Foundations of Amateur Radio

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How to get started ... Jun 05, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

Today I'm going to talk about getting started. In the past I've mentioned that it's a good idea to find a community, a club or a local mentor to get you going in this hobby, and that still stands. You really need to find some like-minded, available humans to share this experience with. That being said, there are some things that you can do on your lonesome.

An often asked question is: "What radio should I buy?" The answer to that question can be long and involved, but it boils down to this: "What ever you can afford."

That answer in and of itself isn't that helpful. Do you get a $40 cheap hand-held or a $4000 all-singing and dancing radio?

My best answer to that is: "Buy your second radio first." What I mean is that if you spend your money on a $40 radio today, how long will you enjoy it and how long will it be until you spend your next bit of money and is that $40 investment a waste of money?

I'm not making a value judgement here, the answer is still: "What ever you can afford."

When I asked that question of my mentor, Hi Meg, she explained that her first radio was a hand-held radio and that she quickly settled on a Yaesu FT857d as her second radio. She went on to say that picking a brand is like choosing between Mac or PC, Ford vs. General Motors, vi vs. emacs, Debian vs. Red Hat, Tomato vs. Tomato. There are followers in each camp and nay-sayers in every other camp.

I picked my radio based on whom I had around me for support, who was nearby for silly questions, advice on accessories, experience with settings and knowledge of costs, faults and other intangibles that I was completely unfamiliar with.

Once you get into this hobby, you'll come across people who have technical reasons for picking a particular radio, or sentimental reasons, or financial ones, or what ever reason they come up with. When you get started, not much of that matters. If you have money to burn, then sure, you can by the top-of-the range radio, but if you're never going to use it, what's the point?

Once you've picked your radio, other choices follow. What power supply do I need, how much space do I need, what kinds of connectors does it come with, has it got a built-in antenna, or do you need to erect one, does it have a tuner built-in, or do you need to get one, do you need programming software, a microphone, etc. etc. Each of these follows from the initial selection of your radio.

What now? You have a radio, presumably an antenna of some sort and your radio is actually turned on and you can hear stuff.

If you've come from a short-wave listening background, you'll know where everything is, have a familiarity with the bands and an idea of how things work. If you're new to this hobby, then these things are not so obvious. Things to mention are that each band is unique, that is, they all have their own characteristics. Some are always noisy, others are always quiet, some are active during the day, others only at night, some have stations all day long and others only for short periods.

A lot of this depends on things outside your control. Propagation is a variable animal and depending on what our Sun is doing, propagation will change, sometimes substantially, as time goes by. Forecasts for the weather are getting better. The same is true for propagation forecasts. A forecast is just that, a prediction of the environment, but not a guarantee of conditions.

There is no substitute for turning on your radio and having a listen. If you're in someone else's shack, have a listen on their equipment, use the opportunity to learn something about different set-ups. If you get the chance, operate on that station and see what happens.

Getting started isn't a magical invisible unattainable thing, it's taking the first step on your journey into this hobby of Amateur Radio.

Get to it already.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

A surprise might be just around the corner... May 29, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

This crazy hobby keeps sending curve balls to me. You've heard me talk in the past about missed opportunities. There are times when you look back and ask yourself: "What was I thinking?"

Over the past, oh boy, I just looked it up, two years, I have been struggling with an antenna system that I could use while mobile. I took delivery of 4 single band antennas, one for 80m, one for 40m, 15m and one for 10m. I also purchased a boot-lip mount and some other things like coax switches and adapters.

I've been attempting to make these antennas work with very, very limited success. They work just fine, they tune up as expected, show the SWR curve that the manufacturer has helpfully printed on a little card that comes with each antenna and generally are sturdy, compact and wonderful, but only if they're installed on something other than my car.

In desperation a year ago I purchased a tuner for my radio, so at least I can trick it into transmitting. I have made very few contacts, added one or two DX countries in the past year and really got no-where.

So, during the week I recalled that one of the things I purchased was an adapter. It's got a PL-259 socket on one end and a CB-thread on the other. I dug it out, found the thread that goes into the hole and attempted to attach it to the CB antenna I was given within a month of becoming an Amateur. It had been modified to work on 10m and most of my DX contacts had been with that antenna.

So, I attempted to attach the adapter and it doesn't fit.

So I look around my shed and notice another antenna that I was given at the same time that never worked, it's a multi-tap antenna. Picture an antenna that is a big stick, has wire would around its entire length with points where you can attach a lead to bypass some of the antenna. You plug the lead into the bottom connector, then pick the band you want to work on, put the other end of the lead into the right tapping point and off you go. It came with a big spring mount, was intended to be bolted to a bull-bar, but using a family sedan, makes attaching this contraption pretty hopeless. It'd tested it where I could, measured it, tested more, made a new wander lead with a solid connector and nothing I did made it work.

It turns out that the thread in my adapter fits properly into the base of this multi-tap antenna.

I took it out into a local park, put the antenna with the lead on 40m, bolted it to my boot-lip mount, halfway pulled out the tuning end, a little metal spike that you can use to adjust the length of the antenna and turned on my radio.

Guess what happened next?

Nothing, that's what happened.

I was stunned, into silence, imagine that, me silent.

It worked. No adjustments, no trimming, no fixes, nothing. Just plugged it in and it worked.

Propagation was pretty poor, so no contacts as such, but oh my.

The point of all this is that when you least expect it, a surprise might come your way. Look at the assumptions you've made in your shack, think of the things you've tried and failed to achieve and use that to take a fresh look at what you have.

Hopefully your delight will be just as surprising as mine was.

I'll be back on air a lot more, who know's I might even get the opportunity to have a chat with you.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Harmonics and calling CQ May 22, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

Have you ever had your radio on, listening around, say on 40m and heard the following:

"CQ, CQ 40m, this is VK6FLAB, calling CQ 40, CQ 40m, calling CQ"

Apart from the fact that the station calling seems pretty desperate for a contact, you're tuned to 40m, why on earth would you actually mention that, what's the point of telling me what band you're calling on, when clearly I'm hearing you on that band?

The answer to this question is in harmonics.

At the heart of every radio is an oscillator, set to some or other frequency that forms the basis of all that happens around it. In order to arrive at different frequencies, we add and subtract, double and halve frequencies, all combining to arrive at the various frequencies and bands we use.

I'll use some fictitious numbers here to give you an idea of what's happening.

Imagine that you have a 3.5 MHz oscillator. With it you can double it to 7 MHz, double that to 14 MHz, double it again to 28 MHz, that's 80m, 40m, 20m and 10m, just by using doubling. You could use the same oscillator and a doubler with a frequency tripler to get 21 MHz and so on.

A side-effect of doubling and tripling frequencies is that this process isn't perfect or linear. This in turn means that some of those imperfections also get doubled and tripled.

These imperfections are called spurious emissions and we reduce them as much as possible; in fact it's required by legislation to be below a certain level below the wanted emission.

As technology improves, these spurious emission standards evolve. The US FCC as an example says that for radios built before January 1, 1978 they're exempt, radios until 2003 must be 30 dB below the wanted emission and current radios must be 43 dB below.

What this means is that in effect your radio is transmitting on multiple frequencies at the same time, but filtering prevents most of this from coming out.

Now, imagine that you have a series of dipoles connected to your radio, one for 160m, one for 80m, one for 40m, one for 10m, etc. Imagine that your radio was built before January 1, 1978 and you're calling CQ. The harmonics are being generated, and because you've got an antenna connected that can transmit those harmonics, they go out into the wide blue world outside.

It's entirely possible that someone listening on 20m, 15m or 10m is hearing you calling on 40m through your spurious emissions at some or other harmonic.

So, next time you hear a station calling CQ 40m, they're either rusted on die-hard amateurs on a modern radio, or they are using a so-called boat anchor, having fun on air.

Either way, it's a great idea to say hello while you have the opportunity. Perhaps even use the experience as an excuse to learn more about their station, or even check out their harmonics and let them know if you can hear them. Propagation be damned.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Lower and Upper Side Band, why is it so? May 15, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

Today we enjoy radio using all manner of different so-called modes. The ones that most people are familiar with are FM and AM. In fact digital radio DAB+ is another example of a mode. In Amateur Radio we have a few more to play with, Single Side Band, or SSB, countless other digital modes, CW, or Carrier Wave are all different approaches to getting information from one place to another.

If you have a radio that uses SSB, you'll soon notice that there are two versions of SSB, something called LSB and something called USB, or Lower and Upper Side band.

If you tune around the bands you'll soon notice that some stations are using Lower Side Band and others are using Upper Side Band and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.

Actually, there is a method to the madness. First of all, commercial and military HF radio all use Upper Side Band all the time. Radio Amateurs are a bit more traditional and we have the following basic convention. For voice signals on frequencies lower than 10 MHz, we use Lower Side Band, and for signals above 10 MHz we use Upper Side Band.

There are exceptions to this. RTTY, one of the digital modes uses Lower Side Band regardless of frequency and all the other digital modes use Upper Side Band.

Confused yet?

Here's another way to think of it. Everyone uses Upper Side Band, except for RTTY and Voice below 10 MHz on Amateur Radio.

Why are we doing this cookey thing to ourselves in Amateur Radio? First thing to note is that it's not random, we didn't just wake up one morning with this idea and said, lets do that.

Side Band was first figured out mathematically in 1914. A year later it was made into reality by John Carson who used it to carry more long distance telephone calls across the AT&T phone system. There were on-air experiments and in 1933 the ARRL board instructed the technical staff of QST magazine to investigate the feasibility of single side band carrier-less phone transmission on amateur frequencies. There is lots to read about this in the January 2003 edition of QST magazine, if you're interested, it's a fascinating read.

From an engineering perspective, radios built during the birth of Side Band, or Single Side Band Suppressed Carrier, to give its full name, used different methods to create a side band signal. One method was to filter out the part of the side band you didn't want, the other was to use phasing to add or subtract two signals and create a side band signal. Creating a filter was hard, creating a phase difference was much simpler to achieve.

Now, one of the effects of using this method of making a side band signal was that you had a place where the signals would add and another where they would subtract. Where was this place you ask?

One guess.

10 MHz anyone?

So, for these radios built during the birth of side band, Upper and Lower Side Band came as a side-effect of creating a simple and reliable system to make the signal.

Today we have alternatives which make this 10 MHz magic spot pretty much obsolete, but there are still 1951 Collins 75A-1 radios on air today and we like to talk to each other, so why fix something that isn't broken?

That's why we use Upper and Lower Side Band. Remember, everything uses Upper Side Band, except RTTY and Amateur Radio phone below 10 MHz.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Logging software ... what to choose? May 08, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

Today I'm going to talk about housekeeping, that is, the things you should be doing while you're doing the things you like doing, like making noise on air.

The topic of Logging is one that continues to attract comment, suggestion, frustration and on occasion ridicule.

Let me start with the fact that the very first contact that I made was not logged. I can tell you exactly which day it was, Sunday, April 17. I can tell you where I was, Stirk Park in Kalamunda in Western Australia. I can tell you that the other station was a Japanese station, but that's all I can tell you. I don't know the time, the band, likely 10m or 15m, I couldn't tell you their callsign, even though I'm pretty sure that I wrote it on a random piece of paper at the time. It simply hadn't occurred to me that I should actually log that contact, or that I'd ever think back to that day and wonder whom I spoke with.

So, if you've not yet been on-air, get your logging sorted out now. It doesn't have to be fancy, it can be your diary, a notebook, a binder, or a phone, tablet or computer with appropriate software, just actually start logging. Do it today.

That out of the way, getting the entries stored somewhere, you'll soon notice that there are tools you love and tools you despise and that over time this changes. It also changes for different activities. If you're on the top of a summit or in a national park, you might just want a small notepad to log your contacts, but if you're in the middle of a contest you might just want to not have to worry about logging everything manually, you might just want to punch in the other station's callsign and their exchange.

The point is that for every amateur activity there are different aspects of logging. If you're chasing island activations you'll need a spot for the IOTA number, but if you're actually on the island, others are chasing you, then a good contest log is likely all you'll need.

So, I just said the magic word, good. What is a good log, what does it look like, which software should you look at?

Well, as in everything in life, that depends. You're likely to change logging software across your amateur activities, either because you have come to dislike the one you're using, or because it no longer works on the current version of your computer, or any number of other reasons. When you're picking software, you should as the very first priority discard all logging software that does not allow you to export the log. If you cannot export, you're locked in and your data is very possibly lost at some point in the future, so only use logging software, if you're using software, that does an export.

Now I did mention that you don't need to use software. Paper is perfectly fine, just a little harder to use if you want to check back and see when you worked a station more than once. It's also hard to use, actually, impossible to use, if you want to use Logbook Of The World, eQSL, clublog or any number of online contact verification tools.

If you're looking to log during a contest, figure out if the contest is actually supported by the software, this will help you reduce the number of contacts you make that are invalid. For example, a contest might specify that you can only work a station every two hours. Relying on memory is not a good plan. Using a computer to do that is much more productive and reduces the number of contacts that are going to be tossed out by the contest manager - not to mention that some contests apply penalties if you log an invalid contact.

A log that requires you to type in the frequency once is fine, but not if you need to type it in each time. If you're doing that on your phone, it'll get very tired very quickly.

If your logging software won't work without an Internet connection and you're away from the net while being set-up as a portable station, you'll have all manner of issues, so consider that.

So, what do I use?

For most of my contest activity, at the moment, I use VK Contest Logger. It's somewhat frustrating to use on a small sub-note book, but it's pretty stable, allows multiple computers to talk to each-other and share band information, allows export, is lightweight, regularly maintained and runs on most Windows computers. My actual station log on my Linux Desktop is using CQRLOG which I use to remove duplicates and enter QSL information, export to Logbook Of The World, eQSL and the like. I use a notepad when I'm mobile chasing DX and enter the data in my station log. I've used WINTEST during contests, played with HRD and still have not found one that works well on my phone.

It's a moving feast. I have different operating systems, Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Android, each for different purposes, but I've yet to find a universal one that integrates well across all that.

What ever solution you pick, make sure you log your first contact.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What can you say on-air? May 01, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

There are things to say and things not to say as a radio amateur.

Let's start with swearing on-air. Each jurisdiction is different and changing. The Australian Radiocommunications License Conditions Determination, or LCD has nothing to say about content. It's all about bandwidth, frequency and modes. The rules in the USA discuss "obscene or indecent words or language", but there is no definition of what that might mean. A word in one country is meaningless, where in another it's completely unacceptable.

Our station signals travel around the globe, so it's prudent to moderate your language and to refrain from creating a situation where offence might occur.

Of course, there are those who take this to the n'th degree. There is a perception that you cannot use the words K-Mart or Target on air, instead referring to these locations by some euphemism. There is nothing in the rules saying that you are prohibited from stating that you purchased a tube of SWR grease for $1.49 from Target, but if you're using the bands to tell your fellow amateurs that you're offering a two-for-one deal on your pork chops because you're a butcher during the day, that's considered an advertisement and is prohibited.

There is no prohibition on language about sex, religion or politics, but that doesn't make them good topics of general conversation. That doesn't mean that you are not allowed to discuss them on-air with a mate, it means that you should really think about it if you're raising this as a topic in a net. Keep remembering that there are people from all walks of life, across the globe, who can hear you.

There is a funny clause in the Australian LCD, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it also exists in some form in other jurisdictions. Here, it states that the licensee must not transmit any form of entertainment. In Australia this is explained as not permitting music, but that is not actually a word that occurs in the conditions. It does occur in the USA and no doubt there are variations within other jurisdictions.

This "entertainment" clause is about broadcasting. There is an attempt to distinguish between commercial on-air use, that of a broadcaster, and amateur use, that of a licensed amateur.

The way it's worded in Australia is funny though. Am I entertaining you right now? Are you listening to this on-air? Am I currently in breach of the Australian licence conditions, or is the station that is transmitting my voice? To put your mind at ease, this is covered under another section, the licensee must use an amateur station solely for the purpose of transmitting news and information services related to the operation of amateur stations.

The two clauses that I just mentioned, the entertainment one and the news and information one, are all part of the same section, so you need to read the whole bit to understand what's going on. Of course that won't stop complaints or other interpretations, but so-far, that's all we have.

While we're on the point of describing what's proscribed and what's not. The Australian conditions say nothing about how to sign if you're operating portable. There is no rule that says that you have to. There is a document called "Amateur operating procedures" that states that the "information, about the operating procedures for the amateur service, can help prospective amateur operators studying for amateur exams". It suggests that you use the locality when you're saying your callsign and if you're using CW, it suggests a stroke and a number. This is why we have this proliferation of different ways of communicating this information. Stroke mobile, Stroke portable, Stroke QRP, Stroke VK6 they're all made up. None of them have any official status. Your callsign is just that, your callsign.

That's not to say that it's not helpful to add that you're portable, mobile, on a bicycle or standing in the ocean, but it's not part of your station identification.

There used to be a special endorsement for an amateur station to permit it to transmit television signals. It involved a Stroke-T as a suffix, but that was discontinued.

This means that what you say on-air is part regulated, part folklore and part common sense. Unfortunately where the edges of those three are is less than precise.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

QRP - When you care to send the very least! Apr 24, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

Today I'm going to talk about QRP, a term that's used in various different environments and one that I've used in the past. So, let's start at the beginning. QRP is a three letter code, part of the so-called Q-codes, that can either be a question or an answer. It's used in Morse communications to either ask "Shall I decrease transmitter power?" or to answer "Yes, decrease your transmitter power." It was perfectly valid for a kilowatt station to ask: "QRP?" and for another kilowatt station to answer: "QRP".

Language changes over time, meanings get inverted, changed, adopted and transformed. The three letter combination, Q-R-P, is no different. Today in Amateur Radio, the three letters are more like a word, rather than a code and the meaning has changed to indicate that a station is running low power or as an indication to others that they're likely to be a weaker signal that requires a little more effort to pull out of the noise than any other station.

As you might know, propagation is a fickle friend. There are days when you cannot talk to the station up the road and other days when you can hear a low power station clear across the globe and everything in between. The assumption that a QRP station is always hard to hear is not set in stone and often is quite incorrect. That's not to say that people think it's low, they hear QRP and think: "Hard work".

It's a bit like fishing for trout. Some days are good, other days are just wet.

Another aspect of the concept of QRP is the amount of power. The definitions differ. There are some that say that any station using 10 Watts or less is considered QRP. Others set the bar differently at 5 Watts. The ARRL defines it at 10 Watts or less for SSB and 5 Watts or less for CW or Digital. The WIA website uses a generic 5 Watts on their Low Power Radio page and different contests have different definitions of QRP.

It's clear that there is no single definition of what constitutes QRP, just that it's low power.

For me, I use 5 Watts and call myself a QRP station.

Should you tell the other station that you're QRP? Should you include /QRP in your callsign and say something like, this is VK6FLAB/QRP.

It depends.

There are times when my statement of QRP got me through a pile-up and other times when some smart calling didn't require me to mention that I was only using 5 Watts. I've noted in exchanges that I'm using 5 Watts and had positive responses. There was a time when I signed specifically with VK6FLAB/QRP, but it causes all manner of grief with confirmation of your contact, since some stations will log the /QRP and others won't, since it's not an official callsign suffix.

So, QRP is a wonderful aspect of our hobby, it teaches you to learn about propagation, to get your antennas sorted out, to pick your times and to learn better operating procedures.

I find it immensely satisfying to make a contact with my 5 Watts and there are times I wished my radio would go even lower than 5 Watts.

I know of amateurs who have worked across the globe, that is, the opposite side of the world, the furthest they can get with just a milliwatt SSB, so I know that while my contact from VK6 Western Australia to CO, Cuba with 5 Watts was proof that it all works, I know that there is more to explore.

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Coax impedence, 50 Ohm and 75 Ohm, why is it so? Apr 17, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

There is a recurring question that never seems to get a straight answer. Why are we using 50 Ohm impedance and not 75 Ohm? The more people you ask, the more answers you get. There'll be commentary about standing waves, SWR, loss, incompatibility, soldering, cost, velocity factor, diameter, susceptibility to noise and the list goes on and grows, the more people you ask, the longer the list.

Of course as time goes by, people remember stories told to them, guess, or even, how to say this, make stuff up.

To steal a phrase: "Why is it so?"

In the 1930's, when most of us were not even the apple in the eye of their parents - let alone their grand parents - coaxial cable was being developed for kilowatt radio transmitters.

There are two aspects to consider, the amount of loss against length and the ability of the coax to handle power.

Without going into the maths, there's plenty of that online, the lowest loss for air-dielectric cable is 77 Ohms. If we look at the peak power handling, that occurs at 30 Ohms, that is, at 77 Ohms, coax is best at getting signal across the cable with the lowest amount of loss and at 30 Ohms, coax is best at dealing with high power. Clearly a compromise is needed.

So, the mean between 77 Ohm and 30 Ohm is 53.5 Ohm and the geometric mean is 48 Ohm, so, 50 Ohm is a compromise between power handling and signal loss, for air dielectric.

So, obviously, 75 Ohm is used for TV reception and not for transmission. Except it ain't so.

In 1938, Roy Plunkett invented PTFE or Teflon. This material wasn't around when 50 Ohm was decided on.

If you remember, coax consists of a few parts, the centre and the shield, each conductors that we use to move our signal around and something in between, the dielectric, which stops the two conductors touching, with a cover over the top of that for good measure to protect against shorting and damage. The dielectric can be an air gap, or some form of plastic like PTFE.

Electrically, the dielectric constant for Air is 1, for foam PTFE it's 1.43 and for solid PTFE it's 2.2. Turns out that this makes quite the difference. Our lowest loss coax, is 77 Ohm for coax with an air dielectric, but drops to 64 Ohms with foam and 52 Ohm with solid PTFE. So, rather serendipitously, 50 Ohm was a grand choice, good power handling capability and low loss with a solid PTFE core.

Now, why are we using 75 Ohm for TV? One suggestion is that it's another compromise between low loss and cable flexibility.

What does all this mean for you?

In a nut-shell, 75 Ohm coax is one type of compromise, 50 Ohm coax is another. You can use either, but they won't be the same and won't react the same. Calculations made for one, will not apply to the other and loss and power handling will be different. This means that your roll of cheap Quad Shield RG6 is perfectly fine for some aspects of our hobby and not for others.

Here's an interesting tid-bit to tide you over until next we meet. If we compare RG58, common in Amateur Radio to RG6, common in TV, the losses are quite different. For 100m of coax, at different frequencies, these start to add up. At 1 MHz, the difference in loss is .6 of a dB, at 10 MHz, it's 2.2 dB and at 145 MHz, it's 10.7 dB. To be clear, the loss for RG6 is lower across the board.

This really means that you shouldn't be afraid to experiment. There is nothing particularly special about the different types of coax and each choice has it's advantages and dis-advantages.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Q-codes in voice Apr 10, 2016

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

This week I'm going to have a look at something called a Q-code. Last week I talked about a few aspects of operating. One of the inventions associated with human speech is the short-cut, a way to quickly say something rather than use the whole story. Before Amateur Radio this started on the telegraph with shortcuts called Q-codes. Think a three letter combination, starting with Q, followed by two letters. QTH, QSL, QRZ, QLF are examples.

Language, just like Amateur Radio is an evolving feast. You'll find people writing articles about the abuse of Q-codes in speech going back to the early days of voice operation. The Q-code started with Morse Code as a way to quickly say something without needing to key the whole thing. This has flowed over into voice. You'll hear people use Morse-Code-isms in day to day language, 73, QSL, QTH and others are all examples of shortcuts that have no actual place in speech, but none the less have taken hold.

Having said that, of course there is difference of opinion how you should conduct yourself. I know that there are things I hear on air that make me wince, and I'm sure that I've said things that make others shake their head. So, here's my take on how it should be done and feel free to do the same, or ignore me altogether.

There is no such thing as "QRZ the frequency?". Nobody is calling the frequency. QRZ is specifically for the purpose of asking: "Who is calling me?" I know that there are some who are sharpening their pitchforks about now with all manner of comment, so let me be clear. I know, there are people who use QRZ in a pile-up. They've been calling CQ, had lots of replies, work a station and then after the contact say: QRZ?, with the meaning: "I'm done with the contact and I'm ready for another."

This in my opinion is particularly poor operating, since it means that you're too lazy to say your callsign, disrespectful of all the stations calling you, arrogant enough to assume that everyone knows which station you are and oblivious to the notion that propagation is ever changing with new stations dropping in and out all the time.

Instead of saying QRZ after such a contact, you're much better off saying your callsign instead. If you're in doubt, listen to some actually experienced contesters or DX operators and then you can you can fire off your feedback.

I've been told that I have a habit of overusing QSL, but it means: "Transmission received and understood." and in communications there cannot be too much of that. I use it in day to day on-air language, use it in email and SMS and when I'm proficient in Morse, no doubt I'll use it there too.

There are those that say that Hi-Hi, should not be used in voice, in Morse it's .... .. .... .., which sounds a little like someone laughing, which is where it comes from. Personally I think it's cute that you say Hi-Hi, even if someone who's not an Amateur doesn't share the joke.

As a stick in the mud, I dislike 73's. If you're going to abuse a code, then at least use the correct one. It's nice in Morse, --... ...--, symmetric, the end of a contact, all fine. But there's not more than one of them and we're not sending off the number 3, seven times, so drop the 's'.

I've been using language associated with broadcasting for a long time and I confess to wincing when I hear "Car-ah-be-an", rather than "Ca-rib-be-an", or "ad-ver-tise-ment" vs. "ad-ver-tis-ment" - no doubt some of my pronouncements will make you wince and some will find you agreeing.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Operating Procedures Apr 03, 2016

Show notes

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Today we're going to look at operating procedures, that is, what to say, when to say it and when not to say it. Amateur Radio being over a century old has lots of traditions and lots of quirky exceptions to rules, but you'll learn those as you go on air and make mistakes, and assume that you'll make those, probably regularly and every now and then someone will gently correct you, or you'll get shouted at, either way you'll get feedback.

It's generally a better idea to figure out what's going on before you even open your mouth, so lets look at some things that really need to be second nature.

Your callsign is always last. Always! That way the other station knows who you are, every time.

I realise that you might not think that this is important, but just imagine that you've been inconsistent with this across your activities and one day you're in an emergency. Now it's crucial to know who is who. If you always do it the same, always your callsign last, then you'll do that in an emergency too.

That out of the way, there are other aspects to operating that you need to take into account.

You should always listen on the frequency that you're intending to operate. The longer the better. The reason I say that is because you may not hear both sides, or even two out of three, or more sides of the conversation. If there is a group talking, you may only hear one station who is happily chatting with others.

After listening, you should say: "Is this frequency in use?" and listen some more. After about a minute, ask again, adding your callsign: "Is this frequency in use, VK6FLAB". If you still hear nothing, you can say: "Nothing heard" and start your transmission on the frequency.

While you're operating remember that band conditions change and that you might find yourself all of a sudden among other stations that were not there earlier. They were, but you didn't hear them and you might actually find that they could hear you all along, so be prepared to make some new friends or make peace.

There are idiots on air. You'll find net controllers who all of a sudden turn up on the frequency that you've been operating on and demand that you QSY. You can argue the point, or you can take the high road and leave the frequency to those who think they own the air. No mileage to be made from yelling at each other, no benefit and you'll end up looking like the problem, even though no single station owns any frequency.

Similarly you'll find stations who have particular perspectives on how stations should operate and they'll go out of their way to tell you off. Pay no attention, unless they are actually going to make a formal complaint to your regulator, their feedback is just that, feedback.

If you hear a couple of stations talking to each other and there's a few stations you know, you can drop your callsign in between the gap between overs and if they're inclined, a station will acknowledge you and let you in. This in turn implies a gap between overs. Sometimes that gap doesn't exist. If it's urgent, you can try your callsign and understand that it may clash with another station, but don't force it and if you're in a group, leave a gap after the previous station hands over to you.

If you hear two stations discussing a medical issue, family affairs or other topics that are not generic, listen, but don't but in. When they're done and said goodbye, you can try your callsign and see if they respond, but don't expect it.

Next week I'll take a look at Q-codes.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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