Radio-Amateur-Station
7J1AQB
Radio-Amateur is a somewhat special hobby.
Take a look at my home, you will agree!
Pictures and text taken from the Japanese Radio-Amateur-magazine MOBILE-HAM 1995
My home as it looks now, autumn 2003, trying to activate some HAM contacts.
The room is full with any kind of technical stuff….
Together with my son-in-law, who is living in Hawaii and who passed by for a short visit to Japan.
Everybody makes use out of electromagnetic waves in his daily life.
Think about listening to a radio, looking TV, answering your handy-phone …..
To be radio-amateur makes it possible to know much more about it…..However you need to pass an examination to get permission to do that, and then you can apply for opening your own radio-amateur-station. Be aware, that this is not a cheap hobby. Transmitters, amplifiers, terminal-node-controllers, communication-receivers, power-supply, cables and construction of antennas can cost you a lot of money.
Radio-Amateur is a vast field of technology to explore. By my profession I am technician for color televison and videosystems, radio amateur experience is very important for me as training and we enjoy it in our radio amateur club.
Some of us enjoy to send signals to the moon, which will be reflected and entering the earth again, some others like to pack all their equipment and travel to a remote area far away from their own country and try to find radio-amateurs to talk with. Others like to participate in contests to find out, how many connections are possible, some are using only morse-codes, others are specialists in receiving and decoding of data. There are also radio-amateur satellits. Believe me, radio-amateur activity is an endless list……
My own station is quite good in the
following technical fields:
- Packet-Radio-Station 7J1YAB, running on 4 channels (21,50,144,430) and modem, 24h and 365 days, transmitting bulletins and personal mail
- IRLP node for voice-transmission, 24 h connected to the internet and to the 430 mhz band
- Decoding ACARS from airplanes, then display them real-time on a computer screen, very similar to a radar-screen and data processing of an air-traffic-controller, this works on VHF and HF all around the Pacific area.
- Printout of weather-maps transmitted by satellit
- Transmission of pictures (SSTV)
- Voice Communication on HF, VHF, UHF, SHF
This is a list of transmitters, receivers, antennas, power-supplies, computers, terminal-node-controllers, amplifiers, and so on of my amateur-radio-station:
Often people who are not into radio-amateur are asking me about the farest possible connection I ever had. My station located near the open sea is very good in transmitting and receiving around the Pacific area. My farest connection by voice was from Japan to Paraguay, by data to Fiji. The farest reception on airband was from an airplane of New Zealand Air, departure from Narita Airport without interruption up to enter approach for Auckland.
Reception quality is variable and depending not only on your location or equipment, but also on season, daytime, sunspots…..
Radio amateur activities are also changing…. While the old image of a radio-amateur is a man with a huge antenna tower and a microphone, nowadays small handheld transmitters might connect you to base-stations, which will automatically connect you by internet to other radio-amateur stations somewhere in this world.
Radio Amateur Stations are using international call-signs to identify each other. You might compare that with a car and its number-plate. My callsign is 7J1AQB……….all stations starting with 7J are foreigners operating in Japan, 1 is the sector of Tokyo.
7J1YAB……… Y is standing for a club-call, and not for an individual station
For identification and verification if we meet on air or if we meet personally, we exchange QSL-cards, it is simply said, a name-card of our stations.
30 years TIARA (Picture)
TIARA - This is our radio-amateur-club for foreigners living in Japan, our club-callsigns are 7J1YAA and 7J1YAB
If interested in HAM stuff, then contact us by e-mail…..
If you can read Japanese try the following link of my friend, who is specialized in packet-radio communications:
For IRLP information:
IRLP Diagram for ICOM820, ICOM721
