Finding Locals in a Long-Distance Hobby [070]

Greetings from the den...

HERE

I’m at home enjoying the holidays but keen to send out an email before the year is over.

I hope all is well in your part of the world.

After I sent my last post, I turned on my new radio for the first time and heard Canada and America on a piece of wire thrown into a tree. That’s a first for my new location and I figured the radio was performing some kind of magic. Both of those contacts had immense pile ups so I realised that conditions were in fact up and I was in for an interesting night.

It took me a while to realise how to turn on the tuner on my still new FTX-1 Optima. 🙄 Which should give you an indication of just how little time I have made for radio.

With managing the still antenna-free garden, cutting, chipping and stacking firewood for winter… harvesting and picking apples plums and other fruit… plus the making of cider to see us through the holidays… there’s been more than enough excuses I can use for not getting the station up and running. I’m getting there though. Just slowly.

I did have a couple of friends (M9TOG & M1NER) come visit me. Gordon made the 90 minute drive over and for Andy it was about 6 hours. We certainly got to pay a little radio but we mostly did a tour of the local pubs and looked for tall buildings that would look good with antennas on.

We are hoping to have a little field day spring/summer… as well as some more ‘club walks’ between local ale houses.

Read on and you will get an idea about how much I miss having radio friends nearby.

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THERE

I’m constantly reminded how physically isolated I am from other radio operators and how lucky I was where I used to live in Cambridgeshire.

Back there, the amateur community was never far away. My local club met a short walk from my house and I could almost see the local repeater from my shack. I regularly met other operators for informal gatherings in pubs or each other’s homes. There was a rhythm to our interactions and rarely a lull between contacts.

If anything happened with the weather, power, or otherwise, there was always someone on the other end of the repeater and a bunch of people nearby happy to head over to help fix things.

That density of radio fanatics created a kind of ambient community and with it some reassurance that all was well in the world of radio.

Here in the Scottish Borders, the picture is somewhat different. I’m about twenty minutes drive from the nearest amateur radio operator (that I know of) and I genuinely have no idea if there are any others within an hour of my QTH.

That may sound unremarkable to operators in large rural parts of the US or Australia, but having moved from a place where there may have been over a hundred hams within a 20 minute drive, it’s been a bit of a shock. There was a local club but it dissolved as those running it got older or went silent key.

Of course, amateur radio thrives on distance. We celebrate the long path, fleeting openings and pulling weak signals out of the noise. So in theory, none of this should matter as we mostly connect over the air, not necessarily across kitchen tables or village halls.

But in practice, I am finding that physical proximity still matters a great deal. There is something about face-to-face contact that cements a community in a way no net or messaging group quite can. Seeing the same people regularly. Passing around bits of kit. Sharing stories about weird antennas, half finished projects, seemingly magical contacts, or simply sitting with a cup of tea while talking about life in general.

These small, ordinary, off air interactions are where we share a little more personally. Where trust and a sense of belonging can form.

Without that, the hobby can feel strangely two dimensional. Where we’re technically active at the same time as being socially disconnected. Although a QSO can easily lead to a friendship, adding a callsign to a logbook is just collecting. You can make hundreds of global contacts and still feel like you’re operating alone.

That craving for a deeper connection is what has nudged me toward the idea of starting something local to me. Nothing formal. No constitution, or committee. So no pressure. Just a once-a-month meet and greet. A chance to flush out the quiet hams who must be out there somewhere, operating from sheds, spare rooms and caravans. Maybe even attract the radio curious, unsure where to begin.

I suspect there are more operators in my part of the Borders than it appears. Some will have drifted away after the local Berwick Amateur Society folded. Some may be licensed but inactive. Others might simply not see themselves as the club going type. So a casual, low-stakes gathering feels like the right place to start.

Amateur radio has always been about more than radios. It is about helping one another, sharing a nerdy curiosity in an infinite playground and the slow building of friendships over time.

In an age where so much community has been abstracted by algorithms and crammed into feeds and servers, it feels a little radical to suggest meeting in the same room, at the same time, with no agenda beyond connecting.

I have no idea if this will work. But I feel it’s worth a go. In a hobby built on reaching out far and wide, sometimes it’s fun to see what we’re missing right under our noses.

This map shows the ‘dead zone’ around my QTH, marked by the cross. The two closest clubs are Galashiels & Dars (Which I really must visit) and Northumbria ARC Which I have visited (and it’s pretty awesome). Both of these clubs are a one hour drive away.

I can also be contacted through QRZ if you wanted to give me a heads up.

The good news is that there is an amazing repeater not far away from me, GB3BT. Being coastal it has huge coverage and I’ve heard people over 100 miles away getting in. It’s rare though. Normally the only ones to be heard on it are me and Kieth MM6KFE. So should I should find local-ish amateurs out there, there’s a potential of a radio net to keep everyone in the loop.

In the interim, I’m going to be listening out on there as much as possible and if you think you might be able to get into GB3BT, Please do try. You never know I might even be there to come back to you.

If you’ve read this far and feel like you might be able to help please let me know. Or if you had (or still have) the same issue in your part of the world, please feel free to comment or reply. I’d love to know more. Especially if you have managed to grow something from nothing.

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GEAR

I have managed to string up my EFHW and my ZS6BKW. Still not in the open but round the back of the house. If I don’t put a caravan or pod in the bottom of our field, I think i’ll need a good 100m of coax to reach some clear space. Another one of those jobs I keep pushing down the list.

There are some interesting pods around and I like the simplicity of this kind of thing from HullyPods.

The wooden decking and frame is an optional extra but I could see a few panels and a mini wind turbine able to keep the station batteries topped up. It also looks like it would cope with the wind and rain we’ve experienced this winter.

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I’m seeing quite a lot of aluminium wind up masts coming out of China but I’m somewhat hesitant to ask for a price as their website uses the font Comic Sands and I’m hesitant to send anyone a chunk of cash who’s not going to use a proper font ;-)

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ONAIR

On flicking around the bands I heard a Austrian radio operator Gerald OE1GAQ using an AI voice assistant to collect QSO’s. He stated that it was an experiment as his chatbot was steadily responding to voice calls with station name, signal strength and small talk etc.

I’m hoping this will not become the norm. I much prefer talking with humans. Although I guess it’s just a fancy digital mode that people can listen in on. Perhaps those unable to talk will ditch morse for AI voice assistants and we will start to hear generated voices in the style of who knows who? Yoda having a QSO with John Cleese perhaps?

There are a few projects of this kind popping up. Here is one on Github.

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Are you using HOIP?

If so give me a call on 200353. Please respect that I’m in the UK and awake between 8am and 11pm ;-)

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And one day recently while chatting with my only local Ham friend Kieth MM6KFE he mentioned he was having issues with FT8 on his Yaesu FT857. I headed over to marvel at a rats nest of homebrew wires he’d been using for a very long time. I was thinking that this would be the perfect little project to take down a local club and fix with friends.

But being lazy and wanting to save Kieth some money on the parts, I pinged my online friends in C.R.O.W.S (The creative radio operators wireless society ;-) and Gordon (mentioned above) told me he had the lead needed. We planned a coffee half way from our QTHs and Gordon donated the cable to Kieth just in time for Christmas.

Kieth was super happy and sent me a screen grab of his first international FT8 contacts in a long time. It had me feeling super thankful that with a little leg work we could get a local community feel even with only a handful of radio operators spread across the borders.

Be it a thriving populated club house, or a handful of hams travelling to share a drink… Cherish what you have.

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ELSEWHERE

• Families speak to Santa through Ham Radio.

• Rising CO2 levels could destabilise satellite and radio communications.

• The national Trust in the UK is marking 125 years of the Lizard wireless station that helped transform global radio communication.

• US spy satellites built by SpaceX send signals in the wrong direction.

• How Unified S-Band was used for the Apollo program.

• Space-π to transmit SSTV images via UMKA-1 (RS40S) CubeSat from now through to late January 2026.

• This is my other more regular, slightly more eclectic email.

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FINALS

Thanks for reading and I hope subscribing.

Please share this wherever you think it might resonate. At time of writing there are over 1000 subscribers to this email.

You are some of the more curious people in radio ;-) And I thank you.

You are also all welcome to leave a comment with your callsign and location. This is most certainly a social network and can also be a community. Reach out and say hi!

Happy New Year!

Over

73 de Christian G5DOC

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