KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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Where are all the amateur radio Tik Toks?

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My boss at ARDC has asked me to take a look at TikTok and come up with some ideas as to whether it’s worth it for us to spend time on creating our own videos. So, today, I created a TikTok account and browsed around for a while, searching for amateur radio content. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed.

Whereas on YouTube there’s just tons of amateur radio content, I only found a few TikTokers producing much amateur radio content. These include:

  • @glamhamradio. Natalie, NW6S, is the TikToker behind this channel(?). She seems to have a good grasp of how to create short, instructional videos.
  • @radioprep. David, W5CWT, has only eight videos in his channel, but all of them show how he used regular “stuff” in ham radio.
  • @k5ata_goodgamehamradio. This is the channel of Steve, K5ATA, the ARRL’s Education and Learning Manager. There are 17 TikToks in this channel, but not all of them are related to ham radio.

Am I missing something here? Are there other TikTokers with more and interesting amateur radio content? If so, I’d really like to know about it.

Also, I’m trying to think how we might use TikTok to promote ARDC. I suppose that we could get some grantees to send in videos, then extract clips to post as TikToks. Do you think that would be of any interest to people? I’m kind of thinking that it wouldn’t be worth the time and energy.

From my own point of view, I might try to make a few TikToks to illustrate points in my No Nonsense study guides. It should be simple enough to do a few of them and see if they get any traction. What do you think?

KB6NU on the DitDit Podcast

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A week or so ago, Bruce, N9WKE, phoned me and asked if I would appear on the Dit Dit podcast. He hadn’t produced an episode in nearly two years and wanted to get started again. He said that he wanted to have me on his show because I was “the #1 most requested guest.”

Now, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it was still an honor to be asked. Here’s the episode:

The podcast doesn’t break any new ground, so if you’ve heard any of my talks or read my CW Geek’s Guide, you can pretty well guess what I have to say. But, it was a lot of fun to record, and I think you’ll enjoy listening to it.

Amateur radio videos: Contest University 2022

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This year, at the Dayton Hamvention, they once again held Contest University in person. They also livestreamed and recorded the presentations. Here’s the video:

This video includes the following presentations:

  • Low Band Receiving Antennas by W3LPL
  • Improving your Transmitting Antennas for Solar Cycle 25 by W3LPL
  • Improving the Competitiveness of Your Station by W3LPL
  • The ND7K Contest Station, Teamwork and Multi-operator Innovations by N6WIN
  • Grounding and Bonding by N0AX
  • Antennas and Propagation Questions and Answers by W3LPL
  • Optimizing your Receiver Performance by NC0B

Recordings of previous years’ Contest University presentations are also online.

Another crazy idea for an amateur radio video

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A couple of weeks ago, the Veritasium video, “The Big Misconception About Electricity” created quite a stir. If you’re interested in the physics of electricity, you might want to watch this yourself.

I’m not going to discuss the technical merits of this video here (although feel free to do so in the comments below). Instead, I’m going to mention that some hams suggested that we get the guy behind Veritasium to produce a video on an aspect of ham radio. The idea would be to attract those who are interested in the science behind radio—presumably younger people—into amateur radio. After all, if he can make mundane scientific topics seem cool, shouldn’t he be able to make amateur radio seem cool?

Also, he has almost 12 million subscribers on YouTube. If we could somehow convince him to do a video on amateur radio, it would get a lot of play. I’ve emailed him about this and am now waiting for a reply.

My question to you all is are there other video producers out there like Vertiasium who are doing something similar? I’ve been browsing YouTube for the last hour, and while there are a ton of videos on radio waves, for example, they’re all pretty dry, academic stuff. I want to find someone that can not only explain a topic, but spur a viewer’s imagination as well.

I know we have a bunch of amateur radio YouTubers, and they all do some great videos, but their audience are folks who already have amateur radio licenses. They’re preaching to the choir. I want someone who can produce a video that people outside the church will watch and convince them to join the congregation.

What do you think? Do you have any favorite video producers who might be able to pull this off? To sweeten the pot a little, let me remind you that I’m the Communications Manager for ARDC. We make grants to organizations and projects that promote and support amateur radio. If we find the right producer, funds might be available.

By the way

Dave Jones, of EEVBlog fame, has done a video on this topic, tackling it from an engineering point of view. It’s worth watching, if you’re interested in the topic.

ICQ Podcast Episode 375 – The Fed Files

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In this episode, I joined Martin Butler (M1MRB), Edmund Spicer M0MNG and Ed Durrant DD5LP, and we blabbed about:

Amateur radio videos: 6-year-old ham on David Letterman, KB6NU on Operator of the Week, how to make your own DMR codeplug

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Young ham on David Letterman

Veronica Harrington, KC6TQR, appeared on March 26, 1992. She was six years old at the time. David Letterman actually had a ham license at one point.

KB6NU on Operator of the Week

Yours truly appeared on the podcast, Operator of the Week by WA7PBE. It’s always fun to appear on podcasts like this.

Make your own DMR codeplug

This video by BridgeCom aims to take some of the mystery out of DMR codeplugs. The video talks about the Anytone radios that Bridgecom sells, but you should be able to set up your own after viewing the video. If you need more info, the YouTube page lists a bunch of other videos explaining how to do this.

From my inbox: how transistors work, texting device, DEFCON talks

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Understanding Basic Electronics

The Long Island CW Club has turned into much more than a place for hams to learn Morse Code. It really is an online amateur radio club. Their Zoom rooms host talks on a wide variety of topics, and their mailing list has become a forum for less experienced hams to seek out the advice of those who, shall we say, have been in the hobby for a while.

A recent thread, Understanding Basic Electronics, caught my eye. It has a number or resources to help the new ham learn electronics. Of those, there’s one I really like, How Transistors Work – A Simple Explanation. It has explanations for how both bipolar junction transistors and field-effect transistors (FETs) work.

Chatter uses LoRa to send encrypted texts

Chatter is an amusing little device that uses LoRa to send encrypted text messages. I’ve often thought that a device like this, but operating on the amateur radio bands, would be a killer app for amateur radio.

This particular device is kind of expensive at $132. Not only that, it comes as a kit that you have to put together yourself. Both those being the case, I don’t see this becoming a big seller. It is amusing, though.

I haven’t checked in with the Ham Messenger developer lately, so I don’t know how that project is going. For folks with a license, though, I’d still recommend that that is the way to go. Of course, since Ham Messenger uses amateur radio frequencies, the messages can’t be encrypted. It seems a bit silly that you can encrypt using an unlicensed service, while you can’t with amateur radio, but them’s the rules.

From Southgate ARC:

Talks from the Ham Radio Village at DEF CON 29 released

The amateur radio talks given in the Ham Radio Village at last year’s DEF CON 29 event are now available on YouTube. The talks include:

  • An Introduction to RF Test Equipment by Kurtis Kopf K6GG
  • Amateur Radio Mesh Networking by Tyler Gardner KI7ODK
  • Spectrum Coordination for Amateur Radio by Bryan Fields W9CR
  • Getting started with low power/long distance comms (QRP) by Eric Escobar W6WD
  • How to Contact the ISS with a $30 Radio by Gregg Horton K6XSS

Watch the talks on the DEFCON YouTube channel.

ICQ Podcast #363: The Lost Tribe, the Pied Piper and the Executive

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In this episode, I joined Martin Butler (M1MRB), Edmund Spicer M0MNG, Ed Durrant DD5LP and Leslie Butterfield G0CIB to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. We discussed:

This episode’s feature is The Lost Tribe, the Pied Piper and the Executive.

Videos for newcomers: Repeater 101, CTCSS for the Baofeng UV-5R, Understanding CTCSS and DCS

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I’ve gotten a couple of inquiries from new hams lately about using repeaters and programming their radios. So, I did a little searching for YouTube videos, and came up with the following:

Repeater 101 for new Amateur Radio Operators

In this presentation Bob Schmid, WA9FBO, of the Northern Colorado Amateur Radio Club discusses all you need to know to get started with using repeaters. He talks about transmitters, receivers, controllers, duplexers, combiners, repeater sites and of course, antennas. It’s a little long, but worth the watch.

Baofeng UV-5R: Add CTCSS and DCS Codes & Tones On The Keypad And Connect To & Talk On A Repeater

The most common reason that newcomers are unable to access a repeater is that they’re radio isn’t programmed to send a CTCSS tone. This video offers step-by-step, button-by-button instructions to program a Baofeng UV-5R to use CTCSS tones or DCS codes using the keypad, not the CHIRP programming program.

Understanding CTCSS and DCS

This video explains the basic technical principles behind CTCSS (continuous tone coded squelch system) and DCS (digitally coded squelch) as well as how they are used in analog radio systems, such as amateur radio FM repeaters. The content in this video is not strictly related to amateur radio applications, but it’s still useful info.

ICQ Podcast Episode 359 – Teaching ham radio classes online

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In this episode, I joined Martin Butler M1MRB, Leslie Butterfield G0CIB, Edmund Spicer M0MNG, and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss the news.  We discussed the following:

The feature for this episode is “Teaching ham radio classes online” by yours truly.