Foundations of Amateur Radio

Over the past nine months or so I've been working on a project that I've called Bald Yak. If you're unfamiliar, the Bald Yak project aims to create a modular, bidirectio…

The other day I stumbled on a random post by Gary N8DMT which caused me to view the world in a different way. The post outlined combining a PlutoSDR and an application c…

Recently I discussed the idea of listening to the radio spectrum across the internet for the purposes of getting signal into your shack when radios, or in my case, anten…

One of the many challenges associated with being a radio amateur is actually being able to listen to weak signals. If you're like me and more than half the planet, you l…

Every single radio amateur has come to this hobby with an itch to scratch. Time and again I've seen amateurs around me pursue that particular purpose, only to come out t…

Recently I came across a series of strident posts about the injustice associated with a non-amateur service using the 70cm band. Complete with links to discussions, spec…

In the community of radio amateurs scattered around the planet we have a habit of getting together with others to have fun in whatever shape that takes. The obvious ones…

Recently I was given some radio data captured on the 40m band. Using a piece of software called "Universal Radio Hacker", I attempted to decode it. At the time I thought…

Recently I was helping a friend erect their newly refurbished multi-band antenna and during the process we discussed the notion of tuning an antenna that's high in the a…

Just over a year ago, the ARRL, the American Radio Relay League, the peak body for amateur radio in the United States and one of the oldest of such organisations, experi…

The other day Randall, VK6WR, encouraged me to get on-air. He described it like this:

"There is a mystery signal on 40m that you can try your new Universal Radio Hacker…

The other day I was discussing with a fellow amateur the increased frustration my mobile phone provider was inflicting. We hit on the idea of figuring out if other provi…

The other day a fellow amateur asked me to help them with lowering their radio mast so they could do some maintenance on the antennas attached to it. This is not the fir…

The other day a report in "Amateur Radio Daily" caught my eye. Under the heading "IARU Considers Consolidation", I read that the International Amateur Radio Union, celeb…

Right off the bat, let me start with a question. "What do you think you're doing?"

To give you some context, it should come as no surprise that I'm talking about amateu…

Around the world are thousands of associations, groups of people, clubs if you like, that represent radio amateurs. Some of those associations are anointed with a specia…

Since becoming a licensed amateur in 2010, I have spent a good amount of time putting together my thoughts on a weekly basis about the hobby and the community surroundin…

Recently I saw a social media post featuring a screenshot of some random website with pretty charts and indicators describing "current HF propagation". Aside from lackin…

A recent comment by a fellow amateur sparked a train of thought that made me wonder why there is a pervasive idea within our community that you need a radio transmitter …

Over the years I've talked about different ways of using our license to transmit. I've discussed things like modes such as voice AM, FM, and SSB, and digital modes like …