Articles

The PCARS Learn section is where we help someone get started.

Articles is where we wander farther down the rabbit hole.

This is where we’ll publish longer pieces about amateur radio topics, projects, operating experiences, technical subjects, and things we’ve learned along the way.

What You’ll Find Here

There isn’t going to be one particular theme beyond amateur radio.

Articles may cover subjects such as:

• Operating techniques
• HF, VHF, and UHF
• Antennas and feed line
• Repeaters
• Digital voice
• Digital modes
• Portable operating
• Emergency communications
• Public-service communications
• Radios and station equipment
• Computers and networking in the shack
• Technical projects
• Troubleshooting
• Southeast Mississippi amateur radio
• Experiments that worked
• Experiments that didn’t
• Things we probably should have known before starting

Some articles will be instructional.

Some will document a project.

Some may explain a particular technology or operating mode.

Others may simply come from somebody saying:

“You know what would be interesting?”

That sentence has probably been responsible for a significant percentage of amateur radio projects.

Learn or Articles?

If you’re new to amateur radio and looking for a place to begin, start with PCARS Learn.

Learn follows a path from:

What is amateur radio?

through:

How do I get licensed?

and eventually:

What do I actually say when I press the button?

Articles aren’t intended to follow a particular sequence.

Read whatever interests you.

Skip whatever doesn’t.

Come back when a subject suddenly becomes relevant because you bought another radio, put up another antenna, discovered another operating mode, or made some other perfectly reasonable decision that somehow created three more projects.

Practical Beats Impressive

We’d rather publish something useful than something complicated merely for the sake of sounding technical.

That doesn’t mean we’ll avoid technical subjects.

Amateur radio can become deeply technical, and that’s one of the things many of us enjoy about it.

But when we explain something, we’ll try to explain:

• What it is
• Why it matters
• When you might use it
• What the tradeoffs are
• What we’ve learned from actually trying it

A schematic, formula, command line, or configuration example is useful when it helps solve the problem.

Jargon for the sake of jargon isn’t.

Experience Counts

Not every useful amateur radio lesson comes from a textbook.

Sometimes it comes from building something.

Sometimes it comes from operating.

Sometimes it comes from helping someone else troubleshoot a problem.

And occasionally it comes from spending several hours discovering that the problem was the one cable you were absolutely certain was good.

Those lessons count too.

When an article reflects experience rather than a universal rule, we’ll try to say so.

Amateur radio has plenty of room for more than one good solution.

We Can Be Wrong

We try to make the information on this site accurate.

That does not grant us immunity from mistakes.

Technology changes.

Rules change.

Software changes.

Equipment changes.

And sometimes somebody simply gets something wrong.

If you find an error in an article, please tell us.

We’d rather correct useful information than defend incorrect information out of pride.

Contact us at info@pcars.club.

Want to Contribute?

PCARS doesn’t need every article to come from the same person.

If you have experience, a project, an operating technique, a technical subject, or a lesson that might help another amateur radio operator, we’d like to hear about it.

You don’t need to be a professional writer.

You need something worth sharing.

We can work on the rest.

And if you learned something through an impressive series of mistakes, even better.

Bad decisions occasionally make excellent documentation.

Start Exploring

The newest PCARS articles appear below.

If the list is still short, remember that PCARS itself is still being built.

We’re interested in publishing useful material, not generating articles simply to make the archive look busy.

Quality first.

Quantity will take care of itself.