Q: Where is a good place to start if you want to become an amateur radio enthusiast?
Answer: The scope of amateur radio activities is very wide, and the knowledge, experience, equipment, and venue conditions required vary greatly. Each person’s development path is different, and their future interests and focuses are different. Therefore, the best starting point is not a fixed pattern.
Generally speaking, the first step is to start with the identity of the amateur radio station user and set up an ultra short wave amateur radio station suitable for local communication. Firstly, familiarize oneself with the operating rules of amateur radio communication, learn standard calling, answering, signal reporting, insertion requests, and other operations. From the beginning, cultivate a “typhoon” that can reflect the noble spiritual realm of amateur radio enthusiasts, such as strict compliance with laws and regulations, being humble and eager to learn, understanding others, respecting others, being patient and friendly, and pursuing perfection, and win the respect of friends. At the same time, accumulate understanding of the laws of radio wave propagation through communication practice and comparison of different effects, develop equipment and environmental conditions similar to oneself, identify the differences in the effectiveness of one’s own radio station, and set a goal for improvement.
Then, under the guidance of peers, one can experiment on how to improve the effectiveness of their radio station by improving antennas and other means. It may be necessary to borrow some instruments to measure the standing wave ratio of the antenna circuit, verify the gain parameters of the antenna, adjust the installation of the antenna, or even make a better antenna by oneself. Many people have accumulated different experiences in this area, so it’s worth discussing more.
After becoming familiar with the operation of FM calls in ultra short frequency bands, you can find friends who share the same interest, connect personal computers and radio equipment, and use different communication software. You may also need to learn how to make a simple interface cable to test digital communication, slow scan image transmission and reception with each other. These experiments do not require significant hard costs, and even slight caution in operation will not cause harmful interference to other communications. As long as the signal is good, it is easy to succeed.
As long as you have interest and dedication, accumulate a year and a half of practice, and do one or twenty weekends of special experiments, you will definitely learn a lot of knowledge and technology, and even be promoted to the envy of “Half Bottle Vinegar Industry Yujia” by updated beginners. At this point, it is not difficult to determine the second step based on one’s own experience. Whether to continue engaging in ultra short wave amateur radio activities, seeking new fun from APRS, amateur satellite communication, Echolink, mmdvm… or to set up short wave amateur radio stations and rely on the magical shortwave sky wave communication method to achieve direct communication with various parts of the world.
It should be noted that the equipment required for the first step above can be an ultra short wave base radio or a car mounted radio in frequency modulation mode, or a handheld radio with a transmission power of only 3-5 watts. The difference lies in the size of the conventional communication range, but in terms of the types of radio experiments that can be carried out, the difference is not significant.
