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Foundations of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio

By: Onno (VK6FLAB)
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Starting in the wonderful hobby of Amateur or HAM Radio can be daunting and challenging but can be very rewarding. Every week I look at a different aspect of the hobby, how you might fit in and get the very best from the 1000 hobbies that Amateur Radio represents. Note that this podcast started in 2011 as "What use is an F-call?".℗ & © 2015 - 2025 Onno Benschop Physics Science
Episodes
  • Bald Yak 13, Monitoring the Sun .. small steps

    Bald Yak 13, Monitoring the Sun .. small steps
    Oct 18 2025
    Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I received an email from Frank K4FMH asking me about an idea I'd worked on some time ago, namely the notion that I might monitor solar flux at home using a software defined radio. At the time I was attempting to get some software running on my PlutoSDR and got nowhere fast. Before I continue, a PlutoSDR, or more formally an ADALM Pluto Active Learning Module by Analog Devices, is both a computer and a software defined radio receiver and transmitter in a cute little blue box. I've talked about this device before. It's an open design, which means that both the software and hardware are documented and available straight from the manufacturer. Out of the box it covers 325 MHz to 3.8 GHz. You can connect to a PlutoSDR using USB or via the network, wireless or Ethernet, though I will mention that neither of those last two is currently working for me, but more on that later. Encouraged by Frank's email, I set out to explore further and came across a 2019 European GNU Radio days workshop, which discussed some of the tools that are available for the PlutoSDR, accompanied by two PDF documents walking you through the experience. One comment around why the PlutoSDR uses networking as one of the connectivity options spoke to me. From a usability perspective, networking makes it easier to access the PlutoSDR from a virtual machine, since most of the time that already has network connectivity, whereas USB often requires drivers. As you might recall, network connectivity is one of the many things that I'm trying to achieve with a project that I'm calling Bald Yak, since by the time we're done, there's not going to be much hair left from all the Yak Shaving. The Bald Yak project aims to create a modular, bidirectional and distributed signal processing and control system that leverages GNU Radio. As a result, I set about trying to actually walk myself through those PDF tutorials .. and got stuck on the first sentence on the first page, which helpfully states: "The necessary prerequisites have been installed on the local lab machine." It went on to supply a link to a page with instructions on how to acquire those very same prerequisites. Two days later, after much trial and error, I can now report that I too have these installed and because I cannot help myself, I made it into a Docker container and published this on my VK6FLAB GitHub page. To put it mildly, there's a few moving parts and plenty of gotchas. As an aside, if you think that installing Docker is harder than installing these tools, I have some news for you .. trust me .. by a long shot .. it's not. Right now I'm working on writing the documentation that accompanies this project such that you can actually use it without needing to bang your head against the desk in frustration. Mind you, the documentation part of this is non-trivial. For reasons I don't yet understand, my Pluto does not want to talk to the network directly over either WiFi or Ethernet, and connecting over USB through a virtual machine inside a Docker container is giving me headaches, so right now I'm connected across the network to a Raspberry Pi that's physically connected to the Pluto. As a result, I can now use the tools inside my Docker container, connected to the Pluto through the Pi and if you're curious, 'iiod' is the tool to make that happen .. more documentation. At this point you might well ask, why bother? This is a fair question. Let me see if I can give you an answer that will satisfy. Monitoring solar flux typically occurs at 2.8 GHz, which is outside the range of RTL-SDR dongles which top out at about 1.7 GHz. For the PlutoSDR however, it's almost perfectly within the standard frequency range. One of the tools that is introduced by the talk is an application called 'iio-scope', which as the name suggests, is an oscilloscope for 'iio' or Industrial I/O devices, of which the PlutoSDR is one. As an aside, the accelerometer in your laptop, the battery voltage, the CPU temperatures, fans, and plenty of others, are all 'iio' devices that you can look at with various tools. So, once I've finished the tutorials, I suspect that I will understand a little better how some of the various parts of the PlutoSDR hang together, and I can set it up to monitor 2.8 GHz. Of course, that's only step one, the next step is to make a Raspberry Pi record the power levels over time, better still, record it on the PlutoSDR itself, and see if we can actually notice any change .. without requiring anything fancy like a special antenna, some massive filters, a special mount and all the other fun and games that no doubt will reveal themselves in good time. It also means that, if I got this right, I have the beginnings of the bits needed to get the PlutoSDR to talk to GNU Radio. Why? Because I can, and because Frank asked, also Yak Shaving. I'm Onno VK6FLAB
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    6 mins
  • When your hobby revolves around electricity ...

    When your hobby revolves around electricity ...
    Oct 11 2025
    Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I went on my first POTA or Parks On The Air adventure, this time I was on my own. If you recall, my power company announced yet another planned network outage and I felt that I could use this time without electricity to my benefit, for a change. As is traditional, I did all the prior planning to prevent pretty poor performance. I made a list, checked that all the items on the list were in my kit, packed the kit days before, put it all ready to go in the hallway the night before, packed the car on the day and set out on my adventure. I will confess that I was slightly more sweaty than anticipated when I set off because the umbrella in the boot of my car has a nasty and recurring habit of getting in the way, specifically it stops things from getting pushed right to the full depth of the boot. Mind you, it wasn't until I started getting agitated that I realised that it wasn't the umbrella's fault entirely this time, since as it turns out, the folding chair that I was attempting to jam in place doesn't actually fit longways into the boot. Anyhoo, I set off and visited the local petrol station. I was not prepared for a customer to spend 15 minutes dribbling the last bit of diesel into their pretend Sports Utility Vehicle, but he looked like he was up for a fight, so I smiled sweetly and waited for him to pay and move his box on wheels. After paying for my own fuel and driving off, the pressure in my bladder had gotten beyond the "cross your legs and hope for the best" stages and I swiftly made my way to the nearest shopping complex where a local pharmacist helpfully told me that there were no toilets in the building and that the local hotel or fast food joint were the place to relieve the pressure. One problem .. they were both closed. At this point I was in pain, and discovered that I couldn't read the screen on my mobile phone in the lovely sunlight, because it was set to battery saving mode, since my charger was at home where the power was out. After disabling the battery saving mode I opened the local public toilet map shortcut on my phone, and discovered that fortunately the shortcut still worked, opening up my default browser, which suddenly didn't want to display a map. Copied the URL to another browser, still in pain, finally a map. Click on the nearest icon and it navigates me there from Darwin, or over 4,000 km from where I actually am. Luckily it has the GPS location which I copy and then paste into my mapping app, and I can finally navigate to the nearest toilet. Several comment worthy navigation moves later, I drive into the car park, lock the car, painfully shuffle to the building, do my business in the very clean facilities and then decide that I should just stop, sit, and take a breath. So, I get in the car and discover that my partner was right when they heaped scorn on our newly acquired thermos cup. It really does hurt your nose when you try to drink from it and the sharp edges in your mouth do nothing to make the experience joyful. Meanwhile there's some trucks moving around in the car park and a guy walks up to the car to ask me if I can move because they want to move a third, or was it forth, truck into the space. I swallow my sip of restorative coffee, wipe the now wet bridge of my nose, and move the car, only to be blocked from leaving the exit thanks to the slowest reversing truck I've ever encountered, one who then proceeds to sit at the next intersection for five minutes without indicating where it was going. Are we having fun yet? I finally made my way to the main road where I attempt to calm my nerves with the help of a Morse code edition of my podcast. It's been the only exposure I've had to Morse for way too long. This accompanies me to my first destination, breakfast. I'm going to skip past the drivers in the centre lane driving at 10 km per hour below the posted speed limit, or the ones who think that jumping out of a side street in front of you is normal and safe driving practice. At every traffic light I celebrate the pause with a sip from my coffee and a furtive wipe of my nose which is being assaulted by the lid of the cup. I arrive at my breakfast destination and fear the worst. Their car park is almost empty. I've never seen it this quiet and I didn't check to confirm that they were open, or not. I look at my map application and remember to turn my phone back to battery saving mode. According to the Internet, my cafe is open, so I cross my fingers and get out of the car. To my delight, they are absolutely open, make me a lovely breakfast and provide the needful for lunch too .. I have a big day planned after all. After enjoying breakfast and hot chocolate, with two marshmallows, I get back in the car and navigate to my planned set-up location. As I drive into the park I notice something that I hadn't the last time I was here. I'm descending, as-in, the deeper into the park I go, the more I go downhill. That in ...
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    12 mins
  • Preparing for an outing

    Preparing for an outing
    Oct 4 2025
    Foundations of Amateur Radio

    Recently my local power company notified me of a planned network outage, that's code for, we're turning off the power and your choice is to deal with it. If you've been paying attention, you'll note that this is not the first time this has happened in recent times.

    On this occasion I want to make a difference and actually use the day wisely. Coincidentally, the 750th instalment of F-troop is coming up and traditionally we try to find an excuse to get outside and set-up a station in a local park somewhere. If you recall, I recently went outside and came across a new park, one with picnic tables, gazebos, toilets and all the mod cons required for a party.

    Combine these unrelated events and you end up with testing the idea of running F-troop, a weekly net for new and returning amateurs, from this park, which also neatly turns that into a POTA or Parks On The Air activity, which raises several logistical questions.

    The first one being, what is the radio noise like in this park, followed shortly by the question, can I hit my local 2m repeater, any 2m repeater, or the local 10m repeater? If the answer to those questions is unsatisfactory, I might be required to rethink my plans.

    Combining those questions with a power outage at home seems like the perfect excuse to go out into the bright day to get on air and make some noise.

    One challenge. Having removed my radio from my car several years ago to accommodate the replacement of the transmission, I never did replace it and never used my radio in the car again, which truth be told is not a situation I ever imagined when I first installed it many years ago.

    This leads me to creating a list, which should come as no surprise, a list with what I need to bring as a minimum requirement to test the questions I need answers to. I will confess that the "making a radio packing list" skill-set has atrophied in recent times, so I started small.

    I'll need a radio, and a suitable antenna, in my case, at least two, one for 2m and one for 10m. Then there's the question of power, at which point I discovered that my trusty portable sealed lead acid batteries have finally died, not bad after 15 years, well, 12 years of regular use. Likely they would have continued to be of service if I'd used them in the past three years, mainly hampered by the death of my 12 volt battery charger.

    If you feel like I'm going off track, you'd be right. That was the exact experience I had when I started building my list. I added a digital multimeter, an antenna analyser, an antenna tuner and coax, then realised that I needed to check if the coax adaptors were the right ones and so it continued.

    The upshot is a preliminary list with 15 items on it, in various stages of fully populated, for example, I know I have a 2m and 70cm antenna in the garage, but I haven't touched it in years, so I need to go find it, and the battery in my digital multimeter needs checking, you get the idea.

    It's a good thing I started this caper well over a week before the planned outage, so at least I have half a fighting chance to get it to the point of usefulness before my screen turns black due to the threatened lack of electricity.

    It occurred to me whilst I was in the middle of this extended list creation process, that I was essentially replicating what I might have experienced the very first time I went outside with my station in 2011. In coming to that realisation, the stress levels that were building steadily at that point, pretty much dissipated with the understanding that I'd already done this and survived the experience. In other words, there was nothing worth stressing about.

    So, this leaves me with a question for you. What does this process look like for you, how do you prepare to get on-air and make noise, what steps do you take and what do you avoid, are there things you might share with a new amateur and if so, how will you do that?

    I contemplated sharing the list in a public place, but realised that the power of the list isn't the items on it, but in the process of making it, so, no list, but the notion that you too can do this, and if it transpires that you forgot something, there's always the next adventure.

    I'm Onno VK6FLAB
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    5 mins
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