Foundations of Amateur Radio

Still excited from my minor victory in discovering a missing puzzle piece associated with the project I'm working on, I spent the past week introducing my head, if not literally, at least figuratively, to the surface of my desk in a traditional head-desk troubleshooting move that you might be familiar with. I suppose it's an improvement on the "Bear with a Toothache" approach.

In short, the Yak is losing hair .. rapidly.

You might be wondering why I'm telling you about it, since in the land of milk and honey nothing ever goes wrong and all the answers are presented on a silver platter, except when they're not.

Within the amateur radio community, it appears to me that the inclination to fiddle is ingrained and widespread. Given that the hobby is all about experimentation and learning, that's not a bad thing, but there are times when this behaviour can be counterproductive.

Specifically when you're troubleshooting.

Faced with a problem, there are times when a systematic approach is warranted. For some, the first time they come across this phenomenon is during the practical test component of their amateur radio license. Presented with a station, they're asked to determine why it's not working.

The problem might be a power supply that isn't plugged in, or a disconnected antenna, the mode button set to FM, the squelch closed, the RF gain set to zero, generally something simple.

Those inexperienced in the art of troubleshooting are more likely than not inclined to try everything, sometimes all at once, in the hope that one of the changes will magically fix the issue, but in reality, often making the problem worse.

There is a better way.

I'm mentioning this because this skill applies to many aspects of life and in the decades that I've been here, it's not something I was ever taught.

It's funny to think that a quote from nearly a century ago applies to this skill: "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

The salient point being "eliminating all which is impossible".

In other words, you're not finding the problem, you're eliminating all the things that are not the problem. Another way is to think of it as finding all the things that don't need fixing. While that might sound weird, in deeply interdependent systems like an amateur radio station, or a computer, that approach can help you find the root cause of an issue and with it the path to a potential fix.

Of course, this process invites you to examine where the issue might exist. Experience will teach you that you need to start small and grow the net, rather than cast wide and narrow it down. That's not to say that you need to stop paying attention to the bigger picture.

In the example of an inoperative station, you might discover that the lights in the room are out and that this coincides with the radio being off. In other words, trying to discover if the antenna is disconnected makes little sense, since there is no power to the radio.

In my case, I'm balancing my efforts between maintaining an existing system whilst attempting to deploy a new one to replace it. I'm working on several related issues on multiple fronts. Their common theme is audio, though the specifics differ depending on which computer I'm looking at. Then there's the installation and ongoing care and maintenance associated with keeping GNU Radio running.

It's a balancing act because while this is happening, I still need to look for work, respond to email, deal with the regulatory requirements for accounting and tax returns, not to mention the myriad projects I have going on at any given time.

At this point I could go into deep and disturbing detail about the technology issues I'm juggling and I could even justify it by pointing out that a problem shared is a problem halved, but truth be told, I'm not sure you're up for a treatise on the comings and goings of forced system security updates and arising bugs, and just so we're clear, this is not the company who brought us a talking paperclip, it's the one who gave rise to companies called "Orange" and "Lemon".

On the GNU Radio front, there's a snake based installer that happily installs two incompatible libraries for the same application, causing it to fail, and a beer related one that fails to install dependencies. At least I can use 'apt-get' on a real system.

That said, juggling problems and all, I did manage to actually hear an FM station being decoded across the network. It did help that I actually connected the antenna to the radio, and I'm ignoring the audio buffer under-runs, or over-runs, depending on the weather, or some other unknowable variable, but I suspect that's all part of the learning I'm in the middle of.

Hopefully, the hair will grow back soon.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB