ICQ Podcast Episode 400 Celebration

In this episode, Martin Butler M1MRB, Chris Howard (M0TCH), Martin Rothwell (M0SGL), Frank Howell (K4FMH), Bill Barnes (WC3B) and Leslie Butterfields (G0CIB) discussed a few news items, but the main event was the presenter’s recollections of of the past 400 episodes.

I joined them for the last 45 minutes or so. I would have joined them sooner, but I got mixed up because they’re not on daylight savings time yet, while we are here in Michigan.

How I got involved

I got involved with ICQ Podcast in a roundabout way. I somehow happened to hear an episode of the Ishow sometime in late 2015 in which the panel discussed a one-day amateur radio license class. (I can’t find the exact episode because the listing on TuneIn only goes back to episode 202, and there doesn’t seem to be a list of episodes on the ICQ Podcast website itself.) Martin, M1MRB, expressed some scepticism that could be done in a single day, even though I’d been doing this for years already.

I immediately emailed Martin and said that I would be happy to explain to him how I do this. As a result, I was interviewed for the feature on episode 202 (1/10/2016).

At the time, I don’t think there were any American presenters on the show, and I volunteered to be on the panel. Martin accepted my proposal, and I first appeared as a panelist on episode 206 (3/10/2016).  It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than seven years now. 

In addition to sharing how we got involved with the podcast, Martin and Colin, M6BOY, asked us to share what we enjoy most about being on the podcast. What I enjoy most is running into our listeners, either on the air or at amateur radio events. My latest experience with this was at the 2023 HamSCI Workshop. They had set up a special event station there, and on Friday morning, I visited the station to see what was going on.

There was another fellow there, watching someone operate the station, and I went up to him and struck up a conversation. After exchanging greetings, I introduced myself as Dan KB6NU. He replied, “I know you. I listen to you on the ICQ Podcast. I recognized your voice.”

I haven’t yet met a listener who’s complained about the podcast, either the content or the length of the episodes. So, we must be doing something right!