Having been a licensed member of this community since 2010 I feel qualified to answer a recurring question: "What kind of hobby is amateur radio?"

The single best answer I can give is that it's big. The deeper you become involved, the bigger it gets. I stole the phrase, "amateur radio is 1000 hobbies in one" and I've remarked that I suspect that it's underselling the experience. Point being, whatever you've heard about amateur radio is likely true and guaranteed to be only part of the story.

There was a time when amateur radio was a concept regularly seen in general discussion. That's no longer the case, but you'll soon discover that amateurs are everywhere and the things we get up to still make the headlines from time to time.

That said, as a community we tend to use complex language and in specific ways. For example, a radio amateur is unlikely to broadcast, instead they transmit. From the outside looking in the two are synonymous, but within amateur radio the two couldn't be more different. Broadcasting is one to many, transmitting is one to one. Broadcasting separates the operator from the equipment, transmitting has the operator actively engaged with it.

Amateur radio is about curiosity, about trying things, about learning and sharing, it's about technology, electronics, nature and physics, it's about software and hardware, about camping and competing and plenty more and with that come friendships that seem to last a lifetime, perhaps forged in the fire of fascination, perhaps made almost perchance in passing. I have more amateur friends than not and among us we have a massive variety of interests.

Unlike most hobbies, you need to obtain a government issued license to become a fully licensed amateur, as-in, be permitted to transmit. For some this requirement might be a deterrent, but once you understand why, since radio waves don't stop at political boundaries and every human shares the same radio spectrum, licensing becomes a necessity, not an obstacle. That said, you can start long before then by receiving, no license required.

Amateur radio is a global activity. It's centrally regulated, but administered locally in each country and locality. As a result I cannot tell you specifically how much things will cost where you are, but the fees are generally not cost prohibitive and in many cases they are low or even free.

You become licensed by completing a training course, passing an exam and receiving a certification that lasts for life. Once you are certified you can apply for a callsign and operate an amateur station. The closest equivalent to a callsign outside the hobby is a car license plate. It's a unique combination of letters and numbers that identify an amateur. For example, my callsign is VK6FLAB, said phonetically, it's Victor Kilo Six Foxtrot Lima Alpha Bravo. We use phonetics because often individual letters are lost due to interference which comes in many different forms. Depending on where you are, a callsign might be subject to a renewal fee.

If doing a course and passing an exam seems scary, getting started at the introductory level is generally a weekend worth of effort. That introduces the notion that there are different levels, or to use an amateur phrase, classes, which, again depending on where you are, permit different access to the radio spectrum where your WiFi, mobile phone, garage door opener, emergency services, aviation, satellite and free to air television all share the same limited resources with radio amateurs. The higher your license class, the more access you get, but the more you become responsible for. Again, using a car analogy, you graduate from moped to car to truck.

If you've come across this hobby before, you should consider that one of the historic international license requirements hasn't existed for decades, namely Morse code. Mind you, some countries still require Morse, but their numbers are dwindling rapidly.

There is an often repeated concept that amateur radio is old white men sitting in the dark talking to each other about the weather, their station and their ailments. While there's some of that around, you'll soon discover that there's people from all walks of life, all ages and interests and backgrounds. Given that this is a global experience, you do not need to limit your interactions to the people within your local community.

I've been contributing a weekly article about amateur radio since 2011. Detailing the many and varied aspects of this hobby and if you're curious about what you might find here, warts and all, jump in. There are two series of articles, "What use is an F-call?", which covers 2011 to 2015 when it was renamed to "Foundations of Amateur Radio". Available as an audio podcast, as text, as email and there are eBooks too.

You'll find plenty of amateur radio resources online and social media communities with different interests and sensibilities. As with any community, amateur radio has its share of gatekeepers who hark back to the days of yore, some literally, some in their language and behaviour. Don't let that dissuade you from exploring this magical community.

Feel free to drop me an email, [email protected] and I'll do my best to answer any burning questions you're left with.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The International Amateur Radio Union or IARU was formed on the 18th of April 1925 in Paris. Today, split into four organisations, consisting of one for each of the three ITU Regions, and the International Secretariat, are said to coordinate their efforts to represent the globe spanning activity of amateur radio.

Each organisation has its own constitution, which at some point I might compare, but for now I'll focus on the International Secretariat.

Last updated on the 9th of May, 1989, the constitution has nine pages detailing how the IARU works. After defining its name, it describes its purpose.

Its objectives shall be the protection, promotion, and advancement of the Amateur and Amateur-Satellite Services within the framework of regulations established by the International Telecommunication Union, and to provide support to Member-Societies in the pursuit of these objectives at the national level, with special reference to the following:

a) representation of the interests of amateur radio at and between conferences and meetings of international telecommunications organizations;

b) encouragement of agreements between national amateur radio societies on matters of common interest;

c) enhancement of amateur radio as a means of technical self-training for young people;

d) promotion of technical and scientific investigations in the field of radiocommunication;

e) promotion of amateur radio as a means of providing relief in the event of natural disasters;

f) encouragement of international goodwill and friendship;

g) support of Member-Societies in developing amateur radio as a valuable national resource, particularly in developing countries; and

h) development of amateur radio in those countries not represented by Member-Societies.

Those are lofty goals and no doubt they have changed over the past century. The objectives as described have been in effect for over 35 years, so we can safely say that they are part and parcel of the current workings of the IARU. This leads me to several questions, mostly uncomfortable ones.

Over the years I have witnessed the incessant cry for the growth of the hobby in the face of apparent global decline. What I haven't seen is any evidence of the IARU actually doing much towards its own objectives. At this point you might well be chomping at the bit to enlighten me, please do, and you might well be right that the IARU is doing stuff, but the key here is seeing evidence. As I keep saying, if you don't write it down, it didn't happen. You do this for contacts between stations, why should the IARU be any different?

While the IARU is a recognised United Nations organisation, it's entirely volunteer run and paid for by its members. The International Secretariat is funded by its three regional organisations, which in turn are funded by the member societies in each country like the WIA in Australia, ARRL in the U.S., RSGB in the U.K., JARL in Japan and VERON in the Netherlands; over 160 organisations in all. Those in turn are funded by their members. For a decade or more I contributed to the funding of the IARU through my WIA membership. I note, as an aside, that organisations like the Radio Amateur Society of Australia or RASA and the European Radio Amateurs' Organization or EURAO, which are not recognised by the IARU, do not fund it, unless they're making donations on the side.

That's important because this hobby, despite its amateur nature, runs on money. If you want to help the IARU, the only way to do so is as a volunteer. That's great if you have money to pay for food and housing, less so if you don't. Similarly, member societies are also, by enlarge, run by volunteers, each doing so in the face of big business and government attempts to increase their spectrum allocation at the expense of amateur radio at every turn.

This leaves us with an organisation with lofty goals to foster, promote and grow our community, funded and run by volunteers, with in my opinion little to show for its century history.

Is this the best model? Is this how we make a robust, representative and effective organisation?

Speaking of representative, in 2018 Don G3BJ, former president of the RSGB and then president of the Region 1 IARU, talked in some detail about how the IARU operates in an enlightening video you can find on YouTube called "RSGB Convention lecture 2018 - So what has the IARU ever done for us?".

In that lecture Don makes the statement that "the ARRL provides significant additional funding" and "without that [the] IARU would be in very serious problems".

If you're not a member of the ARRL, what does that mean? How much is significant funding? Is it real money, or is it paper money in the form of office space provided within the ARRL offices in Connecticut? If a member of the IARU International Secretariat is also a member and office bearer of the ARRL, does that buy access? For example in 2021 the ARRL executive committee nominated their past president to become the Secretary of the IARU, which at least according to the ARRL, it "has the right and obligation to".

I don't know how you feel about that, but it makes me uncomfortable and here in Australia I can't say that I feel represented, even if I was a current and paid up member of the WIA, which I'm not. I think organisations like the member societies and the IARU have a very important role to play in our hobby, but what I don't see is evidence that they are.

No doubt I'll get emails telling me to step up. I would if I had a functioning money tree in my backyard.

Transparency is an issue in our community. I left the WIA because I felt that there was no transparency. The ARRL had a wide ranging security breach recently and whilst it has written a great many words on the subject, most of them are, at least in my professional opinion, the opposite of transparent. I have yet to see the operating budget for the WIA, the ARRL or the IARU, despite having paid money into at least two of those.

So, what of the future of our hobby? What does representation in a modern global community look like and does the structure of our hobby need scrutiny and discussion?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The story goes that the name of our hobby, at least in some parts of the world, ham radio, stems from the notion that we as a community were perceived as being ham-fisted in our ability to operate a Morse key. We apparently claimed that slur and made it our own. I've never actually been able to verify this narrative, but it goes to the heart of what it is to be part of the hobby of amateur radio, as opposed to Professional radio, which is what I once heard someone refer to themselves as.

This notion that we are playing outside our sandbox, that we're doing something less than real, that we're somehow not whole as a result is absurd, especially in the context of how we are an integral part of how spectrum is allocated around the globe. It's fun to remember that playing outside the box, trialling things, exploring, inventing and learning, is the reason we're here.

The whole thing is incremental, much like learning to walk, sometimes you fall flat on your face, yet here you are perambulating like a champ. As an aside, did you know that how you get up off the floor is pretty much how you learnt to do it as a toddler, it might not be the most efficient, but it's how you do it. Speaking of falling down, making mistakes on-air is part and parcel of being an amateur. There's no protocol police, nobody to issue a fine if you make a mistake, just dust yourself off and try again.

The urge to optimise pervades our hobby. We optimise our antennas, our gear, the time and band we choose to communicate on, the modes we use, the places we operate from, even how we participate in contests, all of it is a cycle of optimisation.

During contests I've regularly attempted to flex my imagination to optimise my activities. For example, the VK Shires contest rewards you for combinations of shires, so, I created a map of all the shires, then looked for places to activate, preferably on or near borders, so I could change shire with minimal effort. There are contests that reward different maidenhead locators, so I set about finding spots where you could activate four at once. By the way, a maidenhead locator is an amateur radio geo-locator which I'll dig into some other time. Contesters regularly use multiple radios to optimise their ability to talk to stations that double their points, so-called multipliers.

Over the years I've come across many different excuses for getting on-air and making noise. Popular activities like Parks On The Air, or POTA, Summits On The Air or SOTA, and plenty of others are all programs that aim to get you out of your shack, set up your station at a particular location and make contact with anyone and everyone. On occasion you'll hear a station combining activities, doing both a POTA and a SOTA activation because the summit is inside the boundaries of a national park.

Ian M0TRT took this idea to a whole new level. He wondered if you could qualify for multiple programs simultaneously and if so, how many. Gathering data from Summits, Parks, Islands, Beaches and Bunkers on the Air, together with UK Castle and Lighthouse awards and adding World Wide Flora and Fauna or WWFF, eight programs in all, he set about exploring. For some programs like Castles, Lighthouses and Bunkers you need to be within 1 km of the entity and summits need to be activated within 25 meters altitude from the peak. For other programs, beaches, parks and islands plenty of extra work was needed. Ian's code is available on GitHub, in the "weeaaoa" or "Worked Everything Everywhere All At Once Award" repository.

If you have time to head out to the beach just east of Devil's Point near Plymouth you'll be able to activate 21 different programs at the same time. The Maidenhead locator is IO70WI06.

As with any outdoor amateur radio activity, take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints and kill nothing but time. Be mindful of creating obstacles and trip hazards for your fellow humans and be prepared to have a park ranger turn up as soon as you sit down.

Oh, and if you think that's not in the spirit of amateur radio, you haven't been paying attention.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Article:

• https://ianrenton.com/projects/worked-everything-award/

GitHub:

• https://github.com/ianrenton/weeaaoa/blob/main/main.py

How are you storing passwords and 2FA keys that proliferate across every conceivable online service these days?

What made you choose that solution and have you considered what would happen in life altering situations like, hardware failure, theft, fire, divorce, death?

If you're using an online solution, has it been hacked and how did that impact you?

One of my recurring, you might call it, regrets, but probably not quite that strong, is that I often find myself discovering that an amateur radio contest came and went, or worse, I found out on the day, preferably at midnight UTC when many contests start, which happens to be 8 am Saturday morning where I live, right when my weekly radio net for new and returning amateurs, F-troop, begins.

Often by that time I already have plans for the weekend and now I know I'm missing out on some or other activity that might encourage me to go outside and get fresh air whilst playing radio.

Don't get me wrong, it's my own responsibility to manage my time, but that doesn't explain what's going on, so I started exploring what might be causing this. I mean, it shouldn't be that hard, there's pretty much a contest on every weekend, so I could sort out my radio and get on-air to make noise at any point of any day. That this doesn't happen can only partially be explained by the state of my shack, which I have yet to get working the way I want, but it doesn't explain everything.

I'm subscribed to several contest calendars. The most prominent of these is one maintained by Bruce WA7BNM. The contestcalendar.com website is a great place to start. Another is the personal site of prolific contester and contest manager, Alan VK4SN. Both sites offer a calendar feed file that you can subscribe to.

So, subscribe to the calendar, job done, right?

Unfortunately not. As it happens, for several years I have in fact subscribed to both those calendars. I even shared these with my partner, which results in a fun exchange at the breakfast table that goes something like this: "Hey, do you need the car on Saturday?" "Why?" "Well there's an amateur contest on."

So, my partner is often more aware of contests than I am and supposedly I'm the amateur in this household.

It occurs to me that I need an alert to point at an upcoming contest. Preferably one that I can configure that's specific to me. I don't tend to look that far into the future, I have plenty of stuff that needs to happen today without worrying about next month.

I started exploring what I might do about this. Be the change you want to see, so I contacted Bruce and asked what views he might hold on the addition of an alarm in the calendar file he publishes. I also asked if there was a way to configure what contests are visible in that file.

Whilst hunting through his site, I discovered that there's plenty of Australian contests not on the site, so I created a list of contests I know about that I thought should be on the calendar.

I might point out that Bruce's job isn't easy. Trying to get information out of contest managers can sometimes be like powering a spark-gap transmitter using a pushbike.

Here's an example of one contest that has an algorithm to determine when the next contest is, I kid you not. There's a Winter, Spring and Summer version of this contest, for Winter, when the June solstice is on a weekday (Monday through Friday), the weekend following shall be the weekend of the event, if not, that weekend shall be the weekend of the event. The Spring and Summer versions are even more involved, counting forwards or backwards four weekends from the December solstice. It helpfully includes a link to the solstice dates for this century, because really, that's how the dates are determined.

If I'm feeling particularly sparky, I might even make a calculator, since the contest manager for that contest hasn't announced the dates for the next contest, though my previous experiences whilst attempting to calculate moon bounce windows using the Python Astropy package was challenging. I did find PyEphym which has several solstice and equinox functions.

So, now all I need to do is make my shack work as I want it, bolt a radio back in my car, win lotto and something else, I forget what.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Australia has a long relationship with callsigns. Over time the regulator, today the ACMA, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, has seen fit to introduce different types of callsigns and restrictions associated with those callsigns.

The change that made the most waves most recently was the introduction of the so-called F-call. It's a callsign that looks like mine, VK6FLAB. It has a VK prefix for Australia, the number 6 indicating my state, Western Australia, then the letter F, followed by a suffix of three letters.

This type of callsign was introduced in 2005. To this day there are plenty of amateurs on-air who don't believe that this is a real callsign, to the point where some refuse to make contact, or worse, make inflammatory statements about getting a real callsign, and that's just the letters, let alone those who think that the callsign denotes a lack of skill or knowledge demanding that the amateur "upgrade" their license to a real one.

At the time of introduction, the apparent intent was to indicate that the holder was licensed as a Foundation or beginner. In 2020 this was changed, and existing F-call holders were able to apply for a new callsign if they desired. Some did, many did not. Currently there are 1,385 F-calls active and there are 3,748 Foundation class callsigns in the registry.

After this change, you might think that all callsigns in Australia are now either two or three letter suffixes, as-in VK6AA or VK6AAA. Actually, the F-call continues to exist and there are now also two by one calls, VK6A, intended for contesters.

A popular idea is that the F-call is for Foundation license class amateurs only. There are currently 10 Standard and 16 Advanced license classed holders with an F-call. There are also two special event callsigns that sport an F-call.

With the addition of contest callsigns, new prefixes, VJ and VL, were introduced which brought with it the notion that you could use those new prefixes for your callsign. Currently, only contest callsigns are allocated with VJ and VL prefixes.

An often repeated idea is that we're running out of callsigns. Well, there are 1,434,160 possible callsigns if we count each prefix, each state, single, double, triple and F-calls across all prefixes. As it happens, there are at present 15,859 assigned and 53 pending callsigns.

If not all, then surely, we're running out of real callsigns. Nope. If we look at the VK prefix alone, less than 10% of available callsigns have been allocated.

Okay, we've run out of contest callsigns. Nope. There are 1,040 possible contest callsigns and only 188 allocated.

Another popular notion is that we've run out of two-letter callsigns, that is, the suffix has only two letters. Again, no. There are 3,553 allocated out of 6,760, less than 53% has been assigned.

Surely, some states appear to have run out of two-letter callsigns. Well, maybe. Theoretically each state has 676 two-letter callsigns but none have all of those allocated. For example, VK3, with 675 allocated two-letter suffixes, is missing VK3NG for no discernible reason. More on the missing ones shortly. It's impossible to use the current register to determine how many amateurs hold more than one two letter callsign.

Another notion is that you can have a special event callsign as long as it starts with VI. As it happens there are currently special event callsigns registered with VI, VK and AX prefixes. Just over half of them have any online activity to promote the callsign for their event.

You might think that a callsign can only be "Assigned" or "Available". According to the register a callsign can be "Pending", it can also be "Reserved", more on that in a moment, and it can not be in the list at all, "Missing" if you like. Take for example JNW, it's assigned in VK2, it's available in all other states, except VK3 where it simply doesn't exist. This oddity doesn't restrict itself to VK3. Take XCA, available in all states, except VK4. TLC doesn't exist in VK2. Many more examples to go round.

And that's not looking at exclusions due to swear words and reserved words like PAN; but SOS is an assigned callsign. Combinations that you think might be unavailable, like QST, are fine, except in VK2 where it doesn't exist.

It's thought that reservations are only for repeaters. Nope. Suffixes with GG followed by a letter are reserved for the Girl Guides, those that start with S followed by two letters are reserved for Scouts, those starting with WI are for the Wireless Institute of Australia and those with IY are for the International Year of something. Interestingly there is no reference to repeaters or beacons at all in the callsign register since they fall under the old license regime, rather than the new amateur class. And you thought that the system was getting simpler and cheaper to run.

You might think that every state has the same number of callsigns. Ignoring F-calls, VK5 has the most callsigns available and VK3 the least. No doubt this is due to the callsigns that are "Missing" from the register.

This likely leaves you with plenty more questions, but next time someone asserts something about callsigns, perhaps it's time to have a think before you spout.

Note that this information is based on the ACMA callsign register as I found it on the 29th of June 2024. This started as an exploration of just how many different amateur calls were registered.

At the time there were 3,748 Foundation class, 2,079 Standard class and 9,946 Advanced class callsigns assigned or pending.

Without knowing how many callsigns each amateur has been assigned, it's impossible to know just how many amateurs those 15,773 callsigns represent. Perhaps it's time for the regulator to start publishing some data on our community, rather than relying on the likes of me to download 1,774 pages of data and two days analysing it.

I can tell you that I have been assigned two callsigns, one for day-to-day use and one I use for digital modes and contests, given that WSPR doesn't play nice with VK6FLAB and I really have no desire to give up my call.

Before I go, every VK callsign also has an AX equivalent on three days every year, 26 January, 25 April and 17 May and as I said, you can apply for a special event callsign with an AX prefix.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Over the past week I've been attempting to work out what the IARU, the International Amateur Radio Union, actually does and how it works. I started looking into this because the IARU is this year celebrating a century since its foundation in 1925. You might think of the IARU as one organisation, but behind the scenes there are actually four, one for each so-called "Region" as well a Global organisation called the International Secretariat, headquartered at the ARRL in Connecticut.

The Regions have been negotiated by members of the ITU, the International Telecommunications Union. As early as 1927 the ITU documented differences in frequency allocations between Europe and Other Regions. In Cairo in 1938 it defined boundaries for Europe. In Atlantic City in 1947, the ITU defined three Regions, with specific boundaries, essentially, Europe and Africa, the Americas and the rest of the world.

As a surprise to nobody, this is purely a political decision, especially since radio waves don't get to have a passport and pass border control. The impact of this continues today, generations later. We still have this patchwork of frequency allocations, we still have exclusions, different band-edges and other anachronisms.

The Regions are further divided into Zones. When you start looking at the ITU zone map in detail it gets weird. For example, Iraq is in Region 1, neighbouring Iran has been specifically excluded from Region 1 and moved to Region 3. In case you're curious, Iran has been represented at the ITU since 1938.

Antarctica is part of seven of the 90 ITU zones and all three Regions, because of course it is.

Zone 90, jammed between zones 35, 45, 61, 64, 65 and 76, almost as an afterthought, contains one landmass, Minamitorishima, an island that sticks 9 m above the water, has a 6 km coastline and is generally off-limits to the general public. The nearest land in any direction is over 1,000 km away. It's got an IOTA, Islands On The Air, designation, OC-073 and despite its isolation, has been activated by radio amateurs using JD1 prefix callsigns.

I live in Australia, ITU zone 58, part of Region 3, together with the two most populous countries on the planet, India and China and the rest of eastern Asia, but not the Former Soviet republics and most, but not all of Oceania, you know, because .. logic. From a population perspective Region 3 is the largest by several orders of magnitude, but you'd never know it if you went looking.

Why am I telling you all this?

Well, that's the international stage on which the IARU is representing amateur radio. In 1927 the underlying assumption was that each service, Amateur Radio included, had a global exclusive allocation. The reality was different. Spectrum was in such short supply that individual exceptions were carved out, which as I've said resulted in splitting up the world into regions, starting in 1938 and codified in 1947.

The IARU in 1925 is a different organisation from what it is today. In 1925 individual amateurs could become members. As soon as enough members from a country joined, they'd be grouped together. When there were enough groups, the IARU became a federation of national associations.

Over time, the IARU as a single body, evolved into the structure we have today. In 1950 in Paris, the IARU Region 1 organisation was formed. In 1964 in Mexico City, IARU Region 2 was created and in 1968 in Sydney, IARU Region 3 came to exist. You can see their online presence at the various iaru.org websites.

How it works is no clearer now than it was when I started. What it has achieved is equally unclear. I'm currently trolling through ITU World Radiocommunications Conference documentation going back to 1903 to discover references to Amateur Radio, but it's hard going. At least it's something. The IARU documentation is not nearly as extensive or up to date.

It appears that many, if not all, of the people working behind the scenes at the various IARU organisations are volunteers. If you feel inclined, there is an ongoing request for assistance, and before you ask, yes, I looked into helping out, but that will have to wait until funds permit.

If you have insights into the functioning of the IARU, don't be shy, get in touch. [email protected] is my address.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

#ARDC

Australian Research Data Commons

meet

Amateur Radio Digital Communications

Gotta love acronyms..

My search has been without results.

My "new" model remote with a Siri button keeps needing to be reset to control my infrared amplifier. Press and hold the Volume Down and TV button works, but it's annoying when you want to change the volume whilst watching something and it doesn't respond.

Firmware version is 0x83.

Anyone got any ideas what might be causing this?

I've been using VMware for about two decades. I'm moving elsewhere. KVM appears to be the solution for me.

I cannot discover how a guest display is supposed to work.

On VMware workstation/Fusion the application provides the display interface and puts it into a window on the host. This can be resized to full screen. It's how I've been running my Debian desktop and probably hundreds of other virtual machines (mostly Linux) inside a guest on my MacOS iMac.

If I install Linux or BSD onto the bare metal iMac, how do KVM guests show their screen?

I really don't want to run VNC or RDP inside the guest.

I've been looking for documentation on this but Google search is now so bad that technical documents are completely hidden behind marketing blurbs or LLM generated rubbish.

Anyone?

So, I have a confession. I don't know everything. Shocking right?

Over the past too many months, actually, come to think of it, years, I have not been on-air with my station on HF using FT8 or Olivia, modes that use tools like "WSJT-X" and "fldigi". This has not always been the case. For a time I used a tiny computer running those tools. It had plenty of issues related to its size and capacity. Overwhelmingly it was slow, unsurprising since it was released in 2009. After one particularly frustrating session where I had to recompile WSJT-X on an older 32-bit operating system using an Atom processor, I decided that this was not helping me, and I put it away.

The idea was to use my main computer that could do all the heavy lifting without cracking a sweat. To make this happen the traditional way, I'd be expected to physically connect the radio to the computer. I'm not a fan of doing that, given the potential damage that RF could do to my computer, not to mention that I have a sit-stand desk on wheels that I move around my office as the mood or the light takes me, if you're interested, I found a mobile lectern that the computer is clamped to. Works great, been using it for years.

RF aside, moving around the office is not conducive to plugging in a radio that comes with power, coax, audio, control, microphone and expects to have some space around it to actually use it. No problem, I have a RemoteRig, a device that comes in two parts. You connect one unit to the radio, the other to the head, that is, the removable faceplate of the radio, and using a network connection, you can have the head in one place and the radio in another. The two units don't have to be in the same room, let alone the same country.

I figured that I could replace the second half of the system, the head and its unit, and instead use software on my computer to get the same functionality and be up and running in minutes. That was several years ago. Interestingly, whilst I'm putting this together I did a search for "RemoteRig protocols" and learnt a few things, so perhaps this path isn't quite as dead as I feared. I've reached out to Mikael SM2O and if that comes to anything I'll let you know.

In the meantime I've been trying to figure out how to operate my radio in software only. I can control the radio if I physically connect a computer like a Raspberry Pi to it and use "rigctld" to interact with it. This gives me access to all the standard CAT, or Computer Assisted Tuning commands. In other words, I can change band, mode, frequency, trigger the transmitter, all the stuff that you need to get on-air to make noise.

There's only one bit missing, the noise, as-in audio, either coming from the radio, or going to it. I suppose I could trigger a carrier and use it to send Morse, but that doesn't give me receive capability. I've tried using network audio using "pulseaudio" - it never worked right. I've made USB hot-plug scripts that allow you to connect a USB device into a computer and access it across the network on another computer - it mostly works for sound, but reliable is not a word I'd use. I've looked at using the USB sound card in the audio mixer on my desk, but it's subject to all manner of funky restrictions and random audio dropouts. I could use a virtual screen and connect to a Raspberry Pi that's physically connected to the radio, but that's leaving all the hard work on the Pi, rather than the computer that I'm currently using with several orders of magnitude more capability.

Whilst we're discussing this, one of the reasons I like the idea of a software defined radio like a PlutoSDR, is that the stuff coming out of the radio, and going into it for that matter, is already digital. It takes away a whole lot of complexity, admittedly replacing it with software, but that's where I feel more comfortable.

Which brings me to you.

As I said, I don't know everything.

What are you doing in this space? Are you actually on-air with your contraption, or is it still in the planning stages? Are you sending audio, or digital data across the network? Does your system have the ability to swap out a radio and replace it with something completely different? Do you rely on functions available on the radio, or could it be used for a 1950's valve radio, a twenty year old one, a current model, or any number of software defined radios without issues? Finally, is it Open Source?

I confess that I'm not holding my breath for an answer, but there is a chance that you're similarly intrigued by this collection of questions that you will poke your head above the fence and make yourself known.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The recent "incident" at the ARRL in which it disclosed that it was the "victim of a sophisticated network attack by a malicious international cyber group" brings into focus some serious questions around our community in relation to identity and privacy.

Let's start with your callsign. Right now in Australia you can use the official register to look for VK6FLAB. When you do, you'll discover that it's "Assigned to Foundation". That's it. No mention of who holds it, where it's registered or how to contact the holder, none of that.

In the case of my callsign, because I haven't surrendered my apparently now legally useless license, you can still search the previous system, the Register of Radiocommunications Licenses and discover that it's held by me, but as soon as it expires, that record will vanish and the relationship between me and my callsign will be lost to the public.

Also, there are no dates associated with any of this. You cannot use the current or previous system to discover if I held my callsign in November 2010 or not. In case you're wondering, no, I didn't, I was licensed a month later. Right now if you look for VK6EEN on QRZ.com, you'll see that it's linked to CT1EEN, but when was that information last updated? I know for a fact that I became the holder in November 2020. It appears that Sam CT1EEN used it around the turn of the century, about 24 years ago, but precisely when and for how long, is unclear.

So, from a public disclosure perspective, the links between me and my callsigns are tenuous at best.

Before I continue, I will point out that this is not unusual. For example, you can see the number plate on my car as I drive down the street, but most people don't have the ability to link it to me.

Similarly, Ofcom in the United Kingdom released a list of allocated amateur callsigns after a freedom of information request. It's unclear if this information is updated, or if it requires a new request each time. Like Australia, the dataset contains the callsign, the type of license and when the record was last updated. Nothing else.

In contrast, the United States has a full license search that returns name, address, issue and expiry dates. Japan offers both a search tool and downloads. Interestingly you can see if a callsign was previously licensed and when, but not by whom.

No doubt each country has their own interpretation in relation to how this is handled and as was the case in Australia, this is ever changing.

This leaves us with an interesting phenomenon.

We use callsigns on-air to identify ourselves, but the relationship between the callsign and our identity, let alone when, is not guaranteed for a significant proportion of the amateur community.

So, how does this relate to the ARRL incident?

Radio amateurs like to make contacts with each other and collect those contacts like you might collect stickers or postage stamps. For decades we've used QSL cards, essentially a postcard sent from one amateur to another to confirm a contact. When you collect enough cards, you can apply for an award, like the DXCC, showing that you made contact with one hundred different so-called DX entities.

In the era of computing, some organisations, like the ARRL, came up with the idea of using the internet to exchange these contacts instead of using a postcard. This reduced delays and was presented as a system to make the process more secure by requiring that people electronically sign their contacts, but could only do so after identifying themselves using traditional means, like providing copies of their license, their passport, etc. The ARRL called it Logbook of the World, or LoTW, and it was adopted by the amateur community around the globe.

While the ARRL continues to state that it only holds public information on its member database, it has made no such assurances about the LoTW system. There is personal and private information that the ARRL has and there is no indication at all what happened to it.

Other systems such as QRZ, eQSL, Clublog and Hamlog offer similar systems with various levels of authentication and verification. A new player, HQSL, is confusing the issue by offering cryptographically signed QSL cards, boasting that their system is decentralised and not restricted to any single service, but immediately requires that you sign-up with Hamlog to get going.

So, we have several organisations offering electronic logging, contact confirmation and security which claim to guarantee that this callsign contacted that callsign at a time and date, on a band, using a mode.

One problem.

None of this is real.

For starters, there is no guarantee that the station operating VK6FLAB was me. There is also no record guaranteeing that I'm the holder of VK6FLAB, or any proof that I am who I say I am. There is also no guarantee that the person confirming a contact between VK6FLAB and you is me. So, we're creating a phantom secure system that's attempting to fix the wrong problem.

In golf, when you start playing for rankings, rather than a round at the 19th hole, the process used to verify your score is dependent on peer review. You cannot mark your own score-card, someone else does.

In amateur radio we've built this electronic house of cards to track whom we've talked to and when, but it's a mirage when looked at closely.

While a DXCC award is worth nothing more than a personal achievement, we cannot go on pretending that identity verification services like LoTW are real, nor can we continue to accept that organisations like the ARRL should demand and store valuable identity information.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB