Table of contents

Path to Raynet

This article was written originally for the Lothians Raynet website. You can read it there in its original form.

Introduction

Quite often it is this lack of initial information that is preventing a person from realising their goals. It is this initial information about how can someone can become a Raynet member that we will cover in this article.

Basic assumptions This article intended audience is a person that is interested in emergency communications.

A person that potentially lives in a rural area that does not have good infrastructure and could be vulnerable to adverse weather conditions.

Someone Who would like to be prepared In case of an emergency, either environmental or of any other type happens to be able to communicate with other people and offer help.

The background story

The content of the previous two paragraphs can very well be used to describe me, so this is also very close to my own journey of becoming a member of Lothians Raynet, the amateur emergency communications group for the wider Lothians area.

A few hears ago, I used to live in East Lothians and I loved to travel around in the wider Lothians are and the Scottish borders. These areas are very beautiful, but also fairly isolated, and the available infrastructure is not of the same level as that of the big Scottish cities.

In the years I lived in the East Lothians, I have experienced quite a few storms that caused a lot of damage In these areas, quite often leaving whole areas without power for days, leaving areas close to the sea with water damage, or just simply having buildings suffering damage because of high winds.

It was during those times that I started wondering if there was anything that could be done, if there was anything that I could do to be prepared and assist if something like this happened in my area.

My research led to a couple of options.

There are some local emergency response groups such as Lothians 4x4 that help their local community during an emergency, and Raynet the national wide amateur emergency communications organisation, with Lothians Raynet their local Branch. In order to become a member of Raynet a prospective member has to be licensed as an amateur radio operator.

Interestingly, around that time and at the beginning of covid lock-down I had started exploring how I could become a licensed radio amateur and what were my options.

Licence tiers

In the UK, amateur radio licensing is being regulated by Ofcom. There are three licensing tiers in UK amateur radio.

  • The first tier is Foundation licence. This licence is designed for beginners. Foundation licence does not require any prior technical knowledge. It is focused on radio operation and health and safety measures, ensuring that the operator has the knowledge necessary to operate safely without causing any interference. The maximum power allowed with Foundation licence is 25 watt.
  • The second tier is Intermediate licence. It goes deep into the theory of radio communication and introduces its owner to antenna theory, electronics and RF propagation. It is more challenging than Foundation, but the material is fairly easy to digest. The maximum allowed power with Intermediate is 100watt. Having passed Foundation is a requirement in order to be allowed to take this test.
  • The third is Full licence. Full amateur licence is quite technical and challenging, it requires the licensee to spend quite a bit of time studying theory and understanding concepts rather than remember a few rules, but it gives the licensee the right to design their own radios and allows maximum amateur radio power of 1000watt in the primary bands and 400watt in the secondary bands. Having an Intermediate licence is a requirement in order to take this test.
  • Direct to full. A complicated one step test where a candidate goes from nothing to full licence, intended for candidates that have a technical background in electronics and RF engineering.

Describing the various licence tiers may make people to believe that a Foundation licence is in some way inferior to a Full licence, but this is not really a case.

Apart from the restriction in power which grows according to the knowledge of the licensee all tiers are well-rounded, and a Foundation licence owner is given access to most bands, they can operate both locally and internationally without any issues. They can use digital radio, they can contact satellites.

Raynet membership does not have any restrictions about licence levels. All levels are welcome. Which brings us to the next question. How does one get a licence, what is the process, the cost and the difficulty?

Cost

Training cost can be broken down to three components:

  1. Training material cost
  2. Training course cost
  3. Test cost

Points 1 and 3 are controlled by RSGB (Radio Society of Great Britain) the organisation Ofcom has outsourced licensing operations. The training material provided by RSGB comes in the form of a collection of manuals found in RSGB e-shop and the cost at the time of writing this is:

  1. Foundation £7.99
  2. Intermediate £10.99
  3. Full £15.99

In addition to the physical manuals, there is also an electronic version which can be downloaded in an e-book reader such as Kindle.

These books are not the only source of information, and candidates are not obliged to buy them. They are designed to cover the syllabus. A candidate can choose to use them or use a different source of information. Generally, most people buy the official training manuals, in addition to participating in training courses or study using apps and electronic courses available via the internet.

A number of options are available for people who do not have access to a local ham club.

Essex ham is an excellent resource with links to training material and courses available both physical and online. It can be found here

OARC (Online Amateur Radio Community) is a great online community organised with more than 2,500 members. Interested people can join OARC at no cost by joining their Discord server and participating in the initiatives of the community. There is no cost in the participation, and there are several thematic Discord channels dedicated to different aspects of the hobby, including emergency communications and resilience.

OARC offers training courses for all levels, and the cost of enrolling is £5 for the first course an interested person will join. Any subsequent participation in training is free. The £5 cost is in reality a donation to the community. All trainers are volunteers and nobody is being paid for this work. OARC can be found at here

Even though I have mentioned training courses, a candidate does not have to attend one. It is perfectly possible to pass Foundation and Intermediate tests by just self studying the official manuals and the various free question pools found on the internet. I have done that myself for the first two tiers.

Taking the full test is significantly more challenging than the first two tests, and attending a training course is a good idea. OARC full training course is a great way to ensure success.

Exam fees:

  1. Foundation: £35
  2. Intermediate: £39
  3. Full: £45
  4. Direct to full: £95

Taking the test

Online exams existed before the Covid pandemic, but after the pandemic happened RSGB switched to fully online exams, although there are still provisions for traditional paper based exams in RSGB affiliated clubs.

The exam platform used for online testing is using a tool called TestReach and a candidate after registering for an exam will have to create an account in TestReach.

They will be contacted by their invigilator a few days prior to the exam to for a preliminary call to go through the procedure and test their equipment.

After the exam, the candidate will be informed by TestReach about their result and if they have been successful. If they passed the test, a week later they will receive a letter from Ofcom with their candidate number inviting them to create an account in Ofcom website and use their candidate number to claim their new call sign.

After they claim their call sign they are ready to start operating and participating in the various ham related activities including joining Raynet.