Yesterday I had a wonderful contact of firsts. It was:

• My first contact outside the US
• My first contact with Canada
• My first contact on 20 meters
• My first contact on PSK31

Until later that day, my only radio is my beloved Yaesu FT-817ND. It's a low power rig that is intended for backpacking purposes, featuring a maximum output of 5 watts and an internal battery. It's an adorable little rig, but the total output wattage is tiny compared to typical Ham Radio rigs. 

Let's compare my FT-817 to my newest rig that arrived only hours later -- an Icom 707. This older rig was originally released in 1993, 11 years before the 817ND! Nevertheless, the power output for the 707 is common to many rigs manufactured today, 100 watts.Even with a modest antenna, you can go across the country easily on 100 watts. With luck and the Ionosphere on your side, you can go around the world! With only 5 watts, however, things become much more tricky. You need to consider your mode carefully.

A mode is the method of encoding information in a radio signal. The most basic one you're probably familiar with through movies, Morse Code. This method turns the transmitter (or more specifically, the power amplifier connected to the antenna) on and off. Like binary, it has two "digits", a short "dit" and a long "dah". By encoding each letter of the alphabet as a series of dits and dahs, you can exchange information. Since the signal is either fully on, or fully off, and the frequency is constant, Hams like calling this mode CW, or Continuous Wave. CW is the mode proper, while Morse is merely a method of encoding the information. 

Other modes you're already familiar with, AM and FM. These are voice modes. Explaining these requires a bit more imagination. Think of your voice as a sine wave. Radio waves can also be thought of as a sine wave. For your voice, the length between the peaks of wave is much, much bigger than the radio wave. So much so, you can superimpose your voice wave by varying the power output of the transmitter. This is how AM, or Amplitude Modulation works. FM, or Frequency Modulation works by varying the frequency of the radio signal proportionally with your voice sine wave. FM was created to avoid noise generated by the atmosphere, most of which causes spikes in amplitude. 

While voice modes are easily approachable, they are rarely used in QRP work. Voice modes have a hidden cost, Sidebands. The original, unmodulated radio signal produced by the transmitter still makes it to the antenna even when you're talking! This bit of the signal, the Carrier Wave, doesn't contain any information. Instead, by a quirk of combining waveforms, the signal spreads out below and above the carrier wave proportional to the spoken frequency. These are Sidebands. FM has huge sidebands, since it's frequency changes slightly. While AM's are smaller, the two sidebands are mirrors, containing the same vocal information. A more efficient modification of AM is called Single Side Band. This mode cuts out one of the sidebands and the carrier wave. This means that what is transmitted has much more punch and travels further than it would otherwise. This makes SSB a good mode for low power work.

The ultimate mode for QRP work is still CW. Since there is no superimposed audio wave, the sidebands are tiny. All the punch is put into a very narrow range of frequencies, meaning each watt carries the signal that much further. The problem is that CW is a dying art. It's no longer a required skill to get an Amateur Radio license. While this was done to lower the barrier to entry for prospective Hams, the ubiquity of computers has popularized Morse Code Decoders -- software that can listen to a CW signal and print out the text. Likewise, Morse Encoders allow you to use a keyboard to type letters, making the computer translate them into dits and dahs for you. 

The problem is, that feels like cheating to me. If you're going to do CW, you should break out a straight key, or an iambic paddle and cut out the silicon middleman. And while that is my plan, after I practice thoroughly, I'm still facing the problem of a poor antenna and a low power rig. Enter PSK31.

PSK31 stands for Phased Shift Keying, 31 Baud. In many ways, it's like Morse Code. It encodes letters in an equivalent of dits and dahs, but by shifting the phase of the signal. Going back to our imagined sine wave, if you're at a peak, PSK31 will suddenly shift to a valley, with no transition in between. By doing this rapidly, we can encode letters in a series of timed phase reversals. The nifty thing is that this is not done with the radio signal! Instead, PSK31 is encoded as an audio tone! Why do this? PSK31 was designed to be simple, and bare bones. Requiring new transmitters to be build just to support it would hamper adoption. Instead, PSK31 is produced (and received) by a computer, and sent to a standard SSB transceiver. Unlike transmitting a full human voice on SSB, PSK31 only results in a very narrow range of audio, this means the sidebands are very narrow. As narrow or more narrow than CW! This means all the power is packed into a tiny bit of frequency, making each watt count. 

Now here comes the really nifty part: PSK31 conversations are often all sent and received with the transceiver tuned to the same frequency. Multiple people, having multiple conversations, at the same time, on the same frequency. How? Recall that PSK31 is encoded as audio first. By telling the PSK31 software to produce audio at one tone or another, multiple people can occupy the same frequency. It's like a room full of people each with a whistle. Only two people in the room have the same kind of whistle that produces the same tone. Since they're only listening for the same tone they themselves are producing, they can ignore everyone else. 

Want to try it yourself? Really! No radio required! Download and install Digipan on your computer. If you're on Linux, it runs just fine in Wine! Now, plug in a microphone and start up the software. Go to Configure -> Sound Card and set things appropriately. Then put on this Youtube video while having the mic pointed at your computer speakers. Nifty!

In a typical Ham setup, however, a special interface is required to interconnect the computer in the transceiver in a safe way. Too much audio power from the receiver can damage your computer's sound card. Too much from the computer, can damage the transmitter. I recently purchased a SignaLink USB. The nice thing about this unit is it's only a USB sound card to the computer. It works in Linux just fine.

While I made my 560 mile contact fairly easily, there's a lot more I can do. My antenna was not properly tuned, resulting in poor efficiency. Not all of my 5 watts ended up "in the air". I think with some additional work and tuning, I can make it much, much further. 

One of my first hobbies -- even before programming and computers -- was Amateur Radio. It was so early in my life that I do not recall how I discovered it. I do remember that I did so independantly. I wasn't introduced to the hobby by an "Elmer", and only was able to read about it in books. 

I was already interested in electronics, even at my young age. I regularly spend my small allowence on project books from Radio Shack, which was a short walk away from the grocery store my Mom and I visited every week. I still fondly remember the stable-bound, grid-lined books about timer circuits, optoelectronics, etc. Perhaps I discovered Radio there, as Radio Shack did have a line of licensing training guides.

The library, however, was my primary source of information. From there, I could get books about ocilators, the ARRL Handbook and a very old, very fondly remembered book I called "The Green Book". It was the size of a Grant Morrison trade comic, and stuffed from cover to cover with electrical diagrams for transmitters, receivers, amplifiers, antenna tuners, and all sorts of gadgets needed to build a proper "ham shack" (now you know where Radio Shack got their name). 

Why not just buy a ham radio "rig", like normal people? I was young, and my family did not have a lot of spare cash. Dad already had an expensive hobby with computers, owning one of the first Macintosh computers -- the Mac Plus. It was primarily used to support Dad's photography business he ran on weekends. 

Certainly, they didn't have enough to spend $300 on a basic radio set for me. Mom took a disdainful attitude to the entire hobby, claiming that it was dangerous. Dad often shook his head whenever I poured over the latest catalog in the mail from Ham Radio Outlet or Universal Radio, and said "You always pick expensive hobbies". 

He didn't mean it vindictively, but the words still hurt today.

With no Elmer and no parental support, the only thing I could do about Ham Radio was read. I read every interesting book from the library. I requested more that needed to be mailed in. I saved my less-than $10 per week allowence to buy more books -- not an easy task in early 1990s! I taught myself electronics, memorized Ohm's Law, and learned to read circuit diagrams. I was mocked on the school bus for my interests and the large books I luged around. I learned to be furiously private. I cultivated an attitude that kept others away.

I took my Technian exam in 1995. There was a ham fest and somehow I managed to convice Dad to take me there. I passed eaily. I was now I licensed radio amateur. There was only one problem: No radio. Ham radios were still too expensive. While I could build one, I would need to do so from scratch. The age of the Heathkit was long since passed. As a Technician in 1995, I couldn't operate in the HF bands, or on CW. The easiest circuits to build, and the most widely advertised projects were, you guessed it, on HF with CW. Had thought about it, I would have gotten Tech Plus or Advanced license, granting me access to those frequencies and modes. After all, one thing I could do was read and take tests...

Sometime in the next few years, radios finally did drop enough in price for my family to afford one. The Alinco DJ-S11 is a 2 meter handheld, operated by three AA batteries. It was sold for $99. My family had a practical approach to Christmas gifts, tell us want you want, and if it's within your alloted $100, you can have it. 

I still have this radio today. It's cute, tiny, simple, and does everything a new ham would need. Except there's one glaring problem -- it's woefully underpowered. A standard handy-talky (HT) today outputs about 5 watts of power. The radio I had opened that Christmas, only outputted 250 milli-watts. Given where I lived, it wouldn't have even made it to the next repeater. It was useless.

I remember sitting in my room, eventually working up the courage to press the transmit button, only to have silence greet me each time. Eventually, I put the radio in a drawer, packed up all my books, and quietly forgot about the entire thing.

For the next decade I didn't touch Ham Radio. I convinced myself my parents were right. Some years later, I threw out all of my books, my parts, and everything else save for the DJ-S11 and a MFJ Morse Code trainer -- they were deemed too expensive to trivially dispose. Those remained in a box for years, a painful memory. 

In those years I taught myself C and C++ programming, GUI design, low level graphics algorithms, cross-platform programming frameworks, and more I won't bother to list. I had more success in a sense of the term: What I built actually worked. If it didn't, I didn't need to go to a shop to buy more parts. I only needed to rewrite what I had done, compile, and try again. I also enjoyed more social success in that I had conversations with people. For all the effort I put in to Radio, it didn't allievate the crippling lonliness of my childhood. I used programming to make friends well into college before I figured out what friends were.

I can't place what drew my attention back to Ham Radio. Perhaps it was a visiting friend who brought her HT and her mobile station with her for a week-long visit. I wasn't in a place to look into the hobby then, but this summer I had both the time and resources. Radios are still expensive, but no more so than a mid-range laptop or a non-subsidised smartphone. The Internet, far from being the downfall of the hobby, has made finding study materials and testing sites so much easier to find. 

I spent most of the last week studying for my tech exam. I was surprised to discover the Morse Code requirement had been dropped -- something that held me up all those years ago. I poured over the ARRL Licensing manual, and drilled myself using websites and an Android app. Old episodes of DS9 or something from Netflix played in the background quietly those evenings.

I took the exam yesterday, scheduling it the last minute through the ARRL website. I tore through the exam, only missing one question. The Volunteer Examiners (VEs) egged me on by suggesting I take the General exam too. I hadn't studied, but it was still early in the morning, and I had already paid the $15 to take any number of exams that day. I sat down and tried it.

The General Class exam isn't easy, but if you're versed in a lot of first principles of radio and electronics, it's not difficult to derive the correct responses. I didn't do as well as the Tech exam, but I still passed.

That same day, I bought a new radio. Again, an HT, but a full 5 watts and full of features. I could have bought a more powerful mobile station, but there's something about hand-helds I find appealing. Hopefully my new call sign will appear in the FCC database by mid-week, and I can attempt my first contact.