Amateur Radio

• "use the station for the purpose of self-training in communication by wireless telegraphy, which use (without limiting the generality of the foregoing) includes technical investigations."

• "address messages only to other licenced amateurs or the stations of licenced amateurs, and shall send only:-

• messages relating to technical investigations or remarks of a personal character; or

• signals (not enciphered) which form part of, or relate to, the transmission of messages.

That's it folks, that's all we can do! 

Incidentally, remarks of a personal character do not seem to include the making of personal remarks, as one LPWS member was prosecuted for calling a colleague a "CUNT", even though he replied "Cheerio mate" afterwards!

Check out the complete "rules" here, THE BR68

Amateur radio seems to be a virtually unknown hobby unless you happen to know a radio amateur. The Radio Amateurs Exam seems to be a barrier to "outsiders" but if the truth was known to them as to how easy it really is, we could attract far more participants from all walks of life. The new Foundation Licence appears to be addressing this point.

Snobbery and Hierarchy

Amongst the ranks of radio amateurs there is tremendous snobbery and a hierarchy based on your station's call-sign (remember it's the station's call-sign, not yours!) and the type of licence you have.

In the past, well up to the start of the new century in fact, this prejudice was aimed at those who had a "B" class licence - in other words, those who had not passed their Morse exam. Now the childish bigots have a far greater range of fellow amateurs to look down upon.

• Novice licence holders

• Foundation licence holders

• M3 licence holders

• etc. etc.

It is also usual to look down upon and denigrate anyone with a callsign issued after yours.

To look down upon a fellow radio amateur merely because he/she has not passed the Morse test, irrespective of whether they intend to operate below 50Mhz, is as preposterous as a lorry driver looking down upon a car driver who has not bothered to pass an HGV driving test.

Radio Amateur Exams

Currently, there are only two opportunities to sit the Radio Amateurs Exam each year, although there are plans to make it available "on demand"
 The City & Guilds of London Institute devise the examination papers under the direction of Mr.Roger Bone.

The exam used to be set in 2 papers covering theory and operating procedures & licensing respectively. In 1998 these 2 papers were combined so it is no longer possible to pass each part one at a time. Fear not, it may appear daunting, but the multiple choice questions actually make it fairly easy to someone with a slight technical knowledge and average common sense. The 4 answers consist of:-

• The RIGHT answer.

• A probable answer.

• A barely possible answer.

• A stupid answer.

With the application of a little common sense, you can reduce your options to a 50/50 choice, and with slight knowledge of the subject, you can bias your choice well in favour of the correct answer.

When you consider a flexible pass mark based on the accuracy of the other candidates, you can see that a pass mark in the region of 40% correctly answered questions can be easily achieved. In fact, if you could train a baboon to correctly fill in only one of the four answer boxes to each question, you could quite easily expect the animal to have a better then 50/50 chance of passing.

A pass in the Radio Amateur Exam is nothing really to be so proud about, but to some of the loonies you meet, this is their lifetimes achievement! This is where the problem starts, under achievers and social misfits suddenly think they have some sort of social status, and long to hear that elusive SOS or May Day call. Others go of and join organisations such as Raynet so they can drive about in surplus ambulances and wear bright day-glow orange tabards whilst wielding a hand-held radio in the same way as a Hollywood star clutches an "Oscar"!

The fact that widespread mass communications are now available to all parts of the world seems to have passed completely over their heads, and they genuinely believe that they are only seconds away from performing a vital task in an emergency situation, sadly the truth could not be further away!

Once licenced. radio amateurs join ranks to conspire against anyone not "toeing the line" and, just for example, playing music on a repeater. They believe that they are the sensible ones, but all is not as it seems.

A typical tactic of the “sensible” fraternity is to KEY OVER anyone operating in a strange voice or playing music. This is just as illegal as the material they try to obliterate, possibly more so.

Firstly, it is a requirement to give the call sign of the station during an initial call, it is an offence to cause deliberate interference, and a general transmission is also banned. By transmitting over an airwave abuser they commit at least 3 offences, and possibly 4 as there is also a requirement to write-up transmissions in a log book, they are hardly likely to enter the date & time of their illegal jamming transmission are they?

At this point the status of the abuser and the “sensible” radio ham start to merge, and it is hard to distinguish which is the stupid one!

For some inexplicable reason, the use of abbreviations in amateur radio communications within the U.K. is restricted by the terms of the BR68, and Ofcom (formerly The Radiocommunications Agency) publish a list of those abbreviations of which they approve:-

The Abbreviation

The Meaning

It has always been a mystery to us why a phrase like" FINE BUSINESS" should be used at all, let alone to such an extent that it needs an officially sanctioned abbreviation!
Before entering "amateur radio" circles, we had never heard the phrase!