Foundations of Amateur Radio

Several years ago, I forget exactly when, I was gifted a device called a "Wio Terminal". It's a micro-controller in a box with a screen, buttons, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a boat load of sensors, ports and more. It's intended for experimentation and truth be told, exactly the right gift for a geek like me. It even has rubber feet to stop it from sliding off the desk, well, slow it down at least!

The thing is, it remained sealed in its box until this week, when I finally gathered enough unrelated information, something I often refer to as "puzzle pieces", to understand what this device might do and how I might use it.

Given that I'm talking about amateur radio, and not software development, I'll only mention that I got my initial "hello world" working and observe that I have some radio projects in mind for it.

What this experience revealed to me was that complexity is hard, not to mention frustrating, and not limited to my adventures with computers. Let me elaborate.

In amateur radio the answer to a great many questions is a phrase I've used before: "It depends", a valid, but ultimately immensely irksome response.

Over the years I've attempted to dig into what exactly "it" depends on, with varying levels of success. While Earth rotates on its axis, that answer is unlikely to change, but I think I can make it potentially less aggravating, and here's how.

When you come across a question where the answer is: "It depends", stop worrying about exactly "what" "it" depends on, instead, keep the question in mind whilst you go about your life.

Looking back at my Wio Terminal experience, that's exactly what I did. While there's the frustration of not being able to report to my friend that I'd done anything useful with it, by having it float around my desk, albeit still in the box, I regularly noticed it, and when going about my day I'd continue to gather puzzle pieces that eventually hit a critical mass.

In other words, whilst gathering apparently unrelated, facts, skills, articles, example code, cables, computing resources, how-to documents, forum posts and the like, including having discussions with others, eventually I had enough to realise that I had the answer to my question that wasn't "It depends", instead, I had a clear, well, clearer, understanding of what kinds of things I needed to achieve to make progress.

Now I'll be the first to acknowledge that this journey isn't always a gentle stroll in the woods, "bear with a sore tooth" has been levelled more than once, but the point remains, figuring out how things work isn't a linear process and once you are aware of that, life becomes, well, at least in my mind, more interesting.

Again, what does this have to do with amateur radio?

Well, let's look at some innocuous questions that an amateur might ask: "What radio should I buy?", or "What antenna should I get?", or "Given the current propagation, can I make a contact with my friend on the other side of the planet?"

The answer to each of these questions is: "It depends."

If you have been in this community for a time, you'll understand some of the things "it" depends on, but the longer you are here, the more aware you become of other things "it" depends on, in other words, your understanding of the problem reveals that there are more considerations at play that might not be immediately obvious.

At some point you'll get to the next unhelpful response in amateur radio: "Try it and report back."

Equally annoying, since, at least on the face of it, you'll invariably be left with the feeling that nobody cares, least of all the person you asked. While I'll acknowledge that this is sometimes the case, on the whole, the response really reveals that there are too many unknown variables to form any coherent overview.

That said, as the person answering, providing a range might be helpful to at least get a sense of what space to play in. What I mean by that is, sometimes figuring out what needs to happen involves multiple considerations which each impact on the solution in subtle and different ways.

When you're learning about a problem, you might not know what those considerations are, but as time goes by, while you're presumably collecting puzzle pieces, your awareness increases.

During the week, I saw a post by Christophe ON6ZQ announcing a tool called "HF Propagation Lab" (https://on6zq.be/prop), described as "A browser-only teaching instrument for amateur radio operators. It explains what live space-weather numbers suggest, how each band may react, and which ionospheric mechanism is probably doing the work. It is a teaching model, not a substitute for beacons, skimmers, WSPR, or listening on the air."

What this tool does is give you a feel of the propagation landscape you're playing in, what variables impact in what way, in your ability to make contacts.

In other words, it's a way to learn about the unknown variables associated with propagation.

So, when have you been the recipient, or donor, of the phrase: "It depends.", or "Try it and report back.", and what might you do to improve things next time?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB