Several friends have asked me to explain the procedure and formalities of becoming a ham radio operator in India. Unlike many of the western countries , the active population of amateur radio operators in India is very minuscule. The major reason for this is the cumbersome procedure and the lack of interest from concerned authorities.<\/p>\n
Obtaining a license can be a tiresome process. The general algorithm for obtaining a license is some thing like this.<\/p>\n
1) Decide whether you are really fascinated by the hobby.<\/p>\n
2) Get hold of the application forms and fill them out.<\/p>\n
3) Send them to the nearest monitoring station<\/p>\n
4) After 2 to 4 months you will get get an intimation from the monitoring station, asking you to appear for the ASOC examination.<\/p>\n
5) Write the examination and forget about it. If you are successful, you will get another\u00a0 intimation from the monitoring station\u00a0 within 2 to 3 months.<\/p>\n
6) Get yourself into an infinite loop. This will allow the government to verify about your antecedents<\/p>\n
7) If you are lucky, the Ministry of communication will interrupt you to remit the license fee ( you are still in the loop :D)<\/p>\n
8) Once you remit the fee, you may get a license in another 2 ( may be more) months.<\/p>\n
By this time any reasonable Indian will have lost his interest in the hobby.<\/p>\n
I will now attempt to give more information on tackling the algorithm.<\/p>\n
Step 1<\/p>\n
This is the most important step in the process. Read about the pros and cons of becoming a ham. Whether you will have the time ( and money) to build and operate a station. Interact with a nearby ham about the virtues. If you are a geek, you have a better chance.<\/p>\n
There are several website giving information on ham radio. Look\u00a0 around them. You can start with\u00a0 this<\/a> and this<\/a>.<\/p>\n Get hold of a decent radio ( ordinary broadcast band radio with short wave band.) . Most of the amateur operators in India work on 40M and 20M. You can easily tune to 40M on an ordinary radio. The 40m band is from 7.0 to 7. 1.Mhz. Most of the radios will have 41M marked on their dial. So our 40M band is just below that.<\/p>\n Build a simple VFO and place it near the radio. When you turn the\u00a0 tuning\u00a0 capacitor on the VFO , you will get a sharp whistle on the radio. Now,attach\u00a0 a long wire to the telescopic Ariel\u00a0 of the radio. Make the length about 10m and\u00a0 hang it horizontally. Tune around 40m band.<\/p>\n The circuit of a simple 40m VFO is given <\/a>here<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n Most of the amateur activity on 40M band is around 7am to 8.30am\u00a0 IST\u00a0 on weekdays. On Sundays, you can find some stations through out the day. However,\u00a0 better band conditions prevail during mornings.<\/p>\n Listen for some days and see whether you like to be a ham.\u00a0 A\u00a0 good ham station can be built at a cost of say \u00a0 Rs 1000.\u00a0 You\u00a0 can alternately purchase equipment costing lot of money. For building a station you need to put in lot of time and effort. Think well before starting out.<\/p>\n Step 2<\/p>\n For me this was the most difficult step. I will give you the details.<\/p>\n In India. there are four kinds of amateur licenses. They are:<\/p>\n 1) Advanced grade<\/p>\n 2) Grade 1<\/p>\n 3) Grade 2<\/p>\n 4) Grade 2 (restricted)<\/p>\n These licenses are issued by the Wireless Planning and Coordination section(WPC) of Ministry of Communications Government of India.( They have a website<\/a> but seems to be down for some time ) For obtaining the license, you must appear for an examination conducted by WPC. The examination will cover topics in basic electronics, radio regulations and Morse code. This examination is called Amateur Station Operator’s Certificate (ASOC) examination. The rules regarding amateur radio is here<\/a>. The syllabus for the examination is also available along with the rules.<\/p>\n Depending on your license, the power output and frequencies that\u00a0 you can use vary. For reasonable operations on the air, you need at least a grade 2 license.<\/p>\n The application forms for the examination is here<\/a>. You have to fill out the form. Against item no 9 (Particulars of apparatus used), you can write “home brewed”. You\u00a0 need to fill in 4 copies of personal details . and\u00a0\u00a0 4 photographs.<\/p>\n Take a Demand draft (DD) for the required amount. The draft must be purchased from State Bank of India.( This is very specific,no other bank acceptable. )\u00a0 You can apply simultaneously for grade 1 grade 2 and grade 2 restricted. It is a good idea too. So purchase a draft for Rs 40. in favour of \" PAY AND ACCOUNTS OFFICER (HQ), Department of Telecommunication \" payable at Service Branch, New Delhi <\/tt>.\u00a0 The guy at the bank counter looked at me scornfully when he saw my application for\u00a0 demand draft. The DD commission was around RS 25.\u00a0 He also warned me that I may not be able to cancel the DD later on.<\/p>\n There are few attachments to be submitted .<\/p>\n a) Nationality certificate . The format of nationality certificate is here. The certificate must be from a\u00a0 Gazetted officer of the state or central government or from the Principal of a school\/college.<\/p>\n b) Personal details 4 copies.<\/p>\n c) photographs (4 nos)<\/p>\n d)(Optional)\u00a0 If you have a B Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering, you can furnish a copy of the certificate. You will get exception from\u00a0 part 1 of the examination.<\/p>\n Step 3<\/p>\n Once you have filled in the application and collected all certificates , send the application to the nearest wireless monitoring station. The\u00a0 list of monitoring station are available here<\/a>. Please note that your DD is payable at New Delhi, even though you are sending the documents to\u00a0 a local monitoring station.<\/p>\n The examination will be conducted once in three months in most of the monitoring stations. They will\u00a0 intimate you the date of examination approximately 2 weeks before the examination.<\/p>\n Step 4<\/p>\n Preparing for the examination<\/p>\n Now you have to prepare for the examination. There was a book named ABC’s of Amateur Radio in India published by EFY. I think it is almost out of print. You can download the book ” A Guide to ham radio ” from Vigyan prasar<\/a>.<\/p>\n Learning Morse code<\/p>\n There are several software’s available for learning Morse code. Links to some of them are listed below.<\/p>\n There a good tutorial CD published by ARRL. You can buy it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Alternately, you can download lessons teaching Morse code in KOCH method from here<\/a>.<\/p>\n PC\u00a0 based tutorials are available on the Internet. You can try cwcp on GNU\/Linux systems.<\/p>\n Learning Morse code can be difficult for some people. But if you practice it consistently , it can be mastered in 3 weeks time. The Morse code test has 2 parts. Morse code sending and receiving. Sending part is pretty easy .<\/p>\n Step 5<\/p>\n The actual examination is a silly affair. There will one only one or two candidates\u00a0 present. The WPC officials conducting the examinations are\u00a0 generally helpful.<\/p>\n See this post f<\/a>or some sample question papers.<\/p>\n Step 6\u00a0 7 and 8<\/p>\n You don’t have much to do other than\u00a0 waiting for a letter from WPC.<\/p>\n There will be a police verification.\u00a0 But it is done in\u00a0 a clandestine manner. Don’t bother about it, if you have a clean record.<\/p>\n Once you get it remit the fee\u00a0 and get hold of a call sign and enjoy your hobby.<\/p>\n Probably, you will be 2 to 3 years older by this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Several friends have asked me to explain the procedure and formalities of becoming a ham radio operator in India. Unlike many of the western countries , the active population of amateur radio operators in India is very minuscule. The major reason for this is the cumbersome procedure and the lack of interest from concerned authorities.… Continue reading How to become a HAM radio operator in India<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ham-radio","category-living-in-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstorms.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstorms.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstorms.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstorms.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstorms.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brainstorms.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":498,"href":"https:\/\/brainstorms.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions\/498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstorms.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstorms.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstorms.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}