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-4373 or go to hamstation .com. Good evening,
everyone. It's time for ham talk live episode
number 38 It's the author of the book contact
sport JK George in 3 BB recorded live on Thursday
November 3rd 2016 I'm your host Neil rap WB 9
VPG. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of
ham talk live Tonight will be joined by noted
author JK. Jim George in 3 BB to talk about his
latest book entitled Contact Sport and we'll
take your calls live in just a few minutes. Last
week on the show Gerald Youngblood K5SDR was
here to talk about his company Flex Radios. So
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or you can download it. from most of those popular
podcasting websites. JK Jim George in 3BB has
been an avid amateur radio enthusiast with a
special love for Morse code and radio sporting
since his teenage years over 50 years ago. He
started his hobby listening to shortwave broadcasts
and long -distance AM radio stations. He is a
graduate of Virginia Tech where he was president
of the VT Amateur Radio Club and was inducted
into the Virginia Tech Academy of Engineering
after serving as chair of the advisory boards
for both electrical and computer engineering
as well as the College of Engineering. He is
an avid Virginia Tech sports fan and has completed
grad school at Arizona State University specializing
in semiconductor materials physics. Jim's professional
career was primarily at Motorola, where he worked
in the semiconductor business for nearly 40 years
and served as corporate vice president for nearly
15 years. Following his retirement, he was a
founding member of the advisory board for KUTFM,
the public radio station of the University of
Texas at Austin. George enjoys reading and writing
and he and his wife live in the Hill County west
of Austin and have three grown children and five
grandchildren. His first book was entitled Reunion.
a novel about a difficult relationship between
a father and son as well as a lifelong friendships
with a unique high school peer group in his latest
book, Contact Sport, tells the story of the 2014
World Radio Team Championships. And let me also
add that Jim spent part of his youth growing
up down in Eastern Kentucky around uh, Paintsville,
uh, Kentucky, which is the home of four number
university of Kentucky basketball star and current
Alabama assistant coach John Pelfrey. And so
anybody that knows me knows I'm a UK fan. So
I had to throw that in there. Jim, welcome to
am talk live. Hello, Neil. And obviously you're
a member of big blue nation. And, uh, I guess
I have to confess here that obviously if you
grew up in, uh, Eastern Kentucky, Southwestern
Virginia and Southern West Virginia. Note those
geographic adjectives are really important. You
are clearly a child of Appalachia. So I confess
I am. Yep. Yep. Very good. So, so do you know
John Pelfrey? Did you know who he was? Uh, yeah,
no, I, I know the name, but actually to show
you how old I am, the big sports hero for, uh,
for UK at the time that I was a kid and pencil
was babe perilla of the football team. Ah, okay.
Well, very good. So you, you've got that whole,
whole UK history going there. So, and everybody
always wants to know how in the world did a UK
fan end up in Bloomington, Indiana? There you
go. Uh, you know, lifelong Hoosier, but I grew
up watching the wrong TV channel, I guess. Got
started on UK basketball very, very early on.
And, uh, and so, um, yeah, I'm kind of a fish
out of water in Bloomington, Indiana, but. anyway
well let's let's get into you the book here contact
sport tell us a little bit about that book and
the storyline and what inspired you to write
it well first of all thanks very much for having
me on ham talk live and also I don't know if
people know about you but you're such an effective
and inspirational high school teacher you know
you teach AP you're an outstanding you're sort
of like Mr. Perfect in terms of high school teaching
and I admire that so much and and I want to say
hello to hopefully a number of my friends family
high school buddies from long ago plus people
I know from ham radio and scattered over the
US and probably other countries so Hello out
there in internet land Thank you But to it to
address your question that the book came up as
somewhat of a surprise to me I have competed
in the WRTC. I was a competitor in 2000 in Slovenia,
and I was a referee two years later in 2002 in
Helsinki, Finland. It's one of my favorite radio
sporting events, other than the Morse code sprint.
But the idea for this came in a phone call or
an email from Doug Grant. Doug is... K1DG and
I've known him for years through the we competed
in the semiconductor industry but Doug had read
my first book which was you know as you mentioned
Reunion a somewhat autobiographical novel but
that book came out in December of 2011 and Doug
had read it he liked it he felt I could write
and he was looking for somebody to write a book
about the WRTC which is the world Radio Sport
Team Championship that he was hosting and chairing
in 2014 up near Boston in New England and To
be perfectly candid. I was not Doug's first choice.
He had Lined up a very well -known professional
writer and journalist named Mark of Mossack OB
MAS CIK and Mark lives in Denver and he had written
a number of popular books. The best known, I
guess, is the book about really obsessive, competitive,
wacko, wonderful birdwatching called The Big
Year. Of course, that went on to be a movie with
Steve Black and Owen Wilson and Steve Martin.
And he had agreed to write the book, but a mosaic
was pulled off the project somewhat at the last
minute. by his publisher in Colorado to write
a book about the legalization of marijuana out
there. And so he left Doug high and dry, so to
speak. And just as a personal note, Marco Mosic
did end up contacting me. He did ask that I send
him a copy of the manuscript of the book, and
he read it and liked it. wrote a wonderful review
that's on the front cover of Contact Sport. But
I only had one month to decide whether I could
do this to get back to Doug Grant. I told him
I would, I feel I can do it, I love the contest,
I have the background, but I'm gonna have to
get a publisher to support this work. I want
it in all the retail stores, I want it... available
worldwide. And I pitched it and luckily, I got
a contact through a local publisher here in Austin
called Greenleaf Book Group. They're very good
and they were wonderful. And so, you know, that
all fell together and boom, I was, I was ready
to commit to Doug about the project. Well, you
know, that explains a little bit about some of
Doug's comparisons of contesting to birdwatching.
So that actually ties together a few things there.
So yeah, he's he's familiar with certainly the
big year and had, you know, contact to get more
of a mosaic. And so Doug is quite a quite a mover
and shaker. And I will say that the World Radiosport
Team Championship would a not have happened and
B wouldn't have happened so extremely well under
his stern but fair leadership. Very good. Well,
let's go into that a little bit. The WRTC championships,
you traveled to Boston to start doing your interviews
and writing and recording everything and trying
to put all this together. Tell us about how you
did that. How did you go about getting everything?
observed and recorded and how you turn that into
a story in line for a book that is for both experienced
contesters and non -hams. I'm glad you mentioned
that, Neil, because there are a lot of hams in
the world. There are two million amateur radio
operators worldwide and about a third of those,
or about 700 ,000, are in this country. So, you
know, it seemed like to me, hey, it's a potentially
big audience inside the hobby. But I would not
have done it only for the ham radio audience,
the ham radio market. It's really important to
me that I wrote this for the broad audience,
people that have never even heard of ham radio.
And so when when the thing when the project got
a green light all across the board, I booked
a flight literally a week before the event. Doug
had gotten me a room into the hotel which was
clearly sold out and he somehow magically made
a room available for me to book. I got an all
-access pass from Doug and simply I went down
to the local Staples office store and bought
a great big 300 page black notebook and a handful
of ballpoint pens and I just showed up. I wasn't
quite sure how to be a journalist. My training
is in engineering and science. So I simply started
walking around talking to people and, you know,
tell me about yourself and what do you do? And
I thought, oh, this is cool. I noticed they were
looking for people to be volunteer drivers for
the teams because most of the teams, probably
three quarters of them were from outside the
U .S. There were people from 40 different countries.
And so I volunteered to be a team driver. I ended
up with a team that I had never met, but I had
contacted over the air, especially one, Stefan
von Balz, who's called us DL1IAO. I started talking
to Stefan on Morse code when he was a teenager,
and now he's an ophthalmologist in Europe. Actually,
he's moving from Germany to Sweden to take up
a new life there. So, you know, how in the world
do you cover an international event with 59 teams
of two people and 59 single referees and What
do you do? So, you know, I just I read up on
it a bit and the first thing I realized is even
though I did have content knowledge of this and
I loved it You can't focus on everyone. You can't
include everyone equally. So I I knew for sure
that I would cover between five and 10 teams,
although all the teams are mentioned at the end,
all the results for every one of these events
going back to I think 1996 or earlier, they're
all in the book in an appendix. So anyhow, I
knew that I would focus, I knew the story would
cover the winning teams, the top one or two or
three. You knew that by definition. But then
I decided, well, there would be some over -the
-top people, some well -known people. In addition,
since for the first time we had a women's team
that happened to be two women from Germany that
had fully qualified with no reservations, I wanted
to cover them. A, I thought they would be interesting,
and B, frankly, I wanted to reach out to the
women readers who may not be hams. And there
were some really over -the -top personalities.
George de Montrand a very well -known civic leader
from Houston who owns a bunch of car dealerships
and RV centers and Scott Redd who's a retired
Admiral in the Navy who was the first director
of the United States Counterterrorism Center,
you know a huge name and a fellow named Tom Georgians
who was a CEO of a big data networking company
in California and A fellow from Europe called
Tano Vak, who's an Estonian guy, very strong
personality who, you know, has a big track record.
And there were the defending champions from Russia
who won the one in Moscow. So, you know, I ended
up with a good mix of interesting people and
also people from a meritocracy point of view
that finished really, really well. And then I
found, I guess, which is not too surprising,
but I didn't think about it at the time, I since
I was more or less embedded with a team as the
driver and on their site, not all the time, but
almost all the time, you know, I got really close
to this team, I saw the setup, I saw them working,
I, I had my meals out there, I drove them to
and from and. And so anyhow, You know, you just
sort of get into it that way and then things
start to happen and It really it really worked
out fabulously well Sounds like a great experience
where you can take some time to get to know these
people and and Really really dig into it. So
that sounds great One of the comments that's
on the Amazon store had this quote, with the
turn of each page, I found myself becoming increasingly
engrossed in not only the details of the story,
but also the intense suspense that made it extremely
hard to put the book down. So tell us how can
we get a hold of a copy of this book? We can't
put it down either and and and also talk about
your upcoming audible book release coming Well,
thank you great great great setup questions and
I I stumbled into a number of things that made
the book absolutely I think fascinating First
of all roughly a third of the book has nothing
to do with radio sporting with ham radio or with
anything to do with this technical event. The
book has to do, since I was writing it for a
broader audience, there were a lot of things
in it that were not controversial or dramatic.
It has a ham widow's ball for the people who
were there who were not competing. It has backgrounded.
But then I got lost. Here I am, a U .S. driver
and I... I was completely lost and really put
my team into danger. There's a big chapter which
many people feel is the best chapter in the book
called A Bad Trip. And it's not about drugs,
it's about an incompetent guy from Texas getting
lost in the woods of Massachusetts. It was a
very, very isolated site. But I also lucked into
the tightest and most controversial of these
World Radio Sport Team Championships of any to
date. The judges really focus on the top three
medals. All teams are ranked, but number one
wins the gold. It's like the Olympics. Number
two wins the silver, and number three wins the
bronze. And those are the three teams that come
up on the podium, get their medallions, get their
pictures taken, and they're really the ones in
the photographs. And that's where you want to
be, of course. Now, in this one, the number one
and two teams, the first one were two Americans
from California and Alaska via Idaho. The number
two teams were two fellows from Slovakia, and
they pretty well had a lock on number one and
number two. Their scores were really far enough
ahead that sort of just a meteor hitting the
computers scoring everything, they were they
were a lot. But number three, four, five, and
six were so close together that, you know, you
take all the results and grind them into a gigantic
database and you eliminate the errors and bad
context and this and that. And so the whole controversy
was about who was going to get the bronze and
as it turns out, The number three team, as the
scores were reported, were a USA team who had
a pretty reasonably comfortable lead. The number
four team was actually one fellow from the US
and one guy from Canada up in Ontario. The number
five team was the German team that I drove incompetently,
quote unquote, my team, because you get to feel
that way when you're embedded. And the number
six team were a Lithuanian duo that had done
this amazing recovery from having one of their
computers totally break. At one point I think
they were dead last or maybe next to last and
they came back with a really amazing recovery
and they ended up number six and they were in
the mix. And the drama about the book is... What
how did they sort out three four five and six
and essentially without giving the entire story
away. The whole thing came down to number three
team and number five team the USA team and the
German men's team which I had driven and I had
been at their site and it came down to every
time they ran the computer run of another batch
of. of electronic log books came in from all
over the world. I think they ended up with over
3 ,000. And so every time they would run another
50 or 100 after the first big slug of these,
frankly the places would change. Number three
would go to number four or number five would
come to number three and they bounced around.
Finally it came down to number... The USA team
and the German team, every time they ran it,
they would flip, they would flop. They did not
know who won this contest when the judges went
to bed late Sunday night around midnight. And
remember, they were going to award the prizes
at a big banquet on Monday night, roughly at
eight o 'clock local time. In fact, when they
woke up Monday morning and Doug Grant and the
other the other chief judges all met with these
two fellows, a guy named Tree Tyrell from the
Portland area and a fellow named Trey Garlo from
the Bay area. He lives near Santa Cruz, California.
They were the super data maven wizard guys who
know how to do this. And they finally on Sunday
morning, Doug Grant said, who won it? They said,
we don't know. And so Grant ordered two little
stick -on bronze scripts to go on the one and
only big, handsome oak plaque. And roughly, I
guess, at about 11 or 12 or noon on Sunday, Grant
said, well, we have to make a decision here because
we're not going to have a tie, although some
of the judges were prepared to award a tie. And
it came down to rightly or wrongly. rightly or
wrongly, it came down to one contact because
the contact was with a different country, which
is called a multiplier, and the different country
would sway it more than simply a couple of new
contacts, plus or minus. And I'm not going to
spoil it, but the different country, which happened
to be a Greek island, a small, tiny Greek island
with was something like 600 people that lived
on it within 10 miles of the Turkish mainland.
It was part of the Greek, the Dakanese island
chain, Rhodes is the largest island. It came
down to a single contact with an elderly British
gentleman who was vacationing there with a really
simple little teeny ham radio set. And he had
only gotten on and had made four contacts, believe
it or not. He really wasn't in the context. He
got up and probably had a cup of tea and heard
a couple of people. And so it came down to that.
Was it going to be valid? or was it not, and
I will simply say that it was an agonizing decision.
It went one way and not the other, and that's
the way the book turned out. And so I was pleased
to have the beneficiary of that. And very briefly,
I know we're probably running a bit long on time,
but to answer your question about the Audible
book, contact sports available basically every
way you can do it. There's a hardcover print
copy on retail in Amazon, Barnes and Noble. There's
a paperback version everywhere, and there's an
ebook download on every ebook, Kindles, Nooks.
iTunes, Google, ebooks. They're all available
in those three, hardcover, softcover, and ebook.
But I felt we needed to have an audible version.
And my son happens to run and own a small recording
studio here in town. And he does mainly singer
-songwriter people, Austin people with a low
budget. And so I decided to hire my son. I'm
myself the reader. I can read it. I'm not a professional,
but I understand the subject matter. I've got
one more session with my son to finish my portion,
and then it's going to take him four to six weeks
to eliminate the breaths and the silences and
the coughs and all the stuff to mix and master
it. It then gets uploaded to an organization
called, I'm going to do this from memory, Audible.
creation exchange. I think it's ACX, audio creation
exchange. Anyhow, that's close if not exact.
And then they basically host it. And then you
can download it from audible .com and from any
other ebook source. I'm sorry, audible book source.
And it should be out hopefully by about the end
of the year. So, you know, maybe somebody can
order it as a Christmas present or something.
And at that point, I'm going to say this deed
is done. I do promote it. I go to hamfests. I
go to book clubs that read my books, either of
them, and I appear in person if anybody is interested,
if they're reasonably close. And then there's
going to be a number three book started in the
first of next year. Oh, very good. Sounds like
you've got it available in all the different
formats, so should be easy to get a hold of.
And we do need to take a break here, but we'll
be back and we're going to take your calls for
Jim George right after this word from Tower Electronics
right here on HamTalk Live. This episode of HamTalk
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Live. Well, it is time for your calls now. So
if you have a question for author Jim George
in 3BB, call now at 812 -NET -HAM -1. That's
812 -638. Four two six one or you can Skype us
at ham talk live just make sure you turn your
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ham talk live or you can post in the comments
Anything you want to ask about the WRTC championships
or the book? Any of that kind of thing why give
us a call eight one two net ham one is the easy
way to do that eight one two six three eight
four two six one Well I know one of your passions
in addition to contesting is getting young people
into amateur radio so how do you see this book
helping that out while we're waiting on on people
to call here? I do hope some people do have some
questions or just can check in by the way by
telephone but in the meanwhile you're right getting
young people into the hobby and then getting
young people into contesting is obviously critically
important. I think contesting is what one would
call a critical app to our hobby. It's one of
the things that people really enjoy doing, certainly
not the only thing, and not everybody likes it,
but it's something that does push the state of
the art in terms of equipment design. It does
result in the breakthrough developments on new
receivers. In fact, I guess Gerald Youngblood
last week talked about software -defined radios
with his company FlexRadio. And you know, Flex
is responding to the demand of contesters. But
basically, it's critical that we get young people
in. And contesting is an interesting thing. It
has a... It's got a startup, it's challenging,
you know, you can't simply just do it with no
experience. And also people that start, especially
if you're young, you don't have a lot of money,
you're maybe working a part -time job or mowing
yards or something to get your equipment. So
realistically, you can dabble from your home
station, you can make plenty of contacts, but
you're never going to be winning the things.
So one thing I'd recommend people do is they
find First of all, it's critical you join the
local ham radio club and in a place like Austin
here There are you know three or four ham. They're
more than there are big a number of ham radio
clubs Some are very general, you know, some are
pretty stayed Some are into operating like going
to DX locations and faraway places and some are
into contesting and some are into Emergency communications,
but join an active ham radio club where you can
get mentoring That's crucial. Get somebody that's
experienced to help you learn this game. Then
you're going to find that there are people that
own stations and they just love to have people
come out and operate their stations in a team.
Those are called multi -operating, multi -operator
events. So number one, join a club. Number two,
join a club that's got a - an element of interest
in radio contesting, radio sporting. And then
once you're there, you'll find somebody who owns
the station and is looking to train a young person,
to mentor a young person, and let you have some
on -the -air time in a big station with good
antennas and running competitive transmitter
power. And you're just going to have so much
fun. You'll just find, wow, this is like a video
game, but it's even better and there's no video.
All of a sudden, voices are coming in or Morse
code is coming in from all over the world and
dialects and accents and the voices are wobbly
and verbally and they're coming over the North
Pole and they're distorted by magnetics and foreign
accents and it's just it's just plus you learn
a lot about geography or learn a lot about other
cultures. So bottom line is find a club, find
an active club, get mentored in radio sporting.
Go to somebody and, and, and join their team
as an operator and, uh, highly recommend it.
Yeah. I've found that ham radio is, is really
a truly interdisciplinary, uh, activity that,
that reinforces everything math, chemistry, physics,
history, geography. foreign language, you name
it, it covers it. And so it's a great tool to
use for educating young people. And speaking
of young people, we do have a tweet here from
Sterling Coffee in Zero SSC who says that I stole
his question already, but wants to know how many
young people were participating in the WRTC that
you wrote the book about. Wow, I'm so glad you
I'm so glad you asked that question because I
had neglected to mention that one of the teams
one of the 59 teams sterling was was actually
specifically designated to be a youth team and
The youth team actually was very interesting.
I'm actually looking in the book now to find
the Coal letters from the youth team, but and
and for some reason, let me see. Let me see.
Let me see Well, I'm under pressure here I'm
not finding it but I can tell you that the youth
team had two people on it. It had Whiskey, Quebec
to Mexico and it had a wonderful Italian guy.
Here it is. It had I said one LBG Lima Bravo
golf and their call was k1t k1 tango and they
finished number 29 out of 59 teams and They were
they were specifically Designated as the youth
team and as such we wanted to and I think I think
to be qualified one you could not be 25 years
of age or older and They were a wonderful team.
Paul is a graduate student at Seton Hall up in
New York in international relations. He'll be
wonderful. And IZ1LBG, for some reason, I've
got a brain blank on his name, but he's a wonderful
guy, very expressive, very outgoing, wonderful,
a head of You know, tussled hair and full of
moving his hands around and talking very expressive.
And he was, he was over there with traveling
with his mom and dad and they were going on to
see the U S so, uh, they were the only team under
25, although there were, there were several teams
who were there in their thirties. Uh, but, you
know, but, uh, a lot of people were probably
over, over the mid forties or over. Okay. Very
good. We do have a, uh, call on the line here.
So welcome to HamTalk Live. Who is this? Yeah,
thank you. This is Dave, K4COG. Jim, K8JTV. I
knew him as K8JTV in Princeton, West Virginia.
And Jim is the one that got me and my brother
involved in ham radio. K -A -Q -Q -S, so hello
Jim, it's been a long time. Wow, yeah, it's David
Jenkins, David Jenkins and his brother David,
and their father was the minister of one of our
churches in Princeton, West Virginia, and they
happened to live literally maybe 120 yards from
where my parents lived. a super guy, in fact,
David went on to work for a ministry in the Philippines
and in Africa as a, I'm gonna make up your title,
you can correct me, David, but it's basically
you were the communications guy, to put it. And
I know you live, you and your wife, your family
live in North Carolina now, I believe. We live
in Cary, North Carolina. I wanna say one thing,
okay, you were my, I remember my brother's Alan
or he goes by Andy. Yeah so we used to come up
to your house and you had an SX 43 and the DX
20 and we just love to see you operate CW and
you really inspired us and so you know we're
not too active right now but wow it's good to
hear that you're riding. Anyway, I wanted to
mention Emory Reesert. What kind of impact did
he have in your life, Jim? Neil Wheat, are we
okay on time for this? Yeah. Yeah. We've got
about, we've got about two or three minutes here,
but I was just going to say that, uh, we may
have to rename the show instead of calling it
ham talk live. We may have to call it. This is
your life. Yeah. Well, no, go ahead. You got
about two minutes. Okay. Well, well, Dave is
correct. And his brother, Alan, not, not, uh,
I've missed the name, but or Andy. But yeah,
I have a DX20 and an SX43 and a long wire sort
of antenna, mainly on 40 meters. But yeah, and
you were KQQS, as you said. And I will say also,
I remember when you were in the Philippines,
you were K4COG stroke DU7 or DU something. And
we actually had a contact once, I think, on 40
meters. and you were running QRP, so that was
pretty cool, but you mentioned Emory Reesor,
it was W8 Golf Charlie Zulu, and he was my mentor,
and to people that don't know this term, there's
a term in ham radio, whoever has a mentor, the
word is, and don't ask me where it came from,
it's Elmer, E -L -M -E -R, but an Elmer is a
term of great, admiration and respect. And Mr.
Reecer was my Elmer and a very, very prim and
proper older man, a wonderful, wonderful guy.
And I owe him a lot. Well, thanks for calling,
Dave. It's really good to hear your voice and
regards to your wife. Okay. Good luck on your
books. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for calling,
Dave. Appreciate it. Thank you, Neil. All right,
take care, 73. 73. All right, well, we're just
about out of time. We've got a minute here. Sterling
said thanks for the answer to the question. And
now he's disappointed because when WRTC 2018
comes around, he's going to be 27. So he said
he's disappointed about the youth team thing.
So we've got. We've got just like 30 seconds.
Tell us about the 2018 coming up. Oh, yes. I'm
glad you mentioned that. The German, the German,
a group of German hams put in a bid for 2018.
And this, by the way, this event now runs every
four years. So, you know, with with it up in
New England and in 14, it's going to be in Germany.
And I think it's northern Germany in 2018. There's
a handful of people coordinating this, and I'm
not going to mention their calls. One is Michael
Hoding. I can't remember his code. He's a DL6,
DL1QQ. Sandy Raker is part of the fundraising
group. They're going to have a terrific event,
well -organized. It should be just great, and
I wish them all the best. All right. Well, thank
you so much, Jim, for coming on. We really appreciate
you taking the time to talk to everybody about
this and take the calls. And best of luck on
getting that audible finished up. We'll be looking
forward to it. Neil, thanks so much for the opportunity
to be on your show. You did a great job. And
I'm a fan now. And thank you very much. Oh, you're
very welcome. Well, that is a wrap for this week's
edition of HamTalk Live. Thanks to my guest,
Jim J .K. George in 3BB, and everyone out there
in cyberspace for listening and calling in. And
I'll invite you all back next Thursday night
at 9 p .m. Eastern Time. And for a list of all
of our upcoming guests, visit HamTalkLive .com.
So for now, this is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, saying
7 -3. 7 -5 and of course may the good DX be yours
Seven three and good luck from ham talk live