Foundations of Amateur Radio Onno (VK6FLAB)

Foundations of Amateur Radio

A great deal of energy is expended on the notion of operating portable. I've talked about this plenty of times. Issues like power, antennas, suitable radios, logging, transport and time of day all come to mind. Some activities are framed specifically as portable operations. Things like Summits On The Air, or SOTA, Parks On The Air, or POTA, World Wide Flora and Fauna, or WWFF. There's field days, portable contests and specific activities like the 2014 activation of FT5ZM on Amsterdam Island and the 2016 activation of VK0EK on Heard Island. I mention those last two specifically since I had the distinct pleasure of meeting those teams and had the opportunity to interview each amateur whilst enjoying a typical Aussie BBQ. I'll point out that no shrimps were thrown anywhere. You can find those interviews with FT5ZM and VK0EK on my website at vk6flab.com.

Each of these activities are framed in the context of the activity, as-in, you climb a mountain with a radio and then you make noise.

That's not the only way to go portable. One of my friends checks in to the weekly F-troop as a portable station most weeks. Glynn VK6PAW gets in his car, drives to some random location and participates from wherever he happens to be at the time. In doing so, the radio part of it, is the add-on between leaving home and arriving at a destination for a cup of coffee.

Charles NK8O works all over the United States. When he checks into F-troop, he's rarely in the same place two weeks in a row. In between work and sleep you'll find him activating a nearby park. He's been doing this for quite some time. While this is a POTA activity, he finds parks that fit into his life, rather than point at a park and make a specific trip there to activate it.

Before I continue, I'd like to mention that I'm not dismissing making a specific trip. Far from it. The point I'm making is that making any such trip is extra work. It's an added activity in your life. Whilst entirely enjoyable, there's plenty of times where that's just not possible.

Instead I'd like to look at this from the other side.

Both Glynn and Charles have a radio with them. Perhaps not all the time, but often enough that they can activate their station when they happen to be in a suitable location.

I've similarly put a radio into my luggage when going on a holiday. It might transpire that it stays there, or it might be that I happen to find a picnic table at the side of a water reservoir that happens to be in the shade and just begging to try a radio at.

In other words, if you have a radio handy, you can handily use it when the opportunity comes to pass.

So, what do you bring with you? If you're like Charles, you'll have a QRP radio, a Morse key, a battery and a wire antenna. Glynn has a vertical that lives in his car and the radio is bolted in.

For a while I had my radio permanently mounted in my car and I suspect that will return there in the not too distant future. It was removed for a service that involved the transmission being replaced after it failed after only a 140,000 km on the clock. Thankfully a fellow amateur had a spare car we could use, but I wasn't game to drill holes for an antenna and I'm pretty sure they were pretty happy about that.

The more I look at the activities that others report on, the more I have come to realise that the people who get on-air the most are the ones who have found a way to weave radio into their day-to-day life, rather than rely on specific amateur radio activities and plans.

I confess that I miss sitting by a local lake making noise or finding a random car park with shade that is just begging for someone, anyone, to turn on a radio and have a go.

So, how do you approach radio in your life, and how might you find ways to incorporate it into the gaps?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio

As a self-proclaimed radio nerd I'm aware of the various amateur bands. Depending on your license, your familiarity will likely vary. I've never been on 6m for example, but I have a good working relationship with the 10m band.

Amateur bands aside, there's plenty of other activity across the radio spectrum. It occurred to me that I've never actually stopped to take note of what specifically I can hear from my own station. Think of it as a station frequency survey.

Obvious sources are AM and FM radio broadcasters. Then there's the aviation frequencies, the local control tower, arrival and departure frequencies as well as Perth airport ground on occasion. There's the ATIS, the Automatic Terminal Information Service. There was a time when I could hear various aviation non-directional beacons, or NDBs, that are near me, but many of them were switched off in 2016. I haven't yet found a current list of which of the 213 remaining navigation aids that form part of the Backup Navigation Network across Australia are still on the air.

As it happens, there's currently some horrendous noise on HF with several new potential sources that I have not yet identified, a pool pump, a bank of solar panels, plasma TV, you name it.

Staying with aviation, I've briefly played with Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, better known as ADS-B, or ADSB, on 1090 MHz. If you have a PlutoSDR, I updated the dump1090 program to use Open Street Map several years ago. You can find it on my VK6FLAB GitHub page. If you want to see some very interesting visualisations for ADSB, have a look at the adsb.exposed website.

Further up the frequencies are things like 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi. In a previous life, before I was an amateur, I played with Ku-band satellite frequencies in the range between 12 to 18 GHz, specifically DVB-S, or Digital Video Broadcasting - Satellite.

While that's an impressive list of things, it leaves an awful lot of unexplored territory. For example, the local trains and public transit authority, the fire and emergency services, the volunteer bush fire brigades, water bombers and the like.

I've not even looked at local digital services like DVB-T, that's the terrestrial standard, or the local radio version, DAB+, or Digital Audio Broadcasting.

Then there's pagers, and countless marine services and channels, the ubiquitous CB frequencies and a couple of pirate ones, and global services like GPS, weather satellite and other Earth monitoring services.

Note that I'm specifically highlighting things that I can hear at my station, or more precisely, should be able to hear. I'm in the process of figuring out which particular tools I need to actually have a stab at hearing and decoding things like weather satellite.

I wouldn't be me if I didn't try this with my hands tied behind my back. I'm limiting myself to things I can hear using the antennas that I already have. I don't, well not at this stage, want to start building and installing more antennas, probably because in the not too distant future I plan to finally erect a replacement HF antenna, but that's a story for another day.

As for now, I'm plotting noise levels using a tool called rtl_power. I'm working on figuring out what extra noise has joined my environment. I'm also starting to make a concerted effort to document specifically what I've actually heard. Not so much a continuous log, more of a one-way log if you like, some might call it a shortwave listener log.

What RF sources have you heard in your shack and how many of them did you document?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations 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 expecting to make less than a dozen contacts per hour, paper is a perfectly valid way of keeping track, but it's likely that most contests expect you to transcribe your scribbles into electronic form. Which electronic form is normally explicitly stated in the rules for that contest.

While I mention rules, you should check the rules for each contest you participate in. Rules change regularly, sometimes significantly, often subtly with little edge cases captured in updated requirements.

On the software side, using electronic logging, even transcribing your paper log, can get you to unexpected results. I participated in a local contest and logged with a tool I've used before, xlog.

Contests often specify that you must submit logs using something like Cabrillo or ADIF. There are contests that provide a web page where you're expected to paste or manually enter your contacts in some specific format.

Using xlog I exported into each of the available formats, Cabrillo, ADIF, Tab Separated Values or TSV and a format I've never heard of, EDI. The format, according to a VHF Handbook I read, Electronic Data Interchange, was recommended by the IARU Region 1 during a meeting of the VHF/UHF/Microwave committee in Vienna in 1998 and later endorsed by the Executive Committee.

The contest I participated in asked for logs in Excel, Word, ASCII text or the output of electronic logging programs. Based on that I opened up the Cabrillo file and noticed that the export was gibberish. It had entries that bore no relation to the actual contest log entries, so I set about fixing them, one line at a time, to ensure that what I was submitting was actually a true reflection of my log.

So, issue number one is that xlog does not appear to export Cabrillo or ADIF properly. The TSV and EDI files appear, at least at first glance, to have the correct information, and the xlog internal file also contains the correct information. Much food for head-scratching. I'm running the latest version, so I'll dig in further when I have a moment.

In any case, I received a lovely email from the contest manager who apologised for not being able to open up my submitted log because they didn't have access to anything that could open up a Cabrillo file. We exchanged a few emails and I eventually sent a Comma Separated Values, or CSV file, and my log was accepted.

What I discovered was that their computer was "helping" in typical unhelpful "Clippy" style, by refusing to open up a Cabrillo file, claiming that it didn't have software installed that could read it.

Which brings me to issue number two.

All these files, Cabrillo, ADIF, TSV, CSV, EDI, even xlog's internal file are all text files. You can open them up in any text editor, on any platform, even Windows, which for reasons only the developers at Microsoft understand, refuses to open a text file if it has the wrong file extension. This "helpful" aspect of the platform is extended into their email service, "Outlook.com" previously called "Hotmail", which refuses to download "unknown" files, like the Cabrillo file with a ".cbr" extension.

With the demise of Windows Notepad, another annoying aspect has been removed, that of line-endings. To signify the end of a line MacOS, Windows and Linux have different ideas on how to indicate that a line of text has come to an end. In Windows-land, and DOS before it, use Carriage Return followed by Linefeed. Unix, including Linux and FreeBSD use Linefeed only; OS X also uses Linefeed, but cla

Foundations 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 Research in the Netherlands,
- Deutscher Amateur Radio Club, I'll let you figure out what that translates to,
- American Radio Relay League

Language aside, one of these is not like the other.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, at a moment likely before either of us was born, Hiram, wanted to send a message from his amateur station in Hartford to a friend in Springfield. That's 26 miles, or less than half an hour up the road via I-91.

One minor problem.

At the time, in 1914, using amateur radio for anything beyond 20 miles or so was considered a miracle, so Hiram asked a mate at the halfway point in Windsor Locks to relay a message on his behalf. Soon after he convinced his local radio club in Hartford that building an organised network of stations to relay amateur radio messages was worth doing and the American Radio Relay League was born. Co-founded with radio experimenter Clarence Tuska, Hiram Percy Maxim became its first President. He held many callsigns, most recently W1AW.

At the time, longwave, the longer the better, was considered the pinnacle of communication technology. The airwaves were becoming crowded, so amateurs, in search of more space and always up for a challenge, started experimenting at the edges. The shortest wavelength available to amateurs at the time was the 200m band, or 1,500 kHz. In December 1921 the first successful transatlantic transmissions were achieved. Hundreds of North American amateurs were heard across Europe on 200m and several were heard in reply.

In a dance that continues to this day, new technology replacing old, spark gap transmitters were replaced by vacuum tubes and using those amateurs were able to use even shorter wavelengths. While technically illegal to operate on higher frequencies, the authorities put their fingers in their ears and let those crazy amateurs play on those useless bands.

This is a world without international prefixes, no VK, PA or G stations, so amateurs were forced to come up with their own system to indicate the continent and country.

This was clearly organised chaos at the edges of legality, in many countries amateur radio operation was actively discouraged or even illegal. Soon the same person who came up with the notion of the ARRL led the way and organised a meeting in Paris. That meeting, on the 18th of April, 1925 marks the forming of the IARU, the International Amateur Radio Union and as I said, it exists today.

That date, the 18th of April is globally, well at least in the amateur radio community, uh, well, small pockets of the amateur radio community, known as World Amateur Radio Day.

2024 marks the beginning of a year of celebration for the centenary of the organisation that brought together this global rag-tag group of enthusiast experimenters that we fondly refer to as our community.

The IARU theme for this year is: "A Century of Connections: Celebrating 100 years of Amateur Radio Innovation, Community, and Advocacy" and you're invited.

So, what types of activities are you planning, what kind of celebration do you have in mind, and who is bringing the birthday cake?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations 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 again. If you're not sure what I'm describing, let me elaborate. A new radio takes a few goes to calibrate your ear and brain to learn what you can expect to hear and work. On some radios if you can hear the other station, you can work them. On others, unless they're pegging the S-meter, you've got no chance. QRP adds an extra layer of challenge.

A few hours earlier I'd been discussing HF band conditions and one comment that stuck in my mind was that the bands appeared to be more quiet than normal. At the time, nobody could put a finger on why or how, but there appeared to be a general consensus that this was the case.

So when I tuned to 10m, after having switched off my beacon, which I promptly forgot to turn back on for 36 hours or so, I went hunting for stations to contact. I heard a few, but their signals were very weak. Noise levels were amazing, very quiet, but stations were very low down. I thought nothing of it, given the discussion we'd just had, and persisted and as I said, I made two contacts.

Since contacts were hard to come by, I started playing with another experiment I'm working on. Specifically I'm using something called USBip to connect to some USB devices across my network. The way it works is that you plug the devices, like a CAT cable and a USB sound-card into a Raspberry Pi, then using another computer, you can access those devices wirelessly as-if they're physically connected to the other computer. This is useful if you don't want to subject an expensive computer to any stray RF that might be coming in via a USB port. I've written some hot-plug support for this, so you can just connect and disconnect USB devices without needing to fiddle. You'll find the code on my github page.

Given that stations were few and far between and not staying in one place, I moved to a local AM broadcast station, so I could test the USBip sound-card link and all I heard was absolute garbage audio coming from that station. I turned on another radio and it too had the same rubbish audio. After a couple of hours fiddling with RF-Gain and still not getting anywhere I started searching online for an answer. One thread, 27 posts long, seemed to describe what I was hearing. Bill N8VUL supplied the answer: "Make sure AGC is on"

So, no. It wasn't, on either radio.

Why it was off on both radios I will never know. It did make me start exploring again just what other settings I have access to on my radio and what they sound like. Turns out that there's not a lot to be found that has any basis in fact. There were a lot of videos showing amateurs pushing lots of buttons uttering phrases like: "Can you hear the difference?" with nothing much materially changing.

The closest to something useful was a YouTube video by Doug N4HNH, called "ATT, IPO, [and] RF Gain" in which he shows some of the effects of each of those options on a Yaesu FT DX 5000. One thing I noticed is that the radio has a neat display that shows the signal path as it passes from a selected antenna through those options and more, highlighting which ones are in use.

I started hunting around to see if such a block diagram exists for my FT-857d. Unfortunately I didn't manage to find any such diagram, not even for another radio. The closest I got was the image on page 30 of the FT DX 5000 Series Operating Manual.

I did learn that the attenuator on my radio is 10 dB and it doesn't function on 2m and 70cm. As for the AGC, the user manual doesn't help much. It states that it's used to d

Foundations 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. It's always in the perfect spot, holds any weight and of course it's made from unobtainium.

Absent a skyhook, there are other ways of hoisting an antenna into the air. A recent discussion revealed that in some places catapults and trebuchets are frowned upon, if not outright illegal. Can't imagine why. Depending on their size, they may be difficult to transport.

In the same vein, antenna launchers, lightly camouflaged spud guns, are essentially a gas pressurised tube, causing a projectile to be launched by releasing a valve. Those too are pretty restricted and for good reason.

Fortunately there are plenty of other ways of getting things to be in the right place.

Let's explore.

One option is to bring along a pole, made from whatever is at hand, a multi-element fibreglass pole made by Spiderbeam, mine is 12m long, has always worked for me, though I will confess that I have managed to break one. It did take a 135 degree bend in the tip to achieve that. I'll hasten to add, I didn't set out to do that. Previously it had easily sustained 90 degree abuse in heavy wind. I purchased a new one. I've used it for years. It's not cheap, but it works.

Alternatives, much less strong, are using fishing rods or much less flexible, aluminium tubes, pool cleaning extension poles, even painters poles and at a pinch, lengths of wood screwed together, or if you're a Scout, logs lashed into some contraption.

Then there's using the nearby landscape.

Getting a wire into a tree is an activity that's fun for young and old. Not so much for the person attempting it. Often this starts with throwing things at the tree. You might find a spanner, tie it to a rope and whirl it around, letting go at just the right moment to get it to where you're going. This is not a safe activity and not recommended away from emergency medical assistance, you've been warned.

This graduates to using things like a monkey's fist knot. I was given a brightly coloured one, lovingly hand crafted by Alan VK6PWD. It's reminiscent of a Sea Scout woggle knot. Truth be told, it's too beautiful to use, or rather risk losing. Tie it to a line and whirl and throw. Then there's the arborist throw bag, same deal.

Each of these whirling activities are fraught. Mainly because you need to strike a balance between the strength of the line, strong enough to be chucked, uh, thrown, but weak enough that you can break it if it gets caught and believe me, it will.

There's the option of co-opting your dog's ball launcher. Tie a rope to the ball and hurl. Success depends on how quick your dog is in catching low flying tennis balls.

The last time I went fishing was in 2003 when I used a string and a safety pin to catch an, admittedly, tiny fish at Harry's Hole using a tiny piece of bread, took all of 5 minutes. That said, I have a new fishing rod, well, it was new when I purchased it, but now it's a couple of years old. It was the absolute cheapest one I could find. I also bought a box of sinkers.

Purchased on the advice of Bob VK6POP, I've used that rod many times to launch a sinker at a nearby tree and used it to pull through some line and then an antenna. It's still a balance between using a fishing line that's strong enough to handle the weight of a sinker and weak enough to break when you want to. The sinker needs to be just the right weight too. Too light and you'll launch it at the right branch where it will stay for the rest of the life of the tree. Too heavy and it will end up somewhere in the