Discovering the Fascination of Amateur Radio:

 Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is a captivating hobby that opens up a world of possibilities. We’ll delve into the allure of amateur radio, highlighting its rich history, global community, and the boundless opportunities for learning, exploration, and service. Whether you’re interested in long-distance communications, emergency preparedness, technical experimentation, or simply connecting with like-minded individuals, amateur radio has something for everyone.

Exploring the Basics of Amateur Radio:

 In this section, we’ll provide a comprehensive overview of the essentials to help you get started. We’ll cover the equipment needed for an amateur radio setup, including transceivers, antennas, and accessories. Additionally, we’ll explore the process of obtaining an amateur radio license, discussing the different license classes and the exciting possibilities each class offers.

Participating in Amateur Radio Events:

 Amateur radio enthusiasts often come together to participate in exciting events and contests. We’ll highlight notable events like Field Day, where operators set up temporary stations in outdoor locations, and contest weekends, which test your skills in making as many contacts as possible. These events offer opportunities for camaraderie, competition, and the chance to showcase your expertise.

Unleashing the Power of Communication:

 Amateur radio is all about connecting with others, locally and across the globe. We’ll explore the various communication modes available, from traditional voice transmissions to cutting-edge digital modes and even satellite operations. You’ll discover the joy of making contacts, exchanging QSL cards, participating in nets, and engaging in fascinating conversations that transcend geographical boundaries.

Embracing the Adventure of DXing:

 DXing, or making long-distance contacts, is a thrilling aspect of amateur radio. We’ll delve into the art of DXing, discussing propagation, band conditions, and techniques for successful DXing. You’ll learn how to unlock the magic of distant communications, chasing elusive stations, and expanding your horizons through exciting QSOs with operators in far-flung corners of the world.

Delving into Special Interest Areas:

 Amateur radio offers a wide array of special interest areas that cater to diverse passions. We’ll explore popular niches such as contesting, where operators compete to make as many contacts as possible within a specified time frame. We’ll also delve into satellite communication, where you can engage in QSOs using orbiting satellites, and portable operations, which allow you to take your radio adventures to new locations.

Embracing Lifelong Learning:

 Amateur radio is a journey of continuous learning and personal growth. We’ll discuss the abundance of educational resources available, from online forums and communities to books, podcasts, and hands-on workshops. Whether you’re interested in honing your technical skills, mastering Morse code, or exploring the intricacies of antenna design, there’s always something new to discover and learn in the world of amateur radio.

Taking Ham Radio Portable:

 Amateur radio is not limited to your home station. We’ll discuss the joys of portable operations, where you can take your radio gear to parks, mountains, beaches, or any location of your choice. Portable operations offer a breath of fresh air, allowing you to combine your passion for radio with the love of nature and exploration.

Congratulations on taking the first step toward an exciting amateur radio adventure! The Amateur Radio Blog is your trusted companion as you navigate this captivating realm of wireless communication. From equipment choices to licensing, from making contacts to exploring special interest areas, we’re here to inspire, inform, and support you along your journey.

Stay tuned for our upcoming articles, where we’ll delve deeper into specific aspects of amateur radio, ChatGPT Plugins Development, share inspiring stories from fellow operators, and provide valuable tips and tricks to enhance your ham radio experience. Remember, amateur radio is not just a hobby; it’s a gateway to a world of possibilities, connecting you with a vibrant community of enthusiasts and fostering a lifelong passion for wireless communication.

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In the 1940s and 1950s, media observers who were enamored with television confidently predicted the demise of radio. They claimed that the experience of watching moving pictures in the coziness of a living room could not be replicated by the medium.

The emergence of rock and roll, which embodied the youth uprising against the conservatism of the decades before it, gave radio a larger audience than before and disproved the forecasts of the pessimists.

Since then, radio has proven to be the ultimate survivor, adjusting to the preferences of younger listener generations and incorporating modern technologies. It countered the risks posed by personal video recorders and digital compact discs in the 1980s and 1990s by placing a larger emphasis on listener-driven programming. By the late 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, radio stations were reinventing themselves to target specific audiences. These stations included talk radio, punk rock stations, and even stations that played music by a single band 24 hours a day, predating the emergence of Spotify and iTunes by at least ten years.

The reports of radio’s demise are therefore much overstated, to paraphrase Mark Twain.

The radio is still the most accessible and portable medium: a radio costs $50, making it cheaper than a cell phone or TV.

Audio programs easily overcome literacy-related barriers, enabling even the illiterate to understand and absorb news and information. The price associated with producing content is often between one-fifth and one-tenth that of producing images. This makes broadcasting in a dizzying array of languages, dialects, and artistic forms more affordable.

Since the technology has been around for more than a century, it is also not particularly complex. Today, even non-technical people may design and create broadcast transmitters and receivers. Radio has historically been the preferred medium for activists and social movements, and for good reason. Additionally, it continues to be one of the most commonly reported habits worldwide to listen to the morning news on the radio. Local radio stations that may serve niche demographics in specific geographic areas are multipling due to radio’s accessibility and affordability.

Radio is vanishing. We are viewing the medium’s penultimate iteration as it tries to appeal to an aging population.

The antiquated technology of radio and all associated content formats will soon be replaced by the internet. With the improved interactive capability of the Internet, radio is not even comparable.

People from all over the world can create their own channels using streaming platforms. The Internet has already triumphed in the music war thanks to programs like Apple Music, Gaana, and Saavn.

Users of streaming apps can play anything they want, even replaying whole playlists. Each person has an app on their smartphone that “understands” their musical preferences and introduces them to new music by creating playlists based on what they are likely to enjoy.

Internet-based radio

Sports commentary innovations, interactive game shows, hyper-local news and events, the presence of an extraordinary array of frequencies, and a sound monetisation plan are just a few of the reasons that could have postponed the inevitable (death of the radio) by a little bit.

Radio programming will likely still need to use the Internet as its distribution technology even if it were to magically rediscover itself. To put it another way, even if people were to listen to what is broadcast on the radio, they would do it online.

It follows that even if the “art of radio” (read: “audio”) survives, it won’t “truly” survive.

We are witnessing the final iteration of a bygone technology used to serve an aging consumer base. Radio is becoming less and less relevant to our nation’s youth as time goes on.

Radio’s growth can be aided by diversification.

Radio is still useful, yes. Although it is simple to claim that everything has gone digital, radio is still alive and well. The importance of radio in times of disaster, like the recent floods in Mumbai, cannot be stressed even now.

A portable radio is something that costs nothing, doesn’t require Internet bandwidth, and can be used anywhere.

However, I see difficulties for the medium in the future. Our media landscape is rapidly evolving, and radio faces fierce competition from new media. Lack of an appropriate measurement tool is one of its problems. You can gauge the audience when using a digital platform. There isn’t a reliable scientific metric available to gauge radio content. Many evaluations still depend heavily on perception. One of the main problems facing the radio industry is this.

Integration, harmony, and participation

Hybrid radio, or the use of the convergence of layered technologies to provide new radio services, is at the heart of HRadio. The goal is to create compelling new radio services made possible by technologies such as infrastructure, call tracking review, and development libraries. This will make it possible to provide time- and location-independent linear radio services that are easily integrated with personalized content on demand, wherever and whenever the listener wants it.

To achieve this goal, researchers are creating hybrid features and prototypes that target three important areas: integration, harmonization, and user experience. Initially, scientists developed 47 examples of the use of streaming technologies in live radio broadcasting. Examples include interactive features such as song and artist recommendations, the ability to pause and resume without missing a beat, and a feature that seamlessly transfers a listening session from a mobile app to a car radio. One use case even allows users to instantly replace music from their Spotify playlist whenever the radio plays a song they don’t like!

The future of radio

Today’s research efforts are focused on building and evaluating prototypes that include some of these features. For example, the HRadio application broadcasts metadata-enhanced radio over the Internet using a technology known as Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) over IP. A distinctive feature of the prototype is the timeshift function, which allows users to play, skip or pause the radio broadcast. In addition, the app has a social component that allows users to interact with the radio station and share updates. The HRadio online view and the HRadio car app are more like prototypes.

Each of these ideas “complements the identity of live radio with a range of streaming benefits.” As a result, we are not only educating a new generation of listeners, but also contributing to the future of this important media. In order to complete large-scale testing using developed prototypes, the project was recently extended. Along with radio stations across Europe, the team is actively collaborating with Belgian and German broadcasters to integrate some of the project’s early features into their live programming.

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Take an electromagnetic wave. It is a sine wave, an oscillation of magnetic and electric field strength vectors. “Where is the information here?” you ask, and there is a reason for that question.

The sine wave itself does not carry any information. It is the modulation of the signal that is used to transmit the data. There are different types of modulation:

• amplitude;
• phase;
• frequency;
• Amplitude-frequency.

For example, the abbreviation FM means frequency modulation.
Modulation is a change in one of the signal parameters.

Frequency modulation is a change in frequency. Amplitude modulation is a change in amplitude. Of course, the change is not a simple one, but a carrier.

We have a carrier signal (carrier oscillation) and an information signal (speech, sound, music). Modulation of carrier signal allows to encode information in it. And the parameter of this signal changes according to information signal.

Below we will consider frequency modulation, as FM-radio stations – the most popular, and it is more pleasant to talk about what is familiar. In frequency modulation, the signal does not change in amplitude. In accordance with changes in the level of the information signal, the frequency of the carrier oscillation changes.

How a radio works
The simplest radio receiver contains a receiver and a transmitter. The transmitter must send the signal and the receiver must receive it.

In doing so, the receiver does not just transmit, but encodes the signal using modulation. The transmitter also has to do the reverse, that is, decode the signal. And then we get the same signal that was transmitted to us.

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The wave nature of radiation
Electromagnetic interaction between objects is subject to electromagnetic theory based on Maxwell’s equations. He assumed that electric and magnetic fields have closed lines of force – vectors of intensity, oscillating perpendicular to the direction of wave propagation. These waves propagating in space create an electromagnetic field. Their existence and wave nature were later proven experimentally.

An electromagnetic wave is an electric and magnetic field that mutually transform into each other.

Scale of electromagnetic radiation
Processes in space and the objects that are there generate electromagnetic radiation. The wave scale is a method of recording electromagnetic radiation.

A detailed illustration of the spectral range is shown in the figure. The boundaries on such a scale are conventional.

Electromagnetic wave types and their wavelength ranges
Type of wave Wavelength
Radio waves Over 1 meter
Microwaves 1mm to 1 meter
Infrared 700 nm to 1 mm
Visible light 380 nm to 700 nm
Ultraviolet 10 nm to 380 nm
X-rays from 5nm to 10nm
Wavelength ranges of electromagnetic waves

Infrared radiation
Between radio waves and visible light lies the infrared (thermal) radiation region. In industry this radiation is used for drying paint surfaces, wood, grain, etc. Infrared rays are used in remote controls, automation systems, security systems, etc.

Interestingly, many wildlife has a kind of “night vision device” that can perceive infrared beams.

Radio waves
Electromagnetic waves of the radio range are the most commonly used in technology. They are used in mobile communications, radio broadcasting, television, for detection and recognition of various objects (radiolocation), to locate objects (GPS-navigation, GPS-monitoring, etc.), to communicate with spacecraft, etc..

Microwave – a device that uses radio waves of high frequency (usually
Hz)

Radio waves have made human life much more comfortable. However, they affect the general condition of humans and animals, and the shorter the waves, the stronger the organisms react to them.

Microwaves.
Microwaves are most commonly associated with the microwave oven, and this is just one of many possible applications. They are produced by special electronic tubes. Microwaves propagate easily through the air, even under adverse atmospheric conditions (fog, precipitation). This is why they are used in radars, devices used to determine location. Radars are used in meteorology, for example to track rain clouds. Microwaves are also used in radio and satellite communications, i.e. between satellite and Earth (telephones, faxes, data transmission) and between satellites.

The post Electromagnetic radiation: types, what affects it and how to protect yourself appeared first on DX-Arnode.

How it is shown in the drawings can be seen in the picture below. This radio component has two inputs (inverting and non-inverting) and one output.

Comparators come in the form of microcircuits, which consist of a large number of transistors. 

Sometimes the schematic representation of a comparator looks like the picture below. That is two contacts are added on the sides, which are used for power.

But in this case there may be some confusion. Because this kind of picture is similar to the picture on the schematics of an operational amplifier. 

Principle of operation
The task of this device is to compare the voltages at the inputs. Let’s look at the simplest example of how this works. 

If the voltage applied to the inverting input is higher than the voltage applied to the non-inverting input, the comparator output will be shorted to minus power. 

Please note: if the voltage is higher on the non-inverting input, the comparator output will be shorted to the plus side of the power supply.

What the comparator is used for
Despite their simplicity, comparators have found widespread use in radio electronics. It is safe to say that all the logic circuits used in computing technology rest on their shoulders. 

How to make a light sensor based on a comparator
For this we need a 12 V power supply. Apart from that, we will also need other radio components:

comparator;
a resistor;
a photoresistor;
a variable resistor;
a transistor. 

The 10 kOhm resistor paired with the photoresistor act as a voltage divider which divides the 12 V voltage that the power supply outputs.  

Note: the more light that hits the photoresistor, the higher the voltage on the divider will be.

The voltage from the divider goes to the inverting input of the comparator. And a variable resistor (potentiometer) is connected to the non-inverting input, which also divides the voltage. 

Tips for reading: Installation and connection diagram of a motion sensor: for lighting, with and without a switch

A transistor must be connected to the output of the comparator. It will be open if the voltage at the non-inverting input is higher than at the inverting input. So that’s basically the whole circuit. It is very simple and very clear. 

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