Foundations Of Amateur Radio

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 same room, supplying the time happens within the context of that room, but if the world is our oyster, our room is a little larger and dawn for one person is dusk for another, at the same time. Before we could communicate at the speed of light and travel faster than a bullet, time was a relative thing related to the location of the Sun and considered mainly by mariners and astronomers. Even with the advent of increasingly accurate clocks, for most people, noon was when the Sun was at its highest point and the local clock was set to that. When our world got smaller, because communication and travel got faster, p

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 amateurs across 28 countries during the 22 days it was in orbit. It was launched just over four years after Sputnik 1 and was built entirely by amateurs for radio amateurs. In the sixty years since we've come a long way. Today high school students are building and launching CubeSats and several groups have built satellites for less than a $1,000. OSCAR 76, the so-called "$50SAT" cost $250 in parts. It operated in orbit for 20 months. Fees for launching a 10cm cubed satellite are around $60,000 and reducing by the year. If that sounds like a lot of money for the amateur community, consider that the budget for operating VK

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 though I've been here for a while, I feel like I'm learning something new every day. One of the largest challenges associated with using low power on HF is propagation on the HF bands which is more fluid than ever. There's plenty of variables. For example, in addition to the day-night cycle, there's Earth's magnetic field, the impact from coronal mass ejections as well as the solar cycle. As that cycle waxes and wanes, or in my case, wanes and waxes, propagation trends are affected on a longer term basis. There's all manner of tools to explore this. The Australian Space Weather Service is one of many such bodies that c

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 surrounded by existing poles and wire mesh. The preparation for me was the key to having an easy path to a successful outcome. First step was to measure out the existing poles for the best fit, measured, then stood back and looked, then measured again, yes all is good, this will work. Made up the ropes and pulleys, rechecked the length and height, yep all good, put the ropes and pulleys in place, ready to attach the insulators. I'm going for four corners with an overall measure of 23 meters long by 17 meters wide. Using a corner feed point. Made up a feed point cockatoo deterrent, 90 mil storm water pipe abou

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 very own remote-controlled voice-keyer. After making the announcement I received several emails from excited contesters who wanted to thank me for my efforts and I have to tell you, making something that others find useful is very rewarding. My announcement also sparked some discussion around using voice-keyers including some who consider that this isn't a useful addition to the hobby. More on that in a moment. After the code was written, I had to actually, you know, use it. So I hooked up my radio, launched ssbdaemon and fired up my current contest logger of choice, TLF, and attempted to make noise. Unfortunatel

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 itch from my own shack. For 24 glorious hours I was able to make contacts from the comfort of my home, being able to make a cup of tea, eat some dinner, stay warm, catch a nap when the bands were closed and generally have a blast. My set-up worked well. Operating QRP or low power, I used a basic contest logger, since I wasn't expecting to be making many contacts. To automatically call CQ, I recorded my voice and set-up a script that played the audio, waited four seconds, then played it again. Using my audio mixer, I could turn that on and off at will and between that and the headset I was wearing I had loads of fu

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 a limerick by Arthur Frackenpohl: There was a young fellow of Perth Who was born on the day of his birth He married, they say On his wife's wedding day And died when he quitted the earth Stay with me. In this day and age, first and foremost, let me give you a short summary, cobbled together from bits and pieces of a new invention, conceived whilst watching the evening sunset in close proximity to the beach. What this cornucopia of tautologies has to do with our hobby might not be obvious, but let me illustrate. Consider the phrase: "a compromise antenna", as-in, "Oh, I'd never use that antenna, it's a co

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, let alone one thousand characters. Latin fared a little better. It's been in use for over two thousand years, but other than fields like biology, medicine and of course some religions, the best you can hope for is et cetera, mea culpa and my favourite, carpe noctum, that and a few mottos scattered about. Using technology to store information is no better. If you have a 3.5 inch floppy disc tucked away in a drawer, can you still read it today and do you know why it's called a floppy disc? What about a 5.25 inch, or 8 inch floppy. What about tape. Do you still have backups stored on DAT? Even if you could physical

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 illustrates exactly what it's like to dip your toes into the world of amateur radio and it's a path that many amateurs have taken to become licensed and transmitting. I'm mentioning this because that same short wave listener also won a platinum diploma from the anniversary of Stanislaw Lem's 100th birthday amateur contest. If that name sends tingles of excitement down your spine, you're familiar with his work. If not, you might be interested to know that Stanislaw Lem was a world acclaimed Polish writer of science fiction who died in 2006. This random discovery, in addition to giving me ideas about opportunities for

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you begin your amateur radio journey, one of the first things you learn about that's not directly involved with radios and antennas is the ionosphere and its impact on long distance communications. Immediately after that you are more likely that not to be introduced to the biggest plasma experiment in our backyard, the Sun. With that introduction comes information about solar flares, solar flux, sunspots, geomagnetic storms, coronal mass ejections as well as the solar cycle, the solar index and associated propagation forecasts. Before I dig further, I will point out that I'm mentioning this with the ultimate aim for you to get on air and make noise, so fasten your seat-belt and let's go for a ride. The Sun is big. If it was hollow, it could fit more than a million Earths inside. The Sun accounts for 99.8% of the total mass of our entire solar system. About 73% of the Sun's mass is hydrogen, about 25% is helium and the rest, about 1.69% is made up of all the other heavier

Foundations of Amateur Radio Since December 2010 I've been licensed as a radio amateur. For some this seems like a long time ago, for others, it's just the beginning. In my time thus far I've attempted to document and describe my journey and in doing so, I've had the unbeatable pleasure of hearing stories from others who were inspired by my efforts to join, or rejoin the hobby. It occurred to me that it's hard to tell when you look at any one amateur if the ink on their licence is still wet, or if the whole certificate is faded and yellowed with time. You also cannot tell by looking if one amateur turns on their gear in the car during the daily commute, or if they go out on expeditions to remote locations twice a year. The callsign a person holds tells you even less, let alone the class of their license. In our community we talk about mentoring and we call such people Elmers, but do we really use this as a way to glue together our hobby as its namesake might suggest? As a result of my profile, there's a

Foundations of Amateur Radio Getting on air and making noise is what it's all about, so last week, that's exactly what we did. Randall VK6WR, Jishnu VK6JN and I participated in the Fox Mike Hotel Portable Operations Challenge which is specifically scored to deal with power and mode differences between stations by using a handicap system that they liken to playing golf. Having been the winner of the Sir Donald Bradman Award in the Millmerran Memorial Golf Tournament for making the highest score on the day, this speaks to me in more ways than I can say. In case you're wondering, more hits in golf is bad and I'm not a golfer. Scoring in the Portable Ops Challenge is based around four different attributes, the power you're using, the nature of your station, portable or fixed, the mode used and the number of transmitters in use. To achieve this, you exchange a maidenhead grid square, a combination of letters and numbers that indicates your location on earth, which is then used to determine how many kilometres p

Foundations of Amateur Radio Over the past few weeks I've been having my hearing tested. I've had the opportunity to discuss sound in some detail with an audiologist. Today as a result of a collision between a jar of chilli pickles and a tiled floor I've come to the realisation that sound is important in unexpected ways. It will probably not come as a surprise to you that sound has an emotional component. Just think of a particular song, or a voice, or something that you've heard previously. The sound of a jack-hammer, or a bell, a horse or a jet, each completely different, impact on your mood. Some sounds are pleasant, others jarring. Some make you feel happy, others make you anxious or even angry. For some time now I've observed in myself that there are times when I cannot stand sound and other times when I invite it into my life. For example, if there's a HF radio going in the background and I'm attempting to have a conversation with a person in the shack, the sound coming from the radio causes irritat

Foundations of Amateur Radio When I first started in this hobby I found myself surrounded by other amateurs who all seemed to have a spare room in their house, or a spare building near their house, or even a property somewhere, dedicated to amateur radio. There was an endless parade of equipment, antennas, tools, workshops, spare parts and the like. Frankly it was overwhelming. A decade on, I have some perspective to share on that first exposure. For me the hobby was brand new. I didn't have a family history, there were no amateur friends I'd grown up with, no electronics uncle or anything even remotely resembling any of that. What I was exposed to wasn't a new thing, it represented something that had been going on for years, decades and lifetimes even. It quickly became apparent that having a shack was desirable, but in my case, at the time, unobtainable, so instead I did the next best thing I could think of. I built a shack in my car. That was a journey that took several years to make. At the end of it,

Foundations of Amateur Radio In our hobby we use kilohertz and megahertz enthusiastically. Sometimes even gigahertz. The other day during a discussion the question arose, what comes after tera, as in terahertz? I couldn't remember, so I had to look it up, peta comes next, then exa, zetta and yotta, derived from the Greek word for eight. That in and of itself was interesting, but it turns out that Greek isn't the only language used in attributing SI metric prefixes, SI being the International System of Units. Of the 20 units, which I'll get to in a moment, there's 12 with Greek origins, five deriving from Latin, two from Danish and one from Spanish. The units are used to describe how many of a thing there are in base-10, so, a thousand of something is kilo, or ten to the power of three, which gives us kilohertz. A gigahertz is ten to the power of nine and so-on. Interestingly, kilo is derived from the Greek word thousand, but mega comes from the Greek for great. Both hecto, as in hectopascals and deca as in

Foundations of Amateur Radio A couple of weeks ago an amateur put out a call on the local email discussion list. The message was simple, it read: "I have a 606A HP Signal Generator with a copy of the Operating and Service Manual. It covers 50 kHz to 65 MHz. Free to a good home :-)" It's not the first time that such a message has done the rounds, but this time my reply was quick enough for it to be first. Overnight I became the new custodian of a Hewlett Packard 606A Signal Generator. A signal generator is a tool that can form a specific carrier across a range of frequencies in much the same way that your amateur radio can. In this case, the HP-606A can cover all the amateur HF bands and everything in between. The signal that's generated is calibrated, that is, it's of a specific power level, very stable, clean and it can be used to calibrate other equipment. To set the scene, the HP-606A was released into the wild in 1959. You might call it vintage at this point. It's the size of a modern microwave oven,

Foundations of Amateur Radio Recently I illustrated the diversity of our community by highlighting social media posts made to a single community over a 24 hour period. Each reflecting a different aspect of our community. It occurred to me that although those things are amateur radio, some more obviously than others, there's a whole other side of the community that isn't amateur radio. Look at radio astronomy for example. One of my friends is an astronomer and we've been having loads of fun learning from each other. I'm getting exposed to concepts like Fourier transforms, interferometry, sampling and plenty of the mathematical concepts that underlie my interest in amateur radio. Then there's things like physics. While I've always been interested, long before I met my physics teacher in high-school who helped me kick off a career in computing, I've been playing with light bulbs, batteries, disassembling old hardware like the valve radio that I was given when I was about twelve or so. There's the continued

Foundations of Amateur Radio You've heard me say that amateur radio is a thousand hobbies in one. It's not my idea, but it speaks to me in ways that are hard to articulate. Today I found a way that might give you an inkling just how vast this community is. One place where our community gathers is on-air, but it's not the only place. There are clubs, websites, email lists, video channels and other outlets all catering for different amateur radio users and their interests. One such place is the social media site Reddit. In the so-called amateurradio sub with currently over 88 thousand members, there is a lively community discussing many of the different aspects of our hobby. Over the past 24 hours, 23 posts were made in that single community. "Thanks, K-2722 hunters", was a photo about activating Carolina Beach State Park, as part of an activity called Parks on the Air, or POTA. To participate you can either go to a park, set-up your station and make contacts, or you can stay at home and listen out for peop

Foundations of Amateur Radio The essential purpose of an amateur radio contest is to get on air and make noise. Each contest has a set of rules on how they intend to achieve this. An integral part of the rules is the idea that you establish a contact, a QSO, with another station and exchange some predefined information. Likely the callsign, a signal report and often something else, a serial number, the age of the operator, a maidenhead locator or the CQ or ITU zone. I'll race past the discussion around sending 5 and 9 as a standard signal report and move right along. To validate your activity, you record this information in a log and after the contest has concluded, you share your log with the contest organiser who collates and processes the submitted logs to determine a winner. As a participant you look for your callsign on the results page and if you're lucky you get some form of trophy, a certificate, a plaque, or more often than not, a PDF. An amateur radio contest is not a particularly high stakes comp

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you explore the landscape of amateur radio you'll discover an endless array of innovation. There's websites with photos and descriptions of activities, places discovered and lessons learnt. If you watch the growing collection of YouTube channels you'll discover videos describing what people have been up to, commenting on videos they've seen and you'll start to notice that people all over the community are pinging off each other. Social media does the same. If you read an amateur magazine, or a book, you'll unearth references and counter-references, links and credits, descriptions gleaned and tests made, all of them interlinking and adding to the knowledge base that underpins the amateur radio community and society beyond it. The same is true for on-air activity. Look at contesting for example, you'll hear descriptions from other contesters, sharing their lessons learnt which potentially influence how you do your next contesting activity. The same is true for working DX, op