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Should a brand new ham buy used gear, and does eBay's new FCC rule change the answer? James, Jim and Rory dig into it in Episode 23, along with a month-long check-in on the Icom ID-5200A.

Rory shares how the ID-5200A has settled into his car, what the color display and on-screen keyboard are like to use, and why native APRS is still on his wish list. The crew compares the buzz around the ID-5200A and the Kenwood TM-D750A, Jim's Xiegu G7250 order is on the way from Radioddity, and James talks IC-7110 hopes and a hotel-window CW attempt from New Mexico.

Then it's the news: eBay's FCC requirement for radios that can transmit outside the ham bands, an update on the Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act, ARISS and NASA signing a new four-year agreement for ham radio on the International Space Station, the new POTA site, and a sobering look at a helicopter strike on a radio tower in Florida. The hosts close with how to find a club that fits, what to check before buying at a swap, and how to send in topic ideas.

Topics: Icom ID-5200A, Kenwood TM-D750A, APRS, Xiegu G7250, Icom IC-7110, eBay FCC rule, buying used radios, ham swaps and QRZ, HOA antenna bill, ARISS, POTA, CW.

Don't miss a single episode! Follow the Everyday Ham Podcast on your favorite podcast platform (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and more) and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Short show intro audio clip

Short outro audio clip

The Everyday Ham Podcast is hosted by James Mills (K8JKU), Jim Davis (N8JRD), and Rory Locke (W8KNX) – three friends who dive into the world of amateur radio with a casual, lighthearted twist.

Follow us at: Website: https://www.everydayham.com/

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Andy N0APX made his first JTTY contact shortly before we went live, using a pre-release build of the World Radio League desktop app, and we get the story right here.

This month Everyday Ham sits down with Andy N0APX, product manager for World Radio League, and James N0WRL, the founder and CEO behind World Radio League and Ham Radio Prep. WRL has passed 100,000 users and 65 million logged contacts, and they explain how a simple web form became a cloud logger with mobile, desktop and web apps, CAT control, FT8, contest scoring and integrations with QRZ, Logbook of the World, WSJT-X and N1MM. We talk Winter Field Day live scoring, how a small team picks a roadmap, and how they use AI tools without letting the AI do the thinking. They also preview Morse Mastery, a free self-paced CW course, and Ham Radio Prep's plan to let you schedule your exam from inside the app.

Before the interview, Rory shares his first impressions of the Icom ID-5200 in his Jeep, Jim gives his early ID-5200 versus Kenwood TM-D750A take, and James reports back on the Heil BM-17 headset after many POTA activations.

Topics: World Radio League, JTTY, FT8, Winter Field Day, Ham Radio Prep, Morse Mastery, Icom ID-5200

Don't miss a single episode! Follow the Everyday Ham Podcast on your favorite podcast platform (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and more) and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Short show intro audio clip

Short outro audio clip

The Everyday Ham Podcast is hosted by James Mills (K8JKU), Jim Davis (N8JRD), and Rory Locke (W8KNX) – three friends who dive into the world of amateur radio with a casual, lighthearted twist.

Follow us at: Website: https://www.everydayham.com/

Send us Fan Mail

Jay Aho (N8QYQ) came back to ham radio after 20 years away and, about a year later, had an APRS digipeater and a Winlink gateway running 210 feet up on the Detroit Masonic Temple. In this episode he tells James (K8JKU), Jim (N8JRD) and Rory (W8KNX) how it happened: a childhood friend who happens to manage the building, trustees who said yes to emergency communications, and a whole lot of learning along the way.

Jay explains why he picked a low-gain Diamond X30 and 30 watts instead of blasting the region, why the site runs as a WIDE1-1 fill-in digipeater to be additive to the network rather than competitive, and how it now shows 93 miles of coverage on aprs.fi. He gets into the build itself, a Raspberry Pi 4 running Dire Wolf for APRS and a hardened Windows mini PC for VARA FM Winlink, each feeding a Yaesu FTM-3100 at 30 watts, plus watchdogs, auto-boot after a power loss, remote access, LiFePO4 battery backup, and the surprisingly easy grounding story. He also introduces Detroit Never Goes Silent, a lobby exhibit where visitors scan a QR code and receive an email that traveled over radio, and talks about the effort to fund an ARPSC station at Detroit's Emergency Operations Center.

Before the interview, the crew covers Jason KN4AL's 1000th POTA activation, Activate All RI 2026, the new POTA website beta, building shack dashboards with Claude Code, and everything they've learned about the Icom IC-7110 since Tokyo Ham Fair.

Topics in this episode:
Icom IC-7110 specs, pricing and release speculation
Activate All RI 2026, September 11-13
The new POTA website beta at next.pota.app
Shack dashboards built with Claude Code
Jay N8QYQ's Detroit APRS digipeater and Winlink gateway
Diamond X30, WIDE1-1 fill-in and 93 miles of coverage
Raspberry Pi 4, Dire Wolf, VARA FM and a hardened Windows mini PC
Detroit Never Goes Silent and the Detroit EOC station

Don't miss a single episode! Follow the Everyday Ham Podcast on your favorite podcast platform (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and more) and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Short show intro audio clip

Short outro audio clip

The Everyday Ham Podcast is hosted by James Mills (K8JKU), Jim Davis (N8JRD), and Rory Locke (W8KNX) – three friends who dive into the world of amateur radio with a casual, lighthearted twist.

Follow us at: Website: https://www.everydayham.com/