What Use Is An F-call?

What use is an F-call? Digital Voice in Amateur Radio is broken. It's a big call for a mere F-call to make, so let me back that up with some facts. There are three basic digital voice products you can buy as an amateur today, D-Star made by ICOM, System Fusion made by Yaesu and MOTOTRBO or TRBO by Motorola. There is also Project 25, or P25. Each of these systems are based around technologies and patents owned by a company called Digital Voice Systems Inc. or DVSI. In essence, each of these systems use the same maths to encode and decode an audio signal. This process of encoding and decoding is embodied in a thing called a Coder / Decoder or CODEC. While each of these use the same maths, owned by the same company, they don't actually inter-operate. What that means that if you want to use a D-Star repeater, you need a D-Star radio, and if you want to use a System Fusion repeater, you need a System Fusion radio, even though both radios use the same maths to make your voice into a digital signal. It gets wo

What use is an F-call? As you've heard me talk about making contacts with other countries on many occasions, I thought I'd spend a little time describing what I do when I've actually made the contact. At the moment I'm logging my contact on CQRLOG, it's a Linux based programme that manages each contact, tracks to show if I've uploaded it to Logbook of the World, eQSL and Clublog. I chose those three services based on their functionality and their availability. I won't go into each of them, but combined they allow me to confirm the contacts I've made. Once I've done that I also log into the WIA members section of the Awards system where I upload my contacts. The awards system confirms my contacts with those same three services, Logbook of the World, eQSL and Clublog, to confirm that I have in fact made the contact. There is a ranking system, and if you're into league tables, there is ample opportunity to rank yourself against others. There is even a special section for Foundation Licensees, so you can com

What use is an F-call? In the normal day-to-day interaction between amateurs on air we use the procedure to say the other station's call-sign, followed by our own. If there's two people on-air, this is a simple way to have a discussion. But what if there are more? If it's informal, we tend to talk in a circle, that is, we keep handing the microphone to the next person in the line. For this to work, you need to remember who comes after you, so you can hand it over to them. If you want to join in a discussion like this, say your callsign between hand-overs and you'll be asked to join in. It's best to wait for a whole circuit, so you know who is in the discussion and what the sequence of people is. Again, you need to remember who comes after you. Sometimes this descends into anyone talks to anyone, but often that means that one or more people miss out, so be mindful of those who are sitting on the side, they too might have something to share. If the discussion is a more regular occurrence, it might turn int

What use is an F-call? When was the last time you went online and downloaded a copy of the LCD? Do you even know where to find it? Do you know when it last changed and what changes it contained? If the answer is, "I have a copy from 2005 when they introduced the Foundation license.", you have a problem. The LCD changed in 2005 twice, again in 2008, also in 2010 and again in 2013. In total, between 2005 and 2013 there are 546 changes to the document that sets out the conditions to which your amateur license is subject to. Some of those 546 changes are trivial, renaming the department from ACA to ACMA account for about 5 changes, others are more significant. For example, between the 2010 and 2013 issue of the LCD, there were only 21 changes, little ones like changing the date and bigger ones like removing zone restrictions from around Melbourne, Perth and Sydney and adding two new exclusion zones, one off the coast of Exmouth with a 1000km radius and one in the Timor Sea with a 2000km radius. If

What use is an F-call? I recently spent some time talking about the Grey Line, about the way it moves around and how it will help you make contacts along its path. If you recall, the direction of the Grey Line changes throughout the year. As the tilt of the earth affects the direction of the sun on your head, it also affects the shadow line that's drawn across the planet as sun-set and sun-rise occur at your QTH. Of course, you already know this. We experience this change as our seasons. So, if the Grey Line changes direction, the obvious question is, "Which way should you point your antenna?" If you are using a vertical, there isn't much pointing going on, but if you have anything that is rotating, even a mobile station qualifies, there is benefit in actually aligning yourself with the Grey Line. Of course you can look online and see a lovely Grey Line map and use that, but that does require that you have access to the Internet, or a phone with an App or some other technology. But you don't

What use is an F-call? I've now been an amateur since December 2010. In the time that I've been part of this hobby I've come to understand that a large part of the experience is to tinker. We tinker with radios, batteries, antennas, coax, connectors, mobile set-ups and software. We fiddle with circuits, with antenna designs, with locations, with anything and everything. Of course the fiddling is all about improvement, or sometimes, it's just about getting on-air. The more you fiddle, the more you learn and the more experience you gain. So there is good to be had from doing these things. Yesterday I was at a fellow amateur where he had his radio scanning 15m. It was just sitting in the background and as we finished lunch and went into the afternoon, we could hear signals picking up. Eventually the signals became strong enough to work. I managed to add another DX country to my list with his gear and it reminded me that fiddling is only one part of the hobby that I love. I've been so busy getting my statio

What use is an F-call? Man-made interference is a wonderful thing. It allows you to appreciate that there are both people and morons on air. Some people become morons, either by accident, or on purpose, but every now and then you have special people who share our airwaves. In case you're wondering, a moron is someone with the intellectual age between 8 and 12. In the past we as amateurs have chosen to ignore them. In general that works pretty well. The moron doesn't know that they're having any effect and they soon move on to greener pastures, hopefully one six foot under, but that's a story for another day. I have a special friend. He's special because he thinks it's particularly funny to disrupt a weekly net that I host called F-troop. He likes to send DTMF tones, play audio tracks and generally be a pain in the rear. This isn't a new thing. I've been logging activity from this moron since April 2012. He comes in every now and then, completely disrupts the net and then pisses off. You could infer from

What use is an F-call? In the past I've mentioned the Grey Line. If you recall, this is a twice daily phenomenon. During dawn and dusk, and often slightly before and after, there is an enhanced level of DX propagation. That is, if you're listening while it's happening, you'll notice far-off stations you didn't hear before, clear as day, then five or ten minutes later they're gone. Today I'm not going into the actual process that makes this happen, absorption, D and F layers and the like. The more you read about the physics of this, the more you'll get bamboozled with different and vociferous views. Instead I want to talk about something that hadn't occurred to me until earlier in the week. Once I tell you the response is likely going to be the same as mine was: Duh! So, propagation along, not across, along the Grey Line, is enhanced. So, the line is North-South, right? Well, yes and no. Twice a year it is, at the equinox, when the length of the day and the length of the night is the same, but otherwise, i

What use is an F-call? Amateur Radio is a personal thing. It's an expression of communication, of exploration, of invention, learning, electronics, physics and personal achievement. The community we are members of is a living organism. We pick up random people from the global community, spark their interest and gain another member. For new entrants to our community there is much to see and do. Often the choices are overwhelming and common mistakes are made. While every person has their own journey through this, there are things we as a group could do to help. Any Amateur can be a mentor or Elmer, to new member of our hobby. As Rob W9BRD said in 1971, "We need those Elmers. All the Elmers, including the ham who took the most time and trouble to give you a push toward your license, are the birds who keep this great game young and fresh." In your local club, is there a mentoring program? Is it explicit? Have people put their name up as a point of contact to new members? Are there activities that yo

What use is an F-call? You purchased a shiny new radio and it's all you imagined and it works great and you're over the moon with your purchase and you're raring to go, but you find yourself constantly typing in the frequencies, or twiddling the VFO to change repeaters. As a last ditch attempt, you've got out the manual and you're busily typing in each repeater, one at a time, and then when you've finally done it, you hit the wrong button and you have start again. Only 22 repeaters more to go. Does this sound familiar? If it doesn't then we should talk. You really should be programming in all your local repeaters, and better still, all the national ones as well. I know that some radios don't have enough channels for all of that, but I must confess that this limitation is becoming less and less. So, if you should do all that and you really don't want to manually do all of that work, how do you actually get all the frequencies into your gear without going insane? You could clone a radio from a friend. The

What use is an F-call? Recently I was part of a discussion about emergency preparedness. The idea being that as radio amateurs we're ideally suited to being communication hubs and conduits to pass messages along. Of course as part of that we need to have skills and equipment to make those things possible. I've often said that doing contests are a great way to improve your radio skills. It's an adverse environment in which sending and receiving messages is related to your score and as a bonus, it's a great way to pick up some DX stations that are not yet in your log. There are other things that you can do as an amateur to improve your level of preparedness. I recently conducted an informal survey among a group of amateurs to see which repeaters they had programmed into their radios and which ones they'd actually used. Turns out, in our little group, two repeaters were being used, the rest, around 15 were sometimes programmed into radios, but hardly ever used. As part of improving our skills we want to mak

What use is an F-call? I've just built myself v1.0 of a Raspberry Pi SDR. It still has some way to go until I can show it off - needs a touch screen, a power supply that runs on 12V, some user interface elements, but the functionality is there. If you're unfamiliar with the nature of a Raspberry Pi, it's a single board computer, the size of a credit card, has Ethernet, USB, HDMI, audio, video and a MicroSD card slot. My version comes with 512Mb of memory. It's 17mm high. This is a tiny fully functional computer. From a geek perspective, it's running a version of Debian Linux, called raspbian. It's the same version of Debian as my main computer, Wheezy, which means that everything you have on your main computer, you could theoretically use on a Raspberry Pi. I've plugged in a USB Television Dongle, one that allows it to be reprogrammed into a versatile receiver. After a little bit of programming, nothing too complex, I can now see wave forms and spectrograms of 2 MHz of bandwidth. I'm aiming to make this

What use is an F-call? Amateur Radio is a social activity. It's about communication and community. Ironically, as much as we are about talking to one and other, we still do some activities all on our own. If you're hunting for a rare station, trolling up and down the bands, looking for that elusive callsign or country, or sitting in a pile-up, calling and calling and calling some more, hearing your callsign and confirming a contact, that kind of activity is very solitary. It doesn't have to be. I know the feeling of getting a hard get and putting down your microphone and jumping up and down, yelling in celebration, wanting to tell someone, your XYL, the neighbors, the cat, anyone about your amazing feat of achievement, I've been there. If you do this with a fellow amateur, either both of you in the same shack or via a local repeater, or on 850MHz, or via email, that experience means something to the other person. I just got a message from a great friend who managed to speak with Israel on 6m, something h

What use is an F-call? As an F-call, working DX, you'll spend many hours looking for that elusive contact, or you'll turn on your radio, tune around, hear a station, call back and bag a new country. It's all there for the taking, one contact at a time. As you operate on HF, you'll notice a whole range of operating skills, from amazing to atrocious and everything in between. You'll hear stations who keep calling two letters of their callsign, or those who run a pile-up for 40 contacts without once uttering their own callsign. You'll hear people who are not sure about their microphone and seem afraid it might bite, and those who are seemingly completely deaf to the world. As you listen around you'll begin to discern those operators who are doing an amazing job, who, apparently without effort, pull your callsign out of the muck and come back to your first call, and you'll hear those who say all the letters of your callsign, but never in one sentence or in the correct order. The difference between you and all

What use is an F-call? On previous occasions I've discussed the QSL system in Amateur Radio. It's a mechanism that uses what's known as out-of-band communications to confirm contacts. For over a hundred years that has been mostly in the form of QSL cards. Since the introduction of the Internet, websites and pervasive computing, some of the confirmations have been moved from card to electron. I've had about 29 countries confirmed electronically and two via card. Until about 10 minutes ago I was convinced that electronic QSL confirmation was the way to go. Before I explain why, there is a place for both, electronic confirmation is simple, cheap and often very quick. QSL cards on the other hand are involved, sometimes costly and often take a long time. I'm sitting at my desk with a stack of QSL cards for the VI103WIA callsign which was activated during the Wireless Institute Conference which was held here in Fremantle in May of 2013. These cards are about contacts made a long time ago, though I've had it told

What use is an F-call? Yesterday I learned an interesting lesson. It wasn't a simple lesson to learn, but I'm guessing it's going to take me some years to come to grips with what I experienced. Said plainly, "Small Changes can have a Big Effect" That's pretty straight forward as a lesson, but when you actually experience it head on, it tends to make more impact. As you've heard in the past, I operate my radio mostly from my car. I recently purchased some antennas that I want to mount on my car and want to use without an antenna tuner. Don't get me wrong, my antenna coupling unit has done some amazing things. It continues to work well with my 12m squid pole and I'll continue to take it with me when I go camping. With a friend and fellow amateur we spent most of yesterday fiddling with my antennas on my car. I have to say, doing this with someone else makes life a lot better. You can bounce ideas off each other, prod the other into action with a calculator, argue about the merits of your idea and

What use is an F-call? I've recently purchased four verticals, one for each of the HF bands I'm allowed to use. I installed them and started playing, only to be confronted with some interesting results. The 80m and 40m verticals have a very high Q, that is to say, they resonate on a particular frequency and you can make contacts at those frequencies with about 22 kHz variation. This is as expected. My antenna analyser picture looks just like the one on the box. This is great. In theory all I should need to do is trim them a little bit and have them resonant at the frequency I want to operate on. I did hold off on the trimming, since cutting antennas longer is pretty hard to do, and because I got some weird results for the other two verticals. On 10m and 15m the antennas are resonant outside the band. On 15m it's below the band and on 10m it's above the band. I could just cut the 15m antenna shorter, but there is something strange going on here. I tried using different mounts, even a magnetic - not recomm

What use is an F-call? In our hobby we come across terms and names that we use and commonly understand, that is, we think we understand them. I mean, what's a velocity factor and what is a dielectric? Simple right? The velocity factor is something to do with coax and the dielectric is something to do with capacitors. Next. Hold on. Let's have a little closer look at this. The velocity factor is the wave propagation speed, or the velocity of propagation, relative to the speed of light. That is to say, it's a percentage of the speed of light. In a piece of RG58, the velocity factor is anywhere between 66% and 73% of the speed of light. You already know that the wavelength of a frequency is dependent on the medium it's traveling through, so when you calculate the wavelength of 21 MHz, you do some maths and out drops around about 15m. If you want to make a resonant antenna, it has to be some part multiple of that wave length, so a piece of wire 15m long will be a single wave length. Well, no. The velocity

What use is an F-call? When you operate your station on a regular basis you might find yourself lulled into the belief that all is well with the world and that your station will continue to operate as expected. It worked yesterday, so why wouldn't it work today - nothing changed. Having now operated my station for several years and having been granted the opportunity to operate stations built and maintained by others I can categorically state that nothing stays the same, ever. In fact, it's probably better to work on the assumption that your station is changing all the time, that it's different than it was yesterday and even different than it was an hour ago. This variation is the result of a number of things that affect the operation of your station. The weather is an obvious influence. Antennas are subject to the wind, the rain and the sun, not to mention lightning and atmospheric ionisation. But the weather is not the only variable. Power supplies are fed by the grid which fluctuates, power supplies h

What use is an F-call? Having a Foundation License, the basic amateur licence in a three tiered system that is in use in Australia, means that you have access to low power only. 10 Watts PEP is the limit today, though that might change as reviews get underway. I've said in the past that if you operate an advanced call as a QRP station, that is, SSB 5 Watts or less, and you make a contact, you're showered with accolade. This illustrates that there is a disconnect between an F-call who legally needs to use QRP and an advanced call who chooses to. At the time I suggested that as an F-call, you look at the QRP community who will be sharing your experience of low power, because they want to, even if you're required to. There are other activities that you can participate in as an F-call, using your low power station. SOTA, or Summits On The Air is an Amateur Radio activity where some stations are activated on the top of summits, that is, an energetic individual climbs up a mountain with radio gear, erects their