Foundations of Amateur Radio

One of the many challenges associated with being a radio amateur is actually being able to listen to weak signals. If you're like me and more than half the planet, you live in an urban area, which comes with the benefits and pitfalls of having neighbours.

From a radio perspective, there's plenty of noise that drowns out weak signals, so more and more amateurs are finding new and interesting ways to de...

Every single radio amateur has come to this hobby with an itch to scratch. Time and again I've seen amateurs around me pursue that particular purpose, only to come out the other end with a look of bewilderment writ large across their face. For some amateurs it means the end of their involvement in the hobby, for others it starts a new journey into the unknown.

One of the ways we explore our community ...

Recently I came across a series of strident posts about the injustice associated with a non-amateur service using the 70cm band. Complete with links to discussions, spectrum plots, angst and even incoherent outrage, all related to the notion that whomever "allowed" this user to transmit on this band was clearly incompetent.

Except, that this is probably not the case, or the full story.

So, what's goi...

In the community of radio amateurs scattered around the planet we have a habit of getting together with others to have fun in whatever shape that takes. The obvious ones are HAMfests, car boot sales, raffles and other amateur adjacent pursuits, but we also do things like licence training, weekly on-air nets, contesting, portable activations, climbing mountains, or hills, setting-up in parks, or lightho...

Recently I was given some radio data captured on the 40m band. Using a piece of software called "Universal Radio Hacker", I attempted to decode it. At the time I thought that this might be Morse code, since then I've been told by someone who has been using Morse longer than I've been alive, that it isn't.

I shared the data on my VK6FLAB GitHub repository where you can download it and see what you lear...

Recently I was helping a friend erect their newly refurbished multi-band antenna and during the process we discussed the notion of tuning an antenna that's high in the air. They made a curious response, in that they'd tuned the antenna on the ground before we started.

I asked how this would work, since as I understand the process, this changes things once it gets in the air. They assured me that while...

Just over a year ago, the ARRL, the American Radio Relay League, the peak body for amateur radio in the United States and one of the oldest of such organisations, experienced an incident.

During the weeks following, the ARRL was tight-lipped about the extent of the incident and most amateurs only really noticed that services were off-line or slow to respond. After months of delay and disinformation, t...

The other day Randall, VK6WR, encouraged me to get on-air. He described it like this:

"There is a mystery signal on 40m that you can try your new Universal Radio Hacker skills on. It appears to be a FSK signal separated by 7kHz with the two signals at 7.0615 and 7.0685 MHz. Each of them on their own sounds a bit like a Morse signal, but my CW decoder decodes junk. But if you can see it on a spectrum s...

The other day I was discussing with a fellow amateur the increased frustration my mobile phone provider was inflicting. We hit on the idea of figuring out if other providers would fit the bill and how we could determine if their coverage would suit our needs. Aside from using an old mobile phone, I suggested that using a $25 RTL-SDR dongle would provide a way to record mobile phone cell site beacons fr...

The other day a fellow amateur asked me to help them with lowering their radio mast so they could do some maintenance on the antennas attached to it. This is not the first time I've been a participant in such an activity, but it was the first time I felt explicitly safe.

Don't get me wrong, on previous occasions nothing bad happened, but there was always an undertone of "what-if" and an associated anx...

The other day a report in "Amateur Radio Daily" caught my eye. Under the heading "IARU Considers Consolidation", I read that the International Amateur Radio Union, celebrating 100 years of representing our hobby, is considering significant change. Links in the report reveal a PDF document titled "IARU Consultation on Proposed Restructuring March 2025".

The document, dated 21 March, outlines the struct...

Right off the bat, let me start with a question. "What do you think you're doing?"

To give you some context, it should come as no surprise that I'm talking about amateur radio and what it is that we do, you and I, when we "do amateur radio".

Of course the answer is different for every person you ask, and it's likely to change over time. So, let's explore and fair warning, if you know me at all, you'l...

Around the world are thousands of associations, groups of people, clubs if you like, that represent radio amateurs. Some of those associations are anointed with a special status, that of "member society" or "peak body", which allows them to represent their country with their own governments and on the international stage to the ITU, the International Telecommunications Union, through a global organisat...

Since becoming a licensed amateur in 2010, I have spent a good amount of time putting together my thoughts on a weekly basis about the hobby and the community surrounding amateur radio. As you might know, my interest is eclectic, some might say random, but by enlarge, I go where the unicorns appear.

Over a year ago I mentioned in passing a community called HamSCI. The label on the box is "Ham Radio Sc...

Recently I saw a social media post featuring a screenshot of some random website with pretty charts and indicators describing "current HF propagation". Aside from lacking a date, it helpfully included notations like "Solar Storm Imminent" and "Band Closed".

It made me wonder, not for the first time, what the reliability of this type of notification is. Does it actually indicate what you might expect w...

A recent comment by a fellow amateur sparked a train of thought that made me wonder why there is a pervasive idea within our community that you need a radio transmitter and antenna to be a radio amateur, moreover that for some reason, if you don't have either, you're not a real amateur.

I suppose it's related to the often repeated trope that the internet enabled modes like Allstar Link, Echolink and e...

Over the years I've talked about different ways of using our license to transmit. I've discussed things like modes such as voice AM, FM, and SSB, and digital modes like FT8, WSPR, RTTY, FreeDV, Hellschreiber, Olivia and even Morse code.

Recently it occurred to me that there is something odd about how we do this as a community. Now that I've realised this it's hard to unsee. Let me see if I can get you...

One of the basic aspects of being human and growing up is the process of learning. From a young age we explore our environment, play with others, have fun, fall over and bruise our knees, get up and try again. The playing aspect of this is often discussed as a way to keep things interesting. We add a competition element as an added incentive, so much so that we formaulate it into global competitions an...

When you join the community of radio amateurs, or when you briefly look over the shoulder of the nearest devotee, you're likely to discover that this is a hobby about a great many different ideas. Over the years I've discussed this aspect of our community repeatedly, talked about the rewards it brings you, about the camaraderie, about communication, learning, research, soldering, disaster recovery, pub...