ARLA/CLUSTER: Episódio 201 da série "Foundations of Amateur Radio": A Fragilidade das Comunicações

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Foundations of Amateur Radio #201

Fragility of Communication

Our day to day life is full of communication. We listen, although less
and less, to the radio for news and entertainment, sometimes mixed
together as food and games for the masses.

We can communicate with family, friends and the rest of the global
population using a telephone. With the internet as a transmission
medium, we exchange text, sound and vision with impunity to anyone who
stumbles across it on a mind boggling collection of outlets, websites,
social media, email, streaming services to name a few.

The vast majority of this kind of communication is a commodity, that
means that with little or no training most of the population has
access to this.

Another aspect of this commodification is that it's reliable. It works
most of the time, it's generally good quality, with little or no loss,
as in, you speak into your phone and there's an extremely high chance
for the other party to hear your voice. While there are occasions that
calls drop out, or the audio is chopped up, it's more an exception
rather than a regular occurrence.

In stark contrast, amateur radio is none of those things. It's not a
commodity, it's not reliable, it's a poor man's version of the
ubiquitous mobile phone.

As amateurs we know why it's not the same, for starters, to make
contact between say Perth and Bermuda using amateur radio requires
exactly two pieces of equipment. Your radio and theirs. Making this
contact with a mobile requires that both ends have a phone. They'll
also need a way to connect to the phone network, either a local base
station or a telephone exchange, those in turn connect via many
different ways to each other, including repeaters, relays, perhaps a
satellite, a fibre optic cable or three, too many devices to count
today. Extreme level of complexity.

I'm mentioning this because it's simple to conclude that amateur radio
is obsolete, but its just not true.

With the lack of reliability associated with an amateur radio
connection comes something that is unique to society today. Thanks to
reliable communication, we have come to expect that all communication
is reliable, even our experimental hobby, but if you spend any time on
air at all you'll quickly realise that for amateur radio, we need to
conduct ourselves with protocol, using specific procedures, phonetics,
structured phrases, callsigns and the like to overcome some of the
aspects of unreliability.

Talking on the local repeater looks and smells like a mobile phone
chat room, but it's not. It relies entirely on the participants
collaborating to ensure reliable communication.

Similarly, calling CQ on HF, requires that you understand that the
other station isn't on the end of a telephone connection and that
parts of what you're saying are going to be missing at the other end.
Using phonetics, speaking slower, waiting longer and monitoring, all
assist with making contact.

If you're unsure about this, just listen in on a local net for regular
confusion, or use an online receiver like WebSDR to hear what you
sound like at the other end.

To make things a little more interesting, every amateur band has a
different failure mode. On 20m from one breath to the next, the path
might close, on 80m you might get overwhelmed by noise, on 40m you
might find yourself all of a sudden sharing the frequency with another
station, both of you blissfully unaware of the other's existence.

Communication in amateur radio is collaborative and there are common
courtesy behaviours. If you're working a rare DX station, that's not a
personal friend, don't start a whole conversation about your dogs,
your medical issues, or the level of amazingness of your station.
You're not alone in attempting to make the contact and they're not
there for your personal enjoyment. Hogging the frequency is a sure
fired way to acquire the ire of your fellow amateurs, especially in
marginal conditions, where band conditions are rapidly changing.

There is nothing like getting your feet wet by actually getting on air
and making noise, but when you do, remind yourself that this is not a
telephone and it's not perfect. Be mindful of your on-air conduct and
you'll find a globe full of friends.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB