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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

5:19

When I said Parrot Repeater ... I likely had a...

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2022/01/15

Foundations of Amateur Radio A little while ago I mentioned in passing that I was considering implementing a parrot repeater to help determine how your radio is performing. Discussion afterwards revealed that not everyone had the same picture in mind, so I thought I'd share with you some of what I'm considering and why. Most of the modern radio landscape revolves around hooking a computer up to some type of radio frequency capable device. Commonly it's the audio and control signals that travel

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5:29

Products made from unobtainium

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2022/01/08

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I received an email from a fellow amateur, Elwood WB0OEW. We've been exchanging email for a little while and having been in the hobby since before I learnt to ride a bicycle, he's always got some interesting insight into something I've said and an encouraging word to share. This time he introduced me to a project he built and published a couple of years ago. It's a variable frequency standard, built from parts and, at the time, costing all of about $150,

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3:38

Leaving the hobby ...

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2022/01/01

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I came across a how to video on becoming a radio amateur. It's a recurring kind of publication, the kind that I've contributed to in the past. I wondered what it would take to leave the hobby. First of all, I'd have to let my callsign lapse. That's easy enough, but I paid for five years, so it's going to take a while. When it has finally ceased being mine, have I stopped being an amateur? For one, my qualifications would still be in the regulator's

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4:46

What testing equipment is essential?

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/12/25

Foundations of Amateur Radio After discussing the notion that it's not really possible to determine how your gear is performing without measuring, several people commented that in the good old days an amateur was expected to have sufficient equipment to test performance of their gear. I flippantly pointed out that once upon a time, computers ran on punch cards too. That's not to dismiss the notion of testing, but rather that times have changed. Testing equipment that was suitable in the 1980's is

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4:58

How does your gear measure up?

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/12/18

Foundations of Amateur Radio When you spend some time in this hobby you're likely to find equipment with similar performance for vastly different pricing. At one end of the spectrum you might compare a cheap $25 hand-held radio to a $450 one. At the other end, a $1,500 SDR or Software Defined Radio against a $4,500 one. Those examples are for brand name devices, which generally speaking have published specifications, come with regulatory approvals, a wide user base, reviews and a distribution

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6:30

Getting Amateur Radio propagation data at home

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/12/11

Foundations of Amateur Radio For some time now I've been discussing the potential of weak signal propagation and its ability to create a live map from the data that your own station transmits. There are several systems in place that show a map of where and when your station was heard in the past little while. Using 200 milliwatts, I've been transmitting a WSPR or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter beacon on 10m for the past few weeks. At the moment, the furthest away my beacon has been heard is

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4:51

Amateur Radio and the art of getting started ...

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/12/04

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the regular topics of conversation in amateur radio, especially for those new to the community, is where to start? The sheer volume of available options is often overwhelming. If you've never encountered the complexity associated with this amazing hobby the experience can be disheartening and even demoralising. In my early years I was results driven. Getting on air, making noise, logging a contact, adding a country, winning a contest, rinse and repeat, get

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6:57

One Timezone To Rule Them All

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/11/27

Foundations of Amateur Radio Right now it's 10:45. That piece of information is unhelpful without any context. I could just as easily have told you that it's 2:45 and it would be just as accurate, helpful and meaningless. The point being that without context, you don't know if I'm an insomniac, drinking morning tea, recovering from a late lunch or putting on my PJs. If I'm talking to people in the same room, supplying the time happens within the context of that room, but if the world is our

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4:31

The Rebirth of Homebrew

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/11/20

Foundations of Amateur Radio On the 12th of December 1961, before I was born, before my parents met, the first amateur radio satellite was launched by Project OSCAR. It was a 10 kilo box, launched as the first private non-government spacecraft. OSCAR 1 was the first piggyback satellite, launched as a secondary payload taking the space of a ballast weight and managed to be heard by over 570 amateurs across 28 countries during the 22 days it was in orbit. It was launched just over four years after

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4:40

Defeating the Pitfalls of Predicting HF Propagation

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/11/13

Foundations of Amateur Radio As you might know, I like to transmit with as little power as possible, known as QRP operation. My own station runs at 5 Watts, since on HF, that's as low as my radio will go. I could go lower by turning down the microphone gain, which interestingly is how some radios actually operate, but for now, 5 Watts seems to be a good starting point and truth be told, even though I've been here for a while, I feel like I'm learning something new every day. One of the largest

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5:05

What have you been up to in Amateur Radio lately ......

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/11/06

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4:05

The Ripple Effects of making change ...

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/10/30

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5:24

How to run an SSB contest without using your voice ...

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/10/23

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5:08

The inherent redundancy of a compromise antenna

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/10/16

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7:19

Standard Information Exchange in Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/10/09

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2:49

You in the community ...

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/10/02

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4:35

The sun shines on our hobby in unexpected ways.

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/09/25

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3:38

We need more glue in our hobby ...

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/09/18

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4:00

The Fox Mike Hotel Portable Operations Challenge

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/09/11

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4:04

What's in a sound?

Foundations of Amateur Radio ·

2021/09/04

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558 results

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