Finding your path in this hobby

Foundations of Amateur Radio

As you might recall, recently I stumbled on an excellent list of 52 weekly challenges put together by Fabian, DJ5CW and friends. You can find it at hamchallenge.org. As I've previously mentioned, it contains activities right across the amateur spectrum, from designing a QSL card to making a contact on 80m or 160m, with everything in between. It's an excellent tool to set a weekly goal to achieve and I recommend that you have a go.

It's not the only interesting tool around.

Amal VU3FTH and Steph Piper, whom you might know as MakerQueen AU, have put together an "Amateur Radio Skill Tree". It's a collection of hexagonal tiles, each with a skill, displayed together in an attempt to track what you know and could know about amateur radio. The idea is that you print it out and colour in each tile as you complete it. You'll find things like "Explore D-Star", "Build a cw key", "Teach a friend about Amateur Radio", and plenty more. Can you get four activities in a row and which skills could do with more effort? There are 68 tiles ready for your colouring pencil .. Bingo!

The Radio Amateur Training Planning and Activities Committee, better known as the RATPAC, put together an "Amateur Radio Challenges Checklist for 2025" and published it on mastodon.radio. It's a list of bands, modes, activities, builds and clubs that help you track what you've been up to throughout the year. While we're here, I should mention that the RATPAC in their words "comprises Amateur Radio Operators of a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences", and hosts two weekly Zoom meetings so anyone can participate in the talks published on the ratpac.us website. If you're unable to attend, you'll find the presentation on YouTube.

Over the years I've been part of this amazing hobby, I've been telling anyone who will listen that there is plenty to do and see in our community, a thousand hobbies in one. The tools I've mentioned represent around one hundred and fifty activities and pursuits, but hidden behind each one is plenty to explore. For example, hamchallenge asks you to spend week 21 creating a GNU Radio flowgraph. That topic alone could fill a decade worth of exploration if you were so inclined. Similarly, one of the Skill Tree tiles is "Study RF propagation", something which you might realise is easier said than done. The RATPAC checklist has a tick box for "Work 100 countries", not something you're likely to achieve in an afternoon.

My point is, you can do as much or as little of this as you like, to what ever degree floats your boat. As you might know, I'm deep in the weeds with GNU Radio and I expect to stay there for plenty of time to come, but you are under no obligation to follow me down the rabbit hole. In other words, it interests me, but it might not do the same for you.

One final comment. None of these activities require you to upgrade your license, well, other than the Skill Tree tile "Upgrade your radio license". You can do most if not all of the activities I've shared with any amateur license and plenty of it can be done without a license at all.

So, what are you waiting for?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB