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PODCAST

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Starting in the wonderful hobby of Amateur or HAM Radio can be daunting and challenging but can be very rewarding. Every week I look at a different aspect of the hobby, how you might fit in and get the very best from the 1000 hobbies that Amateur Radio represents. Note that this podcast started in 2011 as "What use is an F-call?".

education how to

All Episodes

5:14

Using an SDR as measuring equipment

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/08/23

Foundations of Amateur RadioThe other day I stumbled on a random post by Gary N8DMT which caused me to view the world in a different way. The post outlined combining a PlutoSDR and an application called SATSAGEN to measure the frequency characteristics of a coupler. Aside from a detailed description, the post includes a couple of excellent photos showing the PlutoSDR connected to the coupler and the output piped back into the Pluto. Before I continue, a PlutoSDR is a Software Defined Radio or

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4:42

Listening to local RF via a web browser

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/08/16

Foundations of Amateur RadioRecently I discussed the idea of listening to the radio spectrum across the internet for the purposes of getting signal into your shack when radios, or in my case, antennas are causing you challenges. I continued to explore and discovered a project by Jacobo EA1ITI, called "radioreceiver". Behind that unassuming name lies a tool born in 2014, that allows you to plug an RTL-SDR dongle into your computer, open up your web-browser, and listen to the radio signals that

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5:49

Decoding distant signals over the web?

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/08/09

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the many challenges associated with being a radio amateur is actually being able to listen to weak signals. If you're like me and more than half the planet, you live in an urban area, which comes with the benefits and pitfalls of having neighbours. From a radio perspective, there's plenty of noise that drowns out weak signals, so more and more amateurs are finding new and interesting ways to deal with this. Over the years I've talked plenty about so-called

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4:28

What can we activate today?

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/08/02

Foundations of Amateur Radio Every single radio amateur has come to this hobby with an itch to scratch. Time and again I've seen amateurs around me pursue that particular purpose, only to come out the other end with a look of bewilderment writ large across their face. For some amateurs it means the end of their involvement in the hobby, for others it starts a new journey into the unknown. One of the ways we explore our community is by travelling out of our shack into the big outdoors in whatever

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10:59

Using Amateur Bands for other purposes

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/07/26

Foundations of Amateur RadioRecently I came across a series of strident posts about the injustice associated with a non-amateur service using the 70cm band. Complete with links to discussions, spectrum plots, angst and even incoherent outrage, all related to the notion that whomever "allowed" this user to transmit on this band was clearly incompetent. Except, that this is probably not the case, or the full story. So, what's going on and why are people incensed? This all started at least six

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5:33

There's promotion .. and then there's Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/07/19

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

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8:22

Decoding a signal ...

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/07/12

Foundations of Amateur RadioRecently I was given some radio data captured on the 40m band. Using a piece of software called "Universal Radio Hacker", I attempted to decode it. At the time I thought that this might be Morse code, since then I've been told by someone who has been using Morse longer than I've been alive, that it isn't. I shared the data on my VK6FLAB GitHub repository where you can download it and see what you learn, and perhaps repeat what I did, or better still, improve on

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5:08

Antenna modelling with genetic algorithms.

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/07/05

Foundations of Amateur RadioRecently I was helping a friend erect their newly refurbished multi-band antenna and during the process we discussed the notion of tuning an antenna that's high in the air. They made a curious response, in that they'd tuned the antenna on the ground before we started. I asked how this would work, since as I understand the process, this changes things once it gets in the air. They assured me that while the actual SWR might change, the frequencies at which it was

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12:27

The ARRL incident of May 2024, a year later

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/06/28

Foundations of Amateur RadioJust over a year ago, the ARRL, the American Radio Relay League, the peak body for amateur radio in the United States and one of the oldest of such organisations, experienced an incident. During the weeks following, the ARRL was tight-lipped about the extent of the incident and most amateurs only really noticed that services were off-line or slow to respond. After months of delay and disinformation, the ARRL finally revealed that it was the subject of a ransomware

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5:10

The Art of decoding a signal.

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/06/21

Foundations of Amateur RadioThe other day Randall, VK6WR, encouraged me to get on-air. He described it like this: "There is a mystery signal on 40m that you can try your new Universal Radio Hacker skills on. It appears to be a FSK signal separated by 7kHz with the two signals at 7.0615 and 7.0685 MHz. Each of them on their own sounds a bit like a Morse signal, but my CW decoder decodes junk. But if you can see it on a spectrum scope, it is clearly FSK because either one of them is on at any

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5:02

Random Serendipity

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/06/14

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

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3:56

Can you be a Professional Radio Amateur?

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/06/07

Foundations of Amateur RadioThe other day a fellow amateur asked me to help them with lowering their radio mast so they could do some maintenance on the antennas attached to it. This is not the first time I've been a participant in such an activity, but it was the first time I felt explicitly safe. Don't get me wrong, on previous occasions nothing bad happened, but there was always an undertone of "what-if" and an associated anxiety. This time was different. Before we did anything, we sat down,

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9:49

What's really happening at the IARU?

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/05/31

Foundations of Amateur RadioThe other day a report in "Amateur Radio Daily" caught my eye. Under the heading "IARU Considers Consolidation", I read that the International Amateur Radio Union, celebrating 100 years of representing our hobby, is considering significant change. Links in the report reveal a PDF document titled "IARU Consultation on Proposed Restructuring March 2025". The document, dated 21 March, outlines the structure of the IARU, four organisations, one for each ITU Region, and one

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3:03

What do you think you're doing?

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/05/24

Foundations of Amateur Radio Right off the bat, let me start with a question. "What do you think you're doing?" To give you some context, it should come as no surprise that I'm talking about amateur radio and what it is that we do, you and I, when we "do amateur radio". Of course the answer is different for every person you ask, and it's likely to change over time. So, let's explore and fair warning, if you know me at all, you'll realise that I'll be asking more questions, so here goes. Is this

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8:28

How does your member society represent itself?

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/05/17

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

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4:59

A brief introduction to the HamSCI community

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/05/10

Foundations of Amateur RadioSince becoming a licensed amateur in 2010, I have spent a good amount of time putting together my thoughts on a weekly basis about the hobby and the community surrounding amateur radio. As you might know, my interest is eclectic, some might say random, but by enlarge, I go where the unicorns appear. Over a year ago I mentioned in passing a community called HamSCI. The label on the box is "Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation", which gives you a sense of what this is

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6:37

Can we figure out how much the Sun really affects...

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/05/03

Foundations of Amateur RadioRecently I saw a social media post featuring a screenshot of some random website with pretty charts and indicators describing "current HF propagation". Aside from lacking a date, it helpfully included notations like "Solar Storm Imminent" and "Band Closed". It made me wonder, not for the first time, what the reliability of this type of notification is. Does it actually indicate what you might expect when you get on air to make noise, is it globally relevant, is the

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3:50

Being an amateur without either radio or antenna

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/04/26

Foundations of Amateur RadioA recent comment by a fellow amateur sparked a train of thought that made me wonder why there is a pervasive idea within our community that you need a radio transmitter and antenna to be a radio amateur, moreover that for some reason, if you don't have either, you're not a real amateur. I suppose it's related to the often repeated trope that the internet enabled modes like Allstar Link, Echolink and even IRLP, are not real radio, despite evidence to the

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3:21

Becoming Mode Agile

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/04/19

Foundations of Amateur RadioOver the years I've talked about different ways of using our license to transmit. I've discussed things like modes such as voice AM, FM, and SSB, and digital modes like FT8, WSPR, RTTY, FreeDV, Hellschreiber, Olivia and even Morse code. Recently it occurred to me that there is something odd about how we do this as a community. Now that I've realised this it's hard to unsee. Let me see if I can get you to the same place of wonder. Why is it that we as amateurs only use

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4:37

Playing Games On-Air

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2025/04/12

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

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