Foundations of Amateur Radio

The other day it occurred to me that my callsign had been away from HF for months, probably longer. I didn't really want to think about how long it had been. I moved QTH over two years ago and ever since I've been working on a new antenna set-up. You know the kind, you shouldn't rush this. Anyway, having just had a camp-out with some friends for a portable contest, where I gleefully had fun with the station callsign, I thought it was time to actually do what I keep advocating to anyone who stands still long enough, to get on air and make some noise.

So I did.

You know that feeling when the longer you wait, the harder it gets and the more you put it off? That had invaded my thinking and my avoidance. The typical excuses of not enough space, too much noise, no antenna, radio not ready, too hard, all fought their way into prominence. I'd had enough.

So, on Saturday I collected all the bits that make up my portable station. It had clearly been a while since I'd used it, since I couldn't for the life of me remember where the head of my Yaesu FT-857d was, that was until I remembered that it had previously been installed in my car, so that's precisely where I found it. The tiny jumper cable between the head and the body was located in my headset bag where I'd stashed it after forgetting it for a contest one year. The microphone was where I'd stored it in the car. The battery was easier, since I'd used that the weekend before. Pulled out a table, a chair and set about putting my station together right there in the driveway.

I'd been meaning to test an antenna that to all intents and purposes was doomed to fail, a long-wire on the ground. I didn't have an un-un or a balun, but I did have my trusty antenna coupler, so I used that. One end of the antenna, twelve and a half meters going one way, the other half going at a right angle. That pretty much solved that.

Then for the final touch, I turned the radio on. All worked and I set about figuring out what I could hear. Across all the NCDXF beacons and bands I could hear the local beacon about 30km away.

I have mentioned the NCDXF before, but in short, the Northern California DX Foundation has since 1979 coordinated the installation and maintenance of a collection of transmitters that 24 hours a day, every three minutes transmits on a staggered schedule across 5 different bands. It's called the International Beacon Project. For funding, the NCDXF relies on donations from people like you and in Western Australia the WA Repeater Group maintain the beacon, VK6RBP.

Each transmission consists of a callsign, a beep at a 100 watts, a beep at 10 watts, 1 watt and 100 milliwatts. You can hear the beacons on 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m and 10m. Their purpose is to determine what propagation is like across the world on each of the bands, in pretty much real time. It was the impetus for me to start learning Morse Code - in case you're wondering, no, I know, I'm still at it.

On my wire on the ground antenna the local beacon on the 10m band was by far the strongest. I also had a listen on 80m and 40m and even found two stations in deep discussion about something or other. Didn't manage to catch their callsigns, but good readability, not so much in the way of signal strength.

I called up a friend on 900 MHz, in case you're sceptical, yes I hold a licence for that, so do you, it's cunningly encapsulated in a sophisticated portable battery powered multifunctional gadget made of electronics and glass. He was in the middle of repairing some damage sustained to his G5RV Jr. antenna during our latest adventures - Hi Glynn - and afterwards we had a go to see if we could in fact hear each other. I was using 5 Watts, he something like 70 Watts. Neither of us could hear the other, even though we're a similar distance from each other as the beacon. Not yet sure if it was his radio acting up, or mine for that matter.

I then started down the digital modes path. Installed a PSK31 decoder and set about programming my radio for the traditional PSK31 frequencies. Didn't hear anything, didn't decode anything, but had a ball none the less.

You might think to yourself right about now what the point of all this was if I didn't make any contacts? The answer is simple, I got outside, in the sun, soaked up some Vitamin D and played radio, just like the weekend was intended for. My next adventures are likely going to involve the same antenna and a vertical for transmit to see how that goes.

You don't need an excuse to get out and play and when you do you might not make any contacts, but that's not really the point of playing, is it?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB