General rules of posting, commenting and conducting business on these forums.

Periodically from time to time, important announcements related to these forums will be posted here.

Feel free to talk about anything and everything that might generally be related to Amateur Radio in this board.

Discussion on ham radio operating procedures, ethics, and traditions.

Discuss any matter related to HF radio propagation and issues that determine propagation like the effect of Ionosphere, SSN/SFI, Solar cycle, seasons, abnormal solar activity, Geomagnetic disturbances, etc. Various phenomena like Gray-line propagation, winter anomalies, SP/LP, etc. VHF/UHF phenomenon like Tropospheric Super-Refraction, Ducting, etc may also be discussed

There are so many variants of HF antennas that are used by ham radio operators. These include both vertical and horizontally polarized mono-band as well as multi-band wire antennas, Yagi, Cubical Quads, LPDA, Stacked Arrays, and other specialized antenna configurations. Feel free to ask questions and discuss them.

Setup and tuning procedures of radio transmitter, receiver, and transceivers. How to optimally operate them, negotiate HF noise conditions effectively, when to and when not to use Speech Compressors, modulation depth and intelligibility, etc... Also discuss the ways of setting up the station equipment to obtain best results.

Despite the sharp decrease in interest amongst ham radio operators in CW over the last few decades, it still remains the most disaster survivable radio communication mode in the world. When all other modes might fail, either due to hostile propagation environment or their dependence (for either trunking or timing) on non-native networks like the internet, etc; Radio-telegraphy (CW) will have the best prospects of surviving... Hence, CW, in its original non-machine dependent form (manual keying and copying by the ear) must still remain relevant to amateur radio. Please feel free to discuss various aspects of CW Radiotelegraphy including operating techniques, learning methods, etc...

All digital communication modes like RTTY, PSK31, ROS, JT65, FT8, etc., as applicable to text-mode HF radio transmissions may be discussed in the board. All aspects pertaining to radio transceiver setup (including adjustment and tuning), required peripheral interfaces, computer encoding-decoding software, etc are welcome to be discussed.

Slow-Scan Television (SSTV) has been in vogue and been popular amongst a dedicated section of ham radio operators even since the days prior to the advent of computers. In the modern day-n-age, the Analog SSTV (with several standardized protocols), Digital SSTV (Easypal and KG-STV, etc.) are practiced by the enthusiasts of picture transmission over radio. This forum is open to all for discussion on these topic.

Discuss RF measurements techniques as applicable to amateur radio station equipment and on-air communications. The importance of understanding the fundamentals of various radio equipment specification parameters, and also the signal/propagation parameters to leverage overall communication performance cannot be over-emphasized.

Antenna characterization, SWR, Transmission line characteristics, imbalances, common-mode current (CMR) and losses have major ramifications on the ability of the radio station to be either good or not so good for DX communication under weak-signal and hostile propagation conditions. Discuss these finer nuances of ham radio station setup to enhance capabilities.

This forum board is dedicated to discussions on Amateur satellite communication like the typical ham radio LEO satellites of various types including those featuring FM repeaters as well as linear transponders. Other satellites providing amateur radio service in high-elliptical orbits like the Molniya class birds (Phase-3), or Geosynchronous (QO-100), and the ISS may all be discussed on this board. The discussions could include various topics like station equipment, satellite tracking, acquisition, footprint, other aspects like the Doppler shifts, polarization rotation issues, the overall link-budgets needed, etc...

Discuss matters related to general operating procedure, virtual propagation model, virtual antennas, etc as applicable to the HamSphere virtual radio platform.

Announce and discuss the proceedings of special activities and and events that take place on HamSphere 3.0 and 4.0 virtual radio platforms.

Amateur Radio Ragchew enthusiasts operating on either HS3 or HS4 platforms may use this section of the forum to exchange views and experience. The Ragchewers may also fix skeds or announce their presence by either posting or commenting here.