Foundations Of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio It broke and now what? Imagine you're a new amateur. You've woken up in the middle of the night because insomnia seems like a good way to use amateur radio as an excuse to get on air and make some noise. You turn on the radio, key up the transmitter and the next thing you know it's dark. The breaker that powers your radio popped and there's no more glow coming from the hardware that's warming up your shack. You get up, reset the breaker, tighten up your dressing gown and switch on your gear. You sit down and key up. Pop, darkness. What do you do next? The first thing to realise is that there is something wrong. That might sound obvious, the radio just tripped the breaker and it went off, but sometimes it's not that obvious, sometimes there's something wrong, but it's not nearly as clear as light and dark. For example, you might key up and the SWR goes high. You might not even notice if your radio is set to monitor the power output, or the automatic gain control that indicates