Foundations of Amateur Radio

This morning I spoke with two amateurs on-air. Not that surprising, since I was hosting a weekly net called F-troop for new and returning amateurs. Both amateurs came on-air for the first time in our net, one licensed sixty years ago, the other six days ago.

It didn't strike me until long after the net had finished that these two amateurs have a completely different experience in this shared community. One started in a world where megacycles were common, the other knows them as megahertz, one purchased their radio in parts, the other purchased it online, one heard Donald Duck sounds and needed to read about a new mode called Single Side Band, the other is going to be reading about digital modes and how they work, one was dealing with analogue television interference, the other is dealing with plasma screens.

Both these operators share many things. They are both licensed radio amateurs, both have the opportunity to participate in contests, attain their DXCC, pull out a soldering iron, participate in social activities and become members of their local radio club.

If during their first year as an amateur both of them read Amateur Radio magazine, the members' periodical published by the Wireless Institute of Australia, they'd both find the rules and the results of the Rememberence Day contest, field days, letters to the editor, instructions on how to build antennas, including detailed instructions on building a 2m Yagi, information from the QSL manager, DX activity reports, the new Australian call book and information about the local news broadcast which continues to go to air on Sunday morning at 9:30am local time.

In the intervening sixty years amateur radio has changed a lot, but it's also stayed the same. A radio from 1957 will still be able to communicate with a radio from 2017. Imagine that for a moment. Electronics during those sixty years saw countless dramatic changes. For example, Fairchild Semiconducter one of the pioneers in the manufacturing of transistors and integrated circuits was founded in 1957.

Imagine that, the introduction and obsolesence of transistors within those sixty years. The first integrated circuit build by Jack Kilby in 1958 was a phase shift oscillator, consisting of one transistor and a handfull of capacitors and resistors. Today an integrated circuit contains 25 million transistors per square millimeter with some chips being up to 600 square millimeter in size, that's 15 billion transistors.

The mind boggles what has happened in those sixty years, but the most satisfying part of all this is that both these amateurs can come on-air, join a net and participate in the hobby today.

If that's not the representation of an amazing hobby, then I don't know what is. Thank you to Sandy VK6FBHW and Brian VK6DAD.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB.