Foundations of Amateur Radio

When you join the community of radio amateurs you'll find a passionate group of people who to greater and lesser degree spend their time and energy playing with radios in whatever shape that takes. For some it involves building equipment, for others it means going on a hike and activating a park. Across all walks of life you'll find people who are licensed radio amateurs, each with their own take on what this hobby means.

Within that community it's easy to imagine that you're the centre of the world of radio. You know stuff, you do stuff, you invent stuff. As a community we're a place where people dream up weird and wonderful ideas and set about making them happen.

Radio amateurs have a long association with emergency services. When I joined the hobby over a decade ago one of the sales pitches made to me was that we're ready to be part of emergency communications. In some jurisdictions that's baked into the license.

There was a time when a radio amateur was expected to be ready to jump into a communications gap and render assistance with their station. There are amateur based groups groups like WICEN, the Wireless Institute Civil Emergency Network in Australia, ARES, the Amateur Radio Emergency Service in the United States, RAYNET, the Radio Amateurs' Emergency Network in the United Kingdom, AREDN, the Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network in Germany, DARES, the Dutch Amateur Radio Emergency Service, AREC or Amateur Radio Emergency Communications in New Zealand and EmComms in Trinidad and Tobago to name a few.

Each of those manages their participation in different ways. For example, ARES offers training and certification where AREDN offers software and a how-to guide, in Trinidad and Tobago the Office of Disaster Preparedness Management is actively involved in amateur radio and maintains an active amateur radio station and five repeaters.

In Australia there's a requirement to record and notify authorities if you become aware of a distress signal as a part of your license. In fact in Australia you must immediately cease all transmissions. You must continue to listen on frequency. You must record full details of the distress message, in writing and if possible recorded by tape recorder.

While that scenario can and has happened, it's not common. An amateur station being used to provide an emergency link in the case of catastrophic failure has also happened, but in Australia I'm not sure if that was in my lifetime or not.
 
My point is that the idea that we're going to put up a critical radio link and be the heart of communications in an emergency is, in Australia at least, not particularly likely. That's not to say that you should ignore that potential, or that it's universally true, but it's to point out that there are other things that you can do with your license that might happen more readily and help your community more.

Outside our amateur community, there's plenty of radio in use as well. The obvious ones are volunteer bush fire brigades, state emergency services and the like. Less obvious might be the local marine rescue group, surf life saving or the local council. Each of those use radios as part of their service delivery and a radio amateur can contribute to that without needing to bring their station along. In fact, if you don't have an amateur license, but want to play radio, that's an excellent place to do it as a volunteer. I should mention that radio procedures are also in use in all manner of other professions, mining, policing, the military and aviation to name a couple, not to forget occupations like tour-guides, ferry operators and pretty much any place where telephones, fixed or mobile are not readily deployed.

Within those areas there are procedures and jargon that you'll need to learn and perhaps even need to be certified for, but you as a radio amateur have several skills that you can bring to the table because you already have a license.

For example, I learnt my phonetic alphabet many years before I ever heard of amateur radio. It was a requirement for my aviation radio ticket which in turn was required before I flew solo. When it came to making my first ever transmission on amateur radio, doing the phonetic thing was second nature, much to the surprise of my fellow trainees at the time. A thank you is due to both Neil VK6BDO, now Silent Key, and Doug VK6DB for making that training happen.

You can apply the skills you bring with you when you join an organisation outside amateur radio who deals with wireless communication in whatever form that takes. For example, just the idea that you know how to pick up a microphone and push the Push To Talk button and speak and let the button go after you're done, a pretty trivial activity in amateur radio, will be something that you have that most of the untrained general public have no idea about.

Amateur radio is a massive hobby. Playing with radio, or doing something serious with it comes in all shapes and sizes. Your amateur experience can help, but be prepared to learn different procedures and methods. The amateur way isn't the only way and it's not the only place where radio is used and sometimes it's good to have a look outside your comfort zone and see what the neighbours are up to.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB