Category: radio

I hear this question quite a bit. "What's the point of ham radio?" usually tied in with "You know you can just pick up a phone and call someone right?" or "The internet lets you chat across the globe too, you know?"
Yes, I know it's possible to accomplish a task in a seemingly more efficient way, but that's not what makes ham radio interesting. What's the point of sailing, fishing, rock climbing, hiking, gaming, hunting, knitting, auto racing...? There are more efficient methods of travel, attaining food, clothing, etc. So what's the point of any hobby, really? Those who enjoy the hobby will say "it's fun", but that's not a very clear answer because what is fun to one person is boring to another.

With ham radio, like any other hobby, it's a pastime - one that happens to have a lot of electronic underpinnings.

In fact, I liken it to catch-and-release fishing more than chatting or phone calls. Yes, you talk to people, but the majority of hams don’t care about the content of the conversation as much as where the other party is.
In my fishing analogy, I say casting out your lure is like calling out on the radio. "Will I get a bite?" = "Will someone hear me?"

Someone probably will hear you and answer your call. So you respond and find out how well they're able to hear you, where they're from, and perhaps some other information about them. That's like reeling in a fish to measure and weigh them. "Wow! This guy's in the mountains of Nepal!"/"Wow, what a big fish!"
Sometimes the "fish" isn’t very big, the radio contact may be relatively close distance to you, so you say so-long and "cast" again - hoping for bigger fish.
Or maybe a rare fish...
Or a hard-to-catch fish...
Or a relatively famous fish...
Or maybe you want to try fishing with different equipment (bigger, smaller, new technology, relay through a satellite, etc) and see if that helps or hurts what you "reel in". That experimentation is what interests me personally. I'm into making radio contacts with a relatively minimalist (low power) setup from someplace other than home.

It’s a pastime full of opportunities to experiment with radio equipment to see what you can reel in.

Taking things a step further, one of the reasons ham radio creeps into the news cycle from time to time is thanks to ham radio's unique ability to communicate over long distances using no infrastructure at all. There's no infrastructure to be damaged in a natural disaster that would disrupt communications, there's no infrastructure vulnerable to a cyberattack that would knock out the ability to send and receive information - no, amateur radio is a do-it-yourself means of communicating over distances without relying on others to provide all the "in between" links.
So, yes, you can pick up a phone and call someone on the other side of the country (assuming you know their phone number), but that requires you to a) pay for such a service and b) be reliant upon service providers to ensure that link stays available when you need it. Ham radio has no such reliance on others. This is why you see ham radio - old as it may seem - always coming in to fill in the gaps where more modern and sophisticated systems fail.

I recently posted on Facebook for some friends about an incredibly cheap radio out of China. It's the Baofeng UV-5R.
The little dual-band radio has been the source of much consternation among the old guard of amateur radio because of it's cheap construction, low quality display, and some technical problems with the radio (some which make it technically illegal to operate on some frequencies). However, it is 100% legal to operate on the 2m amateur band (144-148MHz). The price of this radio is what makes all shortcomings able to be overlooked. It costs $25 on Amazon with free shipping for Prime customers!

Now, the radio is not a super great radio, but it's a phenomenal starter radio. (Or, as I call the one I keep in my car, a "burner" radio. I can drop it, lose it, or have it stolen and I simply would not care.) If one were to purchase this little capable radio for the mere $25 price tag, one should also get a couple of pieces of kit that should be standard: a better after-market antenna (Option 1 or Option 2) and a USB programming cable in order to program all the frequencies of nearby repeaters using software like CHiRP. All in, the whole kit still comes in around $40 which is still a fraction of the cost of a dual band radio from one of the major amateur radio manufacturers like Icom, Kenwood, or Yaesu.

Study, study
Anyone interested in amateur radio should consider studying for their license before dropping any money on a radio. While the radio is cheap, it's still money wasted if you can't use it because you don't have a license. The student guide's I most often recommend are the Technician study guide by Gordon West, WB6NOA, or the Technician study guide by the ARRL. Once you've studied a little, I recommend taking free online practice tests like HamStudy.org until you're consistently getting 75% or better. There are plenty of other online resources to help you study such as the YouTube series by Dave Casler and Ham College by the AmateurLogic guys.

Testing
Once you've studied, it's time to test. The Technician license is fairly easy enough. It's 35 questions, multiple choice, and the questions and answers are all public knowledge! There's no secret. Your test will be made up of the same questions with the same answer choices that you studied in the book or online. You only need to get 26 of them correct to get a passing score of 75%. Testing can usually be found within a short drive of wherever you live. The ARRL VEC has a huge number of testing locations put on by various local clubs, the W5YI Group also has a large group of test proctoring locations, and then the smallest of the three options is the Laurel VEC. (The cool thing with Laurel is that while there are so few clubs, they offer testing for free and are generally faster than the others in terms of processing your test results and getting you your license - so perhaps worth the drive to find a location!)

So hopefully that helps get you off and running with the cool amateur radio hobby I've enjoyed for quite some time now. I look forward to talking to you on the radio someday!

I posted earlier about my new MountainTopper Radio. They're only being made and sold in small batches so I was never able to get my hands on one until January 2016. When I visited the site and saw they were for sale, I jumped at the opportunity to secure one of the little radios and it arrived a couple of weeks later. I had a business trip to go on so I wasn't able to fully get to know the radio until I got home. After I got home, the following Monday I got on the radio with the manual open on my computer. I got a feel for all the features packed into the limited number of buttons. After a while I really got the hang of it.
The next night (Tuesday) was a NAQCC Weeknight Sprint (a mini 2-hr radio contest) and it was also a night when class was cancelled. The 40m band was in pretty decent condition that night and I easily nabbed 5 different states. At the conclusion of the contest I made a couple more contacts and decided I loved the little radio. I've been using it nightly for the past week, making at least one QRP CW contact each day ...and that's where I've learned something.

It's something I heard guys say over and over again and, like you reading this, I've seen others write about: CW Works.

It's not just some old geezer claiming his tastes/choice mode is superior. What I mean to say is when the bands are great or incredibly noisy, CW still gets through. To modify the slogan "When all else fails... CW". Sure, digital modes get through when conditions are equally rough. (I first learned that late at night during Field Day one year using PSK31. Voice was impossible. It was too noisy and at night 20m usually will not propagate. I couldn't hear anything but there on my computer screen was a host of PSK signals "down in the mud" that the computer was able to identify.)
The "trouble" with digital modes is they require more gear (a computer). For camping/backpacking/portable operations, that's more gear to bring with you and (usually) another power source. CW requires less setup, less favorable band conditions and fundamentally has not changed much since the early days of radio. What surprised me over my week of CW contacts is how the band conditions would change from day to day, but I was still able to make contacts.

As someone deeply interested in education and how the human brain works, Morse Code is extremely fascinating. For the newcomer/outsider it's an unintelligible string of dits and dahs. To the trained ear it's a steady stream of letters, numbers, words and phrases sent with the simplest radio equipment out there. Learning Morse Code can be tricky and, like a diet or exercise, takes dedication and a committed personal desire to want it. When you do finally get the hang of it at whatever speed (most would contend 5wpm is minimum threshold), there is something strangely relaxing from fully utilizing your mental capacity. (I know programmers and mathematicians can attest.) When you're "in the zone" and working CW you're focused on the conversation, it requires mental concentration but is also relaxed. (I'm no runner but I hear endurance runners have a similar feeling.)

Ok, so why does CW work?
A CW signal is just a modulated signal. It's the presence/absence and timing of a carrier. That's it. You don't have to worry about distortion really. You'll either hear that carrier or you won't. The other party is turning it on and off - so long as you can hear something, the intelligence is there. When conditions are bad, when your signal is really, really weak, it might be harder for the other station to hear you but they're still hearing you. With voice you have to be able to hear them well enough to detect the various parts of speech. Anyone that has ever heard a sideband QRP station knows how difficult that is. The poor guy on the other end might be screaming into his microphone but if propagation isn't carrying the signal enough you just won't hear them. With CW, if you can hear something, that's enough to copy them. (Now, whether or not they'll hear you is a matter of your signal strength.)
Taking this concept one step further is why so many QRP guys are CW guys. QRP voice can be endlessly frustrating. When QRP SSB works, it's cool, but more often than not conditions will not permit QRP SSB. When it does work, it's usually really weak. With CW, like I said, it's either there or it's not. With CW, a QRP signal is only one S-unit down from a 599 signal report. That's 1/20th the power used for a still perfectly legible signal! QRP is plenty good enough to work all of North America from my home in Texas. If I were to move up to a full 100W, that's enough to work the world! With SSB, you need some serious antenna gain and a good sized amplifier to reliably work the globe.

So, chalk another one up to the CW believers column. You don't have to believe me. You don't have to love CW. (I'm not a CW purist or a digital mode hater either!) I'm just fascinated that no matter the conditions, CW works.

It's been quite a while since I last made a post but this is one I have to mark the occassion for. For the better part of the past 6 months I've had my eye on the MountainTopper Radio. It's a small QRP CW radio designed by Steve Weber, KD1JV, and sold by LNR Precision. The model I got is the 3-band version. (At the time of this writing there are rumors stirring about an upcoming 5-band version. Since I'm really only active on 40m and 20m, I'll pass on the 5 band model.)

The radio is very small - about the size of a deck of cards. There's no internal antenna tuner or battery. The volume, RF gain, and filter settings are fixed so there's no need for adjustment knobs. Nor is there a tuning knob. Tuning is done by two push buttons (UP and DOWN) that nudge the VFO up or down 50Hz. Holding down the button will change the frequency in 100Hz steps at a rate of 10 steps per second.
The elimination of knobs on the face of the radio allows the radio to pack very small. It's so small in fact, I was moved to get a Micro key from KK5PY. It has to be the smallest paddles I've ever used. To match the small size, the MTR can be powered by a 9V battery or a small 12V LiPo battery pack. Pack in some earbuds, a wire antenna, and a paper logbook and the whole kit fits into a small padded, zippered case ready to go. It's a radio meant for travel! I can't wait to take it on the road with me.
I've been using it to make QRP CW contacts each day for the past week and I'm going to try to get QRP Worked All States on 40m CW. (Paper QSL cards only!)

Hopefully I'll have more posts about this remarkable little radio in the future. To any ham considering purchasing one of these radios, I'm highly, highly impressed and absolutely love the compact size and performance of the radio. I can't recommend it enough. (Also I still have my Elecraft KX1, but the MTR is smaller and less to fuss with!)

In Fall 2014, I setup my first Raspberry Pi WebSDR receiver for the 40m amateur radio band. In late July 2015, the Raspberry Pi stopped working at all. Once I hooked a monitor up to it, I learned the SD card had been corrupted. I'm now in the process of rebuilding the receiver and will be updating the steps required to setup this project on my project page.
The receiver hardware itself is fine and operational, it is only the WebSDR host (Raspberry Pi) that is out of commission.

For now the WebSDR and ISS iGate must connect to my home network via a wireless link from my ham shack behind my house. I'm in the process of digging a trench to run a network connection out to the shack so I don't have to wrestle with spotty wifi coverage. I'm going to be running fiber optic for the main run for reason I'll explain that in an upcoming post.