Foundations of Amateur Radio

Latest Episodes:

How low can you go? Nov 27, 2022

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

It's common knowledge that power, as in output power, makes your signal heard in more places. If you've followed my adventures you'll also know that I'm a firm believer in low power or QRP operation.

It all started when I was told that my shiny new amateur license was rubbish because I was only allowed to use 10 Watts. Seemingly the whole community around me shared that opinion and slogans like "life's too short for QRP" are still commonly heard.

As a direct result of that sentiment I decided to explore and document just how much I could actually do with my so-called introductory license, the Australian Foundation License. I've now held it for over a decade and I'm still exploring and writing.

One of my first acts of rebellion was to lower my radio output power to its minimum setting of 5 Watts and half legal power was sufficient to prove my point.

Although I'm still regularly being encouraged to upgrade, my second act of defiance is to keep my Foundation License until I decide that I need more. I'll let you know if it ever happens.

One more well known so-called "fact" about our hobby is that if you use low power you'll really only get anywhere on the higher bands, 2m, 70cm and above. There's plenty of reports of amateurs using a low power handheld radio to talk to the International Space Station and my own satellite internet used 1 Watt to get to geostationary orbit. On HF on the other hand, 5 Watts is as low as you really want to go. Making contacts is a struggle and often frustrating, but when you do, bliss!

About a year ago I took delivery of a WSPR beacon. It's capable of transmitting on all my accessible HF bands using 200 mW. Given my antenna situation I've configured it to transmit on the 10m band, 24 hours a day, thunderstorms excepted. When making the purchase decision I had no insight into how my beacon would perform. 200 mW is stretching even my love of low power, but I hooked it up and turned it on and waited.

It came as quite a surprise that my beacon was heard over 15 thousand kilometres away, not once, not a couple of times, but regularly. When I came up with my November challenge to see if I could improve on that I made an almost throw away comment about reducing power to see if I could still make the distance.

A couple of weeks ago I hooked up a 6 dB attenuator to my beacon, reducing the power from 200 down to 50 mW. It came as quite a surprise that my signal made it to the same receiver in the Canary Islands. My kilometre per Watt calculation shot up, quadrupling my previous record.

Just imagine, 50 mW making its way over a third of the way around the globe, bouncing between the ionosphere and the planet, just like any other HF signal. At that point I realised I had learnt a few things. You don't need stupid power to make a distant contact on HF either. I started wondering just how little power was needed to get out of the shack.

Yesterday I hooked up a 10 dB attenuator and within ten hours my now 20 mW beacon broke my own kilometre per Watt record again and based on the signal to noise numbers from previous contacts, I see no reason for that record to stand for very long. Once that happens I've got plenty more attenuators to play with and I'm not afraid to use them.

Now I'm on the hunt for an attenuator that will reduce my main radio output from 5 Watts. I'm told I should aim for double the power rating, but I also have to consider how to connect my antenna coupler which needs 10 Watts to tune, but that's a project for another day

When was the last time that you used really low power?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The nature of learning things... Nov 20, 2022

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Recently I discussed the concept of a VFO, a Variable Frequency Oscillator. It's an essential building block for our amateur radio community. In describing the idea behind it, while making an error in one of the CB radio frequencies, thanks to Ben VK6NCB for picking that up, I skirted around how a VFO actually works.

In reality the VFO is a collective term that describes a whole range of different methods to vary a frequency. Naturally I continued my exploration and discovered a whole range of documentation on the subject. I even started writing about how one common method, a Phase Locked Loop or PLL, works and how a VCO, a Voltage Controlled Oscillator, operates as part of that. I'll come back to those shortly.

In doing my reading, since, as is often the case, I use my weekly contribution to the world as a method to learn things. I'll investigate a topic and attempt to describe who came up with it, what it means, how it works and what its place is in the world, the who, where, why and what of it, if you like. I suspect that comes from my very first introduction to broadcast radio where that was one of the very first things I was taught, thirty years or so ago.

If you've followed along for the decade I've been at this you'll know that I also intersperse such learning with observations about the things that I'm interested in. This is such an observation, a meta view if you will.

