Amateur Radio

The other day I was discussing with a fellow amateur the increased frustration my mobile phone provider was inflicting. We hit on the idea of figuring out if other providers would fit the bill and how we could determine if their coverage would suit our needs. Aside from using an old mobile phone, I suggested that using a $25 RTL-SDR dongle would provide a way to record mobile phone cell site beacons from the various mobile networks to map what signal levels we might find.

To that end, I discovered a tool called LTE-Cell-Scanner by Xianjun BH1RXH. Forked from the original project by James Peroulas, it allows you to use simple hardware to scan for LTE Cells used by mobile phone networks. James points out on his site that this tool can also be used to calibrate an RTL-SDR receiver's oscillator, since an LTE downlink centre frequency is stable to within 50 Parts Per Billion, that's 10 times more stable than my Yaesu FT-857d using a TCXO.

If this doesn't mean much, think of it as a local frequency reference standard that you can use in your shack with minimal effort and cost.

The story gets better.

I started building LTE-Cell-Scanner from source and in doing so discovered a directory on my computer named "uhrr". I didn't remember what it was for, so I looked online. The first search result, when I looked for "uhrr radio" was a repository by Oliver F4HTB, more on that in a bit.

The second search result was something called "Universal Radio Hacker". I clicked on the link and discovered a mind boggling tool. There are times in your life when something flips, this was one of those times. It happened when I discovered "csdr" by Andras HA7ILM and again when I discovered "GNU Radio".

Diving into "Universal Radio Hacker", by Dr. Johannes Pohl and Dr. Andreas Noack I was introduced to the art of decoding and generating digital radio signals. In 2018 it was presented for the first time during the USENIX Workshop on Offensive Technologies, or WOOT, as a tool to discover, decode and identify exploits of proprietary IoT devices scattered all over the planet. As an aside, USENIX, Users Of Unix, since 1975.

Back to radio. Universal Radio Hacker allows you to dissect recorded radio signals using all manner of interactive processes. When you go looking for it, and you should, I recommend that you start by watching some videos. You'll find an introductory play list on my YouTube channel. By the time you've seen those, you'll likely share my excitement.

To encourage you further, the Universal Radio Hacker is open source, written in Python, and runs on Linux, MacOS and Windows. So far there have been 94 releases of the software, so it's seen significant development in the years since it was released into the wild.

When installing it I was surprised to discover that its acronym was "uhr", not "uhrr". This was a relief since I still didn't remember what "uhrr" was all about and I couldn't imagine having forgotten Universal Radio Hacker. It turns out that the last time I looked at "uhrr" was apparently in 2021 when I shared my experience in an article titled "The remote edge..."; "uhrr" or "Universal Ham Radio Remote" is a tool that allows you to use a web browser to access a radio remotely.

My little journey into unexpected diversions, distractions and discovery has led me into a path where several puzzle pieces have come together. For example, Universal Radio Hacker and GNU Radio can talk to each other, they're both written in Python, they're both open source, have a history of development and have a community of users. The LTE-Cell-Scanner, also open source, will allow me to calibrate most if not all of my radio gear and I'm once again inspired to keep digging into yet another aspect of this wonderful hobby. I'm sure that there are more than a thousand different hobbies under this roof.

Go forth, explore, discover, be amazed, and stay curious!

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The physicist and mathematician who demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space as waves moving at the speed of light. He proposed that light is an undulation in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. The unification of light and electrical phenomena led to his prediction of the existence of radio waves.

We wouldn't be here without his curiosity.

Hey folks! Relatively new ham here, I’ve been enjoying listening to the local repeaters while doing other stuff on my laptop. Last night I turned on my radio before my laptop, and as it booted up what was a relatively clear transmission became nothing but static. I’m a little surprised the effect could be so dramatic on 2m given none of the major components would be operating around that frequency range, but I suppose there could be some minor chips on the board running around there? Is this a common experience?

The other day a fellow amateur asked me to help them with lowering their radio mast so they could do some maintenance on the antennas attached to it. This is not the first time I've been a participant in such an activity, but it was the first time I felt explicitly safe.

Don't get me wrong, on previous occasions nothing bad happened, but there was always an undertone of "what-if" and an associated anxiety. This time was different. Before we did anything, we sat down, had a cup of coffee, talked and discussed what was going to happen. After coffee we looked at specifics and discussed the process in detail. Then we prepared. Clipping cable ties, winding up loose ends, disconnecting coax, and securing a pulley to a tree. We ran a winch line, discussed distances, looked at potential snags and coax lengths and angles, considered what would happen if something unexpected might happen and discussed various safety considerations, like never walking below the mast whilst it was in its most stressed position, half-way lowered and out of reach.

Then we slowly went about doing what we talked about.

All that sounds pretty reasonable, and it should. It was the first time I'd ever discussed in detail what the plan was, what could happen if something broke, if something got caught and any number of contingencies. We even discussed handling steel winch lines, something which I was unfamiliar with.

Of course it's entirely possible that something bad could happen, something neither of us had considered, but we put ourselves in a position where we both felt safe after mitigating known risks and allowing leeway for unknown risks.

Another word for this type of preparation is "Professionalism". It's a fraught word. You might recall me telling a story where I contacted the regulator to discuss wideband interference caused by a train-line, specifically blocking out a range of AM broadcast frequencies, including the emergency broadcast station. I revealed during that conversation that I was an amateur and had some experience with radio. The person I was speaking to shared that they were a "Professional", using a capital "P" to condescend that my amateur credentials were nothing in comparison to theirs. The conversation ended, the wideband interference is still there, years later.

It's not the only time I've come across this weird relationship with this word "Professionalism". At one time I worked at a community broadcaster where I was one of the producers and presenters. If you're unfamiliar, it's essentially a special interest broadcaster, in this case radio, run by mostly volunteers. We were having a meeting to discuss plans and during that I raised the notion of "Professionalism" in relation to conduct, things like turning up on time for your shift, documenting labels correctly on tapes, keeping logs, broadcasting advertisements at the allocated time, etc. Unfortunately some in the group equated "Professionalism" with "Commercialism" and expressed their discontent with the notion vocally. I stopped volunteering there shortly after.

This to say that I can understand that "Professionalism" has different meanings for different people. In a community like Amateur Radio it might mean that it's considered a taboo word, but I'd like to encourage you to think of it as a way of getting things done .. safely .. and to the betterment of the community.

So, next time you have a working bee, an antenna party, a contest, or a ham-fest, think about how you conduct yourself, how you might improve the experience for yourself and for those around you.

I call that "Professionalism".

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The other day a report in "Amateur Radio Daily" caught my eye. Under the heading "IARU Considers Consolidation", I read that the International Amateur Radio Union, celebrating 100 years of representing our hobby, is considering significant change. Links in the report reveal a PDF document titled "IARU Consultation on Proposed Restructuring March 2025".

The document, dated 21 March, outlines the structure of the IARU, four organisations, one for each ITU Region, and one global organisation, the International Secretariat. It provides some insights on how the funding arrangements between these organisations exist and goes on to talk about how the IARU operates, including incorporation, or not, currencies, committees, priorities and other background and historic information.

All excellent. Stuff that should be public knowledge, but having spent the better part of a year reading IARU documents, this one brought several new eye opening things to the table.

The document attributes no authors but is at least spell-checked in US English, and appears to be part of a discussion started long before I became an amateur. In 2005, the IARU started the "IARU 2025 Committee" to look into the future of the organisation. It concluded its work in 2012. In 2020 a new committee was started, the "Future Committee", consisting of representation from each of the regions.

The introductory wording is curious and includes these words: "We can no longer afford not to move the process forward" - at least implying that this document is a foregone conclusion.

Searching for the document on the IARU sites will give you no results. Searching for "Future Committee", gives you two results, neither actually having the words "Future Committee". The only reference which makes any sense in either of those two results, and only after the fact, is a paragraph, published on 12 October 2020, that refers to the Administrative Council, or AC, and states: "The AC received and discussed an in-depth report from its Working Group on the Future of IARU and agreed to steps for evolving toward a more flexible organization and strengthened relationships with all stakeholders in the global amateur radio community and telecommunications ecosystem."

For a process that started 20 years ago, this is the first I've heard of it. Curious wouldn't you say, in an organisation that claims to represent both you and I? It's almost like the IARU wants to keep this whole thing a secret. There's more.

The thrust of the document is to explore the notion of simplifying the operation of the IARU by consolidating the four organisations into one incorporated body based in Switzerland, where the IARU Region 1 organisation is currently incorporated. It goes on to discuss how this is great for the hobby, how it will save on resources and how it will allow the mostly volunteer run organisation to operate more democratically.

It outlines the process for adoption, including a 60 day consultation period for the 167 Member Societies, as-in peak bodies in your country. I'll save you the suspense, the consultation period ended before I saw the document. There's a 30 day "Detailed Draft Proposal phase" and a "Final Proposal and Voting stage", neither of which are on any specific time-line that I could find.

You might say, well, Onno, you're not a member society, it's none of your business. That's true. Here's the thing. Let me quote from Section 5, on page 11: "In many cases the IARU Member-Society does not represent the majority of the national amateur community."

So .. not to belabour the point, the IARU, who is proud to represent Amateur Radio on the International Stage, writes in its own documentation that the organisation doesn't represent the majority of amateurs while claiming its intention to make the organisation more flexible and democratic. Gotta say, feeling all warm and fuzzy.

In Section 6, the document goes into great detail about finance. I'm kidding, it has one sub-sub section about money, section 6.1.3, less than 10% of the document, no less explosive for its brevity. It states that each region contributes to the overall IARU budget, but that this contribution remains insufficient to cover the many critical representation efforts required.

It goes on to say that "Historically, the ARRL has played a key role in bridging this financial gap".

For its contribution, the ARRL currently nominates the President and Vice President which the member societies get to vote on. I wonder what happens if they don't vote for the nominated candidate and what happens when the ARRL is no longer first among equals, will it continue to fund the IARU?

While pointing out that all direct representation of the IARU at the ITU are made by volunteers, as well as "nearly all" other activities, I wonder which activities are paid and how much?

There's also discussion about a "not ideal" "compromise", namely that we'll have to be virtual attendees to save money. Really? In 2025, after a century of representing amateur radio, we're still attending meetings in person? Has nobody at the IARU heard of this new technology, you know, the one it claims to promote, radio? Or the more modern version, teleconference? You'd think that a bunch of volunteer radio amateurs would jump at the chance to debate things over radio.

Moving on.

The finance section includes an interesting statement. "Many regions have accumulated cash reserves" and "where these reserves are substantial and have resulted from a specific region's activities, they may need to be held in trust and designated exclusively for initiatives related to that former region".

Let's unpack this.

There's three regions. "Many regions" means more than one, but not all, so, two. In other words, one region has no money. Which one?

Moreover, "substantial" reserves from "a specific region", means one of the other two, so, one. So, it made money, it's substantial, it's intended to be designated exclusively for that one region. Which one?

The Wireless Institute of Australia, which claims to have existed longer than the IARU and the ARRL before it, was a federation. In 2004 the regulator indicated that it should consolidate its efforts because apparently the various state WIA organisations "could never agree on a single outcome".

This organisation was incorporated in VK3 where it continues to exist as a first among equals. Curiously the Victorian, Tasmanian and South Australia with Northern Territory Divisions of the Wireless Institute of Australia are each still incorporated and active. Today if you're in VK6, like I am, your experience of the WIA is completely different from that if you're in VK3 and to a lesser extent VK2.

Remind you of anything?

The document mentions that "only fully paid up member-societies in good standing have the right to vote" and "The current fee structure will need to be harmonized across all three regions, which may lead to increased dues for some Member-Societies".

That tells us that some member societies will have to pay more money and if they don't they won't be able to vote. I wonder if these are members of the region with all the money, or from the region without money? I'll remind you that member societies have already been acknowledged by the IARU as being underfunded, offering reduced services with some member societies being disbanded.

The point being that we're finding out behind the scenes, after the fact, of a process that has been in play for 20 years, that aims to create a single harmonised body whilst exacerbating existing inequities, and doing so in secret.

Is that the kind of body that you want to represent you on the world stage?

Is this something that your member society knows about, is it actively participating, does it share that information with you or hide it? Are you informed, or did you learn more today from me than you have in the past 20 years?

Before I leave you to your thoughts, credit to Cale K4HCK for publishing the story and thanks to their source for sharing the document.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Seems Mastodon.radio instance has an outage. Haven't been able to access for last couple of hours.

We'll walk you through adding a display module to your FakeTec Meshtastic Device to show messages, node information, and network status in real-time.

Right off the bat, let me start with a question. "What do you think you're doing?"

To give you some context, it should come as no surprise that I'm talking about amateur radio and what it is that we do, you and I, when we "do amateur radio".

Of course the answer is different for every person you ask, and it's likely to change over time. So, let's explore and fair warning, if you know me at all, you'll realise that I'll be asking more questions, so here goes.

Is this an activity that you do, for yourself, or for others? Is it a hobby, or a vocation, or something else? Do you use this as part of your life outside this community and if you do, how?

At this point I hope you're getting a sense of Deja-Vu all over again, in that I'm asking you to explore your own place in the community. I'm asking because it occurs to me that we spend an awful lot of time looking in the other direction.

How do we compare skills and knowledge against other amateurs, how does our shack compare with another, how does our antenna stack up, which modes have you used, what things have you activated, how much power do you use? All things that might form part of the activity of amateur radio, but fail to look at you as a person and your role in this.

For example, have you considered if you're interested in helping new amateurs, or would you rather just do your own thing? What about how you gain skills? Would you rather read a book, watch a YouTube video, attend a class or play with others? If you're considering upgrading your license to gain more responsibilities, are you doing that for yourself, or are you doing it because of peer pressure?

If you've been part of the hobby for a little while you'll have discovered that radio amateurs are everywhere, often in unexpected places. With that comes the realisation that this implies that we have members who represent all of humanity in all its many-splendored complexity. Where in that spectrum are you and what is your role in participating in that wider community, and is your role what you want it to be?

One of the themes I've discovered over the years is insecurity. A recurring perception is that amateurs who've attained the highest license level are somehow "more" amateur than those who are on another journey. Where do you fit in that? How do you perceive amateurs with differing license classes? Do you apply the same metric to moped, car and truck licenses? How do you compare yourself against those who are not amateurs and how did you step into your license?

I'm going to stop with the questions now and leave you with a thought.

The hobby of amateur radio is a playground where you have the freedom to explore radio and all that it offers, but nobody said that you need to limit yourself to radio.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Is anyone around here playing around with TETRA, I pulled a Hytera PTC760 FxB1 radio from the trash at work and learning my way into that technology. if someone has some hints or tips I’d highly appreciate them.

We'll walk you through adding a Telemetry module to your FakeTec Meshtastic Device to measure air pressure, temperature, and humidity.

Nets and conversations on repeaters in the Wake County, NC vicinity are getting disrupted by a troublemaker. The conventional wisdom is not to feed the trolls.

Transcript of short article about interference follows:

When You’re the Victim of Intentional Interference

The question of why one ham intentionally interferes with another would make a fascinating study topic for psychologists. The answer usually involves anger of some sort-either anger at you personally, or anger at the world in general. Amateur Radio is the ideal medium for those who want to act on their frustrations with little fear of suffering the consequences. A ham who wouldn’t dare insult you to your face has no problem anonymously garbling your transmissions!

This type of ham gains pleasure from his actions only when you acknowledge them. He craves attention and your angry response gives him exactly what he needs. The trick is to do everything possib!e to ignore him. Try to continue your conversation as best you can, working around his interruptions without comment If the interference is so bad that you cannot continue, move to another frequency.

I know it’s difficult to hold your tongue in the face of such rude behavior. By ignoring his antics, however, you’ll rob him of the pleasure he seeks. Eventually, he’ll become bored and move on. That’s the worst punishment you can inflict! - WB8IMY

This guide details building a low-cost Meshtastic node using an NRF52840 Pro Micro, HT-RA62 LoRa module, and FakeTec PCB. Total cost is around $11. Assembly requires SMC soldering skills, followed by bootloader updates and Meshtastic firmware installation.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.radio/post/7413978

The WisMesh Board ONE offers solar support, expansion slot, and a compact design for Meshtastic users—all for $30. Find out how it compares to popular models in this hands-on review.

Hello, this is for ham radio enthusiasts from India. VU2LVJ is starting a free online learning program for the Amateur Station Operators Certificate (ASOC) exam in India. If someone is interested you can get in touch with him (look at this bio on his qrz page) or DM me, I can connect you with him. 73 de VU2TUM.

Around the world are thousands of associations, groups of people, clubs if you like, that represent radio amateurs. Some of those associations are anointed with a special status, that of "member society" or "peak body", which allows them to represent their country with their own governments and on the international stage to the ITU, the International Telecommunications Union, through a global organisation, the IARU, the International Amateur Radio Union.

Some of these are known across our whole community, the ARRL in the USA, the RSGB in the UK, and the WIA in Australia. Some much less so, the CRAC, the Chinese Radio Amateurs Club, or the ARSI, the Amateur Radio Society of India, for example.

In an attempt to get a deeper understanding of what distinguishes these organisations, I visited a dozen member society websites. Cultural sensibilities and aesthetics aside, the variety and sense of priority is both pleasing and astounding.

Starting close to home, the WIA, the Wireless Institute of Australia, shows news as the most important and the top story is a radio contact between the International Space Station and a school, held about two weeks ago.

The ERAU, the Estonian Radio Amateurs Association, features an article about the 2025 General Meeting outlining who was there, what was discussed and thanking the participants for their contributions.

When I visited, the ARRL, the American Radio Relay League, top news item, was the renewed defence of the 902-928 MHz Amateur Radio Band, from a few days ago. The most important issue for the ARRL is that you read the latest edition of QST magazine, but only if you're a member.

The RSGB, the Radio Society of Great Britain, has an odd landing page that links to the main site, which features much of the same content. The latest news is "Mental Health Awareness Week" and encourages us to celebrate kindness in our community.

The DARC, the German Amateur Radio Club, has a page full of announcements and the top one was an article about current solar activity including a coronal hole and various solar flares.

The ERASD, the Egyptian Radio Amateurs Society for Development, uses qsl.net as its main website. It features many images with text, presumably in Arabic, that unfortunately I was not able to translate. Curiously the landing page features some English text that welcomes all interested to join. I confess that I love the juxtaposition between a Yaesu FT-2000 transceiver and the images of Tutankhamun and the pyramids.

The RAC, the Radio Amateurs of Canada, use their homepage to promote its purpose, and features many pictures of their bi-monthly magazine, which you can only read if you're a member, which is where many of the homepage links seem to go.

The RCA, the Radio Club of Argentina, is promoting the 2024-2025 Railway Marathon, including links to descriptions of what constitutes a Railway Activation, how to reserve your station, and upcoming and past activations. There's also a reminder to renew your license.

The ARSI, the Amateur Radio Society of India, has a very sparse landing page showing their mission and not much else. Clicking around gives you lots of information about the history, activities, awards and the like. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find out how to become licensed in India. There's hardly any images.

In contrast, the URA, the Union of Radio Amateurs of Andorra, lands you on a page with contact details and not much else. Clicking through the site gives you lots of pictures of happy people and maps, lots of maps.

The KARL, the Korean Amateur Radio League, features an announcement with a link to the 24th Amateur Radio Direction Finding, from a week ago, but it requires a login to actually read it.

The JARL, the Japan Amateur Radio League, features an announcement to a form you can complete to join the "List of stations from which you do not wish to receive QSL cards."

The NZART, the New Zealand Association of Radio Transmitters, features a big button to latest news and clicking on it shows the "Jock White Field Day", which was held several months ago.

I wasn't able to see the CRAC, the Chinese Radio Amateurs Club, since the page didn't load for me. The "Wayback machine", also known as archive.org, from a capture a few days ago, showed a news item announcing the intent to organise the 1st Class C Amateur Radio Technical "something", I say "something" because I cannot actually load the article and see what it has to say. The event was scheduled for a month ago, the announcement was from several months ago.

Content aside, finding sites was interesting too, mind you, there's plenty of member associations that don't have any web presence at all. Is that by choice, or necessity?

The IARU list of member societies conflicts with the list of national organisations shown on Wikipedia. The IARU has about 160 entries, I say about, since the list isn't really formatted as much as it's congealed. Let's just say, perhaps a table for tabular data might be a novel approach. Wikipedia is slightly better formatted, it lists 93 national organisations.

As it happens, both include a link to the national organisation for China, which is either the Chinese Radio Sports Association, with apparently two different acronyms, either CRSAOA, or CRSA, or if you believe the IARU as a source, it's the one I mentioned earlier, the CRAC. I don't know which one is right, but at least we can assume that the IARU page was updated formally, rather than edited by someone on the internet. Regardless of which one is the "real" Chinese national amateur radio organisation, none of the websites loaded for me.

Let's move on. It's interesting that several non-English sites like Korea, Japan and Germany feature a button that allows their site to be translated into English. What's even more interesting is that the English version of the site is not in any way the same content. In many cases it appears to be information relevant to English visitors rather than a translation. One notable exception is Estonia, which allows a visitor to read their site in Estonian or English right out of the box.

Unsurprisingly, the ARRL website has no buttons for Spanish, even though that represents about 13 percent of the USA population, let alone any other language.

I'd encourage you to visit a few and see what you can learn about the other members of our community around the world.

My visits leave me with questions.

What do these organisations stand for? What do they do? Are they there for amateurs, for aspirant members, the general public, for regulators, for their members, for fund raising and advertising, or international visitors and tourism?

It seems to me that looking at just a few of these organisations reveals a great many things about how they understand their own role and how they deliver service and just how much money they have to play with to make that happen.

I'll leave you to ponder how effective they might be and what your role is in that endeavour.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The world’s largest amateur radio convention returns to the Greene County Fair and Expo Center this weekend, with a slate of new and classic experiences for ham radio fans of all ages.

Hamvention brought over 35,000 amateur radio enthusiasts and over 700 volunteers to Xenia last May, and organizers have seen “equally exciting” ticket sales for 2025. For comparison, the population of the entire city of Xenia is only about 25,000.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34434940

We’re gonna be so fucked. Get ready for shittier experiences with internet providers and cell companies.

I'm stoked to have successfully received and decoded an SSTV signal from the ISS for the first time using my cheap Baofeng radio and QSSTV. Took a few tries, but luckily the ISS has been passing over my area several times per day over the last few days, so I've had several opportunities to try it.

Since becoming a licensed amateur in 2010, I have spent a good amount of time putting together my thoughts on a weekly basis about the hobby and the community surrounding amateur radio. As you might know, my interest is eclectic, some might say random, but by enlarge, I go where the unicorns appear.

Over a year ago I mentioned in passing a community called HamSCI. The label on the box is "Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation", which gives you a sense of what this is all about. It was started by amateur radio scientists who study upper atmospheric and space physics.

More formally, the HamSCI mission is the "Continuation and extension of the amateur's proven ability to contribute to the advancement of the radio art."

If you visit the hamsci.org website, and you should, you'll discover dozens of universities and around 1,300 people, many of whom are licensed radio amateurs, who are asking questions and discovering answers that matter to more than just our amateur community.

For the eighth time the HamSCI community held an annual "workshop", really, an opportunity to get together and share ideas, in person and across the internet, a conference by any other name.

Under the banner theme of "HamSCI's Big Year", over two days, 56 people representing 27 different organisations across 61 sessions, tutorials, discussions, tours, posters and demonstrations, explored topics all over our hobby, from the Personal Space Weather Network, capable of making ground based measurements of the space environment, to the Whistler Catcher Pi, a project to record the VLF spectrum to 48 kHz using a Raspberry Pi.

You'll find research into HF antennas for the DASI or Distributed Array of Small Instruments project and associated NSF grants, exploring measurements of HF and VLF, combined with GPS and magnetometer across 20 to 30 stations.

There's discussions on how to explore Geospace Data, such as information coming from the Personal Space Weather Station network, or PSWS, using the OpenSpace project and dealing with the challenges of visualising across a wide scale, all the way up to the entire known universe. Did I mention that there's work underway to add PSWS compatible receivers to Antarctica?

There reports on observations and modelling of the ionospheric effects of the April 2024 solar eclipse QSO party, including Doppler radio, HF time differences, and Medium Wave signal enhancements, not to mention planning and promoting future meteor scatter QSO parties.

There's, post-sunset sporadic-F propagation, large scale travelling ionospheric disturbances, GPS disciplined beacons, the physical nature of sporadic-E propagation and plenty more.

As you might have heard me say at one time or another, the difference between fiddling and science is writing it down. It means that you'll find every session has accompanying documentation, charts, graphics and scientific papers. Remember, there's eight years of reading to catch up with, or learn from, or play with. The publications and presentations section on the hamsci.org website currently has 526 different entries.

You might not be interested in the impact of radio wave and GPS scintillation, or rapid fluctuation in strength, caused during the G5 geomagnetic storm that occurred on the 10th of May 2024, or a statistical study of ion temperature anistropy using AMISR, or Advanced Modular Incoherent Scatter Radar data .. or you might.

In case you're curious, "anistropy" is the property of being directionally dependent, in other words, it matters in which direction you measure, which might have some relevance to you if you consider that we think of the ionosphere and radio paths being reciprocal. If it reminds you of isotropy, that's because they're opposites.

The point being, that amateur radio is a great many things to different people. If you're a scientist, budding, graduate or tenured, there's a home for you within this amazing hobby.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

tl;dr: if you could build a tiny array of nantennas, could you use it to form an image?

My inspiration for this idea comes from insect compound eyes as well as some uses of optical fiber like boroscopes and endoscopes, where light enters a dense array of optical fibers and emerges as an image on the other end.

The idea is that you have a densely packed array of nanoscopic antennas that are resonant at visible wavelengths, with each antenna connected to its own "feed line" which all in turn connect to a receiver that can collate the received signals from all the antennas into an image.

The ISS is currently transmitting SSTV pictures on 145.800 MHz using the PD120 mode.

"Impedance matching is one of the perpetual confusions for new electronics students, and for good reason: the idea that increasing the impedance of a circuit can lead to more power transmission is frighteningly unintuitive at first glance. Even once you understand this, designing a circuit with impedance matching is a tricky task, and it’s here that [Ralph Gable]’s introduction to impedance matching is helpful."

Cross posted from https://rss.ponder.cat/post/172998