Foundations of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the recurring questions in this hobby, technically outside this hobby, asked by people who've not yet, or have only just been bitten by the bug, is: "What's the point of this hobby?" In some ways I too have asked this question, though for me the answer came within a few months of learning that amateur radio exists. In response to others asking this I've also made meagre attempts to answer this question with varying degrees of success and satisfaction. The typical responses are things like: there's a thousand hobbies inside amateur radio, it's about the communication, about the camaraderie, about climbing and hiking, about technology, science, physics, electronics. The truth is that this is just a fly-over view of what it means to have this as your hobby. It occurs to me, having now been licensed for a little while, I can actually express a little more clearly what this hobby has given me. At a basic level, I now know what the front of a TV aerial is and how Wi-Fi is attenuated by walls, how line of sight works and why you can talk to the International Space Station with a hand-held radio. I've learnt about sunrise and sunset and how they affect propagation, the grey line and how the ionosphere is broken into layers that are affected by solar radiation. I've learnt about sunspots and how they change over time, that there are cycles, that there is a thing called the Maunder Minimum and that propagation is a fickle beast. I've learnt about the Ionospheric Prediction Service and about band planning in contests, about dealing with pile-ups and making contacts, about voice-keyers and computer controlled radios, about contesting software and logging, about contest scoring and contest rules. I've learnt about gain and about loss, about how 75 Ohm coax differs from 50 Ohm coax, how connectors work, about soldering and crimping, how to use a crimper and what connectors to use with which coax. I've learnt about path-loss and about bouncing signals off the moon, about Sagittarius A*, a bright and very compact astronomical radio source at the centre of the Milky Way and about inclination and ascension, about galactic coordinates and observation windows, about programming in Python and the astropy library. I've learnt about how radio signals are used to encode information, the seemingly infinite supply of digital modes and how a radio signal can be described in three dimensions. I've learnt how maths can describe amplitude modulation and how side-bands can be described, about signal to noise ratios and decibels. I've experienced the joys of making a rare contact, to places like Amsterdam Island, Prince Edward & Marion Island, Heard Island, Micronesia, Cuba, Kiribati, and many more. I've learnt more about geography, about maidenhead locators, learnt new phrases and started learning new languages. I've gone out camping more times than I can count, spent nights under the stars making contacts across the globe. I've set-up my station in parks and on peaks across the country, made life-long friends locally and abroad, tested my patience and my endurance. I've learnt about the pioneers and inventors who came before me, about their successes and failures, their enduring legacies and their inventiveness. I've gained insight into Apollo radio communications and distance measuring, global positioning before there was GPS, about satellite dishes and radio during disasters, about emergency communications and temporary set-ups with just enough to get the job done. I've written software, made charts, learnt how to use GNUPlot, written articles, recorded podcasts, interviewed amateurs, published books, produced, presented and transmitted amateur news broadcasts, built amateur radio websites, chaired meetings, raised funds, contributed to club committees and helped as I was able. I've helped organise a national amateur radio conference, learnt how to teach others and created a weekly radio net for new and returning amateurs. I've acted as a point of contact, offered life advice and acted as a shoulder to cry on when the going got tough for some of my fellow amateurs. I've built more, tested more, explored more, learnt more and done more in the past decade than I have in the 40 years before that. When I look back over the 472 podcast episodes I've written so-far, that massive list is only just scratching the surface and it only just begins to describe how deeply affected I've been by this hobby. It only barely describes the width and depth of this hobby and I've only been here for a little while. I must point out that I did all these things because I could, because I had radio amateur friends who prodded and poked, who helped and asked, who gave and received. My exposure over this decade was only possible because there are others who share my interests and stopped to take a moment to express that. Next time you're asked about how amateur radio is relevant, how it relates to the world, how it affects yo

Foundations of Amateur Radio The hobby of Amateur Radio is essentially one of experimentation. Within our community we endlessly build things, from amplifiers to Yagis and every letter of the alphabet in between. With every experiment we grow the amateur radio sphere of influence just a little bit. As our hobby is evolving into Software Defined Radio, or SDR, the homebrew aspect of our community is also changing bit by bit and as a result, homebrew today is just as likely to be based on software as it is in hardware. Unlike the physical world where you need to source and buy components, design a circuit, build it, test it and then put it in a box, in the software realm you can get started with the computer that is more than likely within reach right now. Recently I took delivery of a new SDR, an ADALM Pluto. It's essentially a Linux computer, FPGA and transmit capable SDR in a small box. I bought it specifically for the purpose of experimentation. One of the first things I did with this device was install an existing piece of software called dump1090. The tool listens to 1090 MHz and decodes Mode S transponders, used by aviation to report aircraft information in real-time. Originally written by Salvatore Sanfilippo in 2012 for the RTL-SDR dongle, it was patched by several people and in 2017 it was updated by Jiang Wei to support the Pluto SDR. My contribution to the project is minor. I've updated the on-board web-server to use Open Street Map and a few other cosmetic changes. For me it was a "Hello World" project, something that's the software equivalent of warming up your soldering iron and pre-tinning the wire you're about to use. The tools to do this is what I want to discuss. When you look at the software that underlies much of the SDR world, the digital modes, logging, contesting, even the software inside tools like the Nano-VNA, much of it is open source. That means that as a curious amateur you can have access to the underlying equivalent of the circuit diagram. As you can with a soldering iron, a scribe and wire, you can patch or update a circuit. In the software realm you can do the same once you have access to the source code. The tools you're going to get in touch with are text editors, compilers, libraries and configuration files. If that's not your thing, I appreciate that, but if it sparks your interest, you'll open the door into a brand new world of software development where you can determine how a mode works or what it supports or how it interacts with your radio or testing gear. When you jump in, likely feet first, you're going to make mistakes and lose hair and sleep and you'll be shaking your virtual or physical fist at the person who came before you, but then that's the world of experimentation, so likely you'll already have that down pat. You'll likely play with different tools that require different versions, often installed side-by-side, much to your chagrin when you learn that it just won't work. Not to mention that removal of the offending tool often leaves interfering cruft behind, not unlike unsightly and short-circuiting blobs of solder. I'm here to introduce you, albeit briefly, to a tool that will take much of that pain away. The free tool is called Docker. It has got little in the way of visibility in the amateur radio world, but in the software development world it's pretty much old hat. Essentially the idea is that you can install stuff into a so called disposable container so you can have your copy of dump1090 installed in one container and your copy of codec2 in another, a copy of rtl-sdr in a third container, all working independently from each other, without needing to complicate things with multiple computers or virtual machines. If a developer uses Debian, another uses Ubuntu and a third uses Red Hat, you can run these side-by-side without any issue. If they need an ancient version of something, that too is handled without a problem. Make a mistake, destroy the container and start again, fresh. Docker is a tool that allows you to build an environment on Linux, MacOS and Windows, as well as the Raspberry Pi, that acts and behaves in many ways like a virtual machine. In all the ways that you're likely to use it, at least initially, it's indistinguishable. What that means is that the operating system, the compiler and the libraries that you need for one tool won't affect those needed for another tool. The best part of this is that you can build on a massive library of pre-existing Docker containers and use files that describe how to build and compile tools like dump1090. If you look for my callsign vk6flab on github.com, you'll find my version of dump1090 and you'll find a Dockerfile that describes how I built it. The project contains all the bits you'll need to get started with your own version of dump1090, or some other project that tickles your fancy. Every time you build something, the amateur radio sphere of influence grows just that little bit. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Every week I run a net for new and returning amateurs. A variety of people join in with varying degrees of skill, knowledge and number of birthdays. One of the regular things I say during that net is that if I'm not acknowledging you, it's because I cannot hear you. I then start a spiel about repeater offsets and give some examples, but what is it really and how does it work? As you might recall, a repeater is a radio, generally located somewhere useful, like on a hill or tall building, that offers the ability to talk to other amateurs who are not within range of your radio. For bands like 2m, 70cm and 23cm, generally speaking, contacts are line-of-sight. If you're standing on a hill, you can talk to more people because your line of sight is further away. This is also why you can talk to the International Space Station with a hand-held, since it's in your line-of-sight, at least some of the time. A repeater acts as a line-of-sight extender. If it can see both you and another station, it can act as a bridge between you. How it does this is pretty simple. A repeater listens to your signal and transmits that to the other station. It uses two separate frequencies to make this happen. A receive and a transmit frequency, or more precisely an input and an output frequency. To remember which is which, you can think of a repeater as a giant megaphone, you talk into it and sound comes out. Said differently, think of a repeater as a device that takes an input from one station and makes an output for everyone to listen to. To actually use a repeater, your radio needs to be setup to transmit on the repeater input and it needs to receive on the repeater output. This means that when you transmit, the repeater can hear you and when you're listening, you can hear the repeater. To achieve this, you can set your radio up using repeater mode. It uses a thing called an offset to set the difference between the input and output frequencies. To find out what the offset is, you take the repeater input frequency and subtract the repeater output. If you've set-up your radio correctly you're tuned and listening to the repeater output. When you hit the Push to Talk or PTT, you'll transmit on the input frequency and when you let go, you're back to receiving on the output frequency. One final roadblock might be that your local repeater has a tone lock. If it does, the repeater will ignore you even if you have all the frequencies correct. This tone is generally published by the repeater owner or your local regulator. You can also check a website called repeaterbook.com to see many of the world's repeaters and their specific settings. Now, I should point out that while repeater offsets are standardised, they're not the same across bands, across the world, or even within a country or city. Depending on where you are, what the density of repeaters is and what band you're on, the offset number and direction will change. It's even possible that you have a variety of offsets on the same band in the same city. This means that you cannot just pick a standard offset for your radio but most modern radios will have a method to deal with this. It's easy to get this wrong. Setting up your radio for using a repeater is deciptively simple. Three things to look out for when it's not working. You have the input and output reversed, the offset is wrong, or there's a tone blocking your transmission. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The single most discussed topic in amateur radio is that of antenna design, that and medical procedures on 80m, but I kid. Previously I've discussed the notion that all frequencies are on-air all the time and that your traditional radio uses much of its electronic circuitry to filter out all the things you don't want to hear. Parallel to that is the concept that you tune your antenna to be resonant on a particular band or frequency. As amateurs we might look for a wide-band antenna that makes it possible to use our radio across several bands. We often construct our antennas to be multiple harmonics of a band so we can have access to more spectrum without needing more physical antennas. None of this is new and as an amateur you'll likely spend the rest of your days improving your antenna situation, or at least talking about it, if not outright bemoaning the lack of antenna space, family approval, budget or some other excuse. As I started my journey into Software Defined Radio a new idea occurred to me. If an antenna is a resonant circuit, could you think of your antenna as a filter, as-in, something that leaves out the things you don't care about? In and of itself I'm sure I'm not the first to consider this notion, but the idea means that you essentially turn your idea of an antenna on its head, from something that receives to something that rejects. Consider for example the small transmitting loop antenna, often also called a magnetic loop antenna. It's got one characteristic that isn't often considered a benefit, it has something called a High-Q, or a high Quality Factor. The higher the Q, the narrower the bandwidth. I should digress here for a moment. Q is a number. Big number means narrow bandwidth, little number means wide bandwidth. It's easy to calculate. If you look at an SWR plot of an antenna you'll see a curve where the bottom of the curve is the lowest SWR of your antenna, that's the centre frequency. You'll also see two points on the same curve where the SWR hits 2:1. If you take the centre frequency and divide that by the difference between the two edge frequencies, you'll have the Q of that antenna. Using numbers, consider an antenna that's got an SWR below 2 between say 7 MHz and 7.2 MHz, a bandwidth of 200 kHz, you'd have a centre frequency of 7.1 MHz. The Q of that antenna would be 7100 divided by 200 or a Q of 35.5 If you had an antenna that had a bandwidth of 5 kHz at 7.1 MHz, it would have a Q of 1420. And just to wrap that up. This is helpful because just comparing bandwidth on different antennas doesn't tell you enough. Is an antenna that has 400 kHz bandwidth on 20m more or less selective than an antenna with 200 kHz bandwidth on 40m, what about 100 kHz on 80m? Back to the small transmitting loop antenna or mag-loop. If you're using such an antenna on an amateur band like say the 40m band, you'll likely have to re-tune your antenna every time you even think about changing frequency. I've had the frustration of using a manual version of such an antenna and it can wear thin very quickly. I'm bringing this up because it can also be a benefit. Imagine that you need to make a contact on a busy band during a contest. Often you'll find yourself setting up the filters on your radio, trying hard to remove all the extraneous noise that comes from strong signals nearby. What if your antenna could help with that? What if you thought of your antenna as a pre-filter, something that makes the job of extracting just that signal from the bit of spectrum you're interested in? My point is this. We're talking about an antenna that from one perspective can be a pain to use, requiring constant retuning, constant adjustment, just to get on the air and make noise. From another perspective, that very same antenna is a way to filter out the things you don't want to hear and extract the signal you care about. How you approach this depends on your perspective and just considering your antenna as a filter might help you see another side of your antenna system that you hadn't considered before. How you use this is entirely up to you. For my money, I'll be doing more experiments. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The day came to pass when all my set-up and configuration was going to culminate in the moment of truth when I enabled TX on my WSPR mode station. Before I tell you of my experience, I should give you a little bit of background. A few weeks ago I managed to erect a HF vertical at my home or QTH. That in and of itself was news worthy, well at least to me it was, since it was the first time since I became licensed in 2010 that I had actual real all-band HF capability at home. Last weekend I ran some RG6, yes, 72 Ohm Quad Shield, low-loss coaxial cable, from my antenna, through the roof, into my shack. I was thrilled. Immediately set about getting my HF station up and running. This involved installing WSJT-X, a tool that allows you to do weak signal work, perfect for when you're a low power or QRP station like me. I've previously reported using WSPR, Weak Signal Propagation Reporter on a Raspberry Pi and a dongle, but this time I was using my Yaesu FT-857d. Reports were coming in thick and fast. Managed to hear stations on all the bands I'm allowed on, 80m, 40m, 15m, 10m, 2m and 70cm. Managed to make it report online and update the various maps around the place. Brilliant! Now I wanted to do the next thing. Transmit and see who could hear me and how far my beautiful callsign might travel on 5 Watts. So, after some abortive attempts, I configured the levels correctly, made sure that my antenna coupler, an SG-237, was tuned and hit "Enable TX" on the screen of my computer. Dutifully my computer did what was expected, turned on the transmitter and happily made the fan run on my radio for two minutes at a time. I tried 80m, 40m and 15m. All worked swimmingly. Then I looked on the map to see who had heard me. Nobody. Nothing. Nada. Niets en niemand. I could hear N8VIM using 5 Watts, 18649 km away, but nobody could hear me, not even the station VK6CQ who is 9 km from me. So, what's going on? Turns out that I'm not using a "standard" callsign. That's right, my VK6FLAB, authorised by the World Radiocommunication Conference 2003, implemented by the Australian regulator, the ACMA in 2005 and issued to me in 2010 isn't a standard callsign. Seems that the deal-breaker is the four letter suffix, FLAB, that's killing my attempts at making contact. Now I know that there are moves under way, not quite sure what stage they're at, to allow Australian amateurs to apply for any three-letter suffix and keep that regardless of their license level, but that to me doesn't really solve the underlying issue, where a perfectly legal callsign isn't allowed to be used by one of the most popular modes today. I've lodged a bug report on the WSJT-X mailing list, but to accommodate this callsign will probably require a fundamental change in the way the WSPR mode and likely several other JT modes will work, not to mention the databases, the maps, API calls and other fun things like logging. Technically I could have figured this out back in September 2019 when I was first allowed to use digital modes with my license, but I didn't have an antenna then. In case you're wondering. I also investigated using a so-called extended, or type-2 message, but that allows for an add-on prefix that can be up to three alphanumeric characters or an add-on suffix that can be a single letter or one or two digits. I could use something like VK6FLA/B, but I'm sure that the owner of VK6FLA would be upset and using VK6/F0LAB might have a French amateur yell Merde! at me when they spot their callsign being transmitted from VK6. One suggestion was to upgrade my license. What's the fun in that? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I was getting ready to go out when rain started pelting down. Not unexpected in this part of the world at this time of year but inconvenient for my plans. I didn't particularly want to carry an umbrella and the thought of wearing a rain hood brought back memories of water trickling down my back. For reasons I'm not quite sure of, my eye fell on my hat on its hook at the door. The hat I wear in the heat of summer to keep my brain from frying, the hat I use whilst camping with my amateur radio friends, the hat I've worn whilst loading massive hay bales with a tractor and the hat I've worn swimming in the Ord River - well, a descendent, third generation if I remember correctly. I shook my head in disbelief, after donning my raincoat, put my trusty Akubra Territory on my head and stepped out into the rain. Perfect. Kept me dry, kept my glasses clear and no drips down my back. You may well wonder what this has to do with radio and that's a fair question. I will preface this with a disclaimer that you might not have this set-up in your shack just now, but perhaps it will inspire you to get started. I've been talking a lot about Software Defined Radio, and I do believe that it represents the future for our hobby, but that doesn't mean that my traditional radio, in my case a Yaesu FT-857d, is headed for the scrap heap just yet. As you might know, with some preparation you can connect your radio to a computer and control it. You can also connect both the send and receive audio to a computer using a variety of techniques which I probably should get into at some point. Assuming that you have, and I realise you might not yet have done this, but assuming for a moment that you have made this all work, you can use this to do things like JT65, FT8, PSK31, SSTV and hundreds of other modes. One thing I did during the week was use this set-up to listen to noise. Seriously, that's what I did. I picked a spot on the band with nothing but noise. No discernible signal and fired up the application WSJT-X, it's the tool you use for many weak signal modes. As an aside, as a tool, it is also helpful in getting your digital mode levels set correctly. One of the windows in WSJT-X is the waterfall and spectrum display. On it you can see the signal as it is right now and how it's been in the past. If you turn on one of the filters on your radio, you can see the display change. You can literally see what gets filtered out. On my radio I've got the standard filter, as well as a 2 kHz and a 300 Hz Collins filter. Using this technique, you can specifically see what each filter does. If I turn on the built-in Digital Signal Processor, the DSP, I can see what the adjustments do, as well as the impact of the mode on the filter. And how the various settings interact. For example, until I saw this display, I didn't know what the "DSP HPF CUTOFF" and "DSP LPF CUTOFF" specifically did and how they interacted with the other filters. Similarly what "DSP BPF WIDTH" did and how. I also didn't know that even if you set both the high and low pass filter frequencies to the same value, you still have a usable filter, even if you might think that nothing could get through. Now I do realise that your radio may not have those specific settings, but I am confident that if you pick a spot on the band, set up a frequency display and waterfall, you'll discover things about your radio that you hadn't before. I also realise that you can hear some of this by just playing with filters, but seeing it on the scope adds a whole other dimension to the experience. Just one example is to see how a narrow filter interacts with the in-built DSP, something that's difficult to hear, but easy to see. If you have a Morse beacon to hand, you can also see how various frequency shifts work and the impact of selecting filters in relation to that signal. No need to just listen to the beacon with just CW mode either. Have a look at it using SSB. Using something for an unexpected purpose can give you many great rewards. As for the hat, really, I hadn't used my hat to ward off the rain until then; you live and learn. What have you discovered recently? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Much of the operation that I've done as a radio amateur is conducted in the field. That is, I tend to either drive my car to a location, or go out with friends and set-up camp to play. After you do this for a while you start to notice the things that you look for in an operating position. The very first one is accessibility. That is, how easy is it to get there? It's fine coming up with the ultimate location, but if it's an hour's drive away and you've only got an hour to play, you'll spend all your time getting there and you'll be home late. By contrast, for field days lasting several nights, I've regularly driven more than a hundred kilometres to find the spot, sometime much more than that. The point is that the accessibility changes depending on your available time. The journey to the location can be just as much fun as the destination itself. How long you plan to be there will determine what antennas you might want to set-up. If you're there for an hour, you'll likely use a vertical on your car. If you're there for the weekend, your antenna farm will be determined by how much wire you brought and what you can hang it off. Hanging antennas is the next thing. You can bring your own poles, but for height, nothing beats a solid tree. The taller the better. More taller, more better. If you have several to choose from, you get to play with all manner of fun stuff. For one antenna contraption we had three trees that we ran a wire between. They were roughly spaced in a triangle about 200 meters apart from each other. As I recall, the antenna we built, a massive V-beam managed to talk to Europe for most of the weekend. For another adventure a simple G5RV dipole was hoisted high into the trees. Another was accomplished by strapping a pole to a fence and setting up an inverted-V antenna. Recently we set-up an antenna that was nothing more than a wire running over the ground. So, generally speaking height is good. You can cheat by having a low tree and a hill. Or a fence and a pole, or a gazebo and tent-pegs. What ever you can do to attach an antenna to will work to some degree. Which reminds me, if your hill is tall enough, it's likely to have a communications tower on it for someone, if not everyone. They're not the end of the world, but they can cause havoc with noise. Depends entirely on what the communication structure is used for. Bear in mind, some of these sites have noisy solar panel inverters or generators, so that too needs to be taken into consideration. Another factor in picking a location involves water. Setting up a vertical on a jetty is gold. I've made many long-distance contacts using a vertical with a ground wire running into the ocean. Note that you don't have to actually get wet. Being near the ocean is often enough. I've had plenty of success from a beach car-park from a vertical on my car. In general, man-made objects such as houses, factories, other cars, power lines, generators, boats, camping grounds with solar panels and plenty more are often bad news for HF communications. The biggest disappointment happens when you take the time to go to a site, set up camp, build your antennas, turn on the radio and all you hear is the noise from a nearby source of interference. That said, you don't need to travel to the ends of the earth either. 15 minutes from my house is a lake with a park. There's a car park which on occasion attracts a motor home with a solar panel, but by enlarge it's a local park with people going for a walk. From a radio perspective, despite homes, businesses, schools and cars nearby, the place is heaven. It's quiet, it has shade, running water, fence posts and I regularly make contacts from there, right in the middle of the city. That brings me to another aspect. Creature comforts. Setting up near a busy road isn't fun. Neither is sitting in your car without shade. Having amenities within reasonable distance helps. For example, recently for a field day we set-up within 10 minutes drive from a regional centre. Didn't even notice it was there, happily dropped in for shopping and a meal. Some beers might have been consumed. That same site also had high voltage power lines near our location. The only difference was that our site was above the power lines at the top of a hill, so we never even noticed them. Finally, some of this is all about picking a camp-site that's suitable for radio, rather than a radio site that will handle camping. You get better at it the more you do it. If you check back after the adventure, you'll learn some stuff as well, so don't be shy to discuss your experience with your friends. What ever you do, practice makes perfect. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio If you've ever used a spray can of WD-40, you might have wondered what the name means. It stands for "Water Displacement, 40th formula". In my time as a radio amateur I'd never stopped to think what the RG in RG-58 stood for. Turns out that it too has a meaning, "Radio Guide", though I have found some interesting alternative descriptions where the G stood for Government. This radio guide, really a transmission line, gets a signal from point A to point B. Depending on how you construct that transmission line determines what you'll get at the other end. Coaxial cable or coax is a length of cable made from several components. There's the outer layer or jacket, that protects the cable from electrical shorting, U/V deterioration and water ingress which causes all manner of problems. Inside that is an electrically conductive shield that forms one half of the transmission line, inside that is a dielectric, essentially a separator or insulator between the shield and the inner most, or central conductor, the core. Each of these components can change. On the outside the first thing you might notice is the thickness of the cable. The next thing you might observe is how flexible it is. Below the outer surface other things can also be altered. For example, the core could be a solid copper wire, or it could be strands of copper. It could be aluminium, silver or even steel. It might not even be wire. Some coax like Heliax, used in broadcasting, uses a central conductive tube as the core with air as the insulator between the core and the shield. The dielectric that separates the core from the shield can be made from different materials such as plastics, air and even inert gas such as nitrogen and it comes in varying thickness. Similarly the shield can vary in thickness, material and construction. There are also variations that have multiple levels of shielding, such as for example Quad Shield RG-6, common in satellite television and internet connections that has four layers of shielding. Other aspects might not be nearly as obvious. If you're running coax down a power line it will need physical strength. If you're burying it in the ground it will need to be protected from water ingress. Temperature and heat dissipation are also considerations and if you're using the coax in a nuclear reactor, its ability to deal with radiation. More commonly if you need to run the coax around a corner, how tight it can be bent is another consideration. As the materials and dimensions are changed, the characteristics of the coax changes. Each of these are documented and standardised. The standardisation is both a blessing and a curse. So many options and so much to choose from. For example, if you compare RG-58 to RG-59 they look pretty similar. If you cut into them you'll notice that they're made from similar materials. If you put them side-by-side, you'll notice that RG-59 is thicker, by about 20%, conversely the core for RG-59 is thinner by about 20%, this also means that the dielectric is about 30% different in thickness. As a consequence, connectors for one might fit on the other, but rarely work well. These variations mean that while both types of coax are common and priced similarly, they're not interchangeable. RG-59 used to be common in satellite TV installations and is still used in CCTV, whilst RG-58 is common in radio communications. If you made the decision to actually go out and buy RG-58, you'll come across many variations indicated by extra letters. For example, BC means Bare Copper and TC means Tinned Copper. The final piece of the puzzle in this tangled offering of transmission line is that each manufacturer has their own way of doing and naming things in pursuit of market share. For example, the coax I installed recently is known as LMR-400, CNT-400, WBC-400 and several others. If the performance of your coax actually matters that much, I'd recommend that you spend some time looking at your options before handing over any money. All that behind the name of a piece of coax that runs between your radio and antenna. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio During the week I climbed on my roof and installed a base antenna for the 2m and 70cm band. The antenna is a Diamond X-300N. It's 3 meters tall, has a gain of 6.5 dB on 2m and 9 dB on 70cm. I've owned it for just under eight years and this week I finally took it out of the box and installed it. I know, I know, in my defence, you shouldn't rush these things. Truth is, until this week I really didn't have a realistic way of installing it. Several factors needed to come together. Some of them trivial, others less so. In the end, the antenna is now installed on my roof, connected via coax through my roof to my radio. Now before we get all excited about what that means, let's compare my previous outdoor setting to the current one. Today I'm using LMR-400 coax, 30 meters of it. Previously I used RG-58, but only 20 meters of it. From a coax perspective, even though I increased the length by 30%, my loss actually went down, on 70cm it went down by over 4 dB. If you recall, 3 dB loss is the same as losing half your signal, so before my 5 Watts even got to the antenna, I'd already lost more than half of it using RG-58. I will mention right now that the numbers I'm giving here are purposefully not exact. There's no point. Your situation and mine are not the same, and my two installations are barely equivalent, so actual numbers don't help you. The point I'm making is that the type of coax you use to feed your antenna can make a massive difference. In my case that difference means that half of my 5 Watts never even made it to the antenna. In addition to this the two antennas are different. Not by much, but enough to make a difference. As icing on the cake the new antenna is longer by a third, so my new antenna has a better horizon, it's higher off the ground, even if it's installed at a similar height. You might recall that loss and gain are dependent on frequency, so any calculation needs to be done for each band you're going to use. In my case I had to do this twice, once for the 2m band and once for the 70cm band. I should also mention that depending on the SWR of your antenna, the losses also change, but let's not go there today. If you want to actually figure out what this means for your station, the calculation goes a little like this. Take the power output from your radio, subtract the coax loss and add the antenna gain. The end result is a number that represents the gain - or loss - from the entire system. If coax loss and antenna gain are the same, you're not losing anything, but you're also not gaining anything. The reward for the aches and pains from climbing on and in my roof are represented by the fact that now my 5 Watt signal on 2m effectively became 10 Watts. On 70cm it became 13 Watts. With the added height and gain in addition to being able to hit all the local repeaters, I can now hear the local beacon and I've successfully decoded the JT4 and JT65 messages that the beacon spits out. It's only been a week, but it's already made a massive difference. No doubt my on-air experience will also benefit from this adventure. Unfortunately, to do this for yourself is not quite as simple as giving you a link and punching in the numbers. I won't make any promises I cannot keep, but I am looking into it. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I received an email from Colin VK2JCC who mentioned that he was a keen home brewer and he was interested in a discussion about using ex-military gear in amateur radio. If you want to see his beautiful rig, check out Colin's Clansman PRC 320 Radio, does 2 to 30 MHz at 3 or 30 Watts. Look for his callsign and you'll also find a video of him calling CQ. Colin also shared his efforts for the construction of a Ground Tuning Unit which started a whole different exploration, but I'll leave that for another day. Back to the topic at hand, ex-military gear in our hobby. My initial thoughts on the subject were predictable: "What on earth do I know about this and do I have anything useful to contribute on the matter?" It turns out that this isn't something new to me. You might recall that I'm an IT professional in my non-amateur life. In that role you'll likely never see me buying second hand or refurbished gear, unless I installed it myself and was the person responsible for its maintenance. This same mindset prevails within my hobby. Although I am the owner of several pieces of pre-loved equipment, it arrived either because I knew the previous owner and where they live, or because it arrived unencumbered at my door. I go to hamfests and look askance at the gear on offer. I'll buy connectors, a tower, but not so much anything in the way of electronics. I asked around and I'm not alone in this. Many of my peers have the same view. Why pay good money for something that has been abused? It occurred to me, that this mindset is based on the idea that something can go wrong because the equipment has been invisibly damaged. Of course that is possible. However, on reflection, the reality is likely different. In my professional life I've seen plenty of badly maltreated equipment. I remember being called out to a faulty computer that sat on the ground in the office in a car mechanics workshop. The computer, used for accounting, would on warm days just stop. On opening it up, in 2006, I found a motherboard with a Pentium processor on board. It was untouched from when it had been built in around 1994. The CPU fan was no longer moving and the amount of caked on dust - complete with microscopic motor oil - had formed a solid cake around the cooling fins. After removing the dirt, the fan spun back into life and the computer was once again rock-solid. That is the definition of abused electronics. Yes, in case you're wondering, I did recommend replacing the computer, but out in the back roads of Australia, that's easier said than done. Story aside, I came to the conclusion that while abuse might reduce the circuit life from a millennium down to a century, that was unlikely to happen in my lifetime. Back to the ex-military gear. Based on Colin's comments, his historic radio, and my insights into the scale of abuse and their impact, I'm more inclined today than I was yesterday to investigate. I will note that I'm spoilt for choice. I can pretty much buy off the shelf any gadget required, limited by my imagination and my budget, but that wasn't true for several of my amateur friends. I know of several modifications of aviation and military rigs, born from necessity, that eventually made it into amateur radio and come to think of it, there's not much difference from me adding a serial interface to my Commodore VIC 20 back in the 1980's. Before I start shopping for radios that glow in the dark, there is another consideration. I did the same with computers over 20 years ago. I ended up with about a dozen of them in my office. Today that's replaced by a single one that runs as many virtual computers as I need. In radio terms, do I fill my shack with boxes, or should I spend my efforts on getting an RF signal into a black box with SDR written on the side? It's hard to know what the differences are without seeing both sides of the equation, but I'm sure that at my next hamfest I'll be looking around with different coloured glasses. Thank you to Colin VK2JCC for asking the question and showing his toys. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio During the week I finally made the decision to purchase my first software defined transmit capable radio. It wasn't an easy choice for me, given that the range of options vary in price from "not much" to "more than my car is worth" and an infinite number of choices between those. One of the considerations, other than price, was a thing called bit-depth. In the past I've spoken about how an analogue to digital converter or ADC uses bits to represent a radio signal. In short, a voltage coming from an antenna is represented as a digital value inside the radio. No signal represents a value of zero and maximum signal represents the maximum value that fits into the decoder. A concrete example might be an 8-bit ADC which can represent 256 different values. If you look at the choices available to you, you'll see that there are 8-bit radios, 12-bit ones, 16-bit, 18-bit and 24-bit radios. On the face of it you could just say, more bits is better, but how much better? For example, an ANAN-10 and a FLEX-3000 radio, both costing about the same, have a different ADC. The ANAN is a 16-bit device and the FLEX is a 24-bit device. At the other end, a HackRF One is an 8-bit device and costs twice as much as an ADALM Pluto that's a 12-bit device. How do you choose and what are you choosing? Essentially you're choosing something called dynamic range. Think of it as the range of signal strengths that you can represent using a number of bits. As it happens there's a formula for that. It's 20 times the log 10 of 2 to the power of the number of bits times the square root of 3 divided by 2 and it represents decibels relative to full scale or dBFS. In more recognisable terms, it comes down to a bit being worth 6 dB of range. A good approximation is the number of bits times six plus two. For example, a 6-bit SDR will have a dynamic range of 6 times 6 bits is 36, plus 2 makes 38 dB of range. An 8-bit SDR has 6 times 8 bits is 48 plus 2 makes 50 dB of dynamic range. I'm using rounded off numbers here but it gives you a pretty accurate sense of scale. Six times the bits plus 2 works until about 36-bits and then it's off by one dB, until we hit 85-bits - which we won't likely be able to buy at the local ham store for a little while yet - and then it'll be off by 2 dB. Another way to think of dynamic range is to think of it as the difference between the weakest signal you can measure and the strongest signal. Given your SDR is going to be using a whole chunk of radio spectrum, you likely will have to deal with your local broadcast stations as well as that QRP signal you want to decipher, so more dynamic range is better. Let's give this some context. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the ABC, has a local AM station on 720 kHz that has a transmitter with an EIRP of just under 155 kilowatts. My QRP station uses 5 watts. My signal is 45 dB weaker than that local transmitter. This means that in order for an SDR to be able detect my signal in comparison to the broadcast station, it would need to have a range of 45 dB or 45 less 2 is 43 divided by 6 is 8 bits range at a minimum. Now this isn't precise or complete, but it should give you some sense of scale. In this example, the amplitude range of my 5 watt signal is represented by a digital range of 1 and the broadcast transmitter is represented by a range of 255 values. That means that the best you could hope for in decoding my signal would be if I was transmitting Morse, the absence or presence of my signal would make the value representing my signal go from 0 to 1. As you might imagine, this is not suitable to decode something more complex like SSB. My Morse signal is also right at the noise floor, so it might not even be detectable at all. Similarly, in the absence of a 150 kilowatt station, but say a 1500 watt station, you'd need just under 25 dB range, or 4-bits. Now before you start pointing out that there are other issues, yes, there are, sample rate, clock stability to name two. We'll get to those. I should also point out that normally you'd represent the voltage range using both positive and negative values and I didn't mention that the maximum is calculated using RMS. In the meantime, I'm getting excited to see my new toy arrive. I'll let you know how it goes. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I stumbled on a social media post titled "So, you want to be an astronomer..." by /u/Andromeda321 on reddit. Look it up if you're interested how she puts together the prerequisites from her perspective as an astronomer. Apart from the fact that a few of my friends are astronomers, one even a radio amateur - and I have to confess, that's a combination that is exciting and intriguing - it got me considering how you become a radio amateur. In my mind I started putting together lists and links and other prerequisites that help you become an amateur when it occurred to me that being an amateur is in my view a state of mind. While it's true that there is a licensing process that gives you transmission privileges, that to me is not what makes an amateur. When I started my amateur radio involvement in 2010 I'd seen amateur radio exactly twice. Once as a sea-scout during a Jamboree on the Air at the end of the 1970's and once when my manager parked his tiny car, I think it was a champagne coloured Daihatsu Charade, with a massive 40m or 80m vertical in the car park at work. As I started learning about amateur radio and passed my test I'd commenced the journey into what I now consider to be membership of the amateur community. That same journey is undertaken by people across the planet. For some it starts like mine, with a course. For others it starts with a neighbour or a parent, a friend or an aunt. They might start with listening to short-wave radio, or playing with electronics. People start their journey at all different places and times in their life. There is a perspective within the amateur radio community that says that you're not a real amateur until you've passed a test. I don't think that's right. Passing a test is part of the experience and you may or may not start there, or even pursue the test. That doesn't describe your radio amateur status, that's just giving you responsibilities and regulations that permit you to expand your thirst for knowledge. In my experience, the real test of being an amateur lies in something much simpler than that. Being a radio amateur isn't a profession, it's a hobby. An amazing one, but a hobby. I know that there are plenty of amateurs that will argue that it's a service. I don't deny that there is a service aspect, but that doesn't take away the rest of the community, it adds to it. You might wonder why I'm even bringing this up. The reason is that all too often our community erects fences. "You don't have a license", "You don't know Morse", "You only have an introductory license", "You only own a cheap Chinese hand held", followed by: "You're not a real amateur." I think that you're an amateur when you decide to be one. So, if you're not yet here, what's stopping you? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The activities that our community places under the banner of amateur radio are many and varied. I've referred to this as a thousand hobbies in one. If you look at the surface, you'll find all manner of activities that readily attach to our hobby. Activations for example are invented at any opportunity, from parks to peaks, light houses, bridges, trains, boats, lakes, roads, locators and countries. We pursue contesting, making contacts using different modes, different power levels, we pick the frequencies on which we operate. If you dig a little deeper you might consider investigating propagation, or antenna builds, electronics, physics and more. It occurs to me that there is an underlying activity, one that any amateur can participate in and most do at what ever level they choose. It's the act of being curious. You can choose to turn your radio on and be curious to what's going on around you on the bands, or you can be curious as to what the underlying principles are of the mode you're using to make a contact. You can be curious as to the electrical principles and you can be curious as to the maths behind that. Superficially you might think that being curious isn't really something that is remarkable. I'm here to disagree with that. If you drive a car, you can choose to be curious, but many just put fuel in the right hole and keep air in the tyres. Most will wash their car from time to time. Some will dig into the innards of their car, but the vast majority lacking even a superficial understanding will have their car serviced by an expert. The same is true for computers. You might not wash your computer, but doing maintenance is often a case of waiting for it to die and calling your local IT expert. There is absolutely opportunity for curiosity in relation to cars and computers and there are plenty of stories from those who follow that path. In our community I think that this balance is completely different. In amateur radio there are a few people who use their radio like the majority of the general public uses their car, but in the whole, I think that the bulk of radio amateurs travel down a rabbit hole on a regular basis, armed with multi-meters, screw drivers and soldering irons. I see their reports, I hear their questions, I read their emails and respond to their requests. You might say that I'm biased, since those are the amateurs I come across, but I think that's underselling quite how special this hobby of ours really is. I love that you can be curious about an antenna and keep digging and become curious about the underlying laws, right down to the fundamental principles behind the phenomenon we experience as radio. I've said many times that getting your license is like receiving the keys to the hobby. You have the ability to open the door and come inside to see and explore for yourself. What have you been curious about lately and what did you do about it? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you start life you learn early on the difference between being told about an experience and the actual experience. There's a saying that comes to mind, I use it regularly in my day job: In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, while in practice there is. I thought I'd do the quote justice to see where it came from, not from Einstein, who was three years old at the time it was coined and neither Yogi Berra or Richard Feynman had been born. Quote Investigator puts it in the Yale Literary Magazine of February 1882 and attributes it to Benjamin Brewster, but I digress. A little while ago the regulator in Australia altered the rules of engagement in relation to amateur radio for people holding the license that I do. All Australian amateurs are now permitted to transmit digital modes. Not that this should have been any impediment to the exploration of the receive side, but I had a few other things on my plate to try. Still do. Over the weekend I sat in my driveway with my radio and had the urge to see if I could actually do some PSK31, a digital mode that had a low entry barrier, since there were defined frequencies, and I could use a decoder on my phone. So, I set about doing just that. I had already programmed in the various frequencies into my radio the week before. I hadn't actually heard any signals, but that didn't deter me. I set about getting myself set-up for what I'm calling a driveway hack. Picture this. A folding table with my radio. A stool next to it with me on it. The radio connected to an antenna, a vertical that was attached to a neighbour's roof with a magnetic mount and my phone running DroidPSK. I was tuned to the 10m PSK frequency, had the volume turned up, holding my phone next to the speaker, watching the waterfall. Nothing. I called up a mate who had this all working and we set about trouble shooting my set up. He made some transmissions; nothing. I listened to the 10m beacon, loud and clear. He made some more transmissions, still nothing. Then we realised while I was switching back and forth between the beacon and the PSK frequency that his radio was set up for a different standard PSK frequency. Gotta love standards, there's one for every occasion. Changed my frequency and for the first time I could actually see stuff in the waterfall display on my phone. If you've never seen a waterfall display, it's a tool that helps visualise the signal strength of a chunk of spectrum over time. It's pretty nifty and a waterfall displays a lot of information. Starting with colour, the idea is that a colour represents a particular signal strength. Red for full signal, yellow for half, blue for the lowest detected signal and black for no signal. Fill in the gaps with the colours of the rainbow. If you represent a line made of dots with the start of the line at say 0 Hz and the end of the line at say 3 kHz, you could split the line into 300 dots, and each dot could be coloured to represent the average signal strength for a little 10 Hz slice of spectrum. If you wait a second, move the line you drew down and then measure again, you'd end up with two lines. The line from now at the top, the line from a second ago below it. If you do this every second, you'll end up with lines flowing off the bottom of the screen, the oldest lines at the bottom and the newest ones at the top. That is a waterfall display. Over time you'll start to recognise what a particular signal looks like on the waterfall and there are even modes where you can draw on the waterfall, but I'll leave that for another day. As I said, I could now finally see signals on my waterfall display. I'm not going to dig too deep here, because there's much confusion in the language surrounding all this and I intend to get the names straight in my mind before I express them here, but after figuring out that you have to tell DroidPSK which signal you want to decode, I finally managed to decode the transmission from my friend. After putting on some headphones and realising that the clicks I was hearing from my phone were actually artefacts from the speaker, I also managed to transmit a CQ signal which my friend decoded. He then acknowledged my callsign in his next transmission. So, I now have two screen shots, his and mine, showing that we both saw each other using 10m PSK31. There wasn't a signal strength exchange, mainly because I have yet to figure out how to determine that and where it's visible, but for all the things that matter, I managed a contact with PSK31 thanks to Randall VK6WR, very exciting! Since then I've started experimenting with decoding WebSDR, that's HF signals coming in via the internet and being decoded on my computer from the web audio. I'm still working on that, but there is so much to learn and play with and a transmitter isn't yet needed to have fun. I should mention that you can also decode satellite signals like this. Digital modes, just when you thought that the rabbit ho

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day it occurred to me that my callsign had been away from HF for months, probably longer. I didn't really want to think about how long it had been. I moved QTH over two years ago and ever since I've been working on a new antenna set-up. You know the kind, you shouldn't rush this. Anyway, having just had a camp-out with some friends for a portable contest, where I gleefully had fun with the station callsign, I thought it was time to actually do what I keep advocating to anyone who stands still long enough, to get on air and make some noise. So I did. You know that feeling when the longer you wait, the harder it gets and the more you put it off? That had invaded my thinking and my avoidance. The typical excuses of not enough space, too much noise, no antenna, radio not ready, too hard, all fought their way into prominence. I'd had enough. So, on Saturday I collected all the bits that make up my portable station. It had clearly been a while since I'd used it, since I couldn't for the life of me remember where the head of my Yaesu FT-857d was, that was until I remembered that it had previously been installed in my car, so that's precisely where I found it. The tiny jumper cable between the head and the body was located in my headset bag where I'd stashed it after forgetting it for a contest one year. The microphone was where I'd stored it in the car. The battery was easier, since I'd used that the weekend before. Pulled out a table, a chair and set about putting my station together right there in the driveway. I'd been meaning to test an antenna that to all intents and purposes was doomed to fail, a long-wire on the ground. I didn't have an un-un or a balun, but I did have my trusty antenna coupler, so I used that. One end of the antenna, twelve and a half meters going one way, the other half going at a right angle. That pretty much solved that. Then for the final touch, I turned the radio on. All worked and I set about figuring out what I could hear. Across all the NCDXF beacons and bands I could hear the local beacon about 30km away. I have mentioned the NCDXF before, but in short, the Northern California DX Foundation has since 1979 coordinated the installation and maintenance of a collection of transmitters that 24 hours a day, every three minutes transmits on a staggered schedule across 5 different bands. It's called the International Beacon Project. For funding, the NCDXF relies on donations from people like you and in Western Australia the WA Repeater Group maintain the beacon, VK6RBP. Each transmission consists of a callsign, a beep at a 100 watts, a beep at 10 watts, 1 watt and 100 milliwatts. You can hear the beacons on 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m and 10m. Their purpose is to determine what propagation is like across the world on each of the bands, in pretty much real time. It was the impetus for me to start learning Morse Code - in case you're wondering, no, I know, I'm still at it. On my wire on the ground antenna the local beacon on the 10m band was by far the strongest. I also had a listen on 80m and 40m and even found two stations in deep discussion about something or other. Didn't manage to catch their callsigns, but good readability, not so much in the way of signal strength. I called up a friend on 900 MHz, in case you're sceptical, yes I hold a licence for that, so do you, it's cunningly encapsulated in a sophisticated portable battery powered multifunctional gadget made of electronics and glass. He was in the middle of repairing some damage sustained to his G5RV Jr. antenna during our latest adventures - Hi Glynn - and afterwards we had a go to see if we could in fact hear each other. I was using 5 Watts, he something like 70 Watts. Neither of us could hear the other, even though we're a similar distance from each other as the beacon. Not yet sure if it was his radio acting up, or mine for that matter. I then started down the digital modes path. Installed a PSK31 decoder and set about programming my radio for the traditional PSK31 frequencies. Didn't hear anything, didn't decode anything, but had a ball none the less. You might think to yourself right about now what the point of all this was if I didn't make any contacts? The answer is simple, I got outside, in the sun, soaked up some Vitamin D and played radio, just like the weekend was intended for. My next adventures are likely going to involve the same antenna and a vertical for transmit to see how that goes. You don't need an excuse to get out and play and when you do you might not make any contacts, but that's not really the point of playing, is it? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio In our hobby we regularly talk about its purpose, its need, its usefulness and other potentially abstract notions. Often there's a nod towards science, learning, self-discovery, challenge, emergency service or some other higher order concept. I know I've discussed many of those over the years and encouraged you to find what the hobby means to you. There is one aspect of our hobby that's pretty much left unsaid. It's left unsaid because it's obvious, since radio is about communication at its heart, the idea that we use our radios for communication is ingrained and unheralded. You might find a few new amateurs talking about how they made their first contact on the local repeater, or how they want to use the hobby to stay in touch when they're out and about. It occurred to me the other day that much of the world is subject to travel restrictions and social or physical distancing requirements. There's places that are in total lock-down and whilst there are strong recommendations for people over 70 to stay completely isolated, that's not yet a requirement where I live. It might come to that, but at the moment the COVID-19 pandemic is changing habits and communities on an hourly basis. Technology is often sought as a solution. There's plenty of video-conferences being held. Local amateur clubs are going online to stay in touch with members while face-to-face meetings are off the menu. Then there's the ongoing access to social media, blogs, discussion groups, mailing lists and the like. There are a few brave radio clubs using something a little less technical. The radio. Shock, horror, imagine that, an amateur radio club using an actual, you know radio, to talk to each other. I must admit that communication via radio, as obvious as that sounds isn't always the first thing that comes to mind. I've lost count of the number of times when at the local club one member stood outside yelling back into the shack which way the rotator on the Yagi was pointing whilst adjustments were being made - turns out that the rotator was spinning on the mast in the wind. Took a concerted effort, seriously, to actually turn on a hand-held radio and talk to each other, like civilised people. On the weekend during F-troop, a weekly net for new and returning amateurs, I also asked how people were doing given the social isolation that is pervasive. I also started toying with the idea of running an F-troop every day, then I scaled it back to every Wednesday and Saturday and then it occurred to me that the power to host a net is in the thumb of any amateur clicking their push to talk button and I finally settled on continuing the normal activity of hosting F-troop on Saturday morning at 00:00 UTC for an hour. I understand that in a technically connected world with cheap internet and fully functional gadgets like smart phones, the idea of going back to radio might seem like a step backwards, but I'd like to point out that we're radio amateurs. That's like being a chef and ordering take-out when you have a fully stocked kitchen. If you're experienced in this hobby you'll know that nobody needs to grant you permission to host a net, but if you're new here you might not. So, to you I say: "You don't need permission to host a net, so get to it." There are some things I've learnt since starting F-troop nearly a decade ago. Start small. Depending on the skill-level of the participants, choose an option for hosting it. F-troop is run with a single net-controller, often that's me, and the role of net-control directs who's next to talk. If you're just playing around, the tried and true version is a round-robin net. You'll need to pay attention a little better because you'll need to know who comes after you so you can hand the call to them. There are also variations on this, but again, start small. I track contacts in a spreadsheet, but a piece of paper is just fine. Writing down all the stations you hear is a great idea, since it helps you keep track of who's said what. You can add information as it comes to hand. If the net is on HF you might record the signal strength you see when you're listening to each station, as well as the name and location or QTH. Pro-Tip, use a new piece of paper for each net and put a date on it. Future you will love you for it. My point is that there should be absolutely no impediment to getting on air, making noise and breaking isolation from the comfort of your own shack. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio When I started learning about antennas I was told height is might. The higher the better. For many years I've followed that advice and like a good little parrot I've dispensed that advice. Turns out that as is usual in our hobby, that's not the whole story. I first came across a ground based antenna with a BOG, that's a Beverage On Ground antenna. It's essentially a long length of coax that's pointed at what you want to hear. You can either terminate the end, or not, different effects result with plenty of discussion about directivity, angles, lobes and the like. One of the things you'll notice with you use a Beverage antenna is that it's quiet. All signals are reduced in strength, but that also means that noise is reduced. Turns out that this pays off and you hear stuff that you've not heard before. Excellent for a field day or if you want to hear some serious DX stations. There's plenty of stuff that's not nice about a Beverage antenna. For one, it's highly directional, it takes up lots of space and if you want to listen in another direction, you'll either build a second or third and switch between them. That, or you'll be rolling up and laying out the coax to point at a new DX entity. You also cannot transmit with a Beverage antenna. While we're on the subject, often a beverage can be combined with a vertical, one for receive, the other for transmit. It's one of the projects that lying in my to-do pile. I've even got a remote controlled coax switch, but I'm still figuring out how to make my FT-857d do the switching. I could stop there, but I came across another idea a couple of weeks ago. At the time I was being introduced to the local emergency communications team. They showed me their HF stand-by gear. Long piece of wire that you could chuck out on the ground and make contact. As a good little amateur I remember thinking to myself, these poor people they have a lot to learn. I'm glad I'm an eager apprentice in learning the art of keeping my big mouth shut. During F-troop, a weekly net for new and returning amateurs, you'll find details on vk6flab.com, another amateur was talking about putting a wire near the ground, like about a foot off the turf with great results. I tried it on the weekend with a friend. We were out camping for a local amateur contest, miles from anywhere and anyone and I recalled the emergency communications people and the story during F-troop. We had some time to play, so we started with a long-wire, actually, pretty-much a wire dipole on the ground. Plugged it in, turned on the radio, magic. Same kind of sound effect as a Beverage antenna. Nice and quiet, good signals to be heard. We turned the whole contraption 90 degrees, no difference. Since then I've learned that it's pretty much omni directional and unlike a Beverage antenna, you can use it to transmit. Of course it's not going to act in quite the same way as a dipole high in the air, and that's pretty obvious, since it's not in the air. It'll give you communications that are called NVIS, or Near Vertical Incident Skywave, essentially stuff that goes straight up and comes down, stations up to about 400 km or so away. For scale, that's enough to cover all of Holland. In Australia it's enough to cover the state of Victoria, or the width of the UK, and most of the width of the State of New York. Before you get all huffy and point out that this is not a great DX antenna I'll beat you to it and tell you that this is not a great DX antenna. It's not meant to be. Nor is it intended to be an instruction on what antenna to build next. This is purely intended to illustrate that antennas come in all manner of shapes and sizes and there is lots to be learnt from trial and error. I know that this is a "compromise" antenna. Guess what, so is every other antenna. Today the compromise is that we don't need any poles, trees or unsuspecting human support structures to keep an antenna in the air. You can essentially try this one for free at any time, on your own, on the beach, in a park or on the side of a mountain. Another great use is to talk to your friends who live in the same city on HF. I have no doubt you could even manage some FT8 contacts using this antenna. Next time someone tells you to put your antenna in the air, ask them who they want to talk to. If it's locals, then there is absolutely no need at all. As for mastering the art of keeping my big mouth shut, we'll see. I'll leave you with this. It's not the answer that's important, it's the question, for everything else there's experimentation. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio An often repeated statement about the purpose of our hobby is related to emergency preparedness. The various peak bodies around the world devote plenty of resources to the concept, with helpful examples, umbrella organisations, training, coordinators, grants and funding, photo-opportunities and all the other trimmings that come from the idea that you and I are going to be of assistance in the case of some or other emergency. Looking up the various emergency coordination groups is a disappointing experience. From broken web-sites with non-existent pages to latest news that's over two years old, through to the latest sausage sizzle and fun-run. Entreaties to make sure that you have your current Membership ID card, otherwise you won't be covered for insurance purposes. As I said, all the trimmings with lots of evidence of paper pushing and little or no evidence of actual preparedness, let alone public information that might help any new or old radio amateur become prepared. Back to the topic at hand and leaving aside the nature of the emergency for a moment, given that the response for a bush-fire, a cyclone, flood or pestilence is likely to be different. Let's look at the things we have direct control over. If you have at any time taken your radio out of the shack and carried it into a paddock, connected it to an antenna, fired it up and made a contact, you're well ahead of the curve. There are plenty of amateurs who have never ever considered what going field-portable might look like, let alone tried it. That's fine if you live in a bunker, have independent power and are able to withstand all manner of disaster scenarios, but realistically it likely means that your emergency assistance will be of the kind that's outside the emergency zone. Helpful to be sure, but there's plenty of those stations to be found - unless the issue is global, in which case we have a completely different set of problems, pandemic, anyone, anyone? Let's focus on the other side of the fence. You're in an emergency zone. Doesn't matter what kind of emergency. Communications are limited or overwhelmed, information is restricted, messaging is hampered and you're a radio amateur with a working radio. If all goes well you should be able to help. So what does a working radio look like and what does helping mean? First thing to think of is power. Have you got a battery? Is it charged? When was the last time you tested it? How long has it been sitting on the shelf? Did it discharge in the meantime? What about a charger? Have you got a generator? What about fuel and oil? What about spare parts? Have you got something else, like a solar panel, a wind generator or a water turbine? What about a push-bike with a dynamo attached? How long does your radio run on a battery and at which transmitter power level is that? After thoroughly investigating power, what does your actual emergency station look like? Will it be used for voice communication, or will it be used as a digital gateway? Can you use it to send rudimentary messages, or can it be used as an internet gateway for a local community? What bands are you planning to operate on? Do you have an antenna? What happens if your current antenna is taken out by a fire, lighting strike or something else? When was it last tested? Do you have a back-up antenna? Have you actually used this antenna? Does it have all the right connectors and are they with the antenna? So, pretend that you got all that right. What about you? Have you got spare clothes? Food? Shelter? Medication? What about Personal Protective Equipment, masks, gloves, what-ever? What about ancillary items like pen and paper? Do you have power for the laptop that's being used to create the digital mode messages? Note that I've not said a word about the usefulness of any of this. This is the base level of preparedness just so you can actually look yourself in the mirror and say that you have at least got a level of ability to be of assistance in the case of an emergency. You can of course argue that you should hook up with the local emergency services and offer your skills as a radio amateur. That's helpful, but what if you cannot actually go to the muster point? How does that help? Now lets pretend that you actually have done all this. When was the last time you tested it? What does the actual helping look like? Have you ever attempted to pass emergency messages? What about messages that must be transferred absolutely 100% correctly, think medication dosages? Who did you pass them to? When was the last time you did a regional emergency simulation between your amateur friends? How often do you do this? Once a decade, or more often than that? What if the local repeater isn't working? What about in your club or your local neighbourhood? Do your neighbours even know you exist? The point of all of this is to reveal that the level of emergency preparedness for radio amateurs is in my opinion spotty at best. If you disa

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the things I love most about this hobby is the ability to randomly dart off into any related direction and learn new stuff. For example, the names Nikola, Guglielmo, Heinrich and Edwin emblazoned on a t-shirt sent to me by a very appreciative listener Jack KI4KEP, started an exploration into the deeds and misdeeds of the people behind those names. The first three might be somewhat familiar, Nikola Tesla whom we have to thank for inventions like Alternating Current, the Tesla coil, wireless power, radio remote control and many others. The Tesla company is named as a tribute to him. The magnetic flux density uses the letter T as its symbol and its called the Tesla. As a side note, if you've ever struggled to decide if a symbol needs to be a capital letter or not, like say the V for volt, the A for ampere, the O for ohm, the m for meter, the s in second or the K in kelvin, you just need to remember that if the unit is named after a person, the symbol needs to be a capital letter. That does assume that you know that the unit is named after an actual person, like say the Earl of Sandwich. Name two in our list, Guglielmo Marconi is the person whom we can thank for the practical development of radio communication, using improved spark-gap transmitters, the development and commercialisation of long-distance radio transmissions and his association with many other services such as a transatlantic radio-telegraph service, providing communications to shipping such as Jack Phillips and Harold Bride who were employed by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company to act as radio operators on the RMS Titanic on its fateful voyage. Our third name, Heinrich comes into sharp focus when I add his surname, Hertz. His name continues on in our day-to-day language and Heinrich Hertz is responsible for validating many of the underlying principles of our hobby. Using a spark-gap transmitter he was the first to conclusively prove the existence of electromagnetic waves which were predicted by James Clerk Maxwell. He also came up with the parabolic antenna, the dipole antenna, measurement of electric field intensity, electromagnetic waves and many other experiments. If you've ever seen a bullet hole in glass, you've seen a Hertzian cone. The last name had me stumped. It took a question to learn that Edwin shares a name with a famous cyclist and a famous astronaut, namely Armstrong. Edwin Howard Armstrong has been called "the most prolific and influential inventor in radio history". If you're like me you may not have heard of Edwin Armstrong. You might be surprised to learn that he's responsible for the regenerative circuit, the super-heterodyne circuit and while he was working on defending his invention against a claim made by a patent attorney he stumbled on the super-regeneration circuit. If you're a radio amateur, you'll likely have heard those terms, if not, they're electronic circuits that make radio receivers more sensitive which forms the basis of many radios in use today. My Yaesu FT-857d is a super-heterodyne radio for example. It doesn't stop there. The biggest claim to fame that Edwin Armstrong brings to the table is the invention of FM radio. It took many years and a protracted lawsuit that lasted until almost a year after he died to finally have Armstrong formally established as the inventor of FM. Not for a minute will I suggest that my exploration was comprehensive or in-depth, but it made my day when I put on a t-shirt with the names of those inventors who made it possible for me to be here and share this with you today. On the shoulders of giants wearing a t-shirt with their names I stand. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio A regular lament is the lack of things to do in our hobby. I know, it's foreign to me, but there are plenty of amateurs who express frustration at the lack of activity, no contacts, nothing new, no challenges. For my poison, I started the process of contacting 100 different countries using 5 Watts. I've been at it for a number of years and truth be told, since my latest domestic move, over two years ago now, my efforts have been put on hold. Not because I didn't want to, but because I was getting annoyed with having to leave my home and wanting desperately to have a functional shack at home. As you might know, that's a project that's still in hand and thanks to some magnificent assistance from various places, I'm still making progress. That said, your perspective might be dulled by the notion that this pretty much concludes the on-air activity possibilities that exist. Within my own license class, until recently, I was permitted to use voice modes like SSB, AM and FM and I was permitted to use hand-keyed Morse. I have access to 10 Watts and am currently allowed to use six different amateur bands, namely 80m, 40m, 15m, 10m, 2m and 70cm. So together with the four modes, I'd be able to make 24 different contacts to 100 different countries, that's 2400 different combinations. Of course there are more than 100 countries, that is, DXCC entities. The 2018 list has 340 of them, so that's over 8-thousand different options for getting on air and making noise. Last year all that changed. The local regulator in Australia, the ACMA decreed that all amateurs in Australia were permitted to use all modes. It's taken a little while for that to sink in. Specifically what it means for me. A quick search reveals that there are at least 60 different digital modes, think RTTY, Olivia, PSK31, etc. In addition to those, there's a plethora of other modes like IRLP, AllStar Link, EchoLink, CODEC2 and Brandmeister. So conservatively I'm going to estimate that I now have got access to over a hundred different modes, across six bands with 340 countries, that's over 200-thousand different options for making a contact. Of course it's unlikely that I'll make a contact between say Belize V3A and Perth VK6 on 2m using Olivia, but even if we limit our calculation to HF, we still have at least 136-thousand opportunities for adding something interesting to your logbook. I've been hunting for a canonical list of all the various amateur modes and the tools needed to make and receive them. No doubt that will take me some time. I'll be documenting it on the projects page on vk6flab.com if you want to follow along. Speaking of which, you'll also find past episodes of this podcast there. I suppose I should start by converting my current efforts into some pretty pictures that show what I've been up to so far, but that's a mapping exercise that I'll have to add to my to-do list, since I'm guessing it involves learning how to use some fun mapping tools. If 136-thousand opportunities isn't enough, you can also add grid-squares, large and small, different prefectures in Japan, provinces in the Netherlands, CQ zones across the world or ITU areas, prefixes and operating modes. Clearly there's plenty to do and see. I wonder if there's an award for all modes all bands all countries and I wonder what happens if someone invents a new mode? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I bumped into a concept that I've heard repeated before. The so-called "impersonal nature" of digital modes. There's this idea that any communication that isn't using voice, is devoid of the human touch. Often this assertion is specifically made in relation to modern digital modes like JT65 and FT8. As an aside, I've never heard it in relation to other digital amateur modes like slow-scan television, RTTY or PSK31. In the early 1900's when amateur radio was beginning to be a thing, the means of communication was Morse Code. With beeps across the globe contacts were made between amateur stations. With every incoming dit and dah, letters were received, words constructed and meaning derived. This is long distance communication in its early stages. Each amateur was said to have a fist, their particular rhythm of touching the key. Across multiple stations it was possible for an experienced operator to distinguish between two amateurs based on how they were sending Morse Code. I can confirm that if you've ever had the privilege of hearing lots of amateurs clamour in a so-called pile-up, you can hear for yourself that different stations sound different, even if they're all sending Morse Code. So on the one hand we have this deeply inhuman means of communications like Morse Code which is by the language we use considered to be made by humans, personalised with a fist. On the other hand we have a deeply technical mode like FT8 which isn't. During the week I was discussing this change of perception during a haircut. I pointed out that this happens everywhere. For example, in the hairdressing profession an electric clipper might have been seen as impersonal when it was invented in 1921. Today it makes quick work of a Number 1 cut. In mobile phone communication an SMS was seen as impersonal with voice preferred, but today the world would look quite different without the 5 billion messaging mobile phone subscribers. In 2013 it was estimated that there were 8 trillion SMS messages, and 10 trillion other smart phone messages. As you might realise, behind each of those messages is a human, well, apart from the SPAM and the computer notifications, but even those are programmed by a human. So what makes the difference between Morse Code and FT8? Why is an SMS impersonal in 1992, but preferred by most today? I'd hazard a guess and state that the experience of the person making the statement has a lot to say about their perception of the nature of the medium. My typing away at a keyboard and seeing words appear on my screen might not appeal to someone who chased a turkey around the yard in search of a quill, but then electricity might also be surprising. It's interesting to me that PSK31, something that's not particularly thought of as being impersonal, was introduced to the amateur radio community in December 1998 by Peter G3PLX. The first Weak Signal modes, commonly known as WSJT modes, were introduced in 2001 by Joe K1JT, only three years later. JT65 came around in 2003. We have this situation where PSK31 is not impersonal, but JT65, which is five years younger, is considered impersonal and the popular mode FT8, which is an extension of JT65 is said to be the end of the hobby. If hyperbole would relate to truth, the end of our hobby in sight, we should all get rid of our radios and hand back our licenses. Perhaps we should take a step back and notice that behind every FT8 station, behind every voice-call, behind every amateur transmitter is at some point a human with a license. If we're splitting hairs, then a local automatic voice repeater must be the height of impersonal. The other thing I'd like to point out is that how you perceive the use of a particular mode is also important. If you think of FT8 as having a personal beacon in your shack that uses your radio and your antenna to measure how well your signal is heard across the globe, you might just start enjoying this so-called impersonal mode. One of my friends, Wally VK6YS, now silent key, told a story where he was driving down the highway to meet his friend. They were chatting away using Morse Code, Wally in his car, the friend in his shack. Once Wally arrived the friend wanted to see how Wally was able to send Morse Code whilst driving and could he please see his Morse key? Wally confessed to having whistled into his microphone to make the contact, since he didn't have a Morse key in his car. According to Wally, his friend was off the air for months in disgust. I should mention that my Number 1 haircut looks great, if only for the fact that it allowed me to spend some quality time discussing and contemplating the nature of the hobby that I love. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio In my day to day activities as a radio amateur I come in contact with people across all parts of their amateur journey. Some who don't yet know that they're amateurs, through to those who've just passed their test and are waiting for their callsign. Then there are those who have been amateurs for a while, experimented a bit and have settled down into the comfort of being a member of an active community. Stretch that further and I also spend regular quality time with amateurs who have been licensed longer than I've been alive. Recently I received an email from a freshly minted amateur. Just like me, still pretty much wet behind the ears, keen as mustard, trying very hard to figure out what to do next and where to go. The basic gist of the email from this amateur was that they didn't know what kind of antenna they could erect at their home and failing that, couldn't decide on what radio to acquire to match the antenna that they hadn't decided on, not to mention that the antenna needed to match the radio that didn't yet exist. If you've been around this community for a while you might recognise the chicken and the egg, which comes first, the antenna or the radio? The answer is obvious, hidden in plain sight, easy to deduce, simple to understand, and completely useless. Let me help you with the answer: It depends. If that didn't test your patience, even if you've been an amateur for longer than my parents have been alive, you'll know that this is an unanswerable question. So how do you break the egg and get started? Easy. Start somewhere. As it happens I have a recommendation. It's cheap, simple and it will get your feet wet sooner rather than later. My recommendation is neither, or both, depending on your perspective. I promise, I'll get to the point shortly. The reason I'm making it last and savouring the point, some might say, belabouring it, is because it's one that happens over and over again, day in, day out, year in, year out. My recommendation is that you spend $25 on an RTL-SDR dongle and hunt around your home for a piece of wire. That's it. If you're not familiar with an RTL-SDR dongle, it's essentially a USB thumb-drive sized device that plugs into the nearest computer and paired with the correct software it has access to many if not all of the frequencies that you as an amateur are allowed to play with. Given that it's a receiver, the antenna doesn't really matter all that much, at least not initially, so any piece of conductive wire will suit. Most dongles even come with an antenna of sorts, so you can get started straight away. Resources associated with this podcast are on the vk6flab.com website where I've also collected a few links under F-troop to get you on your way with an RTL-SDR dongle. The purist radio amateurs will likely arc up at this point and mention that this isn't real amateur radio, to which I can only say: Bah Humbug. Radio is about receiving as much as it is about transmitting. Any fool with two bits of wire can transmit, but it takes finesse to receive, so start there. There are other benefits from going this way. Other than ease of entry, that's another way of saying - cheap - you can easily spot where and when there is activity. You can use all the traditional modes like CW, SSB, AM and FM, but you can also play with all of the new modes like WSPR, FT8, JT65 and investigate some of the other modes like RTTY, PSK31, Olivia, SSTV and others. All this will help you have a better idea of the landscape you're stepping into without a major purchase. To really set a cat among the pigeons, I'm also looking into a Raspberry Pi based transmitter, rpitx by Evariste F5OEO. When that bears fruit I'll let you know. In the mean time, play, learn, listen, experiment. No need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars while you're still unsure. Even if you already have a lovely amateur station, an RTL-SDR dongle is worth every cent and then some. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Every person is the product of their environment. Unsurprisingly this is even true for radio amateurs. That's not too say that we can't break our mould, but it takes effort. I grew up around technology in the 1980's. As a result I'm familiar with 8-bit microprocessors like the Motorola 6502 which featured heavily at the time. I tend to think in terms of the presence or absence of a signal, rather than the intricacies of circuits and components. As a child of my time, I'm not particularly familiar with the punch card or paper tape, or core memory, or valves, 386 machine code or what's in an FPGA. As a direct result of my age, my knowledge and understanding of circuits is sparse at best. I understand basic components like resisters and capacitors in a DC setting, Ohms Law and the fun you can have with a battery, a few resistors, diodes and an LED light. As a radio amateur I've been introduced to how some things work differently in an AC circuit, like an antenna and a feed-line. Until very recently my knowledge about filters was based on what I'd read. I know that there is fun to be had with coax and stubs and other cute things, but how and why they work eluded me. Today I'm a step closer. Before I dig in and share some of what I've learnt, let's have a quick look at what a filter is and does. You'll have likely heard of high-pass and low-pass filters. You might have heard of band-pass and band-stop filters. If you think of a high-pass filter as a device that lets through high frequencies and a low-pass filter as a device that lets through low frequencies, we're already well on our way. If you put a high-pass filter together with a low-pass filter, you end up with a range of frequencies that doesn't pass, known as a band-stop filter. Similarly, if you tweak the frequencies that pass just so, you can combine a high-pass and a low-pass filter to make a band-pass filter. Let me illustrate. Imagine a 15m band-pass filter. It allows all frequencies in the 15m amateur band through, but blocks everything else. You could construct such a thing from a high-pass filter that allows 15m and above through combined with a low-pass filter that allows 15m and below through. Everything below 15m is stopped by the high-pass filter and everything above 15m is stopped by the low-pass filter. The gap between the overlap of the high-pass and low-pass filters is what creates a space where the 15m band gets through. If you move things around a little, the same can be constructed to make a 15m band-stop filter. Something that lets anything through, except a 15m amateur signal. To make such a gadget would require a low-pass filter that allows everything below 15m combined with a high-pass filter that lets everything above 15m through. So, if you can construct a high-pass filter and a low-pass filter, you can pretty much create any combination and allow or stop specific frequency ranges. If you're wondering why this might be useful, think about a contest. Two radios in the same shack. One transmitting on 15m and one on 40m. These two bands, one at 21 MHz and one at 7 MHz are third harmonics to each other. This means essentially that a radio on 40m affects one on 15m and vice-versa. If you had a set of filters that stopped 15m and passed 40m on one transceiver and a set of filters that stopped 40m and passed 15m on the other, both of you would be much happier. You don't need to do contesting to benefit from a filter. If you use an RTL-SDR dongle, it's affected by nearby strong signals, like say a local radio or television station. That's fine if that's what you're trying to hear, but not so much if you're trying to hear something else. Filters can help to make your life better. Now, to round this off at a suitable point, you can think of an inductor as device that lets low frequencies through but blocks high frequencies. Similarly, a capacitor is a device that blocks low frequencies but lets high frequencies through. So, it's fair to think of an inductor as a low-pass filter and a capacitor as a high-pass filter. The symbol for a capacitor is the letter C (Charlie) and for an inductor it's the letter L (Lima). You could make a circuit that either directly blocks from a certain frequency, or one that lets it through, but sends it to ground. This gives you two designs for a low pass filter one using an inductor or an RL circuit and one using a capacitor or an RC circuit. Similarly you can create a high-pass filter using either an inductor or a capacitor. That gives you four designs for two filters. Each of these can be combined to create band-pass and band-stop filters. The maths behind it isn't particularly daunting with basic high-school maths and if you want to see it happen before your eyes, check out the "Organic Chemistry Tutor" on YouTube. The play list you're looking for is cleverly disguised as "Electronic Circuits". As a direct result, I started hunting for breadboards, but it turns out that you can s

Foundations of Amateur Radio If you've ever found yourself in the position of attempting to screw a PL259 into an SO239, or an N-type plug into an N-type socket you'll have likely come across the situation where the thread doesn't quite fit. If it does, you might have issues attempting to undo the connection, even if you didn't particularly do anything strenuous in relation to mating the two in the first place. This kind of situation happens to me more than I think is reasonable. It happens on cheap connectors, on expensive ones, on the back of radio gear, on adaptors, patch leads and the like. Initially I put this down to cheap vs. expensive, but that really doesn't add up if you're attempting to connect an expensive plug into an expensive radio. If you're into machining you'll know about swarf. If not, think metallic dust. Of course it doesn't have to be metallic, it could be a single grain of sand, or it could be a slightly damaged thread. A couple of months ago I went on the hunt for a tap and die set that would solve this issue once and for all. If you're not familiar with the terms, a tap is like a long bolt with a square head and a die is like a thick washer with holes cut out. In addition to being hardened, they each have cutting edges, which allows these two tools to do their job, the job of cutting threads. Normally you'd use a tap to make a thread into a hole that you've drilled. You'd use a die to make a thread onto a rod that you have. There's lots of technique associated with this, cutting fluids, alignment, pressure and the like. Plenty of relaxing YouTube videos around - which is how I came upon this idea in the first place. You can also use a tap or a die to cut across an existing thread and you can do this with connectors. A die, threaded over a socket, will clean up the socket threads. Similarly a tap screwed into a plug will clean up the plug thread. There's a disclaimer coming for that last point, but stick around. Trying to find a tap and die to match can be a challenge. The PL259, SO239 and N-type connectors are all 5/8th size threads. They're 24 turns per inch, and also known as UNEF (Uniform November Echo Foxtrot) threads, or Unified Extra Fine. So if you start on your hunt, you'll be looking for 5/8th, 24 TPI, UNEF taps and dies. I found mine online at $15 or so from a US supplier. Got to me in about a week. When they arrived I immediately set about cleaning up all my sockets. This was amazing, all of a sudden stuff started fitting well. Unfortunately I couldn't use the tap. The centre hole in a standard tap isn't big enough for the pin of a PL259, let alone an N-type connector, but a friend of a friend has access to machine tools and made the centre hole bigger. Word of warning, this is hardened steel. A hand-drill won't cut it. I must mention that this won't allow you to use the tap inside an N-type plug, but you can use a die on the socket. I'll also point out that if you need to use a tap wrench or a die holder, you're doing it wrong. We're cleaning up the thread, not making a new one. If you need extra force the most likely scenario is that you've cross threaded the tool onto the connector. Of course if you've got a completely stuffed connector thread, then these tools can help, but you might want to consider replacing the connector. My tap and die live in my go-kit right next to the coax adaptors. On my next field-day I won't be having to deal with poor connections, nor will I have to worry about unscrewing them after the event. A tap and die, great simple tools to fix a recurring issue. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio If you've ever had the pleasure or misfortune to hear an on-air net, you might have considered, however briefly, how that net came to be, how it's run and what's involved behind the scenes to make it happen. I host a weekly net called "F-troop". It's been running every week since the 12th of June in 2011. Since then I've made over 5000 contacts with stations scattered all over the globe. A typical net has about ten people, but depending on the weather, what's on TV or if people had a hard Friday night that number fluctuates. The biggest was about 40, the smallest just two. At this point I could tell you that the infrastructure to make this happen, the preparation, management processes, network and marketing are what take up the bulk of my week. I mean, there might be a weekly stand-up between stakeholders on a Wednesday, a plan for the content, what to discuss, you know, the typical. If I told you that, I'd be lying. The reality is that F-troop is an organic animal. I generally get to my radio a couple of minutes before we start, midnight UTC, switch on, kerplunk the local repeater and wait for the clock to tick over. I then launch into my opening spiel, something along the lines of: "Hi folks, it's me, it's F-troop, who's awake?" After taking a few calls and logging them, I'll circulate through, call for more people, rinse and repeat. There are two invisible things happening, one required, the other I do because I'm a computer geek. The required activity is logging. I chose to log in an online spreadsheet. It's helpful because it makes for a single place where all contacts are stored and it allows for others to host the net if I happen to fall off the air, either by being somewhere else, like a holiday every decade or so, or because my radio isn't being cooperative. The other thing that logging gives you is a memory. I generally recall a person's name from their callsign, but if you listen closely you'll notice that every now and again I'll extend my babble so I can search for a callsign and appear not to be suffering from memory loss. The other thing that happens is that I update the website. I'll be merrily adding articles from emails or discussion as it's happening. If someone mentions a product or a website, a callsign or a project, I'll often be searching for it in real time and adding it as a post to the F-troop website. That way people who want to refer back at a later time, that includes me, can search and find the thing that someone showed us. As simple or as complex as that sounds, depending on your level of experience, it's really not rocket science. You can do this with pen and paper. I know, I've done it, standing in a car-park with a notepad, whilst dodging rain showers and preparing for a field-day. It's fun to test your skill and to get out of your comfort zone every now and again. I should interrupt this story for a word from our sponsors. Don't have a kitten, we're not talking about advertising, we're talking about repeater and network operators who graciously give of their time and resources to link the main F-troop repeater to others around the world. The network of AllStar, Echolink, IRLP and IRN radios that carry F-troop is astonishing to me. We have regular participants all over Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. There have been contacts with stations in Asia and Europe. For that to happen I don't do a single thing. Well, technically I let repeater operators know I exist and when it breaks, but that's pretty much the sum total of my efforts. Why am I telling you this? Last week it broke. My radio was acting up and someone commented on that. I handed over the reigns and let them at it. They were very unsure. I let them know that F-troop is for beginners. It's expected that people are going to make a mistake, I know I do, plenty of times. It occurred to me afterwards that hosting a net can be scary. If you have no idea what's involved, how to make it happen, what to do, then hosting must be immensely daunting. I hope that sharing how I do this will give you the confidence to host your own net in your own community. Perhaps you can tell me more about it, or come and visit F-troop. Saturday morning at midnight UTC. If you want I'll even help you host it. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you switch your radio on to start a radio fishing expedition you join all the other spectrum users across the planet. To be fair, you'll likely only become aware of some of those for the time that your radio is switched on, even if there are thousands around. One of the ways you can find other users is by ditting out "QRL?" in Morse or saying "Is this frequency in use?" into your microphone. This simple courtesy of checking to see if the frequency you're on is actually being used by someone, is part of your license. You're taught to do this and it's expected. What's not clear is what happens next. It's simple if you hear a callsign, or a "yes", but what if you hear nothing? Sometimes nothing means exactly that, there's nobody on the frequency, but that's not always the case. There's plenty of opportunity for the frequency to be in use and you still not getting a response back. Let's imagine for a moment that the frequency you're on is in use by two stations talking to each other. You come on frequency, hear nothing and ask if the frequency is in use. You hear nothing. You try again, still nothing. You start calling CQ. Moments later, you get an earful from some random station. Sound familiar? If it doesn't, you'll need to spend more time on-air. I can guarantee that you'll experience this in your amateur adventures, much more than once. How does this happen? You did everything right. Imagine two stations, let's call them Amanda VK4FRST and Marc VK3OHM, having a conversation, a QSO. They're discussing the ins- and outs of the WIA awards system and having a grand old time. You turn your radio on, happen to tune to the same frequency as their QSO and after listening to nothing for a bit, you call "Is this frequency in use?". You still hear nothing so you try again: "Is this frequency in use? VK6FLAB". Still nothing. You call "Nothing heard." and start calling CQ. You're on one side of the country, Amanda and Marc are on the other side. They cannot hear you and you cannot hear them. Then the sun moves a bit and all of a sudden your CQ is all over their discussion. Unhappy people on both sides of the country. There are six paths to consider here. The one between you and Amanda, and the reverse. Similarly the path between you and Marc and that reverse. If you ask for frequency in-use, neither Amanda, nor Marc can hear you. Similarly, you cannot hear either Amanda or Marc. You should also take a moment to consider the path between Amanda and Marc and vice-versa. They might have a really great 5 and 9 conversation, or they might be struggling along with a 3 and 2. I've simplified this, because of course, you calling over the top of a conversation can also disturb the contact under way. Saying that the frequency is in use makes it worse. While all this is happening, the sun is moving, the ionosphere is moving, propagation is moving, the whole thing is like the Cat in the Hat balancing on a beach ball, complete with cake, rake and a fish still in its bowl. The first thing you need to do when this happens is stop and take a breath. Nobody owns any frequency, so claiming that this is your frequency is not going to help anyone. If the other station is having a QSO and you're calling CQ, it's time for you to move, change frequency and QSY. If you're Amanda or Marc, you can tell your contact that there is some interference and then call the other station that the frequency is in use. If they change frequency, all good, if they don't, tell your contact to change frequency. There's no need for aggravation. There is no ownership. There's no point in getting upset and no mileage in making life hard for the other station. The fact of the matter is that there was what we call in networking, a collision. It's time to back off and renegotiate. All this is exactly the same if you're using voice, Morse, FT8, or any other mode. Take a breath, renegotiate, move on. Now, if you're a QRP station like me, it's much more likely that you'll not be heard most of the time. In that case it's often much quicker to just to move without going through the negotiation process. Of course you can attempt to make a QRP contact with one of the other stations, but it's considered pretty rude to stick your head between two people who are having a cup of coffee together and ask them for their autograph, so don't do it on air either. If you assume malice from the get-go, you'll find yourself unhappy most of the time. If you celebrate that all of a sudden there's propagation between VK6, VK4 and VK2 you'll end up much happier with your on-air experiences. While I'm giving out advice, here's something I learnt during the week. If you break a toe, tread carefully. Stubbing a broken toe hurts. Really. Badly. In case you're wondering, my new boot is not a fashion accessory. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you become a member of the amateur radio community you become part of a small group of humans who know and understand certain aspects of life. That's not to say that others don't share this or that the knowledge is unique or special, but radio amateurs are required to know this before they receive their license. In the past I've spoken about how getting a license is like receiving a key that opens the door to the world of radio communications. It's one of the more accessible ways to grab hold of this key and it's the recipe for life long learning. During the week a friend of mine, a newly minted amateur, pointed out that this represents something that the general population isn't aware of or attaches little in the way of value to. The interconnectedness of radio spectrum is something that radio amateurs take for granted. To us it's obvious. A transmitter on 3585 kHz is fundamentally the same as one on 92.1 MHz. A key fob on 434 MHz is similar to a computer on 2.45 GHz as is a laser on 500 THz or an X-ray machine on 30 PHz. As a radio amateur we're taught that the radio spectrum is a continuous phenomenon and that spectrum is shared among users with specific rules around interference and interaction. Another thing we know as radio amateurs is the difference between the front and the back of a Yagi-antenna. We know about radiation patterns, about the ionosphere and how the sun and sun-spots interact with some of our activities. The point is that our knowledge, it's fair to say, specialised knowledge, even at the lowest level of licensing, exceeds that of the general public. This is all by way of background because this leads to something that I learnt during the week. As amateurs we have a responsibility to be custodians of that knowledge, that is, to care for it and to ensure its accuracy and to preserve that knowledge. For some amateurs that means that they want this information to be exclusive, but for me it means that this information should be shared and nurtured and encouraged in those people who make choices based on incorrect information. For example, as a radio amateur it's my duty to inform a person who is contemplating breaking the radio spectrum licensing rules that they are doing so. Not because I'm a regulator, but because I have specialised information that they lack. Importing a radio module that's using a frequency that's not available in your country is an example of something that I am compelled to point out. I know that some amateurs take this compulsion to the next level and become a de-facto police officer attempting to enforce those restrictions. I understand where that comes from, but I also know that this is not my role and it's not your role. If you feel strongly enough about a transgression, perceived or real, there are plenty of ways to deal with that. Reporting the offence to the regulator is one option for example. Knowing which end is the front of a TV antenna means that you can point out a mistake to a home-owner about the direction their antenna is pointing at, but it doesn't mean that you need to climb on their roof to turn it around. I've said many times before that having an amateur license is a privilege. It's a gift, even if you worked hard for it, it was given to you, bestowed on you by the regulator in your country. It seems to me that having such a gift means that it should be treated as such. As radio amateurs we're not entitled to a license, nor are we entitled to transmit. We're granted permission to do so. I think that it's important to keep that in the back of our minds when we set out to educate those around us. As for the education itself. It pays to consider what you take for granted when you're giving advice. Telling a person about Wi-Fi propagation through a home is a complex topic. You can make the explanation as hard or as simple as you want, but don't expect that the person receiving the advice has the same background information or interest that you have. I was once told by a statistician about how various statistics worked and what their background was. I was translating a program from Modula-2 into WingZ hyper-script. I didn't care about how it worked, just that the provided code did what it was supposed to and that what I wrote did the same thing. I had no interest in becoming a professor in statistics, despite the earnest instruction enforced on me by my employer 30 years ago. It's been said that you must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself. What and how we teach those around us can be the seed of something bigger. I may well have become a statistician if the information had been tailored to my requirements, but that chance was lost 30 years ago. I think it's a great way to consider what we teach and how. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio As radio amateurs we learn which frequencies we're allowed to transmit on, where stuff lives and who has priority when there's a signal on the frequency you're operating on and when you need to contact your regulator if you hear an illegal station on the air. Some of that information arrives in your brain by way of the education process that eventually becomes your license after a test. Depending on which country your license is valid, determines which region of the International Amateur Radio Union your activities fall. Here in Australia, I'm part of the IARU Region 3, together with the rest of the Asia - Pacific region. In the Americas you're part of Region 2 and Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Northern Asia fall into Region 1. As amateur population sizes go, Region 2 and 3 each cover about 40% of all radio amateurs. Region 1 is about 20%. Each of these IARU regions has a specific band-plan that is updated regularly as member countries adapt and negotiate different frequencies for different users. The band-edges might not change that often, but bands come and go, segments are added and removed as needs change. For example, here in Australia or VK, the 6m band has been changing because analogue TV has been changing. Information about band-plans is not easy to come by. For example if I look at IARU Region 2, their documentation is pretty sparse. I've never managed to actually load their website and by the looks of it, neither has the Internet Archive. Given that Region 2 is all of the Americas and represents pretty much two fifths of all amateurs on planet Earth, that's a big hole. There is some availability in Region 1 and 3, but those too leave to be desired. There does not appear to be any formal method of archiving or naming and the transient nature of the Internet all but guarantees that historic information like this is being lost at a high rate. Even with those limitations in mind, there is plenty of information to be found. Let's look at Australia, for no other reason than that I was able to pull some of the historic information out of the bit-bucket. You might be surprised to learn that there is much more change under the hood that far exceeds the band edges and segment changes. The Wireless Institute of Australia publishes the Australian Amateur Band Plan. Using the Internet Archive I was able to count that between November 2007 and November 2019 there were at least 25 different versions of that band plan published, for example in 2008 alone there were at least five different versions. I managed to download 11 of those band plans which show the introduction of the 2200 meter band, the 630 meter band, changes to mode frequencies, DX frequencies, the allocation of emergency frequencies, changes to FM bandwidth from 6 kHz to 8 kHz on bands below 10m, the formalisation of WSPR frequencies, JT65, FT8 and JT9. Now I must point out that the information I'm presenting here is incomplete. There are many more changes, just in VK alone. I'm relying on the Internet Archive which only sampled the WIA website 162 times between March 2008 and January 2020. Within those pages there were only 11 copies of the actual band plan and I've only compared three of them, August 2009, March 2015 and October 2019, and of those only a few changes that stood out. And this is for Australia alone. This is on the HF bands. I've not even looked at the veritable feast of changes associated with the VHF and UHF bands, let alone the cm, mm and higher bands. Even with this massive disclaimer, my point should be pretty clear. A band-plan is a living document. It changes regularly. Likely much more often than you realise. I'll leave you with one burning question. When was the last time you got yourself a copy of the band-plan? Seriously, when was it? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio So, you've got yourself a license, or it's coming but you're waiting for the regulator to get the administration done and for your payment to go through. The excitement is building, you're itching to get started and you've told your family and friends what your new callsign is. Then the day arrives. Your callsign is allocated, it's paid for and you're allowed to call yourself a licensed radio amateur, a member of the community, a part of history, the next thing in radio. Now what? Where do you start on this adventure of a thousand hobbies in one? The truth is that you already did. Look behind you. You have a license, a callsign and you've found the community, well, at least some of it. How do I know that you found the community? Amateur Radio is a secret, known only to those who bounce into it. That bounce is where you found the community. Like any community you'll find people you like and people you don't. People who share your interest and people who are doing things that make your head explode. That said, is there any sage advice that I can share with you on your journey? I do, but, you're not going to like it. In fact until you've been an amateur for a little while you're possibly even going to hate my advice. I know, hate is a strong word. If it's not all black and white for you, you're going to think I'm chickening out in giving you advice. Wanna hear it? Start somewhere, anywhere. Let me say that again. Start somewhere, anywhere. One of the most fundamental aspects of this hobby is that it's driven by your personal exploration, your journey, your imagination and your adventure. It's entirely up to you to decide what you like and what you don't. I know that there are those who think that advice should come in the form of buying a radio, erecting an antenna and getting on-air. For many that's a journey worth doing. For others that's the beginning of the end of the hobby for them. If you're unsure which of the thousands of activities you'd like to do, since you don't know what they are, I'll tell you a secret. Neither do we. Seriously. There are so many things to do in this hobby that not a day goes by that I find a new thing to do and look at. A new toy to play with, or a new adventure to embark on. This morning I realised that the antenna design and build I've been working on represents roughly 600 million different variations. If I did those manually, taking a generous 10 minutes per set-up, I'll be here for nearly 35 years, 8 hours a day, trying another set-up. Clearly my hobby now includes automating antenna modelling. My point is that there are so many different aspects of life, the universe, and everything that intersect in some way with the hobby of amateur radio that there's bound to be several that you can think of right off the top of your head. You might immediately be dismissing them as foolish, but if we all did that, nothing would ever happen. If you're looking for ideas, that's a whole different thing. Of course the nearest search engine is a possibility, but I do have to confess, it's a dogs breakfast. Another is to visit your local club and see what others are up to. You could watch YouTube videos or listen to podcasts or read articles. All these are options to get suggestions. Ultimately, the whole point of this hobby is that you embark on your own adventure, start on your own journey, down your own yellow brick road. If you think what you're proposing intersects with amateur radio, you're right! That's not to say that there's no benefit to be had from engaging with others, far from it, just that you are the chief architect of your destiny. You're in charge. So get to it. Go do something, anything. While you're at it, document the adventure. One day you'll be glad you did. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Over the years I've been asked what the hobby of amateur radio is all about. My response has evolved over time, but it started with the lure of simple point-to-point communications. The antidote against such an example is that a mobile phone does that and more. Of course if you're already in the hobby you know that there is a massive difference between the two, but if you're an onlooker that is not nearly as obvious. There are other problems with an answer like that. It doesn't cover the spirit of the hobby, the intent, the reach, or any of the other aspects of our pursuits that keep us all coming back for more. I was asked recently to provide a credit to a fellow amateur for providing inspiration for an episode. Since then I've reflected long and hard about the nature of inspiration and what causes me to contribute and participate. The reality is that my inspiration comes from all manner of nooks and crannies, from articles I read, videos I watch, discussions I have, activities I participate in, builds I make and emails I exchange. Not to mention friendships, random comments, shower thoughts and flights of fancy. My understanding of our community of this hobby continues to evolve as I participate and contribute. I think that underlying all of this is the expansion of my mind, my interests, my exposure to new things is what makes amateur radio such a massively interesting activity. When I started I had no inkling that between learning how to solder and what a Fourier transform is lies this immense field of individual and community activity. What other hobby has the ability to link astronomy, moon, camping, community, planning, building, drilling, sound, language, antennas, internet, computing, valves, maths, propagation, mapping, transport, emergencies, physics, competition, camaraderie, satellite, soil, ionosphere, sun, batteries, old, new, invention and exploration? In addition to the technical aspects there's the whole library of human interaction, teaching, learning, giving and receiving, socialising, friendship, discussion and debate to scratch the surface. In amateur terms I'm still a babe in the woods and the more I learn the more I realise that this is likely to continue for the rest of my life. For me, amateur radio is the binding force between interests. It's about wonder, curiosity and inspiration. It's about trying and failing, about testing and learning, about thinking and doing. The magic for me is that you can do this at any level. As a 10-year old with a freshly minted license, or as a 90-year old with a twinkle in your eye. You can approach this as a scientist, or as an educator, as a submariner, or an accountant, as a truck-driver or a boiler maker, from young to old and anywhere at all, amateur radio is just plain interesting. As for giving credit. I'd like to credit you for your contribution, for your participation and for your excitement. Keep up the wonder and continue to make this community your own. In the end amateur radio means different things to different people. What does amateur radio mean to you? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio During the week I received an email from a fellow amateur who described that they were feeling deeply disturbed by the decline of the core knowledge underlying the education and certification of today's new amateurs. This is a topic I've covered previously and some of what I'm about to say will touch on things I've said before. I come from a long background in information technology. My first introduction was around the Motorola 6502 processor in the early 1980's. At that time a computer with 5 kilobytes of memory was a big deal. I learnt to harness every byte and nurture every bit. I learnt machine-code, BASIC, Pascal and Modula-2, which went on to form the basis of my current profession. The reason I raise this is because there are many parallels in the evolution of amateur radio and the evolution of information technology. For many years I lamented the dumbing down of the skill-set associated with newly fledged computer graduates. In a nut-shell, hand-coded would always beat Java. I held that view for a long time, until it occurred to me that in the big picture it didn't matter. Let me elaborate before you start jumping up and down. In computing, every two or so years, everything doubles, speed, memory, bandwidth, etc. The price pretty-much stays the same. This means that the inefficiencies introduced by "high-level" languages like Java result in very little in the way of performance loss, but in return the actual process of writing new software accelerates. This means that you end up with more functionality, quicker, at the cost of less efficient code. That's a pretty reasonable trade-off. If that example doesn't speak to you, it's the difference between rolling out turf from the back of a truck to construct a new golf course and teeing off in days, compared to spending a week planting grass, from seed, nurturing it and waiting at least two months until you might consider playing a round. Does a golfer care if was rolled turf or planted seed? A similar thing is happening in our hobby. The advent of Software Defined Radio creates a new category of experimentation. The component count is reduced by several orders of magnitude, in return for functionality built by way of software and maths. Of course that means that the new amateur of today has no idea in the operation of a valve and only limited understanding of a transistor, but in return they can create new modes such as WSPR, JT65, CODEC2 and the massive evolution of other digital experiments, and they can do that with tools unheard of 5 years ago, let alone 50 years ago. I am an example of an amateur who knows of the existence of a valve and I have a rudimentary understanding of how it works. I am seriously considering building my own Software Defined Radio, from scratch. I understand that this might not be something that comes easy and may even be seen as detrimental to the hobby, but I dare say that the introduction of the valve to a spark-gap operator caused the same experience, let alone the introduction of the transistor, the integrated circuit or the explosion of cheap single on chip systems that can be had for cents in the dollar. The essentials still remain. For example, right now I'm working on an antenna. It involves sourcing nuts that seem to be made from unobtainium, even though they are completely standard in our community and have been for longer than I've been alive. The self-learning of our hobby, the exploration, the investigation, the curiosity will endure. What we're going to be playing with tomorrow is not going to be anything like what we were doing yesterday, and I'm OK with that. That our hobby is changing is unmistakable. That's true for every human endeavour ever. I don't agree that there is a decline, nor do I think we've lost more than we've gained. I think the future of our hobby, our community and our pursuits is strong and bright. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio During the week I celebrated my ninth birthday. You might think that I'm quite eloquent for a nine year old and you'd be right if it was related to how I came to be born. My ninth birthday as an amateur appeared in my diary unexpectedly on a Monday and I took the liberty of telling a few people. On one forum it started a wonderful series of comments from amateurs and would be amateurs about their experience coming to our community. I've shared mine before, so instead I'd like to share some of the stories that truly show just how diverse our amateur friends really are. Floyd KK3Q says: My Dad was into CB radio (back when it wasn't so bad) and I was his antenna guy. He had black lung so I was the one who took down and put up his antennas for him. In the process I learned a lot (ask me later about a "smoke poles" and "buried 12V batteries") Well, Dad and I got into the illegal SSB frequencies and one night we visited one of the locals who happened to be using a Kenwood 520 on 11 meters. One look at that rig and I was in love. I never heard of ham radio and when I asked about it the owner said the radio was a "ham" radio and you needed a license to run one. Which she didn't have by the way. So I says, "Maybe I'll get myself a ham license and a rig like the Kenwood." She laughed at me, "You're just a stupid truck mechanic, you'll never get a ham license." I never run from a challenge, skipped over Novice and got my Tech, wanted on 20 meters so under incentive licensing I had to upgrade to General which meant 13WPM CW and me partially deaf. Next I wanted SSTV but you had to be Advanced class so I upgraded. Finally I lusted after a short call sign so I upgraded to Extra back when 20WPM CW was still required. Been a nice run, learned a LOT from a lot of elmers. Floyd has been a ham for 42 years. Bill WK2KX has been a ham for 33 years. Will be 34 this January. Licensed at age 11. He goes on to say: My dad and I did it together, but most of my family are licensed as well. My grandfather started it. His main claim to fame is that he served as general Eisenhower's radio man during ww2 for about a month. Now I have both my parents, a bunch of cousins, aunts, uncles, etc who are all licensed - enough that I've considered creating a "worked all (our last name)s" award, haha. Tyrell KD7TKJ turned 18 as an amateur in September. My stepdad wasn't a ham, but one of the kids he grew up with was... And my stepdad told me a story at a young age about how he and this neighborhood kid would go to the auto wreckers to pick up scraps to build radios out of, and then use said radios to talk to Australia... The details of said story really were never complete, and I've never met anyone since that claimed to have built a radio from car parts... But it was enough to get me to (get my mom to) get the ARRL Now You're Talking book and get licensed. I've been addicted to this more than any money making Enterprise ever since. One amateur writes: I got my license 48 years ago. In high school, every day I'd pass a door with no window, just a sign "W2CXN". When I got the courage to knock, I was met with a person I knew liked his job. So happy to help. I remember thinking, how cool is that? Peter KD2TCQ has been an amateur for 4 days and got interested because of packet radio as well as the ability to do on HF (which he needs to upgrade to do via phone but he's studying for that) Ron K7UV says: I'm at 62 years and was licensed at age of 12. My dad and I built two receivers together and I wanted to do more than listen... the rest is history. Yup, I go way back before transistors and computers and remember cycles, mmF, aerials and condensers. My original Hammarland receiver had around 13 tubes, the transmitter had 6 tubes plus the 2 meter converter had 4 tubes and my SCR522 had at least 7 tubes. It kept my bedroom quite warm in the winter and sweltering in the summer when there was no air conditioner, just fans. The weird thing... I miss those days, maybe it's just my nostalgia kicking in. But radio and my interactions with my father were essentially what led me to radio. Matt KD2MGM says: I suppose We're only 3. My brother and I put CB radios in our trucks in the summer of 16' but we quickly realized living out in the country that there weren't really any people on the air waves and that 4 watts wasn't enough to talk over the hills to each-other. These days we are not super active but still hop on the air once in a while. You can find all these stories and many more on the amateurradio sub on Reddit. For me, reminiscing over how you came to be part of this amazing community brings us all together. Our stories are not that different, we're all cut from the same cloth. Curiosity killed the cat, but it just makes amateur radio stronger. How long have you been an amateur and what got you in the door? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio In the early 1990's when I was a broadcaster I would come into the studio and prepare my show. That involved hours of preparation, but on the technology side it involved vinyl records, reel-to-reel tape on open spools, looped tape on cart, running edits and razorblades. If you're not familiar, a running edit is where you're playing the tape at normal speed and you hit record at just the right moment to replace the content. Of course that also requires that the thing you're recording is synchronised. Imagine yourself with four hands and three ears and you'll have a good idea. Razor blade edits required that you mark the tape where the audio started, chop the tape at that point and stick it to another piece of tape. The joy of having sticky tape, razorblades and audio tape strewn around the room and hoping that the tape didn't let go when you transferred the audio to a broadcast tape. If you wanted to play a song at the right time, you had to start it by putting the needle on the record, spinning the platter until you heard the song, then stopping the platter, winding back half or three quarter turn from where the audio started, depending on the speed and torque of the turntable, and then when you hit play, you'd have about half a second until the music started. At the beginning of the 1990's that was how it was done. Then compact disc came in and we could cue up a song and hit the go button and get almost instant sound. You could change tracks at the turn of a dial. Vinyl records were phased out pretty quick. In 1993 I switched radio station and instead of reel-to-reel we used DAT, or Digital Audio Tape. It had the advantage that there was no discernible loss of audio quality as you copied material, but there was no editing, since the bits on the tape needed to be aligned and you just couldn't do that with most of the available gear. The start-up delay was horrendous too, several seconds if I recall. A lifetime of dead air if you got it wrong. You might be wondering why I'm going down memory lane like this? The reason is that something changed, fundamentally, almost overnight. In 1995 Microsoft launched Windows 95. It was in August and as the local computer show I organised a competition to give away a copy of Windows 95. I edited my competition stinger, a 15 second and a 30 second promotional audio segment, entirely on my computer. Using SoundEdit 16 on my Macintosh computer I could overly tracks, add voice-overs, move sound tracks around, add dozens of tracks, change the left and right channel independently, amplify or delete specific beats, all things that were completely impossible using the gear in a radio station at the time. When I brought my stinger into the station managers office on my laptop computer, the earth shifted. Overnight everything changed. At that point radio stations around the globe started the race towards entirely being run from hard-disk. The digital revolution hit broadcast audio. That's almost a quarter century ago, but that change cannot be overstated. I think that in amateur radio we're looking at the same kind of change with the same level of impact. Today you can go online and buy a NanoVNA for less than a hundred dollars. This device, a touch-screen driven tool, allows you to measure electrical circuits. For example, you might connect an antenna and measure the impedance of that antenna. If you connect a reference antenna to the second port, you can even measure radiation patterns. Think about that for a moment. You can measure a radiation pattern. That means that there is something that radiates. Does that sound familiar? Perhaps like a transmitter? So this NanoVNA is essentially a transmitter and receiver in one box, currently runs up to 900 MHz, but the next version is already in the works and it's slated to manage 3.5 GHz, for the same amount of money. So, a 3.5 GHz transceiver for less than a hundred bucks. If you look at the internals of a NanoVNA, you'll notice that it's got much of the same bits as a software defined radio, because it is a software defined radio. Thanks to modern integration, at a component level it has significantly less complexity than the early 1980's microcomputers I grew up with like the Commodore Vic 20. Yes, I know, it's not quite a radio. There's different filtering, different software, no audio input, or output for that matter, no Morse key, it doesn't do FT8 or some other fancy mode, but guess what, it's all software. The parts of this device aren't complicated, they're cheap, simple to program and I don't think it's going to take long before we see a new explosion of software defined transceivers that are begging to be used by radio amateurs around the globe. We live in exciting times would be the understatement of the year. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio With the growing availability of new ways of communicating across the globe, from digital voice such as CODEC2, through weak signal modes like WSPR, JT65, MSK144 and FT4 to name a few, with Internet linked radio such as Brandmeister and DMR and the newly granted access to all Australian amateurs to all those modes, it's easy to overlook the one mode that started this adventure. Morse Code. It's no longer required to obtain your amateur license, so if that was putting you off from getting your license, you can breathe easy and get right to it. Among all the shiny new modes Morse Code continues to hold its own and for good reason. It's simple, reliable, has an amazing signal to noise ratio and if you're driving in your car and you're stuck without a Morse Key, you can always just whistle into your radio. If you've been following my journey through the hobby you'll know that I've been attempting to learn Morse Code. For a while now. It's been a challenge, more so since I spend less and less time in a car and more and more time behind my keyboard appeasing my clients. That's not to say that I've forgotten, just that what I've tried so far has eluded success. A little while ago I received an email from a friend, Shaun VK6BEK who let me know that there was a discussion happening on a mailing list he was a member of and in that discussion I cracked a mention. Being the shy and retiring type I had to have a look for myself. To read the message I had to join, which is fine, since Charles NK8O has been bugging me to do that for years, well perhaps not bugging, perhaps keying me - hi hi. Turns out that the Straight Key Century Club, the SKCC, was having a recurring discussion about the topic of Head Copy or Head Reading. To give you a sense of what that is, consider what I'm saying to you right now. It doesn't matter if you're reading this in an eBook on your Kindle, reading it on an email or online, listening to it on your local repeater, or via your favourite podcast player, for each of those the same process is happening. You are not absorbing individual letters or sounds, but getting the meaning from the entire structure of a sentence. For uncommon words you might need to calibrate your brain, but for the most part you're just bobbing along understanding what I'm saying. In essence you're doing the equivalent of Head Copy. In Morse Code the same can be achieved. Ultimately it's a language, a tonal one, but a language none the less. Hearing the individual dits and dahs, followed by letters, words and sentences, eventually you'll get to a point where it all just flows. I speak a few different languages, a curse or a blessing depending on your point of view. It means that I've become exposed to how language is built up. Initially when you hear a new language your brain is trying hard to figure out where the individual sounds belong, which sound belongs to which word, how a word begins and ends, how you make a plural, all the things you take for granted after you've learnt a language. In Morse that is no different. Within that context of discussing Head Copy, Gwen NG3P mentioned that she used the text edition of this podcast to convert into a Morse Code MP3 file so she could learn to hear Morse and bring them with her on her mobile phone. Gwen and I had similar aims. In the past I'd done the same with a book, Huckleberry Finn if I recall, as well as random letters and also the ARRL Morse practice downloads, but nothing seemed to work for me. For Gwen my podcast was an obvious source, so much so that I completely missed it, since they are short and on the topic of amateur radio. The language in use is likely going to be things that you'll hear on air and there's a smattering of callsigns, so all good. Long story short, I spent last week converting all 454 episodes of the podcast to Morse Code for your Head Copy practice enjoyment. They're encoded at 25 WPM, or Words Per Minute and the tone is 600 Hz. I even put them online and made it possible for you to add them to your podcast player. Best part? I now get to hear Morse Code at a pace that I'm looking for, on a topic that's relevant and I have been receiving plenty of emails from others who are just as excited as I am. You can find these episodes on the podcast homepage at http://vk6flab.com. Let me know how you go. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio A while ago I set up a WSPR, or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter at home. Before I go into the details, WSPR is an amateur radio protocol that allows stations to transmit their callsign, location and power level and for receivers around the globe to decode those and upload the results to a central database. It's a great way to see what you can hear and what propagation is like. A couple of months ago the regulator changed the Australian License Conditions Determination, the rules of engagement around amateur radio and now all licensed amateurs in Australia can even set-up a transmitter although I haven't yet. Receiving is plenty of fun and anyone can do that. Initially I used a piece of Windows software to track the contacts but to me it was like ordering a courier with an 18-wheeler to pick up a postage stamp. I looked around an found a piece of software that runs nicely on a single board Raspberry Pi computer. The software is called rtlsdr_wsprd, it's a mouthful, but it works nicely on a Pi with an RTL SDR dongle. The dongle I have is capable of using all HF frequencies up to 1766 MHz, so I can technically hear the 23 cm band, though I haven't actually heard any stations there. I created a list of all the published WSPR frequencies and I listen to a frequency for fifteen minutes, pick another frequency at random and do it again, all day, every day. My log for this installation goes back about eight months and I get about a hundred contacts every month or so. You might think that's a lot of contacts, but really it's not. The antenna is indoors, it's under a metal roof and while it's on the second floor, it's far from ideal, but it works surprisingly well. What have I learned from this experience? I've heard 36 different stations, across 11 countries and 23 grid squares, the furthest was G0CCL, a club station in Cambridge in the United Kingdom which was transmitting on 20m with 5 Watts. I heard it 14750 km away. There are plenty of other things that I can extract from this. The most popular band is 20m, it accounts for nearly 70% of the contacts I heard. Surprisingly, I am also hearing contacts on 80m, as well as on every other amateur band that my receiver can hear. The 6m band is pretty popular too, nearly 13% of the stations I heard. For my receiver, between 4am and 6am in the morning was the best time to hear something, together they account for just under 20% of the contacts. Locally the worst time is 8am in the morning. From the data I've collected, April and May were the most active, accounting for nearly 70% of the contacts. I must point out that the log is not continuous, there's gaps when the logging station wasn't switched on and when I was switching antennas and locations, so using the statistics I've given you here for your own station are probably not going to work quite the same. The WSPR mode isn't perfect. It will happily decode rubbish and report on that, so I've manually filtered out the bogus information, like for example a grid square XI97LK, or callsign 3KE/21XWK, where neither the location or the prefix are real. I can tell you that I was surprised that my station can hear 80m on the little telescopic rabbit-ear antenna supplied with my dongle. That same antenna is also fine at hearing 6m, so I'm pretty happy with that. One thing that this little experiment reveals for me is that a cheap dongle is a perfectly fine way to start playing with a limited budget. It offers the opportunity to explore the RF spectrum using modern tools and techniques. Much of what I describe is absolutely possible with a traditional radio. Originally I had my station set-up like that. It consisted of my Yaesu FT-857d, a 12 V power supply, a CAT cable, an audio interface and a computer. In stark contrast, my current set-up consists of two things. A Raspberry Pi with an RTL SDR dongle plugged in. While this set-up cannot transmit, neither could I at the time. Since then there have been advances in both. There are all-band WSPR transmitters for a similar cost to a Pi and a dongle. Power it up, configure it and you're good to go. I'm eyeing off that as a future project, since it's perfect to use to see what bands are open for your station at any given moment. If you've never had a go, you should. I've documented how my monitor station works and you can find it on the projects page on my website at vk6flab.com. WSPR is a really nice way to get into many different aspects of our hobby and the barrier to entry is your imagination. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Putting a radio in a car. As you might recall, most of my radio activity is done away from my shack. I tend to operate portable, camping, sitting on a jetty or using a picnic table while a BBQ is going nearby. For me operating with my car as a mobile base made more sense than trying to cram an antenna in a home with little or no garden. Putting a radio in a car can be as simple as bringing a hand-held and hanging it from the rear-view mirror, or it can involve a mobile phone mount that allows you to clamp it in place. Pretty soon you'll want to have an antenna on the outside of the car, so then you start figuring out how to make it go through the car without needing to drill holes and sparking the ire of the other users of the car. Not long after that you'll want to charge it, then the microphone will become inconvenient, changing frequency, using it for more than talking on the local repeater. Eventually you might well get to the point that a hand-held is no longer appropriate. Without telling you which radio to buy, since there are many different ones to choose from, with different specifications, different pricing, different functions and different sizes, there are plenty of roadblocks to radio bliss in the car. The very first one is: Where to put the radio? If your radio has a detachable front, that is, the buttons and display can be separated from the main body, you'll have more options, but if that's not possible, you'll likely need to find somewhere near and preferably visible to where you'll be using it. There are transceivers that fit into a standard car radio opening which might come in handy if your car comes with all manner of bezels and curves. You might find a spot in the centre console, or overhead. If you can put the transceiver in one spot and the head in another, then you can put the radio in any little hidey hole, for example, under the passenger seat, or in the luggage compartment, in the glove box, or behind the drivers seat. When you are looking for a spot, consider how you're going to get electricity to it and how you're going to connect the antenna. You'll likely need to connect the power supply wire directly to the battery, which might determine how the power gets into the cabin of the car. If you can drill holes in your car, you'll have extra options, but consider that you'll need to protect the wire that goes through those holes and you'll also need to protect the steel, given that once you drilled that hole, it's no longer protected by paint from rusting. The same is true for the antenna. Can you use an existing path, or do you need to make a new one? If you put the radio in the luggage compartment, can the antenna lead exit that and what happens if it rains? In my set up I have an all band radio, it does HF, VHF and UHF, but I didn't want to have multiple antennas on the car. The radio has multiple sockets, so I used a coax switch that's connected to an antenna mount on the rear of the car and ran two lines back to the radio, so I can switch between HF and VHF. Of course I need to swap out the antenna, but I'm not switching whilst I'm driving, so that's no problem. Other things to consider are what noise comes from the car. I don't mean the zoom-zoom noise, I mean the noise from things like the alternator. How will you deal with that? What about grounding? How will you make the ground plane of the antenna? Can you use braid to connect the various panels of the vehicle to each other? If your mount is temporary, like for example a magnetic mount, how will you protect the paint work? Can you clamp something across an edge, or will you need to drill a hole? If you're at all unsure, then try some set-ups. Run a temporary power supply through a door, figure out where stuff goes. Look at what your friends have done, test it by going out, park somewhere and try to use it for real. It can be daunting to set-up a car, but it is very rewarding and it's a great way to get used to the many aspects that are involved once you dive into this hobby. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day we were aligning an antenna for a contest. It had slipped on the rotator pole during a recent storm and when the rotator was set to zero it was pointing somewhere south east. Not ideal if you want to point your antenna at a particular station. The topic of the direction of north came up. There was vague hand-pointing, some mobile phone compass magic performed and north was arrived at. I asked if that compass took into account magnetic declination which in turn was met with blank stares. So, what is magnetic declination and where is north? It's likely that in school your first physics lesson was around magnetism. Playing with magnets is an easy way to start the conversation around science. One thing you learn in school is that opposite magnets attract. A north pole to a south pole and so on. A compass is a simple magnet with a north and a south pole. So, the north pole of the compass is attracted to the south magnetic pole of the Earth. This means that the Earth's north magnetic pole is currently at the bottom of the Earth. Also, while we're on the subject, the magnetic field lines that leave a magnet are defined as being the north pole of that magnet. So on top of the planet the magnetic field lines enter the Earth and at the bottom of the planet they leave the Earth. That definition of north and south was the first to be used and it was pretty successful in getting sailing ships all around the globe. Since then the definition has changed into defining the poles as the points around which the Earth rotates on its axis. The north pole is the one on your left as you face the rising Sun. So, the north pole that you and I talk about in day-to-day conversation refers to an imaginary point where the Earth rotates around you and you stay still - ignoring for a moment that the Earth is hurtling around the Sun and the Sun is moving around in the Solar System and the Solar System is moving in the Milky Way Galaxy and its moving inside the Universe, turtles all the way down. In case you're wondering how fast you're moving while you're standing still, it's in the order of 360 km per second in relation to the cosmic background radiation. By the time you've finished this you'll have moved about a hundred thousand kilometres from where you started. The subtle difference between the definition of north being related to the magnetic pole and the rotation axis means that there's a difference where your compass points and where north is. You probably already knew this. You might not know that the amount of distance between both the magnetic poles and the rotation poles changes over time. The magnetic poles of the Earth are constantly moving. That's pretty straight forward, but there's more. The Earth's magnetic field isn't pretty. It's not all straight lines and unicorns. It's messy, very messy. And the mess is moving. Normally there's a new map published every five years, but sometimes that's not enough to account for the movement. For example, early in 2019 a new map was published out of sequence to account for changes that were larger than expected. Why the map you ask? Because field lines are not straight. You'll find all manner of weird shapes and swirls. This means that where ever you are on Earth, your compass is pointing in a different direction, because it's not pointing at the magnetic pole, it's aligned with the magnetic field line which could be as much as 20 degrees off, in either direction, so 40 degrees error could make you completely miss Australia as you're sailing around the planet. If this is beginning to sound a little familiar, you might consider our Sun. Every sunspot is a magnetic pole. They come in pairs, a magnetic north pole where the magnetic field leaves the Sun and a magnetic south pole where it enters the Sun. If you've come across the impact of the Sun on radio communications and the ionosphere, you'll already know that the Sun is a turbulent place. Sunspots come and go, they move around, there's cycles within cycles, solar minima, maxima, pole reversals, lots of stuff that makes this a variable feast. The Earth is doing this too. Not as fast, not as hard, not as big as the Sun, but measurable and a rich source of research for Geophysicists and Geologists, since we can even figure out that the magnetic field on Earth reverses itself, has done many times, just like the Sun. So, next time you get the question, where's north, check out the magnetic declination map for your location, you might be surprised where your compass is pointing, it's almost certainly not north. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio An interesting question came up the other day. It's there such a thing as a solo contest? At the time I answered with examples like talking to a hundred countries to achieve the DXCC, or doing that on every band. I gave other examples too, but today I'd like to come at this from a different angle. When you go fly fishing, you typically stand in cold water trying to tempt a fish into taking your lure. If you are in the right spot at the right time with the right bait you might be lucky and achieve momentary bliss with the capture of a fish. That moment, the peak of achievement when the fish bites, that's a moment for you and you alone. Of course you'll be able to brag about it later and bask in the glory of your achievement, but the moment itself is a solitary experience. Many aspects of amateur radio are exactly like that. The circumstances are not even that different. Instead of standing in cold water, you're having your eardrums assaulted by noise. Instead of a line you have an antenna. Instead of a lure, you have your voice, but the same thrill happens when you hear your callsign being said by the other station. Calling back and forth with the exchange is much like fighting a fish. The bragging is no different. Of course amateur radio isn't actually fly fishing, but it's close. One of the things that you can do with amateur radio is achieve the bliss of success together with friends. You can compete in a contest together and share the missed opportunities, the misheard callsigns and what ever else chance throws in your way. Yes, I know, in fly fishing you can participate in the World Championships as a team, but generally it's a solitary experience. Oh, I should point out that my relationship with a fishing rod is an unhealed one. At the age of ten or so I managed to catch a fish in the local canal. At age 36 I caught a tiny fish on a safety pin in a pool at the base of a waterfall in the Kimberley. Typically I carry a fishing rod around into the bush with a lead weight to hoik it through a tree so I can pull a wire antenna up, so if there's any inaccuracies in relation to my dissertation on fly fishing, please don't hesitate to let me know. I've said this before. Amateur radio is lots of different things. It's a pursuit of technology, of excellence, of challenge, fun, victory and it's about having the experience. You can do this on your own and feel the amazing joy of making a contact, or you can do it with friends. Ultimately the choice is yours. Which ever one you pick, how you play is up to you. You can decide to see what comes along, or you can set out to make something happen. There is no right or wrong way, nobody to tell you that you must this or should that, it's entirely your decision to make. I like, actually, I love trying to get better at whatever I do. Talking to people, crossing the street, building an antenna, making a contact, winning a contest. I love trying new things, having new experiences, and seeing what others do differently. That's my make-up, it's me. If you want ideas on what to do, feel free to ask, but expect me to be interested in how you go. If you tried something new, share your experiences and tell your tale. I really don't mind if it failed. I'd much rather hear that you tried, rather than gave up before you started. So, what's your next adventure? Perhaps you have a waterproof radio and you want to bring it when you next go fishing ... I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I looked in my diary and noticed that it was the anniversary of my first solo flight. If that's not familiar to you, it means I got in an aeroplane on my own for the first time, taxied to the end of the runway, made a radio call to warn all the other pilots, took off, flew a circuit and landed safely. All the essentials for flying a plane. It occurred to me that there was a period of preparation associated with that flight. I did training, I practised, I got my gear in order and then after all was ready, I did the actual flight. In a technical hobby like Amateur Radio it's easy to get stuck in any of the steps leading up to your first transmission. It's just as easy to get stuck getting ready to do a contest, activate a digital mode, climbing a SOTA peak. Each of those activities are part of our hobby and doing those can provide you with a sense of achievement, a measure of success and ultimately the confidence to continue in this hobby. I've said before that there is a contest on pretty much every weekend, if not quite every day. People who participate in those contests do so for a variety of reasons, from testing equipment, to getting different countries in the log, to catching up with friends, to winning. I'm a die-hard contester. I love the chase, love to improve on my performance, get better, do more, faster, etc. That's not to say that there are times when I use the opportunity of a contest to try something new. At the moment I'm in the process of trying to figure out how I can record my voice into appropriate audio files so I can make the logging tool N1MM make all the noise on behalf of my vocal chords. Calling CQ for hours on end is not a good way to protect your voice and for those within earshot it's no way to spend a weekend listening to gibberish fill the house. I don't know how I'll go. Admittedly I've left it a bit late for the contest at hand, but I'm going to give it a go. I doubt I'll achieve more than a dozen contacts, if any, but then that's not why I'm doing it. My point is that you can, for any reason at all, participate in a contest. You don't need permission, you don't need to be asked, you can just decide to. When you're ready, when you feel the urge, when you think you can, or even if you think you can't, have a go. Today. Now. Some fair warning. If you pick a busy contest, like say the CQWW, you'll find that there are plenty of other stations around. They too are having a go at what ever level they choose to. Some will be out to win and others will try to say hello and want a chat. When you start you might feel the need to do lots of calling. Better use of your time is to have a listen and see what's happening. Check out the other operating techniques. Once you have the hang of it, try it yourself. It won't hurt, nobody will bite, though some might get testy if you jump on top of a rare station. If that's all too much to try and it's a little too scary, find yourself a local net, a discussion, an on-air meet-up, and have a listen. Then, if the going's good, join in. Key your microphone and say your callsign. Take it from there. Going Solo is something that every amateur you hear on air has done. It's time for you to do the same. Now get on air and make some noise! I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I accidentally learnt something new. I know, it's crazy, sometimes I surprise myself. I received an email that announced an activity from something called WWROF, more specifically, the World Wide Radio Operators Foundation. It caught my eye, because it was announcing a webinar about an upcoming contest, as it happens the largest annual amateur contest, the CQ World Wide. The time zone for the webinar put it firmly during my sleeping hours, so I asked about the availability of a YouTube video after the fact. Got an email back from Founding Director, Mark N5OT, and you'll be pleased to learn that there is in fact a video, not only that, videos going back to the dawn of the organisation with topics focused on Amateur Radio Operating. There's information about Receiving Antenna Metrics; Constructing a Horizontal Waller Flag; Ethics in Contesting; RTTY or Legacy Digital Contesting; Solar Spot Cycles; Dayton Hamvention; High Performance Receive Antennas for a Small Lot; World Radiosport Team Championships; Contest University; Operating two bands, using synchronised, interleaved QSO's; Remote Multi-Multi Contesting; and more, much more. To think that I didn't know this group existed and I've been here for a while, turns out, they've been around since 2009 when the foundation was created by a group of radio amateurs who saw a need for an independent organisation devoted to the skill and art of radio operating. Their motto is: "Dedicated to improving the skills of amateur radio operators around the world, utilising education, competition, advancement of technology and scientific research, promoting international friendship and goodwill, and preparing them to better serve society in times of communication need." Gotta say, if it weren't for the fact that it's on a web-page that I don't control, that could have been written by me. The WWROF puts contesting front-and-centre in the art of operating. They believe, and I agree, that amateur radio contests provide a means of testing operating skill. So, what have this group of radio operators been up to? Well, they administer the Cabrillo log format, support Contest University, support webinars on topics of interest to Contesters, created the Contester's Code of Ethics, Sponsor the World Wide Digi DX contest, are developing wideband recording systems, manage contest awards and donate equipment to young contesters and developing-country contesters, and finally they support the World Radiosport Team Championship. So, if this leaves you thinking that I'm advocating that you should check out this group, at wwrof.org, you'd be right. If you're looking for something to learn and YouTube is your medium, then check out the WWROF channel. Lots to see and do. One thing that might not be obvious from my glowing reports is that this is for you at whatever level of contesting you find yourself, not only that, it's not about contesting per-se, it's about operating as a radio amateur. For example, you'll find a discussion by Craig K9CT who describes how to plan your station, from finding land, selecting antennas to the layout of your shack. There's information about how to contest as a Rover Station by Rick K1DS. There's outlines of rules for various contests. Carl K9LA describes how to use Grey Line Propagation on the Low Bands, and Ed N4II talks about how to use 80m to get from Florida to the Cocos Keeling Islands around the corner from me, well 2932 km and that's 300 km closer to me than Sydney. I should mention that I have no relationship with the World Wide Radio Operators Foundation, but given their purpose of existence, I endorse their efforts. Their address is wwrof.org. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio As you might know I enjoy doing contests, actually that's an understatement; I LOVE doing contests. I think that they represent an excellent way to learn about operating procedure, propagation, band selection, antenna direction, callsign recognition and dealing with adverse operating environments. In short, I think that contesting teaches you lots about amateur radio in a very short time. That said, doing a contest, or learning from a contest is challenging and for a new amateur it can be absolutely daunting. If you have the luxury of a club station, you're familiar with the following picture. Bunch of people sitting around in the shack, one person operating the radio. If the operator has their headset on, the conversation in the shack will be about life the universe and everything. If the operator isn't wearing a headset, the conversation in the shack will also be about life the universe and everything with the radio blaring in the background and the operator initially asking people to keep quiet so they could discern that elusive DX station, frustration growing with every contact. Being at your own station might not be much different. Replace shack with home and the people in the shack with your family and you get the picture. If you step into that environment as a new amateur you'll get a sense of camaraderie, but little in the way of contesting knowledge. If you're lucky you might have someone point out what's happening, but quickly the conversation is likely to turn to other topics. It's hard to participate when you can only hear half the conversation. Recently I did another contest. As I said, I love them, so why not? I invited two new amateurs to the party. They arrived separately at different times and had vastly different experiences. My first guest got to see the back of my head whilst I called "CQ Contest VK6FLAB", followed by "NK8O, you are 59020", then "104, CQ Contest VK6FLAB". My second guest got to hear the whole contact. "CQ Contest VK6FLAB", "NK8O" "NK8O, you are 59020", "VK6FLAB you are 59104" "104, CQ Contest VK6FLAB". In both cases I was wearing a headset, but in the case of my second guest I'd finally achieved something that I'd been aching to achieve for years. I managed to combine the best of both worlds. The radio audible in the shack and the operator wearing a headset, at the same time. My intent has always been to get this to work, but radio after radio, configuration after configuration, shack after shack, this seemed to be a doomed attempt at getting my fellow amateurs to understand why this was important and how we might implement this. One of the radios in the past had a Headphones plus Speaker option, but it wasn't ideal and as I recall, it handled sub-receivers poorly, not to mention the menu shenanigans required to actually make it work. The current radio in the club-shack is typical of radios today. Headphones or Speakers, not both. This radio has an Ethernet port, so there was talk of using Voice over IP and extracting it to multiple destinations. This conversation went on for a while. I then hit on the idea of using computer speakers, tweaking them by clipping the wire that mutes the speaker when you insert headphones. In the end, the solution was much nicer, much simpler and easy to implement for any radio with a headphone socket. I confess that I cannot believe it was this simple, but it was. Get yourself a Y-adaptor. It's basically a headphone splitter. You can get them almost anywhere, supermarket, petrol station, electronics store, anywhere that sells mobile phone accessories to teenagers who want to share their music with their friends. Plug the Y-adaptor plug into the radio headphone socket. Plug your headphone into one of the Y-adaptor sockets and plug some powered computer speakers into the other Y-adaptor socket. Set the volume on the radio for your headset as needed and adjust the computer speaker volume as required. End result is an operator who can hear the contact and a shack that can teach a new amateur about what's going on. Bliss. Feedback from guest number two - this changed everything and he learnt a great deal after that. Mission accomplished. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio About a year or so ago I received a message from a friend of mine. The message asked if I would have or could find a use for some amateur radio gear from their active amateur father who became a silent key. That started a sequence of events that leads us here, today. In the year that followed that message I became the grateful owner and archivist of an amateur shack that belonged to Walter VK6BCP (SK). Walter had two calls that I know of, VK6BCP, last logged on the DX cluster on the 5th of April 2012. His other call, from Switzerland, was HB9CAI, last reported on the cluster on the 23rd of February 2005. The more I dig into Walter's collection of all things that make a shack, coax, connectors, boxes with spares, power supplies, odds-and-ends, the more I find a kindred spirit. I never met Walter, but he and I share the same sense of order. We sort things in the same way, we have the same kinds of things on hand and it's gotten to the point where it's hard to tell where his shack ends and mine begins. Walter's shack contributed several radios, some of which I loan out to beginning local amateurs, I took one with me on a recent trip and I've been using one to run a weekly net to see how this particular radio works and what quirks exist. One of the requirements to actually switching on that last radio brings me to bread crumbs. I needed a power supply to make the valves glow - well, the digital display - but you get the idea. There was a suitable power supply on the shelf, but I had no idea when it was last switched on, if it worked, if it would set fire to my shack, what the state of it was. It looked near new, no scratches on the paint, bit dusty, but it looked as well loved as my own power supply, which is now coming up to nearly a decade old. I picked it up and the power supply rattled. Never a good thing in a device that has no moving parts. On closer inspection I noticed that only four of the fourteen screws were holding the case together and it stopped me from plugging the thing in and turning it on - with a stand-by fire extinguisher at the ready - mind you, I might have been slightly exaggerating with the fire extinguisher. I did what any enterprising radio amateur would do in that situation, I got out a screwdriver and extracted the four remaining screws and lifted the lid. I wasn't sure what I would find, but nothing prepared me for what was there, though Walter being Swiss should have. Inside this lovingly maintained power supply I found a little zip-loc bag with ten screws. The ones missing from the case. This was the source of the rattle. I also found a disconnected fan lead, actually, it had been purposefully cut and folded back. Now why do you suppose that was? For my money, Walter knew this power supply well. His power requirements didn't need a fan - truth be told, mine probably don't either - and to keep everything in one place and to remind himself that he'd made a modification, he'd done the smart thing, make it obvious that something had been modified. He could have put a sticker on the case, but over time that would have faded. He could have carved his initials into the case and carved an instruction, but both of those would have reduced the aesthetics of the power supply and if his callsign ever changed, or if he reconnected the fan, he'd have to start again. What I found was something that gave me pause to consider how you manage to document what you've done, not only for yourself, but for others who might stumble on your modification. I'm certain that Walter never considered that one day I'd be telling you this story and thanking him for his preparation, but that's exactly where we are. You might come away from this wondering what the point was of all this? The point is, you can prepare your shack for events that might not happen. You might lose your memory, become a silent key, or have a beginner borrow your kit. You'll never know what it will be. What you can do is make it possible to discover that something has been changed. Walter could have just as easily put all fourteen screws back in and I would have never been any the wiser. I might have thought that the fan only came on under load, instead of not coming on at all, ever, because the lead had been cut. My first sign of trouble would have been magic smoke escaping and perhaps the need for a fire-extinguisher. Leaving bread crumbs for discovery is a really simple and helpful way to document your adventures. Thank you Walter VK6BCP (SK) - it's been a pleasure to know you through your shack. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Lessons Learnt Learning to me is an ongoing process. For some reason that's not a universal experience. I've met people who cram for an exam, pass their test, get the certificate and hang out their shingle. The retained knowledge is spotty and vigorously defended as the final word on the topic. It's never been like that for me. I tend to walk through life intensely curious about the how and why of a thing. Take my recent adventures operating a new to me radio with a new to me antenna in a new to me location. It went sideways, fast, with little direct evidence of the experience to show for itself. I did learn several things. I expected that having switched on the radio at home, transmitting into a dummy load and receiving was enough to prove that the radio was operating normally. The fact that I didn't hear anything and didn't know if that was because of my set-up or the radio itself was not helpful. I expected that bringing a long-wire with a multi-tap un-un would guarantee that I'd be able to operate on any band. The fact that I got a high SWR everywhere didn't tell me what the cause was and not having access to my testing equipment made troubleshooting much harder. I expected to plug the radio into the car and brought battery terminal clip adaptors and a cigarette lighter plug adaptor to facilitate this. I didn't expect to operate separate from the car, hadn't considered that the voltage might drop below acceptable and didn't know how fast that might happen. I sort of expected that the radio would have a voltage display, but so far that's eluded me. I even have an in-line Volt meter back at the shack, would have been more useful than the torrid I packed. I expected that the length of the power leads would be sufficient to comfortably install the radio into the car and operate without having to be mindful of where to put my feet. I didn't expect that the power lead was only just long enough to place the radio in the passenger side foot well and didn't offer any flexibility at all. I expected that I had taken with me enough in the way of connectors and adaptors to connect various antenna options together. I did. I managed to bring one surplus item which couldn't be connected and didn't need to be either. I expected that my coax patch lead was sufficient to have the radio inside the car and the antenna outside the car. It was. Just. I expected for planning purposes that Google Maps would work the same as it does at home. Satellite and street views pretty much in sync and roads shown on the map actually existed. It didn't. The satellite view was current, street view was 11 years old for some streets, pre-building boom, pre-cyclone, pre-historic pretty much. There were roads indicated that didn't exist, couldn't exist, had never existed and would never exist. The place I stayed at has been there for more than a decade, but Google Maps shows me surrounded by water. The local board walk has been there for over 30 years, but Google doesn't know it exists. I expected to be able to get anything missing from my kit with little trouble from local big box stores. In reality, the local electronics dealer is an authorised stockist of a well known brand, capable of ordering in most stuff, but a full brand store with actual stock was well over 100km away. I expected that buying a battery locally might cause weight issues for packing luggage. In reality, shipping batteries across the country is non-trivial and in many ways should be budgeted as a disposable item, since shipping is likely to be either not permitted, or cost as much or more than the original purchase price. It boggles the mind how these batteries actually arrive at the shop where you buy them, but no doubt that's above my pay grade. I'm sure there's more to learn from my adventures, but I'm happy to have experienced this to add to my skill set as a radio amateur. What learning have you been exposed to when you least expected to be? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Going on an outing After my fun and games working out how to manage power for a temporary radio set-up, away from my shack and normal infrastructure, I had the pleasure of actually going out to get on air and make some noise. A national contest was on offer and it's always been a favourite of mine. It's simple to log, you can work as much or as little as you like and there's generally a good community spirit associated with it. After mapping my way around the neighbourhood, I'd found a few candidate locations, nearby water, trees, parking, bit of separation from housing, all the good stuff you need when you go walkabout. Had the opportunity to configure the car, setting up in an underground garage, nice and cool, good light, perfect start to a contesting day. Found a suitable route for the power lead from the battery to the radio, set-up the various bits, microphone, dummy load, untangled the wire antenna, all ready to go. Got in the car an hour before the contest started and drove 5 minutes up the road to contesting location candidate number 1. Shame about the overhead power lines. On to location 2, shame about all the cars, location 3, overhead power lines, location 4, no parking signs, location 5 through 7 couldn't be found because the map and reality didn't quite agree with each other. At that point I made the decision to go and have some lunch. Best thing I could have done. There was another location, number 8 or 28, who cares at this point, but it was 50km away, just under an hour drive. My trusty navigator and aspirant logger and I decided to bite the bullet and head on out into the great unknown. We arrived an hour after the start of the contest. Drove up and down the shore of a local man-made lake and after dismissing several full sun locations, found a little dead end track with nice trees and plenty of shade. It's a 26°C day, so sitting in the full sun is not a pleasant thing in a dark car. Used my rope and gifted weight - thanks Alan VK6PWD - to find a spot for the antenna wire, set-up and powered up. Tested the SWR. High, everywhere. Tested with different un-un settings, 16:1, 9:1, 4:1, high, everywhere. Found a loose connector, one I'd tested before packing and then another. Replaced them both, still high. Dummy load was fine. Tried three different antenna layouts and decided to see if I could actually hear anything. Listened to all NCDXF beacons on all bands. Nothing. Not a sausage. At least the cattle coming past for a look-see were having a great time. After all that, the only thing left to do was to pack up and drive home. Mind you, we did find a nice red wine on the way home, so it wasn't a complete loss. In past years I might have been quite upset about this experience, but with experience comes acceptance that sometimes it's just not your day. I'm furiously scribbling down all the things I've learnt from this outing. I'll leave that for another time. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Planning for an outing Recently I had the opportunity to use a new radio whilst I was far away from my shack. It wasn't unexpected, I took the radio with me, planned for the experience and packed light with intent. My original packing included a 10m length of coax, my analyser, some antenna weights, wire, rope, power leads, BNC adaptors, barrel connectors and a balun. Total weight came in at about 7kg. More than double the weight of the radio itself. The biggest weight came with the coax, so that stayed home. Got rid of all the "what-if" adaptors, dumped the antenna weights, dumped the balun and the analyser, added an un-un, and a multimeter and came in at just under 5kg. The idea was to operate from the car, chuck a long-wire into a tree and make noise. Then I got to where I was going and learnt that there were lots of SOTA peaks nearby. If you're not familiar with SOTA, it stands for Summits On The Air and it's a way of encouraging people to go out and make noise while also encouraging others to listen out for your activation of a nearby peak. As an aside, it's separate but closely related to WWFF, World Wide Flora and Fauna, since peaks are often in National Parks and who wouldn't want an excuse to activate two things in one sitting? One of the most basic rules of SOTA is that all equipment must be operated from a portable power source (batteries, solar cells, etc). Operation is expressly forbidden using permanently installed power sources or fossil-fuel generators of any kind. That of course means that using the battery in a car is not allowed, though I suppose I could unbolt the battery from the engine bay, but I'm pretty sure that the hire-car company would frown on that plan. I set about attempting to find out how much power the radio actually draws at 5 Watt, and how much battery I'd need to activate a peak. Given that my shack wasn't where I was, I couldn't just plug it into my fancy power supply and read the power draw from the display, should have done that before I left. Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda. I resorted to asking the community, but that was dependent on the kindness of strangers. Another hitch was the battery. I came up with the brilliant plan to use one of those high-capacity jump start boxes, 18Ah or so. Picked the one I liked the best, figured out if I could ship it back to my shack on return, since it likely couldn't fly, both from a weight and a dangerous goods perspective and found a supplier locally - well 108km away - and then, me being me, I downloaded the user manual, and learnt that what I wanted to do, power my radio, was expressly, strongly, not recommended, fear of explosion and the like. Planning foiled. I still wanted to operate, contest to be attempted, SOTA be damned. How could I operate and not fear that I'd be draining the car battery? A cigarette lighter mounted Volt meter! So, now I can connect the radio directly to the battery in the car and check the voltage whilst I'm operating. Now all I need is a parking spot with a nearby tree or gazebo and no noisy neighbours or overhead power lines. I'll let you know how I go. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Boating adventures The other day I was on a boat. That's right, me, on a floating thing, on the water, the ocean actually, steering and everything. I should confess that when I was younger I spent most weekends sailing as a sea scout in Holland. Managed to become a bootsen, that's the bunny in charge of a boat. Sea scouts, zee verkenners, was also my very first introduction to amateur radio through JOTA, Jamboree On The Air, where scouts across the globe come together, though it didn't make quite as much impression as breaking the middle finger on my right hand an hour later, but that's a story for another day. So, me, on a motorboat, a tiny one, but still. You may be wondering where this is going, trust me, it's relevant. In preparation for my boating adventure I pulled out my trusty hand held radio, a waterproof Yaesu VX-7R. If you're not familiar with it, it's a tiny radio, capable of tuning between 500 kHz and 1 GHz, not quite DC to Daylight, but impressive nonetheless. I have it programmed for all registered Australian repeaters. One state per group in case you're planning to program yours. One of the in-built options is to select Marine Channels. They're numbered from 0 to 281. I've looked in the past and in Australia the channel numbers don't follow any logic as simple as that. Numbering is all over the place, 84 channels as far as I can tell, I had to count them, the highest channel number is 2086 and there's channels with names like AIS 1 and AIS 2 rather than numbers. If you're a yachtie, you're laughing your head off right now, but I'm making a point about Amateur Radio. We don't do channels here, well mostly we don't, unless we picked up an ancient radio cheap from somewhere and re-purposed it for Amateur Radio, but to coin another sailing term, by and large, we do frequencies. So, here's the thing. My radio is perfectly able to transmit on marine frequencies and being a responsible person I thought it would be smart to bring my radio, just in case. I will confess that I didn't. After discovering that the marine documentation was all about channels, and decoding frequencies was beyond a quick look-up, I thought that it would be prudent to leave my radio at home. I had a mobile phone with me, was staying near to the marina and the boat owner actually supplied a radio. So here I am, a semi-experienced radio amateur, completely clueless about marine radio. While I was figuring out how to tell you about this, I managed to find the government website which referred to a training website which referred to a user guide that actually had a list of channels and frequencies side-by-side. You'll be pleased to learn that channel 16 on my radio, the emergency marine channel is on the same frequency as the official channel 16 in Australia. My point is this. We have a common interest in communicating. In the case of an emergency it would be useful to know what marine channels relate to what frequencies and how we as radio amateurs can help if required. It also means that we as radio amateurs are not the all knowing beings we believe ourselves to be. Of course we already knew that, so we keep learning. I know I'm going to learn how marine radio channels work. I'll probably have a look-see at other channel spectrum users and see how they relate, so I can know how their system works in case I ever need to. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Gate-keeping, special people and bullies. One of the recurring topics in my experience of amateur radio is that associated with people who use the hobby as an excuse to sow discontent. That comes in many forms, at the extreme end it's harassment, but it also comes in the form of gatekeepers and nay-sayers. It's important to realise that while this behaviour is not limited to amateur radio, we seem to have more than our fair share of the negative element. When you come into this community, all bright-eyed, excited, willing to learn, you might be astonished just how negative some community members can be. You might pick up a special friend who follows you around, either on-air, or on-line, rarely in real life, who makes it their mission to make your life a misery. This behaviour manifests itself with statements about the unsuitability of your license, your equipment, your gender, your knowledge, your examination process, your chosen frequency, your selected mode, anything that's not to the liking of whomever challenged your existence. This kind of behaviour is known as gate-keeping and in amateur radio it's rife. People with a chip on their shoulder, the size of Montana, with nothing better to do than berate new amateurs, tell them off, preferably as a means to explain to them why they should leave the hobby or are not worthy of being considered an amateur. In addition to these delightful utterances, I regularly see sexist, racist and other content shared among our community that would not be condoned in the workplace, let alone in the family home. Why do we as a community tolerate this extreme behaviour when in the rest of our lives this is strongly discouraged and can lead to severe consequences such as dismissal and legal proceedings? In civil discourse we treat each other with respect and that should be there regardless of the environment, be it professional, the home, or in this case a hobby. It's been said that for some people in amateur radio, their biggest life achievement was the gaining of their amateur license. The acronym FIGJAM comes to mind to describe some of those entitlement rich individuals. So what do you do when you are confronted with a repeater troll, or told that you don't measure up because you don't know Morse, or some other denigrating statement? Previously I would have advocated that you ignore it and move on. Often times you've done nothing wrong and there's nothing to be gained from arguing the point. There's only one problem with that. There is no cost to the bully, let's face it, we're talking about bullies, minor or major, still a bully. No cost means no disincentive, which means that the behaviour continues until the bully gets bored. Only problem is that you'll need to weather the storm while that happens. Not good for you, your mental health or the mental health of the people around you. That's not a good balance. As a community it's our job, that is, my job and your job to call out this behaviour and to expose it for what it is, abhorrent, elitist, sexist, racist, gate-keeping. I've been told that this isn't real and that I should leave this alone and to that I say: No. This is my hobby too and I get to have a say about what kind of hobby community I'd like to be part of. So, instead I think we as a community need to do something more active. I think we, that is, you and I, need to call out a bully when we encounter one. It does't have to be confrontational, however satisfying that might be, but it needs to draw a line in the sand. For example, you might say something like this: Thank you for your comment. I don't believe that it's in the spirit of amateur radio. Please stop. It's not going to end the behaviour of the bully, but it does achieve some other things. If this is on-line, it will flag for future readers that something is amiss and on-air it will highlight to fellow frequency users that you're not OK with what's going on. It does some other things as well. For you it will give you a sense of ownership of what's going on around you, rather than being pushed into the role of victim. It will also give the bully a statement that's neutral whilst indicating that their behaviour is unacceptable. I think that the only way out of the keyboard warrior and repeater-troll hell we find ourselves in is to do something different, to make noise, to shine a light and to discourage bad behaviour. One thing I can say from personal observation is that what we as a community have done to date isn't working. It's getting worse. We're alienating good people who want to make a contribution and we're doing nothing to discourage those who are sure of their position and are unapologetic about how they express that superiority. Step up. Call it out. Thank you for your comment. I don't believe that it's in the spirit of amateur radio. Please stop. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio New Entrants are Everywhere The hobby of amateur radio has been around for a long time. It was here before I was born and it will be here after I become a silent key. The same is true for you. While there is a recurring discussion about the death of the hobby, the reality is that our community changes continually. People come and go all the time. Reasons for change are as varied as the number of people you care to look at, from interest through to family, from money through to time, from boredom through to excitement, from life through to death. As our community fluctuates, our skill level varies. We see new people come into the hobby, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready for a new adventure, at the same time we have people who are experienced, or jaded, or both, participating in the community and finding themselves answering the same questions over and over again. What radio should I get? Is this radio better? How do I do HF? How do I get my license? Where is everyone? How do you participate in a net? Which antenna should I buy? What is a QSO or a QTH? How come this and why that? At some point I was that person and I have no doubt that at some point you were, or are that person. The challenge in maintaining a semblance of community coherence is to balance the needs for new and aspiring amateurs with the expectations of those already in the community. How do you answer the same questions while staying fresh and encouraging, when all you really want to do is ignore the noise and get on with the hobby? The answer is simple. You need to recognise that the change in the hobby is fundamental. New people coming in, new technologies, new hardware, new modes, new rules, new customs, all of it is in flux all the time. It shouldn't be seen as a threat, but as par for the course, something that is part of our community and part of why and how we exist. To draw an analogy with something else, cooking. We've been doing that for a while, some suggest as far back as 2 million years ago. Every day new people learn to cook, new people invent or reinvent recipes, cooking classes abound, television shows with competitive cooking, new ingredients, new tools, new techniques and relearned old methods, there's celebrity chefs, awards and the more you look at cooking, the more you understand how it changes and continues to change. In many ways cooking and amateur radio are the same. The idea of teaching your child, or a friend, or a person on social media how to cook something is accepted as how it is and how cooking evolves. In amateur radio we can do the same. It's easy to dismiss silly questions, or to give snide answers, or to ignore new arrivals, but that's not something that grows our community, strengthens it, or broadens it. Of course, how much you participate in this is the real yardstick of how much of an amateur you really are. Said in another way, if an amateur calls CQ into a dummy load, does anyone care? One of the challenges as a new entrant into the community is to figure out where to go and how to learn more. It's never been easier than it is today, even if you think that it's hard. In a bygone era you had to go to a library, or to find another amateur, or go to a club to even know that our hobby existed, these days the access to our community is within reach for any person on the planet. We have endless resources, in the form of web-sites, books, both electronic and paper, clubs, virtual and physical, social media, podcasts and articles such as this, video channels, and an endlessly growing and evolving community that cannot help but document its adventures and exploits. Amateur radio today is as close as the nearest search engine and as far as you want to take it. Never be afraid of asking a question and consider it a right of passage if a grumpy bugger tells you off for asking a stupid one. The worst question is the one you never asked. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio What's in a Watt? We need more power. I'm giving her all she's got, Captain! She cannae take anymore. I'm sure your Scottish ancestors are rolling in their graves right now, but in our community of radio amateurs we have a tendency to advocate the use of more power. More power fixes all problems and hides all sins. Another way to look at that is to think of the station with more power as an aligator, all mouth, no ears. Before you dismiss this as another avocacy for QRP or low power, let me point out that more power creates more interference, more potential for harm, more electricity consumption, more wear and tear and more cost. Previously I've spoken extensively about QRP communications, making contact with 5 Watt or less, but let's have a look at how much less. I've shared with you that I managed to contact a station on the other side of the planet with only 5 Watts, Perth to Cuba and for me that was proof positive that all this was possible, even feasable. We're doing much better than that. One measurement is to calculate how many kilometers per Watt you achieved. My example of 5 Watt between Perth and Cuba is the equivalent of 3592 km per Watt. The maximum distance to the opposite side of our globe is about 20,000 km and my contact did nearly 18,000 km. If you think that's amazing, I should warn you, my contact was special, for me, but as low power contacts go, it's not that amazing. The first solid state radio contact made across the Atlantic ocean managed over 76,000 km per Watt. That was on 18 September 1956. You'll find the radio on display at the ARRL Laboratory, together with the bug and station log showing the contact between Chelmsford, Massachusetts and Copenhagen, Denmark between Gus W1OGU and Bo OZ7BO, on a radio made of two germanium transistors and built by Gus W1OGU, Al W1OSF and Dick W1UBC, who built the diminutive gadget on a lark to see if they could Work All Continents with it. If you can copy the 40 microwatt CW beacon run by the North American QRP CW Club, you too can join in the fun. The current record stands at just under 22 million km per Watt when Bill W4ZV managed to copy the code word OMAHA from the N2XE beacon from New London, North Carolina. Just to be clear, we're talking about a signal that travelled the equivalent of 22 million km using 1 Watt of power. If you think that was amazing, Pioneer 10 managed to achieve 1.3 billion, that's 1.3 thousand million km per Watt in 2003. Mind you, that record was achieved with a slightly bulky antenna, the Deep Space Network. Are you ready for more? The current record stands at just under double the Pioneer 10 record, just under 2.6 billion km per Watt. That was achieved by Dick KL7YU and Bill W7BVV who made contacts between Alaska and Oregon in December 1969 and January 1970. A distance of 2655 km using one micro Watt. Yes, you can throw a Kilowatt at the problem, or you can take your time, do some work and have some fun with low power. You can call it QRP, or you can call it just enough to get the job done. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio It broke and now what? Imagine you're a new amateur. You've woken up in the middle of the night because insomnia seems like a good way to use amateur radio as an excuse to get on air and make some noise. You turn on the radio, key up the transmitter and the next thing you know it's dark. The breaker that powers your radio popped and there's no more glow coming from the hardware that's warming up your shack. You get up, reset the breaker, tighten up your dressing gown and switch on your gear. You sit down and key up. Pop, darkness. What do you do next? The first thing to realise is that there is something wrong. That might sound obvious, the radio just tripped the breaker and it went off, but sometimes it's not that obvious, sometimes there's something wrong, but it's not nearly as clear as light and dark. For example, you might key up and the SWR goes high. You might not even notice if your radio is set to monitor the power output, or the automatic gain control that indicates how well your audio is going out. The point is that noticing that something is wrong is a matter of paying attention. Just sitting there all dumb and happy, mashing the microphone is going to cost money or cost something else one day when you stop paying attention. So, finding out what's wrong starts with noticing that something is amiss. If you've been clued in that something is broken, and you're not standing next to your radio with a fire extinguisher, or tears running down your cheeks because you just blew up your new radio, you can move onto the next part of this little adventure. One thing to note is that it's really easy to make it worse at this point. Making it worse arrives in all manner of different ways, pain, either physical, RF burns, smoke, sparks, or mental like the emptying of your wallet when it goes pear-shape. The art of troubleshooting is the process of attempting to learn what's going on. Some people know instinctively how to do this, others just wiggle stuff, unplug stuff and hope for the best. Hoping for the best is not the best plan. One of the most basic aspects of troubleshooting, of trying to figure out what's happened, is to document what you find. Write it down. I know you're going to skip this, but it's going to bite you and then you'll be sorry and I'll be here telling you that I told you so. So write it down. Be meticulous. In case you're wondering, you're doing this for your own benefit, not my sense of curiosity. If you measure a value now and it's 7 Ohm and you change something and then you measure again and it's 23 Ohm, if you didn't write it down, you'll never know. Especially if the two measurements are a week apart. Next basic concept is to change as little as possible, preferably one thing at a time. That's easy for me to say while your reptilian hind-brain is currently attempting to decide between whom to murder first and how fast to run. There is a tendency during panic to wildly wave your hands about and fiddle with lots of stuff. The urge to do that is strong. Resist that urge with all that you have. Again, you're going to ignore that and I'm going to stifle my I told you so chant, but less is more. This is important. If you change two things, you've just doubled the possible causes. If you change three, there are now six different causes and if you change four things, we're up to 24 different versions of the problem. Keep it simple. Third concept is to test things. The smaller the test, the better. For example, you're connected to the right antenna, right? The power supply is giving out the right voltage, right? The squelch is open, right? The microphone is plugged in, right? Test each of those, one at a time. The more you troubleshoot, the more this list will come naturally. Right now you're probably cursing me for not supplying you with a ready-made list. That's because my shack is nothing like yours, not even a little bit. Also, your shack keeps changing. Besides we're learning the skill of troubleshooting and I already know how to do that. Mind you, truth be told, I've been known to make mistakes too, so there's that. Forth concept is about testing gear. There is a tendency within our community to buy gadgets. The more the better, a volt meter, an ohm meter, an ammeter, an SWR meter, an oscilloscope, a VNA, a what-ever. The more toys the better. While toys, uh tools, help, they're not the answer to every question. You have a more fundamental issue to deal with. Garbage in equals garbage out. If you measure ohms, but needed volts, there's no helping you. So, instead of focussing on what new tool to acquire, focus on what measurement you need to make to prove that something works, or doesn't. The process of troubleshooting doesn't come naturally to everyone. I know, I've seen some very panicked people break some very expensive hardware, seen full-bright scholars make bonehead mistakes and heard stories of physicists narrowly avoiding electrocution, so don't be