Foundations of Amateur Radio
474 episodes - English - Latest episode: 20 days ago - ★★★★★ - 30 ratingsStarting in the wonderful hobby of Amateur or HAM Radio can be daunting and challenging but can be very rewarding. Every week I look at a different aspect of the hobby, how you might fit in and get the very best from the 1000 hobbies that Amateur Radio represents. Note that this podcast started in 2011 as "What use is an F-call?".
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Episodes
It's all just text!
April 06, 2024 16:00 - 5 minutes - 10.5 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio The other day I had an interesting exchange with a contest manager and it's not the first time I've had this dance. As you might know, pretty much every weekend marks at least one on-air amateur radio contest. Following rules set out by a contest the aim is to make contact or a QSO with stations, taking note of each, in a process called logging. Using logging software is one way to keep track of who you talked to, a piece of paper is another. If your station is ...
Are you up for a global party?
March 30, 2024 16:00 - 4 minutes - 8.07 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Did you know that on the 18th of April, 1925 a group of radio amateurs had a meeting in Paris? During that meeting they formed an organisation that still exists today. Before I get into that, let me share a list of names. - Wireless Institute of Australia - Radio Amateurs of Canada - Radio Society of Great Britain - Vereniging voor Experimenteel Radio Onderzoek in Nederland or if you don't speak Dutch, can't imagine why, the Association for Experimental Radio Re...
What's with all that lack of noise?
March 23, 2024 16:00 - 5 minutes - 10.6 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio During the weekend I participated in a contest. Before you get all excited, it was only for a couple of hours over a few different sittings and while I had plenty of fun, of the eleven QRP, or low power, contacts I made, nine were on VHF and UHF, two were on 10m HF. Mind you, 3,200 and 3,500 km contacts are nothing to sneeze at. It has been a while since I've actually been on HF, so long that it felt like turning on a new radio and getting used to it all over ag...
The skyhook dilemma ...
March 16, 2024 16:00 - 5 minutes - 9.38 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Whenever I'm out in the bush in the process of erecting some or other wire contraption, uh, antenna, I cannot help but think of the iconic Australian rock band, Skyhooks, not for their glam rock inspired music, nor for their pure mathematics and computer science degree holding guitarist, but for their name. In antenna erection, a skyhook is called for when you point at a spot in the sky and will into being an attachment point for the wire antenna in your hand. I...
Technology at its finest ...
March 09, 2024 16:00 - 7 minutes - 13.6 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio So, the 19th of February 2024 came and went. As it was, my day started with the highest minimum that month, 27.5 degrees Celsius, that's the minimum overnight temperature. The maximum that day here in Perth, Western Australia was 42.3 degrees. The day before was the highest maximum for the month, 42.9. If you're not sure, that's over 109 in Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit's scale. That same day the Australian regulator, the ACMA, launched a new era in Amateur Radio. M...
The Art of finding an operating location
March 02, 2024 16:00 - 3 minutes - 6.45 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio When you operate your station portable, either for fun, or for points, you might be surprised to learn that getting on air and making noise isn't quite as simple as bringing a radio and turning it on. Aside from the need for a reliable power supply, batteries, generator, solar panels, or a magic mains socket, there is the requirement for bringing enough gear to get on air, but not so much that setting up takes days, or even hours. The decisions you make are inf...
Getting things done .. or not.
February 24, 2024 16:00 - 6 minutes - 11.6 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Have you ever had a day when nothing you started actually got anywhere? I've had a fortnight like that. Several weeks ago I wrote a couple of articles about emergency communications and its tenuous relationship with our hobby. As a result I managed to get a week ahead of myself and started using that week to do some long overdue analysis of the WSPR or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter data set. I've started this process several times and I finally had a whole for...
Writing to the regulator about amateur beacon and repeater licenses.
February 17, 2024 16:00 - 5 minutes - 9.87 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio A few weeks ago I discovered that the regulations for amateur radio in Australia had some definitions that caused me to wonder if 2,312 amateurs in VK, me among them, had been operating illegally? Specifically it appeared that using a WSPR or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter transmitter of any kind, both computer controlled and stand-alone beacons, was contrary to what was permitted in the rules, since in Australia an "amateur beacon station" means a station in ...
What is amateur radio as an emergency response?
February 10, 2024 16:00 - 6 minutes - 11 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio I recently discussed some of the notions of amateur radio as emergency response. The idea that you might jump into the breach and be a hero is appealing and often celebrated. The American Radio Relay League, or ARRL, proudly tells the story of two amateur radio emergency communication events. One, of a person who fell in their bathroom and happened to have a handheld radio that they used to contact another amateur who contacted emergency services. The story goes...
What is the right mode for emergency communications?
February 03, 2024 16:00 - 5 minutes - 9.94 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Amateur radio is an activity that falls between two camps, those who think of it as a service and those who approach it as a hobby. I think that the notion of amateur radio as a service is often repeated, but in my time as part of this community, I've seen little evidence of actual service. That said, the idea of amateur radio as a service is often linked to emergency communications, for example, a phrase used by the Wireless Institute of Australia is "Amateur R...
What is a repeater or a beacon ... really?
January 27, 2024 16:00 - 6 minutes - 12 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio The other day I came across an amateur who expressed concern that someone was using a frequency set aside for repeater use with their hotspot. Band plan issues aside, and you are encouraged to send an email to [email protected] with the link to the official band plan that applies to your DX entity, in my experience it's not unusual for an amateur who is configuring their so-called hotspot to use such a frequency. While you might be familiar with the concept of a mo...
New arrangements for Australian Amateur Radio
January 20, 2024 16:00 - 6 minutes - 12.4 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio From the 19th of February 2024, the ACMA, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the regulator, is modifying the rules for amateur radio in Australia by moving to an amateur class license where all amateurs will operate under the same license instead of under an individual one. You must be qualified to operate under the new class license and all currently licensed radio amateurs should now have been issued with a recognition certificate for their cur...
How to see 56 MHz of bandwidth...
January 13, 2024 16:00 - 7 minutes - 14.2 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio The other day I stumbled on a project called Maia SDR by Daniel EA4GPZ. Maia, spelled Mike Alpha India Alpha, is a star in the Pleiades cluster. The Maia SDR project homepage proclaims that it is "An open-source FPGA-based SDR project focusing on the ADALM Pluto". Now, I can completely understand if that collection of words is gibberish to you, but take it from me, it's not, let me explain. PlutoSDR or Pluto is the common name of a piece of hardware which is of...
The Art of operating QRP
January 06, 2024 16:00 - 6 minutes - 11.6 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio The attraction to amateur radio for me lies in the idea that it provides a framework for experimentation and learning. There's never an end to either. Each time you go on-air is an opportunity to do both and every chance I get, I cannot help being sucked into another adventure. My weekly scribbles are an attempt to both document what I've been up to and to encourage others to take a step on the path that I'm discovering, moment by moment, week by week. One of th...
Finding the right frequency.
December 30, 2023 16:00 - 15 minutes - 28.3 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Today I'm going to spend a little longer with you than usual, but then, I think this is important and it's good to end the year on a bang. Have you ever attempted to make contact with a specific DXCC entity and spent some time exploring the band plan to discover what the best frequency might be to achieve that? If you got right into it, you might have gone so far as to attempt to locate the band plan that applies to your particular target. If you have, what I'm ...
It's the little things ...
December 23, 2023 16:00 - 6 minutes - 11.5 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Walking into your shack is often a joyous experience. You take a moment to smile at your setup and, at least mentally, rub your hands in glee anticipating some fun. Well, that is how it is for me, but recently it's been less of that and more of an audible groan at the accumulated cruft that makes it nigh on impossible to sit down, let alone achieve anything fun. It's not as bad as it could be. I'm forced to keep my station at least operational to host my weekly ...
The visibility of our radio community.
December 16, 2023 16:00 - 6 minutes - 11.4 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Cars have been here for well over a century and so has radio. Cars pretty much start when Carl Benz first applied for a patent for his "vehicle powered by a gas engine" on the 29th of January 1886 which is regarded as the birth certificate for automobiles. Radio starts as a thing when Heinrich Hertz proves that radio waves exist in 1888. Since then things have changed, a lot. Today, both these technologies, cars and radio, are everywhere. It's estimated that t...
Report on Radio Harmonic Power
December 09, 2023 16:00 - 4 minutes - 8.89 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio There is a perception in the community that the hobby of amateur radio is an expensive way to have fun. While it's entirely possible to spend thousands of dollars on equipment, in much the same way that it's possible if your preferred hobby is golf, getting started does not have to require that you start planting money trees. Lots of fun can be had using cheap amateur radio transceivers that are used all around the world. If you do start with such a radio, the c...
What about promoting the hobby?
December 02, 2023 16:00 - 6 minutes - 12.2 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Amateur radio is an activity enjoyed by many people around the world. How many exactly is cause for debate. The most recent official figure we have is from the IARU, the International Amateur Radio Union. In 2020 it counted over 3 million people, but an article written a year later puts that figure at 1.75 million. In Australia there's a common narrative that the total amateur population is in undeniable decline, some think that it's on a stark decline. Interest...
Spontaneously getting out and about ...
November 25, 2023 16:00 - 5 minutes - 9.32 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio For years I've been hosting a weekly net called F-troop. It's a one hour opportunity for new and returning amateurs to get together and share their questions, and sometimes answers, about anything and everything amateur radio, with side trips into astronomy, electronics, circuit boards, testing gear and whatever else takes our fancy on the day. The net runs for an hour every Saturday morning starting at midnight UTC, which for some is a time when they're fast asl...
Failure to simulate ...
November 18, 2023 16:00 - 6 minutes - 11.5 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio During the week I started a new project. If you know me at all, this is not unusual. Having worked in the IT industry for nearly 40 years it's also not unusual that projects have a way of surprising you and this project was no different. Recently I've been talking about antennas, a topic close to the heart of many amateurs and one that garners a lot of opinion and in my experience, much less in the way of facts, so being a firm believer of facts, I set out to ad...
Let's compare the same antenna in different locations...
November 11, 2023 16:00 - 5 minutes - 10.7 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Let's compare the same antenna in different locations... Over the years I've spent many hours building and testing antennas. I've talked about this and discussed how there is essentially an infinite variety of antennas that can exist. To give you a sense of this, picture a basic dipole antenna, two bits of wire, same length, connected to a feed-point. We're doing this experiment in space, so we're not concerned with trees or rope, or the ground for that matter, ...
Let's talk about reciprosity...
November 04, 2023 16:00 - 6 minutes - 11.5 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio All antennas have a radiation pattern that charts on a sphere where it radiates more and where it radiates less than the theoretical isotropic radiator. This comparison is expressed as dBi antenna gain. There is a fundamental concept in antenna design called "reciprocity". Essentially it means that transmit and receive behaviour of an antenna is identical. In other words, the radiation pattern of an antenna applies for both transmitting and receiving of signals....
Let's talk about gain ...
October 28, 2023 16:00 - 5 minutes - 10 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio After recently talking about noise, today I want to discuss gain, specifically antenna gain. When you say that your antenna has 18 dBi gain, what does that mean? This entire discussion starts with an isotropic radiator or antenna. It's often described as the perfect antenna, but rarely is there any description on how that actually works, so I'd like to start there. Before we dig in too much, it's worth remembering that an isotropic antenna is a thought experime...
Let's talk about noise ...
October 21, 2023 16:00 - 5 minutes - 10.3 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Today I'd like to talk about noise, but before I do, I need to cover some ground. Recently I explored the idea that, on their own, neither antenna, nor coax, made a big difference in the potential for a contact when compared to the impact of path loss between two stations. I went on to point out that you'd be unlikely to even notice the difference in normal communications. Only when you're working at the margins, when the signal is barely detectable, would addin...
How much does your coax and antenna matter?
October 14, 2023 16:00 - 7 minutes - 13.3 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Recently I explained some of the reasons why I've shifted to using dBm to discuss power. You might recall that 1 Watt is defined as 1,000 mW and that's represented by 30 dBm. 10 Watts is 40 dBm, 400 Watts, the maximum power output in Australia is 56 dBm and 1,500 Watts, the maximum in the USA, is just under 62 dBm. My favourite power level, 5 Watts, is 37 dBm. I mentioned that using dBm allows us to create a continuous scale between the transmitted power and the...
Gadgets on Demand
October 07, 2023 16:00 - 5 minutes - 9.21 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio The other day I went looking for a software defined radio or SDR for HF. This happened because all such devices on my desk are rated at higher frequencies and I've still not managed to fix the broken SMA board connector on the transverter I purchased over a year and a half ago. In case you're wondering, the design has two SMA connectors attached at either end of a printed circuit board, also known as a PCB. The board slides into a metal case and both connectors ...
All the power in the observable universe expressed in milliwatts ...
September 30, 2023 16:00 - 6 minutes - 12.5 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio If you've been following my amateur radio journey, you'll have likely noticed that I've been straying from the fold. The words I use for power have been changing. I've reduced references to Watt and increased use of the term decibel. Initially this was incidental, recently it's been more of a deliberate decision and I'd like to explain how this came to be. It starts with representing really big and really small numbers. Let's start big. On 14 September, 2015 t...
Between decibels and milliwatts ...
September 23, 2023 16:00 - 5 minutes - 9.99 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Between decibels and milliwatts ... As you might recall, I've been working towards using a cheap $20 RTL-SDR dongle to measure the second and third harmonic of a handheld radio in an attempt to discover how realistic that is as a solution when compared to using professional equipment like a Hewlett Packard 8920A RF Communications Test Set. I spent quite some time discussing how to protect the receiver against the transmitter output and described a methodology t...
Wet and Blue adventures with coax ...
September 16, 2023 16:00 - 5 minutes - 9.32 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Over the weekend a friend of mine convinced me to help plant some trees. Mind you, I was told that this was going to be a blue tree painting day. The Blue Tree Project is now a global awareness campaign that paints dead trees blue to spread the message that "it's OK to not be OK", and help break down the stigma that's still largely attached to mental health. In the process, I learnt that my physical stamina is not what it once was and my current appetite for ben...
Checking attenuation numbers ...
September 09, 2023 16:00 - 6 minutes - 12.1 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Before we start I should give you fair warning. There are many moving parts in what I'm about to discuss and there's lots of numbers coming. Don't stress too much about the exact numbers. In essence, what I'm attempting is to explore how we can reduce the power output from a transmitter in such a way that it doesn't blow up a receiver whilst making sure that the signal is strong enough that we can actually measure it. With that in mind, recently I discussed the ...
How much attenuation is enough?
September 02, 2023 16:00 - 5 minutes - 10.9 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Recently I had the opportunity to use a piece of professional equipment to measure the so-called unwanted or spurious emissions that a transceiver might produce. In describing this I finished off with the idea that you could use a $20 RTL-SDR dongle to do these measurements in your own shack. I did point out that you should use enough attenuation to prevent the white smoke from escaping from your dongle, but it left a question, how much attenuation is enough? An...
Starting to measure spurious emissions ...
August 26, 2023 16:00 - 6 minutes - 11.9 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio At a recent local HAMfest we set-up a table to measure second and third harmonic emissions from any handheld radio that came our way. The process was fun and we learnt lots and in due course we plan to publish a report on our findings. When we received a handheld, we would disconnect the antenna, and replace it with a short length of coax and connect it to a spectrum analyser. We would then trigger the Push To Talk, or PTT button and measure several things. We'd...
Gathering Data rather than Opinions ...
August 19, 2023 16:00 - 5 minutes - 9.84 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio There's nothing quite as satisfying as the click of a well designed piece of equipment. It's something that tickles the brain and done well it makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. If time was on my side and I wasn't going somewhere else with this, I'd now regale you with research on the phenomenon, I'd explore the community of people building mechanical keyboards and those who restore equipment to their former glory, instead I'm encouraging you to ...
Jumping into the unknown ...
August 12, 2023 16:00 - 6 minutes - 11.9 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio If you walk into your radio shack and switch on a light, the result is instantaneous, one moment it's dark, the next it's not. What if I told you that as immediate as it appears, there is actually a small delay between you closing the circuit and the light coming on. Likely the distance between your switch and your light is less than say 10 meters, so the delay is likely to be less than 33 nanoseconds, not something you'd notice unless you're out to measure it. ...
How fast is Morse code?
August 05, 2023 16:00 - 7 minutes - 12.9 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio The first official telegram to pass between two continents was a letter of congratulations from Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom to President of the United States James Buchanan on 16 August 1858. The text is captured in the collection of the US Library of Congress. It's a low resolution image of a photo of a wood engraving. Based on me counting the characters, the text from the Queen to the President is about 650 characters. IEEE reports it as 98 words, wher...
Will the real inventor of Morse code please stand?
July 29, 2023 16:00 - 6 minutes - 12.8 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Morse code is a way for people to send information across long distances. The code we use today, made from dit and dah elements is nothing like the code demonstrated and attributed to Samuel Morse in 1837. Over years and with assistance from Professor of Chemistry Leonard Gail and Physicist Joseph Henry, then Professor of Literature, Samuel Morse, and mechanically minded Alfred Vail developed an electrical telegraph system that automatically moved a paper tape a...
Is Morse really built around the most popular letters in English?
July 22, 2023 16:00 - 6 minutes - 12.3 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Thanks to several high profile races we already know that sending Morse is faster than SMS. Recently I started digging into the underpinnings of Morse code to answer the question, "Can you send Morse faster than binary encoded ASCII?" Both ASCII, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange and Morse are techniques to encode information for electronic transmission. One is built for humans, the other for computers. To answer the question, which is faste...
Adventures with Morse Code
July 15, 2023 16:00 - 6 minutes - 11.3 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio If you've ever looked at Morse Code, you might be forgiven if you conclude that it appears to be a less than ideal way of getting information from point A to point B. The idea is simple, based on a set of rules, you translate characters, one at a time, into a series of dits and dahs, each spaced apart according to the separation between each element, each character and each word. The other day I came across a statement that asserted that you could send Morse fas...
The nature and ownership of information
July 08, 2023 16:00 - 8 minutes - 14.7 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Have you ever made an international contact using amateur radio and used that towards tracking an award like for example the DXCC? If you're not familiar, it's an award for amateurs who make contact with at least 100 "distinct geographic and political entities". In 1935 the American Radio Relay League, or ARRL published an article by Clinton B. DeSoto, W1CBD, titled: "How to Count Countries Worked: A New DX Scoring System". In the article he asks: "Are Tasmania ...
Asking a professional in the community...
July 01, 2023 16:00 - 4 minutes - 8.14 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio In the earlier days of my career I worked in a computing centre at a university surrounded by people with different interests and experiences in computing. There were programmers, hardware engineers, technicians, sales people, administrators, educators, support staff, statisticians and even a librarian. There wasn't a lot of socialising or foosball, but every now and then we'd bump into each other in the lunchroom and talk about things that were not work related...
Planning and making lemonade
June 24, 2023 16:00 - 4 minutes - 8.44 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio The other weekend there was an amateur radio contest on. Not surprising if you realise that's true for most weekends. For a change, I knew about this contest before it started, because I missed out a year ago, so I did the smart thing to add it to my diary with an alert a month out. In this particular contest there's points to be made by being a so-called roving station, that is, one that moves around during the contest and in the past that's how I've participat...
Where is your community and how resilient is it?
June 17, 2023 16:00 - 6 minutes - 11.4 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio During the week, prompted by a protest on popular social media site Reddit, I rediscovered that there are other places to spend time. It sounds absurd now, but until then much of my social interaction with the world was via a single online presence. This didn't happen overnight. Over the years more and more of my time was spent on Reddit engaging with other humans around topics of my interest, amateur radio being one of them. As you might know, I'm the host of a...
What is our legacy?
June 10, 2023 16:00 - 7 minutes - 13.1 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Our hobby has been around for over a century. The Wireless Institute of Australia, or WIA, is the oldest amateur association on the globe, having just marked 113 years since formation. The American Radio Relay League, or ARRL, is four years younger, founded in 1914. I'm mentioning these two associations because they documented their journey through many of the years since foundation. The ARRL has published QST magazine since 1915 and the WIA has published Amateu...
Accolades in Amateur Radio?
June 03, 2023 16:00 - 3 minutes - 7.01 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Today I'd like to start with saying thank you to the Wireless Institute of Australia for awarding me the Brenda Edmonds Education Award "in recognition of outstanding service in the education of the Amateur Radio Community and advancement of licensees." It's an unexpected honour and a thrill that leads me to a question about how we recognise the people around us. Over the years I've been a member of around a dozen radio amateur clubs and associations. To my rec...
A Linux contest logger ...
May 27, 2023 16:00 - 3 minutes - 6.96 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio As you might know I'm in the process of building a cross-platform, open source, contest logger. Right now that project is at the stage where there is a proof of concept that you can use and install as a progressive web app on any web browser. It's intended as a starting point for discussion. Note that this is a long way from the stage where you might want to actually use it for any contest, it's not feature complete and if it breaks you get to keep both parts. I...
Considering the language of our community ...
May 20, 2023 16:00 - 4 minutes - 8.36 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio A curious thing happens when you become part of the amateur community, you start to talk like an amateur. This phenomenon isn't specific to being a radio amateur, it happens whenever you join any community. Lead by example, one word at a time, you start to inherit a vocabulary that represents that community. Amateur radio, rife with acronyms and so-called Q-Codes, a standardised set of three-letter codes that start with the letter "Q", does this in spades. If yo...
Measuring the Solar Flux Index at home ...
May 13, 2023 16:00 - 5 minutes - 10.3 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Recently the Australian Space Weather Forecasting Centre issued an alert for a Coronal Mass Ejection or CME expected to impact Earth within 24 to 36 hours. This was presented within the context of seeing the resulting Aurora, but as a user of the HF radio spectrum, I'm subscribed to their email list, not for the pretty pictures, though I would be delighted to actually see them with my mark one eyeball, I'm on the list for the impact on propagation for my hobby. ...
Propagation during the 2023 Solar Eclipse
May 06, 2023 16:00 - 5 minutes - 10.9 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio On Thursday the 20th of April, 2023 at 04:17:56 UTC the world was subjected to a rare event, a hybrid solar eclipse. In Perth I experienced a partial eclipse and people lucky enough to be directly in line, places like Ningaloo Reef, Exmouth and Barrow Island, experienced a total eclipse. Timor-Leste had the experience of the peak total eclipse. At the time I went into my shack and refreshed the WSPR or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter beacon map I have open and ...
Doing the same thing over and over again ...
April 29, 2023 16:00 - 3 minutes - 5.78 MBFoundations of Amateur Radio Over the years I've used the phrase, which I shamelessly stole, that amateur radio is a thousand hobbies in one. I've discussed countless different activities and adventures that all fall under the banner of amateur radio, in one way or another. Since becoming a licensed radio amateur I've had the opportunity to speak with many different amateurs and hear their views on what amateur radio means to them. Based on their responses I've often found myself exploring ...