Foundations of Amateur Radio

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 curiosity is something that I've always had and I'm sure I'm not alone with those traits. It occurred to me that my newly minted Amateur License achieved exactly what it intended to, Introduce me to Amateur Radio. It did more than that. It set me on a path that I'm travelling down today where I'm learning a new thing most weeks and telling others about it. I don't yet fully grasp the difference between an NPN and a PNP transistor, nor do I understand the workings of a Valve to the point where I can explain it to you, but the truth of the matter is that I haven't had the need to, or at this stage the curiosity to. That's not to say that a day will come when I do want to know. So here's the thing. Would you rather I have the highest level of license, having passed my test, cramming for my exam, guessing answers on a multiple-choice form, or would it be better if I came to know and understand the body of work that makes up the foundations of our hobby? As an aside, I have taken a mock test at some point. If I recall, I managed a score of 75% or so, might have been higher, but it outlined the areas of knowledge that I don't have at this time and that was why I took it in the first place. There are Amateurs who pass tests and then there are Amateurs who learn. One final comment about upgrading. When was the last time you upgraded your car license to the next level, say rally driver, or Formula-1 driver? When was the last time you got called out on not having upgraded and admonished for being a lowly car driver? Onto Amateur stuff. First of all, the wheel bearing has gone to a better place. It drove away on a big blue truck on Wednesday morning and is no longer. So sad. In antenna news, you may recall my experiences with the installation and tuning of an antenna for a friend of mine. I made all manner of what some would call outlandish statements, one Amateur all but called me a liar and accused me of making it all up to promote my podcast. All this excitement because I dared query the documentation of an Antenna. I've reached out to the manufacturer, but I've not yet received a response. I'm told that my hunch that this was a vertical dipole was correct. That in itself is curious since I've been experimenting with a vertical dipole made from coax, not enough to talk about success yet, but enough to be told that it will never work. Gotta love the doubters. As I suspected, the cut-off piece of inner coax, if you recall, the one that was a centimetre or so too long, is half of a capacitor, the other half is in the base of the antenna. Note that all this is based on what I've been told by a fellow amateur, and I'm looking forward to hearing from the manufacturer what they have to say. So, my vertical coax antenna idea started off with the idea that I wanted to use a vertical dipole for working portable. I realised that some of the designs I've seen knocking around the 'net are cutting off long chunks of shield, or folding it back, or doing all manner of funky things to a piece of coax. I wondered what would happen if I took a piece of wire, cut it to the length of one half of a dipole, attached a banana-plug to it and stuck it on the end of a piece of coax. One half of the antenna would be the wire, the other half would be the shield of the coax. If I could come up with something like a choke that would stop RF travelling all the way back to my radio, I might have myself a vertical dipole with the benefit of not having to cut up coax, no extra connectors and if I made it possible for the choke to slide up and down, my antenna would be simple to transform into something for any band. As I said, I'm not yet at the success stage. I did some testing with something called an ugly balun, but it's pretty clunky and results are mixed. I tried ferrite-clip-on-beads, but they didn't seem to do the trick - though that could have be the nature of the particular clip-on's that I had at the time. When I have some more play time free, I'l

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 purchased a so-called "Ground Independent Monopole" suitable for 380 to 520 MHz. You get no points for guessing that this was to be used for a CB installation on his vehicle. When you read the accompanying material, this magical antenna has a 4 dB improvement when compared to a 3 wave whip in the centre of a metal roof. But then when you look at the foot note, it talks about a 4 dB improvement over a 1/4 wave whip, but pattern tests only deliver a 2 to 2.5dB actual gain. I can hear you groaning from here. It leads me to several observations. As a licensed amateur you should be able to already spot holes as wide as a semi-trailer in those few statements. As amateurs we're often dismissive of the CB community, but how can they be held to account if manufacturers publish what looks to me like drivel of the highest order. The design itself is curious. There appears to be a loading coil in the base, the centre of the coax is trimmed to a specified length and inserted through the coil and electrical continuity exists between the radiating element and the coax shield. After spending some time trouble-shooting the installation I determined that the PL259 connector at the end wasn't actually soldered to the coax, so we fixed that. Using my antenna analyser we trimmed the vertical as specified, a couple of millimetres at a time, but it wasn't setting the world on fire with the updated SWR charts I was generating. We stopped trimming when we got close, since cutting off length is easy, cutting on length not so much. I then re-read the instructions and queried the length of the trimmed bit of inner coax that was inserted into the loading coil and found out that it was about a centimetre too long. Fingers crossed we trimmed that to length and the SWR chart improved. It still didn't set the world on fire, but at least the SWR wasn't 8 to 1 on CB Channel 40. Of course I've urged my friend to get an Amateur License, but that's ultimately their own choice. What I took away from the experience is that even a very basic Amateur License like the one I hold is sufficient to understand better what is going on and to be able to begin the process of trouble-shooting antenna installations. I thought I understood that this antenna was basically a vertical dipole, but at the moment I'm not sure and I'm wondering if the loading coil is actually a matching circuit and I wonder why the coax shield and the radiator are connected to each other. I'm sure the antenna is designed with the best intentions and I'm moderately confident that it works as intended. Now all we need to do is train the marketing department to talk to the engineering department before publishing their materials. For me the take-away is two fold. Don't blame a CB-er for their lack of knowledge, sometimes the manufacturer is to blame. The other take-away is that with a basic understanding of Amateur Radio you can help your fellow radio operator. Now, where on my desk is that thing I was looking for? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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 food on this desk - other than the cup of coffee I've just made and there's no globs of solder or other sticky things like oil and glue, but still. One of my friends remarked the other day that no matter how much space we have, we always seem to run out. He wondered why. At the time, my reply was something along the lines of: "Well, it's for the same reason as your bank-account never has enough money in it." While that observation is probably valid, I'd like to point out some side effects of a messy desk. If your intent is to operate the radio and get on air to make noise, there needs to be a working station. You need to be able to test it without having to move stuff around and fault finding needs to be part of the way the thing is set-up. One station I visited had solved this problem by moving their operating station away from the wall so they had two access points. The front where you operate the station and the back where you test it. That way you get to have your cake and eat it too. The set-up worked really well. Picture a few racks with gear, an operating desk arranged in an L-shape, but moved away from the wall, rather than pushed into the corner. Space limitations prevented you from walking all the way around it, but you could get to all but one side of one rack. All this was arranged into the space of a standard spare bedroom, pretty much the same as most shack's I've visited. I find myself looking around my own environment with this front-and-rear idea in mind and I'm having a think about how I might apply it. Another observation is that we never ever throw anything away, ever. I have seen antenna projects that were doomed to fail from day one, spare screws, bits of wood, drawers and drawers of random electronic components, bits of wire, cut-off connectors, damaged bits of coax, half-wound baluns, empty tubes of silicone, failed micro-switches, bent wave guides, broken windings, arced air-gap capacitors, empty boxes, plastic bags, old radio magazines, all waiting for the day that they become useful, likely never. I'm not saying that this cruft is never useful. I'm saying that the chances of them being useful is inversely proportional to the amount. That means, the more junk you have, the less useful it is. Perhaps culling is a way to increase the usefulness of what's left. The ultimate example of something like this is a Go-Cart wheel bearing that I have lying on my desk. It's a piece of precision engineering, but it's stuffed. It has completed it's useful service life, was discarded in the dirt and I picked it up, cleaned it, oiled it and now it sits on my desk. It looks great, feels nice to play with, but as objects go, it's one of the least useful items on my desk, otherwise filled with paper, computer gear and radio gear. I just made the bold step to toss it in the bin. Not yet sure how I feel about it, but I'll try by saying that it's the beginning of making the remaining cruft on my desk more useful. Perhaps our communal messiness is a thing to do with amateur radio as a hobby, or perhaps we have more than our share of messy members of society. The very nature of our hobby is that we test and trial things whilst doing on-air stuff like making contacts and chatting with friends. Perhaps we should arrange our work-spaces to match. If you've found a way to make it work for you, please feel free let me know and perhaps send me a picture or two. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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 multitude of 2m and 70cm transmitters around that I could add to my tally of things heard and worked. There are websites dedicated to these transmitters and schedules exist to highlight when, how and where these things are. So, what am I talking about? The wonderful world of Amateur Radio Satellites. There are lots around, sending out idents, having uplink and downlink, sending out digital packets, you name it, the wide variety of Amateur Radio in a 90 minute orbit around the planet. I'll confess that I thought there were one or two doing the rounds, but there are a few more. Just counting the active ones, there are 85 satellites designed to be used by Amateurs at the moment, of course that changes all the time, going up and down as more are launched and others stop responding. In addition to this collection, there are other things you can listen out for, like weather satellites, the International Space Station and a bunch of other objects. I came across the N2YO website which shows you what's up in your sky right now, the foot print and direction, when it clears the horizon, in which direction and what the highest elevation is and when it vanishes again, all very helpful in getting half a chance to hear the transmission in the first place. I've said this before, this hobby is magic. I can't do HF, so now I'm playing with satellites. Looks like I'm going to have to sort out some digital decoding software as well, since many of the satellites have all manner of non-Morse code transmissions, APRS, digital modes, graphics, etc. Lots to learn. Did I mention that you could do much of this with a hand-held radio? Power is not a problem and an external antenna is likely all you'll need. By the way, this is what I like about Amateur Radio, there are so many different aspects to this hobby, so much variety, so many things to learn and experience and I have only just scratched the surface. It bears repeating that a beginner's licence in Amateur Radio gives you access to all this and most of the things I've been talking about since I started talking about the hobby back in 2011. I've been licensed now for a little more than a minute and a half, but I still get a pleasant surprise on a regular basis about the size and scope of my chosen hobby. There's no excuse, getting bored with Amateur Radio is just not an option. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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 recognise this as DTMF or Dual Tone Multiple Frequency signalling. It's pretty nifty. Send two discrete frequencies at the same time across some link and decode it at the other end. It's nifty because these frequencies might happen during a normal conversation, but not at the same time for a particular duration. As Amateurs we use this to communicate with our repeaters, to send signals to it, to activate links, to power on and off stuff and all manner of other interesting things. So, how does it actually work? Well, you have two sets of four non-overlapping frequencies which you can combine into 16 different combinations, enough for 10 digits, four letters and two symbols. To make this work, the frequencies must be pretty stable, the ITU recommends less than 1.8% off the nominal frequency and distortion must be 20 dB below the fundamental frequencies. Today producing such a thing is trivial, a chip for a dollar will do the job and another one at the other end to decode it. Four bucks and you're good to go for two-way DTMF at both ends. Bargain. Being the curios type I went looking to find out what a DTMF circuit might look like before we could buy such products. The closest I came was a build-your-own voice mail system in BYTE! magazine of April 1982 using LM567 tone decoders, but a quick look at the box shows that these are also something that we'd call an Integrated Circuit. I'm going out on a limb here, since DTMF has been around since it was first supplied to customers in 1963 and suggest that the original DTMF decoders were not quite as trivial as a dollar chip. They likely contained many discrete components including eight separate filters and ways to combine them so signals could be added to each other to detect the existence or absence of a specific tone, but I've yet to actually lay eyes on anything more fundamental than the tone decoders. That being said, you can connect your all-in-one dollar chip, the CM-8870, to something like an Arduino and do your own decoding of DTMF signals. Seems that the 1982 BYTE! magazine article was just the beginning of the revitalisation of DTMF, robot controllers, home automation, in-vehicle signalling and more, not to mention, using it to activate IRLP and other wonderful radio services. Before you start sending me email about this non-Amateur invention, I'll point out that Amateurs also didn't invent copper wire, that was two Scots, or was it Dutch, I forget, fighting over a coin. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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 Japan wasn't particularly special. I don't recall the band on which I heard the station, so that's not it either. What was different was that I heard it at home, my QTH. The place where there is S7 or higher noise all the time, where I cannot put up a full antenna and make do with a dipole in the garage and a single band vertical on the roof. Looking back at the conversation it occurred to me that what I like about Amateur Radio is the unexpectedness of it, the surprises that come your way, like little gifts waiting to be unpacked. It reminded me of a journey coming back from a club meeting last year when I spent the time going through the entire frequency range of my radio. There's quite a bit to visit. The radio in the car does 100 kHz through to 56 MHz as a single range, then has several other ranges. My hand-held is capable of 500 kHz through 999 MHz. Between the two I have the ability to pick up most of the stuff that's around. If that's not enough, there are many online radio receivers to connect to using all manner of different tools, the simplest to get running is probably WebSDR, where you visit a web-page and pick out the frequency you want to hear. All this RF activity is happening all around us all the time. There's the local Top-40 radio station, the talk back shows, the local community stations, single frequency specialist broadcasters, the local public transit authority, etc. etc. You never know what you're going to find and what you're going to hear. Many Amateurs I speak to started off as short-wave listeners. I had a short-wave radio when I was growing up, but it never much did anything for me. Now that I'm an Amateur and I understand what's happening to make those distant signals arrive at my ear, I'm becoming the short-wave listener I never was. That's what I like about Amateur Radio. Unexpected gifts being shared across the globe from people, cultures and experiences that bring us all together. For me, Amateur Radio is about the thirst for curiosity, the never ending supply of wonder and the joy in hearing them arrive un-announced at my doorstep. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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, doesn't actually mean that you can operate your own station, for that to happen, you need a callsign and the requirements for a callsign are that you have a license. It's like learning to drive. Once you've passed your driving test you're able to drive a car, but you need a current drivers' license to actually get behind the wheel. In most cases there are different levels of license. Going back to the car analogy, you can drive a car, a moped or a truck, but not with the same license. In Amateur Radio there are several different types of licenses. For example in Australia there are three, in increasing level of responsibility, a Foundation License, a Standard License and an Advanced License. In the United States there are also three, The Technician License, the General License and the Amateur Extra License. In the United Kingdom there are also three, the Foundation License, the Intermediate License and the Full License. Germany has two types and calls them Class E and Class A. In essence the idea is that with more learning comes more responsibility and a change of license. To muddy the waters a little, as time passes and Amateur Radio evolves, license types change and merge, new ones are introduced and old ones vanish. For example, to my knowledge there are no countries requiring Morse Code as a skill for an Amateur License. That wasn't always the case and until 2003 the World Radio-communication Conference essentially left it to individual countries to decide if Morse Code was a requirement for specific privileges. As an aside, Citizen Band or CB, where anyone can walk into a shop, buy a CB radio and use it without passing a test and getting a license is fundamentally different in that the license is linked specifically to the radio itself. There is still a license, and to operate, the license needs to be current, but it's intrinsic to the radio itself. Amateur Radio has the license linked to the person, rather than the radio. Now that you know a little about the landscape, the next step on your journey towards becoming an Amateur is a little less nebulous. It's probably a good place to start at the beginning and work your way through that and as time goes on and your confidence and experience improves, to add to the learning and do the next thing as it occurs to you. I should point out that there are Amateurs who believe that it should be your goal to get the highest level of responsibility, but my perspective on this is quite different. This is a hobby, your hobby. If you want more responsibility, then go do some learning and pass a test. If you're happy to do what you're doing, then do that. Don't let anyone tell you that you must increase your learning, just because they tell you to or that it's the done thing. For me, I've set a personal goal to work a hundred countries using 5 Watts and every contact I make counts towards that. If you've been listening for a while you might have noticed that I've not bragged about any remote contacts and that's because I've hardly been out and about on-air using my own callsign. Too many other things to do and I'm in no hurry while I'm learning and having fun. So, what's next? The simplest is to find yourself a local Amateur and get them to point you to the local training group, but if you're not able to do that, contact your National Amateur Radio Association and ask them who provides training for you. You're likely to find a local website with information, or you might listen to the local Amateur Radio News Broadcast where the local training organisation tells you about upcoming courses. The first level of license is likely to be pretty simple, think a weekend of listening and playing with radios, followed by a written and practical test. If you have issues with travel or learning, you're likely to find that there are ways to help you get on air, so don't give up, just because you can't drive to the big smoke, don't have a local training organisation or are hopeless

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 make it work. This all changed last weekend when I had a spare 15 minutes, literally, 15 minutes when I went into the shed to have another look. This was spurred on by a note that I'd read that pointed out that the Buddipole is asymmetric, that is, both legs and coils are not the same. This important tid-bit of information made things click in my mind and all of a sudden I realised that I didn't need to make both sides the same length, or adjust both sides in the same way. Until that moment I'd always thought of the Buddipole as a dipole on a stand and expected like any traditional dipole it would have both legs at the same length. What if you could move the feed point along the length of your dipole, what would happen? What if you kept the overall length the same, but by making one end longer and the other end shorter, you in effect were moving the feed point along your dipole? Wonderful things start to happen, that's what. What I'm saying is that you don't have to make a dipole have equal length legs and that sometimes this is desirable. Previously I've mentioned that the height of a dipole, the wire thickness, the ends, the angle and so on all affect the feed point impedance. Turns out, that where you place the feed point also affects this. If you recall basic antenna theory, you might recall that the middle of a dipole is the lowest impedance and that the end of a dipole is the highest impedance. Each of these values are on a continuum, that is, they vary as you change things. That means that between the two extremes of impedance there are other in-between values. If you have a balun, you can use this to get a great match for your antenna by tweaking these values. Another example of this continuum is a loop antenna. If you make it twice as high as wide, the feed point impedance is 50 Ohm, but if you use the same loop and squash it flat, the impedance is 300 Ohm. Varying the shape changes the impedance. In essence this means that there is an infinite number of antennas that can be made just as a dipole and another infinite number of antennas that can be made as a loop. So, just two antenna types alone already gives you a lifetime supply of options and that's ignoring the height, soil or wire. Now you understand why antennas are tricky and why we talk about them so much. It also explains why the Internet is full of different explanations on antennas, since they are all based around the local conditions under which the author is describing their adventure. Next time you hear an Amateur going on about their antenna, perhaps there's something to take away. I know I won't be anywhere as impatient listening to others talking about their contraptions. Final thought. A vertical is a dipole too. The radials are one half, the vertical the other. You can change the length of either, or both, but you can also feed the antenna in a different location. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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 a contact on the other side of the planet, for them it's next door. I asked around for explanations from others about what they thought DX meant: - Receiving signals & station from remote locations - Long distance, harder to achieve contacts. - Doesn't have to be international, all frequency dependant. - VK[234] to VK6 is DX ;) - Outside of my suburb ! - Anything hard I suppose, or anything "overseas" The take away should be that DX-ing is an activity that means different things to different people. You could put it down to kilometres, or countries, it really doesn't matter. Just be prepared that your measure may not apply to the other station. Ironically, thinking back to one of my earlier on-air experiences. I called CQ-DX and got a reply that said something along the lines of "What kind of DX are you expecting?" to which I replied: "Anything I can get." is put into a different context by the knowledge that DX is not a fixed idea. At the time I thought that I had done something wrong and that my activities were some how incorrect. Checking with the amateurs nearby at the time, it transpired that this wasn't the case. My insight into the variation of something that looks like a simple concept, DX, puts a different light on the subject. I'm highlighting this because I think it's important to understand that when you're on air, you're bringing with you the experiences you have and you're communicating with others who may, or may not share those experiences and understandings, even for something as obvious and common as the concept of DX. It also spurs me on to continue to develop my QSL card. If you've sent me one and I've not sent you one back, it's because I'm still very unhappy with the design I've got and I'm working on something that's more me, more Australia and captures the essence of the idiosyncrasy that is me. If you're wondering what a QSL card is, think Amateur Radio Postcard. The name derives from something called the Q-Codes, shortcut names used originally in telegraphy, then by Amateurs in Morse, now also heard in all general conversation on air. The code "QSL" means "Can you acknowledge receipt?" when asked as a question, or it means "I am acknowledging receipt." when used as an answer. The card was named after this as a way to confirm contacts between stations. A QSL card generally contains your callsign, their callsign, the time, date, the band or frequency, the mode and signal reports of the contact. Some go overboard with whole novels, include general information about the station, perhaps a picture of your friendly face, or some other image. Traditionally, interesting locations, like say Amsterdam Island, activated as FT5ZM go all out in making their cards, since the location is desirable and the card should be as well. One final comment. To work DX, you need to be on-air, so get your station in good working order, turn it on and make noise. Making contacts, local and DX is about being lucky and the only way you can do that is by actually being on-air and making your own luck. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Recently I talked about making a propagation map in your mind by listening to the various NCDXF beacons across the globe on various HF bands. You're not limited to listening to a beacon to learn what propagation is like. If I tell you that listening to a band gives you an indication on what's going on, you're likely to respond with: "Duh". But what if I suggest that instead of listening to a DX station running a pile-up, you instead listen to the stations calling? Back in January 2014, episode 133, when this series was still called "What use is an F-call?", I explained what "Listening 10-up" means and how you operate in a so-called split mode. As you might recall, working split is about dealing with the phenomenon that a weak DX station working in some desirable location is likely to be overwhelmed by stronger signals, to the point of no longer being heard. It's a good skill to learn and you should try and work both sides, being the station calling a DX, but also being the one getting swamped. As I said, normally you're the one calling the DX station and you don't particularly care about the other stations swamping the band. What if you did? What if you used their signals to figure out where propagation was happening? If you did that, you could perhaps point your antenna in the correct direction, or specifically focus on calling for stations in that area, or listen out for stations in that region in other parts of the band. The thing is, propagation doesn't care what the signal is. As long as you can decode it in what ever way you prefer, Mark I ear-drum, or some fancy decoder, it doesn't matter. If you can hear the signal, it means it's getting from them to you. I should note a word of caution here. It's taken me several years to realise that I could often hear many stations that had no chance of hearing me. I'd crank up the volume on the radio, listen out for anything and try to work what I heard. Sometimes you get a great result, and you shouldn't discount those, but often all I got for my trouble is a sore head from decoding mush. What I learned, especially as a low power operator - I use 5 Watts - if the other station isn't coming in with a reasonable signal strength, S5 or higher, then there's little point. There is a concept of reciprocity. The idea is that if you can hear them, you can work them. For some power levels that might actually be true, but for the rest of us, a fine grain of salt should be added to the mix. Before you start in on me telling me I'm wrong, perhaps consider the variations in local environment, antenna differences, not to mention variation in the Ionosphere or alligators, all mouth and no ears running several kilowatts. The take-away in all this should be that propagation is everywhere. You can use it to hunt for likely contenders and no signal on the band should be ignored as a potential source of propagation information. One final thought. You can also reverse this. Turn on a web based receiver in some desirable part of the world, pick a frequency and then using your radio, call CQ and see if you can hear yourself across the web. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Technology is a moving feast. New ideas spring new inventions which in turn change our lives. Amateur Radio is at the forefront of such inventions. Radio Amateurs have been until recently the only soldering iron brigade around. We've been building things for over a hundred years and we continue as a community to think of new ideas and ways to make them happen. For example, we take technologies like AllStar Link, EchoLink, Wires and so on all in our stride. We think nothing of having our radios connected to each other using techniques other than radio spectrum. In November 1997, when iPhone still meant Internet Phone, an inquisitive 22 year old amateur called Dave Cameron VE7LTD came up with a way to link a radio to the Internet and the first three Internet Radio Linking Project stations were connected to each other and the now global network of IRLP nodes was born. Dave built a DTMF decoder which allowed remote control of a computer and the radio that was attached to it, and made it possible to send the audio from the radio to the sound-card of the computer, which in turn sent that audio in digital format across the Internet to a similarly equipped system where the audio was turned back into a radio transmission. This bridging idea took off and many different systems were developed, many of which are in active use today. The various systems all use some form of Voice over IP to transmit audio across the Internet, but there are many variations on how the audio gets to the system in the first place. In IRLP - as I mentioned - the audio can only come in via an Amateur Radio. EchoLink uses a similar system, but in addition to Amateur Radio as a source, you can register your callsign and use several different applications on your computer or mobile phone to link into the network. AllStar takes this idea further, instead of making a point-to-point connection, the AllStar system is based around an open source telephone exchange called Asterisk and it's used to link together the various systems. Other variations also exist. The idea of using Voice over IP techniques spawned a whole set of radio technologies that use similar methodologies to compress voice and then instead of transmitting it across the Internet, use radio waves to send them from one radio to the next. Technologies such as D-Star, System Fusion, MotoBro and DMR built on this idea. Of course these technologies also use the Internet to share information and connect users across the globe. There is some contention around these systems. Many Amateurs consider them to be "Not Real Radio", but then I suspect if you look at the birth of SSB, you'll find die-hard CW operators with a similar complaint. The same is true for low power propagation modes like WSPR which aren't real radio because you cannot have a QSO. Other issues in the technical sphere also exist. The IRLP software is closed source. You can only buy IRLP hardware from one place and it doesn't allow you to connect in any other way than via a radio. EchoLink now charges for conferences being registered in the system. In the past I've already spoken about Fusion, D-Star and MotoBro and their restrictions around interoperability, licensing and closed source nature. From a practical perspective, there are also concerns about the use of these systems in the case of massive failures during local disasters and the like. If the Internet is down, many of these systems will simply become local radio networks. Coverage could perhaps be extended by creating a local mesh network, but HF radio still very much has its place in our world. For me this is all about learning and innovation. Ultimately which system you use is up to you. I live in a software world where Open Source rules for good reason and my vote will always go to Open Source. To be clear, I'm not adverse to making money, we all have to pay the rent, but making innovation and invention secret is not the way to go in our hyper-connected world. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The world is your oyster, but sometimes you need to find a way to test what is going on with your station and determine what is working and what isn't. Often I turn my radio on to scanning mode and I set it to scan the Northern California DX Foundation beacons. These beacons, perhaps better known as the NCDXF beacons can be heard across five different HF frequencies, on 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m and 10m. These beacons repeat in a cycle that lasts three minutes, covering 18 different transmitters located in countries scattered around the globe. Beacons exist in New York City at the United Nations, in two other locations across the US, in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Russia, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Israel, Finland, Madeira, Argentina, Peru and Venezuela. Each beacon rotates through each frequency and then waits three minutes to transmit on the same frequency again. Each transmission contains the station callsign, sent in 22 words per minute Morse code, followed by four one-second beeps. The callsign and the first beep is sent using 100 watts, the next one uses 10 watts, the third beep is sent with 1 watt and the final one uses 100 milliwatts. What this does is give you a pretty accurate map of what you can hear on what frequency at this time with your station. Another way to think of this is as a propagation map that actually uses your station as the receiver. If you can't hear 'm, you can't work 'm. If your radio doesn't scan across frequencies very well, there's nothing wrong with listening on one frequency for 3 minutes, switching to the next and so on; 15 minutes later you'll know what propagation is like around your station. You can find full details about this whole beacon system on ncdxf.org and I should mention that there are many other beacons around that provide signals for you to listen to. As an aside, this system is precisely what prompted me to start the process of learning Morse Code. I'm still at it and you should not take my slow progress as anything other than me being distracted by the other things that are happening in my life. If you need something more active and participatory to get a sense of the operation of your station, you should have a listen to the 7130 DX net. It happens every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9:30am UTC on 7.130 MHz +/- QRM. Next time I'll talk about how that works and what you might gain from having a go. I'm Onno VK6FLAB.

Foundations of Amateur Radio Recently I made a comment about melting your coax and that this was a bad thing. Today I'm going to talk about some of how this comes about and what kinds of parameters we're dealing with. Let's start with coax itself. The operating temperature of coax is somewhere around 80 to 90 Degrees Celsius, or 176 to 194 Fahrenheit. Soldering is at 230 Celsius, or 446 Fahrenheit, so for starters, soldering coax is a risky adventure. For argument's sake, let's assume that you managed to solder your coax without damaging it. What else can go wrong? Let's have a look at high voltage transmission lines. Why do we move power around the place using high voltage lines? The answer is that in a high voltage line, the current is low. Where the current is low, heating is low, so more of the energy gets from the power-station to your shack and less of it is used to heat up the power line between the power station and you. So, that means that high voltage and low current is less heat loss. The opposite is also true. Low voltage and high current is more heat loss. Now if you look at a dipole antenna, you'll know that this contraption is moving energy around at some or other frequency. As it's doing that, there are high and low voltage points and high and low current points. In a half-wave dipole, the high voltage points are at the ends of the antenna, and the high current points are at the feed-point. Guess where your coax is? So, you've got your connection to your antenna located at a high current point, in the place where high current has the potential to create problems, things like heating up your coax and potentially melting it. So, when does this heating happen? Well, you need high resistance and high current. This typically happens when you've got a bad connector at the feed-point. In practical terms this means that if you're using QRP, 5 Watts, you're unlikely to come across a situation where this becomes an issue, since the currents aren't that high and a bad connection typically means no contacts. If on the other hand you're using high power, then make sure that the connection to your antenna is strong, solid, and water proof so it doesn't deteriorate to the point of melting and then killing your radio. It's best to keep an eye on the SWR meter when you're working, since a high SWR might be indicating that the resistance at your antenna changed for the worse. Final comment. When you've set-up your station, create a note of the SWR at different frequencies and refer back to that regularly. Spotting a problem early might just prevent some expensive maintenance later on. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm going to talk about SWR or Standing Wave Ratio. As amateurs we use this term all the time, we expect to see it on a meter or display near our transmitter, we buy specific gadgets to measure it and often we seek to find the lowest possible SWR. As I've said in the past, the perfect antenna cannot exist, in the same way, a perfect connection, the feed-line, between an antenna and transmitter can also not exist. The perfect match is a 50 Ohm match, but a dummy load is a perfect match and its purpose is specifically not to radiate. So what's all this about then? Lets start in a swimming pool for a moment. Imagine that this pool is really long and skinny. Say 100m long and 1cm wide. Stand on one side and make a splash. The ripple of the water radiates from the source of the splash, you, to the other end of the pool. The end wall bounces the ripple back to you, and bounces back and forth until all the ripples have dissipated. Now, if you kept splashing about, and waves were rippling back and forth while you were splashing, some of the ripples would happen at the same time as a splash and some of the ripples would happen at the time between two splashes. That means that at some times the splash and the reflections would sit on top of each other, making a higher wave and at some times splashes and reflections would be sitting below each other, making the troughs between splashes deeper. If you replaced the water with electricity and the pool with a transmission line, the same is true. If you made an electronic splash, say a transmission from your radio, into the feed-line, the ripple would travel along the feed-line, bounce off the end, come back, bounce off the radio and so on. In the same way, reflections and transmissions can add to each other, and they can also subtract from each other. This difference between the addition of signals and the subtraction of signals is what we call the SWR. There are two ways to get to the SWR. If you connect a 50 Ohm feed-line to a 100 Ohm antenna, the SWR is 2:1. This is a theoretical SWR and it tells you is that there will be a ripple coming back from the antenna that is both adding and subtracting from the original transmission. Alternatively we could use an SWR meter to measure the voltage differences between the high and the low part of a wave and indicate on a dial what the SWR is. This is an actual SWR. The two are indicating the same thing and we can use that to get from a measurement to an understanding of impedance matching between the feed-line and the antenna. As a point of reference, if there are no ripples bouncing back, then there is no addition or subtraction, and the resulting SWR is 1:1. For completeness, I should point out that the rabbit hole is much deeper than this explanation and I'll revisit this topic in the future. Now for the final piece of the puzzle. A piece of coax in Amateur Radio is 50 Ohm. If you have an antenna that is 50 Ohm, that's perfectly fine as an antenna system. Of course, antennas are not so accommodating. A dipole has a feed-point impedance of about 75 Ohm. A folded dipole has a feed-point impedance of about 300 Ohm. Each different antenna system has a different impedance and thus needs a different transmission line connected to it. So, if you look at a 50 Ohm coax connected to a 300 Ohm folded dipole, you know that the SWR is going to be 6:1. However if you connected a 300 Ohm ladder-line to the same folded dipole, the SWR would be 1:1. What this means is that the coax would have waves rippling back and forth and the ladder-line would not. The coax would have a particular loss and each ripple going back and forth would be subjected to that loss, where on the ladder-line, the loss would only apply once, on the outbound leg, since no energy would be bouncing back. As an aside, this loss is experienced as heat and if you're not careful it will melt your coax or worse. That's not to say that SWR kills everything, but you need to be aware of what's actually going on. Now I should point out one more thing. These bouncing waves, the ripples coming back have information embedded on them. If you're transmitting voice, or some digital mode, the ripples that bounced back would be broadcast with a slight delay and the second bounce with another slight delay, and so-on. This phenomenon could actually make your signal into gibberish. Coax has its place. It's a very flexible way of getting a signal from A to B, it's not affected by crazy nearby signals and it's robust, not to mention cheap. If you actually need to get your signal somewhere, then it will pay to look at how best to use it, when to use ladder-line and how to organise your shack in such a way that the best signal makes it outside to the working end of your radio. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the tick boxes we're required to deal with is the one titled "Station Security". As licensed amateurs we're required to secure our station from use by unauthorised people. What form does that take, how do you do it, what makes it secure and how much security is enough? I spent a bit of time looking around to see if there were any guidelines I could unearth to actually describe in detail what this might actually mean, but my Google Fu is clearly broken, since I was unable to find any such documentation. That's not to say that it doesn't exist, just that it's well hidden among the hits about encryption, broadcasting music and other spurious results. What form does this requirement take in your shack? Do you tick the box and move on, or have you taken specific actions to comply with this requirement? For me, I have two shacks. One in my office and one in my car. Taking the car first, the security of my mobile shack is based around the notion that my car is locked when I'm not around. Technically my partner also uses the car and it's not directly under my control at that time, but the flip side of that is that the radio needs to be manually connected to a battery, the head of the radio needs to be connected to the patch lead, the antenna needs to be screwed in and the coax switch needs to match the band you're trying to operate on. These things are not complicated for an amateur, but for a member of the public they form several barriers to entry before they could actually operate my station. In my office, where I mostly operate on VHF due to the high noise level on HF, security takes a similar form. It's in a locked house, that is, if I'm not home, the house is locked. Similarly, when my partner is around they technically can get to the station. The same is true for any guests to our house. Security again is a multi-level activity. The radio needs to be connected to power, the antenna needs to be connected to the correct port, the remote head needs to be connected correctly and if all that is done, you can operate my station. There are no specific locks on my radio; the same is true for any station I've ever visited. All of the clubs I'm a member of have a room or a box with a lock on it which is one barrier, but once that is breached, the radio behind it is good to go. This whole topic is an example of how we legislate for a particular thing, in this case preventing use by an unauthorised person, but don't actually specify what that means. So, what type of security does your station have? What's enough security and what isn't? Is my station legal or not? What makes it so? What about your station? It's easy to read the rules and tick the box, but sometimes the tickbox is a deep rabbit hole. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Radio Waves travel in straight lines. They go from point to point and that's it. Except that Radio Waves also reflect off certain surfaces, like light does. So, Radio Waves travel in straight lines and they also reflect and that's it. Except that Radio Waves also change direction when they pass through some change of medium. So, then, Radio Waves travel in straight lines and they also reflect and refract and that's it. Except that Radio Waves also bend when they encounter an obstacle or a slit. So, ok that's it. Radio Waves travel in straight lines and they also reflect and refract and diffract and that's the end of it. Except that they turn slightly due to gravity when they pass by a large mass. So, this phenomenon that we use in our hobby every time we key up a transmitter or listen to an off-air signal is doing much that is invisible. It bends and wobbles, bounces and shifts, reflects and refracts and somehow we still manage to make our signal get from here to there. The reason I'm raising this at all is that all new entrants to the hobby often scratch their head when they start transmitting. Antennas and propagation aside, the humble hand-held portable radio, the walkie talkie, or handitalky, or whatever you call it, does some weird stuff. Some people use it like a mobile phone, other talk into it like they're summoning the oracle, others wave it about and hover around metal doorways or hold it close to their body and walk about while they're talking. I host a weekly radio net, you should check it out some day, Saturday Morning, 0:00 to 1:00 UTC, it's called F-troop and we get lots of different skill levels and experiences sharing stories and answering questions. Many times we have amateurs who are using a hand-held and getting unexpected results. This variable, fluid nature of radio waves is why this happens. Each tiny variation causes some effect and some outcome. Resulting in a wildly fluctuating signal that varies between loud and clear and inaudible and all steps in between. And that's not even talking about flat batteries or trying to talk through a hill to a local repeater. My point is that radio waves are unpredictable. If you are using your radio in an unpredictable way while using an unpredictable medium like radio, then all bets are off. Next time you key up your hand-held, spare a thought for what's happening between your antenna and mine. I'm Onno VK6FLAB.

Foundations of Amateur Radio To do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome is the definition of insanity; so how do you avoid making the same mistakes on-air in Amateur Radio? During the week I was wading through some old photos and videos on my phone to make some space and I stumbled on some old videos taken by others and sent to me whilst I was on-air. It was a lovely look back at some previous activity, but they also made me cringe. Here's one example, the very first time, back in 2011, I did a local contest, using the club callsign VK6AHR: == One One. My number to you is uh, one zero four, uh V K Six Alpha Hotel Romeo to V K Six Alpha Romeo, my number to you is one zero four. == It's only that I know I was using the club callsign that I know who I am and who the other station is, in this case the other station was VK6AR. My exchange was 104, but clear as mud and twice as thick. These days I'd say something much less convoluted, something like: VK6AR, 59104 from VK6AHR Here's another attempt from me in my early days, calling DX using my own callsign: == "CQ DX, CQ Delta Xray, this is Victor Kilo Six Fox Lima Alpha Bravo calling CQ DX" == CQ Delta Xray, what was I thinking? Actually, I was emulating another amateur. So what you say, while there are new amateurs in your shack, matters. Also, I noticed that I started the bad habit of saying Fox instead of Foxtrot. Fortunately one of my listeners wrote in to nip that in the bud early on. My point in sharing these evolutions of my on-air style is that you might experience me as a practiced amateur, but just like you, I had to learn by making mistakes and being told I was making mistakes. Fortunately there was some video evidence to help in my innocent education stages. So, from your perspective, next time you get on air, try and record some of your activity and have a listen back. I've done this with new amateurs and old-hands and it's absolutely staggering how much you learn from having a listen to yourself. So, when you get on air to make some noise, record it for education purposes and listen back. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio There was a time when I took my computer out into the field to do my portable logging. That's still true for contests, but when I'm hunting for an elusive DX station, I no longer take with me all the bits that are required to make that level of technology work. I've come to the realisation that less is more. Especially with portable operations in parks and on summits. This move to paper will actually simplify your life whilst you're enjoying the rare stations you can hear. So, if you're using paper logs and you are wanting to make actual contacts, how do you do this without going insane? Normally you'd find a station, log their call, put down the frequency, scratch it out when the contact failed, rinse and repeat. The end result is a page full of scratched out callsigns with no structure and little chance to accurately log these into your normal station log. The best way to overcome this is to take a leaf from N1MM, a brilliant piece of logging software that deserves a whole separate segment and when I'm sufficiently proficient with it, I'll do just that. In the meantime, one of the things you can do with N1MM is mark a station. This mark consists of a callsign and a frequency. Technically it also consists of a mode and a time-stamp, but lets not get too carried away. On paper, if you format your log-sheet appropriately, you can use a separate line for each station you hear. Log the frequency while you're writing down the callsign. If you're inclined, you can also write down their name and any other salient details you hear as you're browsing past. What this does is set up a framework for you to log your calls. When you actually make contact, then you can enter the signal report and the time. That way you can instantly see which of the lines contain actual contacts and which of them contain stations heard. Sometimes I write down their signal strength as I note the station, but that's a pretty variable thing, so do that in moderation. When you've actually completed the contact, make a mark, either an exclamation point or two, or an asterisk, or something that you recognise. That way when you're sitting in front of your station log, you can quickly log those specially marked contacts and add them to your DXCC tally. This same technique works well during search and pounce operation during a contest, though I personally am unlikely to use paper for contest logging; N1MM is very helpful in keeping track for you. As a bonus, N1MM allows a station to expire, so your screen isn't filled with stations that are no longer there. I should point out that I'm making the assumption that you're the one responding to another station, rather than sitting on a frequency calling CQ. If you're doing that, just log their callsign as they come past, keep track of the time and write down any signal reports when they're happening. That way you don't get ahead of yourself and you'll end up with a log that still makes sense later on. Logging is important for your own benefit. Some jurisdictions require a station log, for others it's optional. If you're interacting with other stations, logging their call is a courteous thing to do. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm going to talk about magic. In the past I've made mention of the magic that is Amateur Radio. There are those who think that our hobby isn't magic and that everything that we do in this field is understood and documented. I think that this is both wrong and unhelpful, since there is much to learn, much to discover and much to invent. Amateur Radio isn't dead, it's full of life, full of things that are continuing to develop, evolve and grow. Let me give you an example. In radio there is a phenomenon called the "FM Capture Effect". Explaining how you experience it is simple. If you have two FM transmitters on the same frequency, and you're using an FM receiver, one of the FM transmitters will win, that is, you'll hear one and not the other. Unlike in AM and SSB transmissions, where you hear both at the same time, the FM Capture Effect causes the receiver to pick one over the other. As an aside, it's because of this effect that aviation and HF communication mostly prefer AM based communication. Imagine two pilots trying to talk to the tower at the same time, one is heard and the other not. Back to the magic. We can describe that this thing happens. We can show it happening, we can even measure the signal strength difference that causes it to happen, 0.17dB according to one document I read. We can use formulas to describe our FM signal, we can use simulations to emulate it, but in the end, the closest we can get to the how and why is: This happens, we know it happens, it happens under these circumstances, but precisely how, we're not sure. A thesis I read on the subject by Park Soon Sang at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, published in 1989, spends many pages saying all these things and finishes off with: "The simulation results establish that the low pass filtering portion of frequency demodulation accounts for the capture effect of FM receivers." and goes on to say: "It is recommended that the capture effect be verified using an operating experimental system in which system parameters can be controlled and accurately measured." Or in other words, we built a software simulator to learn about this phenomenon. This simulator suggests that the low pass filter causes this, but you really should make an actual set-up to test this. If I'm less vague, we simulated it, it looks right, but we're really only guessing, so test this in the real world. Now, before you get all huffy. I'm saying that a phenomenon that has existed since the first FM transmission in 1936 is still being explored and investigated and the jury is still out as to what precisely causes it and what the parameters are. As Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 1973: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- by that definition, Amateur Radio is clearly magic. So, when you next scratch your head about what the future of our hobby has in store, the answer is almost certainly covered by the very same author: "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." Amateur Radio, it's magic and there is more to discover. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio This technology driven community of radio enthusiasts makes me laugh on occasion. Today I had to laugh when I realised that we spend an awful lot of time talking about antennas and radios and feed lines and impedance and propagation and electronics and a whole lot of subject in-between and around that. It stuck me that one conversation that we don't have, is the one about microphones. Specifically how to actually use one. I've been around hundreds of radio amateurs, seen them speak into their microphone, witnessed them standing at a lectern presenting their latest project, observed them attempting to rally the troops during a HAMfest by yelling into a microphone and heard them on-air. I came to the realisation that despite our familiarity with the technology, by enlarge, the amateurs I observed are no better than the general public when it comes to using a microphone. Actually, I think as a community we're worse, because we won't be told how to do it. So, I'm going to tell you. You can switch me off, or in the secrecy of your own shack, stick around and see if there is something to learn. I'm coming at this from a background in broadcasting. I've conducted some 1800 interviews in my time, have spoken in public, on-air and in myriad different environments, including large event venues and sports arenas. I won't say I've seen it all, but I've seen my fair share of how it's done, what it sounds like and what doesn't work. The very first thing to note is that yelling into a microphone will make it worse. Let me say that again. Don't ever yell into a microphone. The second thing to note is that you should keep the distance between your mouth and your microphone as static as possible. A good rule of thumb is to clench your fist and put it between your chin and the microphone. That's the distance that you should start with. Some microphones need you closer, others need you further away. Eating your microphone is only for very experienced operators in specific environments, since every thing your mouth does will be captured. A microphone is in essence a device that converts movement into electricity. This sounds obvious, but it means that waving the microphone around is also movement. The cable that's attached to the microphone moves, and makes sound. The desk on which the microphone is placed moves when you touch it, that's sound. Anything you can hear with your ears and much that you cannot, will be captured by the microphone. Not all microphones are equal. The ideal microphone converts all frequencies equally well, but this isn't actually possible, so, some frequencies are better captured than other frequencies. This means that your voice will not actually be captured in exactly the same way as it comes out of your mouth. Speaking of which. What you hear from a recording of your voice often sounds wrong. This is because the sound that's coming from inside your mouth is also travelling inside your head and your ears pick it up from the inside as well as from the outside. Listening to a recording of your voice doesn't echo inside your head. On an FM repeater, if your signal is captured by the repeater, the volume is not due to your antenna, it's due to your microphone. So make sure you set the microphone gain appropriately and when people tell you that you sound soft, fix the gain. Microphones will pick up breathing and the sounds your lips make when you smack them together and when you say the letter P as in PaPa. The best way to deal with this sound is to learn not to make it. In the mean time, you can speak across the microphone, rather than directly at it. This means that you should keep the same distance, but tilt the microphone slightly. Speaking into a lectern microphone, a radio microphone or a hand-held all follow exactly the same principles. If you get the opportunity to hear yourself via headphones while speaking into a microphone, use it to listen to what exactly is captured. You'll get distracted by how your voice sounds, but have a listen to the smacking and the breathing and the popping of your voice. Final tip. If your voice gets tired from speaking and you run out of breath, you're doing it wrong. Touch your belly while talking, don't press down, just touch it. You're aiming to use your whole body, feeling your gut participate in the speaking. Technically what you're doing is making your diaphragm move, but that's hard to imagine. Touching your belly does the trick. No more excuses. When you get on air, make sure that the beginning of the link between you and the other station is fully functional, start with getting the microphone right. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio There is a curious phenomenon related to how we operate that is pervasive within our community. As an inexperienced ham, I would turn on my radio and tune around and hear nothing. I'd change bands and do it again. Over time I'd work my way through the bands I'm allowed on and find no activity. On rare occasions I'd venture into the wide unknown and see what other bands were doing, ones where I wasn't allowed to transmit due to my license restrictions, and find lots of people talking to each other, making noise and having fun. More often than not, this band of feverish activity was 20m. For a long time I ascribed magical properties to this 20m band. There was always propagation, people were always there and it seemed that if you wanted to make contacts, that was the place to be. Over time I participated in contests with other amateurs, operating a club station and finding myself on 20m making contacts. I began to believe that 20m was this amazing place where stuff was always happening. This seemed to be reinforced by other amateurs who would use as their sole reason for gaining extra responsibilities, access to the 20m band. Now before you start, 20m is special. It has some interesting properties which make contacts appear and vanish at short notice. Just like other bands with their different peculiarities, practice makes perfect. But, 20m isn't that special. It's not a band that is always open, or always closed, just like 15m isn't, nor is 10m, neither is 6m, 80m, or 160m or whatever band you prefer to operate on. No band is always open and no band is always closed. Guess how I know this? Whenever there is a contest, activity blooms all over the place, the bands are full of stations, making contacts, having fun and annoying those stations who hate contesters with vehemence, so, clearly there is something else going on. There is. It's you, and me, and everyone else. We're all listening. While listening is good, you also need people to talk, otherwise there is nothing to listen to. There are automated stations around using beacons and WSPR modes and all manner of cute software to determine if their station is being heard. And if you look at the maps, they clearly are being heard. So, as I've said before, go on air and make some noise. If you want to make contacts, you need to make noise. Your friends need to make noise. You need to setup regular contacts with friends somewhere on the planet and actually use the bands. Yes, having access to 20m is fun, but lamenting that is frankly a waste of time. Whatever band you're on, whatever you're doing, you need to make noise. Yes, of course there are variations in propagation throughout the day and the solar cycle affects how far and wide you'll be heard, and sun spots and solar flares affect the ionosphere as well, but it's not the only variable. Just because no-one is heard, doesn't mean that no-one is there. So, repeating myself, go on air and make some noise. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The thing I like about our community is that there is always something new brewing, someone is inventing something, making something or doing something. It amazes me that the level of ingenuity is boundless. During the week someone asked the question, "What's the difference between AM and FM?" and while answering that could incorporate hand waving, arrows and drawings, I came across a much simpler explanation, which simply says it all. Credit goes to redditor EmmetOT. Imagine replacing radio with light, this isn't a stretch, since it's part of the same spectrum. Replace a radio transmitter with a light bulb. AM is using a dimmer, changing the brightness, to send information. FM is changing the colour of the light to send information. I could stop right there, but there is so much more going on in our community. If you've been out of Amateur Radio for a while, and I know, this happens to the best of us, you'll be forgiven in thinking that nothing is the same as it was, while wondering if anything ever changes. Both these things are true and I think that's good. The first AM voice transmission was made in 1900, SSB experimentation began in 1915 and FM experiments were happening in the early 1930's. These three modes, AM, SSB and FM are still with us today. We've done other cool stuff since then, stereophonic and quadraphonic FM. We think of RTTY as a relative new kid on the block, but it has its origins in 1874 and the first on-air RTTY was heard in 1922. Without going into too much detail, other modes that we are beginning to think of as ancient are surprisingly new. PSK31 for example joined us in 1998, but Hellschreiber, is from the 1920's, MFSK comes from 1962 and Packet Radio hails from the 1970's. JT65 comes from 2003 and JT9 is from 2012. My point is that whatever the mode you're using, someone is extending it, modifying it, improving it or inventing something new. Your level of familiarity with a mode has little or nothing to do with the age of the mode. As is the case with everything in Amateur Radio, horses for courses. In your Amateur pursuits you'll come across those who will tell you that there is nothing new to be invented, that everything has already been thought of and that we are a hobby of old people harking back to the golden era of something or other. I'm here to tell you that nothing is further from the truth. Amateur Radio is a hobby of invention of people asking the question: "I wonder what happens if I do this...", often followed by a big bang and the magic smoke coming out. Don't let that deter you. Keep on with the experimentation, even if you've only been a member of this community for a minute and a half like me, you too can make a contribution. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you use your trusty multi-meter to measure resistance across a 50 Ohm resistor, it shows 50 Ohm, but when you use it across a piece of 50 Ohm coax, you see either infinity, or 0. Similarly, when you measure across a folded-dipole, you see 0, not 300 Ohm. Does this mean that a 50 Ohm resistor is somehow different than a 50 Ohm piece of coax and why is the feed-point impedance of a folded dipole 300 Ohm, when your multi-meter clearly says it's 0? Does this mean that there are two types of Ohm? Today I'm going to explain why this is and what's going on. Yesterday I started reading up on the subject and every single explanation I came across went into deep ju-ju with scary maths, using complex and imaginary numbers. I did a bit of that in my dark past, but none of that is needed to understand what's happening. As you know, there is such a thing as Direct Current or DC - we use it with batteries and little power supplies, in simple circuits and all manner of day-to-day activities. There is another world that we as amateurs use, the world of Alternating Current or AC. In house-hold wiring we use 50 or 60 Hertz and different voltages depending on where on the globe we are. In radio terms we use it for our transmissions, on HF at several Mega Hertz and beyond. These two different worlds, the DC and AC world don't appear to have anything in common. Here's the kicker though, they are the same thing. Yup. DC and AC are the same thing. What? Yup. I'm not making this up. As you might recall, if you look at an AC voltage, it goes from plus to minus and back again. A 50 Hertz alternating current does this swap 50 times per second. When you're rag-chewing on 40m, or 7 MHz, it happens 7 million times a second. From plus to minus and back, 7 million times. Clearly there has to be some impact on this massive level of activity. Think of direct current as an alternating current with a frequency of 0 Hertz, that is, over time, DC doesn't change. So, DC is a short cut for saying AC at 0 Hertz. If you understand that explanation, then some really cool stuff starts to happen. Before I get to the cool stuff, you might recall Ohm's Law, commonly expressed as: "Given a current and a resistance, we can determine a voltage". Said in another way, the resistance of a circuit is related to the voltage and the current in the circuit. Now, in this simple form of Ohm's Law, the voltage doesn't change from plus to minus and back again. That is, over time, there is no change. Now if you start doing funky stuff with your voltage, like change it from plus to minus and back again, an additional type of resistance comes into play, called reactance. This reactance is the part that is affected by voltage change over time. So if you swap the voltage from plus to minus and back again a million times a second, the reactance has a big part to play. In short, there are two types of resistance, one that is independent of time, called resistance, and one that's dependent on time, called reactance. Both of these, resistance and reactance, happen within a circuit. If the voltage doesn't change over time, then the reactance part is zero and similarly there are circumstances where you can have a resistance of zero but have a reactance that's not - one example is a folded dipole. Now, if you combine the resistance and reactance, you get something called impedance. Now you have all the bits. Resistance is expressed in Ohm, Impedance is expressed in Ohm, and thus Reactance is also expressed in Ohm. If we look at our folded dipole with a feed-point impedance of 300 Ohm, you now know that this 300 Ohm comes from a resistance of 0 Ohm and a reactance of 300 Ohm at the resonant frequency, which is why your trusty multi-meter shows it as 0, since the voltage it uses to measure is alternating at 0 Hertz, which is not the resonant frequency of this antenna. Before I go, the rabbit hole goes deeper. Reactance itself is made up of Capacitance and Inductance, which each deal with the reactance in a capacitor and an inductor, but I'll leave that for another day. So, next time someone tells you that the feed-point impedance of your folded dipole is 300 Ohm, you'll now understand why your multi-meter says it's 0. I'm Onno VK6FLAB.

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm concluding my breakdown of the contest that I participated in recently as a mobile station. I planned to make my contacts on one band and I did that. Feedback indicated that there were other contacts to be had on other bands, but switching bands is a non trivial affair with my current set-up. I planned to have a common frequency that would be a local cluster of activity, except it never happened that way because others decided to do their own thing. This meant that my antenna was tuned for the top end of the band, rather than the more typical centre of activity. I expected to work several home stations and managed to do so with two, but that was much lower than I expected and planned for, so my overall score didn't reach the planned levels, even if it was triple last year's effort. I planned to drive a circuit in about 90 minutes, instead it took about three hours. Fortunately there were lots of mobile stations about which helped me much more than expected. I keep telling myself that I need to sort out a voice-keyer because each time my voice gives out about half way through the contest, but again I keep forgetting to make that happen. My laptop power worked pretty well, but the location of the device, sitting on the passenger seat and then during on air activity, parked at the side of the road, it was balanced on my knee. Not ideal and not comfortable. My phone worked really well as my live GPS map and the boundaries I'd drawn using Google My Maps really helped to show me where I was in relation to the boundaries for this contest. I'm a relatively new arrival into the Amateur community but I often forget that I've been contesting almost from day one. My first on air experience was a club station during a field day camp out where the activity centred around a little folding table with Amateurs crowded around it. On air I have lots of broadcast experience, which means that I'm experienced in multi-tasking, coordinating frequencies, logs, callsigns, navigation and strategic objectives. I forget that this is not true for others on air. I love contesting, seriously, I love it. This activity puts me right on the bleeding edge of my capability and it's exhilarating to explore the peaks and troughs of the activity. I used rope to prevent my heavy antenna from breaking my boot lip mount and was worried about strange looks I might get. The rope worked well, the mount did not suffer from the experience and I didn't get much in the way of strange looks. In fact, much less than when I'm parked up with my 12m squid pole. Food and water worked great, but I will add public toilets to my map for next year, since it's not fun having to hunt. Mind you, a petrol station is a good option when you're in a hurry. At the end of the day, I managed to triple my score, I achieved all my objectives and proved to myself that my strategy, which came about thanks to discussion with fellow contesters, was solid, workable and a better performer than last year. I'm not yet sure how I'll change what I did, perhaps more antennas, parked at places longer, working more bands at the time might be an improvement. Time will tell. I hope that this adventure made you look at your activities and gives you some ideas on what to try, what to investigate and things to look out for. Hopefully I'll hear you on air during the next contest. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm going to look at the actual on-air activity of the contest. Previously I've talked about the preparation and planning, as well as the doing, in terms of mechanics, what to bring, where to put it and how to power it all. At the most basic level, a contest is a combination of two things, making and taking calls. It's an important point, so I'll say it again. A contest is two things, sitting on a frequency and call CQ and have other stations call you, and, it's also hunting up and down the dial finding other stations who are calling CQ. These two sides, being the instigator of the contact, and being the responder, are needed to make points. Even the most advanced contest station with multiple operators and transmitters will do both these things and when you're on your own you too need to do this. One reason for this is that in a contest others are doing the exact same thing. They're also swapping between both these activities to pick up extra points and multipliers. Another reason is propagation. Your station is unique. It has a unique radiation pattern, a unique location, a unique audience of stations that can hear you at any one time. Across the duration of the contest this will change as day turns into night and night back into day. If you're mobile, there is an additional variable, your location which will affect your audience every time you move. If those two reasons were not enough, here's one more. How do you know if the band your on is working or not? How do you know if there are others nearby, or on a completely different part of the band, or, if the band is open or closed, or if solar conditions have shifted and a band has been affected? For my contest I had a vertical antenna mounted on my car. I can use it to operate on the bands I'm allowed to use, 10m, 15m, 40m and 80m. For this contest, my go-to band was 40m. Local conditions dictate that when dusk arrives, the lower part, 7.0 to 7.150 is all but unusable due to heavy interference from non-amateur stations overseas, so I picked a spot near 7.190 and used that as my calling frequency. Of course, as was expected, not everyone got the memo that I'd be up at that end of the band, and the little flag I posted saying that this was my frequency was dutifully ignored by everyone. What I'm saying is that there is no such thing as "my calling frequency", just the place where you like to call and you have to manage this along the duration of the contest, since others will find your little hidey-hole and use it at the drop of a hat. And if you're QRP like me, they might even just start calling CQ right over the top of you and you'll find that you think you're making contacts with stations that are not actually talking to you. In other words, be flexible. As a rule, for myself, having been bitten by this many times, I don't QSY to another band if a station I've just worked asks to do so, since the aim for your contest is for you to make contacts, not for someone else to make them. That's not to say that if it's 3 o'clock in the morning and nothing much is happening this won't change. Again, flexibility is key. I tend to use both VFO A and VFO B on my radio. It's a quick way to swap between frequencies or bands and it allows you to both sit on a frequency, calling CQ and hunt up and down the band at the same time. If that doesn't make sense to you, this is how I do this. I set my calling frequency up on VFO A and copy that to VFO B. I call CQ a few times on VFO A, swap to VFO B, scan up or down a little way, find a station that I'd like to work and swap back to VFO A, call CQ a few more times, swap back to VFO B, hear the station finish their call and hear them call CQ. I respond and if they hear me, I make the contact. If not, I swap back to VFO A, call CQ and do it all again. This way I can be in one place calling CQ and pick up contacts at the same time. If you have multiple radios, even as a single operator, you can do this and pipe the audio from one radio into one ear and the audio from the other radio into the other ear and do both at the same time. You can even combine the two and have four frequencies you work on. This requires practice, and you must make sure that both radios are not on the same band, ever, otherwise you'll likely blow up the second one while transmitting on the first. Next time I'll look at what worked and what didn't, the aftermath. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm going to talk about the doing of a contest. Previously I discussed the preparation and you can go back to that and have a listen online, search iTunes for my callsign, VK6FLAB. The contest I participated in was a 24 hour contest. It started at 2pm local time on a Saturday and ran the whole 24 hours. If I was sitting in a shack, I might have and in the past actually have, operated during most of that. Seeing that this time around I was planning to be mobile, I needed to get sleep in between driving from location to location. In my car I have a suction cup stuck to the front windscreen which holds the head of my radio. It's mostly within reach, but if I operate for a little while, extending my arm gets tiring, so if that's the case, I drop the steering wheel, push it forward and modify my seat position. A better solution would be to find a better location, but I've not managed that yet. I keep looking at other set-ups, but haven't found one that works for me. I'll let you know if I do. My logging is done on a computer. A net-book. It's small, light and pretty responsive. It's running Windows XP, never connects to the 'net and it works. I balance it on my knee when entering contacts, or have it on the passenger seat and tap into it that way. Also not ideal. I saw a series of photos where a fellow traveller had used a plastic sewer pipe, and bend, to push into the cup-holder of the centre console and mount their computer on that. I've not yet travelled to the hardware store, but I can see a future where that might occur. Power for the laptop comes from a 12V power supply. It's plugged into the cigarette lighter, set to the voltage of my computer and plugged in. It has a handy USB socket on the power supply that I use to keep my phone charged. That sits on another suction cup on the dashboard in a mount. It showed me where I was and where the boundaries of operation where. Every now and then I even used it as a phone. Speaking about power. I power my radio with a 12V battery that's sitting in the boot. At night, finding the right keys to press is a challenge. The interior light of the car is one option, but I find it makes too much light, draws too much attention and uses more power than I'm willing to use. Instead I use an LED headlamp. I was wearing it for a while, but a better solution turned out to be attaching it to the sun visor where it still is. In terms of feeding and watering, for water I had about six bottles of water lying in the passenger seat foot-well. For food, a small insulated bag with fruit, apples, pears and a banana. I stayed away from nuts, sugar and other traditional stay-awake foods, because I find that I over eat, get sleepy and become less productive. In between locations I'd turn the radio volume down, turn on some classical music and let my mind relax a little. I drove about 300km during the 24 hours. Operated from 2pm until about 10pm and from about 5am to 2pm, a total of 17 hours. I managed to have a sausage roll for breakfast, not recommended, a few cups of coffee in the morning - keeping my eyes peeled for a coffee place at 5am paid off at 7am. I wore comfortable shoes, a t-shirt and jeans. Next time I'll wear shorts or tracksuit pants. The belt really didn't work for me for that extended period of time sitting in a car. Next time I'll talk about the operation during the contest. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Training is a word that is steeped in tradition, it conjures up images of classrooms, teachers, chewing gum stuck to the bottom of your desk and being called upon to attend the front of the class to explain something based on the misapprehension that you did your homework. Fortunately this is a hobby and training is something you can do yourself, to yourself, by yourself at your own pace. Of course, you can choose to do it with others, but it's not required as such. We talk about being prepared for doing stuff, but what do we actually do to make that happen? I've said many times that I like to do contests. In fact, I'm preparing for one right now. This particular contest awards points for making a contact and doubles the points, a so-called multiplier, every time I work a different area. So, what does my training for this look like, what preparation have I done and what am I doing right now? My first step was to read the rules, the specifics of what is proscribed, what is permitted and what is counted and what isn't. This sets up the training ground, the framework under which I have to operate my station. My next step was to pull out a map and draw the boundaries of the areas that affected my score, showing those regions that I'd likely be in and likely make contact with. The crucial part for this was to see where the boundaries were, because it's likely that while driving around, having situational awareness will pay a good part of being successful. Then I looked at the band conditions. I set-up with my multi-band antenna, a multi-tap Outbacker, and set it up on the 4 HF bands that I'm allowed to operate on, 80m, 40m, 15m and 10m. I set out to make a single contact with each, based on another station a couple of kilometres up the road. We both have vertical antennas to increase our chance of success. Based on that I determined a few things. One, that this particular antenna and my car make for some pretty specific directionality on some bands. Two, that 10m and 15m were working close in, but not 20km away, that 80m sort of worked but that 40m was a winner. Based on this test I decided that 40m was going to be my frequency band for this contest. Then I went about getting tools together. I have a laptop for scoring and a power supply that connects to the car for the laptop. I've charged my radio battery, so it will run for a week on 5 Watts, got together pen and paper as a backup, found a USB charger for my phone and will shortly be packing fruit and water for while I'm on the road. Last night I fuelled up the car, ready for the contest, and this morning I dug out a few spare antennas in case one of my friends is able to come out and play on-air as well. I've looked at the map closely, did maths on how best to operate, added markers to my map where good operating positions might be found, likely they're completely rubbish, but going there is when I'll find that out. I've told others what I'm going to do, encouraged others to get on air and play and by the time I start I'll have had a healthy lunch, a hot shower and comfortable clothes to keep me on the road. I've packed a warm coat, and gone through the contest in my mind to see if I can think of other things that I might need. All this is only the pre-cursor to actually doing the contest. Call it Part 1. Part 2 is the contest and Part 3 is figuring out what worked and what didn't. I'll tell you about that next time we meet. Training, it can be fun, or it can be traumatic, you decide. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm going to talk about getting started. In the past I've mentioned that it's a good idea to find a community, a club or a local mentor to get you going in this hobby, and that still stands. You really need to find some like-minded, available humans to share this experience with. That being said, there are some things that you can do on your lonesome. An often asked question is: "What radio should I buy?" The answer to that question can be long and involved, but it boils down to this: "What ever you can afford." That answer in and of itself isn't that helpful. Do you get a $40 cheap hand-held or a $4000 all-singing and dancing radio? My best answer to that is: "Buy your second radio first." What I mean is that if you spend your money on a $40 radio today, how long will you enjoy it and how long will it be until you spend your next bit of money and is that $40 investment a waste of money? I'm not making a value judgement here, the answer is still: "What ever you can afford." When I asked that question of my mentor, Hi Meg, she explained that her first radio was a hand-held radio and that she quickly settled on a Yaesu FT857d as her second radio. She went on to say that picking a brand is like choosing between Mac or PC, Ford vs. General Motors, vi vs. emacs, Debian vs. Red Hat, Tomato vs. Tomato. There are followers in each camp and nay-sayers in every other camp. I picked my radio based on whom I had around me for support, who was nearby for silly questions, advice on accessories, experience with settings and knowledge of costs, faults and other intangibles that I was completely unfamiliar with. Once you get into this hobby, you'll come across people who have technical reasons for picking a particular radio, or sentimental reasons, or financial ones, or what ever reason they come up with. When you get started, not much of that matters. If you have money to burn, then sure, you can by the top-of-the range radio, but if you're never going to use it, what's the point? Once you've picked your radio, other choices follow. What power supply do I need, how much space do I need, what kinds of connectors does it come with, has it got a built-in antenna, or do you need to erect one, does it have a tuner built-in, or do you need to get one, do you need programming software, a microphone, etc. etc. Each of these follows from the initial selection of your radio. What now? You have a radio, presumably an antenna of some sort and your radio is actually turned on and you can hear stuff. If you've come from a short-wave listening background, you'll know where everything is, have a familiarity with the bands and an idea of how things work. If you're new to this hobby, then these things are not so obvious. Things to mention are that each band is unique, that is, they all have their own characteristics. Some are always noisy, others are always quiet, some are active during the day, others only at night, some have stations all day long and others only for short periods. A lot of this depends on things outside your control. Propagation is a variable animal and depending on what our Sun is doing, propagation will change, sometimes substantially, as time goes by. Forecasts for the weather are getting better. The same is true for propagation forecasts. A forecast is just that, a prediction of the environment, but not a guarantee of conditions. There is no substitute for turning on your radio and having a listen. If you're in someone else's shack, have a listen on their equipment, use the opportunity to learn something about different set-ups. If you get the chance, operate on that station and see what happens. Getting started isn't a magical invisible unattainable thing, it's taking the first step on your journey into this hobby of Amateur Radio. Get to it already. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio This crazy hobby keeps sending curve balls to me. You've heard me talk in the past about missed opportunities. There are times when you look back and ask yourself: "What was I thinking?" Over the past, oh boy, I just looked it up, two years, I have been struggling with an antenna system that I could use while mobile. I took delivery of 4 single band antennas, one for 80m, one for 40m, 15m and one for 10m. I also purchased a boot-lip mount and some other things like coax switches and adapters. I've been attempting to make these antennas work with very, very limited success. They work just fine, they tune up as expected, show the SWR curve that the manufacturer has helpfully printed on a little card that comes with each antenna and generally are sturdy, compact and wonderful, but only if they're installed on something other than my car. In desperation a year ago I purchased a tuner for my radio, so at least I can trick it into transmitting. I have made very few contacts, added one or two DX countries in the past year and really got no-where. So, during the week I recalled that one of the things I purchased was an adapter. It's got a PL-259 socket on one end and a CB-thread on the other. I dug it out, found the thread that goes into the hole and attempted to attach it to the CB antenna I was given within a month of becoming an Amateur. It had been modified to work on 10m and most of my DX contacts had been with that antenna. So, I attempted to attach the adapter and it doesn't fit. So I look around my shed and notice another antenna that I was given at the same time that never worked, it's a multi-tap antenna. Picture an antenna that is a big stick, has wire would around its entire length with points where you can attach a lead to bypass some of the antenna. You plug the lead into the bottom connector, then pick the band you want to work on, put the other end of the lead into the right tapping point and off you go. It came with a big spring mount, was intended to be bolted to a bull-bar, but using a family sedan, makes attaching this contraption pretty hopeless. It'd tested it where I could, measured it, tested more, made a new wander lead with a solid connector and nothing I did made it work. It turns out that the thread in my adapter fits properly into the base of this multi-tap antenna. I took it out into a local park, put the antenna with the lead on 40m, bolted it to my boot-lip mount, halfway pulled out the tuning end, a little metal spike that you can use to adjust the length of the antenna and turned on my radio. Guess what happened next? Nothing, that's what happened. I was stunned, into silence, imagine that, me silent. It worked. No adjustments, no trimming, no fixes, nothing. Just plugged it in and it worked. Propagation was pretty poor, so no contacts as such, but oh my. The point of all this is that when you least expect it, a surprise might come your way. Look at the assumptions you've made in your shack, think of the things you've tried and failed to achieve and use that to take a fresh look at what you have. Hopefully your delight will be just as surprising as mine was. I'll be back on air a lot more, who know's I might even get the opportunity to have a chat with you. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Have you ever had your radio on, listening around, say on 40m and heard the following: "CQ, CQ 40m, this is VK6FLAB, calling CQ 40, CQ 40m, calling CQ" Apart from the fact that the station calling seems pretty desperate for a contact, you're tuned to 40m, why on earth would you actually mention that, what's the point of telling me what band you're calling on, when clearly I'm hearing you on that band? The answer to this question is in harmonics. At the heart of every radio is an oscillator, set to some or other frequency that forms the basis of all that happens around it. In order to arrive at different frequencies, we add and subtract, double and halve frequencies, all combining to arrive at the various frequencies and bands we use. I'll use some fictitious numbers here to give you an idea of what's happening. Imagine that you have a 3.5 MHz oscillator. With it you can double it to 7 MHz, double that to 14 MHz, double it again to 28 MHz, that's 80m, 40m, 20m and 10m, just by using doubling. You could use the same oscillator and a doubler with a frequency tripler to get 21 MHz and so on. A side-effect of doubling and tripling frequencies is that this process isn't perfect or linear. This in turn means that some of those imperfections also get doubled and tripled. These imperfections are called spurious emissions and we reduce them as much as possible; in fact it's required by legislation to be below a certain level below the wanted emission. As technology improves, these spurious emission standards evolve. The US FCC as an example says that for radios built before January 1, 1978 they're exempt, radios until 2003 must be 30 dB below the wanted emission and current radios must be 43 dB below. What this means is that in effect your radio is transmitting on multiple frequencies at the same time, but filtering prevents most of this from coming out. Now, imagine that you have a series of dipoles connected to your radio, one for 160m, one for 80m, one for 40m, one for 10m, etc. Imagine that your radio was built before January 1, 1978 and you're calling CQ. The harmonics are being generated, and because you've got an antenna connected that can transmit those harmonics, they go out into the wide blue world outside. It's entirely possible that someone listening on 20m, 15m or 10m is hearing you calling on 40m through your spurious emissions at some or other harmonic. So, next time you hear a station calling CQ 40m, they're either rusted on die-hard amateurs on a modern radio, or they are using a so-called boat anchor, having fun on air. Either way, it's a great idea to say hello while you have the opportunity. Perhaps even use the experience as an excuse to learn more about their station, or even check out their harmonics and let them know if you can hear them. Propagation be damned. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today we enjoy radio using all manner of different so-called modes. The ones that most people are familiar with are FM and AM. In fact digital radio DAB+ is another example of a mode. In Amateur Radio we have a few more to play with, Single Side Band, or SSB, countless other digital modes, CW, or Carrier Wave are all different approaches to getting information from one place to another. If you have a radio that uses SSB, you'll soon notice that there are two versions of SSB, something called LSB and something called USB, or Lower and Upper Side band. If you tune around the bands you'll soon notice that some stations are using Lower Side Band and others are using Upper Side Band and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. Actually, there is a method to the madness. First of all, commercial and military HF radio all use Upper Side Band all the time. Radio Amateurs are a bit more traditional and we have the following basic convention. For voice signals on frequencies lower than 10 MHz, we use Lower Side Band, and for signals above 10 MHz we use Upper Side Band. There are exceptions to this. RTTY, one of the digital modes uses Lower Side Band regardless of frequency and all the other digital modes use Upper Side Band. Confused yet? Here's another way to think of it. Everyone uses Upper Side Band, except for RTTY and Voice below 10 MHz on Amateur Radio. Why are we doing this cookey thing to ourselves in Amateur Radio? First thing to note is that it's not random, we didn't just wake up one morning with this idea and said, lets do that. Side Band was first figured out mathematically in 1914. A year later it was made into reality by John Carson who used it to carry more long distance telephone calls across the AT&T phone system. There were on-air experiments and in 1933 the ARRL board instructed the technical staff of QST magazine to investigate the feasibility of single side band carrier-less phone transmission on amateur frequencies. There is lots to read about this in the January 2003 edition of QST magazine, if you're interested, it's a fascinating read. From an engineering perspective, radios built during the birth of Side Band, or Single Side Band Suppressed Carrier, to give its full name, used different methods to create a side band signal. One method was to filter out the part of the side band you didn't want, the other was to use phasing to add or subtract two signals and create a side band signal. Creating a filter was hard, creating a phase difference was much simpler to achieve. Now, one of the effects of using this method of making a side band signal was that you had a place where the signals would add and another where they would subtract. Where was this place you ask? One guess. 10 MHz anyone? So, for these radios built during the birth of side band, Upper and Lower Side Band came as a side-effect of creating a simple and reliable system to make the signal. Today we have alternatives which make this 10 MHz magic spot pretty much obsolete, but there are still 1951 Collins 75A-1 radios on air today and we like to talk to each other, so why fix something that isn't broken? That's why we use Upper and Lower Side Band. Remember, everything uses Upper Side Band, except RTTY and Amateur Radio phone below 10 MHz. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm going to talk about housekeeping, that is, the things you should be doing while you're doing the things you like doing, like making noise on air. The topic of Logging is one that continues to attract comment, suggestion, frustration and on occasion ridicule. Let me start with the fact that the very first contact that I made was not logged. I can tell you exactly which day it was, Sunday, April 17. I can tell you where I was, Stirk Park in Kalamunda in Western Australia. I can tell you that the other station was a Japanese station, but that's all I can tell you. I don't know the time, the band, likely 10m or 15m, I couldn't tell you their callsign, even though I'm pretty sure that I wrote it on a random piece of paper at the time. It simply hadn't occurred to me that I should actually log that contact, or that I'd ever think back to that day and wonder whom I spoke with. So, if you've not yet been on-air, get your logging sorted out now. It doesn't have to be fancy, it can be your diary, a notebook, a binder, or a phone, tablet or computer with appropriate software, just actually start logging. Do it today. That out of the way, getting the entries stored somewhere, you'll soon notice that there are tools you love and tools you despise and that over time this changes. It also changes for different activities. If you're on the top of a summit or in a national park, you might just want a small notepad to log your contacts, but if you're in the middle of a contest you might just want to not have to worry about logging everything manually, you might just want to punch in the other station's callsign and their exchange. The point is that for every amateur activity there are different aspects of logging. If you're chasing island activations you'll need a spot for the IOTA number, but if you're actually on the island, others are chasing you, then a good contest log is likely all you'll need. So, I just said the magic word, good. What is a good log, what does it look like, which software should you look at? Well, as in everything in life, that depends. You're likely to change logging software across your amateur activities, either because you have come to dislike the one you're using, or because it no longer works on the current version of your computer, or any number of other reasons. When you're picking software, you should as the very first priority discard all logging software that does not allow you to export the log. If you cannot export, you're locked in and your data is very possibly lost at some point in the future, so only use logging software, if you're using software, that does an export. Now I did mention that you don't need to use software. Paper is perfectly fine, just a little harder to use if you want to check back and see when you worked a station more than once. It's also hard to use, actually, impossible to use, if you want to use Logbook Of The World, eQSL, clublog or any number of online contact verification tools. If you're looking to log during a contest, figure out if the contest is actually supported by the software, this will help you reduce the number of contacts you make that are invalid. For example, a contest might specify that you can only work a station every two hours. Relying on memory is not a good plan. Using a computer to do that is much more productive and reduces the number of contacts that are going to be tossed out by the contest manager - not to mention that some contests apply penalties if you log an invalid contact. A log that requires you to type in the frequency once is fine, but not if you need to type it in each time. If you're doing that on your phone, it'll get very tired very quickly. If your logging software won't work without an Internet connection and you're away from the net while being set-up as a portable station, you'll have all manner of issues, so consider that. So, what do I use? For most of my contest activity, at the moment, I use VK Contest Logger. It's somewhat frustrating to use on a small sub-note book, but it's pretty stable, allows multiple computers to talk to each-other and share band information, allows export, is lightweight, regularly maintained and runs on most Windows computers. My actual station log on my Linux Desktop is using CQRLOG which I use to remove duplicates and enter QSL information, export to Logbook Of The World, eQSL and the like. I use a notepad when I'm mobile chasing DX and enter the data in my station log. I've used WINTEST during contests, played with HRD and still have not found one that works well on my phone. It's a moving feast. I have different operating systems, Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Android, each for different purposes, but I've yet to find a universal one that integrates well across all that. What ever solution you pick, make sure you log your first contact. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio There are things to say and things not to say as a radio amateur. Let's start with swearing on-air. Each jurisdiction is different and changing. The Australian Radiocommunications License Conditions Determination, or LCD has nothing to say about content. It's all about bandwidth, frequency and modes. The rules in the USA discuss "obscene or indecent words or language", but there is no definition of what that might mean. A word in one country is meaningless, where in another it's completely unacceptable. Our station signals travel around the globe, so it's prudent to moderate your language and to refrain from creating a situation where offence might occur. Of course, there are those who take this to the n'th degree. There is a perception that you cannot use the words K-Mart or Target on air, instead referring to these locations by some euphemism. There is nothing in the rules saying that you are prohibited from stating that you purchased a tube of SWR grease for $1.49 from Target, but if you're using the bands to tell your fellow amateurs that you're offering a two-for-one deal on your pork chops because you're a butcher during the day, that's considered an advertisement and is prohibited. There is no prohibition on language about sex, religion or politics, but that doesn't make them good topics of general conversation. That doesn't mean that you are not allowed to discuss them on-air with a mate, it means that you should really think about it if you're raising this as a topic in a net. Keep remembering that there are people from all walks of life, across the globe, who can hear you. There is a funny clause in the Australian LCD, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it also exists in some form in other jurisdictions. Here, it states that the licensee must not transmit any form of entertainment. In Australia this is explained as not permitting music, but that is not actually a word that occurs in the conditions. It does occur in the USA and no doubt there are variations within other jurisdictions. This "entertainment" clause is about broadcasting. There is an attempt to distinguish between commercial on-air use, that of a broadcaster, and amateur use, that of a licensed amateur. The way it's worded in Australia is funny though. Am I entertaining you right now? Are you listening to this on-air? Am I currently in breach of the Australian licence conditions, or is the station that is transmitting my voice? To put your mind at ease, this is covered under another section, the licensee must use an amateur station solely for the purpose of transmitting news and information services related to the operation of amateur stations. The two clauses that I just mentioned, the entertainment one and the news and information one, are all part of the same section, so you need to read the whole bit to understand what's going on. Of course that won't stop complaints or other interpretations, but so-far, that's all we have. While we're on the point of describing what's proscribed and what's not. The Australian conditions say nothing about how to sign if you're operating portable. There is no rule that says that you have to. There is a document called "Amateur operating procedures" that states that the "information, about the operating procedures for the amateur service, can help prospective amateur operators studying for amateur exams". It suggests that you use the locality when you're saying your callsign and if you're using CW, it suggests a stroke and a number. This is why we have this proliferation of different ways of communicating this information. Stroke mobile, Stroke portable, Stroke QRP, Stroke VK6 they're all made up. None of them have any official status. Your callsign is just that, your callsign. That's not to say that it's not helpful to add that you're portable, mobile, on a bicycle or standing in the ocean, but it's not part of your station identification. There used to be a special endorsement for an amateur station to permit it to transmit television signals. It involved a Stroke-T as a suffix, but that was discontinued. This means that what you say on-air is part regulated, part folklore and part common sense. Unfortunately where the edges of those three are is less than precise. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm going to talk about QRP, a term that's used in various different environments and one that I've used in the past. So, let's start at the beginning. QRP is a three letter code, part of the so-called Q-codes, that can either be a question or an answer. It's used in Morse communications to either ask "Shall I decrease transmitter power?" or to answer "Yes, decrease your transmitter power." It was perfectly valid for a kilowatt station to ask: "QRP?" and for another kilowatt station to answer: "QRP". Language changes over time, meanings get inverted, changed, adopted and transformed. The three letter combination, Q-R-P, is no different. Today in Amateur Radio, the three letters are more like a word, rather than a code and the meaning has changed to indicate that a station is running low power or as an indication to others that they're likely to be a weaker signal that requires a little more effort to pull out of the noise than any other station. As you might know, propagation is a fickle friend. There are days when you cannot talk to the station up the road and other days when you can hear a low power station clear across the globe and everything in between. The assumption that a QRP station is always hard to hear is not set in stone and often is quite incorrect. That's not to say that people think it's low, they hear QRP and think: "Hard work". It's a bit like fishing for trout. Some days are good, other days are just wet. Another aspect of the concept of QRP is the amount of power. The definitions differ. There are some that say that any station using 10 Watts or less is considered QRP. Others set the bar differently at 5 Watts. The ARRL defines it at 10 Watts or less for SSB and 5 Watts or less for CW or Digital. The WIA website uses a generic 5 Watts on their Low Power Radio page and different contests have different definitions of QRP. It's clear that there is no single definition of what constitutes QRP, just that it's low power. For me, I use 5 Watts and call myself a QRP station. Should you tell the other station that you're QRP? Should you include /QRP in your callsign and say something like, this is VK6FLAB/QRP. It depends. There are times when my statement of QRP got me through a pile-up and other times when some smart calling didn't require me to mention that I was only using 5 Watts. I've noted in exchanges that I'm using 5 Watts and had positive responses. There was a time when I signed specifically with VK6FLAB/QRP, but it causes all manner of grief with confirmation of your contact, since some stations will log the /QRP and others won't, since it's not an official callsign suffix. So, QRP is a wonderful aspect of our hobby, it teaches you to learn about propagation, to get your antennas sorted out, to pick your times and to learn better operating procedures. I find it immensely satisfying to make a contact with my 5 Watts and there are times I wished my radio would go even lower than 5 Watts. I know of amateurs who have worked across the globe, that is, the opposite side of the world, the furthest they can get with just a milliwatt SSB, so I know that while my contact from VK6 Western Australia to CO, Cuba with 5 Watts was proof that it all works, I know that there is more to explore. QRP - When you care to send the very least! I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio There is a recurring question that never seems to get a straight answer. Why are we using 50 Ohm impedance and not 75 Ohm? The more people you ask, the more answers you get. There'll be commentary about standing waves, SWR, loss, incompatibility, soldering, cost, velocity factor, diameter, susceptibility to noise and the list goes on and grows, the more people you ask, the longer the list. Of course as time goes by, people remember stories told to them, guess, or even, how to say this, make stuff up. To steal a phrase: "Why is it so?" In the 1930's, when most of us were not even the apple in the eye of their parents - let alone their grand parents - coaxial cable was being developed for kilowatt radio transmitters. There are two aspects to consider, the amount of loss against length and the ability of the coax to handle power. Without going into the maths, there's plenty of that online, the lowest loss for air-dielectric cable is 77 Ohms. If we look at the peak power handling, that occurs at 30 Ohms, that is, at 77 Ohms, coax is best at getting signal across the cable with the lowest amount of loss and at 30 Ohms, coax is best at dealing with high power. Clearly a compromise is needed. So, the mean between 77 Ohm and 30 Ohm is 53.5 Ohm and the geometric mean is 48 Ohm, so, 50 Ohm is a compromise between power handling and signal loss, for air dielectric. So, obviously, 75 Ohm is used for TV reception and not for transmission. Except it ain't so. In 1938, Roy Plunkett invented PTFE or Teflon. This material wasn't around when 50 Ohm was decided on. If you remember, coax consists of a few parts, the centre and the shield, each conductors that we use to move our signal around and something in between, the dielectric, which stops the two conductors touching, with a cover over the top of that for good measure to protect against shorting and damage. The dielectric can be an air gap, or some form of plastic like PTFE. Electrically, the dielectric constant for Air is 1, for foam PTFE it's 1.43 and for solid PTFE it's 2.2. Turns out that this makes quite the difference. Our lowest loss coax, is 77 Ohm for coax with an air dielectric, but drops to 64 Ohms with foam and 52 Ohm with solid PTFE. So, rather serendipitously, 50 Ohm was a grand choice, good power handling capability and low loss with a solid PTFE core. Now, why are we using 75 Ohm for TV? One suggestion is that it's another compromise between low loss and cable flexibility. What does all this mean for you? In a nut-shell, 75 Ohm coax is one type of compromise, 50 Ohm coax is another. You can use either, but they won't be the same and won't react the same. Calculations made for one, will not apply to the other and loss and power handling will be different. This means that your roll of cheap Quad Shield RG6 is perfectly fine for some aspects of our hobby and not for others. Here's an interesting tid-bit to tide you over until next we meet. If we compare RG58, common in Amateur Radio to RG6, common in TV, the losses are quite different. For 100m of coax, at different frequencies, these start to add up. At 1 MHz, the difference in loss is .6 of a dB, at 10 MHz, it's 2.2 dB and at 145 MHz, it's 10.7 dB. To be clear, the loss for RG6 is lower across the board. This really means that you shouldn't be afraid to experiment. There is nothing particularly special about the different types of coax and each choice has it's advantages and dis-advantages. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio This week I'm going to have a look at something called a Q-code. Last week I talked about a few aspects of operating. One of the inventions associated with human speech is the short-cut, a way to quickly say something rather than use the whole story. Before Amateur Radio this started on the telegraph with shortcuts called Q-codes. Think a three letter combination, starting with Q, followed by two letters. QTH, QSL, QRZ, QLF are examples. Language, just like Amateur Radio is an evolving feast. You'll find people writing articles about the abuse of Q-codes in speech going back to the early days of voice operation. The Q-code started with Morse Code as a way to quickly say something without needing to key the whole thing. This has flowed over into voice. You'll hear people use Morse-Code-isms in day to day language, 73, QSL, QTH and others are all examples of shortcuts that have no actual place in speech, but none the less have taken hold. Having said that, of course there is difference of opinion how you should conduct yourself. I know that there are things I hear on air that make me wince, and I'm sure that I've said things that make others shake their head. So, here's my take on how it should be done and feel free to do the same, or ignore me altogether. There is no such thing as "QRZ the frequency?". Nobody is calling the frequency. QRZ is specifically for the purpose of asking: "Who is calling me?" I know that there are some who are sharpening their pitchforks about now with all manner of comment, so let me be clear. I know, there are people who use QRZ in a pile-up. They've been calling CQ, had lots of replies, work a station and then after the contact say: QRZ?, with the meaning: "I'm done with the contact and I'm ready for another." This in my opinion is particularly poor operating, since it means that you're too lazy to say your callsign, disrespectful of all the stations calling you, arrogant enough to assume that everyone knows which station you are and oblivious to the notion that propagation is ever changing with new stations dropping in and out all the time. Instead of saying QRZ after such a contact, you're much better off saying your callsign instead. If you're in doubt, listen to some actually experienced contesters or DX operators and then you can you can fire off your feedback. I've been told that I have a habit of overusing QSL, but it means: "Transmission received and understood." and in communications there cannot be too much of that. I use it in day to day on-air language, use it in email and SMS and when I'm proficient in Morse, no doubt I'll use it there too. There are those that say that Hi-Hi, should not be used in voice, in Morse it's .... .. .... .., which sounds a little like someone laughing, which is where it comes from. Personally I think it's cute that you say Hi-Hi, even if someone who's not an Amateur doesn't share the joke. As a stick in the mud, I dislike 73's. If you're going to abuse a code, then at least use the correct one. It's nice in Morse, --... ...--, symmetric, the end of a contact, all fine. But there's not more than one of them and we're not sending off the number 3, seven times, so drop the 's'. I've been using language associated with broadcasting for a long time and I confess to wincing when I hear "Car-ah-be-an", rather than "Ca-rib-be-an", or "ad-ver-tise-ment" vs. "ad-ver-tis-ment" - no doubt some of my pronouncements will make you wince and some will find you agreeing. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today we're going to look at operating procedures, that is, what to say, when to say it and when not to say it. Amateur Radio being over a century old has lots of traditions and lots of quirky exceptions to rules, but you'll learn those as you go on air and make mistakes, and assume that you'll make those, probably regularly and every now and then someone will gently correct you, or you'll get shouted at, either way you'll get feedback. It's generally a better idea to figure out what's going on before you even open your mouth, so lets look at some things that really need to be second nature. Your callsign is always last. Always! That way the other station knows who you are, every time. I realise that you might not think that this is important, but just imagine that you've been inconsistent with this across your activities and one day you're in an emergency. Now it's crucial to know who is who. If you always do it the same, always your callsign last, then you'll do that in an emergency too. That out of the way, there are other aspects to operating that you need to take into account. You should always listen on the frequency that you're intending to operate. The longer the better. The reason I say that is because you may not hear both sides, or even two out of three, or more sides of the conversation. If there is a group talking, you may only hear one station who is happily chatting with others. After listening, you should say: "Is this frequency in use?" and listen some more. After about a minute, ask again, adding your callsign: "Is this frequency in use, VK6FLAB". If you still hear nothing, you can say: "Nothing heard" and start your transmission on the frequency. While you're operating remember that band conditions change and that you might find yourself all of a sudden among other stations that were not there earlier. They were, but you didn't hear them and you might actually find that they could hear you all along, so be prepared to make some new friends or make peace. There are idiots on air. You'll find net controllers who all of a sudden turn up on the frequency that you've been operating on and demand that you QSY. You can argue the point, or you can take the high road and leave the frequency to those who think they own the air. No mileage to be made from yelling at each other, no benefit and you'll end up looking like the problem, even though no single station owns any frequency. Similarly you'll find stations who have particular perspectives on how stations should operate and they'll go out of their way to tell you off. Pay no attention, unless they are actually going to make a formal complaint to your regulator, their feedback is just that, feedback. If you hear a couple of stations talking to each other and there's a few stations you know, you can drop your callsign in between the gap between overs and if they're inclined, a station will acknowledge you and let you in. This in turn implies a gap between overs. Sometimes that gap doesn't exist. If it's urgent, you can try your callsign and understand that it may clash with another station, but don't force it and if you're in a group, leave a gap after the previous station hands over to you. If you hear two stations discussing a medical issue, family affairs or other topics that are not generic, listen, but don't but in. When they're done and said goodbye, you can try your callsign and see if they respond, but don't expect it. Next week I'll take a look at Q-codes. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio In the past I've talked about our hobby and lightning. I've done it on more than one occasion, talked about cows and lightning strikes, about earth bonding and the dangers associated with lightning that's not directly overhead, but close enough to matter. On the weekend I learned the difference between saying something and seeing something. A group of Amateurs, went out camping, about two hours from anywhere in the middle of the bush to participate in an annual field day. We'd set-up our various overnight shelters, erected two marquees and proceeded to construct our portable shack. We were there for two nights. On the first night, the heavens opened up and the rain poured down, soaking the ground good and proper. We were lucky, our camp was at the top of a hill and drainage was great. At one point in the middle of the night I was standing outside in the rain, getting wet while attending to some ablutions - an unforgettable experience, but I digress. The next day the camp was in full swing. We were on air and operating, making contacts, despite the poor levels of propagation. We'd erected an 80m dipole, 40m of wire in the air, a 2m vertical, a G5RV antenna and some other wire antennas. Each of these had a piece of coax coming into the marquee and strung along the roof made their way to the appropriate radio. At that point the sky turned grey and thunder was heard. It was still dry, no actual activity overhead, or even within anything that could be considered nearby. As a precaution we disconnected our coax and settled down to wait for the impending storm. It never came. Other amateurs and house-holders were not so lucky, experiencing flooding and damage that was described as epic. Meanwhile back at our portable shack, we decided that it would be smart to separate power and coax a little. We started by pulling back the coax and moving it back into the roof space of the marquee. At one point, one of our team had his hand on the metal marquee frame and pulled at the coax connector that was feeding the 80m dipole. The next moment a crack was heard, he jumped. He's experienced a significant discharge between his hand and the coax. Remember, it's not raining, there's a grey sky and thunder can be heard in the distance. Looking back, I still cannot believe that between us, five Amateurs with a combined experience level of about 90 years between us, moving coax around while there was lightning in the air. What were we thinking? We were very lucky last weekend. It could have been much, much worse. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today's Amateur Radio is less like the valve or transistor based radio and more like a computer. So much so that most radios today have a mechanism to connect the radio to a computer. This mechanism is called a Computer Aided Tuning interface, or CAT interface. It's a mechanism that's used to allow two way control information to be shared between the radio and a computer. This interaction is a serial connection, generally something called RS232. This is a standard that was developed in 1962 and it specifies things like timing, voltages and other attributes. The electronics from that era don't look much like the ones of today and most of the challenges with getting this stuff to work is related directly to these differences. It should come as no surprise that each manufacturer has their own take on what this whole contraption looks like and most of this technology is not directly compatible across radios. So, let's imagine that you've got a radio and a computer and they're physically connected to each other using a CAT interface of some description. We then need to make sure that things like the speed of both ends is the same, that is, the BAUD rate is the same. Also we need to check that the number of bits, stop bits and parity are also correct. If this sounds a little like 1980's modem talk, you'd be correct. The radio is presenting itself to the computer as a serial device, just like a dial-up modem does. If you've not seen this, just think of it as if the numbers at both ends need to match. Often the radio will have a standard setting, which you should use as a starting point. Now, I'm going to skip over things like IRQs and port addresses, not because it's simple, but because it might work out of the box, or it might cause you to lose hair. If it's the latter, you're going to need to do some IT support and this is about radios and not about computers. I'm also going to gloss over the problem that most modern computers don't have an actual serial port any more, most have something called USB which requires an adapter and software for the adapter, another potential minefield to traverse. Now comes the bit where it all works, right? Nope. Not yet. Next you need to have software that knows how to talk to your radio. It may be programming software, specifically to configure your radio, or it may be generic logging software that reads what mode and frequency you're on and puts that in your log, or it may be something that knows how to correct the frequency of your radio to deal with the Doppler effect of an overflying satellite. In each case, you'll need to tell your software several things. The most basic one of those is the port number. That is, of all of the serial ports on your computer, which one is connected to your radio? Seeing that all Amateur Radio manufacturers agree on everything, all actual control codes and responses are the same across all radios. Oh wait, nope, that's not true. They're not even the same across the same brand, so you'll also need to tell your software which actual radio you're using, which is the perfect opportunity to learn that your shiny new radio doesn't yet exist within the software. So, when you start looking at the CAT interface, you now know that this is a thing that's going to require some homework and planning. To make digital modes work, you need an audio interface to go with the CAT interface, which a whole different set of fun and games, including ground loops, impedance matching, levels, feedback and distortion. Now, if you thought that you and I took a lovely walk through the deep arcane world of serial computer interfaces, wrap your head around this. When we use the current crop of software defined radios, we replicate all of this, both CAT and audio interfaces with virtual versions of cables, BAUD rates and port numbers. Suffice to say, I don't have words. I should add that all of what I've said is just so you get an idea that there is a chain of stuff that needs to work and that any one of these being incorrect will cause none of it to work. So, when you're doing this in your own shack, start at the beginning, get the cable working, set the speed and bits, set the port, pick the radio and cross your fingers. It's not trivial, but it's worth it. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm going to talk about operating procedures. Before groan and tune out, stay with me for a moment, this is important for all amateurs, even you. We as amateurs have a range of bands allocated to us. These bands cover a whole chunk of spectrum that we in many cases share with other users. They might either share the same band with us, or the other way around, we with them. Our bands might be right next to theirs or overlap in some part. To make things more interesting, these bands are unfortunately not uniform across the world. For example, in Australia part of IARU Region 3, the 40m band runs from 7.0 to 7.3 MHz. In Region 2, it's the same, but in Region 1, it only covers 7.0 to 7.2 MHz. If you look at the 80m band it's worse: Region 1 uses 3.5 to 3.8 MHz, Region 2 uses 3.5 to 4 MHz, Region 3 uses 3.5 to 3.9 MHz, but in Australia we can only use 3.5 to 3.7 and 3.776 to 3.8 MHz and that last little bit, the DX window, only if you hold an Advanced License. This can have profound implications for your operation on air. If you hear a station, clearly an amateur, callsign, working a pile-up and doing everything right, you may not actually be allowed to work them, even if you're privileged on the band you're listening on. Things get tricky near the edges of the bands. If you're operating near an edge, you are not allowed to have your signal stray across the band edge, so if you're using an SSB signal, the frequency shown on your radio is not where the edge of your transmission is, the radio is showing where the carrier is, the side-band signal depending on the type, can be another 2.5 to 6 KHz up or down. So, that's simple right. If you're using a band that uses Lower Side Band, say 80m, you can slide on up to the upper band-edge and start operating right? Uhm. No. Couple of things. The other side of the side-band doesn't vanish, it's reduced. Depending on the quality of the radio, the reduction is better or worse. Using an amplifier makes this problem bigger. Some radios have good filters on both transmit and receive which changes the picture again. I've not even talked about spurious emissions, harmonics and other artefacts which muddle this picture even further. The take-away for this is to make sure you know where the band edges are for your station and to make sure that you know what the performance of your actual radio is and where it transmits. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm going to talk about repeaters. These invisible services that sit on a particular frequency and do magic things to your signal. First of all, the best way to think of a repeater is to think of it as two radios. One is the receiver, the other the transmitter. The way it works is that the receiver hears your signal and sends that audio to the transmitter which sends it out over the air. For this to work, there need to be two frequencies in use, the one that you're transmitting on and the one that the repeater is transmitting on. From this simple idea, many different things flow. There is no rule that states that the receiver and the transmitter need to be in the same place, let alone on the same band; if they're on different bands, it's called a cross-band repeater. If the receiver and the transmitter are on the same band, the system needs to deal with the fact that a strong signal is being transmitted by the repeater right next to where the receiver is. If you're not careful, the transmitter will overwhelm or de-sense the receiver, making it harder to get your signal into the repeater. Several techniques are used, a contraption called a cavity filter is set-up to specifically let either the receive frequency through, or to block all frequencies except the transmit frequency. Some combine both of these techniques to make the repeater hear weak stations better. If the receiver and transmitter are on the same band, the difference between the two frequencies in use is called the offset. It varies per band. On 2 meters, the offset is normally 600 kHz, but it varies, on 70cm the offset is 5 MHz, but on 10m, the offset is 100 kHz. So different bands use different configurations and of course each of these is subject to local variation. There may be local interference on the standard offset, so it may be varied. There are some other things going on with repeaters. You can have a repeater that receives and transmits on the same frequency, it's called a parrot repeater and it sits there waiting for you to transmit, stores the incoming audio for a set period and then when you stop transmitting, it sends out the audio on the same frequency. This is useful to see how you sound on-air. Other techniques include adding computers to create IRLP, Echolink and AllStar Link. Essentially the receiver is connected to a computer which sends the audio across the Internet to another computer which in turn sends out the audio to another transmitter. After you stop transmitting, the chain is reversed and the other station can talk to you via a reverse path. There are also specialised repeaters that can listen in one mode, like FM and transmit in another, like AM, or SSB. This allows a 2m user to use HF from their FM hand-held radio. If all that's not enough, there are other things possible with repeaters. You can use a special tone to identify to the receiver that your signal is a valid audio signal. This is used in environments where noisy local signals often trigger the repeater, resulting in ongoing kerplunking of the transmitter. Next time you key up your local repeater, have a think about what's happening when you key-up your radio and say thanks to the owner of the repeater who spent time and effort, not to mention money, to make this invisible friend on the air work for you. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio There is an interesting phenomenon that I've begun to notice and now that I've seen it, it's hard to un-see. Think of it as the equivalent of the little dot in the top right corner of the screen that signifies the end of the reel to a movie projectionist. Once you've seen it, you can't miss it ever again. If you haven't, sorry, you will and now you'll carry that with you for the rest of your life. Across Amateur Radio, from Foundation and Standard through Advanced or Technician and General though Extra, there is this thing where people get together and ask each other how to get started. It's amazing to observe, grown adults every one of them, not daring to take the first step. It ranges from keying your microphone for the first time, through to making your first HF contact, through building an antenna, going portable, climbing a mountain, making contact with the International Space Station, doing a contest, building a radio or erecting a tower. It seems that collectively we've forgotten that this whole thing we do is about experimentation. We're so wrapped up in failure that more and more I see people wanting reassurance that what they're doing is right. Like they have to somehow be perfect the first time, be amazing, be accurate, eloquent, sturdy, brilliant or whatever is going on. I don't know how this started, but it's got to stop. If we extrapolate along this path we're going to end up as licensed automatons with no innovation, no spunk, no mistakes and no learning. Don't mistake me. You're not alone, there is prior learning to be had and community knowledge to be gleaned, but if you never fall flat on your face, how will you ever learn to get up? So, next time you're getting ready to do something, just start. Don't wait for validation, take failure in your stride and learn. Last week a friend and I went to scout a new location for a field day contest. We drove there, set up our station and proceeded to spend the day failing. We got RF into the radio, the computer was barely readable in the sun, I got sunburnt, we made two contacts and had a miserable time with short power leads, hard to use trees and to boot, it was hot. On the flip side, we trialled a new antenna design, learned that my clip on ferrite chokes don't and that we now had a list of things we'd learned and stuff we needed to bring when we came up for real. We didn't go up there to fail, we wanted to activate a rare WWFF Park, but instead we failed and learned other stuff. Think of this whole thing in a different way, frame it not as success or failure, but frame it as a way to learn something. Edison had this to say: "Negative results are just what I want. They're just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don't." Learning to experiment and being an experimenter and having a license that says you're an experimenter is also about learning to fail. Don't be scared. It happens to all of us. The better you fail, the better you succeed. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The single largest topic of conversation in Amateur Radio is about Antennas. The discussion often starts with one amateur telling another amateur about some or other amazing antenna, followed by a heated discussion about the merits or pitfalls of that same antenna and why they would never ever consider using it and why it's a waste of money, or some other rationale. Let's take for example the discussion of Dipole versus Vertical. There are those who will tell you that they'd never ever use a Dipole and similarly those who'd say the same about a vertical. Assertions of suitability aside, let's have a look at what we're talking about, first of all. In rough terms, a dipole is an antenna that is generally suspended between two sky-hooks, its fed from the centre and has pretty much an omni-directional radiation pattern. That is, signals arrive and depart from this antenna, pretty much evenly in all directions. Now, before you get all excited. It's not exactly the case, since it's not an isotropic point source, which you might recall is a theoretical antenna that we can prove not to be physically possible, but a dipole is the next best thing. A vertical is an antenna, which is often supported from a pole of some description, has some form of radial ground-plane at the base and while it's also omni-directional, there are parts of the signal that don't arrive nearly as well and other parts of the signal that fare better. Often a statement when comparing a dipole to a vertical will be something like this: "A vertical is better for DX and a dipole is better for local contacts." Now, let's just investigate that for a moment. If you've ever seen the radiation pattern for a vertical, you might have seen that there is a particular angle at which there is gain when compared to other angles. What this means is that signal arriving and departing from the antenna in essence favour that angle. Similarly, a dipole doesn't display this phenomenon nearly as sharply. There is some asymmetry between the sides and the ends of a dipole, but it's not particularly strong. Not that it's non-existent, just not pronounced. If you were to overlap the radiation pattern of a dipole and that of a vertical, you'd notice that apart from the single angle where the vertical favours radiation, the dipole pretty much has the same level of gain all round. In essence, this means that to all intent and purpose, apart from a single little angle, the dipole is pretty much the same as a vertical. I hear you say, "Yes, but..." Indeed. Think of a vertical as an antenna that favours a particular angle of incidence. It's more prone to hear signals from that angle than any other angle. Similarly, any transmitted signal is likely to favour that particular angle. As you know, the ionosphere is a moving feast. Signals arriving at one angle one moment may not be arriving at the same angle the next moment. If your vertical hears a signal one moment and not another, does that make for an effective antenna? Another aspect that separates a vertical from a dipole is the behaviour of vertical signals, so called NVIS, or Near Vertical Incident Signals. Things that are nearby. A vertical antenna all but ignores that aspect, where a dipole has no such behaviour. So, we're getting to the heart of it, imagine for a moment that the differences between a vertical and a dipole is their difference in filtering of signals. That is, a vertical filters signals from above, where the dipole doesn't. Similarly, a vertical filters all but the bits from a particular angle of incidence, where a dipole doesn't. If you've followed along, you might begin to realise that there is not a single "best" antenna. It's horses for courses. Your antenna choice is based on what you aim to achieve, not which antenna is better than any other antenna. So, the question: "Which antenna is the best?" should really be: "Which antenna is the best for this particular activity?" Something to try next time you have a chance. Get a two-way coax switch and hook up both a vertical and a dipole and listen to the same station with each antenna in turn. Take your time, listen throughout the day. You'll be amazed how they differ and how it changes over time. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm going to talk about dipoles. You know the tried and true antenna, the go-to design for getting on air, the simple first antenna you ever make, the one you learn from, you know the one. It's the mainstay of every amateur, of any field-day, of all things Amateur Radio. It's a simple thing. Using metric, rather than imperial measurements, but the point stands, you use the speed of light in vacuum divided by the required operating frequency and you get the overall wave length for that frequency. In absolute terms, roughly 300 m/s divided by 50 MHz, gives you 6 meters. Surprise, that's the band name for 50 MHz. Now the dipole is a half-wave contraption, so, 6 meters divided by 2 gives you 3 meters for your total half-wave dipole. Each leg is half that, a quarter wave length, so you have 3 meters divided by 2 again and you end up with two bits of wire, a meter and a half long each. If you're following along, that's 300 divided by 50 divided by 2 divided by 2, or using the same numbers in a slightly different order, 300 divided by 2 divided by 2 divided by 50 MHz, or 75 divided by 50 MHz. Still one and a half meters per leg of your shiny new dipole. So, the basic formula for a metric dipole can be stated as 75 divided by the frequency in MHz per leg. If you're playing with feet and inches, 300 m/s becomes 984 ft/s, half that is 492, half that is 246 feet, so the imperial version is 246 divided by the frequency in MHz, gives you length in feet for each leg. So, you've cut your wires, tied them to some magical feed point contraption, plug it into your radio and you're good to go, right? Now, anyone who's actually done this knows that this is not what will actually happen. It's never that simple, and frankly if it were, we wouldn't be Amateurs, we'd be, unlicensed or something. So, what affects the actual length of this magical antenna? Lots and lots of things. Here are a few that come to mind: - The thickness of the wire you're using. - The thickness of the insulation on the wire. - A thing called the end-effect. - The height of the contraption above the ground. - The kind of ground. - The price of the copper you're using. Sorry that last one isn't right. I have been told, time and time again that there are only two kinds of wire, cheap wire and free wire. The preference is for the latter. So, price of the copper doesn't matter. Another thing that does matter is that some wire can stretch while in the air, making the antenna longer, so keep that in mind. Fine and well I hear you say. But how does this really matter? If you increase the thickness of the wire, the resonant frequency goes down, that is, the antenna is "too long". If you increase the thickness of the insulation, the resonant frequency goes down as well. The end-effect is like adding a capacitor to the end of the wire, making it "longer" as well. The height effect is different for each height. Generally the effect is that the antenna resonates at a lower frequency. Each type of ground has a different amount of effect. Water vs rock vs sand vs clay. I can hear you groan at this point. First comment to make is that all of these effects make the antenna resonate at a lower frequency. This means that the suggestion to cut your antenna longer than the calculated number doesn't make much sense. If you start with the basic calculation, 75 divided by the frequency in MHz, you'll end up with an antenna that's extremely likely to be too long. I can hear you screaming at me right about now. Hold your tar and feathers. I gave you the First comment. Here's a Second one. If you don't have space for a straight dipole, say, you need to go around a corner, or put a bend in the wire, all of what I just said goes out the window. If you put this above a metal roof, poof, also out the window. If you cannot terminate the wire to a rope without bending the end of the wire, poof. A Third comment. You cannot cut wire longer. You can only cut it shorter. Cutting it longer is called soldering and that's a whole 'nother thing. Let me finish with some tips for new players. Don't ever cut your wire. It won't work like you expect and it will only give you more work. Always, always, always, fold your wire back over itself and wind it back over the end. If you leave it dangling you're adding capacitance and doing all manner of other weird stuff to your antenna. Also, if you need extra length because the 80m dipole just won't fit into the back yard, you can use the end capacitance to good effect, hang it down towards the ground and you'll end up with an antenna more to your liking. Final comment and then you can start sending me emails about how I'm wrong. The humble dipole antenna is a magnificent contraption. It has more variables than you can poke a stick at and anyone who tells you that it's just a case of calculating this by doing a simple division hasn't got the faintest idea of what's actually going on. There are times when simplification is

Foundations of Amateur Radio Today I want to raise the topic of batteries. Specifically, sizing the battery. You can do as I did naively, look at the manual, see that the current consumption of your radio is 22 Amp, decide that this means that you need to get a 26 Ah battery to use your radio for 1 hour. Being the portable type, I got two, 52 Ah in total. Some time has passed since I made that purchase. I've learned that I can get a lot more out of my battery than 2 hours. I also learned that lugging 56 Ah around is not fun. Having learned this, what could I have done to improve? Well, first of all, the 22 Amp is for Transmit. According to the manual, on receive it's only using 1 Amp. If you're not transmitting all the time, then you're not drawing 22 Amp the whole time. The ratio between send and receive is the Duty Cycle, often expressed as a percentage of the time spent transmitting. Another thing to note is that 22 Amp is when you use full power for a particular mode and band combination. On my radio that's 100 Watts, HF FM, so only using 5 Watts will reduce the power consumption radically. Speaking of which, my radio has different maximum power levels for different bands, so when you're doing the maths, you need to take that into account. If that didn't add enough complexity, different modes use different amounts of power. AM, FM, RTTY and other digital modes use 100% duty cycle. CW uses 40% and SSB only 20%. So, rough back of napkin calculation, using 5 Watts SSB on HF for an hour, transmitting only half the time gives you 22 Amps times 5% power, times 20% SSB, times 50% of the time, a 10th of an Amp. Now, before you go out and buy a 1 Amp Hour battery and expect to use it on HF for 10 hours, there are some wrinkles. First of all, a 12 Volt, 26 Amp Hour battery doesn't actually give you an Amp per hour for 26 hours at 12 Volt. It's graded on a scale. At the beginning it gives you a higher voltage, at the end it gives you a lower voltage and after a certain point you've actually destroyed your battery, not to mention that the radio stopped operating when the voltage went below 11.7 Volts - somewhere around 30% capacity. To make things even more interesting, different batteries react differently depending on how fast you're drawing from them. Another issue is that temperature affects how much power you are able to draw. After all that, the manual for your radio is specifying theoretical numbers, not actual ones. I've never ever seen my radio draw 22 Amps, even when it was running flat out. On the flip side, I've also never seen my radio draw less than 4 Amp when transmitting, so the maths for this doesn't add up as expected. So, why was I giving you the maths if it doesn't work out? Because the Simple Simon Says solution doesn't work, but neither does some educated calculation. I hear you saying: "Well, that wasn't helpful." Actually it was. Now I can tell you something and you'll know why it will help you. Get yourself a power supply with a display that shows Amps, or get yourself an ammeter and stick it into the power supply circuit and take some measurements. Use a dummy load as the antenna, since SWR will also affect these numbers, as does the microphone gain, the squelch level and the volume level, as well as the display on the radio, the tuner and other things you have connected. Theory is great, practice in this case gets you a lot more reliable result. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio There is a recurring topic in Amateur Radio circles, called "permissions", or "rights", or some other word indicating "entitlement". It's a conversation that has been happening since the dawn of radio experimentation and will continue until well after our Sun has burped it's final sun-spot. In Australia, there are three classes of License, in increasing level of responsibility they are Foundation, Standard and Advanced. There is an ongoing tension between these categories. Some higher level responsible licensees look down on the class with less responsibility, and the reverse is also true. This separation of class is an evolutionary one. As I said recently, the most recent overhaul, more than 10 years ago, back in 2005 saw the introduction of the Foundation Class and the consolidation of various classes into Standard and Advanced. There are current noises being made about how this needs to change. There are those who suggest that the Foundation Class needs to have access to more power, to more bands, to more modes and various other suggestions. There are recurring noises of making the Foundation Class require a renewal and other such things. Often there is some link made to the growth of the hobby. Make it simpler so we can get more people, make it bigger so we get more people, make it harder so we get better people, make it ... something else. I'm a computer geek. I like playing with data and I like to figure out how stuff works. Over a year ago I started the process of trying to understand how amateur radio ebbs and flows. For example, in rough terms, in the 10 years that the Foundation Class of license has existed, we've issued about 10,000 new licenses, so around 1,000 a year, give or take. In the same time, the total size of the amateur community has stayed pretty much the same. So, did we loose all those Foundation entrants, did the old ones die off, did something else happen? Is a licensee who starts and stays for a year more or less likely to upgrade? Is there a time window when the likelihood of dropping out is increased? Is there some underlying factor that causes people to leave the community? Is there a correlation between on-air activity and longevity in the hobby? What about age, gender, etc. We simply don't have the analysis at this time. I've been at the ACMA and the WIA to get access to historic data, frankly it's been a hard slog, the ACMA pointing at the WIA and the WIA claiming license restrictions and neither giving any indication that they're doing anything to resolve the issue. In case you're wondering, I'm talking about the public RADCOM, now called SPECTRA database, nothing secret or private about it. I recently hit on the idea of using contest logs from the various contests to determine actual on-air activity. So that will add several gigabytes of data to my investigation. And an interesting side note - based on incomplete data, the 2015 CQWW Phone Contest saw the submission of 60 logs from Australia, but around 750 actual stations from VK were heard on-air. I'm attempting to get the same raw information from the local contests. This will give me a "Last Heard on Air" date, which will give me an indication of the status of the callsign involved. So, regardless of where you stand on the notion of the amount of responsibility you have as a Licensed Amateur, it's clear to me that we need more information. I think this is important for the future of our hobby and I'm working on it. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The history of the evolution of amateur licensing is a nebulous affair, told and re-told, moulded, changed and interpreted by the story tellers along the way. There is an on-going debate about how the restructure of the licensing regime in Australia, in 2005, has affected our hobby. In 2005, after a 10 month review period, three classes of license were established, a new Foundation class, an a re-imagined Standard and Advanced class, using existing novice and novice limited licenses to create the Standard class and combining limited, intermediate and unrestricted licenses into the Advanced class. I've touched on this subject before, back in 2011, when I noted that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. The ACMA published the review in May of 2004. It summarises the responses about the introduction of the Foundation licensing option. It opens with, "Over two-thirds of submissions were in favour of the introduction". It goes on to say that the most common reason for support was the need to make the amateur service more accessible and cited that the Foundation class then introduced in the UK was the appropriate standard. The majority of respondents suggested that the maximum transmitter output should be 100 Watts PEP and suggested 80m, 40m, 15m, 10m, 6m, 2m and 70cm as the appropriate bands. Also of interest is that 39% of respondents were in favour of a two-tier licensing structure, where 24% were in favour of a three-tier structure. The ACMA report also mentions that many respondents suggested that the foundation license should not be renewed without the licensee being re-examined. If you're familiar with the restrictions and obligations of the Foundation License then you'll recognise that some of these responses were agreed to and some rejected. I've not included the full report, it goes to 15 pages, but there are some other interesting things in the ACMA report. The ACMA notes that the main reason cited for requiring a Foundation licensee to be re-examined was to promote the license as a "stepping stone" to amateur radio operation. It notes that while there are provisions in the Act for such a re-examination, where there are reasonable grounds to believe that a qualified operator would be unable to achieve satisfactory results. The ACMA notes that none of the current amateur licensing options requires an amateur operator to be re-examined regularly. I wonder if we actually forced all amateurs to re-do their license, how many would actually pass? I know I would. There are other interesting things afoot. There is discussion today about allowing Foundation Licensees to use digital modes, but there is a move to require that it be added to the syllabus before that is permitted. Of course there is a parallel to make, none of the current licensees have any such formal training, why should a Foundation Licensee be "special" and require extra training. I've been asked what I think about privileges and the Foundation License. To be clear, I'm perfectly happy with my privileges. I have yet to experience all that Amateur Radio offers, and by turning my operating power to half the permitted level, 5 Watts, I'm learning specifically what works and what doesn't. I'm learning about propagation, about antennas, about operating techniques and about patience. I'm sure that this stands me in good stead wherever I go. One final comment, the ACMA report references a submission by a group called CQVK. I managed to track down the 112 page submission and have uploaded it to the F-troop website, the home of the weekly net in which New and Returning Hams can get together every week. Have a look at the ACMA report and the CQVK report at http://ftroop.vk6.net. As I've said before, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Let's not. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio There are skills that come from thinking and there are skills that come from doing. There is place for both in Amateur Radio. There is nothing in the world that is like the experience of working a pile-up, unless the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange counts, but I've not personally been there and it doesn't look as intimate as a radio shack. Working stations across the planet that are coming in thick and fast is an amazing thrill, not unlike getting onto a roller-coaster. The long slow journey to the top of the ride is calling CQ, the crest of the hill is the first response and the loop-de-loop is when they're all calling at the same time; rolling back down to earth at the end of the ride is the petering out of the calls, only to start again. If you've never experienced it, I'd strongly recommend that you find a way to put yourself in the position where you are exposed to this absolutely thrilling experience. So, what do you do when you're actually in this situation? Hopefully you're not going to be on your own the first time, but it does happen and it might be that the person you're with has never had the experience either, so here's some ideas on what to do. The first thing to remember, this is YOUR pile-up. You're the one running it, you're the one in control of it, it's your actions that make it work, or not. I've said in the past, it's all about rhythm. It's about expectation management. If the pile-up sees you floundering about, not being consistent, not giving out succinct information, they'll go elsewhere and the experience will be over before it begins. So. The noise is overwhelming, there are stations all over the place calling you. If you hear a callsign, or most of a callsign, then call that. Don't change your mind if someone else comes back instead. You've called CQ and let's say that you heard, K1R. You call back, K1R, 59. If the station operator on the other end is any good, the response might be HK1R, 59 also. Your response will be HK1R. CQ VK6FLAB. But lets say that you only heard K1. You call back, "the station with K1". The response is three stations at the same time, one SK1Q, one VK1AA, one JA7BG. You could get upset about the JA7 station calling, but remember, he too has lots of stations calling around him, he might not have properly heard either. You say "the station with K1, K1 only please". Two stations come back. SK1Q and VK1AA. You pick the one you hear best. SK1 again. You hear SK1Q. "SK1Q, 59." If your memory is great, you could also go on to say "VK1AA 59" and then call CQ. This is not something you'd do on your first or 10th pile-up, but it's something to work toward. The thing that took me a while to recognise is that there are idiots on the band who think that their callsign is the most important. My best advice is to ignore them. This is hard. They'll be very noisy. One trick, call while they're calling, rather than let their rhythm destroy yours. Remember, this is YOUR pile-up. Other things to note. I've spoken in the past about the so-called standard phonetic alphabet. As you might remember, there is no such thing. This will trip you up. Don't let it bother you. Other fun stuff that happens in a pile-up, especially if it's been going for a little while, is that you notice little comments. You might inject one of your own. "HK1R Big Signal, you're 59". Or if it's a friend, K9CT, you might say: "K9CT, Hi Craig, long time no see, 59." It's the little inserts in the middle of a pile-up, in the middle of the night that make you smile and give you that shot of adrenaline to make it last longer. I have to admit. For me, there is no stronger drug that riding a pile-up. Of course, this is not all there is to learn about pile-ups. It's to give you some idea of what's going on and what you might do to keep it alive when it happens to you. Feel free to get in touch with questions if you like. I'm Onno VK6FLAB This and other episodes are available online at http://podcasts.itmaze.com.au

Foundations of Amateur Radio This is episode 236 or so of my weekly contribution to this hobby. As you may have heard me say over the past few weeks, this is now available as a podcast which you can subscribe to. It's available at http://podcasts.itmaze.com.au and you can also search for my callsign, VK6FLAB on iTunes and find it there. I'm mentioning this because each podcast also contains a transcript, which you can use to search the content. I've been doing this podcast since May 2011 and in that time I've covered many topics. I get wonderful feedback from you about each segment, thank you, and I also get requests for content. Often new listeners ask me if I could talk about XYZ topic, and I'm finding more and more that in fact I have talked about such a topic. That's not to say that I won't revisit a topic if I have information to add. For example, I was in the process of researching baluns, got distracted by word-use and will revisit. As I'm doing the research I'm realising that the rabbit hole goes deep on that particular topic, so I'm not yet at a point where I can say much about it other than to think of a balun as a maths tool for feed-point impedance, that is to say, a 6 to 1 balun will transform a 300 Ohm feed-point to a 50 Ohm one, similarly a 9 to 1 will do the same for a 450 Ohm feed-point. All fine and dandy, but why would you need a 1 to 1 balun. Or what's the difference between a voltage balun and a current balun, not to mention the bandwidth, the different material types, and on it goes. So, I'm not yet at the point where I can distil the information to a three minute segment, but I will. I've also discussed cows and lightning in the past. If you remember, if a cow is facing the impact point of lightning, they can die from the current that flows along their body from their front legs to their rear legs. Which is why you want a single point earth in your station. I hope that you'll take the opportunity to have a look-see across the previous editions of this segment and find something to your liking. I'm Onno VK6FLAB. This and previous editions can be found online at http://podcasts.itmaze.com.au/ and are also available for download from iTunes and other podcast directories. Just search for my callsign.

Foundations of Amateur Radio Previously I've discussed different aspects of contesting in relation to Amateur Radio. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, contesting is an activity where you test your station and skill against other amateurs. Unlike other contests where you're all in the same physical location, say a stadium, or an online playing field, amateur radio contesting is most commonly done from the comfort of your own shack. Of course, as is true for everything in life, there are exceptions to this. There are contests where you're not in your own environment, say on a field day, at a contest station, or some other place, but I'll ignore these for the moment. In most organised sports, and amateur radio is no exception, there are rules for participating. It should go without saying that you're expected to abide by the rules. Disqualification, bans, even life-time exclusions and revision of results can and have happened. Contests are planned by different people and groups and vary greatly across the globe. Amateur Radio is a global pursuit, and contesting is a global activity. It can start as simple as making a contact every day, through to staying awake for 48 hours and making as many contacts as possible across as many countries as possible as fast as possible, and everything in between. If you think about that for a moment, you'll soon realise that with so many different people organising contests, there is likely going to be one that tickles your fancy. There are several contests every weekend and often one every day. People participate in contests for different reasons, to try their new station, to win, to get another country on their DX list, to achieve a distance record, to test their skill, to learn how to hear callsigns in noisy environments, to spend time on-air, to laugh with friends and to contribute to the hobby of amateur radio. If you're new to our community, then contesting might be a scary proposition. You might not know what to do, or how to even start. You should know that your doubts were true for everyone you hear on air. We still haven't mastered the art of growing an amateur in utero, though I should confess that some act as if they are. So where do you start? The best way to do this is to set-up your station and to tune around the bands and to listen to what is going on. It will be confusing at first, but if you find a station that is making contacts that are different from normal ones, you know the one where you both exchange callsigns and a signal report, you'll begin to hear other parts of the contact. It's possible that the station is exchanging a serial number, or some other special token. You can also go online and find many different amateur contest calendars which each will give you a way to find out what global activity is currently taking place, so you can look up the contest online and read the rules. If all that's too hard, talk to your fellow amateur friends and go to their station and see what they do to participate in a contest. I'm Onno VK6FLAB This and other episodes of Foundations of Amateur Radio can be heard via podcast or download at podcasts.itmaze.com.au.