I just returned from Las Vegas yesterday, where I attended DEFCON and taught a one-day Tech class in the Ham Radio Village for the second year in a row. As it was last year, it was both exhilarating and exhausting. I arrived Wednesday afternoon, taught the class on Thursday, wandered about DEFCON on Friday, learned a few things, and left Saturday morning.
This year, there was another full house (pun intended) with 31 students in all. Unfortunately, only 24 passed the test. That’s a little lower than my usual pass rate, but come to find out that some of the students had never even looked at the study guide before the class. I know this because when I mentioned that I was following my study guide from front to back, several asked where they could get it.
I’m already thinking about next year. For example, I think with a little more publicity we could get 50 people to attend the class. Also, I probably should make up some slides to make up to show the students what resistors look like and what RF connectors look like. I usually have a goodie bag of components that I pass around for a local class, but it’s difficult to do that for a class somewhere other than Ann Arbor.
At lunch, an ICQPodcast listener joined me for lunch. That was nice. I told him that I was always surprised when people say they listen to us on the podcast. He replied that he was a relatively new ham, and that listening to the podcast helped him learn more about the community and become part of it. I hadn’t thought about that being one of our functions, but it’s something that I’m going to keep in mind on future episodes.
After the class, two study guide readers came up to me and thanked me for writing the study guides. One of them said that he used my study guides to pass all three tests. Now, he’s a VE with Ham Radio Village and giving back as well. How cool is that?
Hanging out at DEFCON
On Friday, I hung out at the conference and learned stuff. I learned a bit about quantum computing, how some people are using social media to chart the course of the war in Ukraine, and whether or not solid-state drives are actually more reliable than mechanical hard drives.
One of the other “villages” that I was really impressed with was the Hardware Hacking/Soldering Skills Village. They had at least a hundred people sitting at tables soldering and unsoldering things. Hamvention needs something like that.
While I’ll teach at DEFCON for as long as they’ll have me, I have never been a big fan of Las Vegas. I really have no desire at all to gamble anymore (I used to play a little blackjack), it’s incredibly hot in August (every day was over 100ºF), and the price for nearly everything is sky-high (I paid more than $20 for breakfast at a Dunkin Donuts!). Even so, it was packed to the gills. I was amazed that they get so many people there with such high temperatures and high prices.
Despite all that, DEFCON did get me pumped up about doing more hacking. For example, I’m going to look into purchasing a Xiegu X6100 and hacking on it. Apparently, the software runs on an internal Linux computer and can be user-modified. R1CBU has already hacked the X6100, adding features and improving the radio’s performance. I’m looking forward to learning more about this. I also have some other ideas, which I’ll be writing more about in the future.
UPDATE 8/15/23
I got this very nice email today:
Hi Dan,
Thank you for teaching your class @ DefCon! I was lucky enough to snag a spot at the very last minute; I got a lot out of the class but, since I had no prior knowledge of/experience with the subject and the exam was being offering for the duration of the con, I decided to hold off until I’d had a chance to review the material.
That said, I’m happy to share that I took & passed the exam on Sunday after re-reading your guide and taking a practice test.
So, thank you again for piquing my interest in ham radio & making it so accessible — I hadn’t expected to leave Las Vegas a licensed amateur radio technician!
I’ve since downloaded your “21 Things to do After” guide and look forward to getting started with my first radio.. : )
How cool is that? That bumps up my pass rate a little more :)
The HF Signals sBitx is also open-source. Someone needs to fix the FT8 mode. It tends to send on the wrong time slot, etc, and Ashar hasn’t had the time to figure it out. Check out the BITX20 groups.io mailing list, where most of the recent posting are all about the sBitx.