Ham Radio

When I was 10 years old, I passed my foundation amateur radio exam. The course had been my first formal introduction to electronics, my first time seeing a real application to maths, and undoubtedly inspired a lifelong interest in physics and technology.

It was my grandad (M0KZB) who encouraged me to start, and who took me to the classes. He has been a radio ham since a kid too, and it is a big part of his life. He teaches morse code on the air and is the RSGB Morse Test Coordinator.

Of course, as a kid with a hobby of collecting hobbies, I didn't keep it up. If memory serves me well, I think I moved on to glass engraving. Or cryptography. One of the two. And soon a much more dominating hobby took over: I discovered web development. So the radio hobby didn't stick.

Fast forward more than 20 years. I have a kid of my own, a lot more understanding about physics and technology, and disposable income. While doomscrolling through YouTube one evening, I came across DX Commander video on antenna basics, and it got me hooked again.

It's quite silly, really. I have a PhD in physics. I work in a fast paced tech environment, and communications is a part of that. I have a smartphone, and use WiFi all the time. Antennas shouldn't particularly interest me. I know how they work (from a physics perspective), I use them implicitly every day. So implicitly, in fact, that I barely recognise their existence.

But there is something magical about antennas. With a piece of wire and some suitable equipment attached to it, you can communicate with other people around the world. No middle men, no service providers to pay for uptime. Just you, a long piece of wire, something that can use that long piece of wire, and the weather.

And this is a big deal. In emergency situations, cell towers and internet providers can be overwhelmed or worse - non-functional. In such emergencies, radio can be one of the only viable communication options. Amateur radio operators can not only reach out to one another in these scenarios, but also assist emergency services. Taking things to extremes, "preppers" plan for survival in more apocalyptic scenarios and a ham radio or two is an essential part of their kit (this is the part of the blog post where you listen to Bruce Springsteen's Radio Nowhere, just to get the feel of the scenario).

Of course, it isn't just about emergencies. It's about the sheer geek factor, the challenges, the education, and the technology. I hear stories about people building radios out of old parts, wiring them up to some cat5 ethernet cable to use as an antenna, and still reaching people hundreds of miles away.

To have access to a basic communication technology that is used around the world, with no subscription fee, ​there's a lot of value to be had there. Add technically interesting and educational and it's simply irresistible.

I decided to rummage through a yet-unpacked box of gadgets and gizmos from my old house, and found a trusty handheld radio given to my by my grandad: a Baofeng UV-5R. I perched it onto my home office windowsil and left it there scanning.

I live in a rural, hilly area, so was not expecting much from a small handheld with a little "rubber duck" antenna. To my surprise, though, I did manage to pick up activity on one frequency, and it turned out to be the Shrewsbury repeater (GB3LH). That's 20 miles away from my house, which is quite impressive. After setting up my radio to transmit with the right settings for the repeater, I was equally astonished that the repeater responded. I could send and receive over a distance of 20 miles with that little, low-powered thing.

I can hand-wave an argument as to why this is possible. The River Severn flows through my area and makes its way to Shrewsbury. This not only carves out a relatively flat path between the two, which is important in UHF and VHF frequencies because they are limited to ground propagation, but a large body of water also improves propagation. That's my theory, at least.

It would make some level of sense, too, as that repeater is the only thing I can access. I can't get through to much closer repeaters in other directions.

Unfortunately that feels quite isolating. I searched around for SDRs (software-defined radios) available to stream on the web. They're fantastic for listening in on chatter going on over the air, and I enjoyed doing so. It helped me identify which areas I want to be able to reach - there seems to be a lot of activity around Liverpool and the Black Country, so I need to aim to be able to reach 60 miles. It also helped me identify which HF bands I want to aim for if I went down that route: 40m seems very active.

Ok, I was sold. This is a hobby I want to pick up again, and properly. But on foundation level power and restrictions on antennas, I decided that the obvious next step was to do my intermediate exam. This would grant me 50 Watts of power (instead of 10), which will possibly increase to 100 Watts later this year if Ofcom goes ahead with proposed changes.

I bought the intermediate study book, and the exam book full of sample questions and answers. I enrolled in an online course by ​GM6DX that was extremely useful. I also bought a pack of 400 blank flashcards to help me memorise some of the recall-based questions.

But I'm also a procrastinator, so I spent an evening writing up a flashcard app in Vue.js, then scraped the RSGB past questions so I could really cram. Re-sitting is fine but I always want to get something right the first time around, so I wanted to ace it.

The exam was pretty interesting. It was online, and I had to use special software for it - that didn't work on Linux, so I used my company macbook. I also needed two cameras on a WebEx call, so I used my phone for that.

I'm not naturally good at exams, but I've sat enough of them to have a method. It is as follows.

First, I memorise a very important message to myself, and when the exam starts the first thing I do is write that message down on the allowed scrap paper. For this one, that message was "use all of the time, double check all calculations before submitting, and remember capacitance is upside down". This is a reminder to myself not to race through it, not to be sloppy just because I want it to be over, and that capacitance adds weirdly. All of this is obvious, but a lot of obvious things can lose their obvi...osity (?) in exams.

Second, I do questions in order of comfort. I flick through all of the questions and find any that I know the answer to immediately, then get them out of the way. Then, I go through the questions that involve calculations, and do those. Then, I go through the questions that involve looking through provided information (e.g. the band plan), and do those. The remainder of questions are typically about license conditions and safety, and I hate those questions. I like to leave the horrible questions until last.

Third, I forecast. For each answer, I write down a confidence level out of 10. This helps me to gauge the point in the exam where I think I have already accrued enough points to pass, which helps me to relax and slow down for the more awkward questions.

After taking up most of the time available to me, and long after everyone else on the exam had finished and left, I decided that there was no further improvement I could make and submitted it. Of 46 questions, the pass mark is 28. I got the score instantly: 42 out of 46 questions correct. That's a solid pass!

As soon as the confirmation letter came through, I went onto the Ofcom website to get my new callsign. My old one was MW3JKB, and the new one would be 2W0???. JKB was taken. ARK was taken. JAK was taken. Everything I could think of was taken, until I found JRK. That was available! I suppose it's a justifiable contortion of "Jake Arkinstall", so I nabbed it, and my new callsign was now 2W0JRK. Now to use it!

One thing I knew was that getting set up properly is not a fast process. You need a power supply, you need the radio itself. You need coax, and connectors galore. You need an antenna (or multiple). And that's before you even think about a balun.

So I decided to take this slow. My grandad managed to find a Yeasu FT991 (not the FT991A) for sale for £500, which was a bargain, and I decided to buy it. He also managed to find a power supply. I was half way there! Ish.

Now I knew I had a radio that could do both HF and VHF/UHF, it was time to think about antennas. I decided to go for a DX Commander for HF (partially as a thank you to Calum whose antenna video got me back into the hobby, and partially because he had a Black Friday offer on). For VHF, I went for a Moonraker white stick antenna that I can mount onto my chimney stack.

But this all means nothing if I have no coax. So I ordered some of that too - 50m of 10mm LMR400, and some PL259 connectors for the ends. Unfortunately, the wrong coax was sent and it was much too thin to use the connectors, and not of the quality I'd want for UHF. I sent it back and asked for the coax I ordered - and the returned coax never made it to them. I'm still trying to sort this situation out, and until it is resolved, I have no coax.

The other thing I needed to sort out was a suitable desk. The radio and power supply are heavy, and I had them perched precariously on a tiny, rickety table that I don't think I'd trust to bear the weight of a postage stamp. A trip to IKEA later, I now have a proper radio workspace. One that isn't wobbly, at least. It also has plenty of storage and some space for soldering work, which is an improvement over doing it on the floor as I have been so far.

All that's left is for the coax situation to get sorted out and I can get to work fitting the antennas and finally getting on the air!

Hopefully my next ham related blog post will contain some good news and updates on my progress.