Welcome to the Web Page of Amateur Radio Station WB9BSH

This is my first attempt at a home page, but I figure I can't go wrong since it's free. My real reason for this page is to introduce more people to amateur radio from my perspective. I was first licensed in 1969 as WN9BSH and have been having fun ever since. Later I upgraded to WB9BSH with more privileges. I built my own equipment from kits back when I started; that was back in the good old days when real radios had tubes and glowed in the dark. It's hard to forget the pain of soldering your finger instead to the resistor or the smell of the lead fumes from the melting solder. Today, it's hard to work on any ham equipment because of the micro-sized components. On the other hand, today's equipment can do things not even imagined years ago.

Hams have frequency allocations available on many different bands from just above the AM broadcast band up to and including visible light. The transmitted signal on each band propagates differently. Some bands are better during the day rather than night, others are better during the night; some bands only transmit line of sight (if you are behind an obstruction or over the horizon you won't hear the signal), others can transmit around the world; some bands come alive during high sunspot activity, other are better during low sunspot activity. In short, there is something for everyone.

My experience has been on the shortwave bands, so I'll describe some of the methods of communications used here. The old standby is Morse code (CW). This is fun at times but my speed is only about 15 words per minute so it takes a while to exchange any information. My favorite is voice. Voice mode on shortwave frequencies is mostly by single-sideband (SSB). Radioteletype (RTTY) is a mode similar to using an old mechanical typewriter. Slow-scan television (SSTV) transmits a color picture about once every 60 seconds. With the proper programs CW, RTTY, and SSTV signals can be fed to a computer and viewed on the monitor. Other modes I have not yet tried include ASCII, PACKET, AMTOR, PACTOR, CLOVER, and G-TOR. This is amazing stuff to me.

Many hams like myself just talk to various people in the states or numerous countries around the world. Other hams try to qualify for a certificate for contacts with all 50 states or certificates for contacts with stations operating at special events or a certificate for contacts with over 300 countries around the globe or a certificate for contacts with stations in each of the 3,079 counties in the U.S. or hundreds of other certificates. Other hams compete in contests with the points based on the number of countries contacted; other contests base points on the number of callsign prefixes contacted; still other contests base points other criteria. Some contests only allow the use of one mode (CW, SSB, RTTY, SSTV, PACKET) while other contests allow the use of any or all modes. Some hams like building equipment better than operating. Others like to experiment with antennas or new modes of communication. Some like to use frequencies that cannot travel beyond your line of sight - so they bounce their signals off meteor trails or even the moon (the higher up the farther away the horizon is). Finding your niche is part of the fun.

National ham organizations in various countries and some universities have even built their own satellites and had them launched at little charge as a piggyback ride on another payload. These micro-satellites can be used for communications or downloading pictures taken by cameras aboard the satellites. Most of the frequencies used are well above shortwave but some of the Russian satellites do use the shortwave bands. If you have the right equipment, you can talk to astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle (if it ever flys again), the Russian space station Mir (well maybe not since it is no longer in orbit), and the International Space Station.

Hopefully, I will have piqued your interest in this fascinating hobby and you will check out one or more of the following links:

American Radio Relay League for info on ham radio

Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation for satellite info

A huge collection of ham related web pages

Links to some other great sites:

A live camera shot from atop the tallest building in Tennessee (the locals here in Nashville call it the Batman building because of the way it looks)

Email: fsk-rtty48@comcast.net Copyright � 1997-2008 (created Jun-02-1997 and last revised Sept-27-2009 at 23:55 UTC)

No laws of physics were broken but countless numbers of electrons were inconvenienced and moved around to create this site.