Foundations of Amateur Radio

Mark Twain is often misquoted in relation to reports about his death, pithy as always, he said: "The report of my death was an exaggeration." Similarly the death of amateur radio has been reported on many different occasions.

Letting amateurs near a Morse key, banning spark-gap transmitters, introducing transistors, integrated circuits, computers, the internet, software defined radio, the list grows as technology evolves. I can imagine our descendants decrying the death of amateur radio with the commodification of quantum computing at some point in the future of humanity.

Yesterday I had an entertaining and instructional play date with a fellow amateur. We discussed countless aspects of our hobby, things like how you'd go about direction finding if you had access to multiple radios and antennas, what characteristics that might have, what you'd need in the way of mathematics, how you'd write software to solve the problem and how you'd go about calibrating such a system. Could you use a local AM broadcast station as a calibration source, or do you need to generate a known signal?

We started talking about how you'd send data across the network so you could have a dozen devices in different locations that you could synchronise and share data. How would you control it, how would you make use of existing standards, were there other tools like this already and what were their limitations.

Then there was the conversation about using spectrum effectively, seeing current digital modes like FT8 and their level of effective use of a 2.5kHz slice of spectrum with 15 second time-slots and the theoretical bandwidth that you might achieve if you used that mode as a data transmission mode.

There was the conversation around how you'd use propagation tools to determine path openings on the higher bands without needing a beacon, just a computer and a radio.

Then we talked about how you'd go about making a simple WSPR beacon, based on a minimum component count and some readily available hardware, rather than a sophisticated transceiver like a PlutoSDR.

There was a discussion around E-class amplifiers and their characteristics and potential pitfalls.

We managed to cover a fair bit of ground in a few hours over our hot beverage of choice, a nice meal for lunch and despite me tripping over the threshold of my front door, banging my head against the wall and rolling my ankle. The head is fine, the ankle not so much.

My point is that the world of amateur radio is never done, it's never finished, there's never an end. There's always more to discover, more to explore, build and investigate.

How on earth could you contemplate that this was a hobby that had no relevance in the world today, let alone that of tomorrow.

I for one am very happy to call myself an amateur and looking forward to discovering what else there is to play with. Why are you an amateur and does this feel like the end or a new beginning every day?

The reports of the death of amateur radio was an exaggeration.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB