Wet string and 10 Watts

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Today I had the pleasure of talking to a group of freshly minted Amateurs. It's a semi-regular occurrence where I visit a local club that offers training to obtain an Amateur License. I should mention that you'll find clubs like this all over the place and there are often opportunities to do remote examinations if you're too far from an assessor. This however isn't about becoming an Amateur, that's something that I'll leave entirely up to you, even if I think that being an Amateur is a wonderful thing.

One of the things I like about this hobby is that it's different things to different people. There is a huge variety of aspects to this pursuit of Amateur Radio and as I've said in the past, it's really a thousand hobbies rolled into one.

In Australia there are three so-called classes of license, think of it as a moped licence, a car license and a truck license. If you want to drive a truck you need that one, but if you're on a moped, there's no need to spend your efforts on learning to double-de-clutch a Ranger gearbox - something I can assure you from personal experience is hard to master, but fun to get right.

The three licenses in Australia, Foundation, Standard and Advanced each have different privileges, access to different but overlapping aspects of the hobby. One privilege within the class of license that I hold, the Foundation or F-call, is that I'm limited to using 10 Watts.

I've spoken about this restriction many times, in fact, the very first time I shared my opinion about this hobby in this forum was exactly about those pesky 10 Watts and what is possible with them.

Back to the freshly minted Amateurs.

It occurred to me that while I was explaining the amazing width and breadth of our hobby, that the 10 Watts, while completely arbitrary, and often lambasted for being so, is actually a blessing in disguise.

When you get on air, or if you already have the privilege to do so, you'll learn or already know that making contacts with a wet piece of string is pretty hard, nigh on impossible with 10 Watts.

One solution is to add more power. A better, more elegant solution, is to get a better antenna.

So, the blessing in disguise that 10 Watts represents is really all about forcing a Foundation Licensee to spend considerable effort in their antenna system. Something which we might all agree on is a good thing, if only to clear the air of alligators, big mouth, no ears.

I'll take the risk of repeating myself. It's not how much power, but what you do with it that matters.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB