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Connectivity Among People Is Everything

Tying down cables and tuning
for digimode dx...

Around the year 1976, I was a young man growing up in Maryland, and unaware of the world of radio. Then, one evening, I happened to tune around on an older brother's multiband radio. It was a much underused part of the Montgomery Ward Airline series, and covered the so-called "marine band." There were time signals, VOLMETs, amateurs, and all sorts of intriguing signals fading in each evening. Before long, I had developed quite an interest but not much skill in broadcast band DX listening.

A local ham, Marc KA3ARF, suggested I learn about the amateur radio service. Back in those days one had to send and receive 5 wpm morse code as well as taking a test on regulations and basic theory. Licensed originally as KA3BVX, my main interests were chasing distant stations and listening to various "utility" stations - mostly aviation, military, and maritime services. AM operation was popular then, and stations like WA1HLR and WA3UAN regularly held court on 3.880 MHz. I quickly discovered that most radio equipment designs were a kludge of compromises. Stability vs tuning range, fidelity vs readability, bells and whistles vs cost. Soon I was learning to modify my equipment in order to better dig out those weak signals that were so interesting. The tasks at hand were adding filters, changing capacitors, putting up better and better antennas, etc. In my opinion, the best learning in radio is accomplished by studying, tweaking, testing, and refining.

Working around the demands of career and family, I have just dabbled in radio through the last fifteen years or so. Working in aviation, I actually do quite a bit of HF and VHF operating, but it is all position reports, clearances, and other similar air band comms that I used to monitor as a young utility DXer. At home, my amateur activity consists of some VHF activity now and then, QRP here and there. Enhanced single sideband operation has been a favorite interest here since about 1999 or so.

After earning the Amateur Extra class license, my interests focused on commercial radio licensing. I pursued the GROL + Radar, GMDSS, and 2nd Class Radiotelegrapher certificates. Why? Because there is always another mountain to climb in radio! There is always another adventure and another aspect to learn. Another puzzle to solve.

More recently, my activities combine computing with amateur radio. Signals can be both generated and received in a properly equipped computer, and atmospheric conditions that are impossible for a human operator to handle become quite manageable by computers working in the digital domain. In addition, networking technology makes it possible to send staggering amounts of data - enough to transfer in seconds what would take hours on voice or CW.

Many of the articles you will find on ab9il.net involve "liberation technologies" that facilitate privacy, anonymity, free and open communication anywhere in the world. I firmly believe that human beings are born free, with rights given by God (superseding the withdrawal of those rights by countries). With knowledge shared by this website, andsimilar ones, people are going to destroy oppressive oppressive govenments replace them with transparent and participatory systems that respect human rights and the free flow of ideas and communications. This website will carry articles enabling ordinary people to enjoy freedoms of speech and connectivity while thwarting attempts to suppress such freedoms. Dictators and supporters of two bit punk governments (Libya, Syria, Burma, Bahrain, etc) will not like my website, but here one finds the way of the future.

- Philip Collier AB9IL. Comments Edited 12/2005, 12/2008, and 08/2011