One of the unexpected benefits of this hobby is how it provides you with the ability to connect to others in ways that are not directly related to radio.

Take for example Steve. Steve appears at unpredictable times and locations, been hunted by citizens and scientists and unlike Steve's potential invisible cousin, the proton arc, has been photographed by aurora hunters many times. It looks like observations go back as far as 1705.

In 2017, physics professor Eric Donovan saw some of these photos and got curious. Assisted with GPS coordinates from an aurora hunter in Alberta, Song Despins, Eric correlated the time and location and it turns out that Steve was observed as a ribbon of gas 25 kilometres wide, 300 kilometres above Earth with a temperature of 3,000 degrees Celsius by the European Space Agency's Swarm, a constellation of magnetic field measuring satellites in orbit since 2013 and planned as a four year mission, so-far it has almost managed eleven years.

Steve? Yeah, it's not named after Steven Hawking or Steve Martin, rather, if you're seeing something unexplained, you might name it something less scary, like the hedge in the movie "Over the Hedge". Steve was given a backronym, finding words after the fact, Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, but I prefer Steve. The NASA team at Goddard Space Flight Center have adopted Steve, so it looks like a keeper.

I would never have even stopped to read the recent article in the local news, let alone dig into the various publications, if it weren't for the notion that Steve is one of many phenomena affecting the ionosphere and with it our hobby.

Here's another example.

Vance KV4P published a plan on kv4p.com, outlining a $35 project that requires minimal soldering that makes any Android phone into a handheld radio for 2m. Using a radio module, a micro-controller, a short USB cable, antenna connector, antenna and some sticky gel pads, Vance has come up with an open source project and circuit-board design that will get you on your way. He's even designed a 3D printable enclosure so you don't have to scare your friends with a bare circuit board.

Whilst the Android app is in beta, that is, not quite fit for human consumption, you'll need to drop an email to Vance to get in on the action. Source code is on GitHub.

I came across this project after breakfast, reading the "Y Combinator - Hacker News" which features all manner of weird and wonderful projects, links and questions from all over the technology sphere. The post has expansive discussion on Vance's project, including thoughts on other ideas on how to do interesting things related to our hobby.

Again, if it weren't for the fact that I'm already an amateur, I would never have taken more than a glance at this and I would never consider that this was a doable project, let alone discover other amateur radio projects like HamWAN and AREDN, or the Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network.

The point being that we as amateurs are often pigeonholed by society into the idea of obsolete, disconnected and quaint. I'm here to tell you that our hobby has made me more alive than ever, more connected to others around me, more observant to electrical and physical phenomena and if that makes me quaint, I'm Okay with that.

Also, while we're on the topic of being Okay. Charles NK8O reached out and told me that after listening to me talk about FT8 and his Morse code achievements, he cracked up and then raised the stakes by pointing out that you can get on HF with CW, that's continuous wave, or more commonly, Morse Code, for about $100, where a kit capable of SSB, Single Side Band, or more generally audio, will likely set you back significantly more. His advice, which I cannot fault, "Get on the air!", presumably to make some noise.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Every now and then you come across an idea that throws you for a loop. It comes seemingly out of nowhere and once you've seen it, you cannot unsee it. It's a lot like a 1929 painting I like called "The Treachery of Images", also known as "Ceci n'est pas une pipe", or in English, "This is Not a Pipe" by Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte. If you're not familiar with it, it's a painting of a pipe, and by being a painting, it's not a pipe. Obviously.

Before I go into the idea that rocked my world, I need to set the stage a little.

There are several modes I've discussed before, WSPR, or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter, FT8 or Franke-Taylor design, 8-FSK modulation and plenty others.

Each of these modes has one thing in common. They require that all participants are using the same time. That is, both sender and receiver need to agree on when "now" is for this to work.

A WSPR signal takes 110.6 seconds, every 120 seconds, starting on the even minute. It requires that the transmitter and receiver agree on the time within about 2 seconds.

An FT8 signal takes 12.6 seconds within a 15 second window. It requires an accuracy of about 20 milliseconds.

These timekeeping requirements are pretty easy to achieve in a modern network connected computer. You turn on a thing called NTP, or Network Time Protocol, point it at an appropriate clock and off you go.

If you're not connected to the Internet, then things get squirrelly pretty quickly. You could buy yourself a GPS, set up a link between the GPS and your computer, run some software and use the GPS clock to synchronise time on your computer.

Of course, this requires a GPS, a serial cable, software, configuration, battery power to keep the GPS running and probably a couple of other things. I've never done this, but given what I'm about to share, I don't think I ever will.

What if you used a WSPR, or an FT8 signal, from someone else to synchronise your clock? If you've ever launched WSJT-X, you'll have seen a column marked DT, that's Delta Time, or the difference in time between the clock on your computer and that of the transmitter.

If you could read the difference and use it to adjust your clock, you'd be in business.

Charles NK8O pointed me to a GitHub Gist with a single little Python script, written by Peter K6PLI. It updates the clock on your computer using the Delta Time from WSJT-X.

I'd point you at the script from here, but 3a730575, and 24 more characters, and that's just one element of the URL, doesn't run quite off the tongue, so I've cloned it into my VK6FLAB GitHub repository where it's called wsjt-time-sync. I added Peter's description to the ReadMe file, but I can take no credit for the effort, or the idea, that's all Peter.

So, synchronise your clock using the signal that you're trying to decode. Seems pretty obvious now, but that was a brand new notion for me.

Of course now I'm excited and wondering where else I might use this.

Let me know if there's more to this that tickles your fancy.

Also, just because I know Charles will poke my eye out with a Morse key if I don't mention this, you could use this script on your next POTA, Parks On The Air, or WWFF, World Wide Flora and Fauna activation, or anywhere else you go portable to make some noise.

I know, right, Charles, using FT8 instead of Morse Code, what's next, the end of the hobby? I'll tell you a secret. From time to time, he even uses his voice!

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The other day I was packing the car to go on a little trip an hour out of the city to see the Milky Way. I briefly entertained the idea of bringing my radio gear with me to get on air to make some noise.

I resisted the urge, mainly because thinking about this didn't fill me with joy, rather it made me groan.

Now to be absolutely clear, I adore going out into the scrub with my radio gear. I love getting on air and making noise. I like doing this with friends.

If the time spent is about amateur radio, in other words, if I'm doing this with other amateurs, preparation and set up are part of the experience.

However, if I'm on my own, or with my non-amateur SO, significant other, then preparation and set up often take more time than the actual on-air activity and by the time that things are humming along, we're ready to do something else, fine food, nice view, coffee, you name it, anything other than radio.

So, how can I make the preparation and set up to be something much less time consuming? I don't really want to take over our car and bolt the radio back into it, nor do I want to strap a multi-tap antenna to the roof. At the other end, I also have no desire to bring a wire, look for a tree, do some throwing, find a place to sit and do the rest of the preparation to get on air.

In other words, I want my cake and eat it too.

What might that look like?

One of my fellow amateurs has a telescopic whip, looks like a transistor radio antenna on steroids, but using that requires that you bring something to tune it, given that the ground is going to influence the antenna in unexpected ways.

I could go out and buy a QRP radio with an in-built tuner, make the whip as long as it goes, perhaps even make it into a vertical dipole by combining two and start playing, but I'm not there yet.

Of course I'm not the first to try any of this. The Parks On The Air and Summits On The Air activators are all over this type of activity, hopefully they've written some of their learnings down. I confess that I haven't found anything yet.

How much of this have you achieved? What compromises did you make, what modes do you use when you're operating like this, mind you, I can hear my friend Charles NK8O from here, "Use Morse Onno", so I can take that as a given.

All I need to do is learn it.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

As I sit here, away from my shack, I'm overlooking a picturesque valley that I'm visiting for a couple of days to see the stars. I learnt recently that my SO, Significant Other, had never seen the Milky Way with their Mark One Eyeball and we thought that it would be fun to remedy that.

One of the challenges in accomplishing this is that we're surrounded by light almost everywhere we go. Street lights, porch lights, car lights, stadium and building lights, traffic lights, even emergency lighting on various towers dotting the landscape.

Last night we laid on our backs on a picnic blanket tucked into a sleeping bag, looking up at the sky. The valley where we are is pretty good, there's much less light pollution than in the city, but it's not pitch black. We fantasised about knocking on neighbours' doors to ask them to turn off their porch lights, but quickly came to the realisation that this was not going to be either acceptable, or reasonable.

While I entertained the notion of creating a community Milky Way watching event, increasing local awareness of the new moon, light pollution and making it a local monthly event I discovered that Astro Tourism is a thing and our location happens to be part of the local scene.

Of course I couldn't help myself and started explaining to my SO about how light and radio are the same thing when it struck me that in our hobby we have a similar issue.

We don't refer to it as light pollution, instead we call it noise, specifically, QRM, or man-made noise, as opposed to QRN, natural noise.

I wondered what a community event might look like if we did this with radio amateurs, rather than star gazers. How far would we need to go to get away from noise and could we realistically make something that was actually noise free?

In reality the radio gear we bring, the power supplies, the solar panels, generators, inverters, computers and pretty much all the other stuff to make life come with radio noise to more or lesser degree.

How could you set up an event where that type of noise was contained? Could it be done? What would it take?

On a small scale, I can go to my local park with a fully charged 12 volt battery and a radio and get some sense of what it might look like, but all that really does is whet your appetite. What does this sound like if it's really quiet?

For star gazers, there is a project called DarkSky with a .org website. It documents where designated Dark Sky Places are and promotes the protection of communities from the effects of light pollution through outreach, advocacy and conservation.

We as radio amateurs could do with such a thing. What would our radio quiet spaces look like? How would we find them, how would we coordinate our efforts and what would outreach, advocacy and conservation look like for a radio quiet space?

From a star gazing perspective, I've experienced the middle of nowhere, Lake King in Western Australia, in a paddock, lying in my swag, looking up. The sight is overwhelming. I felt like I was falling, even though I was lying flat on my back, physically not moving.

I wonder what such a level of quiet looks like with a radio?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The other day I was handed a sheaf of paper. The person handing it to me, an amateur, was insistent that I take custody of this little collection. I asked what it was that they intended for me to do with it and the response was that because I did things with history, I should do this too.

Aside from taking on a new project, trying to juggle life and income, their observation was pretty spot on, even though I had never quite seen it in that way. Over the years I've often explained things in the context of the era in which it came into being, the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858, the first 20m contact between the UK and Australia, back in 1925, the founding of the IARU, also in 1925.

For some years I've been playing with the idea of documenting the journey from Spark Gap to SDR. I started writing down milestones, collecting information about the various protagonists along the way, attempting to capture their life milestones and their radio related accomplishments. One friend went so far as to take photos of the replica spark gap transmitter in Hobart, Tasmania as used by Douglas Mawson between 1911 and 1914 during their Antarctic expedition.

Between being entrusted with the written history of 28 Chapter of the Ten-Ten International Net and today I've started a spreadsheet. If you know me at all, you know that I love a good spreadsheet. This one is pretty simple, date, event, event type, protagonist, note and source. So far I've got about 85 rows. I'm using it to capture milestones directly related to our hobby, when the first EchoLink node went live, when RTTY came to be used on-air, the invention of FM, when we got access to the 2m band, when 160m was taken away during World War II, ultimately, all of it.

There is already a website that documents some of this but it's USA centric, even though our community is global, and it does not include any sources, so there's no way to verify any of the events, which I think is essential if you're going to capture this in any meaningful way.

I want this list I'm creating to include all manner of amateur related things, the first time F-troop went on-air, the first CQWW, perhaps even every CQWW. I have also set-up a form so you can contribute your events and over time grow it into something that captures what it is that we've done over the years. Perhaps it will grow into a section on Wikipedia, perhaps it will become its own thing, it's too early to tell.

As I've said many times, if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen. So, this is me, or us, writing it down. Perhaps we'll be able to find a way to make it through the next 100 years.

You can find the Amateur History Project under Projects on my home-page at vk6flab.com - I look forward to reading your contributions.

So, thank you Christine, VK6ZLZ for pushing that sheaf of paper into my hands. I hope I'm worthy of the history that it represents.

I'm Onno Vk6FLAB