The response from the QSO Today listener survey was terrific. Almost all of you who answered my survey entered the drawing by giving me your call sign.  I assigned each record in the survey that contained a call sign a line number, set the range in an on-line random number generator and pushed the button.  I got this idea from Cale at the HamRadio 360 Podcast.  Great idea Cale!  The winner of the drawing was Mervin Northover, M0MIN, in the UK, who now has his prize.

While the survey was insightful, you were also very generous with your guest suggestions.  Most of your QSO Today guest suggestions were new names and call signs to me, many of whom I had never heard of.  I entered all of your suggested guests into my prospect list.  I go through a few each day, complete the record and send invitations.  I expect that we will have some great future guests on the podcast.

I purchased my plane ticket and made reservations for my first Dayton Hamfest.  I hope to meet many of the QSO Today listeners at the show.  I also plan to attend the FDIM conference.  What I learned is that the Fairborn hotels are the closest hotels to the new Hamvention site in Xenia.  As a result, hotel rooms disappeared quickly right after New Year’s, possibly impacting the folks that would go to FDIM.  So if you are planning Dayton this year, now is the time to make preparations. 

My QSO Today is with Mike Myers, VA3MPM, who is an active ham in the city of Ottawa, Canada.  Mike likes to collect old transceivers, the ones that many of us wanted as kids, in the seventies, but out of our financial reach at the time. He likes the early Drake, Swan, Yaesu, and Kenwood transceivers that he finds at hamfests for very little money.  Mike says that most of these rigs will work with a little clean up and maybe replacement of all of the electrolytic capacitors.  In the end, he has some very interesting rigs where each one gives him a different on-air user experience.  

Some new hams to the QSO Today podcast tell me that the cost of a ham rig can be expensive and a barrier to getting on the air.  These older rigs (under the careful scrutiny of an Elmer) can be a great opportunity to get on the air for a fraction of the cost of a new rig.  With a little more help, you can add some SDR (Software Defined Radio) capability to give these rigs some interesting new capability (See QST Magazine, Jan 2017, Modulation-Demodulation Software Radio, by Alex Schwarz, P. 50). 

For me these QSO Today conversations stimulate some new thinking.  I hope that they do the same for you. 

​73,  Eric 4Z1UG

​Thanks to all of you who completed my listener survey.  As I write this over 300 of you have replied and entered my drawing for the $100.00 DX Engineering Gift Certificate.   Your input is very helpful.  I will post the survey results to the QSO Today website at some point soon.  

I take your comments and suggestions very seriously.  One of your most important contributions is guest suggestions. As I have said before, I send out tens of invitations every month to create a roster of QSO Today guests.  Only about 10% of my invitations result in QSO Today interviews.  I think that this is a very good response.  Your suggestions bring to my attention ham radio operators who have amazing stories that I want to hear and share with you.  As I go through the QSO Today Listener Survey, I am adding your suggestions to my list. Thanks!

I was pleasantly surprised by the response to Episode 127 with Brooke Allen, N2BA.  Our QSO went off the traditional rails of the typical QSO Today conversation and ventured into territory that I found both interesting and compelling. It caused me to question, in my own mind, what it is about amateur radio that should be preserved.  Why is it important for the ham radio service and its licensees to still be here after the old timers are gone?  If I have to make an elevator pitch about ham radio, what could I say in its favor?

Here is my elevator pitch: 

Amateur radio provides hands-on learning experience that encompasses a vast amount of technical knowledge, practical mechanical and social skills.  Its mentors and students often trade places as they research, experiment, construct, and test new circuits, equipment, antennas and other technical contraptions. Ham radio creates a passionate life trajectory into science and technology for its younger members.  It’s the ultimate hands-on STEM classroom.

I appreciate that my QSO with Brooke was discussed on some other podcasts.  I chuckled as I heard comments from other podcasters that I may have squirmed in my chair when, as my mother used to say, the conversation became “adult”.  As a community we should have these discussions that lead us to articulating our positions as a service and hobby for the future.  

​I don’t have answers, but I like asking the questions.

73, Eric 4Z1UG

Often during a QSO Today interview I am catapulted into the past to remember my youth, growing up with electricity and electronics, and then the discovery of amateur radio, almost by accident. My conversation with Ian Keyser, G3ROO, this week, caused me to recall, as a very young boy, playing with electric wires, plugs and live house current. I made wall plugs from shoe boxes and rescued electric motors out of equipment my Dad had in the garage. I had a pair of sound powered field phones that provided hours of fun, especially when I ran the twisted pair out my bedroom window to the house next door. I was so inspired by the Disneyland Tiki Room at age 9, that I attempted to add Tiki Room features to the bedroom I shared with my two brothers. Unfortunately, the combination of a high speed electric motor and plastic flowers wreaked havoc on the babysitter’s fine, straight hair. That might have been the reason she never came back.

Growing up in the sixties, in Southern California, we were all over town on our bikes up in every neighbor’s tree and we spent countless hours digging underground forts in the empty fields behind the house. We sometimes got hurt, although not badly, were pretty dirty until bath time and kept Band-Aid in business for years. We were not alone; all of us kids carried our childhood wounds with pride, sometimes even sporting a cast.

​What I remember is that my parents didn’t protect me from my interest in electricity, although maybe not aware of how many times I got a shock. They supported my interest and created opportunities for me to work on my electronic projects from an early age. I still have the telephone lineman’s pliers in my tool box that I received from my grandparents on my seventh birthday over fifty years ago. I can’t work on telephone lines without them. When I wanted a Heathkit electronics laboratory in the fifth grade, my Mother made a list of electronic and electrical terms on a yellow pad that I had to learn to merit the gift. Frankly, I was surprised to know that my Mom knew the definition of an Erg! (Erg=10 to the minus 7 Joules)
Taking risks, pushing the envelope, trying new things and occasionally getting injured helped us to grow into confident adults. Perhaps the combination of potential liability, insurance companies and over protective parenting has created a safe but non-challenging environment. When was the last time you saw a “high dive” or even a diving board at a public pool? 

Are we too protective of our children that we limit their opportunities, setting them into safer situations in front of the computer, television, or iPad? If we want our kids and grand-kids to be builders or even amateur radio operators, we may have to open the doors and let the kids out into the world. I don’t have the answer. I am only asking the questions. 
 
73, Eric 4Z1UG

I am now 126 episodes into the QSO Today podcast. If you are reading this when I sent it, it is New Years’ Eve, 2016. Tomorrow is 2017. I want to share with you a few things that I learned in 2016.

• Being a podcaster, especially one who hosts a guest every week, requires good listening skills. Since I began the podcast, I have learned to listen more intently for the gems that are often revealed. In 2017, I hope to become more comfortable with the “pregnant pauses” in conversations that often lead to a better QSO and not be the one who breaks the silence.

• My education trained me to add up the facts before making a decision; put all of my ducks in a row. While it goes against this way of thinking, my gut often gives me the early warning of the right decision before the facts add up. I am paying more attention to my intuition than ever before. Perhaps this is one of the gifts of being older.

• When adversity strikes, often the pain is intense. It causes an accounting of one’s health, business and personal relationships, and a resetting of priorities. When the pain subsides, the gift is the knowledge of which tasks, challenges, friends and family members are important and sadly and painfully, which are not. In the long run this is a good thing like cleaning out the basement after the flood.

• One of the guests whom I hoped to have on the QSO Today Podcast was Jim Dixon, WB6NIL, who was the creator of the Allstar technology, ROIP or radio over Internet protocol that leverages the Asterisk phone system created by Mark Spencer. I have mentioned a few times that I use this technology, created by Jim, to stay in touch with my ham friends around the world using my UHF repeater. Sadly, Jim passed away this month leaving a void in the Allstar community amongst his friends and the people who knew him. While Jim and I traded emails about coming on the show, it was not to be. He who hesitates is lost.

• The QSO Today Podcast, like some of my other activities, was born out of my desire after my 56th birthday to live my life out “on the edge”, to take risks to do something that others have not done, to preserve the stories of some of the amazing Hams who contributed so much to our noble hobby. I also sing and perform in musical theater, no longer the geeky kid who ran the lights and sound backstage. (the picture is 4Z1UG singing "Colonel Buffalo Bill" as Charlie in Annie Get Your Gun).   I can only say that I am sorry that I did not adopt this attitude a few decades earlier. If you are young and reading this message then I advise you to take chances on the edge of your comfort zone. Your life will be enriched.

73,  Eric 4Z1UG