The Volunteer Monitor Program and HF Practice

The Volunteer Monitor Program

What is the Volunteer Monitor Program?

Amateur volunteers who are formally enlisted to monitor the airwaves for rules violations.

Which of the following are objectives of the Volunteer Monitor Program?

To encourage amateur radio operators to self-regulate and comply with the rules.

Note the objective carefully: encourage self-regulation, not enforce. Volunteer Monitors observe and report; the FCC enforces. Most of what the programme produces is a courteous note about something the operator did not realise, and that is by design.

It replaced the older Official Observer programme in 2019, under an agreement between the FCC and the ARRL.

What procedure may be used by Volunteer Monitors to localize a station whose continuous carrier is holding a repeater on in their area?

Compare beam headings on the repeater input from their home locations with that of other Volunteer Monitors

Triangulation by several stations at once — the direction-finding technique from the Technician track, applied cooperatively. Two bearings intersect at a point.

Azimuthal maps and long path

Which of the following describes an azimuthal projection map?

A map that shows true bearings and distances from a specific location.

Centred on your station, so a straight line from the centre to any point is the true great-circle bearing and the radius is the true distance. An ordinary Mercator map cannot do this — it makes Greenland enormous and turns great circles into curves.

If you own a directional antenna, an azimuthal map centred on your location is genuinely the most useful piece of paper in the station.

How is a directional antenna pointed when making a “long-path” contact with another station?

180 degrees from the station’s short-path heading.

Exactly opposite. If Japan is at 310 degrees short path, the long path is at 130. That is why an antenna that turns a full circle is worth having and one restricted to a half is not.

The small habits

Calling CQ on HF:

Repeat “CQ” a few times, followed by “this is,” then your call sign a few times, then pause to listen.

The same structure as VHF simplex. On HF you generally call a few times more, since propagation may bring you in and out.

Phonetics:

Which of the following are examples of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet?

Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta.

The standard set. Improvised alternatives (“Alabama, Boston”) are common and worse: the NATO words were selected specifically to survive noise and accents.

Logging:

Why do many amateurs keep a station log?

To help with a reply if the FCC requests information about your station

The FCC has not required a log since 1983, and keeping one is still the sensible answer to a question about what you were doing on a given evening. Modern logging software makes it free.

Contest identification:

Which of the following is required when participating in a contest on HF frequencies?

Identify your station according to normal FCC regulations.

A contest suspends nothing. Every ten minutes and at the end, as always.

QRP:

What is QRP operation?

Low-power transmit operation.

Conventionally 5 W or less on CW and digital, 10 W on phone. It is a deliberate constraint that teaches more about antennas and propagation than any amount of power does.

Signal reports:

Why are signal reports typically exchanged at the beginning of an HF contact?

To allow each station to operate according to conditions.

Not courtesy — information. Knowing you are a weak, fading signal at the other end tells you to keep transmissions short, repeat call signs, and skip the small talk. A strong report says the opposite. The report shapes the contact.

Check yourself

1. A station is at 40 degrees short path from you. Where do you point for long path?
2. Does the FCC require you to keep a log?
3. Your report comes back “3 by 3, deep fading”. How should that change what you do next?