Radio Amateurs To See Reallocation Of Portions Of Microwave Band

There is no better explanation.

If you are sufficiently interested, ways of overcoming difficulties may be devised. This was the case in the early 1970s for me and some others that were interested in higher frequencies while still in grammar school.

I made homebrew 23 cm and 3 cm gear with nothing else than a grid-dipper, multimeter, diode detector and the famous "bicycle pump wavemeter". The 2304 MHz gear was however made while at Uni, using some metalworking facilities and the W2CQH and DC0DA designs from "UKW-Berichte".

A major aspect then as now was the lack of stations to make contacts with. Living in a larger city did help somewhat.

You have to know what you are doing when "microwaving" however, which may be an obstacle today, but kits around from various vendors such as DB6NT are quite forgiving.

I notice the similarities between the complaints about how difficult it is to learn Morse, and about having to learn some engineering skills in order to be able to build more advanced microwave gear. If you are interested enough, both Morse and microwaves may be mastered.

The earliest "no-code" licences in Europe were aimed at "experimenters" trying to increase both the technical skill level and the activity on the UHF and up bands. It turned out that the more serious experimenters quite early realised that Morse was indispensable for weak-signal work, and learned it anyway.


73/
Karl-Arne
SM0AOM

 

Microwaves include 2.4GHz and 5.8GGHz... look at all the inexpensive gear available for those two bands! Homebrew antennas are easy and can work well... I think the younger folks might be more lit up by possibilities there.

It is possible to make your own gear for every band, 23cm up to 3cm. Look through w1ghz.org web pages to get some ideas. Yes, SHF requires surface mount techniques. But the workstation isn't too much $$ and the passive parts are $cheap.

I'm not up to making my own corcuit boards but copying one of Paul's layouts aeems easy enough. Crucial to use good (teflon?) board material.

Found material for projects is fun. I am just tickled by the copper pipe cap filters. And 3/4" copper pipe waveguide for 10GHz.

Repurposed stuff is fun. How about a $25 receiver for QO-100? Use an old Dish network dish and LNB, tune the SDR to 690MHz (?), and voila.

Other fun projects: WA5VJB circuit board antennas, novel forms tgat are impractical at HF or even VHF. Slot antennas, Wide banded log periodics. Vivaldis for the ultimate wide banded antenna. Many others.

For modest $$, get a sheet metal brake, drill press, maybe a mill. Or make a new friend with those. Make feed horns, project boxes, all kinds or stuff. Metal working is a great set of skills for life long fun.

Get time on a 3D printer and make a form for a horn feed. Spray it with hogh metal content paint.. voila.

One good hobby leads to another...
I'm just getting started here...

 

OK, here's the deal - for each bit of microwave we lose, we get a little more of HF
spectrum in return !
Few days ago, worked 5B60AMX with 100W to a dipole in the attic on CW.
For the rest of the day I walked around with a bright, happy grin from ear to ear !
There's only one other activity which will do that, and we all know what it is !

 

This would be a "deal" that the spectrum authorities world-wide would jump at.

Say that 2 or 3 more MHz below 30 MHz could be allocated, in exchange for letting go of all UHF and up spectrum.

This would in a "nut-shell" reveal how backwards the majority of radio amateurs really may be. It also speaks volumes about the priorities of the contesters and DX-chasers.

A quite small piece of spectrum without any current commercial value would be "traded" against spectrum real estate worth billions. Add to this the continually worsening RFI problem on HF.

Occupancy measurements recently made at VHF and higher bands have shown that the actual amateur spectrum used is just a few percent of the available space, so I would not be surprised at all if such a proposal could come forward quite soon.

I for one would be very careful in suggesting such a move.

73/
Karl-Arne
SM0AOM

 

Karl,

That's really harsh.

In the US, Part 97 was never dominated by experimenters. Granted, the percent of bona fide experimenters has likely decreased in the last decade, but the real issue we face today is how to : 1) make it easier for extant hams to pursue experimentation at microwave; 2) draw those who might be interested in microwave INTO ham radio as a vehicle for their use and knowledge.

Those who contest and DX at HF are executing a different factor in the Part 97 mission--keeping a pool of those with OTA radio skills.

Nothing wrong with that.

73
Chip W1YW

 

The DX-chasers and contesters consider themselves very important.

In fact, so important that they should consider petitioning the ITU for their own exclusive spectrum allocations in the HF range. The response from the ITU would on the other hand give a "hint" about the real importance of such operations.

I have lost contact with the FCC since more than 20 years,
but if they are anything like other Administrations, they are just waiting for amateur radio to go away, preferably quietly.

73/
Karl-Arne
SM0AOM

 

Its not that the lack of cheep/ish projects so much, its what do I do when my widget does not work. At HF i can grab my 200Mhz scope that cost peanuts and do some dafingerpoken and find out what was wrong. At 5Ghz i will be running blind unless i can come up with $10,000 for a used scope, $5000 for a used sig gen etc. And lets for argument sake say money was not a problem and I could call up Emona and order $100,000 of test gear. Who am i going to do microwaves with when I am living in a rural town that has 2 non active hams in it?

And this is the biggest problem of them all. While it sounds great to say microwaves are the future of ham radio, its not all that practical for anyone living anywhere other than a big city. When i do get on the radio, or spend time building something, I want to know that there is going to be someone out there that might take the time to reply to me. 80, 40 and 20m are the goto bands for that very reason, you can pick anytime of the day and night and always hear someone, somewhere. Microwaves, I am beholden to hams that live within 10Km of me who may not even exist, let alone be on air when i am.

Thats also the problem with VHF simplex around here. I spent better part of a month calling on the SSB and CW calling frequencies here at all times of the day and night and never made a single contact. I sold the shack in a box and moved on. I was going to buy a 9700 but there is just no point to it unless you have your own special group that meets up at arranged times. I have some stuff here I can transmit with to 6Ghz and would if there was someone near be with the same capabilities, but i don't because it would be a waste of time.

 

Buy another $10 wifi widget and move on.

The $10000 test equipment would be sooooo nice! But it's unnecessary. We're not professional RF engineers.

And if experimenting steers someone to such a career, great!

Regarding finding partners to QSO with:

Yes it's difficult. Gotta coordinate and set a sked. Choose an activity weekend, or contest weekend. I'm sure there is a ham community in the big city, higher band folks are always scrapping for one more QSO.

VHF+ is scored by grids. Take it mobile and get more grids.

Too bad you sold your 9700. Never thought about trying meteor scatter on 2m? Or EME on any of its bands? Need a yagi and good preamp to RX. 2 excellent construction projects right there. Ok, I guess that's VHF UHF not microwave.

You already go portable for HF. . That may be required on high bands, too.

It's ok if none of this is for you. You already have a lot of fun and success building and doing on HF.

As shown many times, CW on HF simply isn't compelling to younger folks. So I suggested some easy fun projects, that can be done around what is compelling:. Remote control of multicopters, battle bots, comms with remote instrumentation, etc. Good ways to get started doing ham radio.

 

I think the problem for me at least as you have kind of pointed out, is that I look at microwaves in terms of CW/SSB/QSO etc, when what they are really suited to is other applications. Something I had discussed with some friends here not long after the ACMA changed the LCD (think FCC/97) to allow for modes unlimited bandwidth on all bands (with power density limits) was to develop something in the 2 or 5gig bands using off the shelf components for some novel ham application. Be it, data, telemetry or whatever, that was so cheep and ubiquitous that everyone could deploy one at home and have this huge adhoc network happening. Think DMR hotspot/APRS on steroids.

Now I admit, we never actually went anywhere with this, but it would be that kind of killer application, cheap and simple to deploy, that would do to microwaves what the bitx or qcx did for kit builders. Something that is only simple and useful with great utility, but would drive others on to experiment and develop the system more broadly. This was certainly something way out of our skill set, but i think you can see the point, the only way to make microwaves the future is to have an application that makes it accessible to the masses.

Not in my skill set, but if someone did do something like this and could keep it under $2/300 I think bringing people to play could be achievable.

 

I've already developed it (3 years ago). I've thought about productizing it, but you know what they say. If you want to make a small fortune in ham radio, start with a large fortune.

 

The problem is the 1500 dollar Ettus transceiver.

 

It's just a proof of concept test bed. It would have to be developed into a $300 stand alone box.

 

If you can do it at that price point, it could be the ticket.

 

yes exactly! Hams excel at using virtually no spectrum, which is why the telcos feel justified to take away the allocation. Yeah, 50Hz CW on 3456.100GHz, a few times a year for contests. we should have been using spread spectrum and as you say other wide, high bit rate applications, and petitioning for higher rates down low. Yeah, we know how to use it responsibly, check this out.

That might address Karl's concern. A little bit.

 

Maybe the idea of creating our own internet. It's pretty common knowledge how vulnerable the existing net is. One good solar storm that takes out GPS timebase and it would collapse. Basing a network on stand alone servers with the ability to coordinate time like JS8 call and we could be up moving traffic while the existing net would have to reestablish itself. It would attract a lot more younger types too I would think. That would combine several disciplines. I have heard that's being tried out west but info is scarce.