AmateurRadio.com

On Tuesday, when Mr. Liu from the NCC asked me for my opinion on matters regarding radio amateurs in Taiwan, I gave him my two wishes:

1 – an English version of the exam, to get more foreigners licensed.

2 – being able to choose your own call sign.

Both requests were torpedoed right away. First off, when the NCC would make an English version of the exam then they would also have make a Japanese version to accommodate them. And then an Indonesian version. And a …….. well, you get the drift.

Assigning call signs was a more sensitive matter. Even though the R.O.C. on Taiwan has been independent since 1949, it has not been recognised by many. Hence, over here we depend on the generosity of our next door big brother – the P.R.C. of China – to be able to use some prefixes from the ITU assigned block for China (Taiwan uses BM, BN, BO, BQ, BU, BV and BX, China the rest of the B-block). Amateur radio call signs are kept back for 20 years after expiry, so the resulting pool is small. So, unfortunately, once you get your call sign you are stuck with it, because the NCC doesn’t want to hand our new ones at your will. And even though changing areas would be a good reason, they still refuse. I am now living in area 3, but I still have to use my area 2 call because the NCC doesn’t want to assign a new BX3 call to me.

Luckily I am happy with my call. After all, ABT stands for “Any Bloody Thing” and that is how I enjoy the hobby: any bloody thing goes! Have a nice weekend.

I was at home but too busy to play radio, so I did the WSPR thing on 10 MHz all day. Here is a screenshot of the local morning session.As you can see I am right in the middle between JA2GRC, DU1MGA and W8TOD in Beijing. W8TOD in Beijing??? There must be something wrong with his set up of WSPR! But there isn’t. On the QRZ.com page of Warren you can read the following:

I live in Beijing, China currently and am operating under the “less than one watt” and the “it’s legal if you don’t get caught” rules.

There you go! Stay under the radar, mingle in the crowd and you can get your radio fix, even if it is not allowed. The radio situation in Asia is messy, so turn it into your advantage.

Mind you, I wouldn’t do what Warren does and as I wrote yesterday, I am very careful in my actions, because I want to enjoy my hobby for a long time. So I do my best to play by the rules, but I will bend them if necessary.

I finally have an official fixed amateur radio station! Isn’t it great! I’m tickled pink. (Calm down Hans, don’t get too excited here).

Yesterday two people from the NCC (our local version of the FCC) came to inspect my station for the official fixed station licence. An hour late, but we’re in Taiwan, so get used to it. There were two guys and one started off with a strange question: if I had any questions about the radio regulations? Ehh…no! I passed the exam, so I know what they are. And then again, I ignore them when I feel like it, because that is what we do in Taiwan, right? But the guy asking the question was Mr. Liu and he wasn’t so bad at all. In fact, he was interested in the examination procedure in the Netherlands and he wanted my e-mail address so he could consult me on changes in the examination question pool, which is going to be changed in November. He is also the man who put together the statistics I mentioned in my last post here on AmateurRadio.com.

In the mean time the other guy tested my TS-440S. He hooked it up to a Bird clone and a spectrum analyser, fed into a dummy load. On 80 and 40 meters my harmonics suppression was only just 40 dB, but on the other bands around 50 dB: good enough. The power output was measured at around 80 Watts, but I saw that the SWR of the whole set up was 1:1.5, so then it’s no surprise that the rig didn’t show its full potential. They looked at my antenna, which is on the balcony, but other than that they weren’t interested in anything. After an hour they left and the licence will be coming in the mail.

You would have thought that inspecting a radio station would be more thorough: electrical safety, structural safety of antenna’s, equipment that can only transmit on designated frequencies, etc. My TS-440S can transmit on any HF frequency, but they didn’t even check or notice. So what is this farce about? Unfortunately us hams in Taiwan know more about amateur radio than anyone working for the NCC. But there need to be rules and regulations, thought up by people high up in the chain of command, who want to be listened to (just like the Emperor, a hundred years ago. Really, little has changed). It doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong, propose something realistic or not, you just have to obey them. But once you have shown that you have played by the rules then there is a solution: ignore them. You know that you will never be bothered by them again, so you make your own rules.

Example: the Ministry of Transportation and Communication devises a national frequency allocation table. The NCC (which is a subdivision of the MOTC) extracts the amateur radio frequencies, allocates them according to type of licence and puts it in the official rules and regulations which we are to obey. Now the MOTC frequency allocation table is already inaccurate due to contradictions within the MOTC. The NCC uses an old version of the FOT and the MOTC doesn’t bother to let the NCC know of the updates. The result: most hams in Taiwan use the IARU region 3 frequency allocation table for HF. The NCC knows that Class 2 and 1 amateurs are serious people and we are never checked apart from the time you set up a station, so live and let live. On VHF and UHF there is a little tighter control because of the great number of sausages and inexperienced Class 3 amateurs. So, do what you want on HF and be a bit careful on V/UHF. That’s the way we do it in Taiwan.

I am careful by nature and I want to enjoy the hobby for as long as I can, so no worries about me. Besides, amateur radio is more about listening than transmitting, not? So after the NCC folk were gone the TS-440S was still on 10 meters and I tuned that band for a bit. Heard beacons from DU1EV/B on @28195 (very weak) and HS0BBD/B on 28205.9 (in OK03, strong at times). The DU1EV beacon is in testing phase, running 1 Watt into a Yagi pointed to Japan. Eddie hopes to relocate it to a better spot, with a GP antenna instead of a Yagi. Stay tuned.

If you haven’t noticed it yet then I will confess myself: I am a little bit of an oddball! I don’t like ham fests, field days, working mobile, going QRP in the park, ARES or hanging out at other people’s shack. My own shack is where I feel the best. My soldering iron to the left, my radios to the right, the key in front of it. Nobody who can bother me, but the world is coming to me via my set.

Unfortunately this has its limitations, because everybody needs help at some point. And as I am not a recluse I do enjoy some company, every now and then, with people who are like minded. So when I learned about the weekly meeting at the shack of BX3AA I decided to check it out. The Taiwanese hams I had met up till now were okay, but not really like minded. Well, that has changed. Sam (BX3AA) has a little ham shop in down-town Taoyuan. When you go in you are being welcomed by a very friendly 45 year old guy, some jazz music in the background and a cup of Taiwanese tea. And on Saturday afternoon hams from around Taoyuan join him for a cuppa. There is some talk, but you don’t have to say much. Sometimes every one is quiet so to better enjoy the tea and the music. Talking about like-mindedness! I think I finally found my posse!
Unfortunately Taoyuan is a very busy city and my car was parked in a wrong spot and thus towed away. A bummer after such an enjoyable afternoon, but BV3FQ (not in the photo, he had already gone home) made me forget it all a couple of days later. I had asked him where I could buy aluminium tubes and rods (trust me, not easy to find in Taiwan) and phoned me up and said he had already bought what I needed. Well, isn’t that a great way to get help!

Just before our trip to the Netherlands I got an e-mail from Deborah of the NCC (the Taiwanese version of the FCC). “Why I hadn’t come in for my my fixed station licence yet?” Good question! The answer: because I was ignoring the matter, hoping that it would go away. But there is no going around it, rules are rules. So on Tuesday I went there and got the papers in order. I needed a copy of my landlady’s ID and house ownership certificate, but luckily she was very cooperative. We share the same Chinese family name, maybe that is why.

In Taiwan – like a number of other East Asian countries – you can’t set up a station right away. First you pass the operators exam and get a licence to operate a station. Then you apply for a station licence, which comes in two forms, a portable and a fixed one. The portable licence is easy because it covers any HT or other equipment below 50 Watts. You bring your transceiver to the NCC office, they test it, you get a laminated card in return. The fixed station licence is more troublesome. Unless you own your house you need permission and signatures from anyone and everyone living around you. That is, unless you put your antenna on the balcony of your apartment, then it is easy. Unless the HOA of your gated community or apartment building objects, then you’re in big trouble. Confused already? Welcome to Taiwan. Whatever situation, once you get it done it will cost you US$50 for a five year licence, but then you can legally transmit from your home.

With this background information the following statistics are now easier to understand. They are fresh from the NCC and go up to June 2012.

Amateur Radio Operator ——-> Number of Licenses
Class 1 —————————–> 871
Class 2 —————————–> 73
Class 3 —————————–> 42,330

First up the number of licensed amateur radio operators. Class 3 operators (VHF/UHF only) are in a large majority. That comes as no surprise as most are ex-CBers (or “ex-sausages”) who now use 2 meters as their Chicken Band together together with the remainder of the sausages who can’t memorize 360 questions and answers – and score 25 of them right – and thus occupy 2 meters illegally.

I am one of the 73 Class 2 operators and there are 871 Class 1 operators. So there are only 944 Taiwanese operators (with either a BU, BV or BX prefix) who you can potentially meet on HF. That is not a lot considering there are 21 million people in Taiwan. But together with the Class 3 operators there are a whopping 43.274 hams in Taiwan and that is a quite considerable number.

But not everyone has set up a station. Here are those statistics:

Fixed Amateur Station ——-> Total Number of Licenses
Class 1 —————————-> 586
Class 2 —————————-> 4
Class 3 —————————-> 1,924
Mobile Amateur Station 23,876

So out of the 43.274 hams in Taiwan, only 26,390 have bothered to set up a station, either fixed or portable, or both. So your chances of running into a Taiwanese ham on HF are actually reduced to a little less than 600 and my estimate is that probably only around 100 of them are active.

If you wonder why so many people with an operating licence haven’t set up a station then there is an easy explanation. At a lot of tech colleges you can score credit points if you take the the Class 3 operators exam. It’s easy enough if you memorise the answers and the Taiwanese are good at this. After five years the licence expires automatically, so one less operator in the statistics. It’s not a bad way to gain new hams, though. While I was at the NCC some time ago there was a group of six students taking the exam. Five were just bored with it and passed with the minimum score. The sixth student had genuinely studied the material and was interested in things like call signs, Q-codes, etc. He passed with flying colours. There is no guarantee, but I do hope he pursued in getting a station on air.

Put my birthday gift (an RealTek RTL2832U based TV stick) in the suitcase to bring along with me on my family visit to the Netherlands. It worked fine in Taiwan but it was DOA when we arrived here. A pity since everyone is now talking about great sporadic E conditions. Only US$11, so no major monetary loss. I still have my HT and APRS setup to play with, but now my tracker is also not responding any more! Luckily the HT is still working fine and I’m having a good time talking to fellow hams on the local repeaters.

We humans are a strange breed. We all need to be member of a pack, but at the same time stand out from the crowd. I am no different and I am happy to belong to the pack of radio amateurs. Standing out of that crowd of hams is a bit more difficult: I have a modest station, don’t do terribly exciting things, am not an inventor nor innovator, I just enjoy the hobby in my own quiet way, including collecting QSL cards.

Now there is something you can be different in! Most QSL cards nowadays are very non-personal, run-of-the-mill photo cards, designed and printed by a handful of companies. Not for me, I want it special. Very special.

I am a man of many trades and skills, but drawing is not one of them. Really, it is not. Has never been, will never be. But how much more personal can you get if you can draw your own card, with yourself in it? So there is a challenge, but quite a fun one.

I started of by brainstorming: I live in Longtan, which means “Dragon Lake”. Maybe the dragon is not too happy with me filling the airwaves, so he emerges from the lake. Next step, search the internet for pictures of dragons, lakes, mountains, radio operators and myself. I then started the GIMP (that’s Photoshop for you non-free software users) and made a composition with the images I had found. Now that’s where I shine: within an hour I had my idea on screen and it wasn’t too bad either.

Of course, there were 10 different styles of drawing in that composition. But I work in a school with many talented children and I happened to have beef with a kid who is very good at drawing. So when he had to report himself to the office little did he know that after a stern speech from me I asked him to make up his wrong-doing by doing something right for me. He agreed and I showed him my computer generated composition. He said he could make it into something better, so he did and a few weeks later he had it done. I scanned it in, cleaned it up and used Scribus (that’s QuarkXpress for you non-free software users) to add text to the design.

So here it is, finally, the new BX2ABT QSL card………

Printed in beautiful black and white, on elephant tusk paper (can’t help it, that’s how it is called), double sided, for a mere 15 Euro/20 US$ for 500 cards. That is where Taiwan still shines: cheap and fast printing. Want one my cards? You will have to work me and that won’t be easy because the coming month we will be in the Netherlands. BX2ABT is transforming into PA2BX again. So where did I put those QSL cards…..?