Foundations Of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio Over the past six years or so I've single mindedly been producing a weekly segment about Amateur Radio. Over time this has evolved into a podcast which gets about half a million hits a year. Naturally I receive emails and I do my best to respond in a timely fashion. One of the other things I do is announce a new edition of the podcast on several different sites where listeners have the opportunity to share their views about what ever is on their mind. Sometimes their response is even about the podcast itself, though I confess that some comments appear to indicate that listening isn't part of a requirement to actually form an opinion about what it is that I have said that week. All that aside, I find it immensely fascinating that the responses I receive vary so much in perspective. It's not hard to understand and observe that our community comes from people along all walks of life. From nine-year olds to ninety-year olds and everything in between. I tend not to comment directly

Foundations of Amateur Radio Recently I was told that Amateur Radio as a hobby is dead. This isn't news. It's often repeated and the story goes like this. The hobby is full of old dying men who when they finally shuffle off this mortal coil, or as we like to say "become a silent key", will take their hobby with them. There is anecdotal evidence to back this up. An organisation that tasked itself with the preservation of Morse Code in the tradition of Telegraphers and Seafarers is forecasting their demise due to the age of their membership. Other comments along these same lines talk about the futility of Amateur Radio in the face of other communication tools such as the Internet, Mobile Phones and the like. Emergency Services often ignore the Amateur Radio Service because they have all the communication infrastructure they need. People point at the declining numbers of Amateurs and say: "See, I told you, the numbers don't lie!" If you listen to this you might wonder why it is that you're fascinated by this

Foundations of Amateur Radio Amateur Radio as a hobby is one of those activities that covers a wide range of pursuits. A fellow Amateur once referred to it at 1000 hobbies in one. I like that as a description, but it really doesn't cover how wide and extensive this hobby really is. You've heard me talk about radios and on-air activity, about contesting, about out door activities, about electronics and antennas, about the grey line and about decibels. Today I'm going to talk about the Sun. Using a hand-held radio you're often using higher frequencies, 2m, or 144 MHz or higher. These radio waves mostly travel along line-of-sight. If you look at the lower frequencies, called HF, 28 MHz, 21 MHz, or lower, then those radio waves also travel line-of-sight, but they also travel up into the ionosphere surrounding the earth. If you manage to hit the angle just right, then some of those will reflect off the ionosphere back to earth. It's a lot like skipping a stone on a pond. If you get it right, you might make it

Foundations of Amateur Radio In my travels along the highways and byways of the Internet I came across several references to MARS in relation to Amateur Radio. Being the curious soul that I am, my interest was sparked. I must warn you, today there is a lot to cover. First up before I tell you anything, let me start by pointing out that what I'm talking about has different levels of application depending on where you are on the planet. I also need to inform you that in some parts of the globe this is considered illegal, where in other parts of the same globe, it's perfectly fine. So, MARS, or MARS/CAP if you want to get more precise. What is it, how does it work and what do you need to know about it? MARS is an acronym for Military Auxiliary Radio System and CAP is an acronym for Civil Air Patrol. Given that we don't have such things in Australia, this phenomenon relates to the United States of America where MARS/CAP is used to coordinate search activities and relay messages on HF and VHF frequencies near

Foundations of Amateur Radio If you have the need to switch something on and off, a likely first candidate is to get a switch from the local hardware store. The principle is pretty straightforward. You put the switch into the power supply lead and by pushing it on, the two halves of the switch make contact with each other, completing a circuit, and the thing you're switching turns on. It's a lot like having two bits of bare wire that you can touch the ends together. What if you want to remove the human touch from the equation, that is, switch something without having to actually push a switch? A potential candidate for this is a relay. In essence it's exactly the same as a manual switch, except the pushing is done by an electromagnet. The way it works is that you send a current through a coil that is wound around a metal core which results in a magnetic force. This force is used to push or pull the switch open or closed. Now both a manual switch and a relay have moving parts. That means that there is a lim

Foundations of Amateur Radio Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I look at an antenna and marvel at what it implies. A simple piece of conducting material made into some particular shape and size that harnesses the radio spectrum. I find it fascinating that this can and does exist and my fascination translates into a thing of beauty. I recall being on a camping trip and being introduced by a friend to an antenna that was strung between two trees in the middle of the bush. For some reason that escapes me we needed to lower the antenna and I got to have a look at the feed-point. Let me describe this to you. Picture a ceramic fence insulator. The two legs of the wire dipole are each fed through the insulator at a 90 degree offset, in just the same way as you would install it into an electric fence. Looped around this is a piece of RG213 coax which is soldered onto each leg of the dipole, shield to one side, centre to the other. No traditional balun, but there is a piece of wire wrapped around the coax, ho

Foundations of Amateur Radio About ten minutes ago I was blissfully unaware of the existence of James K2MIJ. It's unclear if this bliss will ever be returned because it's obvious to me that James and I share several things, a sense of humour among them. Mind you, I've not yet actually spoken to James, other than me saying "Hello" right now, but his QRZ page is a thing of wonder. Last week I was talking about weird and wonderful antennas. As you know, Amateur Radios don't particularly care what you plug into the back, as long as it looks like a 50 Ohm load, the vast majority of transceivers will happily transmit into them. I've heard of people making contacts with dummy loads, bits of wet string, chairs and as I said last week, bridges and rail-road tracks. James has made it his mission to tune up strange things. He's made a lawn chair dipole and is using it to contact all states across the US, with only 5 Watts. He's added more countries to his DXCC than I have - 53 - and while he's at it, he also made som

Foundations of Amateur Radio During the week I received a funny picture from a fellow amateur. This particular image was one titled "Multitap Antenna" and it featured a Four Wheel Drive vehicle with a bull-bar and a spring base mounted antenna. The antenna was made from pipe and at suitable intervals the pipe had a t-piece with a tap. Nothing too peculiar, right? Well, other than that the taps were standard brass garden taps with a hose-quick release clip and hose fittings. Made me laugh. Anyway, that reminded me of a series of postings on Social Media about the random things people have used as antennas, from emergency bits of copper wire attached to flag-poles to get a local station back on the air during an emergency to tuning up wire fences, bed frames and the like. There's even a "Strange Antenna Challenge" with suggestions of ladders, baby chairs - presumably without the baby, umbrellas in trees and other fun stuff. Suggestions to contact your local TV station to promote the activity to bring back

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I was going to talk to you about Grid Dip Oscillators. Some research later I realised that I don't yet understand the topic enough to explain it to myself, let alone explain it to you. I then set my sights on a simpler thing, an SWR Meter. Pretty standard fare in a radio shack. You plug it in and off you go, nothing to it. So I then set about learning how this actually works. As you know, if it's written on the Internet, it must be true, and in this case, there must be a thousand different explanations and ways that this common black box works in your shack. Since I found so many different explanations that made me recall a quote: "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother." So, at this point I should sit down and explain it to you as if you're my grandmother, right? Unfortunately I'm not yet at that level of understanding, so I'll not add to the noise of explanation until such time as I do understand it. Instead I'm going to

Foundations of Amateur Radio Last week I went on an adventure and came home with an experience. I've been wanting to go out and play radio for a while. Work has been spectacularly unhelpful in making time available to achieve this, not to mention the 17 million other things vying for my undivided attention. Last week the planets aligned and my outing came to pass. I'd set my sights on doing a SOTA activation. If you're not familiar with that, SOTA is an acronym for Summits On The Air and the aim is to get to the top of a mountain and make contacts from there. I've previously been under the tutelage and presence of some very experienced SOTA hams and during a conference in Canberra last year I managed to activate several summits with others. I even managed to survive walking up one peak on my own, using my hand-held to make some contacts. I use the word survive in less than ironic terms because I relied on Google Maps to navigate me up to the peak and for reasons best known to Google, it walked me up the s

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I want to talk about Politics. I can hear you groan from here, so hold your horses, stow your tar and feathers and put your pitchfork back in the barn. Amateur Radio is a hobby. It's to do with electronics and physics and the ionosphere and other cool stuff. Some people call Amateur Radio a thousand hobbies in one and that's a pretty good description. Underlying Amateur Radio are the people. Those who have spent their time studying, learning new skills, doing tests, passing exams, as well as people who are interested bystanders, not necessarily licensed, but drawn towards the bounty that Amateur Radio as a hobby represents. An interesting phenomenon among people is their varying level of passion. Some people are passionate about their dog, others about their children, others are passionate about cars, or baking, or in our case, passionate about Amateur Radio. Passion has been explained to me once as a "big elephant". You sit on its back and it takes you where you want t

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I celebrated my sixth birthday, no not that one, the one that reminds me when I first became licensed as a Radio Amateur. It caused me to reflect on what I've done with my license and what I've learned and where I'm heading. A recurring theme in my Amateur life is one of upgrading. Not a month goes by when someone makes a comment about my license status. As you might know, I hold the entry level license in Australia, the Foundation License as it's called. Other countries call theirs different things, but the aim of this license type is to introduce new entrants into the hobby and for me it's done that in spades. If you've listened to some of my previous mutterings and musings, or if you've listened to all of them, heading for 300 now, you'll have noticed that it's rare that I'm not talking about something I learned, something new, or something that interests me that I've found and I want to share with the community. This quest for knowledge, learning and curiosit

Foundations of Amateur Radio Let me start completely off-topic today with a thank you for emails and other expressions of concern regarding the demise of the bearing last week from my messy desk. I did not loose my marbles, other than the ball bearings in the disposed item and my sanity is as intact as it ever was. I was also asked for photos of the messy desk and as a concession to that I'll use a photo of the ball bearing for the podcast edition this week. How am I able to produce a photo of the disposed ball bearing? Truth be told, it's in the bin, the bin is in my office, but it wasn't emptied last week, since there was so little inside, so the ball bearing lives - until Tuesday when the bin will surely be emptied. Now, on to Amateur Radio matters, since that's why I'm here, though based on your emails, I'm not quite yet sure why you're here. Yesterday a good friend of mine, who tragically has yet to see the light and become a licensed Amateur came to me with a non-functioning antenna. He had purchase

Foundations of Amateur Radio In my time as a member of the radio community I've been in around 30 different shacks and a similar amount of camp-out style activations. I've operated at least a hundred different radio set-ups with different operating styles, logging systems and power sources. I wouldn't say that I was particularly experienced, but I've seen enough to make some observations. My first observation is that radio shacks and set-ups tend to be messy. It's not unusual to see several radios, antenna tuners, amplifiers, switches, computers, power supplies, soldering iron and accumulated cruft in the form of resistors, wires, spare antennas, connectors, screws, knobs and globs of solder, all vying for space on the same bench at the same time. I'm looking at my own desk right now and I can count a hundred different objects within 60 seconds with no effort what-so-ever, and that's on a desk that's barely larger than a square meter in size. I'm not particularly messy in the scheme of things. There's no

Foundations of Amateur Radio There are moments in your life when you say to yourself, duh, why didn't I think of this earlier? I had one of those last week. As you might recall, I have a hard time using HF communications from my home. There is lots of noise around and I've been going out mobile and portable to make contacts. As satisfying as that is, nothing beats sitting at home in your comfy chair with all the other home amenities. Ideally I have this notion that I should be able to do my hobby from home and have my cake and eat it too. Turns out, my duh moment was just that. I speak regularly on the local 2m repeater, in fact I host a weekly net called F-troop that encourages new and returning hams to get on air and make some noise in a friendly environment where no question is too silly and mistakes can be made on-air without subsequent yelling and carrying-on. So, I have a fully working HF radio at home, but it works just fine on 2m and 70cm. My duh moment was when I realised that there are a mult

Foundations of Amateur Radio Ingenuity is the name of the game in Amateur Radio, building, inventing, solving and helping are all part and parcel of this hobby. We like to lay claim to being the source of all that is good in the world, all that was invented came from Amateur Radio first, right? Seriously though, sometimes we pick up a technology along the way from other places. If you've ever picked up your microphone and pushed one or more buttons on it whilst the push to talk button was down, you've likely used this technology that's set out in an ITU recommendation called Q.23. It has the quaint title of: "Technical Features of Push-Button Telephone Sets". It's a brief document as such, all of four pages, two title pages and one mostly dealing with why this Push-Button idea is a great one and how it relates to international phone calls etc. The meat is in the final page, showing eight frequencies and how you combine them to generate voice frequency signals. If you've been paying attention, you might r

Foundations of Amateur Radio Last week over dinner I was chatting with a friend about Amateur Radio in a discussion about things that take your fancy. I was attempting to explain what it specifically was about this hobby that keeps me coming back. I talked about invention, about exploration, about fishing and catching that elusive station, but looking back over that discussion it occurred to me that none of that is what "does it" for me. Sure, those things are part of it, but it's not what makes me turn on my radio, what has my face light up in delight or allows me to get out of bed in the middle of the night to explore the bands. A brief phone call with another Amateur to wish him Happy Birthday twigged me to what's going on. He asked me: "What's new in your world?", and my answer, innocuous at best was: "Well, last weekend I heard a Japanese station from my QTH." In the past I've mentioned that I've made many contacts with Japan, looking at my log, 63 of them, on 10m and 15m, so the fact that I heard Ja

Foundations of Amateur Radio Being on air and getting on air are part of the journey that you undertake when becoming a Radio Amateur, but what happens before all that, what do you need to get your foot in the door as it were? If you're listening to this via a radio, you're already on the journey, but if you've downloaded this as a podcast, you're not far behind and your journey towards becoming a Radio Amateur is just around the corner. Let's start with a few things before I start with the journey itself. First of all, every country is slightly different, so while I can give you specific examples, they'll be valid for only a few people. In becoming a Radio Amateur you'll have to undertake some learning, pass a test and get a license. This license is specific to you and for most, if not all Amateurs, the license itself is for life. That means that if you have already passed an Amateur License Test in your past, you're likely still a Licensed Amateur today. Being a Licensed Amateur, or having a License, d

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the recurring topics in on-air discussion is that of antennas and if we were to graph the topics of conversations, antennas would be the clear winner in any line-up. As a beginning Amateur this phenomenon bamboozled me for a very long time. Why are these people talking about antennas all the time and what's there to know that you can't say in 30 seconds? From the mouths of babes... I've mentioned in the past that Amateur Radio is to a very large degree magic. Another way of expressing that is to say that there is an Art to being an Amateur and antennas play a big part. A friend of mine loaned me his antenna kit called a Buddipole. It's a portable set-up that is akin to Meccano or Lego in that you can build up an antenna from parts and make a large range of antennas from the same basic parts, two coils, a feed point, a balun, two telescopic whips and some extension pieces. For me this particular antenna has been temperamental and I couldn't get my head around how to ma

Foundations of Amateur Radio Have you ever been on air and in the middle of a wonderful discussion that all of a sudden and often unexpectedly erupts into a heated argument about nothing? One of those conversations that came to mind was about what the term DX means. I'd been taught that DX means outside the country and if you're calling CQ DX, I was taught that this means that you're looking for a contact in the next country. So. What's the argument? Simple really. In a nutshell, making a contact between Perth and Sydney, nearly 3300 kilometres apart is inside one country, but making a contact across the same distance between say Amsterdam and Lebanon, is about nine countries away. This really means that for every station DX has a different meaning. So, this DX caper means different things for different people. I've said in the past that I'd laughed when a station made a big deal about contacting Japan, when that's something I do regularly. The opposite effect happened when I contacted Cuba. For me it's