Foundations of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you start life you learn early on the difference between being told about an experience and the actual experience. There's a saying that comes to mind, I use it regularly in my day job: In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, while in practice there is. I thought I'd do the quote justice to see where it came from, not from Einstein, who was t...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day it occurred to me that my callsign had been away from HF for months, probably longer. I didn't really want to think about how long it had been. I moved QTH over two years ago and ever since I've been working on a new antenna set-up. You know the kind, you shouldn't rush this. Anyway, having just had a camp-out with some friends for a portable contest, whe...

Foundations of Amateur Radio In our hobby we regularly talk about its purpose, its need, its usefulness and other potentially abstract notions. Often there's a nod towards science, learning, self-discovery, challenge, emergency service or some other higher order concept. I know I've discussed many of those over the years and encouraged you to find what the hobby means to you. There is one aspect o...

Foundations of Amateur Radio When I started learning about antennas I was told height is might. The higher the better. For many years I've followed that advice and like a good little parrot I've dispensed that advice. Turns out that as is usual in our hobby, that's not the whole story. I first came across a ground based antenna with a BOG, that's a Beverage On Ground antenna. It's essentially a lo...

Foundations of Amateur Radio An often repeated statement about the purpose of our hobby is related to emergency preparedness. The various peak bodies around the world devote plenty of resources to the concept, with helpful examples, umbrella organisations, training, coordinators, grants and funding, photo-opportunities and all the other trimmings that come from the idea that you and I are going to...

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the things I love most about this hobby is the ability to randomly dart off into any related direction and learn new stuff. For example, the names Nikola, Guglielmo, Heinrich and Edwin emblazoned on a t-shirt sent to me by a very appreciative listener Jack KI4KEP, started an exploration into the deeds and misdeeds of the people behind those names. The first thre...

Foundations of Amateur Radio A regular lament is the lack of things to do in our hobby. I know, it's foreign to me, but there are plenty of amateurs who express frustration at the lack of activity, no contacts, nothing new, no challenges. For my poison, I started the process of contacting 100 different countries using 5 Watts. I've been at it for a number of years and truth be told, since my lates...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I bumped into a concept that I've heard repeated before. The so-called "impersonal nature" of digital modes. There's this idea that any communication that isn't using voice, is devoid of the human touch. Often this assertion is specifically made in relation to modern digital modes like JT65 and FT8. As an aside, I've never heard it in relation to other di...

Foundations of Amateur Radio In my day to day activities as a radio amateur I come in contact with people across all parts of their amateur journey. Some who don't yet know that they're amateurs, through to those who've just passed their test and are waiting for their callsign. Then there are those who have been amateurs for a while, experimented a bit and have settled down into the comfort of bei...

Foundations of Amateur Radio Every person is the product of their environment. Unsurprisingly this is even true for radio amateurs. That's not too say that we can't break our mould, but it takes effort. I grew up around technology in the 1980's. As a result I'm familiar with 8-bit microprocessors like the Motorola 6502 which featured heavily at the time. I tend to think in terms of the presence or...

Foundations of Amateur Radio If you've ever found yourself in the position of attempting to screw a PL259 into an SO239, or an N-type plug into an N-type socket you'll have likely come across the situation where the thread doesn't quite fit. If it does, you might have issues attempting to undo the connection, even if you didn't particularly do anything strenuous in relation to mating the two in th...

Foundations of Amateur Radio If you've ever had the pleasure or misfortune to hear an on-air net, you might have considered, however briefly, how that net came to be, how it's run and what's involved behind the scenes to make it happen. I host a weekly net called "F-troop". It's been running every week since the 12th of June in 2011. Since then I've made over 5000 contacts with stations scattered...

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you switch your radio on to start a radio fishing expedition you join all the other spectrum users across the planet. To be fair, you'll likely only become aware of some of those for the time that your radio is switched on, even if there are thousands around. One of the ways you can find other users is by ditting out "QRL?" in Morse or saying "Is this frequency in...

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you become a member of the amateur radio community you become part of a small group of humans who know and understand certain aspects of life. That's not to say that others don't share this or that the knowledge is unique or special, but radio amateurs are required to know this before they receive their license. In the past I've spoken about how getting a license...

Foundations of Amateur Radio As radio amateurs we learn which frequencies we're allowed to transmit on, where stuff lives and who has priority when there's a signal on the frequency you're operating on and when you need to contact your regulator if you hear an illegal station on the air. Some of that information arrives in your brain by way of the education process that eventually becomes your lic...

Foundations of Amateur Radio So, you've got yourself a license, or it's coming but you're waiting for the regulator to get the administration done and for your payment to go through. The excitement is building, you're itching to get started and you've told your family and friends what your new callsign is. Then the day arrives. Your callsign is allocated, it's paid for and you're allowed to call y...

Foundations of Amateur Radio Over the years I've been asked what the hobby of amateur radio is all about. My response has evolved over time, but it started with the lure of simple point-to-point communications. The antidote against such an example is that a mobile phone does that and more. Of course if you're already in the hobby you know that there is a massive difference between the two, but if...

Foundations of Amateur Radio During the week I received an email from a fellow amateur who described that they were feeling deeply disturbed by the decline of the core knowledge underlying the education and certification of today's new amateurs. This is a topic I've covered previously and some of what I'm about to say will touch on things I've said before. I come from a long background in informat...

Foundations of Amateur Radio During the week I celebrated my ninth birthday. You might think that I'm quite eloquent for a nine year old and you'd be right if it was related to how I came to be born. My ninth birthday as an amateur appeared in my diary unexpectedly on a Monday and I took the liberty of telling a few people. On one forum it started a wonderful series of comments from amateurs and w...

Foundations of Amateur Radio In the early 1990's when I was a broadcaster I would come into the studio and prepare my show. That involved hours of preparation, but on the technology side it involved vinyl records, reel-to-reel tape on open spools, looped tape on cart, running edits and razorblades. If you're not familiar, a running edit is where you're playing the tape at normal speed and you hit...

Foundations of Amateur Radio With the growing availability of new ways of communicating across the globe, from digital voice such as CODEC2, through weak signal modes like WSPR, JT65, MSK144 and FT4 to name a few, with Internet linked radio such as Brandmeister and DMR and the newly granted access to all Australian amateurs to all those modes, it's easy to overlook the one mode that started this a...

Foundations of Amateur Radio A while ago I set up a WSPR, or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter at home. Before I go into the details, WSPR is an amateur radio protocol that allows stations to transmit their callsign, location and power level and for receivers around the globe to decode those and upload the results to a central database. It's a great way to see what you can hear and what propagation...

Foundations of Amateur Radio Putting a radio in a car. As you might recall, most of my radio activity is done away from my shack. I tend to operate portable, camping, sitting on a jetty or using a picnic table while a BBQ is going nearby. For me operating with my car as a mobile base made more sense than trying to cram an antenna in a home with little or no garden. Putting a radio in a car can be...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day we were aligning an antenna for a contest. It had slipped on the rotator pole during a recent storm and when the rotator was set to zero it was pointing somewhere south east. Not ideal if you want to point your antenna at a particular station. The topic of the direction of north came up. There was vague hand-pointing, some mobile phone compass magic perfo...

Foundations of Amateur Radio An interesting question came up the other day. It's there such a thing as a solo contest? At the time I answered with examples like talking to a hundred countries to achieve the DXCC, or doing that on every band. I gave other examples too, but today I'd like to come at this from a different angle. When you go fly fishing, you typically stand in cold water trying to tem...