Over the weekend I had the opportunity to participate in two completely different community events, one aimed at an amateur radio audience, the other at the general public.

Every year, several of the amateur radio clubs in my area hold their individual swap meet, where the aim of the event is to bring amateurs together and to use it as a social fund raising event.

Some jokingly refer to it as a junk library where one person's junk is the next person's treasure, only for it to turn up on their table the next year.

This particular event is held inside what can best be described as a large high school gymnasium. Mind you, my experience with high school facilities predates my amateur radio birthday by quite some decades, so, a building with a wooden floor, basket ball court and other sports markings on the floor.

Mind you, this building has a canteen, a foyer and a big parking lot, so it only resembles my reminiscing in abstract ways; I grew up with bicycles and snow - from time to time, not cars and sun.

Individuals and organisations can book and pay for one or more tables to display their wares. There's a raffle, growing in scope each year, the universal bloke yelling unintelligibly into a microphone, signal unreadable with an RST of 2 and 9, and there's food for sale with drinks, and tables to sit and chat.

It had been a while since I'd last attended and with it came memories of setting up the local news broadcast team so we could do a live edition of the weekly amateur radio news, hard work, lots of planning and very rewarding, also good practice.

This year the entry price went up, the event was down on numbers and there were half a dozen or so empty tables. I'm guessing these were booked and the participants didn't turn up, but I don't know. For the organising club this must have been heartbreaking. I know for me, it was disappointing.

That said, it offered the opportunity to catch up with plenty of friends and acquaintances, new and old amateurs, people who knew me before I knew them, the typical face to face experience that you might get from accidentally being in the same place at the same time.

If this description leaves you with the sense of longing, you know how I felt when I drove away to travel to the other side of the city to attend the second event.

Organised by a local council as an Open Day, it brings together a bunch of different organisations to a central location, augmented with food vans, sausage sizzle, ice-cream and coffee, the whole thing was outdoors.

One of the organisations represented was a different amateur radio club, based at the site, with a small display and the ability for people to talk, have a sticky beak and mosey on.

Interestingly, the kids attending were given a treasure hunt sheet with questions about each of the organisations there, including two questions about the amateur radio club. Funnily enough, a local community radio station is also on site and it too had questions in the treasure hunt.

This dynamic allowed kids and their parents to approach the club and ask silly questions and the confusion between "amateur" radio and "community" radio allowed for more information to be shared with more laughter to go around for all.

The sausage sizzle, a local Rotary club fundraiser, was a hit with a steady stream of people lining up for a bite.

This is the second time this event has been hosted and both times I spoke with many people who were not radio amateurs, people who had electronics projects in need of guidance, and the odd local politician, some more than others.

Over the years I've attended plenty of amateur radio events and while there's a place and need for each of them, I have to say, talking to an interested kid about a homebrew quadrifilar helix antenna has to my favourite experience.

So, why am I talking about this, you ask?

It's pretty simple. Ask yourself, does a particular amateur or amateur adjacent event spark joy, or does it represent an opportunity for reflection and renewal?

Do we need another swap meet, I think locally we have at least five across the year, or could you do a fundraiser with a bingo night in a pub? What about an exhibition, or an auction? A BBQ or a breakfast? A course or a camp out? Have you considered a shack open day or a school visit show and tell? What about joining forces with other community groups and clubs?

What could the ultimate event bring and who would you like to see there? What would they take away and what resources might you need to pull it off?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The other day I heard a thunderclap and as is my Pavlovian response, immediately ran to my shack to disconnect the antennas from their respective transmitter and transceiver. I added a diary entry to my phone to note that I'd disabled my WSPR, or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter beacon, which generally runs 24/7. A few hours later I remembered that my beacon was off and I returned to put it all back in working order.

That's not always been the case. From time-to-time I've managed to turn off the beacon and forgotten to re-enable it, once for months. Same with my main radio, which at one point was disconnected from its antenna, taking a good half hour of stressful troubleshooting to discover one memorable Saturday morning, when I tried to set-up for my weekly net. Now it's the first step, before I turn on the power supply.

I've mentioned in passing that lightning protection and grounding requirements are not globally uniform and I'm purposefully refraining from advising you how to do this in your shack. When in doubt, talk to your local community and a licensed electrician, mainly because there's plenty of poor advice around that could result in your applicable household electrical regulations being breached.

Back to my shack.

Wouldn't it be cool if I could automate this, something like a remote controlled relay, preferably wireless so stray RF doesn't make it into the wrong circuit. Switching aside, it occurred to me that I'd also need some way of detecting lightning to trigger this system, you know, disconnect the antennas, turn off the beacon, then reverse the process when all is clear.

Speaking of automation, a few years ago I purchased a beautiful electromechanical coax switch. I'm still trying to discover how to drive it and I'm not game to power it with the risk of letting the magic smoke out, so if you have specific details for a K&L 6LMP-28-F-N-I-TTL six position coax switch, a data sheet would be wonderful, get in touch, cq@vk6flab.com is my email address.

Searching for lightning detectors reveals a boatload of circuits and tools. There's websites galore, an active community surrounding "blitzortung.org" with an absolutely mesmerising homepage, and plenty of other projects to play with. One thing I noticed was a distinct lack of SDR, or Software Defined Radio implementations. The number isn't zero, but I didn't find any turn-key solutions.

One recurring theme, other than arguing which frequency to tune to for the best result, was the notion that a simple AM radio receiver could be used. The idea often promulgated is to tune between stations and to listen for clicks and pops. It occurred to me that using an SDR as an AM receiver is pretty much the first thing you do after plugging it in.

Combining these ideas, it seems obvious, of course it's unlikely to be, but you know, why spoil the fun, to do this within the 2.6 MHz bandwidth of an RTL-SDR dongle which might actually detect some wideband RF, the signature of a lightning strike.

That started me down the path of splitting a signal in GNU Radio, routing it to multiple AM decoders, looking for peaks, all that fun, when I realised that I know of a tool that does pretty much all of that, "rtl-airband". With a simple text file to describe the frequencies you want to monitor, decode, apply squelch, mix, position and route, most of the job is done.

When it's running, you might have just created a lightning detector to start your journey on this road, using stuff you already have. I intend to create an example configuration file for exactly this purpose, perhaps even a script to generate it, and I'll publish it on GitHub.

Word of warning, based on the number of tools alone, the rabbit hole is deep.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

During the week I was shown a photograph of a chalkboard standing on the sidewalk with one of those "Thought of the Day" quotes on it. Credit aside, since I've been unable to confirm it, despite multiple reverse image searches and attempts at author attribution, the sentiment stuck with me and the more I think about it, the more it resonates and this being radio, that works on so many levels.

We proudly refer to our community as "amateur radio", hold it up as a badge of honour and tell everyone we know about it. Curiously, when you look in the dictionary, you see a litany of words with less than complementary connotations, like "freak", "dabbler", "crank", "neophyte", "inexpert", "unprofessional", "second-rate" and plenty more.

In essence the word "amateur" is contrasted with the word "professional" and our community comes out looking worse for wear.

I'm pointing this out because the experience is insidious. I've told the story of me attempting to report local radio broadcast interference to the regulator when I came upon an investigator who asked how I knew about interference. I explained that I was a licensed amateur. His response was: "I am a Professional". I can still hear the capital "P", now well over a decade later.

It's also interesting when you talk to people outside the community who don't really get what it is that we do. Often they'll think that you're not serious about this and will unthinkingly dismiss your interest and pursuit, because it has the word "amateur" in it.

So, what of this and the chalkboard?

Here's the quote.

"You say 'amateur' as if it's a dirty word. 'Amateur' comes from the Latin word 'amare' which means 'to love'. To do things for the love of it."

As you might imagine, I went hunting to confirm this sentiment.

It turns out that the word "amateur" comes from French "amateur", meaning, "person who cultivates an art or science for their pleasure", in turn that comes directly from Latin "amator", meaning "lover, one who loves", which stems from "amare", "to love". As an aside, "dilettante" from Italian "dilettare", comes from "to delight".

It appears that once respectable pursuits in arts and science lost ground against professionalism and we ended up with a growing gap between formal and informal which increasingly is understood as dangerous, rather than charming.

I think it's time to reclaim "amateur" and take "to love" to heart in our community.

So .. "radio, for the love of it". That's what we do, what we are. And to be honest, I think that really says everything we need to remember.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB