Article published on September 29, 2024 By Dan KB6NU

Over the past few months I've been investigating the history of the IARU, the International Amateur Radio Union, to help it celebrate a century of amateur radio achievements.

If you're a radio amateur and you pay anyone a membership fee, I have questions for you.

Let me set the stage with a quote from the IARU:

"All licensed radio amateurs benefit from the work of the IARU, whether or not they are members of their national IARU member-society. But every licensed radio amateur should be a member. Only by combining our efforts in this way can we ensure the future health of amateur radio, for ourselves and for future generations."

That's straight from the IARU website. It seems like a lofty and worthy aspiration.

Before I proceed, let me assure you that I'm absolutely committed to improving this hobby and this community, committed to strengthening its representation, its reach and increasing its activity levels.

The IARU has existed for nearly a century. It consists of a global organisation and three regional ones, each working towards improving on, and advocating for, the amateur community. Governed by different constitutions each organisation pursues similar but not identical roles within its sphere of influence.

Most, if not all IARU organisations are run by volunteers, people like you and I, who stick their hand up and help out, writing documents, attending meetings, updating websites, managing membership information and all the other things that the IARU apparently does.

I say apparently because getting anything other than motherhood statements from any of the IARU organisations is like pulling teeth. To construct a historic list of elected office bearers, President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer and various regional Directors is an exercise in archaeology and much of the information doesn't appear to exist.

That also seems to be true for what the IARU is spending its money on, your money.

The IARU is funded by the fees that we pay to the representative body in our country, either directly, or as a member of a club who contributes. In my case, if I was paying a membership fee to the Wireless Institute of Australia, like I did for a decade, some of that would pass to IARU Region 3 and then from there, some would pass to the global IARU secretariat.

Multiplied by every country and every paying member in that country across a century, there are significant, and to the best of my knowledge, unaccounted for sums of money involved.

Then there is the list of things that the IARU has achieved. I don't doubt for a moment that people have been working very hard, giving it their all, helping, working late, doing things above and beyond to make outcomes appear, as-if by magic, without any of the blood sweat and tears associated with the process. I suppose it's like sausage, nobody wants to see how it's made, and I understand the sentiment.

What of the outcomes, the published results? Should they be secret too?

At the moment the IARU claims that it represents amateur radio on the global stage and on its website lists its achievements, namely: 21 MHz, Amateur Satellite, WARC bands, more Amateur Satellite bands, more 7 MHz frequencies, easing of restrictions in relation to disaster communications, 136 kHz, 472 kHz, 5 MHz, 50 MHz in Region 1, international roaming, and emergency communications.

Impressive list right? There's twelve achievements listed in all, across 100 years, with meetings in cities all over the globe, with hundreds of people participating. Mind you, it appears that only recently has some level of coordination emerged between where meetings are held, by and large, each organisation meets every few years, staggered so there's always a meeting in a different country every year. Those frequent flyer miles must be adding up. If only there was another way to communicate across the globe.

So, let's look at this in terms of effort and reward. Let's say that across the globe that at any one point in time there are 100 people part of the IARU infrastructure across the four organisations, or 25 in each. It's a modest representation. Let's say that they each volunteered 1 hour per week, so 52 hours a year, 5,200 hours across the entire IARU per year, or 520,000 hours across a century. This means that each achievement took more than 43,000 hours of volunteer effort. Unless of course there was more achieved that is undocumented. Mind you, 52 hours a year per volunteer is also probably light on, potentially by orders of magnitude.

I note that for example there's no mention of things like quashing the 2m proposal by France where the local aviation authorities were looking to acquire some extra spectrum, or negotiations in relation to 1.2 GHz at the ITU World Radiocommunication Conference 2023 or WRC-23 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, held between 20 November and 15 December 2023.

My point is this:

What is the IARU doing? Is it really effective, or is it burning volunteer hours like it's going out of fashion? What is it spending your money on? Where is the record of all this activity? What level of accountability is there? Is your peak body looking at the IARU books? Are they holding the IARU accountable, or are they part of the problem?

There is plenty of evidence that there are other issues too. As I said, I attempted to write down who was elected president in what year in which IARU organisation. Aside from missing decades of information, there are amateurs in that line up who served as president for 26 years. Imagine that, a representative body that elects the same person for nine straight terms. I'm not naming them, the information I have is incomplete; right now I cannot tell you who was previously elected across IARU Region 3, or list anyone between Hiram Percy Maxim elected in 1925 as the first IARU president and 2009 when Tim Ellam, VE6SH and G4HUA, was elected president to the global body, but it's unclear if he was the only president between 2009 and 2024 when he was re-elected.

So, what do we do about this?

First of all, am I just tilting at windmills or is this an actual issue that needs fixing and if so, what might that look like?

Engagement would be my first guess. Is your club sending money to your peak body? Has it asked what the funds are used for? If you're a member of your peak body, have you asked them where the money goes and how much of it goes to the IARU and what it's spent on?

Contacting your peak body and asking questions might be the first place to start, but if your peak body is dysfunctional as plenty of them appear to be, perhaps it's time to contact the president of your own IARU region and ask them what gives, that is if you can find out who they are.

As I said, I think that our hobby is important, I think it needs advocacy, I think that takes money and effort, but right now I have very limited evidence that what we're doing and how we're doing it is the most effective way to go about it.

What will you do about this?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

As I sit here, away from my shack, I'm overlooking a picturesque valley that I'm visiting for a couple of days to see the stars. I learnt recently that my SO, Significant Other, had never seen the Milky Way with their Mark One Eyeball and we thought that it would be fun to remedy that.

One of the challenges in accomplishing this is that we're surrounded by light almost everywhere we go. Street lights, porch lights, car lights, stadium and building lights, traffic lights, even emergency lighting on various towers dotting the landscape.

Last night we laid on our backs on a picnic blanket tucked into a sleeping bag, looking up at the sky. The valley where we are is pretty good, there's much less light pollution than in the city, but it's not pitch black. We fantasised about knocking on neighbours' doors to ask them to turn off their porch lights, but quickly came to the realisation that this was not going to be either acceptable, or reasonable.

While I entertained the notion of creating a community Milky Way watching event, increasing local awareness of the new moon, light pollution and making it a local monthly event I discovered that Astro Tourism is a thing and our location happens to be part of the local scene.

Of course I couldn't help myself and started explaining to my SO about how light and radio are the same thing when it struck me that in our hobby we have a similar issue.

We don't refer to it as light pollution, instead we call it noise, specifically, QRM, or man-made noise, as opposed to QRN, natural noise.

I wondered what a community event might look like if we did this with radio amateurs, rather than star gazers. How far would we need to go to get away from noise and could we realistically make something that was actually noise free?

In reality the radio gear we bring, the power supplies, the solar panels, generators, inverters, computers and pretty much all the other stuff to make life come with radio noise to more or lesser degree.

How could you set up an event where that type of noise was contained? Could it be done? What would it take?

On a small scale, I can go to my local park with a fully charged 12 volt battery and a radio and get some sense of what it might look like, but all that really does is whet your appetite. What does this sound like if it's really quiet?

For star gazers, there is a project called DarkSky with a .org website. It documents where designated Dark Sky Places are and promotes the protection of communities from the effects of light pollution through outreach, advocacy and conservation.

We as radio amateurs could do with such a thing. What would our radio quiet spaces look like? How would we find them, how would we coordinate our efforts and what would outreach, advocacy and conservation look like for a radio quiet space?

From a star gazing perspective, I've experienced the middle of nowhere, Lake King in Western Australia, in a paddock, lying in my swag, looking up. The sight is overwhelming. I felt like I was falling, even though I was lying flat on my back, physically not moving.

I wonder what such a level of quiet looks like with a radio?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The other day I was handed a sheaf of paper. The person handing it to me, an amateur, was insistent that I take custody of this little collection. I asked what it was that they intended for me to do with it and the response was that because I did things with history, I should do this too.

Aside from taking on a new project, trying to juggle life and income, their observation was pretty spot on, even though I had never quite seen it in that way. Over the years I've often explained things in the context of the era in which it came into being, the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858, the first 20m contact between the UK and Australia, back in 1925, the founding of the IARU, also in 1925.

For some years I've been playing with the idea of documenting the journey from Spark Gap to SDR. I started writing down milestones, collecting information about the various protagonists along the way, attempting to capture their life milestones and their radio related accomplishments. One friend went so far as to take photos of the replica spark gap transmitter in Hobart, Tasmania as used by Douglas Mawson between 1911 and 1914 during their Antarctic expedition.

Between being entrusted with the written history of 28 Chapter of the Ten-Ten International Net and today I've started a spreadsheet. If you know me at all, you know that I love a good spreadsheet. This one is pretty simple, date, event, event type, protagonist, note and source. So far I've got about 85 rows. I'm using it to capture milestones directly related to our hobby, when the first EchoLink node went live, when RTTY came to be used on-air, the invention of FM, when we got access to the 2m band, when 160m was taken away during World War II, ultimately, all of it.

There is already a website that documents some of this but it's USA centric, even though our community is global, and it does not include any sources, so there's no way to verify any of the events, which I think is essential if you're going to capture this in any meaningful way.

I want this list I'm creating to include all manner of amateur related things, the first time F-troop went on-air, the first CQWW, perhaps even every CQWW. I have also set-up a form so you can contribute your events and over time grow it into something that captures what it is that we've done over the years. Perhaps it will grow into a section on Wikipedia, perhaps it will become its own thing, it's too early to tell.

As I've said many times, if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen. So, this is me, or us, writing it down. Perhaps we'll be able to find a way to make it through the next 100 years.

You can find the Amateur History Project under Projects on my home-page at vk6flab.com - I look forward to reading your contributions.

So, thank you Christine, VK6ZLZ for pushing that sheaf of paper into my hands. I hope I'm worthy of the history that it represents.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

To get into the hobby of amateur radio is easy, but that doesn't mean it's simple. I was introduced to the hobby three times.

The first time I was a Sea Scout in the Netherlands. It was JOTA, the annual Jamboree On The Air and radio amateurs across the planet were set up at various Scouting locations with their stations showing off how to make contact with far away places.

My memory of it is brief. I recall a green heavy army tent with radios on a table. There was noise everywhere. I was told that I was hearing a station in Brazil, which seemed incongruous, given that I was standing on an island surrounded by other Sea Scouts, a place where I had been camping and sailing for several years.

We trooped out of the tent and ten minutes later I broke a finger playing a game where you sat on a mast trying to upend the other person using a canvas bag with a jib in it. I was unceremoniously upended and landed poorly and broke the middle finger on my right hand. Being a teenager that was of course a source of immediate ridicule and innuendo and getting a dink, that's Aussie slang for getting a ride on the back of the pushbike of my boatswain to the local hospital, after rowing from the island to the mainland caused me to completely forget that amateur radio experience.

The second time I came across the hobby was through my then manager, Ian, whom I now know as VK6KIH, but at the time he was a quiet spoken man thrust into the role of manager. The introduction came in the form of a Daihatsu Charade with a massive, what I suspect, was a 40m HF whip. The amateur radio aspect made little or no impression. The antenna, clearly much too large for such a tiny vehicle, did. I don't recall ever talking about amateur radio or even seeing his setup. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if I ever have.