I discovered somewhat to my chagrin that the ways that an essential component of our hobby, a system called a Phase Locked Loop, was described in such academic terms, complete with formulas and detailed circuits and even component lists, spread over pages and pages of verbiage, or explained in YouTube videos lasting an hour or more. Of course there were some little gems, ElectronicNotes on YouTube manages to cover the basics in little over six minutes, but that's a rare example.

It reminded me of a website that I've been using to fill in the gaps in my understanding of SDR or Software Defined Radio and Digital Signal Processing or DSP. The PySDR.org site is an online textbook written by Dr. Marc Lichtman. He says about his method: "Instead of burying ourselves in equations, an abundance of images and animations are used to help convey the concepts [...]"

My weekly efforts have always attempted to do exactly that and I found myself in a place where such a thing didn't appear to exist for the concepts behind the PLL and VCO. My obvious response to that would be to write the missing document and as I said, I have a first draft of it sitting on my computer.

There's only one problem.

I don't yet "grok" the concepts. If you're unfamiliar with what grokking is, it means to understand intuitively and emphatically. It also means that unless I can describe it in less than a single page of A4 paper I don't understand what I'm saying and you'll get bored waiting for me to make a point.

Here's my point.

How do you learn concepts? What is it that you do to discover new topics of interest and how do you progress through the various stages between discovery and grokking?

For me it's about puzzle pieces. It's always been puzzle pieces. Little nuggets of information, almost trivial on their own, but after a while you get to a point where you have enough of them that you can start joining them together to grasp a more complex concept.

Here's a puzzle piece I discovered today.

Impedance: The difference between an explosion in air and one under water is impedance.

It's little concepts like that which make me get out of bed and discover what's on the horizon next. I'm also learning about double and triple conversion superheterodyne radio which I believe has a one-on-one parallel application in Software Defined Radio and Digital Signal Processing. Once I figure out how to describe it to you, I'll let you know.

The point of all this is that learning things is as much about understanding as it is about explaining.

Feel free to point me at new and interesting basic concepts.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What's in a VFO? Nov 13, 2022

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

One of the many acronyms that define the world of amateur radio is VFO. It stands for Variable Frequency Oscillator. That doesn't explain much if you're not familiar with the purpose of it and just how special this aspect of amateur radio is.

Much of the world of radio beyond our hobby, like broadcast television, WiFi and Citizen Band or CB, to name a few, uses radio spectrum in a particular way. On a television you change channels to switch between stations. Similarly, a WiFi network uses specific channels to make your wireless network a reality and the same goes for CB, different channels to make yourself heard.

Looking specifically at CB for a moment, if you look at channel 8 for example, depending on which type of equipment you have, your radio might be using 27.055 MHz, or 476.575 MHz, or 476.6 MHz. Each of those frequencies can be described as CB channel 8. The first is on the 27 MHz or 11m band, the second is if you're using a 40 channel radio, which is now depreciated and the third is if you're using an 80 channel radio.

If you look at digital broadcast television, channel 8 is on 191.5 MHz. On WiFi, channel 8 is on 2.447 GHz or 5.040 GHz.

You get the point, depending on where you are as a user of radio spectrum, channel 8 might mean a whole host of different things and as I've described with CB radio, that might even change over time.

Harry Potter needed magic to reach Platform Nine and Three-Quarters at Kings Cross Station to get to school. In a channelised world, getting to an in-between frequency is not possible if you're using licensed equipment, unless you're a radio amateur, then you can use magic to get into the gaps. That magic is called the VFO.

You might recall that our radios use many different frequencies internally to be able to filter out specifically what signal you want to hear. Most of those frequencies are fixed, in fact in the vast majority of cases these are actually tuned and calibrated to work in a very specific way.

The one exception is the VFO, it's by nature variable. It's likely calibrated, but it's not fixed and that allows our community to tune our equipment to any frequency we desire.

The traditional user interface for this is a big knob on the front of your radio, colloquially referred to as the dial, as-in turn the dial to change frequency.

This allows us something quite rare in radio land. We can be frequency agile. It means that if there's interference at a specific frequency, we can tweak our VFO and slightly modify where our radio is tuned. You use this almost subconsciously when you're on HF trying to tune to a particular station.

In the world of software radio there's likely no knob. You type in a number and the variable frequency oscillator in the radio is tuned to another frequency and the output signal, or transmit signal if you're making noise on-air, changes to another frequency.

Digital modes like WSPR, which generally use a very specific frequency also vary that frequency but in a different way. You set your radio to the appropriate so-called dial frequency, let's say 28.1246 MHz on the 10m band and then the software alters the signal by up to 200 Hz to change within the available audio range of your radio, altering between a low of 1400 Hz and a high of 1600 Hz, making the actual WSPR frequency on 10m between 28.1260 and 28.1262 MHz.

I'm mentioning the WSPR example because while we're frequency agile in our hobby, we do use channels as well. There's a specific set of frequencies set aside, channels if you like, for WSPR, FT8 and other modes. We do the same on the 2m and 70cm bands where we have rules for where repeaters are allowed to be.

It means that we get the best of both worlds. We have the stability and institutional knowledge where repeaters or some modes go, but we also get to play in any spot we want.

For example, there's nothing stopping me and a friend setting our radio to some random frequency within our license allocation and outside pre-allocated space and run a WSPR transmitter there. Only the two of us will know about it, well at least at first, but it allows us to experiment away from any other users who might experience interference from our tests and exploration.

The VFO is what makes our hobby so very interesting and it's what makes it possible to do weird and wonderful experiments.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

My Virtual Workbench Nov 06, 2022

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

With the ever increasing pace of innovation, well, change, I'll leave alone if it's actual innovation instead of marketing, we see new software released at an almost alarming rate.

There is an urge to stay abreast of this process, to update, upgrade and try new solutions as soon as they are presented to you by well meaning friends and colleagues, not to mention online marketing, uh, reviews and other enticements that make you click the button to install something to avert the fear of missing out.

If you've done this for a number of years, actually, who am I kidding, a number of weeks, you'll discover that this comes at a cost. One that the corporate world has attempted to address by using terms like Standard Operating Environment, backups, administrator privileges and other such annoying things that prevent users from trying something new and breaking things.

At home and in the shack most of that is not a problem. No corporate IT division around to stop you, but soon you'll discover that something you installed caused you grief, encouraged your logging software to stop talking to your radio, prevented you radio from changing frequency, or blocked the latest digital mode from working as intended.

I live in that world too, but with the benefit of an IT background I decided nearly a decade and a half ago that enough was enough. I bit the bullet and bought myself a new computer. I vowed to install only one tool on that laptop, a virtualisation environment, also known as a hypervisor. It allows you to run a virtual computer inside a window. Given enough CPU power you can run multiple virtual computers in multiple windows inside your actual physical hardware.

This gives you flexibility. You can run a copy of your favourite operating system in a virtual environment, install the latest and greatest software on it and if it breaks, you delete it and start again. In my case I'm running my daily desktop environment where I'm currently writing this as a virtual Linux machine inside my physical computer which is also running several other virtual machines, including some network monitoring tools, a software defined radio development environment, my accounting software and plenty of other things.

Each virtual machine is nothing more than a folder on my physical computer and making a full backup is as simple as making a copy of that folder. Better still, if I want to try a new version of something on a machine that I'm already using, I can duplicate the folder, fire up the copy of the virtual machine, install the new software and test it. If it works, great, if not, throw it away and start again.

Changing physical computers is also simple. Buy a new computer. Install the hypervisor, copy the machine folders across and start working.

From a security perspective, it also means that I can install a random bit of software recommended by a friend without getting worried about it stealing any of my information, given that my private information isn't on the virtual machine on which I'm installing this unknown piece of software.

I also use this to compile new bits of code. If I come across a project on GitHub that I'd like to try, I can fire up a brand new machine and install all the prerequisites without running the risk of breaking something that I rely on. It also means that I can test with different operating systems, from macOS, any flavour of Linux, copies of Windows and play with virtual copies of Android or if I'm feeling frisky, BeOS.

There are other ways to achieve some of this. For example, you could get yourself a Raspberry Pi and half a dozen MicroSD cards. Install an operating system onto a card, boot the Pi, install your new application and if you like it, use it. If not, wipe the card, start again. You can have a dedicated WSPR beacon card, a contest logging card, whatever you need, all separate, all easy to backup and change as needed.

If that's not enough, some virtualisation environments allow you to emulate different microprocessors, so you could run ARM code on an x86 processor, or vice-versa.

