Page 19 - Issue 2 2023

AMATEUR RADIO

Lack of recognition impedes amateur

radio’s contribution to technology

By Hans van de Groenendaal ZS6AKV

mateur radio has stood the test by techno hobbyists in their garages and in joint ventures with students in university
of time. After a century it is laboratories. It is ironic that, as happened at the dawn of radio when radio amateurs
Astill around and has even made showed that shortwaves could provide world-wide communication, radio amateurs
inroads into the makers community proved to the world the benefits of low earth orbits where today, thousands of satellites
mainly because of its access to technology orbit to provide internet services, power GPS and weather satellites.
and spectrum. Essentially, amateur
radio is a technical hobby or the better First Geostationary Amateur Satellite
description of it is a techno pastime. Over A few years ago, the Qatar amateur radio society was able to negotiate a free launch
the past hundred or so years, personal opportunity into a geostationary orbit aboard Es’hail- 2. The satellite features 24 Ku-
communication became a strong focus, band and 11 Ka-band transponders to provide direct broadcasting services for television,
then a competitive element made its government and commercial content distribution. The payload of Es’hail 2 also includes a
appearance and then disaster and linear transponder with a bandwidth of 500 kHz and 8 MHz for the amateur radio satellite
emergency communication was added to service, with uplinks on 2.4 GHz (13-cm band) and downlinks on 10.45 GHz (3-cm band).
the focus as a service to the community. The German AMSAT organisation built the transponder and installed ground control
All of these are still strong elements that stations in Germany and Qatar. The amateur payload was given the designation of Qatar
make up amateur radio today. OSCAR 100. (OQ100) and provides coverage over Africa, Europe and the Near East. The
The development of the internet and bandwidth is split into a narrow band operation and wide band TV operation. QO100
mobile communication influenced the opened up new experimentation territories developing sophisticated microwave receivers
amateur radio landscape, not as predicted and transmitter.
- its demise - but rather with a strong new These few examples show clearly that there is an informal sector of experimenters and
focus on technology and experimentation; developers who make contributions to enhancing technology, adding to their countries’
one could say a complete turnaround back intellectual capital. Another interesting statistic is that the countries that have the largest
to its roots! Both the internet and mobile amateur radio community also host the largest technology companies.
communication added new dynamics, One of the main stumbling blocks in amateur radio, impeding its ongoing involvement
opening new opportunities. By harnessing in technology development, is lack of recognition by governments and industry of the
these technologies, a new pathway contribution amateur radio has made and is making to technology development. Amateur
opened, placing amateur radio in the radio is seldom recognised in official documents and is not well understood at government
middle of digital transformation. level, be it at an administrative or political level. This makes it very difficult to obtain
Radio amateurs were amongst the funding for technology projects.
first to use VoIP to create a network that
enabled local VHF repeater stations to
connect people worldwide, providing
communication using a simple VHF
handheld radio. The only requirement was
a valid amateur radio licence.
Over a hundred amateur radio
satellites, designed and built by radio
amateurs, have been launched since the
Russians stunned the world with the
launch of Sputnik in 1957. These amateur
radio satellites range from simple analogue
repeaters to complex digital structures.
Amateur radio satellites are built Anton Janovsky ZR6AIC, principal architect of AfriCUBE in his home workshop

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