The third time I came across the hobby was at a dinner table surrounded by fellow "dogcow" geeks. One of them, Meg, then with the callsign VK6LUX showed us her brand new shiny purchase, a drone, that could be controlled remotely via WiFi on 2.4 GHz. She went on to tell us that the range was pretty limited because it was WiFi, but because she was a radio amateur, she was going to experiment with an amplifier. This was permitted because as I learnt, the 2.4 GHz WiFi frequencies are shared with amateur radio. You might know it as the 13cm band.

I asked about this thing called amateur radio. I wanted to know what was involved, how would you become one, what would it cost, you know, all the things everyone always asks. I was told that there'd be a course in two weeks with an exam the weekend after. I asked if we needed a group booking and was told to "just rock up".

So I did.

I got my license in 2010 and my world changed forever. I will add, just to make sure that if you're planning to do this, that during my course I discovered that my license wouldn't permit my use of the 13cm band, so I'd have to upgrade. I promptly purchased the requisite course material and started reading. In the mean time I got distracted by the activities at a local club, then I bought a radio, then I was told I wasn't a real amateur because I only had a beginners' license, so to prove a point, I started having fun with my license. I haven't stopped since.

Now, some, or maybe all of this, I've shared before. Here's something new.

I'm a so-called A.F.O.L, or an Adult Fan Of Lego. It's not a guilty pleasure, I'm happy to admit it. I have too much Lego around me. My oldest set is from 1964, House with Garage, number 324-2. It's not complete any longer, the car is long gone, the garage door weights are broken off, but it has pride of place in my living room. History does not reveal how I came into possession of it. Best I can reconstruct is that in the deep dark corners of Australia it takes a little while for kits to arrive, since I was born after the kit came into existence. I do know that I had it before 1976.

The other day I was watching a documentary about Lego and one thing stood out to me. I'll share the entire quote by Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen the then President and CEO of The Lego Group:

"During the 1990s, we kept thinking that much more should be done for the adult "hobbyist builders," as we called them at the time. Most people on the management team thought we should concentrate on children instead, but I felt that a person could have an inner child at any age."

Why this is important is because of my activities as a radio amateur. We as a community keep saying that we should grow, that we're losing too many people, that we need to engage with S.T.E.M., or Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Whilst that may be true and whilst JOTA and Scouting might give us exposure to fresh new people, there's a massive community of adults who already know about our hobby. They just don't yet know how it might interact with them, personally, or how they might find it interesting, or engaging, rewarding, and all the other things that you as an amateur already know about.

So, if there's Adult Fans Of Lego, why not Adult Fans Of Amateur Radio?

While thinking about that, how would you talk to them, how would you go about finding them, relating their interests to our hobby, finding common ground and discovering even more things that we can add to the thousands of amateur activities we already know about?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The other day I lamented to a fellow amateur that my shack was not functioning well. Specifically, my main workstation died three months ago and ever since I've been struggling to reclaim my productivity. One aspect of that is my desk. For half a decade or so I've had my computer clamped to a rolling lectern. It allowed me to move around my office as my mood and the light from the window changed.

During the weekly net I'd move my lectern and computer next to my radio and host the net whilst logging on my computer.

That's no longer possible because of a number of reasons, so instead I was trying to accomplish the same thing on a tiny 13 inch screen which didn't work for me. My friend asked me why I hadn't just extended the microphone lead from my radio, so I could sit at my now stationary computer and still key the microphone. I located an Ethernet joiner, an Ethernet cable and did just that. Simple. Job done.

Then I started wondering why I wasn't on HF with my station and if there was a simple solution that was eluding me. Spoiler alert, it still eludes me. The requirements are not too complicated, well at least in my mind they're not.

I want to operate on HF. I want the computer to not be physically, or specifically, electrically connected to the radio, in any way. I need to be able to use logging software that tracks the radio band, mode and frequency. I'd like to use digital modes, I'd like to have a computer controlled voice keyer and I do not want to run Windows and if I can at all help it, I'd like to spend as little time as possible doing this without spending an arm and a leg.

So, then I started wondering what this looks like for other people. What kinds of compromises have you made in your shack? What have you accomplished and how did you get there? What choices of hardware and software did you make, and why? Did you give up, or face the challenge head on? How did you gather information and how did you find out what others did?

Not for a moment do I think that this is a simple thing to solve, but it's clear to me that I'm so far down the complicated rabbit hole that I'd like someone to show me the light at the end of the tunnel to make some progress.

Of course I've not been idle while all this is happening. I configured a Raspberry Pi, a small single board computer, to talk to my radio via USB. I connected a sound card to the audio connector on my radio. Theoretically this should give me all that I need, but the difference between theory and practice is common knowledge, in theory it works, in practice it doesn't. The Pi is a few years old, but it's not doing much at all. It connects to my network wirelessly, so my main computer isn't physically connected to the radio, but it's still pretty unreliable and I have to say, calling CQ, either using voice or digital modes, should be rock solid. You don't want your radio to keep transmitting after it's supposed to and other little issues like that.

So, how did you do this? I'm interested to know. I'm not the first person to run into this issue and I'm not the last. Your experience might help me and it might help others. Drop me an email, [email protected] and I look forward to hearing about your adventures.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

At my local hamfest on the weekend I picked up this 6-way coax switch. I've been furiously searching my little heart out, but haven't actually discovered any sign of it.

How do I wire this up? What do I need? What specifications does it have? Anything you can share?

RF Connectors

Connector view of a 6-way coax switch with common connector in the centre surrounded by a hexagonal arrangement of inputs, each an N-type connector. !

Side

Side view of a 6-way coax switch showing mounting hardware and the label !

Control Connectors

Control wire connection view of a 6-way coax switch showing 6 numbered terminals with IND marking, 6 numbered terminals with LOGIC marking and 3 central terminals marked CP, CP and 28V respectively. !

Label

Product Label with the following text:

text K&L 50140 6LMP-28-F-N-I-TTL S/N CC649-2 D.C.9002 !

The International Amateur Radio Union or IARU, is the governing body of our community. It represents us on the world stage through the International Telecommunications Union, the ITU. As I've discussed before, it consists of four separate organisations working together, the International Amateur Radio Union, the global body, and three regional ones, Region 1, 2 and 3, each representing the hobby of amateur radio. Previously I've looked at the constitution of the IARU to get a sense of its purpose in the world.

At the time I mentioned the notion of comparing the four organisations against each other, since ostensibly they're doing the same thing for a different part of the world.

Each of these regional bodies was created separately by different groups of people and their constitutions reflect that. The Global IARU constitution, last updated in 1989 consists of nine pages. The IARU Region 1 constitution, with proposed amendments from 2020 has 31 pages, the English version of the Region 2 constitution, since there's also a Spanish one, was amended in 2019 has six pages including two copies of Article 2, and refers regularly to the Global IARU constitution and finally, Region 3, amended in 2012 has 15 pages.

What is striking at first glance is just how poorly these documents are constructed. Formatting, inconsistent spelling, indentation, general layout and all are lacking attention to detail. I think that this reflects poorly on the internal workings of the IARU, but I digress.

Curiously, the Region 3 website has a whole section on proposed changes to the constitution. Many of those changes are around the election of officials and voting procedures. It also includes the use of modern communications like email and remote conference facilities on internet platforms. One paragraph stood out: "It was also realised that changes would need to be made to formally recognise that we will (as happened at the online conference in 2021) have females as well as males taking responsible positions in IARU Region 3."

It must have come as quite a shock to the delegates to learn that there are females in our hobby. This must have already happened in Region 1, since there is a reference to "he/she" in relation to being elected. Mind you, use of the word "they" must not have occurred to the authors.

But don't worry, we shouldn't rush these things, the International body and the Region 2 constitutions both use "he" for roles. I will point out that the International body has a weasel clause where it states, among other things, "words importing only the masculine gender include the feminine gender and the neutral gender". It's a good start, but falls short of standards expected today.

If you're not sure what all the fuss is about, let me illustrate:

"The term of office of the President shall be for a period of five years from the date of ratification of porcupine nomination, and porcupine shall remain in office until the nomination of porcupine successor has been ratified."

If that felt jarring for you, you might get some sense of what it feels like for someone reading that with gender pronouns that don't match the text.

A better solution would be:

"The term of office of the President shall be for a period of five years from the date of ratification of their nomination, and they shall remain in office until the nomination of their successor has been ratified."

It's not the first time we've struck this type of issue. It's high time that we did something about it. Over a year ago, I pointed out that OM, Old Man, and XYL, eX Young Lady, were derogatory and we should replace them with OP, operator, and SO, significant other. A year before that I proposed a revision of the Amateur's Code to make its language inclusive and reflective of the wider community in which we operate.

I've had discussions with people who identify across the gender spectrum about much of this and the overwhelming feedback I received is that our community is Old White Men clamouring to grow the hobby without a clue that the words they use are part of the problem.

So, credit to Region 1 for implementing some of this and to Region 3 for starting this conversation. I don't doubt that there are members in the Global IARU and Region 2 who would like to see this implemented and to you I say: It's time, high time, to review what language our community uses to identify itself to the wider community. More generally, as the governing and representative global bodies you should be leading the way and providing guidance to the member societies.

So, next time you promote our community, refer to others, link to articles, and attempt to encourage participation, you should take a moment and ask yourself if what you're saying is truly speaking to people who are not Old White Men and if that's the case, what you might do to embrace the wider community.

The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

It's a serious question because so far, none have.

Edit: Some context for those asking.

Eternal September refers to a time when an online community was overrun by new participants to the detriment of that community.

When new people arrive piecemeal, like they're doing right now, they join in and participate. If they make little social mistakes, they are steered by members of the community in the direction that the community has evolved into by supplying social, language and behavioural cues.

New participants alter their behaviour and the community grows a little with the new participant. If they don't alter their behaviour, it's likely that they're removed from the community by some agreed process that has evolved over time.

If the growth is sudden, then the community will be overwhelmed by "blissful or deliberate ignorance" and the systems for cues, moderation and removal fail and the community, often drastically, changes or ceases to exist.

The reference to September is that's when new University Students would get an account on the University computer systems and join Usenet News. They'd arrive every September, there'd be a blip in adjustment and the Usenet communities would absorb the new members.

Eternal September arrived when AOL joined its bulletin board to Usenet and it completely overran everything with people from all across the AOL userbase, most of them not first year University students.

I was there when this happened, alt.best.of.internet (ABOI) was a community where I participated. One of many "new groups" it was alphabetically the first on the AOL list and it imploded. Together with Malinda McCall, I wrote the FAQ in an ultimately fruitless attempt at educating the masses.

I've seen this play out over and over again across the decades I've been online, so that's why I asked.

The ABOI FAQ is here: https://www.itmaze.com.au/articles/aboi-faq

Starting yesterday, Connect hard crashes when you attempt to click on the Inbox and the same happens if you click on the notification bell showing that there are messages.

As of this morning, the Inbox sidebar label is coloured Red instead of Blue.

Connect Version 1.0.190 Android v13 with latest security patches

Getting started in our hobby can be a challenge. Even if you've got a shiny new license and you've been taught what the legal requirements are, you might even have your first radio, but after that it might feel like you're all on your own in this bright and shiny new world.

It doesn't have to be that way.

First thing to know is that you are exactly where all other amateurs have been before you. In other words, don't stress too much about what you don't know or what mistakes you might make. I recently read a comment from a new amateur who was so scared of making a mistake that they hadn't made their first contact. You should know that there is a massive difference between making an accidental mistake and knowingly interfering with another service.

Here's some mistakes I've made.

My license permits a maximum power level of 10 Watts. I dutifully set-up my radio to do just that, made my first contact on HF using 10 Watts, only to learn later that power levels are set separately for HF, 6m, VHF and UHF on my specific radio. So, the second time I keyed up my microphone, I was using 50 Watts. Not only that, I didn't quite understand how to set-up my radio for repeater use, so I keyed up on the output frequency and happily talked to the other station, blissfully unaware that I wasn't actually using the repeater.

It wasn't until several years later that I learnt that the minimum power level was 5 Watts on all bands, except UHF, where it is 2 Watts. And as icing on the cake, one day I managed a 2m contact across about 70 km, from my car. It wasn't until later in the night that I discovered that all the settings on my radio had reset and it was again using 50 Watts.

Another time I was in the club radio shack and having some fun with the club station. I tuned to a 2m frequency and called CQ. Didn't hear anything. Then I discovered that I'd missed a decimal point and was actually transmitting on the 20m band, where I'm not permitted with my license.

Each of those things are outside the restrictions of my license, but made by mistake, not on purpose. Instead of stressing about it, I went, oops, and carried on with a new lesson learnt. I will point out that I'm certain that there are more, mistakes, feel free to let me know.

Those concerns aside, finding people to talk to is another barrier to entry. We have all these bands and there's nobody about. It reminds me of a funny story I've shared before, told by Wally VK6YS, now SK. In his early amateur radio days he operated from Cockatoo Island, an island off the north coast of Western Australia, near Yampi Sound, which is where his callsign came from. With a new radio and transverter for 6m, Wally had been calling CQ for weeks, but nobody would talk to him. Occasionally he'd hear a faint voice in the background. Meanwhile it transpired that amateurs across Japan were getting upset that he wasn't responding to their 20 and 40 over 9 signal reports. His transmission was getting out just fine, his receiver wasn't working nearly as well. Turns out that during manufacturing, a pin on the back of his transverter hadn't been soldered correctly. Oops. Once he fixed that, he worked 150 Japanese stations on the first day and a lifelong love of the 6m band was born.

One hard learnt lesson is that the bands are constantly changing. If you cannot hear anything on one band, try another. If the band is quiet, it's likely because the conditions for that band are bad, but generally this is only true on HF. On VHF and UHF, the opposite is often true. Some bands, like 10m and 6m behave more like VHF, but not always. 20m can go from brilliant to abysmal and back in seconds, sometimes during the contact.

Each band has its own idiosyncrasies that you'll need to explore before you can hope to improve your chances of success and even years of playing will often get you surprises. I recall trying, for giggles only, to call CQ on a pretty quiet band only to score an unexpected contact with a Central European station on the other side of the globe.

A good rule of thumb is to go where the action is. If you can hear others, they're much more likely to hear you. While this is not universally true, it's a good starting point.

Of course, you don't need to physically have a radio to experience any of this. There are many websites that provide you with access to radio tuners. If you search for WebSDR or KiwiSDR you'll come across hundreds of online receivers that you can tune and operate on the frequencies they support using just your web browser. Some have the ability to decode digital modes within the web page, so you won't even have to install any extra software to play.

You might think that using such a receiver is not really amateur radio, but I'd like to point out that a transceiver is both a transmitter and a receiver. You can get the receiver right there in your web browser. The transmitter is a little more complex, but technically also possible. Many amateur clubs have a remote accessible station which will allow you to get started.

That kills two birds with one stone, you get to interact with the people in the club and you get to play on-air without needing to figure out just which radio to get and what antenna to connect it to and where to put either.

Other places to find new friends are of course social media, the so-called fediverse, a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other, has several communities. You can get started at https://mastodon.radio and https://lemmy.radio. There's plenty of other on-air activities like Nets, discussion groups where you can get to know other amateurs. I run a weekly Net for new and returning amateurs called F-troop on Saturday morning midnight UTC for an hour, where you can say hello and ask questions. We pass the microphone around a circle, so everyone gets a go. You'll find more information at https://ftroop.groups.io.

Getting started does not have to be a daunting experience. Get on-air, make noise and before you know it, you'll have forgotten just how much you worried about things that really didn't cause any issues in the big picture.

If you're still stuck, drop me an email, [email protected] and I'll attempt to point you in the right direction.

What are you waiting for?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

A cookie notice that seeks permission to share your details with "848 of our partners" and "actively scan device details for identification".

In the mid 1980's there was this thing called a Bulletin Board System or BBS. You would connect your computer to a gadget called an acoustic coupler that you would sit next to a telephone. You'd pick up the handset, dial a phone number and wait until there was a squeal in your ear. Then you'd push the handset into the rubber cups on the coupler and watch as your computer started putting characters on your screen.

Now, truth be told, my first foray was the next generation of this, an actual modem where you didn't actually have to touch the telephone, instead, the device could dial on your behalf using so-called AT commands.

And if we're being totally honest, I never actually connected to a BBS. My adventures with global communications started with Usenet News in 1990, but I'm here to make a point, I promise.

Amateur radio is a hobby that is for experimentation. One such experiment is a thing called packet radio. Before you roll your eyes about ancient technology, this gets very cool, very fast.

At its most basic, packet radio is about digital radio communication. Until not that long ago to play you needed a thing called a TNC or a Terminal Node Controller. When I got my license in 2010 I was told that this was a magic box to make digital communication possible between a radio and other radios and amateurs.

Right now, many people are playing with WSPR, Weak Signal Propagation Reporter as well as FT8, both examples of things intended to get specific chunks of information exchanged between two stations. What if I want to chat, or send a file, or a picture?

There are tools like "js8call" which is experimenting with the idea of using FT8 to chat, but what if I told you that there's a better way?

Written by John WB2OSZ, named after a canine that became extinct 9,500 years ago, "direwolf", is software that implements an expensive piece of 1980's hardware, a TNC, that runs just fine on a $5 Raspberry pi. It's been around for over a decade, the oldest date I can find is March 2013 though undated versions before that exist.

It's an example of a so-called software-modem, simple to get started, and it implements the essential pieces of packet radio. It's currently running connected to my radio and I can see packets of information scrolling past. In this case I'm tuned to the local APRS, or Automatic Packet Reporting System frequency of 145.175 MHz.

It's the same information that you can see if you point your web browser at aprs.fi

While that's great, it's just the beginning. Tune to another 2m or 70cm frequency and you can use it to connect to a BBS being run by a local amateur, or, you can tune to a HF frequency and connect to one run somewhere else.

Direwolf also supports a technology called KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid, yes really, developed by Brian WB6RQN, Phil KA9Q, Mike K3MC and others. KISS allows you to connect a modem, like direwolf, to a computer and use technologies like TCP/IP, the primary language of the internet, across a radio link, any radio link.

Let me say that again with different words. You can use your HF radio to browse the internet. No proprietary modes in sight, weak signal, error correction included, all open source, all free, all ready to go.

While we're singing its praises, direwolf can also act as an iGate, an interface between radio and services like aprs.fi, a digipeter that receives and re-transmits APRS data and plenty more.

It gets better.

What if you wanted to use something like RTTY, PSK31, Olivia or some other mode? You could use "fldigi" instead of direwolf since it too supports KISS.

To be fair, there are lots of moving parts here and I've glossed over plenty. This isn't intended to discuss precisely how to do this, rather that it's possible at all and has been for quite some time.

I can't wait to attempt to browse the internet using my radio, for nothing other than the thrill of attempting it.

I wonder if I can do this with Morse Code as the underlying protocol. Only one way to find out.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Having been a licensed member of this community since 2010 I feel qualified to answer a recurring question: "What kind of hobby is amateur radio?"

The single best answer I can give is that it's big. The deeper you become involved, the bigger it gets. I stole the phrase, "amateur radio is 1000 hobbies in one" and I've remarked that I suspect that it's underselling the experience. Point being, whatever you've heard about amateur radio is likely true and guaranteed to be only part of the story.

There was a time when amateur radio was a concept regularly seen in general discussion. That's no longer the case, but you'll soon discover that amateurs are everywhere and the things we get up to still make the headlines from time to time.

That said, as a community we tend to use complex language and in specific ways. For example, a radio amateur is unlikely to broadcast, instead they transmit. From the outside looking in the two are synonymous, but within amateur radio the two couldn't be more different. Broadcasting is one to many, transmitting is one to one. Broadcasting separates the operator from the equipment, transmitting has the operator actively engaged with it.

Amateur radio is about curiosity, about trying things, about learning and sharing, it's about technology, electronics, nature and physics, it's about software and hardware, about camping and competing and plenty more and with that come friendships that seem to last a lifetime, perhaps forged in the fire of fascination, perhaps made almost perchance in passing. I have more amateur friends than not and among us we have a massive variety of interests.

Unlike most hobbies, you need to obtain a government issued license to become a fully licensed amateur, as-in, be permitted to transmit. For some this requirement might be a deterrent, but once you understand why, since radio waves don't stop at political boundaries and every human shares the same radio spectrum, licensing becomes a necessity, not an obstacle. That said, you can start long before then by receiving, no license required.

Amateur radio is a global activity. It's centrally regulated, but administered locally in each country and locality. As a result I cannot tell you specifically how much things will cost where you are, but the fees are generally not cost prohibitive and in many cases they are low or even free.

You become licensed by completing a training course, passing an exam and receiving a certification that lasts for life. Once you are certified you can apply for a callsign and operate an amateur station. The closest equivalent to a callsign outside the hobby is a car license plate. It's a unique combination of letters and numbers that identify an amateur. For example, my callsign is VK6FLAB, said phonetically, it's Victor Kilo Six Foxtrot Lima Alpha Bravo. We use phonetics because often individual letters are lost due to interference which comes in many different forms. Depending on where you are, a callsign might be subject to a renewal fee.

If doing a course and passing an exam seems scary, getting started at the introductory level is generally a weekend worth of effort. That introduces the notion that there are different levels, or to use an amateur phrase, classes, which, again depending on where you are, permit different access to the radio spectrum where your WiFi, mobile phone, garage door opener, emergency services, aviation, satellite and free to air television all share the same limited resources with radio amateurs. The higher your license class, the more access you get, but the more you become responsible for. Again, using a car analogy, you graduate from moped to car to truck.

If you've come across this hobby before, you should consider that one of the historic international license requirements hasn't existed for decades, namely Morse code. Mind you, some countries still require Morse, but their numbers are dwindling rapidly.

There is an often repeated concept that amateur radio is old white men sitting in the dark talking to each other about the weather, their station and their ailments. While there's some of that around, you'll soon discover that there's people from all walks of life, all ages and interests and backgrounds. Given that this is a global experience, you do not need to limit your interactions to the people within your local community.

I've been contributing a weekly article about amateur radio since 2011. Detailing the many and varied aspects of this hobby and if you're curious about what you might find here, warts and all, jump in. There are two series of articles, "What use is an F-call?", which covers 2011 to 2015 when it was renamed to "Foundations of Amateur Radio". Available as an audio podcast, as text, as email and there are eBooks too.

You'll find plenty of amateur radio resources online and social media communities with different interests and sensibilities. As with any community, amateur radio has its share of gatekeepers who hark back to the days of yore, some literally, some in their language and behaviour. Don't let that dissuade you from exploring this magical community.

Feel free to drop me an email, [email protected] and I'll do my best to answer any burning questions you're left with.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The International Amateur Radio Union or IARU was formed on the 18th of April 1925 in Paris. Today, split into four organisations, consisting of one for each of the three ITU Regions, and the International Secretariat, are said to coordinate their efforts to represent the globe spanning activity of amateur radio.

Each organisation has its own constitution, which at some point I might compare, but for now I'll focus on the International Secretariat.

Last updated on the 9th of May, 1989, the constitution has nine pages detailing how the IARU works. After defining its name, it describes its purpose.

Its objectives shall be the protection, promotion, and advancement of the Amateur and Amateur-Satellite Services within the framework of regulations established by the International Telecommunication Union, and to provide support to Member-Societies in the pursuit of these objectives at the national level, with special reference to the following:

a) representation of the interests of amateur radio at and between conferences and meetings of international telecommunications organizations;

b) encouragement of agreements between national amateur radio societies on matters of common interest;

c) enhancement of amateur radio as a means of technical self-training for young people;

d) promotion of technical and scientific investigations in the field of radiocommunication;

e) promotion of amateur radio as a means of providing relief in the event of natural disasters;

f) encouragement of international goodwill and friendship;

g) support of Member-Societies in developing amateur radio as a valuable national resource, particularly in developing countries; and

h) development of amateur radio in those countries not represented by Member-Societies.

Those are lofty goals and no doubt they have changed over the past century. The objectives as described have been in effect for over 35 years, so we can safely say that they are part and parcel of the current workings of the IARU. This leads me to several questions, mostly uncomfortable ones.

Over the years I have witnessed the incessant cry for the growth of the hobby in the face of apparent global decline. What I haven't seen is any evidence of the IARU actually doing much towards its own objectives. At this point you might well be chomping at the bit to enlighten me, please do, and you might well be right that the IARU is doing stuff, but the key here is seeing evidence. As I keep saying, if you don't write it down, it didn't happen. You do this for contacts between stations, why should the IARU be any different?

While the IARU is a recognised United Nations organisation, it's entirely volunteer run and paid for by its members. The International Secretariat is funded by its three regional organisations, which in turn are funded by the member societies in each country like the WIA in Australia, ARRL in the U.S., RSGB in the U.K., JARL in Japan and VERON in the Netherlands; over 160 organisations in all. Those in turn are funded by their members. For a decade or more I contributed to the funding of the IARU through my WIA membership. I note, as an aside, that organisations like the Radio Amateur Society of Australia or RASA and the European Radio Amateurs' Organization or EURAO, which are not recognised by the IARU, do not fund it, unless they're making donations on the side.

That's important because this hobby, despite its amateur nature, runs on money. If you want to help the IARU, the only way to do so is as a volunteer. That's great if you have money to pay for food and housing, less so if you don't. Similarly, member societies are also, by enlarge, run by volunteers, each doing so in the face of big business and government attempts to increase their spectrum allocation at the expense of amateur radio at every turn.

This leaves us with an organisation with lofty goals to foster, promote and grow our community, funded and run by volunteers, with in my opinion little to show for its century history.

Is this the best model? Is this how we make a robust, representative and effective organisation?

Speaking of representative, in 2018 Don G3BJ, former president of the RSGB and then president of the Region 1 IARU, talked in some detail about how the IARU operates in an enlightening video you can find on YouTube called "RSGB Convention lecture 2018 - So what has the IARU ever done for us?".

In that lecture Don makes the statement that "the ARRL provides significant additional funding" and "without that [the] IARU would be in very serious problems".

If you're not a member of the ARRL, what does that mean? How much is significant funding? Is it real money, or is it paper money in the form of office space provided within the ARRL offices in Connecticut? If a member of the IARU International Secretariat is also a member and office bearer of the ARRL, does that buy access? For example in 2021 the ARRL executive committee nominated their past president to become the Secretary of the IARU, which at least according to the ARRL, it "has the right and obligation to".

I don't know how you feel about that, but it makes me uncomfortable and here in Australia I can't say that I feel represented, even if I was a current and paid up member of the WIA, which I'm not. I think organisations like the member societies and the IARU have a very important role to play in our hobby, but what I don't see is evidence that they are.

No doubt I'll get emails telling me to step up. I would if I had a functioning money tree in my backyard.

Transparency is an issue in our community. I left the WIA because I felt that there was no transparency. The ARRL had a wide ranging security breach recently and whilst it has written a great many words on the subject, most of them are, at least in my professional opinion, the opposite of transparent. I have yet to see the operating budget for the WIA, the ARRL or the IARU, despite having paid money into at least two of those.

So, what of the future of our hobby? What does representation in a modern global community look like and does the structure of our hobby need scrutiny and discussion?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The story goes that the name of our hobby, at least in some parts of the world, ham radio, stems from the notion that we as a community were perceived as being ham-fisted in our ability to operate a Morse key. We apparently claimed that slur and made it our own. I've never actually been able to verify this narrative, but it goes to the heart of what it is to be part of the hobby of amateur radio, as opposed to Professional radio, which is what I once heard someone refer to themselves as.

This notion that we are playing outside our sandbox, that we're doing something less than real, that we're somehow not whole as a result is absurd, especially in the context of how we are an integral part of how spectrum is allocated around the globe. It's fun to remember that playing outside the box, trialling things, exploring, inventing and learning, is the reason we're here.

The whole thing is incremental, much like learning to walk, sometimes you fall flat on your face, yet here you are perambulating like a champ. As an aside, did you know that how you get up off the floor is pretty much how you learnt to do it as a toddler, it might not be the most efficient, but it's how you do it. Speaking of falling down, making mistakes on-air is part and parcel of being an amateur. There's no protocol police, nobody to issue a fine if you make a mistake, just dust yourself off and try again.

The urge to optimise pervades our hobby. We optimise our antennas, our gear, the time and band we choose to communicate on, the modes we use, the places we operate from, even how we participate in contests, all of it is a cycle of optimisation.

During contests I've regularly attempted to flex my imagination to optimise my activities. For example, the VK Shires contest rewards you for combinations of shires, so, I created a map of all the shires, then looked for places to activate, preferably on or near borders, so I could change shire with minimal effort. There are contests that reward different maidenhead locators, so I set about finding spots where you could activate four at once. By the way, a maidenhead locator is an amateur radio geo-locator which I'll dig into some other time. Contesters regularly use multiple radios to optimise their ability to talk to stations that double their points, so-called multipliers.

Over the years I've come across many different excuses for getting on-air and making noise. Popular activities like Parks On The Air, or POTA, Summits On The Air or SOTA, and plenty of others are all programs that aim to get you out of your shack, set up your station at a particular location and make contact with anyone and everyone. On occasion you'll hear a station combining activities, doing both a POTA and a SOTA activation because the summit is inside the boundaries of a national park.

Ian M0TRT took this idea to a whole new level. He wondered if you could qualify for multiple programs simultaneously and if so, how many. Gathering data from Summits, Parks, Islands, Beaches and Bunkers on the Air, together with UK Castle and Lighthouse awards and adding World Wide Flora and Fauna or WWFF, eight programs in all, he set about exploring. For some programs like Castles, Lighthouses and Bunkers you need to be within 1 km of the entity and summits need to be activated within 25 meters altitude from the peak. For other programs, beaches, parks and islands plenty of extra work was needed. Ian's code is available on GitHub, in the "weeaaoa" or "Worked Everything Everywhere All At Once Award" repository.

If you have time to head out to the beach just east of Devil's Point near Plymouth you'll be able to activate 21 different programs at the same time. The Maidenhead locator is IO70WI06.

As with any outdoor amateur radio activity, take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints and kill nothing but time. Be mindful of creating obstacles and trip hazards for your fellow humans and be prepared to have a park ranger turn up as soon as you sit down.

Oh, and if you think that's not in the spirit of amateur radio, you haven't been paying attention.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Article:

• https://ianrenton.com/projects/worked-everything-award/

GitHub:

• https://github.com/ianrenton/weeaaoa/blob/main/main.py

How are you storing passwords and 2FA keys that proliferate across every conceivable online service these days?

What made you choose that solution and have you considered what would happen in life altering situations like, hardware failure, theft, fire, divorce, death?

If you're using an online solution, has it been hacked and how did that impact you?

One of my recurring, you might call it, regrets, but probably not quite that strong, is that I often find myself discovering that an amateur radio contest came and went, or worse, I found out on the day, preferably at midnight UTC when many contests start, which happens to be 8 am Saturday morning where I live, right when my weekly radio net for new and returning amateurs, F-troop, begins.

Often by that time I already have plans for the weekend and now I know I'm missing out on some or other activity that might encourage me to go outside and get fresh air whilst playing radio.

Don't get me wrong, it's my own responsibility to manage my time, but that doesn't explain what's going on, so I started exploring what might be causing this. I mean, it shouldn't be that hard, there's pretty much a contest on every weekend, so I could sort out my radio and get on-air to make noise at any point of any day. That this doesn't happen can only partially be explained by the state of my shack, which I have yet to get working the way I want, but it doesn't explain everything.

I'm subscribed to several contest calendars. The most prominent of these is one maintained by Bruce WA7BNM. The contestcalendar.com website is a great place to start. Another is the personal site of prolific contester and contest manager, Alan VK4SN. Both sites offer a calendar feed file that you can subscribe to.

So, subscribe to the calendar, job done, right?

Unfortunately not. As it happens, for several years I have in fact subscribed to both those calendars. I even shared these with my partner, which results in a fun exchange at the breakfast table that goes something like this: "Hey, do you need the car on Saturday?" "Why?" "Well there's an amateur contest on."

So, my partner is often more aware of contests than I am and supposedly I'm the amateur in this household.

It occurs to me that I need an alert to point at an upcoming contest. Preferably one that I can configure that's specific to me. I don't tend to look that far into the future, I have plenty of stuff that needs to happen today without worrying about next month.

I started exploring what I might do about this. Be the change you want to see, so I contacted Bruce and asked what views he might hold on the addition of an alarm in the calendar file he publishes. I also asked if there was a way to configure what contests are visible in that file.

Whilst hunting through his site, I discovered that there's plenty of Australian contests not on the site, so I created a list of contests I know about that I thought should be on the calendar.

I might point out that Bruce's job isn't easy. Trying to get information out of contest managers can sometimes be like powering a spark-gap transmitter using a pushbike.

Here's an example of one contest that has an algorithm to determine when the next contest is, I kid you not. There's a Winter, Spring and Summer version of this contest, for Winter, when the June solstice is on a weekday (Monday through Friday), the weekend following shall be the weekend of the event, if not, that weekend shall be the weekend of the event. The Spring and Summer versions are even more involved, counting forwards or backwards four weekends from the December solstice. It helpfully includes a link to the solstice dates for this century, because really, that's how the dates are determined.

If I'm feeling particularly sparky, I might even make a calculator, since the contest manager for that contest hasn't announced the dates for the next contest, though my previous experiences whilst attempting to calculate moon bounce windows using the Python Astropy package was challenging. I did find PyEphym which has several solstice and equinox functions.

So, now all I need to do is make my shack work as I want it, bolt a radio back in my car, win lotto and something else, I forget what.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB