September 6, 2011 at 09:19The practice of radio communications, as it is - an inside look
After reading the “freshly published” practice of radio communication , as it is, thoughts arose about the fact that it is worth sharing your experience in amateur radio communication practice.
Since 2004 I have been dealing with communications technology almost daily (if this was a hobby before, now it has become bread), both HF and VHF.
VHF communication (up to 1 GHz), without distortion (using the reflection of radio waves from meteor showers, the moon, etc.), looks simple: the communication range directly depends on the transmitter power and the height of the antenna suspension.
HF communication is a more extraordinary phenomenon, because the radio wave, depending on the condition, can go around the earth several times, or can be “intermodulated” by lightning discharges if there is a thunderstorm on the route between the interlocutors. Or maybe, again, depending on the conditions (and in particular, on the direction of the antenna), to enter the ionosphere at a critical angle and go into infinitely distant space ...
In the comments to the same article there are questions regarding the receipt of a radio amateur callsign, I went through this the procedure in 2005, in Russia (then I was only 15 years old), so at the moment this scheme may be slightly different:
1 - submit an application to the local DOSAAF (radio club, youth sports center, SUT, etc.).
2 - the state duty is paid (in 2005 it was 60 rubles).
3 - at the local (regional, in the case of sparsely populated subjects of the country) level, a commission is organized and a qualification exam is taken (in my case, it was a booze of examiners using the funds of the examinee, if you are lucky, you will be taken to a normal exam). In my case, the questions were of an average level, approximately what is taught in technical schools - not too much theory, not too much stupidity. Questions are compiled from a course of analogue technology (circuitry RPU, RPRU, AFU, circuit theory, RCiS).
4 - relevant documents (license, documents for the callsign) are issued.
Remark: At the moment, my callsign is not valid for non-payment of annual fees.
And so, after receiving the callsign, according to the principle - first a cow, then a bucket, we look in the direction of our future equipment. There is unlimited scope for imagination, imagination and, as a result, technical creativity ... All the necessary equipment can be assembled yourself, although this is a personal matter for everyone, if the budget allows, you can buy YAESU FT-2000. In my case, it was a Volna transceiver, of domestic production, bought in a local connected circle (because it was closed due to low attendance - there were only two of us) from the director of the Youth Sports Center.
ATTENTION! If you are planning to make a transceiver yourself, then you will need to go through the registration procedure for this product. With the receipt of those. passports and licenses for the transmitter.
And so, we received the call sign, acquired the transceiver and antenna (well, or did it ourselves, which is rare in our time) and set it up, now it's time to broadcast!
But before you go on the air, you should familiarize yourself with another point:
Decent radio amateurs, signalmen, have their own "on-board" magazine, in which they write down the details of each communication. This information is standardized and represents data on the time of communication (UTC naturally), the call sign of the interlocutor (about the rules for issuing and sharing calls in the world, you can read it in Google :)), the location of the interlocutor (QTH), the quality of the received signal (encoded in two digits from 1 to 5, as well as from 1 to 9), where the first digit indicates the quality of the signal modulation, and the second is the relative volume level with which the interlocutor is received. An excellent assessment is 59. Further, at the request of the participants, this connection is fixed with a QSL card (more about which you can read in Google).
Magazine, transceiver, call sign ... we have to go to battle !!!
Amateur radio communication is quite a serious thing, and its implementation is subject to certain regulations. In general, it looks like this: one subscriber gives a general call, and anyone can join him
- RA9WLN - I give a general call to everyone!
- RA9WLN, here UA4WMX.
- UA4WMX here is RA9WLN, good day, my name is XXX, my QTH is pos. Rainbow, I accept you on 5/8.
- RA9WLN, here UA4WMX. And I welcome you, my name is XXX, my QTH in Izhevsk, I accept you for 5/9.
- UA4WMX is RA9WLN here, excellent, I have no questions for you, all the best to you and 73!
- RA9WLN, here UA4WMX, mutually, 73!
[where RA9WLN, UA4WMX are the callsigns; 5/9 - assessment of the quality of the received signal; QTH - location; 73 - international amateur radio numerical code meaning literally “Success and all the best”]
remark: Radio amateurs, in particular those who use Morse code, use a Q-code to reduce the recording of their message.
_______
This is how radio communication goes, ask what is the catch of such communication?
The whole joke is to amuse your amateur vanity, establish long-distance communication, catch the DX, test the equipment and lotions to it, communicate with people and measure your temper in communication competitions!
But there are a couple of limitations:
- you must always comply with ethics, behave appropriately on the air,
- There are 4 forbidden topics that, by default, cannot be discussed on the air - sex, religion, politics, and sports.
Well, in short, this action happens just like that.
In particular, about the HF range:
You all know that short waves propagate reflecting from the ionosphere (the highest part of the earth’s atmosphere) and only at night - this is what the teachers at the university say. In some ways, they may be right, because it is generally known that the sun strongly ionizes the ionosphere, which in turn suppresses the passage of radio waves of certain frequencies. But in reality, the situation is somewhat different.
In general, there are several dedicated bands for amateurs:
160 meters - 1.8 MHz - 1830 ... 1930 kHz
80 meters - 3.5 MHz - 3500 ... 3650 kHz,
40 meters - 7 MHz - 7000 ... 71000 kHz ,
30 meters - 10 MHz - 10100 ... 10150 kHz,
20 meters - 14 MHz - 14000 ... 14350 kHz,
17 meters - 18 MHz - 18068 ... 18168 kHz,
15 meters - 21 MHz - 21000 ... 21450 kHz,
12 meters - 24 MHz - 24890 ... 24990 kHz,
10 meters - 28 MHz - 28000 ... 29700 kHz.
Consider the ones that are used most often:
160 meters - worked on it a little, because passing there ONLY at night. And strangely enough, only in this range they are allowed to work when receiving a callsign from the 4th category. To be honest, I don’t know why this is done, because this range causes the greatest difficulties in the development of beginners.
80 meters - for a long time I was an observer in this range. The situation with the passage is better than 160m, but also only night passage.
40 meters - passing both day and night, night prevails.
20 meters - universal range, round-the-clock passage! It was on it that I made the farthest connection in my life! The respondent was from the USA, from the state of Oklahoma, communication at a distance of 11000km !!!
15 meters and less - special ranges - they border a critical point at which radio waves are no longer reflected from the ionosphere, but go into space. And yet, they are special in that the peak of the passage of radio waves on them is associated with a 12-year cycle of solar activity (the next peak of which, by the way, falls on 2014-2015).
How do I know all this, you ask? Did I have the first category?
No, I had a fourth, but I worked where I wanted, without knowing the morse code. This is undoubtedly a minus, but the thirst for knowledge, sometimes takes its toll.
But in general, the gentlemen from IARU, it is necessary to weaken the requirements for novice radio amateurs - signalmen, and so, interest in this topic irretrievably leaves every year and the development of the Internet ...
I have everything! Success in the development of this field and 73!
Since 2004 I have been dealing with communications technology almost daily (if this was a hobby before, now it has become bread), both HF and VHF.
VHF communication (up to 1 GHz), without distortion (using the reflection of radio waves from meteor showers, the moon, etc.), looks simple: the communication range directly depends on the transmitter power and the height of the antenna suspension.
HF communication is a more extraordinary phenomenon, because the radio wave, depending on the condition, can go around the earth several times, or can be “intermodulated” by lightning discharges if there is a thunderstorm on the route between the interlocutors. Or maybe, again, depending on the conditions (and in particular, on the direction of the antenna), to enter the ionosphere at a critical angle and go into infinitely distant space ...
In the comments to the same article there are questions regarding the receipt of a radio amateur callsign, I went through this the procedure in 2005, in Russia (then I was only 15 years old), so at the moment this scheme may be slightly different:
1 - submit an application to the local DOSAAF (radio club, youth sports center, SUT, etc.).
2 - the state duty is paid (in 2005 it was 60 rubles).
3 - at the local (regional, in the case of sparsely populated subjects of the country) level, a commission is organized and a qualification exam is taken (in my case, it was a booze of examiners using the funds of the examinee, if you are lucky, you will be taken to a normal exam). In my case, the questions were of an average level, approximately what is taught in technical schools - not too much theory, not too much stupidity. Questions are compiled from a course of analogue technology (circuitry RPU, RPRU, AFU, circuit theory, RCiS).
4 - relevant documents (license, documents for the callsign) are issued.
Remark: At the moment, my callsign is not valid for non-payment of annual fees.
And so, after receiving the callsign, according to the principle - first a cow, then a bucket, we look in the direction of our future equipment. There is unlimited scope for imagination, imagination and, as a result, technical creativity ... All the necessary equipment can be assembled yourself, although this is a personal matter for everyone, if the budget allows, you can buy YAESU FT-2000. In my case, it was a Volna transceiver, of domestic production, bought in a local connected circle (because it was closed due to low attendance - there were only two of us) from the director of the Youth Sports Center.
ATTENTION! If you are planning to make a transceiver yourself, then you will need to go through the registration procedure for this product. With the receipt of those. passports and licenses for the transmitter.
And so, we received the call sign, acquired the transceiver and antenna (well, or did it ourselves, which is rare in our time) and set it up, now it's time to broadcast!
But before you go on the air, you should familiarize yourself with another point:
Decent radio amateurs, signalmen, have their own "on-board" magazine, in which they write down the details of each communication. This information is standardized and represents data on the time of communication (UTC naturally), the call sign of the interlocutor (about the rules for issuing and sharing calls in the world, you can read it in Google :)), the location of the interlocutor (QTH), the quality of the received signal (encoded in two digits from 1 to 5, as well as from 1 to 9), where the first digit indicates the quality of the signal modulation, and the second is the relative volume level with which the interlocutor is received. An excellent assessment is 59. Further, at the request of the participants, this connection is fixed with a QSL card (more about which you can read in Google).
Magazine, transceiver, call sign ... we have to go to battle !!!
Amateur radio communication is quite a serious thing, and its implementation is subject to certain regulations. In general, it looks like this: one subscriber gives a general call, and anyone can join him
- RA9WLN - I give a general call to everyone!
- RA9WLN, here UA4WMX.
- UA4WMX here is RA9WLN, good day, my name is XXX, my QTH is pos. Rainbow, I accept you on 5/8.
- RA9WLN, here UA4WMX. And I welcome you, my name is XXX, my QTH in Izhevsk, I accept you for 5/9.
- UA4WMX is RA9WLN here, excellent, I have no questions for you, all the best to you and 73!
- RA9WLN, here UA4WMX, mutually, 73!
[where RA9WLN, UA4WMX are the callsigns; 5/9 - assessment of the quality of the received signal; QTH - location; 73 - international amateur radio numerical code meaning literally “Success and all the best”]
remark: Radio amateurs, in particular those who use Morse code, use a Q-code to reduce the recording of their message.
_______
This is how radio communication goes, ask what is the catch of such communication?
The whole joke is to amuse your amateur vanity, establish long-distance communication, catch the DX, test the equipment and lotions to it, communicate with people and measure your temper in communication competitions!
But there are a couple of limitations:
- you must always comply with ethics, behave appropriately on the air,
- There are 4 forbidden topics that, by default, cannot be discussed on the air - sex, religion, politics, and sports.
Well, in short, this action happens just like that.
In particular, about the HF range:
You all know that short waves propagate reflecting from the ionosphere (the highest part of the earth’s atmosphere) and only at night - this is what the teachers at the university say. In some ways, they may be right, because it is generally known that the sun strongly ionizes the ionosphere, which in turn suppresses the passage of radio waves of certain frequencies. But in reality, the situation is somewhat different.
In general, there are several dedicated bands for amateurs:
160 meters - 1.8 MHz - 1830 ... 1930 kHz
80 meters - 3.5 MHz - 3500 ... 3650 kHz,
40 meters - 7 MHz - 7000 ... 71000 kHz ,
30 meters - 10 MHz - 10100 ... 10150 kHz,
20 meters - 14 MHz - 14000 ... 14350 kHz,
17 meters - 18 MHz - 18068 ... 18168 kHz,
15 meters - 21 MHz - 21000 ... 21450 kHz,
12 meters - 24 MHz - 24890 ... 24990 kHz,
10 meters - 28 MHz - 28000 ... 29700 kHz.
Consider the ones that are used most often:
160 meters - worked on it a little, because passing there ONLY at night. And strangely enough, only in this range they are allowed to work when receiving a callsign from the 4th category. To be honest, I don’t know why this is done, because this range causes the greatest difficulties in the development of beginners.
80 meters - for a long time I was an observer in this range. The situation with the passage is better than 160m, but also only night passage.
40 meters - passing both day and night, night prevails.
20 meters - universal range, round-the-clock passage! It was on it that I made the farthest connection in my life! The respondent was from the USA, from the state of Oklahoma, communication at a distance of 11000km !!!
15 meters and less - special ranges - they border a critical point at which radio waves are no longer reflected from the ionosphere, but go into space. And yet, they are special in that the peak of the passage of radio waves on them is associated with a 12-year cycle of solar activity (the next peak of which, by the way, falls on 2014-2015).
How do I know all this, you ask? Did I have the first category?
No, I had a fourth, but I worked where I wanted, without knowing the morse code. This is undoubtedly a minus, but the thirst for knowledge, sometimes takes its toll.
But in general, the gentlemen from IARU, it is necessary to weaken the requirements for novice radio amateurs - signalmen, and so, interest in this topic irretrievably leaves every year and the development of the Internet ...
I have everything! Success in the development of this field and 73!