Foundations of Amateur Radio

Latest Episodes:

Soldering Irons and Software May 16, 2021

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

The activity of amateur radio revolves around experimentation. For over a century the amateur community has designed, sourced, scrounged and built experiments. Big or small, working or not, each of these is an expression of creativity, problem solving and experimentation.

For most of the century that activity was accompanied by the heady smell of solder smoke. It still makes an appearance in many shacks and field stations today, even my own, coaxed by an unsteady hand, more and more light and bigger and bigger magnification, I manage to join bits of wire, attach components and attempt to keep my fingers from getting burnt and solder from landing on the floor.

I've been soldering since I was nine or so. I think it started with a Morse key, a battery and a bicycle light with a wire running between my bedroom and the bedroom of my next door neighbour. In the decades since I've slightly improved my skill, but I have to confess, soldering isn't really my thing.

My thing is computers. It was computers from the day I was introduced in 1983 and nothing much has changed. For reasons I don't yet grasp, I just get what computers are about. They're user friendly, just picky whom they make friends with.

When I joined the amateur community, it was to discover a hobby that was vast beyond my wildest imagination, technical beyond my understanding and it was not computing. Little did I know.

Computing in amateur radio isn't a new thing. For example, packet radio was being experimented with in 1978 by members of the Montreal Amateur Radio Club, after having been granted permission by the Canadian government. In 2010 when I came along we had logging, DX-clusters and the first weak signal modes were already almost a decade old.

Software Defined Radio has an even longer history. The first "digital receiver" came along in 1970 and the first software transceiver was implemented in 1988. The term "software defined radio" itself was 15 years old when I joined the hobby and truth be told, it's a fascinating tale, I'll take a look at that at another time.

When I started my amateur journey like every new licensee, I jumped in the deep end and kept swimming. From buying a radio, to discovering and building antennas, from going mobile to doing contests and putting together my home station, all of it done, one step at a time, one progressive experiment after another, significant to me, but hardly world shattering in the scheme of things.

Now that I've been here for a decade I've come to see that my current experiments, mostly software based, are in exactly the same spirit as the circuit builders and scroungers, except that I'm doing this by flipping bits, changing configurations, writing software and solving problems that bear no relation to selecting the correct combination of capacitance and reactance to insert into a circuit just so.

Instead I'm wrestling with compilers, designing virtual machines, sending packets, debugging serial ports and finding new and innovative ways to excite transceivers.

For example, today I spent most of the day attempting to discover why when I generate a WSPR signal in one program, it cannot be decoded by another. If that sounds familiar, that was what I was doing last week too. This time I went back to basics and found tools inside the source code of WSJT-X and started experimenting. I'm still digging.

As an aside I was asked recently why I want to do this with audio files and the short answer is: Little Steps.

I can play an audio file through my Yaesu FT-857d. I can receive that and decode it. That's where I want to start with my PlutoSDR experiments, so when I'm doing this, I can use the same audio file and know that the information can be decoded and that any failure to do so is related to how I'm transmitting it.

Back to soldering irons and software. In my experience as an amateur it's becoming increasingly clear that they're both the same thing, tools for experimentation, with or without burning your fingers.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Getting started on WSPR with a PlutoSDR May 09, 2021

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

As you might recall, I took delivery of a device called a PlutoSDR some time ago. If you're not familiar, it's a single-board computer that has the ability to transmit and receive between 70 MHz and 6 GHz. The system is intended as a learning platform, it's open source, you get access to the firmware, compilers and a whole load of other interesting tools. I used it to play with aviation receive using a tool called dump1090 which I updated to use Open Street Map. If you're interested, it's on my VK6FLAB github page.

Over the past few months I've been steadily acquiring little bits and pieces which today added up to a new project.

Can I use my PlutoSDR to transmit WSPR?

This all started because of an experiment and a conversation.

The experiment was: "Using my FT-857d on 70cm can I transmit a weak signal mode like WSPR and have my friend on the other side of the city decode the transmission?" The answer to that was a qualified "Yes". I say qualified, since we weren't able to transmit a WSPR message, but using FT8 we were happily getting decodes across the city. We're not yet sure what the cause of this difference is, other than the possibility that the combined frequency instability at both ends was large enough to cause an issue for a WSPR message, which lasts about two minutes. On the other hand, I learned that my radio can in fact go down to 2 Watts on 70cm. I've owned that radio for over a decade, never knew.

Now that I have a band pass filter, some SMA leads and the ability to talk to my Pluto across the Wi-Fi network, I can resurrect my Pluto adventures and start experimenting.

I mentioned that this was the result of an experiment and a conversation.

The conversation was about how to create a WSPR signal in the first place. At the moment if you run WSJT-X the software will generate audio that gets transmitted via a radio. All fine, except if you don't have a screen or a mouse. Interestingly a WSPR transmission doesn't contain any time information. It is an encoded signal, containing your callsign, a maidenhead locator - that's a four or six character code representing a grid square on Earth, and a power level. That message doesn't change every time your transmitter starts the cycle, so if you were to create say an audio file with that information in it, you could just play the audio to the nearest transmitter, like a handheld radio, or in my case a Pluto, and as long as you started it at the right time, the decoding station wouldn't know the difference.

As an aside, if you're playing along with your own Pluto, and far be it for me to tell you to go and get one, you can set the Pluto up using either USB, in which case it's tethered to your computer, or you can get yourself a USB to Ethernet adaptor and connect to it via your network. If you have a spare Wi-Fi client lying around, you can get that to connect to your Wi-Fi network, connect the Pluto via Ethernet to the Wi-Fi client and your gadget is connected wirelessly to your network. I can tell you that this works, I'm typing commands on the Pluto as we speak.

As is the case in any experiment in amateur radio, you start with one thing and work your way through. At the moment I want to make this as simple as possible. By that I mean, as few moving parts as I can get away with. I could right now fire up some or other SDR tool like say GNU Radio and get it to do the work and make the transmission, but what I'd really like to do is actually have the Pluto do all the work, so I'm starting small.

Step One is to create an audio file that I can transmit using the Pluto.

It turns out that Step One isn't quite as simple as I'd hoped. I located a tool that actually purports to generate an audio file, but the file that it builds cannot be decoded, so there's still some work to be done.

On the face of it the level of progress is low, but then this whole thing has been going for months. The experiment on 70cm lasted half an hour, the discussion took all of a cup of coffee. So far, I've spent more time on this project making the Wi-Fi client talk to my network than all the rest put together and that includes finding and ordering the Pluto in the first place.

You might well wonder why I'm even bothering to talk about this as yet unfinished project. The reason is simple. Every day is a new one. Experiments are what make this hobby what it is and every little thing you learn adds to the next thing you do. Some days you make lots of progress, other days you learn another way to not make a light bulb.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Ergonomics in your shack May 02, 2021

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

In my day job I work in computing. For many years that consisted of going on-site and fixing stuff. Invariably this involved me fixing servers that were installed into a room the size of a broom closet with an optional air conditioner screaming in my ear. The experience often included sitting on a crate, or the floor, holding a keyboard and if it was a Windows Server, rolling a mouse on my knee in order to click on stuff barely discernible on a tiny screen that likely sat a meter too high above my eye line with Ethernet wires going diagonally from one end of the room to the other.

These days with ubiquitous internet connectivity that kind of experience is mostly a thing of the past.

That said, operating a radio during a contest in many stations I've used over the years is not far from that kind of layout.

Often a traditional shack starts off with a radio on a table with a notepad to record contacts. Over time that gets expanded with technology like a computer. It's common to have to juggle the radio display and keyboard, to find a spot for the mouse that doesn't interfere with the desk microphone, or to have to reach over to change band and to activate a different filter, select another antenna, use the rotator or some other essential tool that's required for making that elusive contact.

Some stations have multiple monitors, sometimes they're even together, but more often than not they're a different size, sitting too high and the radio sits as a road-block between your eye line between the screen and the keyboard.

I'm raising this because over the years I've not actually seen anyone spend any energy on discussing how you might improve this experience.

If this was your workplace, the occupational health and safety police would be all over you and for good reason. You could argue that amateur radio is a hobby and that OH&S is of lesser concern, but to that I'd like to point out that you have the same risk of self injury at work as you do in your shack, especially if you're doing a contest for 24 or 48 hours.

Not only is there a risk of injury, why make the experience harder than it needs to be? Ergonomics is the process of designing or arranging a workplace to fit the user. It's a deliberate process. You have to actually stop to consider how you are using a space, in this case your shack.

At the moment I'm experimenting with different aspects of the layout of my shack. For example, I started with a layout of the computer, counter intuitive perhaps, since we're talking about a radio shack, but given that I'm spending much of my time doing contests and digital modes, the computer is used much more than the radio is, even if the radio is what's making all the on-air noise.

After making sure that my keyboard, mouse and screen were in locations that actually helped me, I started trying to figure out where to put the radio and what role it actually plays in making the contact. If during a contest you're using search and pounce, which is when you hunt up and down the bands looking for a contact, you might argue that you'll need access to the radio to change frequency, but if you already have your computer connected to the radio, you can change frequency from the keyboard or by control with your mouse.

Another way I'm looking on reducing the amount of stress to my body whilst operating my station is by sorting out audio. Almost every radio has a speaker on it, but if you've got more than one going at the same time it becomes really difficult to determine which one is actually making noise and even harder if multiple stations are on different frequencies on different radios at the same time.

You could wear headphones and select a radio, one at a time, either by plugging in a particular radio, or by using a selector. If you're using digital modes, the audio might already be going into the computer, which offers you the ability to select from different sound cards, but there are other options. I'm working on plugging the audio from each radio into an audio mixer that will allow me to set the level for each radio independently, mute at will, set the tone, the balance between left and right ear and a few other things.

For a microphone I plan on using the same mixer and I'm working on how to have my digital audio coming from the computer incorporated into the same audio environment, because the digital audio could just as easily be a voice caller using the same system.

For push to talk I settled on a foot switch a couple of years ago. That said, if I'm on my own, I tend to use VOX, or voice operated switching, which turns on the transmitter when microphone audio is detected by the radio. This will need some careful planning if I'm going to connect multiple radios, since I don't want to transmit the same message across each radio at the same time, but with computer control, that too can be addressed.

My point is that we have lots of technology available to us as radio amateurs to achieve what ever we need to. It takes extra effort to decide how you might go about making your environment a place where you can safely sit and operate without making life harder than it needs to be.

What kinds of different techniques and technologies have you used to make your shack a more comfortable environment? Do you spend your days hunting DX, doing contests or making digital contacts, or something else? Have you considered how you might improve the layout of your shack to suit your particular use-case and when was the last time you checked to see if the decisions you originally made are still valid today?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

How much bandwidth is there? Apr 25, 2021

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Have you ever taken a moment to consider the available bandwidth on the various amateur bands?

As an entrant into amateur radio in Australia as a Foundation licence holder you have access to six different amateur bands, the 80m band, 40m, 15m, 10m, 2m and 70cm. If you add the bandwidth from each of those bands together, you end up with 26.65 MHz worth of bandwidth to play with in Australia.

I can tell you that's a big chunk of bandwidth, but until I give you some context, 26.65 MHz isn't likely something that you can picture.

You might think of things as being pretty crowded. For example, on the 40m band during a contest it's common to hear wall to wall signals. There's barely enough room to call CQ and not interfere with anyone else. But how crowded is it really?

Let's start with an SSB signal, typically it's 2.4 kHz wide. On the 40m band, with 300 kHz of bandwidth, there's room for about 125 SSB signals side-by-side. On the 10m band, there's space for over 700 SSB signals side-by-side. Across all the available bandwidth for a Foundation license holder in Australia, there's room for over 11-thousand different SSB signals side-by-side.

While we're on the subject of crowding, there's talk about the massive influx of FT8, some call it a scourge. FT8 channels are transmitted within a single SSB channel and each takes up 50 Hz. That means that within an SSB channel of 2.4 kHz, there's room for 48 different FT8 channels, and if you take into account the odd and even time-slots, that doubles to 96 different signals, all within the same single SSB channel. So while FT8 is popular and growing, let's not get too excited about how much space it's taking up. From the perspective of an Australian Foundation license holder, it's taking up exactly six separate SSB slots of those 11-thousand across the six available bands, room for 576 separate FT8 signals, taking up a total of 14.4 kHz, or 0.05% of the available bandwidth.

Let's look at this another way, of the 26.65 MHz available bandwidth, 20 MHz is from the 70cm band alone, that means that all the other bands put together, fit inside the 70cm band three times over.

Let that sink in for a moment, adding the 80m, 40m, 15m, 10m and 2m band together fit inside the 70cm band three times.

You can use the 70cm band alone for 800-thousand FT8 signals, remember that there's two time slots, so you get two for one.

If this makes your mind explode, then consider that a carrier wave signal is considered to be about 25 Hz wide, so on the 70cm band you could have 800-thousand individual CW signals. You could allocate a personal CW frequency to every one of the amateurs in the United States in the 70cm band and still have room for expansion, not that I'm advocating that, just to give you a sense of scale. I should note that the 70cm band in the United States is even larger than it is in Australia, but I don't want to get bogged down into the various band plans across the world at the moment.

You might ask yourself why am I getting so excited about this?

Amateur radio is about experimentation. I've been telling you about HF propagation and using techniques like FT8 to determine just how far your signal goes, but you could use the same techniques to build a 70cm communication network with the amateurs within your city and share information across the city, perhaps even build a mesh network using your 70cm hand-held and an FT8-call network. It could be used to distribute propagation information, or messages in case of an emergency, or form the basis of something completely different.

If that doesn't whet your appetite, consider that the 1mm amateur band, which runs from 241 to 250 GHz is ready for you to experiment when your license permits. The current world distance record is 114 km, set in 2008 by Brian WA1ZMS and Peter W4WWQ, it has 9 GHz bandwidth and has room for 360-million FT8 signals, or 60 exclusive FT8 channels for every amateur on the planet.

My point is that as radio amateurs we have access to a massive chunk of radio bandwidth and it's just sitting there waiting for you to experiment with.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The massive physics phenomenon just over eight minutes away ... Apr 18, 2021

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

If you've been around radio amateurs for a little while you're likely to have heard about the Solar Cycle and that it affects radio propagation for HF or High Frequency, also known as shortwave communications. The frequencies in the range of around 3 to 30 MHz, or 100m to 10m wavelength. One of the main ways it's used is for is for long distance or global communication and one of the most common ways that's done is using the ionosphere around the globe to refract a radio signal.

In September 2020, the Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel, announced that Solar Cycle 25 had commenced in December 2019 and radio amateurs around the globe rejoiced.

The first question for me was, why Solar Cycle 25?

You might think of the Sun as a stable light in the sky. As it happens, the bright light hides all manner of ferocious activity. One of the measures of this activity is the number of dots observed on the surface of our Star. These dots are called sunspots. As Solar activity increases, the number of sunspots increases. The activity is cyclical, it increases and decreases over time. Each increase and decrease combined is known as a Solar Cycle.

On average a cycle lasts about 10.7 years. Simple maths gives you that Solar Cycles started somewhere around 1750. That seems a little strange. Our Sun is 4.6 billion years old. There are paintings on the rocks at Ubirr in the Northern Territory of Australia that are 40 thousand years old. The pyramids in Egypt are 45 hundred years old. The Solar Cycle has been going for a lot longer than the 7 million years there have been humans on the planet, let alone dinosaurs who experienced the Solar Cycle 66 million years ago. Using fossil records we've determined that the Solar Cycle has been stable for at least the last 700 million years.

Chinese astronomers recorded Solar activity around 800 BC and Chinese and Korean astronomers frequently observed sunspots but no known drawings exist of these observations. The first person to draw sunspots was John of Worcester on the 8th of December 1128. Five days later, half a world away in Korea on the 13th of December 1128, the astronomers in Songdo reported a red vapour that "soared and filled the sky", describing the aurora borealis in the night sky that resulted from those very same sunspots.

In the early 1600's there was plenty of activity around the recording of sunspots. Thomas Harriot appears to have predated Galileo Galilei by more than a year with notes and drawings dated the 8th of December 1610. There's plenty of other names during this period, Father and son David and Johannes Fabricius and Christoph Scheiner to name three, but I'm moving on.

The Solar Cycle, was first described by Christian Horrebow who more than a century later in 1775 wrote: "it appears that after the course of a certain number of years, the appearance of the Sun repeats itself with respect to the number and size of the spots". Recognition of the Solar Cycle was awarded to Samuel Heinrich Schwabe who noticed the regular variation in the number of sunspots and published his findings in a short article entitled "Solar Observations during 1843" in which he suggested that the cycle was 10 years.

Stay with me, we're getting close to Solar Cycle number One.

In 1848 Rudolf Wolf devised a way to quantify sunspot activity. His method, named the Wolf number, is still in use today, though we call it the relative or international sunspot number. In 1852 he published his findings on all the available data on sunspot activity going back to 1610 and calculated the average Solar Cycle duration as 11.11 years. He didn't have enough observations to reliably identify Solar Cycles before 1755, so the 1755-1766 Solar Cycle is what we now consider Solar Cycle number One lasting 11.3 years with a maximum of 144.1 sunspots in June of 1761.

Until 2009 it was thought that there had been 28 Solar Cycles between 1699 and 2008 with an average duration of 11.04 years, but it appears that the 15 year Solar Cycle between 1784 and 1799 was actually two cycles, making the average length only 10.7 years. I should also point out that there have been Solar Cycles as short as 8 years and as long as 14 years.

With the announcement of Solar Cycle 25 comes improved propagation for anyone who cares to get on air and make noise. The current predictions vary depending on the method used, ranging from a very weak to a moderate Solar Cycle 25. There are predictions for the Solar maximum, the time with the most sunspot activity, to occur between 2023 and 2026 with a sunspot range between 95 and 130. By comparison during the previous Solar Cycle, in 2011 the first peak hit 99 and the second peak in 2014 hit 101.

I have purposely stayed away from electromagnetic fields, geomagnetic impacts and the actual methods for HF propagation, I'll look at those another time.

I can tell you that we've gone a little beyond counting dots on the Sun to determine activity and we have a whole slew of satellites orbiting our Star doing all manner of scientific discovery, all of which helps our understanding of what's going on in the massive physics phenomenon 8 minutes and 20 seconds away by radio.

That said, Solar eruptions are still pretty unpredictable, much like the weather around us. Not because we don't want to know, but because this is a very complex one to solve, much like ionospheric propagation is hard to forecast, much easier to measure actual performance and much more accurate.

So, if you want to know how well propagation is going to be today, turn on your radio and have a listen. If you want to know how great it's going to be tomorrow, look at the forecast, but bring an umbrella, or an FT8 transmitter.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB.

The dynamic nature of your shack Apr 11, 2021

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

If you have the opportunity to build your shack, it might start off as a table in the corner where you plonk down a radio, plug into nearby power and run coax to. That's pretty much how most shacks start, mine included.

For me the step of running coax was an activity that took weeks of planning and procrastination and days of climbing on the roof. After actually completing that and getting two runs of coax to my planned shack, one for HF and one for UHF and VHF, the shack building itself was pretty simple.

I had to get power to the location, but an extension lead took care of that. In the interest of space I put the power supply on the floor, a wooden floor that ensured good circulation, unlike carpet, perhaps a topic for another day, I plugged my coax into the radio, plugged in the 12 Volt power and was up and running.

Over time that space continued to grow. Looking at it right now, it has two computer monitors, a laptop, three radios, two coax switches, a keyboard, mouse, digital interface, two speakers, and a fan to cool the radio when I'm calling CQ on FT8.

I'm not a messy person, but I do like to have my tools convenient. It's not a pristine environment by any stretch, but it's orderly as shacks go. An hour ago it wasn't, actually, looking at the clock, that was four hours ago. Time flies when you're having fun.

My shack is the centre of my radio activities. I might receive a gadget from a friend to test and I'll put it on my desk ready to go. The same is true for a foot pedal that I found when looking for something else, as is the audio adaptor that I used in the desk mixer that I'm experimenting with.

Over time each of these bits and pieces accumulate on the surface.

When I noticed that my radio was running hot, or in my mind uncomfortably warm, given that I'm using 5 Watts, I decided to invest in a fan, clipped to the edge of the desk requiring yet another wire.

It's not limited to small bits. I'm testing a new radio, that comes with removable head, a microphone, cables to join those to the main body, two antenna port cables, a coax switch and a power lead with two cables.

Over time you have coax mixed with 12 Volt DC and 240 Volt AC, audio leads, USB leads, video leads, grounding wire, remote control switches, microphone leads, CAT leads and more, all running all over the place.

Making a minor change can become a big hassle, making it hard to determine what goes where, not to mention that each cable generates it's own little slice of RF, wanted or not.

The four hours I've just spent consisted of taking everything except the bolted on computer monitors off the desk and starting from scratch.

I also did this when I first added a second radio, but that was so long ago that the "system" I implemented then was unrecognisable. Doing it again today I made better use of the environment and changed some things around. I started with the 240 Volts requirements, then the coax, then 12 Volts, then audio and finally USB, using cable ties for semi-permanent things like power boards and hook and loop straps for things that move more frequently like audio wiring and video cables.

It's not perfect. I'm looking for some flexible coax patch leads, there's USB cables going every which way, the laptop keyboard isn't used, so why use a laptop, no doubt I'll discover more.

My point is that this is dynamic and every now and then it pays to spend a little while putting things back together.

My next project is to use an audio mixer to bring all the audio together in one place so I can use one headset for everything and give me the opportunity to plug in a tape recorder as my regulator suggests for monitoring emergency communications, though I might have to come up with something a little less 1980 for the actual recording.

If you're going to do this, move the desk at least a meter from the wall so you can get at the back of your shack, you can thank me later.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

When you just have to try things ... Apr 04, 2021

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

A little while ago I was gifted a new radio, well, new to me. A Kenwood TS-480HX. It's an all mode HF transceiver with 6m. Does 200 Watts, but you know me, I'm into QRP, low power, so I first had to figure out how to dial the transmitter down to 5 Watts and that was after figuring out how to feed the dual power supplies from one source and have the fuses work as expected.

When I received the radio, I took stock of all the bits that it was packed with, all complete, all the accessories, even the user manual was laminated. The previous owner, Walter VK6BCP (SK) whom I never met was an amateur after my own heart. I've talked about how he meticulously documented his alterations to a power supply for example.

Previously I've taken this radio on holidays to operate portable in a field day. The experience was underwhelming, in that I didn't hear anyone and nobody responded to my CQ calls. At the time I put it down to a poor antenna and unfamiliarity with the radio, despite reading the manual, well, at least scanning it.

Today I finally set some time aside to do some more testing. I decided that the first step would be to actually set it up in my shack, next to my trusty Yaesu FT-857d and see how it performs in comparison.

So, I plugged everything in, found a coax switch so I could switch the antenna between the two radios and learned that the audio connector that I've been using for digital modes on the Yaesu is actually compatible with the Kenwood. Now I need to make another adaptor for this radio, but in the meantime I can move the audio plug between radios when I swap.

In doing this I learnt a few things.

One is that there's plenty of scope for things to break.

For example, I was reaching over the desk to plug a connector into the coax switch when I leaned on the keyboard and touched the space bar. This caused the radio that I was working on to start its tuning cycle without an antenna connected. Fortunately I was using 5 Watts and I caught it within seconds, so no white smoke this time around.

It does remind me to turn off the radio when fiddling with connectors though. I'm embarrassed to report that I thought I'd learnt that lesson already, nothing like a refresher course in transmitter safety and dumb things not to do in the shack.

Then there was the thing about using remote control. In my naivety I thought that the connector that the Yaesu uses for computer control is also used on the Kenwood. Turns out that it isn't. Fortunately I read the manual before plugging that in.

The Yaesu has a specific digital mode with individual gain and filter characteristics, which seem to be completely lacking on the Kenwood.

I'm still attempting to learn the differences in receive performance between the two. I started this process by running WSJT-X and listening to WSPR or Weak Signal Propagation Reports and testing how both radios decode things. I cannot yet do this side-by-side, but for now I can swap and see signals coming in on either radio.

This is not the first time I've put a different radio on my desk to see how it works and it's not going to be the last time. What I'm looking to achieve is to swap over from the Yaesu to the Kenwood in my shack, so I can put the Yaesu back in the car and have a mobile shack operating again because I have to admit, I do miss that.

What kinds of testing regimes to you have when you're trying out a new radio? I'd love to hear your thoughts. My email address as always is cq@vk6flab.com.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Portable experiences ... Mar 28, 2021

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Last weekend was memorable for all the right reasons. Filled with 24 hours of amateur radio, spent with friends, in a park, making noise and having fun, marking the first time I recall setting up in a park for that length of time with so few extra resources. Normally we'd be decked out with tents, or in my case a swag, we'd have camping stoves, perhaps even a caravan or two, tables, cutlery, the whole shebang.

This time we brought none of that. Just radios, antennas, batteries, water with a few snacks and folding chairs.

This was like nothing I've experienced before and it has me asking myself: Why did I wait so long to operate like this?

It was wonderful.

We spent it being on-air and making noise during a 24 hour contest which is specifically intended to celebrate and reward portable operation. In case you're wondering, the John Moyle Memorial Field Day is to encourage portable field day operation and provide training for emergency situations. It was created in memory of John Moyle, the long term editor of Wireless Weekly, who served in the RAAF with distinction. He's said to be responsible for a number of innovative solutions to keeping radio and radar equipment working under difficult wartime conditions.

I've participated in this contest plenty of times before. This was the first time I did it in a park, in the city, and as experiences went it was fabulous and recommended.

As you might know, I like operating portable. I've been operating from my car for years, from camp-sites in remote locations for just as long and I've activated several parks and peaks in Summits On The Air, or SOTA, and World Wide Flora and Fauna, or WWFF activities. I've also set-up during field days in local parks and I regularly drive to a local park to get on-air and make noise. With that as background, you might ask yourself, what is different?

Let's start with setting the scene.

The park that we used is located in a suburb about 10 km out from the city centre. It has a river running through it and on the banks there are plenty of trees with lawn. Dotted throughout are picnic tables with wooden gazebos. All very civilised.

From a radio perspective, it was RF quiet, that is, no local electrical noise, away from cars, from a footpath, close enough to parking where we could get our gear out of the car and walk it to the site.

All that alone would have made for a great experience, but this went beyond that.

For example, dinner consisted of ordering from the local fish and chips shop five minutes away and picking up some amazing seafood. While there collecting some extra water and most importantly dessert from the supermarket next door.

During our activities we had visits from local amateurs. Over the 24 hours we had a steady stream of interested hams coming out and having a chat. Some took the opportunity to bring food, dips and crackers, thermos flasks of tea, even ice cold beer. One amateur came along at the end of our activation and helped pack-up. All this made for a very enjoyable social experience.

Another thing that was different was that the operator could wear headphones without stopping anyone else from hearing what was going on. We achieved that by connecting a headphone splitter to the radio, piping the audio to some external speakers for local monitoring whilst the operator wearing headphones would not be affected by conversations taking place around them.

We did have some challenges.

Our logging tool of choice was, for reasons we don't yet understand, switching bands which meant that sometimes the numbers we were giving out were not sequential. Generally in a contest situation you exchange a piece of information in addition to a signal report. In this case it's supposed to be a sequential number and because there were multiple operators, the sequence is supposed to be per band.

The trees provided shade, but were not quite up to the task of being sky-hooks able to hold up wire antennas, fortunately we brought squid poles for that purpose.

It was hot. 38 degrees Celsius. It turns out that even though wearing a black long-sleeve T-shirt is not a suitable fashion choice from a temperature perspective, it was perfect in preventing sunburn and for that I was immensely grateful.

As you might know, we track what we bring in a spreadsheet, one row per item. A column for each time we go out. Over time we learn what's used and what's not. Our list is getting better and better.

I'll admit that I felt some trepidation in relation to this location, but I'm so glad that I took a leap of faith and went with the experience.

What a blast!

What kind of activities have you been up to that gave you a blast?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The remote edge... Mar 21, 2021

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

The landscape of remotely operated amateur radio is changing by the day. Once the territory of home brew DTMF decoders and remote controlled radio links, now more often than not it's a Raspberry Pi with an internet connection, or some variation on that.

Before I continue, I must point out that amateur regulations vary widely around the globe, especially in this area. It appears mostly due to the rapidly changing nature of remotely operated radios.

For example, most, if not all software defined radios are technically remotely operated. You run software on your computer, the radio is connected to a network, you twiddle a setting on your computer and the radio responds. The computer is not part of the radio, but without it there's not much radio to be had. There's no need for both to be in the same room, let alone the same building.

Similarly, a Kenwood TS-480 and a Yaesu FT-857d are both radios that have a removable face with knobs and a display. The main body of the radio is a nondescript box with sockets for power and antenna, connected to the face essentially via a serial cable that can be a few centimetres long, or a few meters. There's solutions like RemoteRig that replace this serial cable with a virtual cable, allowing you to put the face in one location and the body in a different one, connected to each other across the internet.

With the introduction of Starlink internet, a low earth orbit satellite based network, a connection to the internet can be made anywhere on earth, making it possible to have your station sitting somewhere far away from interference, powered by batteries and solar panels and connected to the internet. You might not even need to go to satellite based internet, the mobile phone network in many places is often more than sufficient for making such a station viable.

If you're a member of a radio club, you might consider your club station. Often this station is the work of many volunteer years effort with multiple radios, antennas, filters and the like and often it sits idle most of the time, only getting fired up during club meetings or the weekend. What if you connected that station to the internet and offered it as a service to your members?

Depending on license requirements, you might consider amateurs who have limited ability to build a shack but would love to be on air making noise. A remote club shack might be just the ticket for getting them on air. It could even become an income stream for your club.

You might be able to offer access to trainees, or let them monitor the station without transmit ability whilst they're preparing for their license, or you might operate a 48 hour contest in shifts, all using the same transmitter, but from the comfort of your home.

The landscape is full of different solutions, like RemoteRig, which I've already mentioned, RigPi Remote Station Server is a tiny computer that controls your radio and allows you access via a web browser or remote desktop connection. There's Remote Hams, a ready made solution for putting your shack on air with access control and remote management. You can connect specific radios, like the Elecraft K3 Remote System, or a Flex Radio Maestro, there's even web browser remote control projects like Universal Ham Radio Remote by Oliver F4HTB, each making it possible to get on air and make noise using a radio in a different location across the internet.

All of the solutions I've named make it possible to fully use your radio, that means CW, SSB, FM, antenna control and the like. You can use it for FT8 or RTTY, the choice is yours.

The interface might be the face of your radio, a special console, computer, phone or a tablet and you can operate it wherever and whenever the mood takes you.

No longer do you need to have a shack in your home with coax snaking through the walls to an antenna whilst dodging the local authorities, or fighting the engine noise from your car. You can make the ultimate shack anywhere without taking up space in your home or car.

One final comment. This is a moving feast. The level of functionality is increasing by the day. For me this journey started with a steel toolbox in my garage with a radio inside it and coax running from the box to my antenna. I have operated my radio and hosted my weekly net like this. The radio in the garage, me in my office connected via Wi-Fi over a virtual serial cable. You don't need to start this in the middle of nowhere, six hours drive over the back roads to fix a problem, you can start this project today at home.

Where on this journey are you and what issues have you come up against? Let me know. My address as always is cq@vk6flab.com

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Making observations Mar 14, 2021

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Amateur radio is an environment for infinite possibilities. I've spoken about the way that contacts can happen, seemingly out of the blue, how propagation has so many variables it's hard to predict what will happen at any given moment. During a contest you might scan up and down the bands looking for an elusive multiplier, a contact that's worth extra points, or a missing DXCC country, in your quest to contact a hundred or more. It's easy to get swept away in the excitement and disappointment that comes with success and failure.

I'm mentioning this because it's pretty much how many people in our community go about their hobby, me included.

I've likened making a contact to fishing, taking your time to get the rhythm of the other station, understanding that there's a human at the other end. Taking stock of what they're hearing, which stations they're responding to, how they respond and if they give out hints about making a successful contact with them.

The other day I came across a request to decode some Morse on an image showing long and short lines joined together in some form to serve an artistic purpose. Others pointed out that this wasn't Morse. I took an extra moment to point out that Morse had four individual attributes. It has a dit, a dah, a spacing between the letters and a spacing between the words, and since this image didn't have that it couldn't be Morse code. A few days later it occurred to me that I hadn't been paying attention. Morse actually has five attributes, it also has a spacing between each tone. I updated my answer and began to think about this interaction.

It's not the first time that I've stopped to consider what's happening.

For example, if I change bands on FT8, a digital mode that is very helpful for determining current propagation, I have a look at the level of activity. I'm generally not in a hurry, so I tend to leave it on the same band for a while, sometimes an hour, sometimes less, sometimes more. If the band is in full flight with every slot filled, it's easy to tick the "CQ Only" box and hide all the noise, or rather extra messages that form the exchange, but sometimes that noise has a whole lot of interesting information.

You can determine if one of the stations calling CQ is actually answering anyone or if they're just an alligator, all mouth, no ears. You can see individual people attempting to get each other's attention, making a local or a long distance contact. You can type in an interesting grid locator that accompanies most CQ calls and see just how far it is from you and in which direction.

I will also point out that using FT8 to observe a so-called dead band can be just as illustrative. It allows you to see signals in the waterfall, it decodes things that are barely visible and it will give you a feel for how your station at that location on that band at that time is performing in real-time. For example, it showed me that the squelch on my radio was turned on and blocking any chance of receiving weak signals, something that I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't taken the time to observe.

Another example. During a contest I often take some time to listen to a pile-up that surrounds a massive station to see what stations I can hear, who is coming in strong and who is coming in weak. I keep a mental or actual note of what cracks the S-meter with an indication of signal strength and what only turns up as audio, perfectly readable, but not exciting the needle in any way. I might not speak with any of those stations, but I know that there are stations in a particular location that I can hear.

It's easy to get swept up in all this massive excitement that is our hobby, but sometimes it pays off to take a breath, to wait a moment, to take a look and have a listen to learn the lay of the land and understand what is happening and consider the implications. Within that moment of calm you might find an unexpected jewel in the rough. That's for example how I managed a contact with South Sudan several years ago during a massive pile-up in a club station during a contest.

I'd love to hear what you have stumbled upon serendipitously like that. You can always get in touch, cq@vk6flab.com is my address.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected