Foundations of Amateur Radio

Today I was looking around my shack and noticed that I have lots of different amateur radio tools that go beyond the simple bits and pieces that I started with, namely a radio, battery, power supply, coax and antenna.

While I have no illusion that my gear is complete, or even representative of all of the stuff that you might need or come across, I think that it's worth while to mention a few bits and pieces that you may not have considered.

I think the first thing I got that wasn't part of the basic kit, was a dummy load. It's only a little one, rated at 50 Watts or so, but seeing that I'm only using 5, that's more than enough. I use it to check things like VOX sensitivity, that is, I want to set-up a way to talk into my radio without having to push a button - for when I'm doing a contest, and I don't actually want to transmit any signal while testing, so I plug in the dummy load and test with that. I also use it to plug into the end of a piece of coax that I'm testing. I can tell you, it's helped me find some dodgy coax over the years.

I have a range of adaptors, from PL259, SO239, N-type, SMA, BNC, male-to-male, male-to-female, female-to-female, all different permutations. They're all in one box and I have that with me whenever I go portable, it's saved my bacon more times than I can remember.

I have a multi-meter, the most often used part of it is the continuity beep. You can set it to beep if there is a short, which is great for testing power leads, coax shorts and the like.

I splurged and purchased an antenna analyser. It's helping me understand the errors of my ways while building antennas, though I confess that on more than one occasion it added to the confusion.

I have a coax cutter, a pair of high quality pliers, though one of my so called friends left it in the rain one day, so they're less quality than they were, an Anderson Powerpole crimper, a gas soldering iron - so you can solder in the field, a third-hand, since holding something while soldering is an excellent way to get a scar to impress your friends. On my workbench I have a lighted magnifying glass, since the older I get the harder it is to focus on small things. I have a bag of clip-on torroids which I use in places where operating surprises me with bonus RF interference.

I also have stuff like cable-ties, electrical tape, self-amalgamating tape and a fair bit of rope.

You'll notice that I don't have an SWR meter, I figured that the one in my radio and the antenna analyser combined were enough.

I'm sure there are other things that I take for granted, but the items I've outlined are in regular use.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB