Foundations of Amateur Radio

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Are you up for a global party? Mar 31, 2024

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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

What's with all that lack of noise? Mar 24, 2024

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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 disable the Automatic Gain Control and normally it should be left on. There's some discussion around the interaction between the "RF Gain" knob and the AGC, but I must confess that finding useful examples of this managed to elude me.

At this point I have no idea what the difference is between the block diagram on the FT DX 5000 and my FT-857d, other than the obvious single antenna port and plenty of missing features. I find it surprising that for a radio that was introduced over 20 years ago, this kind of information appears to be lacking. Especially since it would help any new amateur operate their radio better and understand the impact of each particular setting on the signal that they were hearing.

If you know of any such resource, reach out, my address is cq@vk6flab.com

Meanwhile I'm going to spend some quality time with my radio and the manual and see what other hidden gems I can find and if you know me at all, you'll know that this isn't the first, second or even third time that I'm going through the manual of a radio that I've now owned for nearly as long as I've been an amateur.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The skyhook dilemma ... Mar 17, 2024

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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 bush, never to be found. Grey sinkers tend to vanish in the grass, so if you can find it, look for something nice and bright, fluorescent is best. In a pinch you can use a couple of sinkers, like when you've run out, but in my experience they tend to wrap themselves around a branch.

Of course you could also just climb into a tree, or hire a cherry picker, but I'm not that flexible, either in my joints or wallet, so those options don't do it for me.

If you have a friendly arborist nearby, there's no shame in paying them to attach a pulley to the required branch in your backyard. Just make sure that the line you use on the pulley cannot escape the groove and get jammed between the wheel and the cheek, don't ask me how I know.

So, what ways do you use to summon a skyhook and does it include a Siberian jukebox?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Technology at its finest ... Mar 10, 2024

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Foundations 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. Moving from personal amateur licenses we legally became part of a class license regime. We have the option to hand our license back and get a refund, but the cautious side of me prevailed and I've not yet handed back my license, since it's currently the only proof that my callsign is valid, the one issued to me in December 2010.

I contacted the ACMA to ask about this and was told that they were having display issues with their system and was sent an image showing both my callsigns and email address. I'm not saying that I don't trust the person sending this to me, but I'm fairly sure that "but your honour, it was in an email" isn't going to cut it if push comes to shove. Curiously my name appears to be missing, showing the word "Blank" instead. Their IT team has been working on displaying F-calls for weeks now. I mean, seriously, these were first issued in 2005. Do we really need to spell this out?

The ACMA continues to actively encourage amateurs to hand in their license and points out that any delay in doing so will reduce the amount that may be due. It also points at Schedule 4, Part 2 subclause (7)(1)(d) of the Radiocommunications (Amateur Stations) Class Licence 2023, to assure me that my callsign is mine and mine alone, irrespective of what's in the register. It goes on to say that the letter they sent back in January, the one they had to resend, since they got my callsign details wrong, explained that I could hand back my license and that my ability to operate hinged on my qualification, not my callsign.

Here's the rub. Let's say that I'm qualified and that the letter I have proves it. I am required to identify myself on-air, the regulations say so. This means that in order for me to claim that I am who I say I am, there needs to be a register with that callsign. Apparently I'm in the register, but nobody other than the regulator can prove that.

One thing that appears to be missing is a solid understanding that the register of callsigns is used by the amateur community to determine if a callsign heard on-air is assigned or not. I mean, I could call myself VK6EEN and without the register who's to say that it's mine?

It's not confidence inspiring to say the least.

Then there's the register itself. There's an online component, which you can use to search for a callsign. As I said, mine isn't visible, neither is any other four letter F-call. As a test, I've been scrolling, one page at a time, for the past hour, to get to VK6F, starting at VK6A, to see if it shows up, but I'm not holding my breath. For some reason the developers who built this appear incapable of rendering a simple table in anything less than 36 seconds per page, so much so that Chrome thinks that the page has crashed and offers to kill it, every time.

Funnily enough, if you extract the URL from within the page and copy it, you can download all 176 pages for VK6 callsigns in less time than it took me to write this sentence. Unsurprisingly, F-calls are not there. Did I mention that this software, released a month ago, is already using depreciated features in my current web browser, which came out a week before the new register went live?

It gets better.

If you actually want to manage your callsign, you need to create an account on the regulator's portal, called ACMA Assist. When you load the ACMA Assist URL and click the "Sign up or log in" button, 134 different URLs from all over the Internet are hit, across 34 different domains, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Markmonitor, Monsido, several content, font, icon and javascript libraries, and plenty more. This is a Government website, requiring that I authenticate to it, and to do that, I'm required to provide more identity documents than the tax department needs and wait for it, authentication is outsourced to some random domain, so you're entering your details into a third-party service.

You have the choice of using the Government identity provider, one that requires a mobile phone and an app, or use a Government owned company that prefers a mobile and a different app, but offers access via a website on yet another domain.

Now it gets funky. If you pick "driver's license", you'll discover that everything that's on your license is information that the form wants. So anyone with a photo of your license can sign up and identify as you, like the chemist who required a photocopy of it so you could buy Sudafed for your debilitating hay fever, because instead, you might use it to create methamphetamine, or the nightclub that required it so you could enter the venue because of course they do, or the telecommunications company that provided access to your details during a recent hack.

Just so we're clear here. I'm now required to validate my identity to access a callsign that is already in the database, already has my email address linked to it and is for an amateur license that I already have been in possession of and paid for since 2010. Never mind that I used to email the regulator to have them issue an invoice that I paid for via credit card, no authentication at all, and that was for a personal license, issued specifically to me.

We'll also ignore that if you signed up with ACMA Assist a year ago, you don't need to validate, not then, not now.

Speaking of email. The ACMA has just sent me one telling me that I can request and fill in a form and email or fax it to them to update my records instead. That's interesting, but what about the privacy implications of tracking by the worlds mega corporations on a Government site or even the security theatre for something that according to the regulator isn't even my permission to operate?

I'm all for giving the regulator the benefit of doubt, but if this is the future of Amateur Radio Licensing in Australia, I'm beginning to wonder just which Wild West Orwellian landscape I stepped into and I'm asking myself is this the best that our limited tax payer dollars can achieve?

If you want to see this for yourself, open up your browser, press F12 and have a look at the network connection tab while you visit the ACMA Assist portal.

Finally, I have one question.

Why are our so-called representative bodies, the WIA and RASA, not jumping up and down about this?

Apparently,

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The Art of finding an operating location Mar 03, 2024

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Foundations 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 influenced by where you decide to operate from. If you want to stay in your car, the location is not nearly as influential as when you decide to find a park where you want to have some fun.

Finding a location is not a trivial process. If you only plan to get on air for an hour to activate a park, you pretty much get what you find, but if you plan to be on air during a contest for the day, other things start to come into focus. For example, what are the toilet facilities like, are we digging a hole, or is there a public facility nearby?

Depending on the time of year, the temperature and weather will influence your choice. For reasons I'm still unsure about, most of the contests in Australia are in the middle of summer, so wearing long sleeves, sunscreen and a hat is the starting point for your adventure. Sitting in the midday sun for any period of time, absent a breeze is not fun, so shade becomes a requirement, not a nice to have. Mind you, at least we don't need to contend with meters of snow, well, not where I am. In other words, what works for me might not work for you.

Finding locations is tricky. You can drive around, consult satellite maps, look for desirable attributes and still be rudely surprised when you get to the point of turning on your gear.

One of the best lessons I learnt was operating from my car during a contest that awarded points for operating in as many different locations as possible. I used a satellite map to find a location within each boundary and then drove from point to point. If I recall, I set-up in over 30 locations across a 48 hour period. It taught me a great deal about discovering high voltage power lines on a satellite map, the impact of trains on your HF radio, the difference that geology has on your antenna and what a safe location looks like and what the typical hallmarks are for a scary one.

My most recent discovery tool is a public toilet map. It's not perfect, the user interface is horrid and for some reason it needs to navigate from the Timor Sea to each toilet, but those issues aside, it does help eliminate locations that lack facilities.

I am in the process of cross referencing the Parks On The Air map with the Toilet map to see if there are some nearby parks that have shade, a loo and the opportunity to park nearby to reduce the amount of lugging required for the gear we intend to bring to the next field day.

So, what are your tips for finding a place to operate? What kinds of things have you learnt that influence what choices you make?

Before I go, one pro-tip. Keep a record of where you actually operate and whilst you're at it, what you used, and not. You can thank me later.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Getting things done .. or not. Feb 25, 2024

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Foundations 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 fortnight to come to grips with 6.7 billion rows of data. Spoiler alert, it hasn't happened yet.

The data contains a record of every reception report uploaded to WSPRnet.org since Tuesday 11 March 2008 at 22:02 UTC. It's published in compressed comma separated value text files and after previously spending weeks of wrangling I managed to convert each one into an sqlite3 database. This wrangling was required because some amateurs used commas in their callsigns or grid squares, or backslashes, or both, and SQLite import isn't smart enough to deal with this. After doing this conversion, I could actually query 191 different databases. I could collect the results and three weeks later I'd have an answer, just in time to download the next month of data.

Garth VK2TTY suggested that I look into parquet as an alternative. No joke, This Changed My Life. I managed to convert all the compressed CSV files to parquet, a process that took a day, rather than a week with SQLite, and then I could start playing. If you're going to do this yourself, make sure you have a big empty hard disk. After a few false starts, the report that previously took three weeks, returned in three hours, and if we're getting technical, since I know this will make at least somebody laugh, the parquet files are stored on a USB drive connected to an iMac that has the directory mounted via sshfs to a virtual Linux desktop machine that's running the duckdb binary inside a Docker container running on a different virtual Docker machine. If you're keeping track, the database travels across USB via two SSHFS mounts to duckdb and it still only takes three hours. So, impressed doesn't even begin to describe my elation. If you're asking "why?" - the answer is that I don't run untrusted binary executables on my host machine.

This allowed me to start doing what-if queries when I discovered a fun issue. A chart I generated with minimum, average and maximum power levels over time showed that there was at least one station that was claiming that it was transmitting with 103 dBm. For context, that's multiple times the power of HAARP, the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program which in 2012 was the most powerful shortwave station using "only" 95.5 dBm, or 3,600 kilowatts, and only 2 dBm shy of the 105 dBm or 32 megawatts used by AN/FPS-85, part of the US Space Force's Space Surveillance Network, able to track a basketball-sized object 41,000 km from Earth.

In other words, 103 dBm is less of a whisper and more of a roar. Funnily enough, not every receiver on the planet reported these transmissions, but more than one did, so the issue is at the transmitter. Unfortunately, when I started looking for reports using more than 60 dBm, there were plenty to choose from, over 18 thousand. While that's less than 0.0003%, it made me wonder how much of the data is dirty and what should I do about it?

There's other examples of dirty data. My beacon has been reported on 24 MHz, which is odd, since my licence conditions do not permit me to use that band. Odder still is that several other beacons, normally on 28 MHz like me, were also reported on 24 MHz by the same station. How often does that happen?

I've previously reported the missing data from the hybrid solar eclipse in 2023, just under two hours and 12 minutes before the eclipse and the 38 minutes following it was missing. I've not yet checked to see if it magically reappeared.

Then there's the faulty decodes. I've talked about this before. Different WSPR versions are better or worse at decoding and the point at which it breaks down varies. In other words, some decoded data is inevitably wrong.

I have previously charted activated grid squares. Apparently, all of Earth, yes, all of it, has at one time or another been used both as a transmission or reception site. Including point Nemo, the top of Mount Everest, all of the arctic and antarctic and plenty more out of the way places, like say the Surveyor Generals Corner located in the Ngaanyatjarraku shire - look it up. Interesting patterns emerge when you split activations down per band. It's not clear if those are decoding artefacts or man made claims.

I've asked the HamSci community for guidance, since dropping incorrect data on the floor doesn't seem to be the right way to go about things, and whilst correcting data seems obvious, what do you change it to and how do you know what's correct?

So, no progress to show for two weeks of work and barely enough to whet your appetite to get on air and make some noise.

Some days are like that.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Writing to the regulator about amateur beacon and repeater licenses. Feb 18, 2024

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Foundations 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 the amateur service that is used principally for the purpose of identifying propagation conditions.

The rules go on to say that you must have a specific beacon license and not having one is not permitted.

I suggested that it was time to send a letter to the regulator, seeking clarification.

Well, let me tell you, that set a cat among the pigeons, not at the regulator, but within the amateur community. Between posting a draft of my proposed email to a local mailing list before sending it to the regulator, and publishing my article, I received responses that ranged from "let sleeping dogs lie", "you are now on their radar", "you will be prosecuted because you admitted to breaking the rules", "carry on and ignore the rules because I am", and plenty more in that same vein.

There were two amateurs that indicated curiosity about what the response might be while pointing out that none of this was legally binding since it hadn't been tested in court.

I also discussed the matter on my weekly net and I learnt that DMR hotspots come in a duplex version, meaning that what you transmit into the hotspot is also transmitted by the hotspot on RF whilst sending it to the Internet. If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that this fits the definition of an "amateur repeater station", which also requires a specific license.

I received a prompt reply from the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the ACMA, the Australian regulator. Here's what the regulator had to say in response to my query:

"I can confirm that you can continue to operate your WSPR beacon and Duplex Hotspot as described without requiring an Amateur Beacon or repeater licence."

It goes on the say:

"Operation of these types of amateur equipment is permitted under the current amateur non assigned arrangements and as such will continue to be permitted under the class licence arrangements."

As a result, if you've been listening to WSPR on 10m, you'll have discovered that my 10 dBm beacon went back on the air 45 minutes after receiving this information. The letter confirms that both WSPR and Duplex hotspots have previously been, and will continue to be, allowed under the new rules from the 19th of February 2024 when they come into effect.

The final paragraph from the regulator sets out the boundaries of where the rules apply. It says:

"The definitions in the Interpretation Determination are broad definitions of amateur repeaters and beacons. For the purposes of amateur licensing the ACMA only considers apparatus assigned licence services, where individual frequency coordination is carried out and specific licences are issued, to be amateur repeaters and beacons."

In my opinion this is significant because you only need to apply for a separate amateur beacon or repeater license in very specific circumstances related to frequency coordination. It makes me wonder if the local beacon operators require an ongoing license for all of their beacons or not.

What I learnt from this process is that there is a high level of fear in the amateur community towards the regulator. I do not know where this originates, since I've interacted with the regulator on dozens of occasions since obtaining my amateur license in 2010 and in every case the response was courteous and informative. When the response wasn't what I expected I replied asking for extra clarification and received it. This enquiry was no different.

Going back through decades of old publications I've previously seen letters between the community and the regulator and I have yet to see anything that warrants the level of fear that appears to permeate our community.

So, why are we afraid of the regulator and why do we keep spreading that fear to anyone within propagation range? What have they ever done to you?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What is amateur radio as an emergency response? Feb 11, 2024

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Foundations 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 on to say that being part of the Amateur Radio Emergency Services or ARES had taught the amateurs the ITU phonetic alphabet, as-if that's not a requirement for getting your amateur license. Then there's the story of two teenagers who were critically injured in a remote area and amateur radio rescued them due to a contact with a random local amateur. Never mind that there was a local off-duty EMT who actually stabilised the patients.

While you might point at this as "amateur radio to the rescue", to me this is a case of people attempting to make the story about amateur radio. If the person in the bathroom happened to have a mobile phone nearby, the story would not have even made the nightly news and if the people in the remote area had actually prepared properly, they'd have had an emergency position-indicating radiobeacon or EPIRB and a satellite phone, rather than accidentally bumping into a random radio amateur.

Moving on. Have you ever noticed that your mobile phone stops working after a couple of hours during a power outage? It's because mobile phone towers run on batteries that depending on load might last up to 12 hours, often much less than that, anywhere from down when the power goes out to 3 hours until the batteries fail. Note that I'm not talking about the battery in your phone, I'm talking about the ones in the tower serving your phone.

I mentioned previously that there was a network outage affecting 40% of the Australian population. The get-out-of jail card was that the rest of the population still had mobile, landline and internet connectivity. What would happen if the other network operator also went down?

Is there a place for amateur radio in those scenarios?

Let's explore. If all mobile, telephone and internet networks were down, what would that look like? Could you call an ambulance or the fire department using amateur radio? Who would you talk to, on what frequency and on which radio would they be listening? Would you set up your portable shack in the local hospital or fire station? Would ambulances and fire services be able to coordinate during such an outage, or would you have your local amateur club ride-along on every ambulance and fire truck?

What does such a system look like in actuality? Has there been any planning or training for this? Are there refresher courses and special certifications? Does your local community have anything like this in place, or are you starting from scratch?

During widespread and long lasting fire emergencies in Australia, radio amateurs have acted as emergency services radio operators. There is at least one amateur club where, years ago, the members underwent special training with the local State Emergency Services to learn their language and procedures, just in case it becomes short staffed when an actual emergency occurs.

I've often said that doing contests is a good way to learn how best to operate your station and how to work in adverse environments with lots of interference, man-made or otherwise. The reality is that it's more likely than not that you'll be using a line-of-sight FM radio in the emergency services communications bunker than sitting in the rubble of your shack using HF with a wire antenna running off battery trying to get someone, anyone, to help you and your community.

There are official amateur radio emergency organisations, WICEN in Australia, ARES and RACES in the United States. Much is made by these organisations about joining and training, but very little in the way of actual emergency response. Is that a marketing issue, or are these types of organisations obsolete and waiting to be disbanded?

My point is this.

If amateur radio is really a service as the WIA states, "A Trusted Partner in Emergency Response", or as the ARRL puts it, "When All Else Fails", even making that a registered trademark, where is the evidence of their activity, where are the annual reports, the after action lessons learnt, the inter-team competitions, the talks at local clubs, the league tables of emergencies handled, lives saved and babies born?

To give you insight into just how broken this is, any licensed amateur can become a member of ARES, but you can only read their newsletter if you're a member of the ARRL. In Australia, for a while, the WIA offered a course for Public Safety Training for Radio Amateurs, but only to amateurs with an Advanced license, which I discovered after spending $633.92 to print out, collate and bind the 973 pages of course material, as-if those of a lesser amateur radio qualification somehow were less able to read a map, operate communications equipment, follow defined occupational health and safety policies and procedures, work effectively in a public safety organisation, as part of a team, or in an emergency operations centre.

So, what's your plan for providing amateur radio as a service?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What is the right mode for emergency communications? Feb 04, 2024

Show notes

Foundations 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 Radio - A Trusted Partner in Emergency Response" on a page outlining the long and fabled history of our hobby in service to the community in times of emergency, mind you, none of them in the past decade.

If we look at the idea of amateur radio as an emergency response, what does that look like today and how might we best be of service?

The question that prompted this discussion centred around the best mode to use for emergency communications and was presented in the context of a tool that links HF radio with email, but is that really the best way to communicate in an emergency?

I mean, picture this, you're on a boat in the middle of the ocean, it's the small hours of the morning, you're asleep, and your boat just sailed into a submerged container and now you're sinking, so the first thing you do is, fire up your laptop, your radio, and link the two to send an email over HF to get help?

Alternatively, your community has just been hit by a natural disaster and the power grid went down, and the first thing you do is use as much battery hungry complex technology as possible to get the word out?

So, until we can send email or a short message directly from our amateur radio transceiver, and I have no doubt that some bright spark is working on that, there are better ways to make contact in case of an emergency.

From a mode perspective, at the bottom of the pile is Morse code. I say bottom, not because it's a poor way of communicating, but it doesn't require much in order to get working. You could essentially use a car battery and splatter your emergency communications around. One downside is that you'd need to learn Morse code and while you're in the middle of an emergency is probably not the best time.

If you're on a sinking boat in the middle of the ocean, you're likely going to use a HF radio, or an emergency beacon, or even a satellite phone, but if you're on land, dry or not, and if you're not an amateur, your best bet is to find a 27 MHz AM Citizen's Band radio, so you can make enough noise to have people come and find you.

The reality, more likely than not, is that emergency services are outside the danger zone waiting for authorities to permit entry.

It should be clear by now that there are several levels of emergency communications before we get to amateur radio. That said, if you have an amateur radio, then you're likely going to use voice communications over SSB on HF or FM on VHF or UHF.

Now you might ask about communications going the other way, from outside the emergency zone, where power and sunshine are plentiful, where you can use a computer without issues. Only thing is that if it's all peaches, why are you attempting to link your radio to HF when on the balance of probability there's a mobile phone sitting in your pocket?

A couple of months ago there was a 12 hour network outage at one of the two main telephone networks affecting nearly 40% of the population of Australia. It was recently revealed that during that time almost 2,700 people could not call emergency services on either their mobile or land-line, let alone use the Internet.

You could argue that this is an actual emergency, but is amateur radio really the vehicle for making contact? I mean, you're trying to call emergency services, your phone isn't working, so rather than use a telephone on another network, you go and find your nearest radio amateur and ask them to call for an ambulance, on their HF radio?

Where does this leave us?

In my opinion, the notion that your shack is going to be used for emergency response is fanciful. That's not to say that there isn't a place for radio amateurs. Far from it.

If you really want to be of service, learn how to operate your radio well, make a plan to work through if you hear a distress call while you monitor emergency HF frequencies, visit the local emergency services to see if they offer training for radio amateurs and make yourself available in case of emergency and you're more likely to be of service than if you sat in your shack polishing your valves.

If you're so inclined, planning for the next emergency, start asking questions. Find out what the plans are for your emergency AM broadcast network, learn how things might break and perhaps then you might consider amateur radio as a service to the community, just not in the way you might have thought.

Next time I'll explore the reality of amateur radio as an emergency response.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What is a repeater or a beacon ... really? Jan 28, 2024

Show notes

Foundations 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 cq@vk6flab.com 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 mobile phone hotspot that allows you to connect a computer through your phone to the Internet, in this case we're talking about an amateur radio hotspot. Similar in that it allows you to connect through the device to the Internet, but different in that this is essentially a device that connects radios to the Internet, and yes, if we're being pedantic then computers and mobile phones also have radio, well spotted.

Anyway, an amateur radio hotspot is a radio with an Internet connection and in that it's much like a modern repeater. Often they use low transmit power, have limited range within a building or vehicle and because of that are hardly "unattended". That said, if you connect a more effective antenna and an amplifier, you could make such a device into a full blown repeater. In other words, the line between hotspot and repeater is likely in the eye of the beholder.

Given that the regulator in many countries requires a license for operating a repeater, or a beacon, I wondered what the official definition of a repeater was, so I went looking. Note that this applies to Australia only, but you'll find the journey illuminating I'm sure.

The current "Radiocommunications Licence Conditions (Apparatus Licence) Determination 2015" does not have either the word repeater or beacon.

The new "Radiocommunications (Amateur Stations) Class Licence 2023" which comes into effect on the 19th of February 2024 uses both repeater and beacon several times but does not define what they are. It has an interpretation section with a note that lists both "amateur repeater station" and "amateur beacon station" and states that the regulator can define terms under section 64(1) of its own act.

The "Australian Communications and Media Authority Act 2005" section 64(1) states that "The ACMA may make a written determination defining 1 or more expressions used in specified instruments, being instruments that are made by the ACMA under 1 or more specified laws of the Commonwealth." It should come as no surprise that neither repeater nor beacon appears in this document.

I then thought to go sideways and search the "Register of Radiocommunications Licences" for a repeater license. It reveals a PDF for a license with all manner of detail, frequencies, power levels, location, antenna type, etc. for a license, but no definition of what a repeater is.

I then looked at the 481 pages of the "Radiocommunications Act 1992". It uses both beacon and repeater. Unfortunately beacon is in relation to the operation of lighthouses, lightships, beacons or buoys. Repeater is in relation to two or more digital radio multiplex transmitters.

I then searched through the "Federal Register of Legislation" for the phrase "amateur beacon station". It returns 27 results of which 9 are in force. I downloaded all 9, including any explanatory text if it was available. In all, 340 pages of legal documents.

Finally we have progress. In the "Radiocommunications (Interpretation) Determination 2015" we find the following definitions:

"amateur beacon station" means a station in the amateur service that is used principally for the purpose of identifying propagation conditions.

"amateur repeater station" means a station established at a fixed location: (a) for the reception of radio signals from amateur stations; and (b) for the automatic retransmission of those signals by radio.

So, if your hotspot is in a vehicle it's not a repeater, but if you have it sitting in your shack, it is.

Similarly, apparently, my 10 dBm WSPR transmitter, which I use solely for the purpose of identifying propagation conditions, is a beacon. Apparently if you have your computer controlling your radio using WSPR, that's a beacon too. You can apparently apply for a license and pay the regulator for the privilege, the price of which went up by 510% according to their own documentation from $29 to $177, no idea if that's a once off or an annual charge.

So, now we have a situation where, apparently, the rules state that I'm not permitted to use WSPR without a beacon license. In fact, the "Explanatory Statement to the amateur class licensing reform instruments" explicitly states that "Subsection 13(2) prohibits the operation of an amateur station for specified purposes, including for the purpose of obtaining a financial gain or reward. The subsection also prohibits the operation of an amateur beacon station or an amateur repeater station under the Amateur Stations Class Licence, and, subject to subsection (3), the transmission of an encoded signal to obscure the meaning of the signal."

I've just hit send on a letter to the regulator asking for clarification. Perhaps you should write one too.

I've also just switched off my WSPR transmitter and if you're one of the 2,312 amateurs who made a WSPR transmission last year in Australia, perhaps you should too.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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