If you want more, you can investigate containerisation. A tool that allows you to essentially create a mini virtual machine and run a new environment using a single command, so fast that you essentially don't need to wait for it to start-up, allowing you to mix and match environments as needed.

At this point you might ask why I'm even talking about this. What does this have to do with amateur radio?

Well, it's how I have my test bench set-up. Sure I have a soldering station, multimeters, a NanoVNA, an antenna analyser and all that kind of great stuff, but my radio world is mostly software and in that space all my tooling is pretty much virtual, put together in such a way that I can pick and choose precisely how I want to test something without killing something I rely on.

I'm telling you about it because in my experience much of the amateur community still relies on a desktop computer running Windows and I have to tell you, there is so much more out there for you to explore.

What does your virtual workbench look like?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

A plan for distributed SDR decoding Oct 30, 2022

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Yesterday I finally discovered the missing piece of information that will allow me to create a project that I've, if not outright spoken about, at least hinted at.

In an ideal world by now I'd have built a proof concept and would be telling you that I've published a GitHub repository under my callsign for you to explore. If wishing made it so. Unfortunately, currently sitting at a keyboard for anything longer than ten minutes or so makes it nigh on impossible to stand up, so you'll have to make do with hand waving and gesticulation rather than actual code, but for now, that's all I have. Consider this a design specification if you're so inclined.

So, big idea.

Imagine that you have a device that can listen to radio frequencies. This device is connected to a network and it shares the data to any number of different listeners which might each do something different with the information.

If you were to do this in the way we watch YouTube or listen to streaming audio, each listener would get their own unique copy of the data. If you have ten listeners, you'd have ten streams crossing your network, even if everyone was enjoying the exact same video or audio at the exact same time.

Instead I want the data coming from the device to have only one stream on the network and for as many different listeners or clients to access it as required at the same time.

Let's get specific here for a moment. I'm talking about using a software defined radio, could be a $25 RTL dongle, could be any SDR, that is tuned to a part of the spectrum, let's say the entire 40m band, and sends that radio information digitally onto the network. This network could be your local network, or it could theoretically be the internet, for now, let's just put it out on our own network.

So, you have a copy of the entire 40m band streaming across your network. Great, now what? Well imagine that you want to decode RTTY on 7.040. You fire up your decoder, point it at the network stream and decode RTTY.

Then you want to decode a WSPR signal, at 7.0386. You fire up your WSPR decoder, point it at the network stream and decode WSPR.

Then you want to decode FT8 on 7.056, same deal, fire up your decoder, point it at the network stream and decode FT8.

Now you want to compare two different RTTY decoders. Fire them both up, point them both at the same stream, decode both, simultaneously.

Of course you could do this with CW signals, with SSB signals, with any decoder you have lying around, Olivia, Hellschreiber, AM, Packet, whatever. All these decoders could be running independently but together on the same band.

You could add a tool that shows a waterfall display of the same data on a web page, or play some of the decoded data to your headphones, or record it to disk, or do spectral analysis, all at the same time.

The information that you're processing is on the network once. You don't have to flood your network with multiple copies of the 40m band, the only limit is how much CPU power you can throw at this and to be frank, most computers on the globe today spend much of their time waiting for you to do something, so processing a bit of data like this is not going to tax anything built in the past 20 years or so.

The missing ingredient for this was a Linux tool called netcat, or nc. It allows us to distribute the information across the network using a technique called broadcasting.

So, RTL dongle, data extracted by a tool called rtl_sdr, distributed across the network using netcat and used by as many clients as you can think of.

The proof of concept I'm working on uses Docker to build a bunch of different containers, or clients if you like, that each can do a different task with the same stream. When I've got something to show and tell, you'll find it, predictably, on my GitHub page.

Oh, if you want to run the same thing for say the 80m band, you can. Now you have two network streams, one for 40m, one for 80m and as many decoders on your network as you have CPU cycles to play with.

If all this sounds like magic, you've seen nothing yet.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The sedentary myth of radio. Oct 23, 2022

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

When people think about and discuss my chosen hobby, amateur radio, there's often a perception that it's old men sitting behind a radio tapping on a Morse key, making beeping noises surrounded by all manner of imposing equipment, stacked thick and high in a tiny room that soon becomes too stifling to spend much time in.

While such scenes might exist, often reinforced by old photos and messy radio shacks, any self respecting amateur will tell you that plenty of time is spent outside the shack dealing with antennas, coax and earthing systems, combined with pouring concrete, building, erecting and climbing towers and a myriad of other physical activity.

My experience has shown that my own inertia bending acts often involve things like camping, portable operation in ever changing environments, throwing ropes into trees and recovering those later, erecting verticals, tying down squid-poles and other muscular movements like building temporary rotators lashed to the nearest utility vehicle to take advantage of a multi-band yagi that someone brought along to play with during a field day.

The first time I really discovered just how lacking my stamina is, was in early 2014 when the FT5ZM DXpedition team to Amsterdam Island was in town. I had the pleasure of spending a day with a couple of team members showing off the sights of my QTH, Perth in Western Australia. In the middle of the city is Kings Park. To give you a sense of scale, at over 400 hectares, Perth's Kings Park is larger than New York's Central Park and London's Hyde Park. One of the attractions is the dual spiral staircase DNA tower. At 15m height, it's the highest viewing point in Kings Park offering 360 degree views of the park and the city surrounding it. Commissioned in 1966, the tower has 101 steps and has recently been refurbished. It derives its name from the DNA Double Helix molecule, which is how the staircases are arranged.

One of my companions on the climb to the top was a sprightly amateur who's been licensed a decade longer than I've been alive. I marvelled when Arnie N6HC essentially ran up the tower when all I was able to achieve was puff my way up in his wake.

Since then I've discovered that doing 24 hour contests, camping and other fun stuff now absolutely kicks the stuffing out of me, often requiring that I spend a day in a small dark room recovering with a blanket over my head. While my body shape and my callsign have things in common and my doctor continues to encourage me to lose weight, I can say that my recent visit to hospital, unexpected as it was, reminded me in no uncertain terms that I should look after myself, if only so I can actually participate in the next contest or camp-out.

I'm not going to tell you what my fitness plan is, nor am I going to tell you to embark on one of your own, other than to ask, have you considered just how much of this wonderful hobby goes beyond keying a microphone or tapping a keyboard and consider just how safe you really are when you next climb up a ladder, tower or other height to fix an antenna?

Speaking of health, I've been absolutely blown away by the incoming messages, offers of help, shared gallbladder emergency and post-operative experiences and more, from people whom I've known for years through to amateurs who took a chance to introduce themselves and wish me well. It wasn't until this week that I really understood that this community is rich in personal lived history, going well beyond the experiences I've had outside the hobby. I'm ever so grateful for your encouragement and intend to keep fighting to get well. It's going to take some time, but I'm looking forward to when I can next camp-out and not regret my life choices.

So, get off your sedentary and go do something will ya?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Setting a little personal challenge ... Oct 16, 2022

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

A week ago I unexpectedly had my gallbladder removed. As emergencies go, I was lucky to be in a major metropolitan area with a remarkable hospital, supported by a group of humanity whom I've never much interacted with in my life. The staff at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital were without exception amazing, from the orderlies to the nurses and everyone behind those, I interacted with about fifty people directly during my stay and every single person had a smile to share and an encouraging word to give. As life experiences go it was as uplifting as I've ever had the opportunity to celebrate. Sure it hurt like hell and there were things I'd rather not have to try again, but on the whole it was, if not pleasant, at least memorable. Recovery is going to take a little while and I understand my voice is expected to return to normal in a few weeks having been intubated for most of a day.

Half an hour after being discharged from my five days in hospital I was faced with a choice. Produce nothing for my weekly contribution to our hobby and face the risk of an astronomical bill from my hosting provider because the script that I wrote didn't foresee that there might be a time when I was unable to provide content, or produce something that, to be sure, was lacking in every way, but at least know that there wouldn't be a surprise waiting on my bank statement next month. So, my inadequate production saw the light of day. For that I apologise, it should have been silence.

During the week I returned to my shack and had a look at my beacon. As you might recall, I've been using Weak Signal Propagation Reports, or WSPR in my shack for a while. According to the logs the very first time was in November of 2017. At the end of last year I took delivery of a ZachTek desktop WSPR transmitter which has been reported on air over 16 thousand times since. I've only been using the 10m band and it's been heard as far away from me in Western Australia as the Canary Islands, the home of Johann EA8/DF4UE and Peter EA8BFK who between them reported my signal nearly 90 times. It's remarkable to note that this is a distance of over 15 thousand kilometres, on the 10m band, using only 200 mW.

During the week I made another milestone, a report in the opposite direction, across the Pacific Ocean to mainland USA. While that didn't break any distance records, it was a thrill to see a report from the Maritime Radio Historical Society, logging WSPR signals using KPH.

Other things to note about these reports are that its been heard across 81 different grid squares, by 144 different stations from all directions of the compass.

During my hospital stay and since, I've come to appreciate setting little goals. Little personal achievements that in and of themselves are not meaningful to anyone but me, and in some cases, my medical support team. It reminded me of a time when I attempted to achieve this in amateur radio, making a contact every day. Looking back over my logs I can tell you that I've not managed to maintain that, though, technically, on average, given that I host a weekly net and there's generally more than seven people who join in, I could claim an average of one QSO per day, but both you and I would know that I was stretching the truth somewhat.

It occurred to me that my signal report by KPH could be considered the beginning of my new 10m adventures. Much of my start in this hobby was during the previous solar cycle and the 10m band featured heavily in much of my activities, especially since you can get on that band with the very minimum of antenna, a quarter wave on 10m is a 2.5m whip and that can fit even on my car and it did, for years.

When the solar cycle eventually wound its way down, the 10m band was quiet for much of the year with the odd spot to whet your appetite, but rare enough to have little in the way of ongoing contacts.

As far as I'm concerned, 10m is back in play and it's my personal special band, so I'm setting myself a little challenge for the month of November and you can join in, open to anyone who wants to play. There's no prize, no scoreboard, no accolades, no nothing, other than the personal satisfaction of achievement.

Here's the challenge. How many kilometres per Watt can you achieve during November? To explain, my beacon uses 200 milliwatts, so any distance is multiplied by five to get the km/W number. If you use more than a Watt, you'll need to divide your distance by the number of Watts you use. As I said, this is a personal challenge. I'm not going to adjudicate, there's no rules to break, no one to tell you that you're cheating, it's just between you and your WSPR beacon.

For now, my record is 75630 km per Watt. I'm going to take the opportunity to consider what I might do to improve on that. Perhaps if I reduce power I'll still be heard in the Canary Islands, but I'll have more bang for my buck. Time will tell. Feel free to share your own achievement, or keep it to yourself, entirely up to you.

In case you're wondering about the capacitor thing, a gallbladder is like a bile capacitor, the analogy came from a story I wrote whilst in hospital, it might even see the light of day...

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

This space left intentionally blank Oct 09, 2022

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Forgive my briefness. You'll discover why this space was left intentionally blank next week. It involves a broken capacitor, of sorts.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The Amateur's Code for future generations... Oct 02, 2022

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Over the past while I've been discussing the Amateur's Code and its place in our community. I've shown that it was published in 1927, despite credits to the contrary and it's possible that it existed since 1923. I've discussed the original code, how it evolved and what changes have been made across the decades since.

I'd like to take this opportunity to compare the original from 1927 to a revision that I've constructed using the various versions that have been published since. Originally I was going to use the current 2022 version in the ARRL handbook to discuss this, but it's completely different from the one shown on the ARRL website today, which appears to be more recent, that it made little sense to pick one over the other.

Back to 1927, or 1923 if you like, written by Paul M. Segal 9EEA, or W9EEA, Director, Rocky Mountain Division and General Counsel of ARRL.

The Amateur's Code

I - The Amateur is Gentlemanly. He never knowingly uses the air for his own amusement in such a way as to lessen the pleasure of others. He abides by the pledges given by the A.R.R.L. in his behalf to the public and the Government.

II - The Amateur is Loyal. He owes his amateur radio to the American Radio Relay League, and he offers it his unswerving loyalty.

III - The Amateur is Progressive. He keeps his station abreast of science. It is built well and efficiently. His operating practice is clean and regular.

IV - The Amateur is Friendly. Slow and patient sending when requested, friendly advice and counsel to the beginner, kindly assistance and cooperation for the broadcast listener: these are marks of the amateur spirit.

V - The Amateur is Balanced. Radio is his hobby. He never allows it to interfere with any of the duties he owes to his home, his job, his school or his community.

VI - The Amateur is Patriotic. His knowledge and his station are always ready for the service of his country and his community.

It has a certain "quality" about it. Leaving aside that it's written with a male radio amateur in mind, it represents what the character Dennis Denuto in the 1997 Australian movie "The Castle" refers to as "It's just the vibe of the thing".

I present to you an updated version of the code in an attempt at preserving that vibe whilst taking into account that we're not in 1923 any longer:

The Radio Amateur is CONSIDERATE and RESPECTFUL...never knowingly behaving in such a way as to lessen the pleasure of others.

The Radio Amateur is LOYAL...offering encouragement and participation to the global amateur community.

The Radio Amateur is PROGRESSIVE...keeping abreast of science, striving to build and operate their station above reproach.

The Radio Amateur is FRIENDLY...patient; offering friendly advice and counsel to the beginner; kindly assistance, cooperation and consideration for the interests of others. These are the hallmarks of the amateur spirit.

The Radio Amateur is BALANCED...radio is a hobby, never allowing it to interfere with any of the duties owed to home, work, school or community.

The Radio Amateur is SUPPORTIVE...knowledge, station and skills always ready for service to country and community.

Hopefully you've followed along with the evolution of this discussion and find the reasoning for it as compelling as I do. Of course this is just one perspective on what a revised Amateur's Code might look like and I am offering it as a topic of discussion to the entire global amateur radio community. I hope that it provides food for thought, talking points and encouragement to ask questions.

I will reiterate my thanks to the WorldRadioHistory.com website where you can find many of the earliest editions of the ARRL handbook. If you have any of the missing editions, or better copies than those available, I'd encourage you to share them to continue to preserve the history of our community.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The Patriot in Amateur Radio Sep 25, 2022

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

It's been a while since I looked up the word "patriotic". Depending on which dictionary definition you use it could be: "showing love for your country and being proud of it", or it could mean: "having or expressing devotion to and vigorous support of one's country".

Synonyms for the word patriotic include "nationalist" and "nationalistic" and it relates to words such as "chauvinist", "jingoist" and "fervent". Jingoist means having or showing excessive favouritism towards one's own country.

That said, the original Amateur's Code published in 1927 says that:

The Amateur is Patriotic. His knowledge and his station are always ready for the service of his country and his community.

The 2022 ARRL handbook says:

The Radio Amateur is PATRIOTIC...station and skill always ready for service to country and community.

The ARRL website is slightly different:

The Radio Amateur is PATRIOTIC...His/[Her] station and skills are always ready for service to country and community.

Based on the meaning and connotations of the word "patriotic", I think that the sixth clause of the Amateur's Code is a political statement. It came at the close of World War One and in that context it makes sense.

I will also note that the word "patriotic" means different things to different people. For some it's a positive concept, for others it's the opposite and I think as a result it's a problematic concept in the world today.

If that's not clear to you, consider the notion of patriotic to a person living in the United States of America versus a person living in Ukraine, or a person living in North Korea, Sudan, China or Japan. Each of these countries have different concepts of the idea of patriotic which might not actually be compatible with each other.

Should we as a global community encourage cohesion or encourage incompatibility?

A more inclusive word might be "loyal", but we've already covered that. I've offered the following revision of the original loyalty clause to be:

The Radio Amateur is LOYAL...offering encouragement and participation to the global amateur community.

We could add the word country to that and dispense with the patriotic clause altogether, but I think that detracts from what the sixth clause is attempting to achieve, the sharing of station and skill to country and community.

What if we replace the word "patriotic" with "supportive" instead? I also think that the lost word "knowledge" is separate from station and skill and I think it has a place in this clause.

The clause would read:

The Radio Amateur is SUPPORTIVE...knowledge, station and skills always ready for service to country and community.

I'm aware that, given the wide range of meanings for the word "patriotic" across Earth, this is likely to be controversial, but in considering this version, please consider the level of emotion included in your feeling of the word "patriotic" versus the emotion for the word "supportive". It seems to me that reducing the level of emotion in a code of conduct is a positive evolution.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected