Foundations Of Amateur Radio

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