What is station security?

Foundations of Amateur Radio

One of the tick boxes we're required to deal with is the one titled "Station Security". As licensed amateurs we're required to secure our station from use by unauthorised people.

What form does that take, how do you do it, what makes it secure and how much security is enough?

I spent a bit of time looking around to see if there were any guidelines I could unearth to actually describe in detail what this might actually mean, but my Google Fu is clearly broken, since I was unable to find any such documentation. That's not to say that it doesn't exist, just that it's well hidden among the hits about encryption, broadcasting music and other spurious results.

What form does this requirement take in your shack? Do you tick the box and move on, or have you taken specific actions to comply with this requirement?

For me, I have two shacks. One in my office and one in my car. Taking the car first, the security of my mobile shack is based around the notion that my car is locked when I'm not around. Technically my partner also uses the car and it's not directly under my control at that time, but the flip side of that is that the radio needs to be manually connected to a battery, the head of the radio needs to be connected to the patch lead, the antenna needs to be screwed in and the coax switch needs to match the band you're trying to operate on.

These things are not complicated for an amateur, but for a member of the public they form several barriers to entry before they could actually operate my station.

In my office, where I mostly operate on VHF due to the high noise level on HF, security takes a similar form.

It's in a locked house, that is, if I'm not home, the house is locked. Similarly, when my partner is around they technically can get to the station. The same is true for any guests to our house. Security again is a multi-level activity. The radio needs to be connected to power, the antenna needs to be connected to the correct port, the remote head needs to be connected correctly and if all that is done, you can operate my station.

There are no specific locks on my radio; the same is true for any station I've ever visited. All of the clubs I'm a member of have a room or a box with a lock on it which is one barrier, but once that is breached, the radio behind it is good to go.

This whole topic is an example of how we legislate for a particular thing, in this case preventing use by an unauthorised person, but don't actually specify what that means.

So, what type of security does your station have? What's enough security and what isn't? Is my station legal or not? What makes it so? What about your station?

It's easy to read the rules and tick the box, but sometimes the tickbox is a deep rabbit hole.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB