So I was like, well, spraying a sealant over the rust is a fucking giant waste.

So they did it twice, oh God.

But of course, like dude, I mean everything under the.

I'm hearing myself Okay, there we go.

So, yeah, so everything's rusting out right and I just I replace things as they need to be replaced.

I stopped, I stopped for gas and, uh, I thought that the, the backing plate was rubbing on the rotor, because you know, like I could kind of hear it it, it sounded like the backing plate was rubbing on the rotor.

Yeah, like, oh well, that's a well, that's a bitch, but I'll deal with it when I get to Montana, yeah right.

And then a guy pulls up at the pump next to me and he goes excuse me, sir, you've got something hanging underneath your truck.

And I was like, oh well, thank you, like I really appreciate that.

Yeah, so it wasn't the backing plate for my rotor or the backing plate rubbing on the rotor, it was the rear strap had broke and rusted off.

Uh, that holds the gas tank up oh no and so the the strap and a piece of plastic were hanging onto the ground.

Wow.

And so I was like all right.

Unfortunately, the the the gas station had a big like gravel lot next to it, so I just pulled into the gravel lot and, uh, fricking ratchet, strap for the wind, like my, my bed right, like literally I've been, I've been putting off having to get a new bed right because when I bought the truck where the bed mounts are was was rotting out okay, oh boy.

So you're way beyond that now like, uh, yeah, I mean you're talking what it was 10 years ago yeah, that's 11 years ago like I bought the truck in 14.

Wow, so I've got, uh, I've got a ratchet strap that goes around the back rack and down to the frame and that holds the bed secure, and now and now I've got a ratchet strap holding the gas tank up.

It'll be fine.

I'll fix it when I get home for now it's grip, spit and duct tape.

Hey, todd, hey, look at the shave boy.

I know it's like literally like if I do this I'll put my hat back on, but it's like it's.

It's fucking hotter than hell in here.

Uh yeah, that's right.

You can't run the EC right With the battery without killing the batteries.

Oh dude, that sucks.

Where are you right now?

Uh, I'm in Salem Illinois.

And why are you on battery power?

Um, illinois, and why young battery power?

So this is a harvest host site and when I booked this back in June okay, I sent the, the owner, a message through harvest host.

I said hey, listen, you know it.

It says that my RV and truck combination is too long for your site.

Is it going to be a problem?

Trying to balance things out here, my friend.

Did they respond?

No response, nothing, all right, well, okay, so I get here just before 5 o'clock.

Now, on their Harvest Host listing it says that you have to arrive before 7.30 pm.

Okay, all right.

Yeah, plenty good there.

Well, there's nobody fucking here.

Wow, like the.

The doors are all locked, the open signs on, but the doors are all locked.

There's nobody here.

So I called the number on the building.

I called the number and the harvest host.

Nobody answered.

So I left the message like you know what I fuck it, I booked it.

I.

If the message Like you know what I fuck it, I booked it.

I.

If the cops show up and say, hey, what the fuck are you doing here?

Like I'll show them the booking.

Yeah, I booked the, I booked the fucking site.

Wow.

So they don't have like that, one doesn't have any.

Yeah, oh shit.

I just lost my audio oh, did you.

You good, you can hear me todd right yeah, I can hear you all.

Right, there we go okay, um, yeah, so we'll see what happens, but I'm, I'm, I'm parked the very far side of their lot.

Uh, there's a shit ton of space here, right next to the fucking highway.

Hopefully you don't hear too much highway noise so you like in a paved parking lot or something like that, or is it like a gravel barrier or what?

yeah, no, it's just, it's a giant gravel lot.

So on the other side of the building there's like horse paddocks and a horse barn, um, and then directly behind the building there's a rodeo arena and then there's just a big giant gravel lot on on the side that I'm on.

So I was like, well, I'll just fucking try and stay out of the way, and it's Sunday night, I don't see anybody fucking bothering me.

Yeah, you probably won't.

Yeah, maybe who shows up for work the following day might come over and be like, hey, what are you doing here?

But at that point you know, water to the bridge.

Yeah, right, like yeah well you know, nobody answers the fucking phone.

Nobody responds to the fucking harvest host messages.

I don't know why you're a harvest host, fucking place I was gonna say isn't like the trade-off you're supposed to like spend some time with them, or like you're supposed to like part of their restaurant, like is that like a restaurant thing, like all of them, mostly restaurants, or what's the deal with that?

well, so they're all different, uh, but yeah, like you know restaurants, there's a restaurant here, uh, you know, and a fucking tack shop or gift shop, fucking whatever.

Yeah, uh, you know the when I stayed at the vineyard, like they had local wines and, uh, honey, and you know different.

You know things from the local area.

It just depends on where you're staying.

They expect you to patronize at the establishment.

I was like this would be great, I'll show up, I'll go get dinner, I'll fucking get set up.

The fucking restaurant's closed.

Nobody fucking here.

I guess it's good there's nobody fucking here.

I guess it's good, you don't have to worry about holding up your end of the bargain.

Yeah, well, and that's just it.

So come tomorrow morning I'm just going to fucking pull out.

I'll fill up and off on my way I go.

Wow.

And then we got another four and a half hour ride, or like how much more left of the leg, the last leg or a couple of legs?

Five and a half.

Five and a half.

Nice.

How many hours, how many hours you drive to get to this place?

Five hours.

And you're still in Illinois, yep.

Holy shit, I know right, exactly.

I said the same thing when he told me that how big is the state?

apparently big enough, that you know, because I mean I was, I was at the very northern part of the state, yeah, in Rochelle, and so, yeah, I drove and I drove, I drove five hours south and I'm still in Illinois.

Jesus can't get out of the state.

I drove five hours south and I'm still in Illinois.

Jesus Can't get out of the state.

Oh man, wow, Trust me, I'm itching to get to Alabama to buy cigarettes because I think, I have two packs left.

Dude, they're fucking.

$14 a pack here, $14 a pack here, yeah, $14 a pack.

Yeah, how much do they normally cost Ten?

Jesus.

Well, dude, we should stop smoking.

I don't know if that's going to happen.

You could have some more.

You could probably save some jumps, I don't know if that's going to happen.

You could probably save some jumps.

Usually I'll buy a cart.

It'll be $100.

And that'll last me for the whole month.

But Bob was actually saying that the brand that he smokes is $40 a carton.

Oh boy, and so yeah.

So he's gonna, he's gonna.

He said he's gonna bring a carton up for me 24-hour poda.

I'll just give him 40 bucks.

That's fucking great Like.

Oh man, Alright, let's 24-hour poda.

Here's a weird one.

I was uh killing time this afternoon just watching, you know, YouTube here and there, while the wife was on Instagram or social surfing or what is it, what's they call it, Doom scrolling and uh, I uh ended up uh coming across Podopower and they were doing their like live stream for their one year anniversary kind of thing, and I was like, oh, this is cool.

And then all of a sudden I was listening and you'll never guess, you ever hear N1PRG on the air.

Like he's got that radio voice.

I mean, you've heard him on the, probably the repeater when you're up this way, right, Joe?

Probably Okay.

So he's got like he's got a good setup, but he's got a good radio voice too as well, and it comes across.

So I'm like, well, listen to Podopower.

I'm like, wait a minute.

Like that's Joe, I can hear him.

Like he's making contact with him.

I'm sure he has no idea who the heck they are.

You know, didn't even really know they have like a YouTube channel, that whole ordeal.

And so I'm like I'm on the, you know hitting poda, power up.

I'm like, dude, tell Joe, Eric says hi, just to throw him a curve because he has no idea, like, how we're any connected.

And of course, like they finally see that in the message scroll and, uh, you know, I, I, all of a sudden he goes and and you know, Joe, before we let you go, you know Eric wants to say hi, N1J, you are.

And he's just like what N1J wants to say, hi, Joe's like what?

Like he's like totally thrown off his whole entire game, Like he was just like, oh, what the heck, who's watching me?

She's like, oh, we're live streaming.

And he's like, oh, I didn't know you were live streaming and you know, so he's just like kind of just surprised.

So I said to my little, how did Eric get to Florida so quick?

I know, Right.

So I was like, oh, sweet, but yeah, it was kind of fun to hit that up, but wow, so we got a lot to talk about tonight.

Yeah, yeah, Well, I mean, you missed near last night, Todd.

Yeah, I know I missed here.

I saw it afterwards.

Why did we do it?

So we just did one.

Well, the little scheduling, I think.

Yeah, I saw it afterwards, why, why did we do it?

So we just did one.

Well, the little scheduling.

I think, yeah, it was either we.

We had to do it at the beginning of the month or we had to do it at the end of the month and, like there wasn't a lot of people that were actually giving any input, they were saying, well, I don't care, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.

So I was like, well, it doesn't matter, to me, it's much easier for me to have done it last night when I was still at CSC, than to do it at the end of the month, where I don't know exactly what my situation's going to be.

I know the RV's going to be in the driveway, but like yeah, once, I don't know, let's fix this.

There we go now.

I look better, I look so small because I spoke up.

We did it last night and that was fine.

I knew I wasn't gonna be there.

I was like you're gonna be like a vague, like I possibly might jump in.

But I knew like once we got up to like the main area and, yes, poland, main, not main, poland, whatever.

Yeah, I caught the joke, I just ignored it.

But I knew like once we got up to like the main area and yes, poland, maine, not Maine, poland, whatever.

Yeah, I caught the joke, I just ignored it.

Um, yeah, it was like, okay, uh, I'm going to try this from the beach here and, of course, like I had like two bars, I look like kind of like the, the, the idiots kind of, you know, with their phones up in the air trying to get the extra bar.

But yeah, it was like, okay, I'm going to say hello and that's it.

And then I couldn't.

The live stream was gone, couldn't get it again, couldn't see it again.

It was like frozen spinning.

I was like, okay, they're going to just see this one post for me and I'm probably going to get crap for it, which I didn't actually get a chance to watch the whole video.

But who was on?

That's all right, Cause Walt kept saying he couldn't hear me.

Like everybody else could hear me, just fine, but Walt couldn't hear me.

And then, at the very end of the show, he realized that he had never connected to his Wi-Fi, he was using his phone and he was on 4G fucking mobile, oh boy.

So he kept freezing Like we would still be able to hear him, but for whatever reason he couldn't hear me and you know everything else.

Yeah, it was 100, him was not okay I was gonna say it's really every year, I mean, we know when elon's playing games with you, but it's very rare that it's ever like totally dead, you know.

And then, and then on top of it, my god was God.

Was it four hours or six hours that you live streamed?

Four hours, yeah, your Jerry Lewis telethon.

My God, I was like watching that.

I had to fast forward a couple of things just to get the highlights, because it got interesting after a while.

Oh, it sure did.

It sure did.

Especially I mean Zig, just like kind of dropped off, like turned off, his camera disappeared, like I assume he passed out.

Uh, tortoise, I I sent, I sent bill, the.

The link bill was hammered, tortoise was hammered wait, wait.

You gotta clarify.

Did you see it, todd?

No, okay, when he who?

What Bill do you think he's talking about?

W-1 WRA.

Yeah yeah, he was hammered.

He was on the live stream hammered.

Oh, dude, I got to watch that.

Then what time?

Four hours.

You have a timeframe Like what hour he went.

You can fast forward to it.

It was towards the end.

Yeah, it was like somewhere like half hour to 45 minutes, yeah, but so the backstory to that is that I don't know how how he found out that paul was live streaming, but all of a sudden I'm on the live stream on the chat.

I posted it oh, that's right, you did on g, sarah.

Ah, okay, that's what I was trying to figure out, where that connection was.

We all know, obviously he was at the club meeting and everyone kind of said to him like he's like, oh, I'm already starting to celebrate my birthday, I'm into my first beer, and that's like when everyone was like, oh well, you're not driving, thank God, you know kind of joking.

And then it was all done.

And then all of a sudden I see him in the live stream and you know, he's like I threw a little bit of money back at Paul after I had already thrown in earlier, and I'm like, cool, I'm number one, I'm in the top, you know ranking here.

And then I like literally step away to go get something else and come back and like he's up there and I'm like, okay, how much did he really throw at it?

And then I realized that like okay, it's way beyond what I'm thinking in terms of money.

So I you know he's.

And then all of a sudden like, as he started to get more chatty in the discussion, um, uh, in the live stream he hits me up on discord directly and he starts talking about like hey, he really, he really misses the idea of being on one of our shows and I'm like, are you okay?

And he's like this might be the whiskey talking, but in essence, you know, I'd like to be on your show sometime in the future.

Is that, are you okay with that?

I'm like yeah, dude, you're always welcome to be on there.

I know you had work related issues.

He's like, ah, you know, he kind of went into the whole details.

He was gonna do it with us he was, but at work basically stopped him from doing it, right, you know, because the labs didn't want, you know, they want to vet everything for him.

So, long story short, he started to get into that whole detail, which I'll leave off to the side, and then at the very end I said I'm like, yeah, we'd love to have you on.

I mean, you want to do a live stream or do you want to, you know, be on record sessions?

Like I don't care either way.

I'm like, all right, well, talk to the guys, we'll figure it out.

And then that kind of where it ended and he still continued, I mean he was getting a little slurry, like his words were starting to be a little slurry.

In the chat, you can kind of like there was no comma, it was all one run on sentence kind of thing.

So you knew something was happening.

And then I like I fell off because I got tired.

And uh, you know, of course Taurus is texting me like at one in the morning.

Hey, dude, you're going to hop on.

Paul's going to tapping my phone.

I whacked it off the desk because Discord was going off, because he DM'd me.

He's like I'll get it in the morning.

How the Discord your thing went for.

What time did it end Like 1 in the morning, 2 in the morning.

I started at 8 Central, 9, 10, 11.

I finished at 12 central.

so it's been 1, 1.30 our time, yeah, yeah.

And then I go back to watch the replay and I'm like, holy crap, that's Bill.

Like I was fast forwarding, fast through and I'm just like you know, ziggy fell off and I'm like, oh, I'll have to go back and check that one out.

And then all of a sudden I see Bill on there and dude, he was.

He was not a hundred percent, because it was like he's like and I'm drinking, and like he's holding, like he's trying to like steady his hand while trying to show the bottle and the bottle's going everywhere in the picture.

And it was.

It was awesome that's cool.

Hey, did you see on um discord that ted said we should do qsl cards?

I like that idea I was curious.

I didn't quite catch on that.

So do tell he's in the chat.

So yeah, I don't think we have time to order them at that point.

No, yeah, well, we could, we could send them out later.

I mean, we could order them and then send them out.

I mean, I get QSL cards like a year later.

I'm not against printing them and figuring one.

You want to design it, you design it.

I've got so much on my fucking plate.

Yeah, I'll mess around with it this week at work.

But yeah, it's a great idea.

I don't mind doing it.

Yeah, ted, and I talked on the repeater today.

I was running errands and, yeah, yeah, he wanted me.

He goes, oh, he goes.

You're not afraid to.

Uh, you know, say what you want, or speak your mind like I'm thinking, as I'm driving, as I'm like done, I'm like maybe you should tone it back a little bit.

And then I wanted to ask him is it a good thing or is it a bad thing, you want me to keep going, or should I reel it in a little bit?

so well I think.

I think the big thing because I got some feedback from a couple people on it too right is, if you're going to be grouchy, right, make sure it's over something worthy of being grouchy.

A lot of your gripes with the fucking testing.

It's completely irrelevant and, and, like your, your bitch is is is an internal bitch, it's.

It's not anything to do with the fucking process, it's just you.

Yeah, I've had a rough couple of weeks.

I think I just let it out.

I think I just let it out on the podcast Cause it's happening across the board everywhere.

So yeah, as long as you contain it here like fucking, my work is just out of control.

And then I get here and I'm like trying to let that shit go fired up.

Yeah, no, I get it, I totally get it.

It could be a one of those things that you know, just the little, uh, little, small little things will just set you off.

But that's what I'm here for.

I'm the referee.

I'll keep you guys from really like getting into some serious trouble with it.

I mean, honestly I hate.

I just hate tests and I don't disagree with that.

We shouldn't have tests and stuff and, like I said, some of the questions I think are stupid, but I think a lot of people think they are, so well, we got at least one listener, and I'm not real and I'm not really.

I'm not pissed at you, paul, or even the ve's that volunteer their time.

I just thought it was kind of like stupid that you fucking guys gave the guy the wrong test.

I mean, that's just dumb well, ted was at that ve session, so he knows what went down.

And you know, like I said, it's all volunteers so I wasn't, you know, gonna definitely point all fingers at you know anybody or anything.

And you know, hey, we've got what?

Maybe one more opportunity to make that work successfully.

If that's, uh, you know you're going full remote for the next one, are you?

gonna still one more.

They said oh well, I said that, but I would.

I didn't know if paul had something different I will.

I will be there in person for the October one.

I'm wearing the.

It'll be after October.

We'll transition to fully remote.

Yeah Well, there's definitely a lot of VEs there, Ted, that's for sure.

But I think that was just to make sure that at least something went smooth.

It did pretty well.

All the VEs were there and they still gave the guy the wrong test.

Oh, blah, blah blah, it's just you know.

It could be a joke.

How many VEs does it take to give out?

to pass out the right exam.

You can see where this one's going.

What was it?

Paul wasn't there, I mean you can't.

I mean if he was there, none of that crap would have happened.

Who were we talking to?

I can't remember where I was, what environment was it?

So we were talking about testing and someone made comment about how Todd's been testing for a year on live free and ham, you know.

So you shouldn't sweat it, you.

You you're way ahead of the curve, or something like that.

I was, I think it was on.

It was Wednesday.

Yes, right, it was Wednesday.

At Preston Somebody had brought it out Like I didn't mention it at all.

Someone's like oh, you should listen to the leafy and ham Todd's been testing for a whole year for his extra.

We don't ever think he's never going to take it, but you know he's never going to take it, I'm just going to test it.

So I don't see your legacy man, I'll get there.

I have to really start book.

I got to.

I think what I got to do is pick a date and then I like like I did with the general and just yeah, panic, work backwards.

Panic work.

Yep, nothing wrong with that, my friend.

You know, eventually, uh, you'll go from there.

So you know, hopefully, with at least uh, uh coming up calendar, we're literally at the 30 day mark till, um, you know, 24 hour podo, that's freaking crazy 30 days like.

So I'm going out to uh peterborough on thursday, so I'm way back hold up on that we'll circle back on some of that and the actual talk, because I want to talk a little 24 hour podo again, because it seems to be popular with a bunch of folks and it's starting to generate interest.

So yeah, we've added a few yeah, the other thing.

Um, I got my my back where it used to be on my truck, so if you guys need any of these, they're like, but they have six things.

You need six for the mic, not four, right?

yeah, it's a rj12, not an rj11.

Right, why did you get a splitter?

because I have a core, I have a wire from my radio to the cord, so like yeah, but the right isn't that that's a two to one, though, right well, no, I just plugged it in.

You could put two.

You could fit two.

I just used one hole.

Oh, that's one space I was gonna say if you just want a barrel, I have a rj12 barrel.

You're more than welcome to.

I just didn't know you were.

That'll keep it together the one I had, the one I had.

I couldn't find I don't know where I put it, so I just ordered these online.

They're like five bucks.

Yeah, cheap insurance yeah so it works.

Um, I talked to ted with the new setup, so it was all good.

Cool says you talked to me too.

Man, what the hell am I chop lever I?

don't know what it was.

I couldn't hear you though.

Yeah, I don't understand why you couldn't hear me I was in downtown nashua yeah, all the buildings and you know on, daniel.

You know when you got we should have just gone digital, that's what.

I should have just gone digital.

We should have just gone to Ford Mountain, it would have been easier.

Yeah, exactly, didn't think about it.

The reason why I put my call out was I was out with friends yesterday and we were up at a brewery up in Scarborough and we were just talking and I had, obviously my ham radio hat, I had my Liffrey ham, I ham was like what's lip free and ham, and so we just started chit-chatting and of course he's like, oh, it's really cool.

And I'm like, oh well, our net's coming up soon.

You know, let's like I'm gonna pull up the, the broadcastify stream, and of course, like 701 rolls around, it's silent, 702 rolls around, silent.

You know, we're getting into three minutes.

And I'm looking foolish because the guy is like, um, is the net gonna start soon?

And I'm like, uh, yeah, I would have thought, because I would have thought I've been broadcasting.

Apparently frank's node didn't reconnect back to the repeater or whatever, so it was offline, but it wasn't telling the feed that was offline.

So I said, oh, bummer, he'll hear, just you know.

And gave him the link again and he you know, hopefully we'll check it out.

But then I tested it this today.

I was like, oh, I'll, I'm back in the territory.

So I keyed up the repeater to see if I could hear myself while listening and I didn't hear anything.

I was like, oh, that's broken.

So the reason why I was like, oh man, because I know ralph and tim and everybody in the club's like, oh, just listen to our repeater, you can hear it 24 7 online.

Okay, well, it's chirp, chirp, chirp.

Because it's not being broadcast.

It's like, okay, that'll do it, so anyway.

So, uh, yeah, well, do you want to talk about your parachute stuff?

Uh, when we get into the free and hammocks, I know you're finally an official owner, right?

yeah, yeah, let me go get it.

He got the whole thing, including the chute, or just the pack.

I think he got the whole thing.

I would hope he got the whole thing.

The pack's really not going to help him jumping out of a plane.

Well, he was talking about just getting the pack.

And then he was like he needed to get a chute.

Oh nice.

Oh nice.

Oh nice.

There it is Sweet, Sweet and the shoot's in it right.

So the main canopy down below is 170 square feet, so I need to replace it with a bigger one, but I'm going to keep the 170 because at some point I'll get down to that.

And then the reserve up top is a 176.

The way you're handling it looks like you sleep with it in bed.

You're like, oh, this is so nice.

Now who'd you?

get that.

Can you see all the fucking dog hair on it already?

Hey you know Watson's got a target.

Fucking dog hair.

already It'll be gone by the time you jump out of the plane.

So don't worry, Let me see the full handle.

Yeah, don't let Todd touch that when he comes up this way, that's one of those paracord wind around.

You know the sailor knots.

That's one of those paracord wind around.

You know the sailor knots.

That's cool.

Yeah, that's easy.

I think, I think they call it a monkey's fist.

Yeah, that's what it was.

I remember having a couple as a kid.

So you just so, you just yank that and the chute comes out.

Yeah, so the the pilot chute is in in this little bag on the bottom of the container, and so when I pull the hacky out, it pulls the pilot out and then the pilot inflates and it's got a bridle strap that runs along this flap and then it goes here.

And then pulls.

Right, and so then, there's the, there's the closing pin.

Yeah, I would laugh at that.

They came loose and all of a sudden the battery goes.

That's awesome Dude.

That is how much is the new, the bigger shoot cost.

Um, so, new ones, how much is the bigger shoot cost?

So new ones are like $2,500 to $2,800.

Used ones it depends on the condition, but anywhere from like $400 to $800.

So the shoots are less than the actual like bag and everything that.

Why like it's just more put into the bag in terms of like safety stuff yeah, there's a, there's a lot that goes into this um and and it.

It all has to be certified by a master rigger.

You know, like I can't sew anything onto this, sure, you know, or make any type of alterations to it in any way there goes the advertising opportunities.

But that's fine.

Well, so you see how it's got, like this little Mexican jalapeno thing.

Yeah, I'm just gonna throw velcro uh, no, it's, that's embroidered oh, oh, geez okay yeah, no, that's embroidered.

Uh, the brand?

Um, no, it's, it's whoever the original owner, mm-hmm.

Almondina O'Reilly so question how many?

Like, how far does the hand-me-downs go, unlike a lot of these on the used market like is it like maybe two people safe?

Or is, like is there a number that they usually tell you don't go, like after four people have used it and they're selling it after that, you know?

no, it's, it's all based on the data manufacturer and and how many jumps it's got.

Um, and then you know it are there.

Are there patches?

You know like, was there fucking holes, same drip that had to be patched, and how many patches are there?

You know those kind of things.

So for every jump then you have to have a log with your parachute, then that stays with it, or how do you know how many jumps it has on it?

Well, so yeah, so that's that's on me to keep that in my log, uh, in in my log book.

There there's a space where you you put your equipment.

Yeah.

And so, uh, you know like, because I've been doing rentals, I put storm two, 10.

And my equipment.

That's what I've been flying, okay.

So so when you bought that off of this person, like, did they give you the total number and say this is?

what I had in my log, or they just give you a copy of their log.

I just I didn't care, it's not like well, you said there's a max limit.

So it's sort of like battery cycles.

You know, after so many battery cycles the battery's just garbage like a pack maybe get used, but parachute I don't know okay but then on the other, but then on the other hand, when it, but then, on the other hand, when you get a brand new parachute, it's never been tried before so that's, true I did, I did run it by by carlos.

Um, where's the fucking?

He must have some extra parachutes for you.

How many packs does he have?

Like 10, didn't he say he had like different packs for I?

think he said he had what?

4 he's got a couple different ones.

Yeah, I'm not sure how many, but like one of the things that he was planning to do if I, if I, wasn't able to rent in Alabama is he's got.

He's got a container that would fit me and he was going to get a demo canopy from PD and then let me fly that.

But Alabama's got Reynolds, so I'm good.

What did you think of my RC parachute dude?

I was going to say what?

Are you going to start jumping there, todd, with your little RC guy?

Dude, I that came up.

So I, paul, I got to send you a video.

So my brother, my niece, just went to college and I think my brother I don't know if it was for her birthday or graduation or something, I think my brother, I don't know if it was for a birthday or graduation or something got her a tandem jump.

And then she's like come on, dad, you got to go with me.

And like he didn't want to go, and he went and he said he goes, dude, he goes.

It's like he said it was awesome, but he was like I thought I was going to die, like he like, yeah, I guess he was life insurance plan.

Yeah, like everything was all set and uh, I guess the guy was doing like like spins, like just kind of around, and he goes.

He goes.

You know, like when you're you're doing that bat thing and you're running around your headstands, he goes.

That's what it felt like, he goes.

I thought I was going to puke if you watch any of the tandem videos, like CSC puts them out all the time, videos of people doing tandem, and a lot of times the instructor will spin them around in a circle during free fall and then when they're when they're under canopy, like the, the way that they'll freaking, they'll spin.

Yeah, that's what he was doing, but totally sideways but he but he was doing like something where he was just kind of like their head was like the pivot and they were just kind of going around.

So he's like.

I was just like.

I don't know how we described it circling the drain yeah, and he's like he goes.

I thought I was gonna puke, he goes.

But it's pretty awesome, he goes.

You don't even feel like you're falling.

He's like, yeah, you jump out of the plane and it's like he goes.

You're like you're flying, he goes.

It's freaking crazy.

I was like I was free falling for like a minute or something.

He said Yep, 60 seconds of free fall?

Yeah, and it doesn't feel like you're falling.

Yeah, you know.

I wonder if those base jumpers feel like they're falling because they have the perspective of the cliff.

You know what I mean.

All right, I will give you this insight, because I was going to do it anyway.

But so, base jumping and jumping out of like a helicopter, or jumping out of a balloon, any of those types, you get that falling feeling.

You get that roller coaster feeling because you're exiting wherever you are and then you have to get to terminal velocity, right, and so, like that's where you get that feeling.

When you jump out of a plane, like I mean, you're already traveling, you know, at almost 100 miles an hour, right, and then you go out like the speed change is negligible, so you don't feel like you're falling, yeah, so okay, well, let's get into this, because I think we should talk a little parachutes, because it kind of dovetails into 24-hour podo too as well, a little bit, and but well, so now that you get the parachute and everything, you're pretty much ready to rock and roll for montesano jumping or down in, uh, huntsville, right I'll, I'll still, I'll still be using a rental because I don't have.

I don't have the main.

Oh, got it yeah.

I mean, could I jump with it?

I could, would it?

Would it be terrible?

Probably not terrible, um, you know, but like to go from a 210 to a 170 is a big jump so it's not like the same sensation you have with the new ham radio.

You just, you know, rip it out of the box or, you know, take it out of the back and like, let's go, let's start a lot of other like things you're going to get around to it before you start playing with it yeah, I would imagine that I would have to have a rigger put it in for me yeah, they're trying to do that.

I don't know necessarily that the risers are the correct length and all of that.

So yeah, just so.

Adjustments is basically what it's going to be for a while, right.

Yeah, until I, just I, yeah, I just I need to get a main.

Um, I want to get to, I want to get a longer chest strap.

The chest strap is fairly short.

Um, and then, yeah, other than that, it should be good to go.

Now, is there a difference between, like, a female and a male parachutes or no Like, is it just they all kind of unisex size?

Yeah, I mean, unless it's specifically designed for, you know, a female body like that's there, they're, they're, basically they're.

They're fit for your physical proportions, right, they're fit for your physical proportions, right.

And so, like when I first tried this on, you know, granted, it's coming from a girl who's considerably shorter than I am, yeah, but it was short on me, you know, like the hip ring was like the bottom of my rib cage, that's like a jab in your gut, yeah, but so you know, I don't know that she had it adjusted or anything, but she changed something with it, because when I tried it on again two months later, like it fit perfect.

Oh.

Perfect.

Yeah, months later, like it fit perfect, oh, perfect.

Yeah, well, she might have taken something off that was like reducing the size or make it a tighter or something, but that's cool, all right.

Well, let's kick this pig off.

So, uh, we're just going to talk a little bit more 24 hour photo because I wanted to do.

Once.

We had that discussion about 24 hour photo, we ended up getting a lot more people asking about what was going on and interested, and a few people actually even signed up again that weren't originally going, that are now going.

So I figured we'd talk.

Um, as I said in the chat, just in case you didn't read it uh, todd, uh, primarily around.

Uh, you know talking, because I was re-watching the replay from near and you guys were talking propagation and I was thinking to me I'm like, well, it's definitely right about the.

It doesn't get better until like mid-September, and so we're going to be the first week of September and we're still possibly going to maybe have to deal with some solar cycle issues and and so we probably should just talk a little more about you know what's our plan B for that type of stuff, because I don't think we, you know, obviously we alluded to FT8 and having another station and one of the things that came back to me.

It wasn't clear enough as to how we're kind of doing it in terms of the station setup, but we'll go into more on that a little bit.

But I wanted to talk about some of the cool stuff that was coming up.

Um, I did a huge mail blast to a bunch of different uh vendors, as I posted in discord.

If you didn't see that, todd, um, you know, uh, ray Novak got back to me, said, yeah, he's all on board.

So then, a whole bunch of stuff.

So we'll get a bunch of icon stuff.

Um, off, uh, spool tenna.

Um, uh, I'm trying to think, uh, wolf of a coil something.

Uh, they're gonna send to something I'm not quite sure what.

Um, who else?

Matt's got a whole bunch of stuff he's bringing and giving away.

Bob's doing a special, you know, mystery box that we'll talk more about.

So, you know, just wanted to talk more about those things and you know we can then talk propagation and get into uh, that and the circle mail drop.

You know, is it your uh affiliate now?

uh, yeah, that's so.

That's what I'm using for for my on the road shit.

Um, I didn't mean to put it over my face.

I.

I was going to say like, wow, you really must be getting kickbacks for this if you're willing to cover yourself up.

I'm like, yeah, you are front and center, you are part of this, you're getting better, you're really covering yourself up now.

But cool, so, yeah, any win links at all.

Let me check.

We did get one post from Bob Paul, todd.

Sorry, let me grab that.

I start it.

I don't think I sent it to you, though Bob said this is from last week.

I'll just post it the chat there and you can read it there.

Chat chat chat private chat group.

That's what bob said, todd, uh, but nothing else on me, just no, that is uh.

Heat events, sorry so we do indeed have a win link oh, I assume chris would probably be one right, since he's trying to do every week yep.

Did he use proper punctuation, this time with commas?

So it is actually I sent an hf win link comma.

Who sent that?

Uh, bob kd9 ysw oh no, that was chris's.

Yeah, he's talking about the stuff I posted in the chat.

Bob who what's called the only Bob he?

doesn't have a call sign yet.

Hopefully he'll test at a 24 hour photo.

So we got to remember to plan for that.

And then I emailed a good game telling him that we were doing the TI giveaway, and he said he would get back to me.

I didn't hear from him and then I hit him up on direct message on Instagram and he said, oh, get back to me, he got my email so he may come up and you know he's all good for us to do a, not a giveaway, a fundraising drive, so that'd be cool.

Yeah, and we can set it up through coffee.

Yeah, that came out really good we can?

Yeah, we can progress bar yeah, yeah, that was really cool.

When you had that above your head I was like oh.

And then oh, yeah, if it went from like 10, 15, 40 and like a look but 40, like okay, what's left?

yeah, so.

So at the beginning of the stream it was at four percent, at the end of the stream is at 70 and, and the following day I got an additional 500 donor from an anonymous source.

Now I know who it is and I thanked the person you know, but dude they.

They put it anonymously, so I'll respect that is that cool, yeah, um, and tortoise even gave, uh, oh, it was given a uh, our finder away.

I think bill was the yeah, bill was the one who scooped it up.

Yeah, yeah, tortoise man, I was like he's even, you know, in his first uh, you know glass of his uh, jamaican rum there and he's already given away an R-Finder.

Which was funny because Bill had contributed $500 prior to Tortoise put that up and he said, alright, the next person that throws up $500 gets the R-Finder, and I don't know, I guess Bill took it as a challenge.

He was like alright.

So he was like, yeah, all right, and so he threw down another five and got himself an eye finder.

Wait a minute.

Yes, bill bill.

Yes, ra put down five hundred dollars.

And then he said whoever, puts another.

No, he already put in 500 on his own.

Yeah, mike tortoise.

Yeah was said.

Hey, I've got this.

Our finder next person that's, you know I'll.

Yeah, if you want to buy it, you know, donate 500 and it's your radio so bill put in another 500, yep, put in a thousand bucks while he was hammered, while he was hammered.

I'm sure he's like what did I do?

Is that legal?

The funny thing is, though, right is PayPal actually put a hold on the money because it was like this might be.

You know, fraud, fraud, wow.

Well, speaking of PayPal, I told you guys like I got screwed with.

They were taking like 99 out and I was like where the fuck's all this money going?

And then I looked at it out and so they it was like fifth, I don't know it was like 1700 over like a couple months it was like 99 and it was like 149 and 90 and it was going to this bank that I don't have Cause.

When I tried to get on my PayPal account, I had to reset my password and then there was a.

There was like an extra um, there's a new bank on it.

And then there was a no, and there was also a new phone number that was the primary, like that, to get the code or whatever.

So I called up PayPal and I said what's going on and within like two days they just sent my the money back.

Wow, that's cool.

They said yeah, you just got to change your shit on on PayPal.

So delete your accounts If they haven't already tried to.

You know, establish.

Someone got into it and they, they changed the phone number, so they left my phone number in there, but they put theirs because when I, when it said what's a two-factor account, it showed up this different number and I was like no, and I'm like what the fuck's going on?

Yeah, that's a little scary these fucking, you know, and they're all, they're all foreigners, they're all like from india, pakistan, yeah well, it's a big thing over there, it's a big giant, you know.

System like you want.

You want me to get going.

I think we just send the SEAL team in there and take them out one by one.

You don't have to dude.

There's YouTubers that make that their mission and they target them and hack them while they're getting hacking other people.

I mean think of all the people that it affects.

I got my bank hacked.

It was such a pain in the ass.

Yeah, my mother-in-law called me up two days ago and it's like you have three minutes.

I'm like fine, yeah, sure, what's up.

And she's like let me read you this.

On my phone it's the typical scam message that shows up.

Yeah, pretty much that's what I did, and she was like she starts to read three quarters.

It's like you know, uh, your registration from new hampshire is blah, blah, blah, and if you don't get this filled in, you're gonna owe fees and then we'll sue you.

Blah, blah and I'm like I'm like trying to yell at him yeah, exactly.

Well, no, this one was actually a registration for the state.

I'm like, I'm like whoa, mom, stop, where do you live?

Massachusetts?

Why would you in your mind think that you'd be getting a new hampshire registration query on your phone and you think it's legit?

Like, just like, like, just delete it.

She's like, should I delete it because I don't want to be in jail?

Like it will tell me that I, you know, I'm like, just delete it.

Like they don't send you that stuff via text, trust me, I would you know.

If that was the case, then I'd be, uh, you know, responding quicker to a lot of uh, you know inquiries like that.

But yeah, well, there's your three minutes.

I'm done.

I gotta go back to work.

Thanks, oh, all right, so you got a win.

Link two.

You said two, right, no, just the one.

Okay, cool, all right, let me still get salty waltz in this stuff.

I gotta delete this script and fix it, all right, okay, man, we're in trouble.

We haven't done a live stream for live free and ham for july, so we'll have to figure that one out oh well, just be true in august yeah, well, we might have to count, uh, you know, or two in september, friday, and then the live stream for, you know, the 24-hour photo.

All right, I mean we could, we could probably sneak one yeah, we could.

I mean, well, once you get settled in Montesano and whatever you know, we can try to do something there.

Or you know something between I'm just you know it's crazy and whatnot trying to get everything done before the end of August, all right, well, let's kick this pig off then, okay, and five, four, three, two, one.

All right, we're gonna talk 24 hour podo because we got some updates and we're gonna be talking about our friend mr propagation because we think he's gonna be a sneaky bastard and try to mess things up for us.

But more of that on.

Next.

To Live Free in Ham.

Hello and welcome to Live Free in Ham podcast.

This is our weekly show, as always, where we discuss ham radio topics in New Hampshire, new England and beyond.

I'm thrilled and we're thrilled to have you here.

Whether you are a regular listener or you know, you're tuning in for your first time.

Thanks again for joining us, appreciate you.

And thanks again for joining us.

Appreciate you.

And thanks again for downloading the podcast.

All right, so let's get into the show.

I'm your host, eric Call sign N1JUR.

And I'm with my co-hosts.

Paul N1OJ WNSTJ.

Todd the General.

The General there he is.

The General.

I couldn't believe you wanted me to take that off the back of that shirt.

I thought that was perfect.

Anyway, before we get into our topic, we got a few things to catch up on here.

As always, our storefront over on livefreeandhamcom forward slash shop is up and available and we've got a bunch of stuff over there.

You can check out our merch.

You can pick up some bacon hammies as always, uh and if you're familiar with the get hammed, you know grassroots thing that we're putting together.

You'll learn more about that too as well.

And you know we're always adding new shirts and other swag for livery and ham folks.

So if you haven't gotten yours, head on over there and pick one up.

And yeah, hopefully you'll continue to help support the show.

So we also have our many ways to connect with us.

You can always head over to our discord and connect us to us in the community.

We've been having a lot of great people over there and have been having a blast seeing all the great awesome conversation and talking about everything under the sun, and it's always fun.

So if you haven't, you know all of our links for our discord is in the description below, or you can head over to our website and check that out.

Or, if you feel so, compli, uh, compel, compelled, I think, is the best way to say this.

If you're so compelled, you can always leave us an SMS, um, or you can uh send us an email at livefreeandham at gmailcom, or you can do the preferred option, which is dial our voicemail, our voicemail doesn't bite, you know.

All you have to do is just stop this podcast right where you're at dial 978-233-1142, listen to our voicemail and leave us a message, say you know, hey, I've been listening to you guys, for you know, first time.

Or you know, I've been listening, for you know, since day one.

Um, you know.

Or you know, hey, ask a.

If you've got some stuff going on, uh, feel free and we'll play it in our next episode, because you know, heck, we want to help you.

If you've got some issues, um, or maybe you just wanted to say hello, we're always glad to play those as well.

Um, so, you know, definitely, take that moment, do that.

We'd love to hear from you.

And you can always check out all of our show notes, because we have all of our links for buy us a beer, Patreon and other activities.

So make sure if you haven't, or you want to help support the show and you want to do it, you can do it through our Patreon and that link is in our description and that's a great way to be able to just get the insider baseball, with Liffrey and Ham as an example.

Uh, we have a live stream every time.

We do a recording here for the show for every week.

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Um, so, yeah, with that, uh, you know, if you want to be part of that great fun, use our Patreon link and come on over, subscribe and, as Bob always says, you can join for as little as $3 a month.

It's not a big expense.

Nope, no, it isn't.

And Bob knows for sure.

He knows so well that he has his own T-shirt to remind all you guys that he's the number one patron guy.

So with that, yeah, that is many ways you can connect with us and you know we always want to make sure, you know we have, you know, you know, to listen to our listeners and get feedback.

And again we thank for all those folks that have done in the past.

So keep it coming, all right.

So with that we're gonna roll into our usual um ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention?

I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story.

Everybody, we got some news.

Slow down, boog, let me handle this.

We've got some news, I've got bad news, and bad news.

I have reviewed ship's personnel.

Captain congratulations all right, cool.

Well, we've got a bunch of things in the mailbag today.

Um, I know we've got uh stuff for you, todd, someone loves you all right, this is uh from bob cough.

Hey guys, after watching the last week of july podcast, it looks like todd needs a vacation.

True, I do need one.

Uh, he's really getting pretty testy.

I'm wondering if I should bring the cattle prod to the 24-hour poter just to keep Todd and Paul separated.

Or, on another thought that this may be, todd is just developing the pre-retirement grumpy old man syndrome.

Well, yes, I am in the pre-retirement mode because, uh, I've got about six years to go, so I am uh wishing six years goes by real quick.

But anyway, yeah, it's been rough.

Uh, I think I was venting a little bit on the uh on the podcast and, uh, I don't know, let us know if you like that side of me or you want me to rein it in a little bit, because I can get going if you let me, but uh, well you know, what might happen is we have to change your youtube channel from wns tga to grouch in new hampshire, because grouch is no longer per se in new hampshire, so I mean grouch in the usa would have to be his new channel name we just changed the whole podcast to the grouches oh no, I do not want to be loved in that one.

Sorry you guys, you're cornered in the market.

I've got my own stuff, yeah.

Anyway, thanks for that, bob.

It's always good to get mail and I'm looking forward to meeting you in person at the 24-hour photo.

Yeah, cool, all right.

Well, with that we also have some win links, as always.

So over to you, mr grouch.

What do we got?

Uh, kilo delta nine yankee sierra whiskey.

Uh, writes to us.

He says uh, subject is week of august the fourth.

Uh, he says well, start of august was hot for us here in east central wisconsin.

Yeah, working as a manual enameler is is hot next to 1700 degree furnace, other than that kids are getting ready for school.

Uh, I will try sending a wind link via fm next week if I can find a close enough gate.

I have a hot hotspot set up now to get DMR or C4FM, but I need a radio to use in the house.

Might take it mobile to chat with some of you.

Other than that, dropped the video of N1OG and myself activating US 1458, of N1OG and myself activating US1458.

And he says, yes, I got N1JUR on the CO2.

Other than that, just waiting for the personal stuff to get done with and waiting to see my diabetes doctor.

Stay safe and do not leave any bands behind.

Signed Chris KD9YSW.

Very cool, chris.

Any bands behind signed chris 89, ysw.

Very cool, chris.

Well, hopefully the diabetes he died to be dies a beat diabetes is what I was thinking in my head before I said it.

Hopefully the test comes back, good, but more so if you're, you know, maybe hooking up with her.

You know that's always a good thing too, man, don't overlook that.

If she's hot, whatever, uh, all right, cool.

Well, and you know, the one thing I was thinking of that I'm missing a lot, you know, wasn't mike and to mak doing win link wednesdays, like that was like his thing they was doing all the time.

So, mike, I don't know, like chris is gonna eventually dethrone you of that spot.

I don't know.

Uh, you know, what do you say?

You know, are you gonna come back in in full force?

You know I'll just throw it out there and leave it, but you know, hey, let me know.

So, yeah, cool, thanks, chris.

And I have to say he is obviously with a 1700 degree blast furnace.

When I saw him on your live stream on Friday he did look a little bit more tan.

You know, there was, that was a sure.

So all good yeah, I've talked to him a couple of times, like as he's going into work and like I mean you could just, you could just almost see the heat as he entered the building.

Wow, dude, yeah.

I'm already sweating just hearing you talk about that.

Yeah, that's, that's a lot, man, but I give you a credit, man, that man, but I give you credit, man, that that that takes a lot of uh, you know a lot of effort to do that every day.

But, uh, more power to you, buddy, and keep it up.

Work towards a goal, sweet, all right.

Well, hey, if you, you know, are so inclined and you want to send us something and you want to be one of our type a's, uh, you can always send us a win link.

Uh, as well, send that only and I'm going to repeat this once and only once to n1og at win link, because anything you send n1jur is just going to repeat this once and only once to N1OG at WinLink, because anything you send to N1JUR is just going to be returned to you unpleasantly, as is the way it goes.

So if you want yours to be read online, or our next episode, then definitely send it to Grouch.

He'll definitely put some very good attention to it and treat it with the utmost kindness and respect, more than I ever will.

Yeah, I actually check my WinLink.

Yeah than I ever will.

Yeah, I actually check my wind link.

Yeah, I don't, yeah, I can't.

It might be, you know, five minutes before the show, but I check it.

That's five minutes more than I do at all.

So, and Todd, combined, I mean that, you know, can't put myself in my own bucket, all right.

Well, good deal on that.

We have no do goods.

And so, hey, just in case you're new to this show, if your club is doing something uh, you know fun, or maybe you're getting together at a PO to meet up or whatever.

We've got a section called do good.

We haven't done it in a long time, I know.

Um, our club, once we start doing some more community type events, I'll be bringing those back a bit, um, but yeah, hey, we'd love to hear it, we'd love to share, we want to spread the joy of clubs that are actually doing some really cool stuff, you know, and that cool stuff can be just being the community, can be within your club.

Whatever would be the case is spreading the ham radio.

Love is what we're looking for, um, and you know, if you're like me and way of you know, having the three-letter word that we all like to call fun, then yeah, send us a do good, we want to hear it.

So with that, let's get into.

It's everyone's favorite segment.

And now a little something extra with Todd.

W1STJ.

Still a general.

All right, wow, I'm on the ball tonight.

I don't know what it is that's.

This is crazy.

This is like unheard of.

So who knows where this is going to lead tonight?

So, yep, go ahead.

Todd, you had to say something I thought we always, when did we like move this to like the right away?

I thought we used to do like how your ham radio week and then we oh we're doing this again I'm just wondering why?

hey, paul how long you've been on the show.

What's the order of uh, you know, operations.

Has it always been this order?

it has always been this way, all right I love, I love you man, I love you.

I'm gonna be 54.

My my memory is shot, but all right, I got it.

No okay.

so I'm gonna side on you, your side, a little bit, because I had that same senior moment too, like two shows ago, where I like, did we go, did we, did we do his before?

And I sit like I press at that whole thing in my mind while you guys were talking and then I finally came to the conclusion hey, my script tells me what order we do it.

So I just followed the script.

So you know, if you had the script there, you'd be all good.

Yeah, we always.

We always do the segments and then we do the show.

Yep, yeah, because remember that, like that's what you guys said, on near, like it's 45 minutes of just Todd in the extra.

That's where I heard it from.

All the Todd testing was on near and Todd wasn't there.

That's why I was like, okay, I'm like I know I heard this from where they were all commenting on how Todd is always going to constantly be testing forever and our is, or maybe it was on pause.

It was on what there's too many live streams going on this entire weekend.

I don't know, it's all blending together.

Uh.

So, yeah, help me out here.

I mean, you might have talked about that, probably.

I think so.

I was probably on your show yeah, we did, we definitely did, because, uh, I believe, I believe I said uh, if you want to actually get to the show, you just got to skip like the first 45 minutes five minutes.

Yeah, I laughed because I know it's true.

And at the same time I'm also thinking inside like man.

We got to shorten this up fast, all right.

Well, we're with that.

You heard it here.

This is where we help Todd study for his extra class.

So we pick three questions as always, test them on it and hopefully he is.

Knowledge gets him to a point where he gets to get to upgrade.

So if you want to follow along, check out hamstudyorg and it's always a place for all.

The VEs recommend everybody to go.

Don't go to that other you know testing site.

This one's way better anyway, so we won't mention them.

But yeah, hamstudyorg is a place to go and we recommend it and that's what we use here on the show to test todd again.

So with that, over to our ve quiz master.

Take it away, mr og all right, todd.

Well, you're gonna love question number one, which comes from some elements.

Number one.

It's a smith chart, no what must the ve team do if an examinee scores a passing grade on all?

Examination elements needed for an upgrade or a new license?

Is it?

A issue the examinee a new or upgraded license.

B three VEs must certify the examinee is qualified for the license grant and that they have complied with the administering the requirement.

C photocopy all examination documents and forward them to the FCC for processing.

Or.

D all of these choices are correct.

Do us proud, Todd, do us proud.

All right, I'm going to go with B.

Mm-hmm, I would agree it is B sir.

And clearly Todd is learning because, yes, the answer is B.

Incredible incredible so what must the VE team do?

If an examinee scores a passing grade on all examination elements needed for an upgrade or new license, the three VEs must certify the examinee is qualified for the license grant and they have complied with the administering VE requirement.

See we don't think we need any more explanation than that just a quote, because one of the other things that they have to do is don't they have to forward it to the ARL to afford it to the FCC?

so you're dear but you're right, but you're wrong.

Okay, so the V, the VE team, has a team lead.

The team lead submits the paperwork to the VEC Right and the VC sends it to the FC.

Yeah, I know we had that whole conversation We'll eventually be doing KP if they refuse to yeah.

All right, that's one.

Let's go to number two.

Oh, yes, he loves this.

Let's go to number two.

Oh, yes, he loves this Sweet.

Blue, you're my boy, Thank you sir, come on, buddy.

All right, todd.

Question number two has a figure In figure E6-3, which is the schematic symbol for the NOT operation.

Okay, which one is the NOT?

Is it A number 5?

, b number 4?

C number 2?

Or D number two or D number six?

No music.

There you go.

Scroll up again so I can see the trying to think of the one that we had with the stupid thing going the wrong way, but it's not the same one, not the gate, it's not a gate.

I know this is just the schematic for the not operation I'm gonna go with a5 I think you're right, man.

Final answer Final.

You are right.

Yeah, dude, look at that.

Thank you, sir.

All right, see, todd, you're learning, I am learning, it can be done.

This is the coolest thing I have ever seen.

So for those that didn't catch the previous time that this appeared, number one is an AND gate, number two is an AND gate, number three is an OR gate, number four is an OR gate, number five is the not gate and figure six is most similar to an amplifier roger roger that todd two for two there we go.

Dude, now don't crash ready for the third and final question of the evening which of the following is most frequently used as a bandpass or notch filter in VHF and UHF transceivers?

Is it A a saline key filter, b a swinging choke filter, c a finite impulse response filter, or is it D a helical filter?

Are you looking it up, Eric Loser?

He's Googling it.

I can hear him typing Damn it I forgot that filter.

Oh man, it's either A or D yeah, that's what kind of remembers.

I didn't find it fast enough um um helical filter helical filter helical helical.

I'm going to go with the helical filter yeah, man, like my gut tells me A for some reason.

But the helical filter sounds more right, but I'm going to go with A just to split the difference.

All right.

Well, Todd said D oh yeah, there we go, dude, and I like the song.

Play me my song, mister.

DJ Give me my song, mr DJ.

So to give an explanation, the most frequently used filter as a bandpass or notch filter in the VHF and UHF transceivers is a helical filter.

Helical filters are commonly used in radio frequency applications for their ability to pass a range of frequencies while rejecting frequencies outside of the desired band.

They are particularly useful in VHF and UHF transceivers which operate at very high frequencies.

Go figure.

Hmm, well, that hint's pretty good too, that makes sense.

Helical HF.

Yeah, there we go.

All right, dude, wow, play me that song.

Go, dude, wow, play me that song, my DJ why.

You didn't get it, I got two, I got two.

I got two.

Cause, even though he Googled the answer, he no, no, I think the last one.

I got the first two right there, my friend, and so much we kicked Paul off.

There we go.

Let's go back to the dynamic one.

There we go, oh yeah, that's it I clicked the wrong one.

I know Somehow we've got a couple extra scenes that need to go away.

I'm pumped Three out of three.

I'm going to have to just go back to my fellow nerds and I will retire to the nerdery with our calculators.

That's where I'm going.

Uh, dude, that's awesome and, like a lot of us, are really smart, I'm really smart yeah, totally.

Oh, man, dude, that's awesome, all right.

Well, like todd, you know, if you're hitting three out of three and hitting it on the ballpark every week, then there should be no freaking reason why you don't, you know, take that test or schedule yourself to go take that test soon.

But you know, if you're still studying for that technician general or that extra class, then hand studyorg is always a great resource for all of your test taking and ham radio licensing learning.

So, as we always like to say, if you recently received your ticket or maybe you got upgraded, you know, we want to know.

Did we have anything recently, paul, todd, I'm sorry, pod there, there we go.

The blend, the bolt together, go ahead, paul Paul, exactly Paul Paul.

Pod and tall.

There we go, paul.

Do we have any that we know the best is this test recently.

None that I've seen that we know the best is this test recently?

Uh, none that I've seen now.

Okay, all right.

Well, hey, you know, and that goes for all of our folks out there.

Heck, if you uh have recently upgraded, we have a channel.

You can post it in our discord.

So head over there, leave that in there and we'll make sure we mention you on the next uh episode.

Um, or feel free to email us at livefreeandham at gmailcom and we'll mention you on the next show.

So now, with the next step in our script that we do every week to week, I'm going to ask hey, todd, and hey, paul, how's your Ham Radio week?

And we'll start with Paul there.

How was your Ham Radio week, my friend?

Well, I, actually I made a Ham Radio contact today on my drive.

So, for those that don't know, I am currently on my way to Huntsville for the Huntsville hand fest.

Uh made the first, uh first almost half of the journey.

Uh still didn't get out of Indiana, or I mean Illinois.

It's all a blend.

Yeah, I'm still in Illinois.

But yeah, every time you know like I would come into any type of you know town or anything you know, throw my call out right.

I'd throw my call out right.

N1og, November 1, oscar golf, in the mobile on, you know, at the time I was on 51 South right and I'd give it, I'd give it, I'd give it, give it, give it, give it.

You just don't hear anything back.

And then, uh, just before I got to odin, illinois, uh, there was, there was another town that I don't remember the name of it, um, but I, I heard, uh, I heard a guy on 14652.

And so I waited and he got clearer and clearer and clearer as I got closer and so he wrapped up his conversation.

He said, okay, I'll let you go.

And so I was like, well, now's my opportunity, I want Oscar Golf mobile I-52 cell phone.

And a guy came back.

His call sign is whiskey delta, 9 november.

Uh, look him up on qr's ad.

He's got a really, really cool page, uh.

But uh, yes, and david, uh sent me an email as well, uh, which I I got you know a little bit ago.

And he said, hey, listen, uh, I, I put you in the log.

Uh, you know not that it was like great dx or anything but they got it, so it's whiskey delta 9 november, right, yep, that was wow okay whiskey 9.

What whiskey 9?

whiskey delta 9 november wait a minute, wasn't he on, uh?

yeah, the clubhouse, it was ramsey.

It was ramsey, illinois.

Yeah, he's been on the Clubhouse.

It was Ramsey, illinois.

Okay, well, he's been on the Clubhouse.

Oh really.

Yeah, this is I can't remember what episode he's got like a radio voice that, like you know, like a really really good radio voice, but his shack and everything he was on.

Yeah, he's been on the Clubhouse.

Cool, that's awesome awesome.

Yeah, so, uh, I did, uh, I did point him in the direction of the podcast so hopefully he hears this, uh, this episode when it, when it drops next week.

And uh, it was, it was really cool.

You know, I mean, it was the one and only uh contact that I made in the five hours that I spent the truck today.

Um, but uh, it was really cool.

You know what I mean.

It was the one and only uh contact that I made in the five hours that I spent in the truck today.

Um, but uh, it was, it was good to get them and uh, you know, we, we, we chatted for maybe about five minutes or so before I started to lose them.

Um dude that's awesome reason that I was losing him was more a me thing than a him thing.

you know it couldn't have been that big giant tin can reflector that you were told behind you.

But you know right yeah, it just.

It just blocks the, uh, the antenna a little bit, you know, just a bit yeah you might have to put a second one on the back, and then you know, toggle, switch it to be able to keep your conversations going.

But yeah, yeah, right, or I'll figure out a way to just, you know, connect, connect to coax, you know to the trailer and have have the antenna on the trailer.

You could do that.

Yeah, you make the whole.

You know the will it antenna.

You know, just tune it up, see if it tunes up in two meters.

Will the Grouch Mobile Command tune?

I know right, Don't touch the trailer.

Kids, stop touching the trailer.

I'm busy trying to have a conversation here.

You know what, honestly so K Murder Mike, he's getting into Huntsville tomorrow as well.

I may have to just be like dude, let's do a quick little video.

You bring out your G90 and you know, we'll just we'll try and tune up the trailer and see Might as well.

Dude, that'd be awesome.

Yeah, I'll game for that.

I'm sure he'll be all over that.

I mean, that's the only thing.

I don't think he's tuned up yet.

Sweet, all right.

Well, dude, that's awesome.

It sounds like you're off to a good start and you know you'll be what in what?

Eight hours More than eight hours, probably a little longer You'll be hanging out with the best of the best of the best of the best of the YouTubers and a whole bunch of other folks.

So, you know, give K5YVY a big hug.

For me, k5yvy, make sure you take a picture of the Ed Dong, because I want to see it in.

You know all of its glory.

Yes, absolutely yeah, I plan to, I don't know, just either wear the GoPro on my chest or on my head, Just try and catch as much footage as I can.

And, um, I, uh, I got a new phone.

It, it, uh, it, it actually it's funny, right.

So it it takes me back because it's a flip.

It's smart, but it's a flip phone.

And, dude, I tell you it is so satisfying, like when you finish a call and you close that flip you like the click because it reminds you when you actually hung it up.

Yeah, kids will never understand that like that was a very uh you know, slamming the phone down on the ringer all the time.

You'd hear the bell go ding and you're like, okay, that was satisfying enough and you'd walk away.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Those days of strangling your cat or dog or fellow family member with the long cord to the closet, yeah, those don't recur any longer yeah, you stretch the kitchen cord out and around down the hall yeah, exactly right, and by the time you get it, it would look like, you know, like over this, like after a while, it wouldn't actually ever get its shape back again.

Oh dude, those days, I miss them.

They were simpler.

They were simpler.

Uh, cool, all right, well, awesome.

Uh, we are gonna be looking forward to seeing, uh, you know, the grouch popping up and and all of the events, and so I guess you're on the hook for jumping right down there.

Is that what you're gonna do on friday?

yeah, so, um, so, carlos and I, we, uh, we've kind of been tossing around like logistical things, uh, and one of the things I will say, like I greatly appreciate that.

You know he said this, that he doesn't want to gatekeep, parachute, mobile, right, he wants to encourage people to do it.

But you know, obviously you have to do it safely, right?

And you're adding, you're adding other extra things on yourself, on your person, that could potentially interfere with your gear.

And so what I did was I found a headset that would go in my helmet with a connector for the bow.

I tried to find one that would plug into my FT3D but, for whatever reason, that single 3.5mm jack pales in comparison to the Kenwood fucking connectors that are out there, which is what a Baofeng uses.

So I got two little flat speakers that sit in the audible altimeter pockets on either side, so right by my ear, and then, uh, it's, it's got a little boom mic that it'll sit right in front of my mouth, um, and, and it does have a a disconnect.

So if something was to go wrong, like I can, I can disconnect it from the helmet and lose, lose the hd and yeah, now you're gonna run it on vox or you're gonna run it just like with the little ptt button so the the headset actually came with a uh, a ptt button that I could strap to my hand oh, wow and yeah so, uh, so I'll be able like a little soft button on my hand.

Nice, yeah, carlos has one like that right, sort of like that.

Or I remember him kind of like gripping or doing something weird.

Yeah, he holds his in his hand.

But yeah, ah, okay, the one that I got it's got a Velcro attachment, so you just put the Velcro around your hand and then you stick the PTP button wherever you want Nice.

So, yeah, you're going to have to work on the recording aspect of it, because you can't log up there, right?

Right, and so we actually did discuss the logistics of that as well, because I can't record, I don't have that ability.

So what we're going to do is we're just going to alternate CUSOs and so when he makes contact with somebody, I'll make contact and then I'll call QRZ, and then I'll make the next contact and he'll make the same contact and he'll call QRZ, and we'll just go back and forth that way.

So that way he'll capture all of the audio and video and I can just do a lot.

Nice.

Well, when you come back this way, remind me and I'll give you the.

I've like the small little digital recorders or whatever that have the inline, you know kind of feed, pass through tooth, so you could do a like a Y connector.

You're more than welcome to that.

It's a digital recorder and I was doing it for satellite, but I I am never going to get to my satellite gear anytime soon, and so I'd rather just have a find a home, because it's like one of those things that you know will just sit there otherwise.

So yeah, if you're ready to record or you want to kind of play around that, let me know and when you get back I'll throw it at you yeah, I mean it would definitely be cool to be able to at the very least record the audio of Parachute Mobile and several.

Hopefully people will be close enough to the live stream cam.

You could probably use your phone for that.

Up at that elevation I don't think he wants his flip phone.

You want me to just be like?

alright, hold on.

Let me hold my phone out.

Strap it to your strap there.

I don't know, dude, all you hear is get in the phone because it's not going to be able to pick up any of his voice.

But it'd be interesting audio.

I think I hear a K one in there.

Really bad, but yeah, no, cool, all right.

Well, dude, that's awesome.

That is a pretty cool to you know.

See, hopefully, you know, I wish I was somewhere in that vicinity.

Now you know, it's making me rethink a lot of my scheduling and stuff like that.

So yeah, you will get.

You will get your chance to make a parachute.

Oh, I know up this way.

We'll talk about that for sure that that I'm not worried about.

I'm just thinking, like all of the other events that you know, todd and I've been like, oh we should go to Dayton, oh, we should go to Huntsville.

So, todd, you're going to be retiring soon, earlier, and I'm going to figure out how to, you know, offset some of my income to be able to do that.

But anyway, yeah, well, uh, chicagoland, and, and I'll just take the truck to dayton with a tent yeah and and I'll, and I'll do it that way, and then, um, you know, I'll do, I'll do huntsville the same way well, if we're doing dayton, you know, one of the things that we did obviously for the 24-hour pod is we just rented a camper and, like we do what um jason does, he'll just rent one out in that area and then pick it up on the way in, and then you know, you split it four ways and it's pretty cheap yeah, I mean, if we could do that too.

Yeah, that works yeah, that way you're not dragging something like that big and killing gas and whatever, and then we can get out there faster and hit poda parks along the way and it's.

I don't know how long it is to drive this way.

It's probably 15 hour drive or something like that from there to you know, dayton, but yeah more to come on that wasn't ryan gonna fly us?

well, yeah, but then we've gotta like, rent a car and then we've got to fly, you know, or a hotel and all that stuff and that like I can only imagine what that would run to well, I might be able to get some free hotel rooms, okay, well around dayton.

I hear it's almost impossible.

You should be booking now for next year.

So yeah, I'd rather rent a trailer.

You know that way we could be at a campground and not like have to like we won't be at Dayton because it's almost impossible to get a site there, but, you know, because the waiting list is so freaking long.

But you know we might be able to find an outside campsite and you know Mike probably would join us because he drives out there and you know we could get four or five guys to.

You know, easily get on on that yeah, I'm sure somebody's going a state park that they recommend, you know yeah that wouldn't be too far away stay at a photo and uh, I want to say I think, uh, I think carlos jumps out of uh skydive cincinnati for a date so, oh, cool, sweet yeah, that'd be fun.

Very cool, all right, man.

Well, looking forward to uh seeing what's coming up in the horizon, I mean, what the huntsville is, what next week is that it?

yeah, next weekend yeah, cool.

So yeah, all the the shenanigans and fun will start, uh early next week and then the actual huntsville is that weekend, uh, at the end of the tail end of it, right?

Yep, so very cool, all right, well with that.

Uh, todd, how was your ham radio week sir?

very disappointing.

Um thursday I was heading down to uh see one of my kids and I was going to show him parks on the air and had a park all worked out and uh, well, I mean unfortunately for me, but positive for him uh, he landed himself at his first job and he had worked that day.

Oh well, no one told me.

The staff at the program he's that never told me, so I had like 15 minutes with him.

So I was like so didn't get to do the poda.

But you didn't go do the poda anyway and like chuck it up as a job thing, yeah, but I had some.

Last week was a bad week.

I I went, you know, I took friday off like I take every friday off in the summer and uh, I came in on monday and all shit broke loose on three of my cases.

It was just a nightmare.

So I had to finish up because I was taking this past friday off, so I only had that day to finish it.

So yeah, it was kind of like if I can do it with him, you know I'll do it.

If not, but he wants me to go back.

So I said, well, when you get your work schedule, let me know and I will come back down and we'll do it again.

So still good to do it.

And then the only other thing I did was I moved my mic from the radio head back to the base of the radio and wired it up to where it used to be, next to the side.

So you removed the convenience.

Oh shit handle.

That was on the front of the dash where the mic lie.

To now to a lower kick plate.

Is that where it now sits?

the dash where the mic lie.

To uh now, to a lower kick plate, is that word now?

So it's, yeah, it's, it's now like on the side of, it's like up front in the side of the um center console where it was on my other jeep.

So it's kind of out of the way and uh, yeah, it was just because you don't have to reach across.

Yeah, yeah I could just get my mic.

Yeah, I could just kind of fucking told you yeah I know you guys were right.

I.

I thought it was kind of it's okay, but you know it was.

You know, if I had the old Jeep and I had it set up like that, they have a mount that goes into the screw of the old shit bar, but there's no screws on this one.

So I couldn't.

This will be the first time that you listen to us but we didn't spend any of your money.

Yeah, it cost me five bucks.

There we go.

I had to buy, uh, these bad boys, these little connectors.

I just paid my own cable true?

yeah, well, we know, I had the cable, I just did I don't know what I did with the other one I had.

I couldn't it.

I was like five bucks for three.

So, yeah, I put it in and I talked to Ted who's watching.

He was on the W one, t E D.

I talked to him on the repeat of this afternoon and the mic is in the new spot and it all sounds good.

So thanks, ted for testing.

Ted's one of our Patreon members and got to listen to our shenanigans pre-show.

So they weren't too bad.

They weren't too bad today.

No rants no rants no rants, but anyway, yeah.

So that was my ham radio week.

You know it was what it was.

I was kind of disappointed because I was really looking forward to doing the polo but work got in the way.

But you know, now that I think about it I should have just said screw work, it just kind of done it anyway.

Yeah, you would have been happier guy, for sure.

Yeah yeah, you got some rail trail to do right, yeah.

Does he have a lot?

of rail trail to do.

The rail trail.

I was like, oh, this week should be easy because I dealt with all the shit last week, but it's going to be like 90 fucking hundred degrees out.

Tough it out, my friend.

Get out there, make 10 contacts in one hour and be done with it.

Move on, although the solar cycle, I hear, is in the shitter yeah of course it is so anyway, and my other ham radio is as I promised I'm wearing my Hillbilly Hams gear.

There we go.

I wore mine on the live stream Friday.

Thank you guys.

Awesome.

Love the shirt, love the hat.

That's awesome.

I'm going to wear it more and more on this show.

Wear it at the 24-hour podo.

I'll have it at the 24-hour podo.

It's pretty awesome that we're honorary members and, like I said, next time I'm in North Carolina we're we're making it happen and even though every time I go to North Carolina I'm on the coast and they're all the way inland, maybe we can meet like midway or something, or I might just take a day and say I'm leaving for the day.

Dude, they, you know, they, uh, they.

They've done a row, so it's not like they can't plan the road towards you and you can work towards them.

I actually could end up being a full-time member in retirement if I moved down there.

You know?

Actually, speaking, speaking of the hillbilly hams, uh, I'm going to have to reach out to them because I need to plan my route home and where I'm stopping and plan my overnight, but I'm going to go through North Carolina.

So I believe they're on the west side of it, kind of like in the southwest corner.

So you might actually be pretty close to them.

I mean I'll be probably coming up 95.

That would be my guess.

Yeah, but that's the other way.

You might have to take a detour, yeah.

Hey, if everything holds together, go ahead, make the detour.

Take your time coming back.

That's what I'd do.

Well, you can't take that much time.

We got shit to do up this way, yeah.

And uh, yeah, we we gotta, we gotta sell some shit too.

Yeah, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta make a quicker trip home than than I would like.

Are you um?

Am I still in good for the trailer?

What yeah All right.

And I cleared out some spot for some of your stuff that we talked about, so we're good to go.

Just don't tell Diane.

We're just not going to tell Diane.

It's going to be a stealth mission.

Hey Todd, why is that little shit over the corner busting at the seams?

Now listen, it'll be two totes.

And then, if you want to hang on, to my ice fishing, stuff.

Yeah, the two totes and the ice fishing.

I cleared it out and plenty of room up there, so we're good, thank you, anyway.

So, eric, how was your ham radio week?

Sounds like the bands are pretty crappy for you.

Uh, well, to be honest, I didn't play much ham radio, sadly, so I couldn't tell you how, whether the bands were happy or not, sorry.

Um, I had high aspirations all last week to actually get some activities done.

I still have to do that 56 to 1 antenna review, uh, for the reliance and all those things.

And I was all super psyched to like, uh, go out and I found a park, um, a new park in tingsborough, uh, that uh is a wildlife management or a pretty sweet park, um, in the middle of nowhere, and I was like, oh man, I'll go check it out.

And I was on my radar somewhere in the middle of the week to tackle and just work.

You once again got in the way and never really got a chance to do a whole lot of things.

So I figured I'd try my hand at, you know, playing radio with my flex that I have here under the desk every once in a while.

You know, most of the time I I just don't have time to do that and uh, yeah, lo and behold, uh, mother nature, apparently in one of the last storms that rolled through, whatever ripped my antenna down, so I didn't bother to go out and I'm like, I'm like, wow, my swrs are a little high so I tuned it and couldn't tune.

Couldn't tune.

I'm like, do I have like?

Because I know we had a lightning storm so I unplugged it, thinking you know, well, great, I'm now transmitting into the dummy load, kind of thing.

And I'm like, no, that's not working.

And I said, all right, I'll call sideband.

So I I found a couple photo, parks, of parks, and I'm like I'm calling CQ, calling CQ, and all the SWRs climbing constantly, like it's, it's banging up.

I'm like, oh, this is not good.

So I go outside and I look and the antenna is literally like the, the guy lines that were wrapped around the tree at like 40, 45 feet had, you know, some tree branch from upper part, came down on top of that, snap that and brought everything crashing down.

So you of that snap that and brought everything crashing down.

So you know, I've got to shoot it back up there.

And of course, you know, I'm like, oh, I'll just go grab my air cannon, I'll do it now.

Well, I forgot, I gave my air cannon to tim and tim's wife, kimmy, was going to do a whole nice paint job on it and fix it up.

And they've had it for a while and it's totally fine, because I didn't need it and it wasn't being used and and so I had.

Now I do and he's like yeah, it doesn't really hold air.

Well, I haven't had a chance to fix it.

I've been super busy, like everybody else has been, and I'm like, oh yeah, as long as I, you know, I get it enough to be able to get up there, but I'll get it back to you and and so, uh, yeah, long story short is, uh, I'll hopefully get that intent up this week.

I gotta get it on my list because if I don't, it's gonna become, you know, buried in the woods, woods, and then I'll be in really you know, bigger issues.

So all that, uh, yeah, so that didn't work in my favor at all.

And then, um, you know I was like, all right, I'll, uh, you know, tackle, you know, throw my gear in the truck and, you know, maybe go do a couple of other pod activations.

And yeah, every time I literally was walking out the door, you know, god forbid a customer have a problem and interrupt my day, you know they, uh, you know, were very, quite nicely like they literally knew to the moment, I was like, all right, I'm gonna go and do a photo, I'm gonna just like, do something simple, like go to the rail trail or whatever and get a couple contacts, just so I feel like a normal person.

Yeah, no, it didn't happen, um, but you know, on the sidebar of it we had some really cool stuff.

Uh, go on, i've've been in the background and I haven't told you guys much, but in the background, trying to work on reaching out to, you know, the VE folks that actually well, not the VE coast, but the organization that, excuse me, creates the testing questions and stuff like that, because I want to invite them on and have a conversation with them and have them talk to us about that said test and why they do the things they do.

So we're brokering that back and forth.

But in some of my stuff I was researching I found that the structure of the testing, their categories they create.

There's a specific category for each level of the testing, called distractors, todd, and those distractors are the ones you get caught up on all the time, because I went back on a couple of random spots and every one of those questions that I looked in their category is a distractor, and so it's intended to throw you off the trail or cause, you know, frustration, because that's how tests are done.

I mean, they throw in distractors.

They don't want it that simple.

So you know that's a question.

I was like, oh, I'm going to jot this down and we're going to ask them when we have them, come on.

So you know, hopefully, knock on wood, in sometime September timeframe, after we get past 24 hour photo, we'll have them on and chit chat.

So, yeah, it's coming.

It'll be good to you know, get the bird's eye view of you.

I'll call my doctor, I'll get some Ativan, yeah well, I'll hold you back.

Or out of in, yeah well, I'll have to hold you back, or I'll just, or I'll just go to Paul and, uh, hang out with him heavy drink well, I'll be good, or others, so I'll hook you up.

Yeah, exactly right, that'll be a fun show.

That'll be.

That'll be wonderful, everyone will tune in for that one that will go viral we'll give Todd a couple of gummies.

Yeah, give Todd a couple of gummies.

Yeah, I love the test man, the questions are great.

We were like what has gone wrong with Todd?

I don't get it.

So with that, you know.

The only other thing I wanted to throw in there that I was quite happy to see, I don't know if you, you guys, aren't on like a HR two O's uh groups.

I all this right.

I think I am.

I don't know Ham Radio Dude and I'm surprised he didn't send it out to more people like you, paul.

But Ham Radio Dude is bringing back FT8 off.

Oh really.

Yeah.

He probably posted it in his Discord.

He might have.

He's been testing it, but at this point I can't remember when the.

I mean, I have to go up to his his page and maybe, paul, while I'm talking about it, you can head up to his page and figure out when that live stream is, but, uh, he's looking for folks to participate.

He threw it out to um, uh, on ham radio 20's io groups list and I said back sure, you know, put me in, I'm game for it and I can't remember the day.

I think it was the eighth or something like that, and now that I'm thinking, or I can't remember when the date was, but he put it out there.

All that being said, yeah, he developed the front end interface for it and a couple other things based off his screenshots, um, so, yeah, we might.

We might see the ft8 off come back around again, which would be kind of cool ft8 battlecom yes, oh, that is so he's got a full website and everything for it interesting yeah.

So, uh, I'm just looking in his in his discord, and he's got uh ft8 battle royale as one of the shadow royal and uh, yeah, there's a, uh, there's a link at the top to ft8 battlecom oh, yeah, yep yeah, ft8 battlecom and that goes right to a leaderboard kind of page and everything else like that.

I don't see much more after that, but um, yeah, so, and it it all gets cross-posted in in this board as well.

That's cool that's really cool.

That'll be fun to see that come back.

I know it was definitely uh, every I think a lot of us like to do and be part of.

Before it uh went south fast.

So you know, maybe uh, this will uh inspire some of the things like world radio league to get you know, into more of the e-gaming stuff.

But we'll see.

But yeah, all the better, it's at least there to play and have fun.

So, looking forward to that, um, and then, outside of that, I don't think I had oh, um, yeah, we can talk about that when we get into 24-hour potter stuff.

But outside of, yeah, I had some good conversations with some vendors, um, and uh, you know, a lot of our subscriber base is doing some really cool stuff with us, so they want to get involved in and help out.

But yeah, we'll dive into that in a second.

So, yeah, outside of that, that was my ham radio week.

All right.

All right.

Well, so I know, right, exactly, dude, I can't tell you how, like this, like from friday to today, it's been just like a whirlwind and I feel like I'm always missing or I'm behind something or forgetting something, and in terms of just trying to stay ahead of, like, all of the ham radio stuff on top of it.

And you know, of course, in my club or our club, I should say, you know, we're getting into, you know, uh, renewal season.

So that's just when my you know, of course, in my club or our club, I should say you know, we're getting into, you know, uh, renewal season.

So that's just when my you know, everything's going to start piling on me and my email inbox going to be, you know, constantly, uh, over flooding.

So, yeah, for three months, I'll, you know, just don't talk to me, or, you know, bother me and I'll be okay.

So will you?

Will you tell me when I have to renew, because I think I bought like, yeah, you're way out.

Dude, if you go up to that link that went out and just click, you know where you stand, it'll tell you.

You know, you're covered for this year my expiration date no, well, I didn't.

I didn't want to do that because I felt like everybody's like, well, how far does that really go out?

I said you know, so I made it like you're covered for 2026, so don't worry about anything more than a year ahead.

You know, and I'll let you know when you're coming close.

Do we have?

uh, do we have a?

Um, what do you call it?

Uh, like a lifetime membership?

Do we ever do?

no, uh, we, we should talk about that, but yeah, that, that that uh has a few, have had a few, folks have asked that, but we go out seven years, so seven years is enough, at least for a while I don't think I did.

I don't think I did seven maybe you were one of the like.

I think we have like three people that went out that far and I think you were one of them just so I mean I'll let you know, it was just easier than the 15 bucks.

I was like what a pain in the ass.

I'm gonna become your worst nightmare for that 15.

If you owe 15, that's the worst part.

I hate this is like I owe 50.

I'm treating people down for $15.

Oh, anyway, you want me to get on this.

You know how funny it feels, like you think 15 bucks is.

So Zach likes to get like a like a big Mac meal every once in a while and Diane doesn't let him go to McDonald's, so I'll let him go to McDonald's every once in a while.

Diane doesn't let him go to McDonald's, so I'll let him go to McDonald's every once in a while.

Like if I get a Big Mac meal and like I get a drink like an iced tea or something, it's like 15 fricking dollars, yep, for a fricking meal.

A burger fries and a drink 15 bucks.

I was like.

I mean not to like get way off fucking topic here, but so I I detest fast food.

Going out to restaurants, right Like to me.

It just the cost never seems worth it to me.

But, um, I don't know, three, four weeks ago, um, I was, I was in a situation where I was just I was running errands and it was it was dinner time and I was like I don't want to fucking cook when I get back to the RV, so I'm just going to stop at McDonald's and that's what I'll grab.

Right, dude, I paid $20 fucking dollars for a goddamn Big Mac meal and the patties were paper thin.

Yep, like paper fucking thin.

Yeah, like paper fucking thin.

Yeah, like this is, this is literally fucking abuse of customers.

Like I was so disappointed and like you'll never get some fucking burgers, man, like, make it like it used to be when it was, you know, an actual, like eighth inch thick fucking patty.

Yeah, you get less and pay more.

I mean, everything's like that, though I mean, look at like, like the deodorant, right like they have the whole stick still putting it on.

You get like a quarter of it like you're like I'm all right, I just bought this, it's already done you sweat too much todd.

Yeah, that I do, but you know, yeah, things, things are getting.

Uh, yeah, it's, I agree with you like like we go to this butcher and it's expensive, right, but it's like top quality stuff and like when you look at like this seasoned steak tips and it's like 23 a pound, you're like what the?

But then when I cook it, it's like better than any restaurant and I'm like I buy a couple pounds of that stuff.

It feeds my family for like two meals.

So if I spent a hundred bucks at the butcher, I'd spend more than that going out to, you know, out to dinner.

But going out to dinner for me is more like um, it's more like a social thing.

It's like you're going out with friends, you go out to dinner, you chit chat, it's like the whole thing.

It's not so much like oh, I just don't feel like eating, I gotta go out to dinner, but it is getting.

I mean, things are just getting outrageous dude, we were just costco today picking up some steaks, like you know, a package of five, like there was the, the, the um t-bone kind of style or no, uh, more of the the, uh, what the heck am I thinking of?

Uh, the sirloin.

And then there was the actual uh, filet mignon.

And the filet mignon were smaller but they were the same price for five of the regular sirloin and that was like 53 bucks and I was like holy crap, that's insane.

I like there's something going on with beef, because they say beef is going to.

Yeah, the tariffs went up, yeah.

Why is?

Beef comes from America.

Some of it does but most of it doesn't.

You'd be surprised.

It's funny because I did a lot of research into that.

Like half of the beef that America has gets exported, not kept here.

So I don't know why we keep that shit in the country.

Well, I hear it's not that great.

That's why we export it well, we, we got this.

Uh, I think it's called butcher block, butcher box, butcher.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yep, and that meat is phenomenal and it's really not.

It's better meat than it's, cheaper than the butcher, more expensive than like Shaw's, but it's way better than Shaw's.

So well, I um, I mean, I get, I get.

Every time I order, I get free burgers.

Free burgers for life.

Well, if you've got a freezer, that's perfect.

You can throw that shit in there and you're good.

But yeah, I just got a freezer.

So I'm thinking like, oh, I'm gonna start like going back and there's a place called patent road that a lot of my barbecue guys that I watch on youtube use and that I'm surprised that their prices haven't gone up.

But when I was last looking at it was like, oh wow, for a hundred bucks you're getting, uh, you know, you know, chuck, you're getting ground hamburger.

You're getting like four or five different items and I'm just like, dude, that's a steal.

You know now that I can stick it in a freezer and not, like you know, worry about it going bad, but yeah, all these steaks aren't bad no, no, they're all good, the, the.

We might have to go to aldi, if you know, because when we, yeah, on friday, and I was looking at that price 53 bucks I was like wow, but although five, you know, you know good sirloin steaks, that not bad price, especially you know where you probably pay, like you know, eight or ten dollars at aldi per steak.

So you're already, you know, at the 40 or 50 level and you're getting a little bit more, you know it's all marbling or whatever is all the like cheap groceries.

Yeah, it's like, uh, like a market building yeah, it's like a building 19 of supermarkets I've never, never been in one Might have to go there.

Well, they don't have, like any, like any brand names that we know.

Oh, so I I had never been to an Aldi, even though there's one right in Nashua.

Yeah, like I, I had.

I had never been, but it just happened to be the closest grocery store to the drop zone, and so now, I keep a quarter in my pocket at all times.

For the cart you have to pay a quarter for the cart, yep.

You get your quarter back when you return the cart.

You do understand that you don't actually have to put the quarter in.

There are people out there that are making little plastic 3D printed things to just slide in there with your keys, so you don't actually have to put the quarter in there.

People out there they're making little plastic 3D printed things to just slide in there with your keys so you don't even have to, like, you just pull the card out.

You don't have to put a real quarter in there.

But whatever, that's cheap it is.

But, like you know, people are like why do I have to pay a quarter for a cart?

But you know, go on.

But yeah, so I was really impressed.

And then I don't know if you, if you watch the fat electrician, but he did.

He did a video on on Holly and how it started and everything and like it's a really cool story, you know yeah.

It was literally designed that, like you, it is more efficiency.

You go down one aisle, up the other, one down and back up and you're at the register and that's it.

And a lot of their products aren't like many manufacturers.

It's probably most of their stuff that they either rebrand or branded or not branded at all from the main distributors or manufacturers that produce stuff that resell and rebrand stuff for Cheerios and whatever else.

But yeah, it's good stuff.

Yeah, there certainly isn't a hundred different cereals.

You get maybe like five or six.

But there are some brand names.

I got Dr Pepper there.

They do have Coke, but I get the off-brand because it's cheaper.

It's the made with the real stuff, and I'm not talking about cane sugar so now that, now that we're uh talking grocery stores and stuff, let's get back yeah, we're getting back on track.

why not?

You know, heck rabbit holes.

So, yeah, so, 24-hour photo we did have I can't remember if it was last episode of the episode before we were chit-chatting about some of that stuff because, uh, as we're getting closer, it's literally.

Here's a you know a fun fact.

Uh, it's 30 days away, so, you know, mark that on your calendar.

Um, I am holding out.

If you really want to still go and you want to camp or you want to have part of the, the uh, you know, be part of the catering stuff, please just email me, like you know, as quickly as you can, cause I'm this week getting the numbers into the catering company for all the barbecue stuff and I'm starting to, uh, you know, try to keep everything together in terms of getting, you know, checks paid for the campsites and everything else like that.

So, yeah, we, we definitely want you to come if you can, but I've already reached out to those that were already put in uh, for the pre.

Um, you know, camp, uh form and uh to have gotten back to me that they can't, because I got uh alternative schedules and I think uh misha has had truck vehicle problems, which is a bummer, but he wanted to come badly and so he's uh hopeful in the future.

So, yeah, we'll definitely, uh, you know, if this is as success as we think it's going to be, um, then yeah, we'll definitely have to think about about picking this up again the year after or whatever we do, and we'll keep everybody updated on that.

But yeah, so yeah, we talked obviously in a very high level about what we were thinking for the stations and, excuse me, a few folks got back to us, you know, a little still confused, so let me kind of you know a little still confused, so let me kind of um.

You know, I'll touch upon that a little bit, but I also want to share with you some new um or things that are going on in the background that we haven't quite put out there yet, that I just want all you guys in the live free and ham community to know about Um and, you know, hopefully it'll get you more excited.

And, uh, you know, if you can't attend, totally fine, you know, if you can't attend, totally fine, you know we are going to, like we said, stream this 24 hours.

It'll be probably the only stream live stream, one that I'm aware of, right, I mean, people have done 24-hour podas at parks and stuff like that, but they've never done a live stream.

So I'm hoping we're the first.

Yeah, so you know, if we are the first, great, if we're not, heck.

We'll do it better than the first persons who did it.

And uh, you know we're gonna have a whole bunch of stuff going on.

So I want to kind of share that with you guys tonight.

Let you know, uh, what's been going on, um, and all of the cool things and and we're gonna talk a little about, uh, because sadly, the guys at at northeast ham radio on saturday all got together.

I wasn't there.

I was tied up, you know, with some family and friends and drinking, but I was watching them and they were chit chatting about, you know, propagation and how horrible it is during August and, you know, beginning of September that it starts to get better as towards you get towards the end of September, which, when I was thinking about at the time, I was like, oh okay, something that we have to think about, and so it kind of got me, you know, spinning the wheels there a little bit, thinking okay, well, you know, how do we really want to configure the station?

What do we have?

A plan B's, just in case, you know.

You know, really, the bands get bad.

You know, how are we going to handle that, because I'd hate to have everybody get there and have a, you know a couple of hours at the radio and they're just calling CQ for the 55th time and nobody's coming back or they can't hear anything or it's static or whatever.

So you know we're going to obviously, you know um, circle back on that and talk about, you know, what we think can help in that area.

Um, but I wanted to share and so I'll start there.

First, is that some of the cool things that we got planned for the 24 hour podo.

So obviously we've talked about the catering stuff.

So you big barbecue fan will have, you know, food for most of Saturday, sunday and and uh, for breakfast and stuff like that.

So if you want to see grouch and, uh, you know Todd there, uh, cook or taste their cooking, um, you know, definitely that's one way to get in there.

They'll, they'll be cooking on Sunday morning for breakfast, um, but we'll be catering it, uh, via barbecue for Friday, saturday nights meals and Sunday we'll be ordering pizzas and a bunch of stuff and there'll be a whole bunch of folks, snacks and everything else like that?

What do you mean?

Sunday?

Sunday morning breakfast.

We're ordering pizza.

That's what you just said.

No, I said Saturday afternoon we're ordering pizza.

Did I screw that up?

Yeah you did.

Okay, well, thanks for you know fixing that I'm just keeping them honest.

I hate to have more emails going, what so back to train up here let's clarify we are not ordering pizza breakfast and then we're breaking up camp.

I'm going home Saturday afternoon when most people are starting to arrive a little short of us starting the live stream, we'll order pizzas from a local pizza place and so there'll be food there.

So if you come hungry, great, you know, that'll be there and available.

But, uh, that kind of sums up the menu there for catering.

So if you're coming and you're spending the weekend there, you know, bring your own.

You know, uh, you know libations, whatever you want to call it, because we're all share and hang out and and do that, stuff, stuff, um, but we'll definitely have soda and water and whatever else, so you don't have to feel like you have to haul your own water.

That'll be ready, available and, um, you know, there for everybody, uh, to come and hang out.

So if you're coming to spend the day, that's awesome.

Uh, if you could come for like an hour or two, totally fine.

Uh, you know, if you want to operate the station, I encourage you to come, do it.

We always need operators.

It's going to be actually 1 pm 2, 3, 4, 5 in the morning it might be me, because I might wake up in a panic attack, having to like get up and go operate the station because I, you know, I I don't hear anybody making noises, um, but you know, and you didn't hear from me, if I can run well, that's that, thank you.

Oh, dude, you're on the same page as me.

I was like, if I get really that point, we're just gonna let wsjtx run and uh, you know we'll be making contacts, no problem, but you didn't hear that here.

Um, I don't know what you're talking about.

I might delete that in post, but, um, all that being said is that, yeah, we're, we're gonna be setting up a station, and so we kind of shared that a little bit.

But, uh, we'll start there because I we keep going back to that we're going to be running our buddy, or my buddy hex, as the main antenna.

We're going to be splitting that into a triplexer and we'll have two output feeds to two separate radios and those two separate radios will all be in the radio tent and really all we'll have.

Uh, in addition to those two radios will both be dx10s.

So if you're not familiar with them, we'll walk you through a real quick primer.

But, um, you know, if you are all the better.

The main station that todd's bringing in will be his radio.

That will be a dx10, but that will be our sideband only station.

So that's going to be going, or available to go, the full 24 hours.

I would love to see our sideband station fully manned that's going to be going, or available to go, the full 24 hours.

I would love to see our sideband station fully manned the full 24 hours.

But if we don't, or if you're saying more of a digital guy, the dx10, that'll probably be sitting just close enough to you.

You could spin your chair over and you can run ft8 or jsa call or any of those other modes uh, on any of the bands.

And so where our antenna currently the, the um, the buddy hex only does 20 through 6, we're gonna probably have to have matt throw or we'll throw up a couple of end feds to cover the 15, you know all the work bands, that kind of stuff.

So we have flexibility to be able to be on all the bands, because that's what we have available to us and it'd be kind of cool to have, you know, multiple people work with some multiple bands, um.

So that'll uh be set up and all configured in the main tent and that'll have a webcam on it for the full 24 hours.

So outside of that, that's pretty much what we're going to be run.

So if you want to come and do two meter FM, you know simplex or you want to come do satellite work or you want to do if gigahertz stuff, whatever, feel free to bring that stuff.

You can also bring your own gear.

But you know, if you want to operate if gigahertz stuff, whatever, feel free to bring that stuff.

You can also bring your own gear.

But you know, if you want to operate and activate the park yourself, we're encouraging you to do it at our station.

You don't have to be on the live stream to do it.

You know you can definitely work us.

You know work parks there to get the park credit yourself.

But yeah, just to kind of simplify some of the extra noise, and you know issues you might have with other stations popping up.

You know that's what we're trying to do to simplify that.

And you know we want everybody to kind of stay, you know, within the general area of you know the campsite so we can all have some fun and hang out and, you know, make new friends and all the like.

So that's kind of where I'm going.

That kind of makes sense to you guys.

Yeah, okay, yeah, okay, yeah.

And just just so that people know, right, even though we're using the club call, like you can still submit your log for the contacts that you've made under the club call because you're the operator you can.

You can also get credit for those right yeah, yeah, we'll.

We'll do is, once uh you're, we'll run an n3fjp.

I I've got two club laptops that will install N3FJP and they'll just be networked together so the log will all be centralized between those two machines and then you're just in the operator section, enter your call, if you're gonna sit down, and then I'll when I get the log out, after I'll just chop out the sections and I'll send you the log to yourself so you don't have to worry about trying to figure out how to get those contacts to submit it yourself.

Make it simple and easy and then that way you know you can just do what you need to do Log the contacts, have some fun, fantastic.

So that's the station set up.

So if you've got some interesting stuff you want to do, satellite work or whatever, reach out to me, let me know and we'll make sure we get that incorporated in, because it'd be kind of cool to do some satellite contacts and credit in that area.

But again, that's primarily what we'll be doing, mostly for uh that and then for staying on the radio train side of it.

Um, todd's gonna still do his recon uh at the park to see whether or not we can hit the repeater up, um, and if that is the case and we can get something up there and amassed and we can put some good power out there, the Grouch will happily take the NCO command, at least for I don't know, saturday.

Do you want to do Saturday night?

Is, I think, what you wanted to do, or was that Friday?

No, it would be either Friday night or Sunday night.

Okay, all right, so then probably not Sunday night, because we'll all be done with that.

I don't think we're going to be there anything after one or a little after one.

Friday night's the club meeting, isn't it?

No, first or second, it's always the second Friday, never mind.

Yeah, no, the club meeting's the 12th on that one.

So we're good there.

Or actually not the 12th, that was a Sunday, it's the 15th.

No, it is the 12th.

The 12th, the 12th, yeah, okay, so we'll go right there.

So, yeah, we won't have a club to worry about that.

Um, so, yeah, we'll do our, you know, do our, uh, annual, we'll call this an annual thing.

Why not?

Because you know we do at least once a year at this point, uh, grouch will be the nco for friday and then saturday we can spend focused on the 24-hour photo.

So you know, if you you want to be part of that, uh, you know, we'll stay tuned for that.

Um, and uh, I think, if I can make sure our all-star node that's hooked up if you want to listen to that net, if you're obviously not on the live stream listening to that, because friday night we we're gonna the lyfreen ham crew, us and a few others are going to be there early on friday to do setup and prep and all that stuff.

So we don't have have to do that on Saturday and scramble, because my Saturday schedule is going to be a little interesting either way, but yeah well, we just want to get stuff set up, we want to have fun.

So you know again, if you decided that you weren't going to be there Friday and you want to be there Friday, you know, let me know.

And you can definitely come and be there Friday and stay over.

But if you can't, then your Saturday is your thing.

That's fine too, um, but however, friday night we're going to be doing another live stream, live free, and ham.

Um, but that's just going to be us hanging out and having fun and just kind of blowing some steam off after getting everything set up and, and you know, doing a little uh pre-prep for the Saturday, uh main event.

Yep.

So it should be fun and, uh, you know we've got some listeners coming out.

Mike and bob and a few others are gonna be there on friday, so we're super excited to meet those guys and finally have, uh, eyeball cusos and chit chat and so, yeah, that's gonna be a fun event and you know you're more than welcome to come by friday night and hang out with us too as well, if you just want to just stop by and say hello, um, but you definitely, you know, kind of just be cognizant of the park rules, because I assume I don't want to overstep our bounds and you know, have people there stuck when the gates close?

If they close the gates, which I highly doubt they will, but whatever, we'll sort all that questions out.

So if you do want to come Friday, I guess I'll throw that out there, let us know.

And then we'll just guest list kind of thing, uh, to come hang out.

But uh, ultimately, uh, that's what we're doing for friday.

And so another another thing on friday, uh is I'll, I'll, I'll keep it updated on the on the discord, uh, but if the, if the weather's good on friday, then I'm going to do parachute mobile on friday now you know, that's where I was dovetailing to.

Okay, go ahead.

Okay.

Yeah, I, just I.

So, uh, I, I want to make sure that you know like one of us, fucking alpha is going to be there on Saturday.

Um, and so, yeah, if the weather's good Friday, I'll do parachute bubble on Friday.

Obviously, you know, it'd be great to get people to come out to the park, uh, or or just be in the general vicinity freaking listening okay, I'm gonna throw this out to you, buddy, because I know you well, the weather's gonna determine all of this.

I know friday would be really cool to do, but I'm gonna be a little selfish because in essence we're gonna be over doing our 4-h community outreach and doing a lot of ham radio demos that I was thinking that if you could jump Saturday a parachute will be really cool with some young kids who would be on the HTs picking that up.

But you know no pressure on there because I know, obviously we you know, todd, hopefully we'll be there on Saturday to kind of, you know, be the responsible one for all of the live free and ham stuff while I'm running off, know, running off, and I'll be back or, you know, before, like you know, noontime.

So I'll I'll put it this way If the weather is good on both days, then I'll jump on both days, Especially if you can get the kids together at the four H thing.

No problem there Really kind of make it a special thing.

100%, really kind of make it a special thing.

Um, 100%, like I would love to do that for the kids.

Okay, cool, yeah, well, so we'll, we'll work offline to get that coordinated.

But if, uh, you know, weather changes or whatever, that's all dependent on all that stuff.

So yeah, we'll, we'll make those details happen.

And uh, yeah, if you are in the area and you want to be part of that, if you're part of our local club, you can always, uh, you know, head over to the 4-h fair event.

That's an agricultural fair.

But we're doing some ham radio cool stuff there on the sidebar.

We we just let people experience ham radio, uh, have talks on repeaters, show them equipment.

We're doing a wind link demo.

Um, we'll have an hf station there where people can make hf contacts and, you know, paul will be the icing on the cake with the parachute mobile stuff if that happens.

So a lot of cool stuff.

All of that leading up to, you know, our well, that'll be independent of, you know, said you know, 24 hour potter.

So if you're heading up Saturday, you know, we'll have you all the details out there how to get there, what times kind of come in, where and what and how to check in.

But you know, just get everything set up.

We're shooting probably for like between 11 and before one o'clock, because one o'clock will be our official 24 hour start kickoff for the poda to begin, and then we'll plow through that for a full 24 hours till 1 PM the next day.

So, you know, people can come and get set up.

There's no rush because in essence, you know, we'll hopefully have that station manned for a couple hours while we're getting people situated and and food's arriving and all that other stuff.

So, yeah, it'll be a fun, crazy, uh you know event with a lot of stuff all going on at once.

But uh, yeah, it should be real fun and and hopefully we'll all survive and we'll have some really cool stories to tell after that.

Oh okay, so I think that is where we are right now.

So that clarifies a lot of questions for folks.

That's awesome.

If you still have questions, email me, hit us up on the Discord in the 24-hour poda, that way we can all answer it and pick that stuff up and have more conversations around that.

But some of the cooler things that are happening through many conversations that we've had offline, that we've talked a little bit about back and forth Um, we're going to do some really cool stuff.

You know we're, as we've maybe shared, and we've, uh, you know, definitely try to um, you know, instill in the community that we do we want to be able to give back.

We always want to do something in that, you know, in that mindset, and so you know, we always encourage, obviously, everybody to go out and do things with POTA and getting new people involved.

One of the things that we were thinking and we were talking offline that you know we wanted to do something to be able to give back is that you know, previous ham tubers have done, you know, fundraising events K-Murder and HRCC and several times have done fundraising events for the Teachers Institute with Good Game game, you know, and so we figured, you know why not we should be able to do that.

We have a great group of community of people that are all support our channel, help us, so they support us and I'm sure they would love to be able to step up and do that same thing.

And then, coupled with that, we were like, well, how can we give back to them?

You know, what can we do to get them more involved?

If they can't be there?

That you know, how can we keep them to them?

You know what can we do to get them more involved.

If they can't be there, that you know.

How can we keep them supporting us, and obviously with good game, but more so helping supporting us channel?

So we're going to be doing a butt ton of giveaways, so let me break that down first.

So the the be our tool of choice for fundraising.

If you were on grouch's live stream on Friday, he used that tool and several other tubers have used it.

A hundred percent of that.

That everybody gives to that for that full 24 hours is all going to go to TI, I'm hoping, keeping you know my fingers crossed.

I've been talking a good game on and off to see if he can come up this way and come hang out with us and talk more TI and just, you know, have fun with it.

But that aside, we're going to be fundraising all full 24 hours for you know, teachers Institute with the intention to you know, whatever we raise at the end of the 24 hours to give to the Teachers Institute and support them.

So, yeah, I would love to have Live Free and Ham and our community just be like, blow the number out of the water.

I think we had quoted roughly, we were looking, you know, we became some insane number.

It was like five thousand dollars, I think it was.

What is that?

That's wrong.

Ring a bell somewhere around there.

You know, I would say anything you can give, anything we can raise, would be awesome If five thousand dollar goal would be even better for you know.

Know, be able to just show how awesome our community is and and how, uh, you know we're able to pay it forward and we'll support something like steve and what he does, because they do everything.

A hundred percent of ti stuff is all uh, donations and, uh, their own, uh, you know, fundraising and stuff like that.

So if we can, we can do and support that.

That's awesome.

But how we're gonna give back to you.

So for that 24 hours, I was like, well, let's step the game up here, and so I reached out to a bunch of the vendors that we have awesome relationships with, that we bring on and talk about antennas and you know everything in between and everybody so far has come back and resounding yes, I want, you know, to give, I want to be able to donate this, I want to be part of this.

So just to list a few off that we're finishing, wrapping up and working some of the details out that in during the line stream.

You know, for that 24 hours, and maybe even because I think we're getting so much stuff, we might actually do a little bit of that giveaway on Friday night too as well, because you know there's just a lot of cool stuff.

So, like thing, people, vendors, like spool, teta, mad dog coils, wolf river coils.

Um, icom is stepping up to, you know, give us a bunch of awesome, cool stuff to give away shag swag and a whole bunch of other things.

Sorry, I couldn't get them to give out a 77 60, but you know, hey, we're just starting that relationship with Ray We'll, we'll see how it goes down the road.

Um, we've got some awesome members uh who are stepping up, uh, who all remain anonymous right now but uh, some really cool, big you know mystery box kind of surprise stuff.

So all of that is all going to be given away.

We're going to be giving away live free and ham stuff uh, schwags and t-shirts and everything in between.

Um, so it'll be just, uh, you know, an Oprah uh on you know steroids a weekend, a weekend for that 24 hours is just doing stuff, giving away stuff.

And we're hoping, as we have a few folks like Matt from Reliance Intended will be there.

He's got a bunch of cool things that he's throwing in the hat.

We're gonna have like just to kind of break things up along the way.

We're just gonna have like small little mini interviews in our side tent.

So, as part of the action we wanna bring you guys in.

I find a lot of times when YouTubers do these camp out events, they you get to see the YouTuber and that's it Like, we're not, like that, we don't all want to just like, have you stare at us.

So we're going to have camera, a camera or two in a main tent where you're just going to be able to have the fun action and the banter and the conversation, um, and we're going to do a bunch of interviews with Matt and I've got uh, um, uh, my gosh Lucas from W1BTR, uh, to come up and talk about his antenna, um, and a whole bunch of other folks.

Uh, ray, we're sort of working it out.

I won't say that you know he, he'll be coming this way, but, uh, you know he, he was excited to hear that this was going on.

So you know he's, uh, yeah, it would be really cool if we could get him.

I'm like, hey, ray, I know you haven't got a big van.

You know big, uh, rv, you can drive it on in no problem.

So you know that might require a little bit more convincing, but, uh, all the better.

Yeah, we've got a butt ton of stuff, guys.

So you know, there won't be, uh, any one period of time that I don't think we'll be doing something fun or giving something away, or you, you know, having a bowl uh, you know, a bowl full of laughs and just making some fricking awesome contacts.

So, yeah, that's kind of what we got in a nutshell.

Um, so, to catch everybody up to where we're at right now yeah, that's that's where we're at.

So this is pretty much it and set in stone, um, you know.

So, uh, hopefully that helps answers a lot of the questions that folks have had, and we'll continue to fill in more of the details as we get closer because, like I said, it's only freaking four weeks away.

So, yeah, if you want in, you know, email me as soon as possible, I can try to fit you in, but at that, probably after the middle of this week, I'm going to have to do a cut off and you can feel free to stop by during the day, but ultimately, you know, for over the nights and stuff like that, I got to lock in all that stuff and get those paid.

So I appreciate everybody's already stepped up and and, yeah, we've got about 15 people going so far that I'm going to be standing most of the week there a weekend.

So that that's really cool and I'm sure there's a bunch more people that are coming for the day on and off.

You know, I know Bill will be there and so who knows where that One will lead if we give him a little more whiskey or rum or whatever his favorite you know, drink of choices.

So yeah, Bill likes a good scotch as well.

Okay, well then, there you go.

So we know where to go with that one.

So, yeah, there'll be a lot Of scotch this weekend, I'm sure.

I have a feeling I might be the only One not.

yeah, you might have to be, because who knows where it all stands.

These, freaking guys are wasted.

Cq 24-hour photo Parks on the Air.

This is.

Whiskey One.

Whiskey One LFH yeah, so, as Todd says, yeah, we are using our club calls.

So you know, keep an eye out for that, put that in Hammer Alert and when we start the ball, rolling.

What is that?

Whiskey One Lima Foxtrot Hotel.

Hotel or just live free in Ham man.

I'll be on 7200 and I'll be going CQ, cq, cq, cq.

Whisq CQ If you want to CQ leave a Foxtrot hotel.

Call and CQ on 7200.

That may be.

I don't know if that'll be Saturday, that might be Friday.

I think we're going to start early.

Yeah, we will emphasis.

There we go, Ted.

Emphasis on whiskey, for sure.

I think we should have the.

We should have.

I bring the 891 and set it up for the part of the hangout tent, just to listen you should be able to hear the tent from right behind you.

I don't think the the radio tent would be that far away.

So yeah, all you'd need is like a county comp.

The radio 10 would be that far away.

So you don't have to worry about that.

All you'd need is a county comp.

Yeah, or just an extension speaker if you really wanted to go that far.

Okay so that leads me to our second problem here.

We obviously know the bands are shit and they've been up and down for quite a while.

The bands aren't shit, it's just some fucking angry bitch.

Yeah Well, in her angry bitchiness, 40 Meters, has been dead as a doornail Listen even when the bands are at their worst I've ever seen it there's still contacts to be made.

We will find people.

There will be people out there.

So you know it may not be a lot, but I mean we'll activate the park.

We got 24 hours.

It's only 10 contacts.

Of course, in 24 hours we should activate the park, so don't worry about it.

I'll find a band, we'll find a band and get them, you know.

And then we just tell people, say hey, listen, if you're out there talking to other people, have them come here.

We're doing a 24-hour pod, you know.

We want everyone, so because I'm dealing with a grouch who's Mr Prepared, and you know I'm an M plus one.

You know what's our backup plan.

So, obviously, if HS is like really, really bad, like we're getting a G five, you know, on our weekend, which, god forbid, I hope doesn't happen, you know, I'm not those folks that like pray for the rain gods, to happen on field day, you know.

But I'm thinking, you know, what should we prepare for or plan for?

Like you know, should I be talking to, uh, you know, wra to bring all of his vhf?

uh, you know beams and stuff.

We need an amp.

An amp one kilo, 1k all right, well, I mean I've, I've got an amp that I need to get rid of okay, but it's, it takes 220 oh, 50 amps, still 50 amps, sort of 220.

I mean, I don't think the park is equipped for that much power, although we're boondocking, and so that's a very long cord and a big generator.

My thought on it is you know, if you know one of us gets in front of the camera, right, and we sit there and we go, all right's, uh, let's try.

Uh, you know hellscriber, right, like everybody on the stream, jump on hellscriber and we're gonna, you know, do you know 15 meters hellscriber?

You know we'll.

Do you know olivia, or you know something just different, right, and but you know it's a digital mode, so so you know it'll, it'll work better, even if the conditions suck.

Okay, so we'll, we'll divert to I know you will.

I'll work it until it's like I need a bottle of water.

I can't stop.

All I wanted to do was get Huntington beach state park and the band sucked and I got the same fr freaking guy on 10 meters and 20 meters and he was having the same problem.

I was like where the hell is everyone?

I know, I know, I know that's what.

I'm trying to.

I know, but you just got to push through and you'll get the 10, you'll get the 20.

I mean, I don't think.

I think we're worrying about it, I think it's gonna be fine.

I'm not worrying about it, I'm just thinking, preparing in ahead, because it's just how I'm thinking in terms of the whole flow of things.

So like, what's the backup plans to other stuff?

And so I just want everybody and not to say that everyone's gonna have a shitty experience I just want every aspect of this to be just as best as you can and plan for as much as we can and then let it ride.

The day of.

You know, if the day of if throws us a curveball, great, we'll all deal with it I'm getting a kilo there.

That's my goal.

I mean you should get a kilo somewhere realistically, um, you know, by the first weekend of september, 10 meters should be starting to open.

Okay, no, like we, we shouldn't, we shouldn't have a lot of problems look at 20 meters.

At two and three in the morning we're going to be hitting australia true, but like what do we do from the one in the morning?

We're going to be hitting Australia?

True, but like what do we do from the?

one in the afternoon till up until like 1am.

20 meters Okay, I worked 20 meters and all I could get was new England.

Remember that day I was like I could only get like New York Like I got Rhode Island.

I thought I was like hitting the jackpot.

I was like oh yeah, pod.

I was like oh, I, I like I said I am not worried that we will make contacts and I'm not worried that envis will become one of our best friends for a while.

Uh, but you know, I'm just, you know, thinking like okay, there are other scenarios or other things that we should be considering that would be fun to play with, like satellite stuff and everything else, like that we, we can try.

I wish I should email him see if he's gonna trip back up here.

What about Chris From Vermont?

Oh, have him bring his van yeah.

Chris, if you're watching this, mark your calendar, get your ass up here and bring the van.

I didn't even think of that.

Kilo India, one Papa right.

I believe he told me he was going to leave us a van here in New Hampshire, so we'd have one in each state.

He was going to give us an opportunity to get a said van for an underclosed amount which is still on the radar.

I haven't talked to Chris in a while, but I'm sure he's been pretty busy.

Don't worry, we're going to get one in New Hampshire too.

I'm like all right.

Could you imagine if the news van could pull my RV?

It probably could dude.

They are one-ton chassis, so those things can pull.

You know, he's like they are built with.

If you ever saw the underneath of Chris's videos, if you watch it, he does a couple of videos on his existing one and I think that was a three-quarter ton and that was still built way over.

You know, a three-quarter ton regular chassis.

So, yeah, you could probably get away with it.

It has pulling power.

You might want to get a diesel because it'll be a little bit better, especially where you have to fill up a lot of gas stations to accommodate trailers 30-foot trailers it might be another upgrade there.

That'd be freaking weird, though.

That'd be so cool.

You driving around with this 33-foot trailer we could paint on the side N1 OG you driving around with this 30 foot.

you know 33 foot trailer we could paint.

We could paint on the side, and one OG with Oscar on it.

I'm a little annoyed.

And then he just road trip the whole country Like people, be like, be like people, be following you.

Man, it'd be awesome.

How did you speaking of the grouch?

How did you get in polo the little grouch?

the trash can icon sebastian he put it in there.

Okay, because I was doing bruise and activate this morning and we were talking about polo and and some of the advanced stuff in it and I looked, I was looking at my old log and it was a log.

I worked you and chris in and I'm like trying to explain to people like oh, you should see the youtube tv icon.

And then then I like wait a minute, grouch has got a trash.

Can what the it's like?

I got to fix that one, you know.

So I'm like, and then I'm thinking like okay, what would I use for my icon?

There's not many that I could use for my call sign, but whatever.

Yeah Cause reached out to Sebastian, um, you know, and I was like, hey, listen, you know, I got a YouTube channel.

It's kind of picking up in popularity and you know.

So like if if I could get included in the YouTube list, like I'd really appreciate it.

And so he was like what's your YouTube channel?

So I sent him the link and, uh, but like half an hour goes back and he goes hey, um, I I picked a little rubbish can for you.

Is that cool, am I fuck?

Yeah, too easy, too easy, yeah.

So they were all laughing at that.

I was like, oh man, he gets all the dumb luck.

So, ah, cool.

So I'll circle back around with chris and see if we can get him to come down I'm sure he'll have no problem and if we have to to, you know, divert back to sitting putting up a 30 foot mast with a.

You know a full.

You know what's what's he got on the end of that one, a signal what's the step IR?

Yeah, he's got a big step IR on the top of his.

So, yeah, we'll just have to move all the cameras in there, but we'll come up with an option We'll be erecting that big, hard, stiff black pass.

Oh, I missed my cue and it's frozen.

What the heck?

Was he joking on that?

No, he wasn't, that's.

If he was in one of his videos, did that even come through?

That wasn't a joke, that was a.

He wasn't come through like that wasn't a.

That wasn't a joke, that was a like he wasn't just like.

He wasn't like over exaggerating, like that's what he was.

That's cut right from his video.

Oh my god, just the same with kevin, dude, you should.

We're gonna shove as much as we can up in there.

Oh yeah, that one, I love that one.

Feel bad because it's Kevin.

I love that guy does?

does Kate murder?

Does Mike?

Does he know that we keep playing?

it a couple of times does he think he knows?

Oh yeah, he does he's been on a couple of live free ham live streams, even on near, and I played it a couple times that paul said big, hard, stiff black mass and I'm like, okay, that's my cue I'm, I'm really I'm looking forward to meeting him.

Uh, you know, we've we've had a couple like short interactions, like discord and different live streams and stuff.

Uh, we seem very like-minded in a lot of ways, so I think we'll get along just fine.

Yeah, dude, I would hope you take advantage of the fact that meeting all the guys that we talked to and everybody there, especially when the big pavilion thing for the weekend, I mean, you'll finally get to meet Six and everybody.

I mean, if you haven't met those guys, you haven't met Rene.

No six and everybody.

I mean, if you haven't known those guys, you haven't met renee, and oh no, you haven't.

You're mostly on live stream.

So yeah, it'd be cool.

Yeah, I've been good name to face.

Um, I've, I've talked a lot with uh, with renee especially, you know, because she, she started getting her skydiving license a couple years ago, uh, so you know, like the whole time I was at csc, like she.

She was keeping in touch with me, uh.

And then I found out that Bern and Renee had started the Circle 6 Mail Drop, which is perfect for people who are skydiving or just RVers or traveling nurses or whatever it may be.

If you're out on the road, you get a Texas address that you use for your registration, your license, and then all of your mail goes to them and they just they scan it, they send it to you and you go yeah, all right, send me this, this, this and this, and jump the rest and then, wherever you are in the country, Now you're going to have to go back to Texas in November to vote in the country.

Now you're going to have to go back to Texas in November to vote.

Well, they must do ballot.

Mail-by-file.

Have you been paying attention to the news, my friend?

It ain't happening anytime soon?

I don't think.

Redistricting, among the fact that they're trying to get rid of mail-in voting, but whatever.

But yeah, we won't go there.

Sorry, I suppose if I have to road trip to fucking Texas, I can do it.

Yeah, I know to go out there and meet Shane and hang out with all those guys.

Sure, you got to penetrate that market.

We've got to infect them with grouch.

It's my plan.

The grouch is gonna penetrate texas there we go.

You really are not.

Now I've got a segment clip here penetrating texas.

Although there were some, yeah, I gotta go back to the your, your live stream.

There was some good stuff in there too, but yeah oh, there's a lot of.

There was a lot of good jumps there yeah, yeah, too much.

I couldn't you know.

I was like already writing down and I'm like, oh, I just have to go back later and do it in small segments it was.

It was actually.

It was really cool that shane shane jumped in yeah, dude, I was like it, almost like I was almost convinced to like jump on and hang out, and I was just like my wife was like or he got me doing something else and I was like I'm going to be able to make like a five minute.

You know, segue, and I know because I've been told that if you're the first to leave, you know, therefore, you become the one with the dick on the face.

So I'm being very cautious now where.

I go trust me, ziggy.

Ziggy took the front of it because he was.

He was the first to go down yeah, but yeah, all good stuff, man, yeah, all fun.

So yeah, I mean, outside of all that stuff going on, yeah, I mean it's coming up as soon as we possibly uh can imagine and all that planning and everything else like that will finally all come to fruition.

And you know, I'm looking forward to obviously meeting bob, because bob uh is uh obviously a good friend and we've connected up a lot and I'm just, you know, hearing from more people and I was talking to shannon and um shane and they're uh super excited to work us on the air several times, so they'll, they'll be a support.

They said, you know, this morning they were like, yeah, you know, if we, you know, if we're out in a park, we'll work your to park, we'll do a bunch of quick rows for you guys so you can just bang out the park to parks over and over again.

You know, I think too, even if the bands are bad, if we make some contacts and we advertise like, hey, we're doing this 24-hour part, we're live streaming it, multiple live streams going on, you know, go check us out and spread the word, I think then we'll start getting.

I think that'll help too.

Yeah, yeah.

And we'll do a, we'll do a testing session Sunday morning after breakfast.

Oh yeah, like testing.

What are we testing again?

I thought we would already have tested it for 24 hours.

I realized that yes.

Bob, and whoever, whoever else.

Yeah, Once the you know either test for their technician.

You don't want to do it on Friday night, like when we're going to be half in the bag.

No, I need to be coherent.

And you think Sunday morning we're going to be coherent.

Excellent, looks like I'll be doing the testing too, I know right.

That's why I said after breakfast.

It'll be like weekend at Bernie's.

I'll have to prop you fuckers up and you'll have to be like here.

I'm going to pass you out the right test.

Bob, this is actually the technician test, not the extra test.

Here you go.

Well, you will know, Todd, because all of my folders are color-coded.

They've got the element written in large letters.

Boy, that escalated quickly.

I killed a man with a trident.

I forgot that was another one.

I had to grab this one's my favorite, mr Burton, you have a massive erection Really.

Oh yes, burton, you have a massive erection Really, oh yes, all right.

Well, yeah, so that's kind of it in a nutshell, guys.

I mean obviously we're not super worried.

I just wanted to kind of put it out there because it was posed to me.

Really, if the bands are going to be crappy, someone send us an amp.

How powerful, how many watts?

Someone send us an amp how powerful.

How many, how many?

Uh, don't get bob cough going, he might drop one in the mail how many uh watts can your can your antenna hold?

500.

I can put up to 1500 watts and do it no problem there you go.

1500 watt amp, that's the max.

Greenfield State Park let's go.

You heard Todd here first Boom, more power.

Bring it, getting all those guys in Brazil.

I'd be like, yeah, I'm killing.

What are you on?

Are you on a kilo?

I'm a kilo and a half.

What are you guys?

Rookies, we'll do ASMR At 1500 watts.

Can't hear me Tough shit, oh man.

So yeah, we'll.

Uh, oh, that's what I forgot.

Shannon actually emailed me and said yeah, they wanted to throw in as a a prize, so there'll be an official hillbilly hat and t-shirt that they're going to throw in the mix.

So you want to get your one and only one, and only like todd's wearing that'll be there too as well.

So, yeah, the prizes are coming in the love showing, so there's awesome stuff going on.

Um, I'm super excited to see all this great stuff.

Yeah, that is a great hat.

I mean I've got mine over here that I wear as an alternate, uh, when I'm not wearing live free and ham, so can't go wrong with that hat.

It's worth, uh, easily five db, if not, uh, you know 500 more contacts in the in the bucket there.

So, cool, well, I mean, that's kind of all I got for tonight, guys.

I mean, I think, uh, we'll obviously get into the finalized details.

We're gonna probably put together a little marketing stuff.

We might, um, you know, if we got some time in the thing, I was thinking about putting maybe a funny video together that we can kind of use for promotion stuff.

But you know, if you guys, you guys are thinking about that, maybe Grouch and his creative juices, if he's bored and wants to get away from the fray and wants to put something together plant a little seed there.

But maybe we'll put something together ourselves here.

I'll put together some more flyers so we'll be able to throw it out on all the discords and get people interested, because it's starting to get out there.

People are starting to hear about it and I'm constantly hearing what's the 24-hour poda?

And I was like, oh okay, we didn't do a good enough job advertising and way back, what.

But that's all right, it'll be.

Practice your elevator pitch, you'll be fine.

Yeah, I suck at that.

If you can't tell, I'm just like dude, it's fun, just come there, we go.

There's my elevator pitch.

So, uh, all right.

Well, hey, ted, thank you again for hanging out with us in the chat.

He's still here, huh, the whole time.

Oh yeah, he listens.

Two and a half hours, ted.

That's dedication, my friend that that's a half a grouch live stream.

Yeah, that's the measurement.

Now, guys, how many grouches can we fit in?

Yeah, oh, man, well, we'll break that in the live stream there for 24 hour putter.

But yeah, so I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, see, good night man good seeing there.

Thank you again, ted.

Yeah, ted is uh awesome.

He's a great supporter and one of our awesome moderators for uh the discord there.

He is uh definitely um an asset and we love having ted so all good, and he's on our ve team ah, yes, he club ve team.

And you know, if we ever decide to get, get our butts out of our heads out of our butts, we'll do a live free and ham VE team someday One of the other millions of other things we've got planned.

So cool, all right.

Well, you guys got any more you want to throw in there or anything I might have missed?

Or we should chitchat, or are we?

good no, it's way past my bedtime.

Put it in your calendar right now, set an alarm for a week prior so that you don't forget, and then set a couple more for you know a couple days prior.

No, no excuses, show up, have fun yep, yeah, totally.

And if you're going to be a part of that whole live stream, we will blast our you know our socials and all the other stuff.

But more so, pay attention to live free ham's um youtube channel and we'll have posts up there reminding you and keep reminding you and keep reminding you.

So you know you don't forget and you know it'll be a blast.

Like paul said, I I expect nothing less so awesome.

All right, well, with that, if we got nothing else here, I'm gonna going to put a little close to this.

So, as always, guys, appreciate everybody who's part of our Live Free and Hand Podcast community.

You guys make these things happen because you know, without it, we'd all be just hanging around the fire.

You know, talking kumbaya and hoping for the great days, you know, of being able to do this, but we get to experience it with you guys and get to hang out.

So, you know, as always, there are awesome ways.

If you're new to this community and you're just plugging in, you're hearing us for the first time.

Again, thank you for being part of that.

But more so, you can always head over, you know, be part of our discord community.

There's a ton of conversations going on on there all the time and we're always meeting new people and they're always coming to hang out.

So, again, that's a great place to start.

Again, join our YouTube channel, become a subscriber and we're at about like 530 people.

You know we want to boost that more.

We want to kind of, you know, be able to get into that next tier.

So spread the word, you know, like share and subscribe, as we always say, and spread the word let other people know about how cool the free and ham is if you get anything out of it yourself, and it's always heck, heck.

We want to hear from you guys.

So use our SMS link, located in all of our show notes and on our description links, and you can always call us and leave us a voicemail at 978-233-1142.

As the sign says, it calls for a good time and we're not kidding.

We want to hear from you guys.

Tell us what you think, give us your opinion, share stuff with us.

If you're struggling with, uh, you know, an issue and you want somebody to kind of hammer it out with you, we're happy to do that.

Um, and if you want to support our show and we love our supporters, uh, from all of our youtube, uh, we don't have new youtube memberships.

I keep forgetting that we're not quite there yet.

We have a lot of patreon uh memberships, and so we thank you guys for all supporting us there.

Um can't tell you how much uh that has been an awesome help in keeping uh us running and doing all this cool stuff we do.

Uh, and if you want to subscribe uh to our bias bear links too, as you can always uh use that to give us a one time there, or, you know, when we do our live streams we get our super.

No, we don't damn it.

I'm so screwed up with my own channel and you know once we get to that stage, it makes things much easier so heck, first and foremost, find everybody, spread the word and get us all subscribed so we can get to a thousand, so I can get over that hump and we can start doing super chats and everything else like that.

But with that, thanks again for hanging out with us here at live free and ham and, as always, if you want to learn about our show, head over to our website at live free and ham and check out all the cool stuff that's over there.

Thanks again for listening and with that, have a good night.

And seven, three, seven three.