Foundations of Amateur Radio

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Lucky Lightning Escape Mar 27, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

In the past I've talked about our hobby and lightning. I've done it on more than one occasion, talked about cows and lightning strikes, about earth bonding and the dangers associated with lightning that's not directly overhead, but close enough to matter.

On the weekend I learned the difference between saying something and seeing something.

A group of Amateurs, went out camping, about two hours from anywhere in the middle of the bush to participate in an annual field day. We'd set-up our various overnight shelters, erected two marquees and proceeded to construct our portable shack. We were there for two nights. On the first night, the heavens opened up and the rain poured down, soaking the ground good and proper. We were lucky, our camp was at the top of a hill and drainage was great. At one point in the middle of the night I was standing outside in the rain, getting wet while attending to some ablutions - an unforgettable experience, but I digress.

The next day the camp was in full swing. We were on air and operating, making contacts, despite the poor levels of propagation. We'd erected an 80m dipole, 40m of wire in the air, a 2m vertical, a G5RV antenna and some other wire antennas. Each of these had a piece of coax coming into the marquee and strung along the roof made their way to the appropriate radio.

At that point the sky turned grey and thunder was heard. It was still dry, no actual activity overhead, or even within anything that could be considered nearby. As a precaution we disconnected our coax and settled down to wait for the impending storm. It never came. Other amateurs and house-holders were not so lucky, experiencing flooding and damage that was described as epic.

Meanwhile back at our portable shack, we decided that it would be smart to separate power and coax a little. We started by pulling back the coax and moving it back into the roof space of the marquee. At one point, one of our team had his hand on the metal marquee frame and pulled at the coax connector that was feeding the 80m dipole. The next moment a crack was heard, he jumped. He's experienced a significant discharge between his hand and the coax.

Remember, it's not raining, there's a grey sky and thunder can be heard in the distance.

Looking back, I still cannot believe that between us, five Amateurs with a combined experience level of about 90 years between us, moving coax around while there was lightning in the air. What were we thinking?

We were very lucky last weekend. It could have been much, much worse.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The CAT interface Mar 20, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

Today's Amateur Radio is less like the valve or transistor based radio and more like a computer. So much so that most radios today have a mechanism to connect the radio to a computer.

This mechanism is called a Computer Aided Tuning interface, or CAT interface. It's a mechanism that's used to allow two way control information to be shared between the radio and a computer.

This interaction is a serial connection, generally something called RS232. This is a standard that was developed in 1962 and it specifies things like timing, voltages and other attributes. The electronics from that era don't look much like the ones of today and most of the challenges with getting this stuff to work is related directly to these differences.

It should come as no surprise that each manufacturer has their own take on what this whole contraption looks like and most of this technology is not directly compatible across radios.

So, let's imagine that you've got a radio and a computer and they're physically connected to each other using a CAT interface of some description. We then need to make sure that things like the speed of both ends is the same, that is, the BAUD rate is the same. Also we need to check that the number of bits, stop bits and parity are also correct. If this sounds a little like 1980's modem talk, you'd be correct. The radio is presenting itself to the computer as a serial device, just like a dial-up modem does. If you've not seen this, just think of it as if the numbers at both ends need to match. Often the radio will have a standard setting, which you should use as a starting point.

Now, I'm going to skip over things like IRQs and port addresses, not because it's simple, but because it might work out of the box, or it might cause you to lose hair. If it's the latter, you're going to need to do some IT support and this is about radios and not about computers.

I'm also going to gloss over the problem that most modern computers don't have an actual serial port any more, most have something called USB which requires an adapter and software for the adapter, another potential minefield to traverse.

Now comes the bit where it all works, right? Nope. Not yet. Next you need to have software that knows how to talk to your radio. It may be programming software, specifically to configure your radio, or it may be generic logging software that reads what mode and frequency you're on and puts that in your log, or it may be something that knows how to correct the frequency of your radio to deal with the Doppler effect of an overflying satellite.

In each case, you'll need to tell your software several things. The most basic one of those is the port number. That is, of all of the serial ports on your computer, which one is connected to your radio?

Seeing that all Amateur Radio manufacturers agree on everything, all actual control codes and responses are the same across all radios. Oh wait, nope, that's not true. They're not even the same across the same brand, so you'll also need to tell your software which actual radio you're using, which is the perfect opportunity to learn that your shiny new radio doesn't yet exist within the software.

So, when you start looking at the CAT interface, you now know that this is a thing that's going to require some homework and planning.

To make digital modes work, you need an audio interface to go with the CAT interface, which a whole different set of fun and games, including ground loops, impedance matching, levels, feedback and distortion.

Now, if you thought that you and I took a lovely walk through the deep arcane world of serial computer interfaces, wrap your head around this.

When we use the current crop of software defined radios, we replicate all of this, both CAT and audio interfaces with virtual versions of cables, BAUD rates and port numbers. Suffice to say, I don't have words.

I should add that all of what I've said is just so you get an idea that there is a chain of stuff that needs to work and that any one of these being incorrect will cause none of it to work. So, when you're doing this in your own shack, start at the beginning, get the cable working, set the speed and bits, set the port, pick the radio and cross your fingers.

It's not trivial, but it's worth it.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Bandplans and Edges Mar 13, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

Today I'm going to talk about operating procedures. Before groan and tune out, stay with me for a moment, this is important for all amateurs, even you.

We as amateurs have a range of bands allocated to us. These bands cover a whole chunk of spectrum that we in many cases share with other users. They might either share the same band with us, or the other way around, we with them. Our bands might be right next to theirs or overlap in some part.

To make things more interesting, these bands are unfortunately not uniform across the world. For example, in Australia part of IARU Region 3, the 40m band runs from 7.0 to 7.3 MHz. In Region 2, it's the same, but in Region 1, it only covers 7.0 to 7.2 MHz.

If you look at the 80m band it's worse: Region 1 uses 3.5 to 3.8 MHz, Region 2 uses 3.5 to 4 MHz, Region 3 uses 3.5 to 3.9 MHz, but in Australia we can only use 3.5 to 3.7 and 3.776 to 3.8 MHz and that last little bit, the DX window, only if you hold an Advanced License.

This can have profound implications for your operation on air. If you hear a station, clearly an amateur, callsign, working a pile-up and doing everything right, you may not actually be allowed to work them, even if you're privileged on the band you're listening on.

Things get tricky near the edges of the bands. If you're operating near an edge, you are not allowed to have your signal stray across the band edge, so if you're using an SSB signal, the frequency shown on your radio is not where the edge of your transmission is, the radio is showing where the carrier is, the side-band signal depending on the type, can be another 2.5 to 6 KHz up or down.

So, that's simple right. If you're using a band that uses Lower Side Band, say 80m, you can slide on up to the upper band-edge and start operating right?

Uhm. No. Couple of things. The other side of the side-band doesn't vanish, it's reduced. Depending on the quality of the radio, the reduction is better or worse. Using an amplifier makes this problem bigger. Some radios have good filters on both transmit and receive which changes the picture again. I've not even talked about spurious emissions, harmonics and other artefacts which muddle this picture even further.

The take-away for this is to make sure you know where the band edges are for your station and to make sure that you know what the performance of your actual radio is and where it transmits.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What's in a Repeater? Mar 06, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

Today I'm going to talk about repeaters. These invisible services that sit on a particular frequency and do magic things to your signal.

First of all, the best way to think of a repeater is to think of it as two radios. One is the receiver, the other the transmitter. The way it works is that the receiver hears your signal and sends that audio to the transmitter which sends it out over the air.

For this to work, there need to be two frequencies in use, the one that you're transmitting on and the one that the repeater is transmitting on.

From this simple idea, many different things flow. There is no rule that states that the receiver and the transmitter need to be in the same place, let alone on the same band; if they're on different bands, it's called a cross-band repeater.

If the receiver and the transmitter are on the same band, the system needs to deal with the fact that a strong signal is being transmitted by the repeater right next to where the receiver is. If you're not careful, the transmitter will overwhelm or de-sense the receiver, making it harder to get your signal into the repeater.

Several techniques are used, a contraption called a cavity filter is set-up to specifically let either the receive frequency through, or to block all frequencies except the transmit frequency. Some combine both of these techniques to make the repeater hear weak stations better.

If the receiver and transmitter are on the same band, the difference between the two frequencies in use is called the offset. It varies per band. On 2 meters, the offset is normally 600 kHz, but it varies, on 70cm the offset is 5 MHz, but on 10m, the offset is 100 kHz. So different bands use different configurations and of course each of these is subject to local variation. There may be local interference on the standard offset, so it may be varied.

There are some other things going on with repeaters. You can have a repeater that receives and transmits on the same frequency, it's called a parrot repeater and it sits there waiting for you to transmit, stores the incoming audio for a set period and then when you stop transmitting, it sends out the audio on the same frequency. This is useful to see how you sound on-air.

Other techniques include adding computers to create IRLP, Echolink and AllStar Link. Essentially the receiver is connected to a computer which sends the audio across the Internet to another computer which in turn sends out the audio to another transmitter. After you stop transmitting, the chain is reversed and the other station can talk to you via a reverse path.

There are also specialised repeaters that can listen in one mode, like FM and transmit in another, like AM, or SSB. This allows a 2m user to use HF from their FM hand-held radio.

If all that's not enough, there are other things possible with repeaters. You can use a special tone to identify to the receiver that your signal is a valid audio signal. This is used in environments where noisy local signals often trigger the repeater, resulting in ongoing kerplunking of the transmitter.

Next time you key up your local repeater, have a think about what's happening when you key-up your radio and say thanks to the owner of the repeater who spent time and effort, not to mention money, to make this invisible friend on the air work for you.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Experimentation is about failure ... Feb 28, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

There is an interesting phenomenon that I've begun to notice and now that I've seen it, it's hard to un-see. Think of it as the equivalent of the little dot in the top right corner of the screen that signifies the end of the reel to a movie projectionist. Once you've seen it, you can't miss it ever again. If you haven't, sorry, you will and now you'll carry that with you for the rest of your life.

Across Amateur Radio, from Foundation and Standard through Advanced or Technician and General though Extra, there is this thing where people get together and ask each other how to get started.

It's amazing to observe, grown adults every one of them, not daring to take the first step. It ranges from keying your microphone for the first time, through to making your first HF contact, through building an antenna, going portable, climbing a mountain, making contact with the International Space Station, doing a contest, building a radio or erecting a tower.

It seems that collectively we've forgotten that this whole thing we do is about experimentation. We're so wrapped up in failure that more and more I see people wanting reassurance that what they're doing is right. Like they have to somehow be perfect the first time, be amazing, be accurate, eloquent, sturdy, brilliant or whatever is going on.

I don't know how this started, but it's got to stop. If we extrapolate along this path we're going to end up as licensed automatons with no innovation, no spunk, no mistakes and no learning.

Don't mistake me. You're not alone, there is prior learning to be had and community knowledge to be gleaned, but if you never fall flat on your face, how will you ever learn to get up?

So, next time you're getting ready to do something, just start. Don't wait for validation, take failure in your stride and learn.

Last week a friend and I went to scout a new location for a field day contest. We drove there, set up our station and proceeded to spend the day failing. We got RF into the radio, the computer was barely readable in the sun, I got sunburnt, we made two contacts and had a miserable time with short power leads, hard to use trees and to boot, it was hot.

On the flip side, we trialled a new antenna design, learned that my clip on ferrite chokes don't and that we now had a list of things we'd learned and stuff we needed to bring when we came up for real.

We didn't go up there to fail, we wanted to activate a rare WWFF Park, but instead we failed and learned other stuff.

Think of this whole thing in a different way, frame it not as success or failure, but frame it as a way to learn something. Edison had this to say: "Negative results are just what I want. They're just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don't."

Learning to experiment and being an experimenter and having a license that says you're an experimenter is also about learning to fail. Don't be scared. It happens to all of us. The better you fail, the better you succeed.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What is the best antenna? Feb 21, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

The single largest topic of conversation in Amateur Radio is about Antennas. The discussion often starts with one amateur telling another amateur about some or other amazing antenna, followed by a heated discussion about the merits or pitfalls of that same antenna and why they would never ever consider using it and why it's a waste of money, or some other rationale.

Let's take for example the discussion of Dipole versus Vertical. There are those who will tell you that they'd never ever use a Dipole and similarly those who'd say the same about a vertical. Assertions of suitability aside, let's have a look at what we're talking about, first of all.

In rough terms, a dipole is an antenna that is generally suspended between two sky-hooks, its fed from the centre and has pretty much an omni-directional radiation pattern. That is, signals arrive and depart from this antenna, pretty much evenly in all directions. Now, before you get all excited. It's not exactly the case, since it's not an isotropic point source, which you might recall is a theoretical antenna that we can prove not to be physically possible, but a dipole is the next best thing.

A vertical is an antenna, which is often supported from a pole of some description, has some form of radial ground-plane at the base and while it's also omni-directional, there are parts of the signal that don't arrive nearly as well and other parts of the signal that fare better.

Often a statement when comparing a dipole to a vertical will be something like this: "A vertical is better for DX and a dipole is better for local contacts."

Now, let's just investigate that for a moment. If you've ever seen the radiation pattern for a vertical, you might have seen that there is a particular angle at which there is gain when compared to other angles. What this means is that signal arriving and departing from the antenna in essence favour that angle. Similarly, a dipole doesn't display this phenomenon nearly as sharply. There is some asymmetry between the sides and the ends of a dipole, but it's not particularly strong. Not that it's non-existent, just not pronounced.

If you were to overlap the radiation pattern of a dipole and that of a vertical, you'd notice that apart from the single angle where the vertical favours radiation, the dipole pretty much has the same level of gain all round.

In essence, this means that to all intent and purpose, apart from a single little angle, the dipole is pretty much the same as a vertical.

I hear you say, "Yes, but..."

Indeed.

Think of a vertical as an antenna that favours a particular angle of incidence. It's more prone to hear signals from that angle than any other angle. Similarly, any transmitted signal is likely to favour that particular angle.

As you know, the ionosphere is a moving feast. Signals arriving at one angle one moment may not be arriving at the same angle the next moment. If your vertical hears a signal one moment and not another, does that make for an effective antenna?

Another aspect that separates a vertical from a dipole is the behaviour of vertical signals, so called NVIS, or Near Vertical Incident Signals. Things that are nearby. A vertical antenna all but ignores that aspect, where a dipole has no such behaviour.

So, we're getting to the heart of it, imagine for a moment that the differences between a vertical and a dipole is their difference in filtering of signals. That is, a vertical filters signals from above, where the dipole doesn't. Similarly, a vertical filters all but the bits from a particular angle of incidence, where a dipole doesn't.

If you've followed along, you might begin to realise that there is not a single "best" antenna. It's horses for courses. Your antenna choice is based on what you aim to achieve, not which antenna is better than any other antenna.

So, the question: "Which antenna is the best?" should really be: "Which antenna is the best for this particular activity?"

Something to try next time you have a chance. Get a two-way coax switch and hook up both a vertical and a dipole and listen to the same station with each antenna in turn. Take your time, listen throughout the day. You'll be amazed how they differ and how it changes over time.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The humble dipole ... contraption. Feb 14, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

Today I'm going to talk about dipoles. You know the tried and true antenna, the go-to design for getting on air, the simple first antenna you ever make, the one you learn from, you know the one. It's the mainstay of every amateur, of any field-day, of all things Amateur Radio.

It's a simple thing. Using metric, rather than imperial measurements, but the point stands, you use the speed of light in vacuum divided by the required operating frequency and you get the overall wave length for that frequency. In absolute terms, roughly 300 m/s divided by 50 MHz, gives you 6 meters. Surprise, that's the band name for 50 MHz.

Now the dipole is a half-wave contraption, so, 6 meters divided by 2 gives you 3 meters for your total half-wave dipole. Each leg is half that, a quarter wave length, so you have 3 meters divided by 2 again and you end up with two bits of wire, a meter and a half long each.

If you're following along, that's 300 divided by 50 divided by 2 divided by 2, or using the same numbers in a slightly different order, 300 divided by 2 divided by 2 divided by 50 MHz, or 75 divided by 50 MHz. Still one and a half meters per leg of your shiny new dipole.

So, the basic formula for a metric dipole can be stated as 75 divided by the frequency in MHz per leg. If you're playing with feet and inches, 300 m/s becomes 984 ft/s, half that is 492, half that is 246 feet, so the imperial version is 246 divided by the frequency in MHz, gives you length in feet for each leg.

So, you've cut your wires, tied them to some magical feed point contraption, plug it into your radio and you're good to go, right?

Now, anyone who's actually done this knows that this is not what will actually happen. It's never that simple, and frankly if it were, we wouldn't be Amateurs, we'd be, unlicensed or something.

So, what affects the actual length of this magical antenna? Lots and lots of things. Here are a few that come to mind:

- The thickness of the wire you're using. - The thickness of the insulation on the wire. - A thing called the end-effect. - The height of the contraption above the ground. - The kind of ground. - The price of the copper you're using.

Sorry that last one isn't right. I have been told, time and time again that there are only two kinds of wire, cheap wire and free wire. The preference is for the latter. So, price of the copper doesn't matter. Another thing that does matter is that some wire can stretch while in the air, making the antenna longer, so keep that in mind.

Fine and well I hear you say. But how does this really matter?

If you increase the thickness of the wire, the resonant frequency goes down, that is, the antenna is "too long". If you increase the thickness of the insulation, the resonant frequency goes down as well. The end-effect is like adding a capacitor to the end of the wire, making it "longer" as well. The height effect is different for each height. Generally the effect is that the antenna resonates at a lower frequency. Each type of ground has a different amount of effect. Water vs rock vs sand vs clay.

I can hear you groan at this point.

First comment to make is that all of these effects make the antenna resonate at a lower frequency. This means that the suggestion to cut your antenna longer than the calculated number doesn't make much sense. If you start with the basic calculation, 75 divided by the frequency in MHz, you'll end up with an antenna that's extremely likely to be too long.

I can hear you screaming at me right about now. Hold your tar and feathers. I gave you the First comment. Here's a Second one.

If you don't have space for a straight dipole, say, you need to go around a corner, or put a bend in the wire, all of what I just said goes out the window. If you put this above a metal roof, poof, also out the window. If you cannot terminate the wire to a rope without bending the end of the wire, poof.

A Third comment. You cannot cut wire longer. You can only cut it shorter. Cutting it longer is called soldering and that's a whole 'nother thing.

Let me finish with some tips for new players.

Don't ever cut your wire. It won't work like you expect and it will only give you more work. Always, always, always, fold your wire back over itself and wind it back over the end. If you leave it dangling you're adding capacitance and doing all manner of other weird stuff to your antenna.

Also, if you need extra length because the 80m dipole just won't fit into the back yard, you can use the end capacitance to good effect, hang it down towards the ground and you'll end up with an antenna more to your liking.

Final comment and then you can start sending me emails about how I'm wrong.

The humble dipole antenna is a magnificent contraption. It has more variables than you can poke a stick at and anyone who tells you that it's just a case of calculating this by doing a simple division hasn't got the faintest idea of what's actually going on. There are times when simplification is helpful. This is not one of those times.

So, have fun, play with your dipole, try different things and observe the differences when you try different things. I've spoken with Amateurs who've been doing this longer than I've been alive and they still can't calculate the actual length of a dipole, put it in the air and have it work first time.

Sometimes you get lucky. More practice, more luck.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Sizing your battery. Feb 07, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

Today I want to raise the topic of batteries. Specifically, sizing the battery.

You can do as I did naively, look at the manual, see that the current consumption of your radio is 22 Amp, decide that this means that you need to get a 26 Ah battery to use your radio for 1 hour. Being the portable type, I got two, 52 Ah in total.

Some time has passed since I made that purchase. I've learned that I can get a lot more out of my battery than 2 hours. I also learned that lugging 56 Ah around is not fun.

Having learned this, what could I have done to improve?

Well, first of all, the 22 Amp is for Transmit. According to the manual, on receive it's only using 1 Amp. If you're not transmitting all the time, then you're not drawing 22 Amp the whole time. The ratio between send and receive is the Duty Cycle, often expressed as a percentage of the time spent transmitting.

Another thing to note is that 22 Amp is when you use full power for a particular mode and band combination. On my radio that's 100 Watts, HF FM, so only using 5 Watts will reduce the power consumption radically. Speaking of which, my radio has different maximum power levels for different bands, so when you're doing the maths, you need to take that into account.

If that didn't add enough complexity, different modes use different amounts of power. AM, FM, RTTY and other digital modes use 100% duty cycle. CW uses 40% and SSB only 20%.

So, rough back of napkin calculation, using 5 Watts SSB on HF for an hour, transmitting only half the time gives you 22 Amps times 5% power, times 20% SSB, times 50% of the time, a 10th of an Amp.

Now, before you go out and buy a 1 Amp Hour battery and expect to use it on HF for 10 hours, there are some wrinkles. First of all, a 12 Volt, 26 Amp Hour battery doesn't actually give you an Amp per hour for 26 hours at 12 Volt. It's graded on a scale. At the beginning it gives you a higher voltage, at the end it gives you a lower voltage and after a certain point you've actually destroyed your battery, not to mention that the radio stopped operating when the voltage went below 11.7 Volts - somewhere around 30% capacity.

To make things even more interesting, different batteries react differently depending on how fast you're drawing from them. Another issue is that temperature affects how much power you are able to draw.

After all that, the manual for your radio is specifying theoretical numbers, not actual ones. I've never ever seen my radio draw 22 Amps, even when it was running flat out. On the flip side, I've also never seen my radio draw less than 4 Amp when transmitting, so the maths for this doesn't add up as expected.

So, why was I giving you the maths if it doesn't work out?

Because the Simple Simon Says solution doesn't work, but neither does some educated calculation.

I hear you saying: "Well, that wasn't helpful."

Actually it was. Now I can tell you something and you'll know why it will help you.

Get yourself a power supply with a display that shows Amps, or get yourself an ammeter and stick it into the power supply circuit and take some measurements.

Use a dummy load as the antenna, since SWR will also affect these numbers, as does the microphone gain, the squelch level and the volume level, as well as the display on the radio, the tuner and other things you have connected.

Theory is great, practice in this case gets you a lot more reliable result.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Where did all the amateurs go? Jan 31, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

There is a recurring topic in Amateur Radio circles, called "permissions", or "rights", or some other word indicating "entitlement". It's a conversation that has been happening since the dawn of radio experimentation and will continue until well after our Sun has burped it's final sun-spot.

In Australia, there are three classes of License, in increasing level of responsibility they are Foundation, Standard and Advanced. There is an ongoing tension between these categories. Some higher level responsible licensees look down on the class with less responsibility, and the reverse is also true.

This separation of class is an evolutionary one. As I said recently, the most recent overhaul, more than 10 years ago, back in 2005 saw the introduction of the Foundation Class and the consolidation of various classes into Standard and Advanced.

There are current noises being made about how this needs to change. There are those who suggest that the Foundation Class needs to have access to more power, to more bands, to more modes and various other suggestions. There are recurring noises of making the Foundation Class require a renewal and other such things. Often there is some link made to the growth of the hobby. Make it simpler so we can get more people, make it bigger so we get more people, make it harder so we get better people, make it ... something else.

I'm a computer geek. I like playing with data and I like to figure out how stuff works. Over a year ago I started the process of trying to understand how amateur radio ebbs and flows. For example, in rough terms, in the 10 years that the Foundation Class of license has existed, we've issued about 10,000 new licenses, so around 1,000 a year, give or take.

In the same time, the total size of the amateur community has stayed pretty much the same.

So, did we loose all those Foundation entrants, did the old ones die off, did something else happen? Is a licensee who starts and stays for a year more or less likely to upgrade? Is there a time window when the likelihood of dropping out is increased? Is there some underlying factor that causes people to leave the community? Is there a correlation between on-air activity and longevity in the hobby? What about age, gender, etc. We simply don't have the analysis at this time.

I've been at the ACMA and the WIA to get access to historic data, frankly it's been a hard slog, the ACMA pointing at the WIA and the WIA claiming license restrictions and neither giving any indication that they're doing anything to resolve the issue. In case you're wondering, I'm talking about the public RADCOM, now called SPECTRA database, nothing secret or private about it.

I recently hit on the idea of using contest logs from the various contests to determine actual on-air activity. So that will add several gigabytes of data to my investigation. And an interesting side note - based on incomplete data, the 2015 CQWW Phone Contest saw the submission of 60 logs from Australia, but around 750 actual stations from VK were heard on-air. I'm attempting to get the same raw information from the local contests. This will give me a "Last Heard on Air" date, which will give me an indication of the status of the callsign involved.

So, regardless of where you stand on the notion of the amount of responsibility you have as a Licensed Amateur, it's clear to me that we need more information.

I think this is important for the future of our hobby and I'm working on it.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Reviewing the introduction of the Foundation License. Jan 24, 2016

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Foundations of Amateur Radio

The history of the evolution of amateur licensing is a nebulous affair, told and re-told, moulded, changed and interpreted by the story tellers along the way. There is an on-going debate about how the restructure of the licensing regime in Australia, in 2005, has affected our hobby.

In 2005, after a 10 month review period, three classes of license were established, a new Foundation class, an a re-imagined Standard and Advanced class, using existing novice and novice limited licenses to create the Standard class and combining limited, intermediate and unrestricted licenses into the Advanced class.

I've touched on this subject before, back in 2011, when I noted that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

The ACMA published the review in May of 2004. It summarises the responses about the introduction of the Foundation licensing option.

It opens with, "Over two-thirds of submissions were in favour of the introduction".

It goes on to say that the most common reason for support was the need to make the amateur service more accessible and cited that the Foundation class then introduced in the UK was the appropriate standard.

The majority of respondents suggested that the maximum transmitter output should be 100 Watts PEP and suggested 80m, 40m, 15m, 10m, 6m, 2m and 70cm as the appropriate bands.

Also of interest is that 39% of respondents were in favour of a two-tier licensing structure, where 24% were in favour of a three-tier structure.

The ACMA report also mentions that many respondents suggested that the foundation license should not be renewed without the licensee being re-examined.

If you're familiar with the restrictions and obligations of the Foundation License then you'll recognise that some of these responses were agreed to and some rejected. I've not included the full report, it goes to 15 pages, but there are some other interesting things in the ACMA report.

The ACMA notes that the main reason cited for requiring a Foundation licensee to be re-examined was to promote the license as a "stepping stone" to amateur radio operation. It notes that while there are provisions in the Act for such a re-examination, where there are reasonable grounds to believe that a qualified operator would be unable to achieve satisfactory results. The ACMA notes that none of the current amateur licensing options requires an amateur operator to be re-examined regularly.

I wonder if we actually forced all amateurs to re-do their license, how many would actually pass? I know I would.

There are other interesting things afoot. There is discussion today about allowing Foundation Licensees to use digital modes, but there is a move to require that it be added to the syllabus before that is permitted. Of course there is a parallel to make, none of the current licensees have any such formal training, why should a Foundation Licensee be "special" and require extra training.

I've been asked what I think about privileges and the Foundation License. To be clear, I'm perfectly happy with my privileges. I have yet to experience all that Amateur Radio offers, and by turning my operating power to half the permitted level, 5 Watts, I'm learning specifically what works and what doesn't. I'm learning about propagation, about antennas, about operating techniques and about patience. I'm sure that this stands me in good stead wherever I go.

One final comment, the ACMA report references a submission by a group called CQVK. I managed to track down the 112 page submission and have uploaded it to the F-troop website, the home of the weekly net in which New and Returning Hams can get together every week. Have a look at the ACMA report and the CQVK report at http://ftroop.vk6.net.

As I've said before, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Let's not.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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