Podcasts about jt65

Tonight working satellites and EME with a very modest station. Unboxing the IC9700, JT65, update on W5KUB-112 over Russia, and much more .

GB2RS News Sunday 24th of October 2021 The news headlines: Get on the microwave bands Become an RSGB Director SAQ Grimeton transmits today   Are you looking for a new challenge? The RSGB has just released an updated video that gives a short introduction to amateur radio on the microwave bands. It explains how microwave technology is involved in everyday life and highlights the opportunities as well as the challenges of this aspect of amateur radio. You can watch the video on the RSGB YouTube channel or on the RSGB's microwave web page at rsgb.org/microwaves The RSGB Nominations Committee includes representatives of the Board, Regional Team and the Committees who work together to select Nominated Directors to serve on the RSGB Board. The Nominations Committee is seeking a wide range of new candidates with skills that will complement the existing skills and knowledge on the Board. If you are an RSGB Member with the skills, time and energy to help lead the Society as a Board Director, please contact the Chair of the Committee via email to nominations.chair@rsgb.org.uk. Today, the 24th of October is United Nations Day and the historic Alexanderson alternator in Grimeton, Sweden, with callsign SAQ, is scheduled to send out a message on 17.2kHz using CW. The live stream on YouTube starts at 1425UTC, with tuning at 1430UTC. The transmission begins at 1500UTC. Just search for SAQ Grimeton to find out more. The RSGB QSL bureau is continuing to search for a new sub-manager for the G4T to G4Z group. Members in this call group are encouraged to check the RSGB website for the latest information and not to send further collection envelopes until a new appointment is made. If you enjoy QSL cards, have space and time, plus some basic spreadsheet skills to record and distribute around 20,000 cards a year, plus a desire to support your fellow amateurs, email your interest to qsl@rsgb.org.uk. Don't forget that in the UK the clocks change to UTC or GMT next weekend. Clocks go back 1 hour at 2am on Sunday the 31st of October. The WSJT development team has announced the General Availability release of WSJT-X version 2.5.1. This release mainly contains improvements and defect repairs related to Q65 and JT65 modes when used with non-standard and compound calls. Also included is a new feature for microwave aircraft scatter, and repairs for defects detected since the 2.5.0 release. Just type WSJT-X into your favourite search engine. Eclipse and Frequency Measurement Festivals are worldwide citizen science campaigns in which amateurs and short wave listeners measure Doppler shift from their home stations, using their regular HF receivers. As the shadow of the moon passes across Antarctica on the 4th of December, it will generate travelling ionospheric disturbances that will, in turn, affect radio propagation. Data collection will run from the 1st to the 10th of December and the results will be made available for scientific analysis. All radio amateurs and short wave listeners are invited to join in, even those located far from the path of totality. In 2020, more than 100 individuals from 45 countries took part in eclipse festivals. For more information, go to hamsci.org. The Yasme Foundation Board of Directors has announced that it will be giving a grant to the Seychelles Amateur Radio Association to establish a facility for its amateur radio club. And now for details of rallies and events Before travelling to any rally or event, please check the event's website as there may still be alterations or cancellations due to the pandemic. The Holsworthy Radio Rally will take place on the 7th of November at Holsworthy Leisure Centre. Doors open at 10 am. Several rallies have been cancelled, as previously publicised. The Galashiels Rally, scheduled to take place today, the 24th of October is cancelled. The Bush valley ARC rally due for the 7th of November has also had to be cancelled. Finally, the Bishop Auckland RAC rally due to be held on the 28th of November is now planned for 2022. Now the DX news A team of four operators will be active as C5C from Kololi, in The Gambia between the 24th of October and the 19th of November. Expect activity on all bands using SSB, CW and FT8 in Fox & Hound mode, plus the QO-100 satellite. See QRZ.com for their planned operating frequencies. QSL direct to F5RAV. Bart, PD1BAT will be working on Saba, NA-145, from the 30th of October to the 5th of November. In his spare time, he will operate as PJ6/PD1BAT on the 40 and 20m bands using FT8 and some SSB. QSL via his home call. Miguel, EA1BP will be active as FM/EA1BP from Martinique, IOTA reference NA-107, from the 27th of October to the 5th of November, including an entry in the CQ WW DX SSB Contest as TO7O.  QSL via his home call; the logs will be uploaded to Logbook of the World and Club Log. Toni, EA5RM and a large multi-national team will be active as HD8R from San Cristobal, Galapagos Islands, SA-004, from the 26th of October to the 7th of November. They will operate CW, SSB and FT8 on the 6 to 160m bands, plus RTTY on 20 metres, with at least four stations on the air simultaneously. QSL via EA5RM. Now the Special Event news From the 25th of October, British Railways ARS members Mark, G1PIE and Pam, 2E1HQY will be operating GB0LMR as part of the society's 55th anniversary year. Operations will be from Preston in Lancashire and 40m will be the main band. More at brars.info. Until the 2nd of November, West of Scotland ARS will be running a special event station GB4GDS, celebrating 90 years of the Guide Dog Association. More information about the station can be found at www.wosars.club. Cray Valley Radio Society will be active as GB75CV until the 29th of October to celebrate its 75th anniversary. QSL via Club Log's OQRS and Logbook of The World only. Now the contest news When operating in contests, please keep yourself and fellow amateurs safe by following relevant pandemic-related government recommendations. This weekend, the UK EI Contest Club DX SSB contest ends its 24-hour run at 1200UTC today, the 24th. Using the contest bands between 3.5 and 28MHz, the exchange is signal report, which is optional, serial number and your district code. On Tuesday the SHF UK Activity Contest runs from 1830 to 2130UTC. Using all modes on the bands between 2.3 and 10GHz, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. On Wednesday the UK EI Contest Club 80m contest runs from 2000 to 2100UTC. Using CW only, the exchange is your 6-character locator. The 80m Autumn Series runs from 1900 to 2030UTC on Thursday. Using SSB only the exchange is signal report and serial number. Next weekend is the 48-hour CQ World Wide DX SSB contest. Ending at 2359UTC on the 31st, it uses the 1.8 to 28MHz contest bands. The exchange is signal report and your Zone, which for the UK is 14. Now the radio propagation report, compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA & G4BAO on Friday the 22nd of October. After a week of sunspots and DX fun it looks like we are back in the doldrums again. The Sun currently has just one sunspot visible, meaning the sunspot number is 11. This represents one sunspot in one group. There has been DX to be had, mostly thanks to DXpeditions, including Guinea Bissau, J5T, The Kingdom of Eswatini, 3DA0WW, and Sao Tome and Principe, S90K. These have been relatively easy to work and brought much-needed excitement to the HF bands. Geomagnetic conditions have been mixed, with the Kp index hitting four on Tuesday. This was the result of a large coronal hole that was Earth-facing earlier in the week. Next week, NOAA predicts the solar flux index will climb again to the high 80s, ending the week in the low to mid-90s. This is likely due to a large active region that is visible on the STEREO Ahead spacecraft's imager and which should rotate into view over the next few days. This may bring a surge in activity again, which should be welcomed by HF operators. And now the VHF and up propagation news. After a reminder of how unsettled Autumn can be, this weekend will see a weak and transient ridge crossing the country, and a possible brief Tropo window, especially to the east across the North Sea. Apart from that, the unsettled autumn flavour continues through the whole of next week and, as we have seen recently, that can mean some pretty wet and windy weather. Rain scatter on the GHz bands is, of course, an option in these conditions, but there is little else to bring cheer unless meteor scatter and aurora come into play. Today the Moon is at apogee, so EME path losses are at their maximum. Moon declination reaches maximum positive declination again on Tuesday so we'll see the Moon reaching its highest elevations at its zenith. The Orionids shower is still active and the Leonis Minorids peaks today, so there's still some interest for meteor scatter enthusiasts. The best time for reflections is, as always, around dawn. And that's all from the propagation team this week.  

GB2RS NEWS Sunday the 10th of January 2021 The news headlines: Happy New Year from RSGB Volunteers invited to stand for election Celebrating 200 years of Greek independence The news team and all the staff at RSGB HQ would like to wish our newsreaders, listeners and online readers a very Happy New Year. We would like to remind everyone that we always welcome your news, by email to radcom@rsgb.org.uk, and the deadline is 10 am sharp on Thursday mornings. The GB2RS script is uploaded to the RSGB website by 4.30 pm each Friday afternoon. We’re into the final weeks of the nominations process for the RSGB elections, which will end at 2359UTC on the 31st of January. The Society is looking for its next President as Dave Wilson, M0OBW will retire at the AGM. There is also a place for one elected Board Director. In addition, there are three Regional Representative vacancies in Regions 2, 6 and 12 because the current post holders were co-opted into a vacancy after the last AGM. Each one has indicated their willingness to stand for election but applications are also welcome from all RSGB Members living in these particular Regions. For more information about any of these roles, how to nominate someone or for information about the election process, visit www.rsgb.org/election. The results will be announced at the RSGB’s online AGM on Saturday the 24th of April. To commemorate the 200th anniversary, the Greek Independence Award will run throughout 2021. Anyone can take part and all mode and types of QSO are valid. The website https://sv2rck.gr/200YEARS lists a number of award stations. Get on the air for Christmas finished yesterday, Saturday the 9th of January, but you still have time to enter the construction competition. Projects can be hardware, software or a system and may be based on a kit. There is a prize of £100 and the winning entry will be featured on the Society’s website and in RadCom. The deadline for entries is the 1st of February. See the details at www.rsgb.org/gota4c. Elettra is the vessel on which Marconi conducted many experiments. The Elettra: the miracle ship award commemorates the centenary of the ship's official registration under the name of Elettra. The award period lasts the whole year and there will be a different special event callsign each month. Detail at www.arifidenza.it. Were you one of the 19,000 people who enjoyed the RSGB’s Tonight @ 8 webinars last year? The 2021 series starts tomorrow, Monday the 11th of January, when Steve Hartley, G0FUW and Pete Juliano, N6QW will talk about amateur radio construction. Despite what many people think, building your own radio equipment is still a very popular aspect of amateur radio. This presentation will share some ideas on how to get started and provide some examples of homebrew gear, using hardware and software. Watch live and ask questions on the RSGB YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/theRSGB. A QSO Party to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Marconi Club AR Loano will take place on the 16th of January. Running from 0800 to 2200UTC using the 20, 40 and 80m bands with CW only, you can find out the rules at www.ariloano.it/marconiclub. Permission has been announced for Category 1 Uzbek licensees to operate in the new WRC-15 Amateur 60m Secondary Allocation of 5351.5 – 5366.5kHz with a maximum power of 100W. Now the special event news Hull and District Amateur Radio Society is celebrating 100 years of amateur radio clubs in the Hull area with a year-long special event station, callsign GB10OH. The station will operate most days throughout 2021 on bands ranging from 160m to 70cm and using different modes. Further details about the station and QSL options can be found on QRZ.com. During 2021, the British Railways ARS will be celebrating its 55th anniversary. They will be running the special event call GB0LMR, operated by BRARS member Mark, G1PIE from Preston in Lancashire. Bands of operation will be 40 to 10 metres using PSK-31, PSK-63 and SSB, plus VHF/UHF. Further information is on QRZ.com and www.brars.info. Now the DX news Grant, VK5GR will be active as VK5KI from Kangaroo Island, OC-139, until the 22nd of January. He plans to operate holiday style on the 80 to 6m bands using CW, SSB and FT8, possibly with some RTTY and PSK. QSL via M0OXO's OQRS. Seba, SQ1SGB and Will, M0ZXA expect to be active as VP8/SQ1SGB or VP8HAL and VP8DOI from Halley VI Research Station, Antarctica until the 4th of February. In their spare time, they will operate SSB and digital modes FT8 and JT65 on 40 and 20 metres. Now the contest news Please remember to check before the contest for any new rules due to lockdown and social distancing, which may differ around the world. The RSGB strongly advises obeying your national and local government’s advice. Today, the 10th, the Datamodes AFS contest runs from 1300 to 1700UTC. The SSB AFS contest takes place on Saturday from 1300 to 1700UTC. Both use the 3.5 and 7MHz bands, and the exchange is signal report and serial number. On Monday and Tuesday, the 2nd Christmas Hope QSO Party has two sessions. The first is 0930 to 1100UTC on the 11th using FT4 on the 3.5 to 28MHz bands, with an exchange of your 4-character locator. The second is 1100 to 1230UTC on the 12th using CW on the same bands with an exchange of signal report and serial number. Tuesday sees the 432MHz FM Activity Contest run from 1900 to 1955UTC. It is followed by the All-Mode UKAC from 2000 to 2230UTC. The exchange for both is signal report, serial number and locator. Wednesday and Thursday see two more sessions of the 2nd Christmas Hope QSO Party. The first is on the 13th from 1230 to 1400UTC using RTTY. The second session is on the 14th from 1400 to 1530UTC using SSB. The exchange is the same for both, signal report and serial number, as are the bands to be used, 3.5 to 28MHz. On Thursday, the 50MHz UK Activity Contest runs from 2000 to 2230UTC. Using all modes, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. On Saturday, the Worked All Britain 1.8MHz Phone Contest runs from 1900 to 2300UTC. The exchange is signal report, serial number and WAB square. Don’t forget, the UK Six Metre Group Winter Marathon runs until the end of January 2021. Just exchange a signal report and locator. Now the radio propagation report, compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA & G4BAO on Thursday the 7th of January. We start by welcoming in 2021, and here’s hoping that it proves to be more fruitful than 2020 in terms of HF propagation. We’ve started the New Year with zero sunspots and a solar flux index back in the mid-70s on Thursday the 7th. The STEREO Ahead spacecraft is not showing anything of note around the back of the Sun, but we know that spots can suddenly appear. HF propagation has been relatively poor, but with seasonal ionospheric changes mainly being responsible for an uplift in daytime critical and maximum usable frequencies. Daytime critical frequencies have generally been in the range of 4.5 to 5.5MHz, falling to below 3.5MHz by 1930UTC on most evenings. This means that 80m is ceasing to be suitable for local NVIS contacts as the evening progresses, which is normal for this time of year. Daytime maximum usable frequencies over a 3,000km path have exceeded 18 and even 21MHz on most days, with winter Sporadic-E being the main DX mode on the higher 12 and 10 metre bands. There has been the odd F2-layer opening on 28MHz, but we will need some more sunspot activity to make band openings more reliable. NOAA predicts the solar flux index will remain in the high 70s at the beginning of next week, reflecting the lack of sunspot activity. The Kp index is predicted to reach a maximum of only two, due to a lack of coronal hole and coronal mass ejection activity. This means we may have a more settled ionosphere, which may be good for HF DX. So in summary, it's more of the same in terms of HF propagation next week, with no real highlights. But don’t ignore the lower bands, such as 1.8, 3.5, and 7MHz, which can really come into their own in mid-winter. And now the VHF and up propagation news. Despite no Tropo for a number of weeks, there has been high pressure to the west of Britain for some time. During the weekend and next week, it will become more dominant over much of the country, initially favouring Tropo for the south-western parts, but perhaps more generally later. This may be temporarily curtailed by frontal systems moving across the country around midweek and thus add some options for GHz rain scatter, but some models bring a ridge of high pressure back later in the week. As hinted at in the last bulletin, a sudden stratospheric warming did indeed develop on the 4th of January 2021. As mentioned, it can have impacts on not just the stratospheric flow but can influence weather patterns nearer the surface about a couple of weeks later. In a related note, it appears the models, after a milder next week, are hinting at a colder northerly spell again after the following weekend. Staying with the stratospheric wind flow changes, these may have a possible link to winter Sporadic-E events and it’s worth monitoring 10m and 6m for activity in the next couple of weeks or so, especially FT8, but CW and SSB are not impossible. After the excitement of the Quadrantids meteor shower we are now entering the annual quiet period in meteor activity with just two significant showers between now and the April Lyrids, so back to pre-dawn random meteors for the best chance of DX. The Moon was at perigee yesterday, so path losses are at their lowest, but it’s at minimum declination on Tuesday meaning Moon windows are short and low elevation. The Moon only reaches 12 degrees elevation on Tuesday, meaning horizon noise will be an issue all week at VHF. And that’s all from the propagation team this week.

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day day I managed my first DX contact using a new mode, FT8. It wasn't very far away, all of 2600 km or so, but it evoked memories of my first ever on-air DX contact nearly a decade ago. I should say thank you to YD3YOG for my 15m contact, fitting because my first ever was also on 15m as I recall. Unfortunately I never did log my first. Recently a friend asked me how the two compared. 15m and logging aside, there's a lot of similarities, even though I'm a more experienced operator today when compared to when I made my first ever contact. The preparation and the building anticipation is what made the contact all the sweeter. A while ago I managed to connect the audio of my radio to a computer. This is pretty much the first step in starting to use digital modes. Essentially many common digital modes use an SSB transmission to generate and receive audio that in turn contains digitally encoded information. There are hundreds of modes like this, from PSK31 to RTTY, WSPR, FT8, SSTV and many more. If you've not yet dabbled in this area, I'd recommend starting with WSJT-X. The software is so far the best tool I've found to make sure that your digital levels are correct and offers several popular modes to see how your station is operating. If you're asking for a first mode recommendation, I'd start with WSPR. Just do the receive part first, then work on from there. There are many tutorials available, some better than others, so if the one you find doesn't float your boat, keep looking. A fly-over view is that there are several things that you need to get working and if they don't all work together, you'll get no result. Obviously you'll need to install the software, but that's not the whole story. For the software to be able to control your radio, change bands, frequency and set-up things like split operation, you'll need to set-up the hardware to do this, in my case a CAT cable between the radio and the computer. You'll also need to set-up control software that knows how to talk to the hardware. In my case that's Hamlib on Linux, but it could be Hamlib or flrig on MacOS or something like OmniRig on your Windows machine. The purpose is to control the radio. When you're troubleshooting, keep that in mind, hardware plus software need to work together to control the radio and this is before you actually do anything useful with the radio. Then you need to have both hardware and software to have audio go between the computer and the radio. In my case the headphone and microphone connectors on my computer are connected to the data port on the back of the radio. If your computer doesn't have access to sockets you might need to use a USB sound-card. If your radio doesn't have an easily accessible port, you might need to have an interface. The computer software in this case is likely setting the volume levels using the audio mixer in your operating system. I will add that some radios have a USB socket on the back that combines both CAT control and audio. The principle though is the same. You need to make the CAT interface work, which is essentially a serial connection, and you need to make the audio work, which is essentially a sound-card. Nothing else will make sense until you've managed to make those two work. Then, and only then, can you try to launch something like WSJT-X, point it at the various things you've configured, then you can actually start decoding signals. For WSJT-X to work properly, there's one more thing. An accurate clock is required. Likely you'll need to use a piece of software that knows how to synchronise with something called NTP or Network Time Protocol. The simplest is to point your clock tool at a time-server called pool.ntp.org which will get you global time coverage. Each operating system does this differently, but getting it right is essential before WSJT-X will actually make sense. You can visit time.is in a web browser to see how accurate your clock currently is. So, get computer control of your radio working, get audio working, set the clock, then you can run WSPR, FT8, JT65 or any other mode. I will note that I'm not attempting to give you specific computer support here, just an overview of what's needed before anything will work. If you've been contesting then CAT control might already be operational. If you've been using a computer voice-keyer, then audio might also be ready. Depending on where you are on your digital journey, these steps might be complicated or trivial. Once you've done all that you can start doing things like figuring out where satellites are or how to talk to the International Space Station, or use Fldigi to make a PSK31 contact or send a picture using SSTV or decode a weather fax. When you've made that first digital DX contact, I'm sure that you too will have a sense of accomplishment! I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I was getting ready to go out when rain started pelting down. Not unexpected in this part of the world at this time of year but inconvenient for my plans. I didn't particularly want to carry an umbrella and the thought of wearing a rain hood brought back memories of water trickling down my back. For reasons I'm not quite sure of, my eye fell on my hat on its hook at the door. The hat I wear in the heat of summer to keep my brain from frying, the hat I use whilst camping with my amateur radio friends, the hat I've worn whilst loading massive hay bales with a tractor and the hat I've worn swimming in the Ord River - well, a descendent, third generation if I remember correctly. I shook my head in disbelief, after donning my raincoat, put my trusty Akubra Territory on my head and stepped out into the rain. Perfect. Kept me dry, kept my glasses clear and no drips down my back. You may well wonder what this has to do with radio and that's a fair question. I will preface this with a disclaimer that you might not have this set-up in your shack just now, but perhaps it will inspire you to get started. I've been talking a lot about Software Defined Radio, and I do believe that it represents the future for our hobby, but that doesn't mean that my traditional radio, in my case a Yaesu FT-857d, is headed for the scrap heap just yet. As you might know, with some preparation you can connect your radio to a computer and control it. You can also connect both the send and receive audio to a computer using a variety of techniques which I probably should get into at some point. Assuming that you have, and I realise you might not yet have done this, but assuming for a moment that you have made this all work, you can use this to do things like JT65, FT8, PSK31, SSTV and hundreds of other modes. One thing I did during the week was use this set-up to listen to noise. Seriously, that's what I did. I picked a spot on the band with nothing but noise. No discernible signal and fired up the application WSJT-X, it's the tool you use for many weak signal modes. As an aside, as a tool, it is also helpful in getting your digital mode levels set correctly. One of the windows in WSJT-X is the waterfall and spectrum display. On it you can see the signal as it is right now and how it's been in the past. If you turn on one of the filters on your radio, you can see the display change. You can literally see what gets filtered out. On my radio I've got the standard filter, as well as a 2 kHz and a 300 Hz Collins filter. Using this technique, you can specifically see what each filter does. If I turn on the built-in Digital Signal Processor, the DSP, I can see what the adjustments do, as well as the impact of the mode on the filter. And how the various settings interact. For example, until I saw this display, I didn't know what the "DSP HPF CUTOFF" and "DSP LPF CUTOFF" specifically did and how they interacted with the other filters. Similarly what "DSP BPF WIDTH" did and how. I also didn't know that even if you set both the high and low pass filter frequencies to the same value, you still have a usable filter, even if you might think that nothing could get through. Now I do realise that your radio may not have those specific settings, but I am confident that if you pick a spot on the band, set up a frequency display and waterfall, you'll discover things about your radio that you hadn't before. I also realise that you can hear some of this by just playing with filters, but seeing it on the scope adds a whole other dimension to the experience. Just one example is to see how a narrow filter interacts with the in-built DSP, something that's difficult to hear, but easy to see. If you have a Morse beacon to hand, you can also see how various frequency shifts work and the impact of selecting filters in relation to that signal. No need to just listen to the beacon with just CW mode either. Have a look at it using SSB. Using something for an unexpected purpose can give you many great rewards. As for the hat, really, I hadn't used my hat to ward off the rain until then; you live and learn. What have you discovered recently? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio During the week I climbed on my roof and installed a base antenna for the 2m and 70cm band. The antenna is a Diamond X-300N. It's 3 meters tall, has a gain of 6.5 dB on 2m and 9 dB on 70cm. I've owned it for just under eight years and this week I finally took it out of the box and installed it. I know, I know, in my defence, you shouldn't rush these things. Truth is, until this week I really didn't have a realistic way of installing it. Several factors needed to come together. Some of them trivial, others less so. In the end, the antenna is now installed on my roof, connected via coax through my roof to my radio. Now before we get all excited about what that means, let's compare my previous outdoor setting to the current one. Today I'm using LMR-400 coax, 30 meters of it. Previously I used RG-58, but only 20 meters of it. From a coax perspective, even though I increased the length by 30%, my loss actually went down, on 70cm it went down by over 4 dB. If you recall, 3 dB loss is the same as losing half your signal, so before my 5 Watts even got to the antenna, I'd already lost more than half of it using RG-58. I will mention right now that the numbers I'm giving here are purposefully not exact. There's no point. Your situation and mine are not the same, and my two installations are barely equivalent, so actual numbers don't help you. The point I'm making is that the type of coax you use to feed your antenna can make a massive difference. In my case that difference means that half of my 5 Watts never even made it to the antenna. In addition to this the two antennas are different. Not by much, but enough to make a difference. As icing on the cake the new antenna is longer by a third, so my new antenna has a better horizon, it's higher off the ground, even if it's installed at a similar height. You might recall that loss and gain are dependent on frequency, so any calculation needs to be done for each band you're going to use. In my case I had to do this twice, once for the 2m band and once for the 70cm band. I should also mention that depending on the SWR of your antenna, the losses also change, but let's not go there today. If you want to actually figure out what this means for your station, the calculation goes a little like this. Take the power output from your radio, subtract the coax loss and add the antenna gain. The end result is a number that represents the gain - or loss - from the entire system. If coax loss and antenna gain are the same, you're not losing anything, but you're also not gaining anything. The reward for the aches and pains from climbing on and in my roof are represented by the fact that now my 5 Watt signal on 2m effectively became 10 Watts. On 70cm it became 13 Watts. With the added height and gain in addition to being able to hit all the local repeaters, I can now hear the local beacon and I've successfully decoded the JT4 and JT65 messages that the beacon spits out. It's only been a week, but it's already made a massive difference. No doubt my on-air experience will also benefit from this adventure. Unfortunately, to do this for yourself is not quite as simple as giving you a link and punching in the numbers. I won't make any promises I cannot keep, but I am looking into it. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I bumped into a concept that I've heard repeated before. The so-called "impersonal nature" of digital modes. There's this idea that any communication that isn't using voice, is devoid of the human touch. Often this assertion is specifically made in relation to modern digital modes like JT65 and FT8. As an aside, I've never heard it in relation to other digital amateur modes like slow-scan television, RTTY or PSK31. In the early 1900's when amateur radio was beginning to be a thing, the means of communication was Morse Code. With beeps across the globe contacts were made between amateur stations. With every incoming dit and dah, letters were received, words constructed and meaning derived. This is long distance communication in its early stages. Each amateur was said to have a fist, their particular rhythm of touching the key. Across multiple stations it was possible for an experienced operator to distinguish between two amateurs based on how they were sending Morse Code. I can confirm that if you've ever had the privilege of hearing lots of amateurs clamour in a so-called pile-up, you can hear for yourself that different stations sound different, even if they're all sending Morse Code. So on the one hand we have this deeply inhuman means of communications like Morse Code which is by the language we use considered to be made by humans, personalised with a fist. On the other hand we have a deeply technical mode like FT8 which isn't. During the week I was discussing this change of perception during a haircut. I pointed out that this happens everywhere. For example, in the hairdressing profession an electric clipper might have been seen as impersonal when it was invented in 1921. Today it makes quick work of a Number 1 cut. In mobile phone communication an SMS was seen as impersonal with voice preferred, but today the world would look quite different without the 5 billion messaging mobile phone subscribers. In 2013 it was estimated that there were 8 trillion SMS messages, and 10 trillion other smart phone messages. As you might realise, behind each of those messages is a human, well, apart from the SPAM and the computer notifications, but even those are programmed by a human. So what makes the difference between Morse Code and FT8? Why is an SMS impersonal in 1992, but preferred by most today? I'd hazard a guess and state that the experience of the person making the statement has a lot to say about their perception of the nature of the medium. My typing away at a keyboard and seeing words appear on my screen might not appeal to someone who chased a turkey around the yard in search of a quill, but then electricity might also be surprising. It's interesting to me that PSK31, something that's not particularly thought of as being impersonal, was introduced to the amateur radio community in December 1998 by Peter G3PLX. The first Weak Signal modes, commonly known as WSJT modes, were introduced in 2001 by Joe K1JT, only three years later. JT65 came around in 2003. We have this situation where PSK31 is not impersonal, but JT65, which is five years younger, is considered impersonal and the popular mode FT8, which is an extension of JT65 is said to be the end of the hobby. If hyperbole would relate to truth, the end of our hobby in sight, we should all get rid of our radios and hand back our licenses. Perhaps we should take a step back and notice that behind every FT8 station, behind every voice-call, behind every amateur transmitter is at some point a human with a license. If we're splitting hairs, then a local automatic voice repeater must be the height of impersonal. The other thing I'd like to point out is that how you perceive the use of a particular mode is also important. If you think of FT8 as having a personal beacon in your shack that uses your radio and your antenna to measure how well your signal is heard across the globe, you might just start enjoying this so-called impersonal mode. One of my friends, Wally VK6YS, now silent key, told a story where he was driving down the highway to meet his friend. They were chatting away using Morse Code, Wally in his car, the friend in his shack. Once Wally arrived the friend wanted to see how Wally was able to send Morse Code whilst driving and could he please see his Morse key? Wally confessed to having whistled into his microphone to make the contact, since he didn't have a Morse key in his car. According to Wally, his friend was off the air for months in disgust. I should mention that my Number 1 haircut looks great, if only for the fact that it allowed me to spend some quality time discussing and contemplating the nature of the hobby that I love. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio In my day to day activities as a radio amateur I come in contact with people across all parts of their amateur journey. Some who don't yet know that they're amateurs, through to those who've just passed their test and are waiting for their callsign. Then there are those who have been amateurs for a while, experimented a bit and have settled down into the comfort of being a member of an active community. Stretch that further and I also spend regular quality time with amateurs who have been licensed longer than I've been alive. Recently I received an email from a freshly minted amateur. Just like me, still pretty much wet behind the ears, keen as mustard, trying very hard to figure out what to do next and where to go. The basic gist of the email from this amateur was that they didn't know what kind of antenna they could erect at their home and failing that, couldn't decide on what radio to acquire to match the antenna that they hadn't decided on, not to mention that the antenna needed to match the radio that didn't yet exist. If you've been around this community for a while you might recognise the chicken and the egg, which comes first, the antenna or the radio? The answer is obvious, hidden in plain sight, easy to deduce, simple to understand, and completely useless. Let me help you with the answer: It depends. If that didn't test your patience, even if you've been an amateur for longer than my parents have been alive, you'll know that this is an unanswerable question. So how do you break the egg and get started? Easy. Start somewhere. As it happens I have a recommendation. It's cheap, simple and it will get your feet wet sooner rather than later. My recommendation is neither, or both, depending on your perspective. I promise, I'll get to the point shortly. The reason I'm making it last and savouring the point, some might say, belabouring it, is because it's one that happens over and over again, day in, day out, year in, year out. My recommendation is that you spend $25 on an RTL-SDR dongle and hunt around your home for a piece of wire. That's it. If you're not familiar with an RTL-SDR dongle, it's essentially a USB thumb-drive sized device that plugs into the nearest computer and paired with the correct software it has access to many if not all of the frequencies that you as an amateur are allowed to play with. Given that it's a receiver, the antenna doesn't really matter all that much, at least not initially, so any piece of conductive wire will suit. Most dongles even come with an antenna of sorts, so you can get started straight away. Resources associated with this podcast are on the vk6flab.com website where I've also collected a few links under F-troop to get you on your way with an RTL-SDR dongle. The purist radio amateurs will likely arc up at this point and mention that this isn't real amateur radio, to which I can only say: Bah Humbug. Radio is about receiving as much as it is about transmitting. Any fool with two bits of wire can transmit, but it takes finesse to receive, so start there. There are other benefits from going this way. Other than ease of entry, that's another way of saying - cheap - you can easily spot where and when there is activity. You can use all the traditional modes like CW, SSB, AM and FM, but you can also play with all of the new modes like WSPR, FT8, JT65 and investigate some of the other modes like RTTY, PSK31, Olivia, SSTV and others. All this will help you have a better idea of the landscape you're stepping into without a major purchase. To really set a cat among the pigeons, I'm also looking into a Raspberry Pi based transmitter, rpitx by Evariste F5OEO. When that bears fruit I'll let you know. In the mean time, play, learn, listen, experiment. No need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars while you're still unsure. Even if you already have a lovely amateur station, an RTL-SDR dongle is worth every cent and then some. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio As radio amateurs we learn which frequencies we're allowed to transmit on, where stuff lives and who has priority when there's a signal on the frequency you're operating on and when you need to contact your regulator if you hear an illegal station on the air. Some of that information arrives in your brain by way of the education process that eventually becomes your license after a test. Depending on which country your license is valid, determines which region of the International Amateur Radio Union your activities fall. Here in Australia, I'm part of the IARU Region 3, together with the rest of the Asia - Pacific region. In the Americas you're part of Region 2 and Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Northern Asia fall into Region 1. As amateur population sizes go, Region 2 and 3 each cover about 40% of all radio amateurs. Region 1 is about 20%. Each of these IARU regions has a specific band-plan that is updated regularly as member countries adapt and negotiate different frequencies for different users. The band-edges might not change that often, but bands come and go, segments are added and removed as needs change. For example, here in Australia or VK, the 6m band has been changing because analogue TV has been changing. Information about band-plans is not easy to come by. For example if I look at IARU Region 2, their documentation is pretty sparse. I've never managed to actually load their website and by the looks of it, neither has the Internet Archive. Given that Region 2 is all of the Americas and represents pretty much two fifths of all amateurs on planet Earth, that's a big hole. There is some availability in Region 1 and 3, but those too leave to be desired. There does not appear to be any formal method of archiving or naming and the transient nature of the Internet all but guarantees that historic information like this is being lost at a high rate. Even with those limitations in mind, there is plenty of information to be found. Let's look at Australia, for no other reason than that I was able to pull some of the historic information out of the bit-bucket. You might be surprised to learn that there is much more change under the hood that far exceeds the band edges and segment changes. The Wireless Institute of Australia publishes the Australian Amateur Band Plan. Using the Internet Archive I was able to count that between November 2007 and November 2019 there were at least 25 different versions of that band plan published, for example in 2008 alone there were at least five different versions. I managed to download 11 of those band plans which show the introduction of the 2200 meter band, the 630 meter band, changes to mode frequencies, DX frequencies, the allocation of emergency frequencies, changes to FM bandwidth from 6 kHz to 8 kHz on bands below 10m, the formalisation of WSPR frequencies, JT65, FT8 and JT9. Now I must point out that the information I'm presenting here is incomplete. There are many more changes, just in VK alone. I'm relying on the Internet Archive which only sampled the WIA website 162 times between March 2008 and January 2020. Within those pages there were only 11 copies of the actual band plan and I've only compared three of them, August 2009, March 2015 and October 2019, and of those only a few changes that stood out. And this is for Australia alone. This is on the HF bands. I've not even looked at the veritable feast of changes associated with the VHF and UHF bands, let alone the cm, mm and higher bands. Even with this massive disclaimer, my point should be pretty clear. A band-plan is a living document. It changes regularly. Likely much more often than you realise. I'll leave you with one burning question. When was the last time you got yourself a copy of the band-plan? Seriously, when was it? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio During the week I received an email from a fellow amateur who described that they were feeling deeply disturbed by the decline of the core knowledge underlying the education and certification of today's new amateurs. This is a topic I've covered previously and some of what I'm about to say will touch on things I've said before. I come from a long background in information technology. My first introduction was around the Motorola 6502 processor in the early 1980's. At that time a computer with 5 kilobytes of memory was a big deal. I learnt to harness every byte and nurture every bit. I learnt machine-code, BASIC, Pascal and Modula-2, which went on to form the basis of my current profession. The reason I raise this is because there are many parallels in the evolution of amateur radio and the evolution of information technology. For many years I lamented the dumbing down of the skill-set associated with newly fledged computer graduates. In a nut-shell, hand-coded would always beat Java. I held that view for a long time, until it occurred to me that in the big picture it didn't matter. Let me elaborate before you start jumping up and down. In computing, every two or so years, everything doubles, speed, memory, bandwidth, etc. The price pretty-much stays the same. This means that the inefficiencies introduced by "high-level" languages like Java result in very little in the way of performance loss, but in return the actual process of writing new software accelerates. This means that you end up with more functionality, quicker, at the cost of less efficient code. That's a pretty reasonable trade-off. If that example doesn't speak to you, it's the difference between rolling out turf from the back of a truck to construct a new golf course and teeing off in days, compared to spending a week planting grass, from seed, nurturing it and waiting at least two months until you might consider playing a round. Does a golfer care if was rolled turf or planted seed? A similar thing is happening in our hobby. The advent of Software Defined Radio creates a new category of experimentation. The component count is reduced by several orders of magnitude, in return for functionality built by way of software and maths. Of course that means that the new amateur of today has no idea in the operation of a valve and only limited understanding of a transistor, but in return they can create new modes such as WSPR, JT65, CODEC2 and the massive evolution of other digital experiments, and they can do that with tools unheard of 5 years ago, let alone 50 years ago. I am an example of an amateur who knows of the existence of a valve and I have a rudimentary understanding of how it works. I am seriously considering building my own Software Defined Radio, from scratch. I understand that this might not be something that comes easy and may even be seen as detrimental to the hobby, but I dare say that the introduction of the valve to a spark-gap operator caused the same experience, let alone the introduction of the transistor, the integrated circuit or the explosion of cheap single on chip systems that can be had for cents in the dollar. The essentials still remain. For example, right now I'm working on an antenna. It involves sourcing nuts that seem to be made from unobtainium, even though they are completely standard in our community and have been for longer than I've been alive. The self-learning of our hobby, the exploration, the investigation, the curiosity will endure. What we're going to be playing with tomorrow is not going to be anything like what we were doing yesterday, and I'm OK with that. That our hobby is changing is unmistakable. That's true for every human endeavour ever. I don't agree that there is a decline, nor do I think we've lost more than we've gained. I think the future of our hobby, our community and our pursuits is strong and bright. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio With the growing availability of new ways of communicating across the globe, from digital voice such as CODEC2, through weak signal modes like WSPR, JT65, MSK144 and FT4 to name a few, with Internet linked radio such as Brandmeister and DMR and the newly granted access to all Australian amateurs to all those modes, it's easy to overlook the one mode that started this adventure. Morse Code. It's no longer required to obtain your amateur license, so if that was putting you off from getting your license, you can breathe easy and get right to it. Among all the shiny new modes Morse Code continues to hold its own and for good reason. It's simple, reliable, has an amazing signal to noise ratio and if you're driving in your car and you're stuck without a Morse Key, you can always just whistle into your radio. If you've been following my journey through the hobby you'll know that I've been attempting to learn Morse Code. For a while now. It's been a challenge, more so since I spend less and less time in a car and more and more time behind my keyboard appeasing my clients. That's not to say that I've forgotten, just that what I've tried so far has eluded success. A little while ago I received an email from a friend, Shaun VK6BEK who let me know that there was a discussion happening on a mailing list he was a member of and in that discussion I cracked a mention. Being the shy and retiring type I had to have a look for myself. To read the message I had to join, which is fine, since Charles NK8O has been bugging me to do that for years, well perhaps not bugging, perhaps keying me - hi hi. Turns out that the Straight Key Century Club, the SKCC, was having a recurring discussion about the topic of Head Copy or Head Reading. To give you a sense of what that is, consider what I'm saying to you right now. It doesn't matter if you're reading this in an eBook on your Kindle, reading it on an email or online, listening to it on your local repeater, or via your favourite podcast player, for each of those the same process is happening. You are not absorbing individual letters or sounds, but getting the meaning from the entire structure of a sentence. For uncommon words you might need to calibrate your brain, but for the most part you're just bobbing along understanding what I'm saying. In essence you're doing the equivalent of Head Copy. In Morse Code the same can be achieved. Ultimately it's a language, a tonal one, but a language none the less. Hearing the individual dits and dahs, followed by letters, words and sentences, eventually you'll get to a point where it all just flows. I speak a few different languages, a curse or a blessing depending on your point of view. It means that I've become exposed to how language is built up. Initially when you hear a new language your brain is trying hard to figure out where the individual sounds belong, which sound belongs to which word, how a word begins and ends, how you make a plural, all the things you take for granted after you've learnt a language. In Morse that is no different. Within that context of discussing Head Copy, Gwen NG3P mentioned that she used the text edition of this podcast to convert into a Morse Code MP3 file so she could learn to hear Morse and bring them with her on her mobile phone. Gwen and I had similar aims. In the past I'd done the same with a book, Huckleberry Finn if I recall, as well as random letters and also the ARRL Morse practice downloads, but nothing seemed to work for me. For Gwen my podcast was an obvious source, so much so that I completely missed it, since they are short and on the topic of amateur radio. The language in use is likely going to be things that you'll hear on air and there's a smattering of callsigns, so all good. Long story short, I spent last week converting all 454 episodes of the podcast to Morse Code for your Head Copy practice enjoyment. They're encoded at 25 WPM, or Words Per Minute and the tone is 600 Hz. I even put them online and made it possible for you to add them to your podcast player. Best part? I now get to hear Morse Code at a pace that I'm looking for, on a topic that's relevant and I have been receiving plenty of emails from others who are just as excited as I am. You can find these episodes on the podcast homepage at http://vk6flab.com. Let me know how you go. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio If the thought of keying up a microphone has you break out in a cold sweat, or the notion of making a mistake sends you into fits of anxiety, the idea of performance in public makes your heart pound, this is for you. Amateur radio is a hobby of communication. The lowest barrier to entry is a hand held radio and making voice contacts with the rest of the community. There is an underlying assumption that this is likely to be the most common way that you'll start getting on air and making noise. Of course you don't have to do that. You could learn Morse Code and never have to open your mouth. You could get a license that's permitted to use a Digital Mode like JT65 or RTTY and let your fingers to the talking. Both those options are perfectly valid and if that's what you need to get on air, be my guest. If you do however want to actually get to a point where you can communicate with other amateurs using voice communication, then let's investigate what voice communication actually entails and what fears might be eating away at your confidence. The most obvious fear, shared by many, if not most amateurs, is the fear of making a mistake. So let's look at that. Apart from blowing up your gear, which won't actually be noticed by anyone but you, those near to you and perhaps your bank manager, blowing up your gear is not a high embarrassment experience. Expensive perhaps, but not so much socially crippling, unless you tell someone that you did it. Other mistakes might be a little more public. For example, if you're on HF, theoretically the entire planet can hear you, perhaps even those space aliens orbiting the Sun and in 4.367 years, those orbiting Alpha Centauri. So potentially, many different individuals and communities can hear you. To counter that I'd point out that most of those will not actually have the means to hear you, or if they technically do, they are likely to be on a different frequency, or otherwise engaged, eating, sleeping, procreating, whatever. The chances that someone actually hears you is very, very low and if you're on VHF or UHF, the audience drops even further. The potential audience is only really line-of-sight, unless you happen to activate a Tropospheric duct, but then that might only double the potential audience, the actual audience is still a fraction compared to HF. You might be afraid that you'll transmit on the wrong frequency. If you've purchased modern properly built and configured amateur radio equipment, the chances of transmitting out of band, into non-amateur frequencies is very low. If you pay attention to what the dial says, and you have a copy of your band-plan at hand, the chances of getting it wrong are even lower. Even so, the band police aren't going to knock on your door within the next 30 seconds, so take a breath. The next set of fears revolve around saying the wrong thing. If you haven't talked on the radio much, or even at all, you're bound to worry about blurting out the wrong thing and being the biggest embarrassment to the hobby in this and the last century. Getting your callsign wrong is pretty common. If you're just starting out, or even if you're more experienced, writing down the callsign on a piece of paper and having it in front of you when you key your microphone is good planning. For every contest I participate in using anything other than my own callsign, I bring a piece of paper and a thick marker for just that purpose. I can still get it wrong, sometimes I even notice. Then there is the topic of the conversation itself. What do you talk about? How long do you talk? How much should you share? The answer to those questions can be summed up with a simple phrase - less is more. If you're establishing the actual contact, a bare minimum is required. You need to first establish that you have their callsign and they have yours. Don't do anything until both those have been confirmed. That goes for both day-to-day contacts and contest contacts. After that, establish how well they are hearing you and how well you are hearing them. Exchange a signal report. If you're in a contest, you'll include the contest exchange while you're sending a signal report. If you're not sure about anything, you can stop there. If you're doing a contest, that's all that's needed and unless the other station asks for your dog's name, or the weather, you can safely move on to your next contact. Your takeaway from this should be that doing a contest can be a really safe way to start. There is minimal information to exchange, it follows a strict format and it's generally over before you know it. Working DX, chasing activators in far away lands can be your next stepping stone, or joining a net on the local repeater might be how you next cut your teeth. You can create a list of things you've heard other people mention and use it to describe your environment. Nothing wrong with making some notes. Most amateurs perpetually carry around a little notebook to scribble down callsigns so when they're in a group discussion, they can track who's on and who's next. As you can tell. You can make this as simple or complex as you like. You can be afraid of the sky falling in, but then you'd need a Druid, a shield and a menhir and if you can swing it, a buddy called Asterix. Final comment. If all else fails, pretend you're talking to me. I can tell you that I'm happy to make the contact, I'm all ears and if I hear you, I'll respond. Did I mention that I'm standing on my head and I'm not wearing any clothes? So have at it. What are you afraid of? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio We tend to spend most of our energy looking at antennas and power to evaluate how well our station works. Based on a better antenna or more power, you're likely to make more contacts is the general gist of the process. Being a QRP operator, power rarely comes into the conversation, 5 Watts is what you get, leaving antennas as the prime method of discovering how effective we can be. Recently I received an email from Layne AE1N, pointing me at an article he wrote on the Nashua Area Radio Society website titled: It's all about the decibels - factors in enhancing station effectiveness. The article, goes into great detail in looking at an alternative way of measuring how well you're doing and builds on the December 2013 QST article - How Much Punch Can You Get from Different Modes? In our hobby we measure using a thing called the decibel. I've spoken about it at great length previously. The way to use it is to compare something against something else. Using the metric used in the QST article we take as a starting point a modern transceiver, using 100 Watts, CW into a half-wave dipole at 30m. Everything we're discussing from here on in, is related to that starting point, the zero point. I should also make clear that we're talking about the ability of the receiver to decode your message, not the strength of the signal. If you were to use the same radio and instead of using CW, used AM, you'd have a station that was 27 dB worse off. That is, your signal would effectively become harder to hear by 27 decibel. On the other hand, you if were to replace the half-wave dipole with a 4 element Yagi, your station would be just under 7 dB better off, that is, it would be easier to hear you by 7 dB. Of course you can combine AM and the Yagi, adding the two measurements together, coming out at minus 20 dB, which means that compared to a 100 Watt transmission on CW into a half-wave dipole, the same 100 Watt transmission on AM into a 4 element Yagi would still be harder to hear by 20 dB. If you go from CW to SSB, you'd be 17 dB worse off, or SSB is 10 dB better than AM. Note that when I say better and worse, it's about how much your signal can be decoded at the other end, using the same receiver, antenna, etc. The whole article includes comparisons between CW and FM, CW and RTTY and so-on. RTTY is only 4 dB worse than CW, but most transceiver manufacturers recommend that you reduce power to a quarter power, that is, 25 Watt instead of 100 Watt when using RTTY or Digital modes, so you end up losing 14 dB for that, making RTTY slightly worse than SSB if you follow the manufacturer instructions to reduce power. This isn't all doom and gloom however. Even though CW is very effective, we can improve things in other ways. For example, using PSK31 gives you a 7 dB head start, switching from CW to JT65 or FT8 gives you 25 dB. Even if you take into account the reduction from the loss of full power, 14 dB, you still end up in front by 11 decibel, which is more than you can get from upping power from 100 Watt to 400 Watt which only gets you 6 dB. Adding an 11 element Yagi gives you a similar improvement as changing from CW to FT8, just over 11 dB, and using 1500 Watts is only slightly better at 12 dB. The point I'm making is that you can use this idea to figure out how to get your signal heard. More power or a bigger antenna is only part of the conversation, picking the correct mode is just as important. Of course, the 11 dB gain you get from moving from CW to FT8, even when reducing power, is one of the main reasons that it's so popular, much easier to change mode than to build a new fancy antenna. One more thing, what of the 5 Watts vs. 100 Watts we started with, 13 dB. That's significant, but if you were to use 5 Watts FT8 into a quarter-wave dipole, using 100% of the 5 Watts, you'll actually be 12 dB better off than the same station using 100 Watts CW. Check out Layne's article for a reference to QST and a whole lot more. It's a very useful way of looking at how your station can be very effective, even if you're QRP. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

From the 2018 TAPR Digital Communications Conference, we learn about a true measurement of signal to noise ratio on some of the most popular HF Digital modes.Be sure to subscribe for more Ham Radio video: https://goo.gl/6hjh2JCheckout my website: https://livefromthehamshack.tvTAPR: https://www.tapr.org/dcc.htmlIf you want to support me, follow my Patreon link: https://goo.gl/FkESU6Also checkout my new channel for Texas Based Craft Beer: https://texasbrewcrafters.tv

From the 2018 TAPR Digital Communications Conference, we learn about a true measurement of signal to noise ratio on some of the most popular HF Digital modes.Be sure to subscribe for more Ham Radio video: https://goo.gl/6hjh2JCheckout my website: https://livefromthehamshack.tvTAPR: https://www.tapr.org/dcc.htmlIf you want to support me, follow my Patreon link: https://goo.gl/FkESU6Also checkout my new channel for Texas Based Craft Beer: https://texasbrewcrafters.tv

Mike Mussler, AI8Z, is one of the early pioneers in the 630 meter band experimental trials in 2007 that resulted in the band being opened for amateur radio exploration. AI8Z rebuilds old rigs, especially military surplus WW2 vintage radios that adorn his Cortez, Colorado ham shack. We start with Mike’s ham radio history in this QSO Today.

Foundations of Amateur Radio The topic of how radio evolves and embraces available technology is one that describes the hobby itself. From spark-gap through AM, SSB and FM our community picked up or invented solutions to make communication possible. When the internet came along it too became a tool ripe for picking and in 1997 a connection between a radio and the internet was made with the Internet Radio Linking Project or IRLP when Dave VE7LTD, a student at the University of British Columbia, joined the UBC Amateur Radio Society. Using a radio, some hardware and a computer, you could send audio between radios across the internet. Since then this field has exploded with D-STAR, Echolink, DMR, AllStar, Wires, CODEC2, System Fusion and Brandmeister. At a glance they're all the same thing, radio + internet = joy. Looking closer there are two distinct kinds of internet radio contraptions, those where the radio is digital and those where it's not. IRLP is an example of an analogue radio connecting to hardware that does the encoding into digital and transmission across the internet. At the other end the reverse process, decoding, happens and another analogue radio is used to hear the result. This encoding and decoding is done by a piece of software called a CODEC. If we continue for a moment down the analogue path, Echolink, AllStar and Wires do similar things. In 2002 Echolink made its way onto the scene, similar to IRLP, but it didn't need any specialised hardware, any computer running the Echolink software could be used as both a client and a server, that is, you could use it to listen to Echolink, or you could use it to connect a radio to another Echolink computer. AllStar, which started life in 2008 went a step further by making the linking completely separate. It uses the metaphor of a telephone exchange to connect nodes together, which is not surprising if you know that it's built on top of the open source telephone switching software Asterisk. In 2012 or so, Yaesu introduced Wires which is much like Echolink and AllStar. There are servers with rooms, not unlike chat rooms, where you connect a node to and in turn your radio. Blurring the lines between these technologies happened when you could build a computer that spoke both IRLP and Echolink at the same time. Now you can also add AllStar to that mix. Essentially these systems do similar things. They manage switching differently, handle DTMF differently, use a different audio CODEC and handle authentication in a variety of ways, but essentially they're ways of connecting normal hand-held radios, generally FM, to each other via the internet using intermediary computers called nodes. Before you start sending angry letters, I know, there's more to it, but I've got more to tell. While Dave was busy in Canada inventing IRLP back in the late 1990's, in Japan the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications funded research, administered by the Japan Amateur Radio League into the digitisation of amateur radio. In 2001 that research resulted in what we know today as D-STAR. Two years later, ICOM started developing D-STAR hardware which resulted in actual physical radios less than a year later. Today you can get D-STAR hardware from ICOM, Kenwood and FlexRadio Systems. Unlike the other technologies where the audio was converted at a central place, in D-STAR the audio is encoded in the radio and a digital signal is sent across the airwaves. That in turn means that the software that does the encoding, the CODEC, needs to be inside the radio. Since the information is digital right from the point of transmit, you can send other information, like GPS locations and messages along with the audio. In 2005 DMR started life as a group of companies, now up to around 40, agreeing on some standards for digital audio in much the same way as D-STAR. Mostly in use by commercial users, DMR has the ability to have two users simultaneously on-air using alternate channels by having separate time slots for each channel, alternating between the two of them. They agreed to use the same CODEC to ensure compatibility. Formal interoperability testing has been happening since 2010, but because DMR allows manufacturers to build in extra features many brands cannot actually work together on the same network. For many years D-STAR and DMR-MARC, the DMR Motorola Amateur Radio Club World Wide Network, were the main digital radio systems around in amateur radio. That changed in 2013 when Yaesu introduced System Fusion. It too made digital audio at the radio, but it added a wrinkle by making it possible to have both analogue and digital audio on the same repeater. Depending on how the repeater is configured, analogue and digital radios can coexist and communicate with each other. The Wires system that Yaesu rolled out was upgraded in 2016, renamed to Wires X and now also incorporates digital information to allow the linking of their System Fusion repeaters. In 2014 at the Ham Radio Exhibition in Friedrichshafen in Germany, Artem R3ABM planned to make an alternative master server for DMR+ and DMR-MARC and the result was a German wordplay which we know today as Brandmeister. It acts as a network for digital radios in much the same way as DMR, but it's run as an open alternative to the commercially available options made by Motorola and Hytera. The story isn't complete without mentioning one other development, CODEC2. It started in 2008 when Bruce Perens K6BP contacted Jean-Marc Valin, famous for the SPEEX audio compressor and David Rowe VK5DGR about the proprietary and patented nature of low data use voice encoders such as those in use in D-STAR, DMR and System Fusion. David had already been working in this area a decade earlier and started writing code. In 2012 during Linux Conference Australia, Jean-Marc and David spent some time together hacking and managed to make a 25% improvement and CODEC2 was well under way. Today CODEC2 forms the basis of several projects including FreeDV in software, the SM1000 FreeDV adaptor in hardware and the roadmap for the future of open and free digital voice is bright. I should mention that this information is specifically brief to give you an overview of the landscape and hopefully I've not made too many glaring errors, but feel free to drop me a line if you do find a problem. Digital radio and the internet, it's not just a single mode, a whole cloud of modes, and I haven't even started with WSPR, FT8 or JT65. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Tomas Hood, NW7US is the propagation editor of a number of shortwave and amateur radio magazines, and has a wide variety of websites,  that grew out of his love for all things radio, and  for listening on the bands to far off DX and commercial broadcast stations. Tomas shares his understanding  of propagation and the lessons we can learn from listening, really listening to the QSOs and exchanges during contest operation.

Foundations of Amateur Radio What is amateur radio? What's not part of the hobby and what is? The more you dig into this, the deeper the rabbit hole goes. I'll start with an analogy to set the scene. In aviation, Sir George Cayley was the first person to investigate heavier-than-air flying vehicles. He invented the aeroplane in 1799. The first full-sized glider, built in 1849 carried the first person in history to fly, the ten-year-old son of one of his servants. Since then the Wright brothers made their flight at Kitty Hawk. We saw the invention of commercial aviation, the turbo prop, the jet engine, the space-shuttle, helicopters, drones, rockets, hot-air balloons, the Hindenburg, the Goodyear blimps, hang-gliders, gyro-copters and many, many other contraptions. Each of those are considered aviation and the person controlling the device is considered a pilot. In amateur radio we talk on the radio. We also create repeaters and talk on them. We link them together using what ever technology is available. We make it possible to connect to such networks using software such as Echolink, AllStar Link, IRLP and other internet based systems. We create digital networks with DMR, use WSPR to exchange information, make contacts using CODEC2, have contests using CW and Morse code. We build software defined radios where we use computers to decode and encode radio signals, test back scatter using all manner of signal processing, use packet radio, RTTY, Hellschreiber and bounce signals off the moon and nearby meteors or an overflying aircraft. We make auto-tuners with a Raspberry-Pi or an SWR meter with an Ardiuno. We build valve based amplifiers and program mp3 voice-keyers, GPS lock radios, map propagation using the internet and have a rag chew on the local 2m repeater. We investigate 13cm propagation, do experiments with amateur television and we set up radio stations on top of mountains, in light houses and on remote islands. All of this is amateur radio, and frankly I've only just scratched the surface. There are heated discussions about if a linked repeater using the internet to create the link is real amateur radio or not, whether using your mobile phone as a node on the Echolink network is real amateur radio or not, if using a computer to create contacts on a digital mode such as JT65 is real radio or not. Each of these questions highlights a misconception about our hobby. There are no boundaries in amateur radio. We're a bunch of inventors, mavericks, people who attempt the unthinkable, try the impossible and make progress. There are people who are passengers on planes, and there are people who fly them. There are people using technology and there are people who invent it. We have a unique perspective as a community. We have the ability to imagine something that doesn't yet exist. Why would you spend any energy on whether that thing is real amateur radio or not? Amateur radio is a myriad of things, some of them related to antennas and radio spectrum, some not. This hobby is what you make of it, so go forth and invent something, try something, get on air and make some noise! I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Dave LeDuc, N1IX, like many of my guests got his ham radio start as a teenager in the sixties.  His love for CW and chasing DX has not diminished over the years.  His new passion is running QRP and winning contests.  Dave shares his ham radio story and offers some advice for QRP success in this episode of QSO Today.  

This is the 193rd episode of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, your hosts discuss ARRL Field Day, JT65 and new modes like it, the wonder of 6m and the E Layer, the NSA, patent trolls, useful command line utilities and more. We also have a great interview with Joe Ayers, AE6XE, about [...]

ハムのラジオ第222回の配信です。(2017/4/2放送） 特集は「JT65の魅力」です。 JT65は最近たくさんの方が運用され、一般的になってきました。そこで、今回は原点に戻って、JT65の魅力について考えてみました。 […]

Foundations of Amateur Radio Over the past six years or so I've single mindedly been producing a weekly segment about Amateur Radio. Over time this has evolved into a podcast which gets about half a million hits a year. Naturally I receive emails and I do my best to respond in a timely fashion. One of the other things I do is announce a new edition of the podcast on several different sites where listeners have the opportunity to share their views about what ever is on their mind. Sometimes their response is even about the podcast itself, though I confess that some comments appear to indicate that listening isn't part of a requirement to actually form an opinion about what it is that I have said that week. All that aside, I find it immensely fascinating that the responses I receive vary so much in perspective. It's not hard to understand and observe that our community comes from people along all walks of life. From nine-year olds to ninety-year olds and everything in between. I tend not to comment directly on such feedback, since everyone has their own opinion, but I came across one post recently that made me sad about the spirit of some Amateurs. In a seemingly bygone era there was a sense that Amateurs would help new people join the community and help them find their way into this vast range of discovery. A place where no question was wrong, where shared experiences are cherished and where the lack of knowledge was an opportunity for learning. It seems that the moniker that we carry, that of HAM, supposedly because when compared to Professional Telegraphers, we were considered HAM-fisted, went on to form the basis of a proud tradition of experimentation and renewal. Across the globe we see a refresh of the license conditions on a regular basis. We saw that here in Australia with the introduction of the so-called Z-call and K-call, looked down upon by Real Amateurs who had a much more stringent licensing regime. We discontinued Morse Code as a requirement for an Amateur License as part of a global treaty agreement in 2003. In Australia this meant that from the 1st of January 2004, Morse Code was no longer required if you wanted to obtain an Amateur License. As you know, that didn't signal the end of Morse, just that it wasn't legally required any more. I'm one of many Amateurs learning Morse because I want to, not because I have to. I'd also point out that it was discontinued by global agreement, not two random guys in Canberra. Back to my point about the spirit of this hobby. The point that was being made is that the Foundation Class license isn't a real license and that it is just being handed to anyone who asks, not like their requirements for Morse Code and a written exam, rather than a multiple-choice test. Essentially conveying that my undignified license and that of my fellow Foundation Licensees isn't to be confused with the noble one that a Real Amateur holds. This kind of response saddens me and frankly I hear it too often. It's as-if we as a community still have not learned that the world moves on. Technology, in many ways the basis of Amateur Radio, evolves. For example, in the current requirements for an Amateur License there is a long-winded discussion about the impacts of spurious transmissions on Analogue Television. In Australia, the last Analogue TV broadcast happened on the 4th of December 2013, that's years ago, but it's still required reading on the Amateur License Syllabus. Similarly we learn about Valves, but attempting to actually obtain such a device is nigh-on impossible. Should we still be learning about those aspects of Electronics, or should we move on? Amateurs are an inventive lot, we make up new modes, link up new technologies, experiment with all manner of stuff and sometimes we end up with something new, like IRLP, AllStar, SDR, Digital Modes and the like. All because someone got curious, couldn't help themselves and started to fiddle. As things fall off the radar at one end, Analogue TV, Morse Code, Valves, the other end picks up things, JT65, Digital TV, Lithium Polymer Batteries and whatever else comes around the corner. So, I'm sad that there are people who feel that my license isn't a real one. As many of my peers, I have a piece of paper from my regulator that begs to differ and a community of enthusiastic eager people who are attempting to find their home among our hobby as it evolves into the future. Last week I talked about the death of our hobby and that it was vastly mis-represented. As I said, year-on-year, more and more Amateurs join, but overall the numbers decline. I think that opinions expressed about the lack of real licensing, decrying the death of Morse etc. is a symptom of why it is that we have a retention problem in our hobby. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but that doesn't mean I have to agree. This is my hobby too and disdain is my fuel! I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The thing I like about our community is that there is always something new brewing, someone is inventing something, making something or doing something. It amazes me that the level of ingenuity is boundless. During the week someone asked the question, "What's the difference between AM and FM?" and while answering that could incorporate hand waving, arrows and drawings, I came across a much simpler explanation, which simply says it all. Credit goes to redditor EmmetOT. Imagine replacing radio with light, this isn't a stretch, since it's part of the same spectrum. Replace a radio transmitter with a light bulb. AM is using a dimmer, changing the brightness, to send information. FM is changing the colour of the light to send information. I could stop right there, but there is so much more going on in our community. If you've been out of Amateur Radio for a while, and I know, this happens to the best of us, you'll be forgiven in thinking that nothing is the same as it was, while wondering if anything ever changes. Both these things are true and I think that's good. The first AM voice transmission was made in 1900, SSB experimentation began in 1915 and FM experiments were happening in the early 1930's. These three modes, AM, SSB and FM are still with us today. We've done other cool stuff since then, stereophonic and quadraphonic FM. We think of RTTY as a relative new kid on the block, but it has its origins in 1874 and the first on-air RTTY was heard in 1922. Without going into too much detail, other modes that we are beginning to think of as ancient are surprisingly new. PSK31 for example joined us in 1998, but Hellschreiber, is from the 1920's, MFSK comes from 1962 and Packet Radio hails from the 1970's. JT65 comes from 2003 and JT9 is from 2012. My point is that whatever the mode you're using, someone is extending it, modifying it, improving it or inventing something new. Your level of familiarity with a mode has little or nothing to do with the age of the mode. As is the case with everything in Amateur Radio, horses for courses. In your Amateur pursuits you'll come across those who will tell you that there is nothing new to be invented, that everything has already been thought of and that we are a hobby of old people harking back to the golden era of something or other. I'm here to tell you that nothing is further from the truth. Amateur Radio is a hobby of invention of people asking the question: "I wonder what happens if I do this...", often followed by a big bang and the magic smoke coming out. Don't let that deter you. Keep on with the experimentation, even if you've only been a member of this community for a minute and a half like me, you too can make a contribution. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? Recently I talked about a digital mode that had the ability to give you an estimated gain of 13dB over Analogue FM. It's the equivalent of gaining more than 2 S-points or like turning up your transmitter power from 10 Watts to 200 Watts. Of course, the receiver at the other end doesn't all of a sudden see their S-meter go up and neither does the power draw from your transmitter spike. The actual transmitted power is still the same and the actual received power is also the same. What's going on for this magic to happen? If you've ever listened to Morse code, not to understand it, I'm not there yet either, but just to hear it, you'll notice that you can detect individual dits and dahs at a very low signal level, much lower than it would be possible to hear an SSB signal in the same environment. The reason that happens is because your ear only needs to detect the presence or absence of a tone. Once you can hear the tone, you can work out how long each tone is and then your brain can decode a dit or a dah. Do that enough and you can decode a letter, then a word, then a sentence. So, under Morse conditions there are two basic variables, a tone or not and the length of that tone. If you had a great filter you could make it possible to filter out all but the wanted signal, making it possible to hear even weaker signals. What we're really talking about here is something called a signal to noise ratio. That is, the difference between the background noise, coming from the atmosphere, the neighbours and the radio itself, and the signal, or the Morse code you're trying to detect. The simpler the signal, the easier it is to hear. Of course there are limitations. You can only key so fast, your radio can only key on and off so fast, etc. What if you could key your radio differently? What if you used multiple tones, could you get the same effect? If you look at JT65, a weak signal digital mode, originally designed to do Earth-Moon-Earth communications, but now widely in use on HF, it does exactly that. Instead of on and off, it uses 65 tones to encode information. It uses a whole lot of mathematics, error correction and the like to ensure that each of these tones is decoded correctly and the message is either conveyed entirely, or ignored. Doing this allows JT65 to work in an environment where the noise is higher than the signal. And get this, the performance is entirely dependent on the software decoder in the receiver. What that means is that as we figure out how to improve software signal processing, the performance of JT65 will get better. The rabbit hole goes deep when you start digging and I can assure you, this just scratches the surface. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Slides Here: https://defcon.org/images/defcon-22/dc-22-presentations/Drapeau-Dukes/DEFCON-22-Drapeau-Dukes-Steganography-in-Commonly-Used-HF-Radio-Protocols-UPDATED.pdf Additional Extra Materials are available here: https://defcon.org/images/defcon-22/dc-22-presentations/Drapeau-Dukes/Paul%20Drapeau%20and%20Brent%20Dukes%20-%20Extras.zip Steganography in Commonly Used HF Radio Protocols Paul Drapeau PRINCIPAL SECURITY RESEARCHER, CONFER TECHNOLOGIES INC. Brent Dukes Imagine having the capability to covertly send messages to an individual or a larger audience, without the need for large centralized infrastructure where your message could be observed, intercepted, or tampered with by oppressive governments or other third parties. We will discuss the opportunities and challenges with steganography implementations in widely used amateur radio digital modes, and present a proof of concept implementation of hiding messages within innocuous transmissions using the JT65 protocol. This technique could theoretically be used to implement a low cost, low infrastructure, covert, world wide short message broadcasting or point to point protocol. No messages in codes or ciphers intended to obscure the meaning thereof were actually transmitted over the amateur bands during the creation of this talk. Paul Drapeau is currently the Principal Security Researcher for Confer Technologies Inc. He has held senior level IT security roles and consulted on information security topics for various organizations for over 15 years. Paul has a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Rhode Island and has been licensed as an amateur radio operator since 1986. Brent Dukes has a decade of experience working in software and systems engineering roles. He spends his nights tied to various hardware hacking projects sitting in pieces all over his lab, and participating in CTFs. His idea of fun is reverse engineering and modifying toys and consumer electronics for the purposes of good. Brent has been a licensed amateur radio operator since 2006. Paul Drapeau - Twitter: @pdogg77 Brent Dukes - Twitter: @TheDukeZip

What use is an F-call? The Amateur Foundation License in Australia has a range of obligations and restrictions that differentiate it from the other Amateur Licenses. The most visible of those is a limit on power of 10 Watts, the bands that are allowed, 80m, 40m, 15m, 10m, 2m and 70cm. Another restriction is related to the use of a computer and your radio. The interpretation is often made along the lines of: "You cannot use a computer connected to your radio." ... and that's simply not the case. The current LCD, as of January 2014, says: "The licensee [..] must not operate an amateur station using automatic mode or computer controlled mode." And it says: "The licensee [..] must not operate an amateur station that is directly connected to a public telecommunications network. It adds in italics a note: "An amateur foundation station may be indirectly connected to a public communications network through a gateway operated by another licensee." This means that you can use your radio to connect to Echolink and IRLP, both Internet based radio technologies. What you cannot do is run an Echolink node on your computer, connect the computer to the radio and have incoming connections activated by somebody over the Internet. You cannot do this, not because it's a public telecommunications network, more on that in a moment, but because the computer is controlling the radio without your input, which you're not permitted to do. Now, the public telecommunications network part. I know that some of you are already spluttering, but, but, but. The amateur station isn't directly connected to a public telecommunications network. It's connected to a computer, which in turn is connected to a network, which in turn is connected to the Internet. This restriction isn't about the Internet, it's about connecting an Amateur Radio to the telephone network, about having someone ring a phone number and the audio that comes in, be sent out over the air on your radio. It's about ensuring that only appropriately licensed persons access the station to transmit. It's an example of how regulation and invention are often not in sync. Another point. APRS, Automatic Packet Reporting System, is a way to use Amateur Radio to transfer packets of information to people who want it. For example, it can be used to report a GPS location, the state of a battery at a repeater site, the read switch on a security door, what ever you can dream up. As a Foundation Licensee, you cannot use the digital mode to send packets using your radio, but nothing prevents you from using APRS on your phone. This has nothing to do with your Amateur License or with the ACMA. It's a system built and used by Amateurs, but if you're not using your radio, you're good to go. Also, there's nothing stopping you from listening to packet radio. You might even pick up an ArduSat or two and help out school science in the process. Other modes you might look at are PSK31, RTTY, JT65, WSPR. The sky is the limit when you listen. Go forth and have fun. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

George looks at FreeDV, Digital Voice for HF. Peter operates JT65 for weak-signal communications. Tommy builds a Raspberry Pi file server. And a Major Award, the ALTV 8th Anniversary Giveaway… We give away the ultimate mobile setup from Icom, GigaParts, Diamond and MFJ to one very lucky viewer. 1:13 of AmateurLogic Goodness

George looks at FreeDV, Digital Voice for HF. Peter operates JT65 for weak-signal communications. Tommy builds a Raspberry Pi file server. And a Major Award, the ALTV 8th Anniversary Giveaway. We give away the ultimate mobile setup from Icom, GigaParts, Diamond and MFJ to one very lucky viewer. 1:13 of AmateurLogic Goodness