NooElec and AmateurRadio.com have picked the winners of our
June 2017 SDR Receiver Giveaway!

Look to see if your name and callsign appears, and follow directions
below to claim your prize if you’re one of our 30 winners…

Prize Package Winners

Two (2)
NESDR SMArt XTR HF Bundles
(with TCXO upgrade module)

Gayland W9AKW
Stan UA3SAQ

Five (5)
NESDR Nano 2+ ADS-B Bundles

Don N0SUB
Scott AF7IL
Federico IW2MVI
Dwain KB1JLO
Stan W0KP

Five (5)
NESDR Nano 2 ADS-B Bundles

Christos SY2BRK
Don KF4A
Dave KM4OWF
Dick KN7AT
Dean N4AJK

Five (5)
NESDR SMArt and NESDR SMArt XTR Two-Packs

Alan W7ALN
Chab YT7WA
John AC2NZ
Vladimir UT1PG
Dennis ZS4BS

Three (3)
NESDR SMArt XTR bundles with antennas

Dave M0LMN
DeWayne KB9ZJ
Miguel EA7JWDTen (10)
NESDR SMArt XTR SDRs

Doug KD5OUG
George VK2NGA
Eric G4EBO
Evariste F5OEO
Jeff VE6DV
Galina UB3ETG
Dustin KD0QYR
Marco PE1ONA
Peter DG1FK
Karl VE7JKD

 Claiming Your Prize

If your name and callsign appears above, please e-mail me at:

[email protected]

Please provide your full name, callsign, and complete shipping address including country.
This is ESSENTIAL to make sure you get your prize as quickly as possible.

We must hear from you by Monday, 19 June 2017.

You can get future winner announcements by
subscribing to our free Amateur Radio Newsletter (subscribe below),
following our posts via RSS feed, via Twitter (@amatradio),
or via Facebook (facebook.com/amatradio).

Sign up so you won’t miss our next prize drawing!

Please tell your friends about this giveaway!

Thank you to NooElec for offering these fantastic prizes!

Visit their website at NooElec.com / eBay store / Amazon store

Interested in ordering now on their website? Use coupon code
‘AMRADIOTENOFF’
for $10 off orders of $100+
(valid through June 17, 2017 at NooElec.com)

NooElec and AmateurRadio.com have teamed up
to give away
Software-Defined Radio (SDR) Receiver Packages
to 30 lucky ham radio operators worldwide!

…plus NooElec will even pay the shipping worldwide!
The deadline to enter is 14 June 2017 at 18:00 UTC.

Prize Packages

Two (2)
NESDR SMArt XTR HF Bundles
(with TCXO upgrade module)
 Listen to and watch frequencies from
100kHz – 2300MHz+ with this bundle.

Five (5)
NESDR Nano 2+ ADS-B Bundles
Includes 2 calibrated and programmed SDRs,
4 antennas, and 5 RF adapters per prize.

Five (5)
NESDR Nano 2 ADS-B Bundles
Includes 2 calibrated and programmed SDRs,
4 antennas, and 5 RF adapters per prize.

Five (5)
NESDR SMArt and NESDR SMArt XTR Two-Packs
One of each per prize.

Three (3)
NESDR SMArt XTR bundles with antennas

Ten (10)
NESDR SMArt XTR SDRs

Eligibility

All licensed ham radio operators worldwide!
(Free worldwide shipping is included!)

How to Enter

It’s very simple!
Leave a comment to this post.
(e-mail address will not be shared)

Entry Duration

Only 1 week!

You may enter only once from
7 June 2017 18:00 UTC
to
14 June 2017 18:00 UTC

(multiple entries from the same entrant will be discarded)

Winner Announcement

15 June 2017

You can get the winner announcement by
subscribing to our free Amateur Radio Newsletter (subscribe below),
following our posts via RSS feed, via Twitter (@amatradio),
or via Facebook (facebook.com/amatradio).

Sign up so you won’t miss our next prize drawing!

Please tell your friends about this giveaway!

Thank you to NooElec for offering these fantastic prizes!

Visit their website at NooElec.com / eBay store / Amazon store

Interested in ordering now on their website? Use coupon code
‘AMRADIOTENOFF’
for $10 off orders of $100+
(valid through June 17, 2017 at NooElec.com)

Don’t forget to enter! Just leave a comment to this post.

When broadcast television began to get big, back in the ’50s, the pundits predicted that it would kill radio. It didn’t, of course, because radio changed to serve its market in different ways (music, news and talk replaced soaps and serials). But TV did quickly become the 8000 pound gorilla … despite a recent radio industry group’s campaign saying that people spend more time with radio than TV today.

Television (or video) has existed in ham radio for a few decades. But for us, it’s still a very niche mode, practiced by a relative handful of hams. Despite all my television/video experience and all the video equipment I’ve accumulated for HamRadioNow.tv, I’ve never had much interest in ATV. Some local guys have had an ATV repeater on and off for a while, but I didn’t catch their bug. Of course, I spend very little time at home on the air. 90% of my operating time is mobile. But lots of hams do spend time on the air from the shacks, on radio.

So why hasn’t video been embraced by the masses?

Equipment is probably one reason. Until recently, hams have used mostly the same analog AM video mode as broadcast television did BD (Before Digital in 2009). A little off-the-shelf equipment has been available. Not that expensive, but not an impulse-buy, either. Getting it on the air was a little challenging. Broadcast TV runs hundreds of kilowatts with antennas on 1000’+ towers. Hams discover that when you spread ham-style signals out from a couple of kHz of SSB or FM to cover 6 MHz (the bandwidth of an AM TV signal), those signals sputter out pretty fast (but, as my guest on this show will point out, not that fast!). Repeaters help, but there are only a few repeaters around. And there’s certainly no large group of hams on the air to help pull you in. You have to decide that this is an edge you want to sit on.

Digital to the rescue? Broadcast TV was required to switch from analog to digital over a decade ago. Ham TV wasn’t required to, but some hams discovered and repurposed some relatively inexpensive digital equipment and discovered that digital ATV was better than analog in many ways (better picture, lower bandwidth, high definition, and at least not more expensive… maybe cheaper). They mostly don’t use the same digital that broadcast TV does in the USA. The digital equipment available allows for a variety of modes and schemes, adapted from cable-TV, satellite broadcast, microwave link and European broadcast digital TV.  And, btw, in a year or two the USA will change to a totally different digital video system, but that’s another story.

The digital stuff has made ATV repeaters easier, and  it’s made operating way more flexible. Analog ATV worked pretty much with a camera pointed at the ham’s face. You could maybe play back a VHS tape into your transmitter, but switching and mixing video required some expensive equipment. The repeaters could repeat the input signal, and that’s all. Well, the the same digital revolution that makes HamRadioNow possible on a shoestring budget (while looking better than broadcast TV did 20 years ago) lets ATV operators become studios. And video over the Internet does the same thing for ATV that it does for D-STAR, DMR, Fusion, etc. on voice: it brings activity from around the world to the local repeater when otherwise the handful of local ops wouldn’t really sustain it.

HamRadioNow has covered many TAPR DCC talks on digital ATV over the past decade. Yes, the first were this talk by Ken Konechy W6HHC (very technical) and this talk by Art Towslee WA8RMC (more operational) back in 2009. Seems like ancient history, but Art says they’d had digital on their ATV repeater in Columbus OH for 5 years . For more, dig out this YouTube Playlist and scroll to Episodes 127, 168, 169, 227, 284!

This year, we talked to digital guru Mel Whitten K0PFX and ATV Quarterly magazine editor Mike Collins WA6SVT in our thunderstorm prone SIB* tucked back in Tent City at the 2017 Dayton Hamvention®. The conversation is mostly aimed at hams who have never (and may never) operated ATV, but wouldn’t mind being informed about the subject. That’s plus or minus (OK, all plus) some ATV jargon that’s hard to avoid when talking to geeks.

Will this ‘new’ digital ATV finally create a mass migration to video? OK, I don’t think so. Maybe for the same reason we still make phone calls instead of ‘video calls’ on Skype, Duo, Facebook and Facetime (etc. etc.). We don’t want to have to look pretty for the camera. Hey, don’t call me on video right now! I’m still in my sweats and I haven’t showered yet. I’m not ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

*Studio In a Booth