Why should you become a Radio Amateur? How do you get a license? Where do you study for the exam? Is the exam easy? Is the equipment expensive? Why not use WhatsApp instead?
These are the comments and questions I get when people know I am a radio amateur. Everyone has their own reasons and goals to become a Radio Amateur. As long as there is an interest then it can grow from there. The most important thing is get some help, join a club, search online. You found this webpage, maybe you followed a link from my YouTube channel.
Wherever you are, there are usually Radio Amateur clubs, just don’t give up! You don’t have to be a genius to study and pass the exam, children can do it as well as adults. I have been in the electronics industry all my life, its been a hobby and a job. Radio Amateurs come from all walks of life for example King Hussain I of Jordan (The present King’s deceased father) was a Radio Amateur.
Its not CB radio.
Many Radio Amateurs are also CB enthusiasts and operators too. Unfortunately, with every hobby there are naysayers and knowitalls who condemn CB radio and their operators and even the new PMR (446MHz) radio users. There is the idiot element in every hobby so don’t be put off.
My goal besides self learning (we’re always learning) is helping others in the hobby or join the hobby. In my day job, I teach many IT and Radio people about radio technology, installations and configurations on commercial radio amongst other topics. It’s a great part of my job and I get to travel with it.
I became a Radio Amateur rather late in life, I was already an electronics engineer, I had radio equipment but just listened at that time to the Russian MIR space station when it was passing. My best friend Graeme who lived 8 miles away suggested we take the RAE (Radio Amateur Exam) so we could chat over radio rather than the phone (landline) since we were in totally different telephone exchange areas and the cost of calls was high just to go 8 miles. We both had day jobs out of the area and attending the RAE course at a college was not an option. I just passed on what I knew to my friend and we only turned up at the college to take the exam. We both passed. Graeme went on and took the Morse Code element. In those days (1994) you had to have passed the Morse Code exam to use HF (Short Wave) as be a Full Licensee.
I’m not really interested in morse code so I just kept my B License. I could talk to Graeme on VHF and UHF directly and via repeaters. We then made our own 70MHz transceivers from ex-utility company VHF radios. I modified the circuits to work at the lower frequency and we purchased the eprom chips from another Radio Amateur. Fantastic! They worked, we were using a Radio Amateur band that you has to make your own radios to use it as there was nothing available to buy. especially when there was at the time only the UK with that allocation. Now you can buy equipment for that band for less than £100. It’s still a little expensive compared to popular VHF and UHF radios but its still a way to operate on a rarely used and quiet band.
In July 2003, the Morse Code requirement was dropped and my license was changed to a Full License. Now I could use the HF bands, if I had a HF radio! Unfortunately I had taken a new job a couple of years earlier that meant I was outside of the UK living in various countries and not having the time for the hobby or applying for a license to operate where I was based. All that was to change with the Covid outbreak. I was living in a Easter European country and went home to the UK for a short break when the world closed down and I was trapped.
That’s when the hobby was resurrected but I had no equipment. I purchased a cheap Baofeng UV10 radio but had to modify it as the audio was awful. From then on, I added to the collection bit by bit. I still work overseas now for a different organisation with even less opportunity to go home. But when I do get a week or so in the UK, I get the chance to play radio again.
So if you think that it is difficult to get into the hobby, it isn’t. You don’t even need to buy a simple VHF/UHF radio to listen whilst you take the exam. You can use a Software Defined Radio (SDR) or use an online one for free. Software Defined Radios are very affordable and can be purchased from Amazon or eBay. The cheapest best quality is the Noolec SDR.
If you buy it as part of a kit, its a bit more expensive but you will get an antenna and you can also get the up converter to listen to Short Wave radio. The SDR will tune to Short Wave without a converter but it isn’t that sensitive.
Even I have one of these kits. All you need is 2 pieces of wire say, about 3-5 metres each to make a good HF antenna. The Balun is included in the kit though, you will need to buy some extra coaxial cables to connect it all together.
The software is free and there is a great community out there with all the help, hints and tips. A check on YouTube will bring a host of videos about which are good SDRs and what you can listen to. Even f you can’t afford to buy one, you can use online WebSDR radio sites. Most are free.
WebSDR.org has 100’s of registered WebSDRs across the world. The site has the web address and the WebSDR capabilities are.
If you have a Raspberry Pi and a SDR radio, you can also host your own WebSDR using OpenWebRX software which is free.
There’s lots to do even if you don’t have your license yet. You can get involved in a local club activities, including construction of radios and antennas. Taking part in radio conversations under supervision, learning about new digital modes in readiness for when you get the license.
Digital Modes
Digital modes before around 2000 were limited to RTTY (Radio Teletype), Slow scan TV and some other modes. With the introduction of DMR and dPMR by the European Union, over the years the price has dropped considerably with DMR and dPMR radios between £50-£100. There are now Radio Amateur digital repeaters popping up all over the place which, before then if you were not in coverage of a repeater, you were basically stuck with local simplex direct radio to radio. In the last few years a new technology has spawned the MMDVM (Multimode Digital Voice Modem) or Hotspot. These have also dropped in cost and their setup is extremely easy. These devices connect a limited range digital radio connected to a server on the internet. You use your radio to talk to the one on the hotspot which, connects you to 1000’s of Radio Amateurs world wide. There are literally 1000’s of talk groups to choose from for free. If you have a license!
This is my monitoring screen for a few of my Hotspots operating on different modes.
The new digital modes available are numerous with DMR being the most popular due to the availability of inexpensive radios. DMR, C4FM/Fusion, D-Star and M17 are popular Radio Amateur modes. Many professional modes like P25 and NXDN can also be used. The old POCSAG pagers have made a comeback especially in mainland Europe with a good community. There isn’t much uptake in the UK, I have a POCSAG node and a pocket pager.
My UHF Pocket Pager during final configuration
Digital Radio is not the only mode you can use to talk world-wide, there is Echolink and AllStar Link. These are analogue modes. Echolink is a software application where AllStar is Software and hardware. Although, to be fair, you don’t even need a radio to use AllStar too. See my blog about my RadioLess node here ->https://g7uay.com/radioless-allstar-node-hardware-build/
There are pre-built modules to plug into Raspberry Pi’s which allow a cheap analogue radio to be connected to others all over the world. One of the most popular groups is Hubnet you can listen online for free without a license.
This is a live view of Hubnet activity via AllStar network
Digital modes are not just limited to voice modes like mentioned above. There’s other popular modes on HF and VHF. One of the most popular is FT8. There are those who say its not real amateur radio but they are old fuddy duddies stuck in the mud.
What is FT8?
FT8 is a digital communication mode used by amateur radio operators to make long-distance contacts. It’s a popular mode because it’s efficient and effective in weak signal conditions.
How does FT8 work?
- FT8 uses a short message format and 8-frequency shift keying (8-FSK) digital modulation scheme.
- It’s designed to maximize communication even when signals are very weak.
- FT8 is ideal for use with loop antennas.
- FT8 is extremely popular on the 6 meter band.
When is FT8 used?
- FT8 is used to communicate on amateur radio bands.
- It’s used despite unfavorable conditions such as during low solar activity, high RF noise, or with low transmit power.
Who developed FT8?
- Joe Taylor (K1JT) and Steve Franke (K9AN) jointly developed FT8.
- It was first introduced in 2017.
So what are you waiting for? Get online and find your local Radio Amateur club. They will help you. Hope to speak to you on the air!
You don’t even have to a have a HF Transceiver. Here I am using one of the cheap £56 ATS25 HF Receivers that had FT8 demodulation built-in as standard. I was using a 1 metre diameter loop led on my bed in a hotel room in Dhaka, Bangladesh and I was receiving a radio amateur from the Isle of Man, UK.
An example of FT8 using the free WSJT-X software. Once setup, it can be automated and make contacts for you. It’s interesting how far you can communicate on low power and limited antennas.
FT8 is designed as a weak signal mode however, there are many Radio Amateurs pumping out high power into antenna arrays which isn’t really the spirit of a weak signal mode. There other weak signal modes like WSPR net. Again, using a computer to log signals received and upload them to a map your signal is also plotted and all the stations that hear you.
This map shows all the stations that were receiving a Radio Amateur in the UK on 7MHz (40 Metre band)
This map from WRPS reporter shows the path that radio signals are making to between Radio Amateurs
This is a poor screenshot but it was me G7UAY being heard from my home made HF transceiver with a 5 metre piece of wire on a fishing pole as the antenna to the United States 3473 miles away.