse? Consider the sophisticated
quality of PL259s from Tower Electronics. From
soldering supplies to adapters, connectors to
cables, and all types of connectors, Tower Electronics
has the parts you're looking for. Well? Just
one more connector? You know I love your PL259s.
Then by all means. Take some with you. Don't
be caught without PL 259s. Visit Tower Electronics
at a ham fest near you or visit them online anytime
at PL -259 .com or call 920 -435 -2973. They
also have ham sticks, mobile antennas and meters
too. See the whole catalog. Go to PL -259 .com
Tower Electronics, the hams dime store since
1978. Ham talk live with Neil Rapp. Well Tower
Electronics is recovering from a busy ham -vention.
They were, they were cooking. So they're gonna
be off for a couple of weeks, but then they'll
be back out on the road June the 1st in Newberry,
Michigan up in the Upper Peninsula. They'll be
at the Hamfest there and then the Father's Day
Fest on June 16th in Monroe, Michigan. Then July
6th, they'll be in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, but
you can visit them anytime you want. Just go
to PL -259 .com. And it's good to see Scott and
Jill out there. And with Hammy, we put some more
Hammy pictures out there, so you have to check
those out. HamTalk Live's 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 you'll
see some of those pictures from the Dayton Hamvention
last weekend. So now it's time for your call,
so. If you've been wanting to ask a question,
now's the time to give us a call. It's 812 -650
-9556. If you have a question or you can tweet
us at HamTalk Live. Let me give you the number
again. It's 812 -650 -9556. And if you're listening
to us on WTWW or on the podcast edition, you
won't be able to reach us live obviously since
we're recorded by that point. So, uh, then as
well, we're waiting to see, uh, some of the calls
here do have a tweet and we can talk a little
bit, uh, about some of the sci -fi stuff here,
but, uh, got a note here from bill WZ one L from,
uh, Amesbury mass and says, uh, not nice to see
you at Hamvention and it's nice to see stories,
including amateur radio and we need more. So
thank you, Dr. Barrett for your recent. contribution.
So that's from Bill WZ 1L. That's excellent.
And I appreciate that. Well, let's talk a little
bit about science fiction and reality. And we
kind of, you know, gave a little bit of an idea
of, you know, there's an alien invasion here
and radio is used to to do some of the communications.
But one of the things that I've been kind of
interested in, I'm a bit of a sci -fi guy. I
like my Star Trek and my Star Wars. I like both
of them. I'm probably a little closer on Star
Trek than Star Wars. But, you know, on Independence
Day and, you know, some of these things. I've
also got this book being that the scientist that
I am the physics of Star Trek and so it kind
of talks about okay, what could really happen
and and What's just there's no way it is it just
doesn't work in the laws of physics and and so
it's not going to happen but You know, in society,
I see a lot of, you know, devices, you know,
communicators, you know, well, now we have cell
phones and so it kind of leads us into reality.
So with your story, do you see anything, you
know, maybe that could actually happen out of
this someday? Well, let me make one comment and
say that you and I like the same kind of science
fiction, but Really, we're not sure science fiction
aficionados. Real people who follow the genre
worry more about the real science and possibilities
with real science and less about the storyline.
If you were like the big three's probably Robert
Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and
then in our... time lately, Orson Scott card.
But you know, Star Trek is, Roddenberry pitched
it as wagon train to the stars. If you look at
Star Wars, it's more fantasy than science fiction
because it starts out a long time ago in a galaxy
far, far away. And none of the aliens or anything
like that are our reality at least as far as
we know and you know Stargate which is connecting
to wormholes and traveling around County more
like Pat the old Western Paladin or have done
with travel so we're in an arena To where we're
more try to be more entertaining than just science
But in in my story they do develop some new technology
that has to do with scrambling Radio frequencies
and bringing down screens and there's some discussion
about the way they build a dome over The state
of Florida that's impenetrable But it's actually
not it's just you can't see through it. It's
in other words They fix it reflecting light for
it. It kindly I Guess it mask the state but the
real thing about this one is if you read the
book The book's based on Revelation 9, which
predicts a locust invasion that this book is
based on. The prologue discusses whether that
is a symbolic passage and why it would be, but
then there's people who believed it was literal,
and the Colonel, the main character, he always
thought it was symbolic till they showed up.
Could it happen? Could the locust actually show
up and cause trouble? It very well could. It
did in the book, but there's a line of reasoning
that it's symbolic and it's not going to happen.
So I'll leave that to the Bible folks and the
sci -fi folks to figure out if they're coming
or not. They're very creative in the ways that
they do things in the book. A lot of low tech
things that will shock you. A lot of twists and
turns. There's not a lot of subplots because,
you know, on television, you're pretty well straightforward,
linear in the presentation. But could it happen?
Possibly. Could the technology that's being developed
in the book actually be technology that you could
mask a whole state? Well, more relevant, could
you mask a vehicle, make it virtually invisible
to the eye or to a camera? Yes, I'm sure that
they're doing that at Wright -Patterson and at
Area 51, and they're probably 30 years ahead
of what you and I think is cool right now. I
think this one is more about a storyline than
it is sometime in the future going to spin off
a Star Trek pad that turns into 50 years later
an iPad. But that's the reason I read sci -fi.
That's the reason I watch sci -fi. I want to
see what these guys come up with creatively.
Sounds like we may have to get Dr. Chip Cohen
W1YW in here on this cloaking thing since he
invented the RF cloaks. He can hide all kinds
of stuff. W1YW, I'm going to tell a story on
him. He actually downloaded the book, read the
book, and left very complimentary remarks about
the book on the QRZ thread. And I was quite...
humbled by, by that. So, uh, you know, I didn't
go out and solicit to him. I don't know him personally,
but he did that and it just gives you a good
feeling. I mean, you, you, you want to hear stuff
like that. Well, that's great. You kept letting
me talk and you wouldn't stop. That's what, that's
what you're supposed to do on this show. It's
called ham talk live. So that's what we do. Well,
if you want to talk, give us a call. It's eight
one two six five zero nine five, five, six. And
we'll uh, Keep the doctor around here for just
a little bit longer. So if you want and give
us a call 812 -650 -9556 or you can tweet us
at ham talk live. Now, Dennis, you, you've got
some, you know, some insights on, on people who
are getting into the, the sci -fi thing. And
so Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about, you know,
maybe who your, your target audience is for this
kind of a book. Well, let me, you know, I always
hate people that, you know, general patent said
there's lies, worst lies. I won't say exactly
what he said and statistics. And I've always
been afraid of people that would get up and quote
statistics if they didn't reveal their sources.
So my source in this, on this point is, uh, The
short, the science fiction writers of America
who have, who was articles were been written
by Orson Scott Card and the Boker reviews. They're,
they're the one that helps authors and publishers
and you know, they'll help you do what you need
to do. But both of those groups say that the
largest number of readers in sci -fi is 18 to
50 years old. But as after the age approaches
55 It starts declining the number from from 50
from 55 To 60 and 65 it goes down about 10 %
So there's not a lot of us old spark gappers
out there sitting around reading sci -fi Maybe
we're watching it on TV, but but we're not buying
the books As a genre, sci -fi is, if you go to
a bookstore, Books of Me and Barnes and Noble,
go look at the sci -fi section. You say, man,
they got a lot of sci -fi books there. Well,
look at the titles and you find out it's more
fantasy than it is sci -fi. Maybe 80 % fantasy
type books and 20 % sci -fi because now they
call it, for the most part, sci -fi and fantasy.
And another statistic, I got this one from Amazon
itself, confirmed by Volcker, 48 % of all science
fiction books, whether paperback or e -book or
audiobook, are bought on Amazon. 48%. Sci -fi
writers say that their income has gone down considerably
because there's less people buying science fiction
books. And you can get into the philosophy of
why that is, but I think, and here's where you
get a little opinion, I think that all the sci
-fi technology that's easily understandable has
been mined or used. And we get into things now
in physics and you're a science guy. You know,
you talk about super colliders and the god particle
and all these things. It's hard to write a book
on the emerging science that people can easily
understand and read and it be entertaining. And
I think, you know, That's of course you could
say, well, you guys are not as good as the big
three. And I'm the first one to admit that. Um,
but, uh, there's a lot of reasons, but, but science
fiction is still good genre. It's just not the
top two or three genres. Okay. Very good. Well,
if you have a question, give us a call eight,
one, two, six, five, zero, nine, five, five,
six. We're going to finish things up here in
just a couple of minutes. So. Give us a call.
Dennis, I want to at least mention here before
we close things down tonight, some of your ham
radio past with antennas and selling antennas
and building antennas and you've had a couple
of companies. Tell us a little bit about Transworld
and Horizon. Well, in around, you know, 2003,
2002, I came up with the idea we needed a small,
stealthy, almost invisible antenna that worked
off the ground that was easy to, you know, service,
set up, take down, and that the HOA police wouldn't
come and haul you off with. So I had an engineer
by the name of Richard Rhodes. To let you know
who Richard Rhodes is, if you saw the The next
to the last Star Trek movie, they introduced
a little robot called BB8. It was like a little
orange ball for the head and an orange ball for
the body. He invented that and took it in his
company out of Colorado, took it to Walmart,
and you could go for a few hundred dollars and
have your own BB8. He did quite well. Of course,
he does other real robotic products, too. But
I told Richard what I wanted, and he said it
wouldn't work. And I said, it's your job to make
it work. I'm paying you. So we came up with an
antenna in a modified H form. Looks like a giant
cap to lie about six foot tall with about 30,
36, about five foot arm at the top and five foot
arm at the bottom. And they were foldable. And
we put induction coils. and relays, 12 -volt
relays in a box. So when you switch the relay
with a control box, you can make the antenna
electrically longer or shorter based on the band,
and you can tune it by separating slightly the
induction coils or push them closer together.
And it was a hit. It would channel 1 ,500 watts
without any problem. It had a 17 degree takeoff
angle, which meant your signal would go as far
as possible before it hit this curvature of the
earth and shot skyward. So you'd get the maximum
power on the first bounce. It was low noise.
It did not require radials. We released it and
it met with a lot of skepticism. The thing I
heard was, well, it's a compromised antenna.
It's a halfway vertical the fifth Most people
talk on a frequency on 80 meters, don't move
around a lot. We probably sold 8 ,000 antennas.
Wildly successful. The reviews on E -Ham and
when I would talk to people were great. I had
some many other things going. I sold the company
to my father -in -law, and he was too old to
run it. He ran it a couple years, and he said,
I want to give it back to you. And I said, no.
Let's get somebody else. So DX engineering took
it over and, uh, they've been doing well with
it and, uh, they've been very pleased with what
happens and it is a great antenna and I don't
get a penny for that testimonial. All right.
Well, we've got, we do have a couple of questions
have come in here on Twitter. So let's, uh, Let's
jump back over to the, to the, uh, sci -fi stuff
here for a second. Brett W Y seven B G, uh, wants
to know, do you think that the movie and TV industries
have ruined the science fiction by commercializing
it and, or watering it down intellectually? And
we'd kind of touched on that a little bit. Well,
let's, let's take a, I'm going to answer his
question, but I have to get there. Let's take
a look at an alien invasion storyline. Okay,
why do aliens invade the earth? Well, number
one, they want to steal our water. That doesn't
make sense because if they've got the technology
to come here and steal our water, they can grab
a comet and melt it and get all the liquid water
they want without the grief they'd have to put
up with for coming here. So I don't like that
storyline. The second thing, They come here to
enslave us. Do you really think as much grief
as a human race is, particularly ham radio operators,
that aliens want anything to do with us? They
probably roll up the windows on their spaceships
when they drive by and tell their kids, be quiet,
we're at Earth. So they're gonna have artificial
intelligence, robotics, that don't fly. And the
third thing is, They come down to harvest us
and eat us, like in the series V, and I say,
well, we probably taste like chicken. That might
be the most viable one of all. But I think we've
worn out the storylines, and we're not creative
with the storylines. And it's more about making
money, not that there's anything wrong with that.
than it is really producing a creative story.
But let me say this, Neil. I've got five different
production companies looking at doing something
with Equinox. They tell me to do this thing the
right way, it will be somewhere around $1 .8
million for a 45 -minute episode, which is an
hour program. You know, they've got to get a
return. They've got to make, you know, sell the
action figures and the cups that Burger King
and McDonald, it's a fact of life. So he's right.
They've dumbed it down. The storylines are not
creative. But what else are they going to do?
But he's 100 % right. He is. All right. Well,
thanks Brett for your question. And Carl KD9HQT
says, his suggestion is that the book should
be in CW ready. You think you can pull that off?
Actually, I probably could. Amazon has got a
company that ACX that turns books into... into
audiobooks, and they're doing it right now. And
I don't know how good it's gonna be. The guy
that they sent to me is pretty good. But that's
not a bad idea, is to do it that way. Or maybe
even CW. But that's a novel approach. I think
there are a lot of hams that would prefer it.
to be in that format. I like that. Now that takes
care of your formatting issues. Yeah. Would solve
them a lot. Of course it may take you a few days
to copy it, but that's right. We could put it
up on the, we could put it up on a podcast or
something and let it play. And, and that could
get it in, in a, we call it spurts. I'm told
that this book is seven and a half hours of audio
book. That's what they tell me based on how many
words it is. So, uh, maybe, maybe CW would, if
you could copy fast enough or really, you could,
you could maybe, uh, uh, be able to cut that
way down from seven to high five. Well, Dennis,
it's been, uh, Been a pleasure to have you here
on the show and, uh, good luck with the book.
I hope it, uh, continues to do well and, and
your audio book that'll be coming up and, and
thanks for, for coming on and telling us all
about this book. I really appreciate you having
me now. I appreciate the folks listening and
the folks that, that, uh, wrote in and had commentary.
I love hands. I love ham radio. I love being
around. But they're just like other groups of
people. There's some at times you could really
just reach out and choke them. So I'm going to
have thick skin. I'm going to, I'm going to stand
there and take the slings and arrows and, uh,
uh, who knows? That might be a sequel to equinox.
One of these days. Well, there you go. Well,
congratulations on the book. And, uh, again,
uh, wish your continued success with it. Thank
you, Neil. All right. Well, that is a wrap for
this week's HamTalk Live. Thanks to Dr. Dennis
Barrett in for ECW and everybody out there in
cyberspace for listening and typing in tonight.
And we'll invite you back next week, Thursday
night, 9 p .m. Eastern Time. And for a list of
all of our upcoming guests, just go over to HamTalkLive
.com. And if you like the show, please leave
us a review on iTunes. That helps us get the
word out about the show a little bit faster.
So for now, this is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, saying
7 -3, 7 -5. And may the good DX be yours. Thanks
for watching!