The Ham radio category covers amateur radio technology, operating techniques and practical station building. Topics include HF, VHF and UHF communication, antennas, transceivers, tuners, digital modes, portable radio, SOTA/POTA operation, propagation, repeaters, SDR receivers, feed lines, grounding, station accessories and real-world radio performance. The articles are written for licensed radio amateurs, beginners preparing for the hobby and technical readers interested in long-distance radio communication.
Somewhere hundreds of kilometers above Earth, a tiny spacecraft is racing around our planet at nearly eight kilometers per second. It is not part of a massive commercial satellite constellation, it does not provide broadband internet to millions of users, and it was not built by a large telecommunications company. Instead, it represents something very…
A meeting point for Europe’s radio amateurs For many radio amateurs in Western Europe, HAM RADIO Friedrichshafen is not just another trade fair. It is the annual place where the amateur radio world becomes visible, physical and international again. For three days, the hobby moves out of shacks, club rooms, contest stations, workshops and portable…
A small USB stick that opens a large part of the radio spectrum A cheap RTL-SDR receiver is one of the simplest ways to discover that the air around us is not silent. To most people, radio still means FM broadcast, walkie-talkies, mobile phones or Wi-Fi. In reality, the radio spectrum is full of signals:…
For more than a century, radio operators around the world have shared a strange technical language built from just three characters at a time. These compact abbreviations survived world wars, commercial Morse telegraphy, transatlantic maritime traffic, military field operations, amateur radio contests, satellites, SDR receivers, and even the internet age itself. Long before smartphones, translators,…
The Yaesu ATAS-120A occupies a very specific and sometimes misunderstood place in the amateur radio antenna world. At first glance, it looks almost too convenient to be true: one compact antenna, automatic tuning, multi-band operation, direct control from compatible Yaesu transceivers, and coverage from HF through VHF and UHF amateur bands. For operators with limited…
The small circuit that changed homebrew radio Some radio circuits develop an almost mythical reputation. The Tayloe detector is one of them. Many newcomers see the name in SDR receiver designs, SoftRock articles, QRP transceiver schematics or I/Q mixer discussions and assume it must be something mathematically intimidating. In reality, the basic idea is surprisingly…
