Foundations of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio On your amateur radio journey, you'll likely discover that many transceivers run on 13.8 volt DC, give or take. For example my FT-857d requires 13.8 volt plus or minus 15 percent, with a negative ground, and a current draw of 22 ampere, more on that later. In other words, the power supply needs to be between about 11.7 and 15.9 volts, the same voltage that runs most vehicles with some wiggle room for fluctuating alternator charging cycles. While some radios will absolutely fit in your car, there's plenty where that just isn't the case, even though they're set-up for a 13.8 volt power supply. You might think of it as an anachronism, a few steps removed from spark gap transmitters, but there's more to the story. Most residential power grids run on AC power, at varying voltages and frequencies between 50 and 60 Hz. Across the world there's eight different AC voltages in use between 100 and 240 volts. Some countries use more than one combination and I haven't even looked at three phase power. Perhaps 13.8 volt DC isn't looking quite as odd. With this revelation comes the need to actually have 13.8 volt available in your shack. Converting your grid power to something you can plug your gear into requires some form of transformation, typically achieved with a power supply. Efficient, cheap and plentiful, the switch mode power supply is the most common. Built to a price, they're also often noisy, not just the fan, but noisy from a radio emissions perspective. Amateur radio has very sensitive receivers and as a result you can often hear, or see if you have a waterfall display, RF birdies, a sound reminiscent of a budgie whistling, every 100 kHz or so across the whole radio spectrum. Not something most other equipment cares about, so you're often left to fend for yourself in figuring out how to deal with this phenomenon. There's plenty of filtering techniques and circuits to be found and some of them even work, but for my money, I'd spend it on a power supply that doesn't make noise in the first place. A regulated power supply maintains a constant output voltage or current, regardless of variations in load or input voltage. An unregulated power supply can wander all over the place. Adjustable power supplies allow you to set the voltage, amperage, or both, sometimes with knobs, sometimes using external controls. At this point you might decide that this is all too hard and you want to do away with all this complexity and use a Sealed Lead Acid, or SLA battery, after all, that's what the 13.8 volt is based on, but then you'll need to charge it. Similarly, picking any battery technology requires some form of charging. Another word for charger is: power supply, often a switch mode one, and likely not filtered in any way that matters to you, since batteries, and for that matter solar power inverters, are unlikely to care about RF birdies. I will make mention of linear power supplies. When I started on this journey, this was the strong recommendation from my peers as the most desirable option. Although they're significantly less efficient than switch mode power supplies, only 30 percent versus better than 80 percent, from an RF perspective, they're extremely quiet. Of course, the lack of efficiency reveals itself in the form of heat, which necessitates the application of cooling, from a fan, often a very noisy fan. One potential source of power supply is a computer power supply unit or PSU. Before you go down that route, consider that they're intended for installation inside a case, often generate various voltages at very specific current draws and are not typically known for being RF quiet. After weighing up all the variables, I chose a laboratory grade switch mode current limiting adjustable power supply. It's set to 13.8 volt and it sits on my desk doing its thing. Rated at 1 to 15 volts at 40 ampere, it's now as old as I am in amateur radio terms, well and truly a teenager, it's also overkill, by quite a margin. Remember when I mentioned that my FT-857d is rated at drawing 22 ampere? As a QRP or low power station I typically use my transmitter set to 5 watt, but even when others use it at full power, I have never ever seen it draw more than 12 ampere. That's not to say that it can't draw 22, I've just never seen it. As a benefit of having such a massive overkill in the specifications of my power supply, I can power more than one radio and not notice. Not that they're all transmitting at the same time, or using more than 5 watt, it just doesn't matter. I previously discussed setting a standard for coax connectors in the shack, the same is true for deciding what to pick for power supply connectors. In my case I chose Anderson Powerpole connectors. Pins come in 15, 30 and 45 ampere ratings, are genderless and housings are available in many different colours. When I say genderless, it means that you can join two identical connectors. Within my shack, I use the RACES or ARES Powerpole wiring standard and every single 13.8 volt connection uses it. If I get new gear that uses some other connector, I'll cut the power supply wire in half and terminate both the power supply and the cut off cable using Powerpole connectors. That way my gear will connect to my own power supply and I'll have a universal adaptor cable when I need it. Over the years I've collected an impressive array of adaptors using this method and it's helped immensely when sharing gear with other amateurs. Word of warning, make sure you get positive and negative the right way around when you join your Powerpole connectors, and make sure that you have the red and black housings the right way around too, you can thank me later. If you do this more than a few times, I'd recommend that you spend the money on a proper crimping tool. It makes the experience So. Much. Better. To avoid many of the pitfalls of interference whilst connecting power and coax to the same radio, try hard to avoid running both in parallel, or worse, joined to each other. Instead, attempt to run them in different directions and only cross at right angles if you have to. One thing to consider is the ability to switch everything off immediately. To that end I have a power switch on my desk that isolates all power to the equipment. You'll notice that I have not said anything about grounding or earthing, that's on purpose. Your laws and mine are not the same. Similarly, information you'll find online rarely, if ever, describes the jurisdiction it applies to, so, look at your own rules and implement accordingly. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Noise la la la la la hinders if I were a rich man effective a noise annoys an oyster communication but a noisy noise annoys an oyster more. Or said differently, when you're trying to communicate, something that the hobby of amateur radio does in spades, you'll need to deal with a phenomenon called noise. This noise comes in different forms, but the effect is the erection of barriers to successful communication. We refer to the impact of noise as a signal to noise ratio or SNR, the signal being the desired information, the noise the undesired interference. Expressed in decibels so you can deal with a massive range using a small number, an SNR greater than 0 dB means that the signal is stronger than the noise. Building a shack requires that you consider noise in many forms. If you've been a radio amateur for a few moments, your mind is likely to head straight for the hiss, crackle and pop you might hear whilst attempting to communicate on HF, but there's a few other things to discuss. There's all sorts of electronic noise received by your radio. In addition, there's audio noise picked up by your ears, and often your microphone. Then there's the noise that you produce, either from your transmitter into the rest of the building, or from your mouth or speakers into the ears of the people you share the space with. Starting with audio, having a space that you can close the door on is a good way to limit the noise coming into and leaving your shack. An alternative is to wear headphones and generate text to speech, or prerecord your voice, ready for a contact, potentially ideal for contesting, not so much for free form discussion. Another consideration is audio from other radios, including those tuned to a local broadcaster, or aviation frequencies. In other words, if you're transmitting with a microphone, make sure that there's no other audio coming through. In some cases it's even illegal to transmit that audio, but in all cases it's noise that makes communication more difficult. This kind of audio noise mitigation is pretty straightforward. In stark contrast, achieving the same with electronic noise is pretty much a balancing act between budget and effectiveness. The impact of noise is inversely proportional to distance. Essentially, the closer it is, the more impact it has. With that in mind, when you start dealing with noise, start nearby and work your way out. As you eliminate the nearby noise, other sources will become apparent. Without turning this into a noise mitigation class, the process is essentially one of elimination. First locate the noise source, then eliminate it. That's easier said than done. For example, if the noise source is a power supply sitting on your bench, you can turn it off, except if that power supply is the one powering your radio, so perhaps I should say: "attempt to eliminate it" instead. There's plenty of ways to have a go at this and volumetric kilotons of content published on the subject, some of it even useful. In many, but not all cases, noise is an electrical phenomenon that enters via any means possible and you'll need to attempt noise mitigation at multiple points of entry. Obvious sources are the power supply, coax and the antenna connection, the speaker cable, the microphone lead, and if you're using a computer, the USB, serial or Ethernet cable and within the computer itself. Each requiring different approaches. The obvious one is to disable the noise, that is, turn off the offending device. As I said, that might not be an option, but you can replace noisy gear, or place it further away. There's isolation, using tools like ferrites and chokes to stop the noise from reaching your radio. Often in the form of a clip-on blob, you'll find these on things like monitor and USB cables. Place the ferrite as close as possible to the input of your radio. If it's loose on the cable, wind it through the ferrite, the tighter the better. There's software solutions with varying levels of effectiveness. You'll find DSP or Digital Signal Processing knobs and buttons on many radios. They're generally helpful for narrowband repeating noises, like the hum of an electric motor or power supply. There's tools that attempt to impose a noise on your signal that cancels out the noise, anti-noise, if you like, by receiving the noise, inverting it and adding it to your signal, thus, at least theoretically, eliminating it, noise minus noise is silence. This can take the form of a device for noise coming in from the antenna, but it also applies to things like noise cancelling speakers. In audio this is called active noise cancelling. There's also a new crop of noise cancelling software, using A.I. or Assumed Intelligence, that captures your signal, attempts to figure out what's noise and what's not, removes the noise and then feeds it back to you. Your Mileage May Vary and if you break it, you get to keep both parts. Consider your privacy and security implications of sending your audio out the door to be processed. That's not to say that, at least theoretically, effective local Machine Learning models could be created to help with this. I have yet to see one. At some point you'll hopefully reach a place where the noise inside your shack is no longer an issue. Then you'll discover your noisy neighbours, with solar panel inverters, pool pumps, plasma televisions, broadband modems, kids toys and pretty much anything electronic, purchased with no consideration whatsoever in relation to your hobby. I'm mentioning this, because more often than not, you'll have little or no control of those devices. You could cultivate your relationship with your neighbours and discuss your situation, but don't expect compliant hardware to magically solve all your issues. Antenna orientation, horizontal versus vertical might assist, as might placement or distance from the noise source. It's why I suggest that you start this journey with simple antennas, with plenty of room for evaluation and modification to suit the conditions. All this to point out that once you have the perfect shack, your work is only just beginning, but then I suspect that you've already realised this. Like antennas, I will note that noise and its elimination is an integral part of this hobby. It's easy to forget that, whilst you're in the middle of a frustrating hunt for a noise source, and if you like you can think of it as ripples or waves on the pond whilst you're casting a fly. When you discuss this with other amateurs, you'll likely come across terms like QRM and QRN, the last letter describing either Man-made or Natural noise. I'm not sure how helpful the distinction is, but it's there if you need it. One resource worth mentioning is a website called qrm.guru. It has documented processes and tools to discover where noise is coming from and how to go about dealing with it. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Putting your station together is best described as a juggling act, since you'll discover that everything depends on everything else and the more you plan, the more you learn and the more variables become apparent, none more so than with the selection of an antenna. Antennas are endlessly variable. To give you a taste, imagine a loop of wire, shaped like a circle. As you stretch the circle, it becomes an oval, if you pull on four corners, it's a square, pull it tight between two points and it more or less becomes a single wire. In other words, one piece of wire can essentially make an infinite number of antennas, and we haven't even varied the material, length, thickness or coating. So, to discuss antennas is to embark on a lifelong journey of exploration and me telling you to get one over another is not going to help, instead I'd like to discuss some considerations that you might not have encountered. The obvious issue of space is generally the first consideration. Then there's the neighbours and their sense of aesthetics, or lack thereof. There's local laws to abide by and sometimes permissions and permit requirements, though in many cases it seems that seeking forgiveness is a quicker route to success. Your Mileage May Vary. Talk to your local amateur club. There's the property owner to consider. If that's you, great, drill away, if not, you will need to tailor your antenna selection to the amount of renovations required. If you live in a restricted location where there are all manner of rules about the things that you cannot do, you might need to think carefully about your options. Stealthy antennas are a thing. As I've said previously, inside your roof might be an option, but there are others. Some examples to consider. If there's a TV aerial on your roof, will that look similar to a 70cm Yagi, or could it hide a 2m vertical? Do you have a metal gutter which might act as an antenna, or could you use Christmas light clips to hang a wire antenna from your gutters? Could you hide a vertical in a plastic down-pipe? Could you dangle a ladder-line antenna out a window at night, or use thin wire to hold up your plants while hiding your antenna in the garden, or can you use a beverage antenna that's lying on the ground, or hidden under the fence capping? Could you tune up your fence for that matter? In other ways to make your hobby look invisible in plain sight, could you use an antenna that looks like a roof vent, or if you're into moon bounce, could you repurpose a satellite dish? Could you make your outdoor washing line into an antenna or add a flagpole vertical antenna that also happens to soothe your vexillology sensibilities? While we're talking stealth, you can paint your antenna to match the decor. To get your antenna up in the air, could you use a length of wood, a pool cleaning or painters pole, strapped to your pergola, gazebo, balcony railing, or some other existing structure? Can you use the edging of a shade sail, professionally installed, it comes complete with mounting points. It doesn't stop there, I've heard of several amateurs who managed to park a sailboat, with the mast up, in their driveway without ever once floating it in a nearby body of water. Of course this is not exhaustive, nor is it meant to be, it's really a trigger to think about some options you might not have discovered. In other words, if you need stealth, you can be creative, rather than buy an antenna off the shelf. Speaking of buying off the shelf, there's nothing quite like buying a wonderful antenna, the answer to all your questions, only to discover that it needs tuning and tweaking, to the point where you might spend a year getting familiar with all its quirks. That's not to discourage you from picking that path, just to warn you that there is no such thing as the perfect antenna. If you are less space restricted, building a tower or a mast, the difference being that a tower stands all by itself, like the one in Paris, a mast needs guy-wires to keep it up. You'll likely need to consider failure, engineering standards and concrete, not to mention maintenance. So, how do you go about selecting the perfect antenna to suit your needs? In the same way that a magician pulls a rabbit from a hat. In other words, there's a trick. It's pretty simple, start small. With that I mean, start with a simple wire antenna. It will achieve a number of things that only experience will give you. For starters, it will prove that your shack works. As-in, end-to-end. That might not sound like a big deal, but there are many different moving parts in building a successful shack, making your first contact is going to be a milestone worth logging, more on that another day. While making your first contact is momentous, getting an antenna in the air will also allow you to hear what your neighbourhood sounds like. Is it completely RF quiet, in which case, where do you live and do you have a spare bedroom? The reality is, for most of us, local RF noise is the norm when setting up your station. Noise is a whole other topic and I'll get into that next time. I haven't said anything at this point about your living circumstances, but it should be obvious that anyone you're living with needs to be on-board with your adventures, so discuss your plans and concerns. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you start the process of getting your hobby off the ground, either for the first time, or after a hiatus, you might be left with the impression that the only way to "do amateur radio" is to have a shack, a place where you can set-up your gear, and connected to that gear using coax, one or more antennas. While that's a common scenario, it's not the only one at your disposal. We are after all in the game of communication and over the past few decades options have exploded. Starting closest to the traditional radio, coax and antenna, is to consider indoor antennas. There's many to choose from. You can install one in the same room as your shack, or, you can build your antennas in the roof space, either way, invisible from the outside can sometimes be a requirement. Stealth is a topic all its own, and no doubt we'll get to that another time. A word of caution. If you do have an indoor antenna and associated coax, consider your transmitter power levels, since it's likely that given the close proximity, you'll exceed emissions safety standards, or you'll cause harm to other electronic equipment in the building. QRP or low power is a good way to go if this is something you're considering. If we step away from a traditional radio, coax, antenna configuration, you can build your shack in other ways too. For example, you can use a local repeater which you might trigger from a local handheld radio. Often dismissed as being for local communications only, there are thousands of repeaters across the globe offering a variety of bands, frequencies and modes. Often you can access a local repeater that can be connected to a remote one using a bewildering array of technologies, some using the internet, some using traditional RF. You'll find repeaters on 10m, 6m, 2m, 70cm and 23cm. There's nothing stopping you making your own repeater. You don't even need to go through the effort of making it completely standalone, for example, my Yaesu FT-857d has a detachable face-plate or head, connected to the main body by a short cable. There are plenty of other radios with a similar configuration. Presumably designed for the installation in a vehicle, where the head needs to be near the driver and there's unlikely to be space for the body, you can run a longer cable from the head to the body and install it somewhere more convenient. In my case it was bolted underneath the removable floor into the boot next to the spare tyre. There's several solutions that replace the connecting cable with an internet connection. Now, that internet connection can be across the room, from inside your shack to your garage, or between your shack and a remote hill where you have permission to put up a bit of gear. In fact, the same type of setup can be used to connect to shared radios, and companies like Elecraft, Flex Radio and ICOM make specific remote heads that can operate remote radio equipment, marketed as RF decks, without needing to install and maintain computers at either end, but more often than not, this equipment is brand or model specific. Which raises another option. You can connect to remote equipment across the internet using your computer, which means that your shack might be a computer, a laptop, or a mobile phone and your gear might be in a different country. Many radio clubs have discovered that their often extensive radio shack is virtually unused during the week, and have installed remote equipment to allow you as a member to connect, sometimes as part of your membership, sometimes with an extra fee, since there are costs associated with setting this up and keeping it running. At some point you're going to discuss this with other amateurs and you're potentially going to hear someone tell you that this is not "real radio". Considering over a century of radio evolution, from spark-gap through valves, transistors, integrated circuits and software defined radio, where exactly is the "real radio" line drawn? Is using WSPR, RTTY, FT8, Hellschreiber, Olivia, SSTV, PSK31, Domino, MFSK and thousands of other digital modes "real radio"? If the answer to that is an emphatic "yes", then ask yourself, how do you actually use those modes? The answer looks suspiciously like a computer running digital mode software, either connected to a physical radio in the same room, or connected to one across the internet. In other words, with the proliferation of communication alternatives, amateur radio is evolving. No doubt it will evolve further. So, today, a perfectly viable, and some might say, modern, amateur radio shack might not actually have any traditional RF based radio gear, though perhaps a hand-held might be something to consider when you next treat yourself, not because without it you're not a real amateur, but because it opens your world to other means of communication, something which I think is perhaps even more important than building the perfect shack. In other words, you are not required to have a shack to be a radio amateur, it's just that it brings with it another dimension of engagement and activity. Speaking from personal experience, I miss my functional shack, but it's evolving, so there's that. Next time I'll take a look at antennas, stealthy or otherwise. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the potentially trickier aspects of putting together your shack is connecting the radio to the antenna. On the face of it, the challenge is limited to making sure that you have mating connectors on both ends, but when you actually start implementing this you'll run into several other considerations. The very first one as I said is the connector. Every amateur I've ever spoken to goes through the same process. You pick a connector, typically the one that your radio comes with, then you adapt the connector on your coaxial cable to suit, then you'll get an SWR meter, a dummy load, some testing gear, a coax switch or two, perhaps another radio, or an amplifier and along the way you'll discover that you now have a growing collection of connectors to choose from, and that's just the connectors inside the shack. After considering connectors, you'll start to contemplate the coax itself. You'll likely weigh price against signal loss, but there are other aspects to the selection of the right coax for the job. For example, how do you get the coax actually into the shack? One of the main challenges associated with solving that problem is surprisingly something that rarely affects our hobby, other than any human factors associated with the phenomenon of "weather". Getting coax into a shack generally involves passing through a weather proof barrier of some sort. In doing so, you're likely to create a place where the weather can make its way into places it's not supposed to. Water can and will travel along your coax. Hopefully on the outside of it, but if you're unlucky, on the inside too, likely destroying it along the way. At first glance you'll think that water only travels down with gravity and in an ideal world you'd be right, but as it happens, water will happily do other things like get blown by the wind, or condensate in temperature gradients, like those found near a hole you just created in your lovely weather proof barrier. If your shack has existing openings, they're generally the easiest to appropriate, things like gaps in the eves, existing vent holes, between roof tiles or sheet iron, plenty of existing places where you can get from inside to outside a shack. Note that this is also the case if your shack is a trestle table tucked away in an office, like mine. Before I continue, I'm about to raise some potential safety issues, but I'm not an occupational health and safety professional, so, do your own due diligence. If you do need to go into your roof space, height aside, consider it a dangerous place. Make sure that there's someone to check on you and consider alternatives to climbing up there. Wearing a face mask and full body clothing is a very good idea. Often you'll find exposed wires, deteriorating or toxic insulation and other nasty things, conductivity of steel roof frames and pipes are also a hazard, so be extremely reluctant to venture there. Avoidance is preferable. Working at heights 101: Don't .. that said, there may be no alternative. You can lift corrugated iron sheets by undoing the roofing screws. If you do, make absolutely sure that you don't make a string of water inlet points when you put it all back together. In lifting a sheet, you can access the roof space and run your coax. Sometimes the gap between the corrugation and the rafters is sufficient to push the coax through, but if you live in a hot climate, make sure that it doesn't touch the sheeting, since coax is likely to distort, if not outright melt, if it's in direct contact with the iron sheet while the sun is belting down on it. Consider the temperature rating of your coax. Similarly, terracotta roof tiles tend to have enough space to allow coax to enter the roof space. Be very careful, since they're often fragile and potentially irreplaceable. Look for openings like existing roof fittings, things like chimneys, vent pipes, roof ridges, etc. for simpler points of entry. If you need to make a hole in your roof and seal it, there's special rubber grommets for this purpose. You cut a little opening in the grommet, too tight for the coax, then force it through. Seal to the roof with UV-stable silicone and you're good to go. Check them every so many years, they deteriorate. Speaking of silicone, if there's an existing hole that you're using, don't just seal it up, it might be there for a reason. Windows often have vent holes or gaps that will fit some types of coax and there's inserts you can use to open a sliding window that will accommodate coax, but consider the security of that window before you commit. There's also special flat coax for running through a window frame or under a door, but check before you buy that they're suitable for the job. Ladder line is also an option, it's much thinner, can travel longer distances, but its performance can be affected by corrugated iron and other conductors. Rarely if ever does the initial acquisition of coaxial cable involve details like "bending radius", the smallest turn you can make with the coax without destroying its characteristics, since bending causes the insulation, the core and the shield to distort to some degree and with it, affect the RF passing through. Whichever path your coax takes, consider that you can cut it short, but not long. If you really must know how long the coax is, use some string to run along the proposed path, but beware, the string has a bending radius that approaches zero, coax does not. Most coax will specify a bending radius for fixed and repeated bending. The fixed one is for a one time only bend and 65 mm is typical. Thinner coax tends to have a smaller bending radius, but that might affect the signal loss, or the budget, or both, so take that into account. Cutting and joining also introduces points of failure, places of moisture ingress, thick spots that cannot be pulled through existing holes, and plenty of other hidden fun and games, in other words, don't be stingy, get it right, it might cost a few bob extra, but you'll have a happier time of it. If you need to run your coax inside a wall, the tool you're looking for is called a "Cavity King", not of the embalming variety, though relevant if you happen to do something foolish like drill a hole through an existing power wire in your building, so don't start drilling holes where it suits without checking first. If you do, make sure that you drill on an angle facing upwards from the outside and find a place where the coax itself doesn't get wet on the way in. Speaking of holes. Terminate the coax after you installed it, not before. You can use electrical tape to attach a rope to pull the coax along its route without damaging the coax. Before you close up the roof and pack everything away attach the connectors to the coax and properly test it. If it fails your tests, it's easier to run it again with everything in place than it is to start from scratch, ask me how I know. In my shack, I have a run of RG-214 that goes to my VHF/UHF vertical, I also have a run of quad shield RG-6 that goes to my HF antenna. If you're familiar with coax indicators, you'll know that RG-6 is actually 75 Ohm, not 50 Ohm. Given that it's made from aluminium, not copper, it's also an absolute turd to solder. What it does have going for it is that it's absurdly cheap, since its used in satellite dish installations across the planet. It also very handily can be terminated with F-type compression connectors, which in the 25 years I've used them, I've yet to see fail. The F-type connector can accommodate a handy BNC adaptor, bringing us back into the realm of amateur radio. My coax goes under the corrugated iron of my roof through the plasterboard of my office wall, hidden away in a cupboard, snakes under the cupboard door, along the wall to the termination coax switch that is in turn connected to my radio, more on that another time. The two coax runs are tied together, to ensure that they don't coil weirdly, don't pose a trip hazard and it's connected to various fixed points along its path. None of it is permanent, other than the hole in the plasterboard, inside a cupboard, behind a faceplate. So, after removing the coax, a blanking plate brings everything back to invisible if that's ever required. What happens outside is a whole different story and what it attaches to, yet another. The point is that from the place of picking the right connector, you likely discovered that routing coax is potentially a bigger challenge than you might have considered at first. There are other options. What issues affect the ingress of coax at your shack? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you start on the journey of putting together a shack, in whatever form that eventually takes, you'll need to figure out how much space is required. Of course, no matter what you choose, it's never enough, but you have to start somewhere. Ultimately a shack is a work in progress. As an aside, I'm using the word "shack", but that is really an amateur concept, so we're not necessarily talking about a plot of land with a wooden lean-to cobbled together from bits of wood collected from your beachcomber days. Not that it can't be that, but it doesn't have to be. As I've said, my "shack" is a wooden trestle table, I know shacks that are a dedicated room in a house, a converted garage, a garden shed, a warehouse office, a radio station, an out building, several scout halls, demountables, a converted passenger bus and plenty more. In this context, in referring to "shack", I mean, "the place where my radio lives when I get on-air to make noise", but "shack" runs off the tongue a little easier. Budget aside, in order to attempt to quantify your space requirements, you need to figure out what you're going to do with it. This perhaps sounds a little ludicrous, since the answer is "amateur radio" .. duh .. obviously. Okay, so, here's some questions. Does amateur radio for you mean any of the following: operating the local repeater, HF radio, solo or with visitors, listening to multiple stations, operating multiple bands simultaneously, computers, Morse code, contesting, soldering, building, experimentation and plenty more. While we're at it, if you're into soldering, is that with valves, discrete components, or integrated circuits, and what levels of existing bits and pieces do you have? I'm asking because the racks of jars, component trays and drawers I've seen over the past fifteen years often rival the actual shack for size. In other words, when you're thinking about .. what .. you want to do, be specific. For me, amateur radio is more about computers and less about soldering irons, that's not to say that I don't own a soldering iron, just that its use is incidental, rather than fundamental, computers, keyboards and monitors on the other hand, for me, are part and parcel of my amateur radio experience. Truth be told, if I could, I'd try to eliminate all the analogue radios from my shack and replace them with a single box capable of wide band operation across the amateur bands that I could control with a computer. I realise that this is not a universal picture of what amateur radio means, but it's what it means for me because it represents the ultimate level of flexibility. That said, I love my FT-857d. I have several other radios that I loan out from time-to-time to new amateurs while they find their feet. I love to experiment with those as well, so my shack needs space for temporary set-ups. While I enjoy chewing the fat over a cup of coffee, I rarely get on-air and make noise with anyone else. That's not because I don't appreciate it, but because I've yet to discover an effective way of filtering interference, a topic for another day. Even if you're not a computer nerd like me, there's a high probability that a shack today includes a computer of some description, for record keeping, propagation forecasts, logging, and digital modes. So it's a good idea to imagine yourself actually doing your planned activities and speculating what kinds of things you'll need. Like, where do you put your cup of coffee, your keyboard and your Morse key? While we're discussing putting things down. Think about the ability to actually use these things, not just where they live. It's no fun balancing a keyboard and trying to reach over the top to change the operating frequency, or having to strain your neck to look at the logging screen when you've made that elusive contact, so think about the ergonomics of what you're planning. Right now I have a wire shelving unit sitting on my desk. It's 80 cm tall, 90 cm wide and 30 cm deep. The two shelves are adjustable in height. Currently one is at the highest point, the other has enough space to fit a base-station radio underneath it, about 13 cm from the lowest point. It's not ideal, since it means that the keyboard is in front of it. During the previous iteration, of which there have been several, my monitors were in front of this and the keyboard was an external one connected to a laptop to the right of the screen, allowing me to have two screens to display information. The idea was that I'd use the computer to control the transceivers using a protocol called CAT. This never happened, so operating was awkward to say the least and as a result, hardly used. Instead the FT-857d sat on top of the bottom shelf, using a sound card to operate on digital modes. A slightly better operating angle, were it not for the monitor that hid it from view. As I said, not ideal. I'm mentioning all this to give you a picture of at least one other shack but in my experience, nothing beats going out to see what others have gotten up to. Of course, you can visit shacks online with the proliferation of photographs proud amateurs have shared, but there's a difference between looking at a photo and walking around someone's physical shack, so keep that in mind. Other space considerations are rarely, if ever, talked about. What space is there left for you to make changes to your shack? You might think that your shack won't change once you've built it. Here's a change, disconnecting the antenna in case of a thunderstorm, here's another, plugging in a CAT cable, setting up an external speaker, or even buying a new radio, you name it, the shack is never done. So, think about the idea of being able to walk behind the radio. If you think that's silly, put the shack on wheels. You'll thank me later. While you're walking behind your equipment, consider coax routing, a topic of its own, but being mindful of the need to actually get the coax from where it enters to your gear and how it relates to any electricity routing required to actually power your gear. One other consideration in relation to space is your chair. How much space does it need? Can you adjust it, is it on casters, or a wooden dining chair? Again, this can all be as simple as a dining table, or it can be something more substantial. In my experience, a happier outcome is achieved if you spend some quality time thinking about some of the questions I've proposed. As you might have guessed, there's plenty more to explore. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Recently it occurred to me that I haven't been using HF in my shack for much longer than I'd care to admit. Over the years I've spoken about my shack and how it's set-up, more on that shortly. I effectively went off-air when I decommissioned the computer that was running tools like "fldigi" and "WSJT-X". Mainly because it was too slow, for example, taking a good minute to launch a copy of Firefox. After that I repurposed my HF antenna for use with my ultra low power WSPR beacon experiments and essentially ceased being a functional HF station. There's other forces at work, which I'll get to, but before I do, in discussion with a fellow amateur we discovered that my desire to get back on-air on HF is essentially the same journey that a new amateur might make and the idea was hatched to document the process and share it with you. In the past you've heard me say that the answer to most questions associated with amateur radio is: "it depends". As a new, or returning amateur, this might not be very helpful if you don't know what it depends on, so, I'm going to attempt to describe the process of determining how to get to the answers required to make a station. Now, before I start I'd like to talk about money. I'm raising this upfront because your access to a budget determines many of the choices that are open to you. You could interpret that to mean that you need money and while that helps, it's not universally true, in fact I'd go so far as to say that you could get on-air and make noise using nothing more than a mobile phone and an internet connection, which truth be told is pretty much the minimum requirement to enjoy my thoughts, so perhaps that's the base requirement. That said, even if you don't have access to that, there's other options that we'll no doubt explore together, so keep that in mind. I think that the very first thing to consider is what you think of when you hear the term "amateur radio". I've said it before and I'll say it again. Amateur Radio is a great many things to different people. For some it means a hand-held radio and chatting with mates on the local repeater, for others it means a full blown HF contest station with multiple antennas and radios, with integrated logging in a dedicated building. For others it means logging into a remote WebSDR and listening to the bands, decoding interesting signals, and license permitting, transmitting remotely across the internet. In other words, the "amateur radio" experience is unique to you. What you get from it is dependent on you and nobody else. As an aside, that's also true for licensing. If you have a "beginners" license, like my Foundation license, then it's entirely up to you to decide if and when you add extra privileges. "Foundations of Amateur Radio", well, its predecessor, "What use is an F-call?" emerged specifically in response to amateurs around me who continued to, let's be kind and call it "encourage" me to "upgrade" to a "real" license. Fifteen years on, I'm still a Foundation "beginner" and thus far I have yet to run out of things to do or talk about, so keep that in mind. I think that covers the disclaimers, no doubt more will occur to me as we continue on this journey. For the first decade or so of having a license, most of my activity was done in my car, a mobile shack of sorts. I didn't have access to a space where I could set-up a radio without running the risk of someone tripping over coax, or a landlord complaining within an hour of me erecting a temporary vertical. In other words, my mobile shack was born from necessity. It was helpful in exploring the limitless variation of operating positions, as-in locations and their impact on propagation, antenna performance, local interference, and plenty of other lessons. So, even if you don't have a permanent space to operate, there's plenty of amateur radio to go round. When I finally moved to a place where I had space, I started the process of putting together my shack. Initially it was pretty much integrated with my home-office. This sort of worked, but both the office and the shack suffered from this combination, so my first observation is that, in my experience, setting aside a dedicated space for a shack is a good idea. Now, right now, as I am telling you that, to the bottom right of my computer screen is the head of my Yaesu FT-857d, connected to a "RemoteRig", a pair of devices that replace the serial cable between the head and the radio with a network connection. The RemoteRig is connected to a WiFi router, which runs a dedicated wireless connection across the room to the WiFi router that's connected to the radio, sitting on what's left of my shack. It's how I run the weekly F-troop net. It's sitting there because I need to be able to access my computer to make log entries and track who's next in the round-robin discussion, and as I said, I've decommissioned my shack computer. Which brings me to the second point. Setting up a shack doesn't happen in isolation. You're likely to have existing infrastructure of some sort. It might be a fixed location for power points, it might be a previously drilled hole for incoming coax, it might be a bolted bench, whatever it is, it's something that you need to take into account. It's also something that you need to consider in terms of feasibility. Just because something is the way it is today, doesn't mean that it has to stay the same for the next decade. I've previously discussed the evolution of my shack, based on a 35 year old wooden IKEA trestle table, all of 1.2 square meters, complete with holes from taking it around Australia for several years in the back of a van. It's currently got a wire mesh shelving unit on top and a pegboard strapped to the back. The legs are adorned with power boards and as I said, the head of my radio is on the other side of the room. This all to say that building a shack doesn't happen in isolation. The local environment will determine what's possible and what's not. I'm not here to tell you what to do, I'm here to help you figure out what a shack looks like in your environment. Note that I've not talked in any way about what equipment to get, what, if any, antenna to install or what else is required. These are all part of the "it depends" and I'll talk about that soon. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio Let's start with an observation, I'm a geek, have been all my life. Since my early teenage years that evolved as a predilection for computing. As you might already know, I became a radio amateur to essentially get away from computing. The reality turned out to be something else entirely. I discovered that the time of combining radio and computing had already begun when I joined the community. Like the evolution from spark-gap, through valves, transistors and integrated circuits, radio has come to encompass software, least of which through SDR, or Software Defined Radio. Why least? Over the years I've attempted to explain some of my fascination and wonder with software, but one aspect I've been unable to convey succinctly is the scope of software. I'm not talking about the fact that you find software inside your microwave oven, your car, your bathroom scales, but that hints at what underlies the phenomenon. If you're not familiar with spreadsheets, imagine a blank piece of paper with a grid drawn on it. Inside each square, or cell, you can put anything you want, a number, a label, a picture, a web address, a formula, a colour, borders, you name it. Your imagination is pretty much the only limiting factor. Now, here's where it gets fun. Once you have filled in the first cell, the next one follows. What this means is that once you've made the first decision, the next one becomes a little easier. Every time you make a decision, the number of options you have open to you become less and less, or to use another word, constrained. So what, you ask? Well, unlike a sheet of paper with a grid, a spreadsheet allows you to add rows and columns, at any point in your document. Doing that reduces the constraints, you have more options open to you. You can also add sheets, or even start a completely separate document. In other words, you have a playground open to you that is infinitely flexible. Writing software is like that, with bells on. Now, I'm not going to tell you to start learning how to write software, though truth be told, there's lots of things to like, and admittedly, frustration, that comes with doing so. Let's talk about that frustration. Once you make the first decision, the next one is more constrained. So, if you start with a blank sheet, you have infinite possibilities. Writing software is exactly like that. Here's the frustration. What's the first thing you should decide, because once you do, your options become reduced. So .. Bald Yak, if you're unfamiliar, the Bald Yak project aims to create a modular, bidirectional and distributed signal processing and control system that leverages GNU Radio. That little phrase hides a lot of complexity, but it already contains some constraints. GNU Radio is one, distributed is another and so-on. Let me share with you what my semi-blank piece of paper looks like. I've been quietly working on an idea to use my Pluto SDR to listen to amateur radio repeaters. Not just one, all of them, across 2m and 70cm. I came up with this idea as a real-life project that I'd like to implement with whatever Bald Yak is, or becomes. It has all the bits I care about right now, multiple frequencies, something that goes well and truly beyond what my Yaesu FT-857d can do, it taxes my skill set, it gives me something to make tangible and it hopefully moves the needle on the Bald Yak project. So, here's some variables to consider. The Pluto SDR has a computer on-board. There are reports that people have run GNU Radio programs on the Pluto itself. This is attractive since the amount of data involved with monitoring 2m and 70cm simultaneously is likely to exceed that of the USB port on the device. However, what I don't know is how much actual computing resources doing this will take to achieve and if a Pluto could actually do this. To give you an example. Imagine a massive fire-hose of data coming into my software and then processing that. Between memory and CPU constraints, I can't just decode the stream for each repeater, likely duplicating a whole bunch of calculations. While that consideration is on the table, decoding a dozen narrowband FM streams implies a dozen copies of the FM decoder software. Ideally this would be one actual piece of software, used a dozen times, rather than a dozen separate copies that will individually be maintained if something changes. For example, once I've built this, I might realise that I need to implement FM de-emphasis, a technique implemented in FM broadcasting to, among other reasons, manage artefacts associated with transmitting a signal over FM, perhaps a topic for another day. When you write software you do not want to have copies of the same software in multiple places. To use a spreadsheet equivalent, it's like putting a Tax rate in multiple places across your document, rather than storing it in a cell and referring to it in other formulas. That way, you can change it once and all the calculations will automatically be correct. Same deal with writing software, especially if that software is intended to be used for more than a once off. While that's going on, let me introduce another variable. I have a Pluto SDR, but the whole point of Bald Yak is that I cannot assume that you have one. It's one of the reasons I chose GNU Radio as the basis of this project. While it's unreasonable to expect that a traditional amateur radio transceiver can decode more than one repeater, the same system could potentially be used to decode multiple Morse code signals, something that should be more than possible, essentially replacing the FM decoder with a Morse decoder. Which brings up an example of another variable. How wide do you make the channels? How do you define them? How do you make it possible to modify these without having to update the software, so an end-user can modify something on their screen and see the result? At this point you might notice a couple of things. I have not got any answers, I also don't have all the questions. It's unlikely I'll ever have all the questions, let alone answers, since the nature of this software thing is flexibility. Now, to bring this in full circle, when I say that SDR, or Software Defined Radio isn't just the box that you connect to an antenna, it's the possibilities that this brings, the sheer volume of options that this opens you up to. Now it's your turn. What questions does this bring for you? What sense of wonder can you bring to the table and what opportunities does this expose you to? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The first step in solving any problem is recognising that there is one. In my case the name of that problem is "logging". Specifically the storage and collection of my amateur radio contact logs. Just to be clear, the actual process of logging is fraught .. what do you log, as in, which pieces of information are germane to the purpose of logging, do you log your own callsign, or do you only collect that once per session, do you log in UTC, or in local time, if you're logging in local time, do you record where you're logging, do you record what power level, which antenna, what radio, the battery voltage, you get the idea. Then there's .. when do you log? Do you log each and every session on-air, weekly nets, chat sessions on the local repeater, do you log the time when you establish the contact, once you've deciphered their callsign, or once the contact ends, and if you never wear a watch, how do you know what time it is? What do you log with? Is it using pen and paper, pencil and paper, on a sheet of A4, or A5, in a binder, in a scrapbook, in an exercise book, in a journal, a diary, on ruled, grid or on plain paper, or do you log with a computer and if you do that, using which of the seven gazillion logging packages that are available to you? I'm not talking about any of those things, though I suppose you could argue that I'm addressing one of the gazillion options, but stick with me. I have, sitting on my desk, fourteen different logbooks. That's not unreasonable, almost one for each year that I've been licensed. Except that these books are not in any way consistent, they're essentially bound pieces of scrap paper with log entries scribbled in the available space, sometimes I've reversed a spiral notebook, just so I can avoid the spiral with my writing hand, sometimes it's oriented in landscape, other times in portrait. Some are smaller than A5, others are foolscap and intended for accounting purposes. Next to that pile are too many empty logbooks, intended for future use. Why so many, you ask? Well it goes like this. You go to the office supply store to look for a suitable logbook. You buy it and try it. You use it for a bit and decide that you either love or hate it. If you hate it, you go back to the store to try and find another one. If you love it, your problem becomes finding an identical logbook. In a fit of inspiration, I loved the grid layout of my tiny spiral notebooks, and decided that this was the one for me, but they're no longer available, so instead I bought twenty A4 7mm grid exercise books with a soft cover, which I hate, and that was after trying to get a third Account Book Journal with a hard cover. There's also several A5 spiral bound books, but they're too chunky for portable operation and their spiral is annoying for logging. There's also various empty ring binders and paper ready for logging in the garage. Who knew that there are apparently multiple disconnected universes where so-called universal loose-leaf hole punched paper doesn't fit ring binders with more than two rings, I suppose that's like different implementations of the same version of ADIF, but I'll admit that I'm bitter and have digressed well off topic. I will say this, stationery and I clearly have an unhealed relationship. That's not the half of it. My computer has at least 208 ADIF and Cabrillo files on it. I say "at least", since that's the ones I found when looking for ADI, ADIF and CAB files. Removing identical files, nets me 171 text files which I'm pretty sure are all log files, 50-thousand lines, but that's with some having a one line per contact and others having a dozen, depending on which software wrote the file. It's going to take a moment, since those 208 files are scattered among 74 different directories. Then there's the files that "wsjt-x" and "fldigi" create, but right now I'm not sure what the extensions for those are, I think one is called "all.txt", and looking inside, it helpfully does not have a year in the logged data, so that's fun. My computer also has logs in "cqrlog", "xlog" and "VKCL", probably others. Then there's the logs I have online. The log for F-troop is a single spreadsheet, it has nearly 10,000 entries. I know that there's other files online and likely in other places like the various clubs I've operated at .. fortunately or not, most of those were done with the club callsign, so I'm calling those out of scope, at least for now. Then there's the entries in LoTW, Clublog, eQSL, probably QRZ and likely more. It all started out so innocently. I made my first contact in 2011 and forgot to log it. Since then I've been extolling the virtues of making sure that everyone around me logs their first contact. Meanwhile I've been pulling my hair out trying to make sense of the fragmented disaster that is represented by logging in amateur radio. I'll take responsibility for my own mess, but I have to point the finger at my predecessors who still cannot agree on what to log, how to log and how to store or convert it, despite a century of logging. It's not for the want of trying. It's that the nature of logging in this hobby is less than consistent, to say the least. Each contest wants their log in some special format, logging tools pick their own format that's incompatible with that of another tool, if you're lucky that incompatibility is obvious, but more likely than not it's subtle. Among all those sources of log entries that I've mentioned are undoubtedly going to be duplicate contacts. There's going to be incorrect transcriptions, inaccurate record keeping, wrong times, missing years and all the other things that come to mind when you describe a data entry problem. Fortunately I have some experience with data entry. It was the transcribing of a recent POTA, or Parks On The Air, log that triggered an insight for me. Faced with the reality of entering contacts into something electronic, based on a bound notebook with log entries scribbled all over it, basically a pretty piece of scrap paper, I needed to solve a specific problem. Namely, the fact that I was entering this data for another amateur, who would be uploading it into the relevant POTA system. I had no idea what the field requirements were, didn't know where they'd be uploaded to, nor what format they needed, so I improvised, figuring that getting both the logged and inferred data into some table would be a good start, so I used a spreadsheet. After completing the task, I had my epiphany. What if I logged ALL my contacts in a spreadsheet? I can sort it by whichever column I want, I can have as many columns as I need, a squillion rows if I make that many contacts, I can convert it to whatever format the next contest manager desires and I can back it up like any other spreadsheet. Better still, it's software agnostic. If I suddenly discover the next best logging tool since toasted sliced bread with creamed honey, I can convert my sheet into something that's required. Better yet, I can extract the data from that tool and put it back into the spreadsheet after discovering the author has a propensity of making random changes that are incompatible with my worldview. So, spreadsheet. Oh, yeah, I won't be using Excel, it has a, let's call it, nasty habit of converting anything that remotely resembles a date into one, even when you don't want it to. Clippy lives on .. apparently. I'll likely photograph each page and to keep track of which logs I've entered, I'll put a coloured dot on a page when I've entered it into my spreadsheet. Once a logbook is entered, I'll mark it in some way too. Then I'll have to massage the existing electronic data. I can't wait. How have you solved your contact logging problem? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I was stuck in traffic behind a vehicle proudly proclaiming that it was "electric". I'd seen the model before, just never connected it with being available as an EV. I wondered how many other cars on the road turned out to have added an "electric" option to their line-up and how that evolution had just quietly, inexorably occurred. It started me thinking about the nature of the driving experience and what it would be like for someone who has never seen a petrol, or other fossil fuel burning vehicle, and what driver education might do to incorporate that. In my teens I first sat on a hotted up moped belonging to a friend, I was old enough to be legal, whilst he wasn't, so I got to ride his bike to school with him on the back, win-win for both. Later on, I learned to drive a car with a manual gearbox and as interest took me, I learned to drive a double clutch gearbox and got my heavy rigid truck license. I also learned to fly a plane, but that's besides the point. Stuck in rush-hour traffic, such as it is in Perth, it made me think about amateur radio licensing and education. Specifically, how do we incorporate change? When I was first licensed, my education included consideration for analogue television interference, including pictures of different screen patterns, their causes and remedies. Three years after I got licensed, almost to the day, the last analogue television transmitter in Australia was switched off on 10 December 2013, 57 years after the first transmissions started. While I retain little, if any, of the now, let's call it, esoteric information associated with that, it made me consider a wider picture in relation to the process of amateur radio education. New amateurs today are unlikely to be asked about analogue television interference, let alone be subjected to questions in their exam. Fair enough, information changes, evolves, becomes superseded or expires, and as a side-effect, I have some brain cells dedicated to analogue television, PAL, 625 lines total, 576 visible, horizontal and vertical synchronisation, white noise, you get the idea. As an aside, 78 on a turntable indicates a speed reserved for shellac records until the 1950s, seeing that we're dropping arcane knowledge. Oh, means NOP on a 6502, in case you're wondering. Although I don't have a specific list of what is currently being taught .. more on that in a moment .. I daresay that newly minted amateurs have a curriculum that has evolved with technology and legal requirements over the past 15 years. A tangible example is the fact that the Foundation Class in Australia is now permitted to use digital modes, something that changed after I was licensed, when on 21 September 2019, the regulator amended the Amateur License Conditions Determination, known locally as the LCD, with immediate effect. The point being that over time things change and education changes with it. This is all as expected. Here's my question. What about the rest of the community? What happens to someone who has been licensed for a decade, a generation, or more? Are they expected to gain these skills by osmosis or self-education? Should this process be dictated by the regulator, or should this be a community effort to bring everyone into the same decade? Should we revise how we educate our amateurs and make the education skill-set technology agnostic, should we be less prescriptive with the license, or should it achieve something else? One example in this space is an initiative called the Ham Challenge, which you can discover at hamchallenge.org. In case it sounds vaguely familiar, I've talked about this before. It's a list of 52 activities that you can take on to broaden your horizons and explore different aspects of our hobby. In its first year, I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves. Is this the kind of self-training that we might encourage, or is there another way to achieve this? Is this something that occurs elsewhere in society and if so, how has that been addressed? I know for example in ICT there are endless certification courses, which I have to confess are in my professional opinion absolutely counterproductive, serving only to entrench vendor lock-in, not something that I think benefits the amateur community. I mentioned curriculum a moment ago. Another approach is to attend a licensing course and participate as part of your own self-education. Of course this will require cooperation from the educators, and we'd need to come up with some idea of how this might be useful. Is this something that benefits from attendance every five years, every decade, more, less? As a bonus side-effect, it will introduce new amateurs to old ones, and vice versa, perhaps facilitating a new resurgence of Elmering, or mentorship, that previously has been the hallmark of our community. Over the decade and a half or so that I've been licensed and writing weekly articles about the hobby and our community, I've made a conscious effort to keep up to date, to learn new skills, to share what I've learnt, to actively explore what I need to learn more about and to share that journey with you. I realise that this is not a universal experience. For some their amateur license sits in a drawer gathering dust together with their first aid certificate and their first runner-up prize for something that for a minute and a half caught their attention years ago. For most of us the reality lies somewhere in between. For many, the amateur experience is one of playing on air and getting delight from the doing and participating. There are those who go out and become teachers, those who sit on boards, those who run clubs and those who get on the local repeater once a week. It takes all of us to make this community and my thoughts are not intended to stop that enjoyment and experience. I'm trying to discover how we build a resilient community, one that is sustainable in a world of continuous and rapid change. I'm Onno VK6FLAB