KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

Ham Radio Village

Dayton Hamvention 2026: Day 3, Friday, May 15 – Forums

By Leave a Comment

Hamvention 2026 logoThe forums at this year’s Hamvention were pretty good—and I’m not just saying this because I was on the schedule. I spent most of Friday morning cruising the vendor booths and schmoozing with people I know. I stopped by the CWops booth, the Amateur Radio Digital Communication (ARDC) booth, and the Youth on the Air (YOTA) booth. In the afternoon, though, I spent most of my time attending the forums.

The first talk I attended was the Long Island CW Club (LICW) presentation, “Our CW Journeys.” I was interested in this talk because I’m in the process of updating my CW book and wanted to learn more about their process.

The presentation consisted of several “testimonials” from members how they learned Morse code by taking LICW classes and participating in LICW activities. The stories were very intriguing, and kudos to LICW for helping people have fun with Morse code.

Next, I stopped by the “Amateur Radio and the Law” forum to say a quick hello to Fred, K1VR, and Bob, K3RF. I didn’t stop to hear the talk, though, as my next stop was the “Hackers in Ham Radio” forum.

This forum was a panel discussion, led by Jeremy, KD8TUO. The discussion was a bit unorganized, but they did talk about how the hacker and ham radio communities intersect. I think that these two communities should intersect even more, and as part of Ham Radio Village, I’m helping to do that. Hackers are the kind of people that we want in ham radio.

The final forum of the day for me was “The Latest from ARDC: Grants and 44Net.” At this forum, folks from ARDC talked a great deal about their latest development, 44Net Connect. It’s taken ARDC a while to get to this point, but it looks to me like they’ve made connecting to 44Net a lot easier than it has been in the past, and I’m looking forward to see what use hams make of it.

There were also short presentations by a couple of their grantees, including the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC) and AMSAT. It’s always great to hear what other grantees are doing. ARDC has made a real difference in amateur radio, and I’m happy to say that it looks like they will continue to do so.

More new hams!

By 1 Comment

In the past two weeks, I’ve taught two one-day Tech classes. The first was at the University of Michigan on Saturday, October 5, 2024. We chose that date because it was the first Saturday this fall when there wasn’t a U-M home football game.

Football games are a big deal around here as you might expect. The university has the largest American football stadium in the world, and won the national championship last year (but this year they aren’t doing quite so well).

My classes are always a mix of university students and the general public. for this class, there were 15 students and 5 folks that signed up via my website. When all was said and done, 16 passed the test (with one passing the General test as well). Of the four that failed, at least two did not prepare at all before the class. James, AE8JF, who headed up the VE team, said, “A couple people that I talked to that failed said that they hadn’t prepared.” *sighs*

Jawning in Philadelphia

This past weekend, I taught a one-day Tech class at JawnCon at Arcadia University in the suburbs of Philadelphia. This is only the second year for JawnCon, and they only sold 250 tickets, so I wasn’t expecting a big class. That being the case, I was pleasantly surprised to find 10 or so in the classroom when it was time to get started.

Dan, KB6NU, in front of a chalkboard.
One of the unique things about teaching at JawnCon was the real chalkboard. Photo: Nicole, AD2IM.

Like all the classes I’ve taught at cons, people wander in and out. I’m OK with that, although it does hurt one’s chances of passing the test. Seven folks stuck with me the whole way, and all seven passed the test.

One of the problems with these con classes is getting information to prospective students. While some students are able to pass the test if they come in cold, they really increase their chances of passing the test if they read through the study guide before the class. Often, some of the people that show up for the class haven’t downloaded the study guide (it’s free!).

Case in point: A young guy showed up just before lunch and sat down close to the front. I chatted with him a bit and asked if he’d gotten the study guide. When a perplexed look crossed his face, I gave him the URL. He downloaded it right away. Despite sitting through the rest of the class, he failed by two questions.  I gotta think that if he’d been in the class from the start, or had gotten the study guide before the class, he would have passed.

Of course, I couldn’t have done either of these classes without a VE team. Thanks to all the ARROW VEs that showed up on October 5 and to Nicole, AD2IM and Ed, N2XDD for organizing the team for JawnCon.

A nice mention by ARDC

In their last grantee roundup, ARDC gave us a nice shoutout. They wrote:

Classroom scene
Photo: Ed, N2XDD.

Ham Radio Village (K0HRV): Amateur Radio Evangelist
The Ham Radio Village (K0HRV) distributes quality educational content, offers hand-on amateur radio experiences, and hosts license testing sessions. Last year, K0HRV received an ARDC grant for the Amateur Radio Evangelist project, aimed at attending conferences to introduce attendees to amateur radio as a lifelong hobby. Recently, the evangelists made their first stop at Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE XV), where Dan Romanchik (KB6NU) gave a well-received talk titled Ham Radio for Hackers, where he discussed amateur radio basics, showcased amateur radio projects interesting to hackers, and provided information on getting an amateur radio license. The next day, Dan gave a one-day Technician class to an engaged audience who readily asked questions, followed by a testing session, where 25 hackers got their Technician ticket! To learn more about Amateur Radio Evangelist at HOPE XV, check out Dan’s blog post, as well as a related blog post from Hackaday.

Onward and upward

Even thought the grant was supposed to cover only four conferences, the Ham Radio Village treasurer thinks we can squeeze in a fifth. So, I’ll be headed to Provo, UT for SaintCon in a week and a half, and after that, possibly B-Sides Delaware in early November. That’s a lot of teaching in just over a month, but I really love doing it. In fact, I’m planning to submit another grant proposal for next year and ask for enough funds for six of these events.