N5FDL's Amateur Radio and Emcomm Blog

Using EventBrite for Event Registrations

2012-03-23T02:28:28Z

If your group puts on training and other events — which I sure hope it does — you might look at using EventBrite to handle your registrations. I have recently begun using it for HamCrams and am starting to use it for other events as well.

Previously, to register for a HamCram, an attendee had to follow a two-step process here on the website. You would fill out a form (created using the Squarespace form tool) and then click on a PayPal link to make payment.

Usually, this worked pretty well but given a large group — like the 38 we had a few weeks ago — problems could occur. Like only about 30 followed the registration properly. Some registered but didn’t pay, others paid but never registered.

This create both unhappy customers and an unhappy organizer. Immediately after the HamCram, I started looking for a better way. Since we are now doing more than 16 HamCrams each year, plus a number of other events, automation is a help. EventBrite has many options, lots of features, and makes creating events quite easy.

EventBrite gathers reg data, manages attendee lists, sends invitations and reminder, manages mailing lists, handles on-site check-in, prints attendee lists and name tags, creates event information web pages, easily links to emails and websites, and “more!” as they say.

Visit my sign-up page here (this is the overview for all our events) and feel free to explore.

If you charge for events — EventBrite offers credit card billing and works great with PayPal — you pay for the service: $99 cents plus 2.5 percent of the registration fee. That is on top of credit card or PayPal fees. I think EventBrite is worth it for the convenience it offers both me and our attendees. And if you do free events, they don’t charge you to use the service at all.

Over the course of a year, if you do only free events, EventBrite is a huge win. If you do a mix of paid and free events, as I do, the overall cost-per-attendee is quite bearable.

Just a suggestion that I hope you will find helpful.

Repeater Owners are Servants, not Gods

2012-01-23T00:44:55Z

This will come as a shock to some of those whose call signs are attached to Amateur Radio repeaters: You’re not special and the Amateur Radio community does not need you nor owe you anything. And, if your repeater is closed or demands a large “voluntary” membership fee, you are hurting, not helping, Amateur Radio.

EMCOMM Groups: If You Aren't Doing, You're Dying

2012-01-12T17:46:56Z

If your local group doesn’t have stuff going on, you’re dying. It’s just that simple.

The great killer of volunteer organizations is not having anything for the volunteers to do. If they don’t have something to do, your volunteers will find something — like a more interesting and involving group to work with. Enough of that and it’s game over for your group.

"World of Amateur Radio" 1978 ARRL Film (Really Cool!)

2011-10-24T02:53:19Z

Dick Van Dyke, Roy Neal K6DUE, Barry Goldwater K7UGA, King Hussein JY1, Arthur Godfrey K4LIB and many others extol the virtues of amateur radio in this vintage film from 1978.

On YouTube Tim Verthein KC0JEZ writes:

I converted this old and somewhat damaged 16mm film to video tape many many years ago when the technology to do that was rather archaic. I have now converted those old video reels to digital movies.

I, Repeater Owner (Part 1)

2011-08-29T07:24:25Z

N5FDL/R in Ripon, borrowed Vertex repeater and Telewave six-cavity duplexerI never expected, in my entire life, to have my call sign on an Amateur Radio repeater, much less two of them. And on 2-meters, too.

Yet, if I key up on 147.015 + PL 82.5, I’ll get a response in the voice of my oldest friend, Ben Harold, KG4BYN, announcing “N5FDL Repeater, Tracy!” Key up on 147.210 and I hear my callsign sent in Morse code that is actually too fast for me to copy (if I didn’t already know it was N5FDL/R being sent).

Like most everyone else, I believed the airwaves were impossibly crowded, that two meters, especially, is “full” and that repeaters were too technical for my feeble brain. At least that last statement is something close to true. The rest is mostly true, but there are still a fair number of repeaters going on the air—admittedly in out-of-the-way places—even here in Northern California.

Right now, there are 10 (12 if you could my two that aren’t yet in the list) 2-meter repeaters pending ccoordination in Northern California. And it turns out they aren’t all in such remote locations:

Pending coordinations on 144 MHz:

146.6200 KD6EKH San LuisObispo 7/6/11 New Repeater

146.6250 W6AY Oakland 10/23/10 New Repeater

146.7300 NW6C Mammoth 7/20/11 No Change

146.7750 N1PPP Kelseyville 12/10/10 New Repeater

146.8200 W6BYS Napa 7/5/11 New Repeater

146.8500 K6LNK Orinda 6/13/11 New Repeater

146.9400 KD6EKH Arroyo Grande 7/5/11 New Repeater

147.3300 K7DAA Morgan Hill 7/5/11 New Repeater

147.3600 K6PAC Lincoln 4/18/11 New Repeater

147.6750 WN6LOO Kelseyville 2/5/11 New Repeater

146.6250 W6AY Oakland 10/23/10 New Repeater

146.7300 NW6C Mammoth 7/20/11 No Change

146.7750 N1PPP Kelseyville 12/10/10 New Repeater

146.8200 W6BYS Napa 7/5/11 New Repeater

146.8500 K6LNK Orinda 6/13/11 New Repeater

146.9400 KD6EKH Arroyo Grande 7/5/11 New Repeater

147.3300 K7DAA Morgan Hill 7/5/11 New Repeater

147.3600 K6PAC Lincoln 4/18/11 New Repeater

147.6750 WN6LOO Kelseyville 2/5/11 New Repeater

Normally, a repeater is “pending” only for 60 days, allowing other repeater owners to complain if they notice interference. When a repeater is shown to be “pending” for a longer time, especially much longer, it suggests serious interference problems have not been worked out. This makes is much less likely the new repeater will ever be coordinated.

This list is generated and emailed every Monday by NARCC, our local repeater coordination group. I won’t talk about coordination in detail here, except to say that NARCC has a very tough job.

Why me?

The reason I have these two repeaters—and somebody else doesn’t—is 100 percent because of my emergency work. If I wasn’t trying to provide needed coverage—handie-talkie coverage, especially—I would never have found out about that these pairs were available.

In my case, I happened to ask the right questions, at the right times, of the right people. I’d like to think I’d also built a reputation as a decent guy who works hard and gets things done. Do that and people share information with you, in this case, frequencies worth monitoring, plotting coverage for, and, eventually, dropping a repeater on. One of the pairs has potential for wide coverage, the other will always be pretty local. Coverage is based on non-interference with other users of the frequencies. This can be tricky and will be discussed in detail later.

One repeater’s antenna is about 25 feet up the tower at the highest elevation fire station in San Joaquin County. It uses a 3-element beam and the coverage is actually quite respectable. Though it still needs work, for reasons we’ll later discuss. Why a beam? To avoid two co-channel repeaters as well as to put more signal where we need it, and less where we don’t.

The other repeater—just installed today as I start writing this—has a 5/8-wave whip antenna mounted to a metal plate about 80 feet up a 195 foot tower at another fire station. That repeater needs either a higher gain omni or a directional antenna before it is complete, but it’s on the air and that’s what counts.

Coordination

Getting a repeater coordinated, under the policies of NARCC, our region’s coordinator is first-come, first-served operation. That means if you know of a good frequency you better keep it a closely guarded secret lest someone else put a repeater there first. That effectively means people are already have repeaters on-the-air are the best candidates for getting new repeaters on-the-air quickly when a frequency pair becomes available.

This is a bit like the seniority system, in that it seems unfair to newcomers but the longer you are around, the more you like it.

Right now, I have two repeaters on the air, new hardware coming for one of them, new hardware being rebuilt for the other, a third repeater being programmed, and a fourth maybe on the way. That means the two repeaters I am already using can be taken out of service.

The very first repeater I used is a loaner and will go back to its owner. The second was constructed from two old GE mobile radios and will become a backup unit.

With two repeaters on the air and three additional repeaters sitting in the shop, I’ll be ready if I have a failure, a friend has a failure, or a new frequency pair presents itself.

I’d love to get a new pair on top of a building in downtown Stockton to improve talkie coverage there or move my better-coverage pair to a taller location and find a low-level pair for local fill-in, if needed, near my home.

Repeater hardware is easy to come by and cheap. What is harder to get—on a budget, anyway—is the expensive and complex duplexer required by the 600 KHz. frequency split on 2-meters. Staying with the split is probably one of the biggest mistakes every made in Amateur Radio. Certainly, it created real (and forever) problems.

That will be the topic of my second post about becoming a repeater owner.

Why (Special Agent) Johnny (Still) Can't Encrypt

2011-08-14T21:07:36Z

Here is a PDF version of the study, presented at the Usenix Security Conference, that details major security issues with the P25 digital protocol used by public safety agencies. It talks about encryption issues and how to mount a denial-of-service attack, capable of making encryption impossible (and forcing users to communicate “in the open”).

The report does a good job of explaining how P25 works and makes you wonder whether the huge investment in P25 post-9/11 actually bought us anything besides an illusion of protection.

P25 is such a joke!

2011-08-13T22:59:22Z

The news this week that P25 digital radios aren t all they are supposed to be didn t come as a surprise. I want to read the study. It found that users don t know how to secure their radios and the radios are subject to easy jamming. I will comment in detail after reading the report.

Meanwhile, this is the system that is supposed to be protecting America from bad guys, but really just drops lots of money into the pockets of the radio manufacturers who hoodwinked DHS and the FCC into mindlessly supporting this boondoggle.

Read the CNET story. Try not to laugh too much. Crying, however, is perfectly acceptable.

CPI Remotes Solve Radio Location Problems

2011-06-10T21:24:47Z

One of the problems facing Amateur operators working in an EOC, hospital, or other emergency management environment is that the radio is never where you really need it to be. More likely, you need radios in multiple locations, but hardware and antenna feedline issues are holding you back.

There is a solution, one which many agencies already use, though generally not for Amateur Radio applications. Here is is:

Seven Tips: How to be a Volunteer that Leaders Love

2011-06-10T20:42:58Z

Having spent two months talking about how to build and kill EMCOMM groups, this month I’ll touch on what it takes to be the volunteer every leader wants on his or her team. Here are seven tips:

Sign-up and show-up — This is really simple, but can’t be overstated. Leaders need dependable volunteers and need them to commit early. We need to be able to plan based on the number of volunteers we can expect. So sign-up early, let your leader know if your plans are “tentative,” and cancel as soon as you know you cannot attend. That makes the planning job much, much easier. Ten people who become available the “day of” aren’t very helpful, unless I have ten unexpected no-shows. People respect our group because they know if we commit to something, we will deliver. This group reliability depends on volunteers who are equally reliable.
Dress like an emergency communications professional — I feel stupid saying this, but what we wear impacts the image of all Amateurs. Now that we wear orange or green safety vests much of the time, individual fashion expression is not so apparent to served agencies or the public. However, as unpaid professionals we need to look like the paid professionals we work alongside.

In general, dress in office work/casual office attire when on an assignment, unless you have a special reason (cleared with your leaders) for dressing differently. If you don’t wear an official government-issued patch, I am not wild about uniforms. I have a Sheriff’s SAR uniform - silver badge and all - and I try very hard not to wear it. Polo shirts (with your group’s logo) are almost always the best thing to wear. Try not to have too many logos or call signs (even your own) visible at the same time.
Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! — We all have better and worse days, but great volunteers develop a “game face” and “game attitude” they bring to public events. Whiners are not allowed. Egos get checked at the door. No, it really isn’t about you, it’s just what net control said or did, probably without thinking, and usually in the heat of the moment.
Seek Feedback (And Offer It) — We all need to talk about what we do well as well as where we could improve. Volunteers need to understand that the people who provide feedback (volunteer bosses) are sometimes insensitive louts. Please forgive us. We didn’t mean to hurt your feelings and it really isn’t personal. Nor is it personal when you tell leaders how we might improve. We are here to serve the public and our communities and we win or lose as a team.

The key to this is being a decent human being and treating others the way you’d want to be treated yourself. Sound familiar?
Build Your Skills — Newcomer mistakes must be forgiven. And some people - like me - make the same silly mistakes over and over. But, we need to constantly “sharpen the saw,” as the book 7 Habits of Highly Successful People calls it. Great volunteers sharpen the saw on a regular basis. The reason we provide support for all these bike rides, community fairs, rodeos and other non-emergency events is two-fold. Sometimes these events become real emergencies. Mostly, though, we’re training for when “the big one” (whatever that is where you live) happens. Use these events to train yourself while having fun. Then read, take classes, do free online training, anything to improve your skills. Reading this newsletter is a good use of your time.
Help solve problems — I was really pleased at a recent event when our volunteers at a remote site solved problems that occurred at their location without help from anyone. It was an issue related to signals and geography and these were new hams - all KJ6 call signs - who took initiative and made things better on the spot. And some people say HamCram hams are know-nothings! In the process, they improved our ability to serve the organization we were working for. Great volunteers give great customer service.
Observe Lines of Authority — Not long ago, I came unglued (it had been a bad day) when a fairly inexperienced volunteer tried to do something that went against the goals of the organization. It was not ill-intended, just inexperience. But, it was the second or third problem. This was a hugely promising volunteer, who just needed to understand why certain things are done the way they are. Even insensitive louts sometimes have good reasons behind their logic.

Good volunteers have ideas and want something to do. They want to contribute but can be overly enthusiastic and cause problems without meaning to. Long story short, the volunteer and I decided to give each other the benefit of the doubt, and at his first event he performed marvelously. He wants to become a leader and at the rate he is going, he will. But, he will need to work within the rules of the organization and ask questions before just “doing.”

This is another way of saying, “Respect your elders.” But if you feel your local leaders are killing the group don’t just sit and watch it happen. That is a topic for another column, based on some of the letters I’ve been getting from E-Letter readers.

(This essay originally appeared in the May, 2011 issue of the ARRL ARES E-Letter)

50% Off Depiction Software During April

2011-04-21T16:13:21Z

Depiction is a low-end geographic information system (GIS) that attempts to reduce the complexity of such products and dramatically improve useability. In my experience and based on 25 years as a professional software reviewer, it only partially succeeds. Further, my discussions with company people have led me to believe they think they have it all worked out, when clearly they don’t.

Nevertheless, if you are willing to invest a lot of time and are unable to learn how to use a professional product (ERSI’s software is the standard), Depiction does offer useful features, but requires a bit of a learning curve and does not always work as advertised (at least for me).