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.
In this episode we meet Pat Hensley, W5WTH, a prolific designer and project builder. Pat has made several intersting radio and non-radio related electronic projects and he features them on his blog site WhiskeyTangoHotel.Com
Some of Pat's projects are very useful and some are just plain fun. Many projects are a blend of hardware (Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, etc) and software (c, Python, etc). Pat publishes all of his source code for us all to learn from. If you want to be inspired to build your first project you have come to the right place.
PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1334 - Full Version
Release Date: September 21, 2024
Here is a summary of the news trending This Week in Amateur Radio. This week's edition is anchored by Denny Haight, NZ8D, Chris Perrine, KB2FAF, Dave Wilson, WA2HOY, Don Hulick, K2ATJ, Will Rogers, K5WLR, Joshua Marler, AA4WX, Eric Zittel, KD2RJX, George Bowen, W2XBS, and Jessica Bowen, KC2VWX.
Produced and edited by George Bowen, W2XBS.
Approximate Running Time: 1:46:03
Podcast Download: https://bit.ly/TWIAR1334
Trending headlines in this week's bulletin service
1. RW: Radio Club of America Announces 21 Award Recipients and Fellows
2. AMSAT: F. Brent Abbott, NA7D, Chief Revenue Officer of Rogue Space Systems, to Keynote Space Symposium
3. WIA: Traffic Increased Four-Fold During Paris Games
4. RAC: Phil A. McBride, VA3QR / HP3QR Radio Amateurs of Canada President and Chair Resigns
5. WIA: Amazon Is Poised To Unveil A Significant Overhaul of Alexa
6. WIA: Nokia To Introduce 5G Enabled Space Suits For Astronauts, And Aims To Build A Network On The Moon
7. WIA: Global Positioning Satellite Now 13 Years Old
8. IR: Hurricane Francine Silences Five Louisiana Stations, FCC Says
9. NASA: Voyager 1 Completes Tricky Thruster Reconfiguration
10. HACK: NASA’s Solar Sail Reflect Brightly In The Night Sky
11. ARRL: Club Grant Program Update
12. NASA: NASA To Develop Lunar Time Standard For Exploration Initiatives
13. RI: AM Radio For Every Vehicle Act Passed House Floor Vote
14. NEWS: ICOM IC-V82 Radios Exploding In Lebanon, Following Exploding AR-924 Pagers
15. RSGB: Radio Society Of Great Britian To End Paper Based License Exams
16. ARRL: ARRL Announces Partnership With Grouper
17. ARRL: ARRL Philanthropist, Radar Detector Pioneer, Michael Valentine, W8MM, Silent Key
18. ARRL: ARRL Section Managers Gather for Training at Headquarters
19. ARRL: National Preparedness Month - Station Readiness
20. ARRL: Get Ready for JOTA/JOTI
21. ARRL: Amplitude Modulation International (AMI) Jamboree 2024 Coming Up
22. Emergency Alerts Are Improved Over DAB+ Receivers
23. Privatization Of The 900 Megahertz Band
24. Amateur Radio Assists One Man Find His Relatives After Fifty-Years
25. New Rural Networking In The United Kingdom\
26. Upcoming RadioSport Contests and Regional ARRL Convention Listings
27. TAPR:Tuscon Amateur Packet Radio calls for nominations for its Board of Directors
28. ACMA: The Australian Communications & Media Authority Issues New Amateur Radio Fees
29. AMSAT: Satellite Shorts From All Over
30. WIA: New frontier for radio broadcasting as they announce "Zonecasting:
31. FCC: FCC adopts new Asymmetrical Sideband rules for high definition radio
32. ARRL: ARRL defends 902-928 megahertz band
33. Teenage Canadian Students gain their amateur radio license after ham radio course work
Plus these Special Features This Week:
* Working Amateur Radio Satellites with Bruce Paige, KK5DO - AMSAT Satellite News
* Foundations of Amateur Radio with Onno Benschop VK6FLAB, will take a look at the history of amateur radio from an Australian perspective.
* The DX Corner with Bill Salyers, AJ8B with news on DXpeditions, DX, RadioSport contests and more.
* Weekly Propagation Forecast from the ARRL
* Will Rogers - K5WLR - A Century Of Amateur Radio. This week, Hiram Percy Maxim's main goal was to establish reliable relaying of messages across the entire country. Will takes us back to the early days of amateur radio in a segment he entitled "Trunk Lines".
-----
Website: https://www.twiar.net
X: https://x.com/TWIAR
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/twiari
YouTube: https://bit.ly/TWIARYouTube
RSS News: https://twiar.net/?feed=rss2
Automated (Full): https://twiar.net/TWIARHAM.mp3 (Static file, updated weekly)
Automated (1-hour): https://www.twiar.net/TWIAR1HR.mp3 (Static file, updated weekly)
-----
This Week in Amateur Radio is produced by Community Video Associates in upstate New York, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. If you would like to volunteer with us as a news anchor or special segment producer please get in touch with our Executive Producer, George, via email at w2xbs77@gmail.com.
Thanks to FortifiedNet.net for the server space!
Thanks to Archive.org for the audio space.
Hello and welcome to the 556th installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short topics episode, the hosts discuss National Preparedness Month, the AMSAT Space Symposium for 2024, Jamboree on the Air, new versions of Pop!_OS and Haiku, Gnome 47 and much more. Thanks for listening and have a great week.
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?
PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1333 - Full Version
Release Date: September 14, 2024
Here is a summary of the news trending This Week in Amateur Radio. This week's edition is anchored by Denny Haight, NZ8D, Chris Perrine, KB2FAF, Dave Wilson, WA2HOY, Don Hulick, K2ATJ, Will Rogers, K5WLR, Joshua Marler, AA4WX, Eric Zittel, KD2RJX, George Bowen, W2XBS, and Jessica Bowen, KC2VWX.
Produced and edited by George Bowen, W2XBS.
Approximate Running Time: 1:29:33
Podcast Download: https://bit.ly/TWIAR1333
Trending headlines in this week's bulletin service
1. TAPR: Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) Calls For Nominations For Board of Directors
2. ACMA: The Australian Communications & Media Authority Issues New Amateur Radio Fees
3. AMSAT: Registration Continues for the 42nd Annual AMSAT Space Symposium & Annual General Meeting
4. AMSAT: AMSAT-DL ERMINAZ Mission Postponed To 2025
5. AMSAT: Updated Software Available for NOAA Polar and Russian Meteor Weather Satellites
6. AMSAT: Satellite Shorts From All Over
7. WIA: New Frontier For Radio Broadcasting Called "Zonecasting"
8. FCC: FCC Adopts New Asymmetric Sideband Rules for HD Radio
9. ARRL: ARRL Defends 902-928 Amateur Radio Band
10. ARRL: Ham Radio Volunteers Serve During Hurricane Francine
11. ARRL: National Preparedness Month Ensuring Family Safety
12. ARRL: Pennsylvania Clubs Plan A Special Centennial Event
13. Museum In Australia Reopens A Telecommunications Exhibit
14. Teenage Canadian Students Gain Licenses After Ham Radio Coursework
15. Solar Researchers Revise Their Latest Solar Storm Assessment
16. Cincinnati Hamfest Seeking Nominations For Honors
17. Longwave Radio Broadcasts To Scheduled To Debut From The Arctic Circle
18. Upcoming RadioSport Contests from the ARRL and Upcoming ARRL Regional Conventions
19. FCC: New FCC regulations grants drone operators spectrum access for navigation
20. BB: Los Angeles Transit Authority fears major revenue loss if FCC approves proposed 900Mhz spectrum plan
21. ARRL: ARRL Utah Section is expanding its emergency communications capabilities
22. ARRL: ARRL VEC Services update during on going services disruption
23. ARRL: Monthly Volunteer Monitoring Report
Plus these Special Features This Week:
* Working Amateur Radio Satellites with Bruce Paige, KK5DO - AMSAT Satellite News
* Foundations of Amateur Radio with Onno Benschop VK6FLAB, will talk about all of the adult fans of amateur radio
* The DX Corner with Bill Salyers, AJ8B with all the latest news on DXpeditions, DX, upcoming Radio Sport contests, and more
* Weekly Propagation Forecast from out solar prognosticator Tadd Cook in Seattle, Washington.
* Will Rogers, K5WLR - A Century Of Amateur Radio - This week, Will tells us about whether it was for public service, or as a challenge worth attacking, transmitting information across ever greater distances is what drove members of the Relay League to organize. In a segment he entitles "The Relay's The Thing."
-----
Website: https://www.twiar.net
X: https://x.com/TWIAR
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/twiari
YouTube: https://bit.ly/TWIARYouTube
RSS News: https://twiar.net/?feed=rss2
Automated (Full): https://twiar.net/TWIARHAM.mp3 (Static file, updated weekly)
Automated (1-hour): https://www.twiar.net/TWIAR1HR.mp3 (Static file, updated weekly)
-----
This Week in Amateur Radio is produced by Community Video Associates in upstate New York, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. If you would like to volunteer with us as a news anchor or special segment producer please get in touch with our Executive Producer, George, via email at w2xbs77@gmail.com.
Thanks to FortifiedNet.net for the server space!
Thanks to Archive.org for the audio space.
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.
Hello and welcome to the 555th installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts discuss the Cloudlog fork known as Wavelog. Topics include download location, installation procedures, basic and advanced configuration, features, feature requests, integrations, quirks and much more. Thanks for listening and have a great week.
In this episode we bring back Rick England, KC6UFT, the designer of the 18650 battery tester. In a previous episode, Rick told us all about the need to test 18650, and other batteries, under load to determine their health. Rick has refined his tester design and shares his experiences and learnings with us on this episode. You will learn all about the proper way to test these popular lithium batteries and plans for making the testers available.
PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1332 - Full Version
Release Date: September 7, 2024
Here is a summary of the news trending This Week in Amateur Radio. This week's edition is anchored by Chris Perrine, KB2FAF, Denny Haight, NZ8D, Dave Wilson, WA2HOY, Don Hulick, K2ATJ, Will Rogers, K5WLR, Marvin Turner, W0MET, Eric Zittel, KD2RJX, William Savacool, K2SAV, Joshua Marler, AA4WX, George Bowen, W2XBS, and Jessica Bowen, KC2VWX.
Produced and edited by George Bowen, W2XBS.
Approximate Running Time: 1:44:53
Podcast Download: https://bit.ly/TWIAR1332
Trending headlines in this week's bulletin service
1. FCC: FCC Rule Grants Drone Operators Spectrum Access For Navigation
2. AMSAT: Japanese Company Takes First Step Toward Removing Space Junk
3. AMSAT: The Starliner Spacecraft Has Started To Emit Strange Noises
4. AMSAT: Halibut Electronics Releases New EggNOGS Kit For Satellite Antennas
5. AMSAT: Satellite Shorts From All Over
6. WIA: Wireless Shimano Derailleurs Subject To Hacking
7. BB: Los Angeles Transit Agency Fears Revenue Hit If FCC Approves Spectrum Plan
8. ARRL: ARRL Utah Section Expanding Emergency Communication Capabilities
9. ARRL: Hams Respond As Hawaii Threatened By Three Major Storms
10. ARRL: September Is National Preparedness Month: Have A Go Kit
11. ARRL: Hawaiian Islands Grid Madness 2024 / Pacificon, Hosting The 2024 ARRL Pacific Division Convention
12. Czech Republic Youth On The Air Adventure Camp Winds Down
13. Incident Command System Adopted By ARES Into Its Traning
14. Patricia Nelson KE0QXD, Silent Key
15. Hams In India Reunite A Man With His Family Who Thought He Was Dead
16. $1 Million Payment Made By ARRL To Ransomware Hackers
17. A Spectrum Of Experience Is Provided By A Childrens Museum
18. MIssissippi Emergency Communicator
19. Faster, More Energy Efficient Operation Promised By New Transistor
20. ARRL: ARRL VEC Services Update During Systems Disruption
21. ARRL: Volunteer Monitoring Program Monthly Report
22. ARRL: Pacificon 2024 Convention Announced
23. ARRL: Upcoming RadioSport Contest Listing and Upcoming Conventions
24. AMSAT: Polaris Dawn is set for a historic launch and first commercial space walk
25. WIA: German Astronomer Johanness Kepler drew sunspots without knowing it
26. ITU: International Telecommunications Union updates its global treaty to enhance radio spectrum use worldwide
27. ARRL: ARRL Club Grants will be awarded in November
28. ARRL: Estate planning for hams - What happens to all your stuff?
29. ARRL: New England Vice Director K9HI presented with signed citation from Massachusetts Governor
30. Memorandum of Understanding is signed by the FCC and the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Plus these Special Features This Week:
* Working Amateur Radio Satellites with Bruce Paige, KK5DO - AMSAT Satellite News - Get an update from AMSAT and what's new with all those amateur satellites in orbit
*Australia's own Onno Benshop, VK6FLAB, and Foundations of Amateur Radio finds Onno Implementing the
KISS, or Keep It Simple Stupid, principle to amateur radio, and takes a look at what happens to a new piece of computer gear when you plug it in
* The DX Corner with Bill Salyers, AJ8B with all the latest news on DXpeditions, DX, upcoming Radio Sport contests, and more
* Weekly Propagation Forecast from the ARRL with Solar Prognosticator Tadd Cook, K7RA in Seattle, Washington
* Our own amateur radio historian, Will Rogers, K5WLR, returns with another edition of A Century Of Amateur Radio. This week, Will takes us back to see how the vacuum tube revolutionized radio, changing it more than any other single invention. This week we take a close up look at the invention of The Audion
-----
Website: https://www.twiar.net
X: https://x.com/TWIAR
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/twiari
YouTube: https://bit.ly/TWIARYouTube
RSS News: https://twiar.net/?feed=rss2
Automated (Full): https://twiar.net/TWIARHAM.mp3 (Static file, updated weekly)
Automated (1-hour): https://www.twiar.net/TWIAR1HR.mp3 (Static file, updated weekly)
-----
This Week in Amateur Radio is produced by Community Video Associates in upstate New York, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. If you would like to volunteer with us as a news anchor or special segment producer please get in touch with our Executive Producer, George, via email at w2xbs77@gmail.com.
Thanks to FortifiedNet.net for the server space!
Thanks to Archive.org for the audio space.
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?
It's time once again for The Weekender. This is our departure into the world of hedonism, random topic excursions, whimsy and (hopefully) knowledge. Thanks for listening and, if you happen to get a chance, feel free to call us or e-mail and send us some feedback. Tell us how we're doing. We'd love to hear from you.
PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1331 - Full Version
Release Date: August 31, 2024
Here is a summary of the news trending This Week in Amateur Radio. This week's edition is anchored by Denny Haight, NZ8D, Dave Wilson, WA2HOY, Don Hulick, K2ATJ, Joshua Marler, AA4WX, Will Rogers, K5WLR, Eric Zittel, KD2RJX, William Savacool, K2SAV, Chris Perrine, KB2FAF, Rich Lawrence, KB2MOB, George Bowen, W2XBS, and Jessica Bowen, KC2VWX.
Produced and edited by George Bowen, W2XBS.
Approximate Running Time: 1:43:50
Podcast Download: https://bit.ly/TWIAR1331
Trending headlines in this week's bulletin service
1. AMSAT: The Indian Space Research Organisation Successfully Launches Satellites
2. AMSAT: SpaceX Transporter-11 Launches 116 Satellites, Including OreSat0.5
3. AMSAT: Polaris Dawn Set For Historic Launch And First Commercial Spacewalk
4. AMSAT: Satellite Shorts From All Over
5. WIA: The Fairy Tale Of 22 YLs And Their Friends
6. WIA: German Astronomer Johannes Kepler Drew Sunspots
7. ITU: International Telecommunications Union Updates Global Treaty To Enhance Radio Spectrum Use
8. ARRL: Resilience Through Amateur Radio For National Preparedness Month
9. ARRL: ARRL Club Grants Will Be Awarded In November
10. ARRL: Estate Planning for Hams (What happens to all your stuff?)
11. ARRL: The U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory Provide Education Access
12. ARRL: New England Division Vice Director Phil Temples, K9HI, Presented Signed Citation From Mass.Governor
13. ARRL: The 25th Anniversary Of Route 66 On The Air Will Have A New Twist This Year
14. ARRL: The League Paid A Hefty Ransom In The Recent Cyberattack. We Bring You Their Press Release
15. A Spectrum Of Experience Is Provided By A Local Childrens Museum
16. Incident Command System Training Adopted By ARES
17. Czech Republic Adventure Had By Youngsters On The Air (YOTA) Camp
18. More Energy Efficient Operation Is Promised By New Faster Transistor
19. Volunteer Patricia Nelson, KE0QXD Trainer, Radio Host SK
20. Memorandum of Understanding Between The FCC And Privacy Commissioner Of Canada
21. Upcoming ARRL regional conventions, and upcoming contests listing
22. RW: Voice of America shutters its Marianas Shortwave transmission sites
23. FCC: FCC proposes modernizing the 3.5 GigaHertz band rules for CB radio service
24. HACK: CanadaArm 2 scores milestone by catching its 50th spacecraft
25. FCC: FCC approves launch of V band satellites for phone access
26. FCC: FCC clears SpaceX to upgrade its first generation Starlink Satellites
27. ARRL: Candidates named for ARRL Director and Vice Director elections
28. ARRL: ARRL IT Security incident report to members
29. ARRL: ARRL expands its online publication archive
30. ARRL: ARRL comments, and opens comment period on proposed changes to the 902-928 megahertz band
Plus these Special Features This Week:
* Working Amateur Radio Satellites with Bruce Paige, KK5DO - AMSAT Satellite News
* Foundations of Amateur Radio with Onno Benschop VK6FLAB, will tell us how to lose more than half of your membership.
* The DX Corner with Bill Salyers, AJ8B with all the latest news on DXpeditions, DX, Radio Sport, upcoming contests, and more..
* Weekly Propagation Forecast from the ARRL
* Will Rogers, K5WLR will be here with another edition of A Century Of Amateur Radio. This week he brings back in time to the nineteen twenties to look at Aerials, Attachments, and Audibility.
-----
Website: https://www.twiar.net
X: https://x.com/TWIAR
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/twiari
YouTube: https://bit.ly/TWIARYouTube
RSS News: https://twiar.net/?feed=rss2
Automated (Full): https://twiar.net/TWIARHAM.mp3 (Static file, updated weekly)
Automated (1-hour): https://www.twiar.net/TWIAR1HR.mp3 (Static file, updated weekly)
-----
This Week in Amateur Radio is produced by Community Video Associates in upstate New York, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. If you would like to volunteer with us as a news anchor or special segment producer please get in touch with our Executive Producer, George, via email at w2xbs77@gmail.com.
Thanks to FortifiedNet.net for the server space!
Thanks to Archive.org for the audio space.
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, cq@vk6flab.com and I look forward to hearing about your adventures.
Hello and welcome to Epiosde 553 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short topics episode, the hosts discuss the recent troubles and resolutions at the ARRL, a RISC-V tablet that runs Ubuntu, the new version of LibreOffice, a Microsoft flaw that breaks things (shocker), and much more. Thanks for listening and have a great week.
In this episode we meet Morten LB0FI, Kjetil LB4FH, Tobias DL3MHT, and Bård (Bob) LB5JJ from the European Ham Radio Show on YouTube. Walt, K4OGO, was not able to make the show this time.
The European Ham Radio show is hosted by Morten and the team talks about many aspects of ham radio on their weekly YouTube show. Topics include radios, antennas, homebrew and a big dose of portable operating. We were invited to join them on their show a few months ago and had such a great time, we wanted to introduce them to our HRWB audience.
We hope you enjoy the discussion of ham radio from a European perspective.
Login
