Foundations of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio The hobby of amateur radio is a curious animal. It sits at the junction between empirical evidence and the scientific method. On the one hand it's all about physics, electricity, magnetism and the science behind those. On the other hand it's about trying something out and seeing what happens. When I started in this hobby, I was all about the science. I wanted to know "Why is it so?" "What evidence is there to support that?", all the typical questions you might ask if you're coming at this from that direction. As is often the case, the more you know, the less you know. That is, the more you understand a topic, the more you understand that you know nothing. The deeper you dig, the more variables become apparent, the deeper the hole goes, the further away from absolute you travel. That's not to say that our hobby is unknowable or non-deterministic, far from it. It's often so complex as to defy immediate explanation using high-school physics. You'll get to a certain point with that knowledge, then from one moment to the next you'll open a door into a world where that knowledge is just not enough. Interestingly when you look at for example the standard way of determining the length of a dipole, a fixed number divided by the frequency, that number we use, what ever the value, is an example of an empirical evidence based number and as observations go, it's not a particularly good one, which is why when you start using it you'll find all manner of exceptions, alterations, modifiers, etc. If there was a formula for a dipole, it would not just have that fixed number and the frequency. Nor would it be a simple division, since the number of variables is likely to head to infinity by the time you actually approach something that can model the real world. Between those two extremes, the quick-and-dirty empirical calculation and the intricate model at the scientific end lies a point of "good enough". The point of "good enough" is where what you're calculating is likely to end up with something that works most of the time. It's not 100% accurate, nor is it trivial, but it gives you a level of confidence that the thing you're calculating is useful and reproducible in many circumstances. I've been told by those who have told me that they know, that the fixed number divided by the frequency is on that "good enough" point, but my experience and the evidence says otherwise. Oh, that's ok, just add 5% to that number, or just cut it long, or insert some or other correction factor to account for the variation, that will give you "good enough". Ok, I'll bite. If that's "good enough", why are we teaching our new amateurs that this is how you create a dipole, no explanation about the variations, the effects of the environment, the material used, just: "Here's a number that you divide by the frequency and you'll have a dipole." My point is that it's time to revisit some of the things we think are "good enough" and look for something "better". I'm not advocating that we all need to become theoretical physicists, though for some that might be just the ticket, but I am saying that we should not just state that making a dipole, or calculating anything associated with our hobby, should be done without context. Here's some context for the magic number 468. Ward N0AX did the research almost a decade ago. It's a fascinating read, look it up! Turns out that the first occurrence of the magic of 468 comes in the form of 438. Yes, that's correct, 438 was the first attempt at making a magic number and it was based on measurements by G. William Lang in 1926 and it was based on averaging measurements for several antennas. In the 1929 ARRL handbook the number 468 first appeared and has been repeated ever since. Apparently as it turns out, the more you repeat something the more it's right. To the point of being ridiculed if you dare question the validity of such a notion. So, what is it, scientific, or empirical, or is it a little of both? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Over the past year and a half I've been working on a secret project. Today I'd like to share what I've been up to. To set the scene, I'm not doing this on my own, a fellow co-conspirator is Randall VK6WR who became an amateur about 20 months ago. Randall has a long association with the Engineering Development Array and the Murchison Wide Field Array, two of several radio telescopes that are built on one of the few radio quiet areas in the world and located near the future home of the Square Kilometre Array, the SKA. One day Randall and I started talking, as you do, new amateur, new topics, interesting new fields and ideas. We hit on the idea that radio astronomy telescopes are able to receive 2m signals. This started a discussion about using a radio telescope to receive a moon-bounce signal. So, the idea was born. Can we create a 5 Watt signal, bounce it off the moon and have it be heard by a radio telescope? Randall and I have been working on that on and off since our first discussion. Let me start by pointing out that we've not managed this yet, but we think it's a project worth doing, to forge cross skill exploration by various different groups. I have a strong background in IT and a few years as a radio amateur; Randall brings with him a wealth of radio astronomy engineering expertise, not to mention signal processing, communications and myriad other skills. We started to do this on the quiet, why talk about something that hasn't happened, might never happen, could be done by someone else who'd claim the glory before we did, and so-on. I've come to the realisation that while those things all hold true, this is a non-trivial project to achieve and anyone who puts in the work and gets there is welcome to claim the glory. So, in the 20 months gone by, while both working full time we've done lots of things. Let's set the parameters. When we first started, both of us were holders of an amateur foundation license. This means hand-keyed Morse, 10 Watts and band restrictions. Because I'm me, I decided that the difference between 10 Watt and 5 Watt wasn't significant enough to make or break this, so we went with 5 Watts QRP. Our license precludes the use of WSJT modes, invented by another radio astronomer, Joe K1JT, so the signal had to be something else. We settled on a manual slow Morse signal. We're using a radio telescope at one end, so it had to be on 144 MHz. Those decisions made, our first project was to attempt to calculate if we could actually achieve this. Conventional wisdom says no, but our ongoing calculations revised several times since our original effort, show that we're right at the edge of what is possible. We then started the process of determining if the radio telescope could actually hear moon bounce radio signals. We have a limited field of view, roughly 20 degrees around vertical, so the moon has to essentially be above the telescope. The galactic centre is a very noisy place from a radio perspective, so it has to be at least 20 degrees away from the moon. Similarly the sun, also very noisy, needs to be 20 degrees away from the moon. That started a process of me learning Python, so I could use Astropy to create a table with observation times that match those criteria. I'm still working on that. Having been a programmer for 35 or so years, I'm not a fan. We did some manual calculations to do some test runs and had two amateurs send a signal to the moon, which for several reasons, we were not able to detect. Traditional Earth Moon Earth, EME, communications benefit from ground gain, something like 3 to 5 dB of gain based on the path essentially ducting across the earth, but that requires the moon to be near the horizon, so not relevant for our project, since the moon needs to be overhead. Of course, it might mean that I need to travel half-way across the globe, so I can get the gain, but that's another project for another day. We get some effective gain from having a very stable signal. You might recall I purchased a high stability compensated crystal module, a TCXO, for my radio a while back, this project is why I did that. Another thing I purchased at the time is mechanical filters which also provide a little effective gain. We started the process of acquiring some high gain 144 MHz Yagi antennas, but through some miscommunication with the amateur who was selling them at a really nice price, we missed out and haven't yet bit the bullet on another set. Initially when Randall and I started this, we were working on it on our own, we tried to learn as much as we could and test the waters ourselves. We've been at it now for a while and it's become apparent that this is going to be something that is likely to involve several other amateurs. Some have already been helping, Allen, Allan, Keith, Alek, Leigh and Marcin all contributed time and material. No doubt this list will grow as the project continues. At the moment I'm still trying to write code to create a calenda

Foundations of Amateur Radio Often we forget the things we've done or achieved and every now and then it seems like a solid use of time to reflect a little on what went before and what that did. Recently I asked various amateurs what they were proud of having done or achieved in the past year, their little personal victory, their thrill to keep coming back to the hobby. For me it was the research and production behind "Is man-made noise really vertical?". It took several weeks to research and produce and received only a handful of responses on social media or via email, even though it was downloaded and read about 10,000 times or so. For me it gives me a thrill to have spent time digging into the Who, What, Why, When, Where and How of a topic that seems steeped in myth and often remains unexplained or unexplored. One amateur shared that they'd made their first HF contact from Perth to Romania, one had gotten their license this year after procrastinating for 30 years, another came back to the hobby after being away for a decade. There was an amateur who managed to set-up a rotatable Yagi on 6m. There were a couple of amateurs who have each been building a repeater network, another who built a 6m Yagi antenna and pre-amplifier, another who erected their tower after 5 years, another who managed to get an article published in the national amateur radio magazine, another who set-up their G5RV and connected it to an Air Spy to make WSPR spots after only a year and a half in the hobby. One amateur got their license upgrade and is looking forward to learning CW next year, another got their station fully set-up and returned to being an active radio amateur. There was an amateur who managed to get through a 20m SSB pile-up. A friend told me that their achievement of the year was to listen, both to others and themselves. There was an amateur who used 10 Watts to make a contact between Massachusetts and New Zealand, one who worked the SO-50 satellite with a Baofeng radio and a rubber duck antenna. One amateur managed to work AO-92 with the same type of gear, made two contacts and even has a recording from one of them. One amateur celebrated the arrival of their Bengali key, considering it Christmas before Christmas. One amateur who made their first contact between Texas and the Netherlands used a 20m self-built Moxon beam constructed from wire and fishing poles. There was an amateur who got their license and is impatient to get on air, it's been a week of waiting. One person upgraded to the top license class and actually started operating. One aspiring amateur was inspired by how easy it was to get licensed and is planning for their entrance as a licensed ham in the new year, mind you, that did't stop him from listening and decoding a NOAA satellite image using an RTL dongle. One amateur decided that he just couldn't wait for his license, studied three days and passed his test. He's now building his first radio, looking forward to making a contact. There's an amateur who joined the ranks and is now looking forward to going for an upgrade to his license next year. One ham has been licensed for 10 months and is already having a blast, erected his first real tower and now has a VHF antenna at 60ft, that's 20m up in the air. There's one amateur who has been learning about what a cheap RTL-SDR dongle can do with SDR# and he's saving up for an Icom 7300. He's finding it tough to balance between spending his money on high-end audio and saving for his Icom. Take it from me, the radio wins, every time! I've only scratched the surface of the activities undertaken in the past 12 months, but it's clear that being an amateur is a positive experience for many people, getting on air and making noise, learning, having fun, trying things and exploring this wonderful hobby is ingrained in much of the community. Before wrapping up, I'd also like to credit Will VK6UU for independently asking the same question and for the countless amateurs who responded, many of whom I wasn't able to squeeze in this time around. Perhaps I should do this more often. What's your proudest moment in the past 12 months? Let me know. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Recently I managed to get some quality on-air time when I participated in a contest. This isn't about contesting. Although I suppose tangentially it is. It was a most enjoyable experience shared with some friends and because we did it at a local radio club, Sunday morning had all manner of visitors joining us for a little social chat, just the ticket for breaking the monotony of calling CQ. Normally when I do a contest I wear headphones, actually it's a headset, that is something over my ears with an attached microphone to capture my contacts without me having to use my hands or move my head towards a fixed location while I'm making the contact. One hour in my trusty headset broke clean in half. They've been with me since 2012 so I was a little disappointed. They weren't cheap. I'm not going to tell you what brand it is, but they're very popular in the contesting community and I bought them based on those recommendations. Given that I now had no headset I immediately went to the nearest social media outlet to ask for recommendations on what to do next and the typical responses included different brands, ways of repairing, better models, those kinds of things. Everything you'd expect from a community which has some experience in creating a headset that actually works within the context of amateur radio. Don't get me wrong some of these suggestions were great but I don't particularly fancy spending $500 on a headset that is suited to listen to glorious HF SSB. If you're not familiar, think long distance AM radio playing music you can barely hear hosted by a DJ you can almost make out. Making a contact using HF SSB is really an exercise in deciphering really bad audio, often with lots of people on the same frequency at the same time, all vying for your attention. Making a contact, a QSO, in that kind of pile-up can be a challenge. The contest ran for 48 hours so in my down time I had to come up with a solution since making a repair within the time available seemed unrealistic, even though I happened to have spare parts somewhere in my shack. As an emergency standby I brought along my mobile phone in-ear headphones. They're lightweight, cheap, and they block out the audio from nearby conversations in the shack. Everything you want in a contesting headphone. I used a microphone on a boom, attached to the desk, but that wasn't ideal, moving your head, looking at the logging screen, operating the radio, from a user interface perspective, it left me wanting. I should add that I prefer to operate a contest using Voice Operated Control, or VOX, that is, setting up your radio in such a way that you don't need to push any buttons to talk, you open your mouth and the radio automatically starts transmitting. Very helpful when you have your hands on the keyboard and the foot-pedal is just out of reach or making your leg tired because you have to hold it up so you don't accidentally key up the transmitter. It occurred to me that I'd never seen this particular use of a headphone in the context of amateur radio. After the contest I went out to find a similarly spartan microphone. I'm still weighing up the options but I think I might have settled on the idea of pursuing headphones and microphones intended for use on a mobile phone, precisely because they are designed to deal with blocking out surrounding audio from both the earpiece and the microphone. As I'm describing this to you it occurs to me that it doesn't even need to be wired, a simple Bluetooth audio module plugged into the radio with wireless mobile phone headsets might just be the ticket. What has been your recipe for success in creating an environment where you can hear a HF SSB QSO in a contest environment without spending half the value of the radio? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The question that new amateurs most often ask after "What radio should I buy?" is "How do I get the best antenna?". In a household where you're the only antenna affected aficionado the question is likely more along the lines of: "Why do you need another antenna?". The answer is pretty much the same, an antenna is fit for purpose, generally only one purpose. Going from A to B without walking might involve a car. If it's just you, one seat is enough, if your local cricket team is coming too, you might need more seats. If the road is rough, you might need a good suspension and if it's the middle of summer in Australia, air-conditioning isn't a luxury but a necessity. Each of those different requirements varies depending on circumstance and need. There are plenty more variables, fuel, distance, cost, and the deeper you dig, the more choices. Antennas are no different. While cars have an element of fashion, colour, styling etc. antennas are more utilitarian, radio amateurs rarely care about the colour of their contraption, but they do care about cost, construction and performance. Those three variables alone would make for plenty of choice, but we've not yet talked about some other variables that come into play. If you're a licensed amateur, picking the frequency you want to use is obvious and a major factor in the choice of antenna, but if you're not an amateur, that's not something obvious, but you have seen it before. Without going into the physics of how and why, imagine all the antennas you've seen in your life. There's a TV antenna on the roof, the antenna on a transistor radio, an antenna on a car, the antenna on your Wi-Fi modem, a mobile phone antenna, satellite dishes, you might have seen antennas near train lines, on top of traffic lights, on a GPS and on a satellite phone. You might not be familiar with all of them, but enough to know that there is a huge range of different types of antennas. The more you look, the more variation you find. You might think that each of those different antennas was chosen at the whim of the person spending the money, but actually, each of those antennas was chosen for a specific job. Each of those antennas works on at least one frequency, sometimes more and does so taking into account its purpose. Is the antenna for sending, or receiving, or both? Is it supposed to work regardless of where it's installed, or how high off the ground it is? Does it need to take into account interference from a particular direction? Is it meant for strong or weak signals, does it need to have a defined lifespan, deal with a particular wind strength, etc. etc. Answering each of those questions determines the choices made to select an antenna from the infinite variety available. As an amateur, my licence allows me to operate in six different frequency ranges or bands. Technically that means at least six different antennas, just so I can use the frequencies I'm licensed for. Of course I'm only scratching the surface here, since I've already explained that antennas come in many different shapes and sizes, each with different characteristics and trade-offs. So next time you wonder why so many different antennas, that's why. If you've been wondering when I'll answer the bit about the best antenna, you should already have a clue by now, but the real answer is unsurprisingly: "That depends." "On what?" you ask. On which ever variables you care about and to which degree. The best antenna depends on the questions you ask. Ask better questions, get a better antenna. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day one of my non amateur friends asked for some help. He wants to set up a receiver for his bush fire brigade that's available via the internet so his community can listen to the communication channels when there are fires around, or when a volunteer is out of radio range but still wants to hear what's going on. His question was about hooking up an antenna. We started to discuss what he already had and it turns out that he has enough coaxial cable in either 50 Ohm RG58 or alternatively 75 Ohm low loss quad shielded satellite TV coax. He's not an amateur, won't be broadcasting and just needs it to work without spending too much money. We then started talking about antennas and he had a tuned whip and a generic scanner antenna. Turns out that the tuned whip was for 78 MHz and he needs to listen to 164 MHz, so I suggested the scanner antenna, so called broadband, but no actual specifications. Then we talked about how it was going to be mounted to his metal roof. Tek screws to the iron, a CB mount with solder pads. That started a conversation about waterproofing and coax rot, termination and then the ground plane. I could get my antenna analyser out, drive to his place an hour or so away, help him install and test it and then decide that we need other options. We might still decide to do that, but it will be driven by what happens at his installation. If you're a licensed amateur with a little experience, this story will leave you with a whole lot of but, but, but. If you're not, then you'd come away with, that's pretty reasonable, let's go. What I find fascinating is the gap between those two. On the one hand you've got knowledge that says this isn't ideal, who in their right mind would hook up a random antenna without the proper ground plane with an unknown feed point impedance to a 75 Ohm coax, using solder pads on the top of a roof. There's more of course, but those are the big ticket items. On the other hand you have an antenna, coax, connectors that fit and a high likelihood of noise coming from your radio. I'm not going to pretend that the choices we made over the phone are the final ones, or that it will even work as described, but we discussed that and the selection of parts gives us the highest chance of success, and rather than give the right answer we went with the closest we could get without spending a cent. The gap between knowing and not knowing can be perilous, but it can also be used as a map to navigate from one to the other. Is this going to work? Who knows, too many variables to be certain, too many unknowns. Sometimes ignorance is bliss and sometimes knowledge is a burden. Finding the balance is a lifetime of learning. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio In our hobby there is a term "Elmer", referring to someone who helps new amateurs find their way inside the community, locate resources, understand techniques, etc. It's part of what we might consider the folklore of amateur radio. I started this with the intent to quickly introduce the concept of an Elmer and then spend some time talking about our own role in this adventure, but as is often the case, I was side-tracked by my own investigation. There is a push within the community to abandon the concept of an Elmer, that it's not real that it serves no purpose and that it's a recent invention and irrelevant to our community. Finding an Elmer today appears to be hard work, seeing the wood for the trees, finding a unicorn in this social media connected world. But as it turns out, Elmers are closer than you think. With a little searching, the person who is credited with introducing the word Elmer into the amateur radio vocabulary was Rod W9BRD. He was the author of a column "How's DX?" in QST magazine from 1947 through to 1978. In March of 1971 he wrote: "[t]oo frequently one hears a sad story in this little nutshell: 'Oh, I almost got a ticket, too, but Elmer, W9XYZ, moved away and I kind of lost interest.' Sure, the guy could have burned through on his own, maybe, but he, like others, wound up an almost-ham. No more Elmer. We need those Elmers. All the Elmers, including the ham who took the most time and trouble to give you a push toward your license, are the birds who keep this great game young and fresh." Rod was first licensed in 1937 as a 14 year old. He became a silent key in 2012. On the face of it we have this idea that an Elmer is someone who helps you get your amateur license, but it started me thinking. What if Elmer wasn't a phrase, but a reference. The name Elmer is a male name from Old English, meaning "noble" and "famous". What if W9XYZ wasn't an actual callsign, but an example, given Rod was licensed as W9BRD, it would be simple to think of XYZ as a random suffix, much like I might use VK6XYZ, which happens to be a non-existent call at the moment. What if Rod was saying: Oh, I almost got a ticket too, but Peter VK6LB, or Paul VK5PAS or Mary VK4PZ, moved away and I kind of lost interest. Instead of using real amateurs like I just did, Rod wanted to use a generic name, someone "nobel" and "famous", with a generic callsign to not single out a particular person. The reference to "Elmer" takes on a whole different meaning. It means anyone, you, me, the amateur at your club, anyone who can help another person become an amateur. As it turns out, "Elmer" is all of us, it's a way to refer to anyone and everyone, it's not a specific role or purpose, it's the invitation to you to help another amateur. This of course means that you need to step-up. You don't need to put on your Elmer cape and become a superhero, you just need to be part of the community, to ask questions, to help with discovering answers and to encourage investigation into this exciting pursuit of amateur radio. So, are you an Elmer and if not, what are you going to do about it? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I read a message from Theodore KS5I who has been around the block a couple of times. He recalls the excitement he experienced when he was first licensed in 1967, the year I was born. He described that at the time transistors were just coming into their own and it was so wonderful to be learning about them. The closing sentence sealed it for me: Theodore wrote: Perhaps, its time for some of us more mature operators to release the past so our hands are free to grab hold of the future and share the enthusiasm of those who look ahead with the same hope and excitement that we had so many years ago.. It's that level of enthusiasm that our hobby needs to foster and develop. The landscape we live in is changing all the time, but new adventures are always just around the corner. They might not look like what was available 50 years ago, or last year, or even yesterday, but they too have their place in the pursuit of amateur radio. Learning is a lifelong activity. If you stop learning, you - as Theodore eloquently puts it - just die. Learning can be scary. Educator Eduardo Briceño talks about the learning zone and the performance zone. The learning zone is when the goal is to improve, concentrating on what we've not yet mastered and the expectation is that mistakes will happen. The performance zone on the other hand is when we do something as best as we can. We concentrate on what we already know and try to minimise mistakes. Amateur radio can operate in either of those zones, doing a contest and going hard can be a performance zone activity, do what we do, do it fast and avoid mistakes. We could also see our activities as a learning zone. We try new things, some will work and some will fail. If we're doing a contest as a learning activity, what skill do you want to master? Is it handing off the QSO, taking the log, recognising a callsign, knowing the CQ zones, matching prefixes to countries and antenna directions, picking the right band, managing battery life or recognising the band conditions? Pick one of those skills and try different things, expect mistakes and learn from them. Over time the thing you practised will be a new skill you've mastered, ready for use when you're going hell for leather in the CQ WW making contacts left right and centre to the envy of your peers. Of course, this doesn't just apply to contesting. For me it's currently about electronics, about figuring out how stuff works and how to apply that to my shack. For you it might be something else in the myriad of options that the 1000 hobbies that amateur radio represents. Life is about growing. Amateur radio is a journey, not a destination. Closing off your options because valves are no longer in vogue and Allstar isn't real radio is just a recipe for stagnation. If you have a dozen minutes to spare, check out Eduardo Briceño's TED talk: How to get better at the things you care about One final point. If you're new to this adventure, your license still wet, then you don't know what you don't know, so you'll spend lots of time in the learning zone. Don't be afraid, it's a great place to be and a wonderful way to explore the hobby in all its variety. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Imagine a world where electronics are pervasive, a transceiver can be purchased for the price of two Big Macs, kits are designed and built using simple tools at home, software makes it possible to invent new methods of communication on an almost daily basis, where long distance contacts are made throughout the day using milliwatts while ionospheric propagation is at an all-time low, where national parks and peaks are being activated at an increasing rate, where new people join in every day, where it's easier and easier to obtain a license and where the word geek is held as a badge of honour. That world is here, it's now and when Rex, KE6MT writes that we're in the midst of a golden age of amateur radio, he hits the nail on the head, or should that be fist on the key? It's easy to notice that amateur radio is difficult, that it's big, that it's messy, that it's full of know-it-alls, but it's hard to remember that it's fun, that it's rewarding and that every day more and more people join in and enjoy this hobby. The ideals of investigation and exploration are alive and well and the urge to participate in activities, just to get out of the house and see some daylight is strong. While you're in the midst of a revolution, it's hard to see the wood for the trees, but make no mistake, the revolution is here, today, now, and you're smack bang in the middle of it. Today you can go online and find any number of different amateurs who share their skills and knowledge, you can find manufacturers and suppliers at the tap of a screen, find and draw schematics, order custom circuit boards at the click of a check-out button, print an enclosure in your bedroom using plans that you downloaded or designed minutes before. With the digitisation of amateur radio comes the promise of new adventures, with adaptive modes, with encoding and decoding in new and interesting ways, with the ability to hear what your station is producing by logging into a remote receiver anywhere on the planet, by sending messages to satellites overhead and talking to people in another country using a hand-held VHF radio. For some the loss of the valve radio is the loss of history, for others it's a sign of progress and improvement. The inventors of spark-gap transmitters were no doubt put out by the arrival of the valve when that became commonplace. Similarly, the transistor has essentially gone the way of the Dodo in the arrival of cheaply programmable integrated circuits. Our hobby keeps getting bigger, all the time. We didn't abandon valves or transistors, or the spark-gap for that matter, we improved on them. You can still build a spark-gap transmitter if you feel the urge, or ferret out a valve or two and build them into something wonderful, nobody is stopping you. Today we learn Morse Code because we want to, not because we have to. We introduce new people with new technology, new ideas, new innovations and hope that they pick up the cape to become the next superhero. You can bemoan the death of the hobby with the solar cycle at an all time low, the entry of stupid amateurs who need to learn from their betters, the passing of the valve and the abolition of Morse Code requirements, or you can celebrate the appearance of all the new and shiny toys that arrive in our hobby every day. The Golden Age of Amateur Radio is Now. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio There are people who ask questions and there are people who answer them. Sometimes the people who answer even know what they're talking about, but sometimes they just repeat what they've been told without any form of critical thought. The reason I raise this is because when you're a new amateur with a shiny new license, you're like a little puppydog, going from tree to tree to have a sniff. Does this smell good, what about this, ooh, that's a nice smell, I wonder what it tastes like. Puppydog analogies aside, as a new amateur you're filled with questions and uncertainty. You don't know what you don't know, you don't know how much you don't know, your license is still wet, so even if you know something, it might not be true. Interestingly the more I look at this, the more I find that new amateurs, filled with questions are more likely to dig around in the fundamental understanding of things and learn something along the way. I've been around this community for a little while now. I obtained my license in 2010. I've learnt a lot of different things about this hobby, how it works, what the mechanisms, phenomenon, etiquette, physics and so-on make amateur radio work. Most of the time I'm learning about some or other new thing. Right now I'm learning about what a Vector Network Analyser is and how it works, so I can explain it to someone else. Foundations of Amateur Radio is about how stuff works, much like Joe Kaufman's book - What makes it go? Though I read it in Dutch when I was growing up - Hoe zit dat in elkaar? There's another series of books by David Macaulay that are my inspiration, The Way Things Work, Unbuilding, Underground and Motel of The Mysteries to name a few. It seems that my drive to ask questions is fundamental to my existence, my uncertainty doesn't scare me off, in fact the opposite is true, it gets me asking more questions, learning more things, gaining a deeper understanding and finding out more than I ever dreamt was possible. If you're a new amateur, I'd recommend that you attempt to keep your curiosity alive. When you're faced with a fact, question it, attempt to discover what is underlying the response. There are amateurs who think that to ask the question, Why is the length of a dipole calculated using some random constant? - is the equivalent of heresy, lack of skill, incompetence and the source of much derision, when it's clear that even a cursory search reveals that not only is the notion incomplete, it's wrong for most, if not all, examples. My perspective is a little different and I'll admit that for some it might be confronting. Why is it so?, What makes it go?, How come? and Why? are all questions to live by. You might conclude that a world where there are no certain answers is a scary place, but for my money the opposite is true. Just because you think it's simple and answerable, doesn't make it so. If you walk in with your eyes open asking questions, then you'll be much more prepared for an unexpected response. If you've just obtained your license and you're not sure about something, ask. You might not like or understand the answers, but that is just a recipe for more questions. Don't be deterred by those who provide certainty, the more certain they are of their answer, the more you should ask. Amateur Radio is about experimentation, it's a license to play, a license to explore, it's a license to investigate. For me Amateur Radio is encapsulated in a quote attributed to Albert Einstein: The more I learn, the more I realise how much I don't know. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Get on air and make some noise is a phrase I use often to encourage amateurs to be active on-air and use the bands that are available to us. One thing that's often glossed over is how to actually make that noise. It can be scary to make that first contact. If you've got your radio installed, your antenna erected, your operating position set-up just right and you're ready to actually key your microphone, how do you do that and how do you get the attention of those around you? First things first. You need to establish if your radio is actually working as expected. If you're using a UHF or VHF radio, often the simplest way is to find a local repeater, key-up your radio and give your callsign. The result should be at least a carrier, a beep or a callsign in Morse-code. Some repeaters even have a voice ident, so you can hear that your action of keying the push-to-talk had an effect. If that isn't working, then there are lots of things you can troubleshoot, but that's for another day. If you want to do the same on HF, unless you happen to be in a position that there is a repeater within propagation distance, generally only on the 6m and 10m bands, then you're essentially out of luck. There isn't a beep, or a carrier, or a voice-ident to be found. This means we have to solve the problem in a different way. First of all, if you cannot hear any stations, the chances of someone hearing you are slim. So, the first thing to do is to check that the squelch on your radio is set to allow all signals to arrive at your speaker. Then find a band where it's noisy. When I say noisy, find one where there is lots of hiss. Generally speaking an open band, one where propagation is getting a signal to you, makes noise, lots of noise. There are exceptions to this, but for now, find the noise. Depending on how you have your antenna set-up, you need to make sure that you're using the right antenna for the band you're using. Some antennas work on multiple bands, others only on one, it depends entirely on what you have got hanging off the end of your radio. Once you've found the noisiest band, go hunting for beeps, as-in Morse-code beeps, or voices, or digital sounds. Find a signal, find evidence of activity. If you have multiple noisy bands, check them all. You might recall that this is all dependent on the ionosphere, so depending on what's going on with the sun, things will change, sometimes within a minute, an hour, or weeks. Generally there is a difference between day and night and sunrise and sunset, so experiment. Once you've found some activity, you need to find someone to talk to. If the voice you hear is weak, look for a strong one. The stronger the better. While this isn't universally true, it's a good starting experience. Every radio and antenna combination has a sweet spot on where you know that they can hear you, but you don't know yet what that sweet spot is, so trial and error is the way to go. HF is not like the local repeater. The people on HF can be anywhere on the planet. They might be there for the first time, or for the third time that day having been on air for sixty years, it's hard to tell. A good analogy is to think of a sport stadium with a hundred thousand people in it. There are people all around you and you're trying to make contact with one of them. You can pick their frequency, but they're likely to be talking to someone else. You might be interrupting a daily chat, a regular net, or happen upon a contest or a special event station. You don't know which one it is and sometimes you can't hear both sides of the conversation. So, before you key your microphone and make some noise, listen to what is going on. Once you've figured out that the station you're hearing might be amenable to talking, wait for a break in the conversation, key your microphone and just say your callsign phonetically, once. If there's no break, that's a good indication that the other station doesn't want to talk to you, unless there is an endless stream of stations, in which case the going might be tough and you might be there for a while. If the other station acknowledges your call, great, you just made contact. Confirm that you have their callsign and that they have yours, write it down with the time and frequency, then start with exchanging information, start with a signal report. In the beginning, less is more. Your first name and city is often more than enough. All we're doing is establishing that we can talk to someone and that they can talk to us. Don't overdo it, get a feeling for what's going on. Then do it again. And again. Before long you'll have some experience on how to get on air and make some noise and you can start learning about improving your skills, becoming familiar with your radio and being an active amateur. Hopefully that wasn't so scary, and remember, every amateur had to make their first contact one day, even those who have been on-air for longer than you've been alive. I'm Onno VK6F

Foundations of Amateur Radio Mistakes are common in all aspects of life. Sometimes they are only known to you, other times they are public knowledge and open to ridicule and lambasting. Getting on air for the first time is an accomplishment and often the initial source of mistakes, mishaps and great frustration. Once you've made it on air, the reception to this feat is often underwhelming, people around you don't appear to appreciate the amount of effort you went to in order to key your microphone and for others to be able to hear that. If you've been in this community for a while it's easy to forget what is involved to make that first contact and to dismiss those around you who've managed to obtain their license, acquire their equipment, install and configure it just so and to actually achieve the first visible milestone in their amateur radio journey, though technically it's audible. If you've never done this, or if you have but have delegated it to the historical backwaters of your mind, here's an outline of some steps and mistakes along the path of making your first contact. The first question you're likely to ask is, which radio followed quickly by, from where? Then, if you're like me and many other starting amateurs, you'll have set up your radio for operation on the local 2m or 70cm repeater, you're likely to have some kind of vertical antenna with the microphone gain and squelch set just so and have your radio set for FM. I'm skipping over power, the electrical type, but that in itself can be a feat of endurance. After hunting around for a list of relevant frequencies, you might also have set up something like CTCSS to ensure that your signal actually gets acknowledged by the repeater. If that's not enough, you'll also have made your radio use an offset which makes it receive using one frequency and transmit using another. There's possibly more things you've had to do to make this work and not be subjected to the ire of the local repeater troll who appears to delight in telling you off when they feel you've done something wrong, like leave the roger beep activated or some other infraction. If you did manage to achieve all these things and actually made your first contact on the repeater, congratulations and welcome to the hobby! Take a breath, you did well. After a while you're likely to become more familiar with your radio and start exploring the local bands. You might program another repeater into your radio and even experiment with local simplex frequencies. Each of these activities brings a new experience and new mistakes. For example, not all repeaters use the same offset, or even an offset in the same direction. Not all repeaters have the same CTCSS requirements. If you're using a simplex frequency, remember to turn off the squelch - don't ask me how I know - so you have a chance to actually hear the other stations, even if you are using FM as the mode. The process of getting on air as a first time user can be daunting, with many different points of failure along the way. Ignore the trolls, try your best and ask for help if you get stuck and celebrate your accomplishment when you manage to make a contact. My point is that achieving all this isn't trivial and it would be helpful if that's remembered from time to time. It's easy to dismiss an achievement made by another, but much more rewarding to celebrate it. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I did an experiment. I searched for "dipole calculator" and using the first 20 results I calculated the length of a dipole suitable for 7.130 MHz. I chose the frequency for no other reason that there is a 7130 DX net every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and for the longest time I've been unable to participate due to the lack of a HF antenna in my new shack. So here's some things I learnt from doing this experiment. Depending on which calculator I use, the length of my dipole can vary by over a meter from longest to shortest result. Depending on my desire to use metric or imperial measurements, my dipole will be a different length, because of course electrons move at a different speed if you're not using the metric system. In case you're wondering, 1 inch is defined as being exactly 2.54 cm, so there's plenty of opportunity to vary that. Speaking of standards, we all agree that the speed of light is a constant, right? Turns out that for some calculators, you can change the speed of light. I'll skip over the notion that none of the calculators actually show what they're using as the speed of light and move on to other interesting discoveries. Apparently you can determine the length of a dipole down to the sub-atomic length, with one calculator going down to the size of an electron to indicate how much wire you should cut from a spool. There are forms that make doing the calculation really easy, single box to type in the frequency, so the answer must be right. There are some that use random standard numbers, even a text book example that uses some number, but no indication where it comes from. For example, the number 486 features regularly, but so does 150 and 5905. There are forms that provide you with several boxes, but no indication which box needs what value, so your answer may or may not indicate the number of eggs per chicken per parsec. One dipole calculator result is actually for a vertical, so your search engine helping you might not actually give you the calculator you expect. There are percentage correction factors. 5% seems to be a favourite number, but no indication as to what the origin of that number is. There's a calculator that allows you to specify the feed point impedance, not sure how that works, but it's a nice feature to have when you're calculating the length of your dipole. Not. One regular instruction is to cut long, that is, measure your wire and cut it longer than the calculator states. How much longer is left as an exercise to the reader. Should it be 1 mm longer, 1 cm longer, or should it be 1 m longer and how much should that change if the frequency changes? Let's move on. The word ground features heavily in these calculators. The phrase "average ground" does too. No indication as to what makes an average ground, or how to go about determining what changes if your ground isn't average. We all agree that the dipole should be half a wave-length above the ground, right? How much is that? The same wave length as the length of the dipole we've just calculated, or a different one? How does the length of the dipole vary if the height varies? While we're looking at variation, how much variation is there depending on how thick the wire you're using is and what about insulation? None of those things are even mentioned in any of these calculators. Dipole calculators, wonderful invention, shame about the implementation. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio One topic that is longer than all other topics combined is that of antennas. Designing, planning, sourcing, building, tuning, using, you name it, all of this is regular fare in the day of a radio amateur. I've discussed the topic here regularly and no doubt I'll revisit that when the mood or necessity takes me. One topic that is rarely discussed is that of failure. About six months ago I moved house. I've been rebuilding my shack, doing all manner of fancy shuffling of gear and yesterday I finally got to the point of getting some HF activity happening. During that process I went through boxes and boxes of stuff, with coax, connectors, wire, nuts, bolts, heat shrink and all the other necessities of being a member of an experimental hobby like ours. One box contained wire. You know the adage, only two types of wire required in our hobby, cheap wire or free wire with a preference for free. This box was stuffed with wire. Bits with connectors, bits wound around spools, bits in zip-loc bags with labels, bits of random length - lots of bits of random length. There was even an abortive attempt at labelling dipoles for various bands on the outside of a couple of zip-loc bags, but no idea if the bit of wire in the bag was actually ever tested and resonant on whatever band was on the label, so who knows, they might have just been cut long waiting for another day and another set of experiments and measurements. I needed around 50 meters of hook-up wire for my HF antenna experiment and it occurred to me when I was hunting through my box that I couldn't look at a spool and tell you how much wire there was. I did a dodgy measurement of one bit, put it on the kitchen scales and determined that another spool was heavier, so it was likely longer, but without bringing in my calculator, doing extra measurements and doing some head scratching there was no way that I was going to get to the point of knowing how much actual wire was on that spool. In the end I made do with the dodgy piece, soldered some joins, that's a whole other adventure, involving a gas-powered soldering iron and a flame, the flame won, as well as several other breaks and fixes. While I was in the process of putting up my new antenna experiment it occurred to me that part of the process of experimentation, even of shack maintenance should be the documentation stage. I have bits of terminated coax, some of it 20 meters long, some longer, some shorter. How much longer, and how much shorter you ask? No idea. But wouldn't it be great if I could put my hands on a piece of kit that I needed that was the length that I expected and not 10 meters over length, or 1 meter short. In my audio kit, I have started labelling patch leads with their functions, using key-ring tags. I don't expect that to work for plain wire, but it should be a good solution for coax. I could use cable tie labels, but past experience with those leaves the text fading on the label. I've experimented with a printed label with clear heat shrink, but for reasons best known to chemists, the clear heat shrink becomes yellow in short order leaving the label unreadable. I've heard of people using electrical tape with colour coding, perhaps one ring for every 5 meters of length, but they seem to come undone in the dust when you go camping. One thing I do know is that this is a recurring problem for me. This is the first time I've actually stopped to talk about it and perhaps it means that I'll get a little closer to a solution. I'd love to hear what you do to deal with this and how you keep track of the countless different lengths of wire, coax and rope that's lying around your shack. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the often repeated attributes of noise and antennas is that man-made noise is vertically polarised and that is why a vertical antenna sounds noisier than a horizontal dipole. It's an interesting thing to say, but it it true? Let's start with what constitutes man-made noise. Cars driving past, solar panel inverters, pool pumps, high-tension power lines, garage door openers, broadband internet modems, LED lights, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, plasma televisions and so on. The more you think about this, the more noise makers you discover. So, are these noise sources all aligned in the same way, making the same noise? Clearly not. There is no alignment standard for installing a lamp, how to align your lawn mower, which direction to drive, what angle to point your garage door opener, so the statement that man-made noise is vertical is clearly bogus. That doesn't mean that the rest of the statement is also wrong. A vertical antenna in an urban environment often sounds much noisier than a horizontal one, sometimes by several dB. So what's going on? One suggestion is that the difference lies in the antenna itself. What if both noise sources, horizontal and vertically polarised were the same, but the antenna heard them differently, how would that look? For starters, a horizontal dipole has a higher sensitivity at a higher angle than a vertical antenna does. So anything arriving at a low angle is picked up by the vertical, but not by the horizontal dipole. The noise that we're talking about is local, we'll get to why in just a moment. Being local, it gets to the antenna via ground wave propagation rather than via the ionosphere. I claimed that the man-made noise we're discussing is local. It's not all local, but if it's remote, it's coming via the ionosphere and we know that it arrives at whatever angle it pleases, so there is little or no difference between a vertical and a horizontal dipole from a noise perspective for signals arriving via the ionosphere. There is another effect. Attenuation or signal loss. In this case loss of strength. Specifically noise strength. More attenuation is the same as more signal loss. Combining ground wave propagation and attenuation brings us to another difference between a horizontal and a vertically polarised noise source. A horizontally polarised ground wave experiences more attenuation than a vertical one. This means that noise that is local travels further and is louder when it's vertical, compared to when it's horizontal, sometimes the difference is over 20 dB. I've been talking about horizontal and vertically polarised noise, but what if the noise is coming at an angle, like the random noise makers around you? A simple way to think of it is that every angle has a horizontal and a vertical part, in much the same way as a right-angle triangle has three sides, one horizontal, one vertical and one on an angle. Putting this all together, we have a number of different effects, all conspiring to make the vertically polarised part of noise travel further, be louder and received better by a vertical antenna, compared to the horizontally polarised part which doesn't travel as far, is softer and heard less by a horizontal dipole. One more thing. The isolation between vertical and horizontal polarisation can be as much as 40 dB, so a horizontal dipole won't hear vertically polarised signals well if at all and vice versa. That doesn't make the vertical antenna useless, far from it. It's great for transmitting a long distance signal, it's small, simple to set-up and if you're in a quiet area, away from noise makers, around 500m to a kilometre or so, it's just fine as an antenna. It also doesn't need to be erected half a wavelength above the ground, doesn't need any sky-hooks, is omni-directional and in common use for most local mobile communications, so don't write off the vertical, just because it sounds noisier. All antennas are a compromise between various elements. I've said it before and I'll say it again, likely plenty more times beyond that. The perfect antenna does not exist. We can prove that, so what ever you pick, what ever you think is the most important, that's what you'll start with and select various aspects as you go. A vertical antenna is no worse than a horizontal dipole, it's different. Just like a Yagi is different, or a discone, or any one of the infinite supplies of antenna options. Knowing what the parameters are is the first step. Oh, and if your neighbours complain about your lawn, tell them it's because of your noise-floor. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The first time I came across the concept of antenna polarisation was a decade before I became a radio amateur. To connect to the internet while driving around Australia I became the proud owner of a portable satellite dish. Portable in the broadest sense of the word, 150 kilos with a dish that's 2.4m high, 1.8m wide, steel base, electronics, power and patience to erect and point. The dish has a receiver and transmitter component that needs to be aligned, just so, in order to be able to have two-way communications using 5 Watts into geosynchronous orbit. The transmit and the receive are exactly 90 degrees offset from each other. One is called horizontal polarisation, the other vertical. The first thing to observe is that if you're using the wrong polarisation, it doesn't really work well. We'll get into what is right in a moment. Depending on where you you ask, the definition of not working well can be as bad as 40 dB loss. Just let that sink in for a moment. If you want to punch through with more power, you'll need to bring 10 kilowatt with you for the receiving station with the opposite polarisation to hear 1 Watt. If you're using a VHF or UHF FM radio in your car, you're likely to have a vertical antenna. The combination of a repeater on a hill and a radio in a car adds up to much more than the the two alone. The line is blurred today because repeaters are very popular and home-base stations are becoming smaller and smaller by the week, so vertical antennas for VHF and UHF at home are today just as common as they are on cars. It wasn't always that way. In fact, in HF, it's almost never that way and if you're a fan of Tropospheric Ducting or long distance VHF, then you'll also shy away from vertical antennas. Let me explain. If you want to erect a HF antenna and you want it to rotate and you want it to be high enough off the ground, you'll build the simplest mast you can get away with. Imagine a HF Yagi. It's got several elements, long to short along a boom, rotator somewhere in the middle. If you mount this Yagi horizontally, your mast will be around half a wave length in height. If you mount the same Yagi vertically, aside from the height discussion - should it be mounted higher or not - now your mast becomes another interfering element within your Yagi. The steel wires that keep your mast standing will also interfere with the Yagi elements and your elements will be closer to the ground where they can potentially cause harmful radiation. So from a mechanical perspective, putting a Yagi on a mast vertically is not trivial. From a radiation perspective you may theoretically get some gain, but adding an element or two will make up for any potential gain that a vertical arrangement interacting with Earth might assist with. There's another reason. The ionosphere. It sounds like a smooth billiard ball, it's drawn as a uniform layer around the earth, but in reality, clouds and their appearance are much more likely to represent the actual surface shapes that the ionosphere presents to your radio waves. A signal coming in one way is unlikely to come out at the other end in the same way and vice versa. That's HF. On VHF and UHF a horizontal signal and a vertical signal when they're used with line of sight are pretty similar, but once you get beyond that, a horizontal signal will travel further, how exactly is a story for another day. If you're doing point to point VHF or UHF contesting, horizontal is the way to go. What about a single HF vertical? It's excellent for a portable station, it is simple to set up, works in all directions, but it means you'll be able to hear all the local man-made noise as well, so find a quiet spot near the beach if you can. So what's the right way? Almost always horizontal, except on cars or when you're on a DXpedition on a beach sipping pina collada and getting caught in the rain. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The term NVIS, or Near Vertical Incidence Skywave is in my short experience as an amateur heaped with scorn and ridicule. Terms like cloud-warmer come to mind when people discuss the principles associated with NVIS, but that does happen in the context of where I live, that is, one of the most isolated cities on the planet, Perth in Western Australia. NVIS has several advantages over other forms of HF communication, it can be done with low power, there is little or no signal fading, simple antennas work well, it has low path loss, better signal to noise ratios and if you're in a valley, you can still use it. So what exactly is NVIS? In the past I've talked about long distance HF communication. Your radio signal bounces off the ionosphere, bounces back to earth and so-on. Like skipping a stone on a pond, the angle at which your signal hits the ionosphere determines what happens next. In general, shallow is good, steep is bad, much like the plop you hear when you don't hit the pond just right, a radio signal can go through the ionosphere, never to be heard again. NVIS is about hitting the ionosphere at a steep angle, in such a way that it reflects back to earth. Without going into detail, generally you can use 40m during the day and 80m at night with some variation depending on the solar cycle and whom you want to talk to. NVIS gives you communications less than 1000 km away, plenty to talk to everyone in your city and surrounding area. In the case of an emergency that's also likely enough to get out of any emergency affected area, so plenty of excuses to set up and try for yourself. I can start talking about angles, maximum usable frequencies and so-on, but I won't. These all relate to specific circumstances, depend on what antenna you're using, what the ground conductivity below you is and as is typical in our hobby, many other variables. What I can say is that NVIS to NVIS station works best, so if you're going to test this with a friend, it will help if you both set up a similar station while you learn the variation associated with this kind of communications. Now I did mention up to 1000 km, that isn't enough to leave Western Australia, Perth to the border is about 1500 km, but if you live in the Netherlands, you can get to 15 or so countries. Depending on where you are, NVIS will give you different outcomes and what I'm talking about affects each station differently. For me, the attraction of NVIS is solid communications on 40m and 80m, something that has eluded me so far. It also allows for a low simple wire antenna, an inverted vee dipole, two bits of wire strung up on a pole, 6m in the middle 2.5m at the end will get me up and running. Perfect for a field-day, excellent for a local contest and brilliant if you're only using low power as a beginner. Because the antenna is close to the ground, it's pretty much omni-directional. If you set-up an antenna for 40m and then cross that with an 80m antenna and feed them both from the same point, you'll have a configuration that will operate well for 24 hours without needing to move antennas in the dark. I have no illusions that an NVIS antenna will help me make contact between Perth and Japan, but then it's not intended for that. I've spoken in the past about finding the right tool for the job. NVIS is a tool, it has a job and it's very good at doing that. It's not for everyone, all the time, but it's a tool that you as an ambitious amateur should know about. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio A recurring question for people who are not yet, or newly licensed is something along the lines of: I have a friend who is 400 kilometres away, can I talk to them on my hand-held 2m radio? This particular question arrives in different forms, but generally along the lines of attempting to communicate between point A and point B at some or other distance. The responses, on social media at least, less so on-air, are often very technical, or offer the advice to get a license, or to get a clue, or the question is ignored or dismissed. That's not helpful, or fair. The person asking the question has expressed an interest in our hobby and is looking for help. As a basic set of answers, if you're both standing on the ground, you'll generally be able to talk about 5km using your hand-held. Stuff between you like buildings and hills will lower that distance. If you both stand on a hill, you can talk further away. As an aside, you can talk to the International Space Station with a 2m, 144 MHz hand-held because there is nothing between you and it when it's overhead, even though it's 350 km away. If you cannot see between the two, then an intermediate radio, a repeater, can facilitate the connection. It needs to have visibility to both radios at the same time. The higher the middle point, the further the distance. For example an antenna at 350m above the ground has a so-called radio horizon of 77km and I should point out that that's actually 15% further than actual line of sight. As long as both ends are within that radius, you should be pretty much good to go. You can theoretically string together a whole bunch of repeaters, along a road for example, but more often than not, for distances greater than line of sight you need to invoke radio frequencies that your 2m hand-held won't do. These frequencies are generally referred to as HF and is generally anything between 3 and 30 MHz. Radio transmissions on these frequencies mainly use the ionosphere to make contact possible and you can make contacts from as close as next-door, to as far as the opposite side of the world. The ionosphere is subject to weather in much the same way as clouds and rain. The variation in the ionosphere is driven by the sun, not by wind and humidity, and it varies throughout the day as the sun rises and sets. Communication varies depending on where the sun is and several other factors well outside this explanation. As the ionosphere changes, usable frequencies change. Something that worked one moment might not the next because the ionosphere changed. As a licensed radio amateur you have access to many different frequencies and depending on the state of the ionosphere you can change frequency as required to alter your station to suit the conditions. You can think of it as adjusting your sail depending on the wind direction, to get from A to B. One final point. Antennas are many and varied. They are designed for specific purpose and will react differently depending on how they're designed, built, installed and used, so the variation you're stepping into is enormous. This hobby is nothing like dialling a phone number and making a connection, it's all about the experience and the learning. If that tickles your fancy, you're already halfway to becoming an amateur. Welcome. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Morse Code is a way of communicating with people across the globe using dits and dahs and the spaces between them to convey a message. It's no longer required to get an Amateur License, but that doesn't mean that it's not useful, in fact, far from it, Morse is still heavily used in this hobby. I've been attempting to learn Morse code for quite some time. To do this I was told, time and time again, over and over, ad nauseam, that Morse is an Auditory Language. I was told that the way to success was to listen before sending, to be able to decode before ever touching a key and to learn with tapes. I also was told that if I learned it slowly, I'd run into trouble later on when I wanted to hear a beacon, which identifies itself with much faster Morse Code. Morse is an interesting phenomenon. We describe it in words in day-to-day terminology as having dots and dashes, which is how the International Telecommunications Union, the ITU defines it, but I have been assured that I should think of it in terms of dits and dahs, because that more closely mimics the sound of the language, and from my current experience, I have to agree. This is an audio language and it's defined in terms of how long a dit takes to transmit. A dit is one time unit. A dah is three dits. The space between a dit and a dah within one letter is one dit. The space between two letters is three dits and the space between two words is seven dits. I'm not expecting you to learn that right here and now, just pointing out that there is a definition of how this is supposed to work. If you make a dit last longer, everything else lasts longer, so determining how fast you're sending something is not simple to do, unless there's a standard. Of course there's a standard. The way that the speed in Morse is defined, is by counting how many times a standard word can be sent per minute. The Paris standard uses the word PARIS, because it is precisely 50 dits in terms of timing. There's another word, CODEX, which has 60 dits, so the two Words Per Minute are different depending on which standard you use. And to make things even more interesting, some people measure with 5 dits between words where the ITU specifies 7 dits between words. So, speed is variable, depending on who's measuring. The ITU doesn't specify which is right, but it gets better. As I said, this is an audio language, so you need to listen to it to learn it. Over the years it's been hammered into me, don't write Morse, don't use dits and dahs, listen, listen, listen. I did. At 25 Words per Minute, at what ever standard that was calculated, I can now hear Morse, that is, I can detect the gaps between letters and words and I can hear the rhythm of the code. Great, so I'm done, right? Not so fast. While I can hear the individual letters, I still don't actually know what a G sounds like, or what makes the letter X, or an Open Parenthesis, or a Question Mark. Easy, look them up, learn the sound, done. Morse Code is standard, right? Right? Seriously, Morse Code is standard, right? No. Not so much, not even a little bit. If you search the globe for Morse Code Charts so you can look up a Question Mark you'll end up with hundreds of different charts. Everyone agrees the letter A or Alpha is dit-dah, but they cannot even agree that N, November, is dah-dit. Some show the difference between an open and a close parenthesis, others use the same character. There's charts that put dits-and-dahs inside the letters of the alphabet, but don't specify in which order the parts are heard. The Wireless Institute of Australia doesn't even appear to bother specifying, the FISTS Down Under Morse Preservation Society doesn't show a copy, the ARRL has an abomination on their website that you cannot even link to, the ACMA defines the end of transmission as a cross and then there are the special ones, survival charts and power point slides and using words to describe a symbol, so you can know that a fraction bar is a dah-dit-dit-dah-dit, but you don't actually know what it looks like. You'll be pleased to learn that the ITU actually publishes a document, ITU-R M.1677-1, last updated in October of 2009, that specifies the International Morse Code. It goes into great detail on what characters are defined, how to start and stop transmissions, how to transmit things like percentages, what to do if you need to send a multiplication symbol, inverted commas, minutes and second signs, fractions and as a bonus it has the phrase that this document and I quote: "should be used to define the Morse code characters and their applications in the radiocommunication services". Nothing quite like a standard that should be adopted, rather than must be adopted. The ITU also tells us that "the code needs to be updated from time-to-time to meet the needs of the radiocommunication services". The French word "arobase", which in English is pronounced "at" and looks like the letter a with a circle, used today in an email addre

Foundations of Amateur Radio In the past I've talked about a weekly net I run, called F-troop. It's intended to be a place where new and returning amateurs find their feet, have a chat, test their gear, meet new friends, ask questions and sometimes get answers. If you want to come and join in, you're welcome to and I'd love to meet you. This net came about because I was new to the hobby and didn't find anyone running any on-air activity for people like me. I asked around and with some encouragement I decided to start an activity. Just like that. My point is that you can do the same. You can keep looking for that elusive group of people who share your interest, or you can get on-air and start a conversation. There's no forms to complete, there's no rules about how it has to happen, no expectations about how you run your net, just have at it. F-troop today looks nothing like it did on day one. On the first day I was on a simplex frequency and nobody could hear me. The next week I moved to a different day and to a local repeater at a different time. After doing that for a little while, we changed day and repeater again, because we kept running into other activities. I'm mentioning this because what you start today may look nothing like what it turns into tomorrow. Your idea might fail, or it might succeed beyond your wildest dreams. You may find new friends or find a different activity that sparks your interest. You could inspire another amateur to join the community, or encourage someone to get on air and make some noise. All around me there are nets, not in name, but in action. There's a group of people who get together during the week at 6am or so for about half an hour to chat on the way to work. There's a group who are learning Morse, another testing FreeDV, another chatting during the morning breakfast, another in the afternoon. There's a net for the emergency communications team, one for the local repeater group and there's a locally hosted net that attracts interest from all corners of the globe. I'm sure that there are others. I know from personal experience that you'll get callers who might not have much to say, but your presence gives them a reason to turn their radio on and participate, to get out of their house and talk to the world. They might not say much, but your being there might be a comfort. While F-troop is semi-organised, with a website, an advertised time and location, a dedicated host and regular callers, your net doesn't need to be any of those things. It can start as a regular chat that can grow, or it can fade away if there is no interest. Your hobby, your rules. One thing I can tell you is that hosting a net is very rewarding. I've seen amateurs start with very little to say, very unsure of themselves, grow into their license, expand their horizons, become skilled and find a new community to make their own. You don't need permission to start a net, you just need to decide to. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Don't get me started, Let's start this thing, Where do I start, Start me up, I could go on, but I have better things to do today, like starting a podcast. Amateur Radio is a hobby with an enourmous range of activities, interests, skills and experiences. If you're new to this hobby, you might find yourself standing at the edge of a precipous wondering what to do next. Where do I start, who do I ask, what's the first step, what if I fail and a myriad of other doubts and concerns. Would you be surprised to learn that this same dialog happens to every Amateur, all the time? Let's say that I'm an experienced member of the community and there is this new mode called FT8 that keeps polluting my PSK31 transmissions. I decide that it's time to see what it's all about. Or, imagine that you've been invited to come on a hiking trek for the first time with some fellow amateurs to activate a summit. Or, you hear about a new entity that has just been announced. Or, you decide that you need a new radio, a new antenna, a new head-set or a new logging package. Or, like me, you want to try again to learn Morse Code. For every activity you ever engage in, there's that moment of doubt, of concern, of challenge. In fact I suspect that it's exactly that thrill that makes people go ahead and pursue their hobby. That means that as a new amateur you're no different from an old amateur. You have the same level of concern and worry that others also have and you too can overcome those by just deciding to. So, what if you're not yet a new amateur? The first thing to note is that everybody who is an amateur today was at one point or another not yet a new amateur. For some that step happened yesterday, for others it happened over 80 years ago and for some that step lies in the future. At this point it would be helpful if I could point out a few resources, some things to look at, to listen to, or to engage with. If you're already on-air, listening, scan around and hear other activities. If you've managed to find the community on-line, you'll likely find other resources nearby, since we amateurs like to cluster, much like any other community. You'll also find on-line radios to hear HF, websites, discussion groups, mailing lists, interest groups, associations and clubs. If you came across this as a random event, see what brought you here and ask around. If you're stuck, ask a fellow amateur. I can introduce you to one right now. Hi, I'm Onno VK6FLAB and I'm an Amateur Radio Operator, pleased to meet you. Drop me a line and say hello, don't be shy. Just because you're not licensed is no excuse to get started. There are stories everywhere of those who start as shortwave listeners, or CB-ers, or come across the hobby in some other random way, like I did. The fact that you're here, now, means you've already found the community. Welcome. Seriously, Welcome to Amateur Radio. Now all you need to do is take another step, and then after that, another, and before you know it you're in and among other amateurs. There are many steps inside this hobby. Which ones you choose to take and at which speed are entirely up to you. This can be as formal or informal as you like. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio There are times when you realise that you've always nodded your head when a particular topic came up and after doing that for long enough, you think you know what's going on. Turns out that, no, you didn't, but that the topic itself was interesting enough to learn from. In my case, Three Phase Power. I came upon this topic over the past month while I struggled with power interruptions, blinking lights, weirdness throughout my house. Turns out that it's been happening for a lot longer than I've lived here. After spending some time with the local power company, which I was told was filled with people who didn't care, turns out that they do, but they're busy people. After some back and forth, some logging, some finger pointing and head-scratching, the solution to my woes was to move me from the White Phase to the Blue Phase. I nodded and smiled and everything was well with the world. I know that there are three phases, Red, White and Blue. If you have overhead power in your street you'll likely notice four wires strung from pole to pole. One for each phase and one for neutral. Apparently there's a standard for which is neutral and the order, but there are too many exceptions for me to spell that all out here, so I'll move on. So, what's with these three phases? If you spin a magnet between two coils you have a generator. As the magnet spins, the magnetic field increases through each coil, then peaks, then reduces, and as the next magnetic pole comes along, the magnetic field reverses, increases, peaks, reduces, etc. If that sounds familiar, it's because I've just described a sine-wave. Every revolution of the magnet is a cycle and if you cycle, say 50 times, you get 50 cycles per second, or 50 Hz. For some countries it's not 50 Hz, but 60. Same thing, just faster. That single set of opposing coils and magnet is a single phase. If you add another set of coils, 120 degrees further along, you get the same phenomenon, completely independently from the first set of coils. That's the second phase. Rinse and repeat for the third phase. To get that power to the rest of the suburb, you need to run a single wire for each phase and a common neutral wire, giving you the four wires that you see on a power pole. Theoretically you could run with more phases, but you need to run more copper into the street, so power companies stopped at three. You can think of these as three completely independent circuits, but they all share the same neutral, so there are some subtle interactions, like if the neutral becomes disconnected, bad news happens, especially in a place like Western Australia where ground conductivity is very poor. In a normal home you'll get fed by one of those phases, in my case I changed over from the white phase to the blue phase. This means that each phase has a different set of users in the street. Roughly a third are using each phase. Looking at the actual voltage and current that comes through at high enough resolution and you'll begin to recognise it as an RF spectrum with harmonics, variations, interference and other artefacts that make power show up as a varying feast, rather than the rock-solid expectation of 240V, 50 Hz you see on the sticker. Three Phase Power, now you can nod along like I did and know how it actually works. I'm Onno VK6FLAB.

Foundations of Amateur Radio It's been raining around here for a while now. Not in the order of 40 days and 40 nights, but significant. Mind you, I have lived in a place where it rained every day for 57 days, but I digress. Water, plenty of it and often in all the wrong places. Being a radio amateur you come across water in many aspects of the hobby, sometimes it comes in handy, like lubricating your throat while you're calling CQ, or as a ground plane for an antenna, other times, not so much, like when it enters the shack and causes the black smoke to escape from your pride and joy. As I said, I'm no stranger to rain and in my travels I've encountered plenty of it. I managed to travel around Australia for a couple of years and I took with me a two-way satellite dish with sensitive electronics attached. Living in Australia I planned for dry. This place is dry. Often very much so, but as it turns out, dry doesn't mean without humidity, storms, rain or in one case hail. These experiences told me a little about protecting electronics from the weather. I should add a disclaimer here, I'm not a certified weatherman, nor am I certified in waterproofing, water ingress, or any other guarantee. So, if you do as I say and it breaks, you get to keep both halves. That said, I have some thoughts on the matter and I wouldn't be me if I didn't share them. Water is generally everywhere. It gets into everything and it's one of those silent killers. Electronics and water rarely mix, unless you submerge the electronics in mineral spirits, or if you seal your electronics in circuit board lacquer. Even then, there are few guarantees. The best you can hope for, in my experience, is to plan for failure, hope for success. Finding where water gets in is often the hardest part of keeping it out. Sealing off your electronics from the world in a waterproof anything will trap heat, which in turn will cause condensation, which will ultimately cause rust and destruction of your priceless electronics. Giving your stuff time to acclimatise is a very good idea. For example, if you have a radio stored in your garage and you bring it indoors, leave it there for several hours, if not overnight. Unless you live in Alaska with an in-floor heater to prevent your engine block from freezing, your garage is cold, your home is warm, the combination causes condensation. Alternatively, if your garage is hot, and your home air-conditioned, the reverse is true and condensation will still happen. Water has a habit of finding its way into anything, encouraged by gravity. That means that a length of coax, run into your wall will attract a stream of water along the coax, straight into the connector and into your wall, or between the core and the braid, or into your radio, or some other undesirable place. If you create a low point before the connector, like a drip-loop, a place where water would have to go up before it can do damage, you'll likely solve the issue, but don't discard the effects of wind which can cause water to go uphill. Connectors are magnets for water. Most connections in use in amateur radio have little or no waterproof rating. There are special waterproof connectors about and you may consider using those, but alternatives like self-amalgamating or rubber tape, which you wind tightly around a connection and in doing so, stretches and glues itself together to keep the water out. These tapes are generally not stable in the ultraviolet of the sun, so you may have to wrap that sealed connector in another layer of tape, plumbing or electrical tape is one solution. Based on the experience from national coax installations, the way to do this is with three windings of rubber tape, followed by two of plumbing tape. Think of up as towards the weather and down as away from the weather and make the windings like this: Wind the rubber tape three times around the connector, up, then down, then up again. Seal this from the sun with two windings of plumbing tape, down and then back up towards the weather. For endurance, add a cable-tie to keep the tape in place when the glue eventually fails. This will ensure that water always runs away from the connector. The way to remember this, for a positive result, there are three ups and two downs. If you ever get your coax wet, that is, the end, be prepared to cut off a length to protect your gear. Coax rot is real and is essentially the rusting of the braid, the shield or the core and it spells bad news for your gear. Operating portable is a whole other subject in relation to weather, but the same principles apply. Keep the temperature stable, keep the water out, protect from rain ingress along the coax and you'll likely be able to have a good time and come home without any damage to your gear. There is a persistent idea that rice can help you dry electronics. While it does have some effect, it's slow and by the time it's removed the water, the damage will already have been done. Air drying is much more effective.

Foundations of Amateur Radio Recently I had a conversation with a group of amateurs, ranging in experience from newbie to salty, from purchase to build, from buy to scrounge, in other words, the whole range. One person in the group asked about how to get started with soldering. Their first harmonic had just been granted a license and they wanted to encourage the new amateur to build something, anything. That in turn started a whole conversation about the how, where, why and what of the way of the heated element and its application to a circuit board. In 2012, almost exactly two years after obtaining my amateur license I purchased an electronics kit. The kit was sold by my local electronics store and was intended to become a High Precision LC Meter. The electronics store packages together many of the schematics that are published in Australia's Silicon Chip Magazine and in this instance, it also came with a lovely case, build instructions and a review from someone who had built the kit, John, VK3FJBX. The whole thing cost me $90 at the time and as far as I was concerned, that was a bargain. These days I might have considered it a little high, but the end result was an LC Meter that does what I need and works as described. The process of building the contraption was not complex, in fact, I think the single surprise was the need to purchase a Component Leg Bending Tool, a fancy name for a $2 tapered block of plastic with little indents that you can use to bend the legs of a resistor so they match the holes of the circuit board. As projects go, this one was a success. I bought it, I built it, I put it together, powered it up and the black smoke stayed inside the components and the meter displayed numbers that matched up with what the label on the component I was testing said. That in an of itself is a story of success. I can point at several other kits sitting in a box, still as bags of components, never assembled, lost interest, got distracted, too hard, not viable, missing bits, whatever the excuse, gathering dust until magically one day they'll be needed for when the apocalypse is here, or the garage explodes from too much stuff and I'm forced to donate it to the world. As my life experience increases, my hands are becoming less steady. I now have a magnifying lamp, not enough clamps and less patience for silliness, so, my kit building is at an all-time-low. Mind you, it's not that I've stopped building or experimenting, instead I'm writing software, investigating new and exciting tools, like a random online circuit simulator I came across during the week. I did want to tell you what it's called, but it's down at the moment and I don't know if it was hugged to death by well meaning amateurs who came to visit. Search with your tool of choice for "Electronic Circuit Simulator in the Browser" and you'll be spoilt for choice. In addition to several browser based simulators around, there are also offline applications you can download and run, even tools you can spend actual money on. All told, several options for learning how to build a circuit, how various things work together, including showing simulated oscilloscope traces, so you can see what your latest contraption actually does. The art of building, the skill of soldering, the pursuit of design is hampered by one thing, and one thing only. Your ability to get out and start. So, what are you waiting for? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio If you've been part of the amateur community for a while and have heard me talk on matters of contesting, you'll know that I'm an avid contester and that for me it's better than sliced bread. Of course, I'm me and you're not. If contesting isn't of any particular interest to you, the hobby of amateur radio is big enough for at least 999 other attractions. I talk about them regularly. If you're on the fence, or if you're unsure, or if you are not enamoured with this whole contesting thing, then today I'd like to ask you to consider another aspect of this activity. Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you to participate in a contest. As I said, there are many other activities within the hobby. For example, testing propagation is a recurring theme, as is testing your gear, your radio, your skill and doing all manner of other amateur things. For many of those activities having another person to test with is often a way to get a result and if you find yourself on a lonely Saturday looking for a friend to help, I have a suggestion to make. It relates to contesting, specifically those on air. It turns out that there are radio amateurs on air almost all the time. Imagine that. Better still, when there's a contest on, there are even more radio amateurs around, all clamouring about, trying to make contacts, trolling up and down the bands, making an effort to hear new stations, calling CQ, generating signals from all over the place. Here's the thing. There is no rule that says that you have to be participating in the contest, or even log contacts for the contest, but there is no harm in you using the airwaves for your own enjoyment. Turns out that if you get on air during a contest, you can use that for example to do testing of all manner of things. If you've run out of things to test, you can use it to learn things, like how to use the RIT or "Receiver Incremental Tuning", something Yaesu calls the Clarifier, or the IF offset, or the noise-blanker, or the noise-filter, or the A/B VFO, or what ever it is that floats your boat. There are people all around you, getting on-air, making noise and you can join in with the fun. You can learn about the directivity of your station, observe how propagation changes, how the different bands react depending on the time of day, the solar cycle, or magnetic flux. If you have the opportunity, you can monitor the grey-line and observe its effects on what you can hear. You can look at a DX Cluster and see what you can hear, compared to what stations other amateurs are reporting. You can measure signal strengths, the impact of the AGC, test you battery life, your mobility, the layout of your shack and if you feel the urge, you can even log a rare station and add it to your log. No rule anywhere says that you have to participate in a contest, but why let a good opportunity go to waste? If you're an avid contester, you might think that I'm advocating that we fill the air with time wasters, people who shouldn't be there, people who are not worth your attention. I'm here to tell you that just because you're in a contest, doesn't mean that the rest of the world is and just because you want to make an exchange, not everyone else does. If I find myself having a conversation mid-contest with someone with a story to tell, I can participate in the discussion, or I can change the dial and call CQ contest somewhere else. The bands are a shared resource, for those who contest and for those who don't. The interesting thing in all this to me is that there seems to be a perception that you can only fall on one side of the coin. You're either a contester, or you're not and never the twain shall meet. That just makes no sense to me. There's an opportunity to sit on either side of the divide and harness both at the same time. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio It seems that when you categorically state something, like I did recently, you get emails and feedback, almost immediately, pointing out the folly of your assertion. Within the context of setting up your radio, an hour before you go away, I intended to convey: "One thing I can categorically state is that programming your radio manually just before your holiday is really something that you should try and avoid." That's not what I actually said. I missed out on the "just before your holiday" in that sentence. The upshot was that I received lots of feedback, some tips and different suggestions on how to do this and do it well. As I hinted at, you should know how to program your hand held. It's almost an essential life-skill. I generally take a copy of my manual with me, either on actual paper, you know, dead-tree variety, or as electrons as a PDF on my phone or other screen-based gadget. That doesn't mean I like programming my radio. In fact I will be so bold as to assert that I hate manually programming any of my radios. The process is tedious, non-obvious, with a process seemingly written for ENIAC in 1946 when you toggled bits on a panel to program a computer. Yes, that's a slight exaggeration, but not by much. Anyway, given that this is such a chore, I tend to avoid it like the plague and only in case of an emergency, do I break out the user manual and poke through 17 pages of arcane button pushing-fu, to get the job done, without hopefully clearing a memory I had programmed before. One of the emails I received, in fact the first one, was from Andrew KF7CCC. He very kindly pointed out the error of my ways, and I agree with him. One of the points that Andrew and others have made is that a defining characteristic of being a radio amateur is that we're frequency agile. That's not something that most other radio users are familiar with. They have a list of channels to pick from and switch between them. In amateur radio we have access to a VFO, a Variable Frequency Oscillator which allows us to change frequency at will. Of course we should all be able to change frequency as the need arises. Sitting on two different channels, pre-programmed into our radios is like being users, rather than inventors of radio, shock, horror. Andrew also mentions a book he's written. In one of the opening paragraphs he says: "This book shouldn't exist." and goes on to explain why the "Handheld Radio Field Guide" is a book that should be made obsolete by sanity entering into the process of programming a radio. I agree with the sentiment. We really have this insane configuration where each brand does it differently, and often within a brand, each model is different. Andrew makes a series of suggestions in his book and I think it's a great starting point for discussion. As I started with, I received lots of feedback. One suggestion was that radios should have an on-board GPS and should automatically know, based on location, which repeaters are nearby. That in turn will create a debate about where the list of repeaters comes from. Such a system appears to exist. At least one manufacturer, Icom does such a thing, but opinions appear to differ on its effectiveness. Another was that you should program the repeater networks into your radio, so when you head away from your home, you have access to the widest range of options. All this talk of repeaters started a lament by some that repeaters are dead and that they are not being used. Others said the opposite and welcomed new calls regularly. I am an IT geek. I wonder if we could create a ping of sorts where a radio transmits a broadcast request for nearby repeaters and that each in turn sends a response, collected by the radio and neatly added to the list of local repeaters. If it sounds familiar, that's because in computing we do this all the time with all manner of different gadgets like printers on our local network. In fact, your radio could just listen for repeater idents and store them. Given that a repeater identifies itself regularly, that's a way we could create a repeater map locally. What ever your poison, as-in, choice of radio, figuring out what to use it for is part of the adventure. You should know your radio inside and out. Read your user manual once in a while, I know I do, every couple of months or so, and each time I learn something new. "One thing I can categorically state is that programming your radio manually just before your holiday is really something that you should try and avoid." I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio A regular question from people who go on holiday is: "Which repeaters should I put into my hand held radio?" If there was infinite amount of memory and time, the answer would be simple - All of them. If it were that simple, I wouldn't be talking about it and you wouldn't be asking the question, so given that it's not that simple, what options do you have for dealing with this question, generally an hour before you pack up your suitcase to leave on that trip to another location. For me, my first effort was to try to find a list of repeaters for the new location. Failing that, I ventured onto the national association and downloaded their list, which I might add, was woefully out of date, but I wasn't to know that when I found it. I then fired up a copy of the cross-platform CHIRP programming software, pushed all the repeater frequencies into my radio and called it a day. I did have the benefit of a radio that was able to group memories into separate so-called banks, which allowed me to be able to select a particular bank for each state, my own state, VK6 was, and I might add, still is, in bank 6. VK5 is in bank 5 and so-on. The advantage of this arrangement is that I can select a bank, set my radio to scan in just that bank and I can hear all the activity that's happening within range of my hand held. Pretty useful when you're on holidays in a new location. If your country doesn't quite break-down into neat little groups like that, or if you cannot break your hand held radio memory into banks, you might have to come up with a different strategy. You could for example, create your own equivalent banks, 100 to 199 is bank 1, 200 to 299 is bank 2, etc. Or if you have 50 states to worry about, you might allocate 101, 201, 301, 401 etc. to state number one and so on. Of course that will start an argument about which state is number one, but I'm sure you can work that out for yourself. Another suggestion is to query the local license database, in Australia the ACMA database, and get a list of currently licensed repeaters. If that's not your style, you could download a mobile phone app, something like Repeaterbook. You can even link your mobile to your radio and have the app set up the frequencies for your location. One suggestion I came across the other day is to do none of this and to just program in all the possible repeater pairs. There's not that many possibilities and setting your radio to scan will unearth any activity on what ever standard pair is being used at the time. This won't get you completely out of the woods, since some repeaters require a CTCSS tone of some description, but several hand held radios have the ability to decode the tone. You could get fancy with pre-programmed tones in different memories, but I'll leave that as an exercise for you to imagine. In the end, finding amateurs in a new location is a lot like finding amateurs in your home town. They're around, you just need to find them. Visiting a local club works at home and it works just as well while you're on holiday, sometimes even more-so, since you'll be a visitor and many clubs like to be on their best behaviour for new comers. One thing I can categorically state is that programming your radio manually is really something that you should try and avoid. Not because it's not possible and not because it's not a skill you should have, but because it's error prone and there's nothing quite as frustrating as programming in the wrong frequency without having the ability to fix it when you're in the field. One tip. CHIRP allows you to create as many different frequency files as you like. There's nothing wrong with making one fit for purpose for this outing and having a different file for your home location, or for a specific contest or DX activity. A final bonus tip. CHIRP generally uses the microphone and headphone sockets for most hand held radios. Setting the volume correctly is a must. If you set the volume too low, CHIRP won't work, since there won't be anything to decode. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio How to get the best Amateur Radio gear? A recurring question for new entrants to our hobby, and truth be told, some experienced ones as well, is: "What's the best hand held to buy?", or the best antenna, or the best base station, the best coax, the best mount, the best software, the best something. There's a principle in Engineering, Good, Fast and Cheap, pick any two. You can have Good and Fast, but it won't be Cheap. You can have Fast and Cheap, but it won't be Good. You can have Good and Cheap, but it won't be Fast. The concept of Quality is balanced between these limits. With that in mind, answering the question in search of the best is already a trade-off. To muddy the waters further, there is an economic principle related to pricing. It goes a little like this. If you sell an amateur radio gadget for $50, there's a group of people who will buy it. There's a group of people who would have paid more for the same thing and a group of people who can't justify $50. If you make the price higher as a manufacturer, say $75, you'll get more money from some people, but the group of people who can't justify the price will get larger, so you'll sell less gadgets. If you make the price $25, you'll sell more gadgets, but you won't capture the income from those who were prepared to pay $50 or $75. So, as a manufacturer, you make three gadgets, one for $25, one for $50 and one for $75. They're all essentially the same, but the market will lap it up. Of course, between $25 and $50, there's a group of people who would have been happy to pay more, etc. etc. Ad-infinitum. That's our amateur radio gadget market place today. The price points might not all be taken up by the same manufacturer, but the market price for say a hand held radio goes from somewhere around $40 to over $1200. You'll find the range completely filled with offers. As an aside, your local telco is doing the same thing, as is your mobile phone manufacturer, your internet service provider and your car manufacturer to name a few. So, now what? We're looking for the best gadget. Since you're going to be the one using it, your definition of best is going to be different to my definition. I care about my hand held being waterproof, but I don't care about having a torch, a compass, a thermometer or a GPS on board. You might want to take it hiking, where I'm more likely to use it on a field-day. This means that asking another amateur, "What's the best?", is a recipe for discussion. Some will be adamant that their selection is superior to that of another amateur, but you should now already know that this is completely subjective. If you go down the scientific route, you might use receiver sensitivity as a metric. If that's all you care about, the choice is easy, list them all by sensitivity and pick the one that's the most sensitive, but the battery life might be abysmal, or it might not use the frequency you care about, or it might have some other extra function you are paying for, but don't care about. We get down to picking from a list. If you're anything like me, and let's face it, we're all amateurs here, you'll get to a point of making a list of the options you have. Selecting the best antenna, the best power supply, the best base station, hand held, mobile, car, service contract, you name it, it always comes to a list. Here's how to pick. Is option A better than B? Yes? Remove B. Is option A better than C? No? Remove A. Is option C better than D? No? Remove D. Is C better than E?, etc, etc. You might be concerned about the ones that you've removed. You already decided that there was a better option than the one you removed, so ignore them, they're just muddying the water. If you want to ask another amateur what they bought and why, that's a whole field of exploration, but if you ask them what's the best gadget, that's just asking for trouble. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio A question that occurs more often than you might think is one related to powering your radio. It comes in a few different flavours, like: "I want to install a radio in my car, how do I power it?", or "I want to operate portable, what's the best way to power my radio?" or "What power-supply should I buy?" There are many more versions of this, but they all come down to the same underlying challenge. I spoke about sizing a battery a couple of years ago, but that's not the only consideration. If you look at the power specifications of my Yaesu FT-857d, you'll see 13.8V DC +/- 15%, Negative ground, 1 Amp on Receive and 22 Amp on Transmit. Based on this I purchased two 26 Amp Hour batteries and a 45 Amp variable power supply. My amateur license restricts me to 10 Watt and I tend to operate using 5 Watt. On receive the actual draw, specified in the documentation at 1 Amp doesn't go above 0.5 Amp in typical use. Transmit, specified at 22 Amp doesn't go above 3.6 Amp at 5 Watts and at 10 Watts it's still only 4.5 Amp, so my 45 Amp power supply is slightly overkill, by a factor of 10. By the way, that's an FM carrier on 2m. Different modes and bands have different current draw. I should make mention of the duty-cycle, that is the difference in time spent transmitting and receiving. A 100% duty-cycle means that you're transmitting all the time, 50% means half the time and 25% means that for every minute of transmission, you'll spend three minutes listening. There is more to the duty cycle, in brief, AM, FM and RTTY are 100% duty cycle modes, CW is a 40% mode and SSB has a duty cycle of 20%. So if you're listening half the time on SSB, your duty-cycle is only 10%. At this point you should at least understand that what the manufacturer says on the box and what your radio actually does is entirely dependent on your use case. I have no doubt that there is a way I can operate my radio so it draws 22 Amp. I'm not quite sure how, but I'm sure it's possible. Sizing aside, there are other things you need to consider. If you're in a car, do you wire the contraption directly to your car battery, or to a secondary battery? Should it be connected directly, or via the accessory switch? Should you get a DC to DC power supply, or some other technology? Also, not all cars are 12V, not all cars have their body as earth and the thicker the wire between the battery and the radio, the better. My decision, given that I live in a country where distances are non-trivial, and in a state bigger than Texas, in fact Western Australia is bigger than Alaska, Texas and Minnesota combined, I decided that it would be prudent to make the power supply for my radio completely separate from my car. I have a toolbox in the boot, that's the trunk if your regulator is the FCC, which contains two 26 Amp Hour batteries. I take it out to charge and put it back when I need it. Other solutions include second batteries with disconnect on low charge circuits, manual and automatic ones, direct connect to the main battery and variations on that theme. In shacks I've seen batteries which are constantly charged connected to a radio and dedicated power supplies bordering on being a local sub-station to ensure that enough of the good stuff makes it into the radio and out to the antenna. For portable operation I've seen Lithium in several different flavours, car start boost batteries, mobile phone USB batteries, remote control car batteries, and the like. If you have more than one, bring some red Velcro and use it to mark the flat battery. One of the things you'll really only be able to learn after doing it is finding out what the noise level is that a power supply generates. A battery generally doesn't make noise, but the charger or up-converter might. Inverters are often a great source of HF noise, the cheaper the more noise, so test before you buy. Also, none of what I've said so far considers emergency preparedness, which is a whole other topic for another day. As in any technical situation, in theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice they're not. Be prepared to do some real world tests, see what your friends are doing and see what you can take-away from that. My purchase of a laboratory variable 45 Amp power supply was excessive, but it's likely to outlast me. The two 26 Amp Hour sealed lead acid batteries are very heavy, but I avoid carrying them as much as I can and so far, seven years later, they still last most of the weekend during a contest. There's not a one-stop solution for power, just like there isn't one for picking a radio. How do you power your radio? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio There is a solitude about amateur radio. Sitting in your shack, listening to the bands, trying to locate an elusive station and if you're doing a contest then even that can be something that you do alone. Don't get me wrong, I like my own company as much as the next introvert, but there is much joy to be found in finding a companion. Over the years I've participated in group activities, camping, field-days, contests, activations, antenna building, ham-fests and the like. These activities have been excellent and I highly recommend that you attempt to find a local community where you can connect with other amateurs to find common ground and explore this hobby together. Last week I did a contest with a friend. Each on our own, but doing the same contest at the same time. The contest itself was what can only be described as a fizzer. For my 8 hours or so of operating I managed a grand total of one contact and that wasn't even with my friend. What made the experience one to remember is that I wasn't alone in the activity. I wasn't the only one having the experience. I was able to share my single contact and know that my friend didn't fare much better, that they had been in the same boat and came out just as wet. It's not the first time I've done a contest with a single friend. This time we did it as two stations, each under our own callsign, but previously I've participated in contests where it was just two of us that were working the same callsign, both trying our best to contribute as much as we could. The thrill of doing this is like nothing else I've experienced and I would highly recommend that you try it. My tips for success are that you agree on a common understanding of why you're there. If one of you is wanting to lark about and the other is serious the experience will end in tears. One of the things I've done in the past is to agree on operator rotation. For one contest we set a hard limit of two hours per operator and between us we covered most of the 48 hours of the contest and we managed enough sleep to stay sane. Operating two radios doesn't in my experience work very well if you're both working in the same shack. That's not to say that there is hardware that can fix that, but so-far it's been elusive at best and at least frustrating. My quest for coax-stub filter bliss continues. Motivation is a big deal. Encouraging the other person, making them a coffee at 2am in the morning, listening in and laughing helps and makes the experience one of joy. Learning and observation is a useful spin-off from this. I've done this with people with more, sometimes decades more, experience than I and with those who have less experience. Giving feedback, write it down, don't interrupt the contest unless it's a rule breaker, and talking about it after the fact will make both of you better operators and that's not a bad outcome by any measurement. Back-seat driving isn't OK. If the other person is operating a pile-up, let them operate it, their ears are not yours and your interjection of a callsign you heard is likely to end up in frustration for both. That's not to say that you can't do this together, just talk about it before you start "helping". One of the most rewarding aspects of this whole process is that you get to see another person doing what you're doing and the differences in style between the two of you is often a learning experience for both, not to mention a shared history that will continue well after the contest is finished and forgotten. Over the years I've now managed around half-a-dozen contests with a single other person, sometimes in their shack, in a club shack, on a camp-out, or in a car mobile and I have to say that it's the most fun I've had along the way. For all I know that kind of fun can be had in a contest station that has an operator for every band with equipment coming out of every corner, but I haven't experienced that yet, so I can't comment. Find yourself a contesting buddy to share the highs and lows and before you know it you'll be having more fun than you've had before. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio We as radio amateurs log things. We log our contacts, we log our progress towards an award, we log how many different countries we've contacted, which stations we heard with WSPR, how many kilometres we managed per watt, which stations were in a net, what callsigns received a QSL card, what location we're in when we made a contact. You get the point, we log things, many things and for many different reasons. Here's a log that I started last week. An asset log. You heard me, an asset log, a thing that logs what amateur radio stuff I have, when it came into my life, where it came from, what brand it is, what model, what the serial number is and if I spent money on it, how much money I spent. It shows things that I've loaned to other amateurs and it shows things that are on loan to me. It started with a conversation about a silent key. That's what we call radio amateurs who have died. The idea of a silent key is one that reminds us that everyone is unique, that every manual Morse code transmission has a particular feel and that this is unique to every amateur. Once that particular combination of speed, tone and pacing is no longer heard, they're said to have become a silent key. I've been an amateur for a few years now and in that time I've seen the process that happens once an amateur becomes silent play out over and over again. In my experience it's not pretty. It almost always appears to end in something akin to a feeding frenzy where the person who got in first grabs the best stuff and leaves the rest for the next person. Rinse and repeat until there's nothing of value left. It leaves me with a bad taste in many ways. For one, the family who is left behind might not know or understand that there is a monetary value associated with what's often referred to as "grandpa's gear" and they might just be in need of some extra financial support in their time of mourning. Another aspect, if there is no actual need for money, is that the person who's shack is being dismantled might have an idea on how they would like to see their hard work live on. They might want to donate it to a particular person, an organisation, a club, a school, or some other destination of their choosing. All that can only work if there is a list of stuff. Having a family member construct that list is going to be a tough ask, unless you're fortunate enough to have more than one amateur in your household. Asking another amateur to make the list creates a load of work with at best guesses of age and value. The only person really qualified to make the list about your shack is you. Last week I started the list on a spreadsheet that I'll share with my family. I'll add to it when more stuff arrives and if I feel the need, I can remove stuff that has moved on. I'm not in the position to add new amateur equipment to my shack more than a few times a year, so maintaining this list isn't going to be an onerous task and I could imagine that the list expands to include tracking which equipment went with me on a field-day, which I have to tell you is always a challenge to track. As a bonus, the list can be used in the case of loss or theft and for insurance purposes, so it's not just for when the time comes that we become a silent key. To get started, make a list of what you can see around you and keep adding stuff. If you keep accounting records, they can be used as a source of information too. We log lots of stuff and I think that adding an asset log is something that will add to any amateur shack and it could form the basis of a legacy that you might leave behind. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The topic of how radio evolves and embraces available technology is one that describes the hobby itself. From spark-gap through AM, SSB and FM our community picked up or invented solutions to make communication possible. When the internet came along it too became a tool ripe for picking and in 1997 a connection between a radio and the internet was made with the Internet Radio Linking Project or IRLP when Dave VE7LTD, a student at the University of British Columbia, joined the UBC Amateur Radio Society. Using a radio, some hardware and a computer, you could send audio between radios across the internet. Since then this field has exploded with D-STAR, Echolink, DMR, AllStar, Wires, CODEC2, System Fusion and Brandmeister. At a glance they're all the same thing, radio + internet = joy. Looking closer there are two distinct kinds of internet radio contraptions, those where the radio is digital and those where it's not. IRLP is an example of an analogue radio connecting to hardware that does the encoding into digital and transmission across the internet. At the other end the reverse process, decoding, happens and another analogue radio is used to hear the result. This encoding and decoding is done by a piece of software called a CODEC. If we continue for a moment down the analogue path, Echolink, AllStar and Wires do similar things. In 2002 Echolink made its way onto the scene, similar to IRLP, but it didn't need any specialised hardware, any computer running the Echolink software could be used as both a client and a server, that is, you could use it to listen to Echolink, or you could use it to connect a radio to another Echolink computer. AllStar, which started life in 2008 went a step further by making the linking completely separate. It uses the metaphor of a telephone exchange to connect nodes together, which is not surprising if you know that it's built on top of the open source telephone switching software Asterisk. In 2012 or so, Yaesu introduced Wires which is much like Echolink and AllStar. There are servers with rooms, not unlike chat rooms, where you connect a node to and in turn your radio. Blurring the lines between these technologies happened when you could build a computer that spoke both IRLP and Echolink at the same time. Now you can also add AllStar to that mix. Essentially these systems do similar things. They manage switching differently, handle DTMF differently, use a different audio CODEC and handle authentication in a variety of ways, but essentially they're ways of connecting normal hand-held radios, generally FM, to each other via the internet using intermediary computers called nodes. Before you start sending angry letters, I know, there's more to it, but I've got more to tell. While Dave was busy in Canada inventing IRLP back in the late 1990's, in Japan the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications funded research, administered by the Japan Amateur Radio League into the digitisation of amateur radio. In 2001 that research resulted in what we know today as D-STAR. Two years later, ICOM started developing D-STAR hardware which resulted in actual physical radios less than a year later. Today you can get D-STAR hardware from ICOM, Kenwood and FlexRadio Systems. Unlike the other technologies where the audio was converted at a central place, in D-STAR the audio is encoded in the radio and a digital signal is sent across the airwaves. That in turn means that the software that does the encoding, the CODEC, needs to be inside the radio. Since the information is digital right from the point of transmit, you can send other information, like GPS locations and messages along with the audio. In 2005 DMR started life as a group of companies, now up to around 40, agreeing on some standards for digital audio in much the same way as D-STAR. Mostly in use by commercial users, DMR has the ability to have two users simultaneously on-air using alternate channels by having separate time slots for each channel, alternating between the two of them. They agreed to use the same CODEC to ensure compatibility. Formal interoperability testing has been happening since 2010, but because DMR allows manufacturers to build in extra features many brands cannot actually work together on the same network. For many years D-STAR and DMR-MARC, the DMR Motorola Amateur Radio Club World Wide Network, were the main digital radio systems around in amateur radio. That changed in 2013 when Yaesu introduced System Fusion. It too made digital audio at the radio, but it added a wrinkle by making it possible to have both analogue and digital audio on the same repeater. Depending on how the repeater is configured, analogue and digital radios can coexist and communicate with each other. The Wires system that Yaesu rolled out was upgraded in 2016, renamed to Wires X and now also incorporates digital information to allow the linking of their System Fusion repeaters. In 2014 at the Ham Radio Exhibition in Friedr

Foundations of Amateur Radio Where are all the Amateurs is a question that I am asked regularly by new entrants into our community. The journey most new amateurs go through and the one I followed starts with becoming interested, getting a license, buying a radio, setting it up and then turning on your radio. If you're lucky you are at this point surrounded by other amateurs, hopefully in a club setting, or you have a friend nearby and you're off and running. The reality is likely that even after a successful first on-air adventure, you'll be on your own in your shack asking yourself where everyone went. I've talked in the past about picking the right day, for example, a Wednesday is likely to have less people on air than a Saturday, but that's only part of the story. One of the things that had never occurred to me until a while after I became an amateur is that listening is a really important way to find other amateurs. Let's start with some things that might not have occurred to you. Most amateurs are not in your time-zone. There is amateur radio activity almost all the time, 24/7 on whatever the appropriate band is. Not all bands sound the same. What worked yesterday might not work today. This hobby isn't exact or precise, that is, there are an infinite number of variables which each affect the experience either positively or negatively and even if you used your radio in exactly the same way with the same settings on the same band in the same location at the same time with the same antenna, the landscape around you has changed, the ionosphere is a lot like the ocean, flat and calm one day, storms and waves the next. Those things aside, each of which could be a whole story is still only part of the story of finding other amateurs. There is a tendency for new amateurs to think of frequencies as numbers, as parameters to add to your radio, pick 7.093 MHz, pick 21.250 MHz, or 28.500 MHz, they're just numbers, things that you pick with your radio, set-up your antenna to and listen. That's part of the story, but there is another part. If you think of light and you go from Infra-red through visible light through to Ultraviolet light and beyond, all you're doing is changing a number, from somewhere around 300 GHz through to 3 PHz. It's a long dial in amateur radio terms, but the difference is just a number, right? It should be obvious that the human day-to-day experience of Infra-red and Ultraviolet are completely different. The 28.5 MHz 10m band frequency is on the same spectrum as both Infra-red and Ultraviolet but you don't expect to see these frequencies or use them in the same way. The same is true for amateur radio bands. The 80m band, the 40m band, 15m and 10m are all different. They're in use by radio amateurs, but their experience is also completely different. Some are good for day-time communications, others for night-time, some work regardless of the solar-cycle, others need solar flux. Magnetic activity affects some bands more than others and that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you have a hand-held radio and you're used to listening to a local 2m repeater it's likely that you've set up the squelch on your radio to hide noise and your day-to-day experience is one where there is silence when nobody is talking. You might tune to 15m and look for the same silence, only to learn later on that noise is what you're actually looking for. The sounds that the 10m band makes is different than the 80m band, the 20m band responds differently to changing conditions to the 40m band and every different radio you use has a different feel, so what you're used to with one radio will be different on another. All this to say that the way you find other amateurs is to listen. You'll need to get a feel for this thing, a sense of opportunity. I've compared amateur radio to fly fishing on more than one occasion. Standing up to your arm-pits in a river tossing out a line, finding a bite will be different depending on the day, the temperature, how much you moved around and the appetite of the fish around you at the time. The more you do this, the more you get a sense of opportunity and the better your results. Instantaneous gratification is going to be elusive, get used to it, be patient, be curious and experiment. I'll leave you with this image. I'm currently standing in my wardrobe, surrounded by clothes, shoes, boxes and jumpers in the middle of my home with the door closed, crammed in with my microphone stand, a laptop and a tablet in an attempt to ward off the background noise that comes from a winter storm that is currently overhead unleashing the first rain of the season in spectacular style. Some days I fantasise that my budget could manage a recording studio or even a sound-proof booth. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio With computers becoming more and more ensconced within the confines of our radio shack the variety of information available is increasing regularly. The introduction of a waterfall display has dramatically simplified the process of detecting what the activity level is on a particular band. If you've never seen a waterfall display, it's often a real-time, or nearly real-time display of radio activity. Leaving aside the mechanics of how this comes about, or how much you see, generally it's presented as a picture that changes over time. In reality it's a very compact way of showing a lot of information. You can think of it as a chart, showing the horizontal axis as frequency, the vertical axis as time and the colour as signal strength. So as you look from left to right you'll look at higher and higher frequencies. For example, the left side might be 7 MHz and the right side might be 7.3 MHz. Halfway along is 7.150 MHz. Similarly, now, as in zero seconds ago is at the top of the chart and 1 minute ago is lower. Depending on how fast you've set it to update the whole screen might represent 10 seconds, 10 minutes or 10 hours of information, entirely flexible, entirely configurable, entirely arbitrary. If you think of the colour black as having no signal strength and the colour red being maximum signal strength, then the brighter the colours, the more signal there is. A morse code signal might turn up as a series of dits and dahs running down the screen, with the oldest one being at the bottom and the newest one at the top. An AM signal might show up as a thick line with a bright colour, that's a high signal strength in the middle and lighter colours or low signal strength towards the edges. Every mode has its own visual characteristic and there are even modes that allow you to read information within a waterfall display. One of the other things you'll see in a waterfall display is strange artefacts, things like a diagonal line for example. If you think of what a diagonal line represents as a radio signal, it's something that has a strong signal at a particular time and frequency. A moment later it's changed frequency and a moment later it's done it again. The steepness of the line is dependent on two things, the speed that the frequency changes and the speed that the waterfall is updating. Before waterfall displays, the way you'd experience such a signal would be something that flashes up as a low to high swoop, or a high to low swoop, depending on your listening mode and the direction of the frequency change. So what is that signal? Well, it's likely to be something called an Ionospheric Sounder. It does what you think it does. Ping the ionosphere across multiple frequencies. The station doing this is listening for a return echo to see if the ionosphere is reflective for that particular frequency at that particular moment. The information can be used to create a map of what the ionosphere is doing right now, which in turn is used to figure out what frequency to use to make a contact. I should also mention that there is a signal identification wiki which shows and plays various identified and unidentified radio signals, hours of fun for the family. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other week I participated in a contest. This particular contest was on the 80m band, around 3.5 MHz. The contest itself, while worthy of a mention, the Harry Angel Memorial Sprint, runs for 106 minutes and commemorates every year of Harry's life, at the time, the oldest radio amateur in Australia. I made two contacts. Count 'm and weep. Two. So, you could do the thing that I might have done in a previous contest, smiled, thought, "Wow, that's not very many contacts." and got on with life. You're free to do that, but I wouldn't be talking about this today if I shared your view. In fact I'm sure that in my activities as a radio amateur I've managed to learn, and in some ways unlearn some things along the way. In a previous contest I might have operated a club station, made contacts a plenty, added to the overall club score, added new countries and multipliers, had some good natured ribbing to go along with it and walked away with nothing to show for it on my own log. The truth is that for many of my on-air contest activities I made contacts for other callsigns, those of fellow amateurs, clubs, special events, you name it, I made contacts. Don't get me wrong, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, nor was it a waste of time. I learnt loads from those experiences, but my own callsign log rarely, if ever, got an outing in such activities. So, this contest was for me. For my callsign, using my radio, my antenna, my location, my patience and my skills. I did the contest because I wanted to, for me. As you know, I'm a fan of operating QRP, that is, low power, so this contest I used 5 Watts, a Yaesu FT857d, a multi-tap vertical antenna, screwed onto a mount on the back of my car, parked next to a river with water to the East of me, so I could benefit from any gain that water nearby might offer me. As an aside, I'll talk more about water and gain at some other time, because it appears that not is all as my handed-down in hush-hush terms from mentor to me, would have me believe. I don't yet know enough to point at anything, but there's more than apparently meets the eye. Watch this space. Anyway, two contacts. Not even that far from me, about 230km South and 20km North East. Both with SSB. I heard about 20 stations, some up to 3,500km away, but they were dealing with S7 noise where I had none. That's right, no noise, S0, in the middle of the city. In addition to a heart stopping moment when the lights came on in the car park where I had set-up, my biggest fear being noisy lights, which turned out to be unfounded, my other take-aways were that I really should bring spare batteries for my LED lamp, and that I called it an LCD lamp last week. Not sure what I was thinking. I logged using pen and paper, in doing so I was upholding a fine tradition of radio amateurs everywhere, pen and paper is by far the most popular method of logging and with two contacts made, that's not surprising. I'm still on the lookout for sensible logging on a phone, but so-far that's eluded me. Perhaps I should write one and sell it, become rich and famous, retire, become loved in the community, kiss babies ... who am I kidding? Seriously though. What would the ideal phone based logging app look like to you? As for the baby-kissing famous one, let me know when you meet them, I'll stay away. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Previously I've talked about leaving your shack and setting up your station in a different location. I have my car configured as a mobile shack of sorts, that is, it's got a radio, an antenna mount and wiring to manage the location of the speaker, the head-unit and the microphone. This weekend I'm planning to do a contest and it's been a while since I operated my radio from my car. I've been advocating that you should do some preparation before actually going and doing your thing, so during the week at lunch time I had a look around on the map and picked a spot that I'd like to operate the contest from this weekend. I drove to the location and pretended to set-up my station, actually, I did set it up. Tuned to the actual frequency, configured my tuner, found out that the tuning range for my antenna isn't ideal for 80m, not that this was a surprise. I'm using a so-called multi-tap antenna and the tuning range is somewhat dependent on factors such as the little metal spike that sits on top and where on my car it's mounted. In these situations I've heard other amateurs make statements that it's obvious because it's a compromise antenna. You won't actually hear me say that, since all antennas are a compromise, but then you already knew that. More surprising was the configuration of where I put the head-unit in my car. In the past I've used a modified mobile phone suction mount but sun and age have conspired into making that unsuitable, so I learned that I'd have to figure something out before my contest. Another surprise was that the microphone lead, which connects to a so-called separation cable, think Ethernet cable with RJ45 and joiners which connects back to the radio, had a little broken Ethernet doohicky (it's called the locking latch), which means that while you can push the connector in place, it doesn't stay. I also remembered that this contest was going to be in the dark, so I went looking for my LCD headlamp and it wasn't where I left it. So, now, several days later, after making my to-fix list, I actually managed to cobble together a few spare minutes and address most of my issues. The only one remaining is where to find the Allen Key for an 80m vertical antenna that I'm also bringing, just in case. The point of all this is that normally if you'd asked me if I was ready for my contest this weekend my immediate answer would have been: "Sure". I'm glad I followed the advise I have learned from the many mistakes I've made in the past by actually checking and because I actually went on-site I also managed to check out the local HF environment which means that come contest time I won't have a surprise that could have been managed by better preparation. No doubt there will be more to learn, but that's for after the contest. Perhaps next week. What do you do in preparation for an outing? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio In the past I've talked about the Standing Wave Ratio, the SWR, and how it describes some of the characteristics of your antenna system. I say system because it's not just the antenna, it's the connection between your radio and the antenna as well. The coax or feed line, their length and how you've connected your antenna, all feature in the performance of the entire kit and caboodle. As an aside, that's why measuring an antenna with an SWR meter at the bottom of the antenna, while you're bolting it to the top of your mast is likely to give you a different result when compared with the measurement performed at the radio. During the week I was asked about how cutting an antenna changes the SWR. The question included a quote from the ARRL Single-Band Dipoles page which states: "If you see that the SWR is getting lower as you move lower in frequency, your antenna is too long. Trim a couple of inches from each end and try again." The person asking the question, Phil, wanted to know why he was seeing a different behaviour. I've seen the same myself and until I had the benefit of an antenna analyser it also made little sense to me. The reason it makes little sense becomes clear once you realise what assumptions you're working under. When you look for antennas online, or when you buy one, often it comes with a lovely SWR graph. You'll see frequencies on the horizontal axis and SWR on the vertical axis. You'll likely see a lovely mostly horizontal line with a dip downwards at the frequency where you want to use this antenna. The assumption you will almost automatically make, I know I did, for years, was that outside the graph the line continues on its merry way in both directions. That means that you're assuming that the SWR comes down in one place and the rest of the time it's high. If wishing made it so. With the benefit of an antenna analyser you can graph the whole HF spectrum, and depending on the hardware, you might even be able to see VHF and UHF or higher. One thing you'll immediately see is that the SWR is all over the place. It's up, and down, crazy lines, across the whole spectrum. You'll find enormous highs and some very interesting lows along the way. It's one reason why I can use an antenna intended for the 10m band on the 2m band. When you're making an antenna, like a single-band dipole, you might find yourself in a position where your antenna SWR is going up and down like a yo-yo around the frequency where you're wanting to be. The higher the frequency, the more likely that your trimming ends you in a different dip or a different high, outside the one that you're actually looking for. One other comment. The ARRL quote which is talking about HF dipoles states that you should remove a couple of inches from each end. Let's take that literally, two inches from each end, that's 4 inches in total. Let's call it 10cm between friends. If you're trimming a dipole for 160m, you'll change the frequency by just over 1 kHz, but if you're doing this on 6m, then the same trimming will change the frequency by nearly 1 MHz and if you use that HF recommendation for 2m, the change is almost 6 MHz, so, trimming a couple of inches as the ARRL suggests will work for some dipoles on some frequencies, but might get you completely crazy results for other frequencies. Now you know, the SWR isn't high across everything except where you care, it's all over the place and sometimes that helps, and sometimes it doesn't. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Last week during F-troop something very interesting happened. If you're not familiar with F-troop, it's a weekly net for new and returning amateurs and every Saturday we welcome callers to the one hour net to discuss anything and everything amateur radio. It's been going for about seven or so years, about as long as I have been making this weekly contribution to the hobby. Normally there's a host, often it's me, but not always, handing the microphone to the next person who then in turn hands the microphone back and the host passes it on to the next caller. This is helpful for new amateurs who then only need to remember two callsigns, their own and that of the host. It's a safe place where people can ask questions and hopefully find an answer, make a mistake, say the wrong callsign, have their roger-beep turned on, be off frequency, all the typical things you do when you're learning or when you've dusted off an old radio after having been away from the hobby for a while. Last week we had a surprise visitor, a special event station, VI4GAMES, operated by Reg VK2MNM who in the midst of the Commonwealth Games was having little success on HF and decided to join in on our net. After saying hello and calling in other stations I started handing the microphone to each caller, encouraging them to make contact with VI4GAMES so they could each claim a contact, end up in the log and get a QSO card for their trouble. Sitting on the side was hard, but at the same time it was extremely rewarding. I witnessed stations calling a special event station for the first time in their life, dealing with strange callsigns, interruptions, distortions and delays, misheard phonetics, incorrect procedures, you name it, I heard it all. There were some who just made the contact and moved on, handing the microphone back to the host and others who started a whole discussion about their life, their station and their joy in making the contact. There were stations just saying their callsign without phonetics, or saying it once, or fast, stomping on the other station, all the things that happen in real life when you're trying to make a contact using HF and SSB. Just to re-iterate, this was on 2m FM, connected via IRLP, Echolink and Allstar to repeaters across the globe, with callers in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. It was eye-opening for me. In the past I've attempted to make contest examples, to make DX contact simulations and tried to get people to change frequency and check back in. As serendipity would have it, this was by far the most learning I've ever seen in the 7 years of this net and I'd encourage anyone to try this at home. Some of the direct take-away tips from this are that using phonetics on 2m FM is not stupid and sometimes it's even required. Repeating your callsign to a new station is not a waste of airtime, since you have no insight whatsoever as to the state of their receiver. You don't know if they have a poor antenna, or if they're connected via the internet, if the link is not optimal or the volume not set correctly. Waiting until the carrier drops on the repeater is a must for many repeaters and keying and talking at the same time is a recipe for being misunderstood. Key your microphone, wait a heartbeat and then start talking. Leaving gaps between overs allows other players onto the field and you should see that as an opportunity, not a burden. I'm sure there were other things that were learned on that random Saturday and who knew that you could learn that much from 2m FM, special event stations and some patience. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio If you read it on the Internet, it must be true, but what happens if you read it and there are 700 different answers? In my day job I search countless times a day for answers to problems. Based on my experience I can look at a list of responses to a question and tell myself what the skill-set is of the poster, "they don't know what they're talking about", "they're guessing", "they've got no clue", "they tried it", "ah, this one knows what they're talking about". As an aside, a company once advocated that we should use social media as a way to provide support to customers, but based on my experience, seeing the correct answer in a series of posts being voted down into oblivion and seeing the wrong answer being promoted is a fantastic example of why that won't work, ever. Infinite monkeys with typewriters might eventually write Shakespeare, but it will take an infinite amount of time and before they succeed there will be a whole lot of rubbish. When I started researching magnetic loop antennas several years ago I went through the same process, search for answers online. I found lots of different stories, opinions, measurements, contradictory statements and formulas. I spent some weeks reading everything I could on the subject and after a while a picture started emerging that started to explain to me how a magnetic loop antenna works. I'm no expert, my foray into this died when two ADSL modem transformers died within seconds of me hitting the PTT on my radio and I sort of lost interest. I have a magnetic loop antenna standing behind me, on loan from a friend and I use it to scan the bands. It's compact, easy to tune and one day I'll make more than a single contact on it. All this to say that I've been investigating coax stub filters. If you're not familiar with the notion, you can cut a piece of coax cable to a specific length and connect it with a t-piece to your antenna feed line. If you do that, depending on the length of the coax you cut, you get interesting effects. These effects include filtering, or notching out frequencies, passing other frequencies and all in all affecting what your radio is able to receive and transmit. If you've never set up your radio with some friends nearby for a field day, a contest or a camp-out, you might be surprised to learn that even across the space of a field or a caravan park you'll be able to hear the other station, even if they're not on the same band. You might hear their actual voice, or more likely, you'll hear all manner of overload sounds that essentially show up as noise blocking out the station you're really trying to hear and work. Of course, the reverse is also true. When you're transmitting, your friend is hearing the same horrible gunk coming out of your radio. One of the ways that you can manage this is to set up filters, either notch filters which reduce the strength of undesired transmissions or pass filters which only allow certain frequencies to get to your radio. Combining these will make your life much easier. Coax stub filters are a tried and true method to achieve this and the Internet is full of expert opinion on how to exactly do this. With infinite budget and time, you can try them all out and with your trusty network analyser you can find the combination that works just for you, but in the real world you have a limited amount of coax, money and your lottery winning didn't cover that network analyser. I started this process in earnest two or so weeks ago and frankly I'm no closer now than I was then. I'm still in the reading articles stages. I think I'd like to create two sets of band pass filters and connect each set to a radio. If I'm on 10m, I set my radio to use a 10m band pass and set the other radio to use a pass filter for their band. I figure between the two of them I have something that resembles what I'm looking for. If wishing made it so. To make matters more interesting, I have two rolls of Quad Shield RG6 coax left over from my days climbing roofs and installing satellite dishes for broadband Internet in the bush. If you're familiar with that you already know that this is 75 Ohm coax. Of course none of the documentation I've been reading even talks about using 75 Ohm coax. I like it because it's strong, low loss and I have loads of it. I've been reading everything I can get my hands on. Friends have been sending me emails with copies of copies of copies of a hand-scribbled notes written by a guy 30 years ago with the magic combination. I have several of these, all different. This morning I came across some electrical circuits that purport to do the same thing with a handful of components. One thing I do know, if the Internet has a thousand answers on how to do something, no-one really knows, or one of them does and is buried among the not-yet completed copies of the works of Shakespeare written by monkeys. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio During the week a friend reminded me that the process of determining what's happening within a shack comes with experience. In my day job my whole skill-set can be summed up with one word: "debugging", in all its many and varied guises, fixing code, hardware, business processes, skill-sets, what ever it may be. The process is pretty much, figure out what's going wrong, find out what shouldn't be happening and attempt to join the mismatch together with anything from gaffer-tape to good old fashioned hard yakka. Back on topic, the question my friend asked was about their WSPR receiver which had stopped making spots. If you're not familiar, WSPR, Weak Signal Propagation Reporter is a way of listening at specific times on specific frequencies for a signal and when received and decoded, publishing the spotted signal on a website. Their first thought was the antenna, that's where the signal comes from, so if that's not working, the rest fails. Pretty good first guess at figuring out what might be wrong. There is an adage somewhere, not sure of the exact wording, but it goes a little like this: if you don't know where to start, start somewhere, anywhere, and go on from there. Based on that the question became: How can I simply test my antenna and should I buy an SWR meter? If you're not familiar with how WSPR actually works, it's a radio receiver connected to a computer running software that decodes the signal and reports it across the Internet to a website that logs reports from around the globe. That sentence hides a level of complexity that boggles the mind if you start digging, but I'll give you a hint, it's not needed in this case. In my own experience with WSPR, my computer would crash regularly and get slower and slower. It turns out that I'd configured it to store a copy of each signal, as an audio file, so the computer drive was chock-a-block full of audio files. End result was crashing. I've also had issues with the WSPR site being unavailable and in Australia we're currently in the middle of rolling out our brand new not so shiny National Broadband Network which in turn causes Internet outages all over the place. While the antenna was a great place to start eliminating issues, there were several other candidates that could also cause issues, none of which required much in the way of effort to eliminate. As a bonus the antenna was also used for a weekly net and a quick scan with a spectrum analyser revealed that it was working just fine. A day later I got a follow-up email, turns out that the station they were listening for, an automatic WSPR beacon nearby had changed frequencies and that meant that it wasn't being received. One plus One equals Three. So, the lesson in all this is that two minds are better than one and that you can both be wrong at the same time. One thing I really love about amateur radio is that the problem domain is huge. You can think of amateur radio as two stations talking to each other, or you can imagine a place where there is so much variability that exploration in and of itself is the activity. Now that I've moved, I should fire up my WSPR receiver and see what gives. Which reminds me, what WSPR spots have you seen and if you're allowed to transmit WSPR with your license, how far have you been heard? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio is now available as an eBook. In Volume 6 - Joy of discovery - read about microphone technique, the dead band, propagation maps, melting coax, amateur radio satellites, strange antennas, self-training, SOTA adventures and more. Search for my callsign - VK6FLAB - on your local Amazon store to have a Look inside. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Have you ever considered the infrastructure that exists to make it possible to tune to 7.090 MHz, call CQ and make contact with anyone on the planet? In a world where we as radio amateurs share spectrum with radio and television broadcasters, mobile phones, wireless networks, satellites, GPS, drones, wireless headphones, radar, boating, aviation, citizen band, garage door openers, fitness trackers and any other wireless gadget imaginable, not to mention radio astronomy, microwave ovens, meteorological aids, inter and intra car communication, autonomous cars, trains and more. The world clamours for spectrum and in among those allocations we find the amateur bands. There are 24 million odd people in Australia, a few normal people, but mostly odd and about 14000 radio amateur license holders, that's about 0.06% of the population. It's extraordinary that in the last 100 years of radio spectrum allocation we have access to the bands we have. It's easy to forget that in the rarefied air of amateur radio where we have access to an astonishing amount of spectrum how unique we really are. Not only do we have a situation where we have access to bands, this is mostly global access. There are exceptions and while bands don't exactly line up, for example 7.090 MHz in Australia and the UK is an SSB calling frequency, but in the United States this is a CW, RTTY and data frequency, still amateur radio, but not the same mode. How this allocation exists is a combination of being the first mover, that is, radio amateurs came along and used it before anyone else had any use for the spectrum and the existence of the International Amateur Radio Union, the IARU. The IARU is a topic in and of itself, but in essence it's an organisation that exists and has done since 1925 due to radio amateurs combining their efforts. The IARU consists of over 160 member countries which are represented by their peak body, in Australia the WIA, the UK has the RSGB and the US has the ARRL. So, if you're a member of one of those organisations, you in turn are represented at the IARU where volunteers represent you and me on the world stage. The IARU has organised the world into three regions that correspond with the International Telecommunications Union, Region 1 is Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Russia, Region 2 is the Americas, Region 3 is the rest, Asia and the Pacific, that includes India and China. At some level discussion about the IARU, the role it plays and the processes it has and services it offers is a dry and boring administrative slog. It's not sexy, it's not thrilling, but every once in a while I think it would be a great idea to consider what the world might look like without the IARU and what our hobby might look like had this organisation not existed. There are some public activities that the IARU engages in, the Beacon Project, the HF World Championships and the Worked All Continents award. There's the Monitoring System and other activities such as the Amateur Radio Direction Finding or ARDF championships. The public relations face aside, much of the activity of the IARU is invisible, going to meetings, making proposals, keeping abreast of new technology and threats to radio spectrum, participating in working and study groups and the administration of all this volunteer effort. Next time you call CQ and a station on the other side of the planet answers, consider some of the invisible forces at work that make it possible. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Recently I spent some time discussing the losses associated with connectors between your radio and your antenna. The traditional wisdom, and I use the word "wisdom" ironically, says that each connector introduces loss into the feed line. There is an understanding that the more connectors you have the worse it is and the more loss you have. Jim W6LG did the test, connected up 30 odd connectors and measured. His measurements were done on 14 MHz and on 50 MHz, using 50 microvolts and 1 kilowatt. No discernible difference. Of course after I mentioned this out loud the questions started. Why didn't he test this at a usable frequency, something like 145 MHz, or in the GHz band? Then there were those who said that this wasn't a real test and that it should be tested with coax in between the connectors. I discussed this all at some length and one idea we had was that perhaps the intersection between the coax and the connector was the problem, that each transition between coax and connector and back was introducing the loss. I wondered if there was a way to test this. Turns out that somebody already did. Back in July 2015 Jim K9YC decided that this needed to be tested. That's right, another Jim. He set up a test with a dozen 100 foot lengths of low loss coax, that's just over 365m of coax. This included two dozen PL259 connectors and 11 barrel connectors. He tested using a calibrated HP generator/voltmeter rig. The total loss was and I quote: "one dB or so less than the loss specified for the cable by the manufacturer". So, the run with connectors was actually better than a single run of coax. In case you're wondering, he tested this up to 500 MHz. Jim K9YC points out that there is a grain of truth in the loss when using junk connectors which can introduce excessive loss and can overheat because the centre conductor is too small. I should mention that this might now debunk the connectors and loss issue, at least up to 500 MHz, but there is something to be said about reducing the number of failure points along the way. Having 35 connections instead of two is an added risk of water ingress, loose connections, short circuits in the connector and potential for other unexpected things like an intermittent connection. In the broader scheme of things, on a field day, or a temporary antenna set up, there's clearly nothing wrong with using some connectors to join together some coax. It also means that my investment into coax terminated SO239 connectors was based on poor information, though it does mean that I don't need to carry nearly as many barrel connectors around. Perhaps it's time to, as Jim puts it, put this "old wives' tale" to bed. In the same document Jim discusses many other questions in relation to coax and stub filters in your HF station. I came across the document while I was looking for information about coax stub filters, since I just participated in another contest where two stations in the same location were interfering with each other and I want to be prepared for next time. There's a lot to discuss in relation to coax stub filters, but in essence you create a quarter wave and half wave lengths of coax that are resonant at a range of different frequencies and the combination of these will either pass or block the band you care about. Given that I have a roll of Quad Shield RG6 lying around, I thought I'd try my hand at making a set of these for my next outing. No doubt I'll share my adventures with you as I explore and dig through the pile of information. Coax and connectors, stubs and filters, it's all in a days experimentation in this amazing hobby we call amateur radio. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio is now available as an eBook. In Volume 5 - Getting on air - read about the perfect SWR, how to become a better operator, what batteries to use, the difference between a propagation forecast and reality, the phonetic alphabet, antenna compromises, Q-codes and more. Search for my callsign - VK6FLAB - on your local Amazon store to have a Look inside. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio A question that comes up regularly is one about loss, specifically loss in the coax and connectors between your radio and your antenna. The general wisdom is that better coax gives you better results and more connectors is bad. Anything with double joiners, or such like is really bad. So, essentially we've been taught that we should have the shortest coax possible with as few connectors as possible. Pretty fair and reasonable, right? During the week I was introduced to a video made by Jim W6LG. Jim has a YouTube channel going back a couple of years with about a 100 videos. One video is loosely called Jim measures the loss in coax connectors and 100 foot of RG8X. In case you're wondering, 100 foot is 30m and 48cm of coax. I know this because the United States of America despite appearances to the contrary is actually metric, they defined the inch as being 2.54cm back in February of 1964. Other than driving on the wrong side of the road, they're not too strange and they talk on the air, a lot, so there's that. Back to Jim. He rummaged through his bits box, the one you have, the one that every amateur has, and if you don't then you clearly need to spend some time being with an Elmer and learning the ropes. Jim pulled out 30 odd connectors, SO239 and PL259 by the looks of things and daisy chained them all together. Jim has been around the block a few times and he has connectors going back to World War 2, so he really did find the bottom of his box to make his video. Anyway, he rigged up a testing tool to compare a single connector to 30 connectors. Measuring the difference, showing pretty graphs, lines and scales, the whole bit. He even compared 20m to 6m and tested both extensively and even re-did the tests with a kilowatt. Then as icing on the cake, you know the one, with a cherry on top, whipped cream on the side, he did the same test with the 30 odd meters of RG8X coax. I could leave you hanging here and let you go and find Jim's video, but that wouldn't be fair if you're currently in the middle of your commute to work like several people I know, so I'll share the outcome, but if you get the chance, the 5 minutes of your life that you'll spend with Jim are worth every second. So, what was the outcome of Jim's test you ask? Surprisingly, there was no discernible difference between one connector and 30 connectors in-line, not at 14 MHz, not at 50 MHz, not at 50 microvolts and not at 1 kilowatt, about 223 and a half million microvolts. Using RG8X coax, which sits about halfway between RG58 and RG213 in terms off loss, there was however 22% loss at 14 MHz and 40% at 50 MHz. Does make me wonder if it's the coax manufacturers who have been telling us to buy more coax rather than join two bits of coax together with a connector. Might have to do that test myself. Better go and start digging through my bits box. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The ultimate radio shack is a nirvana that most amateurs I've met strive for all their life. One of the many views I've heard on the topic keeps speaking to me, one of minimalism, less is more, what is the absolute minimum that you can use and still call yourself an amateur? As you know, I've recently moved and my shack was packed up into some boxes and is now slowly being unearthed. At the moment there are two antennas, a radio and a power supply. Keen observers will note that this is the same as it was last week. I've left well enough alone because of two reasons, one being that I'm trying to catch up on lost work during the move and the time where my internet connection was less than optimal, the other reason being that I've been attempting to work out what I actually want from my shack. Unlike my previous QTH, my current location affords me more flexibility, much more, as in four to six times more space to call my own. That's not to say that I was previously living in a shoebox and now I'm in a mansion, just that the distribution of space this time around is working out very well. So, I could go crazy, install computers, screens, multiple radios, a work bench, a soldering station, a weather monitoring station, a contest computer and the likes, or I could spend some time enjoying the breathing space around me and contemplate what I should do with this new found freedom. Initially I pictured setting up a dedicated DX cluster screen, a propagation screen, write some scripts to show the current maps using something like a raspberry pi, set up a dedicated space for doing contests and figure out how to mount several HF antennas, but the more I think about this, the more I wonder if this is what I really want. I've said many times that I adore contesting, it's a pull, a challenge, a bridge I have to cross, a mountain to climb, whatever the metaphor you see, but is that all there is about amateur radio that I enjoy? I know that I'm working on several bits of software, another DX project, some research and other activities, all related to amateur radio, but not specifically contesting. The thing I'd like to attempt to avoid, perhaps foolishly, given my less than latent hoarding tendencies, is the clutter that I see in other shacks. They're perfectly homely places, comfortable, full of interesting things, but I'm wondering what a minimalist shack might be instead, think of it as a "tiny houses" equivalent of getting rid of clutter in my life. What minimalist successes and failures can you share that helped you along the way? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio is now available as an eBook. In Volume 4 - Just get started - follow my journey through the amateur radio community, how to use QSL cards, mobile antennas on HF, licensing requirements, policing the airwaves, the super check partial list, packing up coax, lightning protection and more. Search for my callsign - VK6FLAB - on your local Amazon store to have a Look inside. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio There is some truth in simplicity. I've mentioned in the past that "suck it and see" is a perfectly valid solution to figuring out if something is going to work or not. I've moved into my new home, my new QTH. The roof is colour bond, that's basically a corrugated iron roof, painted in some random colour. I think it's grey, but don't quote me on that, could be green. Inside is a mezzanine floor, essentially carving out a space within the roof area. It's going to be my office and radio shack, so after setting up technology, I had a spare 15 minutes and came across a box that had my radio bits inside it. After setting up power I went and combed through some more crates to locate a magnetic mount and the vertical I use on 2m and 70cm in my car. The roof beam is held up by a steel post which forms part of the railing that surrounds the mezzanine floor. All conventional wisdom tells me that this is a poor place for an antenna. So, undeterred with little else in the way of simple options, I stuck my magnetic mount to the steel post with my vertical attached. Of course this doesn't mean that I have my vertical actually mounted vertically, in fact it's not, it's horizontal. So, there's one of two steel posts that holds up the steel roof, a magnetic mount stuck to the side of the post with a vertical, running horizontally. It keyed up the local repeater the first time. Made some contacts, spoke to three local amateurs to confirm that they could in fact hear me, swapped sides on the post, from parallel to the roof line to 90 degrees off the side with some improvement. Now as I said, on paper this shouldn't work. The roof beam runs north-south, the repeater is off to the east of the pitched roof, so the signal isn't making its way off the ends, it's going through the roof, or I've managed to use the roof post as an antenna, or the roof, or both, or the signal is bouncing down, over a metal fence, who knows. The point is, it works when anyone you'd have asked about this would have rightly told you that it won't. When I asked recently what the ideal shack should look like, one person who travelled a lot pointed out that just enough shack is a good place to start. Right now, I'm a power supply, radio and a horizontally mounted vertical into the minimal shack. I was asked if I'd tested HF yet. Seriously, the radio is 15 minutes out of the box. But in a word, yes. I put on a 10m vertical, also mounted horizontally, same magnetic mount and I can hear the local beacon on 10m, 12m and 15m, a vast improvement on my previous HF experiences at home. Overall the noise on the bands seems less than it was in my old house - this could be because of shielding of the roof, or it could just be less actual noise, or because my antenna is mounted horizontally. Previously I had S9 noise, now it peaks at S5, but on average it's around S2-3. This is not a proper test by any stretch of my imagination and while initial indicators are better, this is by no means a definitive test of the HF band. For my next trick I'll be taking a closer look at the railing that surrounds my office, It's made from stainless steel stranded wire, the stuff you find on a boat, with seven strands to choose from, in three separate orientations, so plenty of room for experimentation and more if I dare to use the strands on the staircase, seriously, I won't be. One thing I will do before I start keying up for the next HF contact is do some electro magnetic radiation research to learn if I'm in the danger zone, or if my family might be exposed to unsafe levels of RF radiation. Normally this isn't an issue with 5 watts when the antenna is on a roof, but now I have it indoors I'll spend some time making sure. I still have a magnetic loop on loan from a friend, packed away in a box that I'll unearth in the next couple of days to see what it has to say about the new RF environment. As I said this is just the beginning and I've not yet been calling CQ or checking out the local HF nets. What crazy set-ups do you admit to, that actually worked, even though they shouldn't have? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio From time-to-time people move and their shack tends to move with them. For me that move is happening right now, I'm moving all of 900m up the road, a long story in itself, but perhaps best told over a camp fire far from civilisation. As I started the process of working out what needed to be done I realised that I made a few rookie errors. The first one, one that I've made before, but at the time my excuse was that I knew nothing about amateur radio - some say I still don't - this time I was busy focussing on above ground power, pole-top transformers and high-speed internet. I forgot to check mobile phone coverage, forgot to bring a radio and forgot to listen on HF. I will no doubt find out what the state of these things is when I actually move, in a few days from now, but my rationalisation was essentially, "I'm not able to operate from home as it is, so it won't get any worse and if I'm lucky, it might get better." Frankly I didn't have the heart to tell my long-suffering partner that there was yet another condition, you know among the "must have actual proper internet, not the promise of one next year", "must have space for my office" and "a place that can be locked up in the garage". I skipped the "must be amateur radio friendly" tick box for familial peace, and as I said, it cannot get worse and it might get better. Looking around my office now, it occurs to me that I'm going to have to remove the coax that runs through the window, which involves either cutting the coax, or de-soldering the connector. I suspect that it will become the most expedient of the two, given that de-soldering involves having to find my soldering iron among the half-packed-up house, cutting looks like it. I'll tell myself that it's good because I'll find out if my coax is waterlogged, but between you and me, it's because I'm impatient to get moving. The remaining part of this is the thing that's on the other end of the coax, the metal shiny thing on the roof, known to most of the amateur community as a 10m vertical, a metal rod, resonant on the 10m band, about 2m long, clamped to the gable of my pergola, will have to come down. Of course at that point I'll be off the air. No counting how long that will last, but I'm hopeful that a quick-and-dirty magnetic mount will get me up and running shortly after the move. Of course in an ideal world I'd already have measured out the future radio-shack, have a room away from the house, insulated, away from the fence-line, lots of backyard with a choice selection of high trees, no noisy neighbours, council regulations that encourage radio amateurs and a coffee machine, a bed and while I'm at it, air conditioning. Who am I kidding? I'll likely be able to put my radio somewhere in a corner on my desk, much like it is right now and if I'm lucky, I'll be able to be on-air without disturbing the family. This all in stark contrast with a friend of mine who asked the community a simple question. Where would you put your radio shack if you needed fast internet and nearby medical services, anywhere in the state. The answers were many and varied, from ludicrous to amazing, from off the cuff to well researched, just waiting for the win on the weekend lottery to be able to pay for it. Our shack is an integral part of our hobby and while I see some amateurs go out of their way to find and position their ideal shack, I see many more just making do with what they have. No doubt there is a balance to be found. I'm curious to hear what criteria do you have for your shack? What things are essential and what would be nice to have. If money wasn't a problem, what would your ideal shack look like and where would it be? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio is now available as an eBook. In Volume 3 - Share the fun - follow the third year of my journey, how to make contacts on HF, how to go on-air QRP, propagation planning, how to deal with trolls, online resources and more. Search for my callsign - VK6FLAB - on your local Amazon store to have a Look inside. I'm Onno VK6FLAB