Opening

Hello, my name is Dave, and welcome to another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio. It's been a couple of years since my last episode, and I know that HPR is running low on shows. As I have had this one in planning for some time now, I though this was the right time to get it finished.

Main

At the time of recording this, I've been an Amateur Radio licence holder for 6 months. I took the notion of studying and applying for my Foundation licence (the first of three stages to a Full licence) when I read a blog post by Jon Spriggs G7VRI, back in March, entitled Might Amateur Radio be a hobby for you? I saw a presentation by Jon at OggCamp in 2018 in Sheffield where he gave a whistle-stop tour of what Amateur Radio actually is, and how easy it is to get involved in it.

As a bit of background, I was quite involved in the CB Radio scene back in the late 80s and early 90s - I was introduced to CB by my dad, whose handle was "Screwball", in the 70s... he had a CB rig in his car since as far back as I can remember. I picked up the hobby from him, by actually liberating him of his rig when he stopped using it. Unfortunately it got stolen from my car. C'est la vie. Yes, my handle back then was "The Love Bug" - in fact, it was whilst looking for an alternative to "Kool Kat" as a handle that I first used the moniker "The Love Bug" - probably in the mid-80s - and it just stuck.

So, after reading Jon's blog post, and doing some research into Amateur Radio myself, a whole bunch of things happened at the same time: I bought my first radio - a Baofeng UV-5RTP [Amazon UK], I joined the Radio Society of Great Britain (not a requirement, but I would recommend it), signed up for Essex Ham's Foundation Training Course (not a requirement, but strongly recommended as it's geared around the examination, and it's free!)

The training took 3 weeks (in my own time), and I applied for my exam as soon as the training was complete. The exam was an hour long, under as close to exam conditions as an online exam would allow, and I was told by the online system that I'd passed as soon as I submitted my answers. It then took a few days to get the confirmation of passing (and a certificate) in the post, which then allowed me to apply to Ofcom (the authority for the radio spectrum here in the UK) for my licence and callsign. I was able to choose the suffix of my callsign, and - as BUG was taken - I opted for TLB (for The Love Bug), and thus my callsign is - currently - M7TLB (Mike Seven Tango Lima Bravo). I say "currently" - I'm not allowed to change my callsign, however the callsign is specific not only to me but also to the fact that I'm a Foundation Licence holder. Therefore, when I go for my Intermediate and then Full licence, I'll get new callsigns for each one, each superseding the previous.

Anyhoo, once I got my Foundation licence, I went out that Sunday to log some contacts, or QSOs. So I parked up at a high point near to here, put a small aerial on the roof of the car (so that I didn't warm up my head when transmitting), and started calling CQ - essentially a way of saying "I want to talk to somebody" - "Seek You". As part of the licence conditions, you are only permitted to make contact with other identifiable and identified amateurs... general