Foundations of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio The fourth clause of the original Amateur's Code, published in 1927 has a lot to say about the tone of amateur radio. It says: The Amateur is Friendly. Slow and patient sending when requested, friendly advice and counsel to the beginner, kindly assistance and cooperation for the broadcast listener: these are marks of the amateur spirit. The 2022 ARRL handbook tweaks th...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The third clause of the original Amateur's Code reads: The Amateur is Progressive. He keeps his station abreast of science. It is built well and efficiently. His operating practice is clean and regular. The 2022 ARRL handbook is similar: The Radio Amateur is PROGRESSIVE...with knowledge abreast of science, a well-built and efficient station and operation above reproach...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The second clause of the original Amateur's Code reads: The Amateur is Loyal. He owes his amateur radio to the American Radio Relay League, and he offers it his unswerving loyalty. The 2022 ARRL handbook presents it with the following words: The Radio Amateur is LOYAL...offers loyalty, encouragement and support to other amateurs, local clubs and the American Radio Rela...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The first clause of the original Amateur's Code reads: The Amateur is Gentlemanly. He never knowingly uses the air for his own amusement in such a way as to lessen the pleasure of others. He abides by the pledges given by the A.R.R.L. in his behalf to the public and the Government. The 2022 ARRL handbook version states it like this: The Radio Amateur is CONSIDERATE...n...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The American Radio Relay League or ARRL is one of the oldest amateur associations on Earth. 1926 saw the birth of "the Radio Amateur's Handbook", the first edition of what we now know as "The ARRL Handbook For Radio Communications" featured chapters on what it means to be an amateur, how to build and operate a station, how propagation works and how to experiment. The v...

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the most misunderstood settings on your radio is the microphone gain. You'll often hear people talking about adjusting it up or down depending on what they hear and the results are often displeasing to the ear. The very first thing to know is that the microphone gain is likely the single most audible setting on your radio, right after the tuning frequency. It's...

Foundations of Amateur Radio As a new amateur one of the initial perplexing issues you're confronted with is setting up your first radio to talk to the local repeater. The question is so common that it's almost an invisible rite of passage to a new licensee. While I'm a fan of learning, there is plenty of that to go round and setting up your radio to talk to a repeater shouldn't be a hurdle to get...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The art of amateur radio is a globe spanning activity, held together by radio waves and the promise of a community with a shared uncommon interest. The strength of a community depends entirely on the members of that community. Without the efforts of each individual amateur, our worldwide license to experiment is doomed. You might ask yourself what part you have to play...

Foundations of Amateur Radio There are days that my brain just cannot keep up with all the ideas that I have spinning around and today is one such experience. Before I take you on this wild ride I will mention that I'm only going to focus on the amateur radio specific things going on, but I tend to have a couple of projects on the go at any one time, much like a messy desk piled high with paper, b...

Foundations of Amateur Radio In over a decade of writing a weekly article about all manner of different aspects of our hobby and community, I've never once talked about power connectors for your radio. It's so universal as to be invisible and rarely discussed. So much so, that something you do out of habit, makes another stop dead in their tracks and ask themselves why they never thought of it. De...

Foundations of Amateur Radio Not a weekend goes by without an amateur radio contest or six, each with its own objectives, audience, times, rules, exchanges and scores. When you get bitten by the contesting bug, you'll quickly graduate from using pen and paper to keyboard and screen. That process comes with the inevitable selection of software suitable to both run on your shack computer and log you...

Foundations of Amateur Radio A couple of weeks ago a friend, Ben VK6NCB asked an interesting question in our weekly net. He wanted to know, if money wasn't a concern, what would your ideal shack look like? The answers varied widely from leaving everything as is and using the money to retire, through to purpose built fixed or mobile shacks, with world wide DXCC activation travel and everything in b...

Foundations of Amateur Radio If you connect the antenna ports of two radios together and transmit from one into the other, that would be bad, right? Just how bad would it be and what could you do differently? Before I dig in, you might ask yourself why on Earth this question even arises. Consider having two radios and one antenna. You couldn't use a T-piece to connect two radios to the antenna unl...

Foundations of Amateur Radio In the time that I've been a radio amateur not a day has gone by without learning something new. Today was no different and this time learning took me both by surprise and delight. I realise that being delighted by charts, since that's what we're talking about, might not be something that comes naturally, but I can highly recommend that you use this as an opportunity t...

Foundations of Amateur Radio It is in my nature to ask questions. It's been hammered into me from an early age and it often brings me new friends, new ideas and new projects. After spending quite some time mulling over my understanding of radio, I came up with this question: "Is it possible to build a single radio transmitter that is capable of emitting a WSPR signal at the same time on all the HF...

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you finally get to the point of pushing the talk button on your microphone, after passing the test, receiving your license, getting your radio, building an antenna, digesting the manual, identifying a repeater, untangling its offset, programming those frequencies and keying up, you might be surprised to realise that you're lost for words. Something which I've talk...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I was woken by the sound of a thunderclap. It was shockingly loud and came out of the blue. A few moments later, it happened again. I exploded out of bed, rushed to the shack, disconnected the beacon power and switched the antenna coax to "safe". After breathing a sigh of relief, everything went dark and with it came the distinctive sound of the sudden de...

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you obtain your license there's a whole lot of learning to be had before you even get started with your first transmission, but when you get there you'll discover that learning has just begun and the rest of your life will be beset with challenges, quests, discovery and dawning understanding. One of the early and recurring questions is around the best time to be o...

Foundations of Amateur Radio In our hobby we regularly invoke line of sight when we discuss the VHF and higher bands. It's a simple concept to help describe when two transceivers can hear each other. The process evokes an image of a beam of light travelling unobstructed between the antennas at either end. Some might picture a laser, others a flashlight, both are useful to become familiar with some...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The amateur radio community is as varied as humanity across the globe. It represents an endless supply of ideas and experiments that continue to attract people looking for something new and exiting. On the face of it, our hobby is about radio and electronics, about propagation and antennas, about modes and contacts, but if you limit your outlook to those topics you'll...

Foundations of Amateur Radio The lure of digital modes and the opportunities they bring are enough to tempt some amateurs to begin a journey into integrating their radio and computer to make a new world come to life. This isn't without pain or challenge, but the outcomes are so enticing that many embark on this adventure every day. As a person who has made this trip it's heart warming to see the j...

Foundations of Amateur Radio Antennas and propagation are the two single most discussed topics in our hobby, that and how an FT8 contact isn't real. Not a day goes by without some conversation about what antenna is the best one and by how much? In my opinion it's a futile effort made all the worse by so called experts explaining in undeniable gobbledegook, or sometimes even using science, just how...

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the first questions a new amateur asks is "Which radio should I buy?" It's a topic I've discussed at length and the answer "It depends." is unhelpful without doing more research, but after you've done the work, you'll be able to answer it for yourself. A question that is just as important, but not asked nearly enough, frankly, I've not heard it in the decade I'v...

Foundations of Amateur Radio Over the weekend I learnt to my chagrin that my shack was not ready for the contest I decided to participate in for an hour. Truth be told, it was probably me who wasn't ready, but I'm going to blame my shack, since it can't argue and besides this is my story. It started off with turning on the HF radio. That involved turning off my 10m WSPR beacon which is transmittin...

Foundations of Amateur Radio Identifying the problem is the first step in fixing it and with that I want to talk about emergencies. One of the very first things I was told about our amateur radio community was that we're here for when emergencies happen. Our purpose is to communicate, so in a crisis, we can assist by supplying communication to the situation. I've talked about some of this before....