Questions tagged [history]
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33
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4
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What was the first QSO by an astronaut? Was it code or voice?
Discussion under this answer to Could amateur radio operators or others contact the ISS against NASA's wishes? in Space Exploration SE explore some activity from the Mir and ISS stations and the Space ...
- 543
5
votes
3
answers
422
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Why do so many hams prominently display their callsign in the shack?
By ham standards, I'm far from being a long-time adept of amateur radio, but I've seen my fair share of shacks, both on the internet and in person.
What's always attracted my attention is that almost ...
- 457
1
vote
2
answers
104
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What band did walkie-talkies use in Europe before PMR446 was allocated?
The PMR446 band, now used for walkie talkies in Europe, was only allocated after 1997. I'm sure walkie talkies existed before that. What radio bands did those use?
- 405
11
votes
5
answers
3k
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Why do operators mention the band when calling CQ on phone?
I'm a new-ish ham, licenced for about one year now.
Within that year I've heard a lot of CQ calls from other hams on phone (both HF and VHF), and it seems that a large portion of hams routinely ...
- 457
9
votes
1
answer
408
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Hardened UHF Antennas
Minuteman missile silos used an interesting hardened UHF antenna.
What kind of antenna is this? Does anyone have a drawing with a cross section?
Edit:
Jay Moore added a picture to a different type of ...
- 91
0
votes
2
answers
104
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Tuning two antennas using wire length
I've heard that in the early spark-gap wireless telegraphy era people would use kites with a wire acting as antennas and if the receiving side had a wire length that was an even division or multiple ...
- 47
3
votes
1
answer
728
views
What do old unit abbreviations like "mfd" and "kc" mean, and where did they come from?
I saw a recent answer that mentioned "mfd" as a unit of capacitance, and I can recall having seen that term in old schematics and ham radio articles. I've also seen other non-SI unit ...
- 9,162
1
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1
answer
105
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How did SMA connector size become standard?
I'm working on a project in microfluidics and it has become apparent that a significant challenge to overcome is a lack of consensus in connector design.
I have been thinking about my time working ...
- 13
2
votes
3
answers
927
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What replaces the T/R switch in modern transceiver
I have been watching and reading about the time when receiver/transmitter were separated and T/R switches were used. Current transceivers are still sharing a single antenna to transmit and receive. ...
- 209
2
votes
1
answer
259
views
What would a "crystal mixer" have been in an 1960's radio telescope at 960 MHz?
In a paper cited in comments to this answer to In the 1950's how were radio-astrometric positions with portable dishes so precise they could be assigned to their dim optical counterparts (Quasars)?
...
- 543
5
votes
1
answer
201
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Looking for a book that contained a circuit for receiving (literally) underground amateur radio transmissions
In this comment in Earth Science SE I've said:
This is a really cool question! I remember (a long time ago) reading about electromagnetic waves inside conductive soil that travelled near but below ...
- 543
7
votes
1
answer
235
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What exactly was a decremeter and how did they work?
In A Century of WWV, I found this mention of an unusual sounding instrument that may have once been commonplace:
Calibration work was mainly focused on decremeters, instruments designed for ...
- 7,269
3
votes
1
answer
151
views
What is this military radio?
Please help me identify this piece of equipment. It looks military spec, but don't know anything about it.
I want to look up some history about what it was used for.
Here are more photos.
- 31
2
votes
2
answers
151
views
Is the Relay in ARRL still relevant?
The second R in ARRL stands for Relay, but is that still as relevant in the 21st century?
Has it been relevant since broad damped-wave spark transmitters were supplanted with tube-generated CW, which ...
- 7,864
14
votes
6
answers
6k
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Why are vacuum tubes still used in amateur radios?
I wonder, even in this modern generation why the outdated vacuum tubes are used. In other electronic circuits they have been replaced by more efficient (and small) transistors years ago. Why they are ...
- 573
9
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4
answers
3k
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What did it mean to "align" a radio?
I've heard older hams talk about "aligning" their equipment. E.g. "I sent it to a guy for alignment" or "that rig probably needs to be completely aligned before you use it".
As a kid, sometimes I ...
- 7,269
5
votes
2
answers
531
views
How did the terms like QRZ, QTH, and other forms of ham shorthand evolve?
I've wondered if many of the abbreviations are empty, or if they are similar to the recursive acronym like PHP and GNU. For instance, I learned that CQ mimics the two syllables of a French word for ...
- 563
5
votes
2
answers
610
views
What additional information do I get from an RF ammeter, as compared to a regular SWR/wattmeter?
I've grown up using SWR/power meters. They're "simple" devices: They show forward and reverse power, and show the standing wave ratio. They, however, do not show antenna efficiency. New hams are ...
- 2,873
3
votes
2
answers
586
views
Using approximate signal strength at a distance to estimate reception strength of a radio station
I have some historical data on radio stations, but unfortunately, the dataset only has these variables:
the power of the transmitter, in watts
the coordinates of the radio tower
Unfortunately, I ...
- 185
4
votes
2
answers
745
views
When was the first radio transceiver (transmitter/receiver) built, and by whom?
I'm really passionate about signals and communications ever since I was a child where we "built satellites" - little did I know that it would become part of my future. So here is my first question:
...
- 61
2
votes
2
answers
710
views
Lightbulb as an SWR detector?
Back in ye olden days before SWR meters and auto-tuners, how was a ordinary household lightbulb used to help tune an antenna system? What did the circuit and tuning procedure look like?
- 13.2k
10
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5
answers
2k
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How did hams manage to tune their antennas before VSWR meters?
In the early 20th century --back when the hobby was still new-- before VSWR meters and antenna analyzers were invented, how did radio operators know whether they were tuned for maximum power out?
...
- 7,864
8
votes
1
answer
257
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Is there a practical way for hams to participate in cellular-related technology advances?
My understanding is that there used to be more timely overlap between commercial and amateur radio technology — e.g. helping study ionospheric propagation, relatively early adoption of SSB technology, ...
- 7,269
8
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2
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468
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How were 1920s hams able to measure megahertz frequency?
I was reading 200 Meters and Down but one thing that was unclear to me was that hams in the 1920s were operating on the 200 meter frequency, which is around 1.5 Mhz .... or 1500 kilocycles to use the ...
- 834
6
votes
1
answer
551
views
USA/callsigns: Why is California region 6? And the midwest in regions 7-9?
I don't quite understand the regional callsign system for the USA. At first it seems to make sense with CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, and VT being region 1 and then going west NJ and NY are region 2, and then ...
- 834
11
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3
answers
3k
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What does the spark-gap do in a spark-gap transmitter?
I read the Wikipedia article about spark-gap transmitters and I have to admit that I’m even more confused as to what the spark-gap actually did.
The article references this simplified circuit ...
- 834
3
votes
1
answer
239
views
What were the reasons why ATIS identification was introduced?
I am just about to make my inland waterways’ marine VHF radio license in Germany. In Germany, all inland marine VHF radios must be equipped with an ATIS transmitter, which basically sends the stations’...
- 131
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1
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690
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Are there famous radio frequencies? [closed]
I am going to mention a radio frequency of an emergency broadcast radio station in a post apocalyptic video game (I'm part of the dev team), and I would like to make a reference to real world radio. ...
- 113
8
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3
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8k
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What is a panadapter?
To what does the term "panadapter" refer? (Physical hardware or software?) How did the term "panadapter" originate as related to radios or electronics?
How is the term "panadapter" different from ...
- 13.2k
3
votes
1
answer
715
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Where exactly is the Morse code character ";" defined?
I've seen that quite often in Morse code tables (for example here), under punctuation, a semicolon ";"character is listed.
However, the ITU-R M.1677-1 doesn't specify that character as a part of ...
- 2,873
9
votes
5
answers
2k
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Why do some straight keys have a slider that shorts the contacts continuously?
I ended up with an old straight key that has a curious feature: below the main arm that you would tap on, there's an extra metal flange that can sort of loosely pinch an extra sliding lever underneath,...
- 7,269
12
votes
3
answers
2k
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What is the origin, history behind "Ben's Best Bent Wire"?
Bens Best Bent Wire
My uncle, who was a Merchant Marine in WWII used to tell me this. He was a ham, and said it would develop my fist musically.
I was a small child at the time, and through his ...
- 171
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What is the record for the highest non-automated over-the-air CW WPM speed?
Related to this question, but using humans, and in an actual QSO, not lab conditions:
Is there a record for QSO QRQ speed? And, if so, what is the record for the highest non-automated over-the-air ...
- 13.2k