2024-02-23 — Amateur Radio and the Growth of the Spectrum Workforce in the US National Spectrum Strategy, Power Amplifier Suitable for Software Defined Transmitters
Doc - Thanks for the kind words. Sometimes, like these last few weeks, it takes more waking hours than I could EVER have imagined, but some subjects seem important enough for that level of effort. Other weeks, it's just a joy to share what I've learned that week, and Zero Retries comes together in a few hours. In Zero Retries 0140 it was great to balance out the (grinding, to write) National Spectrum Strategy discussion with the article about the power amplifier for SDTs (that was pure fun to write).
Apologies that your great Substack newsletter fell off my Recommendations of other Substack Amateur Radio newsletters that are "recommendable". Somehow, Substack marked it "inactive" and wasn't displaying it on Zero Retries... but now fixed.
...
(update) Argh Substack! The (revived) recommendation for your newsletter kept getting pushed down below the "four" prominent mentions (had to click the "see all" link) and I had no control over the listing order. But, there was one recommended newsletter that seems to have gone silent, so I removed that one and that promoted yours. So hopefully that provides a bit more exposure. Again, apologies, no slight intended.
Hi, it’s great to hear a little bit about your process as I seem to spend far more time than I have doing my main newsletter.
And your attention to detail is phenomenal. You helped me give up the thought that I will know everything in this incredible hobby, and now I’m much happier playing in the spaces that appeal to me most.
Also interesting to hear that mine was marked inactive as I post every week. Unless you’re talking about G5DOC.net which is my radio focused newsletter. That is a little more sporadic and pretty much unknown.
Either way, the recommendation is very much appreciated, and has inspired me to head into the backend of my publications to see if everything is in order.
Doc - Yes, I was referring to your G5DOC Substack newsletter. Given the topic of Zero Retries, I confine my recommendations to newsletters about, or at least adjacent, to Amateur Radio, that provide at least some content that isn't paywalled, as I do with Zero Retries.
Lime Micro has the Lime RFE amplifier. It has a very steep learning curve (mine is pretty much a very expensive dust magnet), but at least there's something. DK if there's actual support for it in GNU radio but their Lime Suite includes a tab for it. And the Lime SDRs include GPIO pins for keying amplifiers and sequencing preamps, etc. Again, not sure how much support is there for generic SDR programs.
At one time the charters of the various US government regulatory agencies included language that mandated they not only regulate but also promote the industries they control. So the FCC's charter included promoting use of radio, the FAA's encouraged aviation, etc. Not sure when that language was removed, but it seems to me the various "letter agencies" would be more in tune with niche and hobby corners if they actually were promoting use. I'm in the small UAV (drone) business, which grew out of hobbyists. Now everyone's getting into the act, and we see what's happening in Ukraine. But before that the FAA was so hostile to the hobby community it took an act of Congress for them to relent. Unfortunately that backfired as the community failed to police themselves, but at least the FCC isn't shutting down amateur radio, although it would only take a few high profile incidents with free-banders or other idiots to bring the hobby into a negative light.
Ready - Thanks for the feedback on the LimeSDRs. Those are definitely better developed (and in fairness, they're designed to be more sophisticated hardware) than the ADALM-PLUTO that I cited. So yes, the new LimeSDR Mini 2.0 would be a better radio stage for my imagined UHF SD Transceiver.
I've had two peripheral involvements in the aviation industry in my day jobs and what I remember was that the dual mandate to regulate AND promote were sometimes in direct conflict. I *think* that it was ultimately decided that the regulatory mission was primary, and the "promotion" was dropped, especially given that commercial aviation had become a behemoth of an industry, quite capable of promoting itself. I don't ever recall hearing about a similar "promotion" mission for the FCC - only regulatory. Yeah, Amateur Radio regularly gets dealt a "black eye" when some idiot with a radio and a bad idea does something really dumb and gets caught... and happens to have an Amateur Radio license. K1MAN comes to mind...
Spectrum Workforce: I will not comment on the situation in the US, I am too far away. But some comments on the situation here in Germany might be interesting:
Our national ham radio society, DARC, does a reasonable job in representing ham radio in legislature, industry standards work and coordination. For the latter, we have a regular roundtable with quite some representatives of ham radio ommunity like DARC, AGCW (CW) etc. and officials. That includes BNetzA (Bundesnetzagentur, in this respect comparable to FCC), military etc. The latter are needed for example as the primary users of the 6m band.
For all this it is important that about half of all personal licenses are represented by DARC. In June we will get a new entry license class (VHF/UHF only). I fear that this might increase the number of licenses, but DARC might win hardly any new members. This might also reduce the influence DARC has had until now.
An example of results at industry standards: To be sold in Germany, power line equipment must notch out the SW ham bands. This is not the case in Austria.
At the last Radio Conference DARC was Europe's loudest voice to defend the 23 cm band against the interests of the navigational services. Negative examples: In Finland the 23cm band is no longer available for ham radio. In all of Scandinavia (OZ, SM, LA, OH) the 70cm ham radio band is only 6 MHz wide, compared to 10 MHz otherwise in Region 1.
In one respect, DARC makes a terrible job: Networking with general public. cqDL, the "German QST", was never available in Germany without a DARC membership. From what I see of (mostly internal) documentation about emergency traffic, there are basic errors that could only happen because the DARC officials lack contact to those responsible for official emergency management.
For example, emergency management here in Germany is organized on the county (Landkreis) level, not by towns or local communities. But DARC expects to be alarmed from that lowest level which will never happen.
Nearly all I found about publicity support was calls to publish press releases about events of local chapters. From time to time ham radio also appears at regional TV stations. Don't ask me who had the initiative.
At a group meeting with my mayor about local resilience the topic "wireless communication" nearly crashed the meeting. Winlink was way beyond their world.
Alexander - Thanks for the comments and providing some perspective from Germany. I am impressed with the networking, the coordination, AMSAT-DL, the HAM RADIO conference, HAMNET... and many things about Amateur Radio in Germany. A few ideas about what individuals and small groups can do about Amateur Radio not being recognized as relevant in society have surfaced since ZR 0140 and I'll be exploring some of those in coming issues.
Thanks for a very thoughtful and thought provoking piece. Representing Amateur Radio to the public is something I struggle with how to accomplish. What is the elevator speech?
Promoting our hobby now is best done through social media. Some hams have been good at this.... but only to other hams, methinks. BTW, enticing young people into the hobby was a problem even when TOM was writing editorials. Please keep up the great writing!
John - Thanks for your comments. Yeah, we're at our best when we're speaking amongst ourselves (again, we're insular), and most of us aren't very effective evangelists for Amateur Radio for those outside Amateur Radio. But, I think I might see a way to "bridge the gap" - talk up Amateur Radio as "techies to techies". When we can make the case for Amateur Radio, to TECHIES... I think there's enough commonality to maybe bridge the gap and make a case to techies in promoting the value of Amateur Radio.
Steve, great reporting. I feel compelled to add a few comments.
As just another old guy who has loved Amateur Radio but who has worked ,fairly recently, in the technology industry, I note that the comments about getting in to libraries, being in schools and lobbying are great, a large issue is that these are places that potential new hams don't look anymore.
I believe that if we want to be noticed by the next generations, we need to have a substantial digital marketing effort - Amateur Radio needs to be "rebranded" and brought into the age of cell phones, small screens, gaming, AI and VR. We need professional digital marketing designs for relevant instagram (not facebook), TikTock, Messenger, LinkedIn (for new professionals) and many other platforms. We need to meet the next generations - as well as some of ours - where they "live" in our world today.
We also need to concentrate on promotion of aspects of our hobby that speak to the new generation. Rather than SSB, CW, FM HT's and even FT8 we need to speak about networking, high speed services, software, exciting new activities and ways to get fit while moving our joint technology future forward in a positive way. It's not that all the "older" stuff is bad, it's just that most of it no longer resonates with potential new hams in a world where a cell phone or many other devices that people use now can instantly communicate multi-media anywhere in the world for almost no cost.
Being an engineer myself, I note that this social/marketing communications (MARCOM) requirement does not come naturally to many techies who love the engineering issues and tend to shy away from promotion - I suggest that this is *most* hams. But... I think that we have, at least in a major part, a seemingly simple but in reality very complex branding and promotion problem in a world full of technologies that most of our existing licensees are not aware of and don't participate in.
I think that Amateur Radio has some of the "tools". We still have a viable ARRL. We have some great Youtubers, Vendors and Bloggers and global reach. We (the ARRL, RSGB, JARL and may others?) need to hire (yup hire) and trust marketing and messaging oriented Gen Alpha (born 2013 – 2025) and Generation Z (born 1996-2012) professional marketing (not technology) types and give them a grand challenge and the funding and tools to implement that challenge.
The grand challenge is to make what we call Amateur Radio relevant to younger people. This means that they need to "Recast" and "Rebrand" Amateur Radio in a form that would catch the interest of young women and men in the current world - hmm. maybe the term "Amateur RADIO" is anachronistic?.
Us older guys need to get out of the way once this challenge is staffed and funded.
Scott - Thanks for the kind words. In Zero Retries I haven't been getting into the specifics of the outreach effort that's needed. Those will be decisions for those that will actually do the evangelism work... if someone... someoneS, some organization steps up TO do the work.
But on the other points, you're in synch with conclusions I've come to in Zero Retries. Despite what WE know Amateur Radio has to offer... and the need as (now) discussed at high levels as the need to expand the "Spectrum Workforce", to the current generations, we're selling "cold, dead fish" instead of "fresh sushi".
I think what evangelism about Amateur Radio to non-Amateur Radio audiences has missed to this point is that they're focusing on the wrong aspects of Amateur Radio. While WE Amateur Radio Operators get excited about (speaking for myself) using mobile-type radios to do slow speed data communications, that gets a big yawn from the current generation. But start talking up AREDN and other microwave networking, that gets their attention. Or start talking about slow speed comms, that has no dependency on Internet or cellular... you get "Wait... what... you can DO that?".
Two other things I think Amateur Radio is going to have to adapt to (and it's going to be a SLOG to get these points across), is:
* Amateur Radio really is no longer in the game when it comes to modern-day EMCOM.
* The only subset of the population that Amateur Radio COULD truly appeal to is techies.
I'm still stuck on imagining who... individuals, existing organizations... could do this kind of evangelism. I think it's going to require some new thinking and some new energy to coalesce into a modern, virtual, distributed, organization. Our existing Amateur Radio organizations just don't seem up to this particular challenge.
And... as far as getting out of the way once it's up and running... Amateur Radio is going to be THEIR activity, with no input from us, soon enough. Thus yeah, help get this new generation launched, then get out of the way. Roger that!
Personally, I have returned to Amateur radio twice since first getting involved in the 1970's as a high school kid. Once in the early 2000's when I found cool toys like the FT-817 - I bought one of the first and still use it today - and again in 2020. Each time I returned, I found so many cool changes.
Since 2020, I am back in SSB and CW, as always, but added FT8, JS8, software modems, DMR, SDR's, FreeDV, NPR70, AREDN, Direwolf instead of 1980's TNC's, VARA and other stuff like Meshtastic as well as GMRS repeaters (old stuff made new?) and so much more.
Of all these what really captures the "newish" prospective hams coming into the hobby is the potential for internet like services and integration with mobile devices (phones not HT's). They are less about the radios and more about the software and services.
It will take some of us old guys with the imagination to find and hire the young people who will create the "Sushi" message, give them the resources that they need and then let go (probably before we really want to).
Thanks for your great work. I’ve no idea how you keep up the pace. G5DOC
Doc - Thanks for the kind words. Sometimes, like these last few weeks, it takes more waking hours than I could EVER have imagined, but some subjects seem important enough for that level of effort. Other weeks, it's just a joy to share what I've learned that week, and Zero Retries comes together in a few hours. In Zero Retries 0140 it was great to balance out the (grinding, to write) National Spectrum Strategy discussion with the article about the power amplifier for SDTs (that was pure fun to write).
Apologies that your great Substack newsletter fell off my Recommendations of other Substack Amateur Radio newsletters that are "recommendable". Somehow, Substack marked it "inactive" and wasn't displaying it on Zero Retries... but now fixed.
...
(update) Argh Substack! The (revived) recommendation for your newsletter kept getting pushed down below the "four" prominent mentions (had to click the "see all" link) and I had no control over the listing order. But, there was one recommended newsletter that seems to have gone silent, so I removed that one and that promoted yours. So hopefully that provides a bit more exposure. Again, apologies, no slight intended.
Hi, it’s great to hear a little bit about your process as I seem to spend far more time than I have doing my main newsletter.
And your attention to detail is phenomenal. You helped me give up the thought that I will know everything in this incredible hobby, and now I’m much happier playing in the spaces that appeal to me most.
Also interesting to hear that mine was marked inactive as I post every week. Unless you’re talking about G5DOC.net which is my radio focused newsletter. That is a little more sporadic and pretty much unknown.
Either way, the recommendation is very much appreciated, and has inspired me to head into the backend of my publications to see if everything is in order.
Doc - Yes, I was referring to your G5DOC Substack newsletter. Given the topic of Zero Retries, I confine my recommendations to newsletters about, or at least adjacent, to Amateur Radio, that provide at least some content that isn't paywalled, as I do with Zero Retries.
Lime Micro has the Lime RFE amplifier. It has a very steep learning curve (mine is pretty much a very expensive dust magnet), but at least there's something. DK if there's actual support for it in GNU radio but their Lime Suite includes a tab for it. And the Lime SDRs include GPIO pins for keying amplifiers and sequencing preamps, etc. Again, not sure how much support is there for generic SDR programs.
At one time the charters of the various US government regulatory agencies included language that mandated they not only regulate but also promote the industries they control. So the FCC's charter included promoting use of radio, the FAA's encouraged aviation, etc. Not sure when that language was removed, but it seems to me the various "letter agencies" would be more in tune with niche and hobby corners if they actually were promoting use. I'm in the small UAV (drone) business, which grew out of hobbyists. Now everyone's getting into the act, and we see what's happening in Ukraine. But before that the FAA was so hostile to the hobby community it took an act of Congress for them to relent. Unfortunately that backfired as the community failed to police themselves, but at least the FCC isn't shutting down amateur radio, although it would only take a few high profile incidents with free-banders or other idiots to bring the hobby into a negative light.
Ready - Thanks for the feedback on the LimeSDRs. Those are definitely better developed (and in fairness, they're designed to be more sophisticated hardware) than the ADALM-PLUTO that I cited. So yes, the new LimeSDR Mini 2.0 would be a better radio stage for my imagined UHF SD Transceiver.
I've had two peripheral involvements in the aviation industry in my day jobs and what I remember was that the dual mandate to regulate AND promote were sometimes in direct conflict. I *think* that it was ultimately decided that the regulatory mission was primary, and the "promotion" was dropped, especially given that commercial aviation had become a behemoth of an industry, quite capable of promoting itself. I don't ever recall hearing about a similar "promotion" mission for the FCC - only regulatory. Yeah, Amateur Radio regularly gets dealt a "black eye" when some idiot with a radio and a bad idea does something really dumb and gets caught... and happens to have an Amateur Radio license. K1MAN comes to mind...
Spectrum Workforce: I will not comment on the situation in the US, I am too far away. But some comments on the situation here in Germany might be interesting:
Our national ham radio society, DARC, does a reasonable job in representing ham radio in legislature, industry standards work and coordination. For the latter, we have a regular roundtable with quite some representatives of ham radio ommunity like DARC, AGCW (CW) etc. and officials. That includes BNetzA (Bundesnetzagentur, in this respect comparable to FCC), military etc. The latter are needed for example as the primary users of the 6m band.
For all this it is important that about half of all personal licenses are represented by DARC. In June we will get a new entry license class (VHF/UHF only). I fear that this might increase the number of licenses, but DARC might win hardly any new members. This might also reduce the influence DARC has had until now.
An example of results at industry standards: To be sold in Germany, power line equipment must notch out the SW ham bands. This is not the case in Austria.
At the last Radio Conference DARC was Europe's loudest voice to defend the 23 cm band against the interests of the navigational services. Negative examples: In Finland the 23cm band is no longer available for ham radio. In all of Scandinavia (OZ, SM, LA, OH) the 70cm ham radio band is only 6 MHz wide, compared to 10 MHz otherwise in Region 1.
In one respect, DARC makes a terrible job: Networking with general public. cqDL, the "German QST", was never available in Germany without a DARC membership. From what I see of (mostly internal) documentation about emergency traffic, there are basic errors that could only happen because the DARC officials lack contact to those responsible for official emergency management.
For example, emergency management here in Germany is organized on the county (Landkreis) level, not by towns or local communities. But DARC expects to be alarmed from that lowest level which will never happen.
Nearly all I found about publicity support was calls to publish press releases about events of local chapters. From time to time ham radio also appears at regional TV stations. Don't ask me who had the initiative.
At a group meeting with my mayor about local resilience the topic "wireless communication" nearly crashed the meeting. Winlink was way beyond their world.
DL4NO
Alexander - Thanks for the comments and providing some perspective from Germany. I am impressed with the networking, the coordination, AMSAT-DL, the HAM RADIO conference, HAMNET... and many things about Amateur Radio in Germany. A few ideas about what individuals and small groups can do about Amateur Radio not being recognized as relevant in society have surfaced since ZR 0140 and I'll be exploring some of those in coming issues.
Thanks for a very thoughtful and thought provoking piece. Representing Amateur Radio to the public is something I struggle with how to accomplish. What is the elevator speech?
Promoting our hobby now is best done through social media. Some hams have been good at this.... but only to other hams, methinks. BTW, enticing young people into the hobby was a problem even when TOM was writing editorials. Please keep up the great writing!
John - Thanks for your comments. Yeah, we're at our best when we're speaking amongst ourselves (again, we're insular), and most of us aren't very effective evangelists for Amateur Radio for those outside Amateur Radio. But, I think I might see a way to "bridge the gap" - talk up Amateur Radio as "techies to techies". When we can make the case for Amateur Radio, to TECHIES... I think there's enough commonality to maybe bridge the gap and make a case to techies in promoting the value of Amateur Radio.
Steve, great reporting. I feel compelled to add a few comments.
As just another old guy who has loved Amateur Radio but who has worked ,fairly recently, in the technology industry, I note that the comments about getting in to libraries, being in schools and lobbying are great, a large issue is that these are places that potential new hams don't look anymore.
I believe that if we want to be noticed by the next generations, we need to have a substantial digital marketing effort - Amateur Radio needs to be "rebranded" and brought into the age of cell phones, small screens, gaming, AI and VR. We need professional digital marketing designs for relevant instagram (not facebook), TikTock, Messenger, LinkedIn (for new professionals) and many other platforms. We need to meet the next generations - as well as some of ours - where they "live" in our world today.
We also need to concentrate on promotion of aspects of our hobby that speak to the new generation. Rather than SSB, CW, FM HT's and even FT8 we need to speak about networking, high speed services, software, exciting new activities and ways to get fit while moving our joint technology future forward in a positive way. It's not that all the "older" stuff is bad, it's just that most of it no longer resonates with potential new hams in a world where a cell phone or many other devices that people use now can instantly communicate multi-media anywhere in the world for almost no cost.
Being an engineer myself, I note that this social/marketing communications (MARCOM) requirement does not come naturally to many techies who love the engineering issues and tend to shy away from promotion - I suggest that this is *most* hams. But... I think that we have, at least in a major part, a seemingly simple but in reality very complex branding and promotion problem in a world full of technologies that most of our existing licensees are not aware of and don't participate in.
I think that Amateur Radio has some of the "tools". We still have a viable ARRL. We have some great Youtubers, Vendors and Bloggers and global reach. We (the ARRL, RSGB, JARL and may others?) need to hire (yup hire) and trust marketing and messaging oriented Gen Alpha (born 2013 – 2025) and Generation Z (born 1996-2012) professional marketing (not technology) types and give them a grand challenge and the funding and tools to implement that challenge.
The grand challenge is to make what we call Amateur Radio relevant to younger people. This means that they need to "Recast" and "Rebrand" Amateur Radio in a form that would catch the interest of young women and men in the current world - hmm. maybe the term "Amateur RADIO" is anachronistic?.
Us older guys need to get out of the way once this challenge is staffed and funded.
Just a thought from an old guy.
Scott - Thanks for the kind words. In Zero Retries I haven't been getting into the specifics of the outreach effort that's needed. Those will be decisions for those that will actually do the evangelism work... if someone... someoneS, some organization steps up TO do the work.
But on the other points, you're in synch with conclusions I've come to in Zero Retries. Despite what WE know Amateur Radio has to offer... and the need as (now) discussed at high levels as the need to expand the "Spectrum Workforce", to the current generations, we're selling "cold, dead fish" instead of "fresh sushi".
I think what evangelism about Amateur Radio to non-Amateur Radio audiences has missed to this point is that they're focusing on the wrong aspects of Amateur Radio. While WE Amateur Radio Operators get excited about (speaking for myself) using mobile-type radios to do slow speed data communications, that gets a big yawn from the current generation. But start talking up AREDN and other microwave networking, that gets their attention. Or start talking about slow speed comms, that has no dependency on Internet or cellular... you get "Wait... what... you can DO that?".
Two other things I think Amateur Radio is going to have to adapt to (and it's going to be a SLOG to get these points across), is:
* Amateur Radio really is no longer in the game when it comes to modern-day EMCOM.
* The only subset of the population that Amateur Radio COULD truly appeal to is techies.
I'm still stuck on imagining who... individuals, existing organizations... could do this kind of evangelism. I think it's going to require some new thinking and some new energy to coalesce into a modern, virtual, distributed, organization. Our existing Amateur Radio organizations just don't seem up to this particular challenge.
And... as far as getting out of the way once it's up and running... Amateur Radio is going to be THEIR activity, with no input from us, soon enough. Thus yeah, help get this new generation launched, then get out of the way. Roger that!
Steve,
So true on all your points.
Personally, I have returned to Amateur radio twice since first getting involved in the 1970's as a high school kid. Once in the early 2000's when I found cool toys like the FT-817 - I bought one of the first and still use it today - and again in 2020. Each time I returned, I found so many cool changes.
Since 2020, I am back in SSB and CW, as always, but added FT8, JS8, software modems, DMR, SDR's, FreeDV, NPR70, AREDN, Direwolf instead of 1980's TNC's, VARA and other stuff like Meshtastic as well as GMRS repeaters (old stuff made new?) and so much more.
Of all these what really captures the "newish" prospective hams coming into the hobby is the potential for internet like services and integration with mobile devices (phones not HT's). They are less about the radios and more about the software and services.
It will take some of us old guys with the imagination to find and hire the young people who will create the "Sushi" message, give them the resources that they need and then let go (probably before we really want to).
Keep up the great work!