SIMPLY ABOUT RADIO AMATEURS, OM, HAM

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Who are them ?

 Radio amateurs are people whose main occupation or first job has nothing to do with the radio and the electronics, but nowadays many radio-amateurs are professional technicians or engineers. We are not afraid of being contradicted in saying that there are more men than women and that nearly the three quarters of the amateur radio operators of all the world are concentrated in the U.S.A. and Japan: maybe because the great technical and technological development influences their activity. Reading the Italian Law "... the radio operator must practice its activity maintaining the content of his own transmissions limited to arguments of technical nature or private communications for which to resort to public services such as the telephone, telegraphic or postal service is not justified, given the insufficient importance of such matters."

The amateur radio operators who belong to the most numerous groups of emergency radio have been engaged in the participation in locality hit from calamity for decades, putting to disposition their operating and technical ability. Another "social" aspect of this pastime is that many disabled persons having the possibility of insertion in the daily paper or job limited by their handicap, find here the possibility to establish contacts of simple or intense friendship without problems of frontiers.

 

 

A Bit of Story:

 

 

 

 The amateur radio operator activity started at the beginning of 20th century: it is one of the most ancient activities in the field of telecommunications.

Guglielmo Marconi can be considered the first radio amateur and radio operator of the world not only from a scientific but also from a chronological point of view. As a result of the research on physics and electricity in the XVI and XVII centuries, he was the one who created the first system of telecommunication with Hertzian waves that were able to receive and to transmit messages via radio in 1895.

In a short while the few kilometres covered by the new technology became tens and hundreds; the connection between Dover, in England, and Vimereux in France across the English Channel was established in 1898; the longer connection, through the use of the "Morse Code", succeeded between Poldhu in Cornovaglia and S. Giovanni of Terranova in Canada in 1901.

The radio amateur activity was controlled with crescent suspicion right from the start in Italy by the authorities that forced the first operating radios to exercise secretly their passion until the Second World War. In 1946 the Ally authorities (the radio-amateur movement had developed freely in their countries) who occupied Italy therefore they emitted the first temporary permissions in Italy; but with the peace treaty and the return of the Italian authorities new and strong limitations were introduced.

During the wars, the amateur radio operators helped the armies fighting, but they were also used in order to supply the local valid auxiliary systems of communication in state of emergency if no other similar service was present or if the existing ones were damaged. Only when the report told about the aids to the populations struck by calamities in Polesine, Florence, Sicily, Friuli and Irpinia in contemporary age, and praised the group of persons who succeeded in replacing the destroyed official networks of telecommunication the job of the amateur radio operator was brought to light and the organs of the State began to see the utility of this service.

 

 

 

Nowadays:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 A radio-amateur needs the possession of the Authorisation from the Ministry of the Communications to be able to operate on the bands of frequency assigned to the service. The Ministry authorises the amateur radio operators to communicate each other using the Morse code (the telegraphy, CW), the vocal way (telephony, SSB, FM, AM), and recently the digital transmissions (radio + PC, like as SSTV, Slow Scan TeleVision, ATV Amatorial TeleVision, RTTY Radio Tele Type, and AMTOR, FEQ, PACTOR, GTOR).

he licence forces the radio-amateur to operate on bands of frequency assigned to this specific service by rigorous international conventions. The same licence assigns also a precise personal nominative: IK5ZTT is mine. The first part of nominative (IK is the prefix) is assigned in agreement with an international rules fixed from the regulations for all the nations of the world and adapted sometimes, from the local authorities, for specific initiatives. "I" letter indicates Italy, the final part of nominative (ZTT, the suffix) is a personal code and it is assigned from the competent Ministry (nation by nation), in a combination coming out from the letters of the alphabet. Between the two groups of letters there is a number dealing with the Italian region where the operator lives: number 5 shows that I live in Tuscany.

During our operations with another operator we have to observe the rules of identification provided for by the regulations, and remember that the conversation is not private and many people can hear us. Every amateur radio operator has just a registry of station, called " Station Log": it's not only a compulsory document but it represents the official recording of the activity of the radio station and must always be brought up to date. All the contacts carried out with reference to the date must be recorded with progressive number, to the exact time, the nominative of the correspondent, the frequency, type of emission etc...

The concrete index of the activity of the amateur radio operator station is the so-called "QSL"; this is the name universally attributed to the postcard used to confirm the successful contact between two operators and it represents a coveted object for collections: the creativity of the operator is left free to choose the colours, the designs and/or the images represented on the card.

That makes this postcard a "unique" piece.

 

Freely read from "Radioamatore, come e perché", by Nerio Neri, I4NE.