Getting into ham radio

Well, at the start of the last solar cycle, when I was becoming a lot more active in radio, someone in the US, quite rightly, said to me: 'it's a great time to come into the hobby!'

And if you are arriving at this blog, curious as to whether amateur radio is for you, we're at that improving phase of the solar cycle yet again.

Today's sun.  More sunspots means more fun on the ham radio bands!  Image: NASA/SDO.

 

Ham radio can appear to be limited to shouting down a microphone and having a really boring conversation with someone you've never met, and isn't interested in what you are.  And, sometimes, it is like that!

But there are an almost limitless set of possibilities and interest avenues to follow, once you decide to get involved.  I really encourage you to do so!  Computing and digital communications are now all the rage, and of particular interest to younger age groups.  They offer the daily-realised potential of global communications at low power, and with less-than-perfect antennas.

And remember: those adverts in magazines, which give you the impression you need a mortgage to come into the hobby, are to be ignored!  I started the hobby by spending about £350 on a good, second-hand transceiver, £100 on a matching unit, and some wire. You can almost certainly do even better than that.

Back in early 2011. I started with a copper-tube 28MHz dipole, and a very low multiband wire dipole beneath it.  Very far from ideal, though the environment was very good, and I had a lot of fun with it!

Here's what you can do with just a triangular piece of wire (a 'delta loop' antenna), strung up on your house at the moment, up at the upper reaches of HF, at 28MH.  You can of course do the same, or better, with a copper tube dipole, just like I had all those years ago!

 

 

Blog prompts IARU engagement

Following my recent post concerning IARU's aspirations for the future, I was interested to receive contact from a IARU R1 representative by e-mail.

If, as it seems, someone was trying to cause trouble between myself and IARU by advising them of my blogpost, then they didn't have the required effect - at all.

 

Instead, I've been pleased to find that, at least in the person who contacted me, an open and transparent approach that accepted some of the criticism that I levelled at IARU.  They've even gone as far as to say that they want to take some of my, admittedly pretty simple ideas forward for further development.

A few key things have come out of the so-far brief but positive discussion, which I'll try to summarise.

IARU's aspirations of how it wants amateur radio to be were written in a present tense in its recent report.

So the aspiration 'we want ham radio to be inclusive', for example, was written as though this is already true: 'ham radio is inclusive'.

As IARU have written it, it can be seen as a form of denial of the problems we face in radio, even though, as I've accepted, that was not the intention.  

I've suggested that IARU should clear-up the confusion and, moreover, show it is up to the task of looking at ourselves squarely in the mirror by accepting the problems we have. Most of these are a real threat to the future of amateur radio, if not addressed.

I thought it would be a good idea to re-write the aspirations in the following manner: 'Amateur radio has a number of problems: a lack of inclusivity amongst gender, age and ethnic backgrounds.  IARU wants to help change this, quickly'.

I think that, written in this way, the IARU statements gain a much greater degree of honesty, which can only assist it get to where it - and the ham radio community - wants to be, because the problem is properly defined from the outset.

I've also suggested that IARU is not very well understood by a typical amateur radio operator, and that a key aim of IARU should be to address this. 

I'm persuaded that IARU has an important role to play, and should work a lot harder to make us all aware of what this role, in practice, is.  If it doesn't do this, it could lead to a lax approach to accountability and, ultimately, a loss of relevance.  Neither of these things are of benefit to our hobby.

In coming months, I hope to be hearing a lot more from IARU, what it has been doing and, especially, how it is going to achieve those aspirations for the future of our hobby. But this is not a love-in; I've already told IARU that I don't warm to any attempts, should they be made, to control the narrative. In that respect, I'm keeping to tradition, as this blog post from 2018 demonstrates.

IARU: more crap

IARU Region 1 seems to have been busy of late with what it describes as taking control of the future of amateur radio, rather than being controlled by the future.

This is a very good idea. But I'm not sure IARU has carried it off.  Indeed, the outcome of this exercise, which involved a large number of member societies, seems to end-up repeating the same old rubbish that we've heard coming from the mouths of rich, retired white people for decades.

Consider, for example, this sentence:

"Amateur radio is seen to be providing social, economic, educational, and other benefits to
society"

Well, at an individual level, I suppose there are certainly social and educational benefits.  But to society as a whole?  I'm not so sure.  And who does IARU believe 'sees' radio to be like this?  Certainly not the general public. Using the words 'other benefits' is nebulous, and weak.

If you ask a person in the street, or they come across you whilst out portable, amongst the public, then I can very confidently say that about 95% of them could not tell you a single thing about amateur radio.  Most, feeling pressed to say anything at all, will tend to blurt-out the words 'CB, is it?'  

And there, I think, is the main battlefront for amateur radio: its sheer unknown-ness to the general public.

That's not to say the public aren't interested; I think they very much are.  A lot of retired-age people who come to talk to me when they see me out on the coast will say how much their young grandchildren would enjoy having a go at radio.  They go on to say it would be a lot better than staring at a mobile phone.  Of course, they're absolutely right!

If you don't slap CB down when the public mention it as something they remember from the dim past about radio, then they are much more likely to take longer to talk to you about it.  I often say 'I started off after a period with CB.'  And that was true for very many of us older than about 50 years today.

It's also true that a fair number of people seeing an antenna will try to see what's going on, but won't engage and won't come to ask.  They mumble with one another that it's probably something illegal, or wonder whether the operator has permission to put an antenna up in such a beautiful spot.

This is almost certainly stoked by the idea amongst the public that amateur radio operators are socially withdrawn, 'anorak' types who lock themselves away in man-sheds.  And let's be honest, a lot of us are like that.  We may not be unfriendly, but we can certainly appear to be.  

In the UK, certainly, amateur radio was widely held for decades by participants to set them apart from - and above - the rest of society.  The need to pass a fairly involved, 90 minute, largely electronics-based examination, plus the mystique of knowing Morse code, essential until very recently to get onto the HF bands, made these people, they imagined, 'special'.  

A large fraction of the radio community back then were well-paid career electronics workers who could afford and/or build their ham equipment.  This just reinforced their separation from the general population. These attitudes were quite effective in isolating amateur radio from the general public, who were even seen as unwelcome threats to the hobby when they came to it via the CB route.

IARU goes on, inevitably, to claim that:

"Amateur radio is seen as a welcoming and accessible activity for people of all ages, backgrounds, genders, and ethnicities, providing fun, social community and personal development" 

Well, I had to laugh at that!  Considering that 50% of humanity is female, there are essentially no women in amateur radio.  Ethnic minorities are seriously under-represented in countries like the UK and the US, especially when it comes to positions in radio societies.  I don't think that women and ethnic minorities find amateur radio welcoming at all.  If they did, they would be participating. 

I also found the following rather odd, to the point of surely being wholly false:

"Amateur radio has an extensive media presence from its accessibility to new entrants to its high value technical and scientific contribution".

Does it?  I can only recall one mainstream media article about amateur radio in the past several years.  Even then, where the BBC tried to present a positive image for us, it was entitled 'The very particular world of amateur radio'.  You can still watch it here, and I'll let you sit back, imagine you're a non-amateur radio person, and think: 'is this really painting a good picture of us, or just lightheartedly reinforcing what the public think of us already?'  Or, maybe more usefully: 'will this encourage more people to rush out and join up?'

I'm not at all persuaded that IARU has a strategy that will work for the future. Reading through their list of 'Strategic Objectives', you find that they are not so much aims for the future, but simply statements of how some contributors to the exercise see amateur radio today - or, actually, how it was, a long time ago.  This feeling is only made worse when you look at the flowchart under 'What happens now?', which seems like a recipe for more committees or something.

For my money, I would make these suggestions to IARU:

(1) Recognise that the management of radio societies are typically highly skewed in terms of ethnicity, age, gender and socio-economic security.  They are highly unrepresentative of society as a whole, and unlikely to understand why people not like them are not joining the hobby.  Indeed, they are unlikely to perceive, or reject the case, that there is any problem at all.  The problems begin here.

(2) The perception of amateur radio that matters isn't found from within the existing amateur radio population itself.  Rather, to ensure the future of amateur radio, and to break down the clear, existing barriers to participation, we need to ask the general public what they think of us.  Only then can we find out where the negative impressions of our hobby lie (although many of us can readily tell you this!)

(3) Stop claiming things about amateur radio that have little foundation in reality.  More especially, stop claiming that a reasonable justification for amateur radio's value is found in 'emergency communications'.  Of couse, radio can provide some relief in emergencies.  It's just that, in practice, almost nobody involved in the hobby will ever use radio in this way. I doubt most people who may be interested in joining would want to do so to pretend being some kind of emergency responder in a yellow jacket, anyway.

(4) The claim that amateur radio provides skilled people to industry is almost certainly false inasmuch as it is in any way a good reason to support radio.  We all know that radio is overwhelmingly a hobby of the ageing male population.  Those aren't working-age people of value to industry, although they are by no means without value in terms of teaching others, for example.

(5) Be honest about where we stand.  We're seen as rather odd, highly-technical and anti-social people who hide away in sheds, surrounded by incomprehensible electronic stuff.  We won't appeal to a new generation of enthusiasts unless we tackle these images first.  

There are plenty of other things to tackle, too.  The UK regulator, OFCOM, for example, has next-to-no interest in the amateur service.  A year ago, it imposed complex and wholly needless EM safety regulations in response to panic amongst the ignorant public about 5G internet.  When asked, absolutely nobody, including OFCOM, were able to provide scientific evidence that provided a basis for their imposition of these ridiculous rules.  

There is no point having a strategy for amateur radio when regulators just stamp their feet at random, with no basis for their actions, and seemingly nobody being able to challenge them.

RSGB - the fight not taken

I had my regular, but very infrequent look around the RSGB's affairs on the Companies House (private company information) web site this morning.

It's always interesting to see how things are going at the RSGB, and I was pleased to see the membership grew quite healthily in the past year or two, although that was almost entirely down to the boredom brought on by the lockdowns.  Overall, the society has a lot of work to do to make sure this blip in the system doesn't just remain as one, once we drag ourselves out of Covid-19.

The RSGB mentions its ongoing relations and meetings with OFCOM, the UK regulator.  But it remains loathe to tell us about the content of those contacts.  

So, once again, I've had to make a Freedom of Information Act request to OFCOM for records of these meetings.  

In the past, FoIA has been useful, notably in relation to the 'K' for Cornwall regional secondary locator debacle; information released by OFCOM showed the RSGB had not been supportive of the idea since the very beginning, but had tended to suggest otherwise to those who were promoting it as a permanent RSL.

It remains to be seen what will come out of the FoIA request this time.  

Wisely, the RSGB chose some time ago not to pursue a legal challenge to the failure of OFCOM to enforce RFI laws in respect of VDSL, which has caused a lot of trouble across the UK.  But options were available - and remain so - to it.

Where the RSGB has failed, in my opinion, is in adapting to the RFI situation in the UK, which is worsening significantly and to the point where hardly anyone living outside of the countryside will not find operating significantly affected by avoidable noise.

For example, The Good Law Project, which successfully challenges government on matters of policy and procedure regularly, show us how things can be done.  GLP may not necessarily be interested in fighting our niche radio corner, perhaps, but they are only one outfit using crowd funding to progress legal challenges that otherwise would not be affordable.

So I would certainly suggest that OFCOM's refusal to tackle what seems an obvious and clear breach of RFI control measures should be revisited.  

If one in ten of the ~21,500 members of the RSGB paid £5 each, then a legal challenge fund would be worth nearly £11,000 - enough to at least get a couple of good legal opinions on the merits of any potential case.  If everyone paid only £1 each (or that the RSGB hypothecated funds for legal action in the same way from subscriptions), then there would be enough money in one year alone to bring, for example, a Judicial Review of OFCOM's decision not to enforce the rules.

This isn't as novel and ridiculous an idea as it might seem to some.  The RSGB already has specific funds ring-fenced for purposes such as 'spectrum defence' (currently worth £9,000, but without expenditure for some time), and prizes based on donations.

The RSGB's accounts seem to be fairly healthy, but are very likely to see a sudden slip as we ease out of the pandemic.  Lockdowns are now politically seen as undesirable and to be avoided in the UK.  The days where we saw a lockdown as a novel 'holiday', shrugged our shoulders and decided to learn something new are over; everyone now wants to be out as much as possible, not locked-up indoors, as they were, for so long.

But I wish the RSGB well, of course.  It is nowhere near persuading me that it is worth joining, however!

 

 

 

An hour at the coast.

Well, the clouds were splitting the sky into a half of blue, and a half of grey today.  I was stuck at the unmoving boundary of the two, with little warmth this lunchtime.

All the same, it proved a great outing with just 4W from the FT-818.  WSPR signals at 1W were hitting +14dB SNR to FY5KE, showing the sheer efficiency of Es propagation.

Station grounding.

 

There's an interesting piece, partly about station earthing, over on PE4BAS' blog at the moment.

Whilst I commented on the dangers of misunderstanding earthing, which is widespread, it doesn't seem to have appeared. Bas later said he didn't see the comment.

Well, these things happen.  Given Bas' response, I think it's important to underscore the dangers even more than I had already, so I've updated this blog a little as a result.

What I will place here is a clear warning to anyone who is thinking of attaching (or already has) wires to the earth system of a house.  

UPDATE: this post unexpectedly became even more relevant, as the ARRL merrily published (21/12/2021) a graphic on their FB page that shows a grounding system that would not be acceptable or legal where PME systems exist.  They should know better, not least as PME is used in some parts of the US, and widely outside of the US.  ARRL publications are widely sold outside the US, which only highlights the failure of the ARRL to consider the potential consequences.

Firstly, there are laws about modifying the electrical supply systems, including the earth, in most countries.  These can carry criminal punishments if you don't adhere to them.  Having a radio licence does not make you qualified, nor does it give you consent to start fiddling with the electrical supply, even in your own house.  You may resent being told that, but that doesn't make it any less true.

One, very good reason why these rules exist is because, if you do get things wrong, that error might well appear on the lines outside, putting people working on them in danger.  

Secondly, an RF earth is not the same thing as an electrical safety earth - although under certain fail conditions, they can become the same thing - and run the very real risk of starting a fire. 

In PME systems, for example, the earth is connected at the input to your house at the neutral; one wire serves two functions.  If the neutral breaks, say, in a storm, then you could find your entire neighbourhood's circuit trying to complete to earth via your radio equipment.  It won't take it, by a very long margin, and will catch fire.  Neutral breaks are not exactly rare.  You might be lucky and find there's a drop to ground from the line outside which happens to be in the right place to stop this situation from arising.  But you can never know where any break will be, so you can't sensibly take a gamble on the PME arrangement outside.

A PME system, as widely found in the UK.  If you install RF earths, it is a legal requirement - and, strictly, requires a qualified installer - to connect every one with its own 10sq mm minimum cable back to the 'incoming' earth (which would be at the chocolate block connector in practical terms here).  No advice is given - seek a qualified installer and talk to your network. A point of weakness may remain, even then, because the earth cable that runs from the input fuse to the distribution box is often not of a high enough cross-sectional area.  You can't change this wire (at least, not legally), and so a network engineer will need to do it.

Your electrical supply may be very different in nature, especially in relation to the earthing system, to the person writing about what they've done in the shack.  It's as well to remember this. 

This is a typical 'recommended' earthing system for radio shacks you can find online, often originating in the USA.  In a large part of the UK, this WOULD NOT conform to regulations, and represents a SERIOUS FIRE RISK - which includes burning your house down. A heavy-duty earth cable from the rod, directly back to the supply input earth/neutral is required in common PME systems.  Screw-type connections to the rod should be avoided - they tend to corrode and make bad connections.

Just remember that your house may well burn down if you connect things up wrongly and contrary to electrical rules.  If that happens, an insurance company is almost certain to refuse - quite rightly - to pay out.  That is a very serious and ruinous outcome.  If Bas, or anyone else, is qualified to do such work, then all well and good; my post wasn't aimed at such people, rather obviously, and they shouldn't be offended.  But others should be very careful indeed.

I urge anyone who is thinking about station grounding to consult their network supplier, and seek such information and consent as may be required.  Connecting wires up to copper rods is easy.  Recovering from an uninsured, burned-down house is not.

Reflecting on modes (updated)

After my incredible journey underground with the FT-818 this past weekend, I'm planning another trip, this time with a dipole cut for 40m, and a matching unit that will almost certainly be needed, given the configuration underground.

A problem that I mentioned in my write-up was that of time-keeping, which I had fully allowed for in my first trip underground. Thanks to the good timekeeping of my mobile phone's internal (non-internet connected) clock, the Raspberry Pi could be kept within about 1.5-2 seconds of the correct time underground, and provided a time update for the Pi if it had to be rebooted (for every second that passes when it's not running, the Pi loses that much time).

40m signals get deep underground, but GPS and mobile internet, and the time services they provide, don't, making FT8 etc difficult, but not impossible, to use.

 

Whilst we have a lot of modes that don't need time synchronisation - PSK-31 and OLIVIA are obvious examples - it struck me that, under the domination of Joe Taylor's software and modes, we have as a hobby gone down a bit of a funnel towards a potentially problemtic dead end: that of needing accurate time synchronisation for all of them.

Receiving FT8, with a ~1.7s time error, deep underground.

 

Undergrounding is, of course, so niche as not ever going to be a motivator to move away from time-dependant digital modes.  GPS dongles allow us to maintain even better time in the absence of mobile internet signals, but are an added, if small complexity, and for Pi use, means we need more USB ports than are available in a portable radio set-up.  GPS is not, of course, available underground, anyway.

UPDATE: Thanks to a heads-up from M5MAT, the solution to the time sync problem lies at this page by KK5JY.  It works!  Download both parts of the software, and follow instructions under the 'Build the software' heading.