Foundations of Amateur Radio

One of the basic aspects of being human and growing up is the process of learning. From a young age we explore our environment, play with others, have fun, fall over and…

When you join the community of radio amateurs, or when you briefly look over the shoulder of the nearest devotee, you're likely to discover that this is a hobby about a …

Recently I started an experiment I plan to run for a year. Using a WSPR beacon and a dummy load I'm transmitting 200 mW, 24 hours a day across all bands supported by my …

Recently Glynn VK6PAW and I had the opportunity to play radio. This isn't something that happens often so we try to make the most of it. For our efforts we had plenty of…

Recently I received a question in relation to the Bald Yak project. If you're not familiar, "The Bald Yak project aims to create a modular, bidirectional and distributed…

Recently I made a joke about operating your station with a dummy load in response to John VA3KOT operating their station with the craziest antenna they ever used.

It go…

When you joined the global community of radio amateurs you did so with a perspective that represented, at the time, what you thought the hobby was and how it operated. S…

Recently I received a lovely email from Michele IU4TBF asking some pertinent questions about the Bald Yak project. If you're unfamiliar, the Bald Yak project aims to cre…

Have you ever come across a solution to a problem that you sort of knew you had, but didn't really appreciate until that moment? I had one of those recently. To set the …

Recently I built a first attempt at a noise cancelling circuit, on my couch, in GNU Radio, without holding a soldering iron and running the risk of the room smelling lik…

As you might recall, recently I stumbled on an excellent list of 52 weekly challenges put together by Fabian, DJ5CW and friends. You can find it at hamchallenge.org. As …

The other day I was sitting on the couch lounging about when I came up with an idea and there and then I picked up a circuit board, soldered down a hundred or so compone…

For quite some time I have operated a WSPR or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter beacon on the 10m band. If you're not familiar with it, I've dialled the power right down …

The other day I noticed a flurry of QSL card designs come across my screen and it sparked me into action on actually creating such a card for myself. I've previously tal…

Life is messy. This is not a revelation. We attempt to organise this chaos by using all kinds of magic incantations, to-do lists, new year resolutions, plans, projects a…

As you might know, a little while ago I started a new project.

"The Bald Yak project aims to create a modular, bidirectional and distributed signal processing and cont…

In the analogue world you throw up an antenna, turn on your radio, tune to a station and sound comes out. Aside from propagation restrictions, you don't particularly car…

When you key your transceiver, as-in, you trigger the Push To Talk or PTT button, you close a switch that activates the transmitter and in turn allows your voice to make…

Bald Yak, week 2

During the week an interesting question was put to me. Am I going to make this into a GNU Radio tutorial? In short, no and yes. At this point I know en…

In the process of developing something from scratch there are a great number of things that need doing. When you start it's unclear what's the most important thing, but …