Foundations of Amateur Radio

Over the weekend I learnt to my chagrin that my shack was not ready for the contest I decided to participate in for an hour. Truth be told, it was probably me who wasn't ready, but I'm going to blame my shack, since it can't argue and besides this is my story.

It started off with turning on the HF radio. That involved turning off my 10m WSPR beacon which is transmitting its little heart out 24 hours a day into the one vertical antenna it shares with my HF radio.

Turning off the beacon was simple enough, reach into the mass of cable and dig out the USB power lead that plugs into the beacon. Then follow the antenna coax to the correct switch. Whoops, that's the GPS coax, the other one, there's the switch, now switching it to the HF radio.

Why didn't the sound change, actually, come to think of it, what sound? Hmm, the audio is going into, nothing, actually, it's going into the audio mixer that's turned off. Turn that on. Then audio at last, nope. Hmm, oh wait, the audio needs to go from the HF radio, not the VHF radio that's configured to do some audio spectrum recording. Turn off the Raspberry Pi at the same time, since there's no more audio going into that and who needs more potential noise? Locate the two audio plugs that go into the radio audio adaptor, disconnect the Pi audio, connect the radio audio, now, which one is the microphone?

Now I've got it all plugged in, still no audio. Hmm, two of the mixer channels are muted. Turn on one, radio goes into TX, that's not good. Turn it off, radio stops transmitting, sigh of relief. Turn on the other channel, finally hear some squeaky sounds. Ahha, it's coming from the headset.

Don the headset, now I've got glorious mono in my brain. Test the microphone, nothing. Hmm, ah the switch on the microphone lead. Now I've got RX and TX going. Yay, victory!

Now turn on the computer so I can do some logging. Fire up my trusty, wait, which tool? The one I normally use for casual contesting hasn't seen a new version since the author became a silent key, no idea if the rules for this contest are still current, fire up the next one, that needs a brand new configuration file, but that means reading the manual and I've got more important things to do.

Try another one, Yes, that's got the rules ready to go. No idea if the rules are current, but at least there's no configuration file to contend with.

At this point I'm two hours into my one hour contesting window and I have to stop. Haven't even tuned the antenna and I'm already out of time.

Hmm, this shack is rigged.

Wonder who I should blame for that?

Some days all good intentions come together. Other days they don't. There's always the next contest.

Lessons learnt, my shack needs a serious rethink on how best to set it up so I can operate daily, experiment and accommodate a casual contest. Looks like I'm off to the hardware store for some brackets and my documentation clearly needs updating, actually, truthfully, needs writing.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB