Thank you for choosing to download the Ham Radio two point zero audio podcast rip.
This is the audio taken out of a video or a live stream I
did recently. You can catch all my videos on YouTube Ham Radio two point
zero and catch us live every Sunday night at seven pm Central Standard Time for
a different topic each week. Thank you for the support and thank you for
being a member of the community. All right, where is k m r
D when I need some windows bashing guys going on? So yeah, that's
the thing. Hey, thanks for joining us tonight, Noel, good to
see in the chat, buddy. My wife is in the chat and appreciate
you guys joining us tonight. We're going to be talking about Winter field Day,
which is in two weekends. I said that to somebody earlier on a
tech They're like, two weekends, Is that all? I'm like, Yeah,
it's two weekends to winterfield Day, buddy. It was Christmas like seven
hours ago and uh and it's Winter field Day in two weeks. So that's
the thing. So thank you for joining us tonight. Ham Radio two point
zero Sunday Night live stream. We got a cool live stream plan for you
tonight. I got several of the folks from the winter Field Day Board,
of which I am a member. I don't really contribute that much because I'm
lazy, but I got several people from the board coming on tonight, so
it should be really good stream. Let me uh, let me say a
couple things. First. Number one, if you're on my email list,
you saw that the gigaparts Explore Delexe battery box is still on sale for twenty
dollars off seventy nine bucks right there. I'm gonna share this link in the
chat right now, and you can get an additional five percent off off of
the sales price with the coupon code of KC five HTV. So that's what
a bus four dollars, another four dollars off. So they were supposed to
put this back up to the normal price of ninety nine dollars at the end
of December, and it's still there. So don't tell them it's been two
weeks. They haven't. They haven't. I haven't done it yet, so
but that's a thing. But if you didn't get my emailed, then sign
up for my email list. Ham Radio two dot com forward slash email Dash
sign up. We've got about about eighteen thousand people on the email list right
now, and when it gets to twenty thousand, we're gonna be doing another
HF radio giveaway, so that's gonna be a thing. So appreciate everybody signing
up on that email list. It is. It is. Uh, it's
kind of weird because I have a couple hundred people sign up a week,
but then I have like fifty to one hundred people unsubscribe, So it's not
it doesn't go up, you know, kind of linearly, linearly, linearly.
It doesn't do that linearly. K six A r K in the house.
What's up, Adam? Good to uh good to see in the chat
tonight. Buddy worked at him on we were activating PODA and Adam was out
there actually on sideband. Believe it or not, Adam's big CW guy,
So thanks for being the chat tonight Adam Special. Shout out to the folks
in Green Text and the Chat YouTube channel members. I see Arthur in there,
Tommy K I five U T S of course N five S K T
is in there, Wayne Johnson, Gray Man, Poda, Hamry Crusader,
Freddie Mack. What's up, buddy, Good to see you. H Scott
Ham rated from nine techies and the inn there. Hopefully you're gonna come do
field Day with the winterfield Day with us Scott Matthew, Katie nine WSD A
A zero m Andy. Every time I put up a new mystery box,
Andy buys the first one. I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm
just saying that's what happens. So you know, there we go. H
what's up, Adam? Thanks for being here tonight, buddy, Appreciate that,
appreciates your your support there. All right, let's uh, let's switch
over here and see who's in the chat. I got to get the right
screen up. Let's take that away and let's do this, and let's do
that. Unmute. What's up, guys, How are y'all? Good?
Evening? Marvin and Melinda are from the Winter field Day Board, and of
course everybody knows Frank. But what's up, Marvin? How are you?
Buddy? I'm good, hanging in here from Massachusetts. Supposed to get a
little bit of snow overnight, but a little bit more coming on Tuesday,
so I think I will definitely have a little winter by the time Winter field
Day comes around. So what is the temperature right now it was about twenty
five to thirty degrees. Oh my god, it's fifteen degrees all day here
in Texas that we are not prepared for this? No you like, Oh
my god, this is not this is not fair. It's literally been fifteen
degrees fifteen degrees all day in North Texas today. Say your own. I'm
prepared, man, I got all my batteries, charts. I guess well,
I'm stock up on fo Okay, yeah, no, no, no,
no, we're there. Yeah, I am prepared, But I still
hate it. I hate the cold weather. I don't like it. I'm
secretly hoping to lose power for two hours two hours tomorrow so I could throw
the radio up in the backyard and get the best noise floor at my Oh
yes, you know, you can turn your breaker off and do that anytime
you want to, Franks, But that doesn't affect my neighbors across the street.
That's true, Paddles, the true. The crappy LED's my other neighbor
has. Yep, yep, that's perfect true, very true, very true.
Melinda, how are you tonight? Good, good evening. Y'all were
waiting on the snow to get to us. We're at right now, Chad
move and they're cop for about three or four inches of snow between tonight and
wow. Very cool. Well, I mean I like the snow, but
I don't like the ice. And most of the time, when in North
Texas, when it gets this cold and it doesn't snow very often, it's
usually just ice, which means that people don't know how to drive on it,
and a bunch of res and just stay home and don't do anything.
So that's kind of how it is. Last I saw, we are lucky.
The participation of rain that's supposed to happen tonight has disappeared off the radar.
Correct correct correct, Yep, that is true, so yep, but
we'll see what We'll see what happens with that. So well, Marvin and
Melinda, thank you for joining tonight. I'm watching the h I think Michael's
supposed to be here as well, so I'm watching the participants view in.
Frank, I'm gonna give you I'll watch it too, co host just in
case anyone. If anyone joins, just let him in. It's fine.
So Frank and I and Mike, Kat Demurdy and Mike in eight yo and
digital rancher Rob probably and maybe Nol Nol, I never got a confirmation from
you, buddy, and who else maybe Scott K five n PL him Radio
for Non Techy's. We're gonna do winterfield Day in Galveston and it's probably still
going to be cold, Texas cold. It's going to be in like the
forties, and but we're gonna do winterfield Day in Galveston. We're gonna do
it from the state park, Galveston Island State Park. I saw someone ask
in the chat before the stream started about whether we could talk about how it
works to do winterfield Day from an actual POTUS spot. So we'll get into
that, So you guys stay tuned for that. We will, because that's
what we're doing this year. We're going to activate as our club call from
a PODA park Winter field Day and I'll explain how we're gonna do it and
and we'll go from there. So but yeah, Marvin, I'm gonna let
you have the floor, buddy, you can. I know there's been some
changes in the rules. I read through them, but I don't have him
memorized. So if you want to talk about what the different rules are between
this year and last year, basically, just what's changed in the last twelve
months. Do you can do that? And then I'm sure you get a
lot of emails about various things, so you know, pick out the top
one or two or three questions you get and we can talk about that and
kind of discuss them from there. Absolutely, So thanks Jason, I appreciate
you letting us to be on the show this evening and TIG time part of
your time for this. But the major change from this year is getting rid
of the bonus points and making them objectives, and some of those objectives being
operating on alternative power, making a satellite contact, setting up a win link,
operating for more than six hours. I believe there's ten of them out
there this year, and your goal is to go out and hopefully accomplish all
ten of those and the you know, out of that, you can check
those boxes when you submit your LUG and then you can get your score of
like seventy per one hundred percent whatever you did, and there's little icons that
will have associate each of those on this year's certificate that we're creating. So
that's probably the biggest change of them all. And then you know, we've
kept a lot of things for like or what power limits still we QRP is
ten wats or less. And I'm trying to think some of the other major
things that we've done. I think that's really about it. We brought all
the contest logging in house, and so we're taking care of all that on
our side. We're not sitting to contest dot com anymore. And you know,
of course winterfield Day will be January twenty seventh and twenty eighth this year,
so you're right in just two weeks here, so you still have the
twelve hour well no more than twelve hours twenty four our prep time in advance,
we still have that capable. So but those are you know, the
major things. I would say, just go out and read our guidelines for
twenty twenty four. You can find them on our site winterfield Day dot Com
under the the rules page and they're down just just the short ways down the
page. Highlight and read. So okay, and then some of our major
questions that we've gotten. We don't really get this too much. I think
people have kind of come to understand that, you know, we're trying to
make this more from a not necessarily a contest platform, but putting it into
a more of an event and and putting this into a communications exercise, which
is what our whole model or or our vision is is that we you know,
want to help you increase your level of preparedness for disasters and improve you
know, your operational skills in the subpart conditions kind of you know, that's
what we say. And so you know, people have come to understand this
is not going to be about making just thousands and thousands of contacts out there,
and what's really about trying to improve your income and winter field your your
your field skills. And so people there's still have questions about you know,
having whether why do we have bone points and then others are talking about FT
four and FT eight. We still get a few of those coming out there.
And again those two things just don't really meet the criteria or the sniff
test for transferring or transmitting messages, uh for you know, for emergency situation.
So that's why we don't we don't have it. And there's lots of
other methods like js A call and r T T Y and PSK thirty one
FL digit, So I mean there's other alternatives you can use, and if
you haven't learned them, and now this is a good reason why you can
go learn them instead of using just FT four FT eight as a digital mode.
So is JSA call legal for I mean, I say legal, Is
it allowed? Now that's been that's been allowed. Yep, that's still been
authorized. We've been using that for a couple of years. Okay, then
I'm remembering wrong. I was thinking that last year we had a meeting that
said that there was one maybe it was maybe it's true three years ago.
Man, I don't know, but we had a meeting one time that said,
uh that. I was like, well, JSA call you can actually
send because I understand your reasoning behind FT eight because it's just a five nine
five nine seventy three goodbye. There's not really a messaging element behind it.
But JSA call uses the same protocol computer pro CAOL transmission protocol, and you
can actually send keyboard to keyboard messages that you can you know, it's it's
free form text. So I was thinking that that was not allowed last year.
But maybe I'm remembering that wrong. So yeah, so you're saying even
our friend came for a c K runs j S eight during winterfield Day primarily
because there's a lot more people using winterfield during Winter field Day. A lot
more people use JS eight than they will during the summerfield Day. So it's
just not very popular during summer fild Day, but during the winter popular winterfield
Day, it's it's quite popular. Actually good, well, good, that's
that's actullent. Okay, I I I was simply remembering that wrong then,
So okay, that's good. Uh. Mike into m a Ca says the
winterfield Day additional objectives are fantastic and a great way to encourage everyone to get
out there and tried different bands, antennas and more. It's an awesome way
to learn. I I like the whole field Day winterfield Day experience overall.
I always have, so thanks Mike for being in the chat today. But
good, hey, you know what jas call is fun? It's uh.
I had what's the guy's name who invented that? I can't remember his name
right now. Jordan, Yeah, he was on the channel three or four
years ago, and I need to get him back on here. I've emailed
him a couple of times. I haven't I haven't connected with him yet.
But uh, but Jays calls a fun mode because it uses the same protocol
as FT eight, but it opens up a keyboard to keyboard experience, so
you can actually type a message. You can say, hey, mud duck,
what are you doing tonight or whatever you want to say? Right a
little little cebe lingo in there. But uh yeah, it's it's it's good.
So okay, so we're we might uh we might try to do some
uh j s call during this uh this year's event. So that's great.
I I was just remembering that wrong apparently, So okay, yeah, and
we can get into a little bit later here, but I'll talk about some
of the stats of what we had for twenty twenty three. And you know,
we're trying to get people, you know, out the door and get
them out there outside the box to just not operate from home, because what
we're finding is while home is our most popular category, but users are only
working about four point four hours. The people who go out and set up
a station and spend the time setting up in tanta trailer whatever it might be,
getting the heat and what not to work, they spend a lot more
time operating on total number of hours than want people do at home. So
which is good too for us. So let me step in here real fast.
I've seen this a couple of times in the chat. When is Winter
field Day? Exactly? What are the days of operation? And so it
starts on Oh, go ahead, Jason ahead. It starts nineteen hundred hours
on Saturday UTC and goes to eighteen fifty nine UTC on Sunday. So twenty
seven to twenty nineteen hundred UTC, the twenty seventh to almost nineteen hundred,
so is eighteen fifty nine UTC on the twenty eighth. So it follows if
you if you guys have ever done regular field day a double orol field day,
we'll call it. It's uh, it's it's yeah, that's the same
thing. So I'm thinking in Texas time right now, it's one it's always
one pm on Saturday to one pm on Sunday. It's the last weekend of
June. That's that's a double l field day. So winterfield Day is six
months later, last weekend of January one pm Texas time Saturday to one pm
Texas Time Sunday, which is we're UTC my six. So so yeah,
nineteen hundred UTC on Saturday to nineteen hundred or eighteen fifty nine u TC on
Sunday, so that'd be that'd be two pm East Coast time and UH and
eleven am West Coast time Saturday the twenty seventh to UH Sunday for twenty four
hours for solid twenty four hours to Sunday the twenty eighth. So that's what
it is to show as usually is it Marvin? Remind me is it always
the last weekend or is it always the fourth weekend because that can vary depending
on when the dates fall. I we have it written as it's the last
weekend in January every year, so and I do want to come back to
this one second. I see a question in the chat as well. Michael
W. A MJL, thanks for asking this question. Did I see that
we can now submit logs with adif that is absolutely correct, We're taking our
database manager on our website site has been able to take those files, partse
the data and put them into the cabrilla format and use the same data that
would be submitted as a Cabrillo file. The other thing is that's kind of
handy on our website that we've created for you guys out there participating Winter Field
Day is the ability to take a paper log, come back to our web
site, enter it manually on there, and then it will export that data
also and submit the log and then you'll get your certificate as an email when
you submit your log. That's how you're going to get your certificate this year,
or that's how we did last year as well. So so yeah,
excellent, excellent. So okay, okay, Andrew, if I use hammers
for logging, how do I convert the ad F files to Carillo? I
would download a piece of software that's free called ad if Master and it will
do. It will do, and you could just google ad i F to
Cabrillo. There's websites that will do it for you. Just upload your ad
i F and it pulls it down to Carilla. Well, if you do
support ad i F files, now you don't have to just export, yeah,
and just straight upload, so you don't have to straight upload. We
are probably in the past we have used with our club. We've used in
three f j P, which has an actual winter field day template. That's
very it's it's very good piece of software. And somebody had asked about PODA
earlier and Don in five SKT had said that the richard and Wireless Club is
going to do winterfield Day from a park. I think that's the park out
there in the spring off a Spring Creek drive in the one actually in Richardson.
It's a small park that's out there. So we're gonna do K and
five TR is who will be operating us K in five tr and we're going
to do winterfield Day from the State Park in Galveston Island. And the way
that works in a nutshell is you take all your winterfield Day logs and you
log it as winterfield Day. Just do winterfield Day. And then you take
those same exact logs and you upload it to Poda Dot app and you upload
it as and make sure you're logging yourself correctly if you're well. If if
you're an individual, then it doesn't matter. But if you're a club like
we are, then in the club, in the logging software it'll be there
will be a field for club call sign, the field for activator call sign.
You make sure you fill those out properly, and then when you upload
that log to PoTA dot app, it will give the club credit and it
will give you the operator credit. So that's the cool thing about Poda is
you can you can activate as a club and you, the individual operator,
gets the same exact credit that the club call gets. So Noel, I
know you're listening right now, Buddy, I hope that you have had I
don't. I haven't talked to you about it since June of last year.
But we need to get can five tr on the PoTA website. If you
haven't done that yet, you're the call sign trustee, Bud. I need
you to do that before two weeks from now. So I know this is
a not on topic, but PoTA needs to fix that upload logs on behalf
so not only one person can do it. Well no, no, no,
I agree with that. I agree with the whole upload log one person
can do it because then anyone could come in there and upload a I mean,
somebody has to be the call sign trustee, right, So that's just
that's how ham radio has worked. That's that's how Hamm Radio has worked for
a long long time. So I agree with that point. But yeah,
you're right at soft topics, so we'll go from there. But yeah,
I know of a couple of I know of a couple of people who said
they're going to operate winter Field day from a park, so we're gonna double
whammy that thing, actually triple whammy because we get winterfield day logs, club
logs and individual logs for PODA, So it's gonna be. It's gonna be
I've never done it. We've never done that before. We've always operated from
up here at the Hunting Lease, and that's always been really fun. So
I know that I know it's gonna be fun. I'm gonna interest to see
how it goes. So I see a couple of the questions, Jason,
I just wanted to see if I an a dress for victims, and people
were asking about the One person asked, do we have like a favorite logging
software? And I would say N three f JP is the absolute probably best.
Now, I will also put hammers out there has a winter field Day
section in their log as well, and that they do a great job as
well for that. But N three h AP is probably by far, by
far our most popular logging soft where and then the thing is, well,
I want you to make sure people go out and do though we'll see people
like I don't know, Let's say he has the one dot two and the
latest software is two dot zero two whatever and people will still be using the
one dot zero two. They're not updating to our latest software, and so
we'll have fifteen versions of N three f JP submitted. So please go out
and update your legs latest software. I don't care if you're using any one
MM or the latest update to Hammers or in three f JP, r Hanmerrate
or Deluxe, whatever you want to use, just go out and get the
latest software for it so it's up to date. That helps us on our
end. And then the other person asked about a winter field day. Do
we have like a swag and gear if you go out to if you go
out to clubgear online dot com and you can find that via our website under
resources, or if you go into our newsletter, you'll see in their clubgear
Online and JSE clubgear online has usually w fours should be on here. He's
on our board. He's the owner of that. But we have mousepads,
we have great coffee mugs, we've got flat we have a great flag.
There's some great gear out there. Someone yeah, to see the big flag.
Jacents just bringing up there. You can put a huge flag out there
so we can do different, so he can he can do different sizes and
it's awesome, so I should totally order that. Hopefully, hopefully he has
those ready to go. I believe he does, so okay, good,
I'll order one of those tonight or tomorrow then and we'll hang it up.
We were we were at the pavilion. We're going to rent a pavilion at
the state park for for winterfield Day, and we were there last week operating
Poda railroad poda and the wind was up and I told Frank, I was
like, we need to remember to bring some tarp, some some some seat,
some alligator clamps to put a tarp up on one side if there's wind.
Because it's on the beach, there's always going to be wind, so
we could put a flag up easily there. So that's what we should do.
So, yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, put it up
there with all our masks and everything. Well, the mass mass will be
in the field man. So yeah, club gear online dot Com is Oh,
thank you, Frank, I was gonna share I say the same thing.
Yeah, thanks, thank thanks for taking care of that man. Awesome,
that's good stuff. You guys will be at ham Cash next uh in
next month? Is that correct? Yeah? Well, Michael Michael Michael will
be there. I'm actually gonna be down there too, but I'll be down
there as the Ham Radio Guy podcast, So I'll be down I'll be visiting
as well. Good Okay, you guys were there, Lad there was a
Winter field Day. Was it in a winterfield Day a table at at ham
cashon last year or was that Hontale? Nope, that was a Huntsville we
did that. That was a hunts I'm thinking Huntsville. Okay, Okay,
you guy, I did that Huntsville. Okay, all right. So yeah,
so Ham Cash or yeah, second biggest tanfest in the nation, ham
Cation is next month. Winterfield Day will have a table yes at ham Cashion.
We won't no, okay, no, okay, because it's really it's
kind of almost after the fact, and they, yeah, I quite honest,
they kind of want to charge us a lot of money for that.
So we did get an advertisement up on qurez dot com. They were able
to give us a little bit of a deal there. So we do have
some advertisements going out in different ways and trying to push some more social media
and whatnot as well. Okay, okay, yeah, you're right. That
is kind of like almost. That's like two weeks after the fact, so
I guess, you know, if it was in if ham Cash was in
like uh, you know, March, then that'd be great. But yeah,
maybe not so okay, all right, all right, I think we're
going to try to do Huntsville this year and then New England. Ham Fest
is the weekend after the twenty third through the twenty sixth or something up in
New England, and I'll be at that one. Now I live up in
this New England area and I'll have a booth up there for that. So
is that the one they call nears Yes, okay, near Fest or something
like that. Yes, that's great. It's called it's called ham Exposition.
I think now they've changed the names of it wreck. Yeah, okay.
I've always wanted to go to that, would never have been to it,
so okay, Well, she'll be excited the show. Let you know how
it goes, all right, Well, or maybe I'll just go there you
go? Why not, Melinda? What's up? I don't want you to
be quiet the whole stream? So what's going on? Your role? That
much? We actually Winifield Day was at the ted Ndaham Fest last so we
did set up as well as Huntsville, so that was a great opportunity to
kind of get Winterfield Day out there. I'm sorry, I have a nosy
bird. Is that what that is? I thought that was feedback from the
microphone. I'm like, okay, he's a due yellow headed amazon. He's
twenty six and oh wow, when I talk, he thinks he needs to
talk. So yeah, of course I think he just laughed Adjason. In
fact, yeah, probably did, probably did. Yeah, Oh my goodness,
that's that's funny. Those birds are great, though, Those birds are
fun so well good, well, hey, thank you for being on the
stream tonight. But yeah, I feel free to chime in any anytime you
want to, Melinda, don't uh, don't let us hog the conversation.
Well thanks, I've actually got Met Lauger going up watching the Sunday Night Net
on Met Lauger and the A. I M so I'm kind of multitasking here.
Good, awesome, Yeah, del Fergus says, what's the bird's call
sign? I think his name is Dexter. So it's a great name,
Dexter. One of my favorite TV shows ever, Dexter. So just thinking,
yeah, I know, I know, yeah, great awesome, Thank
you, thank you, Melinda. Okay, good. So so what else?
So do you have any stats for us from last year? Marvin?
I think, okay, yeah, go ahead with that if you if you
want to talk about that real quick. So what we find interesting is that
we had two thousand and three hendred and sixty seven logs submitted with almost two
hundred well, I should say over two hundred and ninety six thousand and seventy
one QSOs made, so almost three hundred thousand QSOs, which is absolutely phenomenal.
I think that's great. I had no ideas. But what makes this
whole thing interesting For that first stat I gave is that we're nineteen thousand,
six hundred and thirty six different call signs were involved in those. So if
there was nineteen thousand called different call signs, I would hope there would be
nineteen thousand lugs submitted as well, or a muse or maybe maybe closer.
So I think we have a ratio there that that it doesn't match up very
well for a number of call signs versus logs submitted. So I would love
to see that, you know, be more closer to each other. So
hopefully we can get more people submit logs, and that I mean, if
you're making if you're out there hunting winter field Day and you'll I'll just make
twenty twenty five contacts, No big deal, go ahead and submit that log
because we're cross checking them with other people who are submitting those logs, and
if they don't have that other log coming in, you're you're bouncing that contact,
you know, so it kind of negates that a little bit. So
there are seven forty one contacts that were in the log in the in the
logs not claimed last year, so you know, definitely it's worth submitting.
You know. It's kind of like PODA hunting and activation. You're not giving
the hunter any credit if you don't submit your log in PODAH. Kind of
the same thing here. What was really interesting was this past year was Ohio
was the most active state with one hundred and four stations on the air.
The year before was North Carolina with one hundred and ten, So good for
those states. That's kind of cool to see. For the most part,
we have all of US and Canada. All the rack sections are typically had
activity, but there's a few and I can't name those are off the top
of my head. Who did not have activity. But I think those are
more out in like New Hampshire, or you might get up in Vermont or
maybe be over in like Wyoming and Montana where it's very few people are in
that area, and you know, those are the ones that we end up
with no contacts in sometimes. Again I kind of said it a little bit
ago. The average home user is working about four point four hours, and
then we kind of determined that from the time you submage your log to the
time you edge your log. So we're taking that data and kind of extracting
that and trying to figure that out. So, I mean, that's kind
of like some of the cool things that we're able to pull and we're looking
at just to try and see where where we're dropping the gap at and if
there's something we can do to improve that to change it. We want to
improve the winter field day operators experience, and you know what can we do
that from ir N to make that even better and get more people. I
mean, we'll see summer field Day with the aborl Rastra sites to be in
the thousands, and right now we're only about four or five. I think
it was for somebody fortninety when I looked a little bit ago and I think
last year we had about fifte hundreds. It's total that we're rastre so we're
down on numbers of people rake string. So if you're watching this evening and
you've got a Winter field Day event going on, go out and rextra on
your site. You can make it private, you can make it public,
but we're just kind of trying to get an idea where people are at.
So and when you say register you red string like the call sign, you're
going to be operating as that's correct. So you'll go out and go to
a website rech to your location. And it also gives an opportunity for public
or you know, hey, maybe I'm a new Ham and I've heard about
this Winter field Day thing, but I don't really know much about it.
I want to go out and visit a site and see what it's about,
and maybe I getting a chance to operate. They can go on our Winter
field Day site, they can look at it, they can see it and
go, oh, there's a site that's a public near me. I'm going
to go visit that club, and hey, it might be opening a door
for them to become a member of that club. Even so, it's good
from all around. It's a win win if we can get people to go
out and do that. And again there's multiple reasons, not just for us.
It may help you out and get more members of a club involved as
well. Totally okay, good. I seem to recall that from last year,
Noel, I know you're in the chat. I saw you comment earlier
that you registered K five NTR on the website, on the POTTA website.
So go out to Winterfield Day. Since you're the call sign trustee, buddy,
go out to winterfielday dot com and register us as I think. I
think Galveston is Echo Lima thirteen as far as grid Square goes. If I
remember that correctly, it might be Echo Mike thirteen. We're Echo Mike.
We're Echo Mike twelve here. I think it might be about grit squares.
Yeah, we're Echo Mike twelve here where we're sitting, Frank, you and
I are Echo Mac twelve. That five hours sound to here. It's either
Echo Mike thirteen or Echo Lima thirteen. I can't remember, but yeah,
go register kN five t ARE at Galveston Island State Park or just Galveston Texas
is fine if you would, please, sir, please, So do you
publish the those registrations that you get. Yeah, you can see them right
on our website. So you can click on the I'll call it the little
Google icon. It's either purple for private or blue for public. And we've
changed our mapping software this year. Jason, can you pull that up by
chance? Yes? I can. I was just looking at that. Where
do tell me where to just click on click on the purple right in the
mid No actually no, no, no, scroll down, sorry, scroll
down. You have to scroll down to the map. There we go.
So if you scroll in. So we've changed it this year. Last year
you looked at the map and it was just covered in blue and purple Google
designate waypoint markers, and so now this year is u zim zim out.
You can see, oh, there's two of them in that area. I
mean maybe you're in the middle of you know, Texas. Whatever you can
see there's you know, there's like twenty three in Dallas or something earlier I
looked at and so you can scroll and see your numbers. And we don't
have so many pinpoints just splattering the map and you can't really find it where
everything you're at is out on the map. So we've kind of broken it
up. Our database manager has has been able to handle that, so we
can see the map better this year and see where the pinpoints are. And
of course if you click on it will tell you more details about what that
club is doing or maybe a talking frequency it might have on there. Uh,
you know, maybe they're doing supper at six pm and you know,
bring up, bring a you know, a dish to serve whatever. So
so, so right here K five BS is tide Lands Amateur Radio Society.
This is the club that does the Texas City Hamfest every July. So this
if you guys have been to the Texas City Hamfest in South Texas, that's
that club. And then this one right here is the Browsers Valley Image Radio
Club. This is one of the biggest clubs in the Houston area. KK
five W so yeah, they got their b VARC is their club call sign.
I've actually been to their well, no, i've been to their field
day, not their winter field day, and they have a they have a
fantastic field day set up. So so nothing on the island of Galveston is
registered right now. So I need to get to Noel. I need to
get you on that, buddy, get your space preserved. It's right there.
You see where Jamaica beaches. You see this this green area right here,
that's it right there, that's it right there, Galveston On State Park
right there. I do not, I do not. I talked. I
talked to them last week. So yeah, it's it's gonna yeah. Thank
you for the reminder, Frank. I need, I need, I need
to get on that. So I'll get that. I'll get that done tomorrow
probably. I see it. An awesome parrot pro Oh there he is.
Hey, look at that, so is he? So if you're gonna start
talking, Melinda, is he going to start talking as well? There?
We have an African back here in the other cage that's like q r M
personified. So we do ss TV every Sunday night, right uh huh huh.
And sometimes I'll have the radio on that's in the living room because we
have a radio in the house. So that way when my husband is out
of the country for military service, that I don't have to go to the
shack and power everything on. I can just use it right there and they
won't make SSTV. Oh my good Really they'll do the beeps in the really
like a fax machine. Oh my goodness, it's pretty cool. I bet,
I bet it awesome. It is awesome. That's great. Well that's
a pretty bird. Thank you. I want to say. Paul Champion came
for PT. He's out of the Nashville area. He says, you're echo
Lima is your grid squores? So I see that? Yeah, good Paul,
Yeah, thank you, Paul. Yeah. In five SKT said it's
Eko Lima twenty nine and I think that, Yeah, that sounds correct.
So I can see a couple others saying it too. I have a question
here earlier is mobile stations? Okay? For Winter field Day? Yeah,
so the mobile station kind of came out of a couple of different aspects.
One is that and we could go repull the definition exactly, but one of
them, we had a trucker that was traveling across the country and he was
like, well, how do I you know, what what do I category
do I go into? So we kind of created the mobile and then we
also had people who were in like an RV or a trailer or a camp
or some sort and so we figured if your own wheels, and you can
have to get up and move and go to emergency or you need to leave
or whatever, as long as you're I'm calling the basic definition here is as
long as your own wheels and you can move your mobile. If you're operating
in your vehicle and you're just sitting in a park and you're operating out your
your truck and running for ten hours, then you know your mobile. So
if you're operating in a tent, you know, an outdoor shelter or some
sort that's outdoors, and then obviously we'll put indoors anywhere as like an EOC,
a church, a community center, so that would be like an indoor
type of event category. And then your home is self explanatory. So now
now if you're outdoors but you're a club, is there is that a different
category. Nope, You'll still be considered outdoors. Okay, Okay, I
get confused because there's a different there's a different category for club or individual for
field day, So I get confused between the two winterfield day and field I
think we've always operated as either three or four OSCAR for Winter field Day because
we've always been outdoors ever since we've been doing winterfield days, so we're always
in oscar station, depending on how many radios we have. So okay,
all right, good, Yeah. The only thing you'll find is that you
know, we you know, have the outdoors category and and a lot of
people use that, which is which is you know, probably our second most
popular category. Really good, well good, I mean that's I mean realistically,
if you're actually preparing for InCom and post disaster communications, then outdoors is
where you're gonna be. I mean, yeah, that's where we watch it
hurricanes Katrina, Harvey and all that and Ike and all that stuff. That
was all Ham radio operators setting up outdoors to send messages to and from the
area. So that yeah, yeah, you're it's possible. You could set
up indoors if you find the right cross shelter or something, but you know,
outdoors is i mean, especially if the weather's nice, outdoors is more
applicable. So good. Yeah, outdoors or mobile, I mean just even
if you have a trailer or camper, right, it's perfect. I mean,
you can still be indoors and out of the weather, especially if you're
in you know, Minnesota. You know, some people might just be in
a tent on the ice, because there's people who do ice, you know,
ice tins, and they'll go sit up on the ice and set their
hamshack for the weekend. It's right, you know. So yeah, yeah,
that covers the grave. Man Poda says, I live in a tent.
Does that consider it outdoors our home? Go outdoors, but just go
outdoors? Yeah? Okay, so uh let's see how do we do this
here? So gosh, use control zoom. Okay, there we go right
there, So Noel is is on target right here. So thank you very
much. Nol Can five s okay for the win. Here Can five tr
right there on the beach in Galveston. That's where we will be. He
just registered that. So thanks buddy, appreciate you being in the chat tonight
and participating in that great great President of the club, we use that term
loosely because we're a very nonchalant laid back club. We have like two meetings
a year, but we do we do field Day winter field Day every year
and it's a fun thing. So we're we're looking at maybe expanding that eventually
sometime, but right now that's what we do. So so Nole's got is
registered at Galveston isl in state Park, Frank, So we're good to go,
man, Just for everyone to know. If you're going to come in,
do the south side entrance, and then we will be at one of
the big pavilions, look right. Yeah. So somebody asked in the chat
earlier, will you be on the base side of the golf side. We
will be on the golf side. That is the side that they rebuilt like
a year and a half ago. They had the whole golf side shut down
for like two years and they redid the whole thing. Really nice facilities up
there now, tent sites, RV sites, day use sites, nice restroom
and bathhouse facilities and that kind of thing. So yeah, we'll be on
that side. If you're coming south on three FM three thousand and five,
which is the main road through town, you'll turn left to get to the
golf right there where you see the big sign for Galveston Island State Park,
that's where we'll be. So we'll talk about it between a little bit between
now and then as well. So sign up on my email list and I'll
send emails about it. So do that sounds like a great location. It
it it's a it's a fun location. We do Poda there all the time.
We've never done a field day or Winter field Day from there, but
that I mean, I'm looking forward. I think it's gonna be I think
it's gonna be a fun, fun thing. So my wife and I own
a house down there that it's a it's an investment property for us. We
rented out during the summer, but during the winter is nobody there. So
we go down there during the winter and so have several people coming down.
We're gonna stay and have a place to go back to at night. We're
gonna do Poda on Friday, and then we'll go do winterfield Day on Saturday.
So I'm looking forward to having a bed. Now. You might,
you might, I don't know. It depends on how many people we have.
Frank, you might be on the floor. But we'll see. Oh
no, I I got my room only giving up to couples. We'll see
who's the new Robert. Robert was act asking about it earlier. But I
want to make sure Robert has a place to stay if he wants to come
down, because he's our satellite guy. We're gonna have him do satellite Robert.
Robert is an expert expert satellite operator. So yeah, get us some
satellite contacts, but you can come down and have a free place to stay.
Slowly fine, hey, Jason. So one of the questions, yeah,
draws from this is that you're talking about you know, you guys are
doing three or four osker. Do you do your own call signs or do
you have like a club call you're using? We have a club call,
so Keilo November five Tango Radio is what we use. Like I said,
it's a very it's a very laid back club. It's long story short.
It is a club that was formed several years ago by some some people that
I know, but I wasn't a part of it, and they kind of
just kind of let the club go and and my friend Nol was able to
grab the call sign from the trustee because they didn't want to use it anymore.
And we've used that call sign at field Day and winterfield Day for like
the past four years. We according to ALRL standards for clubs, we have
to have a meeting twice a year. We do that. We keep notes
for the meeting, we keep minutes and whatnot, and then we operate as
kN five t R during these events and whatnot. I want to expand that
and do some more potus stuff with it and do some soda activations with it
and whatnot. But we always have fun with both Winter field Day and field
Day to operate as that club. And it's been it's been a good it's
been a good run on that club. But yeah, we'll be operating as
a club call sign. So just f y like last year we had a
club challenge and we did didn't really have a ton of activity on that,
so we did eliminate that for this year. In case anybody's asking any question
around that. Okay, so what did that involved? Is exactly? Is
it like points between clubs and whatnot. So we take the cumulative score,
so if you were operating as your call sign, and then you submitge your
log and you put in your notes also you know, add to club score
or add to club call whatever club it might be, and uh, and
then you put your club name in there as well, because you know,
we had to, you know, make sure we kept separate the club names
and the call signs because there may be two clubs with the same name.
So that's what we can do call signs for too. Yeah, So anyway,
we We threw that in there last year, but we didn't have a
lot of participation with it. But people could you know, total their scores
and come up with a club call with overall scores for the club as well.
But again didn't have a lot of interest in it, so we kind
of dropped it for this year. So okay, but I mean, I'd
love to hear people in the chat if they they if they liked the club
challenge or not. But you know, see what the notes say. But
you know, there's a club challenge that goes on every year at the at
the Poda. I know, I keep talking about Poda at the Poda Plaque
Challenge. There's the plaque of it they have anymore, Well whatever it's called
now, it's a thing in June is a plaque event. It's a plaque
event in June the support your Parks weekend and they have a club thing for
that and people really they really get into that. So I would think that'd
be a good thing for Winnifield Day myself. So yeah, maybe we need
to look at bringing it back. And it just didn't have a lot of
interest in last year and it was kind of a lot to manage because you
might have someone who comes up with I'll use my prior club, Stone's River
Amateur Radio Club, and someone might just put in sr ARC, or someone
might spell Stone's wrong, and it was just kind of a mess because that's
one reason we were asking for people to rachiter He too, because they would
raxture under that club and we could kind of make sure the data matched when
we submitted the club log with what was richstered and know that it was the
same club all in one and not two different clubs here of some sort.
So, like I said, it was a little bit of a mess for
Andrew, our web master, to manage there because I'll get people would sell
it wrong or spell it wrong, or they would simply just put in the
initials of it, you know, instead of the full name correctly. So
yeah, yeah, yeah, well that's the thing. So good. So
let's see, I want to respond to this comment here. I'm gotta find
it again. Okay, Dell Fargas says, none of my clubs are on
the map. Looks like we'll have to go alone. Wolf, Nothing wrong
with that, but contact your clubs and tell them to join the map,
tell them to register themselves, like like Marvin said a minute ago, tell
them to register on winterfield Day dot com so that people know where they are,
cause I didn't look and see if the Hurst Club was there, but
I know they're doing. I know that Hurst is doing winterfield Day because I
got an email from him last week, Frank. But you know, they
always have a lot of people come out to their events because they are They're
a very active club in the North Texas area, so one of the most
actives. I love being part of that club absolutely, absolutely, So yeah,
yeah, make sure your club. If you're a member of a club,
contact them and tell them to register on Winter field Day dot com.
I mean, even if they're just going to go out there and make an
hour's worth of contacts and go home, that's okay. Go do it.
Go read sure yourself so people know you're out there. I see a question
from Kent here in the chat, is self spotting okay during winterfield Day?
So if you're you're running a PoTA and self spot yourself, I think from
that standpoint, i'd have to go. I think we also had someone emails
that question this afternoon, and I've not had a chance for review, Alex.
I've been on a couple video chests this afternoon talking about winterfield Day.
But I think, I mean, if you're out in the Poeta site and
you're doing it there and you're actually in a park, I think that's gonna
be fine. What we I think you can self spot that day. Don't
quote me on that one hundred and ten percent. If Michael W. Four
Ops was in here at Created Services Manager, he k does a lot of
the guidelines and rules and some of the designing and of all this. He
knows that a little bit better than I do, even as president, because
he's in and out of it every day. But you know, I know
you can't go out in pre solicit contacts. So I can't say, hey,
Tank, get a hold of me on you know, a winter field
day. I'm going to be on this frequency at this time and we're going
to try and you know, make a contact that day. You can't pre
solicit, but I think you can at least go in and and and you
know, seuth spot that day. For sure. Yeah, okay, so
uh okay, gray Man, I'm gonna get to you, Gene. I'll
get to you next. Gray Man. Poda, Yeah, gray Man,
Poda, can you do a club call from multiple locations, i e.
A virtual club that has members across the country, because like the y Cars
group who's big into Poda does that, and we for DX hamry To Adventures,
they do that. They'll they'll operate as like Whiskey Echo for Delta X
Ray Stroke five for five calls five land or Stroke six for six land and
whatnot. So what what's your do you have a do you have a knowledge
on that? I guess, I guess I was looking for that question.
I was trying to look at this question. We're to get to me more
time. Uh, can you do a club call from multiple locations? Yeah?
Okay, virtual basically a virtual club, virtual club. Yeah yeah,
So I mean I suppose No, I don't think you can because you have
to be within a thousand foot radius. We do have a similar radius that
a double r L does, so that would not work. And then I
saw someone else had a question down the road. Can I work as one
home and then go one mobile? Uh, and and and submit two different
logs. I guess you can, but it would really end up being in
two different categories. You're gonna have you're gonna be in the mobile group and
you'll also be in the in the home group. Uh, if you operate
as Here's what my stake on this is, we're not the winter Field Day
Police. We're not gonna if you if we said you had to be one
thousand foot circle and you're at twelve hundred or you're you know, if we
said you had to be five hundred foot from your home and you're only three
hundred and nine nine feet, we're not coming out to major. We're not
going to come out and and and and you know, just hold you to
that and go. Man, you said you're one home, and I find
you operating one mobile. You know, it's like if you're mobile, you
can just be one home and still keep under the same uh call sign and
log under the same time frame. Again, I can't hold just that,
but I think just mostly is what we kind of always go on as our
morals. I think it's an integrity and just hope that you kind of do
the right thing. Good amateur radio operators just be good operators. Absolutely,
so I think if you again, if you're not going to hold you true
to it, but if you were at home and you went mobile and you
stayed at one home, I think we're gonna be fine with it. I
mean, I don't like it, but it's like, what else do you
do? I meaner it'd be easier to submitting two different logs. Yeah,
say the one category. If you're going to do that, then just lug
yourself all this mobile or something. Yep. And Gene had a really good
question win link, whin link RF. If you're send win link messages,
is that count as a contact? It does. That's one of our objectives
this year. So it does work and what we're hoping to set up.
And I didn't get it done. KM four a CK could have helped me
with it a little bit too, And I haven't done it. I just
have had time. I moved into my house in Massachusetts and December fifteenth,
and five days later I had water in my basement. So I've been having
remodel my basement and spend a lot of time doing other things. So yeah,
that didn't help moving into a new house. But what I was getting
at is that I was hoping to be able to set up a win link
message so you could send it to w zero WRC and then we would automatically
send a reply back to you. So if you didn't have a place to
send a win link message to. You could send it to that call sign
and then we'd give you an automatic reply back. But I've not had time
to set that up. That will probably being our objectives from next year.
You can send to that call sign. You won't have time to set it
up in the next two weeks, then I might try. If I do
all tweeted that, we'll try. We'll try and get it out on social
media again. We're on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and our discord channel.
If I can get set up in the next two weeks, I will
see if we can get that out there and you give you an automatic replay
that you know you did send a message. It kind of a confirmation for
you that you went through. We'll try and do that. So that reminds
me. Since I'm on boy, I've I'm involved in too many things,
I think. But since I'm on board the board of Winter field Day,
I actually have access to the Instagram and Twitter account for Winter. So you
guys listening to me in the chat right now, listening to me on the
replay, listening to me on the audio rip, okay, because I'll get
this audio rip posted before Winter field Day send me your pictures from winterfield Day
and I will get either, even if it's last year. Send them to
me today tomorrow, okay, but from twenty twenty three or twenty twenty four
or any time before that. If you have a cool picture, I don't
care what it is, send me your pictures for winterfield Day anytime you've done
it. Kcfive htibb at gmail dot com. Send me a picture and say,
please post winterfield Day pics and I'll put it on the Instagram's slash Twitter
for winterfield Day account and we'll get you and we'll tag you. Guys.
Send me your the name of your Instagram account, the name of your Twitter
account. Let me know what it is. I will be happy to tag
you from the winterfield Day account. That's we want to get. We want
to get the winterfield Day social media stuff more active. So I mean it's
it's it's a once a year event. People aren't looking at the winterfield Day
account in August or September or like. Actually sometimes they are, but sometimes
they are. Yeah, but there's a lot more activity in January than there
is any other time of day. So yeah, so send me your pictures.
Case five h shibby Gmail. Send me your stuff. I will be
happy to post it to the winterfield Day social media accounts and tag you guys,
So let me know what your information is. Go ahead and Marvin sorry,
yep, no, No, you're good. Jason, I'm glad you
said that. Talked about that. And the other thing is you can post
them on our Discord channel as well. Yeah, we have Discord so you
can find that right on our website. It's an open invitation all year long.
You can join in there anytime and post your pictures in there. We're
happy to post them. We'd love them. Sometimes we'll use them on our
own social media. If you look at our website right now, we do
have some people who have been posted in our sites before. We reached out
to them and said, hey, can we information to use your photos.
There are some great sites, some great photos. We'd love to have them,
and we just want to see what people are doing. And again,
or even if you post your own photos for winterfield Day on winterfield Day,
hey, at winterfield Day, you can tag us on your on your Twitter
or your Facebook accounts at winterfield Day and we'll get you in there as well.
So absolutely email them to Jason. Absolutely anyway, any way you can,
Well, well, I'll be posting quite a bit of pictures from our
winderfield Day activation on our on the winterfield Day account, so you guys go
check that out. Searched Instagram. Is it just at winterfield Day? I
don't remember. Yep, it's a for Twitter, it is. I don't
know if Facebook and Instagram you'll you'll probably know that one, and I will.
I don't think I have the Facebook, but I do have Instagram,
and I think it's just uh winterfield Day. I think it's just linked together
because Facebook owns Instagram. Now, okay, but yeah, so winterfield Day
I'll find it. So so there's a question, and I'm sure I know
the answer to this one. It says is EchoLink allowed? Thank you?
I was. I was just gonna get to that, thank you, Melinda.
Yes, so nothing that is Internet connected is allowed. This is our
f over the air only, like most contests and field day events type type
stuff are. So it is. It is RF over the air, not
over the Internet. Nothing wrong with internet connected devices. I use all Star
all the time. I love all Star, I love DMRK, nothing wrong
with that. But this event is not for that. So no, that's
not really allowed for this event. Here's the Instagram account. I'm going to
share it with you guys. You guys go follow Winterfield Day on Instagram.
We've got one hundred and seventy three followers and there's four hundred and thirty nine
of you in the chat right now, so I expect that number to grow
by three hundred percent by the time this stream. Is it? Absolutely so,
David. That is a good question. That is a very good question,
David. When link is internet connected question mark, No, it is
not. When link is sending email from your computer through your radio over ourf
to another radio that receives it and downloads it to downloads it to their computer.
Very similar to FT eight JSA call PSK thirty one ritty something like that.
When link is email, win link is email over RF over the air,
not over the internet. Now you can do wind link over the internet,
yes, but when link the regular the real way to do wind link
is over the air. You're sending from your computer through your radio to another
radio and computer connected somewhere else in the world. So even if even if
that win even if it bounces off a win link node somewhere and it kind
of like repeat digitpeedees it or whatever. It's still over the air. So
so yeah, win link is not when link can be both, that's correct,
it can be both. But the essential point of win link is to
say, hey, the Internet is down, let's send an email over the
air. So that's that's that's kind of a thing right there. But yeah,
somebody else have a question on that. Oh hey, look at that.
Uh, Michael decided to wake up. What's up? Dude? Did
you did you go? Did you get over your drunken Stuperman with yuh man?
Are you kidding? I've been out roaming the high desert here in Arizona
and it's been a lot of fun here doing some contract work. And I'll
tell you what. We drove through some mountain passes where the roads were unmaintained.
The Noah was on the road. We're about, you know, eighty
five hundred feet, and you know, we questioned our life decisions at that
point. Yeah, I'm taking this road. I hear you, I hear
you. Wow. Well, good evening to you, man, welcome,
glad you were able to join. And have you been listening? I have
been listening, and as I was listening. I was like, Yo,
don't want me to join because I'm just I'm way too talkative. Right,
I talked to one of the bunch. But I also do a lot of
the rules and stuff, so whenever it comes to these questions, I usually
have them down. But uh, I think on a lot of these things
is there's a spirit within Winter Phil Day and as long as you're operating within
the spirit of MCom and emergency communications, A lot of the stuff that you
read and the rules have from leeway. So you know, like my brother
said, you know, we're not the place. We're not going to come
out major if you're twelve hundred feet or if you're a thousand feet, does
it say a thousand feet? Yes it does. Is it a hard rule
or a guideline? You know? Yeah? So, But I mean even
driving through these winter passes, and I think about a lot of Winter Field
Day. It's not just about radio communications, but it's a preparedness state of
mind. You know, if you're going down the road and you slide off
into a snowbank, you know, how prepared are you? Do you have
you know, an HF radio in your vehicle? Do you have extra blankets.
Do you have a heater? You know, during the Winter field Day
emergency exercise puts people on the mindset of am I prepared to make myself comfortable
and you know, whatever condition I may find myself in. And that may
be you know, a car crash along the side of the road. It
may be you know, a cruise ship that loses power in the middle of
the ocean. It may be a vacation, you know, down to Galveston
or Florida and there's a hurricane coming. You know, do you have that
preparedness mindset to just make sure you can do what you need to do,
not just get on the radio, make contacts, but be comfortable and overcome
obstacles. That's the spirit of Winterfield Day, and as far as you are
operating within that spirit, you'll be fine. We'd love to have you guys
come join us on the air. What digital modes are allowed during Winterfield Day?
Anything that can broadcast a paragraph, thing or a list, So if
you can actually communicate, go back and forth and be like, you know,
yeah, this is Tank Radio, this is my website, this is
where I'm located, this is you know, this is what I need.
And if you can broadcast that kind of information, then you know it's allowed
on winterfield. If it's something where you know you have to have an exact
exchange and you can't enter any other characters or anything like that. A lot
of people mentioned like FT four FT eight more than just a more than just
a signal report. More than just a signal report. We want you to
be able to athlete, be able to carry on the conversation if needed.
Correct. Yeah, f FT eight and FT four, I love them both,
but they're just signal reports. It's like, oh yeah, five seven,
five, nine seventy three, good goodbye, next station. So j
s call number, you're flooded and stuck on a roof and have to send
you a GPS coordinator right right right? Yeah, JS call You can actually
keyboard to keyboard and type of message and it uses the same protocol as FT
eight. So solly, I mean more options are like PSK thirty one and
rtt y and fl DIGI I mean those are some other options there. What's
the what's the something? JT sixty five does that? Yeah? Can that
do it? I think that's just a sigle report also report. Okay,
it's been a while since I've used JT sixty five. I don't remember myself
as well. I couldn't remember that was one of them, but there,
I mean, it was just some of the other examples you can use.
So any digital protocol that hill say it's an active transmission of live data and
not preloaded canned information is fine. Yes, yeah, more than just a
signal report. Okay, cool? So TK Radio Adventures ask Mike if he
remembers back in September of twenty nineteen at Bluff Mountains Adventures, if your remembers
the black FBR truck. Lol. Did not know I was talking to someone
big rider field day, I mean, but yeah, so you got a
fan in the chat. Apparently. Of all the things I used to do,
I used to be an ATV tour guide. Now, if someone had
told me that I can graduate high school and go ride ATVs and get paid
and make a living off of it, I wouldn't have waited until I was
forty years old to go do that. I'd sign up for that right now.
Yeah, let's go. Let's do that. So I totally. Mountain
is in East Tennessee, right around Pidgeonforge and Gatlinburg. They have a great
repeater system over there, and some GMRS repeater systems over there. But that's
a great example of you know, you never know where you're going to be
and what you're going to do. Back in twenty sixteen, they had really
severe fires in East Tennessee and they get flooding and stuff like that as well.
So hello to people I know in East Tennessee for sure, totally,
totally. That's awesome. Good, Yeah, that's great. It's good too.
It's good to get messages. Remember when that kind of thing. So
I had this question is coming from me Tank radio. They all talk at
the beginning of the stream. You defined a or you said that, Uh
you there's a twenty four hour prep period. What what does that mean?
Mike? You want to answer that or you want me to I'm here,
I'm here now. You're all, y'all are in trouble. So just like
summer Phil Day, you know, we want you to be prepared and start
planning, but we don't want you to set up, you know, the
weekend before or you know, start on Wednesday, you know, setting up
your equipment. So we have a I think you can start setting up as
early as twenty four hours before the event, if you're going to be outside
where you get to a park and you got to set up you know,
you know tense and uh you know if Jason you have your hex beam,
you know, if you're going to set up the hext beam, stuff like
that, all that takes time. So we give you a twenty four hour
period to set up your equipment before the operational period begins. In a emergency,
you might only have two hours half hour, so we give you twenty
four but there's only twelve hours of actual time you can do that. So
I mean you could do it from six pm or six am to six pm.
You might be able to do it from five am to five pm or
something, or maybe you need to come there early in the morning, take
a break off in the afternoon, come back in the evening again. So
we only want to maxive early twelve hours out of that, but we want
to give you that more twenty four hour period because it may just be different
time frames for different people depending on where they get off work and things like
that. So technically that's always the rule for field day as well. I
know a lot of people that kind of fudge on that rule a little bit,
including us, because we go to the deer Lease and there is nothing.
There's no water, there's no electricity, there's nothing at the hunting leaks.
We are totally boondocked. So we set up antenna's usually a couple days
before, maybe a day day or two before, but it's like it's very
portable deployment and type thing. Then we'll just hunt PODA for like a day
or two and then we'll do a field day. But yeah, so it
technically it's supposed to be. But this year, Frank, we will be
at the park on Friday, probably on Friday to do PODA, but we
can't stay at the park overnight at the pavilion, so we're gonna have to
tear down Friday night and then go back Saturday morning, set up again,
and do field day all day on Saturday, and decide if we want to
go back on Sunday. So I'm just trying to clarify that that's for the
outside stations. That's if you're going to go do PODA. If you're doing
a home station and your tire rig is permanently set up on a house and
a large tower, you don't need to tear that down. That's all the
classification. As you're working from home, you're not expected to bring that down
and put that back up. No, no, okay, I just I
just wanted to clarify that. You know, Jason said something that made me
think of a something brand new this year. We've had a couple questions on
it, so I guess I could bring it up and offer maybe some clarification
on it. And again, this is in the spirit of winter Phil Dad,
it's not a hard you know rule. But what do you think of
the new guidelines? Jason? Do you see those instead of the bonus points?
I did. Yeah, yeah, I read through that. I can't
remember exactly everything is said right now, but yeah, I did see that
email. Yes, So we added this year one of the objectives because we
don't have bonus points. One of the objectives is to operate for six straight
hours. And of course, you know, if you're not staying there every
night, or you know, if you only have access to the place until
sunset or something like that, people are like, you know, I mean,
you know, sixty years old, I'm gonna have to make a bathroom
break sometime within that period. Yeah, I can't this sixty or six straight
hours and one of the reasoning behind that objectives is because you know, if
you're in a eoc or or if there's an emergency going on and you're sitting
at a Red Cross shelter, you know, you may be in front of
that radio for a four hour, six hour, twelve hour shift, and
you know it may be hard for you to get away, but you know
you don't have to be transmitting the whole time. You know, if you're
in a park, you don't have to be sitting there calling you know,
CQ Winterfield Day PODA for six hours straight. You just have to be with
an earshot of the radio so that if someone does call, you're able to
answer that call. And I was talking to our web designer the other day
and even for a home station, say uh, I'm one home or say
I'm one outdoor, right, and you know I'm gonna have to step away
from the radio. Well, in a situation like that, if there's another,
you know, one home station down the street, I can be like,
hey, you know W zero met this is W four ops. I'm
going to step away from the radio for ten minutes. If you hear any
calls come in, you know, will you be able to take them.
That would be in the spirit of MCom, in the spirit of winterfield Day,
and perfectly acceptable. If someone said, say, W four ops,
are you there? W zero met would be able to be like, he
stepped away from the radio, can I take your traffic? And that's what
it's all about, is being able to be available on the radio for six
hours straight if someone calls you. And I think that's a very interesting way
to do it. If you're a one home station, if you're a one
outdoor station or something like that, you know, if you have someone else
I can hear, you'd be like, hey, you know, can you
listen for traffic for a second. I'm going to step away and you know,
I'll be back. Basically, you know, can you hold the frequency
for me? Or something like that. But we want to get you in
the habit of being like, hey, can you sit and monitored radio for
six hours because in any event of a power outage or something like that,
you might have to right right right, Yeah, totally. So it's it's
an InCom exercise more than anything. So that's great, that's great. Ye.
The other thing is Michael made me think we've got six hour or six
hour timeframe that will work. But we also asked you to work six different
bands, so everybody likes to work twenty and forty, but how about the
ten, twelve to fifteen, you know, and get on those other bands
and work right now. The solar spots have been pretty decent, pretty good,
so you should have some pretty good luck. And some of the d
X stations have been phenomenal on every band. So I don't I do not
like. I don't like twenty meters and let me let me clarify that.
Come on, twenty meters is easy. I would much rather be on ten
or fifteen, or even twelve or seventeen. Now, now clarify something for
me, Marvin, because I think you said twelve a minute ago. Can
we use twelve and seventeen in the work bands on winterfield Day because it's a
contest or no does know what You're right? They are, Michael, they
are excluded in the rules. I personally love seventeen seventeen. I love the
DX man is amazing, and that's where I go whenever there's contest on twenty
and forty because I'm not a contester, so I love seventeen. I'm a
big advocate of keep seventeen Free from Contests. Yeah, no, totally.
We were at we were at the part. We were at Galveston Island State
Park one day, like a couple of years ago, and it was on
a Saturday, and we didn't realize this. We set up at the park.
It was a Frank and I and Mike Kata Murdie and a couple other
guys. We were out there and we set up on twenty meters and twenty
meters was just full and there was some contest going on. I don't remember
what it was, and we're like, we just want to act Canada,
Canada something like something like that. Yeah, We're just like, we just
want to do some PODA. We don't want to do a contest. So
we moved to seven teen. We each got fifty tow one hundred contacts each.
It was easy. So yeah, no, I'm totally with you on
the non contest bands. Twelve and seventeen. Twelve meters is fun. When
it's up, it's up less, it's up less often than ten meters is.
I love ten and twelve meters both. Fifteen is a fantastic DX band.
If you want to do a non work band, that's that's or a
contest band that's that's got a lot of DX, do fifteen. If you
want to do a non contest band that's got a lot of DX, do
seventeen. But those are great bands. All those bands are great. So
we're going to be operating ten, fifteen, twenty forty. I don't know
if we're doing the eighty or not, but we're going to at least do
those four bands at Winterfield Day. So no, I love Evans comment because
Evan commented doing six bands is tough without the WRC bands. Still from me
that I don't forget there. There's a two meters, there's four forty,
there's two twenty sand we have privileges way above that. So we have privileges
in the seven hundred spectrum if you're doing like art and like ten gig hirts
or something or two point five. Those are all amateur radio bands that are
valid to make contacts on. So if you guys, I don't know if
you guys know who Hayden is Ham Radio DX YouTube channel. He's down in
Tasmania, Australia. Okay, he's a good he's a good friend of franken
Our's and he was he was at hamvitchin last year, first time we met
him in person. We've known him for years. He is a great,
great dude, great dude. He was posting in Discord like a week ago
saying he had made a six meter contact from Tasmania, Australia to Texas.
So six meters is it's not it's not heavy right now, but you can
make contacts on six meters buddy, if they're going from down Under to Texas,
Hey, man, get on six meters during winterfield day. That's that's
six meters is totally viable. So yeah, it's it's it's it's a great,
great band, great band. If you get mentioned this, I didn't
see all of the convent. Someone's commenting, has a winter field day something.
The marine time net. A lot of people may not know that there
are certain frequencies that are no no slow scan TV is normally what like a
fourteen two thirty something like that. There's a marine time net which is fourteen
three hundred, and there's some frequencies just as a gentleman's agreement, you know,
hand radio operators stay away from them. They're monitored twenty four hours a
day. Either that or they're used for, you know, a certain mode
or something like that. Educate yourselves and make yourself aware of those, because
you know, we don't want anyone calling CQ Winterfield down fourteen three hundred right
right right, correct, correct, but good fourteen to thirty fourteen, three
hundred maritimes, seventy two hundred, get on, seventy two hundred seek winterfield
Day. Just do it because those guys, those guys don't deserve a break.
So you know, I'm just going to say that out loud. But
you know, so Dan l is asking about remote stations. Are remote stations
allowed for Winterfield Day? I would, well, you have the one hundred
radius that you're supposed to be have all the equipment within one hundred foot radius,
but a thousand yeah feet yeah, But I mean if you're if you're
operating remote, Okay, if you're operating remote and you're in your radio and
your antenna is all within a thousand square one thousand radius of itself, but
you're like a couple of states away, wouldn't that still be as long as
you're operating as that grid square? Would that still not be acceptable? You're
using the Internet to get to that remote station, are you not, yes,
yes, but you're not using the Internet to contact your HF contacts.
That's true. The signals are originating by r S. Yeah. So we
have a remote station set up in Costa Rica right now that I can log
into right now. It's a flex radio and if I make contacts via Costa
Rica, it's from a radio and an antenna set up in Costa Rica.
So it's the transmission of r F from Costa Rica that's getting out to wherever
it gets out to. So that's a that's a that's an actual Yeah,
I mean that's an actual that's an actual RF contact. So I'm curious a
couple of things. You know, would you say you're one home, you
know, West Texas, or do you now become whatever section that transmitter is
in. It's wherever it's whatever grit square the transmitter is in. Okay,
it's wherever the antenna is at. Really, so so you'll you'll submit to
locks then what you're transmitting from remote? If you know, no one log
for where the transmitting antenna is, that's it. So this is a great
question because and the remote station, you got to do two logs. That's
why I was trying to drive, but you're not. You're not transmitting from
home. You're transmitting from the remote station. From the remote station, it
doesn't matter where. You're all from the remote station, yes, but if
you transmit also from your home station, well, does now have access from
that time because some of those remote stations you only have an hour or two.
So you do two logs for when you're doing remote transmitssion, right,
and we were talking ready from home, then it's a separate log. Correct.
The problem with that is whenever you go to submit a log, we
look at the call sign, we look at the twenty four hour period,
and now you have two different sections listed, and we're like, okay,
you know, one of them's wrong, and we can throw all the contacts
from one of them because we're like, this is the home station, and
you know, he recorded himself as a you know something else for or the
different good square, and it makes it hard for you know, if someone's
contacting you and your your good score changes in the middle of the day or
your section changes in the middle of the day because he decided to get on
the remote station. It is a very interesting question. Uh. The one
thing that I would bring it back to is the spirit of winter pill day.
If there is a major snowstorm in the Northeast and it knocks out power
in Pennsylvania, you're probably not going to have the Internet to use a remote
station, so figure out how to do it without the Internet. Yes,
but the likelihood of the Internet going down nation or worldwide is very remote,
not impossible, I'm not going to say very very remote. So if there's
a hurricane, say in Florida, then we here in Texas could log into
a remote station in South Carolina or Virginia and contact stations in Florida who have
set up remote stations in Florida, or set up portable stations of Florida and
send traffic in and out because we would be closer there than we would here
in Texas or whatever. So it's still feasible that you could operate MCom type
situations that way because the Internet's not affected where we are, just where the
disaster was. So it's it's very kind of I don't know, it's very
it's a very what if situation. It's a convoluted question, and honestly,
I don't think we have actually been asked that question to this point. That
I can recall that we've come across that someone says, hey, can we
do a remote station? I don't remember us as being asked that question till
this point, So I think this is a question we'll have to bring back
to the board next this next summer as we start to review things for twenty
twenty five and go our remote station is going to be a lot or not?
And I don't disagree with you, Jason, I think it very well
could be, because again, you are operating from that FUBA location that's your
transmitting site, not where you're transmitting from where you personally physically are. So
definitely, if you are going to do it, i'd say for this year,
we're going to go with the standing rule that we will go from your
transmitting remote location site as you know, one home or whatever you're doing it
as, or maybe two home where if you've got two people there, whatever.
But that's what I would say, we'd go for go for it for
this point because I don't know the answer that. I don't think we've come
across that, So that's that's an interesting takeaway. Yeah, I my vote
would be for if you can operate remote, Okay, if I can log
if I'm in Texas, if I can log into a station in North Carolina,
or in California, or in Canada or in Costa Rica. Costa Rica
is kind of that's not part of Winterfield Day. It's just all DA.
Everything outside of Canada and USA is DX in Field Day and Winterfield Day.
So think about anything inside of Canada or inside of United the forty eight,
well even in the fifty says even Alaskan Hawaii. If you can operate from
one location to another location remotely, then as long as you're operating as the
grid square where the transmitting antenna is, I would say that counts that that
would be my vote. I'd be like, you know, if I'm in
Texas and I'm I'm controlling a station that's in North Carolina. Steve KO FOURFL
has a flex radio North Carolina. I think it's North Carolina. It might
be South Carolina, one of the Carolinas. And he's like, you can
log into my station transmit, okay, good. And if I'm operating that
station and I make one hundred and fifty contacts, but I'm working as that
grid square from the one of the Carolina states at his location and the Internet's
up at my location, then that's still a viable income thing in my book,
because it's it's like, yeah, the Internet, the Internet's not always
going to be up everywhere, but it's never I shouldn't say never. The
likelihood of it being down everywhere is very very very remote. It may be
down in certain sections, but you know, so I've had a lot of
people comment on you know, and home stations are probably our number one,
you know category. Yeah, and we get emails saying that, you know,
I did Winterfield Day, but you know, it was amazing to hear
how many like home to home pile ups there were and stuff like that.
Yeah, I think I would advocate. And you know, if you want
to use a remote station, you can use a remote station to answer cqs,
but not to call CQ. So if you wanted to get long into
a remote station and just spend all day like answering cqs from people who are
calling Winterfield Day, like those outdoor stations and stuff, make as many contexts
as you can, you know, give those people the contacts. But to
log into a remote station and actually call CQ Winterfield Day yourself, that's an
interesting note. I don't think I agree with what you're saying, Michael,
but that's it's an interesting discussion, to say the least. There's a lot
of you here, if you're if you're transmitting from a certain side. It
the only thing that in my mind, the only thing that matters is where
is the antenna? Where is the intent, because that proves what your propagation
is going to be. The propagation is going to be different from an antenna
in South Carolina than an antenna in Texas, than an antenna in Alaska or
Canada or Costa Rica or England. It's going to be different propagation. So
where is your transmitting antenna and if you can get to that antenna from wherever
you are, I'd say that's a viable solution. But that that's me,
that's my vote. So that's okay. There's a lot of people in here
and not I agree with that saying no internet, no remote, just don't
do it at all, no internet, period, be done. So it's
kind of funny we're getting a mixed I think this might be one of those
things we have to put out on Twitter and Facebook and do a poll and
just to kind of see what the general people come back. And say create
a new category. It's not a home station, it's not an outdoor station.
It's an R. You're one R. You're one remote remote. Yeah
yeah, maybe totally. I mean one, maybe not, because that's totally
a thing. Seriously, I'm dead serious when I say the Internet is not
going to be down everywhere. Okay, in some area and some st in
some areas. Hurricane, tornado, natural disaster, earthquake, blah blah blah
blah. Yes, it will be down in parts, but it's not the
likelihood of it being down nationwide is very remote. So if it's down where
you are at, you're in trouble because you can't do remote. Correct.
But that doesn't mean the guy in Arizona or the guy in California couldn't do
remote, which is why he should be able to answer you. But he
shouldn't be able to call seek you help because he made help. It's an
interesting question. Help Where this goes? Yeah, yeah, we're gonna have
to bring this up. Yeah yeah, yeah. Traveler says there's too many
rules already. And Bob, we went like thirteen or fourteen pages in the
rules guideline, and we've taken it down to like maybe six or eight.
We have lessened the rules. We've taken a lot of call it garbage and
redundancy out of those rules and try to simplify it and make it more clear
and and and more specific for you. So uh yeah. So so here's
an easy question from Gene. Is winterfield Day international? Yes, it is.
Stations all over the world that can that can. That's that's what makes
us unique from a double r L is that we have stations all over the
county, all over the world rake string. If you go look on our
winter field Day, if you go out to your site and raster for your
winterfield Day location, Gene, we will uh basically you'll see on the map
there's people over there in like Bulgaria and in Europe and United Kingdom there are
also a rake stream for winter field days. So that that's what makes us
unique from a double L. Here for a second, yes, well,
everybody wants to do all these different modes and and this, that and the
other. We're kind of steering away from the fact that it's for preparedness.
So you have these new people coming into hand rail. Now you've got youth,
you've got yls, you've got you know, school groups that are joining
in, and you've got you know, different groups trying to learn hand rail.
If we just dive in and say with the winter field day, and
we're giving them all this information, all these rules and taking away from the
preparedness factor, then we're losing the impetus behind hand radio, are we not?
I agree? I think that if I understand what you're saying, Melinda,
Yes, I agree. It's in an emergency as an emergency is defined
by ablel okay, as an emergency is defined by our license rules okay,
which is an immediate threat to your personal property. Okay. So I do
a lot of stories about emergency preparedness and hand radio save lives and this kind
of thing. I got a comment on one of my videos a month or
two ago. It's been a while now, and they're like, hey,
this guy, this guy. We were doing a tornado net on one of
our local repeaters and this guy keyed up and he's like, hey, I'm
watching this here and there and there, and the net control said, what's
your call sign? The guy said, well, I don't have a call
sign. I'm relaying information and since this emergency, I shouldn't need a call
sign. To transmit, and the guy was like, well, unless the
tornado's in your backyard, you're not under an emergency right now. Okay,
So it's important to understand how the FCC and the aa RO define emergency.
Okay, it's important to understand that. Now. Whether you agree with that
or not, I'm just saying it's it's important to understand how that's defined.
So in a true emergency, you use any and all means necessary to transmit.
Uh, even if that's your freaking cell phone. Okay, if your
if your smartphone is up and you've got a five G connection on an emergency,
pick up your freaking phone in dollar nine to one one seriously, because
that's a that's a viable tool. Okay. But if you don't have that,
then that then you can go to other things. And that's okay,
but it's important to understand how that is defined. So just because we think
of emergency and him rated, we think of emergency as everything is down,
Oh my god, pick up your radio. Sometimes that might be true,
sometimes it may not be true. So the Internet might be available four G,
five G might be available, Wi Fi might be available. You don't
never know, So it's whatever means of communication is available to you at that
time. So I think, Melinda, I think that's a great I think
that's a great outlook on the situation. Yes, we want to encourage the
youth. We want to encourage everybody else, right, like my husband encourage
my license and the selling aspect for me was the fact that it was e
comm you know, I could get a bubble rig in my car, and
if there was something that I couldn't get internet or cell phone service, I
had emergency communications readily at my hands. Right. I think that's kind of
what we're losing with winterfield Day, with all of these you know, do
this or do that thing is you know, it's to learn and be ready
for emergency preparitis. But if we're adding all this other stuff in there,
are we losing what we're really aiming for with winterfield Day. It's possible.
Yeah, my wife has been licensed for nine years. Her license expires in
February, so next month. So she's been licensed for ten years. Yours
two frankyep So when I got her get her license, we've been married for
twenty one years. I said, you need to get your hand radio.
She's like, she's smart, she's the CPA. She's got a master's degree.
She she's smart. She studied for like two and a half minutes,
and she went and took the test and she got their license. But it
was longer than two and a half minutes, but still she went and got
her license. And I put a radio in her car. And it was
I don't know, three or four months later, and it was winter in
Texas and it ice stormed. And people in North Texas do not know how
to drive in the ice. Okay, I'm just going to tell you that
right now. I've lived here for my whole life. I'm telling you right
now, people do not know how to There's no snow tires in North Texas.
It's either ice or nothing. Okay, there's no snow. So she
was working in downtown Fort Worth and I was working in North a little bit
north of Dallas, and there was an ice storm come up. It happened
to be a Friday. Ice storm come up about noon, eleven am or
twelve on a Friday. My office shut down. They're like, the storm's
getting bad. It's snowing outside, it's icing. It's twenty five five degrees
outside. Go home, okay, and her office told her and saying well,
I called her. I was like, hey, what are they telling
you? And they're like, well, they're suggesting we go home. Let's
go home. So she left her office in North and South fort Worth and
I left at in cop l which is where I was at the time.
Twenty minute drive for me, thirty minute drive for her on a normal day.
It took us both over two hours to get home. Wow. And
we're on the local repeaters talking to each other and to other people on you
know, on our drive home. We're like, hey, we're here,
this is what the situations like, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
A lot of the Hurst Amateur Radio Club people Frank were on the repeaters
that day. We were on the Hurst repeater, we were on the South
fort Worth repeater. Anyway, two hours later I get home, like ten,
ten or fifty minutes before she does. She gets home and we're talking
with everything and everybody was safe and everything, and she's like she looked at
me, She's like, I understand, why now, why you asked me
to get my amateur radio lissuse. She goes, I didn't get it before
that, but she was like able to talk to people the whole way home
from her car, and not just one person on the phone, but like
there was ten or fifteen or twenty people listening on the repeater. And if
she would have had an accident, well she didn't, thankfully, but she
would have an accident, people would be like, oh wow, oh she's
here and here and here called nine to one one. Okay, great,
but it was it was. It was a total InCom situation over VHF repeaters
and it worked because that's what ham radio is all about. So she understood
that because I told her. I was like, you need to get this,
and she didn't get it, whid but after that she did so and
she's and I need to put a radio in her new car. Now I
haven't done that yet, but that's my fund but yeah, I know,
I know I'm falling behind. But yeah, but anyway, so imcom can
be anything. There was no emergency that day, but two hours to get
home from a thirty minute drive, that's a thing. So it's it's it's
important to realize that emergency doesn't always mean oh my god, everything's on fire
and I'm gonna get shot if I leave where I'm standing, right now that
it's not always that. It can be anything that's mildly to extremely life threatening.
So there's a variance, there is all I'm saying. So Jason,
going back to what you know Melinda said as far as like you know,
the rules and encouraging people. Up until the last couple of years, whenever
this current board took over winterfield Day, you had to submit your log in
a cabrill format, which is like a contesting format and stuff. And we've
worked really really hard with our web designer, Like he's been working his butt
off doing all this coding on the back end. And you know, we
can now take an ad I F file, a text file, you know,
all the all these different formats because not everybody wants to, you know,
learn cabrio format. So at winterfield Day, we're trying to make things
easier for people to participate and to go along with the rules. Of Me
and my brother talked about this just today. You know, the term rules,
and you know, I'm an advocate for changing it to guidelines or something
else, because yeah, they're not hard. We say it's a thousand foot,
it's not it is a thousand foot, but that's a thousand foot guideline
R and you know, we don't want you guys to get hung up on
Oh you know, this is the points, is the multiplier, this is
what I have to do. You know, take a look at the objectives.
If you can achieve any of them, that's great, Hey, good
for you, congratulations. Push yourself. If you can't achieve the other ones,
try to achieve them. But don't get hung up on the rules.
Don't get hung up on the multipliers. Don't get hung up on making you
know, ten thousand contacts. It's not about any of the first half of
the rules that you read. It's more about you know, achieving the objectives
and pushing yourself. And we're trying to put those out there as guidelines just
so that everyone has the same exchange. When we go to process the logs,
the information is the same. You know, there has to be a
set of you know, standards and guidelines. But don't get hung up on
the rules. I also wanted to mention ham Radio Hobby said he couldn't register
his site because in Guatemala. Shoot us an email winterfield Day at winterfield day
dot com or w f d A w f d A at winterfield Day dot
com I will have our web designer looking to that and figure out why you
can't register your site. We're always trying to find bugs. We have a
discord channel for beta testing because we're always trying to find bugs, because we're
trying to push our boundaries within an organization. You know, a new mapping
system that's faster for people to access, a new log submission system that makes
it easier for people to use. You know, we really want you to,
you know, participate if you've never done it before. Don't think that,
oh, I'm not going to be able to participate because I don't know
what the rules are. I don't know this. You know, even if
you get out there and make five contacts and go to our web page and
submit ADIF file that has five contacts in it cools to you. You know
we want that, Yes, yep, absolutely with the contacts and then you
know, maybe you're able to achieve five contacts, but you're able to do
ten objectives, you know, so you know, it's again kind of that
personal training. And you know how many people I mean literally in this channel
right now can go out and set up an effective wind link station in a
tent, in a mobile in their vehicle, you know whatever, and actually
be able to operate a wind link station as we talk, and I know
I probably couldn't even offhand myself, so that's kind of one of my goals
to be able to set up myself. This year, I'm going to be
visiting the Side Tech Amateur Radio Society out in Middle Massachusetts. I think it's
a natick. They've invited me out there for their Winter field Day this year,
So we'll see how I'll try and be operating from there. But we
should be fun and kind of looking forward to see how that can work and
joining in a couple of groups and make some contacts and so. But you
know, those are things that we want to be able to just encourage people
to try and set up and do on their own. Overall, totally absolutely,
guys, this has been an excellent informational live stream tonight again. Winterfield
Day is two weeks from yesterday one pm Texas time, which is two pm
East coast and eleven am West Coast time. That's right, nineteen hundred UTC
Saturday to eighteen fifty nine UTC on Sunday, two weeks from yesterday. Yep,
So that's the thing so thank you to everybody who joined tonight. Michael,
Uh, Melinda, Marvin, thank you guys for joining tonight. This
is always great information. On last thing in Yeah, yeah, go ahead,
man, go ahead. We are five o' one c three. Your
donations are accepted and tax deductible, and we do have operating costs. We're
sitting pretty decent right now, but we do pay for website designer that helps
us with our database. We pay for Melchimp to be able to get our
newsletter. You can sign up for our newsletters. We'll send your reminders about
the winterfield Day as the year comes up, so uh you know, yeah,
please subscribe to us as well. And thank you for being on here,
and thanks for everybody joining. The great questions that came through the chat.
That was wonderful, and thanks again Jason for hosting us. Absolutely yeah.
So here's the donation button on the winterfield Day website. Just scroll down
on the on the front page. Gosh, have a shout out to Icon.
We appreciate uh their support too. Yes, yeah, Ray Noback was
in my chat last week, but he's not here tonight. I don't know
why. I must have pissed him off. It's not the first time.
No, he's supporting, he's supporting winning. No, he's yeah, yeah,
I com Icon is a great supporter of winterfield Day. So I'm just
I'm just teasing Ray because he knows. Absolutely so. Yeah, so go
out there and make a donation right here on the winterfield Day website and uh
and uh you know whatever you whatever you feel like doing. So, guys,
thank you once again for tonight. This was fun. Maybe maybe we'll
do a follow up sometime in February after winterfield Day to say, here's what
we did, Here's what we learned, here's what we saw. What kind
of comments do we want to get from the community. Maybe we can try
early March after we get our stats in can see how many. That's great,
that's great. Yeah. Yeah, after ham Cash, it's gonna be
busy. It's gonna be busy from winterfield Day. Am ks for me anyway,
Jason, am I going to see you? Yeah freaking break and I
and Mike and uh other Mike and a couple of yeah, yeah, several
of this would be there. Absolutely, Yeah, we'll be there. We'll
be there at the Polaris. I got some brand new items for polar items.
I got little lord little pins, little pins that have the Pola logo
on them. I have writing pins. I've got all kinds of new stuff.
So come see me at the Polar Base. We we talked about ham
Club hamgear online before you got here, man, so are club gear online.
That's a club gear on you online, you know, to make it
easy. I also own a PoTA gear dot com. Gear dot com.
That's good, so awesome, Hey, we we will absolutely come see you
and talk to you at handcasion. Frank and I will be there and a
bunch of other people as well. So uh, thanks for hey, seriously,
thanks to all three of you for being here tonight. This is always
fine. We had a lot of we had a great turnout and chat tonight.
So it's a it's a fun event. And uh, if you are
in the Galveston area or near the Galveston area, come down to Galveston Island
State Park the weekend of Winterfield Day. You're welcome to join us and sit
down at the radio if you want to, or just watch us. You
don't have to sit down and talk if you don't want to, just hang
out with us, smoke a cigar, drink some beer, beer's not allowed
in the state park, but don't tell them that. We don't care.
And we'll be in a quart Site Arizona with all the our beers and stuff
like that. I'll be in quart Site and I'll tell you what. It's
going to be a long drive from Fort Site, Arizona to Orlando, Florida,
but we'll see you guys there. I'll tell you what I was in
court se last I was in court site last year, and I'm not going
this year, and apparently everybody else is going this year, so I don't
know and say hi, Yeah, Vernon t o be a court site,
so they're all fantastic, awesome, Probably gonna go back next year. We'll
see winter field Day coins. I have a PoTA coin. I need a
I need a field Day. You guys need to do winter field Day coins
coins. That'd be awesome. We can do that. Do that email Frank
or me for the places where we are coins printed. All right, yeah,
yeah, we'll shoot your message. Shooting the message. So seventy three
guys, Thank you everybody for joining, and everyone have a good night,
stay warm because it's fifteen. It's fourteen degrees right now in North Text do
you have snow. No, no, it's just colder. It's colder,
Nell. You can keep it. It's clear, it's clear sky cleo sky.
No. I would I would like to have snow. If we had
snow, it would be worth it. It's just clear skies and colder Nell.
Oh my god. So yeah, yeah, that's the thing. So
seventy three guys, thanks for joining us tonight. So Hi,