Yes! This happens to be pretty good reception of an image, there are others which are not so great. Sometimes you have to tweak the settings, or make sure you're using the correct decoding mode; there are quite a few of them. They have names like Martin and Scottie, among others.
If–and I hope you'll forgive me for an assumption here–you have a US mailing address, you could get your US amateur licenses fairly quickly and then operate under CEPT (once you have General or Amateur Extra) within certain Dutch jurisdictions. You do not need to be a US citizen, or even live here. You can conduct your entire exam via online zoom call. I did my Tech (first license in the US) from a beach on a tropical island with adequate WiFi during the pandemic, and then I did General and Amateur Extra upgrades a couple of years later in a different part of the world, each only weeks apart, also via zoom.
In this way, you can gain some experience operating before taking your exams in Dutch. https://hamstudy.org/ and from there you can book exam appointments online. Here's how wild my setup was: I was on a Pacific Island, taking my US exam, which was conducted by volunteers from the Volunteer Examiners of Australia, some of whom happened to be in the US. You're joining a a true global community.
It's all super fascinating. There's a plethora of digital modes, FT4, JT65, JT9, to name a few. Then there's Slow-scan TV (SSTV) which is a lot of fun:
I can go on and on, really consider getting your license, I think you'd have a lot of fun!
Morse code is amazing in its capacity to be intelligible much much farther under the same power as phone (voice) because the modulation requirements are orders of magnitude smaller than needed for phone; another way of looking at it is CW ("Morse") requires far less power to be intelligible the same distance as phone. Phone bandwidths are 1500-3000hz where CW is like 100hz. I grabbed a screenie of an SDR during a worldwide amateur radio competition a few years ago which illustrates what I mean:
Each narrow streak on the left are CW operators making CQs (contacts), while on the right, the broad strokes are voice operators doing the same.
If you pursue learning Morse, I implore you use the CWops method which is not to use graphics, or other mnemonics commonly found on the internet. You don't have to join CWops–just use their recommendation of listening and sending: https://morsecode.world/international/trainer/trainer.html. The reason here is that graphics and such will form a bottleneck in learning.
You've got me started on talking Amateur radio, so I mildly apologize. One of the absolute strengths of CW is being able to take a very small, compact transceiver (about the size of an adult hand) with limited power (10W) and a resonant length of wire backpacking, then string up the wire on a tree and make worldwide contacts. On 10W.
One of the greatest things about CW operators is that they will respond to your CQ or call at your speed, so even if you're a very slow sender, most folks are quite patient to complete the CQ.
That's a wonderful way to begin. To add to your tools, there's also a free web SDR offered by a group of volunteers: https://www.sdrutah.org/. There's also KiwiSDR: http://kiwisdr.com/public/. I'm partial to SDRUtah because they have really good labels and it's easy to understand what one is looking at. LoRa is neat and I've also been interested in getting into Meshtastic.
I encourage you to pursue your license, most jurisdictions now do not require Morse code, so it's never been easier. Welcome to the hobby!
We all come to it in different ways.
Are you only an SWL (shortwave listener) or do you also have an amateur license?
You can, at least for now in some small way, accomplish this through use of hardware security tokens. Maybe not for long, but at least it’s something.
When I first got my Tech, I was restricted mostly to 10m on HF, or ~28Mhz, so that was the first one I got down. Then I noticed each band deeper into HF was basically twice the wavelength (or half the frequency), so 20m is ~14Mhz, and 40m is ~7Mhz and so on. The exact placement within that band gets pulled up on an allocation chart, but that’s how I was able to wrap my head around it.
~~20m is usually pretty busy on FT8 as well:~~
(FT8 on center, FT4 right)
Turned up my reading comprehension a little to notice you were on 20m.
They abandoned it.
I’m going to try and hop on 20m in my high-noise floor area (lots of EMI) and try to QSO on 10-12W.
I suppose I should practice Morse code, too.
How about you?
E: Fediverse PSA: Getting your (US) license has never been easier—there is no Morse code requirement! Just memorize the answers to the questions (perfectly legal) and take the test, I did all three of mine online, one of which was from a beach on a Pacific island during the pandemic!
I got it into my head that I would like to see a spherical depiction of my QSOs. Azimuthal and other representations weren't cutting it for me.
I managed to coax an LLM to output my ADIF into a KML so I could better visualize the reach of my QSOs, and I am quite stunned. 20m has almost complete global reach, as you'll see below. Admittedly, on CW it probably does. In these visualizations, the vast majority of contacts are on FT8 20m, but there are a few dozen SSB contacts as far as Indonesia. Usually I made these contacts well before sunrise.
This is a representation of my entire logbook, so any QSO not from the SW US are 10m.
Setup: IC-7300, barefoot, 15m mast, and a 20m twinlead j-pole. Having been temporarily based in a residential area, I had quite a high noise floor from various EMI sources, and could have probably done better with weak stations had my noise floor been lower.
Moving to the west:
More west, Australia prominently visible:
Antipodal view:
Looking toward the east, the west coast of Africa coming into view:
Africa; the lonely QSO east of Madagascar is Reunion Island, got this one on FT8:
You can see a sharp decline in activity about mid-screen.
About 1m 15s remaining:
45s after 1200Z:
Granted, this is the IARU Championship. But that's a lot of people on the radio.
20m at 1500Z.
Side note: for the last three days I’ve enjoyed nearly bottomless noise floors; been making SSB QSOs to Japan, Indonesia, and even Rarotonga. Then–today of all days–the AirBnB beside my house has turned on their aircon and it’s completely wiping out all but the strongest signals. My waterfall looks like college ruled notebook paper:
1830Z Update:
1900Z. This is wild.
Man, what an amazing day which will be long–if not impossible–to forget.
In the late 90s, I observed my first partial eclipse from South Florida. Then and there I decided I needed to see a total solar eclipse. Nearly 30 years later, I made good on that little personal promise. The moment I realized I would be in position to get along the path of totality, I made plans with my spouse to do so. We saved the date and planed the logistics.
I, of course, ensured my radio was packed and fully functional; charged the battery the night before. We left Del Rio, the closest place we could find reasonable accommodations, at 0400L. By 0700L we had hoisted and strung the OCF dipole and we were ready to go in DL98rv, just under the central path of the eclipse on the side of Hwy 131 in Texas just beyond the US-Mexican border.
The Tech section of 10m was silent that early, but I kept calling CQ until I started getting QSOs, pretty much went ten in a row in nearly the same number of minutes once the band came alive.
I had wanted to participate in the research project contest, but the instructions and bonuses were a little overwhelming, but I did manage to make one QSO during totality. On the one hand, I was expecting propagation attenuation, but the QSO I made was over 1,500 miles away.
I've read over and over about experiencing totality. Photos will never do it justice. Words doubly so. If you've ever been on the fence about traveling to see totality–just do it.
Lessons learned or confirmed:
I am eager for your questions and feedback!
Let’s QSO!
18:05Z QSY to 28320khz
19:30Z QSY to 28315khz
Here to echo this–it's nice to have a quiet little instance for when the world news gets to be a little too much. Thank you for taking the time to set this all up and manage it.