Foundations of Amateur Radio

One topic that is longer than all other topics combined is that of antennas. Designing, planning, sourcing, building, tuning, using, you name it, all of this is regular …

One of the often repeated attributes of noise and antennas is that man-made noise is vertically polarised and that is why a vertical antenna sounds noisier than a horizo…

The first time I came across the concept of antenna polarisation was a decade before I became a radio amateur. To connect to the internet while driving around Australia …

The term NVIS, or Near Vertical Incidence Skywave is in my short experience as an amateur heaped with scorn and ridicule. Terms like cloud-warmer come to mind when peopl…

A recurring question for people who are not yet, or newly licensed is something along the lines of: I have a friend who is 400 kilometres away, can I talk to them on my …

Morse Code is a way of communicating with people across the globe using dits and dahs and the spaces between them to convey a message. It's no longer required to get an …

In the past I've talked about a weekly net I run, called F-troop. It's intended to be a place where new and returning amateurs find their feet, have a chat, test their g…

Don't get me started, Let's start this thing, Where do I start, Start me up, I could go on, but I have better things to do today, like starting a podcast.

Amateur Radio…

There are times when you realise that you've always nodded your head when a particular topic came up and after doing that for long enough, you think you know what's goin…

It's been raining around here for a while now. Not in the order of 40 days and 40 nights, but significant. Mind you, I have lived in a place where it rained every day fo…

Recently I had a conversation with a group of amateurs, ranging in experience from newbie to salty, from purchase to build, from buy to scrounge, in other words, the who…

If you've been part of the amateur community for a while and have heard me talk on matters of contesting, you'll know that I'm an avid contester and that for me it's bet…

It seems that when you categorically state something, like I did recently, you get emails and feedback, almost immediately, pointing out the folly of your assertion.

Wi…

A regular question from people who go on holiday is: "Which repeaters should I put into my hand held radio?"

If there was infinite amount of memory and time, the answer…

How to get the best Amateur Radio gear?

A recurring question for new entrants to our hobby, and truth be told, some experienced ones as well, is: "What's the best hand …

A question that occurs more often than you might think is one related to powering your radio. It comes in a few different flavours, like: "I want to install a radio in m…

There is a solitude about amateur radio. Sitting in your shack, listening to the bands, trying to locate an elusive station and if you're doing a contest then even that …

We as radio amateurs log things. We log our contacts, we log our progress towards an award, we log how many different countries we've contacted, which stations we heard …

The topic of how radio evolves and embraces available technology is one that describes the hobby itself. From spark-gap through AM, SSB and FM our community picked up or…

Where are all the Amateurs is a question that I am asked regularly by new entrants into our community. The journey most new amateurs go through and the one I followed st…