Amateur Radio

It's a serious question because so far, none have.

Edit: Some context for those asking.

Eternal September refers to a time when an online community was overrun by new participants to the detriment of that community.

When new people arrive piecemeal, like they're doing right now, they join in and participate. If they make little social mistakes, they are steered by members of the community in the direction that the community has evolved into by supplying social, language and behavioural cues.

New participants alter their behaviour and the community grows a little with the new participant. If they don't alter their behaviour, it's likely that they're removed from the community by some agreed process that has evolved over time.

If the growth is sudden, then the community will be overwhelmed by "blissful or deliberate ignorance" and the systems for cues, moderation and removal fail and the community, often drastically, changes or ceases to exist.

The reference to September is that's when new University Students would get an account on the University computer systems and join Usenet News. They'd arrive every September, there'd be a blip in adjustment and the Usenet communities would absorb the new members.

Eternal September arrived when AOL joined its bulletin board to Usenet and it completely overran everything with people from all across the AOL userbase, most of them not first year University students.

I was there when this happened, alt.best.of.internet (ABOI) was a community where I participated. One of many "new groups" it was alphabetically the first on the AOL list and it imploded. Together with Malinda McColl, I wrote the FAQ in an ultimately fruitless attempt at educating the masses.

I've seen this play out over and over again across the decades I've been online, so that's why I asked.

The ABOI FAQ is here: https://www.itmaze.com.au/articles/aboi-faq

ARSI VU-DX CONTEST Dates: 28 – 29 Sep 2024 Duration: 28-Sep 12:00 UTC to 29-Sep 12:00 UTC Geographic Focus: India Participation: Worldwide Mode: SSB, CW, Mixed Bands: 40, 20, 15, 10 M

Getting started in our hobby can be a challenge. Even if you've got a shiny new license and you've been taught what the legal requirements are, you might even have your first radio, but after that it might feel like you're all on your own in this bright and shiny new world.

It doesn't have to be that way.

First thing to know is that you are exactly where all other amateurs have been before you. In other words, don't stress too much about what you don't know or what mistakes you might make. I recently read a comment from a new amateur who was so scared of making a mistake that they hadn't made their first contact. You should know that there is a massive difference between making an accidental mistake and knowingly interfering with another service.

Here's some mistakes I've made.

My license permits a maximum power level of 10 Watts. I dutifully set-up my radio to do just that, made my first contact on HF using 10 Watts, only to learn later that power levels are set separately for HF, 6m, VHF and UHF on my specific radio. So, the second time I keyed up my microphone, I was using 50 Watts. Not only that, I didn't quite understand how to set-up my radio for repeater use, so I keyed up on the output frequency and happily talked to the other station, blissfully unaware that I wasn't actually using the repeater.

It wasn't until several years later that I learnt that the minimum power level was 5 Watts on all bands, except UHF, where it is 2 Watts. And as icing on the cake, one day I managed a 2m contact across about 70 km, from my car. It wasn't until later in the night that I discovered that all the settings on my radio had reset and it was again using 50 Watts.

Another time I was in the club radio shack and having some fun with the club station. I tuned to a 2m frequency and called CQ. Didn't hear anything. Then I discovered that I'd missed a decimal point and was actually transmitting on the 20m band, where I'm not permitted with my license.

Each of those things are outside the restrictions of my license, but made by mistake, not on purpose. Instead of stressing about it, I went, oops, and carried on with a new lesson learnt. I will point out that I'm certain that there are more, mistakes, feel free to let me know.

Those concerns aside, finding people to talk to is another barrier to entry. We have all these bands and there's nobody about. It reminds me of a funny story I've shared before, told by Wally VK6YS, now SK. In his early amateur radio days he operated from Cockatoo Island, an island off the north coast of Western Australia, near Yampi Sound, which is where his callsign came from. With a new radio and transverter for 6m, Wally had been calling CQ for weeks, but nobody would talk to him. Occasionally he'd hear a faint voice in the background. Meanwhile it transpired that amateurs across Japan were getting upset that he wasn't responding to their 20 and 40 over 9 signal reports. His transmission was getting out just fine, his receiver wasn't working nearly as well. Turns out that during manufacturing, a pin on the back of his transverter hadn't been soldered correctly. Oops. Once he fixed that, he worked 150 Japanese stations on the first day and a lifelong love of the 6m band was born.

One hard learnt lesson is that the bands are constantly changing. If you cannot hear anything on one band, try another. If the band is quiet, it's likely because the conditions for that band are bad, but generally this is only true on HF. On VHF and UHF, the opposite is often true. Some bands, like 10m and 6m behave more like VHF, but not always. 20m can go from brilliant to abysmal and back in seconds, sometimes during the contact.

Each band has its own idiosyncrasies that you'll need to explore before you can hope to improve your chances of success and even years of playing will often get you surprises. I recall trying, for giggles only, to call CQ on a pretty quiet band only to score an unexpected contact with a Central European station on the other side of the globe.

A good rule of thumb is to go where the action is. If you can hear others, they're much more likely to hear you. While this is not universally true, it's a good starting point.

Of course, you don't need to physically have a radio to experience any of this. There are many websites that provide you with access to radio tuners. If you search for WebSDR or KiwiSDR you'll come across hundreds of online receivers that you can tune and operate on the frequencies they support using just your web browser. Some have the ability to decode digital modes within the web page, so you won't even have to install any extra software to play.

You might think that using such a receiver is not really amateur radio, but I'd like to point out that a transceiver is both a transmitter and a receiver. You can get the receiver right there in your web browser. The transmitter is a little more complex, but technically also possible. Many amateur clubs have a remote accessible station which will allow you to get started.

That kills two birds with one stone, you get to interact with the people in the club and you get to play on-air without needing to figure out just which radio to get and what antenna to connect it to and where to put either.

Other places to find new friends are of course social media, the so-called fediverse, a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other, has several communities. You can get started at https://mastodon.radio and https://lemmy.radio. There's plenty of other on-air activities like Nets, discussion groups where you can get to know other amateurs. I run a weekly Net for new and returning amateurs called F-troop on Saturday morning midnight UTC for an hour, where you can say hello and ask questions. We pass the microphone around a circle, so everyone gets a go. You'll find more information at https://ftroop.groups.io.

Getting started does not have to be a daunting experience. Get on-air, make noise and before you know it, you'll have forgotten just how much you worried about things that really didn't cause any issues in the big picture.

If you're still stuck, drop me an email, [email protected] and I'll attempt to point you in the right direction.

What are you waiting for?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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A breakdown Meshtastic VS PMR walkie-talkies. We'll look at what they can do, how far they reach, how they communicate, how long their batteries last, and how easy they are to use.

I went down a reading rabbit hole with the recent Meshtastic posts, and decided to pick up 2 LILYGO T-Echo units to fuss around with. One for home base and one will go in my car kit, and out on the trails.

Very excited for them to arrive!

In the mid 1980's there was this thing called a Bulletin Board System or BBS. You would connect your computer to a gadget called an acoustic coupler that you would sit next to a telephone. You'd pick up the handset, dial a phone number and wait until there was a squeal in your ear. Then you'd push the handset into the rubber cups on the coupler and watch as your computer started putting characters on your screen.

Now, truth be told, my first foray was the next generation of this, an actual modem where you didn't actually have to touch the telephone, instead, the device could dial on your behalf using so-called AT commands.

And if we're being totally honest, I never actually connected to a BBS. My adventures with global communications started with Usenet News in 1990, but I'm here to make a point, I promise.

Amateur radio is a hobby that is for experimentation. One such experiment is a thing called packet radio. Before you roll your eyes about ancient technology, this gets very cool, very fast.

At its most basic, packet radio is about digital radio communication. Until not that long ago to play you needed a thing called a TNC or a Terminal Node Controller. When I got my license in 2010 I was told that this was a magic box to make digital communication possible between a radio and other radios and amateurs.

Right now, many people are playing with WSPR, Weak Signal Propagation Reporter as well as FT8, both examples of things intended to get specific chunks of information exchanged between two stations. What if I want to chat, or send a file, or a picture?

There are tools like "js8call" which is experimenting with the idea of using FT8 to chat, but what if I told you that there's a better way?

Written by John WB2OSZ, named after a canine that became extinct 9,500 years ago, "direwolf", is software that implements an expensive piece of 1980's hardware, a TNC, that runs just fine on a $5 Raspberry pi. It's been around for over a decade, the oldest date I can find is March 2013 though undated versions before that exist.

It's an example of a so-called software-modem, simple to get started, and it implements the essential pieces of packet radio. It's currently running connected to my radio and I can see packets of information scrolling past. In this case I'm tuned to the local APRS, or Automatic Packet Reporting System frequency of 145.175 MHz.

It's the same information that you can see if you point your web browser at aprs.fi

While that's great, it's just the beginning. Tune to another 2m or 70cm frequency and you can use it to connect to a BBS being run by a local amateur, or, you can tune to a HF frequency and connect to one run somewhere else.

Direwolf also supports a technology called KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid, yes really, developed by Brian WB6RQN, Phil KA9Q, Mike K3MC and others. KISS allows you to connect a modem, like direwolf, to a computer and use technologies like TCP/IP, the primary language of the internet, across a radio link, any radio link.

Let me say that again with different words. You can use your HF radio to browse the internet. No proprietary modes in sight, weak signal, error correction included, all open source, all free, all ready to go.

While we're singing its praises, direwolf can also act as an iGate, an interface between radio and services like aprs.fi, a digipeter that receives and re-transmits APRS data and plenty more.

It gets better.

What if you wanted to use something like RTTY, PSK31, Olivia or some other mode? You could use "fldigi" instead of direwolf since it too supports KISS.

To be fair, there are lots of moving parts here and I've glossed over plenty. This isn't intended to discuss precisely how to do this, rather that it's possible at all and has been for quite some time.

I can't wait to attempt to browse the internet using my radio, for nothing other than the thrill of attempting it.

I wonder if I can do this with Morse Code as the underlying protocol. Only one way to find out.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Discover the power of Meshtastic with our step-by-step guide on creating coverage maps for your Lora nodes. These maps are key in optimizing communication range, visually showcasing signal strength and coverage areas within a LoRa mesh network.

Make your own Meshtastic LoRa Node with our easy DIY guide. A complete step-by-step for building your customized mesh communication system

We'll walk you through adding a GPS module to your existing Heltec V3 Lora ESP32 Meshtastic Node. This guide will work also for any ESP32 boards but slight changes might be required.

Just a report trying to get used to lemmy my apologies guys. I am really not trying to spam. When I add a picture after adding a link the link get changed with the picture link.

Explore the best Meshtastic devices with our guide! From the all-in-one T-Echo to the feature-packed T-BeamSUPREME and the modular WisBlock Starter Kit, find the perfect fit for your needs. Discover pros, cons, and our top recommendation. Choose wisely and dive into the world of Meshtastic today!

Explore the best Meshtastic devices with our guide! From the all-in-one T-Echo to the feature-packed T-BeamSUPREME and the modular WisBlock Starter Kit, find the perfect fit for your needs. Discover pros, cons, and our top recommendation. Choose wisely and dive into the world of Meshtastic today!

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Having been a licensed member of this community since 2010 I feel qualified to answer a recurring question: "What kind of hobby is amateur radio?"

The single best answer I can give is that it's big. The deeper you become involved, the bigger it gets. I stole the phrase, "amateur radio is 1000 hobbies in one" and I've remarked that I suspect that it's underselling the experience. Point being, whatever you've heard about amateur radio is likely true and guaranteed to be only part of the story.

There was a time when amateur radio was a concept regularly seen in general discussion. That's no longer the case, but you'll soon discover that amateurs are everywhere and the things we get up to still make the headlines from time to time.

That said, as a community we tend to use complex language and in specific ways. For example, a radio amateur is unlikely to broadcast, instead they transmit. From the outside looking in the two are synonymous, but within amateur radio the two couldn't be more different. Broadcasting is one to many, transmitting is one to one. Broadcasting separates the operator from the equipment, transmitting has the operator actively engaged with it.

Amateur radio is about curiosity, about trying things, about learning and sharing, it's about technology, electronics, nature and physics, it's about software and hardware, about camping and competing and plenty more and with that come friendships that seem to last a lifetime, perhaps forged in the fire of fascination, perhaps made almost perchance in passing. I have more amateur friends than not and among us we have a massive variety of interests.

Unlike most hobbies, you need to obtain a government issued license to become a fully licensed amateur, as-in, be permitted to transmit. For some this requirement might be a deterrent, but once you understand why, since radio waves don't stop at political boundaries and every human shares the same radio spectrum, licensing becomes a necessity, not an obstacle. That said, you can start long before then by receiving, no license required.

Amateur radio is a global activity. It's centrally regulated, but administered locally in each country and locality. As a result I cannot tell you specifically how much things will cost where you are, but the fees are generally not cost prohibitive and in many cases they are low or even free.

You become licensed by completing a training course, passing an exam and receiving a certification that lasts for life. Once you are certified you can apply for a callsign and operate an amateur station. The closest equivalent to a callsign outside the hobby is a car license plate. It's a unique combination of letters and numbers that identify an amateur. For example, my callsign is VK6FLAB, said phonetically, it's Victor Kilo Six Foxtrot Lima Alpha Bravo. We use phonetics because often individual letters are lost due to interference which comes in many different forms. Depending on where you are, a callsign might be subject to a renewal fee.

If doing a course and passing an exam seems scary, getting started at the introductory level is generally a weekend worth of effort. That introduces the notion that there are different levels, or to use an amateur phrase, classes, which, again depending on where you are, permit different access to the radio spectrum where your WiFi, mobile phone, garage door opener, emergency services, aviation, satellite and free to air television all share the same limited resources with radio amateurs. The higher your license class, the more access you get, but the more you become responsible for. Again, using a car analogy, you graduate from moped to car to truck.

If you've come across this hobby before, you should consider that one of the historic international license requirements hasn't existed for decades, namely Morse code. Mind you, some countries still require Morse, but their numbers are dwindling rapidly.

There is an often repeated concept that amateur radio is old white men sitting in the dark talking to each other about the weather, their station and their ailments. While there's some of that around, you'll soon discover that there's people from all walks of life, all ages and interests and backgrounds. Given that this is a global experience, you do not need to limit your interactions to the people within your local community.

I've been contributing a weekly article about amateur radio since 2011. Detailing the many and varied aspects of this hobby and if you're curious about what you might find here, warts and all, jump in. There are two series of articles, "What use is an F-call?", which covers 2011 to 2015 when it was renamed to "Foundations of Amateur Radio". Available as an audio podcast, as text, as email and there are eBooks too.

You'll find plenty of amateur radio resources online and social media communities with different interests and sensibilities. As with any community, amateur radio has its share of gatekeepers who hark back to the days of yore, some literally, some in their language and behaviour. Don't let that dissuade you from exploring this magical community.

Feel free to drop me an email, [email protected] and I'll do my best to answer any burning questions you're left with.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Listening to a local repeater and the waterfall display shows some pretty wide modulation whenever the repeater is in use. If I'm showing +/- 50kHz on the scope then the repeater's bandwidth is frequently 20+ even 60+ kHz.

Given that FM voice bandwidth is typically less than 15 kHz, this would indicate a failure somewhere on the repeater tx side of things right?

The International Amateur Radio Union or IARU was formed on the 18th of April 1925 in Paris. Today, split into four organisations, consisting of one for each of the three ITU Regions, and the International Secretariat, are said to coordinate their efforts to represent the globe spanning activity of amateur radio.

Each organisation has its own constitution, which at some point I might compare, but for now I'll focus on the International Secretariat.

Last updated on the 9th of May, 1989, the constitution has nine pages detailing how the IARU works. After defining its name, it describes its purpose.

Its objectives shall be the protection, promotion, and advancement of the Amateur and Amateur-Satellite Services within the framework of regulations established by the International Telecommunication Union, and to provide support to Member-Societies in the pursuit of these objectives at the national level, with special reference to the following:

a) representation of the interests of amateur radio at and between conferences and meetings of international telecommunications organizations;

b) encouragement of agreements between national amateur radio societies on matters of common interest;

c) enhancement of amateur radio as a means of technical self-training for young people;

d) promotion of technical and scientific investigations in the field of radiocommunication;

e) promotion of amateur radio as a means of providing relief in the event of natural disasters;

f) encouragement of international goodwill and friendship;

g) support of Member-Societies in developing amateur radio as a valuable national resource, particularly in developing countries; and

h) development of amateur radio in those countries not represented by Member-Societies.

Those are lofty goals and no doubt they have changed over the past century. The objectives as described have been in effect for over 35 years, so we can safely say that they are part and parcel of the current workings of the IARU. This leads me to several questions, mostly uncomfortable ones.

Over the years I have witnessed the incessant cry for the growth of the hobby in the face of apparent global decline. What I haven't seen is any evidence of the IARU actually doing much towards its own objectives. At this point you might well be chomping at the bit to enlighten me, please do, and you might well be right that the IARU is doing stuff, but the key here is seeing evidence. As I keep saying, if you don't write it down, it didn't happen. You do this for contacts between stations, why should the IARU be any different?

While the IARU is a recognised United Nations organisation, it's entirely volunteer run and paid for by its members. The International Secretariat is funded by its three regional organisations, which in turn are funded by the member societies in each country like the WIA in Australia, ARRL in the U.S., RSGB in the U.K., JARL in Japan and VERON in the Netherlands; over 160 organisations in all. Those in turn are funded by their members. For a decade or more I contributed to the funding of the IARU through my WIA membership. I note, as an aside, that organisations like the Radio Amateur Society of Australia or RASA and the European Radio Amateurs' Organization or EURAO, which are not recognised by the IARU, do not fund it, unless they're making donations on the side.

That's important because this hobby, despite its amateur nature, runs on money. If you want to help the IARU, the only way to do so is as a volunteer. That's great if you have money to pay for food and housing, less so if you don't. Similarly, member societies are also, by enlarge, run by volunteers, each doing so in the face of big business and government attempts to increase their spectrum allocation at the expense of amateur radio at every turn.

This leaves us with an organisation with lofty goals to foster, promote and grow our community, funded and run by volunteers, with in my opinion little to show for its century history.

Is this the best model? Is this how we make a robust, representative and effective organisation?

Speaking of representative, in 2018 Don G3BJ, former president of the RSGB and then president of the Region 1 IARU, talked in some detail about how the IARU operates in an enlightening video you can find on YouTube called "RSGB Convention lecture 2018 - So what has the IARU ever done for us?".

In that lecture Don makes the statement that "the ARRL provides significant additional funding" and "without that [the] IARU would be in very serious problems".

If you're not a member of the ARRL, what does that mean? How much is significant funding? Is it real money, or is it paper money in the form of office space provided within the ARRL offices in Connecticut? If a member of the IARU International Secretariat is also a member and office bearer of the ARRL, does that buy access? For example in 2021 the ARRL executive committee nominated their past president to become the Secretary of the IARU, which at least according to the ARRL, it "has the right and obligation to".

I don't know how you feel about that, but it makes me uncomfortable and here in Australia I can't say that I feel represented, even if I was a current and paid up member of the WIA, which I'm not. I think organisations like the member societies and the IARU have a very important role to play in our hobby, but what I don't see is evidence that they are.

No doubt I'll get emails telling me to step up. I would if I had a functioning money tree in my backyard.

Transparency is an issue in our community. I left the WIA because I felt that there was no transparency. The ARRL had a wide ranging security breach recently and whilst it has written a great many words on the subject, most of them are, at least in my professional opinion, the opposite of transparent. I have yet to see the operating budget for the WIA, the ARRL or the IARU, despite having paid money into at least two of those.

So, what of the future of our hobby? What does representation in a modern global community look like and does the structure of our hobby need scrutiny and discussion?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The story goes that the name of our hobby, at least in some parts of the world, ham radio, stems from the notion that we as a community were perceived as being ham-fisted in our ability to operate a Morse key. We apparently claimed that slur and made it our own. I've never actually been able to verify this narrative, but it goes to the heart of what it is to be part of the hobby of amateur radio, as opposed to Professional radio, which is what I once heard someone refer to themselves as.

This notion that we are playing outside our sandbox, that we're doing something less than real, that we're somehow not whole as a result is absurd, especially in the context of how we are an integral part of how spectrum is allocated around the globe. It's fun to remember that playing outside the box, trialling things, exploring, inventing and learning, is the reason we're here.

The whole thing is incremental, much like learning to walk, sometimes you fall flat on your face, yet here you are perambulating like a champ. As an aside, did you know that how you get up off the floor is pretty much how you learnt to do it as a toddler, it might not be the most efficient, but it's how you do it. Speaking of falling down, making mistakes on-air is part and parcel of being an amateur. There's no protocol police, nobody to issue a fine if you make a mistake, just dust yourself off and try again.

The urge to optimise pervades our hobby. We optimise our antennas, our gear, the time and band we choose to communicate on, the modes we use, the places we operate from, even how we participate in contests, all of it is a cycle of optimisation.

During contests I've regularly attempted to flex my imagination to optimise my activities. For example, the VK Shires contest rewards you for combinations of shires, so, I created a map of all the shires, then looked for places to activate, preferably on or near borders, so I could change shire with minimal effort. There are contests that reward different maidenhead locators, so I set about finding spots where you could activate four at once. By the way, a maidenhead locator is an amateur radio geo-locator which I'll dig into some other time. Contesters regularly use multiple radios to optimise their ability to talk to stations that double their points, so-called multipliers.

Over the years I've come across many different excuses for getting on-air and making noise. Popular activities like Parks On The Air, or POTA, Summits On The Air or SOTA, and plenty of others are all programs that aim to get you out of your shack, set up your station at a particular location and make contact with anyone and everyone. On occasion you'll hear a station combining activities, doing both a POTA and a SOTA activation because the summit is inside the boundaries of a national park.

Ian M0TRT took this idea to a whole new level. He wondered if you could qualify for multiple programs simultaneously and if so, how many. Gathering data from Summits, Parks, Islands, Beaches and Bunkers on the Air, together with UK Castle and Lighthouse awards and adding World Wide Flora and Fauna or WWFF, eight programs in all, he set about exploring. For some programs like Castles, Lighthouses and Bunkers you need to be within 1 km of the entity and summits need to be activated within 25 meters altitude from the peak. For other programs, beaches, parks and islands plenty of extra work was needed. Ian's code is available on GitHub, in the "weeaaoa" or "Worked Everything Everywhere All At Once Award" repository.

If you have time to head out to the beach just east of Devil's Point near Plymouth you'll be able to activate 21 different programs at the same time. The Maidenhead locator is IO70WI06.

As with any outdoor amateur radio activity, take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints and kill nothing but time. Be mindful of creating obstacles and trip hazards for your fellow humans and be prepared to have a park ranger turn up as soon as you sit down.

Oh, and if you think that's not in the spirit of amateur radio, you haven't been paying attention.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Article:

• https://ianrenton.com/projects/worked-everything-award/

GitHub:

• https://github.com/ianrenton/weeaaoa/blob/main/main.py

I got it into my head that I would like to see a spherical depiction of my QSOs. Azimuthal and other representations weren't cutting it for me.

I managed to coax an LLM to output my ADIF into a KML so I could better visualize the reach of my QSOs, and I am quite stunned. 20m has almost complete global reach, as you'll see below. Admittedly, on CW it probably does. In these visualizations, the vast majority of contacts are on FT8 20m, but there are a few dozen SSB contacts as far as Indonesia. Usually I made these contacts well before sunrise.

This is a representation of my entire logbook, so any QSO not from the SW US are 10m.

Setup: IC-7300, barefoot, 15m mast, and a 20m twinlead j-pole. Having been temporarily based in a residential area, I had quite a high noise floor from various EMI sources, and could have probably done better with weak stations had my noise floor been lower.

Moving to the west:

More west, Australia prominently visible:

Antipodal view:

Looking toward the east, the west coast of Africa coming into view:

Africa; the lonely QSO east of Madagascar is Reunion Island, got this one on FT8:

You can see a sharp decline in activity about mid-screen.

About 1m 15s remaining:

45s after 1200Z:

Granted, this is the IARU Championship. But that's a lot of people on the radio.

One of my recurring, you might call it, regrets, but probably not quite that strong, is that I often find myself discovering that an amateur radio contest came and went, or worse, I found out on the day, preferably at midnight UTC when many contests start, which happens to be 8 am Saturday morning where I live, right when my weekly radio net for new and returning amateurs, F-troop, begins.

Often by that time I already have plans for the weekend and now I know I'm missing out on some or other activity that might encourage me to go outside and get fresh air whilst playing radio.

Don't get me wrong, it's my own responsibility to manage my time, but that doesn't explain what's going on, so I started exploring what might be causing this. I mean, it shouldn't be that hard, there's pretty much a contest on every weekend, so I could sort out my radio and get on-air to make noise at any point of any day. That this doesn't happen can only partially be explained by the state of my shack, which I have yet to get working the way I want, but it doesn't explain everything.

I'm subscribed to several contest calendars. The most prominent of these is one maintained by Bruce WA7BNM. The contestcalendar.com website is a great place to start. Another is the personal site of prolific contester and contest manager, Alan VK4SN. Both sites offer a calendar feed file that you can subscribe to.

So, subscribe to the calendar, job done, right?

Unfortunately not. As it happens, for several years I have in fact subscribed to both those calendars. I even shared these with my partner, which results in a fun exchange at the breakfast table that goes something like this: "Hey, do you need the car on Saturday?" "Why?" "Well there's an amateur contest on."

So, my partner is often more aware of contests than I am and supposedly I'm the amateur in this household.

It occurs to me that I need an alert to point at an upcoming contest. Preferably one that I can configure that's specific to me. I don't tend to look that far into the future, I have plenty of stuff that needs to happen today without worrying about next month.

I started exploring what I might do about this. Be the change you want to see, so I contacted Bruce and asked what views he might hold on the addition of an alarm in the calendar file he publishes. I also asked if there was a way to configure what contests are visible in that file.

Whilst hunting through his site, I discovered that there's plenty of Australian contests not on the site, so I created a list of contests I know about that I thought should be on the calendar.

I might point out that Bruce's job isn't easy. Trying to get information out of contest managers can sometimes be like powering a spark-gap transmitter using a pushbike.

Here's an example of one contest that has an algorithm to determine when the next contest is, I kid you not. There's a Winter, Spring and Summer version of this contest, for Winter, when the June solstice is on a weekday (Monday through Friday), the weekend following shall be the weekend of the event, if not, that weekend shall be the weekend of the event. The Spring and Summer versions are even more involved, counting forwards or backwards four weekends from the December solstice. It helpfully includes a link to the solstice dates for this century, because really, that's how the dates are determined.

If I'm feeling particularly sparky, I might even make a calculator, since the contest manager for that contest hasn't announced the dates for the next contest, though my previous experiences whilst attempting to calculate moon bounce windows using the Python Astropy package was challenging. I did find PyEphym which has several solstice and equinox functions.

So, now all I need to do is make my shack work as I want it, bolt a radio back in my car, win lotto and something else, I forget what.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Australia has a long relationship with callsigns. Over time the regulator, today the ACMA, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, has seen fit to introduce different types of callsigns and restrictions associated with those callsigns.

The change that made the most waves most recently was the introduction of the so-called F-call. It's a callsign that looks like mine, VK6FLAB. It has a VK prefix for Australia, the number 6 indicating my state, Western Australia, then the letter F, followed by a suffix of three letters.

This type of callsign was introduced in 2005. To this day there are plenty of amateurs on-air who don't believe that this is a real callsign, to the point where some refuse to make contact, or worse, make inflammatory statements about getting a real callsign, and that's just the letters, let alone those who think that the callsign denotes a lack of skill or knowledge demanding that the amateur "upgrade" their license to a real one.

At the time of introduction, the apparent intent was to indicate that the holder was licensed as a Foundation or beginner. In 2020 this was changed, and existing F-call holders were able to apply for a new callsign if they desired. Some did, many did not. Currently there are 1,385 F-calls active and there are 3,748 Foundation class callsigns in the registry.

After this change, you might think that all callsigns in Australia are now either two or three letter suffixes, as-in VK6AA or VK6AAA. Actually, the F-call continues to exist and there are now also two by one calls, VK6A, intended for contesters.

A popular idea is that the F-call is for Foundation license class amateurs only. There are currently 10 Standard and 16 Advanced license classed holders with an F-call. There are also two special event callsigns that sport an F-call.

With the addition of contest callsigns, new prefixes, VJ and VL, were introduced which brought with it the notion that you could use those new prefixes for your callsign. Currently, only contest callsigns are allocated with VJ and VL prefixes.

An often repeated idea is that we're running out of callsigns. Well, there are 1,434,160 possible callsigns if we count each prefix, each state, single, double, triple and F-calls across all prefixes. As it happens, there are at present 15,859 assigned and 53 pending callsigns.

If not all, then surely, we're running out of real callsigns. Nope. If we look at the VK prefix alone, less than 10% of available callsigns have been allocated.

Okay, we've run out of contest callsigns. Nope. There are 1,040 possible contest callsigns and only 188 allocated.

Another popular notion is that we've run out of two-letter callsigns, that is, the suffix has only two letters. Again, no. There are 3,553 allocated out of 6,760, less than 53% has been assigned.

Surely, some states appear to have run out of two-letter callsigns. Well, maybe. Theoretically each state has 676 two-letter callsigns but none have all of those allocated. For example, VK3, with 675 allocated two-letter suffixes, is missing VK3NG for no discernible reason. More on the missing ones shortly. It's impossible to use the current register to determine how many amateurs hold more than one two letter callsign.

Another notion is that you can have a special event callsign as long as it starts with VI. As it happens there are currently special event callsigns registered with VI, VK and AX prefixes. Just over half of them have any online activity to promote the callsign for their event.

You might think that a callsign can only be "Assigned" or "Available". According to the register a callsign can be "Pending", it can also be "Reserved", more on that in a moment, and it can not be in the list at all, "Missing" if you like. Take for example JNW, it's assigned in VK2, it's available in all other states, except VK3 where it simply doesn't exist. This oddity doesn't restrict itself to VK3. Take XCA, available in all states, except VK4. TLC doesn't exist in VK2. Many more examples to go round.

And that's not looking at exclusions due to swear words and reserved words like PAN; but SOS is an assigned callsign. Combinations that you think might be unavailable, like QST, are fine, except in VK2 where it doesn't exist.

It's thought that reservations are only for repeaters. Nope. Suffixes with GG followed by a letter are reserved for the Girl Guides, those that start with S followed by two letters are reserved for Scouts, those starting with WI are for the Wireless Institute of Australia and those with IY are for the International Year of something. Interestingly there is no reference to repeaters or beacons at all in the callsign register since they fall under the old license regime, rather than the new amateur class. And you thought that the system was getting simpler and cheaper to run.

You might think that every state has the same number of callsigns. Ignoring F-calls, VK5 has the most callsigns available and VK3 the least. No doubt this is due to the callsigns that are "Missing" from the register.

This likely leaves you with plenty more questions, but next time someone asserts something about callsigns, perhaps it's time to have a think before you spout.

Note that this information is based on the ACMA callsign register as I found it on the 29th of June 2024. This started as an exploration of just how many different amateur calls were registered.

At the time there were 3,748 Foundation class, 2,079 Standard class and 9,946 Advanced class callsigns assigned or pending.

Without knowing how many callsigns each amateur has been assigned, it's impossible to know just how many amateurs those 15,773 callsigns represent. Perhaps it's time for the regulator to start publishing some data on our community, rather than relying on the likes of me to download 1,774 pages of data and two days analysing it.

I can tell you that I have been assigned two callsigns, one for day-to-day use and one I use for digital modes and contests, given that WSPR doesn't play nice with VK6FLAB and I really have no desire to give up my call.

Before I go, every VK callsign also has an AX equivalent on three days every year, 26 January, 25 April and 17 May and as I said, you can apply for a special event callsign with an AX prefix.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB