What use is an F-call?

What use is an F-call? This podcast started life in 2011 when I was asked to record a story I shared during the production of the weekly amateur radio news in Western Australia. I'd been a licensed radio amateur, or ham, for a few months and found myself surrounded by people who perceived the basic Australian foundation amateur licence wasn't worth anything. What use is an F-call? is my response to that sentiment. It's produced weekly. In 2015 after long deliberation it was renamed to Foundations of Amateur Radio so people outside Australia might also enjoy the experience. Although most of the items stand alone, I'd recommend that you start at the beginning in 2011 and listen in sequence. Enjoy. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? It seems that there is a disease within the amateur radio community. It's spreading and seems to be contagious. There doesn't seem to be a cure and it seems to be pretty virulent. Symptoms include listlessness, deafness, stubbornness and apathy. Community members have aptly named it as L.A.S. or Lead Arse Syndrome. I receive a regular stream of emails and phone calls from fellow amateurs who share with me their latest idea or plan for an activity in the hobby. It's often a group activity, a plan to do something with the wider community, or a group of people with a common interest. It might be an outing, a meeting, a build-day, an activation, a web-site or some or other thing. The conversation often includes the question: "Do you think it's a good idea?" Often I'll say: "Absolutely, great, wonderful." Sometimes I'll suggest alternatives or point at an existing activity that is already underway. After that the response from the other person is often: "Well, I'll leave it with you." Fortunately I'm made of sterner stuff, having only a few other commitments in this community and I'll often suggest that they take on the project and I'll do whatever I can to support them. I can almost guarantee that's the very last I hear of the activity. So, what is it that stops people from making their idea into reality? Are they dense, lazy or is their idea wrong? No. It's that they lack the confidence to stick their neck out and do something, anything. You might wonder what this has to do with L.A.S. or Lead Arse Syndrome. It's simple. The rest of the community doesn't particularly care one way or the other. They might respond or not, often not; commit to something, or they might not, they might say they're coming, but don't show, they might start an activity but never finish it, they might participate for an hour during a 24 hour contest, but there is no commitment. I know, I should be grateful that they spend the hour, or tell me that their pet parrot died and they cannot attend. But frankly, I'm not. I think that this lack of participation, lack of engagement, lack of commitment is embarrassing. It's not community minded, it's not encouraging to new entrants and it sets a very bad example to the community. I understand that circumstances change and that people have commitments outside the hobby. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about an advanced level of apathy that infuses others and has them give up on their idea before they begin. I'd rather be surrounded by those who think that this is a fun hobby with stuff to learn, people to meet, things to do and places to go. Of course, if you're one of the few with an idea, then I salute you. Hold your head high, scream your idea from the rooftops, share it with the active community and get on with it. Unfortunately there is one of me and many of you. I'm happy to be your sounding board, but I've not yet figured out how to have more than 24 hours in a day. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? When you make contacts around the world with other amateurs the traditional way of confirming a contact is with a QSL card. It's a postcard-like affair that has the details of the station, and if all is well, the details of the contact between their station and yours. Traditionally if you want a QSL card, you'd go to your local post office and buy an International Reply-paid Coupon or IRC, but increasingly this has become more and more difficult, to the point where many post offices have no idea what you're talking about and will deny any existence of an IRC. Anyway, if you did manage to secure an IRC, you'd put your card and an IRC in an envelope and send it off to the remote station and hope that they'd send you back a card using the IRC as a way to pay for their stamp. In effect you're using the postal service to buy stamps for the other station. There is another hybrid version of confirming a contact using QSL cards, the Online QSL Request Service or OQRS. It's an online mechanism where instead of sending an IRC in an envelope and dealing with the post office, you send cold hard cash - via payment, like PayPal - to the other station and they send you a card, either in the mail, or via the QSL bureau. Note that often the QSL bureau option is free. You use OQRS to request the card, but the delivery is free, so no cash involved. I should mention that online-only versions of QSL-cards have also sprung up left right and centre. The two most trusted ones are Logbook Of The World, also knows as LOTW and eQSL. Both these services allow you to upload your contact log and when the other station does that as well, matching log entries result in a confirmed contact. If you're a fiend for pretty QSL cards, you don't need to compromise, online, offline or in-between. You can still get your contact confirmed. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? Recently I witnessed a discussion about callsigns. As you know, your amateur callsign is akin to your personal on-air identity. It's the thing that distinguishes your station from all the other stations on the globe. My callsign was assigned to me randomly, it was intended as a temporary stepping stone to a higher license, but over time I was distracted by all the things I could do as a Foundation Class amateur and my callsign now feels like "me". The discussion was about the re-issuing of callsigns. In Australia, if you don't renew your callsign, after a period of time, it becomes available to be re-issued to another amateur. This allows people to obtain that one particular call that they feel represents them. Some amateurs have the same callsign for many years. It's their identity, it's the thing they used in contests, camp-outs, chats and the rest of their amateur life. When an active, well respected amateur relinquishes their call, often when they become a silent key, there are amateurs who feel that this call should not be re-issued. The practice is different across the globe. In some countries, a callsign is for life, though it's unclear what happens when an amateur becomes silent. Likely there are places where the call becomes available, and in other places it doesn't. In Australia we have calls that come with two letters, VK6YS, Wally, or VK6AS, Andrew are examples of that. In total there are 26 times 26 different options, that is, 676 different two letter callsigns per call area. If we were to lock up each deserving two-letter callsign, we'd run out of two letter calls. While we're chopping down this idea, how would we decide who is deserving and what criteria would we use? If we ever get a single letter callsign, there would be 26 different callsigns. We'd run out even faster. There was much written about retaining and protecting two letter callsigns, but I'm sure I've shown that this is not a sustainable idea. I've seen, heard and read much about amateur radio since I joined the community. There is much rubbish among the gems. Retaining two-letter callsigns for ever is an example of rubbish. I wish those amateurs who want to protect their hobby went back to inventing, back to innovating, back to trying, testing, playing and having fun, rather than attempting to retain the racist, sexist, 1950's that they seem to think represents the pinnacle of Amateur Radio. And if you want to honour a callsign for a mate, then record their history, tell their stories, share their exploits, emulate their kindness and encouragement. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? We are part of an amazing hobby where inventiveness, inquiry and exploration is part and parcel of the thing we do. It's that spirit that got me interested in this hobby and fortunately I have enough friends in the hobby who share that view. Unfortunately, this hobby seems to also attract a group of nay-sayers, people who are always denigrating others, starting from the perspective of saying No, before asking How? Let's call them the whingers. These are the ones who complain about the ineffectiveness of the WIA, the ones who complain that when the license fee goes down, jump up and down for a refund of their five year payment which they made to save money in case the fees went up. These are the ones who want to quarantine callsigns for "deserving amateurs" but have several and want to have a particular callsign and can't wait until the holder becomes a silent key. The ones who say that F-calls should not be allowed on air, or should have their license expired automatically after 12 months because they must upgrade, the ones who tell people off on air, complain about how a contest is run, or want to continue to submit their contest logs on paper. I could go on, but it's depressing and this is a fun hobby. To all those whingers I say, get real. Stand up, be an amateur and get with the times. It used to be that you were in the forefront of exploration, but now you're just a whinging, whining old man. Join in or get out. To the rest of us, I encourage you to call out these whiners and point out to them that their complaints are misguided at best and downright destructive and malicious at worst. This is a hobby. You're supposed to have fun, laugh, make merry, enjoy the community, learn, explore, and lead the way. Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. I'm Onno VK6FLAB.

What use is an F-call? I'm a child of my time and my perspective is the result of input from fellow amateurs. I'm often in the group of amateurs who would rather buy than build, rather get something done, than do it yourself. The black box brigade if you like. The same is true for the antennas I use. I've been struggling with some verticals on the back of my car for months. I've got it working, mostly, but it was a lot of stuffing around. In the end, I added a black box, in the form of a tuner to make it work, sort of. The radio clubs I associate with have towers and multi-element beams, there are antenna farms, rotators, switch boxes, amplifiers and the like, all far removed from a simple set-up. Most of these are purchased and put together, rather than designed and built. During the week I spent some time with the other side of radio. A simple fishing pole with a string of wire, sitting on a groin pointed into the ocean, picking off signals left and right. Until now I've been approaching this along the lines of "get the antenna that works, make contacts, rinse and repeat". Sitting on the groin in the warm sun it occurred to me that there is nothing wrong with that idea, but that I was missing out on the journey along the way. I've been looking at my antenna problem as an annoyance, preventing me from getting on air, and while it did annoy me, it also taught me lots about vertical antenna design, about inductance, reactance, impedance and more. I like shiny new things, radios, computers, antennas and all the rest of it, but I've come to the realisation that there can also be a journey along the way. I'm not sure it's smelling roses, let's call it, enjoy the electrons. It remains to be seen if that translates into me making wacky antenna designs or not, but one thing I learned is not to be afraid of trying anymore. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? When you start in Amateur Radio you'll come across the problem of rolling up coax and rope. If it goes the way it went for me, you'll be doing what you always did, that is, winding up the coax on your arm until someone stops you and tells you that you're doing it wrong. Then you're likely to be told about rolling out the coax into a straight line and when you want to take it home after a field-day, you'll either be rolling it onto a roll, or physically hand-over-hand be rolling the coax into a circle. This is a regular pain in the Alpha. I managed to seek some advice from people who do this for a living. Film crews and audio technicians have to roll up cable on a regular basis and they don't do anything like I was told. Head on over to YouTube and search for "How to Properly Roll Cable". You'll come across a 1 minute 4 second video by Randy Coppinger. He shows you the Over-Under technique and once you've mastered that you'll never twist coax again and your coax won't get damaged when you unroll it. You can use the same technique for power leads, for garden hoses and in some cases rope. For many of the thin ropes you might use as guy wires for temporary antennas you might want to look for a butterfly coil. There are lots of videos around, but the one that seems to explain it simply is the one by Joe Kuster, "How to Butterfly Coil a Slackline or Rope". These two techniques, Over-Under and Butterfly Coil will make your coax and rope last much longer and you'll spend many hours less untangling the mess or replacing kinked coax. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? I've talked in the past about the community spirit that is embodied by Amateur Radio. Yes, I know there are several not very nice people around, some even brag about it, but by enlarge, that's absolutely not the case. I had the opportunity to use an antenna from a friend over a long weekend recently. He's building a tower at his QTH and had a spare Buddipole available that he handed to me while I was having problems getting my mobile verticals to work. It made me think about all the other things that I've been able to do thanks to friends I've made in Amateur Radio. One went on holidays for several months and wanted to make sure that I felt comfortable warming his antennas in his absence. Another brought along his multi-band yagi and helped me configure my hand-held for satellite operation. Another helped set-up contacts with the International Space Station early on in my Amateur career. I've had countless antennas given to me and loaned to me. I've used people's stations and portable gear. Had use of their camping equipment, generators, tents, beds, contesting hardware, computers, radios and tools. I've been able to bring my antennas to friends and test them using their equipment, had advice and assistance when building my station, had replacement bits shipped to me overnight and the list just goes on. I hope that I've been able to return the favour to all those amateurs who've helped me get to where I am and I hope I'll continue to be able to help out as this wonderful hobby evolves. Every now and then something happens that makes you remember all those amazing things. I hope your friends are as helpful as the ones I've found. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? Recently I had the opportunity to participate in a contest that was specifically set-up for QRP. That is, 5 Watts or less. There was an hour for digital modes, including Morse, but I don't yet speak that, so I sat tight for the second hour, for phone. This particular contest was a single band only contest, 80m. When I planned for the contest, I set my watch wrong by an hour, so I almost didn't make it, but fortunately my XYL queried my delayed departure and I was out the door in the nick of time. I headed out to the beach, only to be confronted with S8 noise from the local housing estate, so I retreated rapidly back into the bush and found myself a lovely little nook where I could park the car without causing any disruption and start twiddling the dial. I immediately learned that my vertical was very, very narrow in bandwidth, that is, there was a limited range of frequencies I could use which curtailed the activities somewhat. Undeterred I hunted up and down the workable range, heard lots of stations and even made one contact. I almost tickled the eardrum of a station on the other side of the country, but he was being bombarded by other noise makers, so that didn't eventuate. I got my ear drums belted by some locals who hadn't heard that it was a QRP contest, but all in all, there was lots of fun to be had. My take home was that I should prepare better. I should have scouted a location earlier, used a more suitable antenna and considered if the locals would be pulling out of a side-road, shining their headlights on me parked in the bush on a continuous rotation. The contest was easy to do, reminded me that prior planning prevents piss poor performance and that I should really think about a better way to log contacts on the road in a contest situation. So, every outing is a learning opportunity. If you don't think back about the experience, how do you go about learning from it? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? If you're into contesting, you're likely to have heard of a thing called the Super Check Partial list and if you haven't then you should. It's a simple thing, maintained by Stu, K6TU, it contains a rolling list of the callsigns of all the stations that appeared in a minimum of 6 contest logs as a worked station over the past two years. This means several things. First of all, it means that you need to make contacts. Then each of your contacts needs to submit their log and it has to happen on a regular basis. If all that works, you end up with a text file that has some 43000 callsigns in it. This is a useful tool if you have logging software that can use the list to do partial matches on callsigns. If your callsign is only partially heard, lets say the other station only hears the LAB out of the whole call, VK6FLAB, it might return two or three hits and that might be enough to narrow down your whole callsign. So, instead of the backwards and forwards of exchanging letters, the other station might be able to give you a contest number in one hit. If you're into contesting, that's a big deal. But it's not just for contesting. If you're into DXing, it might also help you, since the Super Check Partial list is commonly used in day to day DX operation, so you might find yourself with a brand new country on your DXCC because you're actively contesting, making contacts and appearing in other people's logs. Now for the catch. This only works if you actually submit your log to Stu, so every time you do a contest, take an extra moment to also submit your log to the Super Check Partial robot lovingly processing your logfile via email. The address is logs@supercheckpartial.com Stu mentions that VK and ZL are severely under represented, so put your log into the system and reap the rewards. Super Check Partial, a free service by another volunteer radio amateur like you. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? If you're new to Amateur Radio like I am, it's easy to turn on your radio, set it up to key your local repeater and call CQ. After the first time it's a trivial matter that you might take for granted. The repeater just sits there on frequency, making communication possible between you and the rest of the Amateur Community. In many ways it's like turning on your mobile phone and dialling a number and talking to someone. When people ask me what the difference is between Amateur Radio and Community Radio, I often jest that in Community Radio you come into the studio, sit behind the microphone, press the red button and talk. Amateur Radio is exactly the same, but you also need to bring the red button. Repeaters are like that. Unless you've been personally involved, it's just a case of pressing the button. Of course that's not actually what happens. Often a group gets together, spit-balling ideas, coming up with a plan, finding money, equipment, support and the like. Then there is the logistics of obtaining a mast or using an existing one, finding bricks, concrete, roofing, batteries, solar panels, radios, antennas, cavities, coax, connectors, a license, perhaps an internet connection, getting all this to site, having helpers and resources to build the repeater hut, cranes, bob-cats, concrete mixers, terminating the coax, erecting the mast, installing guy wires, running coax up the mast, attaching antennas, tuning the thing, testing it, programming the controller, programming the radio, etc. etc. The list just gets longer and longer the more you think about. And, this is done by people like you. People who gave of their free time, who saw a need and using their collective skills and effort made it possible for you to key up your local repeater. Of course, then there's the linking of repeaters, internet connectivity, news relays, time-outs, DTMF controllers, lightning strikes, insect infestations, thieves and vandals. It never ends. So, when you next key up your repeater, think about that. And when there's a busy-bee in your local area, consider sharing some of your resources. I'm Onno VK6FLAB.

What use is an F-call? Recently I talked about a digital mode that had the ability to give you an estimated gain of 13dB over Analogue FM. It's the equivalent of gaining more than 2 S-points or like turning up your transmitter power from 10 Watts to 200 Watts. Of course, the receiver at the other end doesn't all of a sudden see their S-meter go up and neither does the power draw from your transmitter spike. The actual transmitted power is still the same and the actual received power is also the same. What's going on for this magic to happen? If you've ever listened to Morse code, not to understand it, I'm not there yet either, but just to hear it, you'll notice that you can detect individual dits and dahs at a very low signal level, much lower than it would be possible to hear an SSB signal in the same environment. The reason that happens is because your ear only needs to detect the presence or absence of a tone. Once you can hear the tone, you can work out how long each tone is and then your brain can decode a dit or a dah. Do that enough and you can decode a letter, then a word, then a sentence. So, under Morse conditions there are two basic variables, a tone or not and the length of that tone. If you had a great filter you could make it possible to filter out all but the wanted signal, making it possible to hear even weaker signals. What we're really talking about here is something called a signal to noise ratio. That is, the difference between the background noise, coming from the atmosphere, the neighbours and the radio itself, and the signal, or the Morse code you're trying to detect. The simpler the signal, the easier it is to hear. Of course there are limitations. You can only key so fast, your radio can only key on and off so fast, etc. What if you could key your radio differently? What if you used multiple tones, could you get the same effect? If you look at JT65, a weak signal digital mode, originally designed to do Earth-Moon-Earth communications, but now widely in use on HF, it does exactly that. Instead of on and off, it uses 65 tones to encode information. It uses a whole lot of mathematics, error correction and the like to ensure that each of these tones is decoded correctly and the message is either conveyed entirely, or ignored. Doing this allows JT65 to work in an environment where the noise is higher than the signal. And get this, the performance is entirely dependent on the software decoder in the receiver. What that means is that as we figure out how to improve software signal processing, the performance of JT65 will get better. The rabbit hole goes deep when you start digging and I can assure you, this just scratches the surface. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? Operating from your shack is a different experience from operating in another station. It's a completely different experience again if you operate your station portable. At first glance, what's the problem, you pack your radio into a bag, travel to the destination and start operating. If you spend a little more time, you'll soon realise that you'll need to take many other variables into consideration. Things like power, coax, structures for your antenna, antennas, operating position and the like. Let's start with power. Do you have access to mains power where you'll be operating, or will you need to bring a generator, or do you have batteries? If you have batteries, how will you charge them? Are the batteries going to last for the whole operation? How do you know? Is any of the power system going to generate noise on HF? Did you actually test it? What are you going to do about grounding, what about fuel, fire safety, fuses, etc.? I could spend the next 40 minutes going through a list with caveats, gotchas and lessons learned, but ultimately, this needs to be your experience, so, before you go portable, sit down at your current station, happy and dry, and have a look around at all the things that go into the station running smoothly. Now imagine sitting on a desert island and getting your signal out. Make a list, in addition to recording what you're bringing, if there are more than one of you going on the outing, who's bringing it? Also include where an item currently is, include what its status is, for example, does it need a spare battery, or recharging, or repairing. I've now been portable more times than I can count and while it gets easier with time, I can guarantee you that I'll be sitting at my station, looking around for a thing that I forgot. Hopefully it won't be mission critical. Before I forget, resist the urge to bring your whole shack. The car isn't big enough. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? Recently I spoke about digital voice communications. I made mention of the CODEC2 project being developed by Dave Rowe, VK5DGR. I also made reference of the kinds of things that digital voice improves, battery life, channel separation and bandwidth. One of the things I didn't mention, mainly because I still had to learn what it meant, is that CODEC2 has an estimated 13dB gain over Analogue FM. To explain what that actually means, you might recall that an S-point is 6dB, that means that if you use CODEC2, you gain more than two S-points, that's a little like turning up the transmitter power from 10 Watts to 200 Watts. If you look at it another way, if you have a Yagi and you install the same Yagi next to it, and connect it up properly, you've doubled the power and gained 3dB. If you do that again, you have 4 antennas and 6dB, if you do it again, you have 8 antennas and 9dB, again, 16 antennas or 12dB gain. So, the performance that we're talking about is something that you can either visualise as turning up the power from 10 Watts to 200 Watts, or using an antenna array with 16 antennas. So what is this magic thing called CODEC2? Well, as I said previously, a CODEC is a piece of software that encodes and decodes stuff. An example that you might be more familiar with is an MP3 file. You open your sound file, and save it as an MP3. The new file is much smaller but it retains most of the fidelity of the original when you play it back. The same is true for other things in use. Your mobile phone uses a GSM CODEC to make your voice travel across the airwaves as bits, rather than raw audio, like the old analogue phones we used to have. The aim of all of this is to reduce data use, to increase availability of channels and to deal with error correction. CODEC2 does all that, for us, here, in Amateur Radio Land, and of course, it can also be used in the rest of the world, for example for mobile phone communications, making it possible to use less power to transmit the same signal and thus use less battery, making your phone last longer. I'm looking forward to a CODEC2 mode on my radio to go with the AM, FM and SSB modes already there. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? During the week I had the opportunity to hear several people use a radio in day-to-day communications. In this particular instance it was a water taxi speaking to their base. They were using their own frequency and essentially used it to coordinate their activities across their coverage area. Listening with an Amateur ear, if there is such a thing, I noticed that there was a lot of back-and-forth, missed communications and misunderstandings. We take for granted, once we've learned, that there is a sequence in successful radio communications. Consistency, brevity, simple vocabulary, microphone handling, antenna placement, hand-held use and the like. It's not the first time I've noticed that. I wondered if there was a way that we as amateurs can actually extend our wings beyond our hobby and share some procedural skills that we almost take for granted. We often lament that Amateur Radio is declining in it's scope, size and community involvement. Perhaps radio skills are something that we might share around. Wouldn't it be great if we could share our airwaves with others who also know how to communicate on air? I know I'll be monitoring some commercial frequencies from now on to see if there are things that I could do as an Amateur to help make radio communications more reliable and less stressful for the various users of the radio spectrum. Perhaps it could be a new activity to add to the wide range that Amateur Radio represents. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? As you might recall, I've been struggling to get an antenna installed on my car. It's been a process that started seven months ago, resulted in the purchase of four single band antennas and finally the purchase of an antenna tuner. I could spend hours discussing the things that were recommended, tried and tested, but I won't. It's a sorry tale that I'll share with you over a beer or six one day. On the first day that everything "worked", and I use the term loosely, since it's not been long enough yet to compare the performance of the antennas to my squid-pole solution and other antennas I've used over the years; on that first day I spoke to about six different stations scattered around me, at varying distance, from less than 5km away to 700km away. During that time I was parked up in front of a friends house and after a contact we'd position the car in a different direction to see what the impact of that change might be. Since this was my first contact with this setup, we kept the movement to the four directions of the compass, North, East, South and West. Generally speaking, there was a difference for some contacts, depending on which way the car was pointing. The difference could be as much as two S-points, that's 12dB difference, which is a big deal. You might recall that this is similar to the difference between an F-call using 10 Watts and a Standard Call using 100 Watts. Without actually measuring, since this was a rough-and-ready check, my car, with the antenna mounted on the boot has a better performance when the nose of the car is pointing at the remote station. Incidentally, the side and the rear seem to perform similarly, that is, there is no particular difference if the station is off the side or the rear. As I said, this is a rough-and-ready check. I'm going to do the same test several more times, and with the cooperation of a friendly remote station, hopefully add some data points between the four directions of the wind, because it's likely that there are weird artifacts that distort the radiation pattern and it might just be that if you point the car to the north-east, you get another s-point, thanks to the vagaries of the build of my particular car. In the end, I plan to log my direction, the S-point reading and with that I'll be able to draw the radiation pattern that my car represents and in turn I'll be able to use that to figure out which way to point when I'm working the grey-line or when I absolutely have to make a contact with a rare DX station. A mobile rotator on four wheels. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? Amateur Radio is about communication as much as anything else. The whole idea is to get a message from one place to another. This hobby attracts people from all walks of life, people who are physicists, truck drivers, pastry chefs, accountants and dentists and everything else under the sun. One thing is common among us is, we're all Hams. It's not unusual to see people from completely different walks of life bond over a beer and a soldering iron. With the recipe set, you'd imagine that while people have different outlooks, they'd come back to the single thing that they love, radio. Now that I've been an amateur for a while, the cracks in this potentially idyllic view are beginning to appear. There is bickering, abuse, insults and confrontation. We pitch people against each other, state against state, club against club, brand against brand, license against license, achievement against achievement. While humankind is a warmongering species, I am saddened that this is carried on within our small community. We have the potential to be a "League of Extraordinary Gentleman" and my apologies to the females among us, but instead we're a "Rabble of noisy, angry men". Why is it that when a fellow amateur reveals that they don't know something, they are jumped on, rather than supported and educated? Why is it that we work as adversaries, rather than a cooperative? Why is it that we don't rise above the noise and have fun, laugh, enjoy our hobby and make friends. Why are we not civil to each other when things go wrong or mistakes are made? The original Amateur Code written by Paul W9EEA back in 1928 still applies today: The Radio Amateur is CONSIDERATE...never knowingly operates in such a way as to lessen the pleasure of others. LOYAL...offers loyalty, encouragement and support to other amateurs [..] PROGRESSIVE...with knowledge abreast of science, a well-built and efficient station and operation above reproach. FRIENDLY...slow and patient operating when requested; friendly advice and counsel to the beginner; kindly assistance, cooperation and consideration for the interests of others. These are the hallmarks of the amateur spirit. BALANCED...radio is an avocation, never interfering with duties owed to family, job, school or community. PATRIOTIC...station and skill always ready for service to country and community. So, are you an Amateur or not? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? Over the years that I've been an amateur I've spent many hours discussing the ins- and outs of being an amateur. I've talked about what you're allowed to do, where the LCD falls short, what things you can build, what activities you can participate in and where to find and learn more about this wonderful hobby called Amateur Radio. I've received emails from many different people, amateurs and non-amateurs alike, each sharing with me their take on what excites them, what mistakes I made, or what things I should investigate next. An increasing theme over the past few years is that I should admonish amateurs for their misbehavior, that I should be telling people off for doing things that fall outside their license condition. A recurring theme is the idea that there are F-calls who are using more than their allocated 10 Watts of power. It's getting to the point where a growing group of amateurs are expecting me to become an amateur radio police officer and that I should be policing the misdeeds of "my F-calls". Seriously? First of all, they're not "my F-calls". I have no more control over them than they have over me. Second, I'm not qualified to assert one way or another that another amateur is breaking the rules. We have a government body specifically for the task, the ACMA. Third, F-calls breaking the rules? Really? And they're following the lead from who? So, no, I'm not a police officer, I'll not be telling F-calls or anyone else off for exceeding their license condition. If they think it's fine to break the rules, that's their problem. If you think that it's a problem that someone is exceeding their conditions you should tell the ACMA. If you don't think it's a problem big enough to warrant doing that, why are you telling me about it? So, no more "this amateur did this and it's wrong". If you want me to talk about learning to find out if you're breaking the rules, or if you want it to be a training opportunity, by all means, keep the emails coming, but I'm not your cop, not today and not until such time as I accept a job at the ACMA. Finally, if you are knowingly breaking the rules, you really should ask yourself why it is that you are doing this. If you need more power, get a higher license. If you are already using the highest power available, then become a member of the WIA and canvas your local politician. The only thing that has ever changed the world is a small group of individuals making a concerted effort. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? Last week I spent a little time talking about lightning. I discussed how lightning can affect many different things, not just by being a direct hit, but by having a nearby hit, that is, something that is in some way electrically connected to you or your station. We all know that the ground has some level of conductivity, just like air does - the lightning that you see during a thunderstorm is the visualisation of the conductivity of air. In the earth, you don't really see it that clearly, but the same thing happens. Conductivity is measured in Siemens per Meter. Deionised water has a conductivity of about 5.5 micro Siemens per meter, sea water is about 5 Siemens per meter, so, sea water is approximately a million times more conductive than deionised water. Since Siemens is a measure of conductivity and Ohms a measure of resistance, you can convert one into the other as their inverse. A resistor made of 1 cm of seawater at 20C has a resistance of 2 milli Ohm. Ground conductivity is in the order of 1000 times worse than sea water and is typically expressed in milli Siemens per meter. As we're talking about the ground, the conductivity is seasonal, since rain comes and goes, and to add to the mix, this conductivity is frequency dependent. So, In Australia, for a frequency up to 30 kHz, the conductivity varies from 1 to 10 milli Siemens per meter, or 1 cm of ground has a varying resistance between 1 and 10 Ohm. If you look at 1MHz, the conductivity varies much more, from 2 to 50 milli Siemens per meter, depending on where you are, how far you are from the ocean, a river or lake or what the ground is made up of. Back to lightning. Imagine an earth stake next to your shack for your radio and another stake next to your antenna. In a circuit diagram, both of them would show as being connected to earth and you could just look at that and think that all was well with the world. Both are earthed, so you're safe. Unfortunately that's not the case. If you drew the circuit diagram properly there would be a resistor between the two earth stakes. There would also be a conductor, namely your coax between the radio and the antenna. So you have a path of low resistance, the coax, and a parallel path of high resistance, something like 10 kOhm for 10m, between the earth stakes. No points for guessing which one the lightning will take. But the coax is capable of handling that, isn't it? If you have coax rated at 3kV, like RG213, a direct lightning strike will only exceed it's capacity by a million times. So, no, coax is not a good earth path. As an exercise, you can use 300kA as the current for a direct lightning strike. Based on the ground conductivity of 10 milli Siemens per meter, you can work out how far lightning needs to be in order for your RG213 to survive if your earth stakes are 10m apart and not bonded. So the lesson is, bond all of your earth stakes together. Connect the coax shield to the tower and create a Single Point Ground by connecting them all together. There are several online lightning maps showing real-time lightning activity which can also help. Weatherzone incorporates the Bureau of Meteorology Radar images and superimposed lightning strikes. Of course you can also use lightning data to check to see what the noise level might be like at a DX station you're trying to work. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

What use is an F-call? During the week we were subjected to some unusual lightning activity. There was lots to go around and it raises the issue on what to do when lightning is nearby. The obvious comments about disconnecting your radio from your antenna is pretty common knowledge, but there are other things that might happen that you hadn't thought about. Lightning is an electrostatic discharge, and strangely enough, RF is closely related, in that your antenna system converts electric energy into voltages that you then insert into your radio. So, lightning will just as easily affect your antenna as it does your radio. We have a basic understanding that a lightning strike directly into the radio is a good way to let out the magic smoke and a comment should be made that you don't need lightning for this to happen; just static electricity in the air is enough to build up enough charge for your radio to die. It's not uncommon to see sparks between the center and shield on an antenna connector while thunderstorms are about. While all this is going on, I'd also like to point out that the feed-line can be affected by lightning and it doesn't have to be a direct strike. Your coax may be heated up, a short might happen, a connector might be affected and if you have lightning arrestors, they might be fused. The point of this is that even if you disconnected your antenna from your radio to protect it, the rest of the system might be affected and it pays to check the state of your antennas and feed-lines before resuming the operation of your station. If you don't, you may find yourself in a situation where your radio survived the lightning storm, only to die when you put full power into your antenna system. Finally, lightning doesn't only have to come from above. If you are near a strike, the earth might come up and bite your hardware from the other end, it's called earth potential rise or EPR and it can kill. The killer isn't that there is a high potential, it's that there is a difference in potential. From the impact point of lightning, potential is dissipated in all directions. As the distance from the impact point increases, the potential decreases. Imagine a field where lightning strikes. Cows who are facing the lightning will have a different potential between their fore and rear legs, causing a current to flow through their bodies, including the heart. This is enough to kill. A cow standing side on has the same effect, but the distance is the width of the cow, not it's length, so the currents are less. This same phenomenon happens within your station. The earthing system, the radio, power supply and the like. So, lightning, it can ruin your day if it hits directly, but you should pay attention to it even if it didn't hit you. I'm Onno VK6FLAB