Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Amateur radio/Archive 1

Archive 1

Project proposal introduction

Moved from original proposal page.

This is a proposed start point for WikiProject Amateur radio.

The goal of this WikiProject will be to improve Amateur radio related articles and categorization (Category:Amateur radio and its subs). Currently there is a lack of coordination on this topic which has led to some poorly written articles. One which stands out is an earlier version of D-STAR, which required a total rewrite. I've also noticed that many notable Amateur radio related compaines are missing. There are now stubs available for MFJ Enterprises and Hy-Gain, but there are serveral more to go and a lot of expansion/improvement to be done on those already existing.

I'll start building this page out to standard Wikipedia:WikiProject format. If enough people are interested then this page can be moved over to the main Wikipedia namespace. Anyone interested? --StuffOfInterest 18:18, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Comments from project proposal

This was imported from the list of proposed projects for further discussion.

Description: The goal of this WikiProject will be to improve Amateur radio related articles and categorization (Category:Amateur radio and its subs).

Temporary project page: User:StuffOfInterest/WikiProject Amateur radio

User: StuffOfInterest 18:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name):

• — xaosflux ^Talk (May want to expand this to include all "personal radio" as well <e.g. GMRS, FRS, CB> and not just the "amateur" bands.) 20:00, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

• User:M0ffxI second the above. I probably can't contribute much to the project since I'm not a particularly experience ham, but I might take a look over the various articles. Also I might start an article on the Cambridge University Wireless Society at some point.

• ChardingLLNL 02:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC) GGMRS and FRS are governed by a different part of the FCC regulations, and the licensing requirements are totally different - FRS requires no license, and GMRS only requires filling out an applications and sending the FCC $70.00, so I assert that they should be in separate articles. Also, ham radio experimenters have made significant contributions to communications art, science, and engineering. FRS and GMRS are end user services and do not lend themselves to experimentation.

• M0RHI | Talk to me - I have plenty of time on my hands, and as the University of St Andrews does not have a wireless society, despite my efforts, this means that while I'm at university, I'll have plenty of time to edit articles, and help them along their way! I particularly contest, so I'm happy to help out there. Edit: Keep this to amateur radio, it would be wrong to infer false expertise which we are not licensed for (CB etc), and will allow us to exercise our expertise to the best possible usage

• Peter Ellis/talk: I'll always look for Amateur Radio matters among my suite of subjects. Getting over into GMRS, FRS, CB might be a stretch. Let's develop a topic/subject/wanted -page list and go from there; at least establish pages and let them fill out.

• Mysid: A great thing to have. The amateur radio related articles are, in my opinion, in a bad shape here. I've been expanding and improving some of them. I'm an occasional DX listener myself.

• Pcbene (KB1HMF): I disagree with the inclusion of FRS/GMRS/CB (see below), but I think a collection of Amateur Radio pages would be a valuable resource on Wikipedia.

Comments:

• I'm going to go ahead and give it until tomorrow to see if anyone else feels like adding an endorsement here. With the four who signed here, and one more who signed up on the temporary project page, I believe we meet the minimum requirement. I'm sure a few more could be rounded up, but I hate to go and spam a bunch more pages (sorry to anyone who was already annoyed by my mass posting). Thanks to those who have expressed interest so far! --StuffOfInterest 23:22, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Just a follow-up note. Now that the project is active, there is no need to add your name to this interest section. If you think the project is worthwhile, please consider adding yourself to the member list on the main project page. Thanks. --StuffOfInterest 13:17, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Should we expand scope?

Well, the project is less than five minutes old and there is already a new item of business. xaosflux proposed expanding the project to cover GMRS, FRS, CB, and any related "personal" radio services. People involved with Amateur radio are probably best qualified to help on those articles short of bringing in professional radio engineers so I can see the logic.

At this point, I can see three ways to go on this:

1. Do nothing, let the other servies work on their own for fall under some sort of "WikiProject Personal radio".
2. Expand the scope of this project to include peronal radio.
3. Don't expand the scope, but take the other articles under a sort of stewardship where we list and try and improve these articles without explicitly including them in the project.

Any ideas? --StuffOfInterest 12:17, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe Amateur Radio is a very unique practice, different from GMRS, CB and FRS. While GMRS, CB, and FRS are heavily regulated by the FCC, require little technical skill to operate, and have limited capabilities, Ham Radio is a very technical hobby with much more freedom (and bandwidth) given to it. While CB and GMRS simply require an application for a license, Ham Radio requires studying and testing, and issuance of call signs. In addition, Ham Radio offers an infinite potential, including the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) involved in emergency communications (EMCOMM), opportunities for international goodwill, potential for astromical research, ect. In short, Ham Radio is attributed to an international technical community, while GMRS, CB, and FRS simply provide "Walkie-Talkie" capability. For these reasons, I think WikiProject Amateur Radio should remain seperate from family radio services. -- Pcbene 05:02, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Better template graphic

Does anyone have an idea for a better graphic to use on the project template? The current one gets under my skin. It looks like, and probably is, a generic home table-top receiver and not something you would expect to represent Amateur radio. I'd love to use the IARU logo (currently busted), but unfortunately it won't qualify under fair use. Something else would be most welcome. Thanks. --StuffOfInterest 16:15, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

WikiCast

Hi, As someone connected with the WikiCast project I felt your wikiproject might be intrested in contributing.

WikiCast is a net radio station for 'free' content.

It's wiki is at : http://wiki.epstone.net/wikicast/Main_Page

It needs content, and I was wondering if you had any suggestions or contributions?

ShakespeareFan00 18:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Greetings

I noticed in StuffOfInterest's RfA that he started this WikiProject, so I thought I'd join in. I just created a very basic article for the late 73 magazine, and gave it an infobox and graphic. Check it out and let me know what you think. --Aaron 00:23, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Aaron, welcome to the project. And thanks for the support vote over at RfA! The article looks like a great start. I'd heard about 73 before but didn't know about its ties to my lamented, retired Byte magazine. --StuffOfInterest 11:50, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Redlinked articles

I just noticed that a bunch of the articles listed on the project page have recently gone redlinked. It looks to be mostly a combination of prod and speedy deletion. Someone with admin rights will need to look at the deleted edits to see if anyting from the articles is worth salvaging. In some cases any worthwhile content can be merged into other articles (even "list of" type articles). For others we may want to go to WP:DRV to try and bring the entire article back. For a few, such as MFJ Enterprises, talking with those involved in the earlier deletion may help reach agreement on bringing them back. Please don't remove the redlinks off of the project page, but consider adding annotations to the list regarding why and when they were deleted. This will help in deciding what to do. Thanks. --StuffOfInterest 18:44, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

MFJ was a {{prod}}, so all we have to do to get it back is ask for it. --Aaron 18:52, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Still, I've left a note with the person who put the prod tag on to see what it will take to convince him of the notability. He/she nominated it based on WP:CORP. As I originally created the article, I won't do the undelete myself but will ask another admin to later. My hope is to convince the nominator that it is worthy or find out what it would take to clarify the notability so the article doesn't end up right over on WP:AfD after being restored. --StuffOfInterest 18:55, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I was in the middle of rewriting my comment to read as follows when you slipped in with a response: "MFJ was a {{prod}}, so all you have to do, being an admin and all (heh heh), is restore it and put an {{oldprod}} tag on it (per WP:PROD#Contesting_after_deletion)." I'll keep an eye on the page and try to pump up its notability if/when it's restored. --Aaron 18:57, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm going to leave a note for an admin who I know is a HAM asking him to undelete it. I've annotated all of the deleted articles on the project page. It looks like most of them were tagged as CSD A7 by one person on the 11th. I'm guessing he either went through one of the categories or the project page to find the articles as there is no way he would have just run across them. To tell the truth, for most of them, there probably isn't much worth saving as some were just one or two lines and an external link. A "list of" can probably cover everything easy enough. --StuffOfInterest 19:09, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

What is it with this new deletion policy or something, these pages are dropping like flies, no explination, nothing... some of them actaully have content. WHo do I yell at... these pages are a part of projects and then they just disappear. This has got to stop. I thought we had a nomination process for stuf fliek this! It was one thing when it was pages with just links, now its getting draconian Anonym1ty 20:58, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Again I ask what is it with the deletion policy. The way the CSD A7 is being used here is a load of horse manure. I have read What Wikipedia is and is not, I have read policies. I do not agree with the speedy part of these deletions. Perhaps the article does indeed need to go, but what's wrong with the normal process? I can only surmise that some small group of admins is getting some kinda rise over just deleting articles. I mean shortly after the articles become part of this project, then they get wiped out indiscriminately? I mean wouldn't the very fact they were just recently added to a project say something about it???? It's part of a project! These articles are nominated and then deleted faster than I can even see a notice! I have almost all of them in my watch list... and once they're deleted, Nothing shows up in the watch list. Do they deserve to be deleted? Maybe... I might even say probably, but this is just plain crazy! I work for a living and it may take as many as three days for me to check my watch list... these articles are nominated and gone in an hour I'm calling

shenanigans!!!!!! Anonym1ty 21:04, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

(reset indent) I'm betting that someone ran across the project and just started walking articles. Either that, or they found the list of HAM organizations. A7 does get overused at times. For spammy articles it works but for general organizations it seems a bit excessive at times. On the flip side, a lot of the articles deleted were just one or two line stubs which could have had just as much detail on their entry in "List of..." article. MFJ bugged me a bit, but I was able to dig up a few references to show notability and it hasn't been touched since. That is the key, any new article really should have at least one reference and make a statement up front for some claim of notability. At that point the CSD won't work anymore and it will have to go through a full AfD which gives us a much better opportunity to defend the article.

I have somewhere around 500 articles on my watch list right now, so I don't always catch when someone puts a PROD or CSD tag on one of them. CSD is really bad because depending on the backlog (or lack of) it can go on the list and be deleted in just a couple of minutes. The key is to have more eyes watching the articles. The more you (and others) can carry on your watch list the better chance we have of spotting deletion attempts. --StuffOfInterest 14:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

• User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
• User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
• User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
• User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:56, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 00:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Radio

Anyone here interested in helping start a wikiproject radio, since there is not even a generic wikiproject for radio? This project would become either descendent wikiproject or possibly be merged into the main project. If interested, please see the proposal. --PhantomS 03:37, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

References for South Jersey Radio Association?

South Jersey Radio Association just went up for proposed deletion. The problem with the article is that there's no independent source to back up the assertion that it's the oldest extant amateur club. Google has not been useful. Has anybody got a newspaper clipping, ARRL write-up, etc. that could help the article out? 73 —C.Fred (talk) 22:40, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I've added what I could come up with, however I am not a member of that organization. I contacted them to see if they could help point us in the right direction. Anonym1ty 18:44, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Parent project

What is your opinion regarding how this project should be related to WikiProject Telecommunications. Can the Amateur radio WikiProject be defined as a descendant project to Telecommunications, and Telecommunications as its parent? Mange01 17:00, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Telecommunications seems rather generic. IMHO, there should be a parent radio wikiproject. --PhantomS 17:20, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes. But until it exists, can Telecom be parent? Many wireless issues are discussed in the telecom project. Mange01 17:24, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

In all honesty, I'd rather see something like WikiProject Radio be a parent as it is more of a direct line up from Amateur radio. Unfortunately, that project is currently geared towards radio stations rather than radio technology. Telecommunications has a lot of overlap with Amateur radio but I'm not sure if you could consider it a direct line parent. More like a first cousin. :) --StuffOfInterest 19:19, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Radio has been created. Please sign up if interested. --PhantomS 17:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 16:18, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Notability

Articles about Amateur radio clubs have been being deleted quite frequently.

It may be the best idea for us at WP:HAM to define more carefully what constitutes the exact requirements for us to keep or delete articles. Then list them and include them in Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Precedents.

What makes an Amateur radio club notable? In general notability in organizations requires organizations to do something on a national or international scale. Well this is finely vague enough for Amateur radio clubs... But If a club maintains a station, then that can be considered international scope of activities? On the other hand Radio stations get wikipedia articles all the time, why not ham stations? Ok.. Maybe not every licensed ham gets an article. But clubs maintaining stations are important.

What about clubs that work with disaster relief agencies? Red Cross, Salvation Army, NWS/NOAA, FEMA?

ARRL affiliated clubs are not merely chapters of the ARRL but what about ARES groups? they might be considered just that.

Inclusion in Third party records/articles and the like? Then every ham club that has anything counts?

What about age of a club? You have to admit older clubs are likely to be more notable than new ones... but you could argue that brand new contest clubs may be more active.

We should address this and come up with guidelines. Anonym1ty 18:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Anonym1ty (talk • contribs) 18:24, 22 January 2007 (UTC). --gee thanx Mr. Bot... it was only 10 seconds since I hit save instead of preview!!!Anonym1ty 18:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Merely maintaining an HF station is not enough to establish national or international scope. The organization must act nationally or internationally. Otherwise, we wind up listing every local ham club, and that's going to be counterproductive. I think that we should be careful about listing local (or even state) organizations, lest we generate a reputation for generating articles that don't survive AfD - which will make it that much harder to get the worthy oones through the process.

No slight intended to what may well be a fine organization, but does Wikipedia - a resource for all, worldwide - really need the history and list of officers for the Lakeshore Repeater Association? If it does, why not every repeater group in the country? Where does it stop?

The same goes for Gwinnett ARES. I have no opinion about the group itself, but is it notable enough to rate its own separate article? If so, why not every other local ARES organization out there?

Radio stations get articles because they're by their very nature broadcast operations, designed to appeal to the public. Ham stations - even club operations - are not. The average resident of Austin is much more likely to hear about, and tune into, KUT than he is N5XU.

We should be concentrating on those articles that are of use to a wide spectrum of users. Local ham clubs simply aren't. They might well belong in a ham radio wiki, but not on Wikipedia. -- Jay Maynard 02:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

But the average SWL in Poland, Serbia, South Africa would be more interested in finding out about WX4NET then WRJN. There is an inherent value to active Amateur radio club stations. Anonym1ty 16:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Why just one radio article?

I tagged Yaesu ft-107m for speedy delete under WP:CSD#A7 because the article says nothing about why the radio is notable. There's a bigger problem, though: Are we planning to have entries for all, or substantially all, ham rigs ever built? If not, what criteria are we going to pick to list the ones we do want to write (and, probably, defend at AfD)? The FT-107M article was created by an anonymous user, and is very little more than a very broad overview of the radio's features that does not distinguish it from any other radio built in the last 20 years. If that's all it'll ever be, then why do we need an article at all? -- Jay Maynard 01:20, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

As I've mentioned in other places, I really dislike CSD in most cases. I'd much rather see content merged up to a parent level article. In this case, I think the Yaesu (brand) article can be extended to include tables for the different classes of radios. Those tables can have the essential information. The FT-107M article has some details such as mode which would be useful in such a table, which is why I would endorse a merge for an article like this. Another advantage to a merge is that it leaves behind a redirect to the merge destination. In this case someone searching on the FT-107M would end up in the Yeasu article.

Some radios are notable enough to probably warrant their own article. At the point where enough details are in the parent (company) article to build a stand-alone article, then it should be forked out. I do agree that many of the articles are too stubby to justify standing on their own. I've seen this happen on other topics. The Merlin (rocket engine) article, for an engine which has flown once for all of about 15 seconds, was forked into two model articles which only contained a few sentences each. I flagged those child articles with a merge and a multi-merge into tag on the parent. After a couple of weeks with no complaint it only took a few minutes to merge the content in via recommended procedure and convert the old stubs into redirects. No complaints, everybody happy. Doesn't this sound like a better way to avoid conflicts?

I'll go ahead and do the merge tagging for the FT-107M and FT-847. It is not intdended to short-circuit Anonym1ty's effort to improve the FT-107M article but can stand as a fall back position. If anyone runs across any more baby Yaesu articles out there they should feel free to merge tag them and add them onto the company article merge list. --StuffOfInterest 12:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I've started the merge process with tagging and opening a discussion here. --StuffOfInterest 12:56, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Article deletions

I think we should stop blindly contesting every proposed deletion of an article relating to ham radio. An article about an average radio from the 1980s, in the absence of at least an attempt at comprehensive coverage of the manfacturer's whole line or all radios of that era, just makes us look like we're dedicated to sticking trivialities into the encyclopedia. We don't want that reputation. Don't believe me? Look at what's happening to the furry and webcomic communities: there are people out there who are making it their mission on Wikipedia to wipe anything in those categories out of the encyclopedia.

We can either contribute quality entries about truly notable subjects, or we can suffer the same fate. Which is it to be? -- Jay Maynard 16:37, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

See above section. --StuffOfInterest 13:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Get other hams involved

I think we should announce the existence of this project over the air. Well-written pages are a great way to educate people (hams and non-hams) about amateur radio. Perhaps people could exchange their writings over the air via Packet or another digital mode.

We should get a feature article submitted to the ARRL that explains Wikipedia, this project, and the benefits of having free (as is GNU Free Documentation License) information on amateur radio.

Also could we change the heading of the "XfD Articles" so that a non-Wikipedian could recognize what the section is about? Maybe "Discussions about articles for deletion." Then include a sentence or two about what we mean.

Erpingham 01:33, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

All good ideas! I see references to Wikipedia in QST on a regular basis so the HAM community is certainly aware that the encyclopedia is out there. Many (if not most) HAMs probably don't realize how much "expert" help the radio articles need. That is well illustrated in that only eight people have chosen to list themselves on the project members list.

As for an article to submit to QST, we can always start a sub-page for the project (such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Amateur radio/QST article draft) and build up the article there before submission.

Finally, on the section title, how about "Content deletion discussions"? --StuffOfInterest 11:17, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Another idea too...The Talk page on the Amateur radio article is probably due for some archiving. After it is archived, it might not be a bad idea to put something there (when it will be really noticeable) inviting people to join the project. Anonym1ty 20:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Reformat of Amateur radio

I've reformatted the main article in hopes of increasing readability. A lot of detail was moved to sub-articles. -- LuckyLouie 08:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Newbie

Hi, I've just signed up to this wikiproject. I have had a UK novice (M3) licence for a couple of years, but don't have a lot of time/money to spare for the hobby at present. Almost all members seem to be from the US, so I hope I can help rebalance the project team a ittle geographically! I am getting into wiki categories, which I think I can use to help this project. Regards, Lynbarn 22:46, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Glad to have you here. Anonym1ty 20:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Another newbie... thats me ;) Hi, Im new to wikipdeia authoring - that is I'm newish to all the formatting stuff, I did some work on the RSGB page, which someone took over and did a better job, mainly because I got swamped by work etc. Im not exactly sure how you "join" the wikiproject? Am I supposed to just add my name to the list? Anyways, I decided to put some stuff on the Slow-scan television, but noticed that the amateur radio direectory dosnt link across to it. Should it? :: Mchicago 12:49, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

As for joning the project, yes just add your name to the list. There is no entrance examination. Regarding slow-scan and linking, what exactly are you referring to which is or is not linked? Welcome to Wikipedia. --StuffOfInterest 14:31, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Possibly adding the SSTV item to category amateur radio? I'll do it! Lynbarn 17:22, 15 June 2007 (UTC) (too late - Mchicago's done it already!) Lynbarn

Article for deletion

Swan electronics is up for speedy deletion. If you have a comment, drop it on the article's Talk page. - LuckyLouie 19:29, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Control operator

Regarding the proposed article:

There are some specific, legally significant differences between amateur radio operator and 'control operator,' viz. a control operator is a person actually using a station's equipment at a given moment, whether or not he or she is the station owner, who in turn has certain responsibilities regarding his or her equipment regardless of who is operating it. In the US, at least (and I'm not familiar with the rules elsewhere), all amateur licenses have a dual function, granting an amateur's rights to own and maintain a radio station and to operate that or any other amateur station.

In the days before mobile and handheld operation, this distinction had stronger implications. Among other things, the address on your station license (which I believe was physically separate from your operator license) had to denote the actual location of your station equipment, rather than just current contact information for your person. But even today, slightly different rules apply to amateurs operating from base stations that don't belong to them, as compared to those that apply when they are operating their own equipment. There are also a few situations where stations may operate under automatic control -- without any control operator present -- repeaters and beacons being the obvious (only?) examples.

All that said, I don't think it would make much sense to have a separate control operator article, as this function is one of the fundamental and necessary components of being a ham. We might like the idea of having a station, but I'd guess that we tend to get licensed so we can use the thing, excite some flux! Even if you only operate an unmanned beacon station, you've still got to set it up, turn it on, and maintain it, at which times you are acting as a control operator. There may be a case for drawing the control operator/station owner distinction a little more clearly in the amateur radio operator article, though. Any thoughts?

Ninly 07:08, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

WSJT (Amateur radio software) rewritten

I have done a substantial rewrite of WSJT (Amateur radio software). The article now includes some history of the program, a new lede section, technical details about each communications mode in the software, a software infobox, and several sources. A detailed blow-by-blow of my changes is available in the history of User:Iknowyourider/Workspace/WSJT (Amateur radio software)/Draft -- I worked on the article in my userspace because I knew I would make it a lot messier before getting things back to something I'd like to see in the mainspace. I'd really appreciate some feedback on my changes, as this is the first time I've done substantial article writing for Wikipedia. Oh, I've also suggested some todos on the talk page. ␄ –Iknowyourider (t c) 08:34, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Change project notice template?

Please see this discussion regarding changing the project notice template. There is an effort to standardize article notice templates (WP:AMB) which I'm trying to get ready for. At this point, I'm not sure it even relates to project notices, but best to be prepared. --StuffOfInterest 13:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, nevermind. I just realized that this only involves article templates and not talk page templates. --StuffOfInterest 13:45, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Band plan colors

There is a discussion going on regarding charts for band plans. I recently made the folowing post:

"Standardizing the color codes is important. As long as it is consistent I'm not too worried. Since the US appears to be moving from mode to bandwidth allocation (if ARRL gets its way) we'll probably need colors (or patterns) for both. I would actually suggest that we come up with a standard set of colors to be used across all of the HAM articles. The color/pattern settings could be built into a collection of templates so that if we decide to change a color later it can be modified in one place and pushed across all articles. Something similiar was done at Wikipedia:WikiProject Washington Metro to standardize line colors across articles. Having the colors/patterns standardized will help if we start pushing some national band plans into separate articles later."

Perhaps we should look at coming up with a standard set of colors and patterns to represent emission modes as well as bandwidth usage. With it encoded into templates we can give all of the HAM articles a more consistent look. Any suggestions or ideas for implementation? --StuffOfInterest 13:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I've done a little more research on this, and here is how I think it could work.

First, you put the style information in a template. For SSB, a template named "Template:HAM BS SSB" could conain:

style="background-color: blue"

To use that template in a table with a bar covering two columns, you would then enter:

| colspan=2 {{HAM BS SSB}} |

The above would create a blue bar spanning two columns. In the future, if a decision is made to change the color or add style such as hashing for SSB all we have to do is change one template and the style will propagate across all articles. --StuffOfInterest 14:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC}

How about {{HAM BS AM phone}} Yes, just as there are people using CW, the great grandfather of two way radio there are still a few of us using his first harmonic AM! :)

--Dp67 | QSO | Sandboxes 20:17, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

NVIS

Shouldn't the NVIS page be added as a key page? What about pages for each of the bands? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.42.4.138 (talk • contribs)

Category:Amateur_radio_bands, NVIS. - LuckyLouie 20:10, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

List of amateur radio organizations being considered for deletion

The list List of amateur radio organizations is being considered for deletion. A discussion among Wikiproject:Amateur radio members would be beneficial. Andrewjuren(talk) 21:56, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

A cogent discussion would be useful instead of members voting for keep because of WP:ILIKEIT =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:57, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

A discussion would have been prudent before nominating an article for deletion. Perhaps you could have offered ideas for improvement instead of just trying to argue against every single keep !vote out there. --StuffOfInterest 17:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Propagation Modes

I've started to organize the articles on radio propagation modes into a navbox: Template:RF Propagation Navbox. However, it seems that information about these modes are scattered all over. I believe that each major mode warrants its own article and it would be great to get all the material somewhat unified. I've already added some splitting suggestions to TV-FM DX which contains some great stuff on several modes. What do you all think? KMS 22:24, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea. I'll try to help out when I have a few free hours. Andrewjuren(talk) 13:31, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Style issue regarding trailing zeroes in shortwave station frequencies

This is a request for consensus on a style issue regarding the format of shortwave radio station frequencies. Please comment at WT:WPRS#Style issue regarding trailing zeroes in shortwave station frequencies. DHowell (talk) 02:32, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Project page face lift

I've edited the project page to take advantage of the WikiProject Turnkey Project's templates. This gives the page more of a portal feel and logically breaks up the content into individually editable components. I hope this is seen as an improvement.--Kharker (talk) 04:09, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Automatic archiving of this talk page

I propose that we set up MiszaBot to automatically archive this page. I'm thinking we archive anything older than six months, leaving at least the five most recent discussions on the main page. Any objections?--Kharker (talk) 15:50, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

No objection. --StuffOfInterest (talk) 15:55, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

It's set up. The first archives should run in the next 24 hours or so.--Kharker (talk) 17:10, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Gallery on project page

I am not sure what the purpose of the gallery on the project page is. This does not seem to be something that other WikiProjects do. Would anyone oppose removing it?--Kharker (talk) 04:12, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I had originally started the gallery to act as a list of images just as we do with the list of articles. Rather than deleting the gallery outright, how about converting into a proper list? This will actually make it easier to spot redlinks when images are deleted in the future. BTW, thanks for all the work reorging the project. It was tough just keeping track of all you were doing last night. --StuffOfInterest (talk) 12:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I can understand where the idea comes from, but I guess at some point the number of articles and images in a project gets to be long enough that using a single list to keep track of red links is problem. And besides, you want to catch the problem before the redlink. For articles, I'd think that relying upon project members' watchlists to notify them of AfDs, etc. would be the best way to go. Actually, for images, I can see a gallery as being useful - a project member ould browse the images and maybe find one that would be useful in a multiple articles. Maybe a gallery not on the main project page, but linked to from the See Also frame?--Kharker (talk) 20:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind seeing it as just a link off of the main page. Heck, you can convert it back from a list to a galley if you want to do that. Still, I think "Images" is a better name for the sub page than "Gallery". As for keeping track of things via watchlist, I tried and it doesn't work. I have hundreds of articles on my watch list right now including most of the amateur radio related articles. There is just too much to keep track of all the edits. It would be nice if someone comes up with a bot to notify projects when one of their articles is tagged for XfD or CSD. --StuffOfInterest (talk) 21:02, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I run said bot but it can only guess who cares the most about the article. I may add a hard opt in option at some point so people can watch whole categories. BJ^Talk 04:02, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Deletion proposals, March, 2008

• I've taken the prod tags off and put merger tags on a bunch of articles related to Amateur Auxiliary (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and National Traffic System (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). My hope is that if we merge some small topics together we can avoid an all out AfD on the articles. --StuffOfInterest (talk) 15:57, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
  • I like this idea.--Kharker (talk) 18:06, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

• I normally like to handle stub articles like this by proposing a merger of their content into a parent article. Unfortunatley, for this one (Firedrake (shortwave)), I don't see any suitable articles. Perhaps we need a general article on Amateur radio interference to cover topics such as power-line, radar, jamming, and equipment problem interference with Amateur radio? --StuffOfInterest (talk) 16:09, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
  • I think it can be merged into Pirate radio in Asia.--Kharker (talk) 18:10, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to take a break from proding and recategorization before I annoy anybody. Also hello everybody, my call sign just showed up in the FCC database yesterday. :D BJ^Talk 18:14, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

• Congrats on your license! Before proding articles again, how about coming by and discussing options? I have ot admit, I won't miss a lot of the small club articles, but some of the other articles which were marked could be merged into higher level topics. This gets rid of the article count bloat while still salvaging as much content as possible. --StuffOfInterest (talk) 18:33, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Categorization

I'm sure you noticed me changing around the some categories the last few days and I wanted to bring up things I've noticed here.

• From what I can tell the amateur radio project was created before the radio project leading to many talk pages being tagged with the amateur radio banner when the topic isn't amateur radio specific, I've been changing theses slowly to the radio wikiproject.
• Many article that are indirectly related to amateur radio are in Category:Amateur radio and I've been slowly removing these from the category. For example Skywarn is directly related to amateur radio, Storm spotter isn't.
• I've removed some articles from Category:Amateur radio that are in subcategories with some exceptions. I've left the amateur specific radio modulation modes like D-STAR in the amateur radio but removed non-amateur specific modes like Amplitude modulation so they are only in Category:Radio modulation modes, a subcategory of Category:Amateur radio.

Any comments or objections? BJ^Talk 18:56, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Yaesu radio articles

These articles need to get merged or deleted. I think they should be merged and redirected to Yaesu FT series and Yaesu VX series. Comments? BJ^Talk 10:48, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I tried to have these merged all the way up to the main Yaesu article a year or so ago and the proposal ran into resistance. Taking them up to a series level article might get more success. Go ahead and throw the merge tags on them and get a discussion going. Once you do, please put links to the discussion here so we can get people involved. --StuffOfInterest (talk) 12:03, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not sure the format of a merged article would work well. How about Comparison of Yaesu radios (or done by series) page? Having the radio features and specs in a table, this is all the articles list anyways. This would be easier to maintain and easy to do with Icom and Kenwood as well. BJ^Talk 12:50, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Photographs requested

I have requested photographs for the article L-Tronics, which I believe would fall under this Wikiproject. Could anybody help with this? —  scetoaux (T|C) 23:45, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually it does not fit into this Wikiproject. There is nothing in the article indicating that the company makes, or has ever made, anything for the Amateur Radio sector. Roger (talk) 06:28, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree it was an extremely loose characterization, but I didn't think it would fit anywhere else. Thanks anyways. —  scetoaux (T|C) 19:21, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

New geotemplate

{{Coor Maidenhead}}. This might be useful for articles on locations notable to radio hams. --  Denelson83  23:27, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

ITU prefix in country infoboxes?

Would it be worth trying to have ITU prefixes added to the country infobox? Has this ever been proposed? —Ninly (talk) 22:14, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

That's not necessary. See Country codes: A and the other articles in that series. --  Denelson83  02:04, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Glitch in ogg file?

Just came in off the web to look something up, and played the file http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/SOS_morse_code.ogg linked from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_Code

Unless I'm going deaf, I'm 90% certain this is playing "...--". Is this a case of vandalism, or a really bad joke? 68.35.135.191 (talk) 07:32, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I just checked and it plays correctly for me. I'm using WinXP, IE7 and Apple Quicktime. Roger (talk) 14:47, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
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Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 22:23, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Amateur radio frequency bands in India on FLC

Amateur radio frequency bands in India‎ is on WP:FLC. If interested, you can review the article and add comments here. Thanks! =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:22, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

New infobox

I've created a new infobox ({{Infobox amateur radio country}} for use on country related articles such as Amateur radio in India. I'm not very good at templates, so if there are any template gurus, I would be delighted to have it expanded and touched up. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:00, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Amateur radio in India

I need a review done for Amateur radio in India. I plan to feature it soon. Have I left out anything to be covered? =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:45, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

For those who wish to review/support/oppose: Amateur radio in India is on FAC. Wrote this article in 4 days flat. =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:20, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 317 articles are assigned to this project, of which 91, or 28.7%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 14 July 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place the following template on your project page:

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Two questions

1. Should we really be including bandplans in articles on the various amateur bands? Because bandplans are both voluntary guidelines and regional, and because the wiki isn't a guidebook, they seem extraneous and unencyclopedic to me. They're also bulky.

I agree.--Kharker (talk) 15:40, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

2. The WARC bands article says that the no-contesting rule is by "a sort of gentlemen's agreement" – is this true? I'm curious to know and can't find verification, and either way, it's an unreferenced claim.

Yes, it's true, but finding good references to it will involve research. There might be some article in QST published around the time of the WARC band acquisition (the ARRL recently put scanned copies of all QSTs prior to 1994 on the web for viewing by members) or maybe a more recent reference to it in the contesting column in CQ magazine or in a specialty magazine like the NCJ.--Kharker (talk) 15:40, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks. So correct me if I'm mistaken, but the primary reason that contesting is "not allowed" is that contest organizers won't recognize contacts on those bands in the contest rules? Anyway, I'll see if I can find anything in the old QSTs and, failing that, might be able to get in touch with the editor of NCJ or someone else at the League. Thanks. /Ninly (talk) 15:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Any input on either of these? Thanks, and 73! /Ninly (talk) 04:56, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Amateur radio

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7. We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations. A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible. We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:40, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Removing band plans

I have begun removing the tabulated band plans in individual amateur band articles to one of my subpages (User:Ninly/BandPlans). As stated above (under "Two Questions") I believe these are unencyclopedic for three main reasons:

1. Band plans are voluntary,
2. They are regional, and
3. Wikipedia is not a guide book.

Because I realize a good amount of effort went into compiling and tabulating this information, i've made it available on my subpage for now, should discussion give good reason that the articles will benefit from it. However, there are more appropriate reference sources for amateurs in need of this information, and non-hams interested in the bands probably have little use for information this specific. Links to established, up-to-date external sites featuring band plans may be an appropriate alternative. Any input on this change is welcome. /Ninly (talk) 20:21, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe these can go to wikibooks:Amateur Radio Manual? --Elliskev 16:46, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

While the band plans may be regional, some of them, especially for the HF frequencies, have world wide effects. Hitting Europe, Russia, or Japan from the US is trivial. Also, wikipedia is one of the only places I've seen even a small attempt to show all the regional band plans merged. When those plans first showed up on wikipedia, I thought they were overly scattered, and distracting in the article. However, I would strongly support moving your collected user page to a new page. As to WP:NOTGUIDE, I don't get how a bunch of facts fits that. It doesn't instruct, it's not a phone book, it isn't a lecture, it isn't research, and it isn't a case study. It could, however, be made more international by adding more data and showing the overlaps -- which actually are one of the more interesting parts of the band plans. --ssd (talk) 02:31, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Suggest systematic move of band articles

Hi, outsider here. I happened across the 2 meters and 40 meters articles from another discussion. I wonder, what would you all think about moving them to 2 meter band and 40 meter band, etc? The problem with 2 meters is that it sounds like an article about a distance, or about two devices meant to measure something. Also singular nouns or singular noun phrases are generally the preferred form for article titles. Anyway, maybe it's been discussed before and rejected; don't know, haven't checked. Just thought I'd throw in my 2c and see what people think. --Trovatore (talk) 20:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

And the situation is made even worse with the US and elsewhere spellings. 60 meters is about our amateur band and 60 metres is about the athletic race. This has caused a lot of problems in the past. Not sure if your proposal of adding 'band' is the best, maybe something on the lines of '40 meters (amateur)'. Of course living in the UK they should all be spelt 'metres', a meter is what is on your rig to tell you the current.... Dsergeant (talk) 07:28, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with WP:ENGVAR here -- if the articles were first written in American they should stay in American, including their titles. But in my opinion the two you mention should be at 60 meter band and 60 metre footrace, respectively, or something along those lines. There's nothing wrong with one article using meter and another using metre, but to disambiguate between completely different topics on that basis is close to bizarre.

(By the way athletics is another problematic term—in the States it means competitive physical sport in general. I think what you call "athletics" is what we call "track and field".) --Trovatore (talk) 08:11, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the band articles should be named "# meter amateur radio band". That would make them properly unambigious. (I am indifferent to the variety of english) Roger (talk) 10:57, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any ambiguity issue with "x meter band" alone, and would prefer that form with the addition of "(amateur radio)" should a more verbose form prove to be the consensus. However, as a preceding compound adjective with the word "meter" spelled out, "x-meter" should be hyphenated—see the last bullet in the list at WP:HYPHEN for the MoS guideline. Thus, for example, 10-meter band would be my preference. /Ninly (talk) 18:00, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

That sounds great to me. --Trovatore (talk) 20:18, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I also agree with Ninly's suggestion. However, based on my experience in other projects, we should get as wide a consensus in the project as possible before implementing; otherwise, people may start moving articles to their own pet formats. (The US state-highway articles got ugly for a while...) —C.Fred (talk) 22:30, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I have heard that people might refer, for example, to a "2-meter commercial band", as opposed to amateur. But I think that my recommendation is still fine, with the possible addition of "(amateur radio)" to article titles only in cases where it becomes necessary. /Ninly (talk) 21:24, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'm (almost) completely ignorant of this stuff, but how would a 2-meter commercial band be different from a 2-meter amateur band? Radio waves two meters long are the same whether you're getting paid for them or not, no? --Trovatore (talk) 22:08, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

In those cases, the 2-meter band article probably needs to be an article on the general band, including that frequency range A is dedicated to amateur use and B to commercial use, with links to the 2-meter amateur band or 2-meter band (amateur) article to provide specifics. —C.Fred (talk) 22:34, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

That seems reasonable to me, although it may interfere with the parallel presentation of amateur bands in article leads. Just something to think about. The issue (to address Trovatore's question) is more with how the bands are allocated legally. An amateur talking about the "2-meter band" would be talking about a completely different range of frequencies than someone referring to the commercial band of the same name. Bandwidth-based names are approximate and largely used for convenience, since only one specific frequency will have that exact bandwidth (150 MHz in this case—not even in the amateur band!). Similarly, many people (at least in my area) refer to the 70 cm band as "440" even though the allocation properly stretches all the way from 420 to 450 MHz. I'm not familiar with the commercial allocations, but unless someone steps in and wants to start that article, I'd guess it can be relegated to a subsection of the amateur-band article, and mentioned in passing in the lead. /Ninly (talk) 22:49, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

There are a few amateur bands that overlap or are shared with commercial users (2m is not one of them). One example is the 80m band in the Europe/Africa zone. Similarly the upper end of the 40m band overlaps with broadcasters in some countries, however the broadcast band is usually called 41m. In the VHF/UHF section only the amateur bands are named after their (nominal) wavelength - nobody calls the FM radio broadcast band "3m" or the civil aviation band "2.5m". BTW, do the rules require the word meter/metre to be written out in full in the page title? Simply using "#m" would help to avoid ENGVAR wars. Roger (talk) 11:33, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! Good info. Having done some SWLing, I'd seen the broadcast bands referred to that way (41 m, etc.), but didn't know the usage in the non-amateur VHF/UHF range. The pertinent article-naming convention (at WP:NAME) reads: "Prefer spelled-out phrases to abbreviations ... Avoid the use of abbreviations, including acronyms, in page naming unless the term you are naming is almost exclusively known only by its abbreviation and is widely known and used in that form." I'd say that applies to meter vs m. Following the WP:ENGVAR guidelines (and being American myself), I prefer retaining the existing variety, but I have no interest in conflict over superficial differences, either. /Ninly (talk) 15:41, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Here's a more formalized proposal, based on the discussion above: Move all articles referring to specific amateur radio frequency bands from "x meters" or "x centimeters" to "x-meter band" or "x-centimeter band". This would involve:

1. Moving these articles: 160 meters, 80 meters, 60 meters, 40 meters, 20 meters, 15 meters, 10 meters, 6 meters, 4 meters, 2 meters, 1.25 meters, 70 centimeters, 33 centimeters, 23 centimeters, 13 centimeters
2. Placing redirects on the current article names, and adding disambiguation links where appropriate (the 60-meter band vs. footrace being the only currently identified case, since 60 meters will redirect to 60-meter band—60 metres should also probably be moved to something like 60-metre footrace, but that lies outside of our scope here)
3. Adding redirects from 12-meter band, 17-meter band, and 30-meter band to WARC bands
4. Keeping an eye on possible ambiguities, with the possible addition of " (amateur radio)" to article titles, should they arise.

With general approval, I will be happy to do the footwork, but please comment and elaborate on the requirements if necessary; I haven't done anything quite this structurally extensive before. /Ninly (talk) 16:16, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a member of this project, but I came here for the sole reason of asking if this should be done. It's already being discussed! Please do it. --Elliskev 15:04, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I fully support this proposal. Roger (talk) 19:00, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, both. Last chance for dissent! Otherwise I'll go for it sometime tomorrow or, at the latest, Monday morning. /Ninly (talk) 21:05, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there is a policy about it but I think three days to poll interested parties may be a bit too short. I think this should be left open for at least a week. Roger (talk) 09:55, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

On your list of affected pages above, please also include 600 meter band which currently redirects to 500 KHz - that page covers all former users of 500kHz but now with several countries (including the US and UK) having experimental access it may soon deserve its own page! 600 metres is about the athletics race.... Dsergeant (talk) 16:52, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Roger, I'll wait a little longer; didn't know whether there was a standard wait time and hadn't heard much here, but I'm happy to wait a bit longer. And thanks, Dsergeant, for the reminder of 500kc—I'll definitely incorporate that (as 600-meter band) into the project. If there are there any other rogue (microwave?) band articles out there, let me know. Come to think of it, I will also add redirects from the hyphenless versions of the target article titles. /Ninly (talk) 21:51, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I have done it, except:

• 4-metre band retained its British spelling—I didn't think consistency would do when that band is UK-only.
• I didn't touch the 500 kc/600-meter stuff yet, because the article currently focuses on the historic use of the frequency (500 kHz, a wavelength 600 meters), rather than an allocated frequency band. It'd be great if some of this experimental work leads to more formal allocations, but as yet the experimental group is only briefly mentioned in the 500 kHz article, so I decided to hold off on changing it, at least until it was discussed more.

Please let me know if you see anything I missed. /Ninly (talk) 17:06, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Well done! Minor nitpick: The 4m band is not UK only - it is also used in at least South Africa, Italy and I suspect a number of other countries in Region 1 - but it doesn't really matter as UK spelling is apropriate anyway. Roger (talk) 20:30, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

You are right, of course; I mainly just noted that changing to the American spelling would be inconsistent with the article's contents, which I would guess are maintained mostly by people who prefer the British spellings. No need to go there! /Ninly (talk) 18:28, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

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WP:NOT#PLOT

Apologies for the notice, but this is being posted to every WikiProject to avoid accusations of systemic bias. Hiding T 13:21, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Adding article about SWARL

SWARL is Short Wave Amateur Radio Listening club. It is based in Yahoo groups, to be precise, here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SWARL/ According to that groups front page we also have a website http://swarl.org There is also old outdated website that we are trying to close now, and which reffered the most when the one makes search for SWARL in google. The url of the old site (if anyone interested): http://www.members.shaw.ca/SWARL/

Our club is over 700 members around the world and it is rapidly growing. The listed sites are our sources, and I dont know how reliable they are for Wikipedia but our article was removed from here. Removal decision was made on basis of non reliable sources. I dont understand though what else more reliable could we, as club, provide, then our own website.

My question here is it possible for article about our club to join the amateur radio project? if so, what do we need to do? Brack11 (talk) 22:18, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

WP requires reliable sources other than your own site writing about itself, preferably 3rd party independent sources of a non trivial nature. Some examples might be an article in an established electronics magazine or ham radio journal about your organization. - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Are there enough articles on Wikipedia to justify an Outline of amateur radio?

Here's a discussion about subject development you might find interesting.

The Transhumanist 23:32, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

four square antenna

The four square (disambiguation) page mentions that "four square" may refer to a kind of antenna. Alas, it currently lacks a link to the appropriate article about that antenna. I would have already fixed that lack, but I couldn't figure out which kind of antenna is the "four square" antenna:

• the Adcock antenna
• the turnstile antenna
• the quad antenna
• the AWX antenna
• the Alford Loop (from Andrew Alford)

Which one is "the" four square antenna? --68.0.124.33 (talk) 04:31, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

A few seconds with Google yielded a large number of useful sites - some that caught my eye are: It's phased array of four 1/4 wave vertical antennas placed at the corners of a square with the sides measuring 1/4 wavelength. In South Africa they are commonly seen on police vehicles fitted with stolen vehicle tracking devices that operate on a UHF frequency, so they are not only used by hams on HF. Roger (talk) 20:06, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Satellite list on OSCAR page is out of date

Please help fill the gaps and bring it up to date. Roger (talk) 19:47, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Antenna Switch Stub Started

Antenna switch Stub Started

vchapman 7 Jan 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vchapman (talk • contribs) 21:51, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Hong Kong Amateur Radio Transmitting Society

FYI, Hong Kong Amateur Radio Transmitting Society has been nominated for deletion via AfD. 70.29.210.242 (talk) 06:34, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

More references needed

Many of the articles on National Amateur Radio Associations are in need of additional reliable secondary sources to prove the notability of the article's subject. At the moment several articles are being considered for deletion, so it would be nice to help these or some other articles to prove notability. What we need is articles in general-interest newspapers or magazines, published original research or other books on Amateur Radio Associations. PanchoS (talk) 04:42, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

National Ham Societies up for deletion

A large number of national Ham organizations are up at AfD

Including:

• Magyar Rádióamatõr Szövetség
• Association Royale des Radio Amateurs du Maroc
• Royal Union of Belgian Radio Amateurs
• Pakistan Amateur Radio Society
• Réseau Luxembourgeois des Amateurs d'Ondes Courtes

70.29.210.242 (talk) 09:11, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I may be entirely wrong but I get the impression that the person proposing the deletion has some kind of vendetta against amateur radio. Roger (talk) 18:14, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it's just that coverage by third party reliable sources, even local news, are extremely difficult to find for these amateur radio orgs. They may be active and thriving, but not making an impact outside of the ham radio niche. - LuckyLouie (talk) 00:08, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

"Muggle" media have never been interested in Ham radio - if they even know it exists. The only time it gets any coverage at all is when hams step in to provide disaster communications and even then the national orgs involved might not be mentioned by name anyway. Roger (talk) 17:10, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Someone might want to contact the national wikiprojects/noticeboards for each of these countries as well... 70.29.210.242 (talk) 07:53, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Additionally:

• Hong Kong Amateur Radio Transmitting Society
• Asociatia Radioamatorilor din Moldova
• Club de Radioaficionados de Guatemala

and probably more, since I don't think I saw all of them. 70.29.210.242 (talk) 07:46, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

As reflected in my comments on the HARTS deletion discussion, these organizations are notable by virtue of their membership in the IARU and their character as independent national societies. Further sources on their activity and influence would be great, to be sure, but we are not talking about mere local clubs or chapters of organizations (the deletion of which I generally support without better evidenced notability), they are member societies of an international confederation that has major influence in a global diplomatic environment. /ninly_(talk) 17:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Also:

• New Zealand Association of Radio Transmitters
• Liga Panameña de Radioaficionados

70.29.210.242 (talk) 04:14, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

And:

• Aruba Amateur Radio Club

70.29.210.242 (talk) 09:53, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

As well:

• Trinidad and Tobago Amateur Radio Society

70.29.210.242 (talk) 10:47, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

See:

• Wikipedia_talk:Notability (organizations_and_companies)#National_member_associations_of_a_notable_international_organization.
• Talk:International_Amateur_Radio_Union#AfDs_on_stubs_for_member_societies --Abd (talk) 17:50, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

IARU Member Society articles up for deletion

Two stub articles about IARU member societies have been nominated for deletion. Please participate in the discussions by adding your comments to the relevant discussion pages:

• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Lietuvos_Radijo_Mėgėjų_Draugija
• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Asociatia_Radioamatorilor_din_Moldova

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Amateur radio international operation

Amateur radio international operation page has undergone an extensive 6 hours and a complete rewrite with cited sources. vchapman 7 Jan 2010

Search for independent sources for IARU member society information

Current efforts to delete articles on national member societies of the IARU result from an opinion that the IARU is insufficient as a source to establish the notability of these societies. Regardless of the validity of this opinion, it is certainly better if there are other sources. QST is likely to be accepted as an independent source, based on discussion at WP:RSN, but QST archives are only accessible to subscribers (members of the ARRL), as far as I can see, and probably don't go back (on-line) far enough to contain notice of the admission of many member societies. So if you are a member of the ARRL, or have access to archives of old issues of QST, finding citations to events regarding national members would be quite useful. Please post them at Talk:International Amateur Radio Union, and please consider participating in the discussion there, and if you are experienced with Wikipedia guidelines and policies, you may wish to consider comment in WP space on this. My view is that the scramble isn't necessary, but my view may not turn out to be consensus. --Abd (talk) 00:42, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I am an ARRL member with access to the QST archives. They go right back to day one. Unfortunately it is not possible to directly search text, you can search by title, subject, author etc but then you have to download the individual pdf scan of that article. Some of what we are looking for will be in the IARU News column, but nothing can be deduced from the title. A quick search with a few choice words like IARU, NZART etc showed it is not going to be easy to find references that way. Maybe somebody who has a lot of time on their hands. By the way, I strongly support keep all these articles, but sadly it is another instance where WP policy is getting way over the top and many of us are rapidly losing interest in supporting WP. Dsergeant (talk) 07:23, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

What about Popular Communications? Wouldn't that also have some articles on some of the national societies as well? And I think atleast some IEEE magazines might mention them also. 70.29.210.242 (talk) 12:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks, both of you. Dsergeant, other editors may be able to feed you approximate dates, searching the entire archive may not be necessary. I don't know how much personal attention I'll be able to continually give this project, but I do know how to navigate the !bureaucracy, and I can advise and help to a degree, sometimes a lot, sometimes only a little. I'm generally available by email.
• At this point, the AfD situation is starting to look good, but let's not hold a victory parade yet. And it will be important to secure the cooperation of the editor who filed the AfDs, if possible. There is much more of a problem with stubs and unsourced articles on minor radio clubs. It will help if we all cooperate to clean that up. It should start with setting up a better and more complete List of amateur radio organizations, with some kind of standards for inclusion, not just "Whatever!" And then retreat the improper stubs and articles back to that list with merges, which don't destroy content. (Actually, ordinary deletion doesn't destroy content, but it does make it invisible to all but administrators.)
• I'll start working on the general list, you can watch List of amateur radio organizations to see and participate. And I do suggest watching International Amateur Radio Union (which will automatically watch the Talk page) to see how the current situation plays out and to weigh in if it moves you. I can't do all this alone, and if I try, I could end up as burnt toast.
• I'd really like to encourage you to continue to watch this project, check in, and help with the encyclopedia. Yes, it's frustrating sometimes. But there isn't actually a problem with policy, and the guidelines aren't so bad, properly understood. The problem is with the community, which is chaotic and erratic, and some want to see a very tight encyclopedia, with very high standards for inclusion, and others want a more open project. My opinion is that the national member society articles are fine even with a high standard project, but it doesn't necessarily look like that to more deletionist-oriented editors. And we have to try to get along.
• IP, thanks. If you register and use an account, you can become more effective here, should you care about that. But it's fine to contribute anonymously. I've looked for such references. Not easy to find on-line. Sometimes it's a needle in a haystack. --Abd (talk) 15:11, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

FAR

I have nominated Amateur radio direction finding for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 05:36, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Amateur radio on 9/11

The article Communication during the September 11 attacks has only a single "remark" about the contribution of amateur radio to the whole event - this needs to be fixed. Roger (talk) 12:49, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

DX cluster

Following a discussion on one of my email reflectors it became apparent that there is no article on WP about the DX Cluster. I see that DX cluster is in the list of articles to be created, with a note that it used to exist but was deleted.

There is an excellent article on the German WP - [1] which would form the basis of an article in the English WP. There is a much shorter article in the Polish WP, but apparently that is it.

Before I try and create an article it would be useful to know the reasons for the original deletion otherwise we may go the same route again.... And I would need some help, I do occasionally use the cluster but am not the best to do this job. Dsergeant (talk) 18:15, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

See here for previous deletion debate: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/DX cluster. It seems that there wasn't much of an article, and what was there was entirely unclear. Seems to be better that the article starts from scratch or by translating the German article. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 20:00, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it was a fairly useless article, besides the cleanup templates, the entire text of the article reads,

The Principle of the DX Clusters is to attach as many stations looking for these DX SPots together as posible to a series of Clusters all linked together, this way these users can pass almost real time information to each other about rare DX stations that they hear! But it is very important to understand that if no one passes information to the cluster then no-one gets any! SO! AFTER making that rare contact, please spot it for the others!

Nothing to stop you recreating it, just write some intelligible text this time! SpinningSpark 12:00, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. It is my intention sometime to recreate it based on the text of the German article which seems quite reasonable. But I have been diverted on other things at the moment - and don't actually use the cluster myself these days, preferring to work the DX without it. Dsergeant (talk) 16:54, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Template:Infobox amateur radio club

FYI, {{Infobox amateur radio club}} has been nominated for deletion. 70.29.208.247 (talk) 05:37, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Linear amplifier

Linear amplifier is within the scope of your project. There is currently a deletion discussion taking place regarding this article. SpinningSpark 11:53, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Mechanical filter

Can anyone here provide a photograph for the mechanical filter article? SpinningSpark 08:28, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Amateur radio articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Amateur radio articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 00:08, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

FAC nomination

Mechanical filter has been nominated as a Featured article candidate. You are welcome to leave comments on its nomination page. SpinningSpark 00:35, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

How about that amateur-radio-wiki.net?

I am puzzled by the number of sites talking about ham radio out there. Lots of sites, of various levels quality, and none being a definite authority or with sufficient coverage for a newcomer to really *get* into it. Either the level of information is too basic (as with wikipedia) or the level of information is too obscure and specific (as with most other pages). Where should we head here? There's another wiki that tries to create a ham wiki: http://amateur-radio-wiki.net/... should people contribute there or here? or both?

Also note there is a http://amateurradiowiki.us/ wiki that copies a lot of content from wikipedia, include the nice band plan pages we have here or the Sunspot cycle page. --TheAnarcat (talk) 02:32, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Each site has its specific role and audience. Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia and so it must perforce keep to generalities, which would be too superficial for an enthusiast or expert. Other sites, such as those you mention, can go into more detail or have a narrower focus on their specific subject. It's horses for courses. Roger (talk) 12:18, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

That sounds good enough for me. I have made this clearer in documentation on the other side: amateur-radio-wiki is "how", wikipedia is "what", provided it's still general enough to fit with WP:N. Note that deleted pages here should probably be migrated in amateur-radio-wiki unless they can be integrated into other WP pages... How does that sound? I hope you guys can contribute to that other wiki too! :) -- TheAnarcat (talk) 19:12, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Move NATO phonetic alphabet?

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:NATO phonetic alphabet#Move?. — Joe Kress (talk) 08:04, 9 November 2010 (UTC) (Using {{Please see}})

Can this draft become an acceptable article?

Please take a look at User:Edleighton/Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio as well as the linked sources. As I see it this draft can be developed into a reasonable article provided it can get over the Notability hurdle. It doesn't look like anything has ever been published about the subject outside of blogs and ham clubs and society publications.

This is a huge problem for ham radio subjects generally - "outsiders" hardly know that we exist at all nevermind think we and our activities are worth mentioning in the press. Roger (talk) 14:18, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

It's an interesting concept, but looks to share several operational concepts with SDR. I also have concerns that a large amount of the text looks to have been cut-and-pasted from other sources, based on the writing styles involved. That would add a WP:COPYVIO situation on top of the WP:NOTE problem already mentioned. That's what leaps out at me, anyway. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (talk) 14:59, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

What is "SDR"? You are clearly not refering to software defined radio.

The copyvio can be cleaned up quite easily, it's not a major issue. It's quite obvious that User:Edleighton is the same person that runs the blog which is the major source of the copyvio material. It's also the only article/draft he has ever worked on here, so the copyvio can be put down to inexperience. Would an article in the South African Radio League's magazine qualify as a WP:RS for the purpose of establishing Notability or is it not "independent" enough? Roger (talk) 16:54, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Template for linking to maidenhead grid

Hi all, I just started a template to link to a maidenhead grid using this http://no.nonsense.ee/qthmap/ mapper. You can try using it like this: {{maidenhead grid|FN20xr}} with this result: FN20xr. Please let me know if you think this is useful or if we should have a different way of referencing grids in articles and talk pages. Thanks. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 17:19, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Article name: "136 kHz" or "2200-meter band"?

I have opened a discussion on Talk:2200-meter band about whether the article for that band should be named "136 kHz" or "2200-meter band". If you are interested in this matter, please see and comment on the article's talk page. –Sparkgap (talk) 23:18, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Reguest Article Amateur radio international operation be upgraded is status

Currently marked Start, should be considered for 'B' or 'GA'. Much work has been done recently on this article.

-Vinnie, N1LQJ (Vinnie, N1LQJ) 19:54, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Several articles listed for deletion

rticles for several Yaesu handhelds have been listed for deletion: VX-2R, VX-3R, VX-5R, VX-6R, VX-7R, VX-8R. Please see AFD here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Yaesu VX-2R. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 13:57, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Also Yaesu FT-290R Dsergeant (talk) 17:49, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Yaesu FT-60, Yaesu FT-2900R, Yaesu FT-290R, Yaesu FT-221, and Yaesu FRG-7700 were all PRODed. I've removed the prod, but I expect them to be listed as AfD soon. We need to add references to these articles to save them asap. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 16:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I was able to find references for the VX series articles, which led to those articles being merged to Yaesu VX series. The Yaesu FT-1000MP article is also up for deletion and requires references. Thanks. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 19:09, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

W1AW

I came upon the W1AW article by the Random article navigation choice. It is a good article, but it really needs independent sources done as inline citations. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:05, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Point Loma Amateur Radio Club

The article Point Loma Amateur Radio Club has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

The article does not offer any evidence that this radio club is notable. No outside coverage is provided, and none was found in a search of Google, Google News, and Google Books.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. --MelanieN (talk) 16:23, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:HighBeam

Wikipedia:HighBeam describes a limited opportunity for Wikipedia editors to have access to HighBeam Research.
—Wavelength (talk) 16:27, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Jazz CQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teaxWYRH9A4 (CQ in CW) --Cqdx (talk) 20:51, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Slim Gaillard, probably not a ham radio op? - LuckyLouie (talk) 21:31, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Most probably not. But his CQ is perfect :) --Cqdx (talk) 21:36, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

{{Infobox amateur radio country}}

Template:Infobox amateur radio country (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 02:04, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet for Wikiproject Amateur Radio at Wikimania 2014

Hi all,

My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.

One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.

This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:

• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film

• Tech projects/Tools, which may be looking for either users or developers.

• Less known major projects: Wikinews, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, etc.

• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____

• Wikimedia thematic organisations, Wikiwomen’s Collaborative, The Signpost

The deadline for submissions is 1st July 2014

For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to:

Project leaflets
Adikhajuria (talk) 16:46, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Callsigns, WP usernames, minors...

I've noticed a few in the project use their callsign as their username. It is, understandably, a form of validating oneself as really being a ham.

As a ham instructor, the topic of vanity license plates with ham callsigns comes up in every class. My reply is always the same, and I'd like to relate it here (not to criticize any of my fellow hams and wikipedias, but merely out of concern):

Imagine you are driving down a road or freeway somewhere and you really piss someone off, whether due to your lack of driving ability, his lack of understanding, or just a simple and honest mistake. I mean really get this person angry. How far away are we these days from high resolution cameras? In less than 10 second, this really angry person could have taken a picture of your car with their phone, having a copy of your license plate. In this case, your plate is your ham callsign. "Interesting..." thinks this person that is now really steamed at you, "that doesn't look like a normal plate number, lets google it and see what happens." Well, what happens is the first search result, and likely all but one in the front page, will be a link to a database that contains your street address.

In reality, only a mentally-ill person will want to cause you harm, but the opportunity is there. It may be just too much coincidence to think that

• A) you'll get someone angry on the road,
• B) they'll either take a picture of or remember your plate (callsign),
• C) they'll look it up on google,
• D) decide to do something bad to you.

And it is, that is why so many hams have license plates with their callsigns.

Now comes WP usernames. We sign that hundreds if not thousands of times in talk pages. We have discussions, edit wars, light and severe disagreements... any kind of conversation you can think off. These stay online forever, and your callsign is on all of them. The chances of someone not liking you because of your comments are much higher here than on the road. You all know what you are doing, you are responsible adults and you determine how to keep your families safe in this crazy world. Except you are not all adults, and this is what prompted me to write this. Clicking though callsigns today, several userpages had direct links to their QRZ profiles. And some of those bios were something to the effect of "Im so and so, Im X years old" X oftentimes being underage, and in a few occasions pre-teen. The addresses weren't PO boxes...

Please, please, please, kids, if you are editing wikipedia, make sure you do so with your parent's permissions, and don't, don't use your callsign as your username. Any sicko with the wrong intentions (of which there are many in this world) only has to follow a couple of clicks to hurt you badly. I know it is cool to have a ham license and a callsign, but keep it off the internet. Never give out your age if you are a minor, in QRZ, Wikipeida, Social Media, or on the air. Either change your username or remove your age from QRZ, or both. In fact, you should at least remove your age from the internet.

To the adult hams here: you also have kids, keep that in mind. But it is your choice, please don't think I think I know better than you. This issue is a deep concern of mine and I simply want the safety of all who share so many things in common with me.

There is no WP policy I can think off to enforce this, so my request is all that stands. We like you kids, and appreciate all your contributions to WP. Please just stay safe.

Best,

--Wingtipvorte^X PTT ∅ 22:37, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Not something I've ever considered before, and an interesting point, well made. Although there is nothing we can do to stop this, and the risk, although very unlikely, is potentially very high impact, so it is sound advice. As wingtipvortex says, it is very easy to track down an individual in this way, and even though I'm in my 50s, I wouldn't use my call-sign (hey - most people don't use their real names for much the same reason!) on Wikipedia! 73 de Lynbarn (talk) 23:08, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Good advice. Though there are quite a number of people that use their real names (with links to their personal websites) on Wikipedia without any ill effect. But it's a personal choice. Who knows, maybe some people like the attention or the possibility of danger? Definitely a poor choice for minors, though. - LuckyLouie (talk) 23:16, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, people should consider how much personal info they disclose on the Internet, but I have to say this thread is very hypothetical. How many problems have actually been caused by people revealing their callsigns (with or without their age) on Wikipedia? None that I know of. It's easy to frighten yourself with "movie-plot scenarios", where there's actually very little evidence of a problem. This has little to do with Amateur Radio. It's more about social networking ala Facebook.--Albany45 (talk) 01:00, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Albany45, yes, hypothetical is the truth, movie-plot, maybe. I definitely did not want to scare anyone, thought it could easily be read as such. I am not aware of any incidents, though I am trying to prevent any that may happen. As I said above, the reason I posted this was because minors were had both their age and their address on QRZ and they liked that right on their WP userpage. I think you would agree with me that a 10 year-old should not be telling the world his age and address. The originator of the problem is, of course, the FCC, by making our addresses public, so it has everything to do with Amateur Radio. If a Wikipedia wants to say his age in WP, facebook, g+, or whatever, that is fine, even if underage. But if parents are not telling an underage kid to not give out his age when their address is public, someone should. I don't live in a bad area, but there are still plenty of sex-offenders and child molesters nearby. --Wingtipvorte^X PTT ∅ 01:14, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:How to not get outed on Wikipedia.

—Wavelength (talk) 01:28, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Although this topic is of chief concern to minors (and their guardians), I changed my username a while back for this very reason. Anonymity (to as great a degree as possible) is a pearl of great price. All the best, Miniapolis (talk) 02:11, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

I've never revealed my callsign here or on Facebook, even though many of my Facebook contacts are hams who know my callsign. (Not a minor) Roger (talk) 06:30, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

• Many good points here. I don't use my personal callsign everywhere -- such as with WP, I use the name of an organ stop, to show my preference for musical instruments. I don't currently have a call plate on my van, simply because the state is unable to make a zero with a slash through it. So instead, I use a license plate frame with my callsign. I've been a ham for 25 years now and I've never had any problem with anyone because my ham radio callsign was somewhere on my vehicle. I am active in ARES, Emergency Management, and Skywarn. As for public information, because ham radio licenses are issued by the federal government, that information becomes public domain and anyone can search it. This does not concern me. I have no kids so I am not worried about an attack in that direction. My only kids are my cats (and my radios, of course!). All I can say is I have no control over the actions of others. If they intend to do something, then they're going to do it. They should, of course, be prepared for the consequences of their actions if they decide to go through with them. --==-- I am a ham, and my callsign is NØJAA. I have a phone with 911 and GPS, I have radios, and I have guns. And I know how to use ALL of them! Erzahler (talk) 18:27, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

• With our society so deeply connected via social media, seemingly by default, in ever more invasive ways, it should no longer be novel and esoteric knowledge that the individual, active online, should be a wary and self-protective social agent. Using an amateur radio callsign on the radio, on the open airwaves, leaves that amateur radio operator open to discovery. That is why I never use a street address for my FCC-assigned callsign. I use a post box, which keeps my personal street address safe from disclosure, if the United States Post Office follows regulation. This privacy is acknowledged by support groups to women experiencing domestic abuse, simply to add some protection to those women that are in need of postal services, with the safety that comes from obscuring their physical location. All members of my family are amateur radio operators, and each of them have used a postal box number address in connection with the FCC administrative database.

-- NW7US (talk) 12:30, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of Yaesu FT-901 for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Yaesu FT-901 is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Yaesu FT-901 until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. • Gene93k (talk) 17:09, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Edison Amateur Radio Award

I came across a mention of the Edison Amateur Radio Award on-line in a 1955 Popular Mechanics magazine, and noted that we don't (yet) have mention of it anywhere on Wikipedia. We do have an Amateur radio operating award page. Is this award worth its own page? (QSL?) 220 of ^Borg 05:37, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

References

Category:Amateur radio operating awards is a very short list, Imho there are many ham radio awards that are more notable than this one that are also not (yet) covered here on WP. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:23, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Many national AR org articles sent to AFD

A mass nomination for deletion of dozens of articles about national AR societies has been started at WP:Articles for deletion/Amateurs Radio Algeriens. -- Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:39, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Discussion has stalled with only a few participants, more opinions are needed. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:26, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Need some uninvolved help sorting out a content dispute related to Amateur radio.

There has been a ridiculous edit war at LX National QSL Bureau, from what I gather, its about who gets to distribute QSL cards. Its clearly outside my area of knowledge, and I think having some neutral voices would help sort out how the issue should be dealt with. Thanks to anyone able to help out. Monty₈₄₅ 14:42, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet to be moved to NATO phonetic alphabet. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 23:29, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

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Grants:IEG/Wikipedia likes Galactic Exploration for Posterity 2015

Dear Fellow Wikipedians,

I JethroBT (WMF) suggested that I consult with fellow Wikipedians to get feedback and help to improve my idea about "As an unparalleled way to raise awareness of the Wikimedia projects, I propose to create a tremendous media opportunity presented by launching Wikipedia via space travel." I plan to send it on an AARL micro-sat.

Please see the idea at meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Wikipedia_likes_Galactic_Exploration_for_Posterity_2015. Please post your suggestions on the talk page and please feel free to edit the idea and join the project.

Thank you for your time and attention in this matter. I appreciate it.

My best regards, Geraldshields11 (talk) 22:07, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

NATO phonetic alphabet listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for NATO phonetic alphabet to be moved to NATO phonetic alphabet. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 13:14, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

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Call signs in Africa listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Call signs in Africa to be moved. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 19:31, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

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Is nobody interested? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:33, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Request for sources - Four pages from the February 2016 edition of CQ Amateur Radio

I need scans of a few pages of a magazine to improve the South African Radio League article.

• CQ Amateur Radio, February 2016. Pages 59-62. Articles about the South African Radio League's Hamnet National Emergency Communications exercise and about the age restrictions on entry-level (ZU prefix) licences. Thanks Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 22:00, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

@Dodger67: I realize this is a tad late, but check here at the South African Radio League's official site, which gives the age restrictions on ZU-prefix licenses, including new changes coming next year. RegistryKey^(RegEdit) 06:06, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Leslie R. Mitchell

Leslie R. Mitchell is up for deletion, please weigh in.--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 04:17, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Popular pages report

We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, Community Tech bot will post at Wikipedia:WikiProject Amateur radio/Archive 1/Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of WikiProject Amateur radio.

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We're grateful to Mr.Z-man for his original Mr.Z-bot, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of WikiProject Amateur radio, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:15, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

NATO phonetic alphabet listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for NATO phonetic alphabet to be moved to ICAO phonetic alphabet. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 15:29, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

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NATO phonetic alphabet listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for NATO phonetic alphabet to be moved to International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 22:30, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

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WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject

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reclass and fix stubs?

In looking for amateur radio stubs to fix, I found that most of the articles in Category:International Amateur Radio Union member societies need cleanup. Please discuss and/or help at Category talk:International Amateur Radio Union member societies. Does this project have a formal procedure for reclassifying articles? --ssd (talk) 16:24, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Hangeul spelling alphabet

• Korean spelling alphabet (AfD discussion)

Is there an English name for this? What is it? Uncle G (talk) 20:16, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

• I'm not quite sure what you are asking. - ZLEA _T\^C 22:48, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm asking people who might know, what the English name is. They aren't all named "spelling alphabet". Witness Japanese radiotelephony alphabet. The source given is in Korean, and does not give English names, obviously. Uncle G (talk) 08:57, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of BaoFeng UV-5R for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article BaoFeng UV-5R is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/BaoFeng UV-5R until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. mikeu ^talk 19:31, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:23, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

vintage amateur radio

Vintage amateur radio, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Graywalls (talk) 20:39, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Charles E. Apgar

Charles E. Apgar (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) I've just rewritten and greatly expanded this pre-WWI amateur's bio. It could probably benefit from proofreading by others for style, clarity, etc. Please also see my notes at talk. I'm thinking of submitting a DYK. --mikeu ^talk 19:18, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

DYK?

This is in the queue to appear on the main page on January 18. See: Did you know nominations/Charles E. Apgar. --mikeu ^talk 00:04, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

It's an interesting story. I read through the article and did not see any immediate improvements I could make. Congratulations on the DYK. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 01:15, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Excellent work. Maybe you’ll consider submitting it for a GA ;) -LuckyLouie (talk) 01:52, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! Yes, after the DYK I intend to submit to GA. Probably next week. --mikeu ^talk 02:04, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

I nominated the article for GA. --mikeu ^talk 14:32, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

The article has been reviewed and passed GA. --mikeu ^talk 14:32, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Congratulations! Very nice article. I tried and failed to remove the moire on the first image. Such are print scans. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 17:37, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Morse code on Wikimedia Commons

I just wanted to post a link to commons:Category talk:Morse code a discussion thread I posted at Wikimedia commons about filling in missing Morse code sound files. Please join the conversation if you have anything to add. Thanks, VanIsaac_WS^cont 15:10, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

E.H. Scott

A classic radio manufacturer of the 20s, 30s and 40s, known for high quality receivers. According to the blurb for John Slusser's book, E. H. Scott - the Dean of DX: A History of Classic Radio, the products of E.H. Scott Radio Laboratories were considered status symbols of their day, most with chrome plated chassis and high fidelity sound. Not sure if Scott himself was an amateur radio operator, but considering his obsession with radio receiver designs optimized for DX, I would not be surprised. At the moment, there's only a section at H._H._Scott,_Inc.#E.H._Scott about the company. However there appears to be enough in-depth sources available that it could be a stand alone article. - LuckyLouie (talk) 18:31, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree. It appears to be notable enough for its own article and it's not even related to H. H. Scott. - ZLEA _T\^C 18:42, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Property proposal for ITU radio emission designation on Wikidata

Hey, i wanted to pring this d:Wikidata:Property proposal/Authority control#ITU radio emission designation to your attention. Lots of standardized radio transmission modes and even basic modulation types are lacking Wikidata statements to an internationally agreed system for classifying radio frequency signals such as the ITU designation. I would be happy about your opinions and support on Wikidata. Thanks! --Ptolusque (talk) 17:34, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

New article draft: Sommerkamp

Hi all. I crafted (= translated a draft that I made for the German wikipedia) a draft article about the German CB and amateur radio company Sommerkamp: Draft:Sommerkamp. Please let me know what you think about the draft and feel free to extend it. I am happy about any help as this is my first article. Thank you. SokaFan2 (talk) 17:39, 14 September 2021 (UTC)