Foundations of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio The art of amateur radio is many things to many people. For me it's a technological challenge, a learning, a way to broaden my experience, a way to be technically active away from my consultancy. The place that amateur radio takes in your life might be the same, or it might be completely different, as varied as the people I've encountered since I became an amateur. Peo...

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of my favourite activities is contesting. Essentially it's a time-limited activation of your station for the purposes of testing your skill and station against other participants. Contests are controlled by rules as varied as the amateur community itself. That said, there are common terms and concepts and if you're not familiar with them, they can lead to confusion...

Foundations of Amateur Radio After weeks of attempting to get some noise, any noise out of my PlutoSDR I have finally cracked it. Not sure if cracked it refers to my sanity or the outcome, but beeping was heard from the Pluto on my radio, so I'm doing victory laps around the house, all conquering hero type affair, complete with whooping and hand waving. In the end it all came down to serendipity a...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I took delivery of a shiny new circuit board populated with components and connectors. Knowing me, you'd assume that I'd been the recipient of some kind of software defined radio gadget and you'd be right. One of the connectors was a micro USB socket, intended to be used to plug the hardware into a computer and to drive the circuit board. The board came t...

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the topics I've been talking about lately is the idea that we might be able to measure the performance of your radio in some meaningful way using equipment that can be either obtained by any amateur, or by introducing a process that allows results to be compared, even if they have been generated differently. Recently I came up with a tool that automatically gene...

Foundations of Amateur Radio Recently I've spoken about measuring the frequency response of your radio and what the benefits of doing so might be. Today I've got some progress to report and some initial discoveries. Again, this is preliminary, but then all of this hobby is experimentation, so that should come as no surprise. Let's start with the mechanics of what I'm doing and a "duh" moment I nee...

Foundations of Amateur Radio During the week I was reading a comment from another amateur about digital modes. Tucked inside that comment was a phrase that could easily have been overlooked, but it reminded me that there is plenty to learn and test in the field of amateur radio. The phrase, "requires actual understanding of audio level paths" was uttered by Chris, VK2CJB and it prompted a brief co...

Foundations of Amateur Radio On the 6th of June, 2004, two Brazilian amateurs Roland, PY4ZBZ and Arnaldo, PY4BL made a historic contact on 40m. The distance was not particularly significant, only 70 km, but the mode was. Using 2.1 kHz bandwidth, so it could fit within an amateur radio SSB transmission, they used software created by Swiss amateur Francesco, HB9TLK to make the very first HamDream ex...

Foundations of Amateur Radio A couple of days ago, after months of anticipation, an unassuming little box arrived on my doorstep. Inside the box was a nondescript electronic device with two SMA connectors and a USB socket. Other than the branding, there were no markings on the device and it came without any instructions. It did come with a couple of SMA adaptors, which came in handy. A little rese...

Foundations of Amateur Radio A little while ago I mentioned in passing that I was considering implementing a parrot repeater to help determine how your radio is performing. Discussion afterwards revealed that not everyone had the same picture in mind, so I thought I'd share with you some of what I'm considering and why. Most of the modern radio landscape revolves around hooking a computer up to so...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I received an email from a fellow amateur, Elwood WB0OEW. We've been exchanging email for a little while and having been in the hobby since before I learnt to ride a bicycle, he's always got some interesting insight into something I've said and an encouraging word to share. This time he introduced me to a project he built and published a couple of years a...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I came across a how to video on becoming a radio amateur. It's a recurring kind of publication, the kind that I've contributed to in the past. I wondered what it would take to leave the hobby. First of all, I'd have to let my callsign lapse. That's easy enough, but I paid for five years, so it's going to take a while. When it has finally ceased being mine...

Foundations of Amateur Radio After discussing the notion that it's not really possible to determine how your gear is performing without measuring, several people commented that in the good old days an amateur was expected to have sufficient equipment to test performance of their gear. I flippantly pointed out that once upon a time, computers ran on punch cards too. That's not to dismiss the notion...

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you spend some time in this hobby you're likely to find equipment with similar performance for vastly different pricing. At one end of the spectrum you might compare a cheap $25 hand-held radio to a $450 one. At the other end, a $1,500 SDR or Software Defined Radio against a $4,500 one. Those examples are for brand name devices, which generally speaking have publi...

Foundations of Amateur Radio For some time now I've been discussing the potential of weak signal propagation and its ability to create a live map from the data that your own station transmits. There are several systems in place that show a map of where and when your station was heard in the past little while. Using 200 milliwatts, I've been transmitting a WSPR or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter b...

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the regular topics of conversation in amateur radio, especially for those new to the community, is where to start? The sheer volume of available options is often overwhelming. If you've never encountered the complexity associated with this amazing hobby the experience can be disheartening and even demoralising. In my early years I was results driven. Getting on...

Foundations of Amateur Radio Right now it's 10:45. That piece of information is unhelpful without any context. I could just as easily have told you that it's 2:45 and it would be just as accurate, helpful and meaningless. The point being that without context, you don't know if I'm an insomniac, drinking morning tea, recovering from a late lunch or putting on my PJs. If I'm talking to people in the...

Foundations of Amateur Radio On the 12th of December 1961, before I was born, before my parents met, the first amateur radio satellite was launched by Project OSCAR. It was a 10 kilo box, launched as the first private non-government spacecraft. OSCAR 1 was the first piggyback satellite, launched as a secondary payload taking the space of a ballast weight and managed to be heard by over 570 amateur...

Foundations of Amateur Radio As you might know, I like to transmit with as little power as possible, known as QRP operation. My own station runs at 5 Watts, since on HF, that's as low as my radio will go. I could go lower by turning down the microphone gain, which interestingly is how some radios actually operate, but for now, 5 Watts seems to be a good starting point and truth be told, even thoug...

Foundations of Amateur Radio Recently I exchanged emails with fellow amateur Gary VK2OVA. This was his most recent response. Hello Onno, What have you been up to in amateur radio lately, you ask hahahahahahaha. I hope this gives you a good chuckle. I decided to construct and erect a full wave 80 meter sky loop. Simple antenna, and I have lots of space to do so with an old tennis court on the block...

Foundations of Amateur Radio During the week a new piece of software was born. It's not going to solve world hunger or address man-made climate change, but it will help some contesters who want to get on air and make noise without actually making noise. From my vk6flab github page you can get yourself a copy of a tiny little bash script with the catchy name of ssbdaemon and use it to launch your v...

Foundations of Amateur Radio As you might know, I consider myself a contester. I derive great pleasure from getting on air and making noise during a contest. It gives me a wonderful opportunity to test my station, hone my skills and work on learning something new every time I participate. Due to circumstances I've been away from contesting for a number of years, but recently I was able scratch my...

Foundations of Amateur Radio For an activity that's seeped in the art of communication, amateur radio is a diverse collection of people, joined by a common interest and kept together using imperfect language describing an intrinsically complex science in the hope that we can learn from each other to get on air and make noise. In this cooperative endeavour, language is important. Let me start with...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The art of storing information in such a way that it doesn't devolve into random gibberish is an ongoing battle in the evolution of the human race. Egyptians five thousand years ago were perfectly happy storing information using hieroglyphs. They used it for well over three thousand years, but today you'd be hard pressed bumping into anyone on the street who knows one,...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day a member of our community proudly showed off their plaque for first place as a Short Wave Listener or SWL in the Poland SP DX Contest. Together with their dad they listened on 80m using a WebSDR and logged all the contacts they were able to hear. Their participation didn't include transmitters, since neither have got their callsigns, yet. To me this illus...